‘But I keep on telling you she did not wish to go!’ Sherry said, quite tired of the subject.
‘Well, I think she did. And, damme, I never wanted to come here, now I think of it! I’m going back.’
The Viscount shrugged, casting an expressive glance at Mr Ringwood, and Lord Wrotham took his impetuous departure. He had not appeared to be in a convivial mood, but his going threw an unaccountable damper over the party. The Viscount’s countenance wore something very like a scowl, and he drank off his second glass of daffy rather defiantly. Upon someacquaintances coming up to exchange salutations and bets, he roused himself from his abstraction and entered pretty readily into the transactions. But when these friends moved away, he sat down again at his table, looking moody, and drinking his third glass in unbroken silence. An attempt by Mr Ringwood to rouse him failed; and a rallying jest from Revesby only drew a perfunctory smile from him. The third glass seemed to help him to come to a decision. He set it down empty upon the bare table and suddenly demanded: ‘Whatrighthas George Wrotham to take my wife to Almack’s?’
Mr Ringwood considered this carefully. ‘Don’t see any harm in it,’ he pronounced at last. ‘Quite the thing.’
‘Well, I won’t have it!’ said his lordship belligerently.
‘My dear Sherry, let me call for another glass!’ smiled Revesby.
His lordship ignored this. ‘He comes here, don’t say a word, hardly blows a cloud, and then what does he do? Without so much as a by your leave, too!’
‘Don’t see that,’ objected Mr Ringwood, shaking his head. ‘Told you what he was going to do, didn’t he? If you didn’t like it, ought to have told him so. Too late now. Call for another glass!’
‘I don’t want another glass, and I won’t have George taking my wife off under my very nose!’
‘Sherry, Sherry!’ Sir Montagu remonstrated, laying a hand on the Viscount’s arm.
It was shaken off. ‘Don’t keep saying Sherry at me!’ said his lordship irritably. ‘If she wanted to go to the damned Assembly, why the devil did she say she didn’t? Tell me that!’
‘I am sure she did not wish to go, and she will send Wrotham about his business,’ Revesby said soothingly.
Mr Ringwood, rendered percipient by a judicious quantity of gin, said wisely: ‘Wouldn’t say she wished to go if you didn’t, Sherry. Noticed it often. Always does what you wish. Mistake, ifyou ask me.’ He recruited himself with another pull at his glass. ‘Selfish!’ he produced.
‘Who is?’ demanded his lordship.
‘You are,’ said Mr Ringwood simply.
‘I am no such thing!’ Sherry retorted, stung. ‘How the devil was I to know she wanted to go when she said she didn’t?’
‘My dear Sherry, poor Ringwood is a trifle disguised! Why put yourself in a pucker?’ Revesby said.
‘No, I ain’t!’ Mr Ringwood contradicted, eyeing the elegant Sir Montagu with dislike. ‘Sherry’s a fool. Always was. George knew she wanted to go. George ain’t a fool.’ He thought this over. ‘At least, not as big a fool as Sherry,’ he amended.
‘You’re as full as you can hold!’ said Sherry furiously. ‘And George had no right to walk off like that! What’s more, he shan’t take my wife to Almack’s, because I’ll take her myself!’
Revesby caught his sleeve as he sprang up. ‘No, no, my dear fellow, you’re too late now! Consider! George has been gone these twenty minutes, and more!’
‘I shall go straight to Almack’s and give him a set-down!’ promised Sherry, a martial light in his eye.
Mr Ringwood sat up. ‘You’re not going to call George out, Sherry! Mind, now!’
‘Who said anything about calling him out? Merely, if my wife goes to Almack’s, I’m going to Almack’s too!’
‘Really, Sherry, you are making a great to-do about nothing,’ said Revesby gently. ‘There is no impropriety in Wrotham’s escorting Lady Sheringham, I assure you!’
‘Are you accusing my wife of impropriety?’ said Sherry, whose pugnacity was fast reaching alarming proportions.
‘Certainly not!’ replied Revesby. ‘Such a notion never entered my head, my dear boy! I wish you will sit down and forget these crotchets.’
‘Well, I won’t!’ Sherry returned. ‘I’m going to Almack’s.’
Mr Ringwood groped for his quizzing-glass, and through it scrutinised his friend’s person. He let it fall again and lay back in his chair. ‘Not in pantaloons,’ he said. ‘Can’t be done, Sherry.’
The Viscount looked very much put out for a moment, but having taken a resolve he was not one easily to relinquish it. He said, with immense dignity, that he was going off home to change his dress, and stalked out of the Parlour before either Revesby or Ringwood could think of an answer.
When he reached Half Moon Street it was to hear from his butler that her ladyship had gone out with Lord Wrotham. Sherry said grandly that he knew all about that, and demanded his valet. This gentleman was not immediately to be found, and by the time he had been fetched by a breathless page from the select tavern which he patronised in his leisure moments, the Viscount was in a worse temper than ever, and had ruined no fewer than five neckcloths in some fumbling attempts to achieve a Waterfall style. It was more than half an hour later when he was at last correctly attired for the Assembly, and five minutes after eleven when he arrived at Almack’s. Nothing could have been more unfortunate, for the rules laid down by Almack’s despotic patronesses were not even relaxed for the Duke of Wellington himself; and although the civility of Willis, who presided over the club, could scarcely have been exceeded, not all the Viscount’s stormings or blandishments availed to get him beyond the portals. He was obliged to return home, since he had no longer any desire to spend the night at Cribb’s Parlour, and to while away the time in flicking over the pages of a library book, casting the dice, right hand against left, and brooding over his injuries. Whatever he might do when amongst his cronies, he was not one who took pleasure in drinking alone, so that when Lord Wrotham brought his fair charge back to the house, shortly before two o’clock, the door was opened to them by a sober but awe-inspiringly stiff young man, who bowed to hisfriend, thanked him in frigid terms for his kind offices, and expressed the hope – bleakly – that he and my lady had been tolerably well amused.
