“If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!” said his host, recovering his composure.
Ferdy shook his head. “Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.”
“Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!”
“I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.”
“Old Horley?” Mr Westgate said. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?”
“No, no!” replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. “Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.”
“I know what he means!” said Marmaduke. “What’s more, it proves he’s castaway, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?”
“Nemesis!” repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. “That’s it! Dash it, it all goes to show, don’t it? Never thought the stuff they used to teach us at school would come in useful, but if I hadn’t had to learn a lot of Greek and Latin I shouldn’t have known about that thingummy. Forgotten its name again, but it don’t signify now.”
He seemed inclined to brood over the advantages of a classical education, but his brother brought him back to the point. “What the deuce has Nemesis to do with Sherry’s going to Bath?” he demanded.
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Ferdy. “Think I’ll go and see Gil.”
“Dash it, Ferdy, you can’t go off like that!” expostulated Mr Westgate.
“Yes, I can,” replied Ferdy. “Got a fancy to see Gil. Very knowing fellow. Come back again later.”
“You know what, Duke?” said Mr Westgate, watching Ferdy wend his way to the door. “I’ve never seen poor Ferdy so bosky in all my life! He’ll be taken up by the Watch, that’s what’ll happen to him!”
This ignominious fate did not, however, overtake Ferdy. He reached Stratton Street unmolested, to be met by the same intelligence which had greeted Lord Wrotham earlier in the day. He was even more dashed than his lordship had been, but he reached the same decision. For the second time that day Mr Ford ushered one of Mr Ringwood’s cronies into his parlour for the purpose of writing a note to him.
It cost Ferdy time and profound thought to achieve a letter that should explain the whole situation to Mr Ringwood; but when he presently read the elegantly phrased document over to himself he was not ill-pleased with it. To his mind it contrived both to impress Mr Ringwood with a sense of the urgency of the situation and to reassure him on the question of the writer’s selfless loyalty to the cause at stake. It stated clearly that Ferdy would accompany his cousin to Bath, but it became a trifle involved after that, a dark reference to the possible need of a second leaving Mr Ringwood to infer that Ferdy felt there was a strong likelihood of Sherry’s calling him out: a contingency which he explained as being due to the machinations of a mysterious agency whose name might be discovered on application to the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham. It struck Ferdy, when he came to this portion of the missive, that it would be highly undesirable for Mr Ringwood to make any such application, so he appended a terse postscript: Better not.
The composition of such a literary effort naturally made it necessary for the Honourable Ferdy to seek a little stimulant. Fortunately, there was some brandy in one of the decanters on the sideboard. Ferdy poured it into a rummer, drank it off, and then, for he was very meticulous in all matters of good ton, added a second postscript: Took a glass of brandy.
He departed from Mr Ringwood’s lodging, feeling that no action befitting a man of honour had been left undone; and, the brandy having made him pot-valiant, betook himself to Half Moon Street. The house was in darkness, and it was some time before he could obtain a response to his insistent knocking. It seemed to him a very peculiar circumstance that no one should answer the door in Sherry’s house, and he was just wondering whether he could have made a mistake in the number when a window was flung up on the second floor, and Sherry’s voice, rather sleepy and extremely irate, asked who the devil was there.
Ferdy gazed up at the vague outline of his cousin’s head and said: “Hallo, Sherry, dear boy! What the deuce are you doing up there?”
“Is that you, Ferdy?” demanded Sherry wrathfully. “What the deuce are you doing down there, waking me up at this hour of night?”
“What, you ain’t asleep, Sherry, surely?” said Ferdy incredulously. “Night’s young! Come to have a chat with you. Very important.”
“Oh, the devil! Dead-beat again! What a curst nuisance you are, Ferdy!” said Sherry, exasperated.
He withdrew his head from the window, and in a few minutes had opened the front door to admit his cousin. Ferdy walked in, smiling affably, but declined an offer of the spare bedchamber. “Going back to White’s when I’ve had a word with you, Sherry,” he said. “Engaged with some friends. What made you go to bed?”
“Dash it, it’s past one o’clock!” replied Sherry. “Besides, I’m going to Bath tomorrow.”
“Nothing in that,” said Ferdy. “I’m going to Bath too, but I don’t go to bed at one o’clock. Why should I?”
“You’re foxed. You ain’t going to Bath.”
“Yes, I am. Came to tell you. Taken a fancy to go with you.”
Sherry stared at him narrowly, holding up the candle he was carrying. “Why?” he asked.
“Fond of you, Sherry. Don’t know why, but there it is. Always was. If you go to Bath, I’ll go to Bath.”
“Now I know you’re foxed!” said Sherry, quite disgusted.
“No, I ain’t. Fond of Gil too. Not the kind of fellow to leave my friends in the lurch. You driving down?”
“Yes, but — ”
“Take me up in Cavendish Square. Ready for you any time.”
“I don’t mind taking you up if you really mean it,” said Sherry. “In fact, I’d as soon have company on the way as not, but it’s my belief you’ll take the best part of tomorrow to sleep this off! If you won’t go to bed, I wish you’d go home!”
“Not going home: going back to White’s,” said Ferdy. “Care to join us, dear old fellow?”
“No, I would not!” replied Sherry, opening the door for him.
“Quite right! Not dressed for it!” Ferdy agreed. “See you tomorrow!”
Contrary to Sherry’s expectations, when he drew up in Cavendish Square at noon that day he found his cousin not only perfectly wide awake, but prepared for a journey. Ferdy had had time to think of several reasons to account for his desiring to go to Bath, and although his cousin believed none of them, he was far from guessing what the true reason was. He had a suspicion that Ferdy’s activities in London might have made it expedient for him to withdraw from the metropolis for a time, but as he took only the most cursory interest in Ferdy’s affairs, he forbore to question him very strictly.
The winter being unusually mild, no particular discomfort was suffered during the journey, which, as Sherry had prophesied, took them two days to accomplish. The cavalcade, consisting as it did of one large travelling coach, two chaises, bearing servants and baggage, and one sporting curricle, was imposing enough to procure for the dowager the most flattering degree of attention at every halt made on the road. Landlords bowed till their noses almost touched their knees; waiters ran out with offers of cordials; chambermaids dropped curtsies; and ostlers fell over one another in their anxiety to be the first to serve a cortege the style of which promised unusually handsome gratuities.
They entered Bath towards evening on the second day, the dowager’s coach bowling along considerably ahead of the curricle, which had stopped for an unseasonable length of time at a certain hostelry a few miles outside the town. Lady Sheringham had hired a palatial suite of apartments on the Royal Crescent, so Sherry, sweeping into Belmont from Guinea Lane, bore sharp right into Bennet Street, which led into the Circus, past the New Assembly Rooms. It was in the middle of this crowded thoroughfare, just as the nicest precision of eye was required to negotiate the passage between a hackney carriage, drawn up on the left of the road, and a perch phaeton being driven towards him by a down-the-road looking man in a many-caped greatcoat, that Sherry caught sight of his wife, walking along with her hand on Lord Wrotham’s arm.