Practical heart, p.15
Practical Heart, page 15
“Looooovely!” Felicity sang, joining her.
And at this point, Winsted, Lord Vaughn did a very unusual thing. Leaping from his chair, he went to take Mrs. Lawrence in his arms and began waltzing her round the room, shouting “Cheers for us all!” and singing “La-la-la” for the one-two-three of the waltz.
“Huzza!” cried Lord Yates.
“Huzza!” cried Miles.
“Do you know,” said Valerian, looking admiringly upon the dancing couple, “I believe we may make a human of him yet!”
The revelry continued for quite some time, Miles waltzing with Cordelia, Courtney with Felicity, and the rector, to his great surprise, taking a small tour of the room with Valerian, all to the tune of discordant la-la-la’s shouted by various members of the party. They were interrupted at last by the landlord, who said they were disturbing his other guests, for it was now quite late. They sat down, therefore, ordered a bowl of milk-punch, and applauded themselves enthusiastically. When the punch arrived, toasts were drunk to each of the couples, to the parson, to Valerian, and to Cobham in Surrey, and each toast was answered with a loud “Huzza!” At last, however, they allowed the rector to depart, settled down somewhat, and began to make arrangements for the night.
“My Mother will be frantic,” Lord Vaughn declared. “I must send word to her.”
“Do you suppose she will be very angry?” asked Cordelia.
“Well,” he began, on a note of doubt, “I expect she will be a little shocked but, you know, she is fond of you and was never opposed to the match. It is only the idea of an elopement…perhaps We will do well to return to London and have another ceremony.”
They remained some little tension between the Viscount and Winsted, so the company permitted the Vaughns to discuss this point between themselves, and began their own conversation.
“I suppose we must all stop the night here,” said Valerian, choking a little. He threw a glance at Miles. “Unfortunately, I left The Haven so quickly, I haven’t any funds. I wonder—”
“Never mind,” Miles interrupted, just as he was meant to do. “I shall take care of that.”
“You speak as though you were a man of means,” Gillian observed dryly.
“I am not, you know,” Miles answered, becoming serious. “I hope you will not care very much.”
“If you can afford to pay for a room at an inn,” she said, laughing, “you are richer than I by half, at least.”
“That reminds me,” he said. “Have you any family?”
“None at all,” she replied.
“None at all!” said Cordelia suddenly. “But what of your mother?”
“I have been orphaned these eight years and more,” Gillian said, smiling. “I thought my mother would not mind my making use of her a little; she was quite a jolly woman, in her time.”
“Indeed!” said Cordelia, staring.
“Yes, and what about that disturbance we were going to, Miles? I suppose that was all a hum as well?” Lord Vaughn interjected.
“It was,” he agreed cheerfully. “I should love to hear the speech you meant to deliver, though.”
“Ridiculous,” Vaughn declared.
“O no, but I should love to hear it, too!” exclaimed Gillian.
“Speech, speech!” cried the Viscount.
“I could not,” said Winsted, colouring a little.
“Please?” said Felicity timidly, without knowing exactly what she was requesting.
Lord Vaughn found that all eyes were upon him. “O, very well,” he said at last. “It began, ‘Englishmen! Good men of Cobham! A moment of your time is all I beg. The great nation of England, My friends, depends upon the law. Without the due workings of justice, the slow and careful deliberation of government, England is no more than a ship floundering upon the sea. She is a body without a head, a child without a parent, a…’ ” Lord Vaughn went on for quite half an hour in this vein, while his audience (excepting his wife) learned to repent their request to hear him. At last, however, it was over, and it proved to have had a very sobering effect.
“I am tired,” Felicity said, in a whisper.
“Formidable oratory,” Gillian said, hoping he had not heard his new sister-in-law.
“Most remarkable,” Miles agreed, but he could not stop himself from yawning.
“Papa,” Felicity whispered again, “will you bespeak a room for me, please? I am quite fatigued.”
“Damnation!” exclaimed the Viscount. “That’s right! You will need a room of your own—and I, too…O dear, we ought to have had the rector marry you, while he was here.”
Again Miles spoke out. “Never mind, Valerian. I am well-heeled, for the day at least.”
“Bless you, Miles,” said Sherbourne, smiling beneficently.
The landlord was summoned, and the chambers ordered prepared. Cordelia cast a slightly frightened look at Gillian before going off to bed, but Vaughn took her arm gallantly and she said nothing. Felicity was loath to part with Courtney, but part they did, wishing one another sweet dreams and pleasant rest, “and all sorts of nauseating things,” the Viscount remarked, when they had gone.
“I think it is rather pretty,” said Gillian, yawning.
“I hope you do not expect such hearts and flowers from me,” said her husband.
“Dear Heavens, no!” she exclaimed. “I should think you had run mad, or were confusing me with one of your flirts. Dreadful stuff,” she added, grimacing.
“I suppose I shall be obliged to give up my flirts,” said Miles wistfully.
“But whatever for?” she asked. “I am never more amused by you than when you are trying to entertain some empty-headed beauty.”
“This is going to be quite an adventure,” Miles answered, drawing her closer to him. “Our marriage, I mean.”
“What else could it be?” she inquired, striving to sound bored.
“My dear friends,” the Viscount interrupted, “far be it from me to carp, but you are becoming—in your own way, of course—quite as maudlin as Felicity and Courtney. Do you mind reserving all this bright conversation for some occasion when I am not present?”
“Not at all,” Miles answered cheerfully. “By the way, when do you mean to pay my wife what you owe her?”
The Viscount appeared to be dismayed. “You touch upon a subject which is not entirely entertaining,” he sighed. “I am still up to my ears in debt, and I do not know if Courtney, or Vaughn is meaning to rescue me. And, come to think of it,” he continued after a pause, “I believe my week is out. O, Great Heavens, it is!” he exclaimed, after counting up the days on his fingers.
“Your week?” Miles asked.
“Yes, I had a week, you see, in which to debate offering for Miss Mouse—Miss Grouse, that is. And the week ended—O dear, can it be yesterday?”
“It can,” affirmed Gillian, who had been doing sums on her fingers as well. “In fact, it can be two days ago. And is two days ago. Tomorrow it will be three.”
They stared at one another.
“And what is worse,” the Viscount said at last, “is that I agreed with Miss Grouse to pretend to offer for her, and she was supposed to help me, by pretending not to give an answer. It was a delaying tactic, you see—brilliant, I thought. And,” his voice rose to a wail, “I forgot! O, Good Heavens, I was so pleased with the plan I forgot to carry it out!”
“It all comes of scholarship, you know,” Miles observed dispassionately. “If you read less, and acted more, these things would not occur.”
“For the Love of God, Miles, stop lecturing and help me to think. Whatever shall we do? And whatever must Miss Grouse think of me?”
“I am sure, my lord,” said Gillian, “that Mr. Grouse has not even noticed. Doubtless he knows you must have some time to think—”
“Thomas Grouse not notice? You must be mad.” The Viscount was nearing despair.
“Courage, Valerian,” Miles said bracingly. “There is no doing anything tonight, so you may as well go to bed. It is what we are going to do,” he added, looking meaningfully at his bride.
“Oh, that is all very well for you,” said the Viscount disconsolately.
“So it is,” he agreed, taking Gillian by the hand and making for the door. “Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Mrs. Lawrence, adding soothingly, “I am certain there is nothing to worry over yet.”
“I hope you are right,” said Sherbourne, as the Lawrences left the parlour. Unfortunately, she was very, very wrong.
Chapter XIII
“Early to bed, early to rise,” was what Mr. Thomas H. Grouse said, and he arrived, accordingly, on the doorstep of The Haven no later than seven o’clock the next morning. He pulled at the bell-rope and heard a groan echo inside the house, but no one answered. He pulled again, and again, and finally began knocking his plump fist against the door. Still, it was many minutes before Trigg, grumbling and yawning, opened to him.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“I want to see Sherbourne,” answered Mr. Grouse, his short, fat fingers stumbling over themselves as he clenched and unclenched his fists. He grinned his malicious grin.
“His Lordship ain’t at home,” Trigg replied, as Mrs. Trigg, half-asleep and a housecoat pulled about her stout body, appeared at the back of the hall.
“My good man,” said Grouse, “I won’t be put off. If the Viscount is still abed, you must go and wake him.” The grin flickered menacingly, but Trigg was unfazed.
“I told you, the Viscount ain’t at home,” he repeated. He turned to his wife and said, “You tell this gentleman, my dear, if the Viscount is at home.”
Mrs. Trigg came forward into the hall. “No,” she said, pausing to bark a dry, short laugh. “Ain’t none of them home. Run off, is my guess.” She poked her husband in the ribs, her face as blank as a wall.
“Run off?” echoed Mr. Grouse. “None of them here? Where have they gone to, do you know?”
The Triggs nodded in tandem. “What’s the matter, eh?” said Mrs. Trigg at last. “Your daughter missing, too?”
“My daughter? No, what’s she to do with it?”
“Well, she was here not four days ago,” Mrs. Trigg revealed, knowing full well that she ought not to, and delighting in it. “Wanted to talk private-like with the Viscount. Wasn’t she here, Trigg?” she added, jabbing her husband again.
Mr. Trigg nodded with silent energy.
Mr. Grouse surveyed them with his sharp eyes. “Where have they gone to?” he asked at last.
“Cobham in Surrey, they said,” answered Trigg, who had gleaned this knowledge by eavesdropping. “But it’s our guess they’re in France, by now. Run off, they have; haven’t they my dear?” Mrs. Trigg joined him in a spate of spiteful, mirthless laughter.
“But they’ve left all their things, haven’t they?” said Grouse, trying to make sense of it all.
“Their things!” Mrs. Trigg spat out scornfully. “Why, there ain’t a room furnished proper in this whole house, save the drawing room. O, we knew desprit straits when we saw them!”
“What do you mean, my good woman?” Mr. Grouse demanded.
Mrs. Trigg silently opened a door off the hall, the one that led to the dusty room. Mr. Grouse observed the grime and the broken pianoforte, and said with an effort, “I thank you.” He revolved back towards the front door, and left without another word, to the accompaniment of the Triggs’s gleeful cackling.
“Don’t you fret none, sir!” Mrs. Trigg called out after his disappearing form. “They never paid us, neither, so you’re not alone!”
Thomasina knew the instant she saw her father that something had gone wrong. “What is it?” she asked, hoping desperately it was nothing to do with her.
“So you’ve been to see the Viscount, have you?” he said unpleasantly. “And what may that have been for, if I may ask?”
Thomasina let fall the book she was holding. “I—I cannot tell you,” she faltered at last.
“Cannot! You will, my girl.”
“Father!” cried she, striving against panic. “I trust you do not mean to force me.”
Mr. Grouse stared hard at his daughter. “This is the queerest tangle I’ve ever seen,” he said at last. “Get ready for a journey, my daughter. I’ll straighten this out, by God.” Half an hour later they were in their heavy, garish coach, rumbling at top speed towards Cobham. Thomasina wondered with all her might where they were going, but her father offered no information and she dared not ask.
The White Lion, meantime, was the scene of a very convivial breakfast, everyone (save the Viscount) being in high spirits, and all extremely hungry. There was much quizzing and banter among the young people, and it was not until the last roll had been consumed that Valerian was able to detach the Lawrences from the rest of the party in order to speak with them alone.
“I am considering prolonging my sojourn here,” he confided. “I feel safe, you know, at such a distance from Grouse. Surely Courtney will offer to settle the details of his marriage soon?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Miles suggested reasonably.
The Viscount sighed largely. “I cannot. Oh, I know it sounds ridiculous, but now I am confronted with what I started out to achieve, I cannot seem to push it to its conclusion. It appears so mercenary, so vulgar, so, as it were, crude!”
Mrs. Lawrence smiled at her former employer. “I often wondered how you would deal with this matter,” she informed him. “I rather expected you would feel ashamed sooner or later.”
“But my dear ma’am, it is not shame!” he objected. “Call it—delicacy; call it…a proper reticence. An aesthete’s embarrassment before the material concerns of this world—but not shame, I beseech!”
“My Lord, I never knew a man to plead as divertingly as you,” she said, all admiration. “But as for hiding in Cobham,” she added, shaking her head, “I do not think it will answer.”
“But why not?” he insisted.
“Well, for one thing, you haven’t the money to—”
She was interrupted by her husband, who had gone over to the window and was looking into the yard of the inn. “For one thing,” he said, “Mr. Grouse is already here.”
Valerian gasped and jumped from his chair. “Hide me!” he begged. “Conceal me somewhere!”
“My Lord, it cannot be done,” said Gillian. “We must think of something better. Come, let us go into the coffee-room with the others. Perhaps Mr. Grouse will not like to make his demands with such a crowd about him.”
“I am doomed!” cried Valerian, holding his head in misery but allowing himself to be led across the hall.
“Thomasina is with him,” Miles observed, as he followed his uncle into the coffee-room.
“Catastrophe!” moaned the viscount. “Comble de malheur!”
“What is it, Papa?” asked Felicity, alarmed. He stared at her but could say nothing. “Mr. Grouse,” Gillian answered for him.
“O dear,” said she.
Mr. Grouse scorned even to knock before entering the coffee-room. He advanced menacingly, his daughter in tow, and called out, “Sherbourne!” in a gruff, loud tone. He found himself face to face with the Viscount before he had gone two steps. “Oh, so there you are,“ he said, a little embarrassed by his unnecessary volubility.
Valerian gasped but found himself saying, “How do you do; delighted to see you,” for all the world as if they had met at Almack’s.
“I’ve a bone to pick with you, Sherbourne,” said Grouse, refusing to be cowed by the Viscount’s polish.
“By all means, sir, by all means. Do sit down—why, Miss Grouse,” he continued, the state of his nerves betrayed only by a slight flush, “what a pleasant surprise! I am so sorry to have forgot to keep our—appointment the other day.”
Thomasina said nothing; she only gazed at him with round eyes, admiring his courage before her father’s wrath.
“My Lord, I’ll be put off no longer,” warned Grouse, who had unwillingly accepted a seat at the breakfast table. “You owe me money and I’ll be paid.”
“Yes, so you shall, dear sir, but first—” Valerian broke off as he pulled out a chair for Thomasina, “—do sit down, Miss Grouse.”
“You owe me—” Mr. Grouse began, but he was interrupted by Courtney Yates.
“Mr. Grouse, I know you will agree with me when I point out that this sort of discussion is hardly likely to be entertaining to the ladies. In fact, sir, why do not you, and I, and the Viscount retire to some other room, where we may speak without fear of boring them with our nonsense.”
“And who might you be, young sir?” asked Grouse suspiciously.
“I am soon to become his Lordship’s son-in-law,” said Courtney, introducing himself. “I am sure he will make no objection to my joining you while you—chat.”
Mr. Grouse looked doubtful, but he rose all the same and quited the room with Yates and Valerian, who looked as if Heaven had suddenly opened to reveal a troop of angels choiring to him.
“Well, I never thought to see the day!” exclaimed Gillian, when the gentlemen had closed the door to the private parlour. She turned to her husband. “Did you hear him? Courtney, I mean—he looked as if he had been taking on irate creditors all his life. And when I remember how frightened he used to be, even by Felicity!”
Felicity glowed. “It must be love,” said Miles, with a touch of scepticism.
“I did not mean to be rude, Miss Grouse,” said Gillian, “but your father is rather formidable when he is angry, is not he?”
“Rather,” she assented. She sat thinking for some little while, then asked slowly, “will the Viscount be able to pay him now?”
“I have no doubt but what Lord Yates is writing a draught for him this very minute,” Mrs. Lawrence answered.
Miss Grouse absorbed this information, and a strange transformation seemed to take place inside her She sat up much straighter, ceased twisting her hands together, and her eyes flashed so sharply that one almost forgot how round they were. “I hope you will excuse me,” she said, rising with dignity. “I believe I must join the gentlemen for a few moments.” And she marched resolutely towards the parlour.
