‘I knew she would reject you!’ said Lady Sheringham. ‘What delicately nurtured female, I ask of you, my son, would consent to marry one whose footsteps are set upon the pathof Vice? Must she not shrink from those libertine propensities which –’
‘Here, I say, ma’am!’ protested the startled Viscount. ‘It’s not as bad as that, ’pon my soul it’s not!’
His uncle heaved a sigh. ‘You will allow, dear boy, that there is scarcely an extravagant folly you have not committed since you came of age.’
‘No, I won’t,’ retorted the Viscount. ‘Dash it, a man can’t be on the Town without kicking up a lark or so every now and then!’
‘Anthony, can you tell your Mother that there is not a – aCreature(for I cannot bring myself to call her a Female!) with whom you are not ashamed to be seen in the most public of places? Hanging upon your arm, and caressing you in a manner which fills me with repugnance?’
‘No, I can’t,’ replied the Viscount. ‘But I’d give a monkey to know who told you about that little ladybird!’
He rolled a choleric eye towards his uncle as he spoke, but that gentleman’s attention was fixed upon the opposite wall, and his thoughts appeared to be far removed from earthly considerations.
‘You will break my heart!’ declared Lady Sheringham, applying her handkerchief to her eyes again.
‘No, I shan’t, ma’am,’ said her son frankly. ‘You didn’t break your heart over any of Father’s fancies that ever I heard of! Or if you did you can’t do it again. Stands to reason! Besides, when I’m married I shall hedge off, never fear!’
‘But you are not going to be married!’ Lady Sheringham pointed out. ‘And that is not all! Never in my life have I been so mortified as when I was obliged to apologise to General Ware for your abominable behaviour on the road to Kensington last month! I was ready to sink! Of course you were intoxicated!’
‘I was no such thing!’ cried his lordship, stung on the raw. ‘Good God, ma’am, you don’t think I could graze the wheel of five coaches if I’d shot the cat, do you?’
His mother let her handkerchief drop from a suddenly nerveless hand. ‘Graze the wheels offive coaches?’ she faltered, looking at him as though she feared for his sanity.
‘Five of ’em, all in a row, and never checked!’ asserted the Viscount. ‘Sheerest piece of curst ill-fortune that I overturned old Ware’s phaeton! Must have misjudged it. Cost me the wager, too. Backed myself to graze the wheels of the first seven vehicles I met past the Hyde Park turnpike without oversetting any of ’em. Can’t think how I came to bungle it. Must have been old Ware’s driving. He never could keep the line: a mere whipster! No precision of eye at all!’
‘Unhappy boy!’ exclaimed his mother in throbbing accents. ‘Are you dead to all sense of shame? Horace, speak to him!’
‘If he does,’ said the Viscount, his chin jutting dangerously, ‘he’ll go out through that window, uncle or no uncle!’
‘Oh!’ moaned his afflicted parent, sinking back on her couch and putting a hand to her brow. ‘What, what, I ask of you, brother, have I done to deserve this?’
‘Hush, my dear Valeria! Calm yourself, I beg!’ said Mr Paulett, clasping her other hand.
‘No wonder poor Isabella rejected his suit! I cannot find it in me to blame her!’
‘Alas, one cannot but feel that for the sake of the estate it may be for the best!’ said Mr Paulett, strategically retaining his clasp on that frail but protective hand. ‘Loth as I am to say it, I cannot consider poor Sherry fit to assume the control of his fortune. Well for him that it is held in trust for him!’
‘Oh, is it well for me?’ interjected poor Sherry wrathfully. ‘Much you know about it! And why my father ever took it into his head to make you a trustee beats me! I don’t mind Uncle Prosper – at least, I dare say I could handle him, if it weren’t for you, for ever putting a spoke in my wheel! And don’t stand there bamming me that you’re mighty sorry Bella wouldn’t have me,because I know you’re not! Once I get the confounded Trust wound up, out you’ll go, and well you know it! If my mother chooses to let you batten upon her, she may do it, but you won’t batten on me any longer, by Jupiter you won’t!’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Paulett, smiling in a maddening way. ‘But there are two years to run before the Trust comes to an end, my dear boy, and we must hope that by that time you will have seen the error of your ways.’
‘Unless I get married!’ the Viscount reminded him, his eyes very bright and sparkling.
‘Certainly! But you are not, after all, going to get married, dear boy,’ his uncle pointed out.
‘Oh, aren’t I?’ retorted his lordship, striding towards the door.
‘Anthony!’ shrieked Lady Sheringham. ‘What in heaven’s name are you going to do?’ she released her brother’s hand, and sat up. ‘Where are you going? Answer me, I command you!’
‘I’m going back to London!’ answered the Viscount. ‘And I’m going to marry the first woman I see!’
TWO
AS MIGHT HAVEbeen expected, the Viscount’s Parthian shot immediately prostrated his parent. She evinced every sign of falling into a fit of the vapours, and was only revived by the reflection that the Viscount was no longer present to be chastened by the sight of his mother suffering from strong hysterics. A little hartshorn-and-water, tenderly administered by Mr Paulett, a few lavender drops sprinkled upon a handkerchief, and some gentle hand-slapping presently made it possible for the afflicted lady to open her eyes, and to straighten her turban. She at once confided to Mr Paulett her conviction that Anthony would bring home some dreadful, vulgar creature from the opera-ballet on his arm, if only to spite her, and expressed a fervent longing for the quiet of the family tomb.
Mr Paulett did not feel that there was much danger of his nephew’s marrying anyone in the immediate future. He said that he would find Anthony, and represent to him that his unfilial behaviour was leading his mother’s tottering steps to the very brink of the grave, but by the time he had restored the lady to such health as remained to her, and had pointed out to her that a young gentleman desperately enamoured of a Beauty was not very likely to fall into matrimony with some other female, the Viscount was already upon the road to London.
He was driving his curricle. A pair of spirited bays were harnessed to it; a sharp-faced Tiger was perched up behind him; his portmanteau was strapped in its place; and the Viscount, with all the air of one shaking the dust of a loathed spot from his shoes, drove along at a spanking pace, and with very little regard for whatever other vehicles he might chance to meet on the road.
