Venetia (12 page)

She pushed him towards the door, which Damerel was holding open. He had intended to offer to escort her back to Undershaw, but before he could do so he had been irresistibly shepherded out of the room, and Damerel was shutting the door behind him, saying in a consolatory tone: “The boy is pretty well knocked-up, you know.”

“One can only hope it may be a lesson to him!”

“I daresay it will be.”

Edward gave a short laugh. “Ay! if one could but make him realize that he owes his aches to his own folly in persisting in his determination to ride horses he can’t control! For my part I consider it the height of imprudence in him to jump at all, for with that weak leg, you know—”

“But what a pudding-hearted creature he would be if he didn’t do so!” said Damerel. “Did you ever know a halfling who deemed prudence a virtue?”

“I should have supposed that when he knows what the consequences of a fall might be—However, it is always the same with him! he will never brook criticism—flies into a miff at the merest hint of it! I don’t envy you the charge of him!”

“Oh, I shan’t criticize him!” replied Damerel. “I have not the least right to do so, after all!”

Edward made no answer to this, merely saying, as he descended the stairs: “I do not know when .Miss Lanyon means to return to Undershaw. I should be pleased to escort her, and had meant to have offered it.”

There was a decidedly peevish note in his voice. Damerel’s lips twitched, but he replied gravely: “I am afraid I don’t know either. Would you wish me to discover for you?”

“Oh, it is of no consequence, thank you! I daresay she won’t leave Aubrey until she has coaxed him out of his sullens—though it would be better for him if she did!”

“My dear sir, if you feel her groom to be an insufficient escort, do, I beg of you, make yourself at home here for as long as you choose!” said Damerel. “I would offer to go with her in your stead, but I might not be at hand, you know, and, I own, I should not have thought it at all necessary. However, if you feel—”

“No, no! it was merely—But if she has her groom there is of course no need for me to remain. Your lordship is very good, but I have a great deal of business to attend to, and have wasted too much of my time already.”

He then took formal leave, refusing all offers of refreshment, but expressing, in punctilious terms, his sense of obligation for the kindness shown to Aubrey, and his hope that it would soon be possible to relieve his lordship of so unwanted a burden.

To all of this Damerel listened politely, but with a disquieting twinkle in his eye. He said, in the careless way which had previously offended Edward: “Oh, Aubrey won’t worry me!” and having waved farewell almost before Edward’s foot was in the stirrup turned back into the house, and went up to Aubrey’s room again.

VI

he entered to find Aubrey still seething with annoyance, his eyes overbright and his thin cheeks flushed, and said, in an amused voice: “Well, you do accord your visitors Turkish treatment, don’t you?”

“Where is he?” demanded Aubrey.

“
Abiit, excessit ...
”

“What, already?
Vae victis
!
Did you kick him out?”

“On the contrary! I invited him to treat the house as his own.”

“Oh, my God, no!”

“No, that’s very much what he thought—though he didn’t phrase it so. I fancy he doesn’t like me above half—but nothing could have exceeded his civility.” He turned his laughing eyes towards Venetia. “
Worthy
was exactly the right epithet!”

She laughed back at him. “Oh, did you guess?”

“Of course I did! Poor man, I was heartily sorry for him!”

“Sorry for that—that windsucker?” exploded Aubrey. “Wait till you see how little need you had to give him leave to treat your house as his own! He has been doing so with ours ever since my father died! Meddling and moralizing! I tell you to your head, Venetia, if you do marry him I’ll have nothing more to do with you!”

“Well, I don’t mean to marry him, so stop fidgeting yourself into a stew!”

He stirred restlessly, wincing a little. “I’d as lief live with Conway! No, by Jove, I’d
prefer
Conway to that bumptious, prosing piece of self-consequence that never crossed anything but a slug in his life!
He
to talk of giving me lessons—! Why, he has the worst seat and the worst hands of any man in the county, and will go half a mile out of his way to find a gap in a hedge his horse might have taken in his stride! You’d take him for a pad-groom! And as for his curst presumption, walking in here to scold and moralize, you may tell him, Venetia, that I might take that from Conway, but from no one else!”

“Good God, he’ll be demanding satisfaction of me next!” exclaimed Damerel. “Mr. Lanyon, allow me to offer you my most humble apologies!”

Aubrey turned his head on the pillow, and looked at him in some impatience and a good deal of suspicion. “Are you roasting me?”

“I shouldn’t dare! I am begging your pardon for having had the curst presumption to scold you. How I can have had so little conduct—!”

“Gammon!” snapped Aubrey crossly, but with the hint of a reluctant grin. “All you said was that I was a damned young fool, and had more bottom than sense, and I don’t care for
that
!”

“No, indeed!
Quite
unexceptionable!” approved Venetia. “I
knew
his lordship must have said everything that was kind and civil to have put you so much in charity with him!”

“Well, he didn’t moralize over me!” retorted Aubrey, trying not to laugh. “But as for being in charity with him, when he let that Jack-pudding come up here—”

“Why, you ungrateful brat, who rescued you from him? If I hadn’t come in with a hoaxing tale about your Nurse and a roll of lint he would be here yet! Take care I don’t turn that into a true story! I will, if you don’t stop taking snuff.”

“Yes,” Aubrey said, with a sharp sigh. “I beg pardon! I didn’t mean—oh, lord, I don’t know why the devil I lost my temper with such a gudgeon! I don’t do so in general.”

His angry flush began to subside. By the time Marston brought in a tray of cold chicken, and fruit, and tea he had recovered his equanimity; and although he rejected the chicken he was persuaded without much difficulty to drink some tea, and to eat a slice of bread-and-butter. Damerel went away when the nuncheon was brought in, but he came back just as Nurse was preparing to change the compress round Aubrey’s ankle, and to anoint his several bruises with a sovereign remedy of her own, and invited Venetia to take a turn in the garden with him.

She was very willing, but hardly expected to escape without meeting opposition from Nurse. All Nurse said, however, was that she was not to go out without her hat, which was as surprising as her apparent failure to notice that Aubrey was looking exhausted. This was a circumstance which would ordinarily have drawn from her exclamations, rebukes, searching questions, and a comprehensive scold, but although she had eyed him narrowly she had made no comment.

For this abstention Aubrey had his host to thank. Damerel had waylaid Nurse on her way up to his room, and had told her of the disastrous results of Edward’s visit.

Edward, as a respectable candidate for Venetia’s hand, had hitherto enjoyed Nurse’s favour, but no man who had caused Aubrey to suffer a set-back could hope to maintain his place in her esteem. When she learned that he had been reading Aubrey a lecture her eyes snapped with wrath, for reading lectures to Aubrey was a privilege she reserved exclusively to herself. Had she been present Edward should have had a piece of her mind to digest. She had not been present, but in her absence Damerel (though a sinner) had acted with a promptness and a propriety that won her instant approval. So deserving had he shown himself to be that she listened to his advice, and even agreed that it would be imprudent to mention the episode to Aubrey. Damerel thought that if he were to be left alone Aubrey would fall asleep, to which end he proposed to remove his sister from his side for a while. Perhaps she would like to stroll about the garden: what did Mrs. Priddy think?