‘Must you ask his leave? If you choose to go, my chaise is at the Halfway House, and I will drive you there immediately. Well?’
A faint smile touched his lips, for these words had acted on her magically. She was suddenly a creature transformed. ‘Thank you! Oh, how good you are!’
‘I’ll tell Keighley not to stable the grays. Where’s Alice?’
‘In my bedchamber. But will she –’
‘Tell her she may have precisely fifteen minutes in which to pack up what she may need, and warn her that we shan’t stay for her,’ he said, striding to the door.
‘Mrs Scaling – ?’
‘I’ll make all right with her,’ he said, over his shoulder, and was gone.
Alice, at first bemused, no sooner learned that she would not be waited for than she cast her duster from her with the air of one who had burnt her boats, and said tersely: ‘I’ll go if I bust!’ and rushed from the room.
Fearing that at any moment the Squire might come to find her, Phoebe dragged her portmanteau from under the bed and began feverishly to cram her clothes into it. Rather less than fifteen minutes later both damsels crept down the stairs, one clutching a portmanteau and a bandbox from under whose lid a scrap of muslin flounce protruded, the other clasping in both arms a bulky receptacle made of plaited straw.
The curricle was waiting in the yard, with Keighley at the grays’ heads and Sylvester standing beside him. Sylvester laughed when he saw the two dishevelled travellers, and came to relieve Phoebe of her burdens, saying: ‘My compliments! I never thought you would contrive to be ready under half an hour!’
‘Well, I’m not,’ she confessed. ‘I was obliged to leave several things behind, and – oh, dear! Part of my other dress is sticking out of the bandbox!’
‘You may pack it again at the Halfway House,’ he said. ‘But straighten your hat! I will not be seen driving a lady who looks perfectly demented!’
By the time she had achieved a more respectable appearance the luggage had been stowed under the seat, and Sylvester was ready to hand her up. Alice followed her, and in another minute they were away, Keighley swinging himself up behind as the curricle moved forward.
‘Shall I reach London tonight, do you think, sir?’ Phoebe asked, as soon as Sylvester had negotiated the narrow entrance to the yard.
‘I hope you may, but it’s more likely you will be obliged to rack up for the night somewhere. There’s no danger of running into drifts now, but it will be heavy going, with the snow turning everywhere into slush. You must leave it to Keighley to decide what is best to do.’
‘The thing is, you see, that I haven’t a great deal of money with me,’ she confided shyly. ‘In fact, very little! So if we could reach London –’
‘No need to tease yourself over money. Keighley will attend to all such matters as inn charges, tolls, and changes. You will take my own team over the first few stages, but after that it must be hired cattle, I’m afraid.’
‘Thank you! you are very good,’ she said, rather overwhelmed. ‘Pray desire him to keep account of the money he may have to lay out!’
‘He will naturally do so, Miss Marlow.’
‘Yes, but I mean –’
‘Oh, I know what you mean!’ he interrupted. ‘You would like me to present you with a bill, and no doubt I should do so – if I were a job-master.’
‘I may be very much beholden to you, Duke,’ said Phoebe coldly, ‘but if you speak to me in that odiously snubbing way I shall – I shall –’
He laughed. ‘You will what?’
‘Well, I don’t know yet, but I shall think of something, I promise you! Because you are quite at fault! I fancy it may be proper for you to pay the post charges, but it would be most improper for you to pay my bill at an inn!’
‘Very well. If there should be such a bill I will hand it to you when next we meet.’
She inclined her head graciously. ‘I am obliged to you, sir.’
‘Is that the way I speak when I am being odiously snubbing?’ enquired Sylvester.
She gave a tiny chuckle, and said handsomely: ‘I must own that you are not at all stupid!’
‘Oh, no, I’m not stupid! I have a good memory, too. I haven’t forgotten how well you contrived to hit off a number of our acquaintances, and I make no secret of my uneasiness. You have an uncomfortable knack of hitting off just what is most ridiculous in your victims!’
She did not reply. Glancing down at her he saw a very grave look in her face. He wondered what she had found to disturb her in his bantering speech, but he did not ask, because they had by this time reached the Halfway House, and he was obliged to give his attention to the ostler, who came running to hold the grays.
It was not long before the chaise stood waiting to convey the travellers to London. Alice, who had sat lost in a beatific dream in the curricle, was quite overcome by the sight of the elegant equipage in which she was now to travel, with the crest upon its panel, its four magnificent horses stamping and fretting and tossing up their heads, its smart postilions, the deep squabs of the seats, and the sheepskin that covered the floor. To Phoebe’s dismay she burst into tears. However, when anxiously begged to say what was distressing her she replied, between snorting sobs, that she was thinking of her neighbours, denied the privilege of watching her drive off like a queen.
Relieved, Phoebe said: ‘Well, never mind! You will be able to tell them all about it when you go home again! Jump up, and don’t cry any more!’
‘Oh, no, miss! But I do be so happy!’ said Alice, preparing to clamber into the chaise.
Phoebe turned, and looked at Sylvester, waiting to hand her up the steps. Her colour rose; she put out her hand, and as he took it in his, said haltingly: ‘I have been trying to think how to tell you how – how very grateful I am, but I can’t find the words. But, oh, I thank you!’
‘Believe me, Sparrow, you make too much of a very trifling service. Convey my compliments to Lady Ingham, and tell her that I shall do myself the honour of calling on her when I come to town. In my turn, I will convey yours to Thomas and his father!’
‘Yes, pray do! I mean, you will tell Tom how it was, won’t you? And perhaps you could convey my apologies to the Squire, rather than my compliments?’
‘Certainly, if that is your wish.’
‘Well, I think it would be more civil. I only hope he won’t be out of reason vexed!’
‘Don’t tease yourself on that head!’
‘Yes, but if he should be I know you will give him one of your freezing set-downs, and that I couldn’t bear!’ she said.
‘I thought it would not be long before you came to the end of your unnatural civility,’ he observed. ‘Let me assure you that I have no intention of conducting myself with anything less than propriety!’
‘That’s exactly what I dread!’ she said.
‘Good God, what an abominable girl you are! Get into the chaise before I catch the infection!’ he exclaimed, between amusement and annoyance.
She laughed, but said, apologetically, as he handed her up: ‘I wasn’t thinking! Truly I meant not to say one uncivil thing to you!’
‘You are certainly incorrigible. I, on the other hand, am so magnanimous as to wish you a safe and speedy journey!’
‘Magnanimous indeed! Thank you!’
The steps were let up; Alice’s voice was the last to be heard before the door was shut. ‘Hot bricks, and a fur rug, miss!’ disclosed Alice. ‘Spanking, I call it!’
Phoebe leaned forward to wave farewell, the ostlers let go the wheelers’ heads, and the chaise started to move, swaying on its excellent springs. Sylvester stood watching it until it disappeared round a bend in the road, and then turned to Keighley, waiting beside him, the bridle of a hired riding-hack in his hand. ‘Get them to London tonight if you can, John, but run no risks,’ he said. ‘Money, pistols – I think you have everything.
’
‘Yes, your grace, but I wish you’d let me come back!’
‘No, wait for me at Salford House. I can’t take both you and Swale. Or, at any rate, I won’t! Curricles were never meant to carry three persons.’
Keighley smiled grimly, as he hoisted himself into the saddle. ‘I thought your grace was being a trifle crowded,’ he remarked, with a certain amount of satisfaction.
‘And hope it may be a lesson to me! Be damned to you!’ retorted Sylvester.
He accomplished the short journey back to the Blue Boar at a leisurely trot, his mind occupied, not altogether pleasurably, with the events of the past week. He ought never to have stopped at the Blue Boar. He wondered what could have possessed him, and was much inclined to think it had been perversity: John had tried to dissuade him – damn John for being in the right of it, as usual! – and he had done it as much to tease him as for any other reason. Well, he had been well served for that piece of mischief! Once he had found young Orde in such a fix he had been fairly caught: only a monster could have abandoned the boy to his fate. Besides, he liked Thomas, and had not foreseen that his act of charity would precipitate him into the sort of imbroglio he particularly disliked. He could only be thankful that he was not a frequent traveller on the Bath road: he had given them plenty to talk about at the Halfway House, and to afford the vulgar food for gossip was no part of his ambition. That hurly-burly girl! She wanted both manners and conduct; she was disagreeably pert, and had no beauty: he cordially disliked her. What the devil had made him come to her rescue, when all his saner self desired was to see her thoroughly set-down? There had not been the least necessity – except that he had pledged his word. But when he had seen her on the stairs, so absurdly woebegone but trying rather pathetically to smile, he hadn’t recollected that foolish promise: he had acted on impulse, and had only himself to thank for the outcome. Here he was, tied still to a primitive inn, and a young man whose welfare was no concern of his; deprived of his groom; open to the justifiable censure of some unknown country squire – the sort of worthy person, in all probability, whom he entertained at Chance on Public Days; and the subject (if he knew his world) of scandalous conjecture. In some form or another the story would be bound to leak out. The best he could hope for was to be thought to have taken leave of his senses; the worst, that for all his famed fastidiousness he had fallen laughably in love with a dab of a female without style or countenance, who scorned his supposed advances.
No, decided Sylvester, turning neatly into the yard of the Blue Boar: that was rather too much to expect him to bear! Miss Marlow should not exhibit her poor opinion of him to the interested ton. Miss Marlow, in fact, should exhibit something very different from contempt: he was damned if he was going to be the only one to learn a salutary lesson!
His expression, when he alighted from the curricle, and stood watching, with a merciless eye, the exact carrying out of his curt orders, was unamiable enough to make the ostler break into a sweat of anxiety; but when he presently strolled into Tom’s room all traces of ill-humour had vanished from his countenance.
He entered upon a scene of constraint. The Squire, peckish after his ride, had just disposed of a substantial nuncheon, and Tom, having talked himself out of arguments, had been preserving for the past ten minutes a silence pregnant with resentment. He looked round at the opening of the door, his eyes still smouldering, and as soon as he saw that it was Sylvester who had come in, burst out: ‘Salford! The – the most damnable thing! Perhaps you can prevail upon my father to listen to reason! I never would have believed it possible he could – oh, this is my father!’
‘I don’t know what you would never have believed possible,’ said the Squire, getting up from his chair, and bowing to Sylvester, ‘but let me tell you, my boy, I wouldn’t have believed you had only to be away from home for a week to lose your manners! I should think your grace must be wondering if he was reared in a cowbyre, and I’m sure I don’t blame you. He wasn’t, however – and a thundering scold he’d get from his mother if she were here!’ He saw that Sylvester, advancing into the room, was holding out his hand, and shook it warmly. ‘I’m honoured to make your grace’s acquaintance – and feel myself to be devilish obliged to you, as you may guess! You’ve been a great deal too kind to Tom, and how to thank you I don’t know!’
‘But there’s no need to thank me at all, I assure you, sir,’ Sylvester said, at his most charming. ‘I’ve spent a most entertaining week – and made a new friend, whom I can’t allow you to scold! It would be most unjust, you know, for he abandoned his really oppressive civility only at my request. Besides, he has endured six days of boredom without a murmur of complaint!’
‘Ay, and serve him right!’ said the Squire. ‘A bad business this, my lord Duke! I left Marlow in a rare taking, I can tell you. Well, well! He’s the best man to hounds I ever saw, but I never thought his understanding more than moderate. Gretna Green, indeed! Of all the hare-brained notions to have taken into his head!’
‘I wish to God I had taken her to Gretna Green!’ said Tom savagely. ‘Salford, my father is determined to carry her back to Austerby! I can’t make him understand that only a regular brute would do so, after such an escapade as this!’
‘Now, now!’ said the Squire. ‘There’s been no harm done, and no one but ourselves any the wiser – thanks to his grace! – and so I shall tell her ladyship.’
‘As though she would pay the least heed! And what a figure I must cut! I wouldn’t let her go on the stage, and if I had she would have been with Lady Ingham days ago! I promised to take her there myself, and all I’ve done is to land her in a worse case than ever! Father –’
‘Calm yourself, Galahad!’ interposed Sylvester. ‘There is really no occasion to be cast into despair. Miss Marlow left for London an hour ago.’
An astonished silence succeeded these words. Tom broke it with a shout of triumph. ‘Oh, you Trojan, Salford!’
This made Sylvester laugh; but an instant later he was putting up his brows, for the Squire, after staring at him fixedly, said bluntly: ‘If that was your grace’s doing, as I collect it must have been, I shall take leave to tell you it was wrong of you, my lord Duke – very wrong!’
Tom, recognising that look of withdrawal, intervened quickly. ‘You mustn’t say that, Father – indeed you must not! Pray – !’
‘I shall say just what I think, Tom,’ said the Squire, still looking at Sylvester from under his brows. ‘If his grace don’t like it, why, I’m sorry for it, but I’ve said it, and I stand by it!’
Tom glanced apprehensively at Sylvester, but his intervention had been more successful than he knew. Meeting his eyes Sylvester realised, with a slight shock, that he was trying to prevent the Squire’s being wounded by a snub. He had been unaware of his own stiffening; for an instant he remembered Phoebe’s words. He had dismissed them as an impertinent attempt to vex him; he wondered now if it could be true that he, who prided himself on his good manners, appeared to others to be insufferably high in the instep. He said, smiling: ‘Well I don’t like it, for you are doing me an injustice, sir! You may have pledged your word to Marlow, but I pledged mine to his daughter!’
‘Ay, that’s very pretty talking!’ retorted the Squire. ‘But what the devil am I to tell him, Duke?’
‘If I were you,’ replied Sylvester, ‘I rather think I should merely tell him that I had been unable to bring Miss Marlow back with me because she had already left for town – on a visit to her grandmother.’
The Squire, having thought this over, said slowly: ‘I could say that, of course. To be sure, they don’t know Phoebe has been here all along – and it would be as well, I daresay, if they never did get to know of it. At the same time, I don’t like hoaxing Marlow, for that’s what I should be doing, no question about it!’
‘But, Father, what good would it do to tell them you found Phoebe here?’ asked Tom. ‘Now that she’s gone, it co
uld only do harm!’
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ admitted the Squire. ‘What am I going to tell them?’
‘That Miss Marlow travelled to town in my chaise, escorted by my head groom, and attended by a respectable abigail,’ replied Sylvester fluently. ‘Not even Lady Marlow could demand a greater degree of propriety, surely?’
‘Not if she don’t set eyes on the respectable abigail!’ murmured Tom.
‘Don’t put mistaken notions into your father’s head, Thomas! Let me reassure you, sir! The landlady’s daughter has gone with Miss Marlow. She is unquestionably respectable!’
‘Yes, but such a toad-eater!’ said Tom wickedly. ‘Saying you were more important than a gobble-cock – !’
Thirteen
Contrary to Sylvester’s expectation Phoebe reached her grandmother’s house at half past ten that evening. She had been travelling for nearly eight hours, for the state of the roads had compelled the postilions to proceed at a very sober pace, and she was as weary as she was anxious. Her initial reception in Green Street was not encouraging. While she waited in the chaise, with the window let down, watching him, Keighley trod up the steps to the front door and plied the heavy knocker resoundingly. A long, long pause followed, and a nerve-racking fear that Lady Ingham was out of town assailed Phoebe. But just as Keighley raised his hand to repeat his summons she saw him check, and lower his arm again. The quelling noise of bolts being drawn back was next heard, and Phoebe, craning eagerly forward, saw her grandmother’s butler standing on the threshold, with a lamp in his hand, and heaved a sigh of relief.
But if she expected to receive a welcome from Horwich she was the more deceived. Persons who demanded admittance at unseasonable hours were never welcome to him, even when they arrived in chaise-and-four and escorted by a liveried servant. A street lamp illumined the chaise, and he perceived that for all the dirt that clung to the wheels and panels it was an extremely elegant vehicle: none of your job-chaises, but a carriage built for a gentleman of means and taste. A glimpse of a crest, half concealed by mud, caused him to unbend a trifle, but he replied coldly to Keighley’s enquiry that her ladyship was not at home to visitors.