She said apologetically: “No, I fear I don’t. I see that it wouldn’t be a wise thing to do if my ambition were to become one of those tonnish females whom my aunt describes as being of the first consideration, but as it isn’t—”
“Stop talking like the greenhead you are!” he said sternly. “You know nothing about the Steeples’ world! Well, I do know—none better!—and if I thought that this was anything but a hum—” He stopped abruptly, raising his head a little.
“Well?” she prompted.
He lifted his finger, and she too heard the sound that had reached his ears. A carriage was approaching the house. “Aubrey!” Damerel said. His eyes went back to her face, “What reason do you mean to give him for being here? You won’t regale him with this!” He handed back Lady Steeple’s letter to her as he spoke.
She was wishing Aubrey a hundred miles away, and could have screamed with vexation, but she replied with seeming calm: “But, my dear friend, I couldn’t take such a step without first discovering what his sentiments are!”
“If that is all—”
She smiled. “His sentiments, Damerel, not his opinions! For anything I know he might prefer to lodge with the Appersetts than to join me in London.” Her smile wavered. “I don’t think I am very necessary to him either,” she said.
He was on his feet now, standing over her, grasping her wrists, and almost jerking her up out of her chair. “Venetia, I would give my life to spare you pain—disillusionment—all the things you don’t realize—have no knowledge of!—My life! What an empty, fustian thing to say! I could scarcely have hit upon a more worthless sacrifice!” he said bitterly.
There was a murmur of voices in the hall, footsteps were approaching. “Damn Aubrey!” Damerel said under his breath, releasing Venetia’s wrists.
But it was not Aubrey. Setting the door wide, Imber announced in a voice of doom: “Mr. Hendred, my lord!”
XXI
Mr. Hendred walked into the room. He was looking pale, tired, and very angry; and after bestowing one brief glance on Venetia he addressed himself stiffly to Damerel. “Good-evening! You must allow me to apologize for making so belated an arrival! I do not doubt, however, that you were expecting to see me!”
“Well, I suppose I ought to have done so, at all events,” replied Damerel. “You have quite a knack of arriving in what might be called the nick of time, haven’t you? Have you dined?”
Mr. Hendred shuddered, momentarily closing his eyes. “No, sir, I have not dined! Nor, I may add—”
“Then you must be devilish sharp-set! said Damerel curtly. “See to it, Imber!”
An expression of acute nausea crossed Mr. Hendred’s countenance, but before he could master his spleen enough to decline, with civility, this offer of hospitality, Venetia, less charitable emotions vanquished by compassion, started forward, saying: “No, no! My uncle can never eat when he has been travelling all day! Oh, my dear sir, what can have possessed you to have come chasing after me in this imprudent way? I wouldn’t have had you do such a thing for the world! So unnecessary! so foolish! You will be quite knocked-up!”
“Foolish?” repeated Mr. Hendred. “I reached London last night, Venetia, to be met with the intelligence that you had left town by the mail-coach, with the expressed intention of coming to this house—where, indeed, I find you! So far as I can discover, you took this disastrous step because of a quarrel with your aunt—and I must say, Venetia, that I credited you with too much sense to refine anything whatsoever on what your aunt may have said in a distempered freak!”
“My dear, dear uncle, of course I didn’t!” Venetia said remorsefully, coaxing him to a chair. “Do, pray, sit down, for I know very well you are fagged to death, and have that horrid tic! There was no quarrel, I promise you! My poor aunt was quite overset by first seeing my mother at the theatre, and then discovering that I had been so ungrateful as to make a mull of her efforts to bring me into fashion by walking on my father-in-law’s arm all the way from the Pulteney Hotel to Oxford Street. She gave me a rare scold, and I didn’t blame her in the least: I knew she would! But as for leaving town because of it, or parting from her in anger—Sir, she cannot have told you that! She knew what my reason was: I made no secret of it to her!”
“Your aunt,” said Mr. Hendred, expressing himself with determined restraint, “is a woman of great sensibility, and is subject, as you must be aware, to irritation of the nerves! When her spirits become overpowered, it is hard for her to compose herself sufficiently to render a coherent or even a rational account of whatever may have occurred to cast her into affliction. In fact,” he ended, with asperity, “you cannot make head or tail of anything she says! As for knowing what your reason was, I don’t know what you may have seen fit to tell her, Venetia, but so far as I understand it you could think of nothing better to do than to beguile her with some farrago about wishing Damerel to strew rose-leaves for you to walk on!”
Damerel, who had resumed his seat, had been staring moodily into the fire, but at these words he looked up quickly. “Rose-leaves?” he repeated. “Rose-leaves?” His eyes went to Venetia’s face, wickedly quizzing her. “But, my dear girl, at this season?”
“Be quiet, you wretch!” she said, blushing.
“Exactly so!” said Mr. Hendred. Scrupulously exact, he added: “Or her purpose may have been to discourage you from indulging in such wasteful habits. I was unable to discover which—not that it signifies, for a more foolish story I never heard! What you told your aunt is of no consequence. What is of the first consequence to me is that you, my dear niece, a girl—and do not tell me that you are of age, I beg of you!—a girl, I say, residing in my house, under my protection, should have been allowed to run off, unattended, and with the expressed intention of seeking shelter under this of all imaginable roofs! And you call it foolish and unnecessary of me to exert myself to prevent your ruin and my own mortification?”
“No, no!” she said soothingly. “But are you not forgetting that I have a brother living under this roof, sir? I told your servants that I had been sent for because he was ill, and surely—”
“I have neither forgotten Aubrey, nor am I here to lend you countenance!” he interposed sternly. “I am here, as well you must know, to save you from committing an act of irremediable folly! I make no excuse, Damerel, for speaking thus plainly, for you already know my mind!”
“By all means say what you choose,” shrugged Damerel. “We are perfectly in accord, after all!”
Venetia, watching her uncle press his finger-tips to one temple, rose, and went quietly out of the room. She was not absent for many minutes, but when she returned her uncle told her that he had been discussing with Damerel her visit to the Steeples. “I have no hesitation in assuring you, my dear niece, that what his lordship has already told you is perfectly true. No stigma whatsoever attaches to you, and although any regular intercourse between you and Sir Lambert and Lady Steeple would be most undesirable, nothing could be more unbecoming—I may say improper—than for a daughter to cut her mother’s acquaintance! I do not conceal from you that on that painful subject I have never found myself in agreement, either with your aunt, or with your late parent. In my opinion, the policy of secrecy which was insisted on was as ill-judged as it was absurd!”
“Very true!” said Venetia. She looked from one to the other, a smile in her eyes. “What else have you discussed? Have you settled between you what my future is to be? Or shall I tell you what I have settled?”
Mr. Hendred, seeing that smile reflected in Damerel’s eyes, said quickly: “Venetia, I beg you will consider before you do what I gravely fear you cannot but regret! You think me unfeeling, but believe me, it is not so! I think it my duty to tell you, however—and I trust your lordship will forgive me!—that no more unsuitable marriage than the one you contemplate could well be imagined!”
“My dear uncle, how can you talk in such an exaggerated fashion?” Venetia protested. “Do but recollect a little! Damerel may be a rake, but
at least he won’t turn out to be my father!”
“Turn out to be your father?” repeated Mr. Hendred, in a stupefied tone. “What, in heaven’s name—?”
Damerel’s shoulders had begun to shake. “Oedipus,” he said. “At least, so I apprehend, but she has become a trifle confused. What she means is that she won’t turn out to be my mother.”
“Well, it is the same thing, Damerel!” said Venetia, impatient of such pedantry. “Just as unsuitable!”
“You will oblige me, Venetia,” said Mr. Hendred acidly, “by abandoning a subject which I consider to be extremely improper. I may say that I am excessively shocked to think that Aubrey—for I collect it was he!—should have sullied his sister’s ears with such a story!”
“But you must surely see, sir, that Damerel isn’t in the least shocked!” she pointed out. “Doesn’t that circumstance help you to understand why he would be the most suitable of all imaginable husbands for me?”
“No, it does not!” replied Mr. Hendred roundly. “Upon my word, I don’t know how to bring you to your senses! You appear to me to be living in a—in a—”
“Soap-bubble,” supplied Damerel.
“Yes, very well! a soap-bubble!” snapped Mr. Hendred. “You have fallen in love for the first time in your life, Venetia, and in your eyes Damerel is some sort of a hero out of a fairy-tale!”
She went into a peal of laughter. “Oh, no, he is not!” she exclaimed. “Dear sir, how can you suppose me to be such a goose? If that pretty soap-bubble image was meant to signify that a dreadful disillusionment is in store for me, I can assure you that you may be easy!”
“You compel me to be blunt—and a very distasteful task it is! Damerel may have the intention of reforming his way of life, but habits of long standing—the trend of a man’s character—are not easily altered! I have a considerable regard for you, Venetia, and it would cause me distress and self-blame if I saw you made unhappy!”
She looked at Damerel. “Well, my dear friend?”
“Well, my dear delight?” he returned, a glint in his eyes.
“Do you think you will make me unhappy?”
“I don’t—but I will offer you no promises!”
“No, pray don’t!” she said seriously. “As soon as one promises not to do something it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do!” She turned her head towards her uncle again. “You mean to warn me that he may continue to have mistresses, and orgies, and—and so-on, don’t you sir?”
“Particularly so-on!” interpolated Damerel.
“Well, how should I know all the shocking things you do? The thing is, uncle, that I don’t think I ever should know.”
“You’d know about my orgies!” objected Damerel.
“Yes, but I shouldn’t care about them, once in a while. After all, it would be quite unreasonable to wish you to change all your habits, and I can always retire to bed, can’t I?”
“Oh, won’t you preside over them?” he said, much disappointed.
“Yes, love, if you wish me to,” she replied, smiling at him. “Should I enjoy them?”
He stretched out his hand, and when she laid her own in it, held it very tightly. “You shall have a splendid orgy, my dear delight, and you will enjoy it very much indeed!”
Fortunately, since the much-tried Mr. Hendred was showing alarming signs of having reached the end of his endurance, the door opened at that moment, and Imber came in with the tea-tray. He set this down before Venetia, who at once poured out a cup, and gave it to her uncle, saying: “I know you won’t venture to eat anything, sir, but tea always does you good, doesn’t it?”
He could not deny it, and it did indeed exercise a beneficial effect upon him, for by the time he had finished his second cup he had so far accepted the marriage as inevitable as to demand of Damerel whether he had any notion how his affairs stood, to what tune he was in debt, and in what style he proposed to support his wife.
These pregnant questions were posed in a tone of withering irony, but Damerel’s answer was in the nature of a doubler. “I know exactly how my affairs stand: what my debts amount to, and what my disposable assets will bring in. I shan’t be able to support my wife in luxury, but I trust to support her in comfort. I have been into all this with my man of business—a month since! He merely awaits my instructions to act in the manner agreed upon at that time.”
Driven against the ropes, Mr. Hendred was still full of pluck, and rattled in again, game as a pebble. “And a settlement?” he demanded.
He was thrown in the close. “Naturally!” said Damerel, raising his brows with unaccustomed haughtiness.
At this point Venetia entered the ring. “I may not know much about orgies, but you are now talking of what I do understand!” she announced. “And in a perfectly idiotish way! Disposable assets means your race-horses, and your yacht, and the post-horses you stable all over England, and I know not how many other things! There is not the smallest need for you to dispose of them, and as for making a settlement on me, why the—the devil should you, when I have a great deal of money of my own? I must own, I should myself choose to pay off the debts, but if you prefer to live in debt, it is quite your own affair! As for making all these sacrifices—Damerel, it would end in regret for you, not for me!”
“Live in debt?” exclaimed Mr. Hendred, regarding her with an expression not far removed from revulsion. “Prefer to live in debt?”
“Yes, we’ll discuss all these matters, sir—in our idiotish way—at some future date!” said Damerel. “Don’t distress yourself, my sweet! My happiness doesn’t hang on my disposable assets, but on one green girl.”
“Stop!” commanded Mr. Hendred. “You are going a great deal too fast! This will not do!”
“Well, at least it will do better than for her join the Steeples’ set!” retorted Damerel. “Yes, you may stare, but that is the pistol that has been held to my head!”
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Hendred testily. “Aurelia wouldn’t entertain such a notion for an instant! Aurelia with a daughter taking the shine out of her? Ha!”
“Yes, that’s what I think, but although I haven’t yet discovered how she did it, Venetia has wrung an invitation out of her: I’ve been privileged to read it!”
“Good God!” said Mr. Hendred blankly.
“So,” continued Damerel, “we will now devote our energies not to the hopeless task of convincing my green girl that she is making a mistake, but to the problem of how to ensure that she shall not find herself ostracized by the ton.”
“I assure you it won’t trouble me in the least to be ostracized!” interpolated Venetia.
“It would trouble me, however.” Damerel turned his head, and looked thoughtfully at Mr. Hendred. “With your support, sir, and my Aunt Stoborough’s, I think we may contrive to brush through it. I rather fancy you are acquainted with my aunt?”
“I have been acquainted with Lady Stoborough these twenty years,” replied Mr. Hendred, with a thin, triumphant smile. “And the only heed she would pay to any persuasion of mine, or of anyone, would be to do precisely the opposite to what was desired.”
“Just so!” said Damerel. “I see that you will know to a nicety how to bring her round your thumb.”
There was a silence. Mr. Hendred, on whom this speech seemed to have exercised a powerful effect, sat gazing at a picture invisible to his companions. Under Venetia’s fascinated eyes, the skin round his mouth began slowly to stretch, and while his thin lips remained a little pursed two deep creases appeared in his cheeks: Mr. Hendred was enjoying a private joke, too rare to be imparted to his companions. Emerging from this reverie, he surveyed them with disfavour, and declared his inability to discuss the matter on hand any more that evening. He then asked his niece if she meant to accompany him to York, where he meant to spend the night, but not as though he expected to receive an assenting answer.
This gave her the opportunity for which she had been waiting. She said: “No, dear sir, not another yard w
ill I travel this day, and nor, I must break it to you, do you! Don’t eat me! but I directed Imber to send your chaise on to the Red Lion some time ago. I know that is what you like, and indeed, we are so very short-handed—I mean, Damerel is so short-handed here at present that the postilions could hardly be housed without putting the servants to a great deal of work they really have no time to undertake! And Damerel’s valet, a most excellent man, will have seen that a room is prepared for you by now, and will have unpacked your portmanteau. I ventured to direct him to find the pastilles you always burn when you have the headache, upon hearing which he said that he would immediately prepare a tisane for you to drink when you go to bed.”
This programme was so attractive that Mr. Hendred succumbed, though not without warning his host that his complaisance must not be taken to mean that he gave his consent to a marriage of which he strongly disapproved, much less that he was prepared to promote it in any way whatsoever.
Accepting this blighting announcement with equanimity, Damerel then rang the bell for Marston, at which moment Aubrey, having driven into the stableyard, and entered the house by way of a side-door, came into the room. He was looking faintly surprised, and said as he entered: “Well, I wondered who the deuce you could be talking to, Jasper! How d’ye do, sir? Well, m’dear, how are you? I’m glad you’ve come: I’ve missed you.”
He limped across the room to Venetia as he spoke, and much moved by his greeting she embraced him warmly. “And I have missed you, love—you don’t know how much!”
“Stoopid!” he said, with his twisted smile. “Why didn’t you send warning that you were coming? What’s brought you, by the way?”
“I will tell you what brought your sister here!” said Mr. Hendred. “You are of an age to be thought capable of forming an opinion, and I am told that you are considered to have a superior understanding! It may be that Venetia will be more willing to attend to you than to me. Let me tell you, young man, that she has announced her intention of accepting an offer from Lord Damerel!”
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