Sprig Muslin

Chapter 17

At very much the same time as these stirring events were taking place in London, Lord Widmore received letters from his two youngest sisters, and learned from them that with neither had Lady Hester sought shelter. As he had by then argued himself into a belief that she could have gone nowhere else, the tidings came as a severe shock to him, and caused him to exclaim unguardedly: “Gertrude and Constance have not seen Hester since we left London!”

Until that moment, Mr. Whyteleafe had been left in ignorance of the true state of affairs, Lord Widmore being very much more circumspect than his sire. But Mr. Whyteleafe was present when the letters were brought up from the receiving-office, and this involuntary outburst not only arrested his attention, but caused him to demand from his lordship an explanation. He got the explanation from Lady Widmore. Her ladyship’s disregard for appearances made her much inclined to treat the escapade as a very good joke, an attitude of mind which so much revolted her lord that it was with relief that he unburdened himself to the chaplain. Mr. Whyteleafe’s reactions were all that they should have been. He changed colour, and uttered: “Not at Lady Ennerdale’s! Not with Mrs. Nutley, or Lady Cookham! Good God, sir, this is terrible!”

Lord Widmore, looking upon him with approval, decided to admit him into his confidence. As a result, he learned for the first time of the existence of Hildebrand Ross. Until that moment no one had told him that the person supposedly sent by Lady Ennerdale to escort her sister on the journey had been other than a servant. He now discovered that Hester had gone away with an unknown young gentleman of undoubted gentility but suspicious aspect, and exclaimed: “She has eloped!”

But Mr. Whyteleafe did not think that Hester had eloped. Mr. Ross, although sufficiently depraved to utter unblushing lies to a man whose cloth should have commanded his respect, was scarcely of an age to contemplate marriage with a lady approaching her thirtieth year. Mr. Ross, he feared, was no more than a go-between.

Lady Widmore, laughing in a very vulgar way, asked who the deuce was there for Mr. Ross to go between, but she was not attended to. By rapid stages Mr. Ross became an infernal agent, employed either by a secret and obviously ineligible lover, or by a daring kidnapper. Lady Widmore, declaring that she was in stitches, said that any kidnapper who thought to wring a groat out of a family that had not a feather to fly with must be so bottleheaded that even such a goosecap as Hester would be able to escape from his clutches. In her opinion, Hester herself, more sly than any of them had suspected, had employed Mr. Ross to assist her to slip away from Brancaster without exciting surprise or opposition. She recommended her husband to subject his butler to a rigorous inquisition. If anyone knew what kind of an undergame Hester was engaged in, she said, he might lay his life that one was Cliffe, whose maudlin affection for Hester had often put her ladyship out of all patience.

Lord Widmore failed to elicit any information from Cliffe, but Mr. Whyteleafe was more successful. Cliffe, already anxious and more than a little doubtful of the wisdom of his having abetted Hester, crumbled under the powerful exhortations of the chaplain. He was brought to realize that his mistress’s reputation, nay, even her life, perhaps, was at stake, and, weeping, he gave up the only piece of information he had. He told Mr. Whyteleafe that he had recognized the post-boy in charge of the chaise that had borne Lady Hester away as one of the lads employed at the Crown Inn at St. Ives.

From then onward Mr. Whyteleafe assumed command. In a manner calculated to convince the trembling butler that he had aided Lady Hester to commit an indiscretion which must plunge her entire family into a ruinous scandal, he laid a strict charge of silence upon Cliffe. Almost as impressively he pointed out to Lord Widmore that no whisper of the affair must be allowed to reach the ears of any but themselves. Together he and his lordship would discover, at St. Ives, the destination of that post-chaise; together they would track down the fugitive. No coachman or postilion should go with them: they would set forth alone, and in the curricle which the Earl kept at Brancaster for his use when in Cambridgeshire. “And I,” added Mr. Whyteleafe, recollecting that Lord Widmore was a very indifferent whip, “will drive it!”

Meanwhile, in happy ignorance of the hostile forces converging upon him, Sir Gareth was making a recovery upon which his medical attendant never ceased to congratulate himself. It would be some time before his wound would cease to trouble him (a circumstance due, Lady Hester had no hesitation in asserting, to the shockingly rough and ready methods employed in the extraction of the bullet), and still longer before he could hope to regain his full strength; but the progress he made was steady; and it was not long before he was able to persuade his several nurses to let him leave his bed, and try what the beneficial effects of fresh air would do for him. A small orchard lay behind the inn, and, as the weather continued to be sultry, one golden day succeeded another, it was here that he spent his days, in an idyllic existence which not even the ill-humour of Mrs. Chicklade could mar. That stern moralist had never been convinced of the respectability of the party she was called upon to serve; and when she saw the parlour chairs carried into the orchard, together with a table, and all the cushions the inn could yield, and further discovered that her misguided spouse had consented to carry meals there, she knew that her worst suspicions had fallen short of the truth. A set of heathen gypsies, that’s what Chicklade’s precious ladies and gentlemen of quality were, and let no one dare to tell her different! But Chicklade said that he knew the Quality when he saw it, and while the dibs were in tune the visitors might eat their dinner on the roof, if that was their fancy. As for the morals of the party, it was not for him to criticize an out-and-outer who dropped his blunt as freely as did Sir Gareth.

So Mrs. Chicklade, appeased by the thought of the gold that was flowing into her husband’s coffers, continued to cook three handsome meals a day for her disreputable guests, and startled her neighbours by appearing suddenly in a new and impressive bonnet, and a gown of rich purple hue.

As for the disreputable guests, only Amanda was not entirely content to remain at Little Staughton. Sir Gareth had his own reasons for not wishing to bring his stay to an end; Lady Hester, tending him, sitting in comfortable companionship beside him under the laden fruit trees, valued as she had never been before, was putting on a new bloom; and Hildebrand, inspired by the rural solitude, had made a promising start to his tragic drama, and was not at all anxious to return to a more exacting world. He had got his horse back, too, yielding at last to a command from his adopted uncle to stop being a gudgeon, and to retrieve the noble animal without more ado. He still slept on a camp-bed set up in Sir Gareth’s room: not because his services were any longer needed during the night-watches, but because there were only two guest-chambers in the inn. Sir Gareth was thus kept fully abreast of the drama’s progress, the day’s literary output being read to him each night, and his criticisms and suggestions invited. No qualms were suffered by Hildebrand: he blithely assured Sir Gareth that his parents, believing him to be on a walking-tour of Wales, would not expect to receive any letters from him; and as for the friends he should have joined, they would think only that he had changed his plans, or had been delayed, and would doubtless overtake them.

“Well, wouldn’t you like to?” Sir Gareth asked him. “You know, I am really very well able to manage for myself now, and I don’t want you to feel yourself obliged to remain here on my account. Chicklade can do all I need.”

“Chicklade?” said Hildebrand, revolted. “What, let him tie your cravats with his great clumsy hands? I should rather think not! Just as you have taught me how to tie a Waterfall, too! Besides, Aunt Hester and I have decided that when you are well enough to travel to London I am to go with you, to take care of you on the journey. What’s more, if Amanda should take it into her head to run away again you cannot chase after her, Uncle Gary! And while I am in the vein, I do think that it would be a pity to break the thread of my play. Should you object to it if I just read you the second scene again, now that I have rewritten it?”

So Hildebrand was allowed to remain, although Sir Gareth did not think that Amanda had any intention of running away. Amanda, for once, was at a stand. It had never occurred to her that her grandfather would fail to obey her directions, and how to bring added pressure to bear on him was a problem to which there seemed to be no solution. Time was slipping by, and it might well be that already Neil was under orders to rejoin his brigade. She had not quite reached the stage of capitulation, and still exhaustively scanned the Morning Post,which Mr. Vinehall obligingly sent to the Bull each day; but Sir Gareth was hopeful that by the time he was adjudged to be well enough to travel he would have little difficulty in persuading her to accompany him to London. Nothing would prevail upon her to disclose her grandfather’s identity, but she had begun to toy with a scheme whereby not her grandfather’s hand, but Neil’s, might be forced. Did not Uncle Gary think that if he believed her reputation to be lost, Neil would marry her out of hand?

“It seems most unlikely,” he replied. “Why should he?”

She was sitting on the ground, a half-made cowslip ball in her hands, looking so absurdly youthful as she propounded her outrageous scheme, that he was hard put to it to maintain his gravity. “To save my good name,” she said glibly.

“But he wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort,” he objected. “He would be giving you quite a different name.”

“Yes, but if you lose your reputation, you have to be married in a hurry,” she argued. “I know that, because when Theresa—when someone I know lost hers, which she did, though I am not perfectly sure how, someone else I know said to my aunt that there was nothing for it but to get her married immediately, to save her good name. Well, if you stay all alone with a gentleman you lose your reputation at once,so if I pretended Aunt Hester and Hildebrand weren’t here, wouldn’t Neil feel that it was his duty to marry me, whatever Grandpapa says?”

“No, he would be more likely to feel that I must marry you, and you wouldn’t like that, you know.”

“No, of course I shouldn’t, but you could refuse to marry me, couldn’t you? That would put Neil in a fix!”

“Yes, indeed!” agreed Hester, with unruffled calm. “But I believe that he would think it his duty to challenge Uncle Gary to a duel, and although Uncle is much better, he isn’t strong enough to fight a duel. You wouldn’t wish him to overtax himself.”

“No,” Amanda said reluctantly. “Well, Hildebrand must be the one to do it. Hildebrand! Hildebrand!”

Hildebrand, lying on his stomach at some little distance from them, his fingers writhing amongst his disordered locks as he wrestled with literary composition, vouchsafed only an absent grunt.

“Hildebrand, would you be so obliging as to pretend to compromise me, and then refuse to marry me?” said Amanda cajolingly.

“No, can’t you see I’m busy? Ask Uncle Gary!” said Hildebrand.

This was not encouraging, nor, when he was brought to attend to what was being said to him, did he return any more satisfactory answer. He recommended her not to be silly, and added that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

“I think you are uncivil and disobliging!” said Amanda roundly.

“Oh, no, I’m sure he doesn’t mean to be!” said Hester, looking round for her scissors. “I expect—oh, there they are! however did they come to get over there?—I expect he did not quite understand. Really, Hildebrand, you will only have to refuse to marry Amanda, and surely that is not much to ask?”

“Oh, I don’t mind doing that!”he said, grinning.

“You are an unprincipled woman, Hester,” Sir Gareth told her, at the earliest opportunity.

“Yes, I think I am,” she agreed reflectively. “There can be no doubt of it. Are you really proposing to allow Amanda to regale her Brigade-Major with this abominable story she has concocted?”

But I can see no harm in that,Gareth!” she said, vaguely surprised. “It will make her wish to go to London, besides giving her something to do in planning it all, which she needs,you know, because since the calf at the farm was sent off to the market it is really very dull for her here. And the Brigade-Major cannot possibly be foolish enough to believe the story. Anyone must see that she hasn’t the least notion of what it means to be compromised.”

“And having said that, do you still maintain that she should be permitted to marry the fellow?” he asked.

“It depends on what he is like,” she replied thoughtfully. “I should wish to see him before I made up my mind.”

Her wish was granted on the following afternoon. Sir Gareth, half asleep under a big apple-tree, with Joseph wholly asleep on his knee, became drowsily aware of a menacing presence, and opened his eyes. They fell upon a sandy-haired, stockily-built young gentleman who was standing a few feet away, grimly surveying him. Contempt and wrath flamed in his blue eyes as they took in the splendour of the frogged dressing-gown, which, since his coats fitted him far too well to be eased on over his heavily bandaged shoulder, Sir Gareth was obliged to wear. Interested, and mildly surprised, Sir Gareth sought his quizzing-glass, and through it inspected his unknown visitor.

Captain Kendal drew an audible breath, and pronounced in a voice of awful and resolute civility: “Am I correct, sir, in thinking that I address Sir Gareth Ludlow?”

“Sir,” responded Sir Gareth gravely, but with a twitching lip, “you are!”

Captain Kendal appeared to struggle with himself. His fists clenched, and his teeth ground together; he drew another painful breath, and said in measured accents: “I am sorry, sir—damned sorry!—to see that you have your arm in a sling!”

“Your solicitude, sir,” said Sir Gareth, entering into the spirit of this, “moves me deeply! To own the truth, I am sorry to see it there myself.”

“Because,” said Captain Kendal, through his shut teeth, “your disabled condition renders it impossible for me to deal with you as you deserve! My heartfelt wish is that you may recover the use of your arm before I am obliged to leave England!”

“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Gareth, enlightenment dawning on him. He lifted his quizzing-glass again. “Do you know, I had quite a different picture in my mind? I wish you will tell me what your name is!”

“That, sir you will know in good time! You will allow me to tell you that what I learned at Kimbolton brought me here with two overmastering desires: the first to bring you to book, and the second to shake the hand of the boy who tried to rescue from your clutches a girl whose youth and innocence must have protected her from any but an unprincipled villain!”

“Well, I am afraid you can’t realize the first of these very proper ambitions,” said Sir Gareth apologetically, “but there’s nothing easier to accomplish than the second.” He sat up, and looked round, disturbing Joseph, who stood up, sneezed, and sprang off his knee. “When I last saw him he was in the throes of a dramatic composition, over there. Yes, there he is, but not, I perceive, still wrestling with his Muse.”

“What?”said Captain Kendal, taken aback. “Are you trying to hoax me, sir?”

“Not at all! Wake up, Hildebrand! We have a visitor!”

“Do you imagine,” demanded the Captain, “that I am the man to be taken-in by your shams?”

“I am sure you are not,” replied Sir Gareth soothingly. “You do seem to leap a little hurriedly to conclusions—but, then, I don’t know yet precisely what it was you learned at Kimbolton.”

“Why,” the Captain shot at him, “did the chambermaid find your ward’s door locked? Why did your ward think it necessary to lock her door?”

“She didn’t. I locked the door, so that she shouldn’t escape a second time. Yes, come over here, Hildebrand! Our visitor wishes to shake you by the hand. Let me present Mr. Ross to you, sir! This, Hildebrand, unless I much mistake the matter, is the Brigade-Major.”

“What, Amanda’s Brigade-Major?” exclaimed Hildebrand. “Well, of all things! However did you find us out, sir?”

“For God’s sake, have I strayed into a madhouse?” thundered the Captain. “Where is Amanda?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Hildebrand, looking startled. “I daresay she has gone down the road to the farm, though. Shall I go and see if I can find her? Oh, I say, sir, I wish you will tell me!—will she be obliged to wring chickens’ necks if she goes to Spain?”

“Wring—No!” said the Captain, thrown by this time quite off his balance.

“I knew it was all nonsense!” said Hildebrand triumphantly. “I told her it was, but she always thinks she knows everything!”

“Neil!”

The Captain spun round. Amanda had just entered the orchard, bearing a glass of milk and a plate of fruit on a small tray. As the shriek broke from her, she dropped the tray, and came flying across the grass, to hurl herself on to the Captain’s broad chest. “Neil, Neil!” she cried, both arms flung round his neck. “Oh, Neil, have you come to rescue me? Oh, how splendid! I didn’t know what to do, and I was almost in despair, but now everything will be right!”

The Captain, holding her in a crushing hug, said thickly: “Yes, everything. I’ll see to that!” He disengaged himself, and held her off, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Amanda, what has happened to you? The truth, now, and no playing off any tricks!”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the adventures I have had!” she said earnestly. “First there was a horrid woman, who wouldn’t have me for a governess, and then there was Sir Gareth Ludlow, who abducted me, and next there was Mr. Theale, who said he would rescue me from Sir Gareth, only he was so odious that I was obliged to escape from him,and after that there was Joe, who was most kind, and gave me my dear little kitten. I wanted to stay with Joe, though his mother didn’t seem to wish me to, but Sir Gareth found me, and told the most shocking untruths which the Ninfields believed, and went on abducting me, and locking me in my room, and behaving in the most abominable way, in spite of my begging him to let me go, so that though I truthfully never meant Hildebrand to shoot him, it quite served him right—Oh, Neil, this is Sir Gareth! Uncle Gary, this is Neil!—Captain Kendal! And that’s Hildebrand Ross, Neil. Oh, Uncle Gary, I am excessively sorry, but I threw your glass of milk away! Hildebrand, would you be so obliging as to fetch another one?”

“Yes, very well, but you needn’t think I’m going to let you stand there telling bouncers about Uncle Gary!” said Hildebrand indignantly. “He did not abduct you, and as for telling lies about you—well, yes, but you told much worse ones about him! Why, you told me he was forcing you to marry him because you were a great heiress!”

“Yes, but I had to do that, or you wouldn’t have helped me to escape him!”

The Captain, a trifle stunned, released his betrothed, and turned to Sir Gareth. “I don’t understand yet what happened, sir, but I believe I have been doing you an injustice. If that’s so, I beg your pardon! But why you should not have restored Amanda immediately to General Summercourt, or at the very least have written to inform him—”

“He couldn’t!” said Amanda proudly. “He spoiled all my plan of campaign, and he carried me off by force, but he couldn’t make me tell him who I was, or Grandpapa, or you, Neil! I did think he would win even over that, because he meant to carry me off to his sister, in London, and discover your name at the Horse Guards, only he wasn’t able to, because, by the greatest stroke of good fortune, we met Hildebrand, and Hildebrand shot him—though that wasn’t what he meant to do, of course.”

“There is a great deal about this business I don’t understand, but one thing is plain!” said the Captain, sternly eyeing his beloved. “You have been behaving very badly, Amanda!”

“Yes, but I had to, Neil!” she pleaded, hanging her head, “I was afraid you would be a little vexed, but—”

“You knew that I should be very angry indeed. Don’t think you can cajole me, my girl! You may reserve that for your grandfather! He will be here at any moment now, let me tell you, for he was following me from London, and I left a message for him at Kimbolton. Do you know that he has had to call in the Bow Street Runners to find you?”

“No!” cried Amanda, reviving as if by magic. “Uncle Gary, did you hear that? The Runners are after me!”

“I did, and it confirms my worst fears,” said Sir Gareth. “What a pity, though, that you have only just learnt that you are being hunted! You could have made up an even more splendid story, if only you had thought of it.”

“Yes, I could,” she said regretfully. “Still, it would have been much better if Grandpapa had done what I told him to.”

“No, by God, it would not!” said the Captain forcefully. “And if you imagine, Amanda, that I would have married you, had the General been weak enough to have yielded to such a disgraceful trick, you much mistake the matter!”

“Neil!” she cried, her eyes flying to his face, and widening in dismay. “Don’t—don’t you wish to marry me?”

“That,” said the Captain, “is another matter! Now, you come into the house, and make a clean breast of the whole, without any more excuses, or any of your make-believe nonsense!”

“I wouldn’t! you know I wouldn’t!” Amanda stammered, flushing. “Not to you! Neil, you know I wouldn’t!”

“It will be as well for you if you don’t,” said the Captain, inexorably marching her off.

Hildebrand, watching with dropped jaw, turned his eyes towards Sir Gareth. “Well!”he gasped. “She—went with him as meek as a nun’s hen! Amanda!”

It was some time before Captain Kendal emerged again from the house and when at last he came striding through the orchard he was alone. Lady Hester, who had been sitting with Sir Gareth for some little while, blinked at him and said: “Good gracious, Gareth, how very odd of Amanda! I quite thought he would be a heroic-looking young man, did not you?”

Captain Kendal, reaching them, bowed slightly to Hester, but addressed himself to Sir Gareth. “I hope you will accept my apologies, sir. I don’t know how to thank you enough. I got the whole story out of her, and you may be sure I’ve given her a rare dressing. You must have had the devil of a time with her!”

“Nonsense!” Sir Gareth said, holding out his hand.

The Captain gripped it painfully. “You didn’t handle her right, you know,” he said. “She’s as good as gold, if you don’t give her her head. The mischief is that the General and Miss Summercourt have spoilt her to death, and as though that wasn’t enough, she’s been allowed to stuff her head with a lot of trashy novels. I can tell you, it fairly made my hair stand on end when I heard the stories she’s been making up! But the thing is that she hasn’t the ghost of a notion what they really mean. I daresay you know that. I hope you do!”

“Of course I know it! My favourite is the one about the amorous widower—though I must own that the latest gem, in which Hildebrand is to play the leading role, has rare charm. Now you must let me introduce you to my natural sister, Lady Hester Theale!”

The Captain shook hands with Hester, saying seriously: “I am excessively sorry, ma’am, and I beg you will forgive her! I was never more shocked! I shall break her of these tricks, you may be sure, but in some ways she’s no more than a baby, which makes it devilish hard to explain to her why she mustn’t make up faradiddles about being compromised, and the rest of it.”

Lady Hester, casting a look of mild triumph at Sir Gareth, said: “I told you it would depend on what he was like, and I could see you didn’t believe me, only you perceive that I was right! Captain Kendal, don’t listen to anything that anybody may say to you, but just marry Amanda, and take her to Spain with you. It would be too bad if you did not, because she has been to a great deal of trouble over it, besides learning to wring chickens’ necks, and being exactly the sort of wife you ought to have, if you should happen to be wounded again.”

“Well, I don’t want her to wring chickens’ necks—in fact, I won’t have her doing such things!—and I’d as lief not have her by, if I were to be hit again—though I’m glad she’d the sense to stop you bleeding to death, sir!—but, by Jupiter, ma’am, if you think that’s what I should do, I will do it!” said the Captain, once more shaking her by the hand. “I’m very much obliged to you. It isn’t that I don’t know she’d do much better with me than with her grandfather, but she is very young, and I don’t want to take advantage of her. However, if you think it right, the General may go hang! Hallo! That sounds like his voice! Ay, here he comes—but who the devil has he got with him?”

Lady Hester, gazing in a petrified way at the three figures advancing towards her, said faintly: “Widmore and Mr. Whyteleafe! Just when we were so comfortable!”