‘Much better not go at all,’ said Ferdy. ‘Very dull sort of a place these days. Don’t even waltz there. Won’t like the waters either.’
‘Good God, I ain’t going to drink ’em!’
‘Pity to miss the cocking! Very good match!’ Ferdy said, faint but pursuing.
‘I tell you I’m going to escort my mother to Bath!’ Sherry said impatiently. ‘What the deuce ails you, Ferdy? Why shouldn’t I got to Bath?’
‘Just thought you might not care for it, dear boy! No offence! Did you say the Incomparable was going too?’
‘Going to bear my mother company.’
‘Oh!’ said Ferdy, thinking this over painstakingly. ‘Well, that settles it: much better not go, Sherry! If the Incomparable goes, Revesby will, and you won’t like that.’
‘I suppose Bath is big enough to hold us both. In fact, if he means to hang about Bella’s apron-strings, it’s as well I should go!’
Ferdy gave it up. He withdrew a few minutes later to join his friends, and Sherry went home. But Ferdy’s friends found him preoccupied that evening. He sat in a brown study over dinner, followed the party in a trance-like fashion to the card-room, and there paid so little attention to the game that his brother accused him of being cast-away. Their host, considering the question dispassionately, shook his head. ‘Not cast-away, Duke. Very affectionate as soon as he’s a trifle disguised. Not affectionate to-night. You quite well, Ferdy, old fellow?’
‘Had a shock,’ Ferdy said. ‘Saw Sherry to-night.’
‘Sherry?’ said the Honourable Marmaduke.
‘My cousin Sherry,’ explained Ferdy.
‘Dash it, he’s my cousin too, ain’t he?’ said Marmaduke. ‘You’re as dead as a house, Ferdy!’
‘He may be your cousin, too,’ said Ferdy, not prepared to dispute this, ‘but it wouldn’t have given you a shock. No reason why it should. Sherry’s going to Bath.’
Marmaduke stared at him. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Just what I’ve been wondering all the evening, Duke. You know what I think? Fate! That’s what it is: fate! There’s a thing that comes after a fellow: got a name, but I forget what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain’t expecting it.’
‘What sort of thing?’ enquired his host uneasily.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Ferdy. ‘It ain’t a thing you can see.’
‘If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!’ said his host, recovering his composure.
Ferdy shook his head. ‘Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.’
‘Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!’
‘I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.’
‘Old Horley?’ Mr Westgate said. ‘You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?’
‘No, no!’ replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. ‘Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.’
‘I know what he means!’ said Marmaduke. ‘What’s more, it proves he’s cast-away, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?’
‘Nemesis!’ repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. ‘That’s it! Dash it, it all goes to show, don’t it? Never thought the stuff they used to teach us at school would come in useful, but if I hadn’t had to learn a lot of Greek and Latin I shouldn’t have known about that thingummy. Forgotten its name again, but it don’t signify now.’
He seemed inclined to brood over the advantages of a classical education, but his brother brought him back to the point. ‘What the deuce has Nemesis to do with Sherry’s going to Bath?’ he demanded.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Ferdy. ‘Think I’ll go and see Gil.’
‘Dash it, Ferdy, you can’t go off like that!’ expostulated Mr Westgate.
‘Yes, I can,’ replied Ferdy. ‘Got a fancy to see Gil. Very knowing fellow. Come back again later.’
