The next morning I began casting about as to what I should do next.
There was no longer any chance of getting at the secret from Dorothy, if
secret there were. Whilst I am ruminating comes a great battling at
the street door, and Jack Comyn blew in like a gust of wind, rating me
soundly for being a lout and a blockhead.
“Zooks!” he cried, “I danced the soles off my shoes trying to get in
here yesterday, and I hear you were moping all the time, and paid me no
more attention than I had been a dog scratching at the door. What! and
have you fallen out with my lady?”
I confessed the whole matter to him. He was not to be resisted. He
called to Banks for a cogue of Nantsey, and swore amazingly at what he
was pleased to term the inscrutability of woman, offering up consolation
by the wholesale. The incident, he said, but strengthened his conviction
that Mr. Manners had appealed to Dorothy to save him. “And then,” added
his Lordship, facing me with absolute fierceness, “and then, Richard,
why the devil did she weep? There were no tears when I made my avowal.
I tell you, man, that the whole thing points but the one way. She loves
you. I swear it by the rood.”
I could not help laughing, and he stood looking at me with such a
whimsical expression that I rose and flung my arms around him.
“Jack, Jack!” I cried, “what a fraud you are! Do you remember the
argument you used when you had got me out of the sponging-house? Quoting
you, all I had to do was to put Dorothy to the proof, and she would toss
Mr. Marmaduke and his honour broadcast. Now I have confessed myself, and
what is the result? Nay, your theory is gone up in vapour.”
“Then why,” cried his Lordship, hotly, “why before refusing me did she
demand to know whether you had been in love with Patty Swain? 'Sdeath!
you put me in mind of a woman upon stilts--a man has always to be
walking alongside her with encouragement handy. And when a proud
creature such as our young lady breaks down as she hath done, 'tis
clear as skylight there is something wrong. And as for Mr. Manners, Hare
overheard a part of a pow-wow 'twixt him and the duke at the Bedford
Arms,--and Chartersea has all but owned in some of his drunken fits that
our little fop is in his power.”
“Then she is in love with some one else,” I said.
“I tell you she is not,” said Comyn, still more emphatically; “and you
can write that down in red in your table book. Gossip has never been
able to connect her name with that of any man save yours, when she went
for you in Castle Yard. And, gemini, gossip is like water, and will get
in if a crack shows. When the Marquis of Wells was going to Arlington
Street once every day, she sent him about his business in a fortnight.”
Despite Comyn's most unselfish optimism, I could see no light. And in
the recklessness that so often besets youngsters of my temper, on
like occasions, I went off to Newmarket next day with Mr. Fox and Lord
Ossory, in his Lordship's travelling-chaise and four. I spent a very gay
week trying to forget Miss Dolly. I was the loser by some three hundred
pounds, in addition to what I expended and loaned to Mr. Fox. This young
gentleman was then beginning to accumulate at Newmarket a most execrable
stud. He lost prodigiously, but seemed in no wise disturbed thereby.
I have never known a man who took his ill-luck with such a stoical
nonchalance. Not so while the heat was on. As I write, a most ridiculous
recollection rises of Charles dragging his Lordship and me and all who
were with him to that part of the course where the race was highest,
where he would act like a madman; blowing and perspiring, and whipping
and swearing all at a time, and rising up and down as if the horse was
throwing him.
At Newmarket I had the good--or ill-fortune to meet that incorrigible
rake and profligate, my Lord of March and Ruglen. For him the goddess
of Chance had smiled, and he was in the most complaisant humour. I was
presented to his Grace, the Duke of Grafton, whose name I had no reason
to love, and invited to Wakefield Lodge. We went instead, Mr. Fox and
I, to Ampthill, Lord Ossory's seat, with a merry troop. And then we had
more racing; and whist and quinze and pharaoh and hazard, until I was
obliged to write another draft upon Mr. Dix to settle the wails: and
picquet in the travelling-chaise all the way to London. Dining at
Brooks's, we encountered Fitzpatrick and Comyn and my Lord Carlisle.
“Now how much has Charles borrowed of you, Mr. Carvel?” demanded
Fitzpatrick, as we took our seats.
“I'll lay ten guineas that Charles has him mortgaged this day month,
though he owns as much land as William Penn, and is as rich as Fordyce.”
Comyn demanded where the devil I had been, though he knew perfectly. He
was uncommonly silent during dinner, and then asked me if I had heard
the news. I told him I had heard none. He took me by the sleeve, to the
quiet amusement of the company, and led me aside.
“Curse you, Richard,” says be; “you have put me in such a temper that I
vow I'll fling you over. You profess to love her, and yet you go betting
to Newmarket and carousing to Ampthill when she is ill.”
“Ill!” I said, catching my breath.
“Ay! That hurts, does it? Yes, ill, I say. She was missed at Lady
Pembroke's that Friday you had the scene with her, and at Lady
Ailesbury's on Saturday. On Monday morning, when I come to you for
tidings, you are off watching Charles make an ass of himself at
Newmarket.”
“And how is she now, Comyn?” I asked, catching him by the arm.
“You may go yourself and see, and be cursed, Richard Carvel. She is in
trouble, and you are pleasure-seeking in the country. Damme! you deserve
richly to lose her.”
Calling for my greatcoat, and paying no heed to the jeers of the company
for leaving before the toasts and the play, I fairly ran to Arlington
Street. I was in a passion of remorse. Comyn had been but just.
Granting, indeed, that she had refused to marry me, was that any reason
why I should desert my life-long friend and playmate? A hundred little
tokens of her affection for me rose to mind, and last of all that
rescue from Castle Yard in the face of all Mayfair. And in that hour of
darkness the conviction that something was wrong came back upon me
with redoubled force. Her lack of colour, her feverish actions, and the
growing slightness of her figure, all gave me a pang, as I connected
them with that scene on the balcony over the Park.
The house was darkened, and a coach was in front of it.
“Yessir,” said the footman, “Miss Manners has been quite ill. She is now
some better, and Dr. James is with her. Mrs. Manners begs company will
excuse her.”
And Mr. Marmaduke? The man said, with as near a grin as he ever got,
that the marster was gone to Mrs. Cornelys's assembly. As I turned away,
sick at heart, the physician, in his tie-wig and scarlet cloak, came
out, and I stopped him. He was a testy man, and struck the stone an
impatient blow with his staff.
“'Od's life, sir. I am besieged day and night by you young gentlemen. I
begin to think of sending a daily card to Almack's.”
“Sir, I am an old friend of Miss Manners,” I replied, “having grown up
with her in Maryland--”
“Are you Mr. Carvel?” he demanded abruptly, taking his hat from his arm.
“Yes,” I answered, surprised. In the gleam of the portico lanthorn he
scrutinized me for several seconds.
“There are some troubles of the mind which are beyond the power of
physic to remedy, Mr. Carvel,” said he. “She has mentioned your name,
sir, and you are to judge of my meaning. Your most obedient, sir. Good
night, sir.”
And he got into his coach, leaving me standing where I was, bewildered.
That same fear of being alone, which has driven many a man to his cups,
sent me back to Brooks's for company. I found Fox and Comyn seated at
a table in the corner of the drawing-room, for once not playing, but
talking earnestly. Their expressions when they saw me betrayed what my
own face must have been.
“What is it?” cried Comyn, half rising; “is she--is she--”
“No, she is better,” I said.
He looked relieved.
“You must have frightened him badly, Jack,” said Fox.
I flung myself into a chair, and Fox proposed whist, something unusual
for him. Comyn called for cards, and was about to go in search of a
fourth, when we all three caught sight of the Duke of Chartersea in the
door, surveying the room with a cold leisure. His eye paused when in
line with us, and we were seized with astonishment to behold him making
in our direction.
“Squints!” exclaimed Mr. Fox, “now what the devil can the hound want?”
“To pull your nose for sending him to market,” my Lord suggested.
Fox laughed coolly.
“Lay you twenty he doesn't, Jack,” he said.
His Grace plainly had some business with us, and I hoped he was coming
to force the fighting. The pieces had ceased to rattle on the round
mahogany table, and every head in the room seemed turned our way, for
the Covent Garden story was well known. Chartersea laid his hand on
the back of our fourth chair, greeted us with some ceremony, and said
something which, under the circumstances, was almost unheard of in
that day: “If you stand in need of one, gentlemen, I should deem it an
honour.”
The situation had in it enough spice for all of us. We welcomed him with
alacrity. The cards were cut, and it fell to his Grace to deal, which
he did very prettily, despite his heavy hands. He drew Charles Fox, and
they won steadily. The conversation between deals was anywhere; on the
virtue of Morello cherries for the gout, to which his Grace was already
subject; on Mr. Fox's Ariel, and why he had not carried Sandwich's cup
at Newmarket; on the advisability of putting three-year-olds on the
track; in short, on a dozen small topics of the kind. At length, when
Comyn and I had lost some fifty pounds between us, Chartersea threw down
the cards.
“My coach waits to-night, gentlemen,” said he, with some sort of an
accent that did not escape us. “It would give me the greatest pleasure
and you will sup with me in Hanover Square.”