“Yes, your grace,” agreed Keighley. “Broken shaft, let alone the near-side wheels, which I dare say are smashed. Now, for goodness’ sake, do you take care how you go! Nice bobbery if we was to end up the same way!”
“I wonder?” said Sylvester, unholy amusement in his voice. “I shouldn’t suppose there could be many desperate enough to take a curricle out in this weather. I wonder?”
“But they was making for the Border, your grace!” said Keighley, betraying a knowledge he had hitherto discreetly concealed.
“That was only what Miss Eliza said. I thought young Orde must be a regular greenhead to have supposed there was the least chance of his getting within two hundred miles of the Border. Perhaps he isn’t a greenhead, John! I think we are going to make his acquaintance. I am glad we decided to push on to the Pelican!”
“Begging your grace’s pardon,” said Keighley grimly, “we didn’t decide no such thing! What’s more, if I may make so bold as to say so, you don’t want to make his acquaintance. Nor you don’t want to meet Miss again—not if I know anything about it!”
“I daresay you know all about it,” retorted Sylvester, setting his horses in motion again. “You usually do. What happened when they ran into the ditch?”
“I don’t know, your grace,” replied Keighley irascibly. “Maybe there was a coach passed, and they got into it.”
“Don’t be a clunch! What became of the horses? They don’t belong to Master Tom, but to his father. He’d take precious good care of ’em, wouldn’t he?”
“He would, if his father’s the cut of your grace’s honoured father,” acknowledged Keighley, with mordant humour. “Lord, what a set-out we did have, that time your grace took the young bay out, and—”
“Thank you, I haven’t forgotten it! Master Tom, John, got his horses disentangled from that wreck, and led them to the nearest shelter. There can’t have been any broken legs, but I fancy they didn’t come off entirely scatheless. Keep your eyes open for a likely farm, or inn!”
Keighley sighed, but refrained from comment. In the event no great strain was imposed upon his visionary powers, for within half a mile, hard by a narrow lane which crossed the post road, a small wayside inn stood, set back a few yards from the road, with its yard and several outbuildings in its rear.
“Aha!” said Sylvester. “Now we shall see, shan’t we, John? Hold ’em for me!”
Keighley, receiving the reins, was so much incensed by this wayward conduct that he said with awful sarcasm: “Yes, your grace. And if you was to be above an hour, should I walk them, just in case they might happen to take cold?”
But Sylvester, springing down from the curricle, was already entering the Blue Boar, and paid no heed to this sally.
The door opened on to a passage, on one side of which lay the tap, and on the other a small coffee-room. Opposite, a narrow staircase led to the upper floor, and at the head of it, looking anxiously down, stood Miss Phoebe Marlow.
8
The startled exclamation which broke from her, and the look of dismay which came into her face, afforded Sylvester malicious satisfaction. “Ah, how do you do?” he said affably.
One hand gripping the banister-rail, a painful question in her eyes, she uttered: “Mama—?”
“But of course! Outside, in my curricle.” Then he saw that she had turned perfectly white, and said: “Don’t be such a goose-cap! You can’t suppose I would drive your mother-in-law thirty yards, let alone thirty miles!”
Her colour came rushing back; she said: “No—or she consent to drive in a curricle! What—what brings you here, sir?”
“Curiosity, ma’am. I saw the wreck on the road, and guessed it to be Mr. Orde’s curricle.”
“Oh! You didn’t—you were not—” She stopped in some confusion; and then, as he looked up at her in bland inquiry, blurted out: “You didn’t come to find me?”
“Well, no!” he answered apologetically. “I am merely on my way to London. I am afraid, Miss Marlow, that you have been labouring under a misapprehension.”
“Do you mean you were not going to make me an offer?” she demanded.
“You do favour the blunt style, don’t you? Bluntly, then, ma’am, I was not.”
She was not at all offended, but said, with a sigh of relief: “Thank goodness! Not but what it is still excessively awkward. However, you are better than nobody, I suppose!”
“Thank you!”
“Well, when I heard you come in I hoped you had been that odious ostler.”
“What odious ostler?”
“The one who is employed here. Mrs. Scaling—she’s the landlady—sent him off to Newbury to purchase provisions when she feared they might be snowed up here for weeks, perhaps, and he has not come back. His home is there, and Mrs. Scaling thinks he will make the snow an excuse for remaining there until it stops. And the thing is that he has taken the only horse she keeps! Tom—Mr. Orde—won’t hear of my trying if I can ride Trusty—and I own it would be a little difficult, when there’s no saddle, and I am not wearing my riding-dress. And no one ever has ridden Trusty. True would carry me, but that’s impossible: his left hock is badly strained. But that leg is certainly broken, and it must be set!”
“Whose leg?” interrupted Sylvester. “Not the horse’s?”
“Oh, no! It’s not as bad as that!” she assured him. “Mr. Orde’s leg.”
“Are you sure it’s broken?” he asked incredulously. “How the deuce did he get here, if that’s the case? Who got the horses out of their traces?”
“There was a farm-hand, leading a donkey and cart. It was that which caused the accident: Trusty holds donkeys in the greatest aversion, and the wretched creature brayed at him, just as Tom had him in hand, as I thought. Tom caught his heel in the rug, I think, and that’s how it happened. The farmhand helped me to free Trusty and True; and then he lifted Tom into his cart, and brought him here, while I led the horses. Mrs. Scaling and I contrived to cut off Tom’s boot, but I am afraid we hurt him a good deal, because he fainted away in the middle of it. And here we have been ever since, with poor Tom’s leg not set, and no means of fetching a surgeon, all because of that abominable ostler!”
“Good God!” said Sylvester, struggling with a strong desire to laugh. “Wait a minute!”
With these words, he went out into the road again, to where Keighley awaited him. “Stable ’em, John!” he ordered. “We are putting up here for the night. There is only one ostler, and he has gone off to Newbury, so if you see no one in the yard, do as seems best to you!”
“Putting up here, your grace?” demanded Keighley, thunderstruck.
“I should think so: it will be too dark to go farther in another couple of hours,” replied Sylvester, vanishing into the house again.
He found that Phoebe had been joined by a stout woman with iron-grey curls falling from under a mob cap, and a comely countenance just now wearing a harassed expression. She dropped a curtsey to him; and Phoebe said, with careful emphasis: “This is Mrs. Scaling, sir, who has been so very helpful to my brother and to me!”
“How kind of her!” said Sylvester, bestowing upon the landlady the smile which won for him so much willing service. “Their parents would be glad to know that my imprudent young friends fell into such good hands. I have told my groom to stable the horses, but I daresay you will tell him just where he may do so. Can you accommodate the pair of us?”