Sir Nugent waved him peevishly away. “Oh, very well!”
“And also,” said Edmund heroically, “it wasn’t Chien. It was me. And I’m sorry, and—and here they are!”
As he spoke he brought his hands from behind his back, and opening them disclosed two dishevelled tassels. Phoebe, unprepared for this gesture, gave a gasp of consternation; Sir Nugent, after staring for a tense moment at the tassels, said chokingly: “You—you—! By God, if I don’t—”
“Fotherby!”
Sylvester’s voice, ripping across the room, checked the infuriated dandy as he started up menacingly from his chair. Sylvester came quickly forward, and Edmund, though he had stood his ground, breathed more easily. “You dare!” Sylvester said through his teeth.
“I was only going to give him a shake,” said Sir Nugent sulkily. “Damn it, I’m his father-in-law, ain’t I ?”
Sylvester uttered a short, contemptuous laugh, and looked down at Edmund. “Give me those tassels, brat, and be off to bed!”
Edmund relinquished them, but said dolefully: “I thought you wouldn’t be angry any more if I said I was sorry!”
“I’m not angry,” Sylvester said, tickling his cheek with one careless finger. “Word of a Rayne! Goodnight, you imp! Don’t keep Miss Marlow waiting!”
“You’re not angry!” exploded Sir Nugent. “I wonder you don’t reward the young viper!”
“I may yet,” replied Sylvester coolly. “He has done what I could not: given you your own again! When you kidnapped that boy, Fotherby, you knew yourself safe from me, because I would not publish my affairs to the world! I doubt if anything I could have done would have caused you such anguish as Edmund has made you suffer! Bless him, he’s full of pluck! How his father would have laughed!”
“I have a good mind to call you out! Upon my soul I have!” Sir Nugent threatened.
“I don’t think you have!” Sylvester tossed at him. “I am accounted a fair shot, my hero!”
“I fancy,” said Sir Nugent, fulminating, “that Nugent Fotherby is as game a man as ever lived! I fancy, if you were to ask anyone, that would be the answer. The thing is her la’ship wouldn’t like it. Must cherish her! But if she thinks I’m going to take that changeling of hers along with us—!”
The very thought of Edmund seemed to choke him, for he broke off, his choler mounting again, snatched up the tassels, which Sylvester had dropped disdainfully on the table, and stormed out of the room.
Tom could not but feel that Edmund’s confession had still further complicated matters; for the Poisson Rouge now seemed hardly big enough to hold both Sylvester and Sir Nugent. But Edmund’s villainy was soon found to have exercised a good effect. Ianthe, when the story was poured into her ears, said that Edmund must be punished. Sir Nugent told her bitterly that Sylvester would not allow it. So the secret of Sylvester’s arrival was out. Ianthe fell back on her pillows with a shriek; but Sir Nugent, forgetting his marriage vows, informed her (smiting her dressing-table with his clenched fist so that all the gold-topped bottles on it jumped) that she might there and then choose between him and her hell-born brat. This show of violence quite overawed her. She was also a good deal impressed, for it was clearly a proof of masculine superiority, to which she instinctively responded. Her protests, though maintained tearfully, began to lack conviction; and when Sylvester, taking the law into his own hands, knocked on her door, and entered the room hard upon his knock, his reception was less daunting than might have been expected. He was certainly greeted with reproaches, but these were largely directed against his having encouraged Edmund to behave badly. As she blamed him for not having punished Edmund her subsequent declaration that nothing would induce her to abandon her child to his unkindness sounded lame even in her own ears. She then burst into tears, and said that no one had any consideration for her nerves.
This outbreak of lamentation brought Phoebe into the room, to beg her to restrain herself for Edmund’s sake. “I am persuaded you cannot wish to distress him!” she said. “Only think how disturbing for such a little boy to hear his mama crying!”
“You are as heartless as Sylvester!” wept Ianthe. “None of you cares for my sufferings!”
“Not I, certainly,” said Sylvester.
“Oh!” gasped Ianthe, bouncing up in her bed. Indignation brought her sobs to an abrupt end; an angry flush reddened her cheeks; and her lovely eyes darted fire at Sylvester.
“Not the snap of my fingers!” said Sylvester. “You see, I am quite honest with you, Ianthe. And before you resume this affecting display of sensibility listen to what I have to say to you! It has pleased you to remember for four years a foolish thing I once said to you. You have cast it in my teeth so often that you have come to believe I meant it. No, don’t turn away your head! Look me in the face, and answer me! Do you think that I could treat with unkindness all that I have left to me of Harry?”
She said sulkily, picking at her handkerchief: “I am sure I never thought you cared so very much for Harry! You didn’t shed a tear when he died!” She stopped, frightened by the expression on his face.
It was a moment before he spoke. Watching him, Phoebe saw that he was very pale, his satyr-look pronounced, his lips tightly compressed. When he unclosed them it was to say in a curt voice: “When Harry died—I lost a part of myself. We will not discuss that. I have only this to add: you are Edmund’s mother, and you may visit him whenever you choose to do so. I have told you so many times already, but I’ll repeat it. Come to Chance when you please—with or without your husband!”
Sir Nugent, who had been listening intently, exclaimed as the door shut behind Sylvester: “Well, upon my soul, that’s devilish handsome of him! Now, you must own, my love, it is devilish handsome! Damme if I ever thought he’d invite me to Chance! The fact is I had a notion he didn’t like me above half. I shall go, I think. I don’t say it won’t be a dead bore: no fun and gig, and the company pretty stiff-rumped, I daresay. But visiting at Chance, you know! I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll invite him to drink a glass of wine with me! No, by Jove, I’ll invite him to dine with me! Do you think I should change my dress, my love? No! might put him out of countenance. I shall put on a fresh neckcloth: that will exactly answer the purpose!”
Full of these amiable plans he hurried from the room, Ianthe dissolved again into tears, but showed signs of recovering her spirits when Phoebe assured her she would take every care of Edmund upon the journey back to London.
“Oh, dear Miss Marlow, were it not for your going I could not consent to his being taken from me!” Ianthe said, clasping Phoebe’s hand. “I am sure you will care for him as well as I could myself! And if anyone is so unjust as to say that I deserted my child you know it is untrue!”
“If anyone should say such a thing to me I shall reply that he was torn from your arms,” promised Phoebe. “Excuse me! I must go back to him, and blow out his candle.”
But when she reached the bedchamber she shared with Edmund she checked on the threshold, for Sylvester was sitting on the edge of Edmund’s crib. He got up at once, saying with some constraint: “I beg your pardon! I should not be here, but Edmund called to me.”
“Of course! It’s of no consequence!” she said, in a more friendly tone than she had yet used to him.
“Phoebe, Uncle Vester says my papa would have cut off one tassel, and he would have cut off the other!” Edmund told her, his eyes sparkling.
She could not help laughing. “I wonder how he would like it if you cut the tassels from his boots!”
“Ah, I have explained to him that it is a thing which must on no account be done to uncles!” Sylvester said. He ruffled Edmund’s curls. “Goodnight, vile brat!”
“You won’t go away?” Edmund said, assailed by a sudden fear.