“Very well. If there should be such a bill I will hand it to you when next we meet.”
She inclined her head graciously. “I am obliged to you, sir.
“Is that the way I speak when I am being odiously snubbing?” inquired Sylvester.
She gave a tiny chuckle, and said handsomely: “I must own that you are not at all stupid!”
“Oh, no, I’m not stupid! I have a good memory, too. I haven’t forgotten how well you contrived to hit off a number of our acquaintances, and I make no secret of my uneasiness. You have an uncomfortable knack of hitting off just what is most ridiculous in your victims!”
She did not reply. Glancing down at her he saw a very grave look in her face. He wondered what she had found to disturb her in his bantering speech, but he did not ask, because they had by this time reached the Halfway House, and he was obliged to give his attention to the ostler, who came running to hold the greys.
It was not long before the chaise stood waiting to convey the travellers to London. Alice, who had sat lost in a beatific dream in the curricle, was quite overcome by the sight of the elegant equipage in which she was now to travel, with the crest upon its panel, its four magnificent horses stamping and fretting and tossing up their heads, its smart postilions, the deep squabs of the seats, and the sheepskin that covered the floor. To Phoebe’s dismay she burst into tears. However, when anxiously begged to say what was distressing her she replied, between snorting sobs, that she was thinking of the neighbours, denied the privilege of watching her drive off like a queen.
Relieved, Phoebe said: “Well, never mind! you will be able to tell them all about it when you go home again! Jump up, and don’t cry any more!”
“Oh, no, miss! But I do be so happy!” said Alice, preparing to clamber into the chaise.
Phoebe turned, and looked at Sylvester, waiting to hand her up the steps. Her colour rose; she put out her hand, and as he took it in his, said haltingly: “I have been trying to think how to tell you how—how very grateful I am, but I can’t find the words. But, oh, I thank you!”
“Believe me, Sparrow, you make too much of a very trifling service. Convey my compliments to Lady Ingham, and tell her that I shall do myself the honour of calling on her when I come to town. In my turn, I will convey yours to Thomas and his father!”
“Yes, pray do! I mean, you will tell Tom how it was, won’t you? And perhaps you could convey my apologies to the Squire, rather than my compliments?”
“Certainly, if that is your wish.”
“Well, I think it would be more civil. I only hope he won’t be out of reason vexed!”
“Don’t tease yourself on that head!”
“Yes, but if he should be I know you will give him one of your freezing set-downs, and that I couldn’t bear!” she said.
“I thought it would not be long before you came to the end of your unnatural civility,” he observed. “Let me assure you that I have no intention of conducting myself with anything less than propriety!”
“That’s exactly what I dread!” she said.
“Good God, what an abominable girl you are! Get into the chaise before I catch the infection!” he exclaimed, between amusement and annoyance.
She laughed, but said, apologetically, as he handed her up: “I wasn’t thinking! Truly I meant not to say one uncivil thing to you!”
“You are certainly incorrigible. I, on the other hand, am so magnanimous as to wish you a safe and speedy journey!”
“Magnanimous indeed! Thank you!”
The steps were let up; Alice’s voice was the last to be heard before the door was shut. “Hot bricks, and a fur rug, miss!” disclosed Alice. “Spanking, I call it!”
Phoebe leaned forward to wave farewell, the ostlers let go the wheelers’ heads, and the chaise started to move, swaying on its excellent springs. Sylvester stood watching it until it disappeared round a bend in the road, and then turned to Keighley, waiting beside him, the bridle of a hired riding-hack in his hand. “Get them to London tonight if you can, John, but run no risks,” he said. “Money, pistols—I think you have everything.”
“Yes, your grace, but I wish you’d let me come back!”
“No, wait for me at Salford House. I can’t take both you and Swale. Or, at any rate, I won’t! Curricles were never meant to carry three persons.”
Keighley smiled grimly, as he hoisted himself into the saddle. “I thought your grace was being a trifle crowded,” he remarked, with a certain amount of satisfaction.
“And hope it may be a lesson to me! Be damned to you!” retorted Sylvester.
He accomplished the short journey back to the Blue Boar at a leisurely trot, his mind occupied, not altogether pleasurably, with the events of the past week. He ought never to have stopped at the Blue Boar. He wondered what could have possessed him, and was much inclined to think it had been perversity: John had tried to dissuade him—damn John for being in the right of it, as usual!—and he had done it as much to tease him as for any other reason. Well, he had been well served for that piece of mischief! Once he had found young Orde in such a fix he had been fairly caught: only a monster could have abandoned the boy to his fate. Besides, he liked Thomas, and had not foreseen that his act of charity would precipitate him into the sort of imbroglio he particularly disliked. He could only be thankful that he was not a frequent traveller on the Bath Road: he had given them plenty to talk about at the Halfway House, and to afford the vulgar food for gossip was no part of his ambition. That hurly-burly girl! She wanted both manners and conduct; she was disagreeably pert, and had no beauty: he cordially disliked her. What the devil had made him come to her rescue, when all his saner self desired was to see her thoroughly set-down? There had not been the least necessity—except that he had pledged his word. But when he had seen her on the stairs, so absurdly woebegone but trying rather pathetically to smile, he hadn’t recollected that foolish promise: he had acted on impulse, and had only himself to thank for the outcome. Here he was, tied still to a primitive inn, and a young man whose welfare was no concern of his; deprived of his groom; open to the justifiable censure of some unknown country squire—the sort of worthy person, in all probability, whom he entertained at Chance on Public Days; and the subject (if he knew his world) of scandalous conjecture. In some form or another the story would be bound to leak out. The best he could hope for was to be thought to have taken leave of his senses; the worst, that for all his famed fastidiousness he had fallen laughably in love with a dab of a female without style or countenance, who scorned his supposed advances.
No, decided Sylvester, turning neatly into the yard of the Blue Boar: that was rather too much to expect him to bear! Miss Marlow should not exhibit her poor opinion of him to the interested ton. Miss Marlow, in fact, should exhibit something very different from contempt: he was damned if he was going to be the only one to learn a salutary lesson!
His expression, when he alighted from the curricle, and stood watching, with a merciless eye, the exact carrying out of his curt orders, was unamiable enough to make the ostler break into a sweat of anxiety; but when he presently strolled into Tom’s room all traces of ill-humour had vanished from his countenance.
He entered upon a scene of constraint. The Squire, peckish after his ride, had just disposed of a substantial nuncheon, and Tom, having talked himself out of arguments, had been preserving for the past ten minutes a silence pregnant with resentment. He looked round at the opening of the door, his eyes still smouldering, and as soon as he saw that it was Sylvester who had come in, burst out: “Salford! The—the most damnable thing! Perhaps you can prevail upon my father to listen to reason! I never would have believed it possible he could—oh, this is my father!”