Джорджетт Хейер - Friday’s Child

“What the deuce can he want?” said his lordship. “Where is he?”

“Here I be, guvnor!” responded the Tiger, diving under Bootle’s arm. “Out of breath I be, what’s more, loping after a rattler fit to bust meself!”

“You’re boozy!” said his lordship severely.

“I ain’t! You send that fat chub off, and I’ll tell you something as you had ought to know! Yes, and don’t you go putting your listeners forward t’other side of the door!” he added.

Bootle was so much affronted by this admonition that he stalked from the room without another word, shutting the door with meticulous care behind him. The Tiger looked at his master, real trouble in his sharp eyes. “It’s the missus!” he blurted out.

The Viscount dropped the fob he had selected. “What?” he said quickly. “What has happened?”

The Tiger shook his head sadly. “Piked on the bean, guv’nor!” he said simply.

“What?”

“So help me bob, guv’nor, it’s Gawd’s truth! Loped off with that well-breeched swell I seed her with t’other day!”

The Viscount had the oddest impression that the floor was heaving under his feet. He put out a hand to grasp the edge of his dressing-table, saying hoarsely: “It’s a lie!”

“I’ll wish myself backt if ever I told you a lie, guv’nor!” Jason said earnestly. “Nor I wouldn’t tell no lies about the missus! Fit to nap my bib, I be!”

In proof of this statement he drew the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes and sniffed dolorously. The Viscount, white as his shirt, said: “How do you know this, rascal?”

“Seed her with my werry own daylights, guv’nor.” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “I was waiting in Camden Place, that Maria — the saucy mort what is maid to the missus — whiddling the scrap to me that the missus takes the dog what belongs to the old gentry-mort for a walk every evening. Seemed to me if I was to go and tell the missus as how we miss her mortal bad — but I never had no chance to open me bone-box! There was a rattler a-standing in the road, and this cove as you knows of, guv’nor. So I lays low, and keeps my daylights skinned. And along comes the missus with the dawg on a string. Then I seed that well-breeched swell put a mask over his phyz, and I’m bubbled if he didn’t catch hold of the missus and start a-kissing of her! And afore I could get my breath he threw her into the rattler and jumped on to a niceish piece of blood, and whole lot starts off!”

The Viscount started forward. “You damned little fool, did you do nothing to aid her ladyship? You watched her being forcibly carried off, and you — ”

“Guv’nor, it ain’t no use bamming you: she weren’t carried off, not agin her will she weren’t! For I seed her put her arm round the cove’s neck, hugging him like you never saw, and she didn’t struggle, nor let a squeak, not once!”

“I knew it!” declared the dowager.

“No, dash it, ma’am, can’t have known it!” Ferdy expostulated, much moved by the stricken look on his cousin’s face. “Sherry, dear old boy! Depend upon it, all a hum! Kitten wouldn’t go hugging fellows in masks! Might kiss George, but not a fellow in a mask! Wretched Tiger of yours has shot the cat!”

Sherry shook his head dumbly. Jason said: “I ain’t shot the cat! What’s more, I loped after that rattler — ah, right through the town, I did, and I know the road that leery cove took, and it ain’t the road what leads to his own ken, neither! Gone off with the missus on the Radstock road what leads to Wells, he has, but he won’t get far, not if I know it, he won’t!”

Sherry raised his head. “Why won’t he?”

“Acos I forked the cove while he was a-waiting for the missus,” said Jason sulkily. He added in a defensive tone: “You never telled me not to fork that cull, guv’nor, and if he’s a friend of yourn it’s the first I heard of it!”

Sherry was regarding him intently. “What did you steal from him? Come, I’m not angry with you! Answer me!”

Jason sniffed, and reluctantly produced from the breast of his jacket a bulging wallet, and a purse with a ring about its neck, both of which he handed over to his master. The wallet was found to contain, besides a handsome number of banknotes, a special marriage licence, and several visiting cards, inscribed with Mr Tarleton’s name and direction; and the purse held some guinea and half-guinea pieces.

Sherry restored the notes to the wallet with a shaking hand. “He may have some loose coins in his pockets, but you are right!” he said. “He won’t get beyond the first stage, if he’s travelling with hired horses. He doesn’t know the truth: he thinks she is free to marry him, of course. You are positive he took the Radstock road, Jason?”

“Take my dying oath he did!” responded the Tiger.

“Wedding at Wells — yes, very likely! Get my curricle round to the door as quick as you can now! Off with you!”

“Anthony!” intoned the dowager, rising from her chair as Jason sped on his errand. “Will you not listen to your Mother? Do you need further proof of that wicked girl’s — ”

“I beg you will say no more, ma’am!” he interrupted, with a look so stern that she quailed. “Mine is the blame — all of it! I have come by my deserts, and I know it, if you do not! My folly — my neglect of her, my damnable brutality have led her into this flight! Lady Saltash must have compelled her to consent to my visiting her tonight, and rather than meet me — ”

He broke off, his lip quivering. “But she must not — I cannot let her run off with this man before I’ve — before I’ve arranged to set her free! I must find them — explain the circumstances to Tarleton — bring her back to the protection of Lady Saltash!”

Ferdy, who had been lost in profound meditation, looked at him earnestly. “Sherry, dear old boy, you know what I think? All a mistake! Ten to one that fellow of yours don’t know what he’s talking about! Might have taken Kitten to a masquerade. Mask, you know.”

“Ferdy, I was to have dined with her!” Sherry said in a voice which cracked.

“Must have forgotten that. Dash it, deuced easy to forget a dinner engagement! Done it myself. Mind you, quite right to go after her! Not the thing to be driving about with a fellow in a mask: ought to have warned her! But no getting into a miff, Sherry, and frightening the poor little soul half out of her wits!”

“No, no! Though how I am to keep from choking the life out of that Tarleton fellow — But I shall do it, never fear!”

Ferdy took a noble reserve. “Tell you what, Sherry: I’ll come with you,” he said. “Dash it all! not one to leave my friends in the lurch!”

HERO, FLUNG UP INTO THE POST-CHAISE WITH so little ceremony and jolted and bounced over the streets of Bath, had not the smallest notion whither she was bound, or why Sherry had not entered the chaise with her. She pulled a rug, which she found on the seat, over her knees; settled herself in a corner of the vehicle, holding on to one of the straps which served as arm-rests; and awaited eventualities in a state of pleasurable expectation. Had she but known it, her abductor, not so far gone in romance that he had lost quite all his common sense, had had a very fair picture of what would be the result of trying to make love in a form of vehicle nicknamed, not without good reason, a bounder. The road from Bath to Wells, particularly at this season of the year, was pitted with holes: Mr Tarleton thought that romance would have a better chance of surviving if he postponed his love-making until Wells was reached.

This cathedral town lay rather more than eighteen miles from Bath, across the Mendip Hills. Mr Tarleton had booked a room for his prospective bride at the Christopher, and another for himself at the Swan, for although his anxiety to bring adventure into Hero’s drab life might have led him to an act which he did not like to think about very closely, his naturally staid disposition made him paradoxically careful not to incur any more scandal than might be necessary. Indeed, he had prudently hired his chaise and pair from a hostelry where he was unknown, and was sometimes conscious of a craven hope that the truth about his marriage might never be made public property.

This consideration made him decide to change horses at the little village of Emborrow, lying at the foot of the Mendips, rather than at Old Down Inn, which, lying twelve miles beyond Bath, was the usual stage. By the time they had reached this place, the moon was coming up brightly, and the going was consequently easier.

The chaise pulled up in the small yard belonging to the one hostelry of any size, and an ostler shouted for the first turnout. At the same moment, one of the windows of the chaise was let down, and Hero looked out, her eyes dancing in the mingled lantern and moonlight, her lips parted in a roguish smile. “Of all the absurd, delightful starts!” she began, her voice quivering with amusement. Then she broke offshort as her gaze encountered, not Sherry’s beloved features, but Mr Tarleton’s wholly unexciting countenance. A look of startled dismay entered her face; the colour receded from her cheeks; she uttered, in repulsive accents, one word only: “You!”

Mr Tarleton had been prepared for maidenly indignation, but not for this, and he was slightly staggered. He stepped up to the chaise and said, looking up at the blanched face at the window: “But, my sweet love, whom else should it be?”

“Oh!” wailed Hero, her face puckering like a baby’s. “Oh! I thought you w-were S-Sherry!”

Mr Tarleton’s brain reeled. “Thought I was whom?” he said numbly.

“M-my husband!” wept Hero, tears rolling one after the other down her cheeks. “Oh, how could you play such a c-cruel trick on me?”