Sylvester

9

It was nearly eight o’clock before Sylvester returned to the Blue Boar, and for a full hour Phoebe had been picturing just such an accident as had befallen Tom, and wishing that she had not sent him forth on his errand. When he did at last arrive he took her by surprise, for the snow muffled the sound of the horses’ hooves, and he drove his curricle straight into the yard, and came into the house through the back door. She heard a quick stride in the passage, and looked up to see him standing in the doorway of the coffee room. He had not stayed to put off his long driving coat, which was very wet, and had snow still clinging to its many shoulder-capes. She started up, exclaiming: ‘Oh, you are safely back! I have been in such a fidget, fearing you had met with an accident! Have you brought the doctor, sir?’

‘Oh, yes, he is here-or he will be, in a few minutes. I came ahead. Is there a fire in your bedchamber, Miss Marlow?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Then may I suggest that you retire there until the surgeon has departed? I haven’t mentioned your presence here to him, for although your brother and sister story may do well enough for the landlady, it is quite possible, you know, that a doctor living at Hungerford might recognize one or other of you. You will agree that the fewer people to get wind of this escapade of yours the better.’

‘I shouldn’t think he would know either of us,’ she replied, with what he considered to be quite unbecoming sangfroid. ‘However, I daresay you are right, sir. Only, if I am not to see the doctor, will you take him up to Tom, if you please, and hear what he thinks we should do for him?’

‘I’ve told Keighley to do so. He knows much more about such matters than I do. Moreover, I want to put off these wet clothes. Have you dined?’

‘Well, no,’ she owned. ‘Though I ate a slice of bread-and-butter just after you went away.’

‘Good God! Why didn’t you order dinner when you wished for it?’ he said, rather impatiently.

‘Because you bespoke it for when you should return. Mrs. Scaling has only one daughter to help her, you know, and she couldn’t dress two dinners. In fact, she has been in a grand fuss ever since she discovered who you are, because, of course, she is not at all in the habit of entertaining dukes.’

‘I hope that doesn’t mean that we shall get a bad dinner.’

‘Oh, no, on the contrary! She means to feed you in the most lavish way!’ Phoebe assured him.

He smiled. ‘I’m happy to know it: I could eat an ox whole! Stay in this room until you hear Keighley take the surgeon upstairs, and then slip away to your own. I suppose I must, in common charity, give the man a glass of punch before he sets out for Hungerford again, but I’ll get rid of him as soon as I can.’ He nodded to her, and went away, leaving her with her mind divided between resentment at his cool assumption of authority and relief that some at least of her burden of responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders.

When the surgeon presently left Tom, she ventured to go and tap on the door of the best bedroom. Tom bade her come in, and she entered to find him sitting up in bed, much restored by his long sleep, but fretting a good deal over her predicament, his own helplessness, and the condition of his father’s horses. She was able to give him a comfortable account of the horses; as for herself, she said that since they could scarcely have hoped to reach Reading she was quite as well off at the Blue Boar as she would have been at an inn in Newbury.

‘Yes, but the Duke!’ Tom objected. ‘I must say, there was never anything more awkward! Not but what I’m devilish obliged to him. Still-!’

‘Oh, well!’ said Phoebe. ‘We must just make the best of him! And his groom, you know, is a most excellent person. He put the poultice on Trusty’s fore, and he says if we keep the wound pliant with spermacetti ointment until it is perfectly healed, and then dress it with James’s blister, he thinks there will be no blemish at all.’

‘Lord, I hope he may be right!’ Tom said devoutly.

‘Oh, yes, I am persuaded he is!’ She then bethought her that the horses had not been the only sufferers in the spill, and conscientiously inquired after Tom’s broken fibula.

He grinned his appreciation of this palpable afterthought, but replied that the surgeon had not meddled with Keighley’s handiwork, beyond applying a lotion to the inflamed surface, and bandaging the leg to a fresh and less makeshift splint. ‘But the devil of it is that he says I must lie abed for at least a week. And even then I shall be in no case to drive you to London. Lord, I hadn’t thought I was such a clunch as to overturn like that! I am as sorry as could be, but that’s no use! What are we to do?’

‘Well, we can’t do anything at present,’ she answered. ‘It is still snowing, you know, and I shouldn’t wonder at it if we were to find ourselves beleaguered by the morning.’

‘But what about the Duke?’

She considered the Duke. ‘Oh, well, at least I’m not afraid of him! And I must own that although I cannot approve of his conduct-he seems to think he can have anything he wants, you know!-he has made us excessively comfortable. Only fancy, Tom! I have a fire in my bedchamber! A thing Mama never allowed at home, except when I have been ill! Then he said he must have a private parlour, and would hire the coffee room, I daresay not so much as considering whether it might not be inconvenient for Mrs. Scaling to give it to him-and of course she didn’t dare say a word, because she is so much dazzled by his being a duke that she would give up the whole house to him if he should take it into his head to wish for it.’

‘I expect he will pay her handsomely-and who would be coming here on such a night?’ said Tom. ‘Are you going to sit down to dinner with him? Shall you find it awkward?’

‘Well, I daresay it may be a trifle awkward,’ she acknowledged. ‘Particularly if he should ask why I am on my way to London. However, he may not do so, because he will very likely still be in a miff with me.’

‘In a miff with you? Why?’ demanded Tom. ‘He didn’t seem to me as though he cared a groat for your having run away!’

‘Oh, no! Only we quarrelled, you see. Would you believe it? He had the intention of sending poor Keighley to fetch the surgeon! It put me in such a passion that there was no bearing it, and-well, we came to cuffs! But he did go himself, in the end, so I don’t regret it. In fact,’ she added reflectively, ‘I am glad of it, because I was feeling miserably shy before I quarrelled with him, and there is nothing like quarrelling with a person to set one at one’s ease!’

Unable to take this philosophic view of the matter, Tom said, in a shocked voice: ‘Do you mean to tell me you sent him out just to fetch the surgeon for me?’

‘Yes, why not?’ said Phoebe.

‘Well, my God, if that’s not the outside of enough! as though he had been anybody! You are the most outrageous girl, Phoebe! I shouldn’t think he would ever wish to offer for you after such treatment as that!’

‘Well, what a good thing that would be! Not that I think he ever did wish to offer for me. It is the strangest business! I wonder why he came to Austerby?’

Speculation on this point was interrupted by the entrance of Keighley, bearing a heavily laden tray. Neither his injury nor his subsequent potations having impaired Tom’s appetite, he temporarily lost interest in any other problem than what might be concealed beneath the several covers on the tray. Keighley, setting the whole down on the table by the bed, asked him in a fatherly way if he was feeling peckish; and upon being assured by Tom that he was, smiled benevolently at him, and said: ‘That’s the barber! Now, you keep still, sir, and leave me to fix you up so as you can manage! As for you, miss, the covers are set downstairs, and his grace is waiting for you.’

Dismissed in this kind but firm manner Phoebe withdrew, promising in response to a somewhat peremptory command from Tom to return to him as soon as she should have dined. Tom had suddenly been attacked by qualms. Phoebe was at once too innocent and too intimate with him to see anything equivocal in her position; he was fully alive to its impropriety, and he felt that he ought to keep her under his eye. Sylvester had certainly seemed to him to be a very good sort of a man, but he did not know him, after all: he might be a hardened rake, and if that were so a very uncomfortable time Phoebe would have of it, alone with him in the coffee room, while her supposed protector lay tied by the leg in the best bedroom.

Had he but known it, Sylvester was not feeling at all amorous. He was tired, hungry, and in a fair way to regretting the impulse which had made him stop at the Blue Boar. To assist in an elopement was conduct quite unbecoming his position; moreover, it would lay him open to censure, which would not be easier to bear because it was justified. He was frowning down into the fire when Phoebe came into the room, and although he looked up at her entrance the frown did not immediately leave his brow.

She read in it condemnation of her attire, for she was still wearing her stuff travelling dress. He, on the other hand, had changed his buckskins and frockcoat for pantaloons and a long-tailed coat of fine blue cloth, and had arranged a fresh necktie in intricate folds about his throat. It was morning dress, but it made her feel dowdy. To her vexation she found herself explaining that she had not changed her own dress because she would be obliged to go out again to the stable.

He had not noticed what she was wearing, and he replied in the light, indifferent tone which always set up her back: ‘My dear Miss Marlow, there is no occasion to change your dress that I know of-and none for you to visit the stable again tonight, let me add!’

‘I must be satisfied that Trusty has not contrived to rid himself of his poultice,’ she said firmly. ‘I have very little faith in Will Scaling.’

‘You may have complete faith in Keighley.’

She made no reply to this, for while she felt that Keighley, who was developing a cough, ought not to leave the house, she was reluctant to reopen a quarrel just as she was about to sit down to dinner with Sylvester. She glanced uncertainly at him, and saw that the frown had yielded to a look of slight amusement. Having no idea that her countenance was a tolerably exact mirror for her thoughts, or that he had correctly interpreted the changes of expression that flitted across it, she was surprised, and looked inquiringly at him, her head a little tilted to one side.

She put him in mind of some small, brown bird. He laughed, and said: ‘You look like-a sparrow! Yes, I know just what you are wondering whether or not to say. As you wish, Miss Marlow: I will cast an eye over the horses before I go to bed, and if I find that that singularly inappropriately named horse has eaten his poultice I will engage to supply him with a fresh one!’

‘Do you know how to mix a bran poultice?’ she asked sceptically.

‘Better than you, I daresay. No, I don’t, in general, apply them myself, but I hold it to be an excellent maxim that every man should know more than his grooms, and be as well able to deal with whatever need may arise in his stables. When I was a boy the farrier was one of my closest friends!’

‘Do you have your own farrier?’ she asked, diverted. ‘My father does not, and it is something I have always wished for! But you will not mix a poultice in those clothes!’

‘Rather than incur your displeasure I will even do that!’ he assured her. ‘It will expose me to Keighley’s displeasure, of course, but I shan’t regard that. Which puts me in mind of something I have to tell you. I find that the grooms’ quarters here are not at all what Keighley is accustomed to: there is, in fact, only the room in which the ostler sleeps and that, being above that very ill-built stable, is extremely cold. I know you will agree that that will not do, and I hope you won’t dislike the arrangement I have made, which is that the daughter of the house is to give up her chamber to Keighley, and herself sleep on a trestle-bed in your room.’

‘Why shouldn’t she sleep in her mother’s room?’ objected Phoebe, by no means pleased with this further example of Sylvester’s high-handed ways.

‘There is not space enough,’ said Sylvester.

‘Or Keighley might share Will Scaling’s room?’

‘He would be afraid to.’

‘Nonsense! the poor boy is perfectly harmless!’

‘Keighley has the greatest dislike of half-wits.’

‘Then why don’t you let him set up a trestle-bed in your room?’ she demanded.

‘Because I should be very likely to catch his cold,’ explained Sylvester.

She sniffed, but appeared to find this answer reasonable, for she said no more. A welcome interruption was provided by the arrival upon the scene of Miss Alice Scaling, panting under the load of a tray piled high with covered dishes. She was a strapping girl, with apple-red cheeks, and a wide grin, and when she had dumped the tray down on the sideboard she paused a moment to fetch her breath before bobbing a curtsey to Sylvester, and reciting: ‘Mother’s compliments, and there’s chickens, and rabbit stew, and a casserole of rice with the giblets, and curd pudding, and apple fritters, and please to say if your honour would fancy the end of the mutton pie Mother and me and Will had to our dinner.’ A hissing admonition from the passage caused her to amend this speech. ‘Please to say if your grace would fancy it! There’s a tidy bit of it left, and it’s good,’ she added confidentially.

‘Thank you, I am sure it is,’ he replied. ‘I hardly think we shall need it, however.’

‘You’re welcome if you do,’ said Miss Scaling, setting out the dishes on the table with hearty good-will. ‘And no need to fear going short tomorrow, because you’re going to have a boiled turkey. I shall wring his neck first thing in the morning, and into the pot he’ll go the instant he’s plucked and drawed. That way he won’t eat tough,’ she explained. ‘We hadn’t meant to have killed him, but Mother says dukes is more important than a gobble-cock, even if he is a prime young ‘un. And after that we’ll have Mr. Shap’s pig off of him, and there’ll be the legs and the cheeks, and the loin, and the chitterlings and all, your honour! No, your grace! I do be forgetting!’ she said, beaming apologetically.

‘It makes no matter what you call me, but pray don’t wring your turkey’s neck on my account!’ he said, with a quelling glance at Phoebe, who showed every sign of succumbing to an unseemly fit of giggling.

‘What’s a turkey?’ said Miss Scaling, in a large-minded spirit. ‘Happen we can come by another of them, but dukes ain’t found under every bush, that’s what Mother says.’

On this piece of worldly wisdom she withdrew, pulling the door shut behind her with enough vigour to drown Phoebe’s sudden peal of laughter.

‘What an atrocious girl you are!’ remarked Sylvester. ‘Don’t you know better than to laugh at yokels?’

‘It was your face, when she said you were more important than a gobble-cock!’ explained Phoebe, wiping her eyes. ‘Has anyone ever told you that before?’

‘No, never. I take it to be a handsome compliment. But she mustn’t slay that turkey.’

‘Oh, you have only to give her the price of another bird and she will be perfectly satisfied!’

‘But nothing would prevail upon me to eat a bird that had been thrust warm into the pot!’ he objected. ‘And what are chitterlings?’

‘Well, they are the inside parts of the pig,’ said Phoebe, bubbling over again.

‘Good God! Heaven send it may stop snowing before we come to that! In the meantime, shall I carve these chickens, or will you?’

‘Oh, no! You do it, if you please!’ she replied, seating herself at the table. ‘You cannot imagine how hungry I am!’

‘I can, for I am very hungry myself. I wonder why quite half this bird has been removed? Oh, I suppose it was for Orde! How is he, by the bye?’

‘Well, he seems to be going on quite prosperously, but the doctor said he must not get up for a week. I don’t know how I shall contrive to keep him in bed, for he will find it a dead bore, you know.’

He agreed to this, reflecting, however, that Tom would not be the only one to find a prolonged sojourn at the inn a dead bore.

Conversation during the meal was desultory, Sylvester being tired and Phoebe careful to inaugurate no topic for discussion that might lead him to ask embarrassing questions. He asked her none, but his mind was not so much divorced from interest in her adventure as she supposed. Between the snow and Tom’s broken leg it seemed probable that they would all of them be chained to the Blue Boar for some appreciable time. Sylvester had taken his own measures to invest Phoebe’s situation with a certain measure of propriety, but very little doubt existed in his brain that it was the part of a man of the world at least to do what lay within his power to frustrate an elopement. The evils of so clandestine an adventure might not be apparent to a country-bred boy of nineteen, but Sylvester, older than Tom by far more than the eight years that lay between them, was fully alive to them. He supposed he could do no less than bring them to Tom’s notice. He had not the smallest intention of discussing the affair with Phoebe: an awkward task in any circumstances, and in her case likely to prove fruitless, since her entire freedom from the confusion natural to a girl discovered in an escapade she must know to be grossly improper argued a singularly brazen disposition.

As soon as dinner was over she withdrew to Tom’s room, to find that he had been devoting considerable thought to her predicament. One aspect of it had struck him forcibly, and he lost no time in presenting it to her.

‘You know what we were saying, when Keighley brought in my dinner? About the Duke’s not wishing to offer for you? Well, if that’s the case, Phoebe, you need not go to London after all! What a pair of gudgeons we were not to have thought of that before! I have been racking my brains to hit upon a way of getting you there, too!’

‘I did think of it,’ replied Phoebe. ‘But even though the Duke won’t be a danger I am quite determined to go to my grandmother. It isn’t only being afraid of Mama, Tom-though when I consider how angry she will be with me for running away, I own I feel sick with terror!-it is-oh, having once escaped I cannot-will not-go back! You see, even Papa doesn’t love me very much. Not enough to support me, when I implored him to do so. When he held it over my head that if I wouldn’t accept an offer from Salford he would tell Mama I felt myself freed from every bond.’

‘But you aren’t, Phoebe,’ Tom pointed out. ‘You are under age, and he is your father, you know. Your grandmother has no power to keep you against his will.’

‘Oh, no! And perhaps, if he truly wished for my return, I should go back willingly. But he won’t. If I can prevail upon Grandmama to keep me with her I think Papa will be as glad as Mama to be rid of me. At any rate, he won’t care whether I am at Austerby or not, except that he will miss me a little when he discovers how unreliable Swale is when there is no one to watch over the stables.’

Tom did not know what to say to this. He had thought it reasonable enough that she should have fled from her home when faced (as she had believed) with a distasteful marriage; but that she should do so for no other reason than that she was not happy there shocked him a little. He could not approve; on the other hand he was well aware of the misery she would be made to suffer if she were forced to return to Austerby after such an exploit, and he was much too fond of her to withhold whatever help he could render. So he said presently: ‘What can I do, Phoebe? I’ve made a mull of it, but if there is anything I can do I promise you I will.’

She smiled warmly at him. ‘You didn’t make a mull of it: it was all that wretched donkey! Perhaps, if we are not discovered before you are able to help yourself, I might still go to London on the stage-coach, and you will buy my ticket for me. But there is no question of that yet.’

‘No, not while the snow lasts. And in any event-’

‘In any event I hope you don’t think I would leave you in this case! I’m not so shabby! No, don’t tease yourself, Tom! I shall come about, see if I don’t! Perhaps, when the Duke goes away-I should think he would do so as soon as it may be possible, wouldn’t you?-he will carry a letter to Grandmama for me.’

‘Phoebe, has he said anything? About your having run away, I mean?’ Tom asked abruptly.

‘No, not a word! Isn’t it fortunate?’ she replied.

‘I don’t know that. Seems to me- Well, he must think it excessively odd! What happened at Austerby, when it was discovered that you had gone away? Hasn’t he even told you that?’

‘No, but I didn’t ask him.’

‘Good God! I hope he does not think- Phoebe, did he say if he meant to come up to visit me presently?’

‘No, do you wish him to?’ she asked. ‘Shall I send him to you? That is, if he has not already gone to look at Trusty for me. He promised he would do so, and put on a fresh poultice if it should be needed.’

‘Phoebe!’ uttered Tom explosively. ‘If you made him do so it was perfectly outrageous! You are treating him as though he were a lackey!’

She gave an involuntary chuckle. ‘No, am I? I daresay it would do him a great deal of good, but I didn’t make him go out to attend to the horses. He offered to do so, and I own I was surprised. Why do you wish him to visit you?’

‘That’s my concern. Keighley will be coming in before he goes to bed, and I’ll ask him to convey a civil message to the Duke. You are not to go downstairs again, Phoebe. Understand?’

‘No, I am going to bed,’ she replied. ‘I am so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open. But what do you think? That odious man has had Alice Scaling give up her bedchamber to Keighley and set up a trestle for herself in mine! Without so much as asking my leave, and all because he is too proud to let Keighley have a trestle-bed in his room! He said it was because he feared to catch his cold, but I know better!’

‘So do I-much better!’ said Tom. ‘Lord, what a goose you are! You go to bed! And mind, Phoebe! be civil to the Duke when you meet him again!’

She was granted the opportunity to obey this order sooner than he had expected, for at that moment Sylvester walked in, saying: ‘May I come in? How do you go on, Orde? You look a degree better, I think.’

‘Yes, pray do come in!’ said Phoebe, before Tom could speak. ‘He was wishing you would come to visit him. Have you been out to the stable yet?’

‘I have, ma’am, and you may go to bed with a quiet mind. Trusty shows no disposition to rid himself of his poultice. There is some heat still in his companion’s hock, but nothing to cause uneasiness.’

‘Thank you! I am truly obliged to you!’ she said.

‘So am I, sir-most truly obliged to you!’ said Tom. ‘It is devilish kind of you to put yourself to all this trouble! I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘Well, I have thanked him,’ said Phoebe, apparently feeling that any further display of gratitude would be excessive.

‘Yes, well, it’s time you went to bed!’ said Tom, directing a speaking look at her. ‘His grace will excuse you, so you may say goodnight, and be off!’

‘Yes, Grandpapa!’ said Phoebe incorrigibly. ‘Goodnight, my lord Duke!’

‘Sleep well, Sparrow!’ retorted Sylvester, holding the door for her.

To Tom’s relief she went away without committing any more solecisms. He drew a long breath, as Sylvester shut the door, and said: ‘I am very conscious, my lord Duke, that an explanation-’

‘Call me Salford,’ interrupted Sylvester. ‘Did the sawbones subject you to further tortures? I trust not: he told me that Keighley had done all he should.’

‘No, no, he only bound it up again when he had put some lotion on it!’ Tom assured him. ‘And that puts me in mind of something else! I wish you had not gone out in such weather to fetch him, sir! I was excessively shocked when I heard of it! Oh, and you must have paid him his fee, for I did not! If you will tell me what it was-’

‘I will render a strict account to you,’ promised Sylvester, pulling up a chair to the bedside, and sitting down. ‘That hock, by the bye, will have to be fomented for a day or two, but there should be no lasting injury. A tidy pair, so far as I could judge by lantern-light.’

‘My father bought them last year-proper high-bred ‘uns!’ Tom said. ‘I wouldn’t have had this happen to them for a thousand pounds!’

‘I’ll go bail you wouldn’t! A harsh parent?’

‘No, no, he’s a prime gun, but-!’

‘I know,’ said Sylvester sympathetically. ‘So was mine, but-!’

Tom grinned at him. ‘You must think me a cow-handed whipster! But if only that curst donkey hadn’t brayed- However, it’s no use saying that: my father will say I made wretched work of it, and the worst of it is I think I did! And what sort of a case I should have been in if you hadn’t come to the rescue, sir, I don’t know!’

‘If you must thank anybody, thank Keighley!’ recommended Sylvester. ‘I couldn’t have set the broken bone, you know.’

‘No, but it was you who fetched Upsall, which was a great deal too kind of you. There’s another thing, too.’ He hesitated, looking rather shyly at Sylvester, and colouring a little. ‘Phoebe didn’t understand-she isn’t by any means fly to the time of day, you know!-but I did, and-and I’m very much obliged to you for what you’ve done for her. Sending that girl to sleep with her, I mean. I don’t know if it will answer, or if- Well, the thing is, sir-now that we are in such a rare mess do you think I ought to marry her?’

Sylvester had been regarding him with friendly amusement, but this naive question brought a startled frown to his face. ‘But isn’t that your intention?’ he asked.

‘No-oh, lord, no! I mean, it wasn’t my intention (though I did offer to!) until we were grassed by that overturn. But now that we’re cooped up here perhaps I ought, as a man of honour- Only ten to one she’ll refuse to marry me, and then where shall we be?’

‘If you are not eloping, what are you doing?’ demanded Sylvester.

‘I guessed that was what you must be thinking, sir,’ said Tom.

‘I imagine you might. Nor am I the only one who thinks it!’ said Sylvester. ‘When I left Austerby I did so because Marlow had already set out for the Border in pursuit of you!’

‘No!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘Well, what a gudgeon! If he thought Phoebe had run off with me why the deuce hadn’t he the wit to inquire for me at the Manor? My mother could have told him all was well!’

‘I can only say that she did not appear to me to have perfectly understood that,’ responded Sylvester dryly. ‘As it chanced it was she who came to Austerby, bringing with her the letter you had written to her. You young idiot, I don’t know precisely what you told her, but it certainly didn’t persuade her that all was well! It threw her into a state of great affliction-and what she said to Lady Marlow I shall always be happy to think I was privileged to hear!’

‘Did she give her snuff?’ asked Tom appreciatively. ‘But she can’t have thought I had eloped with Phoebe! Why, I particularly told her there was no need for her to be in a fidget! Lord Marlow might, I daresay, but not Mama!’

‘On the contrary! Lord Marlow pooh-poohed the suggestion. He was only brought to believe it on the testimony of one of his younger daughters. I forget what her name is: a sanctimonious schoolgirl whose piety I found nauseating.’

‘Eliza,’ said Tom instantly. ‘But she knew nothing about it! Unless she was listening at the keyhole, and if that was the case she must have known we hadn’t gone to the Border.’

‘She was, but she insisted that she had heard you say you were going to Gretna Green.’

Tom frowned in an effort of memory. ‘I suppose I might have said so: I know I couldn’t see any other way out of the fix. But Phoebe had a much better scheme, as it happened, which I own I was devilish glad to hear! I’m as fond of her as I could be-well, I’ve run tame at Austerby ever since I was breeched, you know, and she’s like my sister!-but I’m damned if I want to marry her! The thing was I promised I’d help her, and the only way I could think of to do it was by doing so.’

‘Help her to do what?’ interrupted Sylvester, considerably mystified.

‘To escape from Austerby. So-’

‘Well, I blame no one for wishing to do that, but what the devil made you choose such a moment? Didn’t you know there was snow in the air?’

‘Yes, of course I did, sir, but I had no choice! The need was urgent-or, at least, Phoebe thought it was. If I hadn’t taken her she meant to go to London by herself, on the common stage!’

‘Why?’

Tom hesitated, glancing speculatively at Sylvester. Sylvester said encouragingly: ‘I won’t cry rope on you!’

The smile won Tom; he said in a burst of confidence: ‘Well, the truth is the whole thing was a fudge, but Lady Marlow told Phoebe you were going to Austerby to make her an offer! I must say it sounded like a hum to me, but it seems Lord Marlow thought so too, so one can’t blame Phoebe for being taken in, and cast into flat despair because of it.’

‘In fact,’ said Sylvester, ‘an offer from me would not have been welcome to her?’

‘Oh, lord, no!’ said Tom. ‘She said nothing would induce her to marry you! But I daresay you may have seen how it is in that house: if you had meant to offer for her Lady Marlow would have bullied her into submitting. The only thing was for her to run away.’ He stopped, uneasily aware of having said more than was discreet. There was an odd expression in Sylvester’s eyes, hard to interpret but rather disquieting. ‘You know what females are, sir!’ he added, trying to mend matters. ‘It was all nonsense, of course, for she scarcely knew you. I hope-I mean-perhaps I shouldn’t have told you!’

‘Oh, why not?’ Sylvester said lightly, smiling again.