He had been half afraid that she might be offended, but she smiled in a dazzling way at him, and accepted the note he was holding out. “Thank you!” she said. “I had never any money to spend of my own before! I think you are quite as handsome as Mr. Ware!”
He laughed. “No, no, that is flattery, I fear! But I must not stay! Goodbye! Pray do not let your uncle use you again as he has done!”
He caught up his hat from the table, cast a final glance at Mr. Liversedge, who was beginning to recover his complexion, and went swiftly out of the room, and down the stairs. Belinda sighed regretfully, and looked in a doubtful way at her guardian. In a few more moments he groaned, and opened his eyes. They were blurred at first, but they cleared gradually. He put a hand first to his cracked skull, and then, instinctively, to his inner pocket. Then he groaned again, and enunciated thickly: “Lost!”
Belinda, a kind-hearted girl, perceiving that he was striving to pick himself up, helped him into a chair. “Your head is broke,” she informed him.
“I know that!” said Mr. Liversedge, tenderly feeling his skull. “That I should have been floored by a greenhorn! For God’s sake, girl, don’t stand there with your mouth half-cocked! Fetch me the brandy-bottle from the cupboard! Why did you not call Joe, silly wench? Five thousand pounds gone in the flash of an eye!”
Belinda brought him the brandy, and he recruited his strength by a generous pull at the bottle. His colour was by now much more healthy, but his spirits were sadly overborne.
“Done by a gudgeon!” he said gloomily. “Done by a miserable, undersized sapskull that has no more wits than to talk of marriage to the first pretty wench he meets! I was never more betwattled in my life! If I could but get my hands on your precious Mr. Matthew Ware—!”
“Oh, it wasn’t Mr. Ware!” said Belinda sunnily.
Mr. Liversedge raised his aching head from between his hands and stared at her in blear-eyed surprise. “What?” he demanded. “Did you say it was not Mr. Ware?”
“Oh, no! Mr. Ware is a much prettier young gentleman,” said Belinda. “He is tall, and handsome, and—”
“Then who the devil was he?” interrupted Mr. Liversedge incredulously.
“I don’t know. He did not say what his name was, and I didn’t think to ask him,” replied Belinda, rather regretfully.
Mr. Liversedge hoisted himself out of his chair with an effort. “My God, what have I done to be saddled with such a fool?” he exclaimed. “If he was not Ware,—why—why, girl, could you not have told me so?”
“I didn’t know you would wish me to,” said Belinda innocently. “You said I must say just what you told me, and you don’t like it if I don’t obey you. And I like him quite as well as Mr. Ware,” she added consolingly.
Mr. Liversedge boxed her ears.
Chapter XI
The Duke returned to Baldock in high fettle. For one who had never before fended for himself, he had managed the affair, he thought, pretty well. Matthew’s letters were safely tucked into his pocket; he had not paid Mr. Liversedge a farthing for them; and he had not had recourse to Manton’s pistol. Even Gideon could hardly have done better. In fact, Gideon would probably not have done as well, since Mr. Liversedge, confronted by his formidable size and extremely purposeful manner, would undoubtedly have conducted himself far more warily. Gilly was too modest not to realize that the success of his stratagem must be largely attributed to his lack of inches, and his quite unalarming appearance. Mr. Liversedge had palpably summed him up as a scared boy within one minute of his having entered his parlour, and had not thought it necessary to be upon his guard. That had not been very wise of Mr. Liversedge, but Gilly was inclined to suspect that for all the breadth and scope of his visions, Mr. Liversedge was not a rogue of any great mental attainment. However, be that as it might, Gilly had scarcely expected to have succeeded so well, and he thought he had a very good right to feel in charity with himself. Nothing now remained to do but to burn Matthew’s letters, set Matthew’s anxious mind at rest, and go back to London with Tom next day. In his present mood he was rather sorry to have no excuse for absenting himself any longer from his household. Certain aspects of his stolen journey had not been altogether comfortable, but on the whole he had enjoyed himself very well, and he had derived a good deal of satisfaction from the discovery that he was not as helpless as he had feared he might be.
This mood of gentle elation suffered a set-back upon his arrival at the White Horse. The inn appeared to have become the focus of interest in the town, for a large and motley crowd was gathered before it, in the centre of which the impressive figure of the town-beadle seemed to be haranguing a heated and flustered Mrs. Appleby. Then the Duke perceived that one of the beadle’s ham-like hands was grasping young Mr. Mamble by the coat-collar, and a sense of foreboding crept over him. He drew up, and prepared to step down from the gig.
Nearly everyone was too much absorbed in the strife raging between the beadle, Mrs. Appleby, a weedy man in a black suit, a farmer with a red face, and a stout lady in a mob-cap, whose voice was even shriller than Mrs. Appleby’s, to have any attention to spare for the arrival of a gig; but the melancholy waiter, who had been surveying the scene with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has foreseen trouble from the outset, chanced to look up as the Duke rose from the driving-seat, and exclaimed: “Ah, here is the gentleman!”
The effect of these simple words was slightly overwhelming. Tom, taking advantage of an involuntary slackening of the grip on his collar, twisted himself free, and thrust his way through the crowd, crying thankfully: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford!
He had scarcely reached the Duke’s side, and clutched his arm, when Mrs. Appleby had seized the other arm, saying indignantly: “Thank goodness you’ve come, sir! Such goings-on as I never saw, and me not knowing which way to turn!”
“Hif you are the cove as is responsible for this young varmint,” said the beadle, reaching the Duke a bare fifteen seconds later than Mrs. Appleby, “hit is my dooty to inform you—”
The rest of this pronouncement was lost in the instant hubbub that arose. The weedy man, the fanner, and the lady in the mob-cap all broke into impassioned speech. The Duke, stunned by Mrs. Appleby’s voice in one ear, and Tom’s in the other, begged them to speak to him one at a time, but was not attended to. Various members of the crowd thought it incumbent upon them to take sides in the dispute, and for a few minutes the fragments of their observations reached the Duke in a confused medley. Such phrases as he caught could not be regarded as other than ominous. The words “lock-up house”—“upsetting of the Mail”—and “a-smashing of Mr. Badby’s good cart” were being freely bandied about; and whereas one half of the crowd seemed disposed to take a lenient view of whatever it was that Tom had done, the other and more vociferous half was urgent with the beadle for his immediate transportation.
“I didn’t! I did not!” Tom asserted passionately. “Oh, sir, pray tell them I did not!”
“Sir!” began the beadle portentously,
“Mr. Rufford, sir, do you make him attend, for listen to me he will not!” besought Mrs. Appleby.
A sudden lull fell, and the Duke realized with dismay that everyone, with the exception of the beadle, was looking at him in the evident expectation that he would instantly take command of the situation. He had never regretted the absence of his entourage more. He even wished that his Uncle Lionel could have been suddenly and miraculously wafted to the scene. The very sight of Lord Lionel’s imposing figure and aristocratic visage would be enough to cause the crowd to disperse, while any well-trained footman would have cleaved a way for his Grace in a fashion haughty enough to have quelled even the beadle. But the Duke found himself bereft of all whose business in life it was to shield him from contact with the vulgar herd, and was obliged to fend once more for himself. He contrived to shake off the two frenzied grips on his arms, and to say in his usual gentle way: “Pray let us go into the house! And do not, I beg of you, all talk to me at once, for I can distinguish nothing that you say!”