Mr Marling watched her seat herself at her writing-table, and once more inquired: ‘What has Vidal done now?’
‘He has abducted an innocent girl – not that I believe a word of it, for the mother’s a harpy, and I’ve little doubt the girl went with him willingly enough. If she didn’t, I shudder to think what may happen.’
‘If you could contrive to be more coherent, mamma, I might understand better.’
Lady Fanny’s quill spluttered across the paper. ‘You will never understand anything except your odious theories, John,’ she said crossly, but she paused in her letter-writing, and gave him a vivid and animated account of her interview with Mrs Challoner.
At the end of it, Mr Marling said in a disgusted voice: ‘Vidal is shameless. He had better marry this young female and live abroad. I quite despair of him, and I feel sure that while he is allowed to run wild in England we shall none of us know a moment’s peace.’
‘Marry her? And pray what do you suppose Avon would have to say to that? We can only hope and trust that something may yet be done.’
‘I had better journey to Newmarket, I suppose, and inform my uncle,’ said Mr Marling gloomily.
‘Oh John, don’t be so provoking!’ cried his mother. ‘Léonie would never forgive me if I let this come to Avon’s ears. You must fetch her from the Vanes at once, and we will lay our heads together.’
‘It is impossible not to feel affection for my Aunt Léonie,’ announced Mr Marling, ‘but have you considered, mamma, that she is capable of treating even this piece of infamy with levity?’
‘It does not signify in the least. All you need do is to bear this letter to her, and bring her back to town,’ said Lady Fanny imperatively.
Mr Marling, disapproving but obedient, arrived at Lady Vane’s house near Bedford that evening. There were several people staying there, but he contrived to meet his aunt in a room apart. His countenance was so lugubrious that she asked him in quick alarm if anything were amiss?
‘Aunt,’ said Mr Marling gravely, ‘I am the bearer of bad tidings.’
Léonie turned pale. ‘Monseigneur?’ she faltered.
‘No, ma’am, so far as I am aware my uncle enjoys his customary health.’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, it is Dominique! He has been shot in a duel? drowned in his yacht? dead of a fever? Speak, you!’
‘My cousin is well, ma’am. Do not alarm yourself on that score. But the news is the worst imaginable.’
‘If he is well it cannot be the worst,’ said Léonie. ‘Please do not prepare me for a shock any more; I find it too alarming. What has happened to my son?’
‘Madam, I regret to be obliged to soil your ears with the story, which I myself find excessively disagreeable. Vidal has abducted – I fear perhaps with violence – a young female of virtue and family.’
‘Oh, mordieu, it is the bourgeoise !’ said Léonie. ‘And now Monseigneur will be more displeased than ever! Tell me it all!’
Mr Marling regarded her with an expression of pained severity. ‘Possibly, my dear aunt, you would prefer to read it. I have a billet for you from my mother.’
‘Give it to me at once, then,’ said Léonie, and fairly snatched it from his hand.
Lady Fanny’s agitated scrawl covered three pages. Léonie read them quickly, and exclaimed at the end that Fanny was an angel. She said that she would return to town at once, and upon her hostess coming into the room, greeted her with apologies, and the information that Lady Fanny was ill, and needed her. Lady Vane was all solicitude, and put a number of sympathetic questions to John which caused that conscientious young man to wriggle uncomfortably. She prevailed on Léonie to postpone her departure at least until next morning, and this Léonie consented to do out of consideration for her nephew, who had been travelling all day.
He and she set forth next day in her grace’s huge travelling coach. Léonie did not seem to be greatly disturbed by her son’s conduct. She said cheerfully that it was very odd of Dominique to abduct the wrong sister, and asked John what he supposed could have happened. John, who was feeling tired and annoyed, said that he could not venture a guess.
‘Well, I think it was very stupid of him,’ said the Duchess.
Mr Marling said austerely: ‘Vidal’s conduct is nearly always stupid, ma’am. He has neither sense nor decency.’
‘Indeed?’ said the Duchess dangerously.
‘I have endeavoured again and again to interest him in serious things. I am his senior by six years, and I have not unnaturally supposed that my advice and frequent warnings would not go entirely unheeded. It seems I was wrong. The late scandalous happenings at Timothy’s make it positively unpleasant for me to enter the clubs, where I am aware that I must be indicated to any stranger as the cousin of a notorious rake and – not to mince matters – murderer. Moreover –’
‘I will tell you something, John,’ interrupted the Duchess. ‘You should be very grateful to Dominique, for of a certainty no one would point you out at all if you were not his cousin.’
‘Good God, aunt, do you imagine I wish to achieve notoriety in such a fashion? It is of all things the most repugnant to me. As for this latest exploit – well, I ascribe it very largely to my Uncle Rupert’s influence. Vidal has always chosen to be intimate with him to a degree I and, I may say, my mother, have considered to be unwise in the extreme. I don’t doubt he learned his utter disregard for morality from him.’
‘I find you insupportable!’ stated the Duchess. ‘My poor child, it is quite plain to me that you are jealous of Dominique.’
‘Jealous?’ repeated Mr Marling, astounded.
‘Of a certainty,’ nodded the Duchess. ‘To shoot a man dead: it is terrible, you say. For you could not do it. You could not shoot an elephant dead. To elope with a woman: it is scandalous! Bien entendu, but you, you could not persuade even a blind woman to elope with you, which I find not scandalous, but tragic.’
Mr Marling was unable to think of a suitable retort. His aunt, having disposed of him in this one withering speech, smiled affably, and patted her knee. ‘We will discuss now what I must do to rescue Dominique from this impasse.’
Mr Marling could not resist the temptation of saying: ‘I apprehend that the unfortunate young female at present in his company is more in need of rescue.’
‘Ah, bah!’ cried the Duchess, ‘it is not possible to talk to you, for you are without sense!’
‘I am sorry, ma’am, if I disappoint you, but you appear to regard this affair very lightly.’
‘I do not regard it lightly at all,’ said Léonie stiffly. ‘Only I do not believe that it is just as this Mrs Challoner has told Fanny. If Vidal has taken her daughter to France I think she went very willingly, and the matter solves itself. Mrs Challoner would have me believe that the one sister went with my son to save the other. Voilà une histoire peu croyable. I ask myself, if this were true where is the girl now? In England, bien sûr, for why should Vidal take to France someone he did not want?’
‘I’ve thought of that too, Aunt Léonie, and I have the answer, though I am afraid you will not credit it. If the story is true, Vidal will have taken her for revenge.’
There was a long silence. The Duchess clasped and unclasped her hands. ‘That is what you think, John?’
‘It is possible, ma’am, you’ll agree.’
‘Yes. In a black mood Dominique might… I must go to Rupert at once! Why do we go so slowly? Tell them to hurry!’
‘Go to my uncle?’ John echoed. ‘I cannot conceive what good he will be to you!’
‘No?’ Léonie said fiercely. ‘I will tell you, then. He will go to France with me, and find Dominique and this girl.’
‘Lord, ma’am, do you tell me you’ll go off to France with him?’
‘Why not?’ demanded Léonie.
‘But, aunt, it will be th
ought prodigious strange if it becomes known. People will think you have run away with my uncle. Moreover, I consider him a most unsuitable escort for any lady, accustomed as you are, my dear ma’am, to every delicate attention to her comfort.’
‘I thank you, John, but I am quite in the way of running off to France with Rupert, and he will look after me very well,’ said her grace. ‘And now, mon enfant, if I am not to murder you we will talk no more of Vidal, or of Rupert, or of anything.’
Some hours later aunt and nephew, each meticulously polite to the other, reached Lady Fanny’s house in town. It was the dinner hour, and her ladyship was about to sit down to a solitary meal when the Duchess came quickly into the dining-room.
‘Oh, my dearest love!’ exclaimed Fanny, embracing her. ‘Thank heaven you have come! It is all too, too true!’
Léonie flung off her cloak. ‘Tell me at once, Fanny; he has abducted her? Truly he has abducted her?’
‘Yes,’ Lady Fanny asseverated. ‘I fear so. That odious woman was here again to-day, and indeed she means mischief, and I don’t doubt she’ll make herself vastly unpleasant unless we can buy her off, which I thought of at once, only, my love, I do not know how in the world we are to do so unless you have a great deal of money by you, for I’ve not a penny. I declare I could kill Vidal! It is so unthinking of him to ravish honest girls – not that I believe she is honest for a moment, Léonie. The mother is a horrid, designing creature if ever I saw one, and oh, my dear, she brought the other sister here to-day, and ’twas that made me believe in her ridiculous story, for all I’m sure the most it’s a pack of lies. The child is quite provokingly lovely, Léonie, and do you know, she makes me think of what I was at her age? As soon as I clapped eyes on her I saw that there was nothing could be more natural than for Vidal to be in love with her.’ She broke off as the serving-man came into the room to lay two more covers, and begged Léonie to be seated. Further discussion being impossible before the servant, she began to talk of the latest town gossip, and even, for want of something to say, asked her son kindly whether he would not like to go to the Royal Society to-night. John deigned no reply, but when dinner was over he informed the two ladies that although it was unhappily out of his power to repair to the Royal Society, he proposed to occupy himself with a book in the library.
Upstairs in the privacy of her boudoir, Fanny poured out the rest of her tale. She said that Sophia Challoner had scarce opened her little sulky mouth, but she could vow the chit was furious at having Vidal stolen from her. ‘The veriest minx, my dear! Oh, I know the signs, trust me! If the sister is at all like her, and how can she not be? poor Vidal is most horridly taken in. There’s no doubt he took her off to France with him, for if he did not, where is she? What shall we do?’
‘I am going to Paris,’ Léonie said. ‘First I will see this Mrs Challoner. Then I shall tell Rupert he must take me to France. If it is all true, and the girl is not a – what is the word, I want, please?’
‘I know what you mean, my love, never fear,’ Lady Fanny said hastily.
‘Well, if she is not that, then I must try to make Dominique marry her, for it is not at all convenable that he should ruin her. Besides, I am sorry for her,’ Léonie added seriously. ‘To be alone like that, and in someone’s power is very uncomfortable, I can assure you, and me, I know.’
‘The mother will never rest till she has caught Vidal, but what of Justin, Léonie? I vow I’ll have no hand in this. He can be so excessively unpleasant, you know.’
‘I have thought of Justin, but though I do not like to deceive him, I see that this time I must. If Dominique must marry the girl I will make up a clever lie to tell him, and he must not know that it was all due to Dominique’s folly. That would make him very enraged, tu sais.’
‘He’ll not believe you,’ Lady Fanny said.
‘Yes, he will believe me, perhaps, because I do not lie to him – ever,’ said Léonie tragically. ‘I have thought of it all, and I am very miserable. I shall write to him one big lie, that cousin Harriet is indisposed, and I have gone to stay with her, and she is so old he will certainly not find that surprising. Then, if it is necessary that Dominique marries this girl whom already I detest, I will make him do it, only it will not appear that I was ever in Paris, for I shall come home, and I shall know nothing of Dominique at all. Then Dominique will write to tell Monseigneur that he is married – and if it is true the girl is Sir Giles’ granddaughter it is not after all so very dreadful – and I shall pretend how glad I am, and perhaps Justin will not mind so much.’
Fanny caught her hands. ‘My dearest love, you know he will be furious, and when Justin is angry he is more dangerous than ever Dominique could be.’
Léonie’s lip trembled. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But at least it will not be so bad as the truth.’
Eleven
On the following morning Mrs Challoner, chancing to look out of the window, was edified to perceive a very elegant equipage drawn up at her door. She said instantly: ‘The Duchess!’ and hurried over to the mirror to arrange her cap. She told Sophia that if she dared to speak a word outside her part she would lock her in her bedchamber for a week. Sophia was about to retort in kind when Betty opened the door and announced in a voice pregnant with awe: ‘The Duchess of Avon, ma’am!’
The Duchess came in, and Mrs Challoner was so surprised she forgot to curtsey. She had expected a lady quite twenty years older than the youthful-looking creature who stood before her, and had prepared herself to meet something very formidable indeed. Great violet-blue eyes, a dimple, and copper curls under a chip-hat did not belong to the Duchess of her imagination, and she stood staring in a disconcerted way instead of greeting her grace with the proper mixture of pride and civility.
‘You are Mrs Challoner?’ the Duchess said directly.
She spoke with a decided French accent, which further surprised her hostess. Sophia was also surprised, and exclaimed without ceremony: ‘Lord, are you Vidal’s mamma, then?’
Léonie looked at her from her head to her heels till Sophia blushed and began to fidget. Then she once more surveyed Mrs Challoner, who remembered her manners, told her daughter to hold her tongue, and pulled forward a chair. ‘Pray, will not your grace be seated?’
‘Thank you,’ Léonie said, and sat down. ‘Madame, I am informed that your daughter has eloped with my son, which is a thing I find not very easy to understand. So I come to you that you may explain to me how this is at all possible.’
Mrs Challoner dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and protested that she was nigh distracted with grief and shame. ‘For Mary is a good girl, your grace, and elope with his lordship she would never do. Ma’am, your son has abducted my poor innocent child by force!’
‘Tiens! ’ said the Duchess with polite interest. ‘My son is then a house-breaker. He perhaps stole her from beneath your roof, madame?’
Mrs Challoner let the handkerchief fall. ‘From under my roof ? How could he do that? No, indeed!’
‘It is what I ask myself,’ said the Duchess. ‘He laid a trap for her, perhaps, and seized her in the street, and carried her off with a gag and a rope.’
Mrs Challoner eyed her with hostility. The Duchess met her look limpidly, and waited. ‘You don’t understand, ma’am,’ said Mrs Challoner.
‘Assuredly I do not understand. You say my son abducted your daughter with force. Eh bien, I demand of you how this could be done in the middle of London. I find M. le Marquis has been extremely clever if he could arrange so difficult a rape.’
Mrs Challoner flushed scarlet. ‘Ma’am! I must beg of you!’
‘It is not then a rape?’
‘Oh, I – yes, indeed and it is, and I will have justice done, ma’am, and so I tell you!’
‘I too desire to have justice done,’ said the Duchess softly. ‘But I am not a fool, madame, and when you talk to me of ra
pes you talk of what I do not at all believe. If your daughter was not willing she could make a great outcry, and it seems to me that in London there is someone who will hear and come to her rescue.’
‘I see, ma’am, you have not heard the whole. Let me explain to you that it was not Mary his lordship wanted, but my little Sophia here. He has been for ever upon my doorstep, and I fear, ma’am, he has quite turned the child’s head. I blush to confess it to your grace, but he attempted to seduce Sophia, of course unbeknownst to me. I do not know what lies he told her, but he had it all arranged to fly with her. I have reared her very strict, ma’am, and how should she dream he did not mean marriage? She thought he would take her to Gretna Green. Oh, I’ll not deny it was mighty foolish and wrong of her, but girls will have these romantic fancies, your grace, and heaven knows what persuasions his lordship may have used. No, Sophy, be quiet!’
Léonie looked at the indignant Sophia, and smiled. ‘You present me my son in a new rôle,’ she said. ‘I have never known him to take so much trouble. It seems he was in love with you quite en désespéré.’
‘He did love me!’ Sophia said chokingly. ‘He never looked at Mary! Never!’
‘Hold your tongue, Sophy! Not but what it is true, ma’am. His lordship was mad for the child. But Mary took it into her head ’twas not marriage he intended, and what she did was to save her sister from ruin.’
‘It is of a nobility almost incredible, madame. What did this Mary do?’
Mrs Challoner threw out her hands dramatically. ‘She took Sophia’s place, ma’am. It was night, and she was masked, for Sophia has found an old loo-mask gone from her drawer. What she had in mind to do I know not, but she meant to return, your grace. And all this was five days ago, and there is no sign of my poor girl. His lordship has run off with her to France.’
‘Indeed?’ Léonie said. ‘You have good information, madame. Who told you that M. le Marquis has gone to France? It is not known to many.’