April Lady Read online

  ‘Oh, if it is the case that you are retiring from business – !’ said Nell, shrugging her shoulders with splendid indifference. ‘I had not perfectly understood: naturally you will wish to be paid immediately! Rest assured that I will attend to the matter!’

  She then sailed away, her head high, and her heart cowering in her little kid shoes. Madame, having curtseyed her off the premises with the greatest deference, rubbed her hands together, and said: ‘She will contrive, that one!’

  That she must somehow contrive, and without Cardross’s knowledge, was by this time a fixed determination in Nell’s mind. Every day that had passed since the first appearance of Madame’s account had added to her dread that he would discover the debt; reason was lost sight of; the debt, and Cardross’s sentiments, if he should be called upon to pay it, assumed grotesque proportions, until it seemed to her as though it might wreck her life. No sobering counsel was at hand to cast a damper on lurid imagination, and give her thoughts a saner direction. Letty, exaggerating her own experiences, recommended her at all costs to settle the matter before Cardross got wind of it; and Dysart, knowing how much his own depredations on her purse were responsible for her present predicament, was apparently prepared to go to extraordinary lengths for the furtherance of this end. But Dysart had shaken her faith in him. Letty might applaud his scheme for her relief: she could not. It seemed to her a shocking thing to have attempted; and the thought of what next his wild humour might prompt him to do put her in a quake of apprehension. There must be no depending on Dysart; and there was no one else to whom she could turn.

  Such a reflection as this was scarcely soothing to nerves already irritated. The conviction that she was friendless, and hunted into the bargain, began to take strong possession of Nell’s mind. She sank into a slough of self-pity, seeing her debt as a sum large enough to have ruined a Nabob, and her husband as a miser with a heart of flint.

  It was in this mood that she presently stepped down from her barouche, and it was her coachman who rescued her from it, by desiring to know whether she would be requiring the carriage again that day. The very mention of it dispelled that unjust vision of Cardross. Just because she had once admired a friend’s barouche he had given her one for her very own, and with a pair of horses that took the shine out of every other pair to be seen in town. She had not liked the famous Cardross necklace, an awe-inspiring collection of emeralds and diamonds heavily set in gold, and instead of being offended he had told her to keep it for state occasions, and had given her the most charming pendant to wear in its stead. ‘For everyday use!’ he had said, with the smile that had won her heart in his eyes.

  Self-pity turned in an instant to self-blame. From being a tyrannical miser Cardross became the most generous man alive, and quite the most ill-used; and she the embodiment of selfishness, extravagance, and ingratitude. And, if Dysart were to be believed, she had added blindness and stupidity to these vices. It now seemed to her wonderful that Cardross should have remained patient for so long. Perhaps he was regretting the impulse that had made him offer for her; perhaps, even, disgust at her coldness and depravity had already driven him back to Lady Orsett.

  A year earlier Nell, instructed by Mama, had steeled herself to accept the fact of Lady Orsett as one of the inescapable crosses a wife must bear with complaisance; but between the girl who had supposed herself to be making a marriage of convenience and the bride who had been brought to realize that hers was a love-match there was a vast difference. Mama would scarcely have recognized her docile, beautifully mannered daughter in the bright-eyed young woman who uttered between clenched teeth: ‘She shan’t have him!’

  This determination, excellent though it might be, only strengthened her resolve to settle Madame Lavalle’s account without applying to Cardross. In her view nothing could more surely jeopardize her whole future than to cast out lures to her husband while presenting him with yet another debt. He must certainly believe her to be hoaxing him, playing off a detestable cajolery that could only disgust a man of sensibility.

  Her thoughts flickered to the second of Dysart’s suggestions, that she should sell some of her jewellery. Not, of course, Cardross’s gifts, but perhaps the row of pearls Mama had given her? But every feeling revolted. They were Mama’s own pearls, jealously preserved by her for her eldest daughter, and bestowed upon her with such affecting tenderness. Stress of circumstances had obliged poor Mama to sell nearly all her jewellery, but her pearls she had clung to through the direst of her straits, and for her daughter to sell them only to pay for an extravagant gown must sink her forever below reproach.

  A very little reflection convinced Nell that there was only one way in which she could raise three hundred pounds. It must be borrowed. Dysart had rather unexpectedly condemned this expedient, but Nell knew that even Mama had had dealings with a moneylender, so that borrowing upon interest, though it might be an expensive practice, could not be a crime. Papa, of course, had carried it to unwise lengths: Nell perfectly understood how ruinous continued borrowings could be, but it was surely absurd to suppose that anything very dreadful would happen if one borrowed three hundred pounds only for a few weeks. It would be paid back at the end of June, and no one need ever know anything about it.

  The more she considered it, the more Nell liked the scheme, and the more she was inclined to attribute Dysart’s severe attitude to some antiquated notion of propriety. Even the most careless of brothers could be amazingly stuffy on any question of conduct affecting the ladies of his family: that was one of the incomprehensible things about men. To hear Papa, in the bosom of his family, one would suppose that modesty and discretion were the two virtues he considered most indispensable in a female. But there had been nothing in Papa’s career to suggest this: indeed far otherwise! Dysart, warmly approving the generously displayed charms of a certain actress, almost in the same breath could speak censoriously of his sister’s gown, if it were cut rather lower than usual, or clung too closely to her form for his suddenly austere taste. Even Cardross suffered from this peculiarity. He had not criticized her raiment, but he made no secret of the fact that he expected from his wife and sister a degree of decorum which he did not practise himself. ‘I will have no scandal in my household,’ said Cardross inflexibly, just as though he had not been creating scandal in Lord Orsett’s household for years. Nell didn’t doubt that he would disapprove strongly of his wife’s patronizing a moneylender, but she didn’t allow it to worry her very much. Imprudent it might be, but what Mama had done could not be a crime.

  Nell gave Dysart a day’s grace, and when he neither came to see her nor wrote to tell her what next he meant to do, set forth, not without some inward trepidation, on a visit to Mr King, in Clarges Street. It had been Mr King who had enjoyed Mama’s custom.

  There were certain difficulties in the way of setting forth from Grosvenor Square alone and on foot, but she overcame these by ordering her carriage round to take her to the Green Park, where (she said) she was going to walk with some friends. At the last moment Letty nearly spoilt this careful plan by going with her, but she had the happy thought of saying that she had arranged to meet in the park two ladies whom Letty violently disliked, so Letty decided instead to go with her maid on a shopping expedition. Nell might tell herself that there was no harm in her projected errand, but she could not tell herself that it would be proper to take Letty into her confidence, for, oddly enough, although it might be allowable for herself to seek relief from her difficulties with Mr King, for Letty to do the same thing would be quite shocking. And she could not help feeling that that was just what Letty would do, once the idea had been put into her head, for she was never out of debt, and had lately been warned by Cardross that he was not going to encourage her extravagant habits by continuing to defray all the totally unnecessary expenses she incurred.

  Nell dressed herself with great care for her expedition, choosing from the formidable collection of walking dresses