CHAPTER XIII
The Earl of Chesterfield entered his drawing-room in a very morose frame of mind, which was scarcely improved by his discovery of a young lady already seated there before him. She was yawning over an illuminated missal; but, at sight of the intruder, she clapped the volume down with a bang, stretched, put her arms behind her head, and smiled with an air of relieved welcome. Any male to Moll was better than none.
“Come along,” she said. “Don’t be shy of me.”
He was pacing forward, his hands behind his back, and stopped to regard her sourly, his head askew.
“Yes? You remarked——?” he said.
Mrs. Davis went into a noiseless shake of laughter.
“Don’t do that,” she cried, “or you’ll give yourself a stiff neck. What a face, sure! Has my lady been putting bitter aloes on your nails, naughty boy, to stop your biting ’em?”
“Mrs. Davis,” said my lord, not moving, and with an air of acid civility, “I am really constrained to impress upon you that it is possible to presume on one’s privileges as Lady Chesterfield’s friend and guest.”
“Is it?” was the serene answer. “And I’m really constrained to impress upon you that it’s possible to presume upon one’s position as the husband of that guest’s hostess.”
“Presume, madam, presume—in my own house!”
She jumped up, and came at him with such a whisk of skirts that involuntarily he retreated a step before her.
“You dare!” she said: “when the very first time we met you had the brazen impudence to kiss me. Presume, indeed—and in your own house! A nice house, this, to pretend to any airs of propriety.”
“There are distinctions to be made, madam, which perhaps you can hardly be expected to appreciate.”
“Between me and another? Why, deuce take you!” cried the lady. “Are you telling me I’m not respectable?”
She quivered on the verge of an explosion. He was a little alarmed. It had been foolish of him to lay aside, just because his wife was not by, the part he was affecting to play. He had forgotten, in his peevishness, that it was as necessary to mislead the visitor as to his sentiments as it was her ladyship. Yet he could not command his temper all in a moment.
“Are you telling me,” he said, “that my house is not?”
Her eyes sparkled at him.
“I can’t appreciate distinctions, you know,” she said, “or I might understand why my lady may do just what I do, and be respected for it, while I for my part have to suffer all manner of sauce and impudence. One of these days I shall be taking two of those precious grooms of yours and knocking their heads together.”
He frowned, setting his lips.
“I am sorry if you have reason to complain of the conduct of my household. I was not aware of this, and will take immediate measures for the punishment of any servant you may point out as having shown you discourtesy.”
“O, all’s one for that!” cried Moll, with a toss. “I can look after myself. Only don’t talk about my presumption in treating you with the familiarity that you treat me, or be so sure of the holy propriety of your house in everything where I’m not concerned.”
He looked at her with a gloomy perplexity, but did not answer.
“Liberties!” cried Mrs. Moll, snapping her fingers. “But where the master sets the example, the mistress can’t be blamed for following him, I suppose.”
“Do you allude to her ladyship?” he demanded.
“Yes, I do,” she answered, with a saucy laugh.
“To what ‘liberties’ do you refer—as applied to yourself, perhaps?”
“Myself be damned!” cried the lady. “I talk of her being closeted alone, in her private apartments, with gentlemen visitors.”
His lordship started and stiffened, as suddenly rigid as a frog popped into boiling water.
“What visitors?” he said, in a suffocated voice.
Moll laughed again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, crosspatch?”
He took a furious step forward, and checked himself.
“Her brothers, belike. And so much for your mischief-making, Mrs. Davis.”
He said it with a sneer; but his eyes glowed.
“Then that’s all right and settled,” replied the girl. “And so now you can be at peace.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“You say so.”
“What do you say?”
“O! I mustn’t mention Kit, I suppose.”
“Kit!” He uttered a blazing oath under his breath. “So my suspicions are confirmed about that reptile! By God, if you and my lady are a pair and in collusion, after all!”
“Fiddle-de-dee!” she said, putting out the tip of her tongue at him. “What do you mean by collusion? That I’m abetting her in carrying on with my own particular friend? Not likely!”
He stamped in impotent exasperation.
“Why do you tell me, then? But I see what it is. She has robbed you of this creature, and you want to be revenged on her for it. And by God you shall! Tell me, when was this?”
“This very afternoon.”
“And how long was he with her?”
“Who?”
“O, you know!”
“I thought you might mean the other.”
“The other? There was another, then?” He positively squeaked in his fury. “Who was it? Curse it, I will know!”
“Sure, you’re so hot, I’m afraid to tell you,” she said.
He broke away, positively dancing, took a rageful turn or two, and came back relatively reasonable.
“Now, Mrs. Davis,” he said; “will you be so good as to acquaint me all—all about this visit? Come, let us kiss and be friends.”
He advanced towards her, with hands extended and a twisted smile, meant to be ingratiatory, on his lips; but she backed before him.
“No, sure,” she said. “That would be friendship at too high a price. What does it matter to you who visited her? Aren’t you ready to throw her over, stock and block, for me?”
“Yes, yes. Only—h’m!—’tis a question of justification, don’t you see—of proof—damn it!—of her guilt.”
“You won’t want to kiss me, now?”
“No; on my word.”
“And you won’t call the gentlemen out to answer for their misbehaviour?”
“Curse me, no!”
“Then, I’ll tell you. It was—— You are sure you won’t kiss me?”
“Not for a thousand pound.”
“What, not for a thousand? Was ever woman so insulted!”
“Then I’ll kiss you for nothing.”
“You will? So, then, my mouth’s shut.”
“O!” He threw up his hands and eyes, giving vent to the remarkable utterance, “The foul fiend grant me virtue!” Then he waxed dangerous. “Mrs. Moll, if it’s to be kissing after all, I’ll pay you, and with interest, here and now.”
She gave a little scream.
“O, mussey! I’ll tell you. It was the Duke.”
He stood looking at her, grinning like a dog.
“The Duke? What Duke?”
“How should I know?”
“You saw him?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
“O, I just looked through the keyhole.”
Still he stared, the grin, or snarl, fixed on his face.
“And what did you see?”
“Only the two gentlemen and my lady.”
“What! They were there together?”
“Why not?”
“Why not, why not! Now, what does it all mean? And which was the favoured one with her?”
“It was his Highness stayed longest.”
“His Highness!”
“So they called him. He looked a very nice tall gentleman, though over grave for my taste.”
“Yes.” Chesterfield’s manner had suddenly fallen ominously quiet. “I think I know whom you mean. And so he, the Duke, stayed longest, did he? And what became of the other?”
“O! he came out to me in the garden, whither I’d run after peeping.”
She saw it rising in him, and likened it in her own mind to a saucepan of milk coming to the boil. There was a flickering under the surface, and then a heave and rise, and the next moment it was overflowing with a tumultuous ebullition there was no stopping. Yet his voice maintained its intense suppression, only doubly envenomed.
“He came out to you, did he? I understand. Your particular friend, your particular pander to dishonourable royalty, came out to you, having effected his purpose of infamous procuration—to congratulate you and himself, I suppose, on the success of your joint villainy. So this is the solution of the mystery, and this your return for the hospitality you have received? Indeed my lady chooses her intimates cleverly.”
Now, Moll was a mischief-making naughtiness, and knew it; but no woman, however self-consciously guilty, can take abuse without recrimination.
“You suppose so? Do you, indeed?” she said. “And I say if you apply those names to me and Kit you’re a liar and a beast. A nice character you, upon my word, to call shame upon your lady for doing in all innocence what you are doing out of the wickedness of your soul every day of your life. She mustn’t entertain a great gentleman, mustn’t she; but you may practise your dissembling arts on her own friend, and think none the worse of yourself for it. Pander, forsooth! I throw the word back in your ugly teeth, as I throw your dirty attentions. I don’t want them, and I don’t want you!”
“My teeth may be ugly,” says my lord, with a savage grin; “but they can bite, as this friend of yours will find to his cost when once I track him down—as I shall do.”
“Poor Kit!” cried Mrs. Moll, with a mocking laugh.
“And as to my attentions to you,” said the other, “you may count them for what you like, only don’t include any inclination of mine in the bill. I paid them because it suited me, and not because you did—for anything but a catspaw. And now that I know your true character, why, you may take yourself off for any attraction I find in you, and the sooner the better for all parties concerned. I do not consider you a fit companion for my lady.”
“That’s plain,” said Moll, a little cowed in spite of herself.
“I wish to make it so,” answered his lordship frigidly. “For what purpose my lady invited you here I know not, nor in what degree that purpose tallied with your command of a confederate, the hired instrument, as I take it, of a more exalted infamy. It is enough that you have used your position here to consolidate the discord and misunderstanding you found already unhappily existing——”
“And what have you done, I should like to know?” cried Mrs. Moll.
“And with an object,” went on the gentleman, not deigning to answer her, “which is only perfectly apparent to me at a late hour. But that recognition, now it has come, imposes a duty on me, and on you the perhaps unwelcome realization that I am the master of this house. I neither ask nor expect you to betray to me this creature of yours and of my lord Duke: I shall identify him in good time, and then he will not have reason to congratulate himself on his amiable participation in your designs. But, as to yourself, I have merely to intimate that I shall esteem it a favour, and to avoid unpleasantness, if you will put an early period to your visit here.”
He bowed with such an immense and killing stateliness, that the young lady was quite overawed, and for the moment had not a word to answer; and so, walking deliberately, with his head high, he left the room.
Mrs. Davis sat for some minutes after he was gone, her face a lively play of emotions.
“Why, deuce take it!” she thought, her lids wide, “if he doesn’t believe as I’ve used Kit for go-between with Madam and the Duke creature. Mussey-me!”
Her eyes half closed, her little nose wrinkled, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, she went into a scream of laughter. But her mood soon changed. Panting, she rose to her feet and struck one little fist into the palm of the other.
“So I’m to go, am I!” she said. “Not before I’ve paid you for that insult, my lad. I don’t quite know how, yet, but somehow, the last word’s got to be with me.”