‘Well?’ Sherry said. ‘Well? What’s your choice? Will you have swords or pistols?’
‘I repeat: I shall not permit you to pick a quarrel with me. You are drunk! If you say that I set Mrs Gillingham on to ruin Lady Sheringham, you will be made to look a fool. I deny it utterly, and she will do so also.’
Sherry stood looking at him for a moment with narrowed, contemptuous eyes. Then he turned away, and set his hand on the door-knob. ‘My cousin Ferdy told me you were a commoner, Revesby,’ he said. His words were like the flick of a whip-lash, and Revesby stiffened under them. ‘He don’t know the half of it!’ Sherry said. ‘You’re cow-hearted – and I never guessed it!’
He waited for a minute, but Sir Montagu neither spoke nor moved. Sherry gave a scornful laugh, and passed out of the room.
SEVENTEEN
WHEN IT WASgradually borne in upon the Viscount’s two best friends that his annoyance with Sir Montagu, instead of blowing over, as they had gloomily supposed it would, had developed into what bore all the appearance of implacable hostility, they were so overjoyed that it was some time before they troubled to enquire into the cause of so complete a break in a most undesirable friendship. It presently occurred to Mr Ringwood, however, that the Viscount was not in quite such volatile spirits as of yore; and at a convenient moment, as he sat in his friend’s library, sampling some burgundy which Sherry had just acquired, he asked simply: ‘Anything amiss, dear old boy?’
Sherry looked up, surprised. ‘No, what should be?’
‘That’s what I wondered. No wish to pry into your affairs. Just thought you wasn’t in your usual spirits. Very tolerable wine, this.’
‘What do you mean, not in my usual spirits? Never better in my life, Gil!’
‘Well, I don’t know, now I come to think of it, what I mean. Took a notion into my head. I do sometimes. Dare say it was because you left Watier’s early last night. Not like you. You ain’t at a standstill, Sherry?’
‘Oh, lord, no! Fact of the matter is, I don’t mean to be. I’ve been talking to my man of business, and the long and the short of it is I’ve been having some over-deep doings, and it don’tanswer. No harm done, but I don’t mean to go Tallerton’s way, I can tell you.’
‘I’m deuced glad of it, Sherry!’ Mr Ringwood said. ‘Never liked to see you going off with Revesby to those hells of his. Sharps and flats, my boy! sharps and flats!’
‘Well, you won’t see me going off with him again to a hell, or anywhere else, for that matter!’ Sherry said, an edge to his voice.
Mr Ringwood met those smouldering blue eyes with a gaze of steady enquiry. ‘Quarrelled with the fellow, Sherry?’
Sherry gave a short laugh. ‘I tried to call him out. Called him all the names I could lay my tongue to! Jupiter! I even hit him in the face! He’s cow-hearted. Told him so – and he took that along with all the rest!’
‘He would,’ said Mr Ringwood. ‘But what made you try to call him out, old boy? Not the baby?’
‘The baby? Oh, that! Lord, no!’
Mr Ringwood maintained a tactful but not unhopeful silence. Sherry refilled the glasses, and wandered over to the fire, and stirred the log on it with his booted foot. He glanced down at his friend. ‘This ain’t to go any farther, Gil.’
‘Can rely on me, dear boy.’
‘Yes, I know. I wouldn’t tell you if I couldn’t. Concerns my wife.’
Mr Ringwood sat up, a look of horror on his countenance. ‘You ain’t going to tell me that ugly customer –’
‘No, no, it ain’t as bad as that!’ Sherry said quickly. He sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, and told his friend, in a few well-chosen words, just what had occurred while he was at Newmarket.
Mr Ringwood listened attentively, uttering sounds, at intervals, indicative of his amazement. He had no hesitation in endorsing the construction the Viscount had put upon the episode. He said that it was as plain as the nose on his face; andwhen he heard of Sir Montagu’s denial he made a derisive noise. But this time the glasses needed to be refilled once more, and when the Viscount had attended to this, both gentlemen spent an agreeable half-hour in recalling various incidents in Sir Montagu’s career which did him no credit; and in freely exchanging views on his character and morals which grew steadily more slanderous as the wine sank in the bottle. Their spirits derived much benefit from this exercise, and Mr Ringwood went so far as to state that he had not felt in such a capital way since first Revesby appeared on his horizon. ‘All for the best, Sherry, you mark my words! As long as he don’t try to play off any more of his tricks on your wife, and he’s such a chicken-hearted fellow I don’t suppose he would dare to, now that he knows you’ve smoked him. All the same, you’d best keep your eye on him, dear old boy.’
‘I mean to,’ Sherry replied. ‘Yes, and on Kitten too, my God! You know, Gil, it’s the devil of a business! Beginning to keep me awake, I can tell you! It ain’t that she means to get into these curst scrapes. But – oh, well!’
Mr Ringwood studied the wine in his glass. ‘Wouldn’t do anything she thought you might not like, Sherry,’ he said tentatively.
‘I know that, but the devil of it is she thinks I shall like the most shocking things!’ Sherry said. ‘What with her taking every word I say to be Gospel-truth, and fancying that whatever I do must be the correct thing – well, it’s enough to turn a fellow’s hair white, it is really, Gil! She would never have thought to go to those blood-suckers, for instance, if I had not been fool enough to say I’d had dealings with them. And I’m dashed if she didn’t plunge deeper the more she lost at that damned house, all because that’s the gudgeon’s trick I’ve been playing myself! Fairly made my blood run cold when I found that out!’
Mr Ringwood agreed that this was certainly enough to shake any man’s nerve; but said after a short pause: ‘You know what I think, Sherry?’
‘Yes: that she don’t mean any harm,’ replied Sherry. ‘You’ve said it before – in fact, you’re always saying it! – and I know it without your telling me.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ said Mr Ringwood. ‘Going to say, she don’t make the same mistake twice. Noticed it.’
‘Well, I don’t see anything in that,’ replied his lordship impatiently.
