Sylvester (19 page)

‘How much I wish we were all of us at the Pelican!’ he exclaimed. ‘Only think how different our lot would be! No,
don’t
let us think of it!’

‘I don’t mean to,’ responded Phoebe cheerfully. ‘The Pelican would not do for me at all, in such a situation. But if Keighley is better tomorrow, I shouldn’t wonder at it if you were able to reach Speenhamland. It can’t be many miles ahead, after all!’

‘And abandon you and Thomas to your fates? If that’s the opinion you hold of me I am able to understand your reluctance to receive my addresses, Miss Marlow!’

She blushed fierily, for although Tom had warned her of his indiscretion she had been encouraged by Sylvester’s previous manner to believe that he would not refer to it. ‘I beg pardon! Of course I did not—it wasn’t—I mean, it was all a stupid mistake, wasn’t it?’ she stammered.

Venturing to look up into his face she saw that his eyes were gleaming with mockery; and she could not doubt that he was enjoying her discomfiture. But as resentment rose in her breast the malice vanished from his expression; and she perceived that he really had got an enchanting smile. This was surprising. She had not before encountered that engaging look; and a moment earlier there had been no trace of it. She was suspicious of it, and yet could not help responding to it.

‘Yes, just a stupid mistake!’ he said reassuringly. ‘Shall I promise not to pay my addresses to you? I am perfectly ready to do so, if it will make you more comfortable.’

But she only laughed at this, and got up, saying that she had no longer any fears on that head. She went away then, and when he saw her next it was an hour later, in Tom’s room, polishing with a scrap of sandpaper the spillikins Tom was cleverly whittling from some wood begged from Mrs Scaling. Tom looked up, smiling, and said: ‘Can you play spillikins, sir? I was used to be a dab at the game, and am issuing a challenge to all comers!’

‘I don’t fear you,’ responded Sylvester, handing him a large pewter tankard. ‘Home-brewed, Thomas—the best thing we’ve yet had here!—Your skill may be superior, but I’ll swear I’m the more in practice! Unless you have young brothers and sisters, in which case I may hedge off a trifle.

‘No, I haven’t,’ grinned Tom. ‘Have you?’

‘No, but I have frequently played with my nephew,’ Sylvester replied.

His attention was just then diverted by a kick on the door, followed by a demand from Will Scaling to be admitted. He turned to open the door, and so did not see the looks of consternation which his words brought to his young friends’ faces. By the time he had foiled an attempt by Will to dump a heavy nuncheon-tray down on Tom’s legs they had revived sufficiently from the shock of discovering that he had a nephew to be able to meet his casual glance with the appearance at least of composure. They were granted no opportunity for an exchange of more than looks until later in the day, for Sylvester returned with Phoebe to Tom’s room after their nuncheon, and only left it when it became time to attend again to the horses. Mrs Scaling having unearthed from the recesses of a cupboard a pack of somewhat greasy playing-cards the beleaguered travellers were not restricted to spillikins or paper games, but embarked on several desperate gambling ventures, using dried peas for counters, and managing the cards and the bets of all the imaginary persons created by them to make up the correct number of gamesters. This was the sort of fooling that might have amused them for a few minutes, but Phoebe’s talent for endowing her creations with names and characteristics invested the nonsense with wit; and when Sylvester, not slow to follow her lead, invented two eccentrics on his own account the game rapidly became a sort of charade, exercising the histrionic ability of the two players, and keeping Tom, who did not aspire to such heights, in a continuous chuckle. But although Tom laughed he thought it a dangerous diversion, for every now and then Phoebe could not resist indulging her genius for mimicry. Tom recognized several characters from
The Lost Heir
;
he was unacquainted with the originals, but to judge by Sylvester’s swift response Phoebe hit them off very recognizably.

‘For the lord’s sake take care what you’re about!’ Tom warned her, as soon as Sylvester had left the room. ‘If he
should
read your book I wouldn’t wager a groat against the chance of his recalling all this mummery of yours, and then putting two and two together, for he’s no fool! You know, Phoebe, I do think you should make a push to alter that book! I mean, after the way he has behaved to us it seems the shabbiest thing to make him out a villain! I can’t think why you should have done so, either, or have supposed him to be insufferably proud. Why, he hasn’t the least height in his manner!’

‘I must own I never expected him to be so amiable,’ she acknowledged. ‘Not but what to be assuming the airs of a great man in such a place as this would be quite absurd, and I give him credit for knowing it.’

‘Phoebe, you must change the book!’ he urged. ‘First, we know that he reads novels, and now he says he has a nephew! Lord, I didn’t know where to look!’

‘No, I was ready to sink myself,’ she agreed. ‘However, I don’t think it signifies so very much. Everyone has nephews, after all! I daresay he may have several of them, but the thing is, remember, that Maximilian was wholly in Count Ugolino’s power, being an orphan. There can be no resemblance!’

‘What
is
Salford’s family?’ Tom asked.

‘Well, I don’t know precisely. There are quite a number of Raynes, but how nearly they may be related to him I haven’t a notion.’

‘I must say, Phoebe, I think you should have discovered just how it was before you put him into your book!’ said Tom, in accents of strong censure. ‘Surely your father must have a
Peerage
?’

‘I don’t know if he has,’ she said guiltily. ‘I never thought—I mean, when I wrote the book I didn’t imagine it would be published! I own, I wish now that I hadn’t made Salford the villain, but, after all, Tom, if I can but change his
appearance
no one will ever guess who Ugolino is! It is all the fault of his wretched eyebrows: if Salford had not had that
tigerish
look I should never have thought of making him a villain!’

‘What a bag of moonshine!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘Tigerish look, indeed! He has a most agreeable countenance!’

‘Now that is coming it
too
strong!’ interrupted Phoebe, roused to indignation. ‘His
smile
is agreeable, but in general his expression is one of haughty indifference! I had nearly said
disdain
,
but he is not disdainful of his fellows because he scarcely notices them.’

‘I suppose you think he has scarcely noticed me?’ said Tom, with heavy sarcasm.

‘No, because he took a fancy to you, and so it pleases him to treat you with flattering distinction. And also,’ Phoebe pursued, her eyes narrowing as though to bring Sylvester’s image into perspective. ‘I believe it piqued him to be told that I disliked him.’

‘I wish I had not said anything about that!’

‘Oh, don’t tease yourself over it! I am persuaded it has done him a great deal of good!’ she said blithely. ‘I assure you, Tom, when I met him previously, in London, his manners were very different.
Then
he had no thought of engaging the good opinion of such a poor little dab as I am;
now
he bestows every degree of attention on me, until I daresay I shall soon find myself obliged to be in raptures about him.’

‘You may well!’ returned Tom. ‘Let me tell you, Phoebe, that if you do contrive to reach London it will be thanks to his good offices, not to mine! He says he will escort you there in his chaise, so for the lord’s sake be civil to him!’

‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did he say so indeed? Well, I must own that that’s excessively handsome of him, but it won’t answer, of course: I can’t leave you here alone, and in such a case! Why, what a monster I should be to think of doing anything so inhuman!’ She added naughtily: ‘So I need not be civil after all, need I?’

11

Sylvester, when presently applied to, gave his support to both contestants. He said that Tom must certainly not be abandoned to his fate; but he also said that Phoebe had no need to delay her journey on that account, since he himself would remain at the Blue Boar, delegating to Keighley the task of conveying her to her grandmother. She could not but be grateful to him for so practical a solution to her difficulty, her only remaining anxiety being the fear that she would be overtaken by her father before the arrival of Sylvester’s chaise at the Blue Boar.

‘I can only say, Miss Marlow,’ responded Sylvester to this confidence,’ that if the first vehicle to reach us from the west is not my chaise two Hounslow-bred postilions will shortly be seeking situations in some other household than mine!’

In fact, his chaise arrived two days later, within a very short time of the snow’s ceasing to fall. Since it had taken the postilions more than two hours to accomplish the stage between Marlborough and Hungerford, Swale’s graphic description of the perils overcome in the cause of duty were not needed to convince Phoebe that the condition of the roads was still too bad to make her father’s appearance on the scene anything but a remote contingency.

Sylvester sent his chaise on to the Halfway House, a couple of miles up the road, but kept Swale at the Blue Boar. Swale, discovering that he must share a bedchamber with Keighley, and eat all his meals in the kitchen, was so much affronted that he hovered for as much as thirty seconds on the brink of tendering his resignation to his noble employer. He bowed stiffly when commanded to wait upon Mr Orde, and sought solace for his lacerated sensibilities in treating that hapless young gentleman with such meticulous politeness that Tom was very soon begging Sylvester to leave him to the less expert but less intimidating ministrations of Will Scaling. Tom’s shyness of Sylvester had not survived forty-eight hours of depending upon him for his every need; and within an hour of having lodged this laughing complaint with him he was taking him roundly to task for having acted upon it in an ill-judged manner. ‘The lord knows what you said to the poor fellow, but if I’d guessed you would say anything at all I never would have told you about it!’ he said. ‘It was worse than anything! He has been in here, begging my pardon, and telling me a bamboozling tale of having been feeling out of sorts, and hoping I shan’t have cause to complain to you
again
!
Lord! I promise you I was never more mortified in my life! A pretty sneaksby you made me, Salford! Did you threaten to turn him
off
,
just because he don’t care to wait on me?’

‘I’m not so high-handed, Thomas. I only asked him to tell me if he was quite happy in my service.’

‘Oh, was
that
all?’ exclaimed Tom. ‘No wonder he was looking so tyburn-faced! And you say you’re not highhanded! Well, I think you’re
mediaeval
!’

That made Sylvester laugh. ‘But in what way am I mediaeval? I pay him a handsome wage, you know.’

‘But you didn’t hire him to take care of me!’

‘My dear Thomas, what in the world has he to do besides?’ Sylvester interrupted, a little impatiently. ‘All the work he has to do for
me
in this hedge-tavern could not occupy him for as much as a couple of hours out of the twenty-four!’

‘No, but he
is your
valet, not mine! You might as well have ordered him to groom your horses, or sweep the floor. And beyond all else you told him he must share Keighley’s room! Now, Salford, you
must
know that your valet is much above your groom’s touch!’

‘Not in my esteem.’

‘Very likely not, but—’

‘But nothing, Thomas! In my own household my esteem is all that signifies. Does that seem mediaeval to you? If it seems so to Swale he may leave me: he’s not my slave!’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Keighley is more my slave, I assure you—and I

never engaged him, and could never dismiss him. Now, what is there in that to make you frown at me?’

‘I wasn’t—I mean, I can’t explain it, only my father always says one should take care not to offend the sensibilities of inferior persons, and though I daresay you didn’t intend to do so, it does seem to me as if—But I should not say so!’ Tom ended, rather hurriedly.

‘Well, you have said so, haven’t you?’ said Sylvester, quite gently, but with the smile hardening on his lips.

‘I beg your pardon, sir!’

Sylvester made no reply to this, but remarked in a thoughtful tone: ‘To have become acquainted with you and with Miss Marlow ought to do me a great deal of good, I hope. What a number of faults I have of which I was never previously made aware!’

‘I don’t know what more I can do than beg your pardon,’ Tom said stiffly.

‘Why, nothing! Unless you like to instruct me how I should treat my servants?’ He paused, as Tom looked at him with belligerence in his eyes, and his lips very resolutely closed, and said quickly: ‘Oh, no! What an unhandsome thing to say to you! Forgive me: I didn’t mean it!’

There could be no resisting that coaxing note, or the softened expression, half contrite, half quizzical, that put to rout the satyr-look. Tom had been conscious of a thin film of ice behind which Sylvester had seemed to withdraw; he had resented it; but it had melted, and he found himself no longer angry, but stammering: ‘Oh, stuff! Besides, I had no business to be criticizing you! Particularly,’ he added rather naively, ‘when you have been so devilish kind to me!’

‘Humdudgeon!’

‘No, it ain’t. What’s more—’

‘If you mean to be a dead bore, Thomas, I’m off!’ Sylvester interrupted. ‘And let me tell you that if you are trying to turn me up sweet you will be speedily bowled out!
Kind
was not the epithet you chose to describe my charitable attempt to make your bed more comfortable this morning!’