Mr. Witt's Widow Part 36

"I'm not anxious to have people pointing at me for an old fool."

"Oh, hang people! Besides, you're not old."

"Fifty-six."

"That's nothing nowadays."

"You're laughing!" said the Marquis, suspiciously.

"Upon my honour, no."

The Marquis laughed too, and put his cigar back in his mouth. He took it out again almost at once. "It wouldn't be bad to have a son," he said. "I mean an heir, you know."

"The first step is a wife then, no doubt."

"Most women are so tedious. Still, you understand my feeling?"

"I might in your position. For myself, I hate brats."

"Ah, you will feel it some day."

Vane thought this rather barefaced. "When did it attack you?" he asked with a smile.

"This afternoon," answered the Marquis, gravely.

Vane's cynical humour was tickled by the _denoment_ this admission suggested. "Gad! I should like to see Gerald Neston's face!" he chuckled, forgetting his own designs in his gratification.

"Of course she's--well, the deuce of a flirt," said the Marquis.

Vane risked a philosophical generalisation. "All nice women are flirts,"

he said. "That's what you mean when you call them nice."

"Very pretty and attractive, though."

"And the shoes?"

"d.a.m.n the shoes!" said the Marquis.

The next morning, Mr. Blodwell and Sidmouth Vane went to London; but the society papers recorded that the Marquis of Mapledurham prolonged his stay at Brighton.

CHAPTER XX.

FATE'S INSTRUMENTS.

Summer and autumn came and went. The season died lingeringly and suffered its slow resurrection. Grouse and partridges, autumn scares and vacation speeches, the yield of the crops and the beginning of the session each had their turn of public favour, and the great Neston sensation died away, galvanised now and again into a fitful spasm of life by Mr. Espion's persevering battery. His efforts were in vain. All the cats were out of all the bags, and the interest of the public was satiated. The actors in the drama, returning to town, as most of them did in the winter, found themselves restored to obscurity; their story, once so eagerly dished up as the latest gossip, was now the stale stock of bores, useful only to regale the very young or the very provincial palate.

All at once, there was a revival. A rumour, a piquant rumour, began to be whispered at the clubs. Men again looked at Gerald Neston, wondering if he had heard it, and at George, asking how he would take it. Mr.

Blodwell had to protest ignorance twenty times a day, and Sidmouth Vane intrenched himself in the safe seclusion of his official apartment. If it were true, it was magnificent. Who knew?

Mr. Pocklington heard the rumour, but, communing with his own heart, held his tongue. He would not disturb the peace that seemed again to have settled on his house. Laura, having a.s.serted her independence, had allowed the subject to drop; she had been bright, cheerful, and docile, had seen sights, and gone to entertainments, and made herself agreeable; and Mrs. Pocklington hoped, against a secret conviction, that the rebellion was not only sleeping but dead. She could not banish herself from London; so, with outward confidence and inward fear, she brought her daughter home in November, praying that George Neston might not cross her path, praying too, in her kind heart, that time might remove the silent barrier between her and her daughter, against which she fretted in vain.

But certain other people had no idea of leaving the matter to the slow and uncertain hand of time. There was a plot afoot. George was in it, and Sidmouth Vane, and Mr. Blodwell; so was the Marquis, and another, whose present name it would ruin our deep mystery to disclose--if it be guessed, there is no help for it. And just when Laura was growing sad, and a little hurt and angry at hearing nothing from George, she chanced to have a conversation with Sidmouth Vane, and emerged therefrom, laughing, blushing, and riotously happy, though the only visible outcome of the talk was an invitation for her mother and herself to join in the mild entertainment of afternoon tea at Vane's rooms the next day. Now, Sidmouth Vane was very deceitful; he, so to say, appropriated to his own use and credit Laura's blushes and Laura's laughter, and, when the invitation came, innocent Mrs. Pocklington, without committing herself to an approval of Mr. Vane, rejoiced to think it pleased Laura to take tea with any young man other than George Neston, and walked into the trap with gracious urbanity.

Vane received his guests, Mr. Blodwell supporting him. Mrs. Pocklington and her daughter were the first arrivals, and Vane apologised for the lateness of the others.

"Lord Mapledurham is coming," he said, "and he's been very busy lately."

"I thought he was out of town," said Mrs. Pocklington.

"He only came back yesterday."

The door opened, and Vane's servant announced with much pomp, "The Marquis and Marchioness of Mapledurham."

The Marquis advanced straight to Mrs. Pocklington; then he took Neaera's hand, and said, "You have always been good to me, Mrs. Pocklington. I hope you'll be as good to my wife."

It was hushed up as far as possible, but still it leaked out that, on this sole occasion, Mrs. Pocklington was at a loss--was, in fact, if the word be allowable, flabbergasted. Vane maliciously hinted at burnt feathers and other extreme remedies, and there was really no doubt at all that Laura untied her mother's bonnet-strings.

Neaera stood looking on, half proud, half frightened, till Laura ran to her and kissed her, and called her the best friend she had, with much other emotional language.

Then Mrs. Pocklington came round, and took a cup of tea, and, still unconsciously doing just as she was meant to do, drifted into the balcony with the Marquis, and had a long conversation with him. When she came back, she found Vane ordering a fresh pot of tea.

"But we must really be going," she said. "Mustn't we, Laura?" And as she spoke she took her daughter's hand and patted it.

"Do you expect any one else, Vane?" asked Mr. Blodwell.

"Well, I did, but he's very late."

"Where can he have got to?" asked Neaera, smiling.

"Oh, I know where he is," said Vane. "He's--he's only in the next room."

Everybody looked at Mrs. Pocklington and smiled. She looked at them all, and last at her daughter. Laura was smiling too, but her eyes were eager and imploring.

"If he wants any tea, he had better come in," said Mrs. Pocklington.

So the pair of shoes wrought out their work, giving society yet another sensation, making Neaera Witt a great lady, and Laura Pocklington a happy woman, and confirming all Mrs. Bort's darkest views on the immorality of the aristocracy. And the Marquis and George Neston put their heads together, and caused to be fashioned two dainty little shoes in gold and diamonds, and gave them to their wives, as a sign and remembrance of the ways of destiny. And Neaera wears the shoe, and will talk to you quite freely about Peckton Gaol.

The whole affair, however, shocked Lord Tottlebury very deeply, and Gerald Neston is still a bachelor. Whether this fate be a reward for the merits he displayed, or a punishment for the faults he fell into, let each, according to his prejudices or his experience, decide. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites._