As soon as he paused, eagerly scanning her face to see what effect his eloquence had had on her, she rose, and said, as she picked up her basket: “Well, now, Oswald, if you have finished talking nonsense, you may listen to what I have to say, and after that you may go home! You have been quite amazingly impertinent, but I don’t mean to scold you for that, because I can see that you’ve hoaxed yourself into thinking I was as good as promised to you before Damerel came to the Priory. How you can be so conceited as to suppose I should have a tendre for a boy not very much older than Aubrey I can’t think! I wish you will try to cure yourself of make-believe, and learn to be a little more sensible! It seems to me that you imagine so much that it gets to be quite real to you, which leads you, you know, to say the most absurd things! Only consider, for instance, what would happen if I were as silly as you, and agreed to marry you! Do you soberly suppose that Sir John and Lady Denny would have nothing to say to such a ridiculous match?”
“Nothing they could say would turn me from my purpose!” he averred.
“Oh, wouldn’t it?” she retorted. “We should just fly to the Border, I collect, since you’re not of age, and be married over the anvil! I should cut a pretty figure! What next should we do? Set forth on this wonderful journey of yours?— which sounds to me excessively uncomfortable, and, indeed, would be more than uncomfortable, because we should soon find ourselves without a feather to fly with. Or have you bamboozled yourself into believing that Sir John will be so obliging as to put you in command of a handsome independence?” She paused, and could not help smiling at the sudden change in his expression. A baffled and angry scowl, which made him look like a thwarted schoolboy, was now being bent upon her, and seemed to indicate that he was already more than half out of love. She moved forward, saying: “You see how foolish it is, don’t you? Don’t let us say any more about it! When you are as old as I am I expect you will be very much in love, not play-acting, with a girl who is at this present sewing samplers in the schoolroom, and if you remember me at all, which you very likely won’t, you’ll wonder how you came to make such a cake of yourself! Go home now—and no more dangling after me, if you please!”
By this time Oswald was hating her quite as much as he had adored her, but not being prone in his most equable moods to consider what was the true state of his feelings he was quite incapable of performing this feat when a prey to emotion. In the jumble of hurt, and fury, and chagrin into which Venetia’s cool mockery had plunged him he saw only one thing clearly, and that was that she looked on him as a schoolboy. He said in a voice that shook with anger: “You think I’m too young to love, do you? Well, you’re wrong!”
With these bitter words, and before she had had time to realize his intention, he seized her, and managed, though not very expertly, to get his arms round her.
Venetia, more concerned for the unhappy kittens, which were very nearly tilted out of the basket by this sudden onslaught, than for herself, cried sharply: “Take care! You idiotish boy, let me go at once!”
But Oswald, who had never before held a girl in his arms, was in the grip of a novel and exciting sensation, and he hugged her rather more tightly, and kissed first her ear, then her eyebrow, and then her cheekbone in several dogged attempts to reach her lips. Between these assaults he said in a breathless, exultant voice: “A child, am I? I’ll show you!”
“Oswald, stop! How dare you—oh, thank goodness!”
If Oswald wondered what had drawn this unexpected exclamation from her, or why she suddenly ceased struggling, he was not left for more than a very few seconds in doubt. A hand was thrust roughly into his neckband, and closed like a vice, nearly choking him, and its fellow grasped the seat of his riding-breeches; he was plucked bodily away from Venetia, jerked round, propelled irresistibly to the doorway, and sent sprawling through it.
IX
Having disposed in this rough and ready fashion of Oswald, Damerel turned to direct a quizzical look at Venetia. “What the deuce have you been doing to cast the boy into this frenzy?” he enquired.
“You may well wonder!” she replied, very much incensed, and considerably dishevelled. “Trying to cure him of his silly fancy for me!”
“Oh, that was it, was it?” he said, amused. He glanced towards Oswald, who was picking himself up. “Well, you had best remain discreetly out of sight now, fair disaster, because if I know anything of the matter your hot-headed swain is about to make a spirited attempt to send me to grass.”
“Oh, no, he is not!” declared Venetia, a martial light in her eye. “You may leave this to me, Damerel! In fact, I order you to do so!”
She swept past him, just as Oswald, having managed to overcome the effects of semi-strangulation, started towards Damerel with his fists clenched. Finding Venetia in his path, he was obliged to check himself, and before he could thrust her aside, which, in his blind rage, he had every intention of doing, she had spoken words that fell on him like a cold douche. “Are you now proposing to begin a vulgar brawl for my entertainment? I give you fair warning, Oswald, that if I have to endure any more of your unmannerly behaviour I shall tell your papa just what has occurred, and with what a total lack of good breeding or propriety you have conducted yourself! I am excessively reluctant to inflict such a mortification upon him, or to distress your mama, so if you wish to make me amends for your rudeness don’t make it necessary for me to do so!”
Scarlet-faced, he stammered: “I’m sorry—it wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”
“Very well, you need say no more,” she interrupted. “I shall not speak of it to anyone, and nor, you may be sure, will Lord Damerel. You had best go home now.”
To his credit, he managed, though the effort nearly choked him, to swallow the various scathing retorts which rose to his tongue, and even to achieve a stiff bow. “Pray—pray accept my humble apologies, and believe that I shall not again trouble you, ma’am!” he said. He then turned his smouldering gaze on to Damerel, and suffered a slight lapse from his stateliness. “And as for you,” he said fiercely, “I’ll—” He gave a gasp, and ended on a note of paralysing formality: “Your lordship shall hear from mo!”
He then executed another bow, and strode away.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” remarked Damerel. “My withers are slightly wrung, you know.”
“Yes, so too are mine,” Venetia agreed, a worried frown between her brows. “I can’t but feel that I am to blame for not having given him a heavy set-down as soon as he began to dangle after me. If I had had the least notion that he was suffering from anything more than a fit of calf-love which would very soon wear itself out I would have done so, of course.”
“He wasn’t. Unless I am much mistaken, it’s I who am responsible for today’s outburst, not you. The silly young nod-cock has been wanting to murder me from the moment he first clapped eyes on me.”
She turned her eyes towards him. “Yes, he has. Oh dear, I do trust he won’t do anything foolish!”
He smiled. “That’s past praying for, but it isn’t his own life he is planning to end! Don’t look so concerned! From what I have seen of him I’d wager a handsome sum on the certainty that before he reaches Ebbersley the worst of his present pangs will be over, and he will be deriving great satisfaction from a vision of my lifeless corpse stretched on the ground—at a distance of twenty yards. Or even of his own. Lord, yes, of course his own! That would ensure a lifetime of remorse for you, my cruel fair, and for me the execration of all. I should be obliged to fly the country, and serve me right! Even my seconds would shun me, for if I didn’t fire before the drop of the handkerchief, or something equally dastardly, you may depend upon it that I should in some way or other cut a very contemptible figure, while he won their pity and admiration by his unshakeable calm and noble bearing.”