Chapter Eight
HERO WOULD HAVE BEEN ASTONISHED, AND, INDEED, indignant, had she been aware that she was the object of Lady Jersey’s sympathy. For she had never been so happy in her life. Sherry had been quite right in thinking that his hunting-box at Melton Mowbray would be just the thing for her. She was delighted with it; and the happy-go-lucky way of life pursued by Sherry when sojourning there could not but appeal to a young lady who had been irked all her own short life by shibboleths and restrictions.
The hunting-box, which was not large, was kept by a married couple who, from having had things very much their own way under their casual master, at first looked upon Hero with suspicious hostility. But as she showed no disposition to interfere in the management of the house, and never dreamed of levelling criticisms where they would certainly be resented, it was not long before Goring and his wife accepted her in much the same spirit as they accepted Mr Ringwood, or any other of the Viscount’s cronies.
It might have been supposed that a very few days spent at Melton Mowbray at the fag-end of the summer would have sufficed to have sent his lordship hotfoot back to town, but thanks to the amusement afforded him by teaching his wife to ride her mare creditably; taking her to Six Hills, and showing her the pick of the best coverts; initiating her into the mysteries of hazard, faro, deep basset, and several other games of chance; playing picquet with Mr Ringwood; trying out his young stock; and attending a cockfight held in the district, he contrived to while away the time very tolerably. Before these simple pursuits had palled upon him, a diversion was created by the arrival in the district of Lord Wrotham, who had come down on a visit to his encumbered estates. Since these were situated only a few miles from Melton, he naturally spent a good deal of his time with his friends, and was delighted to discover in Hero a sympathetic listener. It was not long before he had confided to her his hopeless passion for the Incomparable Isabella, and although an unthinking reference to the complaint which had necessitated the Beauty’s withdrawal from the Polite World seriously endangered, for a few moments, this promising new friendship, the rift was speedily healed by Hero’s assurance that the rash had by no means disfigured Isabella. George rode with Hero to Wartnaby Stone-pits, and, being a very keen rider to hounds, was able to forget his troubles in describing some classic runs to Hero, passing strictures on Assheton Smith, who hunted his own hounds, and often drew his coverts so quickly that he drew over his fox, besides failing sometimes to lift his hounds, which, if you wanted runs in Leicestershire, said George, you must do. Hero, fired with the spirit of emulation after listening to George’s heroic tales, attempted to jump what George called a regular stitcher, and came to grief. Fortunately she was only bruised by her tumble, but the mare strained a tendon, and Sherry, who had been a helpless spectator of the enterprise, no sooner ascertained that his bride was unhurt than he soundly boxed her ears, and swore he would never bring her out with him again. His two friends, though deprecating this violence, endorsed his strictures, having by this time fallen very much into the way of treating Hero as though she had been one of their own young sisters.
When Mr Fakenham joined the party, his presence was felt to be an advantage, as he was able to make a fourth at whist. Some convivial evenings were spent at the hunting-box, under the auspices of a hostess who, however little she might know of the uses of Polite Society, was learning to admiration how to become excessively popular with a party of young bloods. Formality very soon went by the board; she became Kitten to them all; and so accustomed did they grow to her presence at their sessions that they often forgot that she was in the room at all. But they usually remembered her before the party became too convivial for propriety, and then the Viscount would send her up to bed, informing her frankly that they were getting a trifle boosey. Upon one occasion, when he omitted to perform this ritual, she horrified Mr Ringwood by casting a knowledgeable eye over Mr Fakenham, and saying innocently: “Must I go now? I think Ferdy is quite disguised, don’t you?”
The Viscount shouted with laughter, but Mr Ringwood not only begged his hostess never to use such vulgar language, but later made representations to Sherry that they really must all of them be careful what they said in front of her.
A letter from Isabella, written from London, and conveying her felicitations to her dearest Hero, had the effect of breaking up the party. George was no sooner apprised of the Beauty’s return to the haunts of men than he left the greater part of the business which had brought him into the country undone, and posted back to town with the fiercely expressed intention of thrusting a spoke in his Grace of Severn’s wheel. Ferdy and Mr Ringwood took their departure a few days later, and the hunting-box felt sadly empty. The young couple received a morning call from kind Lord and Lady Sefton, during the course of which her ladyship promised Hero the entré to Almack’s when she should take up her residence in London. Sherry informed his wife that this connaissance was the greatest piece of good luck that could have befallen her, since (although he himself might find such company a trifle flat) there was no doubt that the approval of Lady Sefton would be of the greatest value to a lady making her debut in fashionable circles.
“Ten to one,” said Sherry carelessly, “she will have them all leaving their cards in Half Moon Street — Lady Jersey, Lady Cowper, Countess Lieven, Princess Esterhazy, and all their set, you know — and then you will be fixed all right and tight.”
By the time Mr Stoke wrote to apprise him that his new house stood ready to receive him, Sherry had had enough of the country, and not even the annoying intelligence, conveyed to him in a brief scrawl from his uncle Prosper, that his mother was still to be found in Grosvenor Square, availed to keep him longer away from the metropolis. He was under the obligation, too, of returning his watch to the Honourable Ferdy, this young gentleman having written to him from London that since this handsome timepiece was missing from his effects he would be glad if his cousin would recover it from his damned Tiger. Why Ferdy’s watch should exercise such a fascination over Jason no one knew. The Viscount was extremely incensed over his backsliding, and was not in the least mollified by Jason’s tearful explanation that to have the watch within his reach for days together was more than flesh and blood could stand. Matters would have gone ill indeed for Jason had not Hero intervened on his behalf. She had the happy thought of promising to bestow a timepiece upon him as a Christmas gift if he would but refrain, in the interim, from stealing Ferdy’s.
“Or anything else!” said Sherry sternly.
Jason sniffed, wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and promised to behave impeccably. He further pronounced his guv’nor’s lady to be bang-up, which piece of elegant language Sherry assured her, masked a compliment of no mean order.
When the Sheringhams were set down at dusk one evening in Half Moon Street, they found that Mr Stoke had done his work well. Nothing could have been more charming or more tasteful than the disposition of the furniture in the little house. Hero was enchanted and ran from room to room, exclaiming how well the writing table looked, how pretty was the wallpaper in the drawing-room, how glad she was she had chosen the blue brocade instead of the green, and did not Sherry think that Ferdy had selected precisely the right furniture for his library? Both Ferdy and Mr Ringwood had called in Half Moon Street earlier in the day, Ferdy to leave a bouquet of flowers with the butler, and Mr Ringwood a canary in a gilded cage. Hero was so touched by this piece of thoughtfulness that she sat down at the tambour-top writing table before she had even removed her hat, and dashed off her first note, on the very elegant, gilt-edged paper provided by the competent Mr Stoke, and had it carried round immediately to Stratton Street by the pageboy.