Friday’s Child

Chapter Three

FOR ONE DAZED MOMENT MISS WANTAGE COULD only gaze blankly up at him. “M-marry me, Sherry?” she stammered.

“Yes, why not?” responded his lordship. “This is, unless you have some objection, and considering the way you were ready to marry the curate I can’t for the life of me see why you should have!”

“No, no, I wasn’t ready to marry the curate!” protested Hero. “I told you that I would prefer to be a governess!”

“Well, never mind about that,” said his lordship. “It’s no use your saying that you’d prefer to be a governess to marrying me, because it’s absurd! No one would. Dash it, Hero, I don’t want to talk like a coxcomb, and I dare say I may want for principle, and have libertine propensities, and spend all my time in gaming hells, besides being the sort of ugly customer no woman of sensibility could stomach, but you can’t pretend that you wouldn’t be far more comfortable with me than at that curst school you keep on prosing about!”

Miss Wantage was far from wanting to pretend anything of the sort, but the notion of marrying one who had for a number of years appeared to her in much the same light as he appeared to his Tiger seemed so fantastic that she could neither credit him with any serious intentions, nor believe that such a dazzling change in her bleak future could really take place. “Oh, Sherry, don’t please!” she begged, a catch in her voice. “I know it’s a hum, but, please, I wish you will not!”

“It’s no such thing!” the Viscount said. “In fact, the more I think of it the more it seems to me an excellent plan.”

“But, Sherry, you love Isabella!”

“Of course I love Isabella!” responded Sherry. “Though, mind you, I don’t say I’d have offered for her if I hadn’t been so deuced uncomfortably circumstanced, for to tell you the truth, Hero, I’d as lief not be married. However, it’s no use thinking of that! Married I must be, and if I can’t have the Incomparable I’d as soon have you as any other. Sooner,” he added handsomely. “I’m devilish fond of you, Hero. It’s my belief we should deal famously, for you don’t take pets, or go off into odd humours, and you won’t expect me to alter all my habits, and spend my time dancing attendance on you.”

“Oh, no, no!”

“Of course, I know it ain’t a love match,” pursued his lordship. “For my part, I’ve done with love, since Isabella cut up all my hopes. I dare say there is nothing that would please her more than to think that she had embittered my life, just as she seems like to do to poor George’s, but I’ll be damned if I mean to administer to her vanity by letting her know it!”

A sympathetic sigh from his companion brought his attention round to her. He surveyed her somewhat doubtfully, as an unwelcome thought occurred to him. “I wish you weren’t so devilish young!” he complained. “A pretty pickle we shall be in if you take it into your head to fall in love with some fellow or other after we’re tied up! Come to think of it, you’re too young to be married at all. Damme, you’re nothing but a baby!”

“Augusta Yarford was married when she was only just seventeen, Sherry,” offered Miss Wantage hopefully.

“That’s a very different matter. She’d been out a couple of seasons, and if ever a girl was up to snuff it was Gussie Yarford! But you have never been into society at all, or met anyone besides your precious cousin Edwin, and some dab of a parson.”

“And you, Sherry,” she said, smiling shyly at him.

“Yes, but I don’t signify, any more than if I had been your brother.” A qualm seized him. “I suppose I ought not to do it,” he said, with a vague feeling of chivalry. “I don’t mind people calling me a libertine, but I’m damned if I’ll have them saying I took advantage of a chit not out of the schoolroom!”

Miss Wantage clasped her hands together in her lap, and said rather breathlessly: “Sherry, if you think I might suit, please — please do marry me, for I know I should like it above all things!”

“Yes, but you’ve no more notion of what it means than that sparrow,” said the Viscount bluntly. He thought this over for a moment, and added: “In fact, much less.”

“But I should like very much always to be with you, Sherry, because you are never cross with me, and I should enjoy such fun, and go to London, and see all the things I’ve only heard of, and go to parties, and balls, and not be scolded, or sent to that dreadful school, and — oh, Sherry, it wasn’t k-kind in you to put it into my head if you d-didn’t really mean it!”

The Viscount patted her shoulder in a perfunctory way, a slightly rueful grin quivering on his lips. Shatter-brained he might be, but the full implication of this artless speech was not lost on him. “Oh, lord!” he said.

Miss Wantage swallowed a sob, and said valiantly: “You were only funning. Of course I should have known that. I didn’t mean to tease you.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said his lordship. “Damme, why shouldn’t I marry you? I know you haven’t had time to fix your affections, but ten to one you never will, and in any event you won’t find me the sort of husband who’s for ever kicking up a dust over trifles. I shan’t interfere with your pleasures, as long as you keep ’em discreet, my dear. And you needn’t fear I shall be forcing my attentions on you. I told you I was done with love. A marriage of convenience, that’s what it will be! Dash it, it may not be as romantic as I dare say you’d have liked, but you can’t deny it will be more amusing than being a governess!”

Miss Wantage nodded fervently, her eyes like stars. “And I do think it is romantic,” she said.

“That’s because you know nothing about it,” replied Sherry cynically. “Never mind! You’ll enjoy cutting a dash in London, at all events.”

Miss Wantage agreed to this with enthusiasm. But the next instant a thought occurred to her which quenched the sparkle in her eyes. “Oh, how I wish we could! But they will never, never let us, Sherry!”

“Who’s to stop us?” he demanded. “That’s one thing my father didn’t put into the damned Trust! I can marry anyone I please, and no one can say a word.”

“But they will,” said Hero bodingly. “You know they will, Sherry! Your Mama wishes you to make a Brilliant Match, and she will do everything in her power to prevent your throwing yourself away upon me. I have no fortune, you see.”

“I know that, but it don’t signify in the least. Once the Trust ends, I shall have plenty for the pair of us.”

“Lady Sheringham will not think so. And Cousin Jane would pack me off to Bath tomorrow if she knew!”

“Hang it, I don’t see that, Hero, dashed if I do! She’ll say it’s a devilish good match: she’s bound to!”

“That’s just it, Sherry: she would say it was far too good for me! She would be so angry! Because, you know, she does hope that perhaps you might take a liking to Cassy, or even Eudora.”

“Well, I shan’t. Never could abide the sight of either of them, or of Sophy, for that matter, and it’s not likely I shall change at my time of life. However, there’s a good deal in what you say, Hero, and if there’s one thing I detest more than another it’s a parcel of women arguing at me, and having the vapours every five minutes, which is what would happen, sure as check! And if your cousin did pack you off to Bath I should be obliged to go there to rescue you, and I can’t bear the place. There’s only one thing for it: we must go off without saying a word about it to anyone. Once the knot’s tied, and we can do that fast enough if I get a special licence, they won’t say anything — or, at any rate, if they do, it won’t be to us.”

“Won’t it?” Hero asked doubtfully.

“No, because for one thing there’d be no sense in it, and for another we can show them the door,” said the Viscount.

“You don’t think Cousin Jane will say that I am under age, and have it put at an end? People can, can’t they, Sherry?”

The Viscount gave this his profound consideration. “No,” he pronounced finally. “She won’t do that. Don’t see how she could. I mean, only think, Hero! I’m not a dashed adventurer, eloping with an heiress! I’m devilish eligible! She’ll be obliged to swallow it with a good grace. Dare say she’ll look to you to find husbands for those insipid girls.”

“Well, if you think I could, I would try very hard to do so,” said Hero seriously.

“No one could find husbands for such a parcel of dowdies,” replied his lordship, with brutal candour. “Besides, I don’t like them, and I won’t have them in my house. Come along! We’ve wasted enough time. Someone will be bound to come looking for you, if we dawdle here much longer. Hi, Jason!”

“Come now?” gasped Miss Wantage. “But I have nothing with me, Sherry! Must I not pack a portmanteau, or at least a bandbox?”

“Now, will you have sense, Hero? Do you expect me to come driving up to the front door to pick you up? If you go back, and start packing a portmanteau you’ll be discovered.”

“Oh, yes, but — You don’t think I should creep out of the house when it is dark, and join you here?”

“No, I don’t,” replied his lordship. “I don’t want to kick my heels in this damned dull place for the rest of the day! Besides, there’s no moon, and if you think I’m going to drive up to town in the dark, you’re mightily mistaken, my girl! I can’t see what you want with a portmanteau. If the rest of your gowns are anything like the one you have on now, the sooner you’re rid of them the better! I’ll buy you everything you want when we get to London.”

“Oh, Sherry, will you?” cried Miss Wantage, her cheeks in a glow. “Thank you! Let us go quickly!”

The Viscount sprang down into the lane, and held up his hands. “Jump, then!”

Miss Wantage obeyed him promptly. Jason, who had led the horses up to them, regarded her fixedly, and then turned an inquiring eye upon his master.

“I’m taking this lady up to London, Jason,” announced the Viscount.

“Ho!” said the faithful henchman. “Ho, you are, are you, guv’nor?”

“Yes, and what’s more, I don’t want a word said about it. So no tattling in whatever boozing-ken you go to, mind that! And no tattling in the stables either!”

“I can keep my chaffer close,” replied Jason, with dignity, “but it queers me what your lay is this time!”

The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. “I’m going to be married.”

“You never!” gasped Jason. “But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor’, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord? A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!”

“Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!” said the Viscount wrathfully. “You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?”

“I think he’s so droll!” gurgled Miss Wantage. “What is a gentry-mort?”

“God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!”

The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: “I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?”

“Of course I’m not — Good God, so I am!” said his lordship, much struck.

“Because if you be,” pursued Jason, “and if you don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up there beside you like she is.”

“By Jove, he’s in the right of it!” exclaimed the Viscount, reining in suddenly. “We shall have half the countryside blabbing that they saw you driving off with me! There’s nothing for it: you’ll have to sit on the floorboards, and keep yourself hidden under the rug, Hero.”

Her experience of life not having engendered in Hero any expectation of having either her dignity or her comfort much regarded, she made no objection to this proposal, but curled up at the Viscount’s feet, and allowed him to cast the rug over her. Since his method of driving was of the style known as neck-or-nothing, she was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint, merely clasping her arms round the Viscount’s top-boots, and pressing her cheek against the side of his knee. In this fashion they covered the next few miles. The Viscount pulled up beyond the second tollgate, giving it as his opinion that they were now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognize them.

“I don’t mind staying where I am, if you think it would be better for me to do so, Sherry,” Hero assured him.

“Yes, but you’re giving me cramp in my left leg,” said the single-minded Viscount. “Get up, brat, and for the lord’s sake smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!”

Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood strings under Hero’s chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. “You look just like a kitten!”

She laughed. “No, do I, Sherry?”

“Yes, you do. I think it’s your silly little nose,” said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. “That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.”

“Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!” she exclaimed. “You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten.”

“Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. “What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”

“You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.

“I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”

“No, not if we are to go shopping,” agreed Hero. “I could come home with you, couldn’t I?”

“No, certainly not! Wouldn’t do at all!” responded Sherry decidedly. “Besides, I haven’t a home. I mean, I live in a lodging off St James’s Street, and it’s not a situation that would suit you. What’s more, there’s no room for you. I suppose I could take you to Sheringham House, but I shouldn’t think you’d be very comfortable there, with only old Varley and his wife in charge of the place, and everything under holland covers.”

“Oh no! Please don’t take me there!” begged Hero, quite daunted by such a prospect.

Jason, who had been listening with the greatest interest to the conversation, interposed at this point to give it as his opinion that nothing could be more prejudicial to the smooth conduct of the elopement than for Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay. The Viscount, who, in common with every other young blood, was fond of interlarding his conversation with cant terms, found no difficulty in understanding this dark warning. On the whole he agreed with it, but he said with some severity that these strictures on an old family retainer had their origin in Varley’s discovery of an attempted theft of his watch-and-chain, some months previously.

“And that puts me in mind of something I forgot!” he exclaimed, turning his head over his shoulder. “Dashed if I wasn’t in such a pucker when I left home that it went clean out of my head! I don’t know what you stole while we were there, but you can’t have been two days in the place without biting something. Hand it over!”

“Keep your glims on the road, guv’nor, keep your glims on the road!” Jason besought him. “I never mills any ken of yours! I’ll cap downright I never did, nor I never will!”

“Jason!” said his lordship, in minatory accents.

The Tiger gave a sniff. “I forked a couple of meggs from the tallow-faced old cull,” he admitted sulkily. “He never tipped me a Jack, he didn’t.”

“Do you mean you filched a couple of guineas from my uncle?” demanded Sherry.

“Well, how was I to know you didn’t want him forked?” asked Jason. “You never said nothing to me about it, guv’nor, nor I didn’t think he was a friend o’yourn!”

“Oh, well, if that’s all, there’s no harm done!” said Sherry cheerfully. “Not but what it was probably my money, if we only knew.”

“Does he always steal things, Sherry?” whispered Hero, round-eyed.

“Oh, yes, always! He can’t help it, you know.”

“But is it not very awkward?”

“No, it doesn’t worry me,” Sherry replied simply, “never takes anything of mine. It used to be a devilish nuisance when he would keep on forking my friends — he had my cousin Ferdy’s watch five times before I broke him of it — but he don’t do that now, and in any event most people know that if they lose anything when they’ve been with me they have only to tell me about it. Always hands over the booty if I ask him for it. That reminds me! Hi, Jason! Don’t you dare steal anything from this lady! Mind, now! I’ll turn you off without a character if she misses so much as a handkerchief.”

“You wouldn’t never, guv’nor!” gasped the Tiger, horrified.

“Well, no,” admitted Sherry. “I dare say I wouldn’t. But I’d break every bone in your body, so don’t you forget it!”

This merciful mitigation of the threat appeared to relieve the Tiger’s mind. He heaved a sigh, and very handsomely offered to allow himself to be nibbled to death by ducks if he should so far forget himself as to take even a pin from his prospective mistress.

The Viscount, accepting this assurance, told Miss Wantage that she might rest at ease. “Matter of fact, I don’t suppose he would think of robbing you,” he confided. “Still, we may as well be on the safe side. Queer little fellow! Do anything in the world for me, and damme if I know why!”

“How old is he?” inquired Hero.

“Haven’t a notion, my dear. Don’t think he has either. Shouldn’t think he can be more than eighteen or nineteen, though.”

“He’s so very small!”

“Oh, there’s nothing in that! Trained for a jockey at one time, till they kicked him out of the stables for thieving. You know, I’ve been thinking, Kitten, and it’s my belief I’d best take you to Grillon’s.”

“Had you, Sherry? Where is that?”

“Albemarle Street. It’s a hotel. Devilish flat and respectable, but that can’t be helped.”

“Will you stay with me there?” Hero asked, a little nervously.

“Good God, no! That would mean the devil to pay! We shall have enough to do as it is, concocting some kind of a tale to account for a chit of your age jauntering about without a chaperon, or an abigail. Yes, by George, and you haven’t any trunks either! We ought to have brought a cloak-bag, and a few bandboxes. Grillon’s will never take you in without! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“That’s just like you, Sherry,” observed Miss Wantage patiently. “You never would pay the least heed to anything I said, and then you blamed me when things went awry! Always! You know very well I asked you to let me pack a portmanteau. Now what shall we do?”

“Well, it can’t be helped. And I never said a word of blame, not one!”

“No, but you were just about to,” replied Hero, with a mischievous look. “I know you, Sherry!”

He grinned. “Little cat! I’ll tell you what we shall do. We’ll drive straight to my lodging; send my man, Bootle, out to buy your trunks; take a hackney to Bond Street; purchase what you stand in need of for the night; take everything back to my lodging; pack ’em up; and drive off to Grillon’s with ’em. I shall say you’re my sister — no, that won’t do: ten to one, they know I haven’t got a sister! I’ll say you’re my cousin. Going back to school in Bath. Come up from Kent — that’s true enough! — spending the night in London — I promised I’d meet you — abigail broke her leg getting out of the chaise — taken to hospital — no female relative in town — what am I to do? Nothing for it, of course! Take you to a respectable hotel! Couldn’t be better!”

Miss Wantage having no fault to find with this scheme, the rest of the journey was pleasantly beguiled by elaborating the Viscount’s ingenious story, filling in a few details, and laughing heartily over the approaching discomfiture of their respective relations. When the metropolis was reached, a slight squabble arose between them through Miss Wantage’s urgent desire to look about her, and the Viscount’s determination that she should keep her hood drawn well forward to hide her face. This soon blew over, however, and nothing could have been sunnier than Miss Wantage’s mood when she presently jumped down from the curricle outside the Viscount’s lodging.

His lordship’s valet, Bootle, was of necessity a long-suffering and phlegmatic personage, but the sudden arrival of his master, with a shabby young lady on his arm, palpably shook his iron calm. By the time he had grasped that he beheld his future mistress, he had schooled his countenance into an expression of one inured to calamity, and expectant of any outrage. When he learned that he was to sally forth immediately, to procure such baggage as was suited to a lady of quality, his feelings were only betrayed by the faintness of the voice in which he uttered the words: “Very good, my lord!”

But when the Viscount had swept Miss Wantage out again, he so far forgot himself as to confide to the interested proprietor of the lodgings that if Fate had not decreed that he should have a swollen jaw upon the day fixed for the Viscount’s return to his ancestral home, and if the Viscount had been less obliging in granting him a holiday to have the offending tooth drawn, a chain of circumstances, which he foresaw could only end in disaster, would never have been set up. The proprietor, a literal-minded gentleman, said that he had never seen Mr Bootle nor anyone else, for that matter, managing to check any of his lordship’s starts. He apostrophized his lordship as a regular dash, turf or turnpike, a vulgarism which offended Bootle so much that he went off to execute the Viscount’s commission without vouchsafing another word to his crony.

The Viscount, meanwhile, conveyed Miss Wantage to a certain mantua-maker’s establishment in Bond Street, where he was not unknown. Here, after a few moments’ brief and startlingly frank colloquy with the astonished proprietress, he handed Miss Wantage over, to be fitted out as became her station. Nothing occurred to disturb the harmony of these proceedings, except a slight contretemps arising out of Miss Wantage’s burning desire for a very dashing confection of sea-green gauze, with silver ribbons, and the Viscount’s flat refusal to permit her to wear any garment so outrageously unsuited to a young lady supposedly on her way to a select seminary in Bath. This trifling quarrel was adjusted by the mantua-maker, who, foreseeing a valuable customer in the future Lady Sheringham, spared no pains to exercise all the tact at her command. She suggested that his lordship should buy a demure (and extremely expensive) gown for Miss Wantage to wear in the immediate future, at the same time laying by, for a later occasion, the sea-green gauze which had so taken Miss’s fancy. The Viscount agreed to this, and was at once obliged to call Miss Wantage to order for hugging him in public.

By the time these purchases, with a few other of a more intimate nature, had been made; a hat to match the muslin dress chosen at a milliner’s shop farther down the street; a pair of lavender kid gloves procured; such items as brushes, combs, and Joppa soap added to the list of necessities; and a faithful promise made to Miss Wantage that she should visit this entrancing thoroughfare again upon the morrow to make further purchases, dusk was falling. The betrothed couple returned to the Viscount’s lodgings, Miss Wantage in a state of inarticulate bliss, and her cavalier divided between amusement at her pleasure in her first new gown, and a strong inclination for his dinner. Bootle having proved himself worthy of his trust, nothing further remained to do but to pack the various purchases in two neat trunks, and to summon another hackney to convey them to Grillon’s Hotel.

Seated in this homely vehicle, Miss Wantage slipped a small, gloved hand into Sherry’s, and said in a quivering voice: “Thank you, Sherry! Oh, I wish I could tell you — ! You see, no one has ever given me anything before!”

“Poor little soul!” said his lordship, patting her in a friendly way. “There, don’t cry! You may have anything you like now, you know. Anything except that shocking hat with the purple feathers, that is! Mind, you’re not to buy that tomorrow, Kitten! I shall have it taken straight back, if you do!”

“No, Sherry, I promise I won’t,” said Miss Wantage submissively.