“You are as bad as she is,” said Sir Gareth severely.
“Yes, but not so resourceful,” she agreed. “And you are very tired, so you will have a sleep now, and no more visitors.”
There did not seem to be any more to be said. Until he was on his feet again, Sir Gareth knew that he was powerless to restore Amanda to her family; and since he was too weak to exert himself even in argument, he abandoned the struggle, and gave himself up to lazy convalescence, accepting the fantastic situation in which he found himself, and deriving a good deal of amusement from it. His adopted family cosseted him jealously, appealed to him to settle disputes, or decide knotty problems, and made his room, as he grew stronger, their headquarters. Amanda had from the outset regarded him much in the light of an uncle. Hildebrand had thought that, so far from doing the same, he would never be able to confront him without being crushed by a sense of guilt. Once Sir Gareth was himself again, it had taken much courage to enter his room. But as Hildebrand was his chief attendant, the awful moment had to be faced. He had gone in, braced to endure whatever might be in store for him. “Well nephew?” had said Sir Gareth. “And what have you to say for yourself?” He had had an abject apology all prepared but it had been cut short. “Only wait until I am on my feet again!” had said Sir Gareth. “I’ll teach you to brandish loaded pistols!”
After that, there had been no difficulty at all in looking upon Sir Gareth as an uncle. Indeed, it very soon seemed to Sir Gareth that neither Amanda nor Hildebrand remembered that he was not their uncle.
Hildebrand’s chief preoccupation was how to regain possession of his horse, but since he could not bring himself to let some heavy-handed post-boy or ostler ride Prince, and spurned indignantly a suggestion that he should hire a chaise to carry him to St. Ives, so that he could himself bring Prince to Little Staughton, there seemed to be no solution to the problem. “As though I should think of leaving you for all those hours!” he said. “Besides, only consider what it would cost, sir!” j
“What, is it low tide with us?”
“Good God, no! But you can’t think I would first shoot you, Uncle Gary, and then make you pay for me to get my horse back! And in any event, I don’t think I should go, because if I don’t keep an eye on Amanda, the lord only knows what she’ll do next!”
“Then for God’s sake do keep your eye on her!” said Sir Gareth. “What fiendish plot is she hatching now?”
“Well, you know how she disappeared yesterday, and was gone for hours?—Oh, no, Aunt Hester thought we shouldn’t tell you! I beg your pardon, Aunt Hester, but it don’t signify, because she hadn’t run away after all! Well, do you know what she did? She went to Eaton Socon in Farmer Upwood’s gig, just to discover where she could get her hands on the Morning Post!”
“But I think that was such a sensible thing to do!” said Lady Hester. “And she did discover it, too, which I’m sure I should never have done.”
“Yes, you would, ma’am! She discovered it at the receiving-office, and anyone would have known that was the place to go to!”
“Not Aunt Hester,” said Sir Gareth, his eyes quizzing her. “Who does take the Morning Post in these rural parts?”
“Oh, some old fellow, who lives near Colmworth, which is about four miles from here! He is an invalid, and never stirs out of his house, so Chicklade says. The thing is that if I don’t go for her, Amanda swears she will go herself, to ask the old man to let her look at every Morning Post he has received this week!”
“You know, I have suddenly thought of something very discouraging!” said Hester. “I shouldn’t wonder at it if they had been used for lighting the kitchen-fire! Now, that would be too bad, but exactly the sort of thing that is bound to happen!”
“If you think there is any chance that Amanda’s grandfather may have yielded, we had better send to the office of the Morning Post immediately,” said Sir Gareth. “In his place, I had rather have gone to Bow Street, but one never knows.”
“Well, do you think I should try first at this old fellow’s house, sir?” Hildebrand asked.
“By all means—if you can think of a sufficiently plausible excuse for wishing to see so many copies of his newspaper. I daresay you will be thought insane, but if you don’t regard that, why should I?”
“No, why? I shall say that I want them for you, because you are laid by the heels here, and have nothing to read.”
“I wonder why I shouldn’t have guessed that you would drag me into it?” observed Sir Gareth, in a musing tone.
Hildebrand grinned, but assured him that he need have no fear.
“I must own, Gareth,” said Hester thoughtfully, after Hildebrand had departed, “that I can’t help hoping you may be wrong about Bow Street. What shall we do, if we have Runners after us?”
“Emigrate!” he replied promptly.
She smiled, but said: “You know, it would be very exciting, but not, I think, quite comfortable, because, although we have done nothing wrong, the Runners might not perfectly understand just how it all came about. Unless, of course, Amanda is able to think of another splendid story.”
“Any story of Amanda’s will infallibly land us all in Newgate. I see nothing for it but emigration.”
“Not all of us, Gareth: only you!” she said, with a gleam of humour. “She will certainly tell them that you abducted her, because nothing will persuade her that an abduction is something quite different. Oh, well, we must just hope that there may be a notice in one of the papers! And I should think that there would be, for the grandfather must wish to get Amanda back as soon as ever he may.”
But when Hildebrand returned, later in the day, from his errand, she was found to have been wrong. Hildebrand came into Sir Gareth’s room, laden with periodicals, which he dumped on the floor, saying breathlessly: “All for you, Uncle Gary! He would have me bring them, because he says he knows you! Lord I thought we were in a fix then, but I don’t fancy any harm will come of it.”
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Sir Gareth. “I suppose you had to tell him my name? Who is he?”
“Well, I never thought it would signify. And, in any event, everyone knows who you are, because the post-boy told Chicklade what your name was, when you were carried in, that day.”
Amanda, who was seated on the floor, scanning, and discarding, copy after copy of the Morning Post,looked up to say: “I told you you would only make a muff of it! If I had gone myself, I should have made up a very good name for Uncle Gary, only you have no ingenuity, and can think of nothing!”
“Yes!” retorted Hildebrand. “You would have said he was Lancelot du Lake, or something so silly that no one would have believed it!”
“Don’t imagine you are going to quarrel over me!” interposed Sir Gareth. “What I want to know is not what name of unequalled splendour Amanda would have bestowed on me, but what is the name of this recluse, who says he knows me?”
Amanda, uninterested, retired again into the advertisement columns of the Morning Post. Hildebrand said: “Vinehall, sir: Barnabas Vinehall.”
“Well, I should never have made up as silly a name as that!” interpolated Amanda scornfully.
“Good God!” ejaculated Sir Gareth. “I thought he was dead! You don’t mean to say he lives here?”
“Yes, but there’s no need for any of us to be in a quake, because he never goes out now: he told me so!” said Hildebrand reassuringly. “He is the fattest man I ever laid eyes on!”
“I fail to see—”
“No, but only listen, Uncle Gary! It’s dropsy!”
“Poor man!” said Hester sympathetically. “Who is he, Gareth?”