LORD Welter was now Lord Ascot. I was thinking at one time that I would continue to call him by his old title, as being the one most familiar to you. But, on second thoughts, I prefer to call him by his real name, as I see plainly that to follow the other course would produce still worse confusion. I only ask that you will bear his change of title in mind. The new Lady Ascot I shall continue to call Adelaide, choosing rather to incur the charge of undue familiarity with people so far above me in social position, than to be answerable for the inevitable confusion which would be caused by my speaking, so often as I shall have to speak, of two Ladies Ascot, with such a vast difference between them of age and character.
Colonel Whisker, a tenant of Lord Ascot’s, had kindly laced his house at the disposal of his Lordship for his father’s funeral. Never was there a more opportune act of civility, for Ranford was dismantled: and the doors of Casterton were as firmly closed to Adelaide as the gates of the great mosque at Ispahan to a Christian.
Two or three days after Lord Ascot’s death, it was arranged that he should be buried at Ranford. That night the new Lord Ascot came to his wife’s dressing-room, as usual, to plot and conspire.
“Ascot,” said she, “they are all asked to Casterton for the funeral. Do you think she will ask me?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Lord Ascot.
“Why not?” said Adelaide. “She ought to. She is civil enough to me.”
“I tell you I know she won’t. He and I were speaking about it today.”
He was looking over her shoulder into the glass, and saw her bite her lip.
“Ah,” said she. “And what did he say?”
“Oh, he came up in his infernal, cold, insolent way, and said that he should be delighted to see me at Casterton during the funeral, but Lady Hainault feared that she could hardly find rooms for Lady Ascot and her maid.”
“Did you knock him down? Did you kick him?
Did you take him by the throat and knock his hateful head against the wall?” said Adelaide, as quietly as if she was saying “How d’ye do?”
“No, my dear, I didn’t,” said Lord Ascot. “Partly, you see, because I did not know how Lord Saltire would take it. And remember, Adelaide, I always told you that it would take years, years, before people of that sort would receive you.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Well, as much as you could expect me to say. I sneered as insolently, but much more coarsely than he could possibly sneer; and I said that I declined staying at any house where my wife was not received. And so we bowed and parted.”
Adelaide turned round and said, “That was kind and manly of you, Welter. I thank you for that, Welter.”
And so they went down to Colonel Whisker’s cottage, for the funeral. The Colonel probably knew quite how the land lay, for he was a man of the world, and so he had done a very good-natured action just at the right time. She and Lord Ascot lived for a fortnight there, in the most charming style; and Adelaide used to make him laugh, by describing what it was possible the other party were doing up at solemn old Casterton. She used to put her nose in the air and mitate young Lady Hainault to perfection. At another time slie would imitate old Lady Hainault and her disagreeable sayings equally well She was very amusing that fortnight, though never affectionate. She knew that was useless; but she tried to keep Lord Ascot in good humour with her. She had a reason. She wanted to get his ear. She wanted him to confide entirely to her the exact state of affairs between Lord Saltbe and himself. Here was Lord Ascot dead, Charles Ravenshoe probably at Alyden in the middle of the cholera, and Lord Saltire’s vast fortune, so to speak, going a-begging. If he were to be clumsy now — now that the link formed by his father, Lord Ascot, between him and Lord Saltire was taken away — they were ruined indeed. And he was so terribly outspoken!
And so she strained her wits till her face grew sharp and thin, to keep him in good humour. She had a hard task at times; for there was something laying up in the deserted house at Ranford which made Lord Ascot gloomy and savage now and then, when he thought of it. I believe that the man, coarse and brutal as he was, loved his father, in his own way, very deeply.
A night or so after the funeral, there was a dressing-room conference between the two; and, as the conversation which ensued was very important, I must transcribe it carefully.
When he came up to her, she was sitting with her hands folded on her lap, looking so perfectly beautiful that Lord Ascot, astonished and anxious as he was at that moment, remarked it, and felt pleased at, and proud of, her beauty. A greater fool than she might probably have met him with a look of love. She did not. She only raised her great eyes to his, with a look of intelligent curiosity.
He drew a chair up close to her and said —
“I am going to make your hair stand bolt up on end, Adelaide, in spite of your bandoline.”
“I don’t think so,” said she; but she looked startled, nevertheless.
“I am. What do you think of this?”
“This? I think that it is the Times newspaper. Is there anything in it?”
“Read,” said he, and pointed to the list of deaths. She read.
“Drowned, while bathing in Ravenshoe Bay, Cuthbert Ravenshoe, Esq., of Ravenshoe Hall. In the faith that his forefathers bled and died for. — E.I.P.”
“Poor fellow!” she said quietly. “So hes gone, and brother William, the groom, reigns in his stead. That is a piece of nonsense of the priests about their dying or the faith. I never heard that any of them did that. Also, isn’t there something wrong about the grammar?”
“I can’t say,” said Lord Ascot. I was at Eton, and hadn’t the advantage that you had of learning English grammar. Did you ever play the game of trying to read the Times right across, from one column to another, and see what funny nonsense it makes?”
“No. I should think it was good fun,”
“Do it now.”
She did. Exactly opposite the announcement of Cuthbert’s death, was the advertisement we have seen before — Lord Saltire’s advertisement for the missing register.
She was attentive and eager enough now. After a time, she said, “Oho!”
Lord Ascot said, “Hey! what do you think of that, Lady Ascot?”
“I am all abroad.”
“I’ll see if I can fetch you home again. Petre Ravenshoe, in 1778, married a milkmaid. She remembered the duties of her position so far as to conveniently die before any of the family knew what a fool he had made of himself; but so far forgot them, as to give birth to a boy, who lived to be one of the best shots, and one of the jolliest old cocks I ever saw — Old James, the Ravenshoe keeper. Now my early beloved grandmother Ascot is, at this present speaking, no less than eighty-six years old, and so, at the time of the occurrence, was a remarkably shrewd girl of ten. It appears that Peter Ravenshoe, sneaking away here and there with his pretty Protestant wife, out of the way of the priests, and finding life unendurable, not having had a single chance to confess his sins for two long years, came to the good-natured Sir Cingle Headstall, grandmamma’s papa, and opened his griefs, trying to persuade him to break the mattei to that fox-hunting old Turk of a father of his, Howard. Sir Cingle was too cowardly to face the old man for a time; and, before the pair of them could summon co............