‘He did dine at Long’s? You’re sure of that?’
‘He was certainly engaged to do so,’ George said, with perfect truth.
‘Oh! Then – No, he wouldn’t –’ Sherry broke off, flushing. ‘Fact of the matter is I’ve the devil of a head myself this morning, George!’
Lord Wrotham replied sympathetically, and left him. Sherry went back into his library, and sat down to think very hard indeed.
The result of this concentrated thought was to plunge him into quite the most horrid week of his life. His friends, daily expecting to see him at one of his usual haunts, looked for him in vain. His lordship was out of town, travelling first into Buckinghamshire, to Fakenham Manor, and thence all the way north to Lancashire, to Croxteth Hall, the Earl of Sefton’s country seat. He drew blank at both these establishments, but both his aunt and Lady Sefton inexorably dragged his story out of him, and then favoured him with their separate, but curiously similar, readings of his character. Lady Fakenham was a good deal more outspoken than Lady Sefton, told him that he had come by his deserts, and sped him on his way to Lancashire with the depressing reminder that he had only his abominable selfishness to thank for whatever disaster might befall his wife, adrift in a harsh world. When he had gone (and it had cost him all his resolution to take leave of his aunt with common civility), her ladyship said thoughtfully to her husband that this affair might well prove to be the making of Anthony.
‘Yes, but what the deuce can have become of that poor little creature?’ said Lord Fakenham, not particularly interested in Sherry’s possible redemption.
‘Indeed I wish I knew! I wish too that she had come to me, but no doubt she would not think to cast herself upon Anthony’s relations.’
Lady Sefton, having reduced the unfortunate Viscount to the condition of speechless endurance to which she could, upon rare occasions, reduce her eldest-born, my Lord Molyneux, relented towards him sufficiently to permit him a glimpse of two rays of sunlight. She thought it probable that Hero would presently return to Half Moon Street; and she engaged herself to smooth over any unpleasantness that might have arisen in influential quarters from the projected race.
The Viscount posted back to London. The house in Half Moon Street seemed desolate, almost as though someone had died there, he thought. He would have liked to have left it; but when he had made all his plans for shutting it up, and returning to his old lodgings, he changed his mind, and determined to stay there. To shut the house would give rise to much gossip and speculation; and if Hero came back to him it would be a shocking thing, he thought, for her to find the shutters up, and the knocker off the door.
Mr Ringwood was back in town again, saying, with perfect truth, that he saw no reason why his rich uncle should not survive for another ten years. Mr Ringwood said also that he was devilish sorry to hear from George that Lady Sherry was so indisposed as to have been obliged to retire into the country for a space.
Sherry, who had schooled himself to answer such remarks with mechanical civility, found a certain measure of relief in being able to throw off his mask before the friend whom he most trusted. He said abruptly: ‘It’s not true. Only the tale I’ve put about. She’s left me.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ringwood.
Sherry gave a short laugh. ‘You heard me, Gil! She ran away, because I said she was to go down to my mother, at SheringhamPlace. She took some absurd notion into her head – all nonsense, of course! – and she was gone before I’d time to explain why I – For naturally I meant to make all clear to her, and there was no question of – But that’s a female all over!’
Mr Ringwood, helped himself, with extreme deliberation, to a pinch of snuff, said: ‘Don’t play off your tricks on me, Sherry! The truth is, I take it, that you quarrelled with her over that race?’
‘Quarrelled! Gil, do you know what she meant to do? If it had been your wife –! Iwasvery angry! dash it, any man would have been! But there was not the least occasion for her to have run away from me, as though I had been some deuced brute, or – or – I know it was as much my fault as hers, and, what’s more, I said so.Thatwas not why she ran away! I said she should go to my mother and she did not choose to. Talked some fustian about my mother’s thinking she had ruined my life – fiddle!’
‘No wish to say a word against your mother, Sherry, dear boy, but that’s what she has been saying.’
Sherry stared at him. ‘It’s not possible! I never heard a word of this!’
‘Not likely you would,’ said Mr Ringwood. ‘True, for all you may not have heard it. Often thought you don’t pay enough heed to what’s dashed well under your nose, Sherry. Not surprised Kitten wouldn’t go to Sheringham Place. Don’t think her ladyship would have wanted her, either. If you don’t mind my saying so, my dear fellow, the odds are she’d have tried to bully Kitten.’
The Viscount’s eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, no, she would not!’ he said. ‘She’d have had me to reckon with! And if I’d seen her, or anyone else, bullying my Kitten –’
‘Point is, you wouldn’t have been there to have seen it,’ said Mr Ringwood dryly. ‘Don’t supposeyoumeant to stay at Sheringham Place, did you?’
‘No, but – Well, naturally I should have gone down there from time to time, and –’ He stopped, looking sulky, and rather defensive. ‘So you think I was wrong to decide to take Kitten there, do you? Much you know about it!’
Mr Ringwood disregarded this rider, and answered frankly: ‘Yes, I do.’
‘But, good God, man, what else could I have done?’ Sherry burst out. ‘We could not have continued as we were! Dash it, we have not been married much above four months, and if you knew the half of the crazy things Kitten would have done had I not been at hand to prevent her –’
‘Ah!’ interrupted Mr Ringwood. ‘Put your finger on it, Sherry, haven’t you? Didn’t do crazy things when you were at hand.’
‘In the devil’s name, how could I always be at hand? Did you expect me to change my whole way of living, simply because I was married?’
‘Expected you to settle down a trifle, dear boy. Never fancied the notion of it for myself, which is why I’ve stayed single. Seems to me a fellow can’t continue in the same way once he ties himself up. What do you mean to do now?’
‘Find her, of course! I made sure she would have gone to my Aunt Fakenham, or even to Lady Sefton, but she did not. I tell you I’m at my wits’ end, Gil! What with setting it about she’s indisposed, and fobbing people off, and trying to undo the harm that infernal race caused, and not knowing where to look for her – yes, and being obliged to continue living in this damned house – well, there are moments when I’d like to wring Kitten’s neck! I haven’t had a day’s hunting since she left home; I’ve had to career all over England in search of her; and I’m so worried I can’t sleep at night! Dash it, she’s no more fit to be fending for herself than that canary you gave her! And I don’t need you to tell me I’m responsible for her! I should never have been mad enough to have married a chit out of the schoolroom, and that’s the truth of it!’
Mr Ringwood looked at him under his brows. ‘Wishing you hadn’t, Sherry?’
‘I wish I hadn’t married anyone!’ Sherry said petulantly. ‘Don’t you, Gil! There’s nothing but trouble, and anxiety; and the devil of it is that you can’t alter it, and – no, you don’t even want to! The thing is, I suppose a fellow grows used to having a wife, for all he may not think it, and then – Damnation, I miss her like the devil, Gil!’
‘Dare say she’ll come back to you,’ said Mr Ringwood, at his most phlegmatic.
