‘And want of upbringing,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘I can blame no one but myself for that. You didn’t, in sober truth, let her wear an improper gown, did you?’
‘No – oh, no!’ she replied guiltily. ‘Not – not improper precisely! I own it was not just the thing for a girl of her age, but – well, she won’t wear it again, so pray don’t mention it to her, Cardross!’
‘If it made her look like a class of female which my aunt prefers not to particularize, she most assuredly won’t wear it again!’ he returned.
‘Nothing of the sort! Lady Chudleigh knows very well that such gowns are worn by women of the first consequence. Do, pray, let the matter rest! To scold Letty will only set up her back – and it was my fault, after all.’
‘I don’t mean to scold either of you, but I must own, Nell, that I could wish you had put your foot down,’ he said, looking displeased.
‘Perhaps I should have done so,’ she replied, in a mortified tone. ‘I am very sorry!’
‘Yes – well, never mind! I don’t doubt that it is very hard for you to check Letty’s starts. And while we are speaking of the masquerade, what, in heaven’s name, is this extraordinary story I have been hearing about Dysart’s holding you up on the road to Chiswick?’
‘Oh, good God, Lady Chudleigh knows nothing of that, surely?’ she exclaimed, rather aghast.
‘No, I had it from your coachman. According to him, your carriage was stopped by Dysart and two companions, all of them disguised as highwaymen. It seems quite incredible, even in Dysart, but I can hardly suppose that Jeffrey would entertain me with a Canterbury story. Do you mind explaining the matter to me?’
She had forgotten that her servants would be very likely to tell him of Dysart’s strange exploit, and for an ignoble moment wished that she had had the forethought to have bought their silence. She was instantly ashamed of herself, and said, her colour rising: ‘Oh, it was one of Dy’s mad-brained hoaxes, and a great deal too bad of him! I must own that I hoped it wouldn’t come to your ears.’
‘That, Nell, is patent!’ he said.
‘Yes – I mean, I knew you would be vexed! There was no harm in it – it all arose out of a – a stupid wager – but of course it was a most improper thing to do, and so I told him.’
‘All arose out of a wager?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘With which of his associates did Dysart see fit to make you the subject of a wager?’
‘N-not with any of them!’ she stammered, frightened by the look on his face.
‘Then what the devil do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘It was with me!’ she said, improvising desperately. ‘We – we were talking about masquerades, and I said it was nonsense to suppose that one wouldn’t recognize somebody one knew well just because they wore a mask. Dy – Dy said that he would prove me wrong, and – and that was how it was! Only I did recognize him, so I won the wager.’
‘Gratifying! Did you also recognize his companions?’
‘No – that is, it was only Mr Fancot!’ she said imploringly. ‘Oh, and Joe, of course – Dy’s groom! But he doesn’t signify, because he has always been with us, ever since I can remember! Pray, Cardross, don’t be vexed with Dy!’
‘Vexed with him! I am very much more than vexed with him! To be giving you such a fright for the sake of a prank I should find it hard to pardon in a schoolboy goes beyond anything of which I believed him to be capable!’ he said wrathfully.
‘I wasn’t frightened!’ she assured him. ‘Only a very little, at all events!’
‘Oh?’ he said grimly. ‘What, then, made you scream?’
Her eyes sparkled with indignation. ‘I did not scream! I would scorn to do anything so paltry! It was Letty who screamed.’
‘How chicken-hearted of her, to be sure!’ he said sardonically.
‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ she said candidly.
‘Are you quite blinded by your doting fondness for Dysart?’ he demanded. ‘He is fortunate to possess a sister who can find excuses for his every folly, his every extravagance, and for such larks as this latest exploit! I am aware – I have for long been aware! – that he holds a place in your affections that is second to none, but take care what you are about! Encourage him to think he may turn to you in any extremity! smile upon kick-ups unworthy of a freshman! You will not smile when the high spirits you now regard with such indulgence carry him beyond the line of what even his cronies will pardon!’
She shrank a little from the harshness in his voice, but she was quick to recognize the note of jealousy in it. She heard it with a leap of the heart, and it took from his words all power of wounding. Instead of flying to Dysart’s defence, she said merely: ‘Indeed I didn’t smile upon such a prank! It was very bad – quite unbecoming! But it is unjust in you, Cardross, to say that his wildness will lead him into doing anything wicked! You dislike him very much, but that is going too far!’
‘No, I don’t dislike him,’ he replied, in a more moderate tone. ‘On the contrary! I like him well enough to wish to be of real service to him. You think me unjust, but you may believe that I know what I am saying when I tell you that his present way of life is ruinous.’
She said, in swift alarm: ‘Oh, pray, pray don’t thrust him into the army!’
‘I have no power to thrust him into the army. I own I have offered to buy him a commission, and I have not the smallest doubt that there is nothing I might do for him which he would like better, or which would be of more benefit to him. If the only bar in the way of his accepting it is your father’s dislike of the project I will engage to make all right in that quarter.’
‘No, it is not that. I should not say such a thing, but I am afraid Dy doesn’t care much for what poor Papa wishes. But Mama made him promise he wouldn’t do it, and however ramshackle you may think him Dy doesn’t break his promises!’
‘If that is how the case stands,’ he said, ‘I recommend you, my dear, to use your best endeavours to persuade your mother to release him from a promise which I don’t scruple to tell you should never have been extracted from him!’
‘I could not! Oh, she would sink under the very thought of his exposing himself to all the dangers of war!’ She hesitated and then said, with a little difficulty: ‘Mama has had so many trials to bear. Poor Papa, you know…’
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied. ‘For that very reason I am persuaded that if she was aware of the truth she would think the hazards of war less perilous than those of the metropolis. Living, as she now must, so far from London, I fancy she cannot know how closely Dysart is following an example she must dread.’
She looked a little frightened, but said: ‘I know he is sadly wild, and – and expensive, but surely – no worse than that?’
‘Well, that is bad enough,’ he replied. He saw that she was inclined to question him more closely, but he was already vexed that he had allowed his irritation to betray him into saying so much. Before she could speak again he had turned the subject; and very soon after he left her, saying that he must change his habit. Whatever bitter feelings he might cherish he could not shock her by disclosing the full sum of Dysart’s folly. She probably did not even know of that little narrow pink room behind the stage at the Opera House, where the dancers practised their steps in front of long pier-glasses, and any buck in search of amatory adventures could have his pick of the west-end comets. Dysart was a familiar figure in that saloon, and so was his latest chère amie. Nell had certainly seen him driving with this article of virtue – a dasher of the first water, too! reflected Cardross – but what she had made of her one couldn’t tell. She had asked no questions, so perhaps she had guessed. But she didn’t guess that Dysart frequently sallied forth with the Peep o’ Day boys, starting the evening with a rump and dozen at Long’s, and gravitating thence to a less respectable world of which she was wholly ignorant. It diverted the wilder bl
ades to mix on equal terms with the roughest elements of society; buttoning up, they would plunge into the back-slums of Tothill Fields, rubbing shoulders (and often falling into a mill) with all-sorts, from honest coal-porters to petermen. They saw badger-baiting in the reeking squalor of Charles’s, where a man must be a very fly-cove to avoid having his pockets picked; they rubbed shoulders with bing-boys and their mollishers in the sluiceries; became half-sprung on blue ruin in these gin shops, and wandering eastward, deepcut at the Field of Blood. The night music of the watchmen’s rattles marked their progress through the sleeping town; often a drowsing Charley was overturned in his box, and sent sprawling into the kennel; many were the respectable householders brought down to their doors on false alarms of fire, or thieves. Sometimes these larks ended in a roundhouse, with its sequel of Bow Street, a false name, and a fine; sometimes a blade, fortunate enough to be numbered amongst Mother Butler’s favourites, sought refuge at the Finish, and spent what was left of the night snoring on a settle beside the dying embers of the fire in the tap. No, Nell knew nothing of such exploits as these, and no prompting of jealousy was going to seduce her husband into enlightening her. The shock would be severe, and her innocence as much as her affection for Dysart would lead her to regard his excesses in a far more serious light than that in which they appeared to her husband. He was vexed by them, and he viewed their continuance with grim foreboding; but he believed that they sprang from the boredom of idleness rather than from any ingrained depravity. What disturbed him far more was the suspicion he had formed that Dysart, in his restless quest for novelty and excitement, had lately become enrolled as a member of the Beggars’ Club.
This decidedly unsavoury institution had its locality in a cellar at the back of Broad Street, and was generally presided over by the Earl of Barrymore, with Colonel George Hanger as his Vice. It was patronized by all the raff of town, and such persons as those who thought it amusing to eat their suppers out of holes carved in the long table, and with knives and forks that were chained to their places. There was no particular harm in this, but the evils that could accrue from a young man’s getting into Barrymore’s set were grave enough, Cardross knew, to alarm even so casual a parent as Lord Pevensey. Old Georgie Hanger, for all his eccentricities, exercised little influence over the younger men. He was over sixty; and after a varied career, which began at Eton, rose to a commission in the 1st Footguards, reached its nadir in the King’s Bench prison, and included an excursion into trade (when, upon his discharge from the Abbot’s Priory, he set up as a coal-merchant), he had contrived to get himself restored to full-pay, and was now living rather more moderately. His age and his oddities caused him to be tolerated by society, but his manners were too coarse to render him an attractive figure; and, to do him justice, he had not the smallest desire either to figure as the leader of a set or to corrupt the morals of its members.
The noble Earl of Barrymore was a bird of another feather. Neither his rank nor his achievements on the box or in the saddle sufficed to make him acceptable to the ton. He had been one of the founders of the Whip Club; he had introduced the fashionable practice of driving with a small Tiger perched up beside him; his colours were to be seen on any race-course; but society, with the exception of the Prince Regent, who too often appeared to have a strong predilection for disreputable company, was obstinate in avoiding him. An Irish peer, he had inherited the title from his brother, who had earned for himself the unenviable nickname of Hellgate. This circumstance, coupled with the possession of a club-foot, naturally led to his being dubbed Cripplegate. A younger brother, in orders, was known as Newgate, from having (according to his boast) been imprisoned in every gaol in the country; and an excessively foul-mouthed sister became, inevitably, Billingsgate. Cripplegate, with his fame as a Nonesuch, his cool daring in the saddle, and his dark reputation, constituted a real danger to such reckless young bloods as Dysart; and if the hint dropped in Cardross’s ear held so much as a grain of truth neither Lady Pevensey’s maternal fears nor Nell’s distress at being separated from her brother was going to prevent his putting a summary end to that troublesome young man’s career as a town buck of the first cut. The demon of jealousy apart, he liked Dysart well enough to make a push to save him from the consequences of his own folly; for Nell’s sake he was prepared even to undertake the disagreeable task of disclosing to Lord Pevensey the exact nature of the course his heir was treading. He could only hope that the news would not prove fatal to his lordship’s shattered constitution, but he thought it extremely probable that a second stroke might result from it, and could only trust that it would not prove necessary for him to approach his father-in-law. Lord Pevensey might shrug up his shoulders at a tale of fashionable dissipations, but in his day not the most dissolute rake amongst the Upper Ten Thousand sought diversion in the back-slums. Unless the stroke he had already suffered had rendered him very much more incapable than Cardross had reason to suppose, he could be trusted to overbear his lady’s opposition the instant he received the intelligence that Dysart was not only associating on the friendliest terms with scamps, pads, and drivers, but was also in a fair way to becoming a boon companion of one whom his lordship had been amongst the first to ostracize.
Nine
Cardross feared that his unguarded words would lead Nell to enquire more particularly into her brother’s mode of life, but in point of fact she was less disturbed by them than by the possible consequences of the story she had fabricated to account for his holding up her carriage. She had certainly been startled by what he had said, but a few minutes’ reflection led her to think that the jealousy she had so clearly perceived in him had led him to exaggerate. That he had so abruptly turned the subject seemed to her to lend colour to this belief; and since her own troubles were looming large she thought very little more about the matter.
Her encounter with him had quite overset her; it was a struggle to support her spirits, for never before had he treated her with such cool reserve of manner, or looked at her with such hard, searching eyes. The fault was her own: that frightening expression had not been in his face when first he had entered the room. She had been terrified that he might demand an explanation of the dismay she had betrayed, but when he had refrained, as though in disdain or indifference, she had found his cold forbearance more alarming than any display of wrath. She felt herself to have been set at a distance, and although his voice had been kinder when he had asked her what was the matter she had not been conscious of any impulse to confide in him. In her view no moment could have been more unpropitious for confession. Rendered suspicious by her reception of him, vexed with her for not having taken better care of his sister, and his temper dangerously exasperated by Dysart’s conduct, the disclosure that his wife was again badly in debt, and had been putting forth her best endeavours to deceive him, could only be expected to act on him like a match to gunpowder. Nor did it seem at all probable that the knowledge of Dysart’s motive in holding her up would lead him to regard him with more lenient eyes. In fact, far otherwise, she thought: for if she had been shocked by the scheme it seemed safe to suppose that Cardross would utterly condemn it. Once the truth was out Dysart would be more than likely to tell him that he had had three hundred pounds from her, and then, surely, the miserable tangle would be past unravelling.
This melancholy conviction at once put her in mind of the immediate necessity of conveying a warning to Dysart. Cardross plainly meant to call him to book, and it would never do for him to tell a different story from hers. She sat down to dash off a note to him then and there, but she was obliged to pause several times to wipe the blinding tears from her eyes. Try as she would to compose herself, they would keep welling up, because it was so very dreadful to be plotting with Dysart against Cardross.
She had just given the sealed billet to her footman when Letty came in, and at once it occurred to her that she too must be warned to say, if Cardross should question her, that Dysart had held them up for a wager. She c
ould feel herself blushing as she told Letty what she had said to Cardross, but Letty was not at all shocked. ‘Oh, certainly!’ she said, taking it as a matter of course. Nell hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry.
‘So Giles is come home!’ Letty remarked, slowly pulling off her gloves. ‘Well! I am positively glad of it!’
‘Oh, yes!’ Nell murmured. ‘Of course! I mean –’
‘Because,’ pursued Letty, a martial light in her eye, ‘my affairs have now reached a Crisis!’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Nell, quite alarmed. ‘What in the world, love – ?’
‘In six weeks – in less than six weeks! – Jeremy sails for South America!’ announced Letty, in a voice of doom.
‘Oh, dear!’ said Nell. ‘As soon as that! I am so very sorry!’
‘Well, you need not be,’ said Letty. ‘Though I own I had rather not be married in such a scrambling way. However, I don’t mean to repine, for that is a small thing, after all.’
Nell regarded her uneasily. ‘But, dearest, there is no question – You cannot suppose that Cardross will permit it!’
‘And neither he nor you,’ flashed Letty, ‘can suppose that I will permit my adored Jeremy to leave England without me! Unless he has a heart of stone, Giles cannot now refuse his consent.’
Nell was unable to perceive why the imminent departure of Mr Allandale should be supposed to melt Cardross’s heart, and ventured to say as much. It was ill-received. Letty broke into an impassioned diatribe. This was not very coherent, but one plain fact emerged from it: Cardross was to be given a last chance to rehabilitate his character.