Sprig Muslin

Chapter 12

He found, when he reached the square landing at the head of the stairs, that it was going to be a simpler matter than he had feared to locate Amanda’s room. The sound of her voice came to him, from the corridor that led from the landing to the end of the house, and it was evident that instead of retiring immediately to bed she had detained Sir Gareth to engage him in hot argument.

“You have no right to force me to go with you!”

“Very well: I have no right, but nevertheless you will go with me,” Sir Gareth replied, rather wearily. “For heaven’s sake, stop arguing, and go to bed, Amanda!”

Hildebrand hesitated. By all the canons of his upbringing he ought either to advertise his presence, or to go away. He had almost started to tiptoe down the stairs again when it occurred to him that too scrupulous a regard for his own honour in this instance might militate against his being able to rescue Amanda. He remained where he was, not, indeed, quite comfortable, but fairly well persuaded that Amanda at least would raise no objection to his eavesdropping. Her next words almost brought tears of sympathy to his eyes.

“Oh, if you had a heart you would let me go!” she said tragically.

From the chuckle that followed this impassioned outburst, it was to be inferred that Sir Gareth was not at all moved by it. “That is a splendid line, and very creditably delivered,” he approved. “Now you must ring down the curtain, for fear of falling into anticlimax! Have you everything you need for the night?”

She paid no heed to this, but said, in a voice trembling with indignation: “I was never so deceived in anyone! No, or those others!”

“What others?”

“All of them!—that fat landlady, and the Ninfields, and now Mr. Ross! You made them all l-like you, because you have ch-charming manners, and address, and they believed you when you told the w-wickedest untruths, and you make it so that it is no use for me to tell them that you are not a gentleman at all, but a snake!”

“Poor Amanda! Now, listen, you foolish child! I know I seem to you to be heartless, and detestably tyrannical, but, believe me, you’ll thank me for it one day. Come, now, dry your eyes! Anyone would suppose that I really was going to carry you off to that mouldering castle of mine! Instead of that I am taking you to London. Is that so dreadful? I daresay you will enjoy it How would it be if I took you to the play?”

“No!”she said passionately. “I am not a child, and I won’t be bribed like that! How dare you talk to me of going to a stupid play, when you are determined to ruin my life? You are detestable, and I see that it is useless to appeal to your better nature, because you haven’t got a better nature!”

“Black to the core—like Queen Katherine’s heart,” agreed Sir Gareth gravely. “Go to bed, my child: the future won’t look so ill in the morning. There is, however, just one thing I must tell you before I bid you goodnight. Much as I regret the necessity, I am going to lock your door.”

“No!” cried Amanda pantingly. “You shan’t, you shan’t! Give me back that key! Give it back to me instantly!”

“No, Amanda. I warned you that you were not dealing with a flat. If I gave it to you, you would run away as soon as you thought I was asleep. You are not going to escape again.”

“You can’t be so inhuman as to lock me up! I might be ill!”

“Oh, I don’t think you will be!”

“I might die!”she urged.

“Well, if you did that, it wouldn’t signify whether you were locked in, or not, would it?”

“Oh, how hateful you are! I might be burnt in my bed!”

“If the house should happen to catch fire, I will engage not only to rescue you, but Joseph as well. Goodnight—and dream of a revenge on me!”

Mr. Ross heard the click of a closing door, and the grating of the key in the lock. He moved softly forward to peep round the angle of the wall, and was in time to see Sir Gareth withdraw the key from the lock of a door, and cross the corridor to a room directly opposite.

For several minutes Mr. Ross remained on the landing, not knowing just what he ought to do. When he had heard Amanda beg Sir Gareth not to lock her door, his impulse had been to dash to her support. But before he could do so, all the awkwardness of his situation had been realized, and he had hesitated. Profoundly shocked though he was, and burning to perform some heroic deed for Amanda’s sake, he yet could not feel that he would be justified in intervening, or even, perhaps, successful. It was cruel of Sir Gareth to lock the door on Amanda, but if he was her guardian no one could gainsay his right to do so. The things Amanda had said to him certainly indicated that he had behaved very badly to her, but what he had done, or why she was so reluctant to accompany him to London, could at present be matters only for conjecture.

He decided that his first step must be to find a way of approaching Amanda, and he did not immediately perceive how this was to be accomplished. A whispered conversation through the keyhole would be a very indifferent way of communicating with her, and might well bring Sir Gareth out upon him. A little further consideration, however, put him in mind of the fact that her bedroom must, from its position, look out on to the small, walled garden at the back of the inn, and he conceived the happy idea of walking out into this, and of attracting Amanda’s attention by throwing stones at her window.

Fortunately, since he might have been hard put to it to distinguish her window amongst several others which looked on to the garden, this expedient was found to be unnecessary. Amanda’s window stood open, and Amanda was kneeling at it, clearly silhouetted by the candle behind her, her elbows on the ledge, and her face propped between her hands.

Thrust firmly into her room, and the door closed on her, the agitation from which she was suffering had found relief in a burst of tears. Without having precisely decided on a course of action, she had been turning over in her mind a plan of escaping from the White Lion as soon as it was light; and the discovery that Sir Gareth had been aware of this provoked her to quite irrational fury. Though she meant to outwit him if she could, it was insulting of him to suspect her; and his calm air of mastery made her want to hit him. Well, she would show him!

The first step towards showing him had been to run to the window, to ascertain whether it were possible to climb down from it, or even, since the upper storey of the house was at no great height from the ground, to drop down from it. She had not previously thought of this way of escape, and so had not inspected the window. It needed only the most cursory inspection now to inform her that to squeeze herself through it would be impossible. She began to cry again, and was still convulsively sobbing when Mr. Ross came cautiously into the garden through a wicket-gate opening into the stable-yard, and saw her.

The moon was up, brightly illuminating the scene, so there was really no need for Mr. Ross, softly treading along the flagged path until he stood immediately beneath Amanda’s window, to attract her attention by saying, thrillingly, “Hist!” Amanda had seen him as soon as he entered the garden, and had moodily watched his approach. She could think of no way in which he could be of assistance to her.

“Miss Smith! I must have speech with you!” piercingly whispered Mr. Ross. “I heard all!”

“All what?” said Amanda crossly.

“All that you said to Sir Gareth! Only tell me what I can do to help you!”

“No one can help me,” replied Amanda, sunk in gloom.

“I can, and will,” promised Mr. Ross recklessly.

A faint interest gleamed in her eyes. She abandoned her despairing pose, and looked down at his upturned face.

“How? He locked me in, and the window is too small for me to get out of.”

“I will think of a way. Only we cannot continue talking like this. Someone may hear us! Wait! There is bound to be a ladder in the stables! If I can contrive to do so unobserved, I’ll fetch it, and climb up to you!”

Amanda began to feel more hopeful. Up till now she had not considered him in the light of a possible rescuer, for he seemed to her very young, and no match for a man of Sir Gareth’s fiendish ingenuity. He now appeared to be a man of action and resource. She waited.

Time passed, and the slight hope she was cherishing dwindled. Then, just as she was thinking that there was nothing to do but to go to bed, Mr. Ross came back, bearing a short ladder, which was used for climbing into the hayloft. He set this up against the wall of the house, and mounted it. He had to climb to the topmost rung before his head rose above the window-sill, and his hands could grasp it, and the last part of the ascent was somewhat precariously accomplished.

“Oh, pray be careful!” begged Amanda, alarmed but admiring.

“It’s quite safe,” he assured her. “I beg pardon for having been such an age: I had to wait, you see, because that man—your guardian’s groom—was giving the head ostler all manner of directions. Why are you locked in?”

“Because Sir Gareth is determined not to let me escape,” she replied bitterly.

“Yes, but—You see, I did not perfectly understand from what you was saying to him why you wish to escape, or what he means to do with you. Of course, I saw how much you feared him long before!”

“Saw how much I—Oh! Oh, yes!” said Amanda, swallowing with an effort her very natural indignation. “I am wholly in his power!”

“Yes, well, I suppose—I mean, if he’s your guardian, you must be. But what has he done to frighten you? Why did you say he was a snake?”

Amanda did not answer for a moment. She was feeling tired, quite unequal to the task of rapidly composing a suitable explanation. A sigh broke from her. The sadness of this sound wrought powerfully upon Mr. Ross. He ventured to remove one hand from the sill, and to lay it tenderly on hers. “Tell me!” he said.

“He is abducting me,” said Amanda.

Mr. Ross was so much astonished that he nearly fell off the ladder. “Abducting you?” he gasped. “You cannot be serious!”

“Yes, I am! And, what is more, it’s true!” said Amanda.

“Good God! I would not have believed it to have been possible! My dear Miss Smith, you may be easy! I will instantly have you set free! There will be no difficulty. I have but to inform the parish constable, or perhaps a magistrate—I am not perfectly sure, but I shall speedily discover—”

“No, no!” she interrupted hastily. “It would be useless! Pray do not do so!”

“But I am persuaded it is what I should do!” he expostulated. “How should it be useless?”

She sought wildly for some explanation which would satisfy him. None occurred to her, until, just as she was wondering whether she dared tell him the truth, or whether (which she suspected) he would disapprove as heartily as Sir Gareth of her plan of campaign, there flashed into her brain a notion of transcendent splendour. It almost took her breath away, for not only was it an excellent story in itself: it would, properly handled, afford her the means of being exquisitely revenged on Sir Gareth. It was Sir Gareth’s own story, now to prove his undoing. “You see,” said Amanda, drawing a deep, ecstatic breath, “I am an heiress.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Ross, rather at a loss.

“I was left an orphan at an early age,” she continued, embellishing Sir Gareth’s crude handiwork. “Alas! I am quite alone in the world, without kith or kin.”

Mr. Ross, himself a great reader of romances, found nothing to object to in the style of this narrative, but cavilled a little at the matter. “What, have you no relations at all?” he asked incredulously. “No cousins, even?”

Amanda thought him unnecessarily captious, but obligingly presented him with a relative. “Yes, I have an uncle,” she conceded. “But he cannot help me, so—”

“But why not? Surely—”

Amanda, regretting the creation of an uncle who seemed likely to prove an embarrassment, with great presence of mind place him beyond Mr. Ross’s reach. “He is in Bedlam,” she said. “So we need not think any more about him. The thing is that—”

“Mad?”interrupted Mr. Ross, in horrified accents.

“Raving mad,” said Amanda firmly.

“How very dreadful!”

“Yes, isn’t it? Because I have no one to turn to but Sir Gareth.”

“Is he a dangerous madman?” asked Mr. Ross, apparently fascinated by the uncle.

“I do wish you would stop asking questions about my uncle, and attend to what I am saying!” said Amanda, exasperated.

“I beg pardon! It must be excessively painful for you!”

“Yes, and it is quite beside the point, too. Sir Gareth, wishing to possess himself of my fortune, is determined to force me into marriage with himself, and for this purpose is carrying me to London.”

“To London? I should have thought—”

“To London,” repeated Amanda emphatically. “Because that is where he lives, and he means to incarcerate me in his house until I submit. And it’s no use saying the parish constable would stop him, because Sir Gareth would deny every word, and say that he was taking me to live with his sister, who is a very disagreeable woman, and would do anything to oblige him. And everyone would believe him, because they always do. So you would only make a great noise, which I should very much dislike, and all to no purpose.”

Mr. Ross could see that this was very likely, but he was still puzzled. “Where have you been living?” he demanded. “I don’t perfectly understand. You said he abducted you: haven’t you been residing under his roof?”

“No, no, I have hitherto resided with a very respectable woman, who—” She stopped, and decided to eliminate a possible danger. “—who is dead. I mean, she died two years ago, and Sir Gareth then placed me in a seminary, which is exactly the sort of thing he would do! Only now that I am old enough to be married, he came and removed me, and naturally I was pleased, because then I believed him to be everything that was amiable. But when he told me that I must marry him—”

“Good God, I should have thought he would have had more address!” exclaimed Mr. Ross. “Told you that you must marry him when he had only that instant removed you from the seminary?”

“Oh, no! The thing was that he supposed I should like the notion, because previously I had been excessively attached to him, on account of his being so handsome, and agreeable. Only, of course, I never thought of marrying him. Why, he’s quite old! So then I was in a great fright, and I ran away from the place where we were staying last night and he chased me all day, and found me at last, and brought me here. And I cannot think how to escape again, and oh, I am so very unhappy!”

The passionate sincerity with which these final words were uttered pierced Mr. Ross to the heart. He was ashamed to think that he had for a moment doubted the story, and in some agitation implored Amanda not to cry. Amanda, between sobs, told him of her early adventures. These had been wholly enjoyable at the time, but regarded in retrospect, now that she was tired and defeated, the day seemed to her to have been one of unrelieved misery and discomfort.

Mr. Ross had no difficulty in believing this at least. He would, indeed, have found it impossible to have believed that anything less than the direst necessity could have induced a gently-born young female to have take so unprecedented and perilous a step as to cast herself upon the world as she had done. From the moment of her escape, the poor little thing had been mercilessly hounded. It did not surprise him to learn that the fat old gentleman who had with such false kindness offered to carry her to Oundle had tried to take advantage of her innocence. His sensitive nature made it easy for him to imagine the desperation of terror which must have had her in its grip, and the thought of so fragile and lovely a creature cowering on the floor of a farm-cart made him shudder, not the smallest suspicion entering his head that she had thoroughly enjoyed this part of her adventure. The description of the devilish cunning employed by Sir Gareth to regain possession of her lost nothing in the telling. Sir Gareth began, in Mr. Ross’s mind, to assume an aspect of smiling villainy. He wondered how he should have been taken-in by his pleasant manners, until he remembered certain warnings given him by his father against too readily trusting smooth-tongued and apparently creditable gentlemen of fashionable appearance. The world, said the Squire, was full of plausible banditti on the lookout for green young men of fortune. Their stock-in-trade was winning charm, and they frequently bestowed titles upon themselves, generally military. No doubt they were also on the look-out for rich wives, but naturally the Squire had not thought it necessary to tell his son this.

Had some chance brought Mr. Ross face to face with Sir Gareth again, it was possible that his leaping imagination would have suffered a check. But Sir Gareth had gone to bed, and Mr. Ross’s last sight of him had been of him on the corridor, locking Amanda into her room. Every word he had said to Amanda bore out the truth of her story, and of his cynical heartlessness there could be no doubt. Only a hardened scoundrel, in Mr. Ross’s opinion, could have laughed at Amanda’s anguish. Sir Gareth, not content with laughing, had mocked at her distress. He had also (now one came to think of it) tried to deceive her with promises of generous entertainment in London.

No chance brought Sir Gareth on to the scene to counter-act the combined influences on an impressionable youth of Amanda and a full moon. Perched on the stable-ladder, a modern Romeo and his Juliet discussed ways and means.

It did not take them long to discard the trappings of convention. “Oh, I wish you will not call me Miss Smith!” said Juliet.

“Amanda!” breathed Mr. Ross reverently. “And my name is Hildebrand.”

“Isn’t it odd that we should both of us have the most ridiculous names?” said Amanda. “Do you find yours a sad trial?”

Struck by her rare understanding, Mr. Ross told her just how sad a trial his name had been to him, and explained to her the precise circumstances which had led to his being given a name calculated to blight his scholastic career. He had never dreamed it could sound well until he heard it on her lips.

After this digression, they became more practical, and very much more argumentative. A number of schemes for Amanda’s deliverance, all of which depended upon some extremely improbable stroke of good fortune, were considered, and dismissed regretfully; and a promising new alliance was nearly ruptured by Hildebrand’s rejection of a daring suggestion that he should creep into Sir Gareth’s room, and steal from under his pillow (where there could be no doubt it was hidden) the key to Amanda’s room. In Hildebrand, an inculcated respect for convention warred with a craving for romance. The thought of the construction Sir Gareth would inevitably place on the attempted theft of the key, should he wake (as Hildebrand rather thought he would) before the accomplishment of the design, made that young gentleman blush all over his slim body. He was naturally unable to disclose to Amanda the cause of his reluctance, and so was obliged to endure the mortification of being thought a wretchedly cowardly creature.

“Oh, well, if you are afraid—!” said Amanda, with a disdainful shrug of her shoulders.

Her scorn sharpened his wits. The glimmerings of a plan, more daring than any that had occurred to her, flickered in his brain. “Wait!” he commanded, his brows knit portentously. “I have a better notion!”

She waited. After a prolonged silence, pregnant with suspense, Mr. Ross said suddenly: “Are you willing to place your honour in my hands?”

“Yes, yes, of course I am!” responded Amanda, agog with exasperation.

“And do you think,” he asked anxiously, descending with disconcerting rapidity from these heights, “that, if I were mounted on my horse, Prince, you could contrive to leap up before me?”

“I could, if you reached down your hand to me,” replied Amanda optimistically.

He considered this for a daunted moment. “Well, I shall be holding a pistol in my right hand, and I shouldn’t think I could contrive to hold the bridle in it as well,” he said dubiously. “I could try, of course, but—No, I think it would be best if I tucked the reins under my knee. And even if Prince does become restive it won’t signify, once I have you firmly gripped. All you will have to do is to set your foot on mine in the stirrup, and spring the moment I tell you to. Do you think you can do that?”

“Are you going to ride off with me across your saddlebow?” demanded Amanda eagerly.

“Yes—well, no, not precisely! I mean, I thought, if you put your arms round me, you could sit before me—just until we were beyond the reach of pursuit!” he added quickly

“Yes, that would be much more comfortable,” she agreed. “Of course I could do it!”

“Well, when the notion first came to me, I thought you could, too, but now I come to think of it more particularly, I can see that it is a thing we ought to practise.”

“No, no, I am persuaded there can be not the least difficulty!” she urged. “Only think how knights in olden times were for ever riding off with distressed ladies!”

“Yes, and in armour, too!” he said forcibly struck. “Still, we don’t know but what they may have bungled it before they acquired the habit, and it won’t do for us to bungle it. I think I had better dismount, and hold Prince while you get upon his back. Are you able to mount without assistance?”

“Certainly I am! But what are you going to do?”

“Hold you up on the road to Bedford!” disclosed Hildebrand.

Amanda uttered a squeak, which he correctly interpreted as an expression of admiration and approval and save a little jump of excitement. “Like a highwayman? Oh, what a splendid scheme! Pray forgive me for not having thought yon had any courage!”

“It’s a pretty desperate thing to do, of course,” said Hildebrand, “but I can see that only desperate measures will answer in this case and I would do anything to save you from your guardian! I cannot conceive why your father left you in the care of such an infamous person! It seems the oddest thing!”

“He was deceived in him, but never mind that!” said Amanda hastily. “How do you know he means to go to Bedford?”

“I discovered it when I was waiting for an opportunity to seize this ladder! Only to think that I was wishing that groom at Jericho, when all the time I had been guided to the stables by Providence! Because the groom was arranging for the hire of a chaise for his master, and enquiring about the state of the road that runs to Bedford. It’s not a pike-road you know, but Sir Gareth means to goby it, just to Bedford, which is only one stage. And there you are to change from this chaise, which is a shabby, oldfashioned one, and go on to London in a better one, which, of course, may readily be hired in a place like Bedford. Four horses, too! By Jove, it is another instance of Providence! For, you know, if this weren’t such a quiet place, with precious little custom, I daresay they would keep any number of fast vehicles for hire, and bang-up cattle as well, and I might have been at a stand. For I daresay I should have found it pretty hard to cover two postilions, as well as Sir Gareth. But only a pair of horses are hired for the first stage, which makes my task much easier. And I will own myself astonished if we do not find the road deserted, so early in the day! I mean, it can’t be like the pike-roads, with mails and stages going up and down at all hours.”

Amanda agreed to this, but was shaken by doubt. “Yes, but how will you procure a pistol?” she objected.

“Procure one! I have a pair of my own, in my saddle holsters,” said Hildebrand, unable to keep a note of pride out of his voice. “Loaded, too.”

“Oh!” said Amanda, rather thoughtfully.

“You need not be afraid that I don’t know how to handle them. My father holds that one should be accustomed to guns as soon as possible. I don’t wish to boast, but I am accounted a tolerably good shot.”

“Yes, but I don’t wish you to shoot Sir Gareth, or even the post-boy,” said Amanda uneasily.

“Good God, no! Of course I shall do nothing of the sort! Lord, a pretty kick-up that would mean! I might be obliged to fire one of the pistols over the post-boy’s head, to frighten him, you know, but I promise you I shan’t do more. There won’t be the least need. I shall hold Sir Gareth covered, and you may depend upon it he won’t dare to move, with my pistol pointing at his head. He is bound to be taken quite by surprise, but you will not be, and you must lose not an instant in jumping down from the chaise, and mounting Prince. Then I shall get up behind you, and we shall be off in a trice.” He paused, but Amanda said nothing. After a moment, he said, rather hurt: “You don’t care for the scheme?”

“Yes, I do!” she replied warmly. “I like it excessively, for I have have always wished to have adventures, and I can see that this would be a truly splendid adventure. Except for the pistols.”

“Oh, if that is all—! I promise you, you need not be afraid: I won’t even fire in the air!”

“Oh, well, then—No, it won’t do. Nothing is of any use, because I have nowhere to go to,” said Amanda, plunging back into dejection.

But Hildebrand was not daunted. “Don’t be unhappy!” he begged. “I had been thinking of where I should take you, and, if you should not dislike it, I fancy I have hit upon the very thing. Of course, if this had not chanced to fall at an awkward time, I should have taken you home, so that Mama could have looked after you, which, I assure you, she would have been delighted to do. But it so happens that my eldest sister is about to be confined, and Mama has gone away to be with her, while Father is at this very moment taking Blanche and Amabel to Scarborough, for a month. It is very vexatious, but never mind! I will take you to Hannah instead. She is the dearest creature, and I know you would be happy with her, for she used to be our nurse, and she will do anything in the world for me. And her husband is a very good sort of a man. He is a farmer, and they have the jolliest farm, not far from Newmarket. What I thought was that I should ride with you ‘cross country, to St. Neots, and there hire a chaise. I suppose I shall be obliged to stable Prince there, or perhaps I could ride him as far as to Cambridge. Yes, that would be best, for I am accustomed to keep a horse when I am up, and I shall know he will be well cared-for at the livery-stables there.”

“A farm?” said Amanda, reviving as though by magic. “With cows, and hens, and pigs? Oh, I should like that of all things I Yes, yes, do hold us up tomorrow!”

“Well, I will,” he said, gratified. “Then, when I have escorted you to Nurse, I think I should post off to Scarborough, to ask Father just what ought to be done in such a case. Depend upon it, he will know exactly.”

This part of the scheme held out no appeal to Amanda, but she did not say so. There would be time enough at her disposal to dissuade Hildebrand; the immediate need was to escape from Sir Gareth. It seemed to her very unlikely that he would run her to earth at Newmarket; while a farm, as she had already decided, would be an ideal refuge in which to await the capitulation of her grandfather. Her weariness forgotten with the revival of her hopes, she discussed with Hildebrand the various ramifications of his plot; and parted from him finally with only one flaw spoiling her satisfaction. Hildebrand, although willing to engage in any dangerous enterprise for her sake, drew the line at Joseph. A kitten, he said, would place the whole enterprise in jeopardy. Moreover, he doubted very much whether Joseph would enjoy riding on a horse. He rather though he would not. Amanda was obliged to give way on this point, and could only hope that Sir Gareth would be kind to Joseph when he found himself his sole support.