Maggie MacKeever

OUR TABBY

Maggie MacKeever

Chapter One

The russet rooster surveyed his kingdom. The warm summer sun beamed gently down on chestnut coppice and neat hedgerow, hop-yard and barn, country house and cottage, corn mill and church. Riotous blooms twined along fences and stiles, beneath a sky of unclouded blue. Plump sheep and cattle munched lush meadow grass. In all, ‘twas a picture pretty enough to pluck at any but the most jaded heartstrings, rural tranquillity perfect in every detail, including the rooster’s harem clucking and sunning themselves beside a weathered wooden fence.

And then, around a distant bend, rattled a job-coach. It was drawn by nags that suffered greatly in comparison with the well-fed cattle that grazed thereabouts. Offended by the intrusion, the rooster drew himself up majestically and waddled to the edge of the road to survey the approaching coach. One astute glance led him to the conclusion that the job-horses were as short on nerve as on flesh. He awaited his moment. The job-coach drew nigh. The rooster took a deep breath, then erupted in an explosion of feathers and cockcrows beneath the near leader’s startled nose. The outcome was inevitable. The frightened nags bolted, not to be brought under control again until the job-coach collided with a low-branched tree, tumbling its sole passenger into a ditch.

“Hang it!” cried Miss Tabitha Minchin, as she thus descended abruptly and painfully into a dry summer’s accumulation of dust and dirt. Then she flushed guiltily. Miss Minchin’s speech had been unfortunately influenced by the young gentlemen under her uncle’s tutelage. She gingerly inspected herself for damage and found none, save for the quantities of nature’s bounty with which she was now festooned. Ineffectually, she brushed herself. Then she contemplated the verge of the ditch and was somewhat disconcerted to find herself eye to eye with a vengeful-looking russet rooster. Tabby flapped her hands at it. “Shoo! Do go away, you silly fowl. Oh, Mr. Coachman! Do you think you might help me out of this ditch?”

The coachman’s response was eerily disembodied, as well as brief and to the point. “No,” he said. “I’ve got my hands full here, miss. I don’t reckon to be chasing my nags all about the countryside.”

In response to the man’s rudeness, Tabby bit her lower lip. Much as her circumstances had changed of late, she had never before suffered so keen an awareness of just how far she’d come down in the world. Well, she could hardly stay in this ditch in hope that some Good Samaritan would arrive on the scene and nobly overlook the fact that she was a mere hired servant. Tabby eyed the side of the ditch. She had been a tomboy in her youth, which, at twenty years of age, lay not that far in the past. Tabby shooed away the rooster, less hostile now than outright curious. She took a deep breath, hoisted up her skirts, and climbed.

The scene that greeted Tabby on her emergence from the ditch did not elevate her spirits. Even to her inexpert eye it was evident that the job-coach had suffered severe damage to one of its wheels and would travel no farther for a while. “What am I to do?” she cried. “I’m expected in Brighton today. If I’m late, I don’t know what will become of me!”

The coachman glanced over his shoulder at his rumpled and distinctly grimy passenger. Nothing in his expression indicated compassion for the plight of the niece of a deceased, and unfortunately impecunious, Cambridge don. “You may as well make up your mind to being late, then, miss,” he said, not without satisfaction, because he resented her lack of concern for his own plight. The coachman had his own living to think of, and a broken wheel, and these stupid horses that still hadn’t recovered from their fright. The lass looked so woebegone that he relented. “Mayhap the wheel’s not so bad as she looks. There’s a blacksmith shop hereabouts. And an inn.” He pointed down the road. “Along there a ways. You go on and see if they can’t put you up for the night.”

For this night and how many others? Mentally, Tabby counted the little bit of money in her purse.

Since there seemed little point in arguing with the driver, Tabby retrieved her portmanteau from the stricken coach and set off down the dusty road. She reminded herself that her new employer had arranged for her transportation and therefore shouldn’t be out-of-reason startled to discover that the rickety coach had broken down. One thing was certain: if the tenor of her trip thus far was any indication, Tabby needn’t expect any special treatment in her new position as governess to the daughters of Sir Geoffrey Elphinstone.

The summer sun beamed gently down upon field and flower; birds sang and bees droned. It was a scene which had of late enchanted many city dwellers, there being a pugilistic encounter taking place in the neighborhood. So far were Tabby’s heartstrings from being touched by the bucolic beauty of her surroundings that she scowled ferociously at a friendly butterfly. It must not be deduced from this that Tabby’s disposition was disobliging. In general, Tabby was held to be a pretty-tempered little soul, and under better circumstances she might have enjoyed this outing very well, indeed. But her portmanteau was heavy, and her mourning clothes were hot, and Tabby was uncomfortably aware that there was a blister rising on her heel. She was additionally aware that she was in a dreadful pickle. She must get to Brighton. Perhaps there would be some sort of conveyance for hire at the inn. Tabby envisioned a bustling inn yard, with ostlers and waiters, chambermaids and boots and grooms bustling to and fro. Perhaps she might be fortunate enough to secure a place on the Brighton Mail. But mail-coach passage was even dearer than a stage, and surely one had to make reservations in advance?

Again Tabby mentally counted the scant coins in purse. They would not be enough to purchase even an outside seat. She must wait for the surly job-coachman to come back for her. If ever he did! Oh, what a wretched fix this was. Tabby blinked back tears as she thought of her gay and somewhat feckless uncle, so recently deceased of a putrid sore throat, which had resulted from a schoolboy’s practical joke involving a rope ladder and a tub of cold water. How he would scold her for wallowing in self-pity. Tabby squared her shoulders and set off at a brisk if limping pace, a brave little figure in dusty black, wearing a crushed bonnet and hugging her battered portmanteau. Behind her, at a discreet distance, trailed the russet rooster, as if he felt in some degree responsible for her plight.

Chapter Two

The inn toward which Miss Minchin so resolutely plodded lay over the crest of a hill, around a curve. The chain of its weatherbeaten sign creaked in the gentle summer breeze. Tabby would not find it as she anticipated, abustle with yard boys and waiters, chambermaids and boots. No ostlers and grooms darted about the inn yard, soothing impatient horses and passengers eager to clamber aboard a coach waiting to depart. This was a small hostelry, with a thatched roof and only one parlor besides the common taproom. But there were crimson curtains in the lower windows, and bright green shutters, and snow-white window hangings in the bedchambers above.

Judging from the number of raised voices issuing from the bar-parlor, many a weary traveler had found the little inn a welcoming sight. Or, rather, many a sporting gentleman, for the conversation was all about the pugilistic encounter that had taken place in the neighborhood earlier that day. To spare the sensibilities of the female reader—who must shudder at the notion of two modern-day gladiators, stripped to the waist, assaulting each other with naked fists, dislodging teeth and noses and eyes, delivering short, chopping, crashing blows with the full force of the arm shot horizontally from the shoulder until the muscular torsos teamed with sweat and blood splattered the grass—those details will not be repeated here.

Nor did Mr. Peregrine Smithton relish a conversation that rang with such phrases as “fast on his feet” and “displayed well”—and, alas for Perry’s pocketbook, “bellows to mend after the first onslaught”—as well as similarly sanguine descriptions of pugilistic encounters of the past. Mr. Smithton made his way toward the window of the taproom, flicked an elegant wrist, availed himself of a pinch of snuff. Peregrine failed to understand why a contest between two milling coves was the most popular sport in the country, with spectators—himself among them— traveling from miles about to see two bruisers give and take punishment. This opinion he would hardly air in the taproom, which resounded so merrily with talk of levelers and muzzlers, and cross-and-jostle work. But he would certainly air it to one Vivien Sanders, who was responsible for Mr. Smithton’s presence in this place, when next they met.

Peregrine glanced irritably out the window, although at this point he’d given up expecting his friend. The scene of rural tranquillity that lay beyond the somewhat dirty glass brought no gleam of appreciation to his eye. Mr. Smithton was growing deuced bored of rural tranquillity. He was also growing thirsty. Peregrine looked around for the innkeeper, but the fellow was nowhere to be seen. Feeling thirstier by the moment, Perry detached himself from the window, strolled through the taproom door, down a dark uncarpeted passageway, and out into the sunlight.

So bright was that sunlight after the dark passage that Mr. Smithton paused and blinked. Raised voices assaulted his ears, putting him strongly in mind of his onetime sojourn at King’s College, where he had done a little study, but not much; and had come away with a smattering of the classics, a fraction of French, an elegant penmanship that distracted its reader from the eccentricity of Perry’s spelling, and an ability to solve simple sums in arithmetic—an ability that many a dismayed creditor had discovered was insufficiently advanced to enable him to keep abreast of his bills.

“So there you are!” Peregrine ejaculated, as his eyes adjusted to the brightness and the innkeeper came into view. “Begging your pardon—wouldn’t wish to interfere— but prizefights are a thirsty business, even for those of us who can’t clear a lane of men with our fists!”

This pleasant sally caused the innkeeper—a rotund little man whose plump dimensions and rosy cheeks suggested a partiality to his own ale—to turn to Mr. Smithton with a distracted, harassed air. “ ‘Tis that sorry, I am, sir! To be neglecting my guests. But this, er, person is wishful of hiring a room and won’t take my word for it that there ain’t any to be had, and even if there was, that it wouldn’t
do!”

Thus reminded of the witness to his exchange with the innkeeper, Peregrine raised his quizzing glass. He had an impression of a dusty, little, brown-haired chit dressed in black, clutching a portmanteau and wearing a battered bonnet; but his interest was otherwise piqued. “Good Gad, is that a
rooster”
he inquired.

“Yes, it is a rooster!” responded the young lady crossly. “And I haven’t the slightest notion why it is following at my heels like a tantony pig. Perhaps you may intercede for me, sir? The innkeeper says there is no room, but I
must
have a room, because I can walk no farther, and because the coachman will come looking for me here, and if I am not here, then I shall never get to Brighton, and then I will be in the very devil—er, in a very desperate case!”

Mr. Smithton surveyed the rooster and reluctantly abandoned the notion of making his fortune by turning it into a fighting cock. “Don’t know why you want to go to Brighton,” he said judiciously. “Can’t stand the place myself. Cits wishful of taking the water. Prinny. The Pavilion. Pah!” It occurred to Peregrine that he was being critical, and he glanced apologetically at the damsel. Her big eyes were fixed on him. She was a taking little thing, he thought, even with the dust smudge on her cheek. If only she didn’t stare at a fellow so. “No need to frown at me that way! Don’t mean to offend. Each to his own taste.”

The young lady set down her portmanteau, stared at Mr. Smithton’s sandy hair and freckled, snub-nosed face. “Oh, gracious!” she said. “It
is
you!”

Mr. Smithton regarded his elegant sleeve, as if for reassurance, and made a mental survey of himself. Double-breasted coat and tight breeches of fine cloth and tailoring;

riding boots that gleamed enviably; tall hat with a curly brim that was very much
à la mode
; white linen stock wound round his throat and tied in a bulky bow that would have aroused the envy of any acquaintance encountered whilst strolling along Bond Street.

Indeed, Peregrine would much rather have been in Bond Street. There no one would accuse him of being someone he was not. Who else could anyone expect him to be but himself? It need not be explained, perhaps, that it was not only Mr. Smithton’s pockets that were to let. The innkeeper inadvertently came to his rescue, asking, “Do you know this young, er, person, sir?”

Did he know the chit? Peregrine was appalled. He cleared his throat, muttered gruffly, “Ain’t much in the petticoat line. Still, there’s something familiar—Do I know you, ma’am?”

Her cheeks were rosy. “Gudgeon!” she said. “I mean, unless I am very much mistaken, you were one of my uncle’s pupils, sir. At King’s College. Although you were not such a vision of sartorial splendor then! Goodness, Perry, but you have grown very fine.”