After this episode, Elinor was not surprised, an hour later, to encounter Nicky somewhat shakily negotiating the stairs. He was wearing a dressing gown of such startling design and varied color that she blinked at him. He told her that he had bought it in Oxford and that it was all the crack. “Only fancy that old rascal’s wanting to bleed me!” he said. “Why, I must have lost pints already, for I’m as weak as a cat!”
“Of course you are, and you should be in bed!” she said. “You must lie on the sofa in the bookroom, and, mind! If you do not stay there quietly to bed you must and shall go!”
He made a face at her but he was glad enough to stretch himself out on the sofa and to allow her to rearrange his sling more comfortably. But he became; very recalcitrant when Barrow brought in a bowl of gruel, and said that if there was any ale in the house he would like a tankard of it, with a sandwich to eat with it. These being firmly denied him, he agreed to compromise with a bowl of chicken broth and a glass of white wine whey. Having disposed of this light repast, he then settled down to discuss exhaustively with Elinor what ought next to be done to entrap the foe. He had not pursued the subject very far however, when the front doorbell clanged in the distance, and Bouncer rose, growling.
Such was the irritation of nerves which Elinor labored under that she could not repress a start or banish from her mind the fear that whoever stood at the front door had come to the house with a fell purpose in view. Something of the same nature seemed to be in Nicky’s brain too, for he sat with his head a little tilted, listening intently. Bouncer padded over to the door and set his nose to the crack under it, tail and hackles well up. Barrow crossed the hall in his usual leisurely fashion, and a murmur of voices sounded. Bouncer’s bristles sank and he began to wag his tail and to snuff loudly .. “It’s Ned!” exclaimed Nicky, his face lightening.
“Oh, I do hope it is indeed!” cried Elinor, and ran to the door, and opened it.
She would not have believed, twenty-four hours earlier, that the sight of that tall figure in the long, many-caped driving coat could be so welcome to her. “Thank God you are come, my lord!” she uttered in accents of heartfelt relief. Then her eyes alighted on a little old lady standing beside Carlyon, in an old-fashioned bonnet and a drab pelisse over a plain, round gown and a spencer, and she cried out, “Becky!” and started forward to clasp the little lady in a warm embrace.
“My love!” said Miss Beccles. “My dear Mrs. Cheviot!”
“Oh, Becky, pray do not call me so!” Elinor begged. She turned to Carlyon, her cheeks in a glow. “I had no notion you meant to bring her to me so speedily, sir! I am so very much obliged to you! Oh, dear, it makes me wish more than ever that I had not served you such a trick—! I do not know what you will say when you hear of it, but indeed I never dreamed when I let him stay—But do pray come into the bookroom!”
He had been allowing Bouncer to tug at his gloves, but he looked up at that, his brows lifting. “My dear Mrs. Cheviot, how can you possibly have served me a trick? Is anything amiss?”
“Everything!” she declared.
He maintained his usual calm, merely looking a little surprised, and saying, “That is certainly comprehensive. I see you have Nicky here. Yes, that will do, Bouncer! Be quiet!”
Nicky at this moment appeared in the doorway of the bookroom, his left arm reposing interestingly in its sling. “I say, Ned, I’m devilish glad to see you!” he remarked. “We have had such a lark here!”
Carlyon regarded him without betraying either dismay or astonishment. “Now what have you been about?” he asked in a resigned tone.
“Well, I’ll tell you, but take off your coat and come in!”
“Very well, but make your bow to Miss Beccles. My youngest brother, ma’am.”
Miss Beccles dropped a curtsy, saying in her soft voice, “I am very happy to make your acquaintance, sir, but should you be standing there in the draft, do you think? Forgive me, but you do not look to me to be quite well!”
“No, of course he should not be standing there!” said Elinor, recalled to a sense of her responsibilities. “He should be in bed! I wish you will go back to the sofa, Nicky! What a tiresome boy you are!”
Carlyon looked a little amused. “Do as you are bid, Nicky! I think Miss Beccles would be glad of a bowl of soup, Mrs. Cheviot. It was cold during the drive.”
“Oh, no!” murmured the little lady, looking up at him gratefully. “I was so well wrapped up! Such a luxurious chaise, and every kind attention to my comfort!”
“Indeed you must have some soup and a glass of wine as well!” Elinor said, drawing her toward the bookroom. “Barrow, pray tell Mrs. Barrow! There is the chicken broth that was made for Mr. Nick. Come in, Becky dear!”
“By Jove, yes, she may have all my chicken broth and that white wine whey too!” said Nicky generously.
Miss Beccles walked over to the sofa and plumped up the cushions, smiling invitingly at him. He thanked her and lay down again on it. “I will make you a panada presently,” she said. “You will like that, sir.”
“Shall I?” he asked doubtfully.
“Yes,” she said with gentle certainty. She looked at Elinor and said, “My love, if you should desire to be private with his lordship I will go upstairs and set about unpacking my trunks.”
“No, no, Becky, do not go! I do not mean to remain another night in this dreadful house, but since you are come to it, it is only right that you should know what manner of things happen to one here!”
“You alarm me, Mrs. Cheviot,” interposed Carlyon. “Are you going to tell me that you have indeed encountered a headless specter?”
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “I might have known you would make light of it, sir!”
“I may do so, perhaps, but I will engage not to until I know what it is that has so much distressed you. How are you hurt, Nicky?”
“I was shot at!” replied Nicky impressively.
“You were shot at!”
“Yes, but the ball only lodged in my shoulder and Greenlaw soon dug it out.”
“But who shot at you, and why?”
“That’s just it, Ned! We haven’t a notion who it was! It is the most famous affair, and only think! If I had not been sent down it would not have happened and we might never have known anything about it!”
“I think,” said Carlyon, “that you had better tell me this story from the start if I am to understand it.”
“Well, the start of it was Cousin Elinor’s part of the adventure. I was not here. Tell him how it all began, Cousin!”
“Yes, pray do!” said Carlyon, walking over to the fire and standing with his back to it. “I am happy, at all events, to discover that you are so far reconciled to your lot, ma’am, as to accept the—er—relationship that exists between us.”
She was obliged to smile. “Well, I had rather be called by almost any other name than Cheviot!” she said.
“I will bear it in mind. Now, what has been the matter here?”
Beginning to feel, quite irrationally, that she had been making a mountain out of a molehill, she described as briefly as she could her encounter with the young Frenchman. He heard her in attentive silence. Miss Beccles quietly removed her bonnet and pelisse and sat down in a chair with her hands placidly folded in her lap.
“You say he was young and dark and spoke with only a slight accent, ma’am?”
She agreed to it, adding that the Frenchman was of medium height and slim build and wore neat side whiskers.
Carlyon opened his snuffbox and took a meditative pinch. “Then I fancy he must have been young De Castres,” he said.
Nicky sat up. “What, Louis de Castres?” he exclaimed. “But, Ned, he is quite the thing! Why, you may meet him everywhere!”
“Very true. Mrs. Cheviot seems even to have met him here.”
“No, dash it, Ned, he is not the kind of loose screw to be breaking into houses at dead of night! Because the story he told Cousin Elinor was a pack of lies! You do not know the whole yet!”