Джорджетт Хейер - April Lady

“Just coming out.” replied Dysart, watching the tilbury being driven away, “that’s a nice tit you have there: looks to be a sweet goer. Welsh?”

“Yes, I’m pretty well pleased with him,” agreed Cardross. “Very free and fast, and has a good knee action. Oh, yes! pure bred Welsh: I bought him from Chesterford last week. Do you care to come in again?”

“No, I’m bound for Limmer’s,” said the Viscount. He eyed his brother-in-law speculatively. The Earl appeared to be in an amiable frame of mind; it was common knowledge that he was rich enough to be able to buy an abbey; and if there was the least chance of getting three hundred pounds out of him merely for the asking, the Viscount was not the man to let this slip. “You wouldn’t care to lend me three hundred, would you?” he suggested hopefully.

“Three hundred?”

“Call it five!” offered the Viscount, recollecting certain of his own more pressing obligations.

Cardross laughed. “I’ll call it anything you choose, but I shouldn’t at all care to lend you money. And I’ll thank you, Dysart, not to apply to Nell!”

“Nothing of the sort!” said the Viscount, repressing a strong inclination to tell him that the boot was on quite the other leg.

“Dipped again?” enquired Cardross. “You ought to be tied, you know!”

“I see no sense in that,” returned Dysart. “Wouldn’t do me a bit of good! The only way to come about is to make a big coup. I don’t doubt I’ll do it, for it stands to reason the luck must change one day! However, I’ve been thinking seriously of devoting myself to faro, and I believe I’ll do it. The devil’s in the bones, and has been, this year past.”

The news that he was about to reform his way of life met with a disappointing lack of enthusiasm. “What other entertainments have you in store for us?” asked Cardross. “I didn’t see you driving a wheelbarrow blindfold down Piccadilly last week, but I’m told you contrived to dislocate all the traffic for a considerable space of time. I must congratulate you. Also on your latest feat, of cutting your initials on all the trees in St. James’s Park.”

“An hour and fifteen minutes!” said Dysart, with simple pride.

“Very creditable.”

“Oh, lord!” Dysart said petulantly, “what else is there to do but kick up a lark now and then?”

“You might see what can be done to put your estates in order.”

“They ain’t my estates,” retorted Dysart. “I fancy I see my father letting me meddle! What’s more, if there’s anything to be done old Moulton will do it far better than I could. He’s been our agent for years, and he don’t mean to let me meddle either. Not that I want to, for I don’t.”

“I’ll make you an offer,” said Cardross, scanning him not unkindly. “I won’t lend you three hundred pence to fling away at faro, but I’m prepared to settle your debts, and to buy you a commission in any serving regiment you choose to name.”

“By Jove, I wish you would!” Dysart said impulsively.

“I will.”

The Viscount’s blue eyes had kindled, but that eager glow faded, and he laughed, giving his head a rueful shake. “No use! The old gentleman wouldn’t hear of it. God knows why he’s so set on keeping me in England, for putting aside the fact that I’m not his only son it don’t seem to be any pleasure to him to have me at home. Fidgets him to death! I did go down to Devonshire after he had that stroke, you know. Went to oblige my mother, but the end of it was she was obliged to own it didn’t answer. But he wouldn’t let me join for all that.”

“If you wanted it, I might be able to persuade him.”

“Grease him in the fist, eh? Take my advice, and fund your money! Or wait till I do something so outrageous he’ll be glad to see me off to Spain on any terms!” said Dysart, pulling on his gloves.

“Don’t be a fool! Come into the house: we can’t discuss it in the road!”

“If you’re so anxious to waste the ready, lend me a monkey!” mocked Dysart. “As for the rest—oh, lord, I don’t know what I want, and it wouldn’t be a particle of use if I did!”

He waited for a moment, and then, as Cardross made no reply, laughed rather jeeringly, and strode off down the flagway.

It was almost with relief that Nell, a few days later, bade her husband a polite farewell. When he had asked her to accompany him to Merion, she had wanted very much to do so (though not with an indignant Letty in her train); but from the moment that Madame Lavalle’s bill had arrived to blacken her life she had dreaded that he might renew his persuasions. There was now nothing she wanted less than to be in his company, for the sense of guilt, which already weighed heavily on her spirits, almost crushed her when he was with her. If he smiled at her she felt herself to be a deceiving wretch; if there was a coolness in his manner she fancied he had found her out, and was ready to sink. It did not occur to her, in this disordered state of mind, that the scruples which forbade her to let him see her heart were prompting her to pursue a course that might have been expressly designed to confirm him in his suspicion that she cared for nothing but wealth, fashion, and frivolity. There was no lack of parties, at the height of the season, to fill her days; and no lack of eager escorts for the beautiful young Countess, if the Earl had engagements of his own. It seemed to him that he never saw her except on her way to a review, or a ball; and he could scarcely doubt that she preferred the company of even the most callow of her admirers to his. “You know, my love,” he said to her once, mocking himself, “I think fate must have thrown me in your way to depress my pretensions! Would you believe it?—I was used to think myself the devil of a fellow! I now perceive that I’m no such thing—almost a dead bore, in fact!”

She had not answered him, but the colour had flooded her cheeks, and as her eyes flew to his for a brief instant he thought that he caught a glimpse of the loving, vital creature he had once believed her to be. And a moment later she was gone, saying, with a nervous laugh, that he was absurd, that Letty was waiting for her, that she must not stay, because she had promised faithfully to attend Lady Brixworth’s alfresco party out at Richmond.

Subjected to such treatment as this, it was hardly surprising that Cardross, far too proud to betray his hurt, retired behind a barrier of cool, faintly ironic civility, which effectually slew at birth Nell’s impulse to fling caution to the winds, and all her doubts and difficulties at his feet.

To make matters worse, no word came from Dysart, and Letty, bent on achieving her own ends, wore her brother’s temper thin by renewing her attacks every time she saw him. As she had been pledging his credit all over town for weeks past he was soon provoked into addressing a few shattering home truths to her, from which his unhappy wife, an unwilling third at this encounter, gathered that debt and dishonesty were, in his austere view, synonymous terms. Certainly no moment for the disclosure of her own embarrassments could be more unpropitious.

It was therefore with relief that she bade him farewell. He expected to be away for a se’enight, within which time she thought it not unreasonable to suppose that Dysart must have discovered a means of discharging her debt to Madame Lavalle. By way of recalling it to his mind (just in case, in the press of his sporting engagements, he had temporarily forgotten its urgency) she sent round a note to his lodging in Duke Street, inviting him to dine in Grosvenor Square on the night of the masquerade. Well aware of the fatal results of importunacy she resisted a temptation to ask him what progress he had made towards settling her affairs, and was soon rewarded for her restraint. The Viscount not only sent back a note accepting the invitation, but added, in a postscript, that she need not trouble her head more over That Other Matter.

This cryptic message sent her spirits up immediately. It would have been more satisfactory, perhaps, if Dysart had told her what expedient he had hit upon, but she knew him to be no ready letter-writer, and was content to trust that his third attempt at solving her difficulties would be more acceptable to her than his two previous suggestions. Except for one encounter in the Park, where it was impossible to hold private conversation with him, she did not meet him: a circumstance which led her to suppose that whatever plan he had evolved needed a good deal of preparation. This made her feel a trifle uneasy, but he nodded to her so reassuringly at the end of their one chance meeting that her misgivings were soothed. “I shall see you on Thursday,” he said; and that, she thought, was his way of informing her that on Thursday, when he was to go with her to the masquerade, he would be able to tell her just what she must do to rid herself of her intolerable debt.

And then, on Thursday evening, when both the fair hostesses awaited his arrival in Grosvenor Square, he did not come.

Neither was surprised that he should be late in keeping his engagement, for his habits were known to be erratic; and for a full half-hour only the wizard belowstairs, with two capons roasted to a turn on the spits, fat livers in cases in imminent danger of becoming over-baked in the oven, and the caramel sugar spun over a dish of peu d’amours rapidly hardening, saw any cause for agitation. Letty, who had been in low spirits for days past, was wearing a new and extremely dashing ball-dress of white crape so profusely embroidered with silver spangles that when she stood in the light of the great chandelier in the drawing-room the effect was quite dazzling. Nell, less strikingly attired in satin and blonde lace, knew that if Lady Chudleigh should be at the masquerade she would unhesitatingly condemn this toilette as being totally unsuited to a young lady in her first season, for it was cut indecorously low, besides being worn over the most diaphanous of petticoats. Cardross would probably have insisted on its being changed for something more demure. He might even have considered that in his absence his wife should have done so, but Nell felt herself to be unequal to an exhausting and almost certainly losing battle; and assauged her conscience with the reflection that the dress would be largely hidden by the domino of shimmering rose silk, which Letty had tossed across the back of a chair. Besides, Letty was so pleased with her appearance that it had put her into the sunniest of humours, which Nell, having endured a week of sulks and repinings, would not willingly upset.