April Lady

Chapter Ten

The following day was one of gloom, relieved only at nightfall, when the guests began to arrive for a loo-party. It began inauspiciously, with a further reminder from Madame Lavalle, which threw Nell into such a fever of apprehension that she could no longer forbear to plague Dysart, but sent round a letter to his lodgings immediately, imploring him either to tell her what she must do, or to negotiate a loan for her “with a respectable usurer”. Hardly had this been dispatched than Martha came to her with a message from her mistress. Letty, it appeared, had awakened with a toothache, after a troubled night, and begged to be excused from accompanying her sister to North Audley Street, on a morning visit to the Misses Berry.

Nell found the sufferer still abed, a trifle heavy-eyed, but looking remarkably pretty, and without the vestige of a swollen jaw. This seemed to indicate that at least there was no abscess; but when Letty announced in the voice of one dwindling to decay that she thought perhaps the pain would go off if she remained quietly in bed, Nell was resolute in insisting that she should visit the dentist. She was not surprised by Letty’s reluctance to do so, for the prospect of having a tooth drawn was not one which she herself could have faced with equanimity; but when Letty said at last that she would go, and that Martha should accompany her, so that Nell need not postpone her duty-call in North Audley Street, she began to suspect that the toothache was not unconnected with this call. The late Lady Cardross had been a close friend of both the Berry sisters, but her daughter, ungrateful for the kindly interest they took in her, could be depended on to find ingenious excuses for not visiting them. She said that Miss Berry was quizzy, and Miss Agnes cross, and nothing bored her more than to be obliged to drive down to Little Strawberry to spend the day with them. Indeed, she had brightened so perceptibly when Miss Berry, on the occasion of her last visit to the Merion ladies, had confided, with a sigh, that she was compelled to find a tenant for Little Strawberry, that Nell had been positively ashamed of her, and had later taken her severely to task for heartlessness and incivility. So she now eyed the spoiled beauty measuringly, and said that she would herself take her to visit Mr. Tilton. Had she been feeling less oppressed she must have laughed at the smouldering look of resentment cast at her from beneath Letty’s curling eyelashes.

Happily for Letty, who, by the time she was handed into the sinister chair in Mr. Tilton’s room, was in a quake of fright, that worthy practitioner could find nothing amiss with her teeth. In his opinion, the pain she was enduring so bravely was due to a nervous tic. He recommended bed, and a few drops of laudanum as a composer: a prescription which Nell inexorably forced her unwilling sister to carry out, with the result that by four o’clock Letty announced herself to be perfectly cured, and got up to array herself for the evening’s party. She was not in spirits, but somewhat to Nell’s surprise, and greatly to her relief, she had made no further reference, after a bitter outburst on the previous evening, to Cardross’s cruelty. She seemed to have realized that there could be no moving him; and while the droop to her mouth, and the brooding look in her eyes, held out every promise of a fit of the sullens, Nell could not but feel she could bear this better than the exhausting and quite fruitless discussions she had lately been compelled to enter into.

Dysart did not come, but as the retired gentleman’s gentleman, in whose establishment he resided, rather thought that he had gone out of town to see a prize-fight, this was not wonderful. Nell could only hope that he would find the time to send a written answer to her letter, since, if he were to call in person in Grosvenor Square on the following day, he would not find her at home. She was engaged to take Letty to an al fresco party at Osterley.

There was no letter from him in the morning; and had her hostess been any other than Lady Jersey, whom it would be very dangerous to offend, she would have been much inclined to have cried off from the party. It was impossible to do so, however, without giving grave offence, for Lady Jersey had been one of the guests at her loo-party, and would certainly not believe any tale of sudden indisposition.

“Oh, no!” Letty agreed. “It would be quite shocking if you did not go! But I am sure I need not, for I have not the least heart for it, besides being teased by this horrid tic. I mean to stay at home, with a shawl round my head.”

“And Paley’s Sermons in your hand, I daresay!” exclaimed Nell. “For shame, Letty! You have no more tic than I have!”

“Even if I have not I won’t be forced to go to parties when I am in the deepest affliction!” said Letty, flushing. “I don’t doubt it would suit Cardross very well to be able to say that if I continue to do so it is plain he has not done his best to break my heart, but he shan’t have that satisfaction, and so you may tell him! I won’t go!”

“Indeed, Letty, you must go!” Nell said earnestly. “You cannot, surely, wish to have your affairs made the subject of gossip! Think how vexed you were when Lady Sefton and Lady Cowper came here on Sunday to try if they could discover what truth there is in the rumours that are going about! Pray do not wear your heart on your sleeve, my dear! it is so very unbecoming!”

“I won’t go!” Letty reiterated mulishly.

“Won’t go where?” asked Cardross, coming into the room in time to hear this declaration.

“I won’t go to Osterley with Nell! And I don’t care if people do gossip!”

“Of course you will go to Osterley!” he said calmly. “What excuse could you possibly offer for crying off?”

“I have already told Nell I have the tic, and if she doesn’t choose to believe me she need not, but you can neither of you force me to go!”

“Doesn’t Nell believe you? How unfeeling of her! I believe you, my pet, and I will send a message round to Dr. Baillie, desiring him to call.” He added, the glimmer of a smile at the back of his eyes: “My own engagements are of no particular moment, and I will promise to remain at home with you.”

“Rather than endure your company I will go to Osterley!” said Letty, quivering with suppressed fury.

“Yes, I thought you would,” he observed, holding the door for her to pass out of the room. He raised an eyebrow at Nell, and said, as he shut the door again: “What mischief is she plotting? A clandestine meeting with Allandale?”

“I don’t know,” Nell said worriedly. “I hope not, but I own I can’t feel easy about her: I do most sincerely sympathize with her, but it will not do for her to be meeting him in such a way. You won’t mention this to her, but I fear she has let her partiality for him be too clearly seen, and there is already a little gossip about her, in a certain set.”

“The devil there is! Take care, then, she doesn’t give you the slip! Secret meetings I will not endure!”

“No, indeed! But I have been wondering, Cardross, if you would permit me to invite Mr. Allandale to dine with us before he leaves England. Poor Letty! it is very hard if she is not even to be granted the opportunity of taking leave of him.”

“Lending my countenance to an engagement of which I disapprove?” he said quizzically.

“Not more than you have done already, in saying that they may be married when he returns from Brazil!” she urged. “I am persuaded she would be very sensible of your kindness in granting her that indulgence; and then, you know, there would be no need for her to meet him without our knowledge.”

He looked skeptical, but shrugged, and said: “Very well: you may do as seems best to you.”

“Thank you! I will tell her, and I do hope it may comfort her a little.”

But Letty, informed of the treat in store, betrayed no enthusiasm for it; nor, when Nell represented to her the impropriety of her meeting Mr. Allandale in secret, did she return any very satisfactory answer. She sat beside Nell in the carriage looking the embodiment of discontent, but grew rather more cheerful at Osterley. She was always susceptible to admiration, and she received so many compliments on her appearance in a new and dashing dress of pale lemon-coloured crape worn over a slip of white sarsnet, that Nell soon saw, to her relief, that she had abandoned her die-away air, and was prepared to enjoy herself.

Shortly after noon the porter at Cardross House opened the door to the Viscount Dysart. His lordship, who was dressed for travel, in breeches and top-boots, trod briskly into the hall, and demanded his sister. Upon learning that she had gone off on an expedition of pleasure with the Lady Letitia, he looked first thunderstruck, and then wrathful, and exclaimed: “Gone to Osterley? Well, hell and the devil confound it! Did she leave any message for me?”

No, the porter said apologetically, he did not think her ladyship had left a message, unless, perhaps, with Farley.

The Viscount turned an impatient and an enquiring look upon Farley, who had appeared from the nether regions, and was bowing to him with stately civility. “Did her ladyship say when she would be back?” he demanded.

“No, my lord—merely that she had no expectation of being late. I understand it is an al fresco party: something, doubtless, in the nature of a pic-nic.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all hollow!” said the Viscount involuntarily, and in accents of disgust.

“I fancy that his lordship has not yet gone out, my lord, if you would care to see him? Mr. Kent was with him but—”

“No, no, I won’t disturb him, if he’s got his man of business with him!” interrupted Dysart, with aplomb. “In fact, there’s no need to tell him I called: came to see her ladyship on a private matter!”

“Just so, my lord,” said Farley, accepting with a wonderful air of unconsciousness the handsome douceur which the Viscount bestowed on him.

“I’ll step up to her ladyship’s dressing-room, and write a note to her,” said Dysart. “And you’d better give me my hat again! I don’t want his lordship to catch sight of it.”

However, the porter undertook to keep the hat hidden from his master’s eyes, so Dysart, quite unembarrassed, told him to see that he did, and, declining escort, went off up the broad stairway.

“As bold as Beauchamp, that’s what he is,” remarked the porter, carefully setting the hat down under his huge chair. “Down as a hammer, up like a watch-boy! Got some new bobbery on hand from the look in his ogles. Ah, well! he ain’t one of the stiff-rumped sort, that’s one thing, and it don’t matter to him if he’s swallowed a spider: you won’t catch him forgetting to tip a cove his earnest! There’s plenty as wouldn’t give me more than a borde for hiding their tiles, but you mark my words if he don’t fork out a hind-coach-wheel! What did he drop in your famble, Mr. Farley?”

But Farley, revolted by such vulgar curiosity, merely withered him with a stare before retiring again to his own quarters.

Twenty minutes later the Viscount came lightly down the stairs again, pausing for a moment on the half-landing to make sure the coast was clear. Encouraged by a nod and a wink from the porter, he descended the last half-flight, and handed over a sealed billet. “Give that to her ladyship, will you, George?”

“Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord!” said the porter, as a large and shining coin followed the billet.

“And if you want a sure thing for the King’s Plate at Chester tomorrow,” added the Viscount, setting his high-crowned beaver on his head, and pulling on his gloves, “put your blunt on Cockroach!”

The porter thanked him again, but with less fervour. A keen student of the Turf, he perceived that his lordship had taken to betting the long odds, and he could only regret his imprudence: if that was his new lay there would be a sad dwindling of the stream of heavy silver coins that fell from his hand.

Nell, eagerly deciphering the scrawl some hours later, in the privacy of her bedchamber, no sooner made herself mistress of its contents than she read it a second time, more slowly, and with a knit brow, unable to decide whether she ought to be consoled by its message, or alarmed.

“What the devil,” wrote Dysart, without preamble, “is the use of setting up a squawk for me to come and see you if the next thing you do is to go jauntering off to a pic-nic? I can’t wait to see you, for I’m going out of town for a day or two, but you may as well stop fretting and fuming, because I have hit on a way of setting all to rights, and more besides. I shan’t tell you what it is, because ten to one you would not like it, for I never knew anyone with more buffleheaded scruples. I daresay you would have tried to throw a rub in the way, had you been at home, so I am just as glad you are not. If that hog-grubbing mantua-maker of yours starts dunning you again before I get back to town tell her she shall be paid before the week’s out. Now, don’t be in a pucker, my dear Sister, for we shan’t fail this time, and don’t get to wondering if I’ve sold your precious sapphires, or anything else you dote on, for I have not. Your affectionate brother, Dysart. P. S. I greased Farley in the fist not to tell Cardross I was in the house, and your porter too—at least, I shall—so don’t go blurting it out to him like a ninny hammer.”

Having read this twice, Nell’s spirits rose a little. There seemed to be no doubt that Dysart really had discovered a way of paying her debt, though what it could be she had not the remotest guess. It made her uneasy to read that she would not like it; but since he had been indignant with her for supposing that he would play the highway man in earnest, and had now assured her that he had not taken her jewels, she did not think it could be anything very bad. He wrote with such certainty that her first sharp fear died: even Dysart would not have stated so positively that they would not fail this time had the matter rested on the turn of a card, or the fall of the dice. The worst would be if he had backed himself to perform some crazy exploit, and his going out of town made this appear rather probable. Nell knew that he had jumped his horse over that famous dinner-table because someone had bet heavily against his being able to perform the feat. She knew also that no dependence could be placed on his refusing a dangerous wager, because he was so much a stranger to fear that his anxious relatives had more than once entertained the unnerving suspicion that he was incapable of recognizing peril, even though it stared him in the face. Vague but hideous possibilities began to suggest themselves to her but before she had made herself quite sick with apprehension common sense reasserted itself, and she thought what a fool she was to suppose that even the most totty-headed of his cronies would offer him a wager the acceptance of which would put him in danger of breaking his neck.

For twenty-four hours she hung between hope and fear, and then a blow more crushing than any she had thought possible almost annihilated her. She had come in to find a message awaiting her that called for an immediate answer, and taking it upstairs with her, sat down at the tambour-top writing-table in her dressing-room to scribble a reply before ringing for Sutton to dress her for dinner. She had just signed her name and was about to shake the pounce-box over the single sheet of paper, when the door opened behind her, and Sutton’s voice said: “Oh, my lady!”

Sutton sounded agitated. Thinking that she must suppose herself to have been sent for long since (for the only thing that ever ruffled her stately calm was the degrading suspicion that she had fallen short of her own rigid standard), Nell said cheerfully: “Yes, I am come home, but I had not pulled my bell, so don’t be thinking you are late! The India mull-muslin with the short train will do very well for tonight.”

“It’s not that, my lady!” Sutton said. “It is the necklace!”

“The necklace?” Nell repeated uncomprehendingly.

“The necklace of diamonds and emeralds which your ladyship never wears, and which we placed for safety in this very cupboard!” said Sutton tragically. “Between the folds of the blue velvet pelisse your ladyship wore last winter, where no one would think to look for such a thing! Oh, my lady, it is more than an hour since I made the discovery, and how I have found the strength to keep me on my feet I know not! Never in all my years of service has such a thing happened to any of my ladies! Gone, my lady!”

Nell sat turned to stone. As the appalling implication flashed into her brain she found herself unable to move or to speak. The colour drained away from her very lips, but her back was still turned to her dresser, and Sutton did not see how near she was to fainting.

“I took your ladyship’s winter garments out to brush them, and be sure there was no moth crept in, which is always my practice, for too often, my lady, and particularly when a garment is trimmed with fur, will it be found that camphor does not prevail! The case the necklace was laid in was there still, but when I lifted it I thought it felt too light, and the dreadful suspicion came to me—My lady, I opened it, and it was empty!”

A voice which Nell knew must be her own, for all it did not seem to belong to her, said: “Good God, what a fright you put me into, Sutton!”

“My lady?”

Sutton sounded startled. Nell set the pounce-pox down with a shaking hand, her underlip gripped between her teeth. She had overcome her faintness: one must not faint in such an extremity as this. “But surely I told you, Sutton?” she said.

“Told me, my lady?”

She was beginning to see her way: not more than a few steps of it yet. “Did I not? How stupid! Yet I thought I had done so. Don’t—don’t be afraid! It hasn’t been stolen.”

“You have it safe, my lady?” Sutton cried eagerly.

“Yes. That is—no, it—I took it to Jeffreys.”

“You took it to Jeffreys, my lady?” Sutton repeated, in an astonished tone. “Indeed you never told me! And to remove it from the case—! Never say you stuffed it into your reticule! My lady, it is not my place to say so, but you should not! Why, you might have dropped it, or had it snatched from you! It gives one palpitations only to think of it!”

“Nonsense! It was safer by far in my reticule. I hope you may not have told anyone—any of the other servants—that it was stolen? If you have, it must make them very—very uncomfortable—in case they should be suspected of having taken it!”

“Not to a living soul have I opened my lips!” declared Sutton, drawing herself up rather rigidly. “I should think it very improper, my lady, to make such a disclosure to anyone other than your ladyship.”

“I am so glad! The thing is, you see, that I have some notion of wearing it—at our own ball here. I thought, perhaps, with the pale green gauze I might not dislike it. So—I put it on, to see how it would be—yes, on Thursday last, when you went to visit your sister!—and it seemed to me that the clasp was not quite safe. That is why I took it to Jeffreys.”

“Well, my lady,” said Sutton, rapidly recovering her poise, “it is a prodigious relief to me to know that my alarm need not have been. I am sure I was never nearer in my life to suffering a spasm.”

She then folded her lips tightly, dropped a stiff curtsey, and withdrew to the adjoining room to lay out the evening-gown of India mull-muslin.

Nell tried to rise from her chair, found that her knees were shaking, and sank back again. She had staved off immediate discovery, but what to do next she had no idea, nor could she, for many minutes, force her stunned mind to think. Only pictures as useless as they were unwelcome presented themselves to her: of herself, taking the necklace from its hiding-place to show it to Dysart—oh, months ago! of Dysart, seated at this very desk, and writing to tell her that he had not taken her sapphires, or anything else she doted on; of Cardross’s face, when he had spoken to her so harshly about Dysart, and then, quite suddenly, had checked himself. She uttered a stifled moan, and covered her eyes with her hand. Dysart knew she didn’t like the Cardross necklace, but how could he have supposed that it was hers to dispose of at will? Or didn’t he care?

It was fruitless to ask herself such questions as that: no answer could be forthcoming until Dysart himself gave it to her. And that at once raised another question, and a far more urgent one: where was Dysart? It seemed to her at first incomprehensible that he should have left London; but presently it occurred to her that it might be very dangerous to sell the necklace to any London jeweller or pawnbroker. She knew very little about such matters, but she believed it was quite a famous piece; and certainly there could be no mistaking it, if once one had seen it. It had been made a long time ago, in the time of Elizabeth, as a wedding-gift from the Cardross of that age to his bride, and it figured in more than one family portrait. It was, moreover, of unusual workmanship, for the jewels were set in the semblance of flowers and foliage, and every flower trembled on the end of a tiny spiral of gold. Nell had worn it once only, at a Drawing-Room, but although it had excited a good deal of admiration, and not a little curiosity (for no one could imagine what held the jewel-clusters quite half an inch clear of Nell’s breast, or what caused them to nod and quiver with every movement she made), she knew that it did net really become her; there were too many clusters, too much twisted gold in the foundation from which they sprang, too many leaves of flashing emeralds. She had once told Cardross that he ought to lend it to a museum, but although he had agreed that the proper place for it was in a glass case he liked her to wear it on state occasions, and so it had never gone to a museum. But even though it had not been publicly shown she supposed it must be well enough known to make Dysart seek a buyer for it in the provinces. She wondered hopelessly how he expected her to conceal the loss, whether he had found some craftsman skilled enough to copy the necklace, or whether (and this was the best she could hope) he had not sold, but pledged it.

She became aware of Sutton, coughing discreetly in the adjoining room. It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster one was still obliged to dress for dinner. She got up, steadier now, but with so white a face and such a look of strain in her eyes that Sutton, when she saw her come into the bedchamber, exclaimed that she was ill. She glanced at her own reflection in the mirror, and was startled to see how hagged she looked. She forced up a smile, and said: “Not ill, but I have had the head-ache all day. You must rough my cheeks a little.”

“If I may say it, my lady, I had as lief see you laid down in your bed. I am sure none knows better than I what it is to have the migraine.”

Nell shook her head, but she consented to swallow a few drops of laudanum in water, feeling that even though she had no migraine she had never stood in more urgent need of a composer.

The finishing touches had just been put to her toilette when Cardross sought admittance to the room. A sudden terror that Sutton might mention the disappearance of the necklace to him darted through Nell’s mind, and made her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth; but Sutton did not speak. Her face was always rather immobile, and in Cardross’s presence it became mask-like. She dropped a slight curtsey, and at once withdrew, according to her correct practice. Nell remembered that she held men in abhorrence, and could breathe again.

Cardross was still habited in his morning-dress, and the sight of his blue coat and tasselled Hessians made Nell recollect, with relief, that he was not dining at home that evening. She said, with an effort at lightness: “Ah! Daffy Club, I collect!”

He smiled. “No: Cribb’s Parlour! You have no engagement for tonight?”

“No, none. I am quite thankful for it! I have had the headache all day, and am not rid of it yet.”

“For several days, I think.”

Her eyes flew to his, at once startled and wary. “No—but I own I am worn to a bone with dissipation!”

“By something, at all events.” He spoke very evenly, but his expression alarmed her. “I could almost suppose you to be love-lorn—as love-lorn as Letty!”

She looked rather blindly at him. A tragic little smile wavered on her lips, but she turned her head away, not answering.

“I can only wish you a speedy recovery,” he said. “Who is the man so fortunate as to have hit your fancy? No doubt some dashing sprig of fashion?”

“I think you must be trying to joke me,” she said, her face still averted. “It is not kind—when I have the head-ache!”

“You must forgive me.” After a slight pause, he added: “I came to tell you—and I trust it may relieve your head-ache—that I learned today that Allandale has gone into the country for a couple of nights, on a visit to an uncle, or some such thing. You may relax your vigilance—and I would he might remain out of town until he sets sail!”

“I can’t blame you for that. I know you have had a great deal to vex you.”

“Do you?” he said. “Well! it is something that you should own it, I suppose!”