Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

7

Breakfast was served at Austerby, on all but hunting-days, at ten o’clock, which, in Sylvester’s opinion, was at least an hour too early. In general, the custom obtaining at country house-parties was for guests to breakfast at eleven, or even twelve o’clock. Lady Marlow knew it, but she told Sylvester that she disapproved of such hours. Sylvester, to whom the imperative summons of the bell had been an offence, received this information with a slight smile, and a polite inclination of the head, but offered no comment.

It was not long before Lord Marlow, noticing the absence of his daughter, wondered aloud where she could be. Her ladyship, speaking with careful restraint, replied that she fancied she must have gone out for a walk.

“Gone out for a walk!” repeated Lord Marlow, chuckling. “Not she! Gone down to the stables, more like. You must know, Salford, that there is no keeping that girl of mine away from the horses. I wish you might have seen her in the field. A capital seat, good, even hands, and the most bruising little rider you ever saw! Never any need to tell her to throw her heart over! Anything her horse can take she will too: stake-and-bound, a double, an in-and-out, a ridge and furrow—all one to Phoebe! I’ve seen her laid on her back in a ditch, but much she cared!”

Oblivious to his wife’s attempts to catch his eye, he would have continued talking in this strain had Firbank not come into the parlour just then, with the intelligence that Mrs. Orde wished to speak to him.

He was surprised, and Lady Marlow still more so. She thought it an extraordinary circumstance, and said: “Depend upon it, she wishes to see me, Marlow. I do not know why she should disturb us at such an hour. It is not at all the thing. Inform Mrs. Orde, Firbank, that I am at breakfast, but will come to her presently.”

He withdrew, but came back again almost immediately, looking harassed, and with a plump, bright-eyed lady hard on his heels.

“I regret, ma’am, to be obliged to break in on you with so little ceremony,” announced Mrs. Orde, who appeared to be labouring under strong emotion, “but my business will not await your pleasure!”

“Not at all! Delighted to welcome you, ma’am!” said Lord Marlow hastily. “Always happy to be of service! You wish to see me—precisely, yes!”

“On a matter of the utmost urgency!” she said. “Your daughter, sir, has run away with my son!”

The company was not unnaturally startled into silence by this announcement. Without giving her hosts time to recover from the shock Mrs. Orde loosed the vials of her pent-up wrath upon them. “I don’t know why you should look amazed!” she declared, her eyes snapping at Lady Marlow. “You have left no stone unturned to achieve this result! I guessed how it would be from the instant my son told me what his reception has been in this house for the past ten days! I pass over the insulting nature of your conduct, ma’am, but I shall take leave to inform you that nothing is farther from the wishes of his parents than an alliance between Tom and your family! I am excessively attached to Phoebe, poor child, but his father and I have other plans for Tom, and they don’t, let me assure you, include his marriage at the age of nineteen!”

“Nonsense! Such a thought was never in either of their heads!” exclaimed Lord Marlow, in an attempt to stem this blistering eloquence.

He was promptly demolished. “No! Never until her ladyship planted it there!” Mrs. Orde said fiercely. “If I had viewed their friendship with apprehension I should have thought myself a ninnyhammer to have acted as she has! And what has been the result? Exactly what might have been foreseen!”

“Upon my word!” broke in Lady Marlow. “I could almost believe you to have taken leave of your senses, ma’am! A very odd rage you have flown into, and all because my daughter-in-law (as I do not doubt!) has gone out riding with Mr. Thomas Orde!”

“Gone out riding!” Mrs. Orde exclaimed contemptuously. “She has run away from this house, and for that, Lady Marlow, you are to blame, with your Turkish treatment of her, poor little soul! Oh, I have no patience to talk to you! My errand is not to you, but to Phoebe’s father! Read that, my lord!”

With these peremptory words she thrust a single sheet of paper into Lord Marlow’s hand. While he perused the few lines Tom had scrawled to allay any anxiety his mother might feel, Lady Marlow commanded him to show her the note, and Sylvester retired discreetly into the window embrasure. A man of delicacy, he knew, would seize this opportunity to withdraw from the parlour. He accepted with fortitude the realization that he was lacking in delicacy, and wondered whether there was any chance of his being allowed a glimpse of a missive which was exercising so powerful an effect upon his host.

“My dear Mama,” Tom had scribbled, “I am obliged to go away without taking leave of you, but do not be in a worry. I have taken my father’s curricle, and may be absent for some few days, I cannot say precisely how many. Things have come to such a pass at Austerby that there is no bearing it. I must rescue Phoebe, and am persuaded you and my father will understand how it is when you know the whole, and think I did right, for you have always held her in affection.”

As he read these lines Lord Marlow’s cheeks lost some of their ruddy colour. He allowed his wife to twitch the paper out of his hand, stammering: “Impossible! I do not credit it! P-pray, where could they have gone?”

“Exactly! Where?” demanded Mrs. Orde. “That question is what brings me here! If my husband were not in Bristol at this moment—but so it is always! Whenever a man is most needed he is never to be found!”

“I do not know what this message means,” announced Lady Marlow. “I do not pretend to understand it. For my part I strongly suspect Mr. Thomas Orde to have been inebriated when he wrote it.”

“How dare you?” flashed Mrs. Orde, her eyes sparkling dangerously.

“No, no, of course he was not!” interposed Lord Marlow hurriedly. “My love, let me beg of you—Not but what it is so extraordinary that—Though far be it from me to suggest—”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Orde, stamping her foot, “don’t stand there in that addle-brained fashion, saying nothing to the purpose, my lord! Is it nothing to you that your daughter is at this very moment eloping? You must go after her! Discover where she meant to go! Surely Susan might know! Or Miss Battery! She may have let fall a hint—or one of them, better acquainted with her than you, might guess!”

Lady Marlow was inclined to brush this suggestion aside, but her lord, the memory of his overnight interview with Phoebe lively in his mind, was by this time seriously alarmed. He said at once that Susan and Miss Battery should be sent for, and hastened to the door, shouting to Firbank. While a message was carried up to the schoolroom, Mrs. Orde at once relieved her overcharged nerves and paid off every arrear of a debt of rancour that had been mounting in her bosom for years by telling Lady Marlow exactly what she thought of her manners, conduct, insensibility, and gross stupidity. Lord Marlow was inevitably drawn into the altercation; and in the heat of battle Sylvester’s presence was forgotten. He did nothing to attract attention to himself. The moment for that had not yet come, though he had every hope that it was not far distant. Meanwhile he listened to Mrs. Orde’s masterly indictment of his hostess, gratefully storing up in his memory the several anecdotes illustrative of Lady Marlow’s depravity, every detail of which Mrs. Orde had faithfully carried in her mind for years past.

She was silenced at last by the entrance into the room of Miss Battery, accompanied not only by Susan but by Eliza as well. To this circumstance Lady Marlow took instant and pardonable exception; but when she would have dismissed her Miss Battery said grimly: “I thought it my duty to bring her to your ladyship. She says she knows where her sister has gone. Don’t think it, myself.”

“Phoebe would never tell Eliza!” asserted Susan. “And particularly when she never breathed a word to me!”

“I do know where she has gone!” said Eliza. “And I was going to tell Mama, because it is my duty to do so.”

“Yes, well, never mind that!” said Lord Marlow testily. “If you know, tell me at once!”

“She has gone to Gretna Green with Tom Orde, Papa,” said Eliza.

The tone in which she uttered this staggering information was so smug that it goaded Susan into exclaiming impetuously: “I know that’s a rapper, you odious little mischief-maker, you!”

“Susan, you will go to my dressing-room and remain there until I come to you!” said Lady Marlow.

But greatly to her surprise Lord Marlow came to Susan’s rescue. “No, no, this matter must be sifted! It’s my belief Sukey is in the right of it.”

“Mine too,” interpolated Miss Battery.

“Eliza is a very truthful child,” stated Lady Marlow.

“How do you know she is gone to Gretna Green?” demanded Mrs. Orde. “Did she tell you so?”

“Oh, no, ma’am!” said Eliza, looking so innocent that Susan’s hand itched to slap her. “I think it was a secret between her and Tom, and it had made me very unhappy, because it is wrong to have secrets from Mama and Papa, isn’t it, Mama?”

“Very wrong indeed, my dear,” corroborated Lady Marlow graciously. “I am glad to know that one at least of my daughters feels as she ought.”

“Yes, very likely,” said Lord Marlow without any marked display of enthusiasm, “but how do you come to know this, girl?”

“Well, Papa, I don’t like to tell tales of my sister, but Tom came to see her last night.”

“Came to see her last night? When?”

“I don’t know, Papa. It was very late, I think, because I was fast asleep.”

“Then you couldn’t have known anything about it!” interrupted Susan.

“Be silent, Susan!” commanded Lady Marlow.

“I woke up,” explained Eliza. “I heard people talking in the morning-room, and I thought it was robbers, so I got up, because it was my duty to tell Papa, so that he could—”

“Oh, you wicked, untruthful brat!” gasped Susan. “If you had thought that you would have put your head under the blankets in a quake of fright!”

“Am I to speak to you again, Susan?” demanded Lady Marlow.

“Perfectly true,” said Miss Battery. “Never had such an idea in her head. Not at all courageous. Got up out of curiosity.”

“Oh, what does it signify?” cried Mrs. Orde. “Tom must have come to see Phoebe on his way home last night, that much is certain! You heard them talking in the morning-room, did you, Lizzy? What did they say?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Only that just as I was about to run to find Papa I heard Tom speak, quite loud, so I knew it wasn’t house-breakers. He said he hoped there wouldn’t be snow in the north, because it must be Gretna Green.”

“Good God!” ejaculated Lord Marlow. “The young—And what had Phoebe to say to that, pray?”

“She told him not to speak so loud, Papa, and then I heard no more, for I went back to bed.”

“Yes, because try as you might you couldn’t hear any more!” said Susan.

“You behaved very properly,” said Lady Marlow. “If your sister is saved from the dreadful consequences of her conduct she will owe it to your sense of duty. I am excessively pleased with you, Eliza.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Miss Battery, “I should like to know why Eliza’s sense of duty didn’t prompt her to come immediately to my bedchamber to inform me of what was going forward! Don’t scruple to tell you, ma’am, that I don’t think there’s a word of truth in the story.”

“Yes, by God!” said Lord Marlow, kindling. “So should I like to know that! Why didn’t you rouse Miss Battery immediately, Eliza? Susan’s right! You made up the whole story, didn’t you? Eh? Answer me!”

“I didn’t! Oh, Mama, I didn’t!” declared Eliza, beginning to cry.

“Good gracious, my lord!” cried Mrs. Orde. “I should hope that it would be beyond the power of a child of her age to imagine such a tale! Pray, what should she know of Gretna Green? I do not doubt her: indeed, the terrible suspicion had already crossed my mind! What else can we think, in face of what my son wrote? If he felt himself obliged to rescue her, how could he do so except by marrying her? And where could he do that, being under age, except across the Border? I beg of you—I implore you, sir!—to go after them!”

“Go after them!” ejaculated his lordship, his face alarmingly suffused with colour. “I should rather think so, ma’am! Implore me, indeed! Let me tell you you have no need to do that! My daughter to be running off to Gretna Green like any—Oh, let the pair of them but wait until I catch up with them!”

“Well, they won’t do that!” said Mrs. Orde, with some asperity. “And if you do catch them (which I don’t consider certain, for you may depend upon it they have several hours’ start of you, and will stay away from the post roads for as far as they may) you will be so good as to remember, sir, that my son is little more than a schoolboy, and has acted, I don’t question, from motives of the purest chivalry!”

At this point, perceiving that his host, having forgotten all about him, was preparing to storm out of the room, Sylvester judged it to be time to make his presence felt. Coming back into the centre of the room, he said soothingly: “Oh, I should think he would catch them quite easily, ma’am! The strongest probability is that they will run into a snow-drift. I believe it has been snowing for several days in the north. My dear Lord Marlow, before you set out in pursuit of the runaways you must allow me to take my leave of you. In such circumstances I daresay you and her ladyship must be wishing me at Jericho. Accept my thanks for your agreeable hospitality, my regret for its unavoidable curtailment, and my assurance—I trust unnecessary!—that you may rely upon my discretion. It remains only for me to wish you speedy success in your mission, and to beg that you will not delay your departure on my account.”

With these words, delivered very much in the grand manner, he shook hands with Lady Marlow, executed two slight bows to Mrs. Orde and Miss Battery, and was gone from the room before his host had collected his wits enough to do more than utter a half-hearted protest.

His valet, a very correct gentleman’s gentleman, received the news of his immediate departure from Austerby with a deferential bow and an impassive countenance; John Keighley, suffering all the discomfort of a severe cold in his head, bluntly protested. “We’ll never reach London, your grace, not with the roads in the state they’re in, by all accounts.”

“I daresay we shan’t,” replied Sylvester. “But do you think I can’t reach Speenhamland? I’ll prove you wrong!”

Swale, already folding one of Sylvester’s coats, heard this magical word with relief. Speenhamland meant the Pelican, a hostelry as famous for the excellence of its accommodation as for the extortionate nature of its charges. Far better entertainment would be found there than at Austerby, as well for his grace’s servants as for his grace himself.

Unmoved by this reflection, Keighley objected: “It’s more than thirty miles from here, your grace! You’ll have to change horses, and postilions too, because the boys couldn’t do it, not if we run into snow.”

“Oh, I’m not travelling in the chaise!” said Sylvester. “I’ll take the curricle, of course, and drive myself. You will come with me, and Swale can follow in the chaise. Tell the boys they must go as far as they can without a change. They are to bring my own team on by easy stages to the Pelican, and if I’m not there, to town. Swale, put up all I might need for several days in one of my portmanteaux!”

“If your grace should wish me to travel in the curricle I shall be happy to do so,” said Swale, with less truth than heroism.

“No, Keighley will be of far more use to me,” replied Sylvester.

His devoted retainer grunted, and went off to the stables. Within half an hour, resigned to his fate, he was seated beside his master in the curricle, gloomily surveying the prospect, which had by this time become extremely threatening. He had added a large muffler to his attire, and from time to time blew his nose on a handkerchief drenched with camphor. Upon Sylvester’s addressing a chatty remark to him, he said primly: “Yes, your grace.” To a second effort to engage him in conversation he replied: “I couldn’t say, your grace.”

“Oh, couldn’t you?” Sylvester retorted. “Very well! Say what you wish to: that it’s devilish cold, and I’m mad to make the attempt to get to the Pelican! It’s all one to me, and will very likely make you feel more amiable.”

“I wouldn’t so demean myself, your grace,” replied Keighley, with dignity.

“Well, that’s a new come-out,” commented Sylvester. “I thought I was in for one of your scolds.” Receiving no response to this, he said cajolingly: “Come out of the sullens, John, for God’s sake!”

Never, from the day when a very small Sylvester had first coaxed him to do his imperious will, had Keighley been able to resist that note. He said severely: “Well, if ever there was a crack-brained start, your grace! Driving right into a snowstorm, like you are! All I say is, don’t you go blaming me if we end up in a drift!”

“No, I won’t,” Sylvester promised. “The thing was, you see, it was now or never—or at least for a week. You may have been enjoying yourself: I wasn’t! In fact, I’d sooner put up at a hedge tavern.”

Keighley chuckled. “I suspicioned that was the way of it. I didn’t think we should be there long: not when I heard about the smoke in your grace’s bedchamber. Nor Swale didn’t like it, being very niffy-naffy in his ways.”

“Like me,” remarked Sylvester. “In any event, I could hardly have remained, when his lordship was suddenly called away, could I?”

“No, your grace. Particularly seeing as how you wasn’t wishful to.”

Sylvester laughed; and good relations being restored between them they proceeded on their way in perfect amity. It was snowing in Devizes, but they reached Marlborough in good time, and at the Castle Inn stopped to rest the horses, and to partake of a second breakfast. Roaring fires and excellent food strongly tempted Sylvester to remain there, and he might have done so had it not occurred to him it was situated rather too near to Austerby for safety. The arrival of the Bath Mail clinched the matter. It was several hours late, but Sylvester learned from the coachman that although the road was bad in parts, it was nowhere impassable. He decided to push on. Keighley, fortified by a potation of gin, beer, nutmeg, and sugar, which he referred to as hot flannel, raised no objection; so the horses were put to again.

It was heavier going over the next ten miles, and once beyond the Forest of Savernake Sylvester was obliged, once or twice, to pull up, while Keighley got down from the curricle to discover the line of the road. Hungerford was reached, however, without mishap. Sylvester’s famous dapple-greys, with a light vehicle behind them, were tired, but not distressed. If rested for a space, he judged them to be perfectly capable of accomplishing the next stage, which would bring him to Speenhamland, and the Pelican.

By the time they set forward again on their journey it was past four o’clock, and to the hazards of the weather were added those of failing daylight. With the sky so uniformly overcast Keighley was of the opinion that it would be dark before they reached Newbury, but he knew his master too well to waste his breath in remonstrance. Sylvester, who could have numbered on one hand the occasions when he had been ill enough to coddle himself, was neither disconcerted by the blinding snow, nor troubled by its discomforts. Keighley, his cold at its zenith, wondered whether he could be persuaded to draw rein at the Halfway House, and would not have been altogether sorry had they foundered within reach of this or any other hostelry. Neither he nor Sylvester was familiar with the road, but fortune favoured them, just when it became most difficult. They met a stage-coach making its slow and perilous progress towards Bath, and were able to follow its deep tracks for several miles, before these became obliterated by the falling snowflakes. They were still discernible when Keighley’s sharp eyes saw the wreck of a curricle lying in the ditch, and remarked that someone had had a nasty spill. The curricle was covered with snow, but it was plainly a sporting vehicle, and had just as plainly been travelling eastward. Sylvester was assailed suddenly by a suspicion. He pulled up, the better to scrutinize the derelict. “It’s a curricle, John.”

“Yes, your grace,” agreed Keighley. “Broken shaft, let alone the near-side wheels, which I dare say are smashed. Now, for goodness’ sake, do you take care how you go! Nice bobbery if we was to end up the same way!”

“I wonder?” said Sylvester, unholy amusement in his voice. “I shouldn’t suppose there could be many desperate enough to take a curricle out in this weather. I wonder?”

“But they was making for the Border, your grace!” said Keighley, betraying a knowledge he had hitherto discreetly concealed.

“That was only what Miss Eliza said. I thought young Orde must be a regular greenhead to have supposed there was the least chance of his getting within two hundred miles of the Border. Perhaps he isn’t a greenhead, John! I think we are going to make his acquaintance. I am glad we decided to push on to the Pelican!”

“Begging your grace’s pardon,” said Keighley grimly, “we didn’t decide no such thing! What’s more, if I may make so bold as to say so, you don’t want to make his acquaintance. Nor you don’t want to meet Miss again—not if I know anything about it!”

“I daresay you know all about it,” retorted Sylvester, setting his horses in motion again. “You usually do. What happened when they ran into the ditch?”

“I don’t know, your grace,” replied Keighley irascibly. “Maybe there was a coach passed, and they got into it.”

“Don’t be a clunch! What became of the horses? They don’t belong to Master Tom, but to his father. He’d take precious good care of ’em, wouldn’t he?”

“He would, if his father’s the cut of your grace’s honoured father,” acknowledged Keighley, with mordant humour. “Lord, what a set-out we did have, that time your grace took the young bay out, and—”

“Thank you, I haven’t forgotten it! Master Tom, John, got his horses disentangled from that wreck, and led them to the nearest shelter. There can’t have been any broken legs, but I fancy they didn’t come off entirely scatheless. Keep your eyes open for a likely farm, or inn!”

Keighley sighed, but refrained from comment. In the event no great strain was imposed upon his visionary powers, for within half a mile, hard by a narrow lane which crossed the post road, a small wayside inn stood, set back a few yards from the road, with its yard and several outbuildings in its rear.

“Aha!” said Sylvester. “Now we shall see, shan’t we, John? Hold ’em for me!”

Keighley, receiving the reins, was so much incensed by this wayward conduct that he said with awful sarcasm: “Yes, your grace. And if you was to be above an hour, should I walk them, just in case they might happen to take cold?”

But Sylvester, springing down from the curricle, was already entering the Blue Boar, and paid no heed to this sally.

The door opened on to a passage, on one side of which lay the tap, and on the other a small coffee-room. Opposite, a narrow staircase led to the upper floor, and at the head of it, looking anxiously down, stood Miss Phoebe Marlow.