Mr. Thomasson turned up his eyes. 'There was something a little odd--does not your lady think so?'--he ventured to say, 'in her taking possession of Sir George's rooms as she did.'
'Did I not say so? Did I not say that very thing?'
'It seems to prove an understanding between them before they met here last night.'
'I'll take my oath on it!' her ladyship cried with energy. Then in a tone of exultation she continued, 'Ah! here he is again, as I thought! And come round by the street to mask the matter! He has down beside her again. Oh, he is limed, he is limed!' my lady continued, as she searched for her spying-glass, that she might miss no wit of the love-making.
The tutor was all complacence. 'It proves that your ladyship's stratagem,' he said, 'was to the point last night.'
'Oh, Dunborough will live to thank me for that!' she answered. 'Gadzooks, he will! It is first come first served with these madams. This will open his eyes if anything will.'
'Still--it is to be hoped she will leave before he returns,' Mr. Thomasson said, with a slight shiver of anticipation. He knew Mr. Dunborough's temper.
'Maybe,' my lady answered. 'But even if she does not--' There she broke of, and stood peering through the window. And suddenly, 'Lord's sake!' she shrieked, 'what is this?'
The fury of her tone, no less than the expletive--which we have ventured to soften--startled Mr. Thomasson to his feet. Approaching the window in trepidation--for her ladyship's wrath was impartial, and as often alighted on the wrong head as the right--the tutor saw that she had dropped her quizzing-glass, and was striving with shaking hands--but without averting her eyes from the scene outside--to recover and readjust it. Curious as well as alarmed, he drew up to her, and, looking over her shoulder, discerned the seat and Julia; and, alas! seated on the bench beside Julia, not Sir George Soane, as my lady's indifferent sight, prompted by her wishes, had persuaded her, but Mr. Dunborough!
The tutor gasped. 'Oh, dear!' he said, looking round, as if for a way of retreat. 'This is--this is most unfortunate.'
My lady in her wrath did not heed him. Shaking her fist at her unconscious son, 'You rascal!' she cried. 'You paltry, impudent fellow! You would do it before my eyes, would you? Oh, I would like to have the brooming of you! And that minx! Go down you,' she continued, turning fiercely on the trembling, wretched Thomasson--'go down this instant, sir, and--and interrupt them! Don't stand gaping there, but down to them, booby, without the loss of a moment! And bring him up before the word is said. Bring him up, do you hear?'
'Bring him up?' said Mr. Thomasson, his breath coming quickly. 'I?'
'Yes, you! Who else?'
'I--I--but, my dear lady, he is--he can be very violent,' the unhappy tutor faltered, his teeth chattering, and his cheek flabby with fright. 'I have known him--and perhaps it would be better, considering my sacred office, to--to--'
'To what, craven?' her ladyship cried furiously.
'To leave him awhile--I mean to leave him and presently--'
Lady Dunborough's comment was a swinging blow, which the tutor hardly avoided by springing back. Unfortunately this placed her ladyship between him and the door; and it is not likely that he would have escaped her cane a second time, if his wits, and a slice of good fortune, had not come to his assistance. In the midst of his palpitating 'There, there, my lady! My dear good lady!' his tune changed on a sudden to 'See; they are parting! They are parting already. And--and I think--I really think--indeed, my lady, I am sure that she has refused him! She has not accepted him?'
'Refused him!' Lady Dunborough ejaculated in scorn. Nevertheless she lowered the cane and, raising her glass, addressed herself to the window. 'Not accepted him? Bosh, man!'
'But if Sir George had proposed to her before?' the tutor suggested. 'There--oh, he is coming in! He has--he has seen us.'
It was too true. Mr. Dunborough, approaching the door with a lowering face, had looked up as if to see what witnesses there were to his discomfiture. His eyes met his mother's. She shook her fist at him. 'Ay, he has,' she said, her tone more moderate. 'And, Lord, it must be as you say! He is in a fine temper, if I am any judge.'
'I think,' said Mr. Thomasson, looking round, 'I had better--better leave--your ladyship to see him alone.'
'No,' said my lady firmly.
'But--but Mr. Dunborough,' the tutor pleaded, 'may like to see you alone. Yes, I am sure I had better go.'
'No,' said my lady more decisively; and she laid her hand on the hapless tutor's arm.
'But--but if your ladyship is afraid of--of his violence,' Mr. Thomasson stuttered, 'it will be better, surely, for me to call some--some of the servants.'
'Afraid?' Lady Dunborough cried, supremely contemptuous. 'Do you think I am afraid of my own son? And such a son! A poor puppet,' she continued, purposely raising her voice as a step sounded outside, and Mr. Dunborough, flinging open the door, appeared like an angry Jove on the threshold, 'who is fooled by every ruddled woman he meets! Ay, sir, I mean you! You! Oh, I am not to be browbeaten, Dunborough!' she went on; 'and I will trouble you not to kick my furniture, you unmannerly puppy. And out or in's no matter, but shut the door after you.'
Mr. Dunborough was understood to curse everybody; after which he fell into the chair that stood next the door, and, sticking his hands into his breeches-pockets, glared at my lady, his face flushed and sombre.
'Hoity-toity! are these manners?' said she. 'Do you see this reverend gentleman?'
'Ay, and G--d--him!' cried Mr. Dunborough, with a very strong expletive; 'but I'll make him smart for it by-and-by. You have ruined me among you.'
'Saved you, you mean,' said Lady Dunborough with complacency, 'if you are worth saving--which, mind you, I very much doubt, Dunborough.'
'If I had seen her last night,' he answered, drawing a long breath, 'it would have been different. For that I have to thank you two. You sent me to lie at Bath and thought you had got rid of me. But I am back, and I'll remember it, my lady! I'll remember you too, you lying sneak!'
'You common, low fellow!' said my lady.
'Ay, talk away!' said he; and then no more, but stared at the floor before him, his jaw set, and his brow as black as a thunder-cloud. He was a powerful man, and, with that face, a dangerous man. For he was honestly in love; the love was coarse, brutal, headlong, a passion to curse the woman who accepted it; but it was not the less love for that. On the contrary, it was such a fever as fills the veins with fire and drives a man to desperate things; as was proved by his next words.
'You have ruined me among you,' he said, his tone dull and thick, like that of a man in drink. 'If I had seen her last night, there is no knowing but what she would have had me. She would have jumped at it. You tell me why not! But she is different this morning. There is a change in her. Gad, my lady,' with a bitter laugh, 'she is as good a lady as you, and better! And I'd have used her gently. Now I shall carry her off. And if she crosses me I will wring her handsome neck!'
It is noticeable that he did not adduce any reason why the night had changed her. Only he had got it firmly into his head that, but for the delay they had caused, all would be well. Nothing could move him from this.
'Now I shall run away with her,' he repeated.
'She won't go with you,' my lady cried with scorn.
'I sha'n't ask her,' he answered. 'When there is no choice she will come to it. I tell you I shall carry her off. And if I am taken and hanged for it, I'll be hanged at Papworth--before your window.'
'You poor simpleton!' she said. 'Go home to your father.'