‘Oh, he’s not a poor man! Whatever put that into your head?’ said Rose airily. ‘Didn’t Mr Brean ever tell you how one of his aunts married a man that was in a very good way of business? I forget what his name was, but he was a warm man, by all accounts, and this young fellow’s his son.’
Mrs Skeffling shook her head wonderingly. ‘He never said nothing to me about no aunts.’
‘Ah, I daresay he wouldn’t, because when she set up for a lady she didn’t have any more to do with her own family!’ said the inventive Rose. She added, with perfect truth: ‘I forget how it came about that he mentioned her to me. But this Mr Jack – being as he’s got his discharge, and not one to look down on his relations – took a fancy to visit Mr Brean. He’s just been telling me so.’
‘But whatever made Mr Brean go off like he has?’ asked Mrs Skeffling, much mystified.
‘That was where it was very fortunate his cousin happened to come to visit him,’ said Rose, improvising freely. ‘It seems he was wanting to go off on some bit of business – don’t ask me what, because I don’t know what it was! – only, being a widower, and not having anyone fit to mind the gate for him, he couldn’t do it. So that’s how it came about – Mr Jack, being, as you can see, a good-natured young fellow, and willing to do anyone a kindness.’
This glib explanation appeared to satisfy Mrs Skeffling. She said: ‘Oh, is that how it was? Mr Sopworthy took a notion Mr Jack was gammoning us. “Mark my words,” he says, “it’s a bubble! It’s my belief,” he says, “he’s one of them young bucks as has got himself into trouble.” What he suspicioned was that maybe there was a fastener out for him, for debt, very likely; or p’raps he up and killed someone, in one of them murdering duels.’
‘Nothing of the sort!’ said Rose sharply. ‘He’s a very respectable young man, and if Mr Sopworthy was to set such stories about it’ll be him that will find himself in trouble!’
‘Oh, he wouldn’t do that!’ Mrs Skeffling assured her. ‘What he said was, however it might be it wasn’t no business of his, and them as meddled in other folks’ concerns wouldn’t never prosper. Setting aside he took a fancy to Mr Jack. “Whatever he done, he ain’t no hedge-bird,” he says, very positive. “That I’ll swear to!” Which I told him was sure as check, because Miss Nell knows him for a respectable party, and said so to me with her own lips. So then,’ pursued Mrs Skeffling, sinking her voice conspiratorially, ‘Mr Sopworthy stared at me very hard, and he says to me, slow-like, that if so be Mr Jack was a friend of Miss Nell’s it wouldn’t become no one to start gabbing about him, because anyone as wished her well couldn’t but be glad if it should happen that a fine, lusty chap like Mr Jack was courting her, and no doubt he had his reasons – the way things are up at the Manor – for coming here secret. Of course, I don’t know nothing about that, which I told Mr Sopworthy.’
She ended on a distinct note of interrogation, her mild gaze fixed hopefully on her visitor’s face. Miss Durward, who had been thinking rapidly, got up with a great show of haste, and begged her not to say that she had ever said such a thing. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what Mr Sopworthy can have been thinking about, and I hope to goodness he won’t spread such a tarradiddle! Now, mind, Mrs Skeffling! I never breathed a word of it, and I trust and pray no one else will!’
‘No, no!’ Mrs Skeffling assured her, her eyes glistening with excitement. ‘Not a word, Miss Durward, ma’am!’
Satisfied that before many hours had passed no member of a small community affectionately disposed towards the Squire’s granddaughter would think the presence in her gig of the new gatekeeper remarkable, and reckless of possible consequences, Miss Durward took leave of Crowford’s most notable gossip, and departed. She found John passing the time of day with the local carrier, and concluded, from such scraps of the dialogue as she was privileged to overhear, that he was making excellent progress in his study of the vulgar tongue. She told him, as soon as the carrier had driven through the gate, that he should think shame to himself, but rightly judging this censure to be perfunctory he only grinned at her, so endearing a twinkle in his eye that any misgivings lingering in her anxious breast were routed. She then put him swiftly in possession of such details of his genealogy as her fertile imagination had fabricated, and adjured him to drum these well into Ben’s head.
‘I will,’ he promised, enveloping her in a large hug, and planting a kiss on one plump cheek. ‘You’re a woman in a thousand, Rose!’
‘Get along with you, do, Mr Jack!’ she commanded, blushing and dimpling. ‘Carrying on like the Quality, and you trying to hoax everyone you’re Brean’s cousin! You keep your kisses for them as may want them!’
‘I don’t know that anyone does,’ he said ruefully.
‘Well, I’m sure I can’t tell that!’ she retorted tartly. ‘Now, don’t forget what I’ve been telling you!’
‘I won’t. What is my father’s name, by the by?’
‘Gracious, I can’t think of everything!’
‘Didn’t you give him one? Then I think I’ll keep my own. I daresay there are many more Staples in England than ever I heard of. Tell me this! In what way can I be of service to your mistress?’
The dimple vanished, and her mouth hardened. She did not answer for a minute, but stood with her gaze fixed on the gatepost, her face curiously set. Suddenly she brought her eyes up to his face, in a searching look. ‘Are you wishful to be of service to her?’ she demanded.
‘I never wished anything so much in my life.’
He spoke perfectly calmly, but she was quick to hear the note of sincerity in his deep, rather lazy voice. Her lip quivered, and she blinked rapidly. ‘I don’t know what’s to become of her, when the master dies!’ she said. ‘She and Mr Henry are the last of the Stornaways, and it’s him that will have Kellands, not her that’s looked after it these six years past! Long before the master was struck down it was Miss Nell that was as good as a bailiff to him, and better! It was she that turned off all the lazy, good-for-nothing servants that used to eat master out of house and home, let alone cheating him the way it was a shame to see! Scraping, and saving, breeding pigs for the market, leasing this bit of land and that, and bargaining for the best price her own self, like as if she was a man! And when master took ill, she sold the pearls her poor mother left her, and every scrap of jewelry she had from Sir Peter in the days when he was still in his prime, and there wasn’t one of us knew how deep he was in debt. Everything she could she sold, to keep off the vultures that came round as soon as it got to be known Sir Peter was done for! All Sir Peter’s lovely horses – and I can tell you he had hunters he gave hundreds of guineas for, and a team he used to drive which all the sporting gentlemen envied him – and her own hunters as well, with her phaeton, and Sir Peter’s curricle, and the smart barouche he bought for her to drive in when she went visiting – everything! There’s nothing in the stables now but the hack she rides, and the cob, and a couple of stout carriage horses which she kept for farm work mostly. There wasn’t a soul to help her, barring old Mr Birkin, that lived out Tideswell way, and was a friend of the master’s, and he’s been dead these eighteen months! Mr Henry never came next or nigh the place. He knew that there was nothing but the title and a pile of debts to be got out of it! But he’s here now, Mr Jack, and it seems he means to stay! If he’d more heart than a hen, I’d call him a carrion-crow – except that I never saw a crow hover round where there was nothing more to be picked over than a heap of dry bones! I don’t know what brings him here, nor I wouldn’t care, if he hadn’t got that Mr Coate along with him! But that’s a bad one, if ever I saw one, sir, and he’s living up at the Manor like he owned it, and casting his wicked eyes over Miss Nell till my nails itch to tear them out of his ugly face! Miss Nell, she’s not afraid of anything nor of no one, but I am, Mr Jack! I am!’
He had listened in silence to what he guessed to be the overflowing of pent-up anxieties, but when she paused, uncons
ciously gripping his shirt-sleeve, he said quietly, lifting her hand from his arm, and holding it in a warm clasp: ‘Why?’
‘Because when the master goes she’ll be alone! And not a penny in the world but the little her mother left her, and that not enough to buy her clothes with!’
‘But she has other relatives, surely! She spoke to me of an aunt –’
‘If it’s my Lady Rivington you’re meaning, sir, it’s little she’d trouble herself over Miss Nell, and nor would any of poor Mrs Stornaway’s family! Why, when she was a bit of a girl, and the master persuaded her ladyship to bring her out, it was him paid for all, and I know the way her ladyship, and the Misses Rivington, looked down on her, because she was so tall, and more like a boy than a girl!’
‘I see.’ John patted her hand, and released it. ‘You go home now, Rose, and don’t you fret about Miss Nell!’
She thrust a hand into her pocket for a handkerchief, and rather violently blew her nose. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything!’ she uttered, somewhat thickly.
‘It’s of no consequence. I should have discovered it.’
She gave a final sniff, and restored the handkerchief to her pocket. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what possessed me, except for you being so big, sir!’
He could not help laughing. ‘Good God, what has that to say to anything?’
‘You wouldn’t understand – not being a female,’ she replied, sighing. ‘I’ll be going now, sir – and thank you!’
Five
An hour later, Miss Stornaway’s shabby gig drew up at the toll-gate, and her henchman, jumping down, tendered three coins to John, with a broad wink, and demanded a ticket opening the only other gate that lay between Crowfold and Tideswell. But John had already provided himself with this, and he waved away the coins, which made Nell exclaim against him for cheating the trustees.
‘Nothing of the sort!’ he replied, climbing into the gig. ‘I’m not one of those who are able – as the saying goes – to buy an Abbey, but I was born to a modest independance, and I would scorn to cheat the trustees!’
‘But you should not be obliged to buy the ticket for my carriage!’ she objected.
‘Oh, there was no obligation! I hoped to impress you by making such a handsome gesture,’ he said gravely.
‘Sporting the blunt!’ she retaliated, casting a challenging look at him to see how he took this dashing phrase.
‘Exactly so!’ he said.
A gurgle of laughter escaped her. ‘How absurd you are! Are you never serious, Captain Staple?’
‘Why, yes, sometimes, Miss Stornaway!’
She smiled, and drove on for a few moments without speaking. She was not, he thought, shy, but there was a little constraint in her manner, which had been absent from it on the previous day. After a pause, she said, as though she felt it incumbent upon her to make some remark: ‘I hope you do not dislike to be driven by a female, sir?’
‘Not when the female handles the ribbons as well as you do, ma’am,’ he replied.
‘Thank you! It needs no particular skill to drive Squirrel, but I was always accounted a good whip. I can drive a tandem,’ she added, with a touch of pride. ‘My grandfather taught me.’
‘Didn’t your grandfather win a curricle race against Sir John Lade once?’
‘Yes, indeed he did! But that was long ago.’ A tiny sigh accompanied the words, and as though to cover it, she said, in a rallying tone: ‘I had meant to pass you off as the stable boy, you know, but you are so smart today I see it will not do!’
He was wearing his riding coat and top-boots, and his neckcloth was arranged with military neatness. There was nothing of the dandy in his appearance, but his coat was well-cut, and, in striking contrast to Henry Stornaway’s buckish friend, he looked very much the gentleman.
He stretched out one leg, and grimaced at it. ‘I did my best,’ he admitted, ‘but, lord, how right my man was about these leathers of mine! He gave me to understand no one could clean them but himself. I don’t know how that may be, but I certainly can’t! My boots are a disgrace to me, too, but that might be the fault of Brean’s blacking.’
She laughed. ‘Nonsense! I only wish Rose might see you! You have met Rose, so you will not be surprised to learn that she cannot approve of a gentleman’s being seen on the highway in his shirt.’
‘Torn, too, but she has promised to mend it for me. I am very much obliged to her, and not only for that cause. She came to see whether I was a fit and proper person to be permitted to go with you to Tideswell, and she decided that I was.’
‘Yes, she did. I beg your pardon! but she was used to be my nurse, you know, and nothing will persuade her that I am twenty-six years of age, and very well able to take care of myself. She is the dearest creature, but she is for ever preaching propriety to me.’
‘I should think she has some pretty strong notions of propriety,’ he agreed.
‘Alas, poor Rose, she has indeed, and they have all been overset!’
He was watching her profile, thinking how delightfully she smiled, and how surely her expressive countenance reflected her changing moods. ‘Have they? How did that come about?’ he said.
She looked mischievous, chuckling deep in her throat. ‘She is in love with a highwayman!’
‘What? Oh, no, impossible!’
‘I assure you! She won’t admit it – never speaks of it! – but it’s quite true. I know nothing, of course! If I dare to question her I get nothing for my pains but a tremendous scold, and when I was saucy enough to ask her if he does not come secretly to Kellands to see her she would have boxed my ears, could she but have reached them! But I am very sure he does. And the ridiculous thing is that she is the most respectable creature alive, and very nearly forty years old! I daresay no one could be more shocked than she is herself, but make up her mind never to see him again she cannot! Mind, not a word of this to her!’
‘Good God, I should not dare! But how came it about?’
‘Oh, he held us up, rather more than a year ago! It was the most farcical adventure imaginable. She had gone with me to Tinsley, which is beyond Sheffield, you know. It was all to do with a heifer I had a mind to purchase, and since Joseph was laid up with the lumbago, Rose accompanied me in his stead. In this very gig! But owing to a number of circumstances we were detained for longer than I had thought for, so that I was obliged to drive home after dark. Not that I cared for that, or Rose either, for it was moonlight, and I don’t think it ever came into our heads that we might be held up. But we were, and by a masked figure, with a couple of horse-pistols in his hands, all in the style of high melodrama! He commanded me to stand and deliver. You may depend upon it that I obeyed the first of these commands, but what I was to deliver, beyond the few shillings which I had in my reticule, I knew no more than the man in the moon, which I ventured to tell him. That was where we descended from melodrama to farce! He seemed to be a good deal taken aback, and rode up quite close to peer at me. Well! Rose has a temper, and impertinence she will not brook! She said, “How dare you?” not a bit afraid! Then she told him to put his guns away this instant, and, when he didn’t obey, demanded to know whether he had heard her. If it had not been so absurd I should have been in a quake! But there was not the least need: he did put his guns away, and began to beg her pardon, saying he had mistaken me for a man! She was not in the least mollified, however. She scolded him as though he had been a naughty child, and instead of seizing our reticules, or riding off, he stayed there, listening to her, and trying to make his peace with her. He did it, too, in the end! Rose can never remain in a rage for long, and he was so very apologetic that she was obliged to relent. Then he was so obliging as to make us a present of a password, if ever we should be held up again, which I thought excessively handsome of him! The Music’s paid! that’s what you must say if you should be held up. I own, I have never had occasion to put it to the test, but I believ
e it to be a powerful charm. After that, we drove home, and I never knew, for many weeks, that he followed us all the way, just to discover where Rose lived! It was a case of love at first sight. What do you think of that for a romance?’
‘Admirable!’ he replied, a good deal amused. ‘I have only one fault to find with it: I don’t see the happy ending. What is the name of this Knight of the Road?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know that.’
‘I fancy I do.’
She looked quickly at him, surprise in her face. ‘You do? How is this?’
‘I think it may be Chirk. I also believe him to ride a mare called Mollie,’ he said coolly.
‘But how did you discover this?’
‘Ah!’
‘No, don’t be so provoking, pray!’
He laughed. ‘Well, when I arrived at the toll-gate, two nights ago, I stabled my horse in the hen-house. It was evident that a horse had been stabled there before, and at no very distant date. My predecessor owns no horse, but he does own a horse blanket, and fodder. These, Ben informed me, are, in fact, the property of Mr Chirk. Of course, Mr Chirk may be a most estimable character, but as I have been given to understand that he very much dislikes strangers, and would not at all like it to be known that he was in the habit of visiting the toll-house, I take leave to doubt that.’
‘Good heavens!’ She drove on for a few moments, her eyes on the road ahead. ‘Do you mean that Brean may have been in league with footpads?’
‘The suspicion had occurred to me,’ he admitted. ‘To what extent, however, I have no idea. I should imagine that he does no more than afford shelter to this Chirk, for although I can readily perceive that a dishonest gatekeeper on a busy road might be of invaluable assistance to the fraternity, for the information he could give them, I can’t believe that such a little-frequented road as ours is a haunt of highwaymen.’