April Lady

‘You know?’ she repeated, rather scared. ‘But you cannot know, Felix! Besides –’

‘What I mean is, know whose house this is,’ he explained. ‘It ain’t any concern of mine, but it won’t do for you to be doing business with Jew King, cousin. What’s more, if Cardross knew –’

‘You won’t tell Cardross?’ she cried involuntarily.

He was just about to refute with considerable indignation the suggestion that he was a tale-bearer when prudence intervened. He temporized. ‘I won’t tell him if you let me escort you home. If you don’t, nothing else for me to do.’

‘Felix, I never thought you could be so ungentlemanly!’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t either. But the thing is it would be a dashed sight more ungentlemanly to go off and leave you to get into a pickle. Jew King! Lord, cousin, do you know the fellow owns an ornamental villa on the river? Slap up to the nines – never saw such a place in your life!’

‘No, and I don’t see what that has to say to anything!’ retorted Nell crossly.

‘Point is, where did he fund the blunt to pay for it? From people like you, cousin! Take my word for it!’

‘Yes, yes, but I only wish for a loan for a particular reason, just – just a very temporary one!’

He drew her hand through his arm, and obliged her to walk with him up the street. ‘Believe me, fatal!’ he said earnestly.

She sighed, but attempted no further argument. After a pause, Mr Hethersett coughed, and said delicately: ‘Very reluctant to offend you – awkward sort of a business! Thing is, might be able to be of service. Tolerably plump in the pocket, you know.’

She was a good deal touched, but said at once: ‘No, indeed! I am sure there was never anyone half as kind as you, Felix, but that would be the outside of enough! And you mustn’t suppose that I am in the habit of borrowing money: this – there are reasons – why I don’t wish to apply to Cardross for this particular sum! Don’t let us talk about it! It is of no moment, after all.’

‘Certainly not: shouldn’t dream of prying into your affairs, cousin!’ he replied. ‘Only wish to say – at least, I don’t, but must! – feel myself obliged to ask you to give me your word you won’t come running back here as soon as my back’s turned!’

She sighed, but said submissively; ‘No, I won’t do that, if you think it so very bad.’

‘Worst thing in the world!’ he assured her.

‘I don’t see why it should be. After all –’

‘You may not see why, but it ain’t a bit of use telling me you didn’t know it, because I’ve been watching you,’ said Mr Hethersett severely. ‘Going backwards and forwards like a cat on a hot bake-stone!’

‘Oh, how can you say such an uncivil thing?’ she protested. ‘I did not!’

‘That’s what it looked like to me,’ he said, with great firmness. ‘Not the moment for civility, either. Got great regard for you, cousin. Dashed fond of Giles, too. Wouldn’t wish to see either of you in a tangle. Thing is – nothing he wouldn’t give you! Officious thing to do – giving you advice – but if you’re in a fix you tell him, not Jew King!’

She said unhappily: ‘There are circumstances which – Oh, I

can’t explain it to you, but he mustn’t know of this!’

To her relief he forbore to press her. She would have been dismayed, however, had she known the construction he had put on her words.

Mr Hethersett, who had so strongly disapproved of his cousin’s alliance with any member of Lord Pevensey’s family, had now the doubtful felicity of realizing how just had been his objections to the marriage. If Nell had incurred a debt she dared not disclose to Cardross, it was as plain as a pikestaff that she had embroiled herself in her brother’s chaotic affairs. In Mr Hethersett’s view that was almost the only form of expenditure Cardross would not tolerate in his wife. Probably he would not take gaming debts in good part either, but Mr Hethersett did not think that Nell was a gamester. He had once struggled to support her through several rubbers of whist, an experience which had left him in doubt of her ability to distinguish spades from clubs.

He had made his offer to rescue her from her embarrassments in good faith, but he was considerably relieved by her instant refusal of it. He enjoyed a considerable independence, but the last settling-day at Tattersall’s had not been happy, and to have advanced what he feared must be a very large sum of money to Nell must have left him in uncomfortably straitened circumstances. It might also, if the truth leaked out, have involved him in a quarrel with Cardross, who would certainly feel that he had behaved in a very improper way. Cardross was a man of calm judgement, so it was perhaps unlikely that he would suspect his cousin of having formed a warmer attachment for Nell than was seemly. At the same time, there was no predicting what crackbrained notion a man deeply in love might take into his head; and Mr Hethersett was uneasily aware that by assuming the rôle of Nell’s cicisbeo-in-chief he had certainly laid himself open to attack. Nor had he the smallest desire to contribute towards Dysart’s relief. Mr Hethersett, a gentleman of the first respectability, and a high stickler in all matters of taste and conduct, disapproved unequivocally of such dashing blades as Dysart. Such feats as jumping one’s horse over a loaded dinner-table awoke no admiration in his breast, for anything that set people in an uproar was bad ton, and to be in bad ton was to be beyond pardon. The world of fashion might embrace all manner of men: the Out-and-Outers, the Tulips, the Dashes, Tippies, and Bloods: but the first style of elegance could only be achieved by those whose dress and deportment were characterized by an exquisite moderation. Dysart was never moderate. In the saddle he was a hard-goer; on the road his ambition was to give the go-by to every other vehicle; in the gaming-room, not content, like Mr Hethersett, to sport a little blunt on the table, he played deep. He engaged in hare-brained pranks; and the chances were that if you met him any time after noon you would find him ripe already. None but the very strait-laced objected, of course, to a man’s becoming foxed during the course of a convivial evening; but either Dysart had an uncommonly weak head, or he was carrying his drinking propensity beyond the line of what was acceptable. As for his debts, he had been monstrously in the wind at the time of his sister’s marriage, and he had had ample time, since being relieved by Cardross of his more pressing obligations, to run himself to a standstill again. It would be typical of him, Mr Hethersett considered, to apply to his sister for succour; and ridiculous to suppose that she could bring herself to deny him. He did not blame her in the least, but he was strongly of the opinion that such reckless generosity ought to be checked before it had run to such lengths as must put her as well as Dysart heavily in debt. A hazy recollection of the appalling load of debt under which Devonshire’s mother had died flitted through his mind. Astronomical figures had been whispered: probably false, for no one knew the exact truth, but it must have been a monstrous sum. It was said she had lost a huge fortune at play: queer sort of fellow the old Duke must have been, not to have known what his wife was about, thought Mr Hethersett. Things would never get to that pitch of disaster in Cardross’s household, of course; still, they might become pretty bad before he discovered what was happening. He was rich enough to be able to stand the nonsense, but Mr Hethersett had a very fair idea of what his feelings would be if he found Nell out in such deception. Someone, he decided, ought to drop him a hint now, before any serious mischief had been done, and while he was still so much in love with Nell that he would find it easy to excuse her folly. He was inclined for a moment to regret having promised Nell he would not betray her to Cardross; but as soon as he played with the notion of making such a disclosure to his cousin his imagination boggled at it. Under no circumstances could he have done it. The proper person to intervene was Lady Pevensey, and had she been in town he might, he thought, have contrived to hint her on to the trouble. Only she was miles away, tied to that ramshackle husband of hers, and there was no saying, after all, that she would see the matter as she ought: she had never seemed to Mr Hethersett to have much more wit than a pea-goose; besides, she doted on Dysart so fondly that she might possibly think his interests of more importance than Nell’s.

Nell’s voice, would-be cheerful, but decidedly nervous, intruded on these ruminations. ‘You are very silent!’ she said.

‘I beg pardon!’ he said. ‘I was thinking.’

‘About – about this?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No,’ he said unblushingly. ‘Thinking we should take a look-in at Gunter’s. You’d like an ice, I daresay. Just the thing!’

She thanked him, but declined the treat. She would have declined the offer of a chair to carry her home, too, but on this point Mr Hethersett was firm, knowing well what was due to her consequence. To be strolling through the streets of London with only himself as escort would not do for Lady Cardross. So he beckoned to a couple of chairmen before suggesting to her that he should do so, handed her into the chair, and completed his politeness by walking beside it to Grosvenor Square, and engaging her in a commonplace conversation that gave her to understand that he had dismissed the episode in Clarges Street from his mind.

Six