Although the Duke’s headache had not quite left him by the time a medley of fragrant odours arising from downstairs announced the dinner-hour to be at hand, it was materially better, and he got up from his bed, and unpacked his valise. By the time he had disposed his belongings in the chest of drawers, his attentive hostess was tapping on the door. He assured her that he was much restored, and she escorted him to a small parlour, where a fire burned, and the table was already spread with a cloth, and laid with some bone-handled knives and forks.
The Duke dined off some small collars, a serpent of mutton, and a boiled duck with onion sauce, and afterwards tried the experiment of lighting one of the cigars he had brought with him. The waiter, who had been about to bring him a spill, watched with deep interest the kindling of a match with Promethean fire from the machine which the Duke carried in his pocket, and ventured to say that he had heard tell of those things, but had never before seen one.
The Duke smiled in his absent way, and asked: “Is there an inn in Baldock called the Bird in Hand?”
“It’s wunnerful what they think of,” said the waiter. “They do tell me they even has gas-lamps in Lunnon nowadays. Bird in Hand, sir? Not in Baldock, there isn’t. Leastways, I never heard tell on it, and it stands to reason I would have if there were sich a place.”
“Perhaps it may be a little way from the town,” suggested Gilly.
“Ah, very likely,” the waiter agreed, beginning to pile up the dishes on a tray. “There’s no saying but what it mightn’t be so.”
“And perhaps,” further suggested Gilly patiently, “there may be someone in the tap-room who may know of it if you were to ask them.”
The waiter said that he would do this, and went away with his tray. He was gone for some time, and when he came back, although he had collected a quantity of information about a Bird in the Bush, a Partridge, and a Feathers Inn, he had not discovered anyone who knew the Bird in Hand. Gilly rewarded him suitably for his efforts, and said that it did not signify. He did not feel equal to pursuing his enquiries further that evening, so when the waiter had withdrawn he stretched his legs out before the fire, and opened the book his cousin Gideon had given him to read upon his travels. The preface somewhat quellingly advertised the work to exhibit “the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue,” but Gideon had warned him not to allow himself to be daunted by this unpromising start. The book was anonymously published, and had, of course, been cut up by the Quarterly. It was entitled Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The Duke blew a cloud of smoke, crossed one foot over the other, and began to read.
The candles were guttering in their sockets, and the fire was burning very low when the Duke at last tore himself from the tale, and went to bed.
He saw, on consulting his watch, that it was past midnight, and when he opened the door of the parlour he found the inn in darkness. Guarding the flame of his bedroom candle with one hand, he trod along the passage, not precisely expecting to meet a man-made monster (for he was no longer a child, he told himself) but with a shudder in his flesh. He must find some indescribably horrible tale to bestow on Gideon, in revenge for his having given his poor little cousin a book calculated to keep him awake all night, he decided, smiling tohimself.
But with every expectation of having his rest disturbed by nightmares, he slept soundly and dreamlessly all night, awaking in the morning to hear cocks crowing, and to find sunlight stealing between the closed blinds of his room. All trace of his headache had left him; he felt remarkably well, and thought there must be something salubrious about the air of Hertfordshire.
He had told the boots he would have his shaving-water brought to him at eight o’clock, but when this worthy came into his room to waken him, he found him standing by the window in his great coat, interestedly watching a herd of bullocks being driven down the street. It seemed to be market-day, and the Duke had never come into close contact with a market before, and consequently found it most entertaining. He turned his head when the boots entered, saying: “Is it market-day? What quantities of pigs and cows and chickens have come into the town! You must have a very large market here!”
“Oh, no, sir!” said the boots pityingly, setting down the jug of water on the corner-washstand. “ This ain’t nothing! Missus said to ask if there was anything as you would be wanting.”
“Thank you—if you would be good enough to have my coat brushed!” the Duke said, picking it up, and handing it to him.
The boots bore it off carefully. It seemed a very grand coat to him, made of superfine cloth, and lined with silk. He told the waiter, whom he happened to meet on his way to the boot-room, that he suspicioned No. 1 was a high-up gentleman, one as had come into the world hosed and shod, for he had thrown his good shirt that hadn’t a spot on it on to the floor, and a necktie with it, like as if he meant to put on a fresh one. “Which is a thing, Fred, as none but the nobs does. And what queers me is what brings him to this house!”
“Perhaps the Runners is after him,” said the waiter. “He’s killed his man in a bloody duel, that’s very likely what he’s done, and he’s a-hiding of hisself.”
“Gammon!” said the boots scornfully. “He no more killed no one in no duel than a babe unborn!”
“Maybe there’s a fastener going to be served on him,” said the waiter doubtfully. “Though he do seem to be a well-breeched cove as isn’t likely to have got into debt.”
“No, he ain’t!” retorted the boots. “He come here on the stage, and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t run aground. Swallowed a spider, that’s what he’s done. Missus ought to make him show his blunt, but she’s taken one of her fancies to him, and likely hell chouse her out of his reckoning.”
“He don’t look like a downy one to me,” objected the waiter. “And if he’d swallowed a spider he wouldn’t have handed me a fore-coachwheel only for asking of silly questions for him, which he did do.”
“What’s a half-crown to the likes of him?” said the boots disdainfully, but he was impressed by this proof of open-handedness in the Duke, and made up his mind to give his top-boots an extra polish before carrying them upstairs.
When he had partaken of breakfast, the Duke picked up his hat, and sallied forth to find the post-receiving office, where he enquired the direction of one Mr. Liversedge. The clerk said that he did not seem to know the name, and he rather thought he had handed a letter or two to a gentleman calling himself that, or something like it; but he declined to admit any knowledge of the Bird in Hand. No deliveries were made by the Post Office to any such hostelry, and if it existed at all, which he seemed loftily to doubt, it was possibly a common alehouse outside the town, such as would not be frequented by literate persons.
The Duke then bethought him of the market, and made his way there. It was the scene of considerable bustle and business, and in the excitement of watching a young bull, which seemed to have escaped from its tether, being rounded up; six pigs knocked down to a farmer in a red waistcoat; and a large gander putting to rout two small boys and a mongrel cur, he rather forgot the object in view. But when he had been strolling about the market-place for some time, he remembered it, and he asked a man who was meditating profoundly over some fine cabbages whether he knew where the Bird in Hand was to be found. The man withdrew his mind from the cabbages reluctantly, and after considering the Duke for a time, said simply: “You’ll be meaning the Bird and Bush.”
The Duke received very much the same answer from the next five people whom he questioned, but the sixth, a jolly-looking farmer with a striped waistcoat and leggings, said: “Why, sir, whatever would the likes of you be wanting with sich a place as that?”
“Do you know it?” asked the Duke, who had begun to think that Mr. Liversedge had been mistaken in his own direction.
“Not to say know it,” responded the farmer. “It ain’t the sort of place I’d go to, and what’s more, unless I’m much mistook, it ain’t the sort of place you’d go to either. For it ain’t got a good name, sir, and if you’ll take my advice, asking your pardon if not wished for, you won’t go next or nigh it.”
The Duke looked such an innocent enquiry that the farmer became fatherly in his manner, and recommended him to keep out of bad company. He said that if he were to call the Bird in Hand a regular thieves’ ken he wouldn’t be telling any lies, and added if it was plucking the Duke was after there were those whom he would very likely meet at the Bird in Hand who would leave him without a feather to fly with. He had to be coaxed to divulge the locality of the inn, and finally did so with a heavy sigh, and a warning that he would not be held responsible for whatever ill might come of it. “It’s betwixt and between Norton and Arlesey,” he said, “a matter of three or four miles from here, more, if you was to go by the pike road till you come to the road as leads to Shefford, and turn down it. But if you’re set on going there’s a lane which’ll take you right past it, and it goes by way of Norton, off the Hitchin road.”
Armed with this information, the Duke returned to the White Horse and sought out Mrs. Appleby, and asked her if she knew where he could hire a gig, or a riding-horse. It then transpired that if only he had told her earlier that he would be wanting a gig he could have had hers, and with pleasure, and old Mrs. Fawley, to whom she had lent it, might have gone to visit her daughter any other day, and not a mite of difference which. However, when she heard that the Duke only wished to drive quite a short distance, her brow cleared, and she said that if it should not be too late for him the gig was bound to be back in the stables by four o’clock, and could very well be taken out again. The Duke thanked her, and accepted this offer. She then firmly sat him down to a luncheon of cold meat, which he did not in the least want, and did her best to persuade him to let the waiter fetch up some porter, a very strengthening drink which would set him up rarely. But the Duke hated porter, and was resolute in declining.
Owing to old Mrs. Fawley’s inability to keep punctual hours, it was nearly five o’clock before the gig was returned to its owner; but the Duke thought that he would have time to reach the Bird in Hand, and to return again before darkness fell, and he decided not to postpone his visit to Mr. Liversedge. He naturally did not inform Mrs. Appleby of his destination, being reasonably sure, from what he had learned from his market-acquaintance, that she would do what lay in her power to restrain him from venturing to such a haunt of vice. It did not seem likely, in view of Mr. Liversedge’s declared requirements, that he stood in much danger of being robbed of the money in his pockets, or in any way molested, but he took the precaution of leaving the greater part of his money locked up in his chest of drawers; and he loaded one of his new duelling-pistols, and slipped it into his pocket. Thus armed, and having acquainted himself more particularly with the way to Arlesey, he mounted on to the gig, and set off at the sedate trot favoured by the stout cob between the shafts.
It was not long before he came to the lane leading from the Hitchin pike-road. He turned into this, but was soon obliged to allow the cob to slacken his pace to a walk, since the lane, once past the village of Norton, dwindled rapidly into something little better than a cart-track, and was pitted with deep holes. It was also excessively muddy; and he was forced continually to dodge unlopped branches of the nut-trees which bordered it. He met no other vehicles, which was just as well, since the track was too narrow to allow of two vehicles being abreast, and the only human being he saw was a well-grown schoolboy at the hobbledehoy stage, who came into view as he rounded the fifth bend, and splashed through a more than usually large pond of stagnant water.
He did not pay much heed to the boy at first, but as he drew towards him he noticed that he seemed to be in trouble, stumbling along in an uncertain way, as though he were ill, or the worse for drink. Then, as he came almost abreast of him, he saw that the lad, who was dressed in good but shockingly mired clothes, and seemed to have lost his hat, was extremely pale, and had a black eye. He drew up, his quick compassion stirred, and as he did so the boy’s uncertain feet tripped in a rut, and he fell headlong.
The Duke jumped down from the gig, and bent over him, saying in his soft voice: “I am afraid you are not very well: can I help you?”
The boy looked up, blinking at him in a bemused fashion, and the Duke perceived that in spite of his lusty limbs he was little more than a child. “I don’t know,” he said thickly. They took all my money. I fought them, but there were two, and—and I think they hit me on the head. Oh, I feel so sick!”
In proof of this statement, he suddenly retched, and was very sick. The Duke supported him while the paroxysm lasted, and then wiped his face with his handkerchief. “Poor boy!” he said. “There, you will be better now! Where do you live? I will take you to your home.”
The boy, who was leaning limply against his shoulder, stiffened a little at this, and said in a gruff way: “I’m not going home. Besides, it isn’t here. I shall do very well. Don’t trouble—pray!”
“But where is your home?” Gilly asked.
“I won’t say.”
This was uttered in rather a belligerent tone, which caused Gilly to ask: “Have you run away, perhaps?”
The boy was silent, and made an effort to scramble to his feet, thrusting the Duke away.
“I beg your pardon!” Gilly said, smiling. “I should know better than to ask you such awkward questions, for people have been doing the same to me all my life. We will not talk about your home, and you shan’t tell me more than you care to. But would you not like to get up into my gig, and let me drive you wherever it is you are making for?”
There was another silence, while the boy made an ineffectual attempt to brush the mud from his pantaloons. His round, freckled face was still very pale, and his mouth had a sullen pout. He cast a suspicious, sidelong look at the Duke, and sniffed, and rubbed his nose. “They took all my money,” he repeated. “I don’t know what to do, but I won’t go home!” He ended on a gulping sob that betrayed his youth, flushed hotly, and glared at the Duke.
Gilly was far too tactful to notice that unmanly sob. He said cheerfully: “Well, to be sure, it is very hard to decide on what is best to be done without having time to reflect. Have you friends in the neighbourhood to whom I could take you?”
“No,” muttered the boy. He added grudgingly: “Sir.”
“Then I think I had better drive you to the inn where I am putting up, and see what can be done for that black eye of yours. What is your name?”
The boy gave another sniff. “Tom,” he divulged reluctantly. “I want to go to London. And I would have gone, too, only that I asked those men the way to Baldock, and they said they would put me on the road, and then—and then—” He ground his teeth audibly, and said in a kind of growl: “I suppose I was a regular green one, but how was I to tell—?”
“No, indeed, it is the kind of thing that might happen to anyone,” the Duke agreed, propelling him gently towards the gig. “Up you get!”
“And I landed one of them a couple of wisty castors!” Tom told him, allowing himself to be helped into the gig. “Only they had cudgels, and that is how it came about. And they took my five pounds, and my watch, which Pa gave me, and when I came to myself they were gone. I don’t care for having my canister milled, but it is too bad to have taken all my money, and if I could catch them Pa would have them transported!”
The Duke, having put him safely into his seat, went to the cob’s head, and began to turn the gig in the narrow space available for the manoeuvre. He was not at all inclined to take his youthful protégé to an inn of such apparent ill-fame as the Bird in Hand, even though it seemed highly probable that Tom might there realize his wish of catching his assailants; and he decided that his business with Mr. Liversedge would have to be postponed until the next day. Having turned the gig, he mounted on to the box seat, gathered, up the reins, and gave the cob the office to trot homewards. Tom sat slumped on the seat beside him, sunk in depression, sniffing at intervals, and wiping his nose with a grubby handkerchief. After an interval, he said with would-be civility: “I don’t know why you should put yourself to this trouble, sir. I am sure you need not. I daresay I shall do very well when my head stops aching.”
“Oh, you will be as right as a trivet!” Gilly said. “Had you a bag with you, and did the thieves steal that as well?”
Tom fidgeted rather uncomfortably. “No. That is—Well, the thing is I couldn’t bring my portmanteau, sir, because—Well, I couldn’t bring it! But then, you know, I had my money, and I thought I could buy anything I might need.”
The Duke, feeling that he had much in common with his young friend, nodded understandingly, and said that it did not signify. “I expect one of my nightshirts will not fit you so very ill. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” replied Tom, a hint of challenge in his voice.
“You are very big! I had thought you older.”
“Well, I do think anyone might suppose me to be seventeen at least, don’t you?” Tom said, responding to that gratifying remark, and speaking in a far less belligerent tone. “And I am very well able to take care of myself—in general. But if sneaks set upon one two to one there is no doing anything! And I shall never have such a chance again, because they will watch me so close—Oh, it is too bad, sir! I wish I was dead! They would have been sorry then! At least, Pa would, but I daresay Mr. Snape wouldn’t have cared a button, for he’s the greatest beast in nature, and I hate him!”
“Your schoolmaster?” hazarded the Duke.
“Yes. At least, he is my tutor, because Pa wouldn’t have me go to school, which I had liefer have done, I can tell you! And when it came to his reading to me in the chaise, not even something jolly, like Waverley, or The Adventures of Johnny Newcome, which is a famous book, only of course he took it away from me—he would!— but the horridest stuff about Europe in the Middle Ages! As though anyone could listen to such dry fustian! And in the chaise, sir! There was no bearing it any longer!”
“It was certainly very bad,” agreed the Duke sympathetically. “But they will all do it! I remember my own tutoronce tried to interest me in Paley’s Natural Theology upon one of our journeys from Bath to S—to my home!” he corrected himself swiftly.
“That sounds as though it would be just as dry!” said Tom, impressed.
“Oh, worse!”
“What did you do, sir?”
The Duke smiled. “I was very poor-spirited: I tried to listen.”
“Well, I hit Mr. Snape on the head, and ran away!” said Tom, with a return to his challenging manner.
The Duke broke into his low laugh. “Oh, no, did you? But how did you contrive to do that when you were driving along in a chaise?”
“I couldn’t, of course, but the thing is we changed horses at Shefford, and then when we had not gone a mile out of the town the perch broke, and we were obliged to stop. And the postilion was to ride back to Shefford to procure another chaise for us, and when he was gone old Snape said we would take a walk in the wood, and that would not have been so bad, but what must he do but pull his stupid book out of his pocket again, just when I had seen a squirrel’s drey—at least, I am pretty sure it was one, and I would have found out if he had but let me alone! But he is such a prosing, boring beast he don’t care for anything worth a fig, and he said we would read another chapter, and so I floored him. I have a very handy bunch of fives, you know,” he said, exhibiting his large fist to the Duke, “and I dropped him with a flush hit just behind his ear. And if you are thinking, sir,” he added bitterly, “that it wasn’t a handsome thing to do, to hit him from behind, I can tell you that I owe him something, for he is a famous flogger, and is for ever laying into me. Did your tutor too?”
“No, very seldom,” replied the Duke. “But he was a great bore! I fear I could never have floored him, for I was not a big fellow, like you, but I own I never thought of doing so. Did you knock him out?”
“Oh, yes!” said Tom cheerfully. “I don’t think he is dead, though. I could not wait to see, of course, but I should not think he could be. And in a way it will be as well if he is not, because they would hang me for it, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose it is as bad as that!” Gilly consoled him. “Did you then make your way from Shefford?”
“Yes, and the best of it is he will not know which way I went, and I kept to the woods, and the fields, so all the chaises in the world won’t help him. I thought I would get on the coach for London, and see all the sights there, which he would not let me do, horrid old addle-plot! Only fancy, sir! We drove up from Worthing, and we spent just one night in London, and the only thing he would let me see was St. Paul’s Cathedral! As though I cared for that! Not even the wild beasts at the Exeter Exchange! Of course I knew he would never take me to a theatre, and it was no use trying to give him the bag then, for someone would have been bound to have seen me. But when the perch broke, and such a chance offered, I do think I should have been a regular clodpole not to have seized it! And now—now I haven’t a meg, and it is all for nothing! But one thing issure!—I won’t go tamely home! If I can’t get to London, but very likely I shall think of a way to do so, I shall make for the coast, and sign on a barque as ship’s boy. If there had been any pirates left I should have done that rather even than have gone to London. Though I would like to see the sights, and kick up some larks,” he added wistfully.
“Don’t despair!” said Gilly, much entertained by this ingenuous history. “Perhaps we can contrive that you shall go there.”
An eager face was turned towards him. “Oh, sir, do you think I might indeed? But how?”
“Well, we will think about that presently,” promised the Duke, emerging from the lane on to the Hitchin road. “First, however, we must lay a piece of steak to that eye of yours.”
“Sir, you are a regular Trojan!” Tom said, in a rush of gratitude. “I beg your pardon for not being civil to you at first! I thought you was bound to be like all the rest, jawing and moralizing, but I see you are a bang-up person, and I do not at all mind telling you what my name is! It’s Mamble, Thomas Mamble. Pa is an ironmaster, and we live just outside Kettering. Where do you live, sir?”
“Sometimes in the country, sometimes in London.”
“I wish we did so!” Tom said enviously. “I have never been south of Kettering until they sent me to Worthing. I had the measles, you know, and the doctor said I should go there. I wish it had been Brighton! That would have been something like! Only not with old Snape. You can have no notion what it is like, sir, being Pa’s only son! They will not leave me alone for a minute, nor let me do the least thing I like, and everything is wretched beyond bearing!”
“But I know exactly what it is like,” Gilly said. “If I did not, I suppose I should have been just like all the rest, and should have handed you back to your tutor.”
“You will not!” Tom cried, in swift alarm.
Gilly smiled at him. “No, not quite immediately! But I think you must go back to your father in the end, you know. I daresay he is very much attached to you, and you will not like to cause him too much anxiety.”
“N-no,” agreed Tom rather grudgingly. “Of course I shall have to return, but I won’t do so until I have been to London! That would be worth anything! He will be in one of his grand fusses, I suppose, and I shall catch it when I do go back, but—”
“You might not,” the Duke said.
“You do not know Pa, sir!” replied Tom feelingly. “Or Snape!”
“Very true, but it Is possible that if he knows you have been my guest, and if I meet your papa, and talk to him, he may not, after all, be so very angry with you.”
Tom surveyed him doubtfully. “Well, I think he will be,” he said. “I don’t care, mind you, for I can stand a lick or two, but Pa is the biggest ironmaster in all our set, and as rich as—as Crassus, and he has the deuce of a temper! And he is for ever wanting to bring me up a gentleman, and he won’t have me do anything vulgar and jolly, or know the out-and-out fellows in Kettering, and he is bound to be in a rage over this!”
“Well, that would be very terrible,” said the Duke, in his tranquil way. “Perhaps you had best return to Mr. Snape after all.”
“No, that I won’t do!” declared Tom, with great resolution.
It was not long after this that they reached Baldock, and drove into the yard of the White Horse. Tom, although much revived in spirit, was physically a good deal shaken still, and was glad of the support of the Duke’s arm into the inn. The waiter, whom they encountered in the lobby at the back of the house, stared at them in gloomy surprise, but the Duke paid no attention to his, merely saying: “Desire Mrs. Appleby to step up to my room, please,” and leading Tom to the staircase.
When Mrs. Appleby came sailing into the Pink Parlour a few minutes later, she was not only very curious, but more than half inclined to take exception to Tom’s arrival. The waiter had described his appearance in unflattering terms, and although she had been prompt to snub him, she had been equally prompt to come up and inspect Tom for herself.
She found him sitting in the armchair by the fire, while the Duke bathed his bruised head and face. He certainly looked a disreputable object, and Mrs. Appleby exclaimed in a displeased voice: “Well! And may I ask, sir, what is this?”
The Duke was quite unused to being spoken to in that tone, and he turned his head to look at her in some surprise. Without knowing why she did so, she dropped a slight curtsy, and said very much more mildly: “I understood as you wanted to speak to me, sir.”
“Yes,” the Duke replied. “I want a bedchamber to he prepared for my young friend, if you please. He has had the misfortune to be robbed by a couple of footpads. Sit still, Tom, and hold that wet pad to your eye: Mrs. Appleby will bring you some raw beef to put upon it directly.”
“I didn’t know you was going to bring any young gentleman back with you, sir, I’m sure.”
“No, indeed, how should you?” said the Duke. “I did not know it myself. Have you some objection?”
“Of course, sir, if he is a friend of yours—! Only it seems a queer thing, with you not mentioning it, and him with no baggage, and all!”
“It is a sad fix for him to be in,” agreed the Duke. He smiled at her. “We must do what we can to make him more comfortable.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Applesby helplessly. Tm sure I would not wish to be unfeeling, but I never heard of a young gentleman trapesing about the country, and no carriage, nor nothing, and seemingly quite by himself!”
“No, it was certainly unwise, but he will know better another time. I expect he would be glad of that hot brick you brought up for me.”
At this, Tom uttered a growling protest, which had the effect of drawing Mrs. Appleby’s attention to him. She now perceived that he was younger than she had at first supposed, and looking extremely wan and battered. Her face softened; she said: “I will see to it, sir. Oh, dearie me, and the way his good clothes are spoilt! I do hope he has not run away from school!”
“No, I have not!” Tom said.
She shook her head, but said: “Do you take him to No. 6, sir: you will find the bed is ready made up. And if he will take off his jacket and his nether-garments I will see what can be done to furbish them up.”
She bustled away, and Tom, asserting that he was quite well, and did not wish to go to bed, allowed himself to be led down the passage to a small room at the back of the house. When upon his feet he was obliged to confess that he still felt as sick as a horse. The Duke said that he would feel very much better when he had swallowed a glass of hartshorn and water, and rested for a little while, and helped him to strip off his mired clothing. Tom then lay down upon the bed in his underlinen, and the Duke covered him with the patchwork quilt.
“I did not think it would be bellows to mend with me so easily!” Tom murmured discontentedly. “But he hit me with a cudgel, after all! I am as dead as a herring! I only hope old Snape is feeling half as bad!”
He closed his eyes on this pious aspiration; and the Duke, wondering a little ruefully into what difficulties his sympathy with a fellow-sufferer might lead him, went away to ask Mrs. Appleby for some hartshorn.