‘Go and take a damper, you fool!’ retorted Sherry. ‘I’m a married man! What’s more, if I did mean to have a touch at her, I wouldn’t tell you she was on her way to Bath!’
Mollified, George begged pardon, explaining that he was so worn down that he hardly knew what he was saying. Sherry accepted this, and would have taken his leave had not George detained him to say: ‘I wouldn’t go to Bath, if I was you, Sherry. You don’t like the place. If Lady Sheringham would allow me to take your –’
‘Well, she wouldn’t,’ interrupted Sherry. ‘Besides, I’ve got a fancy to go there.’
‘Why?’ demanded George suspiciously.
‘What the deuce has it to do with you? Tired of London. Not been feeling quite the thing. Need a change.’
‘Yes! You will drink the waters, no doubt!’ said George sardonically.
‘I might,’ agreed Sherry. ‘No saying what I may not do – except one thing! Make yourself easy: I don’t mean to make love to the Incomparable!’
And with this, he strode on down Piccadilly, leaving George in a good deal of consternation.
George drove slowly on, turned down into St James’s Street, and had almost reached Ryder Street, where he lodged, when he bethought himself of Mr Ringwood. After all, it was Gil who had taken Kitten down to Bath, and it must be for Gil to decide what was now to be done. He turned his sulky and drove back in the direction of Stratton Street. Sherry had rounded thecorner of Half Moon Street by this time, and was out of sight. George drove up to Mr Ringwood’s lodging, called a loafer to hold his horse, and sprang down from the sulky.
The door of Mr Ringwood’s lodging was opened to him by the retired gentleman’s gentleman who owned the house, who conveyed to him the intelligence that Mr Ringwood was out of town.
‘Out of town!’ exclaimed George indignantly. ‘What the devil ails him to be out of town, I should like to know?’
The owner of the house, being accustomed to the vagaries of the Quality, and knowing this particular member of the Quality of old, showed no surprise at this unreasonable explosion, but said civilly that Mr Ringwood had gone into Leicestershire for a day’s hunting, and was not expected to return until the morrow.
‘Confound him!’ muttered George. ‘Taken his man with him, I suppose?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘He would!’ said George savagely. ‘Now what am I to do?’
Mr Ford, not deeming that any answer was expected of him, discreetly held his peace. George stood glowering for a few minutes, and then said, with all the air of a man who has taken a momentous decision: ‘I’ll leave a note for him!’
Mr Ford bowed, and at once ushered him into Mr Ringwood’s parlour. George sat down at the desk in the window, cast Cocker, theRacing Chronicle, and several copies of theWeekly Dispatchon to the floor, drew forward the ink-well, found, after considerable search amongst a litter of bills and invitations, a sheet of notepaper, and dashed off a hurried letter.
‘Dear Gil,’ he wrote. ‘The devil’s in it now, and no mistake, for Sherry’s off to Bath to-morrow with his mother and Miss Milborne. I see nothing for it but to post down there ahead of him, to warn LadySherry, in case she does not desire to see him. I shall leave town to-night. Yours, etc., Wrotham.’
His lordship then folded this missive, affixed a wafer to it, wrote Mr Ringwood’s name on it in arresting characters, propped it up against the clock on the mantelpiece, and departed. He felt that in going to apprise Hero of her husband’s approaching visit to Bath, he would be acting with extreme propriety; and the circumstance of this particular deed of friendship’s happening to coincide with his own paramount desire to repair to Bath was nothing more (he told himself) than a happy chance.
While George was making these arrangements, Sherry had astonished his man, Bootle, by commanding him to have everything in readiness for a journey to Bath by an early hour on the following morning. He was rather vague about the probable length of his stay in this watering-place, and from never having been obliged to pack for himself, he could not conceive why Bootle should think this a matter of even trifling interest. He decided to drive himself down in his curricle, since this would frustrate at the outset any attempt on his parent’s part to force him into sitting with her in the family travelling coach. So Jason and his groom had immediately to be warned, and by the time this had been done, and the groom given his orders to arrange for suitable changes of horses at the various stages, it was going on for eight o’clock, and the Viscount began to think of his dinner. Since Hero’s disappearance it had become increasingly rare for him to dine at home. On this evening, so firmly persuaded was he that he at last had the clue to Hero’s whereabouts, he felt cheerful enough to have eaten his dinner in Half Moon Street, had Mrs Bradgate made any preparation to meet so unexpected an eventuality. As she had not, he was obliged to go out again. He walked down to White’s and ordered the mostsustaining meal he had been able to fancy for many weeks. He was finishing it when his cousin Ferdy strolled into the coffee-room. Ferdy was engaged with a party of friends, but as they had not yet put in an appearance, he sat down beside Sherry and joined him in a glass of burgundy.
‘Care to see a little cocking to-morrow night, Sherry, dear old boy?’ he asked, sipping his wine.
‘Can’t,’ responded Sherry briefly. ‘I’m off to Bath.’
Ferdy choked. It took a great deal of back-slapping to restore him, and when he was at last able to catch his breath again, his eyes were watering, and his countenance was alarmingly flushed.
‘Well, what the deuce!’ exclaimed Sherry, eyeing him in surprise.
‘Crumb!’ gasped Ferdy.
‘Crumb? You weren’t eating anything!’
‘Must have been,’ said Ferdy feebly. ‘What takes you to Bath, Sherry?’
‘My mother. She’s putting up at Grillon’s with the Incomparable. Both going to Bath to drink the waters. I’m to escort ’em.’
Ferdy gazed at him in dismay. ‘I wouldn’t do it, Sherry,’ he said. ‘You won’t like it there!’
‘Well, if I don’t like it, I can come back, can’t I?’
