Edward saw his duty clear; he saw too that the performance of it was more than likely to involve him in consequences repugnant to a man of taste and sensibility; but he did not shrink from it: he set his jaw, and rode off to the Priory, not in such a spirit of knight-errantry as Oswald Denny would have brought to the task, but inspired by a sober man’s determination to protect the reputation of the lady whom he had chosen to be his bride. At the best, he hoped to bring her to a sense of her impropriety; at the worst, he must bring Damerel to a precise understanding of Venetia’s true circumstances. This task could not be otherthan distasteful to one who prided himself on his correct and well-regulated life; and it might, if Damerel were as careless of public opinion as he was said to be, plunge him into just the sort of scandal his disposition urged him to avoid. He was by no means deficient in courage, but he had not the smallest wish, whatever Damerel’s offences might be, to find himself confronting his lordship early one morning with a pistol in his hand and twenty yards of cold earth between them. If it came to that it would be because Aubrey’s recklessness and Venetia’s incorrigible imprudence had forced him into a position from which, as a man of honour, he could not draw back, even when he considered her to have courted whatever ill might befall her by stepping beyond the barriers of strict propriety, and so giving such men as Damerel a false notion of her character.
It was therefore not with romantic ardour that he rode from Undershaw to the Priory but with a sense of outrage and an exacerbated temper rather hardened than mollified by being kept under rigid control.
His arrival almost coincided with that of Damerel, from Thirsk. As he dismounted, Damerel came striding round the corner of the house from the stables, a package tucked, with his riding-whip, under one arm while he pulled off his gloves. At sight of Edward he checked, in surprise, and for a few moments they stood looking one another over in silence, hard suspicion in one pair of eyes, and in the other a gathering amusement. Then Damerel lifted an enquiring eyebrow, and Edward said stiffly: ‘Lord Damerel, I believe?’
They were the only rehearsed words he was destined to utter. From then on the meeting proceeded on lines quite unlike any for which he had prepared himself. Damerel strolled forward, saying: ‘Yes, I’m Damerel, but you have the advantage of me, I fear. I can guess that you must be a friend of young Lanyon’s, however. How do you do?’
He smiled as he spoke, and held out his hand. Edward was obliged to shake hands with him, a friendly gesture which forced him to abandon the formality he had decided to adopt.
‘How do you do?’ he responded, with civility, if not with warmth. ‘Your lordship has guessed correctly: I am a friend of Aubrey Lanyon – I may say a lifelong friend of hisfamily! I cannot suppose that my name is known to you, but it is Yardley – Edward Yardley of Netherfold.’
He was mistaken. After a frowning moment Damerel’s brow cleared; he said: ‘Does your land lie some few miles beyond my south-western boundary? Yes, I thought so.’ He added, with his swift smile: ‘I flatter myself I am making progress in my knowledge of the neighbourhood! Have you been visiting Aubrey?’
‘I have only this instant arrived, my lord – from Undershaw, where I was informed by the butler of this very unfortunate accident – He told me also that Miss Lanyon was here.’
‘Is she?’ said Damerel indifferently. ‘I’ve been out all the morning, but it’s very probable. If she’s here she will be with her brother: do you care to go up?’
‘Thank you!’ Edward said, with a slight bow. ‘I should like to do so, if Aubrey is sufficiently well to receive a visitor.’
‘I daresay it won’t do him any harm,’ replied Damerel, leading the way through the open door into the house. ‘He’s not much hurt, you know: no bones broken! I sent for his doctor to come to him last night, but I don’t think I should have done so if he hadn’t told me that he had a diseased hip-joint. He is none too comfortable, but Bentworth seems to be satisfied that if only he can be kept quiet for a time no evil consequences need be anticipated. Once he had discovered the existence of my library I saw that there would not be the least difficulty aboutthat.’
There was a laugh in his voice; none at all in Edward’s as he answered: ‘He always has his head in a book.’
Damerel had moved to where a frayed bell-pull hung besidethe stone fireplace; as he tugged at it he shot a swift, appraising glance at Edward. The gleam of amusement in his eyes was pronounced, but he said only: ‘You, I apprehend, are too well-acquainted with him to be astonished by the scope and power of his quite remarkable intelligence.I, on the other hand, after sitting with him for some hours last night, my forgetful and, alas! indolent brain at full stretch to bear me up through arguments which ranged from disputed texts to percipient mind, retired from the lists persuaded that what threatened the boy was not a crippled leg but an addled brain!’
‘Do you think him so clever?’ asked Edward, rather surprised. ‘For my part I have often thought him lacking even in commonsense. But I myself am not at all bookish.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think he has any commonsense at all!’ returned Damerel.
‘I confess I consider it a pity he had not enough to refrain from riding a horse he could not master,’ said Edward, with a slight smile. ‘I warned him how it would be when I first set eyes on that chestnut. Indeed, I begged him most earnestly not to make the attempt.’
‘Did you?’ said Damerel appreciatively. ‘And he didn’t heed you? You astonish me!’
‘He has been very much indulged. That, of course, was made inevitable, to some degree, by his sickliness; but he has been allowed to have his own way beyond what is proper, from the circumstances attached to his upbringing,’ said Edward, painstakingly explaining the Lanyons. ‘His father, the late Sir Francis Lanyon, though in many respects a most estimable man, was eccentric.’
‘So Miss Lanyon informed me. I should suppose him to have been a curst rum touch, myself, but we won’t quarrel over terms!’
‘One hesitates to speak ill of the dead,’ persevered Edward, ‘but towards his children he displayed an almost total want ofinterest or consideration. One would have expected him to have provided his daughter with a chaperon, for instance, but such was not the case. You may have wondered, I daresay, at thefreedomof Miss Lanyon’s manners, and, not knowing the circumstances, have thought it odd that she should be permitted to go abroad unattended.’
‘No doubt I should, had I met her when she was a girl,’ responded Damerel coolly. He turned his head, as Imber came into the hall. ‘Imber, here is Mr Yardley, who has come to visit our invalid! Take him up – and see that Mrs Priddy has that bundle of lint, will you?’ He nodded to Edward to follow the butler, and himself walked off to one of the saloons that led from the hall.
Edward trod up the broad, shallow staircase in Imber’s wake, his feelings almost equally divided between relief at finding Damerel apparently indifferent to Venetia, and annoyance at the casual way he had been dismissed.
In general he ignored Aubrey’s frequent rudeness, but that scornful adjuration to him not to be a slow-top vexed him so much that he was obliged to suppress a sharp retort. He never allowed himself to speak hastily, and it was therefore in a measured tone that he said, after a moment: ‘Let me point out to you, Aubrey, that ifyouwould not try to be quite such a hardgoer this unfortunate accident would never have occurred.’
‘It was not, after all, so very unfortunate,’ intervened Venetia. ‘How kind in you to have come to see how he does!’
‘I must regard as unfortunate – to put it no higher! – any accident that placesyouin an awkward situation,’ he said.
‘Well, pray don’t tease yourself over that!’ she said soothingly. ‘To be sure, I had rather Aubrey were at home, but I am able to visit him every day, you know, andhe, I am persuaded, has not the least wish to be at home. I must tell you, Edward, that nothing could be greater than Damerel’s kindness to Aubrey, orhis good nature in allowing Nurse to order everything precisely as she chooses here. You know her way!’
‘You are very much obliged to his lordship,’ he replied gravely. ‘I do not deny it, but you will scarcely expect me to think your indebtedness anything but an evil, the consequences of which may, I fear, be far-reaching.’
‘Whatconsequences? I hope you mean to tell me what you mean, for I promise you I don’t know! The only consequence I perceive is that we have made an agreeable new acquaintance – and find the Wicked Baron to be very much less black than rumour has painted him!’
‘I make every allowance for your ignorance of the world, Venetia, but surely you cannot be unaware of the evil that attaches to acquaintance with a man of Lord Damerel’s reputation! I should not wish to make a friend of him myself, and inyourcase – which is one of particular delicacy – every feeling revolts against such an acquaintance!’
‘Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?’ muttered Aubrey savagely.
