Читать книгу A Joyous Adventure - Baroness Orczy - Страница 13

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Sir Timothy de Genneville who, despite his gout, betook himself every morning to his club to drink a glass of port—a dose of poison, his doctor declared—before midday, returned to his mansion in Carlton House Terrace in time for luncheon full of choler at the stupendous tale.

“That young man ought to be deported,” he declared, and added one or two oaths to emphasise his feelings in this matter. “He is a scandal to our aristocracy and shames us before these French diplomats. What will Bonaparte think of our English youth?...”

“That it is the bravest youth in all the world,” his lady retorted hotly, “and the toughest enemy. But what has happened now,” she added more lightly, “to put you about at this hour?”

In silence she allowed her spouse to recount to her at full length the sensation which Saint-Denys’s placards had created all over the town. Sir Timothy had obtained possession of one of these, and now, his temper further tormented by the twinge in his big toe, he read its contents aloud to her Ladyship, interspersing the reading with a variety of oaths such as gentlemen were wont to indulge in these days, and comments that were anything but flattering to the author of the printed sheet.

“I wonder if he has had many offers already?” was Lady de Genneville’s sole answer to her husband’s wrath.

“I hope that no man has been fool enough to trust that young jackanapes who has already frittered away two fortunes in such follies as this,” Sir Timothy muttered, and with a vicious snarl he threw the offending sheet into the grate.

“Make no mistake, Sir Timothy,” her ladyship said quietly. “Lord Saint-Denys is a man of his word. He will pay what he has promised, even it prove to be his last shilling. And now,” she added lightly, “shall we go in to luncheon?”

Upstairs and downstairs Lord Saint-Denys was the hero of the hour, for had he not provided half London with food for gossip? The talk at the clubs and the servants’ halls, in the assembly-rooms and the coffee-houses, as well as round the gaming-tables, was more of him than of the Peace Treaty. Everyone hoped that he would be present at Lady de Genneville’s rout, and young and old, ladies and cavaliers, were ready to ply him with eager questions. Had he received any suggestions yet? Had he been tempted to allot the princely reward?

A few hours’ rest had already borne fruit. Young bloods there were who were ready with suggestions which they thought marvellous: a love affair with the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte; a conspiracy to upset the Peace Treaty by challenging Monsieur Otto to a duel; the circumnavigation of the globe in one of the new topsail schooners were some of the ideas which had taken shape in these feather-brains.

But Saint-Denys did not put in an appearance at Lady de Genneville’s rout.

All day he had sat in the library of his beautiful house in Berkeley Square behind his bureau, with a huge ledger in front of him. He kept open house. Every visitor, however humble, was introduced into his presence by Mr. Bunch, the impeccable major-domo and last relic of this once lavish bachelor establishment: name and address, if any, were then entered in the ledger on one side of the page, and the suggested remedy for the incurable malady of boredom from which his lordship suffered was noted on the other. All in his lordship’s own hand and without the suggestion of a smile. After which the visitor was conducted by the majestic Mr. Bunch to the servants’ hall and offered a glass of excellent sherry which was never refused. Of course, this procedure did not apply to gentlemen who also came to Berkeley Square in considerable numbers. Although their names and suggestions were entered in the ledger, they were not kept waiting in the hall with the rest of the crowd, but shown into the boudoir, where cigars, sherry and cards helped to while away their time.

As for the ladies—and there were some, too—they came for the most part provided with suggestions for love intrigues which would have all the elements of surprise, danger and passionate fulfilment conducive to the dissipation of the most incurable boredom. These suggestions were generally accompanied by a play of eyes and lips and lashes to which, alas! Lord Saint-Denys remained entirely impervious; Mr. Bunch declaring afterwards that “the goings-on of them ’ussies after they found that ’is lordship would not fall a victim to their fascinations, was persistively scandalous.”

At the end of the day—there had only been a brief interval for luncheon which Mr. Bunch served to his lordship on a tray in the library—two hundred names and two hundred suggestions had been duly entered in the huge ledger. Lord Saint-Denys was tired and his hand ached.

“I shall be suffering from writer’s cramp, Bunch,” he said, “if I go on.”

He closed down the big ledger with a loud bang, rose from the desk and sank into the nearest arm-chair.

“No more visitors to-night,” he said. “Tell anyone who may be waiting that I shall see them to-morrow. Give me a glass of sherry and a cigar, and in half an hour I shall be for bed.”

The stately Mr. Bunch, after he had seen to the candles and otherwise ministered to his lordship’s comfort, withdrew. Saint-Denys, with a sigh of content, settled himself in a capacious arm-chair in front of the fire, with the cigar between his fingers, his head resting against a cushion, luxuriating in idleness after his strenuous day. He looked at this moment extraordinarily like that portrait which Lawrence painted of him a year or two later, one of the gems of the celebrated Saint-Denys collection of eighteenth century portraiture. The square forehead and straight brow, the somewhat harsh features, the deep-set eyes of an indescribable colour, neither grey nor blue nor hazel, at times of a velvety darkness reminiscent of the south, at others light and steely, but always marred by that almost insolent expression of boredom and of detachment which repelled. Some wag once said of Saint-Denys that he looked like a humorist disguised as a dullard, and there was some truth in that, for now and then there would come a twinkle in the eyes, or a curve of pleasant irony around the lips which would suddenly light up the whole face and make it very attractive, until that air of boredom once more settled over it and irritated by its obvious affectation.

Nevertheless, in justice to this characteristic product of an artificial age, it must be put on record that affectation was no part of Saint-Denys’s attitude toward life. He was at this time not yet thirty years of age. He had spent ten of these in one of the most strenuous campaigns ever imposed on the endurance of any army. He had enjoyed that life while it lasted; had felt neither fatigue nor privations, being possessed of iron nerve and an infinite capacity for enduring pain: he had, in fact, revelled in the keen sensation of fighting and killing, of constant danger, of victory and even of defeat. Was it not natural, then, that he should find irksome the sybaritic life imposed in time of peace upon a gentleman of his rank who hadn’t another fortune to lose and who was sick to death of the perpetual round of amusements, of balls and of routs? Was it not natural that he should fall a prey to a devastating sense of futility and of boredom? There was no affectation in this; and in very truth Saint-Denys was too proud to play up to the gallery, too disdainful of the multitude to thrust himself deliberately before its gaze. His printed placards, his huge ledger and formal entries therein were in no sense of the word a pose. Futile they might seem, even insane, but they were the outward signs of a genuine desire on his part to find a new zest in life.