Читать книгу The Red Mass - Valentine Williams - Страница 7

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The whole day had gone wrong, the young man reflected, as he slowly rode towards Chelsea where the Lady Betty Marchmont lived with her aunt, the Dowager Countess of Orifex. He was more concerned than he would admit over the state of his money affairs, for there were transactions with certain seedy Hebrews of Long Acre which he had sedulously withheld from the knowledge of his guardian. His capital was not large, and he knew, what Maxeter and his other friends did not, that the estates to which he was heir were already heavily encumbered. He was growing increasingly conscious that his means would not indefinitely stand the strain of his life as a man of fashion. He would have to make up his mind to marry and settle down before it was too late.

His encounter with the émigrés had upset him. He cared nothing that two duels, perhaps three, would follow the brisk brush of that morning. But the Vicomte's sneer about the town being full of red coats rankled. It rankled because, as far as Fotheringay was concerned, it was a palpable hit.

'I'll kill him for that!' he muttered, and savagely dug his spurs into Paladin's sides.

His nerves were yet jangling when he was ushered into the prim drawing-room of Lady Orifex. Betty was at the clavecin humming over to herself an old song of Lulli's, while her aunt's companion, Baroness von Schlippenbach, the impoverished daughter of one of George II's Hanoverian Court, bent over her embroidery frame at the window.

The melody broke off abruptly, as he entered, on a note that jarred and sung. Betty rose and dropped in mockery a deep curtsey.

'The Baroness and I,' she said, casting down her beautiful eyes, 'are profoundly sensible of the honour Mr. Fotheringay does us in remembering our poor existence!'

And with spreading skirts she sank down before him once more.

'You seemed to be so glad to be rid of me the last time, Betty,' the young man answered, flushing, 'that I had thought my presence would not be missed!'

'Nor has it, sir! Nor has it!' Lady Betty flashed back, tossing her head. 'Strange as it may seem I have managed very well to amuse myself without you. Indeed, I wonder that you should have troubled to-day!'

And opening her large eyes in feigned amazement at him, she dropped into a gilt bergère and began to play with her little spaniel.

Fotheringay drew up a chair and sat down beside her.

'Indeed, Betty, I have been much taken up with my military duties ...' he began. He tried to mollify her; but her reception of him had increased his exasperation and, even as he spoke, he was conscious that he had made a false start.

'So I observed at the Rotunda on Wednesday night,' she answered with a teasing smile. 'I had believed I had seen you in gallant company with Mr. Angelo and Mr. Bannister, the actor, and ... and others who, no doubt, were likewise engaged in military duties ...'

'You were at Ranelagli on Wednesday?' said the young man. 'I did not see you. With whom were you?'

'I am so much taken with my social duties, I vow, that I scarce remember,' she rejoined mockingly. 'With Mrs. Sheringham and Major Doyle, I believe I was. A great number of people joined our party. I think the Prince of Wales was there ...'

Fotheringay bit his lip.

'You fly high, Betty, my dear,' he said. 'I did not know you numbered His Royal Highness among your acquaintance.'

'Odd as it may seem, I do,' she retorted with a toss of her head. 'And no later than last night I was at Carlton House to hear the Prince play in the quartet of chamber music. On the violoncello His Royal Highness is quite admirable!'

Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders. There were few men of his set who would venture to discuss the character of the Prince of Wales with an unmarried girl.

'Betty,' he said in a low voice, 'get rid of the Baroness. I want to talk to you.'

'Schlippenbach,' observed the girl in a resigned tone, 'will you leave us? Cousin Hector is going to talk secrets!'

'Teueres Kind,' said the Baroness, looking up from her work, 'scarcely I think it is brober that a yong maiden shouldt alone remain vith a yong man. Your oldt Schlippenbach iss disgreet. It is a family dradition. Queen Garoline of plessed memory hass said of my late Papa, "Der Schlippenbach" she hass said "iss domb like a fish!"'

But the girl stood up.

'Schlippenbach!' she cried peremptorily. 'Leave us when I tell you!'

The old Baroness, a haggard and acidulated spinster, her powdered hair piled high in the fashion of a bygone age, had learnt the lesson of years of humble dependence. Her thin and mittened hands folded in front of her, she rose and with a guttural 'I go!' glided silently from the room.

'Ugh!' ejaculated Betty, resuming her seat. 'Every time I see her I am terrified of poverty and old age!'

'Betty,' said Fotheringay, taking her hand, 'there is something I wish to say to her ladyship your aunt. But before I speak to her I want to consult you, to ... to ...'

Betty whipped her hand away.

'My dear Hector,' she said. 'Is this a proposal?'

'Don't mock me, Betty,' Fotheringay pleaded. 'Since you came to town two months ago to be presented I have discovered again my old playmate of our childhood years. Do you remember the old days at Frome? Your aunt brought you to spend Christmas with my mother. You were in mourning for your father then, such a solemn little girl in black. We were sweethearts then, dear Betty, and since I have seen you again in London it has come upon me that you are the only woman for whom I have ever cared. It has seemed to me sometimes that I was not wholly indifferent to you. Dearest Betty, I want to seek happiness with you again at Cranwell where my father and mother began their married life. On my marriage the property, now administered by my uncle, comes back to me. We will live on our estates; our friends shall visit us; and, from time to time, we will travel up to London to taste the delights of the town. How does the prospect please you, Betty? May I speak to your aunt?'

The girl sat very erect in the high-backed chair, her face inscrutable.

'Your proposal does me great honour, my dear Hector,' she said, 'but I beg you to put it from your mind. It is impossible.'

The young man started back.

'Am I so unsuitable a parti, then?' he asked. 'My estates are large and, with the careful management which I shall bestow, will return a more than comfortable income. And, on my uncle's death, as you know, I shall succeed to the baronetcy!'

'I will never live in the country again,' the girl exclaimed passionately. 'I was never meant for a hum-drum life among cows and sheep and poultry. I hate the country, do you understand? I hate it. When my father was killed in the American War, I was left a penniless orphan and all my life that I can remember has been spent in retirement as a dependent on my aunt's generosity. I have only begun to live since I came to London. I have beauty, I have wit, and in London I mean to stay!'

'Town life is hollow,' said Fotheringay gravely. 'Its pleasures are soon exhausted. There is no happiness in the town, my dear!'

The girl stamped her foot.

'You have had your fling!' she cried. 'There is no novelty in London life to you. But what do I know of life? Whom do I ever see at Stoke Norton except old Dr. Benfield or the Squire or Parson Clutterbuck? Here in London a woman may sway empires, may make and unmake men, there are fortunes at her command. Mrs. Sheringham says that with my looks I may make a great match. The Prince is greatly épris, Major Doyle tells me.'

'With all respect for His Royal Highness,' said Fotheringay, 'the Prince of Wales is no fit acquaintance for an unmarried girl!'

Fiercely Lady Betty turned on him.

'And are you any different? With your painted women and your drunken parties and your gambling night and day? And when you tire of it and the money begins to give out ... don't deny it, every one says you are criblé de dettes...! you come to me and offer me to become a squire's wife in Somerset!'

'Better a squire's wife than a Prince's mistress!' Fotheringay retorted hotly.

'Oh!' cried the girl indignantly, 'how dare you say such things to me?'

'You put them in my mouth,' cried the young man vehemently. 'You speak as if there were no such thing as love. Has love no place in your thoughts?'

'If I could meet a man ...' she said.

'And yet I thought ... you gave me reason to think ... you cared for me?'

'You do yourself too much honour, cousin,' she replied coldly.

'When I would have taken service with our battalion in Flanders, you dissuaded me from so doing, if I remember rightly ...' he began.

But, furiously, she cut him short.

'Yes,' she said. 'And you bowed to a woman's whim! You let a woman command you when your comrades are lying out in the open under the grapeshot of the enemy, when your own uncle, your mother's brother, died for his faith on the scaffold. Oh! I wonder you have the courage to look your men in the face. When crimes are being perpetrated that cry to Heaven aloud for the vengeance of a man's strong right arm, you in your fine uniform prance about London, an autocrat among your soldiers, drinking and dicing whilst women of your own mother's birth and race are being foully massacred in Paris. If I met a man I could respect and love, I'd follow him to the ends of the earth. But as for you, I respect more highly Pichegru's ragged Republicans! At least they are ready to die for what they believe!'

White to the lips, Fotheringay stood up and bowed to her. Blindly he took his hat and sword from the old servant in the panelled hall and blindly rode away. By five o'clock, when Montgomerie called at the Saint James's Coffee-House to fetch him to dine at the Cocoa Tree, he was drunk.

He had very little recollection afterwards of the dinner. He remembered a note arriving from Maxeter saying that he was meeting the seconds of the Vicomte de Solesmes that evening and would let Fotheringay know what was decided. For the rest the meal was a confusion of bunches of lights that bent and swayed at him in their big branch candlesticks, of loud voices talking together, of laughter, the popping of corks, of speeches, of songs. There followed a journey in a coach to some gardens where, the soft air of the May evening reviving him, he partly recovered his senses in a box overlooking trees all dappled with coloured lights and leafy paths crowded with throngs that strolled up and down to the strains of a concealed orchestra.

Here there was more claret and champagne, and horse-play with women who shrieked with laughter. One girl tried to slip a great latchkey down his back, and he pursued her, shrilly screaming, until he was brought up leaning over the ramp of the box. Carfax, an ensign, saved him from taking a header into the grounds.

'You're most uncommon drunk, Hector!' he said, grinning, as he put him back on his feet and, ringing for the waiter, ordered him soda-water. Then somebody proposed visiting the gaming-house that had recently been opened in Pickering Court, at the foot of Saint James's Street. They all piled into coaches, leaving the supper table strewn with broken glass, the cloth stained with spilt wine, and a faint odour of perfume hanging in the air.

Arrived at Saint James's Street, a narrow passage between the houses brought them to a small flagged court with a cloistral air, at the end of which stood a low-pitched red-brick house with a green door. On one of the pillars of the doorway was a brass plate inscribed: 'Rouge and Roulette, French and English Hazard. Commence at one o'clock.' A couple of link-boys idled about the court, and in the shadows lurked various shabby individuals, hook-nosed and thick-lipped—Jewish bill-discounters, always at hand 'to accommodate the nobility and gentry.' The windows of the house were brilliantly lit, and through the open casements the sound of voices and laughter floated forth upon the warm evening air.

At the door Montgomerie linked his arm in Fotheringay's.

'You're so dam' drunk, Hector,' he said, 'that you'd best go home. I'll walk round with you if you wish!'

Angrily Fotheringay shook him off.

'What ... what d'you mean?' he said thickly. 'I'm all right, curse you! If any man says I'm drunk ...'—he raised his voice and looked round the knot of men streaming up the steps—'damme, I'll call him out!'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' said an agonised voice from the hall, 'I pray you make less noise. You'll bring the watch on us else!'

'Let him be, Monty!' called another voice.

'He'sh ... hic ... not drunk!' boomed a third. 'Come ... come up and show 'em how to throw a main, Hector!'

A vague and swaying form, silhouetted against the light within, waved from a window.

Friendly arms encircled him and he was drawn into the house.

The draught of soda-water and the drive through the night air had cleared his brain, at least, though his head throbbed and he seemed to have strangely little control over his legs. But Hector Fotheringay had an iron constitution that reacted well against the effects of strong liquor, even when, as on this evening, he had drunk what would have sufficed to put most men in his set under the table. As they trooped through the hall in a body, there flashed back upon his bemused brain, bright as lightning in a clouded sky, the clear recollection of Betty's words to him that afternoon. It was like a stab in the heart, and he knew that, even drunk, he could not find oblivion.

The long, oval gaming-table covered with green baize was set at the far end of the long low room, which was lit by clusters of candles in sconces fastened to the wainscot. The crowd about the tables was silent and preoccupied, and the only sounds were the rattle of the bones and the cry of the throws. Little groups of men stood chatting while waiters circulated with trays of iced punch. All round the walls were settees upholstered in faded red plush.

Hector's party, men and women in a joyous, convivial troop, instantly melted into the company about the table. But for the moment, Hector had no wish to gamble. His numbed brain was fumbling with the memory of Betty and her stinging taunt. Mechanically he took a glass of punch from a waiter and stood a little on one side, morose and gloomy, despair and mortification cankering his heart.

And then, to his unbounded surprise, he heard Betty's name mentioned. It resounded clearly from a knot of men gathered about one of the couches against the wall.

Fotheringay did not catch the words. But the loud guffaw they evoked left him in little doubt as to their purport.

'The fortress is yet inviolate, I swear,' said another voice, drawling and slightly guttural—not the one that had spoken first—'but I doubt whether it will withstand a long siege, eh, Doyle?'

This time he had a brief view of the speaker, a stoutish man who sat on the couch, the only one of the group thus placed. Fotheringay caught a glimpse of him as one of the men in the circle half-turned to give his glass to a passing waiter. Something seemed to snap in the young man's brain. All the pent-up irritation of the day burst its dam and, leaping forth, overwhelmed him. Scarcely conscious of what he did, his glass still in his hand, he strode furiously up to the group, blindly pushing aside two men that stood in his way. He was mad with red, unreasoning rage. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He was only vaguely conscious of a sea of swimming faces that stared whitely at him out of the void as he thrust his way up to the couch.

'You speak of my cousin, sir,' he said, addressing the man on the sofa. 'Let this teach you to mend your manners!'

And he flung the contents of his glass in the other's face.

There was a moment's frightful hush. Stunned by the death-like silence, the glass in his hand dripping on to the carpet, Fotheringay stared stupidly round the circle. The mist began to clear.... Rather to his surprise he recognized in the group Mr. Gray, his acquaintance of the Saint James's Coffee-House, his gimlet eyes fixed upon him. On the sofa a plump, elegantly dressed man was wiping his face with a lace handkerchief. A star glittered on the breast of his exquisitely fitting blue kersey coat. When he saw his face, Fotheringay, drunk as he was, knew what he had done. Even as he reeled back aghast, from the back of the room a drunken voice said clearly:

'Gad! He's soused the Prince!'