Charity Girl

Chapter 9

The Viscount suffered no delays on his journey, and might have reached Harrowgate at the end of the second day had it not occurred to him that to arrive without warning at a watering-place in the height of its season would probably entail a prolonged search for accommodation, and that the late evening was scarcely the time to prosecute this. So he spent the second night at the King’s Arms, in Leeds, leaving himself with only some twenty more miles to cover. He was an extremely healthy young man, and since he spent a great part of his time in all the more energetic forms of sport it was hard to tire him out, but two very long days in a post-chaise had made him feel as weary as he was bored. The chaise was his own, and very well-sprung, but it was also very lightly built, which, while it made for speed, meant that it bounded over the inequalities of the road in a manner not at all conducive to repose. Midway through the second day he remarked to Tain that he wished he could exchange places with one of the post-boys. Quite shocked, Tain said incredulously: “Exchange places with a post-boy, my lord?”

“Yes, for he at least has something to do. Though I daresay I shouldn’t care to be obliged to wear a leg-iron,” he added reflectively.

“No, my lord,” said Tain, primly. “Certainly not! A very unbecoming thing for any gentleman to do!”

“Also uncomfortable, don’t you think?” suggested Desford, gently quizzing him.

“I have never worn one, my lord, so I cannot take it upon myself to venture an opinion,” replied Tain, in chilly accents.

“I must remember to ask my own wheel-boy,” said Desford provocatively.

But Tain, refusing to be drawn, merely said; “Certainly, my lord,” leaving Desford to regret that it was he and not Stebbing who was sitting beside him. Stebbing would undoubtedly have entered with enthusiasm into a discussion, embellishing it with some entertaining anecdotes illustrative of the advantages and disadvantages attached to a postilion’s career.

However, the regret vanished when the Viscount remembered how valuable Tain’s services became from the instant that he climbed down from the chaise, and entered whatever posting-house his employer had chosen to honour with his patronage on this or any other journey. In some mysterious way known only to himself he could transform the most unpromising bedchamber into an inviting one in no more than a flea’s leap, as the saying was; to lay out a change of raiment for his master; to make such arrangements for his comfort as Desford would not have thought it necessary to command, if left to manage for himself; to press out the creases in his coat; to launder his neckcloth and his shirt; to procure extra candles; and to overawe the domestic staff into bringing up hot water to my lord’s room without delay as soon as he himself demanded it. Stebbing might be a more amusing companion during a tedious journey, but none of Tain’s arts was known to him, as the Viscount realized, and acknowledged, when, as Tain drew the curtains round his bed that evening, he murmured: “Thank you! I only wish you may have ensured your own comfort half as well as you have ensured mine!”

He did not reach Harrowgate until shortly before noon on the following morning, because although he had had the intention of setting forward on the last few miles of his journey at eight o’clock Tain had quite deliberately refrained from rousing him until an hour later, saying mendaciously, but with complete sangfroid, that he had misunderstood his instructions. What he did not say was that when he had softly entered the room at six o’clock he had found the Viscount sunk in a profound sleep from which he had not had the heart to rouse him. He guessed, judging by his own experience, that my lord had spent the first part of the night under the lingering impression that he was still bowling and bounding and swaying over the road, and had only slept in uneasy snatches until overcome by exhaustion. As this guess was correct, and Desford was still feeling both sleepy and battered, the excuse was received with a prodigious yawn, accompanied by nothing more alarming than a sceptical glance, and a rather thickly uttered: “Oh, well—!”

Revived by an excellent breakfast, Desford shook off his unaccustomed lassitude, and resumed his journey. It was a day of bright sunshine, with just enough wind blowing off the moors to make it invigorating, and under these conditions he saw Harrowgate at its best, and was much inclined to think that his anonymous Guide had maligned the place. The Low Town did not attract him, but the situation of High Harrowgate, which lay nearly a mile beyond it, was as pleasant as the Guide had grudgingly described. On a clear day—and this was a very clear day—York Minster could be seen in the distance, with the Hambleton hills beyond; and to the west the mountains of Craven. Besides the race course, the theatre, and the principal Chalybeate, High Harrowgate possessed a large green, which was one of its most agreeable features, and round which three of its chief hotels stood, a great many shops, and what bore all the appearance of being a fashionable library. “Come now!” exclaimed Desford cheerfully, as the chaise drew up at the Dragon. “I don’t consider this a dreary place at all, do you, Tain?”

“Your lordship has not yet seen it in bad weather,” responded Tain unencouragingly. “I should not myself choose to sojourn here on a dull day, when the prospect would no doubt be shrouded in mist.”

Neither the Dragon nor the Granby had a room to spare, but the Viscount was more fortunate at the Queen’s, where, after a hurried colloquy with his spouse, conducted in an urgent whisper, the landlord was happy to inform his lordship that he had just one room vacant—indeed, one of his best rooms, looking out on to the green, which he was only able to offer because the gentleman who had booked it had unaccountably failed to honour his contract. He then escorted Desford upstairs to inspect it, and, on its being approved, bowed himself out, and hurried downstairs again, first to order a couple of menials to carry up the gentleman’s baggage to No. 7, and then to inform his flustered wife that if Mr Fritwell should happen to show his front Jack (the hope of his house) would have to give up his room to him, and bed down over the stables. Upon her venturing to expostulate he silenced her by saying that if she thought he was going to turn away a well-breeched swell, travelling in a chaise-and-four, and attended by his valet, merely to avoid offending old Mr Fritwell, who was more inclined to argue over the reckoning than to drop his blunt freely, she was the more mistaken.

Little though he knew it, the Viscount was indebted to Tain’s entrance upon the scene, bearing his dressing-case, for the landlord’s decision to sacrifice old Mr Fritwell. The landlord was sharp enough to recognize after one look at his lordship that a member of the Quality had walked into the inn, and—after a second, shrewd, glance at the cut of his lordship’s coat, the intricate folds of his neckcloth, and the gloss on his top-boots—no country squire, but a London buck of the first head; but it was Tain’s arrival which clinched the matter. Unknown ladies and gentlemen travelling without their personal servants found it hard to obtain accommodation at any of the best inns in Harrowgate, valets and abigails apparently being regarded by the landlords as insurances against the possibility of being choused out of their due reckonings.

The Viscount had not thought it necessary to acquaint the landlord either with his name or his rank, but this was a foolish omission speedily rectified by Tain, far better versed in such matters than his master. Instead of following immediately in the Viscount’s wake, he awaited the landlord’s return at the foot of the stairs, and proceeded with quelling civility to make known to him my lord’s requirements. By the time he had reached the stage of warning the landlord not, on any account, to permit the Boots to lay a finger on my lord’s footwear, he had succeeded in so much enlarging his master’s consequence that it would not have been surprising if the landlord had believed himself to be entertaining, if not a Royal prince, at least a Serene Highness.

As a result of these competent, if top-lofty, tactics, he was able to inform the Viscount, when he presently rejoined him in No. 7, that he had ventured to bespeak a private parlour for him, and to arrange with the landlord for his dinner to be served there. The Viscount, who was standing by the window, watching the various persons passing below, replied absently: “Have you? I thought it not worth while to ask for one since I don’t expect to be here above a couple of nights, but I daresay you’re right. You know, Tain, the place is full of valetudinarians! I’ve never seen so many people hobbling along on sticks in my life!”

“Exactly so, my lord!” said Tain, beginning swiftly to unpack the contents of the dressing-case. “I have myself seen three of them enter this house, one of them being an elderly lady of what one must call a garrulous disposition. I formed the opinion that if she were to subject your lordship to a description of her sufferings and of the cure which she is undergoing you would be hard put to it to maintain even the appearance of civility.”

“Then you were certainly right to procure a private parlour for me,” said the Viscount, laughing.

Leaving Tain to unpack his portmanteau, he sallied forth to continue his search for Lord Nettlecombe. He had already enquired for him at the Dragon and the Granby, without meeting with anything but blank looks and head-shakings, so, as the Chalybeate, under its imposing dome, lay on the opposite side of the green he thought he might as well make that his first port of call. If Lord Nettlecombe had come to Harrowgate for his health’s sake it seemed likely that he must by now have become a familiar figure there. But none of the attendants seemed to have heard of his lordship, the most helpful amongst them being unable to do more than suggest that he should be sought at the Tewit Well, which was the second of the two Chalybeates, situated half-a-mile to the west of the principal one.

Desford strode off, glad to be able to stretch his legs after having been cooped up for so many hours, but although he enjoyed a brisk walk it ended in another rebuff, accompanied by a recommendation to try the Sulphur Wells, at Lower Harrowgate, and the information that although the Lower town was a mile distant by road it was no more than half-a-mile away if approached “over the stile”. But as the directions given to him on how to reach the stile were as vague as such directions too often are, Desford decided to enquire at the inns and boarding-houses in High Harrowgate, before extending his search to the Lower town.

He very soon discovered that although Harrowgate was described by the Guide as consisting of two scattered villages this was another of that anonymous author’s misleading statements: no village that Desford had yet seen contained so many inns and boarding-houses as High Harrowgate. At none of those he visited was he able to obtain any news of his quarry, and by the time a church clock struck the hour of six, at which unfashionable time dinner was served at all the best inns, he was tired, hungry, and exasperated, and thankfully abandoned, for that day, his fruitless search.

When he reached the Queen he was considerably surprised by the respect with which he was greeted, the porter bowing him in, a waiter hurrying forward to discover whether he would take a glass of sherry before he went upstairs to his parlour, and the landlord breaking off a conversation with a less favoured guest to conduct him to the stairs, informing him on the way that dinner—which he trusted would meet with his approval—should be served immediately, and that he had taken it upon himself to bring up a bottle of his best burgundy from the cellar, and one of a very tolerable claret, in case my lord should prefer the lighter wine.

The reason for these embarrassingly obsequious attentions was soon made plain to the Viscount. Tain, relieving him of his hat and gloves, said that he had ventured to order a neat, plain dinner for him, consisting of a Cressy soup, removed with a fillet of veal, some glazed sweetbreads, and a few petit pates, to be followed by a second course of which prawns, peas, and a gooseberry tart were the principal dishes. “I took the precaution, my lord,” he said, “of looking at the bill of fare, and saw that it was just as I had feared: a mere ordinary, and not at all what you are accustomed to. So I ordered what I believe you will like.”

“Well, I am certainly hungry, but I couldn’t eat the half of it!” Desford declared.

However, when he sat down to table he found that he was hungrier than he had supposed, and he ate rather more than half of what was set before him. The claret, though not of the first growth, was better than the landlord’s somewhat slighting description of it had led him to expect; and the brandy with which he rounded off the repast was a true Cognac. Under its benign influence he began to take a more hopeful view of his immediate prospects, and to consider what his next move should be. He decided that the best thing he could do would be to visit first the Sulphur Well, and next, if he failed to come by any intelligence of Lord Nettlecombe’s whereabouts there, to discover the names and directions of the doctors practising in Harrowgate.

The experiences of the first wearing day he had spent in his search for Nettlecombe prevented him from feeling either surprise or any marked degree of disappointment when his enquiries at the Sulphur Well were productive of nothing more than regretful head-shakes; but he was a trifle daunted when presented with a list of the Harrowgate doctors: he had not thought that so many medical men were to be found in so small a spa. He betook himself to the Crown to study the list over a fortifying tankard of Home Brewed; and, having crossed off from it those who advertised themselves as Surgeons, and consulted a plan of both High and Low Harrowgate, which he had had the forethought to buy that morning, set out on foot to visit the first of the Lower town’s practitioners which figured on the list. Neither this member of the Faculty, nor the next on his list, numbered Lord Nettlecombe amongst his patients, but just as the Viscount was contemplating with disgust the prospect of spending the rest of the day in what he was fast coming to believe was an abortive search, fortune at last smiled upon him: Dr Easton, third on the list, not only knew where Nettlecombe was lodging, but had actually been summoned to attend him, when his lordship had suffered a severe attack of colic. “As far as I am aware,” he said, austerely regarding Desford over the top of his spectacles, “his lordship has not removed from that lodging, but since he has not again sought my services I do not claim him as a patient. I will go further! Should he again request my attendance upon him I should have no hesitation in recommending him to consult some other physician more willing than I am, perhaps, to being told that his diagnosis is false, and to having his prescription spurned!”

Resisting an absurd but strong impulse to offer Dr Easton an apology for Nettlecombe’s rudeness, Desford took his leave, saying that he was much obliged to him, and assuring him, with a disarming smile, that he had all his sympathy.

It transpired that Nettlecombe’s lodging was in one of the larger boarding-houses in the Lower town. It had an air of somewhat gloomy respectability, and was presided over by an angular lady whose appearance carried the suggestion that she must be in mourning for a near relation, since she wore a bombasine dress of sombre hue, without frills, or lace, or even a ribbon to lighten its sobriety. Her cap was of starched cambric, tied tightly beneath her chin; and as much of her hair as was allowed to be seen was iron-gray, and smoothed into bands as severe as her expression. She put Desford forcibly in mind of the dame in the village that lay beyond Wolversham who terrified the rural children into good behaviour and the rudiments of learning; and he would not have been in the least surprised to have seen a birch-rod on the high desk behind which she stood.

She was talking to an elderly couple, whose decorous bearing and prim voices exactly matched their surroundings, when Desford entered the house, but she broke off the conversation to direct a piercing look of appraisal at him, which made him feel that at any moment she would tell him that his neckcloth was crooked, or demand to know if he had washed his hands before venturing into her presence. His lips twitched, and his eyes began to dance, upon which her countenance relaxed, and, excusing herself to the elderly couple, she came towards him, saying, with a slight bow: “Yes, sir? What may I have the honour to do for you? If it is accommodation you are seeking, I regret I have none to offer: my house is always fully booked for the season.”

“No, I don’t want accommodation,” he replied. “But I believe you have Lord Nettlecombe staying here. Is that so?”

Her face hardened again; she said grimly: “Yes, sir, it is so!”

It was apparent that the presence of Lord Nettlecombe in her house afforded her no gratification, and that Desford’s enquiry had caused whatever good opinion she had formed of himself to wither at birth. When he requested her to have his card taken to my lord she gave a small, contemptuous sniff, and without deigning to reply, turned away to call sharply to a waiter just about to enter the long room: “George! Conduct this gentleman to Lord Nettlecombe’s parlour!”

She then favoured the Viscount with a haughty inclination of her head, and resumed her conversation with the elderly couple.

Amused, but also a trifle ruffled by this cavalier treatment, Desford was on the verge of telling her that when he had handed her his card he had intended it to be taken to Lord Nettlecombe, not laid on her desk, when it occurred to him that perhaps it would be as well not to give his lordship the opportunity to refuse to see him, so he suppressed the impulse to give this ridiculously uppish creature a set-down, and followed the waiter up the stairs, and along a corridor. The waiter, whose air of profound gloom argued a life of intolerable slavery, but was probably due to the pain of flat feet,. stopped outside a door at the end of the corridor, and asked what name he should say, and, upon learning it, opened the door, and repeated it in a raised, indifferent voice.

“Eh? What’s that?” demanded Lord Nettlecombe wrathfully. “I won’t see him! What the devil do you mean by bringing people up here without my leave? Tell him to go away!”

“I fear you will be obliged to do that yourself, sir,” said Desford, shutting the door upon the waiter, and coming forward. “Pray accept my apologies for not sending up my card! It was my intention to have done so, but the formidable lady below-stairs thought otherwise.”

“That damned pigeon-fancier!” ejaculated his lordship fiercely. “She had the curst impudence to try to diddle me! But I’m no pigeon for her plucking, and so I told her! Gull-catcher! Slip-gibbet! Nail!” He broke off suddenly. “What do you want?” he snarled.

“A few words with you, sir,” said the Viscount coolly.

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t want to talk to anyone! If your name’s Desford you must be old Wroxton’s son, and he’s no friend of mine, I’ll have you know!”

“Oh, I do know it!” responded the Viscount, laying his hat, his gloves, and his malacca cane down on the table.

This indication that he meant to prolong his visit infuriated Nettlecombe so much that he said, in a kind of scream: “Don’t do that! Go away! Do you want to send me off the hooks? I’m a sick man! Worn to the bone with all the worry and trouble I’ve had! Burnt to the socket, damn it! I won’t have strangers thrust in on me, I tell you!”

“I’m sorry you are in such indifferent health,” said Desford politely, “I will try not to tax your strength, but I have a duty to discharge which closely concerns you, and I believe—”

“If you’ve come from my son Jonas you’ve wasted your time!” interrupted Nettlecombe, his pale eyes sharp with suspicion.

“I have not,” said Desford, his calm voice in marked contrast to Nettlecombe’s shrill accents. “I have come on behalf of your granddaughter.”

“That’s a damned quibble!” instantly exclaimed his lordship. “Jonas may take care of his brats himself, and so you may tell him! I wash my hands of the whole brood!”

“I am not speaking of Mr Jonas Steane’s daughters, sir, but of your younger son’s only child.”

My lord’s bony hands clenched the arms of his chair convulsively. “I have no younger son!”

“From what I have been able to discover I fear that that may be true,” said Desford.

“Ha! Dead, is he? And a good thing if he is!” said Nettlecombe viciously. “He’s been dead to me for years, and if you think I’ll have anything to do with any child of his you’re mistaken!”

“I do think it, and I am persuaded that I’m not mistaken, sir. When you have heard in what a desperate situation she has been left I cannot believe that you will refuse to help her. Her mother died when she was a child, and her father placed her in a school in Bath. Until a few years ago, he paid the necessary fees, though not always, I fancy, very punctually, and from time to time he visited her. But the payments and the visits ceased—”

“I know all this!” interrupted Nettlecombe. “The woman wrote to me! Demanded that I should pay for the girl! A damned insolent letter I thought it, too! I told her to apply to the girl’s maternal relations, for she wouldn’t get a groat out of me!”

“She obeyed you, sir, she applied to Lady Bugle, but I don’t think she got a groat out of her either,” said Desford dryly. “Lady Bugle, perceiving an opportunity to provide herself with an unpaid servant, took Miss Steane to her home in Hampshire, under an odious pretence of charity, for which she demanded a slavish gratitude, and unending service, not only for herself, but for every other member of her large family. Miss Steane’s disposition is compliant and affectionate: she had every wish in the world to repay her aunt for having given her a home, and uncomplainingly performed every task set before her, from hemming sheets, or running errands for her cousins, to taking charge of the nursery-children. And I daresay she would still be doing so, perfectly happily, had her aunt treated her with kindness. But she did not, and the poor child became so unhappy that she ran away, with the intention of appealing to you, sir, for protection.”

Nettlecombe, who had listened to this speech with a scowl on his brow, punctuating it with muttered comments, and fidgeting restlessly in his chair, burst out angrily: “It’s no concern of mine! I warned that scoundrelly son of mine how it would be if he didn’t mend his ways. He made his bed, and he must lie on it!”

“But it is not he who is lying on it,” said the Viscount. “It is his daughter who is the innocent victim of her father’s misdeeds.”

“You should read your Bible, young man!” retorted Nettlecombe on a note of triumph. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children! What about that, eh?”

A pungent reply sprang to the Viscount’s lips, but it remained unuttered, for at that moment the door opened, and a middle-aged and buxom woman sailed into the room, saying in far from refined accents: “Well, this is a surprise, to be sure! When that old Tabby downstairs, which has the impudence to call herself Mrs Nunny, just as though a rabbit-pole like she is ever had a husband, told me my lord had a gentleman visiting him you could have knocked me down with a feather, for in general he don’t receive, not being in very high force. Though we shall soon have him quite rumtitum again, shan’t we, my lord?”

My lord responded to this sprightly prophecy with a growl. As for Desford, the newcomer’s surprise was as nothing to his, for she spoke as though she were well-acquainted with him, and he knew that he had never before seen her. He wondered who the devil she could be. Her manner towards Nettlecombe suggested that she might be a nurse, hired to attend him during recuperation from some illness but a stunned look at the lavishly plumed and high-crowned bonnet set upon her brassy curls rapidly put that idea to flight. No nurse wearing such an exaggeratedly fashionable bonnet would ever have been allowed to cross the threshold of a sick-room; nor would she have dreamt of arraying herself (even is she could have afforded to do so) in a purple gown with a demi-train, and trimmed with knots of ribbon.

His blank astonishment must have shown itself in his face, for she simpered, and said archly: “I have the advantage of you, haven’t I? You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are, because I’ve seen your card. So my lord don’t have to tell me.”

Thus put pointedly in mind of his social obligations Lord Nettlecombe said sourly: “Lord Desford—Lady Nettlecombe. And you’ve no need to look like that!” he added, as Desford blinked incredulously at him. “My marriage doesn’t have to meet with your approval!”

“Certainly not!” said Desford, recovering himself. “Pray accept my felicitations, sir! Lady Nettlecombe, your servant!”

He bowed, and finding that she was extending her hand to him took it in his, and (since she clearly expected it) raised it briefly to his lips.

“However did you find us out, my lord?” she asked. “Such pains did we take to keep it secret that we’d gone off on our honeymoon! Not that I’m not very happy to make your acquaintance, for I’m sure we couldn’t have wished for a more amiable bride-guest, neither of us!”

“Don’t talk such fiddle-faddle, Maria!” said Nettlecombe irascibly. “He’s not a bride-guest! He didn’t know we were married when he forced his way in here! All he wants to do is to foist Wilfred’s brat on to me, and I won’t have her!”

“You are mistaken, sir!” said the Viscount icily. “I have not the smallest wish to see Miss Steane in a house where she is not welcome! My purpose in coming to visit you is to inform you that she—your granddaughter, let me remind you!—is entirely destitute! Had I not been with her when she found your house shut up she must have been in a desperate case, for she has no acquaintance in London, no one in the world to turn to but yourself! What might have become of her I leave to your imagination!”

“She had no business to run away from her aunt’s house!” Nettlecombe said angrily. “Most unbecoming! Hoydenish behaviour! Not that I should have expected anything better from a daughter of that rake-shame I refuse to call my son!” He turned towards his bride. “It’s Wilfred’s brat he’s talking about, Maria: you remember how vexed I was when some brass-faced school-keeper wrote to demand that I—I!—should pay for the girl’s schooling? Well, now, if you please—” He broke off, his gaze suddenly riveted to the shawl she was wearing draped across her elbows. “That’s new!” he said, stabbing an accusing finger at it. “Where did it come from?”

“I’ve just purchased it,” she answered boldly. She still smiled, but her smile was at variance with the determined jut of her chin, and the martial gleam in her eyes. “And don’t try to bamboozle me into thinking you didn’t give me leave to buy myself a new shawl, because you did, and this very morning, what’s more!”

“But it’s silk!”he moaned.

“Norwich silk,” she said, smoothing it complacently. “Now, don’t fly into a miff, my lord! You wouldn’t wish for me to be seen about in a cheap shawl, such as anyone could wear, not when I’m your wife!”

There was nothing in his expression to encourage her in this belief; and as he complained mournfully that if she meant to squander his money on finery he would soon be ruined, and added a reproachful rider to the effect that he had expected his marriage to be an economy, Desford very soon found himself the sole, and wholly disregarded, witness to a matrimonial squabble. From the various things that were said, he gathered, without much surprise, that Lord Nettlecombe had married his housekeeper. Why he had done so did not emerge; the reason was to be revealed to him later. But it was plain that in the role of housekeeper my lord’s bride had proved herself to be as big a save-all as he was himself; and that once she had him firmly hooked she had lapsed a little from her former economical habits. And, watching her, as she contended with her lord, always with that firm smile on her lips and that dangerous gleam in her eyes, he thought that it would not be long before my lord would be living under the cat’s foot, as the saying was. For a moment he wondered whether it might be possible to enlist her support, but only for a moment: my Lady Nettlecombe was concerned only with her own support. There was not a trace of womanly compassion in her eyes, and no softness beneath her determined smile.

The quarrel ended as abruptly as it had begun, my lady suddenly recollecting Desford’s presence, and exclaiming: “Oh, whatever must Lord Desford be thinking of us, coming to cuffs like a couple of children over no more than a barley-straw? You must excuse us, my lord! Well, they do say that the first year of marriage is difficult, don’t they, and I’m sure my First and I had many a tiff, but no more than lovers’ quarrels, like this little breeze me and my Second has just had!” She leaned forward to fondle her Second’s unresponsive hand as she spoke, and adjured him, in sugared accents, not to put himself into a fuss over a mere shawl.

“I don’t give a rush for what Desford thinks of me!” declared Nettlecombe, two hectic spots of colour burning in his cheeks. “Cocky young busy-head! Meddling in my affairs!”

“Oh, no!” Desford interposed. “Merely bringing your affairs to your notice, sir!”

Nettlecombe glared at him. “Wilfred’s daughter is no affair of mine! It seems to me she’s your affair, young man! Ay, and it seems to me there’s something very havey-cavey about this! How did you come to be with her when she called at my house? Tell me that! It’s my belief you ran off with her from her aunt’s house, and now you’re trying to be rid of her! Well, you’re blowing at a cold coal! No man has ever contrived to put the change on me!”

Desford turned white with anger, and for an instant such an ugly look blazed in his eyes that Nettlecombe shrank back in his chair, and his spouse rushed forward, and dramatically commanded the Viscount to remember her lord’s age and infirmities. It was unnecessary. The Viscount had already regained control over his temper, and although he was still pale with wrath, he was able to say in a level voice: “I do not forget it, ma’am. His lordship’s infirmities seem to have affected his brain, and God forbid I should call a lunatic to account! If I allowed myself to follow my own inclinations I should leave this house immediately, but I am not here for any purpose of .my own, but solely on behalf of an unfortunate child, who has no one but him to turn to, and so must suffer him to insult me with what patience I can muster!”

Nettlecombe, who had been scared out of his ungovernable fury, muttered something that might have been an apology, and added, in a querulous tone: “Well, it does sound havey-cavey to me—and so it would to anyone!”

“It is not, however. I did not run off with Miss Steane from her aunt’s house. Even if I were such a loose screw as to run off with any girl, you can hardly suppose that I could possibly do so after barely half-an-hour’s conversation with her! I encountered her, the day after my one meeting with her, trudging along the post-road to London, quite unattended, and carrying a heavy portmanteau. I pulled up my horses, of course, and tried to discover what had led her to take such an imprudent—indeed, such an improper step! I shall not weary you with what she was induced to tell me: I will merely say that she was in great distress, and by far too young and inexperienced to have the least idea of what might be the disastrous consequences of her rashness. Her one thought was to reach you, sir—believing in her innocence that you would help her! Since you haven’t hesitated to throw the grossest of insults at my head, I need not scruple to tell you that I didn’t share her belief! I did what I could to persuade her to let me drive her back to her aunt’s house, but I failed. She begged me instead to take her to London. We reached your house in the late afternoon, by which time I had seen enough of her to make me feel that no one, least of all a grandparent, could be hardhearted enough to turn her from his door. And in spite of the intemperate things you have said I still think that had you been at home, and had seen her, you must have taken pity on her. But you were not at home—which was almost as big a facer for me as it was for her! In the circumstances, I thought the best thing I could do was to take her to a very old friend of mine, and leave her in her charge until I could discover your whereabouts, and put her case before you. I trust I have now done so to your satisfaction.”

“There’s only one thing she can do. She must return to her aunt,” said Nettlecombe. “She took the girl away from school, so it’s her responsibility to look after her, not mine!”

“That’s just what I was thinking!” nodded the lady.

“It is a waste of time to think it, ma’am: she won’t go. I daresay she would liefer hire herself out as a cook-maid!”

“Well, and why shouldn’t she?” demanded her ladyship, bristling. “I’m sure it’s a very respectable calling, and there’s plenty of chances for her to rise higher, if she has her wits about her, and gives satisfaction!”

“What have you to say to that, sir?” asked the Viscount. “Could you stomach the knowledge that your granddaughter was earning her bread as a servant?”

Nettlecombe uttered a brutal laugh. “Why not? I married one!”

This declaration not unnaturally took Desford’s breath away. He found himself bereft of words; but on my lady it had quite another effect. She rounded on Nettlecombe, and said in a trembling voice: “I was never a servant of yours, and well you know it! I was your lady-housekeeper, and I’ll thank you to remember it! The idea of you casting nasty aspersions at me! Don’t you dare do so never no more, or you’ll hear some home-speaking from me, my lord, and so I warn you!”

He looked a little ashamed, and more than a little apprehensive, and said hastily: “There, don’t take a pet, Maria! I didn’t mean it! The thing is that Desford has nettled me into such a flame that I hardly know what I’m saying. Not but what—However, let it rest! I’ll give you a new bonnet!”

This offer led to an instant reconciliation, my lady even going so far as to embrace him, exclaiming: “That’s more like my dear old Nettle!”

“Yes, but I’ll go with you to choose it, mind!” said his lordship warily. “And as for Wilfred’s brat, if you think you can palaver me into taking her into my house, Desford, I’ll tell you once and for all I won’t do it!”

“I don’t think it. What I beg leave to suggest to you, sir, is that you should make her an allowance: enough to enable her to maintain herself respectably. Not a fortune, but an independence.”

But this proposal made Nettlecombe’s eyes start alarmingly in their sockets, with as much incredulity as dismay. He said in a choked voice: “Squander my money on that little gypsy? Do you take me for a cabbage-head?”

He received prompt support from his bride, who advised him strongly not to let himself be choused out of his blunt. She added, with great frankness, that for her part she had no notion of raking and scraping to save his blunt for him only to see it thrown away on a hurly-burly girl who had no claim on him. “It’s bad enough for you to be obliged to grease Jonas’s wheels,” she said, “and when I think of the way he’s behaved to me, trying to get you to turn me off, let alone coming the nob over me, it turns me downright queasy to think of him, and that niffy-naffy wife of his, living as high as coach-horses at our expense!”

The Viscount picked up his hat and gloves, and said contemptuously: “Very well, sir. If money means more to you than reputation there is nothing further to be said, and I’ll take my leave of you.”

“It does!” snapped Nettlecombe. “I care nothing for what anyone says of me—never have cared! And the sooner you take yourself off the better pleased I shall be!”

But the Viscount’s words had made the bride look sharply at him, a shade of uneasiness in her face. She said, in a blustering manner: “I’m sure there’s no reason why anyone should blame my lord! No one ever blamed him for disowning the girl’s father, and he was his son!”

The Viscount, who had not missed that swift, faint look of uneasiness, replied, slightly raising his brows: “Well, that is not quite true, ma’am. It was acknowledged that he had been given great provocation, but a number of people considered that he had acted in a—let us say, in a way that was unbecoming in one who was not only a father, but a man of rank.”

“Balderdash!” ejaculated Nettlecombe, flushing. “How do you know what anyone thought? You were in the schoolroom!”

“You must have forgotten, sir, that my father was one of those who did blame you,” said the Viscount gently. “And—er—made no secret of his disapproval!”

As Lord Wroxton’s disapproval had found expression in giving Nettlecombe the cut direct in full view of some dozen members of the ton, it was not surprising that the angry flush on Nettlecombe’s face deepened to a purple hue. He snarled: “Much I cared for Wroxton’s opinion!” but his fingers curled themselves into claws, and he glared at Desford as though he would have liked to fix those claws round his throat.

“Furthermore,” pursued Desford relentlessly, “whatever excuses might be found for your treatment of your son, none can be found for your behaviour towards his orphaned daughter, who is innocent of any fault, but is to become not only the victim of her father’s improvidence but also of her grandfather’s rancour!”

“Let ‘em say what they choose! I don’t care a button what they say!”

“They won’t know anything about it!” said my lady.

“My lord don’t go about much nowadays, so—” She stopped, staring at Desford, who was smiling in a very disquieting way.

“Oh, yes, they will know, ma’am!” he said. “I pledge you my word the story will be all over town within a sennight!”

“Jackanapes! Rush-buckler!” Nettlecombe spat at him.

But at this point my lady quickly intervened, begging him not to fret himself into a fever. “It won’t do to act hasty!” she urged. “You may not care for what people say of you, but it’s my belief it’s me as will be blamed! Even your friends have behaved very stiff to me, and I don’t doubt but what they’d say it was my doing you wouldn’t have anything to do with this girl, and that won’t suit me, my lord, and no amount of argufying will make me say different!”

“And it won’t suit me to waste my money on the girl! Next you’ll be telling me it’s my duty to buy her an annuity!”

“No, I shan’t. It isn’t to be expected that you should, nor that you should pay her an allowance, for who’s to say when you might find it inconvenient to be obliged to shell out the ready—pay the allowance, I mean? I don’t hold with allowances: it makes anyone fidgety to have a thing like that coming due every quarter. No, I’ve got a better notion in my noddle—better for the girl too! What she wants, poor little thing, is a home, and that’s what you can give her, and without being purse-pinched. So why don’t you write to her, and offer to take her into the family? I’ll see to it she don’t worrit you, and she won’t worrit me either. In fact, the more I think of it the more I feel I should like to have her. She’ll be company for me.”

“Take Wilfred’s brat into the family?” he repeated, almost stunned.

She patted his hand. “Well, my lord here is in the right of it when he says it ain’t her fault she’s Wilfred’s brat. I declare I feel downright sorry for her! And if it’s expense you’re thinking of, Nettle, I shouldn’t wonder at it if she turned out to be an economy, because it wouldn’t be an extra mouth to feed, for you know I paid off Betty before we left London, thinking it was a sinful waste of money to keep a girl just to mend the linen, and wash the chandeliers, and the best china, and lend old Lattiford a hand with the silver, and that. Mind you, it’s a bigger waste of money keeping a butler that’s as old and infirm as what he is, but you’d have to pension him off if you sent him packing, so while he can work it’s best for us to keep him.”

Nettlecombe, who had listened to her in gathering exasperation, said explosively: “No, I tell you! I won’t have her in my house!”

“Allow me to set your mind at rest!” said Desford. “You will most certainly not have her in your house, sir! I didn’t help her to escape from one slavery only to pitchfork her into another!”

He strode towards the door, ignoring a plea from my lady to wait. She followed him into the corridor, begging him not to take her lord’s tetchiness amiss, and assuring him that he might rely on her to bring him round. “The thing is,” she said earnestly, “that he’s out of sorts, poor dear gentleman, and no wonder, with all the kick-up there’s been, thinking he was going to lose me, because that shabster, Jonas, had the impudence to set it about that I was setting my cap at him, which I never did, nor thought of! All I thought of was to make him comfortable, which I promise you I did! What’s more, I was the most saving housekeeper he’d ever had! But when that Jonas took to saying I was a man-trap, and warning his pa against me—well! I was obliged to tell his lordship I must leave at the term, because I’ve got my good name to think about, haven’t I? So his lordship made me an Offer, which is all the good Master Jonas got out of trying to be rid of me!” She ended on a triumphant note, but as the Viscount was wholly unresponsive, tightened her hold on his sleeve, and said ingratiatingly: “And as for making his granddaughter a slave, you quite mistook my meaning, my lord! I’m sure I wouldn’t ask her to do anything I wouldn’t do myself—yes, and have done, times out of mind! Not that I was born to it, mind you! Oh, dear me, no! I often think my poor father would have turned in his grave if he’d lived to see the straits I was reduced to, him having been cheated out of his inheritance, like he was, and my First losing his fortune, and leaving me without a souse, which is why I was forced to earn my own bread as best I could. No one knows better than me what it means to step down from one’s rightful station, so if you was thinking Miss Steane would be a servant in her grandpa’s house you’re quite beside the bridge, my lord! She’ll have a good home, and not be asked to do anything any genteel girl wouldn’t be expected to do to help her ma!”

“You are wasting your breath, ma’am,” he replied, inexorably removing her hand from his sleeve, and continuing his progress towards the stairs.

Baffled, she delivered a Parthian shot. “At any hand,” she said shrilly, “you can’t say it was me that wouldn’t offer the girl a home!”