"Maybe," my lady answered. "But even if she does not--" There she broke of, and stood peering through the window. And suddenly, "Lord"s sake!"
she shrieked, "what is this?"
The fury of her tone, no less than the expletive--which we have ventured to soften--startled Mr. Thoma.s.son to his feet. Approaching the window in trepidation--for her ladyship"s wrath was impartial, and as often alighted on the wrong head as the right--the tutor saw that she had dropped her quizzing-gla.s.s, and was striving with shaking hands--but without averting her eyes from the scene outside--to recover and readjust it. Curious as well as alarmed, he drew up to her, and, looking over her shoulder, discerned the seat and Julia; and, alas! seated on the bench beside Julia, not Sir George Soane, as my lady"s indifferent sight, prompted by her wishes, had persuaded her, but Mr. Dunborough!
The tutor gasped. "Oh, dear!" he said, looking round, as if for a way of retreat. "This is--this is most unfortunate."
My lady in her wrath did not heed him. Shaking her fist at her unconscious son, "You rascal!" she cried. "You paltry, impudent fellow!
You would do it before my eyes, would you? Oh, I would like to have the brooming of you! And that minx! Go down you," she continued, turning fiercely on the trembling, wretched Thoma.s.son--"go down this instant, sir, and--and interrupt them! Don"t stand gaping there, but down to them, b.o.o.by, without the loss of a moment! And bring him up before the word is said. Bring him up, do you hear?"
"Bring him up?" said Mr. Thoma.s.son, his breath coming quickly. "I?"
"Yes, you! Who else?"
"I--I--but, my dear lady, he is--he can be very violent," the unhappy tutor faltered, his teeth chattering, and his cheek flabby with fright.
"I have known him--and perhaps it would be better, considering my sacred office, to--to--"
"To what, craven?" her ladyship cried furiously.
"To leave him awhile--I mean to leave him and presently--"
Lady Dunborough"s comment was a swinging blow, which the tutor hardly avoided by springing back. Unfortunately this placed her ladyship between him and the door; and it is not likely that he would have escaped her cane a second time, if his wits, and a slice of good fortune, had not come to his a.s.sistance. In the midst of his palpitating "There, there, my lady! My dear good lady!" his tune changed on a sudden to "See; they are parting! They are parting already. And--and I think--I really think--indeed, my lady, I am sure that she has refused him! She has not accepted him?"
"Refused him!" Lady Dunborough e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in scorn. Nevertheless she lowered the cane and, raising her gla.s.s, addressed herself to the window. "Not accepted him? Bosh, man!"
"But if Sir George had proposed to her before?" the tutor suggested.
"There--oh, he is coming in! He has--he has seen us."
It was too true. Mr. Dunborough, approaching the door with a lowering face, had looked up as if to see what witnesses there were to his discomfiture. His eyes met his mother"s. She shook her fist at him. "Ay, he has," she said, her tone more moderate. "And, Lord, it must be as you say! He is in a fine temper, if I am any judge."
"I think," said Mr. Thoma.s.son, looking round, "I had better--better leave--your ladyship to see him alone."
"No," said my lady firmly.
"But--but Mr. Dunborough," the tutor pleaded, "may like to see you alone. Yes, I am sure I had better go."
"No," said my lady more decisively; and she laid her hand on the hapless tutor"s arm.
"But--but if your ladyship is afraid of--of his violence," Mr. Thoma.s.son stuttered, "it will be better, surely, for me to call some--some of the servants."
"Afraid?" Lady Dunborough cried, supremely contemptuous. "Do you think I am afraid of my own son? And such a son! A poor puppet," she continued, purposely raising her voice as a step sounded outside, and Mr.
Dunborough, flinging open the door, appeared like an angry Jove on the threshold, "who is fooled by every ruddled woman he meets! Ay, sir, I mean you! You! Oh, I am not to be browbeaten, Dunborough!" she went on; "and I will trouble you not to kick my furniture, you unmannerly puppy.
And out or in"s no matter, but shut the door after you."
Mr. Dunborough was understood to curse everybody; after which he fell into the chair that stood next the door, and, sticking his hands into his breeches-pockets, glared at my lady, his face flushed and sombre.
"Hoity-toity! are these manners?" said she. "Do you see this reverend gentleman?"
"Ay, and G--d--him!" cried Mr. Dunborough, with a very strong expletive; "but I"ll make him smart for it by-and-by. You have ruined me among you."
"Saved you, you mean," said Lady Dunborough with complacency, "if you are worth saving--which, mind you, I very much doubt, Dunborough."
"If I had seen her last night," he answered, drawing a long breath, "it would have been different. For that I have to thank you two. You sent me to lie at Bath and thought you had got rid of me. But I am back, and I"ll remember it, my lady! I"ll remember you too, you lying sneak!"
"You common, low fellow!" said my lady.
"Ay, talk away!" said he; and then no more, but stared at the floor before him, his jaw set, and his brow as black as a thunder-cloud. He was a powerful man, and, with that face, a dangerous man. For he was honestly in love; the love was coa.r.s.e, brutal, headlong, a pa.s.sion to curse the woman who accepted it; but it was not the less love for that.
On the contrary, it was such a fever as fills the veins with fire and drives a man to desperate things; as was proved by his next words.
"You have ruined me among you," he said, his tone dull and thick, like that of a man in drink. "If I had seen her last night, there is no knowing but what she would have had me. She would have jumped at it. You tell me why not! But she is different this morning. There is a change in her. Gad, my lady," with a bitter laugh, "she is as good a lady as you, and better! And I"d have used her gently. Now I shall carry her off. And if she crosses me I will wring her handsome neck!"
It is noticeable that he did not adduce any reason why the night had changed her. Only he had got it firmly into his head that, but for the delay they had caused, all would be well. Nothing could move him from this.
"Now I shall run away with her," he repeated.
"She won"t go with you," my lady cried with scorn.
"I sha"n"t ask her," he answered. "When there is no choice she will come to it. I tell you I shall carry her off. And if I am taken and hanged for it, I"ll be hanged at Papworth--before your window."
"You poor simpleton!" she said. "Go home to your father."
"All right, my lady," he answered, without lifting his eyes from the carpet. "Now you know. It will be your doing. I shall force her off, and if I am taken and hanged I will be hanged at Papworth. You took fine pains last night, but I"ll take pains to-day. If I don"t have her I shall never have a wife. But I will have her."
"Fools cry for the moon," said my lady. "Any way, get out of my room.
You are a fine talker, but I warrant you will take care of your neck."
"I shall carry her off and marry her," he repeated, his chin sunk on his breast, his hand rattling the money in his pocket.
"It is a distance to Gretna," she answered. "You"ll be nearer it outside my door, my lad. So be stepping, will you? And if you take my advice, you will go to my lord."
"All right; you know," he said sullenly. "For that sneak there, if he comes in my way, I"ll break every bone in his body. Good-day, my lady.
When I see you again I will have Miss with me."
"Like enough; but not Madam," she retorted. "You are not such a fool as that comes to. And there is the Act besides!"
That was her parting shot; for all the feeling she had shown, from the opening to the close of the interview, she might have been his worst enemy. Yet after a fashion, and as a part of herself, she did love him; which was proved by her first words after the door had closed upon him.
"Lord!" she said uneasily. "I hope he will play no Ferrers tricks, and disgrace us all. He is a black desperate fellow, is Dunborough, when he is roused."
The crestfallen tutor could not in a moment recover himself; but he managed to say that he did not think Mr. Dunborough suspected Sir George; and that even if he did, the men had fought once, in which case there was less risk of a second encounter.
"You don"t know him," my lady answered, "if you say that. But it is not that I mean. He"ll do some wild thing about carrying her off. From a boy he would have his toy. I"ve whipped him till the blood ran, and he"s gone to it."
"But without her consent," said Mr. Thoma.s.son, "it would not be possible."
"I mistrust him," the viscountess answered. "So do you go and find this baggage, and drop a word to her--to go in company you understand. Lord!
he might marry her that way yet. For once away she would have to marry him--ay, and he to marry her to save his neck. And fine fools we should look."
"It"s--it"s a most surprising, wonderful thing she did not take him,"