Katerfelto Part 6

Therefore his mood, notwithstanding his courteous entrance, was none of the most amiable when he paid this morning visit to her ladyship; therefore the tone in which he couched it was little calculated to sweeten the unpalatable communication he had to make.

"Zounds! madam," said his lordship, "you will the more readily hear what I have to say."

"Sure you need not swear," she replied, with frigid dignity. "No gentleman swears so early in the day."

He laughed, and continued more good-humouredly, "Your ladyship is very happy in town, are you not?"

"Your lordship must be a fool to ask such a question," she returned sharply. "If you neglected me less, you would know that in my position, and with my health, it is ridiculous to talk of being happy anywhere!"

"And yet you look charmingly," continued her husband, scanning his own handsome person in the gla.s.s.

"Compared to faces which your lordship is in the habit of studying, mine is perhaps tolerably well-favoured," said she; "but nothing is so deceptive as one's appearance, and the air of this town is simply killing me by inches."

"Then it shall do murder no longer," he answered kindly; "I must leave for the West this very afternoon. My coach is waiting at the door to take me to the minister's. There is not a moment to be lost. It is the king's business; I suppose I ought to say, G.o.d bless him!"

"Well?" she asked coldly, "what concern is that of mine?"

"Will you not come with me?" was his reply. "We have been living separate lives too long. Perhaps each of us is better than the other thinks. Let us give it a trial and see if we cannot be happy together for a few weeks. We have been very uncomfortable apart for a good many years."

The tears were rising to her eyes. A kind word or a caress might have turned the balance even now; but it was his lordship's habit to a.s.sume carelessness of manner at the moment he was most interested, and instead of putting his arm round her waist, he busied himself adjusting cravat and ruffles in the gla.s.s. She felt and showed she was annoyed.

"I cannot leave town," she objected, "at a moment's notice. I wonder you can ask such a thing."

He looked in her face disappointed, and perhaps a little hurt.

"My lady," said he, "you're a puzzle!"

"My lord," said she, "you're a brute!"

CHAPTER VII.

READY AND WILLING.

They left town together notwithstanding; and although my lady altered her mind with every mile, now extolling her own sense of wifely duty, now bewailing her want of firmness and consistency, yet by the time she arrived at Hounslow, where they were to sleep, she had become reconciled to the society of her husband and her enforced journey to the West.

Such impressionable natures, from which emotion so easily pa.s.ses away, enjoy at least this advantage--that one swallow makes for them an immediate summer, one glimpse of sunshine absorbs the memory of a month of storms.

Lord Bellinger, too, seemed in the highest spirits. Though his back must be turned on London and all its pleasures, his inconstant nature could nevertheless find enjoyment in the mere act of change. Moreover, an hour before departure, he had effected a loan of ready-money from the accommodating Katerfelto, who waited on him at his residence in Leicester Square, so completely disguised that Waif herself could hardly have recognised the respectable-looking citizen, in a brown suit and tie-wig, with ample cambric neckerchief concealing his long beard, who was ushered into his lordship's own apartment the moment he entered the house.

Lord Bellinger prided himself on the rapidity with which he transacted affairs of moment. No doubt his method was peculiar to himself.

"Katerfelto," said he, surveying the brown suit and tie-wig with grave curiosity, "I must have five hundred guineas in gold--now, in half an hour."

"Impossible, my lord," answered his visitor. "The time is too short; but you can have it in three-quarters."

"I like doing business with _you_," rejoined his lordship. "I never knew you _make_ difficulties, nor found you unable to overcome them. I want the money directly, because I leave for the West this afternoon; but I consent to give you another quarter of an hour."

"Your lordship is vastly obliging," replied Katerfelto, with his peculiar smile. "I must trouble you to sign this little acknowledgment of the debt."

He drew a sheet of paper from his pocket, filled in certain blank s.p.a.ces at the writing-table, and spread it before his lordship, with an air of excusing himself for the liberty he was obliged to take.

It was Lord Bellinger's boast that he never refused to draw his sword, drink his bottle, stake his money, or sign his name; yet he made a wry face, and threw his pen into the inkstand with a curse, after it had performed its office.

"I'm in a corner," said he, "or you would never have had me on such exorbitant terms. The king's business must not stand to cool. Hang it, man! if it had been my own, not a usurer in the town should have bit me like this!"

"Your lordship is in haste," answered Katerfelto; "and his Majesty's commands cannot be too speedily obeyed. I trust," he added, carelessly, "there is no fear of disaffection in the West."

"State secrets!" answered Bellinger, with a laugh. "How can I tell? I have not yet seen the minister. I go to him in an hour for final instructions."

Though Katerfelto was pondering deeply, his tone seemed lighter than usual, while he asked how the other had been amused the night before at Ranelagh; observing, "It is not your lordship's custom to leave an adventure half accomplished."

"No more of that!" exclaimed Lord Bellinger. "These are but the pastimes of a man who has little serious business on hand. Ambition, you know, is a specific for love. If I play my part well, Katerfelto, I have reason to believe that the next time I borrow your money it will be for an earl!"

"Good luck attend your lordship," answered the other, turning to depart.

"As you are strong, be merciful."

My lord laughed, and snapped his fingers. "In half an hour," said he, "I shall have the lives and estates of some half-dozen gentlemen in my pocket. Intrigue, my good friend, is all very well; but for real sport, give me the great game. If your spiritual informants can travel so far, they will shortly bring you stirring news from the West."

"The vicissitudes of this material world affect me but little," answered Katerfelto, "save in so far as they aid my researches among the boundless regions of science and futurity. I am but a man of thought, while your lordship is a man of action. If, in my humble capacity, I can serve you, command me; and so I take my leave."

"He's an honest fellow enough, I protest," thought his lordship, as the door closed, "though his terms are confoundedly high! Money seems like everything else; if you want it, you must pay for it--through the nose too! But he's an honest fellow, no doubt."

The "honest fellow," meantime, plodding thoughtfully home to Deadman's Alley, busied himself in elaborate calculations of time, distance, expense, and other matters tending to subvert the minister's intention, and render nugatory Lord Bellinger's mission to the West.

He lost not a moment in visiting John Garnet, whom he found sitting up in an easy-chair, half-dressed, but so swathed in bandages that he could hardly move.

Dismissing Waif, who was in attendance as usual, he laid a finger on his patient's wrist, and marked the strong full beat of the pulse in grave approval.

"How much longer are you going to keep me here?" exclaimed John Garnet, with some impatience. "I've been telling Waif, for the last three days, I am as strong as I ever was in my life."

"Get up," replied the doctor, "and lift that chair from the floor. So.

Do you feel as if a dog were licking a raw place in your side?"

"I feel that I ought to be in the saddle," replied the other, "a hundred miles from your close, smoky town. If it wasn't for these cursed bandages, I should never know that I had a side at all."

"Off with them, then!" said Katerfelto, suiting the action to the word by unwinding their folds. "See now the fruits of a little knowledge and a little patience. These wounds have healed, as we call it, at the first intention. Do not be so ready with bare steel again; or, if you must needs brawl, keep your sword-arm bent, and your point moving in a narrower circle."

John Garnet's eyes brightened with pleasure, but his face fell a moment afterwards.

"You have restored me to life," said he, "and I cannot even pay you a surgeon's fee. I tell you plainly, I have not ten guineas in the world."

"We are comrades in the same service," answered the Doctor, quietly.

"There is no question of guineas between you and me. Will you ride a hundred miles on an errand, in which we are equally interested, and cry quits?"

"To the end of the world!" answered John Garnet; "only I have not a horse to my name."