‘Thank God you are better!’ came a cooing voice. ‘I have been in an agony! Dear sir, pray lie still; ’twas a cruel blow, and oh the misunderstanding! Peter, a glass of wine for the gentleman! There, sir, let me but raise your head.’
Mr Markham allowed it, perforce, and sipped at the wine held to his lips. Some of the mists were clearing from his brain. He raised himself on his elbow, and looked round.
‘Oh, you are much better!’ cooed the voice. ‘But gently, sir. Don’t, I implore you, overtax your strength.’
Mr Markham’s gaze came to rest on a flowered waistcoat. He put a hand to his head, and his eyes travelled slowly up the waistcoat to Mr Merriot’s grave face. Mr Merriot was on one knee, glass of wine in hand; Mr Merriot looked all concern.
Recollection came. ‘Burn it, you’re the fellow –’ Mr Markham’s hand went to his jaw; he glared at Peter Merriot. ‘Did you – By God, sir, did you – ?’
‘Let me help you to a chair, sir,’ said Mr Merriot gently. ‘In truth you are shaken, and no wonder. Sir, I cannot sufficiently beg your pardon.’
Mr Markham was on his feet now, dizzy and bewildered. ‘Was it you knocked me down, sir? Answer me that!’ he panted.
‘Alas, sir, I did!’ said Mr Merriot. ‘I came in to find my sister struggling, as I thought, in your arms. Can you blame me, sir? My action was the impulse of the moment.’
Mr Markham was put into a chair. He fought for words, a hand still held to his jaw. ‘Struggling? she flung herself at me in a swoon!’ he burst out.
Miss Merriot was kneeling at his feet, napkin in hand. Mr Markham thrust it aside with an impotent snarl. ‘You have the right to be angry, sir,’ sighed Miss Merriot. ‘’Twas all my folly, but oh sir, when the bustle started, and they were crying fire without I scarce knew what I did!’ Her fair head was bent in modest confusion. Mr Markham did not heed her.
‘Blame you? blame you? Yes, sir, I can!’ he said wrathfully. ‘A damnable little puppy to – to –’ Words failed him; he sat nursing his jaw and fuming.
Mr Merriot said haughtily: – ‘You’re heated sir, and I believe excusably. I don’t heed what you say therefore. I have asked your pardon for a mistake – understandable, I contend – that I made.’
‘Puppy!’ snapped Mr Markham, and drank off the rest of the wine in the glass. It seemed to restore him. He got up unsteadily and his hot gaze swept round again. ‘Letty!’ he shot out. ‘Where is the girl?’
‘Dear sir, indeed you are not yourself yet!’ Miss Merriot laid a soothing hand on his arm. ‘There is no girl here save myself.’
She was shaken off. ‘No girl, you say?’ roared Mr Markham, and went blundering towards the room across the passage. ‘Letty!’ he shouted. ‘Letty, I say! Hell and damnation, her cloak’s gone!’ He came back, his face dark with rage and suspicion, and caught at Mr Merriot’s straight shoulder. ‘Out with it! Where is she? Where have you hidden her? You don’t trick me, my fine sir!’
Miss Merriot, hovering watchfully, cast herself between them, and clung to her brother. ‘No, no!’ she cried. ‘No swords, I do beseech you. Sir, you are raving! There is no girl here that I have seen.’
Mr Merriot put his sister aside. ‘But wait!’ he said slowly. ‘As I remember there was a lady in the room as I came in. A child with black hair. My sister was overwrought, sir, and maybe forgets. Yes, there was a lady.’ He looked round as though he expected to see her lurking in some corner.
‘Damme, it won’t serve!’ cried out the infuriated Mr Markham, and went striding off to the door that led into the taproom, calling loudly for the landlord.
Mine host came quickly, with an uneasy look in his face. In answer to Mr Markham’s furious query he said nervously that in the scare of the fire someone had driven off with his worship’s chaise, and he doubted but that the lady was in it.
Mr Markham swung round to face Peter Merriot again, and there came a red light into his eyes, while his hand fumbled at his sword hilt. ‘Ah, you’re in this!’ he snarled.
Mr Merriot paused in the act of taking snuff. ‘Your pardon, sir?’ he asked in some surprise. ‘A lady gone off in your post-chaise, and myself in it? I don’t understand you, sir. Who is the lady, and why should she go off so? Why, it’s churlish of her, I protest.’
Mr Markham seemed undecided. ‘It’s no business of yours,’ he said savagely. ‘But if I find ’twas you did it. – Which way did the chaise go?’
‘To – towards London, sir,’ nervously answered mine host. ‘But ’tis only what Tom says. I didn’t see myself, and indeed, sir –’
Mr Markham said something between his teeth at which mine host cast a horrified glance at Miss Merriot. The lady appeared to be unmoved. ‘Saddle me a horse at once! Where’s my hat?’
Light dawned on Mr Merriot. ‘Egad, it’s a runaway, Kate. Faith, sir, it seems my – er – impetuosity was indeed ill-timed. A horse, of course! You should be up with the chaise soon enough. A horse for the gentleman!’ Mr Merriot swept out into the court, bearing mine host before him.
‘It’s ready saddled, sir, but Tom says the gentleman ordered it half an hour since,’ said the puzzled landlord.
‘Saddled and ready, eh? Then see it brought round to the door, for the gentleman’s in a hurry.’
‘Yes, sir, but how came it that the horse was bespoke when the gentleman was a-laying like one dead?’
‘Bespoke? A ruse, man, a ruse, and your man in madam’s pay very like. Best keep your mouth shut. Ah, behold the bereft gentleman!’
Mr Markham came stamping out with his hat rammed over his nose, and managed to hoist himself into the saddle with the assistance of two scared ostlers. He gathered the bridle up, and turned to glare down upon Mr Merriot. ‘I’ll settle with you later,’ he promised ferociously, and setting spurs to his horse dashed off into the darkness.
Miss Merriot came out to lay a hand on her brother’s shoulder. ‘The dear gentleman!’ she remarked. ‘Very well, child, but what next?’
Two
Arrival of a Large Gentleman
Brother and sister went back into the coffee-room. As they entered by one door a little figure tiptoed in at the other, and stood poised on one toe as if for flight. ‘Has he gone?’ breathed Miss Letitia.
It was Peter Merriot who went forward and took the lady’s hand. ‘Why, yes, child, gone for the moment,’ he said, and led her to the fire.
She raised a pair of big pansy-brown eyes. ‘Oh, thank you, sir!’ she said. ‘And you too, dear madam.’
Miss Merriot flushed slightly, whereat the humorous look came into Peter’s eye again. He looked down at Miss Letty gravely enough, and pulled a chair forward. ‘Sit down, madam, and let us have the story, if you please. I should desire to know how we may serve you.’
‘You have served me,’ vowed the lady, clasping her hands in her lap. ‘My story is all folly, sir – wicked folly rising out of the most dreadful persecution.’
‘You shock me, madam.’
Miss Merriot came to the fire, and sat down beside the little lady, who promptly caught her hand and kissed it. ‘I don’t know what I should have done without you!’ she said fervently. ‘For I had quite made up my mind I didn’t want to go to Gretna Green at all. You see, I had never seen him in his cups before. It was a terrible awakening. He became altered altogether once we were out of London, and – and I was afraid – a little.’ She looked up blushing. ‘At home when I saw him he was so different, you see.’
‘Do I understand, my dear, that you consented to elope with the gentleman?’ inquired Miss Merriot.
The black curls were nodded vigorously. ‘I thought it would be so romantic,’ sighed Letty. She brightened. ‘And so it was, when you hit him,’ she added, turning to Peter. ‘It was positively marvellous!’
‘Did you elope with him for the romance of it?’ ask
ed Mr Merriot, amused.
‘That, and because of my papa,’ said Letty. ‘And because of being bored. Oh, have you never known, ma’am, what it is to be cooped up, and kept so close that you are ready to die of boredom?’
‘In truth, I’ve led something of a rover’s life,’ said Miss Merriot. ‘But continue, child.’
‘I am an heiress,’ announced Letty in tones the most lugubrious.
‘My felicitations, ma’am,’ bowed Mr Merriot.
‘Felicitations! I wish I were a pauper, sir! If a man comes to the house my papa must needs imagine he is after my money. He said that of Gregory Markham. And indeed I think he was right,’ she said reflectively. ‘Ma’am, I think fathers are – are the veriest plague.’
‘We have suffered, child,’ said Miss Merriot.
‘Then, ma’am, you will feel for me. My papa puts a hateful disagreeable woman to be my duenna, and I am so guarded and sheltered that there is nothing amusing ever happens to me, in spite of having been brought to town. Add to all that, ma’am, Sir Anthony Fanshawe, and you will see why I had come to the pitch of doing anything only to get away!’
‘I feel we are to deplore Sir Anthony, Kate,’ said Mr Merriot.
‘It is not that I am not fond of him,’ Letty explained. ‘I have always been fond of him, but conceive, ma’am, being required to marry a man whom you have known all your life! A man, too, of his years and disposition!’
‘I perceive in you a victim of parental tyranny, child,’ said Miss Merriot. ‘We consign Sir Anthony to perdition.’
Letty giggled at that. ‘Oh, never, ma’am! ’Tis a model of prudence and the virtues! And thirty-five years old at the very least!’
Mr Merriot flicked a speck of snuff from his sleeve.
‘And to escape this greybeard, hence the young Adonis yonder, I suppose?’
Miss Letty hung her head. ‘He – he was not very young either, I suppose,’ she confessed. ‘And I have been very silly, and wicked, I know. But indeed I thought him vastly more entertaining than Tony. You could not for your life imagine Tony excited, or in a scrape, or even hurried. And Gregory said such pretty things, and it was all so romantic I was misled.’
‘The matter’s plain to the meanest intelligence, madam,’ Mr Merriot assured her, ‘I discover in myself a growing desire to meet the phlegmatic Sir Anthony.’
His sister laughed. ‘Ay, that’s to your taste. But what’s the next step?’
‘Oh, she goes with us along to London. Pray, ma’am, may we know your name?’
‘’Tis Letitia Grayson, sir. My papa is Sir Humphrey Grayson of Grayson Court, in Gloucestershire. He is afflicted with the gout. I expect you may see him by and by, for I left a note for him, and he would be bound to find it.’
‘We await his coming, then,’ said Miss Merriot. ‘It solves the matter. My Peter, bespeak a bedchamber for Miss Grayson.’
A confiding hand was slipped into Kate’s as Mr Merriot strolled away to the door. ‘Please will you call me Letty?’ said Miss Grayson shyly.
Mr Merriot made an odd grimace at the panel of the door, and went through into the taproom.
Mine host had barely recovered from his very natural bewilderment at finding that the supposed fugitive was still in his house when there came the sound of a chaise bowling at a rare speed along the road. It drew up at the inn, and in the light of the lamps Mr Merriot saw his servant jump down. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. ‘This should be papa,’ he said pensively. ‘Your fourth room will be wanted, host.’ He went back into the coffee-room to find that Miss Letty was at the window already, peering out.
‘Your papa, as I believe,’ announced Mr Merriot.
‘I am afraid it is,’ agreed Miss Letty. ‘Yet with the gout plaguing him so much – oh lud! As I live, ’tis Anthony!’
Miss Merriot threw her brother a comical look. ‘And so your desires are fulfilled, child. We are all impatience, Letty.’
Mr Merriot stood by her chair, and took snuff. The door opened to admit a large gentleman, who came in very leisurely.
‘Lud, it’s a mammoth!’ said Miss Merriot, for her brother’s private ear.
‘Oh, are you jealous?’ he retorted.
The large gentleman paused on the threshold and put up his quizzing-glass, through which he blandly surveyed the room. He was a very large gentleman indeed, with magnificent shoulders and a fine leg. He seemed rather to fill the room; he had certainly a presence, and a personality. He wore a tie wig of plain brown, and carried his hat under his arm. The hilt of his sword peeped out from between the folds of his greatcoat, but in his hand he held a cane.
‘The gentleman would appear to be annoyed,’ murmured Mr Merriot, looking at the lines about the newcomer’s mouth and square jowl.
‘La, my dear, how can you say so?’ marvelled Miss Merriot, seeing the large gentleman’s grey eyes calm and bored. She rose with an air, and swept a curtsey. The gentleman must not be allowed to dominate the room thus. It seemed he had the way of it. ‘Make your leg, child,’ she threw over her shoulder at Peter. ‘We are under observation.’
The sternness about Sir Anthony’s mouth vanished. He smiled and showed a row of very even white teeth. He bowed with easy grace. ‘Madam, your most obedient! Sir, yours!’
Mr Merriot took Miss Letty by the hand. ‘Permit me to restore to you Miss Grayson, sir,’ he said, ignoring an indignant protest from the lady.
Sir Anthony showed no desire to receive Miss Grayson, who looked him defiantly between the eyes. He smiled still, but he did not offer to take her hand. ‘You should be whipped, Letty,’ he said pleasantly.
Miss Grayson flushed. ‘’Deed, sir, and did you bring your cane for that purpose?’ she demanded.
‘No, my dear, but I should be happy to benefit you that far.’
Peter Merriot was amused, and permitted his chuckle to be heard. ‘Faith, it’s a stern suitor.’
‘You are – very rude – and – and – and hateful!’ declared Miss Grayson, outraged.
Sir Anthony laid down his cane and his hat, and began to take off his greatcoat. As one who had no further interest in Miss Grayson he took out his snuff-box, unfobbed it, and held it out to Mr Merriot. His hand was very white and finely shaped, but it looked to have some strength. ‘Sir,’ said he, smiling sleepily for all his grey eyes were alert beneath their rather heavy lids, ‘you will permit me to thank you on behalf of my friend, Sir Humphrey Grayson, for your services to his daughter.’
Mr Merriot helped himself to a pinch of snuff. Grey eyes met grey; the humorous look played around Mr Merriot’s mouth. ‘Lud, here’s a solemnity!’ he said. ‘I am Miss Grayson’s servant to command.’
Miss Grayson forgot her dignity. ‘Tony, ’twas wonderful! His sword was out in a trice, and I thought he was about to run that odious Markham right through the body, but just as it was too monstrously exciting for words the point seemed to flash upwards and the hilt caught Markham on the chin.’ She demonstrated with a small fist to her own pretty chin. ‘He went down like a stone,’ she ended dramatically. Her glance fell on Miss Merriot by the fire. ‘And Miss Merriot too was splendid, Tony, for she pretended to swoon in Markham’s arms.’
Mr Merriot looked down at his sister something quizzically. ‘My dear, I eclipse you,’ he murmured. He turned again to Sir Anthony. ‘Thus we mourn our departed suitor. Now where did you find my man John?’ He began to pour wine, and handed one glass to the large gentleman.
‘At Stilton,’ Sir Anthony replied. ‘Just before I saw my friend Mr Markham. He was endeavouring to hide a chaise and horses which – er – aroused my suspicions. He was induced to confide in me.’
Mr Merriot looked meditatively at that square handsome face. ‘I wonder why?’ he said, for he knew his John.
A singularly attractive smile crossed Sir Anthony’s f
ace. ‘My charm of manner, sir, I believe,’ he said.
There came a laugh from Miss Merriot. ‘I begin to have a kindness for the large gentleman,’ she remarked to the room at large. ‘And you met the so dear Mr Markham, sir?’
‘Hardly, madam. I had rather say I saw the so dear Mr Markham pass me in a cloud of – mud, I believe.’
‘I wonder, did he see you?’ Miss Merriot’s eyes were bright with laughter.
‘I am almost persuaded that he did,’ said Sir Anthony.
‘Then I take it we are not to expect his return?’ Miss Merriot cocked a knowing eyebrow.
‘I hardly think so, madam,’ said Sir Anthony placidly.
Miss Merriot looked at Miss Grayson. ‘Why, child, I like the large gentleman, I protest,’ she said. ‘Pray, sir, have you dined?’
‘So far I have not had the time, madam, but I have reason to hope the landlord is preparing dinner for me at this moment.’
Mine host himself came in most opportunely then, with the serving maid behind him, carrying a loaded tray. A fresh cover was laid, a roasted chicken placed before Sir Anthony, and a fresh bottle uncorked.
‘You permit, madam?’ Sir Anthony bowed towards Miss Merriot.
‘Pray, sir, be seated. You will be ravenous.’
‘I confess I hate to miss my dinner,’ said Sir Anthony, and began to carve the chicken. ‘There is something of me to maintain, you see,’ he added, with a twinkle, and a glance cast down his noble bulk.
Miss Grayson cut in on Miss Merriot’s laugh. ‘Food!’ she ejaculated scornfully, and tapped an impatient foot. Sir Anthony paid no heed. ‘Well, Tony, you are come nigh on a hundred miles to rescue me, as I suppose, and now have you nothing at all to say but that you have missed your dinner?’
‘That thought has been absorbing me for the last twenty miles,’ said Sir Anthony imperturbably.