From then on the scene rose to nightmarish proportions, so many people claiming damages, or threatening lawsuits, that poor Jessamy’s brain reeled. When his name and direction were demanded he had a horrid vision of a stream of injured persons descending upon Frederica, bent on extorting huge sums from her, and, of instinct, he blurted out: “Berkeley Square! My — my guardian’s house — the M-Marquis of Alverstoke!”
He had no thought in his head but to protect Frederica, but it was swiftly borne in upon him that he had uttered magical words. His assurances of redress (hitherto spurned) were accepted; the irate gentleman, saying that he hoped his guardian would make him smart, resumed his progress up the street; and the dowager, recovering from the vapours, read him a severe lecture, and said she would not fail to report what she called his naughtiness to the Marquis.
Thus it came about that for the second time a Merriville arrived in Berkeley Square at an unseasonable hour, demanding instant speech with the Marquis. Unlike Frederica, however, Jessamy did not reject Charles Trevor’s services; and he was impetuously, and rather incomprehensibly, pouring his story into Charles’s ears when Alverstoke, wearing a long and lavishly caped driving-coat of white drab over his elegant morning-dress, strolled into the room, saying: “Now what? Wicken informs me — ” He broke off, and raised his quizzing-glass to his eye, the better to observe Jessamy’s battered appearance. He let it fall, and advanced. “Repellent boy, have you been in a mill? Why the devil haven’t you patched him up, Charles?”
“I haven’t yet been allowed to, sir,” responded Mr Trevor.
“No, no, it’s of no consequence!” Jessamy said impatiently, wiping away a trickle of blood from a cut on his forehead. “I’m not hurt! Nothing to signify! I only want — I mean I didn’t come here because of that, but because — Oh, pray don’t trouble yourself about it, sir!”
“Stand still!” commanded Alverstoke, taking that dogged chin in his hand, and turning Jessamy’s face to the light.
“It wasn’t a mill! I feel — and it serves me right!” Jessamy said bitterly, and with suppressed violence.
“No doubt, but it doesn’t serve me right to have you bleeding all over my house. Charles, I wish you will be good enough to — No, I’ll attend to it myself. Come along, you young cawker! You can tell me all about it while I put some sticking-plaster over this cut.”
Willy-nilly, Jessamy followed him out of the room, and up the broad stairs, protesting all the way that his wounds and abrasions were of no consequence, and that he had come to his lordship’s house merely to make a clean breast of his iniquity; to warn him that a number of persons of varying degree were probably following hard upon his heels, to demand compensation for the damage they had incurred at his hands; and to beg him to disburse whatever sums were required, under promise of repayment by the culprit.
Presently, having washed the dirt and the bloodstains from his face and hands, relinquished his muddy coat into Knapp’s hands, submitted to having the more accessible of his many bruises anointed, and his brow adorned with a strip of plaster, and swallowed a judicious mixture of brandy and water, his jangled nerves grew quieter, and he was able to give the Marquis a fairly coherent account of his accident, speaking in a voice of rigid control, and betraying only by the clenching and unclenching of his thin hands the inward turmoil under which his spirit laboured. He ended on a harsh note, meeting Alverstoke’s cool, faintly amused eyes with a fierce look in his own. “I had no right to furnish them with your name, sir, or to lead them to suppose that I live here. I know it, and I beg your pardon! I–I want to explain! I only did it because I couldn’t bear to have them coming down upon Frederica! I don’t know what I may have to pay: a great deal, I daresay, because the machine was smashed as well as that chair, and — But whatever it is I will pay, and not my sister! With all the expense of Charis’s come-out — and I was determined not to add to it!”
He ended on a note of anguish, but the Marquis applied an effective damper by saying in a prosaic and slightly bored voice: “Very proper. What is it you wish me to do for you?”
Pulled up short on the verge of an emotional outburst, Jessamy flushed, biting his lip, and managed to reply with tolerable self-command: “To lend me whatever sum may be needed — if you would be so very obliging, sir! On the understanding that I pay it back to you out of my allowance. You see, I haven’t very much left just — just at the moment. There were the lessons I had, and the hire of the machine, so — ”
“Don’t let it worry you!” advised his lordship. “I shan’t dun you!”
Jessamy’s flush deepened. “I know that! Pray don’t say I needn’t pay you back at all, or tell me not to worry! Nothing would prevail upon me not to pay you back, and I ought to worry! At the first test I yielded to temptation! Vainglory! Yes, and worse! I wanted to outshine Felix! Could anything be more contemptible, or show how — how unfitted I am even to think of entering into Holy Orders?”
“Yes, quite a number of things,” replied Alverstoke. “Stop magnifying a trivial incident into a major sin! All you have done is to get into a scrape, through no particular fault of your own, and there is no need whatsoever for any soul-searching. I am glad to know you can fall into scrapes: you’ll be a better parson if you have understanding of human frailty than if you were to be a saint at sixteen years of age!”
Jessamy looked to be rather struck by this, but after frowning over it for a moment, he said: “Yes, but — but when one has made a resolution — not to have the strength to resist temptation shows such weakness of character — doesn’t it, sir?”
“If your resolution was to behave like an ascetic, it shows that you stand in grave danger of becoming a prig!” said his lordship brutally. “Well, you’ve applied to me for assistance, in which you’ve at least shown that you don’t lose your wits in an emergency! I’ll settle the reckoning and you can repay me when you can do so without leaving yourself at a standstill. As for all the threats that were hurled at you, forget them! If any coachman, chair-mender, or any other such person, had the temerity to come here, demanding your blood, you may depend upon it that Mr Trevor would be fully capable of dealing with such impudence! But they won’t come.”
“No,” Jessamy said, his brow darkening. “I didn’t give your name for that reason — it didn’t even occur to me! — but as soon as I said you were my guardian — ” He stopped, brooding over it, and then said, raising his austere eyes to Alverstoke’s face: “That’s as contemptible as the rest!”
“Possibly, but you’ll own it’s convenient! Spare me any moralizing on the hollowness of worldly rank, and pay attention to what I am going to say to you!”
“Yes, sir,” said Jessamy, bracing himself.
“You’ve claimed my protection as your guardian, and you must now submit to your guardian’s judgment. Which is that you will henceforth moderate your studies — believe me, they are excessive! — and devote some part of every day to your physical needs. What you want, Jessamy, is not a Pedestrian Curricle, but a horse!”
Light sprang to Jessamy’s sombre eyes; he exclaimed involuntarily: “Oh, if only —!” He stopped short, and shook his head. “I can’t. Not in London! The expense — ”