“If I may take the liberty of saying so, my lord, I have seldom seen a finer pair. Whatever else may sometimes be amiss, our coats set so that it is a pleasure to see them done justice to.” He assisted his lordship to struggle into one as he spoke, and smoothed the cloth with a loving hand. “When I was with Lord Devenish, sir,” he said reminiscently, “we had to assist his lordship’s legs a little with sawdust in the stocking. But even so they were never what one likes to see in a gentleman of fashion. Everything else about his lordship was as it should be; I believe I never saw a neater waist, and at that time, my lord, coats were worn very tight at the waist with whaleboned skirts. But below the knee his lordship fell off sadly. It took away from one’s pride in dressing him, and sawdust, though helpful, is not like good muscle.”
“I can imagine nothing more unlike,” said Vidal, who was eyeing him in open astonishment. “You seem to have been hard put to it with your previous masters.”
“That, my lord, was the trouble,” replied Timms. “If your lordship will permit me, I will adjust this buckle. When I left Lord Devenish I was with young Mr. Harry Cheston for a space. Shoulders, legs, waist—all very passable. He wore his clothes very well, my lord; never a crease, nor a pin out of place, though he favoured vellum-hole waistcoats more than I could like. It was Mr. Cheston’s hands that were his undoing. Do what one would, my lord, they were such as to render the perfection of his attire quite negligible. He slept every night in chicken-skin gloves, but it was of no use, they remained a vulgar red.”
Vidal cast himself down in the chair by the dressing-table, and leaned back in it, surveying his valet with a half-smile curling his lips. “You alarm me, Timms, positively you alarm me.”
Mr. Timms smiled indulgently. “Your lordship has no need to feel alarm. I could wish that we wore a ring—not a profusion, sir, but one ring, possibly an emerald, which is a stone designed to set off the whiteness of a gentleman’s hand—but since your lordship has a strong aversion from jewels we must forgo the adornment. The hands themselves, if your lordship will not think it impertinent, are all that I could wish.”
His lordship, quite unnerved by this encomium, thust them both into his breeches pockets. “Come, let me have it, Timms!” he said. “Where do I fall short of your devilish high standards? Let me know the worst.”
Mr. Timms bent to dust one of his lordship’s shining boots. “Your lordship can hardly fail to be aware of the elegance of your lordship’s whole figure. In the twenty-five years during which I have been a gentleman’s valet I have always had to fight against odds, as it were. Your lordship would be surprised to know how one inferior feature can ruin the most modish toilet. There was the Honourable Peter Hailing, sir, whose coats were so exactly cut to his figure that it needed myself and two lackeys to coax him into them. He had a leg such as is seldom seen, and his countenance was by no means contemptible. But it all went for nothing, my lord, Mr. Hailing’s neck was so short that no neckcloth could be made to disguise it. I could tell your lordship of a dozen such cases. Sometimes it’s the shoulders, at others the legs; once I served a gentleman with a fatal tendency to corpulence. We did what we could with tight-lacing, but it was not successful. Yet he was as handsome as your lordship, if I may say so.”
“Spare my blushes, Timms,” said the Marquis sardonically. “I don’t aspire to be an Adonis. Out with it! What’s my fault?”
Mr. Timms said simply: “Your lordship has none.”
The Marquis was startled. “Eh?”
“None whatsoever, my lord. One could wish for greater care in the arrangement of the cravat, and a more frequent use of the curling-irons and pounce-box; but we have nothing to conceal. Your lordship will understand that a constant struggle against nature disheartens one. When your lordship found yourself in need of a valet, I applied for the post, being confident—with all respect, my lord—that though your lordship might affect a carelessness that one is bound to deplore, the figure, face, hands—your lordship’s whole person, in short—were so exactly proportioned as to render the apparelling of your lordship a work of pleasure unmarred by any feeling of dissatisfaction.”
“Good God!” said the Marquis.
Mr. Timms said insinuatingly: “If your lordship would permit me to place one patch—one only—”
The Marquis got up. “Content yourself with my perfect proportions, Timms,” he said. “Where’s that fellow Fletcher?” He strode out, calling to his major-domo, who came sedately up the stairs to meet him. “Well, man, are those damned lackeys to be all day about their business?” he demanded.
“John, my lord, is come in. At the Porte Saint-Denis, no one. At the Porte Saint-Martin, no one. I await the return of Robert and Mitchell, my lord, and will apprise your lordship instantly.”
“No luck at the northern gates,” the Marquis said, musing. “So he’s not taking her back to England. Now what the devil’s his game?”
Ten minutes later Fletcher came to find him again, and said impassively: “Robert reports, my lord, that shortly before noon a travelling chaise passed out of Paris by the Port Royal. It contained an Englishman who spoke French very indifferently, and one lady.”
The Marquis’s hand clutched on his riding-whip. “Dijon!” he said, with, something of a snarl. “Damn his infernal impudence! Have the bay saddled, Fletcher, and send me a man to take a note to Miss Marling.” He sat down at the writing-desk, and jabbed a quill in the standish. He scrawled one line only to his cousin. “
When he returned, twenty minutes later, his light chaise was already awaiting him in the courtyard, and his groom was walking the bay up and down. A lackey was in the act of placing two band boxes in the chaise, but was checked by a thunderous demand to know what the devil he was about.
“They belong to the lady, my lord,” explained the lackey nervously.
“Lady? What lady?” said Vidal, astonished.
He was answered by the appearance of his cousin in the big doorway. Miss Marling had on a highly becoming hat, tied under her chin with pink ribands, and carried a feather-muff. Her face wore a look of mulish determination. “Oh, so there you are at last, Vidal!” she said.
“What in the fiend’s name brings you here?” asked the Marquis, coming to her side. “There’s nothing for you to do in this coil.”
Miss Marling looked up at him defiantly. “I am coming with you.”
“The devil you are!” ejaculated his lordship. “No, my fair cousin. I don’t hamper myself with a petticoat on this journey.”
“I am coming with you,” repreated Miss Marling.
“You’re not,” said Vidal curtly, and beckoned to his groom.
Juliana caught at his wrist. “You shan’t go without me!” she said in a fierce whisper. “You only care for your odious Mary, but she has run off with my Frederick, I’ll have you know, and I’ll come if I have to hire a post-chaise and travel alone! I mean it, Vidal!”
He looked down at her frowningly. “You do, do you? I doubt you won’t relish this journey overmuch.”
“You’ll take me?” she said eagerly.
He shrugged. “I’ll take you, but if I were your husband I’d soon school you, my girl.” He handed her up somewhat urgently into the chaise, and said brusquely: “Does Tante know of this?”
“Well, she was gone out, but I felt a letter explaining as well as I could for the hurry I was in.”
“Very well,” Vidal said, and shut the door on her.
One of the lackeys put up the steps; the postillions were already in their saddles, and grooms stood to the horses’ heads. Vidal pulled on his gloves, gathered the bay’s bridle in his left hand, and mounted. “Port Royal!” he said to the postillions, and reigned the bay in hard to let the chaise pass out of the courtyard.
At the first post-stage Miss Marling insisted on descending from the chaise. While the horses were changed she favoured the Marquis with a pungent criticism of his manners, and the springs of the chaise. She said that never had she been so shaken and battered. She wondered that any man should be so brutal as to subject a lady to such discomfort, and declared that she vastly regretted having come on the journey.
“I thought you would,” replied his lordship. “Perhaps it’ll teach you not to meddle in my affairs.”
“Your affairs?” gasped Miss Marling. “Do you imagine that I care a pin for your affairs? I’ve come on my own, Vidal!”
“Then don’t grumble,” he returned.
Miss Marling stalked back to the chaise in high dudgeon. At the next halt she did not even look out of the window, but at the end of another twelve miles, she alighted once more, with her cloak held tightly round her against the sharp evening wind.
