Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

6

Sylvester was in the gallery, alone, and glancing through the pages of a periodical. He was standing in front of the fire, which was burning sluggishly, and every now and then gave forth a plume of smoke. He was dressed with his usual quiet elegance in a black coat and pantaloons, and a plain white waistcoat. A single fob hung at his waist, a single diamond glinted from between the folds of his neckcloth, and one ring, his heavy signet, adorned his hand. He adopted none of the extravagances of the dandy-set, but his air was one of decided fashion, and the exquisite cut of his coat made Phoebe feel more than ordinarily dowdy.

She was startled to find him in the gallery, and checked on the threshold, exclaiming involuntarily: “Oh—!”

He looked up in faint surprise. After a moment he put the periodical down, and said pleasantly: “It’s a bad guest, is it not, who comes down before his host? Let me draw a chair to the fire for you! It is smoking a trifle, but not enough, I am sure, to signify.”

The acid note was faint, but it did not escape her. She came reluctantly down the gallery, saying as she seated herself in the chair he had pulled forward: “All the chimneys smoke at Austerby when the wind is in the northeast.”

Having received abundant evidence of the truth of this statement in the bedchamber allotted to him, he did not question it, merely replying: “Indeed? Every house has its peculiarities, I fancy.”

“Do none of the chimneys smoke in your house?” she asked.

“I believe they were used to, but it was found possible to remedy the fault,” he said, conveniently forgetting how often in exasperation at finding the hall at Chance dense with smoke, he had sworn to replace its mediaeval fireplace with a modern grate.

“How fortunate!” remarked Phoebe.

Silence fell. Miss Marlow sat gazing abstractedly at a Buhl cabinet; and his grace of Salford, unaccustomed to such treatment, eyed her in gathering resentment. He was much inclined to pick up the newspaper again, and was only deterred from doing so by the reflection that disgust at her want of conduct was no excuse for lowering his own standard of good manners. He said in the voice of one trying to set a bashful schoolgirl at her ease: “Your father tells me, Miss Marlow, that you are a notable horsewoman.”

“Does he?” she responded. “Well, he told us that you showed him the way with the Heythrop.”

He glanced quickly down at her, but decided, after an instant, that this remark sprang from inanity. “I imagine I need not tell you that I did no such thing!”

“Oh, no! I am very sure you did not,” she said.

He almost jumped; and being now convinced that this seeming gaucherie was deliberate began to feel as much interested as he was ruffled. Perhaps there was rather more to this little provincial than he had supposed, though why she should utter malicious remarks he was at a loss to understand. It was coming it too strong if she was piqued by his failure to recall on what occasion he had danced with her: did she think he could remember every insignificant girl with whom he had been obliged to stand up for one country dance? And what the devil did she mean by relapsing again into indifferent silence? He tried a new tack: “It is now your turn, Miss Marlow, to start a topic for conversation!”

She withdrew her gaze from the cabinet, and directed it at him for a dispassionate moment. “I haven’t any conversation,” she said.

He hardly knew whether to be diverted or vexed; he was certainly intrigued, and had just decided that although he had not the remotest intention of offering for this outrageous girl, it might not be unamusing to discover what (if anything) lay behind her odd manners when Lady Marlow came into the gallery. Finding her guest there before her she pointed out to him that he was in advance of the hour, which nettled him into replying: “You must blame the wind for being in the northeast, ma’am.”

The shaft went wide. “You mistake, Duke: no blame attaches to your being so early. Indeed, I consider it a good fault! My daughter has been entertaining you, I see. What have you been talking of together, I wonder?”

“We can scarcely be said to have talked of anything,” replied Sylvester. “Miss Marlow informs me that she has no conversation.”

He glanced at Phoebe as he spoke, and encountered such a burning look of reproach that he repented, and tried to mend matters by adding with a laugh: “In point of fact, ma’am, Miss Marlow entered the room a bare minute before yourself, so we have had little opportunity to converse.”

“My daughter-in-law is shy,” said Lady Marlow, with a look at Phoebe which promised signal vengeance presently.

It occurred to Sylvester that after her first start of surprise Phoebe had not appeared to be at all shy. He remembered that Lady Ingham had said she was not just in the ordinary style, and wondered if there might be something more in her than he had as yet detected. Since she was making no effort to engage his interest he concluded that she did not know that he had come to Austerby to look her over. That made it fairly safe to try whether he could charm her out of her farouche behaviour. He smiled at her, and said: “I must hope, then, that she will not be too shy to converse with me when we are a little better acquainted.”

But by the time he rose from the dinner-table all desire to become better acquainted with Phoebe had left him, and the only thing he did desire was an excuse to leave Austerby not later than the following morning. As he sat through an interminable dinner, enduring on one side a monologue delivered by his hostess, at her most consequential, on such topics of interest as the defections of the latest incumbent of the Parish, the excellence of the Bishop, the decay of modern manners, and the customs obtaining in her dear father’s household; and on the other a series of sporting recollections from his host, the look of the satyr became ever more strongly marked on his countenance. Never had he been subjected to such treatment as he was meeting with at Austerby! When he accepted invitations to stay with friends he knew that he would find himself one of a party composed of agreeable persons, with whom he was well acquainted; and that every form of sport or amusement would be provided for their entertainment. One hunted, or one shot; and if the weather became inclement one played at whist, and billiards, took part in theatricals, danced at impromptu balls, and flirted desperately with the prettiest of the ladies. That was how he entertained his own guests: so much the way of his world that it never occurred to him that quite a number of the hostesses who secured him for their parties put forth their best efforts to entertain him royally. But when he found himself the sole guest at Austerby, had been promised by his host an evening’s whist with two obscure country gentlemen; and, by his hostess, the felicity of meeting the Bishop of Bath and Wells, it occurred to him forcibly that in making no proper provision for his entertainment Lord Marlow had been guilty of a social solecism.

He had been received by a hostess who seemed to think she was conferring a high treat upon him. He was contemptuous of flattery, he disliked toad-eaters, he did not consciously expect to be welcomed with distinction, but to be met with condescension was a new experience which set him instantly on his high ropes.

His bedchamber was rendered untenable by the smoke which gushed from the chimney; the water in the brass ewer had been tepid, so that his valet had had to fetch a fresh supply from the kitchens; the eldest daughter of the house had uttered no more than half a dozen sentences since they had entered the dining-room; and although Lord Marlow’s wines were good, the dinner set before the company was as commonplace as it was long drawn-out.

By the time Lord Marlow, promising some rubbers of piquet later in the evening, took him to join the ladies in the drawing-room, he had resigned himself to boredom; but when the first object to meet his gaze, upon entering the room, was a grim female, dressed in black bombasine and seated bolt upright in a chair slightly drawn back from the circle round the fire, he realized that he had grossly underestimated the horrors that lay before him. Besides the grim female two schoolgirls had joined the party, the elder a bouncing young woman with a high complexion, and her father’s rather protuberant blue eyes; the younger a sallow girl too bashful to speak above a whisper or without blushing fierily from neck to brow. Lady Marlow made them both known to him, but ignored the claims of the grim lady to a share of his civility. He concluded that she must be the governess; and instantly determined to show his hostess what he thought of her insufferable manners. He favoured Miss Battery with a slight bow, and his most pleasant smile, and directed at Lady Marlow an inquiring look she was unable to ignore.

“Oh—! My daughters’ governess,” she said shortly. “Pray come to the fire, Duke!”

Sylvester, choosing instead a chair rather nearer to Miss Battery than to the fireside party, addressed a civil remark to her. She answered it with composure, but gruffly, looking at him with unnerving fixity.

Lord Marlow, always very easy and good-natured with his dependants, then added to his wife’s displeasure by saying: “Ah, Miss Battery! I have not seen you since I came home! How do you go on? But I need not ask: you are always well!”

That gave Sylvester the opportunity to ask her if she were related to a family of the same name living in Norfolk. She replied: “Shouldn’t think so, sir. Never heard of them until your grace mentioned them.”

As the family had no existence outside his imagination this was not surprising; but his question seemed to have broken the ice: Miss Battery, appearing slightly mollified, disclosed that she came from Hertfordshire.

Lady Marlow, breaking rudely in on this, said loudly that she had no doubt the Duke would enjoy a little music, and waved Phoebe towards the pianoforte.

Phoebe was an indifferent performer, but as neither her father nor Lady Marlow was at all musical they were perfectly satisfied, as long as she did not falter, or play any unmistakably wrong notes. Sylvester was not musical either, but he had been used to listen to the first musicians of the day, and thought he had never heard anyone play with less taste or feeling. He could only be thankful that she did not play the harp; but when, in response to some affectionate urging from her father, she sang an old ballad in a small, wooden voice he was much inclined to think that even a harp might have been preferable.

At half-past eight the schoolroom party withdrew, and after half an hour’s desultory conversation the tea-tray was brought in. Sylvester saw the end of his purgatory, and so it was. Punctually at half-past nine Lady Marlow informed him that they kept early hours at Austerby, bade him a formal goodnight, and went away, with Phoebe following in her wake. As they mounted the stairs she said complacently that the evening had gone off very well. She added that although she feared the Duke was a man of fashion, she was on the whole pleased with him. “Your father informs me that hunting will be out of the question tomorrow,” she observed. “If it should not be snowing I shall suggest to Salford that he might like to walk with you and your sisters. Miss Battery will accompany you, of course, but I shall tell her she may fall behind, with the girls, and give her a hint at the same time not to be putting herself forward, as I was excessively surprised to see her doing this evening.”

This programme, which, a few hours earlier, would have appalled her, Phoebe listened to with a calm born of her fixed resolve to be gone from Austerby long before it could be put into execution. Parting from Lady Marlow at the head of the stairs she went away to her bedchamber, knowing that both Susan and Miss Battery would come to her there, and that it would consequently be dangerous to repair to the morning-room before she had received these visitors.

Susan was soon got rid of; but Miss Battery, who followed her, showed a disposition to linger. Seating herself at the foot of the bed, and tucking her hands into the sleeves of her thick woollen dressing-gown, she told Phoebe that she thought she had done Sylvester less than justice.

“Sibby! You did not like him?” cried Phoebe.

“Don’t know him well enough to like him. I didn’t dislike him, at all events. No reason why I should: very civil to me!”

“Yes, to vex Mama!” Phoebe said shrewdly. “He was wanting to give her a set-down all through dinner!”

“Well,” said Miss Battery, “can’t blame him for that! Shouldn’t say so, of course, but there it is! Got a charming smile too.”

“I haven’t observed it.”

“You wouldn’t have taken him in such aversion if you had.I observed it. What’s more,” added Miss Battery candidly, “he bore your playing very well, you know. Most truly the gentleman! He must be bent on making you an offer to have solicited you for another song.”

She remained for several more minutes, but finding Phoebe deaf to whatever she chose to advance in Sylvester’s favour she presently went away; and Phoebe, after a discreet interval, slipped out of her room, and along the corridor to the west wing of the house. Here, besides the schoolroom, the nurseries, and various bedchambers, the morning-room was situated, a shabby apartment which, while still dignified by its original title, had dwindled into a mere sewing-room. It was lit by an oil lamp set in the middle of a bare table; and by this indifferent light young Mr. Orde, his overcoat buttoned up to his throat, sat reading a book of Household Hints, which was all the literature the room afforded. He seemed to have found it rewarding, for upon Phoebe’s entrance he looked up, and said with a grin: “I say, Phoebe, this is a famous good book! It tells you how to preserve tripe to go to the East Indies—which is just the sort of thing one might want to know any day of the week. All you need do is to Get a fine Belly of Tripe, quite fresh—”

“Ugh!” shuddered Phoebe, carefully shutting the door. “How horrid! Do put the book away!”

“All in good time! If you don’t want to know how to preserve tripe, what about an Excellent Dish for six or seven Persons for the Expense of Sixpence? Just the thing for the ducal kitchens, I think! It’s made with calf’s lights, and bread, and fat, and some sheeps’ guts, and—”

“How can you be so absurd? Stop reading that nonsense!” scolded Phoebe.

“Nicely cleaned!” pursued Tom. “And if you don’t fancy sheeps’ guts you may take hogs’, or—”

But at this point Phoebe seized the book, and after a slight struggle for possession he let her have it.

“For heaven’s sake don’t laugh so loud!” she begged him. “The children’s bedchamber is almost opposite this room! Oh, Tom, you can’t conceive what a shocking evening I’ve spent! I begged Papa to send the Duke away, but he wouldn’t, so I have made up my mind to go away myself.”

He was conscious of a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach, but replied staunchly: “Well, I told you I was game. I only hope we don’t find the roads snow-bound in the north. Gretna Green it shall be!”

“Not so loud! Of course I’m not going to Gretna Green!” she said in an indignant under-voice. “Keep your voice low, Tom! If Eliza were to wake and hear us talking she would tell Mama, as sure as check! Now listen! I thought it all out at dinner! I must go to London, to my grandmother. She told me once that I might depend on her to do all she could for me, and I think—oh, I am sure she would support me in this, if only she knew what was happening! The only thing is—Tom, you know Mama buys all my dresses, and lets me have very little pin-money! Could you—would you lend me the money for the coach-fare? I think it costs about five-and-thirty shillings for the ticket. And then there is the tip to the guard, and—”

“Yes, of course I’ll lend you as much rhino as you want!” Tom interrupted. “But you can’t mean to travel to London on the stage!”

“Yes, I do. How could I go post, even if I could afford to do so? There would be the hiring of the chaise, and then all the business of the changes—oh, no, it would be impossible! I haven’t an abigail to go with me, remember! I shall be much safer in the common stage. And if I could contrive to get a seat in one of the fast day coaches—”

“Well, you couldn’t. They are always booked up as full as they can hold in Bath, and if you aren’t on the way-bill—Besides, if the snow is as deep beyond Reading as they say it is those coaches won’t run.”

“Well, never mind! Any coach will serve, and I don’t doubt I shall be able to get a place, because people won’t care to travel in this weather, unless they are obliged. I have made up my mind to it that I must be gone from here before anyone can prevent me, very early in the morning. If I could reach Devizes—it is nearer than Calne, and I know some of the London coaches do take that road—only I shall have a portmanteau to carry, and perhaps a bandbox as well, so—Oh, Tom, could you, do you think, take me to Devizes in your gig?”

“Will you stop fretting and fuming?” he said severely. “I’ll take you anywhere you wish, but this scheme of yours—You know, I don’t wish to throw a rub in the way, but I’m afraid it may not hold. This curst weather! A pretty piece of business it would be if you were to get no farther than Reading! It might well turn out so, and then it would be all holiday with you.”

“No, no, I have thought of that already! If the coach goes on, I shall stay with it, but if the snow is very bad I know just what I must do. Do you remember Jane, that used to be the maid who waited on the nursery? Well, she married a corn-chandler, in a very good way of business, I believe, and lives at Reading. So, you see, if I can’t travel beyond Reading I may go to her, and stay with her until the snow has melted!”

“Stay in a corn-chandler’s house?” he repeated, in accents of incredulity.

“Good God, why should I not? He is a very respectable man, and as for Jane, she will take excellent care of me, I can assure you! I suppose you had rather I stayed in a public inn?”

“No, that I wouldn’t! But—” He paused, not liking the scheme, yet unable to think of a better.

She began to coax him, representing to him the advantages of her plan, and all the hopelessness of her situation if she were forced to remain at Austerby. He was easily convinced of this, for it did indeed seem to him that without her father’s support her case was desperate. Nor could he deny that her grandmother was the very person to shield her; but it took a little time to persuade him that neither danger nor impropriety would attend her journey to London in a stage-coach. It was not until she told him that if he would not lend her his aid she meant to trudge to Devizes alone that he at last capitulated. Nothing remained, after that, but to arrange the details of her escape, and this was soon accomplished. Tom promised to have his gig waiting in the lane outside one of the farm gates of Austerby at seven o’clock on the following morning; Phoebe pledged herself not to keep him waiting there; and they parted, one of them full of confidence, the other trying to smother his uneasiness.

She was punctual at the rendezvous; he was not; and for twenty nerve-racking minutes she paced up and down the lane, in the lee of the hedge, her imagination running riot among the various disasters which might have overtaken him. The most likely of these was that he had overslept, a probability which added rage to her anxiety. It had been dark when she herself had dressed, and packed her night gear into the already bulging portmanteau, but by seven o’clock it was daylight, and at any moment, she felt, she might be discovered by some villager or farm-hand to whom she must be well known. The day was cheerless, the wind blowing from the north, and the clouds ominously thick. Anger and apprehension steadily mounted, but both were forgotten in surprise when Tom arrived on the scene, driving, instead of his gig, his father’s curricle, with those two tidy brown steppers, Trusty and True, harnessed to it.

He pulled up beside her and commanded her, without preamble, to go to the horses’ heads. She obeyed, but said, as he cast off the rug wrapped about his legs and jumped down into the road: “But, Tom, how is this? Why have you brought the curricle? I am persuaded you ought not!”

He had picked up her portmanteau, and was lashing it quickly in place. “Yes, I ought. Did you think I was never coming? I’m sorry to be so late, but, you see, I had to go back. We must put this bandbox under the seat.” He stowed it away as he spoke, and came striding up to her. “I’ll take ’em. Do you jump up, and take the ribbons! Take care! they haven’t been out since my father went away, and they’re as lively as be-damned! You will find my father’s old driving-coat: put it on, and wrap that fur rug well round you! And don’t waste time disputing!” he added.

She did as he bade her, but she was considerably astonished, and demanded, as soon as he had climbed up beside her, and taken the reins from her competent hands: “Have you run mad, Tom? What in the world—”

“No, of course I haven’t. The thing is I was the most complete gudgeon last night, not to have seen what I ought to do. Plain as a pikestaff, but it never occurred to me till I had actually set out to come to you. Mind you, I wasn’t easy in my mind! Kept on waking up all night, wondering what I should do. It only came to me when I was on my way here, driving the gig. So I turned sharp about, scribbled a note for my mother, got Jem to fig out Trusty and True—”

“But why?” she interrupted.

“Going to take you to London myself,” he replied briefly.

Her first feeling was one of gratitude, but she was instantly assailed by qualms, and said: “No, no, you can’t do so, Tom!”

“Nonsense, what could be easier? Trusty and True are good for two full stages, and very likely more, if I don’t press them. After that, of course, I must hire job-horses, but unless we learn at Reading that the road from there is too deep to make the attempt we shall be in London by tonight. I shan’t try it, mind, if we get bad news at Reading! If that should be the case, I’ll take you to this corn-chandler of yours, and put up myself at the Crown. The only thing is that you may find it pretty cold.”

“Oh, that doesn’t signify! But indeed, Tom, I think you ought not! Perhaps—”

“Well, it makes no odds what you think,” he returned. “I’m going to do it.”

“But Mrs. Orde—your father—”

“I know my father would say I shouldn’t let you go alone; and as for Mama, she won’t be thrown into a pucker, because I dashed off a note to her, telling her she need not be. And don’t you fly into one of your fusses either! I didn’t say where I was taking you, but only that I was obliged to rescue you from that Duke, and very likely should be away from home for a little while. So that’s all right and tight.”

She could not be perfectly satisfied, but since there was plainly no hope of turning Tom from his purpose, and she was besides thankful not to be obliged to journey alone to London, she said no more to dissuade him.

“That’s a good girl!” he said, correctly interpreting her silence. “Lord, I call it a famous lark, don’t you? If only we don’t run into snow, and I must own I don’t like the look of the sky above half.”

“No, nor I, but if we can but reach Reading I shan’t care for anything else, for even if it was discovered which way we were gone I don’t think I should be looked for there.”

“Oh, we shall reach Reading!” Tom said cheerfully.

She drew a long breath, and said in a thankful tone: “Tom, I can’t tell you how much I’m obliged to you! To own the truth, I didn’t at all want to go all by myself, but now—oh, now I can be easy!”