Lord Tony's Wife (9 page)

‘And you think this…this friend knew?’

‘I know,’ he replied earnestly, ‘that he knew, or he would not have spoken to me as he did. He knows that my whole life is in your exquisite hands—he knows that our happiness is somehow threated by that man Martin-Roget. How he obtained that information I could not guess…he had not the time or the inclination to tell me. I flew to make all arrangements for our marriage to-night and prayed to God–as I have never prayed in my life before—that you, dear heart, would deign to consent.’

‘How could I refuse when Lady Blakeney advised? She is the kindest and dearest friend I possess. She and your friend ought to know one another. Will you not tell me who he is?’

‘I will present him to you, dear heart, as soon as we are married,’ he replied with awkward evasiveness. Then suddenly he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm: ‘I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! It is the most extraordinary thing in the world…’

‘What is that, milor?’ she asked.

‘That you should have cared for me at all. For of course you must care, of you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now…you would not have consented…would you?’

‘You know that I do care, milor,’ she said in her grave quiet way. ‘How could it be otherwise?’

‘But I am so stupid and so slow,’ he said naοvely. ‘Why! look at me now. My heart is simply bursting with all that I want to say to you, but I just can’t find the words, and I do nothing but talk rubbish and feel how you must despise me.’

Once more that humorous little smile played for a moment round Yvonne de Kernogan’s serious mouth. She didn’t say anything just then, but her delicate fingers gave his hand an expressive squeeze.

‘You are not frightened?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Frightened? Of what?’ she rejoined.

‘At the step you are going to take?’

‘Would I take it,’ she retorted gently, ‘if I had any misgivings?’

‘Oh! if you had…Do you know that eve now…’ he continued clumsily and haltingly, ‘now that I have realized just what it will mean to have you…and just what it would mean to me, God help me–if I were to lose you…well!…that even now I would rather go through that hell than that you should feel the least bit doubtful or unhappy about it all.’

Again she smiled, gently, tenderly up into his eager, boyish face.

‘The only unhappiness,’ she said gravely, ‘that could ever overtake me in the future would be parting from you, milor.’

‘Oh! God bless you for that, my dear! God bless you for that! But for pity’s sake turn your dear eyes away from me or I vow I shall go crazy with joy. Men do go crazy with joy sometimes, you know, and I feel that in another moment I shall stand up and shout at the top of my voice to all the people in the room that within the next few hours the loveliest girl in all the world is going to be my wife.’

‘She certainly won’t be that, if you do shout it at the top of your voice, milor, for father would hear you and there would be an end to our beautiful adventure.’

‘It will be a beautiful adventure, won’t it?’ he sighed with unconcealed ecstasy.

‘So beautiful, my dear lord,’ she replied with gentle earnestness, ‘so perfect, in fact, that I am almost afraid something must happen presently to upset it all.’

‘Nothing can happen,’ he assured her. ‘M. Martin-Roget is not here, and His Royal Highness is even now monopolizing M. le duc de Kernogan so that he cannot get away.’

‘Your friend must be very clever to manipulate so many strings on our behalf!’

‘It is long past midnight now, sweetheart,’ he said with sudden irrelevance.

‘Yes, I know. I have been watching the time: and I have already thought everything out for the best. I very often go home from balls and routs in the company of Lady Ffoulkes and sleep in her house those nights. Father is always quite satisfied, when I do that, and to-night he will be doubly satisfied feeling that I shall be taken away from your society. Lady Ffoulkes is in the secret, of course, so Lady Blakeney told me, and she will be ready for me in a few minutes now: she’ll take me home with her and there I will change my dress and rest for awhile, waiting for the happy hour. She will come to the church with me and then…oh then! Oh! my dear milor!’ she added suddenly with a deep sigh whilst her whole face became irradiated with a light of intense happiness, ‘as you say it is the most wonderful thing in all the world—this–our beautiful adventure together.’

‘The parson will be ready at half-past six, dear heart, it was the earliest hour that I could secure…after that we go at once to your church and the priest will tie up any loose threads which our English parson failed to make tight. After those two ceremonies we shall be very much married, shan’t we?…and nothing can come between us, dear heart, can it?’ he queried with a look of intense anxiety on his young face.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. Then she added with a short sigh: ‘Poor father!’

‘Dear heart, he will only fret for a little while. I don’t believe he can really want you to marry that man Martin-Roget. It is just obstinacy on his part. He can’t have anything against me really… save of course that I am not clever and that I shall never do anything very big in the world…except to love you, Yvonne, with my whole heart and soul and with every fibre and muscle in me…Oh! I’ll do that,’ he added with boyish enthusiasm, ‘better than any one else in all the world could do! And your father will, I’ll be bound, forgive me for stealing you, when he sees that you are happy, and contented, and have everything you want and…and…’

As usual Lord Tony’s eloquence was not equal to all that it should have expressed. He blushed furiously and with a quaint, shy gesture, passed his large, well-shaped hand over his smooth, brown hair. ‘I am not much, I know,’ he continued with a winning air of self-deprecation, ‘and you are far above me as the stars—you are so wonderful, so clever, so accomplished and I am nothing at all… but…but I have plenty of high-born connexions, and I have plenty of money and influential friends…and…and Sir Percy Blakeney, who is the most accomplished and finest gentleman in England calls me his friend.’

She smiled at his eagerness. She loved him for his clumsy little ways, his halting speech, that big, loving heart of his which was too full of fine and noble feelings to find vent in mere words.

‘Have you ever met a finer man in all the world?’ he added enthusiastically.

Yvonne de Kernogan smiled once more. Her recollections of Sir Percy Blakeney showed her an elegant man of the world, whose mind seemed chiefly occupied on the devising and the wearing of exquisite clothes, in the uttering of lively witticisms for the entertainment of his royal friend and the ladies of his entourage: it showed her a man of great wealth and vast possessions who seemed willing to spend both in the mere pursuit of pleasures. She liked Sir Percy Blakeney well enough, but she could not understand clever and charming Marguerite Blakeney’s adoration for her inane and foppish husband, nor the whole-hearted admiration openly lavished upon him by men like Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, my lord Hastings, and others. She would gladly have seen her own dear milor choose a more sober and intellectual friend. But then she loved him for his marvellous power of whole-hearted friendship, for his loyalty to those he cared for, for everything in fact that made up the sum total of his winning personality, and she pinned her faith on that other mysterious friend whose individuality vastly intrigued her.

‘I am more interested in your anonymous friend,’ she said quaintly, ‘than in Sir Percy Blakeney. But he too is kindness itself and Lady Blakeney is an angel. I like to think that the happiest days of my life—our honeymoon, my dear lord—will be spent in their house.’

‘Blakeney has lent me Combwich Hall for as long as we like to stay there. We’ll drive thither directly after the service, dear heart, and then we’ll send a courier to your father and ask for his blessing and his forgiveness.’

‘Poor father!’ sighed Yvonne again. But evidently compassion for the father whom she had elected to deceive did not weigh over heavily in the balance of her happiness. Her little hand once more stole like a timid and confiding bird into the shelter of his firm grasp.

V

In the card-room at His Highness’ table Sir Percy Blakeney was holding the bank and seemingly luck was dead against him. Around the various tables the ladies stood about, chattering and hindering the players. Nothing appeared serious to-night, not even the capricious chances of hazard.

His Royal Highness was in rare good humour, for he was winning prodigiously.

Her Grace of Flintshire placed her perfumed and beringed hand upon Sir Percy Blakeney’s shoulder; she stood behind his chair, chattering incessantly in a high flutey treble just like a canary. Blakeney vowed that she was so ravishing that she had put Dame Fortune to flight.

‘You have not yet told us, Sir Percy,’ she said roguishly, ‘how you came to arrive so late at the ball.’

‘Alas, madam,’ he sighed dolefully, ”twas the fault of my cravat.’

‘Your cravat?’

‘Aye indeed! You see I spent the whole of to-day in perfecting my new method for tying a butterfly bow, so as to give the neck an appearance of utmost elegance with a minimum of discomfort. Lady Blakeney will bear me out when I say that I set my whole mind to my task. Was I not busy all day m’dear?’ he added, making a formal appeal to Marguerite, who stood immediately behind His Highness’ chair, and with her luminous eyes, full of merriment and shining with happiness, fixed upon her husband.

‘You certainly spent a considerable time in front of the looking-glass,’ she said gaily, ‘with two valets in attendance and my lord Tony an interested spectator in the proceedings.’

‘There now!’ rejoined Sir Percy triumphantly, ‘her ladyship’s testimony thoroughly bears me out. And now you shall see what Tony says on the matter. Tony! Where’s Tony!’ he added as his lazy grey eyes sought the brilliant crowd in the card-room. ‘Tony, where the devil are you?’

There was no reply, and anon Sir Percy’s merry gaze encountered that of M. le duc de Kernogan who, dressed in sober black, looked strangely conspicuous in the midst of this throng of bright-coloured butterflies, and whose grave eyes, as they rested on the gorgeous figure of their English exquisite, held a world of contempt in their glance.

‘Ah! M. le duc,’ continued Blakeney, returning that scornful look with his habitual good-humoured one, ‘I had not noticed that Mademoiselle Yvonne wsa not with you, else I had not thought of inquiring so loudly for my friend Tony.’

‘My lord Antoine is dancing with my daughter, Sir Percy,’ said the other man gravely, in excellent if somewhat laboured English, ‘he had my permission to ask her.’

‘And is a thrice happy man in consequence,’ retorted Blakeney lightly, ‘though I fear me M. Martin-Roget’s wrath will descend upon my poor Tony’s head with unexampled vigour in consequence.’

‘M. Martin-Roget is not here this evening,’ broke in the Duchess, ‘and methought,’ she added in a discreet whisper, ‘that my lord Tony was all the happier for his absence. The two young people have spent a considerable time together under the shadow of the gallery in the ball-room, and, if I mistake not, Lord Tony is making the most of his time.’

She talked very volubly and with a slight North-country brogue which no doubt made it a little difficult for the stranger to catch her every word. But evidently M. le duc had understood the drift of what she said, for now he rejoined with some acerbity:

‘Mlle. de Kernogan is too well educated, I hope, to allow the attentions of any gentlemen, against her father’s will.’

‘Come, come, M. de Kernogan,’ here interposed His Royal Highness with easy familiarity, ‘Lord Anthony Dewhurst is the son of my old friend the Marquis of Atiltone: one of our most distinguished families in this country, who have helped to make English history. He has moreover inherited a large fortune from his mother, who was a Cruche of Crewkerne and one of the richest heiresses in the land. He is a splendid fellow—a fine sportsman, a loyal gentleman. His attentions to any young lady, however high-born, can be but flattering—and I should say welcome–to those who have her future welfare at heart.’

But in response to this gracious tirade, M. le duc de Kernogan bowed gravely, and his stern features did not relax as he said coldly:

‘Your Royal Highness is pleased to take an interest in the affairs of my daughter. I am deeply grateful.’

There was a second’s awkward pause, for every one felt that despite the obvious respect and deference M. le duc de Kernogan had endeavoured to inflict a snub upon the royal personage, and one or two hot-headed young fops in the immediate entourage even muttered the word: ‘Impertinence!’ inaudibly through their teeth. Only His Royal Highness appeared not to notice anything unusual or disrespectful in M. le duc’s attitude. It seemed as if he was determined to remain good-humoured and pleasant. At any rate he chose to ignore the remark which had offended the ears of his entourage. Only those who stood opposite to His Highness, on the other side of the card table, declared afterwards that the Prince had frowned and that a haughty rejoinder undoubtedly hovered on his lips.

Be that as it may, he certainly did not show the slightest sign of ill-humour: quite gaily and unconcernedly he scooped up his winnings which Sir Percy Blakeney, who held the Bank, was at this moment pushing towards him.

‘Don’t go yet, M. de Kernogan,’ he said as the Frenchman made a movement to work his way out of the crowd, feeling no doubt that the atmosphere round him had become somewhat frigid if not exactly inimical, ‘odn’t go yet, I beg of you. Pardi! Can’t you see that you have been bringing me luck? As a rule Blakeney, who can so well afford to lose, has the devil’s own good fortune, but to-night I have succeeded in getting some of my own back from him. Do not, I entreat you, break the run of my luck by going.’

‘Oh, Monseigneur,’ rejoined the old courtier suavely, ‘how can my poor presence influence the gods, who of a surety always preside over your Highness’ fortunes?’

‘Don’t attempt to explain it, my dear sir,’ quoth the Prince gaily. ‘I only know that if you go now, my luck may go with you and I shall blame you for my losses.’