The Nonesuch, quick to seize opportunity, agreed that such conduct passed all bounds. He was astonished to learn that Lindeth and Miss Trent were so lost to all sense of propriety as to suppose that Tiffany could be left to kick her heels at the King’s Arms while they jauntered about the town (with a dirty and thievish boy) in what was undoubtedly her carriage. He said that they would be well served if, when they at last returned to the King’s Arms, they were to find that the bird had flown.
“Yes,” agreed Tiffany, hiccupping on a sob. “Only, if I were to order John-Coachman to bring the carriage round he wouldn’t do it, because he is a detestable old man, and treats me as if I were a child!”
“I’ll take you home,” said the Nonesuch, with his glinting smile.
She stared at him. “You? In your phaeton? Now?”He nodded; and she jumped up, exclaiming ecstatically: “Oh, yes! I should like that of all things! And we won’t leave a message, either!”
“Oh, that will be quite unnecessary!” he said, with perfect truth.
Her tears ceased abruptly: and if the ill-usage she had suffered still rankled in her bosom it soon became at least temporarily forgotten in the elation of being driven by no less a person than the Nonesuch.
Mrs Underhill was very much shocked when she heard what had happened in Leeds, but although Sir Waldo left Tiffany to tell the story as she pleased the good lady’s reception of it was not at all what her niece desired or expected. She said she wouldn’t have had such a thing happen for the world. “Not with Mrs Chartley letting Patience go with you, as she did, which quite surprised me, for I never thought she would, and no more she would have, if it hadn’t been for Miss Trent being there to take care of her. And what she’ll say, when she hears about this—not that Miss Trent could have stopped it, by all I can make out, for it wasn’t a thing anyone would expect to happen! Well, thank goodness Miss Trent had the sense to stay with Patience! At least Mrs Chartley won’t be able to say we didn’t do our best, or that she was left to be brought home by his lordship, which she wouldn’t have liked at all! Not that I mean he wouldn’t have kept the line, as I hope I don’t need to explain to you, Sir Waldo, for I’m sure I never knew anyone more truly the gentleman—present company excepted, of course—but Mrs Chartley—well, she’s nice to a fault, and very strict in her notions!”
This speech was naturally extremely displeasing to Tiffany. There were danger signals in her eyes, which her aunt viewed with apprehension. Mrs Underhill hoped that she was not going to fly into one of her miffs, and she said feebly: “Now, Tiffany-love, there’s nothing to put you into high fidgets! To be sure, it was vexatious for you to be obliged to wait, when you was wanting to come home, but you wouldn’t have wished to leave poor Miss Chartley with no carriage, now, you know you wouldn’t! A very shabby thing that would have been! And Sir Waldo driving you home in his phaeton, which I’ll be bound you enjoyed!”
“They should have asked me!” said Tiffany obstinately. “If they had done so—”
“I see what it is!” suddenly announced Charlotte, whose penetrating gaze had been fixed for some minutes on her cousin’s face. “Nobody paid any heed to you! And you might just as easily have rescued the boy as Patience, only you didn’t, so it wasn’t you that was brave and noble, but her and that’s why you’re in such a pelter!”
“How dare you?” gasped Tiffany, glaring at her.
“Charlotte, don’t!”begged Mrs. Underhill, much agitated.
“And,”pursued Charlotte, with acute if deplorable insight, “it’s my belief the man in the tilbury didn’t pay any heed to you either, and that’s why you said he was rude and vulgar!”
“Now that’s enough!” said Mrs Underhill, with a very fair assumption of authority. “Whatever must Sir Waldo be thinking of you? I don’t know when I’ve been so mortified! You must please excuse her, sir!”
“I’ll excuse them both, ma’am, and leave them to enjoy their quarrel!” he replied, looking amused.
“Oh, dear, and I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t stop to eat your dinner with us!” exclaimed Mrs Underhill distressfully.
“Thank you: you are very good, ma’am, but I mustn’t stay,” he answered, smiling at her in a way which, as she afterwards told Miss Trent, made her feel all of a twitter.
He then took his leave, and went away. He reached Broom Hall as the shadows were lengthening, and strolled into the house, stripping off his gloves. The door leading into the book-room opened, and a slender sprig of fashion emerged, and paused on the threshold, saying with would-be jauntiness: “Hallo, Waldo!”
At sight of this unexpected visitor Sir Waldo had halted, one glove still only half drawn from his hand, a sudden frown in his eyes. He stood still for an instant; then the frown vanished, and he pulled off his glove, and laid it down on the table. “Dear me!” he said, in a tone of mild surprise. “And what brings you here, Laurie?”
Mr Calver, with the memory of his last encounter with his cousin uncomfortably in mind, was much relieved by the calm friendliness of this greeting. He had not expected to be met with an explosion of wrath, because Waldo never ripped up, or came the ugly; but he had feared that he might cut up a trifle stiff, perhaps. He came forward, saying awkwardly: “I’ve been visiting friends in York. Thought I’d come over to see how you go on.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Sir Waldo politely.
“Well, I—well—you know, I don’t like to be at outs with you! The last time I saw you—Well, I was in a damned bad skin, and I daresay I may have said things I don’t mean! shouldn’t wish you to think—”
“Oh, that’s enough, Laurie!” Sir Waldo interrupted, a swift smile banishing the slightly stern look on his face. “Looby! Did you suppose I had taken an affront into my head? What a gudgeon you must think me!”
“No, I don’t, but—Well, I thought I’d post over to see you—beg your pardon, you know!”
“I’m much obliged to you. Come into the book-room! Has Wedmore done the honours of the house—such as they are?”
“Oh, yes! Well, I haven’t been here much above half-an-hour, but he brought me some sherry, and took Blyth off to unpack my bags.” He shot a sidelong look at his cousin, and ventured on a small joke. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t throw me out of doors even if you had nabbed the rust!”
“Very unlikely,” agreed Sir Waldo, walking over to a side-table, and pouring himself out a glass of sherry. He drank a little, and stood thoughtfully regarding Laurence.
That exquisite, failing, not for the first time in a somewhat chequered career, to meet that steady, faintly amused gaze, cast himself into a chair, with an assumption of ease, and picked up his own glass from a table at his elbow, saying airily: “I hadn’t thought you meant to remain here above a sennight. Everyone is wondering what’s become of you! Is Lindeth still with you? Don’t he find it devilish slow?”
“Apparently not. Tell me! Who are these friends of yours who live in York?”
“Oh, no one you’re acquainted with!”
“I didn’t think I was.” He picked up the decanter, and walked across the room to refill Laurence’s glass. “What is it you want, Laurie?”
“I told you! We came to cuffs, and—”
“No, don’t sham it! You haven’t travelled all the way from London merely to beg my pardon!”
“I’ve come from York!” said Laurence, reddening. “If you don’t believe me you may enquire at the Black Horse, where I hired a chaise to bring me here!”
“I do believe you. I think you went to York on the Edinburgh mail. Or are you on the rocks again, and was it the stage? Stop trying to make a pigeon of me! You’ll only be gapped, you know! What’s the matter? Are you in the suds?”
“No, I am not!” replied Laurence angrily. “I may not be flush in the pocket, but I haven’t come to ask you to pay any gaming debts!”
“Don’t be so ready to sport your canvas! I didn’t suppose that was it. There might be other debts which you forgot to mentio
n when you were last down the wind.”
“Well, there ain’t!” growled Laurence. “Nothing to signify, that is! And if there was, I shouldn’t ask you to dub up the possibles! Not after what you said a month ago! I daresay you think I’m a loose screw, but I don’t run thin!”
“I wish you will come down from these high ropes! I don’t think you a loose screw—though if I were to tell you what I do think you you’d be ready to eat me! If you don’t want me to dub up the possibles, what do you want me to do?”
“It may interest you to know, coz, that it’s been make and scrape with me ever since you left London!” said Laurence bitterly. “And when I think of the shifts I’ve been put to—Well, it’s the outside enough for you to be suspecting me of having come to see you only to get you to tip over the dibs! It isn’t that at all!” He paused. “At least,” he amended, “it ain’t debt! If you must know, I’ve hit upon a devilish good scheme—if I can but raise the recruits! Of course, if you don’t care to frank me—though it ain’t so much franking me, mind, as investing your blunt!—there’s no more to be said. But considering the times you’ve offered to buy me a pair of colours—”
“The offer still stands, Laurie.”
“Yes, but I don’t want it. It wouldn’t suit me at all. I haven’t any taste for the law, either. I didn’t think of it at the time, but if you had suggested the Church to me, when I was up at Oxford, there would have been some sense in it. I daresay I shouldn’t have liked it above half, but I wonder you shouldn’t have thought of it, if you’re so eager to thrust me into some profession or other. After all, I know you’ve several good livings in your gift! However, it’s too late now.”
“That’s just as well, for I can think of few men less suited to the Church.”
“No, very likely I should have found it a dead bore. Not but what a snug parsonage—But it’s of no consequence! I fancy I’ve hit on the very thing, Waldo! What’s more, if the thing comes off right there’s a fortune in it!”
Concealing his misgivings, Sir Waldo invited him to continue.
“Well, I hadn’t meant to broach it to you so soon,” said Laurence, rather naively. “But since you’ve asked me to—and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t care for the scheme: in fact, I’m persuaded you’ll think it’s the very thing—”
“You are filling me with foreboding, Laurie. Do put me out of suspense!”
“Of course, if you mean to set your face against it from the start I might as well keep my tongue!” said Laurence peevishly.
“We haven’t reached the start yet. Cut line!” commanded his cousin.
Laurence looked offended for a moment, but he managed to swallow his spleen. “Yes—Well—well, are you acquainted with Kearney, Waldo?”
“No.”
“Desmond Kearney!” Sir Waldo shook his head. “Oh! I daresay he may not have come in your way, though I should have thought you must have met him. He’s the devil of a man to hounds—a clipping rider! But you high sticklers are so top-lofty—” He broke off, and said hastily: “Not that it signifies! The thing is, Kearney is a friend of mine. Not a feather to fly with, but a first-rate man, and a capital judge of horseflesh! We mean to become partners.”
“Partners in what?” asked Sir Waldo blankly.
“Hunters! Selling ’em, I mean.”
“O my God!”
“I suppose I might have guessed you would—No, do but listen, Waldo!” begged Laurence, suddenly altering his tone. “Only think of the blunt some of the Melton men drop on their hunters! Well, you’re one yourself, so you should know! They say Lord Alvanley gave seven hundred guineas for one of the nags he bought last year, and I could name you a score of men who think nothing of shelling out five or six hundred for horses that were bought originally for no more than eighty or a hundred guineas! Why, if you was to put your own stud under the hammer—just your hunters and your hacks: not your driving-cattle, of course—they wouldn’t fetch a penny under five thousand! I daresay you’re thinking the scheme might not fadge, but—”
“Might not fadge!” interrupted Sir Waldo. “You’d find yourselves at point non-plus within a twelvemonth!”
“No, that we shouldn’t! We have it all planned, and I’d be willing to lay you any odds we shall make an excellent hit. Of course, at first we shall be obliged to spend a good deal of blunt—no need to tell you that!—but—”
“No need at all!”
“Well, there’s no doing anything unless one has some capital! The thing is—”
“Thank you, I know what the thing is!” said Sir Waldo acidly. “For God’s sake, will you stop trying to tip me a rise? I never in my life listened to such an addle-brained scheme! Do you think me such a flat that I would provide the capital for such a crazy venture? Go into partnership with a man who hasn’t a feather to fly with? Oh, no! Laurie! Coming it too strong!”
“If you would but listen—! Kearney ain’t any plumper in the pocket than I am, but he’s just come into some property! It was that circumstance which put the notion into his head! He’s inherited a place in Ireland, from his uncle—Galway, I think. Sounds to me much like this place: gone to rack, and the house pretty well tumbling down. Seemed to him more of a liability than a honey-fall, for there’s no getting rid of it as it stands.”
“It seems like that to me too.”
“Well, that’s where you’re out! We mean to put it to dashed good use! Kearney’s been to look it over, and he says there’s plenty of ground attached, and acres of stabling, which only needs repairing to furnish us with precisely what we need. Now, Waldo, you must know that Ireland’s the place for picking up first-rate horses for no more than eighty pounds apiece! No cart-horse blood there! No black drop! A year’s schooling, and you sell ’em over here for a couple of hundred at the least!”
“If you think that I’m going to set you up as a horse chanter—”
“No such thing!” exclaimed Laurence indignantly. “They won’t be unsound horses!”
“They will be if you have anything to do with choosing them.”
Laurence struggled with himself, and again managed to suppress his anger. “As a matter of fact, Kearney will attend to that side of the business: he knows the country, and which are the best fairs—and I shouldn’t wonder at it if he’s as good a judge of a horse as you are! My part will be to sell ’em over here.”
“Laurie, are you seriously proposing to set up as a dealer?”
“No, of course not! I mean, I’m not going to have a sale-ring, or anything of that kind! I’ve got a much better notion: I’m going to sell ’em on the hunting-field!”
“What?”said Sir Waldo faintly.
“Lord, you know what I mean! You ride a good-looking hunter of the right stamp with one of the Hunts—the Quorn, for instance—and what happens?”
“You end up in the Whissendine.”
“Oh, go to the devil! That’s not what I mean! Someone takes a fancy to your horse—asks you if you’d care to sell him, and before you know where you are—”
“Not if he’s seen you riding the horse!” interpolated Sir Waldo brutally.
Laurence flushed vividly. “Thank you! Upon my word, coz, of all the damnably unjust things to say—! I collect I’m a slow-top—a skirter—a—”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that!” said Sir Waldo, relenting slightly. “You’ve plenty of pluck, but you sloven your fences, and you don’t get the best out of your horses. Also—well, no matter! I’m sorry, but I’ll have no hand in this project.”
“Waldo, I’m not asking you to give it to me!” Laurence urged, rather desperately. “Only to lend it—and no more than five thousand! I swear I’d pay it back!”
“I doubt it! Oh, I don’t doubt you think you would! But I think that so far from your paying me back I should be obliged to tow you out of the River Tick to the tune of a few more thousands. I won’t do it.”
There was a long silence. Laurence got up jerkily, and went over to stare out of the window. Pre
sently he said: “I know you said—when you paid that debt for me last month—that it was the last time, but I never thought you’d refuse to help me when—when I’m trying to do what you’ve been urging me to for ever!”
Sir Waldo could not help smiling at this. “My dear Laurie, I really don’t think I can be said to have urged you to take to horse-coping!”
“You want me to pursue some occupation. And now, when I’m determined not to be idle any longer, or to hang on your sleeve—you make it impossible!”
“Find a respectable occupation, and try me again! You think me a shocking nip-squeeze, but what you are asking me to do is to help you to break your back.”
Laurence turned, forcing a smile to his drooping mouth. “No, I don’t. You’ve been devilish generous to me: I know that! Only—Oh, well! I suppose there’s no more to be said. I’d best go back to London tomorrow. I know you don’t want me here.”
“Gammon! Do you wish to stay?”
“Well, I did rather think;—I mean, everyone is going out of town now, and you know what Brighton costs in July! You told me I must stop wasting the ready—”
“So it clearly behoves me to house you! Stop playing off your tricks, you incorrigible dryboots! I haven’t the smallest objection to your remaining here—but I don’t think you’ll like it above half! The builders are at work, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t care a straw for that!” Laurence assured him. “You seem to be pulling the place to bits—all for your ramshackle brats, I collect!”
“That’s it,” replied Sir Waldo cheerfully. “I must go and tell Wedmore we won’t wait dinner for Julian: he’s in Leeds, and is likely to be detained. That, by the way, is one of the disadvantages of the house: the only unbroken bell-wire is the one leading from our late lamented cousin’s bedroom! There are some other drawbacks, too: your man will tell you all about them! I only hope he won’t cut his stick. I live in constant dread of waking one morning to find that Munslow has abandoned me.”
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