‘Whatever have you done to your hair?’ demanded Cassandra. ‘You look so strange! I should scarcely have known you.’
‘It is the very latest fashion,’ replied Hero. ‘My maid did it.’
Mrs Bagshot gave a short laugh. ‘Fine feathers make fine birds! I see that you have set yourself up in the very latest mode. I suppose we shall have you setting up your carriage, and renting your box at the opera, in imitation of your betters. When I consider – However, I did not come to quarrel with you, and heaven knows I am thankful to see you creditably established, even though you may have had to accept an offer made to you in a fit of pique to do it. I am sure it would not surprise me to find that you are now too grand to recognise the humble cousins who gave you a home when you were left destitute upon the world.’
‘No,’ said Hero seriously.‘Indeed, I am not so ungrateful! And I would be glad to try to find husbands for my cousins, if I could, only Sherry says –’ She broke off short, colouring to the roots of her hair, the most comical expression of dismay on her face.
‘And pray what may your husband say?’ demanded Mrs Bagshot in menacing accents.
‘I’ve forgotten!’ said Hero desperately.
‘I abhor prevarication,’ remarked Eudora.‘I am sure you need not fear to repeat what he said, for it does not matter a fig to us what such a rackety young man may say!’
Stung by this criticism of her idol, Hero retorted without hesitation: ‘Well, he said he wouldn’t have you in the house, because he doesn’t like you!’
Mrs Bagshot turned quite purple, and struggled in vain for words. Before she could find any at all adequate to the situation, Hero had said penitently: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon! But Eudora should not have said that about Sherry! Do, pray, sit down, Cousin Jane, and – and let me ring for Groombridge to bring some fruit, and a glass of wine!’
Mrs Bagshot coldly refused this offer of refreshment, but she condescended to seat herself on the sofa, remarking as she did so that she was sorry to see that her exalted position had not led Hero to mend her manners. Her daughters wandered about the room, inspecting the furniture, criticising the colour of the hangings, and wondering how Hero could bear to have a canary deafening her with its odious noise. Hero replied to their strictures and exclamations with what patience she could muster, and tried to counter Mrs Bagshot’s extremely searching questions with dignity and civility.
She was succeeding very well when the door opened to admit Sherry, who came in all unawares, saying:‘Here’s a damned thing, Kitten! That fool of a man of mine has lost my –’
What Bootle had lost they were not destined to learn, for Sherry, perceiving the morning-callers, broke off in mid-sentence, ejaculated:‘My God!’ in accents of horror, and retired precipitately.
Hero made a desperate attempt to keep her countenance, failed, and went into a peal of laughter. Her affronted relative rose majestically, and, addressing her daughters, said in a terrible voice: ‘Come, my loves! It is plain that we are not welcome in your cousin’s house.’
‘Oh, pray do not take a pet, Cousin Jane!’ begged Hero. ‘It – it is just that poor Sherry is not feeling quite the thing to-day! He will be sorry presently, I dare say.’
Mrs Bagshot, however, was adamant, and was in the act of delivering herself of a severe valedictory speech when a welcome diversion was caused by Groombridge’s announcing Lord Wrotham.
George came in with his usual impetuosity, and with the inevitable lock of raven hair straying across his romantic brow. He grasped his hostess’s hand warmly, saying: ‘I heard you was come up from the country! How do you do? You look to be in famous shape! What a capital little place you have here! It is just the thing, Kitten!’
‘Oh, George, I am so glad to see you!’ Hero said. ‘Oh, do you – are you acquainted with Lord Wrotham, Cousin Jane?’
Mrs Bagshot bowed, but lost no time in shepherding her daughters out of the room. She was naturally unable to suppose that any man could look upon these damsels without experiencing a start of admiration, and although his lordship had the undoubted advantage of being a peer of the realm it was well known that his pockets were (in vulgar parlance) pretty well to let. She scolded Hero, who escorted her downstairs to the front door, on the impropriety of encouraging familiarity from so unstable a young man, and expressed the pious hope that the oddity of her manners would not be her ruin.
Having seen her relative off the premises, Hero sped upstairs again, and danced into the drawing-room, exclaiming: ‘Oh, George, I was never so glad to see anyone! She was scolding me dreadfully when you walked in upon us, and I thought she would never go! I don’t know where Sherry has hidden himself: only fancy! – he came in here, not having the least notion my cousins were with me, and he cried out My God! and ran out of the room! It was the drollest thing! Did you come to find him?’
‘No, no – though I shall be happy to see him, of course! I came to pay my respects, and to leave my card, and to discover if you would care to watch a balloon ascension at three o’clock?’
Hero was naturally delighted with this proposal, and said that there was nothing she would like better.‘How kind it is in you to be thinking of me, George! Indeed, I thank you very much!’
‘No such thing! I assure you – Well, I thought perhaps you might not have witnessed the spectacle. It is an odd circumstance that Miss Milborne has not either. She has a great fancy to see it, only, as it chances, Mrs Milborne is engaged with some friends, and so the whole project must come to nothing, unless –’ a disarmingly ingenuous smile swept across his face – ‘Oh, hang it, Kitten, the long and the short of it is that if you would but offer to take her up in your carriage, I think Miss Milborne would like it excessively! If you could but persuade Sherry to make one of the party, nothing could be more snug!’
‘George, you are the most complete hand!’ Hero told him, borrowing from Sherry’s vocabulary. ‘I have a good mind to bring my cousin Cassy instead of Miss Milborne. How confounded you would look!’
‘I swear you are the best of good fellows!’ George exclaimed. ‘Well, no! I don’t mean that! What am I saying? I declare I am so up in the world to-day – or I shall be, if only you will send a note round to Green Street, to beg Miss Milborne to bear you company!’
‘Well, I will,’ promised Hero, sitting down on the sofa, and patting the place beside her invitingly. ‘But what has occurred to put you in such spirits? Isabella has not – oh, George, she has not accepted you?’
‘No,’ he said, the sparkle dying out of his expressive eyes.‘No, not that, but – Look, Kitten!’
He thrust a hand into his pocket as he spoke, and drew out a small package. This he reverently unwrapped, disclosing a dejected pink rose, which was fast reaching the stage of decomposition.
Hero opened her eyes very wide as she stared at this relic, and then, glancing enquiringly up at George, said in an awed tone: ‘Did she give it to you, George?’
He nodded, his emotions for the moment making it impossible for him to speak. When he had cleared his throat, he said:‘She was wearing a posy of them, pinned to her dress, last night. This one fell into her lap, and Severn –’ he ground his teeth at the recollection – ‘Severn had the temerity to demand it of her! As though he had but to ask, and she must submit to his wishes! I was within an ace of calling him to account, I can tell you! I must have done so, had not Miss Milborne given him such a let-down as – Kitten, she held it out to me, and said with the kindest smile, the most speaking expression in those glorious eyes, that I should have her rose, if I cared to take it! If I cared to! I slept with it beneath my pillow, and I shall carry it next my heart until I die!’ He looked imploringly at Hero, and said with an effort:‘She could not have done so had she not felt a preference – could she?’
‘Oh no, indeed she could not!’ Hero cried. ‘It must be certain! It is the most touching thing I ever heard! Oh, Sherry, is that you? Do, pray, come in, and see what Isabella has bestowed upon dear George!’
> ‘Hallo, George!’ said the Viscount, strolling across the room. ‘My God, Kitten, what a scrape you put me into just now!’
She gave an involuntary giggle.‘I know. And if you could but have seen your own face! But never mind that now! Only look!’
The Viscount eyed the rose disparagingly. ‘Where’s the sense in keeping that?’ he asked. ‘It’s dead. I see nothing at all wonderful in it.’
‘But, Sherry, you do not understand! Isabella gave it to George last night!’
‘Did she, by God?’ said Sherry incorrigibly.‘Lord, what a flirt the girl is!’
Lord Wrotham sprang to his feet, quick rage kindling in his breast. Hero, well accustomed by this time to his starts, shrieked: ‘George, if you call Sherry out, I won’t invite Isabella to go with us!’
His lordship paused, clenching his fists. ‘Sherry!’ he said menacingly, ‘unsay those words!’
‘Damned if I will,’ responded Sherry. ‘You can’t call me out in my own house. Devilish bad ton! Besides, of course the Incomparable is a flirt! Nothing in that! I’d lay a monkey she did it to make Severn jealous. Don’t tell me he wasn’t there! You can’t humbug me, my boy!’
‘If I thought that – !’ said George, thrusting back the lock of hair from his brow.
‘She would not be so cruel!’ said Hero indignantly. ‘Don’t heed him, George!’
‘If I thought it,’ George said,‘if I believed that she was trifling with me so heartlessly, I would – I would grind the rose under my heel!’
‘No need to make a damned mess on our new carpet,’ said Sherry.‘Throw it out of the window.’
‘Sherry, I don’t know how you can be so unfeeling!’ Hero said reproachfully.
‘Well, dash it, what is he to do with it?’ asked Sherry.‘A fellow can’t carry a lot of withered rose-leaves about in his pocket! Just look at the thing already!’
George appeared to be a little daunted by this point of view. ‘I suppose it will fall to pieces,’ he said disconsolately.
‘No, no, there is not the least need!’ Hero assured him. ‘You must press it between the leaves of a book, and then it will keep its shape. Sherry, George desires us to go with him to witness a balloon ascension! We are to take Isabella along with us, if she cares to come. You will like to go, will you not?’
‘What, to watch a curst balloon go up?’ exclaimed Sherry. ‘No, I wouldn’t!’
‘But, Sherry, if you will not accompany us I do not know how we are to contrive!’
‘Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll make such a cake of myself ! If George wants to look like a Johnny Raw he may do so, but he ain’t going to drag me into it!’
Hero was about to argue the point when she suddenly recollected that Sherry too had been one of the Incomparable’s suitors. She thought that perhaps he was trying to mask a natural disinclination to spend a whole afternoon in the company of the unattainable, and tactfully forbore to press him any farther. She suggested to George that they should invite Mr Fakenham to make a fourth in their party. George agreed to this, but when he had had a moment in which to think it over he remembered that Ferdy also formed one of Miss Milborne’s court, and he said that he fancied balloons were not much in Ferdy’s line, and would instead bring his friend, Algernon Gumley, to share in the treat. The Viscount let out a most unseemly crack of laughter at this, but refused to explain why. George informed Hero, a trifle stiffly, that she would find Mr Gumley a very good-humoured fellow, and took himself off, carefully carrying his rose with him.
Hero sat down at the writing-table to compose a suitable note to Isabella. Sherry said: ‘What a fellow George is! Dead roses and balloon ascensions! You wouldn’t think it, but he used to be as game a man as you would meet in a twelve-month before he clapped eyes on Isabella. I’ll swear she means to have Severn, too – if she can get him! They’re laying bets against it at the clubs, you know.’
‘Oh, Sherry!’ Hero said, turning round to look at him. ‘She could not be so heartless as to bestow a flower upon him if her affections were not seriously engaged!’
‘Much you know about it!’ he responded. ‘Why, she’s the most heartless girl I ever met in my life! Look at the way she treated me!’
‘Yes,’ Hero said, hanging down her head a little.‘She was very unkind to you, of course. I am sorry I teased you to go with us this afternoon. I forgot that it must give you pain.’
‘Give me pain?’ repeated Sherry. ‘Oh – ah! Exactly! Slipped my mind for the moment. Do you mean to be writing letters for ever, or are we to drive round to Grosvenor Square?’
Hero assured him that she would be ready to set forth with him in a quarter of an hour, so he went off to send a message to the stables, while she finished her note, and despatched it by the hand of her page.
The visit to the dowager was not a success. She was discovered reclining on a sofa, with the blinds half-lowered and Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs significantly open on her knee. She greeted her daughter-in-law with a visible shudder, and embraced her son with all the tenderness of one conveying speechless sympathy for a victim of fate. A suggestion put forward by Sherry that she might present Hero at Court brought on all her most alarming symptoms. She held out no hope of her health’s permitting her to visit the house in Half Moon Street; and a blunt request from Sherry for the family emeralds apparently brought up a series of the most affecting memories, which obliged her to have recourse to her vinaigrette, and to dab at the corners of her perfectly dry eyes.
‘But you never wear ’em, ma’am!’ Sherry protested. ‘Dash it, you always used to say green was not your colour, and you teased my father into giving you the diamond set in their stead! Besides, you know very well they belong to me – have done, ever since my father died!’
‘Alas, that you should have so little sensibility!’ quavered his parent. ‘The jewels which your dear papa clasped about my throat when we were first married –’
‘No, he didn’t,’ interrupted Sherry.‘My grandfather was alive then, and, what’s more, my father had the devil of a work to induce my grandmother to give ’em up when the old man died! Yes, and you went into one of your miffs, ma’am, and said she had no right to ’em! Remember it as if it was yesterday.’
Perceiving that the widow showed every sign of sinking into a swoon, Hero hastily said that indeed she did not wish to have the emeralds until her mama-in-law was dead. But this turned out to have been an unfortunate remark, as it gave the widow an opportunity of saying that she had no doubt her son and his wife were eagerly awaiting that day. She added that it could not be far distant, and this so much annoyed Sherry that he became quite obstinate about the emeralds, and said that if they were not delivered at his house within a week he would instruct old Ditchling to collect them.
‘Perhaps,’ said the dowager, her colour much heightened,‘you would also wish me to send your wife the pearl set and the diamond studs?’
‘Yes, by Jupiter, I would!’ declared Sherry. ‘I’m glad you put me in mind of them: they’re just the things for Hero!’
‘Oh, Sherry, don’t, please!’ whispered Hero.
‘Nonsense! The pearls are always handed over to the brides in my family: nothing new in that!’ said Sherry briskly. ‘Come along! If you are to go on this expedition with George, it is time we took our leave!’
The dowager was so overcome by the reflection that she had tumbled into a pit of her own digging that she could barely master her voice sufficiently to bid her visitors farewell. Hero curtsied, as though she had still been a little girl in the schoolroom; the Viscount dropped a chaste salute upon the trembling hand held out to him; and they both withdrew with feelings of great relief at having, as Sherry put it, brushed through the ordeal tolerably well.
A civil note from Isabella, accepting Hero’s obliging invitation, was reposing upon the spindle-legged table in the passage which served the house in Half Moon Street as a front hall, and at three o’clock George arrived, with his friend, Mr Gumley. One glance at
this gentleman sufficed to enlighten Hero as to the cause of Sherry’s rude laughter: he had plainly been chosen for his lack of address, and palpable terror of the female sex. He was a plain young man, and although George assured Hero, in an under-voice, that when he overcame his shyness he could be perfectly conversable, he stammered so much that whenever he made a remark, which was not often, it was even more painful for his listeners than for himself. However, he appeared to derive deep, if silent, satisfaction from the spectacle he had been brought to witness, and managed to tell Hero, when they finally parted company, that he had enjoyed himself excessively.
Hero, although she was naturally interested in the first balloon she had ever seen, did not spend an afternoon of unmixed enjoyment. For this the behaviour of Miss Milborne was to blame. Nothing could have been more affectionate than Miss Milborne’s manner towards her hostess, and nothing more wayward than her behaviour towards her maddened lover. Hero was unable to acquit her of coquetry, and was indeed quite shocked to see how she would blow first hot and then cold upon the unfortunate Lord Wrotham. Whether she regretted having given him as much encouragement as lay in a rose dropped from her corsage, or whether she resented the introduction into the party of so unprepossessing a gentleman as Mr Gumley, no one could tell, but although she relented towards him from time to time, even allowing her hand to rest in his for a moment longer than was necessary when he handed her down from the barouche, she was for the most part a little pettish in her manner, and made it plain that he could do nothing to please her. Hero, who had a warm affection for George, could not refrain once from looking at her in a very speaking way, but the Beauty seemed not to notice the reproach in her old friend’s eyes. She launched into a sprightly description of a masquerade she had attended a week earlier, and although Hero might be extremely young and unversed in the ways of spoiled beauties, she could not but recognise that Miss Milborne’s reason for introducing this topic lay in the circumstance of her having been gallanted to this party by his Grace of Severn.
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