The lines about Mr. Mudgley’s jaw seemed to harden. “I don’t care for that,” he said. “Nor I don’t rightly know why he should do any such thing, Mother.”
The Duke rose. “Not for any such reason as you have in your head,” he said. “Walk out with, me: we shall do better to talk this over alone.”
“I’m agreeable,” said Mr. Mudgley, in a level tone, and stood aside for him to pass out of the kitchen.
“Oh, deary me!” said Mrs. Mudgley to Moffat, who had slipped quietly into the house behind his young friend. “I do hope my Jasper won’t offend his Grace! You know what he is, Mr. Moffat! As stiff-necked as his father, and move him you can’t, once he’s taken a notion into his head! Whatever will become of us if he should say something which his Grace might take amiss?”
“His Grace won’t take offence,” Moffat said. “He’s not like his uncle, high in the instep, as the saying is. I’ve known him since he was a sickly boy, hardly out of short-coats, ay, helped him out of trees when he got stuck, and taught him to handle a gun, and there never was a lad with a sweeter nature, that I’ll swear to! What’s more, ma’am, he’s got a way with him, for all he’s not to much to look at, and if he don’t have your Jasper out of his high ropes I shall be fair astonished!”
He was not destined to suffer astonishment. After walking up and down the lane for long enough to make Mrs. Mudgley feel very uneasy, the two men came in, apparently on the best of terms. Mrs. Mudgley saw that the set look he had worn for so long had vanished from her son’s face, and shed tears, which she dried hastily, however, explaining that she didn’t know whether she stood on her head or her heels. None of the three men found this very comprehensible, but they were relieved to see that she had stopped crying, and encouraged her in their several ways, her son patting her on the shoulder, Moffat saying There, there! in a helpless way, and the Duke announcing that it had been decided that he and Lady Harriet would bring Belinda out to Furze Farm as soon as was possible.
Mrs. Mudgley then poured out cowslip wine all round, and after he had heroically swallowed his portion, the Duke took his leave of his hosts and rode back to Bath, feeling that a weight had dropped from his shoulders.
He had been invited to dine in Laura Place, before attending the Dowager and Lady Harriet to the Assembly Rooms, and when he reached the Christopher he found that his cousin had driven out to Cheyney some time earlier. He walked upstairs, to be met by Nettlebed, who took his hat and gloves from him, expressing the hope that he would rest before he changed his dress.
“Yes, perhaps I will,” he said yawning. “What’s this?” He picked up a letter from the table as he spoke, and saw that it was addressed to him in Lord Gaywood’s dashing handwriting.
“My Lord Gaywood’s man left it here for your Grace, not half an hour ago,” responded Nettlebed disparagingly. “He said there was no answer expected. And a fly-by-night fellow he is! I wonder his lordship would have such about him.”
The Duke broke the wafer, and spread open the letter. It was quite brief.
“Dear Sale,” it ran. “Don’t put yourself to any more trouble over your fair Cyprian, for I’m taking her off your hands. It would be a curst sin to tie such an out-and-outer up to some Somerset bumpkin. You may fob Harriet off with what tale you please, and believe me, Your devilish obliged servant, Gaywood.”
Chapter XXV
Fok a full minute after he bad read this missive the Duke knew an impulse to wash his hands of the whole affair. Then a cold, unaccustomed rage took possession of him, and, as he raised his eyes from the letter in his hand, his valet was startled to see in them an expression so reminiscent of the late Duke in one of his rare fits of anger that he could almost have supposed that the Duke’s father and not himself stood before him.
The Duke crushed the letter into a ball, his mouth tightening. He glanced at Nettlebed, and spoke. “My chaise, and four good horses,” he said curtly.
Nettlebed knew that voice, though he had never heard it issuing from this Duke’s lips. He was frightened, but he felt himself bound by his love and duty to protest. “Now, your Grace,” he began, in a scolding tone.
A sudden flash of anger in the Duke’s frowning eyes silenced him. “You heard what I said!”
“Yes, your Grace,” said Nettlebed miserably.
“Do as I bid you, then! It is to be ready for me within twenty minutes. I am going round to Laura Place now. Call me a hackney!”
Devoutly trusting that Lady Harriet would be better able than himself to dissuade his master from undertaking whatever grim project he had in mind, Nettlebed said: “Yes, your Grace!” again, and hurried out of the room.
The Duke bade the hackney-coachman wait for him outside Lady Ampleforth’s house, and ran up the steps to the door. It was opened to him by the porter, who at once ushered him upstairs to the drawing-room, where he found the Dowager seated beside the fire, with her gloved hands clasped on the head of her ebony cane, a bonnet overpoweringly bedecked with curled ostrich plumes, tied over her improbable ringlets. At the writing-table in the window, Lady Harriet, also in walking-dress, sat agitatedly scribbling on a sheet of hot-pressed note-paper. When the Duke was announced, she turned quickly, half-rising from her chair, and exclaiming in a faint voice: “Oh, Gilly!”
“For heaven’s sake, girl!” snapped the Dowager. “Let us have no die-away airs, I beg of you! One would suppose the end of the world to be upon us! Well, Sale, you are come in a good hour! That fancy-piece of yours had found another fool to run mad over her blue eyes.”
“Gilly, I have been quite unworthy of your trust in me!” Harriet said, in a conscience-stricken tone. “I am so mortified, and I fear you will think I have been dreadfully to blame!”
He trod over to her swiftly, and raised her hands to his lips, and kissed them both. “No, no, I could never think that!” he said. “I should not have saddled you with such a tiresome burden!”
“Very true!” said the Dowager.
“Do you know, then, Gilly?” Harriet asked, her eyes searching his face.
“Yes, I know. Belinda has run away again.”
“I was just writing a note to tell you of it. I have been driving out with Grandmama and when we returned, I discovered—Gilly, is it—is it Charlie?”
“Yes.”
She saw the same tightening of the mouth which had alarmed Nettlebed, and timidly laid a hand on his sleeve. “You are very angry! Pray do not be! I think—I think Charlie did not exactly understand the nature of the affair!”
The irrepressible old lady by the fire gave a croak of sardonic mirth. “Small blame to him! I have no patience with these missish tricks, girl! One would say a young man had never before mounted a mistress!”
“Oh, Grandmama, hash! Of course I know—But I promised Gilly I would let no harm befall Belinda!”
“Harm, indeed! The minx does very well for herself, I vow! I see no occasion for these tragedy airs!”
Harriet clasped her hands together. “I had not thought that he had been alone with her, Gilly, but I have been questioning the servants, and it seems that when he would not go to Lady Ombersley’s party with us, saying that he was engaged with some friends of his own, he spent the evening here, with Belinda. But I do not believe the mischief was concerted between them then! Belinda was very unhappy, you know, when you told us how you had been unable to find Mr. Mudgley—”
“I have found him,” he interrupted.
“Oh, Gilly, no! When she may have gone off with Charlie! It makes it worse! What shall we do?”
“I am going after them. I came only to discover if you knew more than I do, and to inform you that I have received a communication from your brother, apprising me of the event. Obliging of him!”