Sprig Muslin Page 13

  It was not long before a gentle sense of well-being began to creep over him; and then, just as he was wondering whether to light another cigarillo, or to take a nap before his dinner, his peace was shattered by the purposeful entry into the parlour of Sir Gareth Ludlow.

  Mr Theale was astonished. He had to blink his eyes several times before he could be sure that they had not deceived him. But the newcomer was certainly Sir Gareth, and, from the look on his face, he seemed to be in a thundering rage. Mr Theale noticed this fleetingly, but his interest was claimed by something of greater importance. Sir Gareth’s blue coat was protected from the dust by a driving coat of such exquisite cut that it held Mr Theale entranced. None knew better than he how seldom a voluminous coat with several shoulder-capes showed a man off to advantage, or how often it made him appear to be as broad as he was long. Sir Gareth, of course, was helped by his height, but the excellence of his figure could not wholly account for the graceful set of the folds that fell almost to his ankles, or for the precision with which half a dozen or more capes were graduated over his shoulders.

  ‘Who,’ demanded Mr Theale reverently, ‘made that coat for you?’

  Sir Gareth had endured a wearing and an exasperating day. It had not been difficult to trace Mr Theale to Brampton, although a good deal of time had been wasted in seeking news of him in all the inns with which Huntingdon was too liberally provided. It had been after Brampton that the trail had become confused. That he had continued along the road which ran from Ely to Kettering was established by one of the ostlers at Brampton, but at Spaldwick, where, after studying his roadbook, Sir Gareth expected to hear that he had stopped for a change, no one seemed to have seen him. That indicated that he had made Thrapston his first change, for there was no other posting-house to be found on that stretch of the road. At the next pike, the keeper rather thought that he had opened to three, or maybe four, yellow-bodied carriages, one of which, unless he was confusing it with a black chaise with yellow wheels, had turned northward into the lane which bisected the post-road. Sir Gareth, after a glance at his map, decided not to pursue this, for it led only to a string of tiny villages. A mile farther on, another, and rather wider, lane offered the traveller a short cut to Oundle, and here Sir Gareth halted to make enquiries, since it was possible, though unlikely, that Oundle was Mr Theale’s destination. He could not discover that any yellow-bodied carriage had turned into the lane that morning, but a sharp-eyed urchin volunteered the information that he had seen just such a turnout, closely followed by a coach with trunks piled on the roof, driving along towards Thrapston a couple of hours back. There could be no doubt that this was Mr Theale’s cortège, and Sir Gareth, after suitably rewarding his informant, drove on, confident that he would glean certain tidings of the fugitives at one of Thrapston’s two posting-houses. He swept through Bythorne, never dreaming that the carriage he was chasing was at that moment standing in the yard behind the modest little inn, with its shafts in the air.

  Thrapston lay only four miles beyond Bythorne, and was soon reached, but neither at the White Hart nor at the George could Sir Gareth discover any trace of his quarry. Mr Theale was perfectly well known at both these inns, and landlords and ostlers alike stated positively that he had not been seen in the town for several months.

  It seemed so incredible that Mr Theale should not have changed horses in Thrapston, that Sir Gareth had wondered if he could have bribed all these persons to cover his tracks. But those whom he questioned were so plainly honest that he dismissed the suspicion, inclining rather to the theory that just as he had chosen to stop in Brampton instead of Huntingdon, so too had Mr Theale preferred to pause for the second change of horses at some house beyond a town where his was a familiar figure. On the road which ran through Corby, Uppingham, and Oakham to Melton Mowbray there appeared to be, on the outskirts of Thrapston, a suburb, or a village, called Islip. Stringent enquiry dragged from the landlord of the George the admission that a change of horses could be obtained there – by such gentlemen as were not over-particular.

  Meanwhile, Sir Gareth’s own pair, carefully though he had nursed them, were spent, and must be stabled. It was not his practice to leave his blood-cattle in strange hands, so when Trotton heard him issuing instructions at the George on the treatment the bays were to receive, and was himself ordered to see them properly bestowed, and realized that he was not to be left in charge of them, he knew that his master’s must indeed be a desperate case.

  Sir Gareth, driving a pair of job horses, drew a blank at Islip, and another at Lowick. He then struck eastward, reaching, by way of an abominable lane, the road that linked Thrapston to Oundle. Here he was similarly unsuccessful, and broke back to the road that led to Kettering. Nowhere had anyone seen a yellow-bodied carriage, followed by a coach laden with baggage. He drove back to Thrapston, and, convinced in spite of all discouragement that Mr Theale was heading for the neighbourhood of Melton Mowbray, once more drove out of the town in that direction. How Mr Theale’s coachman could have contrived, on such a sweltering day, to have pushed his horses beyond Islip he knew not, but that the yellow-bodied carriage had taken the road to Melton Mowbray he was certain. And he was perfectly right, as he knew, as soon as he came upon the derelict, a mile short of Brigstock.

  There was considerable cause for satisfaction in this, but Sir Gareth had been driving all day, and he had eaten nothing since his interrupted breakfast at Brancaster. By the time he arrived at the Brigstock Arms he was holding his temper on a tight rein; and when he entered the parlour to find Mr Theale lounging at his ease, with a bottle at his elbow, and his slippered feet on a stool, an impulse surged up within him to pluck that conscienceless hedonist out of his chair with one hand for the simple purpose of sending him to grass with one scientifically placed punch from the other. Indeed, it had already formed itself into a fist when Mr Theale spoke.

  Mr Theale’s words gave Sir Gareth pause. He stood looking contemptuously down at him, his right hand unclenching as he recognized his condition. It would have been unjust to have described Mr Theale as drunk. It was his boast that no one had seen him deep-cut since the days of his youth, and certainly his capacity for brandy was prodigious. But his potations had cast a pleasant haze over the world, as he saw it, and they had induced in him a mood of immense affability. It was clearly out of the question to deal with him as he deserved. Sir Gareth said curtly: ‘I see. Where is Miss Smith?’

  ‘Schultz?’ enquired Mr Theale knowledgeably.

  ‘Where – is – Miss – Smith?’ repeated Sir Gareth.

  ‘Never heard of her,’ said Mr Theale. ‘Now I come to think of it, Weston makes for you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Where is Amanda Smith?’ demanded Sir Gareth, altering the wording of his question.

  ‘Oh, her!’ said Mr Theale. ‘Damned if I know!’

  ‘Doing it rather too brown!’ Sir Gareth said, with a distinct rasp in his voice. ‘Don’t try to gammon me you didn’t carry her off from Brancaster this morning!’

  ‘Was it only this morning?’ said Mr Theale, mildly surprised. ‘I daresay you’re right, but it seems longer.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I keep telling you I don’t know. Yes, and now I come to think of it, a pretty cool hand you are, my boy! First you bring that fancy-piece to Brancaster, and next, damme if you don’t have the effrontery to come smash up to me, trying to get me to give her up to you! If I weren’t a very easy-going man I should very likely call you to account. Thought you had more delicacy of principle.’

  ‘Rid your mind of two illusions at least! Amanda is neither my mistress nor a fancy-piece!’

  ‘She isn’t? As a matter of fact, I’d got to thinking she might not be. You take the advice of a man who’s older than you, my boy, and has seen more of the world than you ever will! If she ain’t Haymarket ware, hedge off! I don’t say she ain’t a tempting armful – well, I thought so myself! –
but you may take it from me – !’

  ‘I wish to take nothing from you but that child!’ interrupted Sir Gareth. ‘Stop cutting shams, and tell me what you’ve done with her! I warn you, Theale, I’m in no mood to listen to any more of your lies!’

  ‘Now, don’t get in a tweak!’ recommended Mr Theale. ‘It’s no use your asking me what I’ve done with that chit, because I haven’t done anything with her. She gave me the bag. I don’t deny I wasn’t best pleased at the time, but I’m not at all sure now that it ain’t a good thing. Shouldn’t wonder at it if she’d have put me in the basket. You too. Forget her, my boy! After all, not the thing to offer for poor Hester, one moment, and to go chasing after Amanda the next.’

  ‘When did she give you the bag, and where?’ demanded Sir Gareth, ignoring this piece of advice.

  ‘I forget the name of the place, but she’d been eating a lot of raspberries.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t wonder you’re surprised. You’d have been even more surprised if you’d seen the cream she kept pouring over them. I warned her how it would be, but there was no stopping her. Swore she was in high gig, and so she was, then. That didn’t last, of course. She began to feel queasy – at least, that’s what she said. She may have been bamboozling me, though I shouldn’t think anyone could have eaten all those raspberries without becoming as sick as a horse. She sat there, moaning, and saying she must lie down. Got me to stop the carriage in some village or other. I daresay I’ll remember its name in a minute: it wasn’t far from Thrapston. Anyway, we went into an inn there, and Amanda went off upstairs with the landlady – a devilish woman, that! I give you my word, if I’d known what a shrew she was I wouldn’t have set foot inside the place!’

  ‘Never mind the landlady!’ said Sir Gareth impatiently.

  ‘Yes, it’s all very well for you to say never mind the landlady, but you didn’t have to listen to her talking as though you were a regular Queer Nabs, which I’ll be damned if I am!’

  ‘The landlady rumbled you, did she? Good! What happened when Amanda went upstairs?’

  ‘I had a glass of bingo. I needed it, I can tell you, because what with being bounced about in the carriage, and thinking every moment Amanda was going to cast up accounts, I was feeling damned queasy myself.’

  ‘For God’s sake – !’ exclaimed Sir Gareth. ‘I don’t wish to know what you drank, or what you felt like! What happened to Amanda?’

  ‘How should I know? The landlady said she was going to lie down for half an hour, and that’s the last I heard of her, or anyone else, for that matter.’

  ‘Do you mean that she left the inn without anyone’s seeing her?’

  ‘That’s it,’ nodded Mr Theale. ‘Tipped me the double, the sly little cat! Queer business: she just disappeared, though the lord alone knows how she managed it! A pretty fix to have found myself in! Yes, and a pretty breeze she raised, too!’

  ‘Are you telling me,’ said Sir Gareth dangerously, ‘that you left that child to fend for herself while you drove off at your ease?’

  ‘There wasn’t much ease about it,’ objected Mr Theale. ‘To start with, it’s no pleasure to me to jaunter along in a carriage, and to go on with, the damned perch broke, and I had to walk a good mile in tight boots.’

  ‘Did you make no effort to find Amanda?’

  ‘Yes, I did, and how the devil I came to do anything so corkbrained – at my time of life, too! – has me lurched!’

  ‘Where did you search for her?’

  ‘All over the village,’ replied Mr Theale bitterly. ‘You wouldn’t think I could be such a gudgeon, would you? Because no sooner did those gapeseeds know that Amanda had given me the bag than they began to think there was something havey-cavey going on. Naturally, I’d told ’em at the inn, when we arrived there, that Amanda was a young relative of mine. Of course, as soon as she slipped off, that wouldn’t fadge.’

  ‘Where, besides the village, did you search?’

  ‘In a spinney. The landlord thought she might have gone there for a breath of air. Shouted myself hoarse, but to no purpose. That was before I guessed she’d tipped me the double.’ He poured some more brandy into his glass, and drank it, and suddenly ejaculated: ‘Bythorne! That was the name of the place! I thought it would very likely come back to me.’

  ‘Bythorne! Good God! Then – When you couldn’t find her in the village, where next did you go?’

  Mr Theale lowered the glass and looked at him in patient resignation. ‘Well, if ever I met such a fellow for asking muttonheaded questions! I came here, of course. Where did you think I went?’

  ‘I thought,’ said Sir Gareth, in a deadly voice, ‘that you must have searched any road or track that may lead from the village! Was it likely, if Amanda was trying to escape from you, that she would remain in a village which, as I recall, consists of nothing more than two rows of cottages, flanking the post-road?’

  ‘Oh, you did, did you? You must have windmills in your head! Why the devil should I make a cake of myself, scouring the countryside for a girl I can see I’m dashed well rid of?’

  ‘It would be useless to tell you!’ Sir Gareth said, an angry pulse throbbing in his cheek. ‘But if you were not fifteen years my senior, as fat as a hog, and castaway into the bargain, I would hand you such a supply of home-brewed as would send you to bed for a month!’

  ‘Not if you want to have me for an uncle,’ said Mr Theale, quite undismayed. ‘Chuffy thing to do. And let me tell you, my boy, that no one’s ever seen me castaway since I was up at Oxford. Never more than a trifle up in my hat: ask anyone!’ He watched Sir Gareth pick up his hat and gloves, and stride towards the door, and said: ‘Now where are you off to? Ain’t you stopping to dinner?’

  ‘I am not!’ replied Sir Gareth, over his shoulder. ‘Surprising though it may seem to you, I am going to Bythorne!’

  The door shut with a snap behind him. Mr Theale shook his head sadly, and picked up the brandy-bottle again.

  ‘Queer in the attic,’ he remarked. ‘Poor fellow!’

  Ten

  Mr Sheet, summoned for the second time in one day to attend to a member of the Quality, was gratified, but a little flustered. He owned a snug property in the Red Lion, but he had never aspired to cater for carriage-people. His cellars were well stocked with beer and spirits, but he could see at a glance that if this tall exquisite in the awe-inspiring driving coat and the gleaming top-boots meant to dine in his house, he would infallibly call for a bottle of wine. Furthermore, notable cook though Mrs Sheet was, it was doubtful if the sort of fancy dishes such an out-and-outer would demand lay within the boundaries of her skill. Then Sir Gareth disclosed his errand, and Mr Sheet became still more flustered. He had naturally discussed with his wife the extraordinary affair of the young lady with the bandboxes, and at great length; and the more he had considered the matter the stronger had become his uneasy conviction that they had not heard the last of it. He did not think that blame could possibly attach to anything he had done, but still he had had a presentiment that there was trouble in store for him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘there was a young lady come here this morning, with a stout gentleman, but she up and ran away, and more than that I can’t tell your honour, not if I was to be hung for it!’

  He found that the visitor’s gray eyes were uncomfortably penetrating, but he met them squarely enough, if a trifle nervously. Sir Gareth said: ‘I think I should tell you that I am that young lady’s guardian. I have been looking for her all day, with what anxiety you may guess! I haven’t found her, but I did find the stout gentleman, and what I learned from him made me hope with all my heart that I should find Miss Smith here.’

  The landlord shook his head. ‘No, sir. I’m sure, if we’d known – but she never said nothing, and being as the stout gentleman said as she was a relation of his –’

 
‘What’s all this?’

  The voice came from behind Sir Gareth, and he turned quickly, to find himself confronting a buxom dame in a neat cap, tied under her plump chin in a starched bow, and with her hands folded over her ample stomach. She had a comely, good-humoured face, which yet held much determination, but there was a martial light in her eye, and she was regarding Sir Gareth, if not with hostility, certainly with suspicion.

  ‘The gentleman was asking for that young lady, Mary,’ explained Mr Sheet. ‘Him being her guardian, but what he tells me.’