“If he does,” said the Viscount, his chin jutting dangerously, “he’ll go out through that window, uncle or no uncle!”
“Oh!” moaned his afflicted parent, sinking back on her couch and putting a hand to her brow. “What, what, I ask of you, brother, have I done to deserve this?”
“Hush, my dear Valeria! Calm yourself, I beg!” said Mr Paulett, clasping her other hand.
“No wonder poor Isabella rejected his suit! I cannot find it in me to blame her!”
“Alas, one cannot but feel for the sake of the estate it may be for the best!” said Mr Paulett, strategically retaining his clasp on that frail but protective hand. “Loth as I am to say it, I cannot consider poor Sherry fit to assume the control of his fortune. Well for him that it is held in trust for him!”
“Oh, is it well for me?” interjected poor Sherry wrathfully. “Much you know about it! And why my father ever took it into his head to make you a trustee beats me! I don’t mind Uncle Prosper — at least, I dare say I could handle him, if it weren’t for you, for ever putting a spoke in my wheel! And don’t stand there bamming me that you’re mighty sorry Bella wouldn’t have me, because I know you’re not! Once I get the confounded Trust wound up, out you’ll go, and well you know it! If my mother chooses to let you batten upon her, she may do it, but you won’t batten on me any longer, by Jupiter you won’t!”
“Ah!” said Mr Paulett, smiling in a maddening way. “But there are two years to run before the Trust comes to an end, my dear boy, and we must hope that by that time you will have seen the error of your ways.”
“Unless I get married!” the Viscount reminded him, his eyes very bright and sparkling.
“Certainly! But you are not, after all, going to get married, dear boy,” his uncle pointed out.
“Oh, aren’t I?” retorted his lordship, striding towards the door.
“Anthony!” shrieked Lady Sheringham. “What in heaven’s name are you going to do?” She released her brother’s hand, and sat up. “Where are you going? Answer me, I command you!”
“I’m going back to London!” answered the Viscount. “And I’m going to marry the first woman I see!”
Chapter Two
AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, THE VISCOUNT’S Parthian shot immediately prostrated his parent. She evinced every sign of falling into a fit of the vapours, and was only revived by the reflection that the Viscount was no longer present to be chastened by the sight of his mother suffering from strong hysterics. A little hartshorn-and-water, tenderly administered by Mr Paulett, a few lavender drops sprinkled upon a handkerchief, and some gentle hand-slapping presently made it possible for the afflicted lady to open her eyes, and to straighten her turban. She at once confided to Mr Paulett her conviction that Anthony would bring home some dreadful, vulgar creature from the opera-ballet on his arm, if only to spite her, and expressed a fervent longing for the quiet of the family tomb.
Mr Paulett did not feel that there was much danger of his nephew’s marrying anyone in the immediate future. He said that he would find Anthony, and represent to him that his unfilial behaviour was leading his mother’s tottering steps to the very brink of the grave, but by the time he had restored the lady to such health as remained to her, and had pointed out to her that a young gentleman desperately enamoured of a Beauty was not very likely to fall into matrimony with some other female, the Viscount was already upon the road to London.
He was driving his curricle. A pair of spirited bays were harnessed to it; a sharp-faced Tiger was perched up behind him; his portmanteau was strapped in its place; and the Viscount, with all the air of one shaking the dust of a loathed spot from his shoes, drove along at a spanking pace, and with very little regard for whatever other vehicles he might chance to meet on the road.
The Viscount had had many grooms, and several Tigers, but it required an iron nerve to drive out with him in one of his wild fits, and since these attacked him with alarming frequency, and very few grooms possessed the requisite amount of disregard for their lives and limbs, none of them had remained long in his service. By the greatest piece of good fortune he had chanced upon the individual at present hanging on to the curricle behind him. The acquaintanceship had begun with the picking of the Viscount’s pocket, as he emerged from a jeweller’s shop on Ludgate Hill. Jason, who had started life in a Foundling Hospital, passed by way of the streets of London to a racing stable, and thence, through a series of disreputable circumstances, back to the streets of London, was an inexpert thief, but an inspired handler of horses. At the very moment when the Viscount, grappling his captive by the collar, was preparing to drag him off to the nearest Roundhouse, the prime bit of blood between the shafts of his lordship’s phaeton took exception to a wagon which was advancing up the street, and reared suddenly, knocking the groom, who should have been holding his head but was gaping at the Viscount instead, off his feet. A commotion was at once set up during which Jason wriggled out of the Viscount’s slackened hold, and, instead of taking to his heels, leaped for the chestnut’s head. In a very few moments order had been restored, the chestnut apparently recognizing a master-mind in the dirty and ragged creature who had prevented him from bolting, and was now addressing uncouth blandishments to him. Since he was, with good reason, quite the most unpopular horse in the Viscount’s stables, even having the reputation of being willing to savage anyone for the very moderate sum of a , or half-penny, the circumstance of his dropping his head into the unsavoury bosom before him most forcibly struck his owner. The Viscount at once forgot the contretemps which had brought this wizard to his notice, and there and then engaged him to be his new Tiger. Jason — he had no other name, and no one, least of all himself, knew how he came by that one — never having encountered even such careless good nature as the Viscount’s in the unnumbered years of his life, emerged from the trance into which his unexpected luck had pitchforked him to find himself in the employment of a nobleman considered by his relations to be volatile past reclaim, but in whom he recognized, in that moment of blinding enlightenment, a god come down to earth.
The Viscount, who had never made the least attempt to reform himself, did much to reform his new Tiger, not, indeed, from any particular zeal, but because he felt the force of his friends’ representations that continued intimacy with a man whose Tiger could be counted on to relieve one of one’s purse, fobs, and seal, had certain grave drawbacks. The Viscount promised to mend matters, which he did by thrashing his Tiger soundly, and laying orders on him never to rob any of his master’s friends again. Jason, who cared less for the thrashing than for the frown upon his deity’s face, promised to tread a path of rectitude, and made such efforts to keep to this that in a very short time nothing more than a warning word to him, or, at the worst, a command to restore whatever he might have filched from some chance-met acquaintance, was necessary to preserve the utmost harmony between the Viscount and his cronies.
For the rest, although he might lack polish, he proved to be the most devoted servant the Viscount had ever hired. No slave could have been less critical of his owner’s vagaries, or more tireless in his attentions. He had been overturned in his lordship’s curricle five times; had had his leg fractured by a kick from a half-broken horse; had accompanied the Viscount on some of his more hazardous expeditions; and was generally supposed to be willing to engage on his behalf on any enterprise, inclusive of murder.
As he hung on to the straps of the curricle behind the Viscount, he observed dispassionately that he knew all along that they wouldn’t stay above two days in that ken. Receiving no answer to this remark, he relapsed into silence breaking it only at the end of a mile to recommend his master to pull in for the corner, unless he was wishful to throw them both out on to their bowsprits. His tone indicated that if the Viscount had any such wish he was prepared cheerfully to endure this fate.