Crying for the Light Volume Ii Part 18

'The deuce she is! Why, then, don't you make it up with her? A bracelet and a dinner at the Star and Garter will do the trick.'

'I fear not. The fact is, I met her accidentally a short time ago, and she held her head as high as Lucifer.'

'Only acting, my dear boy. 'Tis only pretty f.a.n.n.y's way. 'Tis well-she might have come to you for money.'

'I wish she had. That would have given me a pull on her.'

'She might have served you with an action for breach of promise.'

'That would have been too ridiculous.'

'She was young. I don't feel sure that she might not have had you up under the Act which makes the parent the guardian of the child till she is sixteen.'

'Oh no, she was older than that.'

'Perhaps she wants to excite you. She knows now that you are a single man, and she thinks it well to begin the renewal of her acquaintance with a little seasonable aversion.'

'The fact is, she not only treated me with aversion, but she cut me dead.'

'Shocking!' said his friend.

'Yes, it was. I was always fond of her, and I am mad to get hold of her again.'

'That ought not to be difficult to Sir Watkin Strahan.'

'Perhaps not. But there is a man in the case-a newspaper fellow-the fellow, in short, who had the impudence to come down to Sloville to contest the borough. I believe he lost me the seat. I believe the girl got him to do it out of revenge.'

'Then, I would be even with him.'

'So I will before I've done with him. You may be sure I'll have my revenge,' said the Baronet angrily.

'Yes, I can trust you for that,' said his friend. 'You are a good fellow, Sir Watkin, but you neither forget nor forgive.'

'No, we don't in our family, and we have found it answer our purpose very well.'

'But, come, liquor up. Never mind the women; leave them to themselves.'

'Ah, that is easier said than done. I suppose I must give up this sort of life. I must marry again, and reform, and settle down into a quiet life, look after my tenants, attend the parish church, do my duty as a magistrate and a breeder of fat cattle, as my fathers before me. They seem to have been all highly beloved and deeply regretted. That is, if I read aright the inscriptions on their monuments in Sloville Church.'

'They must have been if they were at all like their latest representative,' said his friend sarcastically.

'You be blowed!' was the uncomplimentary reply. 'I tell you what. I see the girl is acting to-night. I have nothing better to do-I'll go and see her.'

'Shall I come with you?'

'No, I thank you; I'd rather go alone.'

'You had better take me with you. You'll get into another sc.r.a.pe. You always do when I am not with you.'

'Thanks, but I think I am old enough to run alone. If I want your valuable aid I shall send for you.'

'Do-I shall be here all right. It amuses me more to have a quiet rubber than to be tearing all over London by night after anything in petticoats.'

'Ah, you are a philosopher.'

'I wish I could return the compliment.'

'By-the-by,' said the Baronet, changing the subject, 'did you ever hear of the curious predicament I am in?'

'What do you mean-the birth and disappearance of the baby?'

'Exactly so. You were in Italy at the time, or I should have liked to have talked it over. My lady, as you know, did me the favour to present me with a son and heir. I am not a judge of babies myself, nor am I particularly partial to them, but it was a creditable baby, so far as I can judge. I imagine its lungs were sound by the way in which it squealed. It had the regulation number of limbs, the family proboscis, and apparently the parental eyes. The women all voted it a sweet little innocent, and the image of its father.'

'That's a matter of course,' said the friend.

'Well, one day the child was missing.'

'I remember hearing of it. It was said your lady was in delicate health at the time, and the shock caused her death.'

'I believe it had something to do with it; but the fact was with all her admirable qualities she had peculiar notions, and that led to little unpleasantnesses between us at times, and she worried herself about trifles in a way I am sure that was not good for her, and I must own that when the child was missing, naturally, she was very much cut up.'

'And the father?' said the friend.

'I took it more calmly, I own. You can't expect a man of the world, like myself, to have been broken-hearted about the loss of a little bit of flesh like that. Had it lived to become a young man, and to have plagued his poor father as I plagued mine, or as most young fellows do, I should have been prostrated with grief, I dare say. As it was, I bore the loss with the heroism of a martyr, and the resignation of a saint.'

'You need not tell me that; I can quite believe it,' remarked his friend with a smile.

'Well, as I have said, her ladys.h.i.+p worried herself a good deal unnecessarily. I never can understand why women have such particular ideas. I suppose they learn them from the parson. Now, there was Lady ---' (naming the wife of a volatile premier forgotten now, but much beloved by the British public for his spirited foreign policy and his low Church bishops). 'I had the honour of dining with her ladys.h.i.+p at the time there was a little scandal afloat respecting his lords.h.i.+p's proceedings with a governess who had made her appearance in the family of one of his relatives. The thing was in the papers, and it was nonsense pretending to ignore it. Somehow or other it was incidentally alluded to.

'"Ah," said her ladys.h.i.+p, turning to me with one of her most bewitching smiles, "that is so like my dear old man."

'Her ladys.h.i.+p was a sensible woman, and loved her gay Lothario not a bit the less for his little peccadilloes. I never saw a more harmonious pair. They were a model couple, and if they had gone to Dunmow for the flitch of bacon, they would have won it. I never could get my lady to look at things in such a sensible manner, and I do fear that at times she fretted herself a good deal, and we know that is bad for health. One of our nursemaids was a perfect Hebe. I could not resist the temptation. I believe some ill-natured female aroused my lady's suspicions. At any rate, one cold winter's evening she forced herself into my sanctum. I did not happen to be alone. Hebe, as I called her, was with me. We had a scene. I took the mail train that same night to Paris. The poor girl, I understand, was turned out of the house the moment I had gone. My opinion is she stole that baby out of revenge. It was missing about a month after. I must own her ladys.h.i.+p took every step she could to prove that the girl had stolen the child. We had detectives hard at work, and when the child was restored in a mysterious way, the matter dropped.

Then, alas! the child died, and the mother too. That was many years ago, and from that day to this I never have been able to hear anything of the woman. The child is buried in the family vault, but I have been much troubled lately.'

'As how?'

'Why, suppose the child is not dead. That the one restored was someone else's. That I have a son and heir suddenly about to be sprung upon me, at an inconvenient season. That would be awkward, to say the least.'

'D--- awkward,' was the sympathetic reply.

'Suppose, for the sake of argument, I were to marry again, and have a family, and another son and heir, and a claimant came forward for the family t.i.tle and estate.'

'Ah, that would be a nice business for the lawyers, and a G.o.dsend for the newspapers.'

'Undoubtedly, but a bad one for everyone else, especially if the costs were to come out of the estate.'

'Well, the lawyers would have to be paid.'