“You stow your whids, and do what I tell you!” said Wragby.
“It is a marvel to me,” said Mr. Liversedge, picking up the razor, and looking at it contemptuously, “that any gentleman should employ such a vulgar fellow as you.”
“And don’t give me no saucy answers!” said Wragby.
By the time the Captain was ready to set forward on the journey, Mr. Liversedge had not only shaved, but had Imbibed a cup of strong coffee, which revived him sufficiently to enable him to greet his host with creditable urbanity. His optimistic temperament led him to busy himself with the forming of various schemes for turning the present distressing state of affairs to good account rather than to waste time kicking against the pricks. The day was fine, and the cool air refreshing to him. It was not long before he was complimenting Captain Ware upon his horses, and his skill in handling the ribbons.
“Devilish obliging of you to say so!” said Gideon sardonically. “You are no doubt a judge!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Liversedge, tucking the rug more securely round his legs. “I fancy I may be held to be so, sir. You must know that many years ago I was employed in the stables of a notable whip—quite a nonesuch, indeed! A menial position, and one from which I swiftly rose, but it enabled me to judge a horse, and a whip.”
Gideon was amused, “A groom, were you? And what then?”
“In course of time, sir, I attained what was then the sum of my ambition. I became a gentleman’s gentleman.”
Gideon glanced curiously at him. “Why did you abandon that profession?”
Mr. Liversedge described one of his airy gestures. “Various causes, sir, various causes! You may say that it did not afford enough scope for a man of my vision. My ideas have ever been large, and my genius is for the cards and the bones. In fact, had I not suffered certain ill-merited reverses I should not today be in your company, for I assure you that the business in which I have lately been engaged is wholly alien to my tastes—quite repugnant to me, indeed! But necessity, my dear sir, takes no account of sensibility!”
“You are a consummate rogue!” said Gideon forthrightly.
“Sir,” responded Mr. Liversedge, “I must protest against the use of that epithet! A consummate rogue, you will allow, is a rogue from choice, and feels no compunction for his roguery. With me it is far otherwise, I assure you. Particularly have my feelings been wrung by the plight of your noble relative—a most amiable young man, and one whom I was excessively loth to put to inconvenience!”
“You scoundrel, you would have murdered him at a word from me!” Gideon exclaimed.
“That,” said Mr. Liversedge firmly, “would have been your responsibility, Captain Ware.”
At this point, Wragby, who from his seat behind them had been listening to this conversation, interposed to beg his master to pull up so that he might have the pleasure of drawing Mr. Liversedge’s cork.
“No,” said Gideon. “I prefer to hand him over in due course to the Law.”
“I am persuaded,” said Mr. Liversedge, “that when I have restored your relative to you, as I am really anxious to do, you will think better of that unhandsome notion, sir. Ingratitude is a vice which I abhor!”
“We shall see what my relative has to say about it,” replied Gideon grimly.
Mr. Liversedge, who could not feel that forty-eight hours spent in a dark cellar would engender in his victim any feelings of mercy, relapsed into a depressed silence.
But his mercurial spirits could not long remain damped, and by the time Gideon stopped to change horses, he had recovered enough to regale him with a very entertaining anecdote to his first employer’s discredit. While Wragby besought the ostlers to fig out two lively ones, and made arrangements for the Captain’s own horses to be led back to London, he considered the chances of escape; but even his hopeful mind was obliged to realize that these were slim. However, he was a great believer in Providence, and he could not but feel that Providence would intervene on his behalf before the end of the journey. He had not yet divulged the locality of the Duke’s prison, and he had not been urged to do so. Captain Ware was taking it for granted that he would lead him to it. Upon reflection, Mr. Liversedge acknowledged gloomily that unless something quite unforeseen occurred this was precisely what he would do.
Baldock was reached all too soon for his taste, and without the slightest sign of an intervention by Providence. Captain Ware reined in his horses in the middle of the broad street, let them drop to a walk, and said: “You may now direct me, Mr. Liversedge. Unless you would prefer me to enquire the way to the nearest magistrate? It is all one to me.”
Mr. Liversedge was irritated by this remark, and answered with some asperity: “Now that, sir, is a manifestly false observation! It is not all one to you—or would not be to a gentleman of the smallest sensibility! Nothing, I am persuaded, could be further from your wishes than to create a stir over this business! In fact, the more I think on it, the more convinced I become that you and your noble relatives will be very much in my debt if I contrive the affair without anyone’s being the wiser. Consider what must be the result if I compel you to call in the Law! Not only will his Grace—”
He stopped, for it was apparent to him that Captain Ware was not attending. The Captain, glancing idly at an approaching tilbury, had stiffened suddenly, and pulled his horses up dead. “Matt!” he thundered. The next instant he had perceived that Nettlebed was sitting beside his cousin in the tilbury, and he ejaculated: “Good God!”
Young Mr. Ware, on being hailed in such startling accents, jumped as though he had been shot, and dragged his horse to a standstill. “Gideon!” he gasped. “You here? Gideon, something has happened to Gilly! Something must have happened, because—oh, we can’t talk here, in the road!”
“Yes, something has indeed happened to Gilly,” replied his cousin. “But what the devil are you doing here, and what do you know about it?”
Mr. Ware looked extremely wretched, and said: “It is all my fault, and I wish I had never consented to let him—But how was I to guess—though I told him I knew something would happen to him if he persisted! And then, when Nettlebed came to Oxford, and told me—”
“I suspicioned Mr. Matthew had a hand in it,” said Nettlebed, with ghoulish satisfaction. “Sitting up till all hours, and keeping his Grace from his bed, the way he was, the very day before he went off! If I hadn’t been so set-about, I should have thought of Mr. Matthew sooner, no question!”
“I never asked him to do it, and I would not have!” Matthew said hotly. “He would go, in spite of all I could say!”
“Come to the George!” commanded Gideon. “I’d better get to the bottom of this before I do anything else. I suppose you’re in a scrape again!”
“Gideon, where is Gilly?” Matthew called after him urgently.
“Kidnapped!” Gideon threw over his shoulder, and drove on towards the posting-inn.
Mr. Liversedge, who had been sitting wrapped in his own thoughts, gave a genteel little cough, and said: “Another relative, I collect, Captain Ware? Possibly—er—Mr. Matthew Ware?”
“You seem to be remarkably well-acquainted with my family!” returned Gideon shortly.
“No,” said Mr. Liversedge sadly. “Had I been better acquainted with them—But it is useless to repine! So that is Mr. Ware! Dear me, yes! Strange how the dice will sometimes fall against one, do what one will! I wish I had had the good fortune to have met Mr. Ware earlier. He is just the kind of young man I had supposed him to be. I am not one of those who are unable to judge a matter dispassionately, and I will own that although I might have a personal preference for Mr. Ware, his Grace is the better man.”