CHAPTER XXXIV. HIS GRACE MAKES ADVANCES
The next morning I began casting about as to what I should do next.There was no longer any chance of getting at the secret from Dorothy, ifsecret there were. Whilst I am ruminating comes a great battling atthe street door, and Jack Comyn blew in like a gust of wind, rating mesoundly for being a lout and a blockhead.
"Zooks!" he cried, "I danced the soles off my shoes trying to get inhere yesterday, and I hear you were moping all the time, and paid me nomore attention than I had been a dog scratching at the door. What! andhave you fallen out with my lady?"
I confessed the whole matter to him. He was not to be resisted. Hecalled to Banks for a cogue of Nantsey, and swore amazingly at what hewas pleased to term the inscrutability of woman, offering up consolationby the wholesale. The incident, he said, but strengthened his convictionthat Mr. Manners had appealed to Dorothy to save him. "And then," addedhis Lordship, facing me with absolute fierceness, "and then, Richard,why the devil did she weep? There were no tears when I made my avowal.I tell you, man, that the whole thing points but the one way. She lovesyou. I swear it by the rood."
I could not help laughing, and he stood looking at me with such awhimsical expression that I rose and flung my arms around him.
"Jack, Jack!" I cried, "what a fraud you are! Do you remember theargument you used when you had got me out of the sponging-house? Quotingyou, all I had to do was to put Dorothy to the proof, and she would tossMr. Marmaduke and his honour broadcast. Now I have confessed myself, andwhat is the result? Nay, your theory is gone up in vapour."
"Then why," cried his Lordship, hotly, "why before refusing me did shedemand to know whether you had been in love with Patty Swain? 'Sdeath!you put me in mind of a woman upon stilts--a man has always to bewalking alongside her with encouragement handy. And when a proudcreature such as our young lady breaks down as she hath done, 'tisclear as skylight there is something wrong. And as for Mr. Manners, Hareoverheard a part of a pow-wow 'twixt him and the duke at the BedfordArms,--and Chartersea has all but owned in some of his drunken fits thatour little fop is in his power."
"Then she is in love with some one else," I said.
"I tell you she is not," said Comyn, still more emphatically; "and youcan write that down in red in your table book. Gossip has never beenable to connect her name with that of any man save yours, when she wentfor you in Castle Yard. And, gemini, gossip is like water, and will getin if a crack shows. When the Marquis of Wells was going to ArlingtonStreet once every day, she sent him about his business in a fortnight."
Despite Comyn's most unselfish optimism, I could see no light. And inthe recklessness that so often besets youngsters of my temper, onlike occasions, I went off to Newmarket next day with Mr. Fox and LordOssory, in his Lordship's travelling-chaise and four. I spent a very gayweek trying to forget Miss Dolly. I was the loser by some three hundredpounds, in addition to what I expended and loaned to Mr. Fox. This younggentleman was then beginning to accumulate at Newmarket a most execrablestud. He lost prodigiously, but seemed in no wise disturbed thereby.I have never known a man who took his ill-luck with such a stoicalnonchalance. Not so while the heat was on. As I write, a most ridiculousrecollection rises of Charles dragging his Lordship and me and all whowere with him to that part of the course where the race was highest,where he would act like a madman; blowing and perspiring, and whippingand swearing all at a time, and rising up and down as if the horse wasthrowing him.
At Newmarket I had the good--or ill-fortune to meet that incorrigiblerake and profligate, my Lord of March and Ruglen. For him the goddessof Chance had smiled, and he was in the most complaisant humour. I waspresented to his Grace, the Duke of Grafton, whose name I had no reasonto love, and invited to Wakefield Lodge. We went instead, Mr. Fox andI, to Ampthill, Lord Ossory's seat, with a merry troop. And then we hadmore racing; and whist and quinze and pharaoh and hazard, until I wasobliged to write another draft upon Mr. Dix to settle the wails: andpicquet in the travelling-chaise all the way to London. Dining atBrooks's, we encountered Fitzpatrick and Comyn and my Lord Carlisle.
"Now how much has Charles borrowed of you, Mr. Carvel?" demandedFitzpatrick, as we took our seats.
"I'll lay ten guineas that Charles has him mortgaged this day month,though he owns as much land as William Penn, and is as rich as Fordyce."
Comyn demanded where the devil I had been, though he knew perfectly. Hewas uncommonly silent during dinner, and then asked me if I had heardthe news. I told him I had heard none. He took me by the sleeve, to thequiet amusement of the company, and led me aside.
"Curse you, Richard," says be; "you have put me in such a temper that Ivow I'll fling you over. You profess to love her, and yet you go bettingto Newmarket and carousing to Ampthill when she is ill."
"Ill!" I said, catching my breath.
"Ay! That hurts, does it? Yes, ill, I say. She was missed at LadyPembroke's that Friday you had the scene with her, and at LadyAilesbury's on Saturday. On Monday morning, when I come to you fortidings, you are off watching Charles make an ass of himself atNewmarket."
"And how is she now, Comyn?" I asked, catching him by the arm.
"You may go yourself and see, and be cursed, Richard Carvel. She is introuble, and you are pleasure-seeking in the country. Damme! you deserverichly to lose her."
Calling for my greatcoat, and paying no heed to the jeers of the companyfor leaving before the toasts and the play, I fairly ran to ArlingtonStreet. I was in a passion of remorse. Comyn had been but just.Granting, indeed, that she had refused to marry me, was that any reasonwhy I should desert my life-long friend and playmate? A hundred littletokens of her affection for me rose to mind, and last of all thatrescue from Castle Yard in the face of all Mayfair. And in that hour ofdarkness the conviction that something was wrong came back upon mewith redoubled force. Her lack of colour, her feverish actions, and thegrowing slightness of her figure, all gave me a pang, as I connectedthem with that scene on the balcony over the Park.
The house was darkened, and a coach was in front of it.
"Yessir," said the footman, "Miss Manners has been quite ill. She is nowsome better, and Dr. James is with her. Mrs. Manners begs company willexcuse her."
And Mr. Marmaduke? The man said, with as near a grin as he ever got,that the marster was gone to Mrs. Cornelys's assembly. As I turned away,sick at heart, the physician, in his tie-wig and scarlet cloak, cameout, and I stopped him. He was a testy man, and struck the stone animpatient blow with his staff.
"'Od's life, sir. I am besieged day and night by you young gentlemen. Ibegin to think of sending a daily card to Almack's."
"Sir, I am an old friend of Miss Manners," I replied, "having grown upwith her in Maryland--"
"Are you Mr. Carvel?" he demanded abruptly, taking his hat from his arm.
"Yes," I answered, surprised. In the gleam of the portico lanthorn hescrutinized me for several seconds.
"There are some troubles of the mind which are beyond the power ofphysic to remedy, Mr. Carvel," said he. "She has mentioned your name,sir, and you are to judge of my meaning. Your most obedient, sir. Goodnight, sir."
And he got into his coach, leaving me standing where I was, bewildered.
That same fear of being alone, which has driven many a man to his cups,sent me back to Brooks's for company. I found Fox and Comyn seated ata table in the corner of the drawing-room, for once not playing, buttalking earnestly. Their expressions when they saw me betrayed what myown face must have been.
"What is it?" cried Comyn, half rising; "is she--is she--"
"No, she is better," I said.
He looked relieved.
"You must have frightened him badly, Jack," said Fox.
I flung myself into a chair, and Fox proposed whist, something unusualfor him. Comyn called for cards, and was about to go in search of afourth, when we all three caught sight of the Duke of Chartersea in thedoor, surveying the room with a cold leisure. His eye paused when inline with us, and we were seize
d with astonishment to behold him makingin our direction.
"Squints!" exclaimed Mr. Fox, "now what the devil can the hound want?"
"To pull your nose for sending him to market," my Lord suggested.
Fox laughed coolly.
"Lay you twenty he doesn't, Jack," he said.
His Grace plainly had some business with us, and I hoped he was comingto force the fighting. The pieces had ceased to rattle on the roundmahogany table, and every head in the room seemed turned our way, forthe Covent Garden story was well known. Chartersea laid his hand onthe back of our fourth chair, greeted us with some ceremony, and saidsomething which, under the circumstances, was almost unheard of inthat day: "If you stand in need of one, gentlemen, I should deem it anhonour."
The situation had in it enough spice for all of us. We welcomed him withalacrity. The cards were cut, and it fell to his Grace to deal, whichhe did very prettily, despite his heavy hands. He drew Charles Fox, andthey won steadily. The conversation between deals was anywhere; on thevirtue of Morello cherries for the gout, to which his Grace was alreadysubject; on Mr. Fox's Ariel, and why he had not carried Sandwich's cupat Newmarket; on the advisability of putting three-year-olds on thetrack; in short, on a dozen small topics of the kind. At length, whenComyn and I had lost some fifty pounds between us, Chartersea threw downthe cards.
"My coach waits to-night, gentlemen," said he, with some sort of anaccent that did not escape us. "It would give me the greatest pleasureand you will sup with me in Hanover Square."