‘Why, what can she do?’ demanded Phoebe.
‘Go with you as your maid, of course. Come, come, ma’am! After such a strict upbringing as you have endured is it for me to tell you that a young female of your quality may not travel without her abigail?’
‘Oh, what fustian!’ she exclaimed. ‘As though I cared for that!’
‘Very likely you do not, but Lady Ingham will, I promise you. Moreover, if the road should be worse than we expect you might be obliged to spend a night at some posting-house, you know.’
This was unanswerable, but she said mutinously: ‘Well, if Alice doesn’t choose to go I shan’t regard such nonsensical stuff!’
‘Oh, now you are glaringly abroad! Alice will do precisely what I tell her to do,’ he replied, smiling.
The easy confidence with which he uttered these words made her hope very much that he would meet with a rebuff from Alice, but nothing so salutary happened. Learning that she was to accompany Miss to the Metropolis, Alice fell into blissful ecstasy, gazing upon Sylvester with incredulous wonder, and breathing reverently: ‘Lunnon!’ When it was disclosed to her that she should be given five pounds to spend, and her ticket on the stage for her return-journey, she became incapable of speech for several minutes, being afeared, as she presently informed her awed parent, to bust her stay-laces.
The thaw set in, and with it arrived the errant ostler, full of hair-raising accounts of the state of the road. Mrs Scaling told him darkly that he would be sorry presently that he had not made a push to return immediately to the Blue Boar; and when he learned what noble guests she was entertaining he was indeed sorry. But when he discovered that the stables had fallen under the governance of an autocrat who showed no disposition to abdicate in his favour, but, on the contrary, every disposition to set him to work harder than he had ever done, he was not so sorry. He might have missed handsome largesse, but he had also missed several days of being addressed as ‘my lad’, and having his failings crisply pointed out to him, and being commanded to perform all over again such tasks as Keighley considered him to have scamped. Nor were his affronted sensibilities soothed by the treatment he received at Swale’s hands. Swale was forced to eat his dinner in the kitchen amongst the vulgar, but no power known to man could force him to notice the existence of a common ostler. So aloof was his demeanour, so disdainful his glance, that the ostler at first mistook him for his master. He discovered later that the Duke was more approachable.
The first vehicles to pass the inn came from the west, a circumstance which made Phoebe very uneasy; but a day later the Bristol Mail went by, at so unusual an hour that Mrs Scaling said they might depend upon it the road was still mortal bad to the eastward. ‘Likely as not they’ve been two days or more getting here,’ she said. ‘They do be saying in the tap that there’s been nothing like it since four years ago, when the river froze over in London-town, and they had bonfires on it, and a great fair, and I don’t know what-all. I shouldn’t wonder at it, miss, if you was to be here for another se’enight,’ she added hopefully.
‘Nonsense!’ said Sylvester, when this was reported to him. ‘What they say in the tap need not cast you into despair. Tomorrow I’ll drive to Speenhamland, and discover what the mail-coachmen are saying.’
‘If it doesn’t freeze again tonight,’ amended Phoebe, a worried frown between her brows. ‘It was shockingly slippery this morning, and you will have enough to do in holding those grays of yours without having that added to it! I could not reconcile it with my conscience to let you set forth in such circumstances!’
‘Never,’ declared Sylvester, much moved, ‘did I think to hear you express so much solicitude on my behalf, ma’am!’
‘Well, I can’t but see what a fix we should be in if anything should happen to you,’ she replied candidly.
The appreciative gleam in his eyes acknowledged a hit, but he said gravely: ‘The charm of your society, my Sparrow, lies in not knowing what you will say next – though one rapidly learns to expect the worst!’
It did not freeze again that night; and the first news that greeted Phoebe, when she peeped into Tom’s room on her way downstairs to breakfast, was that he had heard a number of vehicles pass the inn, several of which he was sure came from the east. This was presently confirmed by Mrs Scaling, who said, however, that there was no telling whether they had come from London, or from no farther afield than Newbury. She was of the opinion that it would be unwise to venture on such a hazardous journey until the snow had entirely gone from the road; and was regaling Phoebe with a horrid story of three outside passengers on the stage-coach who had died of the cold in just such weather, when Sylvester arrived on the scene, and put an end to this daunting history by observing that since Miss Phoebe was not proposing to travel to London on the roof of a stage-coach there was no need for anyone to feel apprehensive on her account. Mrs Scaling reluctantly conceded this point, but warned his grace that there was a dangerous gravel-pit between Newbury and Reading, very hard to see when there had been heavy falls of snow.
‘Like the coffee-pot,’ said Sylvester acidly. ‘I don’t see that at all – and I should wish to do so immediately, if you please!’
This had the effect of sending Mrs Scaling scuttling off to the kitchen. ‘Do you suppose there really is any danger of driving into a gravel-pit, sir?’ asked Phoebe.
‘No.’
‘I must say, it sounds very unlikely to me. But Mrs Scaling seems to think –’
‘Mrs Scaling merely thinks that the longer she can keep us here the better it will be for her,’ he interrupted.
‘Well, you need not snap my nose off!’ countered Phoebe. ‘Merely because you have come down hours before you are used to do!’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am!’ he said frigidly.
‘It’s of no consequence at all,’ she assured him, smiling kindly at him. ‘I daresay you are always disagreeable before breakfast. Many people are, I believe, and cannot help themselves, try as they will. I don’t mean to say that you do try, of course: why should you, when you are not obliged to be conciliating?’
It was perhaps fortunate that the entrance of Alice at this moment obliged Sylvester to swallow the retort that sprang to his lips. By the time she had withdrawn again he had realised (with far less incredulity than he would have felt a week earlier) that Miss Marlow was being deliberately provoking; and he merely said: ‘Though I may not be obliged to conciliate, you should reflect, ma’am, that it is otherwise with you! I rose at this unseasonable hour wholly on your behalf, but I might yet decide not to go to Newbury after all.’
‘Oh, are you capricious as well?’ asked Phoebe, raising eyes of innocent enquiry to his face.
‘As well as what?’ demanded Sylvester. He saw her lips part, and added hastily: ‘No, don’t tell me! I can hazard a tolerably accurate conjecture, I imagine!’
She laughed, and began to pour out the coffee. ‘I won’t say another word till you’ve come out of the sullens,’ she promised.
Though strongly tempted to reply in kind, Sylvester decided, upon reflection, to hold his peace. Silence prevailed until, looking up from his plate a few minutes later, he found that she was watching him, with so much the air of a bird hopeful of crumbs that he burst out laughing, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, you – Sparrow! What an abominable girl you are!’
‘Yes, I am afraid I am,’ she said, quite seriously. ‘And nothing seems to cure me of saying things I ought not!’
‘Perhaps you don’t try to overcome the fault?’ he suggested, quizzing her.
‘But, in general, I do try!’ she assured him. ‘It is only when I am with persons such as you and Tom – I mean –’
‘Ah, just so!’ he interrupted. ‘When you are with persons whose opinions are of no particular consequence to you, you allow rein to your tongue?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, pleased to find him of so ready an understanding. ‘That i
s the matter in a nutshell! Will you have some more bread-and-butter, sir?’
‘No, thank you,’ he responded. ‘I find I have quite lost my appetite.’
‘It would be wonderful if you had not,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Cooped up in the house as you have been all this while! Will you set out for Newbury soon? I daresay it is foolish of me, but I can’t be easy! Whatever should I do if Mama were to arrive while you are gone?’
‘Hide in the hay-loft!’ he recommended. ‘But if she has a particle of commonsense she won’t make the smallest push to recover you!’
Twelve
Having watched Sylvester depart, Phoebe sat down to play piquet with Tom. The sound of wheels outside made her once or twice look up apprehensively, but the approach of a ridden horse along the road caused her no alarm. She heard, but paid no heed; and so it was that Mr Orde, walking into the room without ceremony, took her entirely by surprise. She gave a gasp, and dropped the cards she was holding. Tom turned his head, and exclaimed in dismay: ‘Father!’
The Squire, having surveyed the truants with the air of one who had known all along how it would be, shut the door, and said: ‘Ay! Now, what the devil do you mean by this, either of you?’
‘It was my fault! Oh, pray don’t be vexed with Tom!’ begged Phoebe.
‘No, it was not!’ asserted Tom. ‘It was mine, and I made a mull of it, and broke my leg!’
‘Ay, so I know!’ said his fond parent. ‘I may think myself fortunate you didn’t break your neck, I suppose. Young cawker! And what did my horses break?’
‘No, no, only a strained hock!’ Phoebe assured him. ‘And I have taken the greatest care – Oh, pray let me help you out of your coat, dear sir!’
‘It’s no use trying to flummery me, girl!’ said the Squire severely, but accepting her aid. ‘A pretty riot and rumpus you’ve caused, the pair of you! Let alone being the death of your father!’
‘Oh, no!’ cried Phoebe, blenching.
He relented, seeing that he had really frightened her, and patted her whitened cheek. ‘No, it ain’t as bad as that, but you know what he is when anything ails him!’
‘Father, we were not eloping!’ Tom interrupted.
The Squire threw him a glance of affectionate scorn. ‘A tinker’s budget, Tom: I never supposed you was. Perhaps you’ll tell me what the devil you were doing – besides driving my new curricle into the ditch, and smashing two of its wheels?’
‘I was taking Phoebe to London, to her grandmother. She would have gone on the common stage if I had not, sir!’
‘And indeed it wasn’t Tom’s fault that we ended in a ditch, sir!’ interpolated Phoebe. ‘He was driving to an inch until we met that evil donkey!’
‘Met a donkey, did you? Oh!’ said the Squire. ‘Well, there was some excuse for you, if that was the case.’
‘No, there wasn’t,’ said Tom frankly. ‘I ought to have managed better, and I had rather I had broke both my legs than have let True strain his hock!’
‘Well, well!’ said his father, visibly mollified. ‘Thank the lord you didn’t! I’ll take a look at that hock presently. I was afraid I should find it to be a case of broken knees.’
‘Mr Orde,’ Phoebe said anxiously, ‘pray tell me! – Does Papa know where I am?’
‘Well, of course he does!’ replied the Squire. ‘You couldn’t expect I wouldn’t tell him, now, could you?’
‘Who told you, Father?’ Tom demanded. ‘I collect it must have been Upsall, but I never saw him before in my life, and none of us disclosed my name to him! And Phoebe he didn’t set eyes on!’
But the news had come from the doctor, of course. He had not discovered the identity of his patient, but he knew who was the elegant young man who had commanded his attendance at the Blue Boar; and it was rather too much to expect of a humble country practitioner that he would refrain from letting it be known as widely as possible that he had lately been called by His Grace of Salford. The news had spread, in the mysterious country-fashion; and if, by the time it reached the Squire’s ears, it had become garbled almost out of recognition it still retained enough of the truth to convince that shrewd gentleman that the supposed scion of the house of Rayne, who had overturned some vehicle on the Bath Road, was none other than his own son.
No, he had not been much surprised. Reaching the Manor not many hours after Tom had left it, he had been met by a distracted helpmate, who poured horrifying tidings into his incredulous ears. But he hoped he knew Tom well enough to be sure he had not eloped. A pretty gudgeon he had thought Marlow, to be hoaxed by such a tale! He had assumed his heir to be well able to take care of himself, as the lord knew (with an ironical eyebrow cocked at Tom) he ought to have been! He had awaited events. The first of these had been the return of Marlow to Austerby with a bad chill, and no news of the fugitives. If her ladyship were to be believed, the chill had developed into a congestion of the lung: at all events, his lordship was feeling devilish sorry for himself, and no wonder, lying in a room so hot as to make him sweat like a gamecock. So far as the Squire had been able to discover, Phoebe had run away to escape a proposal from the Duke of Salford. Well, he had thought that an unlikely tale at the outset; and since he had ascertained that he had been right in thinking that it was on Tom’s behalf Salford had called in the sawbones he knew it for a Banbury story. And now he would be obliged to them if they would explain to him what the devil had made them go off in such a crackbrained style.
It was really very difficult to explain it to him; and not surprising that he should presently declare himself unable to make head or tail of the story. First, this Duke of Phoebe’s was a monster from whose advances she had been obliged to fly; next, he was transformed without cause into a charming fellow with whom she had been consorting on terms of amity for the best part of a se’enight.
‘I never said he was charming,’ objected Phoebe. ‘That was Tom. He toad-eats him!’
‘No such thing!’ said Tom indignantly. ‘You don’t treat him with common civility!’
‘Now, that’s enough!’ interposed the Squire, inured to sudden squabbles between his heir and his heir’s lifelong friend. ‘All I know is that I’m very much obliged to the Duke for taking care of as silly a pair of children as ever I knew! Well, I told her ladyship we should find it to be much ado about nothing, and so it is! It’s not my business to be giving you a scold, my dear, but there’s no denying you deserve one! However, I shall say no more to either of you. A broken leg is punishment enough for Tom; and as for you – well, there’s no sense in saying her ladyship ain’t vexed with you, because she is – very!’
‘I’m not going back to Austerby, sir,’ said Phoebe, with the calm of desperation.
The Squire was very fond of her, but he was a parent himself, and he knew what he would think of any man who aided a child of his to flout his authority. He said kindly, but with a firm note in his voice which Tom at least knew well, that she was certainly going back to Austerby, and under his escort. He had promised Marlow that he would bring his daughter safely back to him, and that was all there was to be said about it.
In this he erred: both Phoebe and Tom found much more to say; but nothing they could say availed to turn the Squire from what he conceived to be his duty. He listened with great patience to every argument advanced, but at the end of an impassioned hour he patted Phoebe’s shoulder, and said: ‘Yes, yes, my dear, but you must be reasonable! If you wish to reside with your grandmother you should write to her, and ask her if she will take you, which I’m sure I hope she may. But it won’t do to go careering over the country in this way, and so she would tell you. As for expecting me to abet you – now, you don’t want for sense, and you know I can’t do it!’
She said despairingly: ‘You don’t understand!’
‘Won’t understand!’ muttered Tom savagely.
‘Don’t, Tom! Perhaps, if I write to her, Grandmama might –
Only they will be so dreadfully angry with me!’ A tear trickled down her cheek; she wiped it away, saying as valiantly as she could: ‘Well, at least I have had one very happy week. When must I go, sir?’
The Squire said gruffly: ‘Best to do so as soon as possible, my dear. I shall hire a chaise to convey you, but Tom’s situation makes it a trifle awkward. Seems to me I ought first to consult with this doctor of his.’
She agreed to this; and then, as another tear spilled over, ran out of the room. The Squire cleared his throat, and said: ‘She will feel better when she’s had her cry, you know.’
It was Phoebe’s intention to do just this, in the privacy of her bedchamber; but she found Alice there, sweeping the floor, and retreated to the stairs, just as the door leading to the back of the inn opened, and Sylvester came into the narrow passage. She stopped, halfway down the stairs, and he looked up. He saw the tear-stains on her cheeks, and said: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Tom’s papa,’ she managed to reply. ‘Mr Orde…’
He was frowning now, the slant of his brows accentuated. ‘Here?’
‘In Tom’s room. He – he says –’
‘Come down to the coffee-room!’ he commanded.
She obeyed, blowing her nose, and saying in a muffled voice: ‘I beg your pardon: I am trying to compose myself!’
He shut the door. ‘Yes, don’t cry! What is it that Orde says?’
‘That I must go home. He promised Papa, you see, and although he is very kind he doesn’t understand. He is going to take me home as soon as he can.’
‘Then you haven’t much time to waste,’ he said coolly. ‘How long will it take you to make ready?’
‘It doesn’t signify. He has to go to Hungerford first to see Dr Upsall, as well as to hire a chaise.’
‘I am not talking of a journey to Austerby, but of one to London. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, indeed it is! Do you mean – But he won’t permit me!’