“Thank you!” she said, bestowing a brilliant smile upon him.
“And hand you into the care of whoever it is who is no doubt awaiting you,” continued Sir Gareth amiably.
She looked to be a good deal daunted, and said, after a pregnant moment: “Well, I don’t think you should do that, because I daresay they will be late.”
“Then I will remain with you until they arrive.”
“They might be very late!”
“Or they might not come at all,” he suggested. “Now, stop trying to hoax me with all these taradiddles, my child! I am much too old a hand to be taken in. No one is going to meet you in Huntingdon, and you may make up your mind to this: I am not going to leave you at the George, or the Fountain, or at any other inn.”
“Then I shan’t go with you,” said Amanda. “So then what will you do?”
“I’m not quite sure,” he replied. “I must either give you into the charge of the Parish officer here, or the Vicar.”
She cried hotly: “I won’t be given into anyone’s charge! I think you are the most interfering, odious person I ever met, and I wish you will go away and leave me to take care of myself, which I am very well able to do!”
“I expect you do,” he agreed. “And, I very much fear, I am just as stuffy as your uncles, which is a very lowering reflection.”
“If you knew the circumstances, I am persuaded you wouldn’t spoil everything!” she urged.
“But I don’t know the circumstances,” he pointed out.
“Well—well—if I were to tell you that I am escaping from persecution—?”
“I shouldn’t believe you. If you are not running away from school, you must be running away from your home, and I conjecture that you are doing that because you’ve fallen in love with someone of whom your relations don’t approve. In fact, you are trying to elope, and if anyone is to meet you in Huntingdon it is the gentleman to whom—as you informed me—you are shortly to be married.”
“Well, you are quite out!” she declared. “I am not eloping, though it would be a much better thing to do, besides being most romantic. Naturally, that was the first scheme I made.”
“What caused you to abandon it?” he enquired.
“He wouldn’t go with me,” said Amanda naively. “He says it is not the thing, and he won’t marry me without Grandpapa’s consent, on account of being a man of honour. He is a soldier, and in a very fine regiment, although not a cavalry regiment. Grandpapa and my papa were both Hussars. Neil is home on sick leave from the Peninsula.”
“I see. Fever, or or wounds?”
“He had a ball in his shoulder, and for months they couldn’t dig it out! That was why he was sent home.”
“And have you become acquainted with him quite lately?”
“Good gracious, no! I’ve known him for ever! He lives at—he lives near my home. At least, his family does. Most unfortunately, he is a younger son, which is a thing Grandpapa quite abominates, because Papa was one too, and so we both have very modest fortunes. Only, Neil has every intention of becoming a General, so that’s nothing to the purpose. Besides, I don’t want a large fortune. I don’t think it would be of the least use to me, except, perhaps, to buy Neil’s promotion, and even that wouldn’t answer, because he prefers to rise by his own exertions.”
“Very proper,” Sir Gareth said gravely.
“Well, I think so, and when we are at war, you know, there is always a great deal of opportunity. Neil has his company already, and I must tell you that when he was obliged to come home he was a Brigade-Major!”
“That is certainly excellent. How old is he?”
“Twenty-four, but he is quite a hardened campaigner, I assure you, so that it is nonsense to suppose he can’t take care of me. Why, he can take care of a whole brigade.”
He laughed. “That,I fancy, would be child’s play, in comparison!”
She looked mischievous suddenly, but said: “No, for I am a soldier’s daughter, and I shouldn’t be in the least troublesome, if only I could marry Neil, and follow the drum with him, and not have to be presented, and go to horrid balls at Almack’s, and be married to an odious man with a large fortune and a title.”
“It would be very disagreeable to be married to an odious man,” he agreed, “but that fate doesn’t overtake everyone who goes to Almack’s, you know! Don’t you think you might like to see a little more of the world before you get married to anyone?”
She shook her head so vigorously that her dusky ringlets danced under the brim of her hat. “No! That is what Grandpapa said, and he made my aunt take me to Bath, and I met a great many people, and went to the Assemblies, in spite of not having been presented yet, and it didn’t put Neil out of my head at all. And if you think, sir, that perhaps I was not a success, I must tell you that you are quite mistaken!”
“I feel sure you were a success,” he replied, smiling.
“I was,” she said candidly. “I had hundreds of compliments paid me, and I stood up for every dance. So now I know all about being fashionable, and I would liefer by far live in a tent with Neil.”
He found her at once childish and strangely mature, and was touched. He said gently: “Perhaps you would, and perhaps you will, one day, live in a tent with Neil. But you are very young to be married, Amanda, and it would be better to wait for a year or two.”
“I have already waited for two years, for I have been betrothed to Neil since I was fifteen, secretly! And I am not too young to be married, because Neil knows an officer in the 95th who is married to a Spanish lady who is much younger than I am!”
There did not seem to be anything to say in reply to this. Sir Gareth, who was beginning to perceive that the task of protecting Amanda was one fraught with difficulty, shifted his ground. “Very well, but if you are not at this moment eloping, which, I own, seems, in the absence of your Brigade-Major, to be unlikely—I wish you will tell me what you hope to gain by running away from your home, and wandering about the countryside in this very unconventional manner?”
“That,” said Amanda, with pride, “is Strategy, sir.”
“I am afraid,” said Sir Gareth apologetically, “that the explanation leaves me no wiser than I was before.”
“Well, it may be Tactics,” she said cautiously. “Though that is when you move troops in the presence of the enemy, and, of course, the enemy isn’t present. I find it very confusing to distinguish between the two things, and it is a pity Neil isn’t here, for you may depend upon it he knows exactly, and he could explain it to you.”
“Yes, I begin to think it is a thousand pities he isn’t here, even though he were not so obliging as to explain it to me,” agreed Sir Gareth.
Amanda, who had been frowning over the problem, said: “I believe the properest expression is a plan of campaign! That’s what it is! How stupid of me! I am not at all surprised you shouldn’t have understood what I meant.”
“I still don’t understand. What is your plan of campaign?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, sir,” said Amanda, not displeased to describe what she plainly considered to be a masterpiece of generalship. “When Neil said that on no account would he take me to Gretna Green, naturally I was obliged to think of a different scheme. And although I daresay it seems to you pretty poor-spirited of him, he is not poor-spirited, and I don’t at all wish you to think such a thing of him.”
“Set your mind at rest on that head: “I don’t!” replied Sir Gareth,
“And it isn’t because he doesn’t wish to marry me, for he does, and he says he is going to marry me, even if we have to wait until I am of age,” she assured him earnestly. She added, after a darkling pause: “But, I must say, it has me quite in a puzzle to understand how he comes to be a very good soldier, which everyone says he truly, is, when he seems to have not the least notion of Surprise, or Attack. Do you suppose it comes from fighting under Lord Wellington’s command, and being obliged to retreat so frequently?”