Sylvester (12 page)

‘That’s a good girl!’ he said, correctly interpreting her silence. ‘Lord, I call it a famous lark, don’t you? If only we don’t run into snow, and I must own I don’t like the look of the sky above half.’

‘No, nor I, but if we can but reach Reading I shan’t care for anything else, for even if it was discovered which way we were gone I don’t think I should be looked for there.’

‘Oh, we shall reach Reading!’ Tom said cheerfully.

She drew a long breath, and said in a thankful tone: ‘Tom, I can’t
tell
you how much I’m obliged to you! To own the truth, I didn’t at all want to go all by myself, but now—oh, now I can be easy!’

7

Breakfast was served at Austerby, on all but hunting-days, at ten o’clock, which, in Sylvester’s opinion, was at least an hour too early. In general, the custom obtaining at country house-parties was for guests to breakfast at eleven, or even twelve o’clock. Lady Marlow knew it, but she told Sylvester that she disapproved of such hours. Sylvester, to whom the imperative summons of the bell had been an offence, received this information with a slight smile, and a polite inclination of the head, but offered no comment.

It was not long before Lord Marlow, noticing the absence of his daughter, wondered aloud where she could be. Her ladyship, speaking with careful restraint, replied that she fancied she must have gone out for a walk.

‘Gone out for a walk!’ repeated Lord Marlow, chuckling. ‘Not she! Gone down to the stables, more like. You must know, Salford, that there is no keeping that girl of mine away from the horses. I wish you might have seen her in the field. A capital seat, good, even hands, and the most bruising little rider you ever saw! Never any need to tell her to throw
her
heart over! Anything her horse can take she will too: stake-and-bound, a double, an in-and-out, a ridge and furrow—all one to Phoebe! I’ve seen her laid on her back in a ditch, but much she cared!’

Oblivious to his wife’s attempts to catch his eye, he would have continued talking in this strain had Firbank not come into the parlour just then, with the intelligence that Mrs Orde wished to speak to him.

He was surprised, and Lady Marlow still more so. She thought it an extraordinary circumstance, and said: ‘Depend upon it, she wishes to see
me
,
Marlow. I do not know why she should disturb us at such an hour. It is not at all the thing. Inform Mrs Orde, Firbank, that I am at breakfast, but will come to her presently.’

He withdrew, but came back again almost immediately, looking harassed, and with a plump, bright-eyed lady hard on his heels.

‘I regret, ma’am, to be obliged to break in on you with so little ceremony,’ announced Mrs Orde, who appeared to be labouring under strong emotion, ‘but my business will not await your pleasure!’

‘Not at all! Delighted to welcome you, ma’am!’ said Lord Marlow hastily. ‘Always happy to be of service! You wish to see me—precisely, yes!’

‘On a matter of the utmost urgency!’ she said. ‘Your daughter, sir, has run away with my son!’

The company was not unnaturally startled into silence by this announcement. Without giving her hosts time to recover from the shock Mrs Orde loosed the vials of her pent-up wrath upon them. ‘I don’t know why you should look amazed!’ she declared, her eyes snapping at Lady Marlow. ‘You have left no stone unturned to achieve this result!
I
guessed how it would be from the instant my son told me what his reception has been in this house for the past ten days! I pass over the insulting nature of your conduct, ma’am, but I shall take leave to inform you that nothing is farther from the wishes of his parents than an alliance between Tom and your family! I am excessively attached to Phoebe, poor child, but his father and I have other plans for Tom, and they don’t, let me assure you, include his marriage at the age of nineteen!’

‘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 addle-brained 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.

‘Perfectly true,’ said Miss Battery. ‘Never had such an idea in her head. Not at all courageous. Got up out of curiosity.’

‘Oh, what does it signify?’ cried Mrs Orde. ‘Tom must have come to see Phoebe on his way home last night, that much is certain! You heard them talking in the morning-room, did you, Lizzy? What did they say?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am. Only that just as I was about to run to find Papa I heard Tom speak, quite loud, so I knew it wasn’t house-breakers. He said he hoped there wouldn’t be snow in the north, because it must be Gretna Green.’

‘Good God!’ ejaculated Lord Marlow. ‘The young—And what had Phoebe to say to that, pray?’

‘She told him not to speak so loud, Papa, and then I heard no more, for I went back to bed.’

‘Yes, because try as you might you
couldn’t
hear any more!’ said Susan.

‘You behaved very properly,’ said Lady Marlow. ‘If your sister is saved from the dreadful consequences of her conduct she will owe it to your sense of duty. I am excessively pleased with you, Eliza.’

‘Begging your pardon, ma’am,’ said Miss Battery, ‘I should like to know why Eliza’s sense of duty didn’t prompt her to come immediately to my bedchamber to inform me of what was going forward! Don’t scruple to tell you, ma’am, that I don’t think there’s a word of truth in the story.’

‘Yes, by God!’ said Lord Marlow, kindling. ‘So should I like to know that!
Why
didn’t you rouse Miss Battery immediately, Eliza? Susan’s right! You made up the whole story, didn’t you? Eh? Answer me!’

‘I didn’t! Oh, Mama, I didn’t!’ declared Eliza, beginning to cry.

‘Good gracious, my lord!’ cried Mrs Orde. ‘I should hope that it would be beyond the power of a child of her age to
imagine
such a tale! Pray, what should she know of Gretna Green? I do not doubt her: indeed, the terrible suspicion had already crossed my mind! What else can we think, in face of what my son wrote? If he felt himself obliged to
rescue her
,
how could he do so except by marrying her? And where could he do
that
,
being under age, except across the Border? I beg of you—I
implore
you, sir!—to go after them!’

‘Go after them!’ ejaculated his lordship, his face alarmingly suffused with colour. ‘I should rather think so, ma’am! Implore me, indeed! Let me tell you you have no need to do
that!
My daughter to be running off to Gretna Green like any—Oh, let the pair of them but wait until I catch up with them!’