for the first time for over a fortnight sir jasper returned to the very fine mansion he had taken for the bath season, before the small hours.
it was about ten o'clock of the evening that his impatient hand upon the knocker sent thunder through the house, startled the gambling footmen in the hall below and the fat butler from his comfortable nook at the housekeeper's fireside and his fragrant glass of punch. the nerves of the elder footman were indeed so shaken that he dropped an ace from his wide cuff as he swung back the door. breathing hot lemon peel, the butler hurried to receive his master's cloak and cane. the ribbons of mistress tremlet's cap quivered over the staircase: the whole household was agog with curiosity, for her ladyship's woman had told them to a tear the state of her ladyship's feelings.
sir jasper cursed freely as he entered, struck the younger footman with his cane over the calves for gaping, requested a just creator to dispose of his butler's soul with all possible celerity, and himself obligingly suggested the particular temperature most suitable to it; then strode he to the drawing-room with the brief announcement that he expected the visit of some gentlemen.
he looked round scowlingly for his wife. the room was empty and desolate in spite of bright chandeliers. he paused with a frowning brow, stood a moment irresolute, then shaped his course for the stairs and mounted with determined foot. in my lady's dressing-room, by one dismal candle, sat her woman, reading a book of sermons. she had a long pink face, had been her ladyship's mother's own attendant; and much sir jasper hated her. she rose bristling, dropped him a curtesy eloquent of a sense of his reprobation; and he felt that with every line of the homily she laid by on his appearance she had just damned him as comfortably as he the butler.
oh, lud, lud! (thus she prayed sir jasper in a frightful whisper) would he in mercy walk softer? my lady was asleep. her ladyship had been so unwell, so indisposed, that she, megrim, had seen the moment when she must send for the apothecary, and have sir jasper looked for all over bath. sir jasper did not seem to realise it, but my lady was of a delicate complexion: a tender flower! a harsh look from sir jasper, an unkind word, much less cruel treatment, and she would slip through his fingers. ay, that she would.
sir jasper cast a lowering suspicious look around. he glared at the woman, at the corners of the room, at the closed door. he felt his hot jealousy sicken and turn green and yellow within him. he stretched out his hand towards the lock of his wife's door; but mistress megrim came between him and his purpose with determined movement, her stout bust creaking in its tight stays.
"no," said she, "no, sir jasper, unless it be across my dead corpse!" here she trembled very much and grew red about the eyes and nose.
"pshaw!" said sir jasper, and walked away down the stairs again and into the empty, lighted drawing-room. first he halted by the window, where lady standish had stood and smiled upon lord verney. then he went to her writing-desk, and laid his hand upon the casket where she kept her correspondence, then withdrawing it with a murmured curse, turned to the chair where she sat, and lifted up her bag of silks. but this he tossed from him without drawing the strings. another moment and his eye caught the gleam of the letter so artfully hidden and exposed by mistress bellairs. he picked it up and surveyed it; it bore no address, was vaguely perfumed and fell temptingly open to his hand. he spread the sheet and saw the ruddy curl. then his eyes read in spite of himself. and as he read the blood rushed to his brain and turned him giddy, and he sank on the settee and tore at the ruffles at his neck. for a moment he suffocated. with recovered breath came a fury as voluptuous as a rapture. he brought the paper to the light and examined the love-lock.
"red!" said he, "red!"
he thought of lord verney's olive face, and looked and glared at the hair again as if he disbelieved his senses. red! were there two of them, a black and a ruddy? stay; oh! women were sly devils! lord verney was a blind. this, this carrot judas was the consoler! "there was a patch above the dimple at the corner of your lip. i dreamed i kissed it." sir jasper gave a sort of roar in his soul, which issued from his lips in a broken groan. the dimple and the patch! ay, he had seen them! only a few short hours ago he had thought to kiss that dimple with a husband's lordly pleasure, that dimple, set for another man!
"blast them! blast them!" cried sir jasper and clenched his hands above his head. the world went round with him, and everything turned the colour of blood. the next instant he was cold again, chiding himself for his passion. he must be calm, calm, for his vengeance. this lock he must trace to its parent head, no later than to-night, if he had to scour the town. he sat down, stretched the fatal missive before him, and sat staring at it.
it was thus that a visitor, who was announced as captain spicer, presently found him. captain spicer was an elongated young gentleman, had a tendency to visual obliquity and was attired in the extreme of fashion. he minced forward, bowing and waving white hands with delicately crooked fingers.
his respects he presented to sir jasper. he had not up to this had the pleasure and honour of sir jasper's acquaintance, but was charmed of the opportunity—any opportunity which should afford him that pleasure and honour. might he, might he? he extended a snuff-box, charmingly enamelled, and quivered it towards his host. sir jasper had risen stiffly, in his dull eye there was no response.
"you do not, then?" said captain spicer, himself extracting a pinch and inhaling it with superlative elegance and the very last turn of the wrist. "and right, my dear sir! a vicious habit. yet positively," said he, and smiled engagingly, "without it, i vow, i could not exist from noon to midnight. but then it must be pure macabaw. anything short of pure macabaw, fie, fie!"
sir jasper shook himself and interrupted with a snarl:
"to what, sir, do i owe the honour?"
"i come," said captain spicer, "of course you have guessed, from my lord verney. there was a trifle, i believe about—ha—the shape of his nether limbs. upon so private a matter, sir, as his, ahem, nether limbs, a gentleman cannot brook reflection. you will comprehend that my lord verney felt hurt, sir jasper, hurt! i myself, familiar as i am with his lordship, have never ventured to hint to him even the name of a hosier, though i know a genius in that line, sir, a fellow who has a gift—a divine inspiration, i may say—in dealing with these intimate details! but gad, sir, delicacy, delicacy!"
sir jasper, meanwhile, had lifted the letter from the table, and was advancing upon captain spicer, ponderingly looking from the lock of hair in his hand to that young gentleman's head, which, however, was powdered to such a nicety that it was quite impossible to tell the colour beneath.
"sir," interrupted he at this juncture, "excuse me, but i should be glad to know if you wear your hair or a wig?"
captain spicer leaped a step back, and looked in amaze at the baronet's earnest countenance.
"egad!" thought he to himself, "verney's in the right of it, the fellow's mad. ha! ha!" said he aloud, "very good, sir jasper, very good. a little conundrum, eh? 'rat me, i love a riddle." he glanced towards the door. sir jasper still advanced upon him as he retreated.
"i asked you, sir," he demanded with an ominous rise in his voice, "if you wore your own hair?" ("the fellow looks frightened," he argued internally—"'tis monstrous suspicious!")
"i," cried the captain, with his back against the door fumbling for the handle as he stood. "fie, fie, who wears a peruke now-a-days, unless it be your country cousin? he, he! how warm the night is!"
sir jasper had halted opposite to him and was rolling a withering eye over his countenance.
"his mealy face is so painted," said the unhappy baronet to himself, "that devil take him if i can guess the colour of the fellow." his hand dropped irresolute by his side.
beads of perspiration sprang on captain spicer's forehead.
"if ever i carry a challenge to a madman again!" thought he.
"your hair is very well powdered," said sir jasper.
"oh, it is so, it is as you say—poudre à la maréchale, sir," said the captain, while under his persevering finger the door-handle slowly turned. an aperture yawned behind him; in a twinkling his slim figure twisted, doubled, and was gone.
"hey, hey!" cried sir jasper, "stop, man, stop, our business together has but just begun."
but captain spicer had reached the street-door.
"look to your master," said he to the footman, "he is ill, very ill!"
sir jasper came running after him into the hall.
"stop him, fools!" cried he to his servants, and then in the next breath, "back!" he ordered. and to himself he murmured, "'tis never he. that sleek, fluttering idiot never grew so crisp a curl nor wrote so sturdy a hand, no, nor kissed a dimple! kissed a dimple! s'death!"
