She had introduced this new topic in the hope of diverting Mr Steane from the real object of his visit, and the gambit succeeded to admiration, though not in the way she had expected. Instead of going into a passion, he burst into a guffaw, slapping his thigh, and gasping: 'By God, that's the best joke I've heard in years! Caught in parson's mousetrap, is he? Damme if I don't write to felicitate him! That'll sting him on the raw! Why, he cast me off for eloping with Jane Wisset, and though I don't say she was of the first rank she wasn't a housekeeper!' He went off into another guffaw, which ended in a wheezing cough; and as soon as he was able to fetch his breath again, invited Henrietta to describe his stepmother to him. She was unable to do this, but she did regale him with some of the things Desford had told her. He was particularly delighted by the quarrel between the newly married couple which had sprung up over the silk shawl, and again slapped his thigh, declaring that it served the old hunks right. He then said, wistfully, that he wished he could have seen his brother's face when the news had been broken to him. He began to chuckle, but another thought occurred to him, and brought a cloud to his brow. 'The worst of it is he can't cut Jonas out of the inheritance,' he said gloomily. 'Still,' he added after brooding over this reflection for a few moments, and speaking in a more hopeful tone: 'I shouldn't wonder at it if this housekeeper makes the old muckworm bleed freely, so the chances are Jonas won't come into as big a fortune as he expected to.' He favoured Henrietta with a bland smile, and said: 'One should always try to look on the bright side. It has ever been my rule. You would be astonished, I daresay, how often the worst disasters do have a brighter aspect.'
She was as much diverted as she was shocked by this simple revelation of Mr Steane's character, and felt herself unable to do more than murmur an affirmative. Any hope that she might have entertained of Mr Steane's forgetting his daughter's pre dicament in the contemplation of his brother's rage and chagrin were dispelled by his next words. 'Well, well!' he said. 'Little did I think that I should enjoy such an excellent joke today! But it will not do, Miss Silverdale! Jokes are out of place at such a time, when my breast is racked with anxiety. I accept that Lord Desford did go to Harrowgate; and I can only say that if he was such a dummy as to think he could fob my unfortunate child off on to her grandfather he has been like a woodcock, justly slain by its own treachery. Or words to that effect. My memory fails me, but I know a woodcock comes into it.'
What she might have been goaded to retort remained unspoken, for at this moment the Viscount came into the room. The thought that flashed into her mind was that he might have been designed to form a contrast to Wilfred Steane. There were fewer than twenty years between them, and it was easy to see that Steane had been a handsome man in his youth. But his good looks had been ruined by dissipation; and his figure spoke just as surely as his face of a life of indolence and over-indulgence. Nor were these faults remedied by his manner, or his dress. In both he favoured a florid style, which made him appear, in Henrietta's critical eyes, disastrously like a demi-beau playing off the airs of an exquisite. Desford, on the other hand, was complete to a shade, she thought. He had a handsome countenance; a lithe, athletic figure; and if the plain coat of blue super fine which he wore had had a label stitched to it bearing the name of Weston it could not have proclaimed the name of its maker more surely than did its superb cut. His air was distinguished; his manners very easy, and unaffected; and while there was no suggestion of the Pink, or the Bond Street Spark, about his trim person it was generally agreed in tonnish circles that his quiet elegance was the Real thing.
He shut the door, and advanced towards Henrietta, who had exclaimed thankfully: 'Desford!'
'Hetta, my love!' he responded, smiling at her, and kissing her hand. He stood holding it in a warm clasp for a minute, as he said: 'Had you despaired of me? I think you must have, and I do beg your pardon! I had hoped to have been with you before this.'
She returned the pressure of his fingers, and then drew her hand away, saying playfully: 'Well, at all events, you've arrived in time to make the acquaintance of Cherry's father, who isn't dead, after all! You must allow me to make you known to each other: Mr Wilfred Steane, Lord Desford!'
The Viscount turned, and raised his quizzing-glass, and through it surveyed Mr Steane, not for very long, but with daunting effect. Henrietta was forced to bite her lip quite savagely to suppress the laughter that bubbled up in her. It was so very unlike Des to do anything so odiously top-lofty! 'Oh,' he said. He bowed slightly. 'I am happy to make your acquaintance, sir.'
'I would I might say the same!' returned Mr Steane. 'Alas that we should meet, sir, under such unhappy circumstances!'
The Viscount looked surprised. 'I beg your pardon?'
'Lord Desford, I have much to say to you, but it would be better that I should speak privately to you!'
'Oh, I have no secrets from Miss Silverdale!' said Desford.
'My respect for a lady's delicate sensibilities has hitherto sealed my lips,' said Steane reprovingly. 'Far be it from me to ask a question that might bring a blush to female cheeks! But I have such a question to put to you, my lord!'
'Then by all means do put it to me!' invited Desford. 'Never mind Miss Silverdale's sensibilities! I daresay they aren't by half as delicate as you suppose – in fact, I'm quite sure they are not! You don't wish to retire, do you, Hetta?'
'Certainly not! I have not the remotest intention of doing so, either. I cut my eye-teeth many years ago, Mr Steane, and if what you have already said to me failed to bring a blush to my cheeks it is not very likely that whatever you are about to say will succeed in doing so! Pray ask Lord Desford any question you choose!'
Mr Steane appeared to be grieved by this response, for he sighed, and shook his head, and murmured: 'Modern manners! It was not so in my young days! But so be it! Lord Desford, are you betrothed to Miss Silverdale?'
'Well, I certainly hope I am!' replied the Viscount, turning his laughing eyes towards Henrietta. 'But what in the world has that to say to anything? I might add – do forgive me! – what in the world has it to do with you, sir?'
Mr Steane was not really surprised. He had known from the moment Desford had entered the room, and had exchanged smiles with Henrietta, that a strong attachment existed between them. But he was much incensed, and said, far from urbanely: 'Then I wonder at your shamelessness, sir, in luring my child away from the protection of her aunt's home with false promises of marriage! As for your effrontery in bringing her to your affianced wife – '
'Don't you think,' suggested the Viscount, 'that foolhardiness would be a better word? Or shall we come down from these impassioned heights? I don't know what you hope to achieve by mouthing such fustian rubbish, for I am persuaded you cannot possibly be so bacon-brained as to suppose that I am guilty of any of these crimes. The mere circumstance of my having placed Cherry in Miss Silverdale's care must absolve me from the two other charges you have laid at my door, but if you wish me to deny them categorically I'll willingly do so! So far from luring Cherry from Maplewood, when I found her trudging up to London I did my possible to persuade her to return to her aunt. I did not offer her marriage, or, perhaps I should add, a carte blanche! Finally, I brought her to Miss Silverdale because, for reasons which must be even better known to you than they are to me, my father would have taken strong exception to her presence under his roof !'
'Be that as it may,' said Mr Steane, struggling against the odds, 'you cannot – if there is any truth in you, which I am much inclined to doubt! – deny that you have placed her in a very equivocal situation!'
'I can and do deny it!' replied the Viscount.
'A man of honour,' persisted Mr Steane, with the doggedness of despair, 'would have restored her to her aunt!'
'That may be your notion of honour, but it isn't mine,' said the Viscount. 'To have forced her into my curricle, and then to have driven her back to a house where she had been so wretchedly unhappy that she fled from it, preferring to seek some means, however menial
, of earning her bread to enduring any more unkindness from her aunt and her cousins, would have been an act of wicked cruelty! Moreover, I hadn't a shadow of right to do it! She begged me to carry her to her grandfather's house in London, hoping that he might allow her to remain there, and convinced that if he refused to do that he would at least house her until she had established herself in some suitable situation.'
'Well, if you thought he'd do any such thing, either you don't know the old snudge, or you're a gudgeon!' said Mr Steane. 'And from what I can see of you it's my belief you're the slyest thing in nature! Up to every move on the board!'
'Oh, not quite that!' said Desford. 'Only to your moves, Steane!'
'You remind me very much of your father,' said Mr Steane, eyeing him with considerable dislike.
'Thank you!' said Desford, bowing.
'Also that young cub of a brother of yours! Both of a hair! No respect for your seniors! A pair of stiff-rumped, bumptious bouncers! Don't think you can put the change on me, Desford, trying to hoax me with your Banbury stories, because you can't!'
'Oh, I shouldn't dream of doing so!' instantly replied his lordship. 'I never compete against experts!'
Henrietta said apologetically: 'Pray forgive me, but are you not straying a little away from the point at issue? Whether Desford was a gudgeon to think that Lord Nettlecombe would receive Cherry, or whether he thought what any man must have thought, doesn't seem to me to have any bearing on the case. He did drive her to London, only to find Lord Nettlecombe's house shut up. He then brought her to me. What, Mr Steane, do you suggest he should rather have done?'
'Thrown in the close!' murmured the Viscount irrepressibly.
'I must decline to enter into argument with you, ma'am,' said Steane, with immense dignity. 'I never argue with females. I will merely say that in accosting my daughter on the highway, coaxing her to climb into his curricle, and driving off with her his lordship behaved with great impropriety – if no worse! And since he abandoned her here – if she is here, which I gravely doubt! – what has he done to redress the injury her reputation has suffered at his hands? He would have me think that he sought my father out in the belief that he would take the child to his bosom – '
'Not a bit of it!' interrupted Desford. 'I hoped I could shame him into making her an allowance, that's all!'
'Well, if that's what you hoped you must be a gudgeon!' said Mr Steane frankly. 'Not that you did, of course! What you hoped was to be able to fob her off on to the old man, and you wouldn't have cared if he'd offered to engage her as a cook-maid as long as you were rid of her!'
'Some such offer was made,' said Desford. 'Not, indeed, by your father, but by your stepmother. I refused it.'
'Yes, it's all very well to say that, but how should I know if you're speaking the truth? All I know is that I return to England to find that my poor little girl has been tossed about amongst a set of unscrupulous persons, cast adrift in a harsh world – '
'Take a damper!' said the Viscount. 'None of that is true, as well you know! The unscrupulous person who cast her adrift is yourself; so let us have less of this theatrical bombast! You wish to know what I have done to redress the injury to her reputation she has suffered at my hands, and my answer is, Nothing – because her reputation has suffered no injury either at my hands, or at anyone else's! But when I found that your father had gone out of town, the lord only knew where, and that Cherry had nowhere to go, not one acquaintance in London, and only a shilling or two in her purse, I realized that little though I might like it I must hold myself responsible for her. With your arrival, my responsibility has come to an end. But before I knew that you were not dead, but actually in this country, I drove down to Bath, to take counsel of Miss Fletching. I was a day behind you, Mr Steane. Miss Fletching most sincerely pities Cherry, and is, I think, very fond of her. She offers her a home, until she can hear of a situation which Cherry might like. She has one in her eye already, with an invalid lady whom she describes as very charm ing and gentle, but all depends upon her present companion, who is torn between her duty to her lately widowed parent, and her wish to remain with her kind mistress.'
'Oh, Des, it would be the very thing for Cherry!' Henrietta cried.
'What!' ejaculated Mr Steane, powerfully affected. 'The very thing for my beloved child to become a paid dependant? Over my dead body!' He buried his face in his handkerchief, but emerged from it for a moment to direct a look of wounded reproach at Desford, and to say in a broken voice: 'That I should have lived to hear my heart's last treasure so insulted!' He disappeared again into the handkerchief, but re-emerged to say bitterly: 'Shabby, my Lord Desford, that's what I call it!'
Desford's lips quivered, and his eyes met Henrietta's, which were brimful of the same appreciative amusement that had put to flight his growing exasperation. The look held, and in each pair of eyes was a warmth behind the laughter.
Mr Steane's voice intruded upon this interlude. 'And where,' he demanded, 'is my little Charity? Answer that, one of you, before you make plans to degrade her!'
'Well, I am afraid we can't answer it just at this moment!' said Henrietta guiltily. 'Desford, you will think me dreadfully careless, but while I was visiting an old friend this morning, Cherry went out for a walk, and – and hasn't yet come back!'
'Mislaid her, have you? I learned from – Grimshaw – that she's missing, but I don't doubt she has done nothing more dangerous than lose her way, and will soon be back.'
'If she has not been spirited away,' said Mr Steane darkly. 'My mind is full of foreboding. I wonder if I shall ever see her again?'
'Yes, and immediately!' said Henrietta, hurrying across the room to the door. 'That's her voice! Heavens, what a relief !'
She opened the door as she spoke. 'Oh, Cherry, you naughty child! Where in the world – ' She broke off abruptly, for a surprising sight met her eyes. Cherry was being carried towards the staircase by Mr Cary Nethercott, her bonnet hanging by its ribbon over one arm, a mutilated boot clutched in one hand, and the other gripping the collar of Mr Nethercott's rough shooting-jacket.
'Dear, dear Miss Silverdale, don't be vexed with me!' she begged. 'I know it was stupid of me to run out, but indeed I didn't mean to make you anxious! Only I lost my way, and couldn't find it, and at last I was so dreadfully tired that I made up my mind to ask the first person I met to show me how to get back to Inglehurst. But it was ages before I saw a single soul, and then it was a horrid man in a gig, who – who looked at me in such a way that – that I said it was of no consequence, and walked on as fast as I could. And then he called after me, and started to get down from the gig, and I ran for my life, into the woods, and, oh, Miss Silverdale, I tore my dress on the brambles, besides catching my foot in a horrid, trailing root, or branch, or something, and falling into a bed of nettles! And when I tried to get up I couldn't, because it hurt me so much that I thought I was going to faint.'
'Well, what a chapter of accidents!' said Henrietta. She saw that one of Cherry's ankles was heavily bandaged, and exclaimed: 'Oh, dear, dear, I collect you sprained your ankle! Poor Cherry!' She smiled at Cary Nethercott. 'Was she in your woods? Was that how you found her? How kind of you to have brought her home! I am very much obliged to you!'
'Yes, that was how it was,' he answered. 'I took my gun out, hoping to get a wood-pigeon or two, but instead I got a far prettier bird, as you see, Miss Hetta! Unfortunately I had no knife on me, so I thought it best to carry Cherry to my own house immediately, so that I could cut the boot off, and tell my housekeeper to apply cold poultices, to take down the swelling. I sent my man off to fetch Foston, fearing, you know, that there might be a broken bone, but he assured me that it was only a very bad sprain. You will say that I should have brought her back to you as soon as Foston had bound up her foot and ankle, but she was so much exhausted by the pain of having it inspected by Foston that I thought it best that she should rest until the pain had gone off.'
'You can't think how much it hurt, dear Miss Silverd
ale! But Mr Nethercott held my hand tightly all the time, and so I was able to bear it.'
'What a perfectly horrid day you've had!' said Henrietta. 'I'm so sorry, my dear: none of it would have happened if I hadn't been absent!'
'Oh, no, no, no!' Cherry said, her eyes and cheeks glowing, and a seraphic smile trembling on her mouth. 'It has been the happiest day of my whole life! Oh, Miss Silverdale, Mr Nethercott has asked me to marry him! Please, please say I may!'
'Good God! – I mean, you have no need to ask my permission, you goose! I have nothing to do but to wish you both very happy, which you may be sure I do, with all my heart! But there is someone here who has come especially to see you, and whom I am persuaded you will be very glad to meet again. Bring her into the library, Mr Nethercott, and put her on the sofa, so that she can keep her foot up.'
'Who,' demanded Mr Steane of the Viscount, 'is this fellow who presumes to offer for my daughter without so much as a by your leave?'
'Cary Nethercott. An excellent fellow!' replied the Viscount enthusiastically.
He moved over to the sofa, and arranged the cushions on it, just as Cary Nethercott bore Cherry tenderly into the room. She exclaimed: 'Lord Desford! Indeed I'm glad to meet him again, Miss Silverdale, for I owe everything to him! How do you do, sir? I have wanted so much to thank you for having brought me here, and I never did, you know!'