‘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 addlebrained 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.