“Not to venture to cross quagmires without making sure you don’t go in over shoes, over boots, at all events!” she said, laughing at him.
“Or at least without making sure that Hetta is there to pull me out!” he amended. He took her hand, and kissed it. “Thank you, my best of friends. I am eternally obliged to you!”
“Oh, fiddle! If you are to drive back to London this evening you had better take leave of your damsel now, because I mean to put her to bed immediately: she’s so tired she can scarcely keep her eyes open! I’ve instructed Grimshaw to set out a supper for you, and you’ll find Simon waiting to bear you company.”
“Bless you!” he said, and turned from her to bid his protégée farewell.
She got up quickly when she saw him coming towards the sofa, and he saw that she was indeed looking very tired. It was with an effort that she smiled at him, and tried to thank him for his kindness. He cut her short, patted her hand, and adjured her, in avuncular style, to be a good girl. He then promised Lady Silverdale that he would come to take his leave of her as soon as he had eaten his supper, and went off to the dining-room.
Here he found his brother seated sideways at the table, with one elbow resting on it, his long legs, in their preposterous Petersham trousers, stretched out before him, and the brandy decanter beside him. Grimshaw, wearing the expression of one whose finer feelings were grossly offended, bowed the Viscount to his chair and regretted that the dishes laid out before him were of a meagre nature, the lobster and the chickens having been consumed at dinner. Also, he added, in an expressionless voice, the almond cheesecakes, which Mr Simon had been pleased to esteem.
“What he means is that I finished the dish,” said Simon. “Devilish good they were too! I wish you will take that Friday-face away, Grimshaw! You’ve been wearing it the whole evening, and it’s giving me a fit of the dismals!”
“I daresay your new rig don’t take his fancy,” said the Viscount, helping himself to some pickled salmon. “And who shall blame him? It makes you look like a coxscomb. Wouldn’t you agree with me, Grimshaw?”
“I should prefer to say, my lord, that it is not a mode which commends itself to me. Nor, if I may be pardoned for putting forward my opinion, one befitting a young gentleman of rank.”
“Well, you’re out there!” retorted Simon. “It’s the very latest style, and it was Petersham who started it!”
“My Lord Petersham, sir,” said Grimshaw, unmoved, , “is well known to be an Eccentric Gentleman, and frequently appears in a style that one can only call rather of the ratherest.”
“And besides which,” said Desford, as Grimshaw withdrew from the room, “Petersham is a good fifteen years older than you are, and he don’t look like a macaroni-merchant whatever he wears.”
“Take care, brother!” Simon warned him. “A little more to that tune and you will find yourself done to a cow’s thumb!”
Desford laughed, and surveyed the various dishes before him through his glass. “Shall I? No, really, Simon, those trousers are the outside of enough! However, I didn’t come to discuss your clothes: I’ve something more important to say to you.”
“Well, now you put me in mind of it I’ve something important to say too! It’s a lucky chance I dined here tonight. Lend me a monkey, Des, will you?”
“No,” responded Desford bluntly. “Or a groat, if it comes to that.”
“Quite right!” said Simon approvingly. “One should never encourage young men to break shins! Just make me a present of it, and not a word about this bud of promise you’re jauntering about with shall pass my lips!”
“What a stretch-halter you are!” remarked Desford, embarking on a raised pie. “Why do you want a monkey? Considering it isn’t a month since the last quarter-day it ought to be high tide with you.”
“Unfortunately,” said Simon, “the last quarter’s allowance was, so to say, bespoke!”
“And my father called me a scattergood!”
“That’s nothing to what he’ll call you, my boy, if he gets wind of your little charmer!”
Desford paid no heed to this sally, but directed a searching look at his brother, and asked: “I collect you’ve been having some deep doings: not let yourself be hooked into any of the Greeking establishments, have you?”
Simon smiled ruefully. “Only once, Des. I may be said to have bought my experience dearly.”
“Physicked you, did they? Well, it happens to us all. Is that what brought you home? Wouldn’t my father frank you?”
“To own the truth, dear boy, I haven’t dared to broach the matter, though that is what brought me home. It hasn’t yet seemed to me the moment to raise ticklish subjects. His mood is far from benign!”
“No wonder, if he saw you in that rig! What a fool you are, Simon! You might have known it would set him all on end!”
“No, no, how can you suppose me to be so wanting in tact? I clothed myself with the utmost propriety of taste. I even sought to gratify him by wearing knee-breeches for dinner, but knee-breeches have no chance of success against gout. I may add that having been obliged to listen to him cutting at me, you, and even Horace for over an hour this afternoon I seized the opportunity to escape, and very handsomely offered to bear Mama’s letter to Lady Silverdale in place of the groom she had meant to send with it. She felt it behoved her to write to enquire after Charlie. Did Hetta tell you that the silly cawker has knocked himself up?”
Desford nodded. “Oh, yes! How bad is he?”
“Well, he looks as sick as a horse, but they seem to think he’s going on pretty prosperously. Now, about that monkey, Des!”
“I’ll give you a cheque on Drummond’s—on one condition!”
Simon laughed. “I won’t breathe a word, Des!”
“Oh, I know that, codling! My condition is that you throw those clothes away!”
“It will be a sacrifice,” said Simon mournfully, “but I’ll do it. What’s more, if there’s any little thing you think I might be able to do for you in your present very odd situation I’ll do that too.”
“Much obliged to you!” said Desford, rather amused, but touched as well. “There isn’t anything—unless you chance to know where old Nettlecombe has loped off to?”
“Nettlecombe? What the devil do you want with that old screw?” demanded Simon, in considerable astonishment.
“My bud of promise, as you call her, is his granddaughter, and I’ve charged myself with the task of delivering her into his care. Only when we reached London we found he had gone out of town, and shut up his house. That’s why I brought her here.”
“Good God, is she a Steane?”
“Yes: Wilfred Steane’s only child.”
“And who the deuce may he be?”
“Oh, the black sheep of the family! Before your time! Before mine too, if it comes to that, but I remember all the talk that went on about him, and in particular the things Papa said of him, and every other Steane he had ever heard of! Which is why I don’t want him to get wind of Cherry!”
“Is that the girl’s name?” asked Simon. “Queer sort of a name to give a girl!”
“No, her name is Charity, but she prefers to be called Cherry. I met her when I was staying at Hazelfield. I don’t propose to take you into the circumstances which led me to bring her to London in search of her grandfather, but you may believe I was pretty well forced to do so. She was living with her maternal aunt, and being so shabbily treated that she ran away. I met her trying to walk to London, and since nothing would prevail upon her to let me take her back to her aunt what else could I do but take her up?”
“A regular Galahad, ain’t you?” grinned Simon.
“No, I am not! If I’d dreamed I should be dipped in the wing over the business I wouldn’t have done it!”
“You would,” said Simon. “Think I don’t know you? What, by the way, did the black sheep do to cause a scandal?”