"'Tis an orgy!" exclaimed Lady Maria.
"Oh, Jasper!" sobbed Lady Standish.
"'Twould be interesting to know," further trumpeted Lady Maria, "which
of these gentlemen is supposed to have run away with the widow
Bellairs?"
"Oh, Kitty!" sobbed Lady Standish.
"My God!" said Sir Jasper, laying down his reeking glass and hardly
believing his eyes.
Mistress Kitty (seated between O'Hara and Stafford at the end of the
table, while Lord Verney and Sir Jasper faced each other), continued,
unmoved, to sip her fragrant brew and cocked her wicked eye at the
newcomers, enjoying the situation prodigiously. She laid an arresting
hand upon the cuffs of her neighbours, who, all polite amazement, were
about to spring to their feet. "Keep still," said she, "keep still and
let Sir Jasper and his lady first have their little explanation
undisturbed. Never intermeddle between husband and wife," she added
demurely: "it has always been one of my guiding axioms!"
"Well, Sir Jasper Standish, these are pretty goings on!" cried Lady
Maria, "for a three months' husband.... (Hold up, my poor dear Julia!)
Profligate!" snorted the old lady, boring the baronet through with one
gimlet eye. "Dissolute wretch! highwayman!"
"I demand," fluted Lady Standish's plaintive treble (in her gentle
obstinate heart she had come to the fixed resolution of never allowing
Sir Jasper out of her sight again), "I demand to be taken back to my
mother, and to have an immediate separation."
"Running away with women out of the streets of Bath!--A lady," (sniff)
"supposed to be engaged to my nevvy! Poor deluded boy----"
"And my dearest friend!--oh, Jasper! _How could you_?"
Sir Jasper broke in upon his wife's treble with the anguished roar of
the goaded: "The devil take me," cried he, "if I don't think the whole
world's going mad! _I_ elope with the widow Bellairs, Lady Maria,
ma'am? _I_ treacherous, my Lady? Ha!" He positively capered with
fury and wounded feeling and general distraction, as he drew the
incriminating documents from his breast, and flourished them, one in
each hand, under the very nose of his accusers. "What of _Red Curl_,
madam? What of the man who kissed the dimple, madam? What of your
lover, madam!"
In his confusion he hurled the last two demands straight in Lady
Maria's face, who, with all the indignation of outraged virtue,
exclaimed in her deepest note:
"Vile slanderer, I deny it!"
Here Mistress Bellairs deemed the moment ripe for her delicate
interference.
"My lovely Standish," she cried, "you look sadly. Indeed I fear you
will swoon if you do not sit. Pray Mr. Stafford, conduct my Lady
Standish to the arm-chair and make her sip a glass of cordial from the
bowl yonder."
"Oh, Kitty!" cried Lady Standish, and devoured the widow's face with
eager eyes to see whether friend or enemy was heralded there.
"My dear," whispered Kitty, "nothing could be going better. Sit down,
I tell you, and I promise you that in ten minutes you will have Sir
Jasper on his knees."
Then running up to Sir Jasper and speaking with the most childlike and
deliberate candour:
"Pray, Sir Jasper," said she, "and what might you be prating of letters
and red curls? Strange now," she looked round the company with dewy,
guileless eyes, "_I_ lost a letter only a day or two ago at your
house--a," she dropped her lids with a most entrancing little simper,
"a rather private letter. I believe I must have lost it in dear
Julia's parlour, near the sofa, for I remember I pulled out my
handkerchief----"
"Good God!" said Sir Jasper, hoarsely, and glared at her, all doubt,
and crushed the letters in his hand.
"Could you--could _you_ have _found_ it, Sir Jasper, I wonder? Mercy
on me! And then this morning ... 'tis the strangest thing ... I get
another letter, another rather private letter, and after despatching a
few notes to my friends, for the life of me, I could not find the
letter any more! And I vow I wanted it, for I had scarce glanced at
it."
"Oh, Mistress Bellairs!" cried Sir Jasper. "Tell me," cried he
panting, "what did these letters contain?"
"La!" said she, "what a question to put to a lady!"
"For God's sake, madam!" said he, and in truth he looked piteous.
"Then, step apart," said she, "and for dear Julia's sake I will confide
in you, as a gentleman."
She led him to the moonlit window, while all followed them with curious
eyes--except Verney, who surreptitiously drank his punch, and slid away
from the table, with the fear of his aunt in his heart. And now
Mistress Kitty hung her head, looked exceedingly bashful and
exceedingly coy. She took up a corner of her dainty flowered gown and
plaited it in her fingers.
"Was there," she asked, "was there anything of the description of a--of
a trifling lock of hair, in the first letter--'twas somewhat of an
auburn hue?"
"Confusion!" exclaimed the baronet, thrust the fateful letters into her
hand, and turning on his heel, stamped his foot, muttering furiously:
"Curse the fool that wrote them, and the feather-head that dropped
them!"
"And what of the fool that picked them up and read them?" whispered
Mistress Kitty's voice in his ears, sharp as a slender stiletto.
She looked him up and down with a fine disdainful mockery.
"Why will you men write?" said she meaningly. "Letters are dangerous
things!"
He stood convicted, without a word.
"La! what a face!" she cried aloud now. "I protest you quite frighten
me. And how is it you are not overjoyed, Sir Jasper? Here is your
Julia proved whiter than the driven snow and more injured than
Griselidis, and you not at her feet!"
"Where is she?" said Sir Jasper, half strangled by contending emotions.
"Why, there, in that arm-chair in the inglenook."
Mistress Kitty smoothed her restored treasures quite tenderly, folded
them neatly and slipped them into the little brocade bag that hung at
her waist.
* * * * *
"Indeed, Lady Standish," said Mr. Stafford, "a glass of punch will do
you no harm."
"Punch?" echoed Lady Maria--then turning fiercely on her nephew: "What,
my Lord!" said she, "would your mother say? Why you are positively
reeking with the dissolute fumes!"
"My dear Lady Maria," interposed the urbane Stafford, "a mere cordial,
a grateful fragrance to heighten the heart after fatigue and emotions,
a sovereign thing, madam, against the night air--the warmest antidote!
A sip of it, I assure you, would vastly restore you."
"I," she said, "I, drink with the profligate and the wanton! The
deceiving husband and the treacherous friend!" She gave the fiercer
refusal for that she felt so strongly in her old bones the charm of his
description.
"Pooh, pooh! my dear ladies, if that is all," said Mr. Stafford, "then,
by Heaven, let the glass circulate at once! Indeed, your La'ship,"
turning to Lady Standish, "so far from our good Jasper having anything
to say to Mistress Bellairs's presence here to-night, let me assure you
that he and I set out alone at an early hour this evening, with no
other object but to be of service to your ladyship--whom your anxious
husband had been led to believe was likely to come this way ...
somewhat--ah--unsuitably protected, as he thought."
Then he bent down and whispered into Lady Standish's pretty ear (which
she willingly enough lent to such consoling assurances): "As for your
friend," he went on, "our delightful if volatile Bellairs--she came
here with a vastly different person to Sir Jasper: poor O'Hara
yonder--who's drinking all the punch! She will tell you herself how it
happened.... But, gracious stars, my _dear_ Lady Maria, have you not
yet been given a glass of the--of Mr. O'Hara's restorative!"
"Allow me," cried Kitty, who, having just settled Sir Jasper's business
for him, had now freedom to place her energies elsewhere. "Dearest
Lady Maria--how sweet of you to join us in our little reconciliation
feast!" She took a brimming glass from O'Hara's hands and held it,
with a winning smile, for Lady Maria's acceptance.
"Madam," responded the matron, scowled, drew her voluminous skirts
together and became impenetrably deaf.
"Ah," cried the widow in her topmost notes, "Madam, how I should have
revered such a relative as yourself! Next to the joy of calling my
Lord Verney's mother, _my_ mother, would have been that of calling his
aunt, _my_ aunt! But the dream is over. Lord Verney and I can never
be more to each other than we are now."
"Eh?" and the Dowager recovered her hearing. "What's that, what's
that, nevvy?"
"'Tis, alas, true," said Lord Verney, with great demureness. "Mistress
Bellairs has given me back my word."
"Forgive me, dear Lady Maria," trilled the widow.
"Mercy on us!" ejaculated the old lady; then, as if unconsciously,
groped for the glass in Mistress Kitty's hand.
"Sit down, sit down all!" cried Mistress Bellairs. Stafford echoed
with a jovial shout. There was a call for a fresh bowl. O'Hara's eyes
began to dance, his tongue to resume its glibness. And Lady Maria was
surprised to find how long her tumbler took to empty, but, curiously,
never failed to be looking the other way when Mistress Bellairs with
tenderest solicitude plied the silver ladle in her direction.
"I hope," said the ancient lady, now wreathed in smiles, "I hope that
Mr. O'Hara's cordial is not really stronger than Madeira wine--which my
physician, that charming Sir George, says is all I ought to drink."
"Madeira?" cried Mr. O'Hara, "Madeira wine is a very fair drink ... it
is a fine stirring dhrink. But 'tis apt, I'm afraid, to heat the blood
overmuch. Now Claret," he went on, pursuing the thesis, "Claret's the
wine for gentlemen--only for the divil of a way it has of lying cold
upon the stomach ... after four or five bottles.... Do I hear you say:
'Port,' over there, Tom, me boy? I'll not deny but that Port has
qualities. It's strong, it's mellow--but it's heavy. It sends a
fellow to sleep, and that's a tirrible bad mark against it; for 'tis
near as bad for a man to sleep when he has a bottle going, as when he
has a lady coming. Then there's Champagne for you: there's
exhilaration in Champagne, 'tis the real tipple for a gentleman when
he's alone--in a _tête-à-tête_--but 'tis not the wine for great
company. Now, my dear friends," said O'Hara, stirring his new brew
with the touch of a past master, "if you want to know a wine that
combines the fire of the Madeira with the elegance of the Claret, the
power and mellowness of the Port with the exhilaration of the
Champagne--there's nothing in the world can compare to a fine
screeching bowl of Brandy Punch!"