The Duke left Arlesey on the following morning, unmolested, but slightly bedraggled. His hosts, upon his dramatic collapse, had carried him up to the second bedroom, and had not only stripped him of his outer garments, but had revived him with all manner of country remedies. They were very much shocked, Mrs. Shottery as much by the scorched state of his riding-coat as by his alarming pallor; and they perceived, by the fine quality of his linen, that he was of gentle birth. By the time that he had recovered his senses, the worthy couple had convinced each other that he had fallen a victim to the cut-throat thieves who infested the district, using the Bird in Hand as their headquarters. The Duke was feeling quite disinclined for conversation, and merely lay smiling wearily upon them, and murmuring his soft-toned thanks for their solicitude. Mrs. Shottery bustled about in high fettle, bringing up hot bricks to lay at his feet, strong possets to coax down his throat, and vinegar to soothe a possible headache, while her husband, having seen the glow of fire in the distance, sallied forth to reconnoitre. He came back just as the Duke was dropping asleep and told him with much headshaking, and many exclamations, that the Bird in Hand was ablaze, and such a to-do as he disremembered to have seen in Arlesey before.
In the morning, the Duke was touched to find that Mrs. Shottery had washed and ironed his shirt, and had even pressed out the creases in his olive-green coat. He said that he would not for the world have had her put herself to such trouble, but she would not listen to such foolishness, she said. Instead she showed him the scorch-marks on his drab riding-coat, mourning over the impossibility of eradicating them. Her husband eyed the Duke with respect, and said he reckoned he knew how the gentleman had come by the marks.
“What happened to the inn?” asked the Duke. “Is it quite burned down? Really, I never thought of that!”
“Well, it ain’t clean gone, but no one couldn’t live in it no more,” replied Mr. Shottery, with satisfaction. “And where that scoundrel Mimms has loped off to the lord alone knows! They say as he and the barman, and another cove went away in the cart, and so many bits and pieces piled up in it that it was a wonder the old nag could draw it. A good riddance to them all, is what I say!”
“If they don’t come back, which they likely will!” said his wife pessimistically.
“I think they will not,” said the Duke. “You may depend upon it that they are afraid that I shall lay information against them.”
“Which I trust and prays, sir, as you will!” said Mrs. Shottery, in minatory accents.
The Duke returned an evasive answer. He had certainly meant to do so, but a period of reflection had shown him the disadvantages of such proper action. His identity would have to be disclosed, and he was as little desirous of having it known that the Duke of Sale had been kidnapped as of advertising his presence in the district. He discovered, too, upon consideration, that having outwitted his enemies he felt himself to be quite in charity with them. His most pressing wish was to return to Hitchin, where his two protégés must by now be fancying themselves deserted.
He drove there in a gig, beside a shy man who had business in the town, and had agreed to carry the Duke along with him, The Shotterys bade him a fond farewell, and indignantly spurned his offer to pay them for his lodging. He said, colouring like a boy, that he thought he had given them a great deal of trouble, but they assured him that they grudged nothing to anyone who could smoke out a nest of thieves, as he had done.
The day was fine, and a night’s repose had restored the Duke to the enjoyment of his usual health. He was inclined to feel pleased with himself, and to think that for a greenhorn he had acquitted himself creditably. It seemed unlikely that Liversedge and his associates would dare to make any further attempt upon his life, or his liberty, and it was reasonable to suppose that he had come to an end of his adventures. Nothing now remained but to convey Tom and Belinda to Bath, and to hand Belinda over to Harriet while he himself searched for Mr. Mudgley.
He reckoned without his hosts. When the gig set him down at the Sun Inn, and he walked into this hostelry, he was met by popping eyes and gaping mouths, and informed by the landlord that no one had expected to see him again. The Duke raised his brows at this, for he did not relish the landlord’s tone, and said: “How is this? Since I have not paid my shot you must have been sure of my return.”
It was plain that the landlord had had no such certainty. He said feebly: “I’m downright glad to see your honour back, but the way things have been ever since you went off, sir, I wouldn’t be surprised at nothing, and that’s the truth!”
The Duke was conscious of a sinking at the pit of his stomach. “Has anything gone amiss?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” said the landlord sarcastically, his wrongs rising forcibly to his mind. “Oh, no, sir! I’ve only had the constables here, and my good name blown upon, for to have the constables nosing round an inn is enough to ruin it, and this posting-house which has given beds to the gentry and the nobility too, and never a breath of scandal the years I’ve owned it!”
The Duke now perceived that he had not yet come to the end of his adventures. He sighed, and said: “Well I suppose it is Master Tom! What mischief has he been engaged upon while I was away?”
The landlord’s bosom swelled. “If it’s your notion of mischief, sir, to be took up for a dangerous rogue, it ain’t mine! Robbery on the King’s highroad, that’s what the charge is! Firing at honest citizens—old Mr. Stalybridge, too, as is highly respected in the town! Hell be transported, if he ain’t hanged, and a good thing too, that’s what I say!”
The Duke was a good deal taken aback by this disclosure, but after a stunned moment he said: “Nonsense! He has no gun, and cannot possibly—”
“Begging your pardon, sir, he had a fine pistol, and it was God’s mercy he didn’t kill Mr. Stalybridge’s coachman with it, for the shot went so close to him it fair scorched his ear!”
“Good God!” ejaculated the Duke, suddenly bethinking him of his duelling-pistols.
“Ah, and well you may say so!” nodded the landlord. “And a great piece of black cloth hanging down over his face, with a couple of holes in it like a mask, enough to give anyone a turn! Locked up in prison he is now, the young varmint!”
“Did you say he missed his shot?” demanded the Duke.
The landlord reluctantly admitted that he had said this, and the Duke, wasting no more time with him, went up to his room to inspect his guns. As he had suspected, one was missing from the case. A quick inspection showed that Tom had taken the pistol which had never been loaded. The box containing powder and ball did not seem to have been tampered with, rather strangely. The Duke collected his fast dwindling capital from the locked drawer in his dressing-table, and sallied forth to see what could be done to extricate Tom from his predicament. Just as he was about to leave the inn he bethought him of his other protégée, and turned to ask the landlord where she was.
“She went away with Mr. Clitheroe,” replied the landlord simply.
The Duke took a moment to assimilate this piece of information. Nothing in Belinda’s artless prattle had led him to foresee the introduction of a Mr. Clitheroe into his life. A happy thought occurred to him; he said quickly: “Did Mr. Clitheroe quite lately marry a Miss Street?”
“Mr. Clitheroe ain’t married at all, nor likely to be,” answered the landlord. “He’s an old Quaker gentleman, as lives with his sister, Ickleford way.”
As it seemed to him most improbable that an old Quaker gentleman should have offered Belinda either a ring to put on her finger, or a purple silk dress, the Duke was now totally at a loss. The landlord, staring fixedly at a point above his head, added in an expressionless voice: “Mr. Clitheroe don’t nowise hold with town bucks seducing of innocent young females—by what he told me.”
The Duke allowed this aspersion upon his character to pass without remonstrance. It seemed reasonable to suppose that Belinda had fallen into safe hands; and a faint hope that one at least of his charges was provided for began to burgeon in his breast. He set forth to find the local Roundhouse.
It was one of Lord Lionel’s maxims that every man, however wealthy, should be able on all occasions to fend for himself; and to this end he had had his ward taught such useful things as how to shoe a horse, and how to clean his own guns. Unfortunately he had never foreseen that Gilly might one day stand in need of instruction on the right methods to employ in dealing with constables and magistrates. Apart from a vague notion that one applied for bail, the Duke had no idea of what he ought to do to procure Tom’s release; but although this would have seriously daunted him a week earlier his horizon had lately been so much broadened that he embarked on his task with a surprising amount of assurance.
This assurance stood him in good stead with the constable, whom he found in charge at the Roundhouse. The constable, an elderly man of comfortable proportions, treated him with an instinctive deference which was only slightly shaken by the disclosure that he was responsible for the young varmint locked up in No. 2 cell. He did indeed look reproachfully at the Duke, and say that it was a serious business which would end in Tom’s being committed for trial, but since he added there was never any knowing what devilment such pesky lads would engage in, the Duke was encouraged to hope that he knew enough about boys not to regard Tom’s exploit in too lurid a light.
He sat down on one of the benches, and laid his hat on the table. “Well, now,” he said, smiling up at the constable, “will you tell me just what happened? I have heard what sounds to me a pack of nonsense, from the landlord of the Sun. He is plainly a foolish fellow, and I should prefer to listen to a sensible man.”
“Now there,” said the constable, warming to him, “you are in the right of it, sir! You might truss up Mr. Moffat’s wit in an eggshell. Not but what this young varmint has gone for to commit a felony, no question. I’ll have to take him up to Mr. Oare’s place this morning, him being a magistrate, and Mr. Stalybridge laying a charge against him, as he is entitled to do.”
The Duke perceived that since Tom had not yet been haled before the magistrate his task must be to induce Mr. Stalybridge to withdraw the charge against him. He said: “Where did all this happen?”
“It were last night, just after dusk,” said the constable. “A matter of a mile outside the town on the road to Stevenage. There was Mr. Stalybridge, a-riding in his carriage, with his man sitting up beside the coachman, him having been on a visit, you see, when up jumps this young varmint of yours out of nowhere, on a horse which he hires from Jem Datchet—which I am bound to say he paid Jem for honest, else Jem would never have let him take the nag, him being one of them as lives in a gravel-pit, as the saying is. And he ups and shouts out, Stand and deliver! quite to the manner born, and looses off this pop of his, which fair scorches the ear off Mr. Stalybridge’s coachman, according to what he tells me. Well, not to wrap it up in clean linen, sir, Mr. Stalybridge was scared for his life, and he had out his purse, and his gold watch, and all manner of gewgaws for to hand over to the young varmint, when his man, which is not one as has more hair than wit, slips off of the box when no one ain’t heeding him, and has your young varmint off of Jem Datchet’s nag just as he’s about to take Mr. Stalybridge’s purse. I will say the lad is a proper fighter, for he put in a deal of cross-and-jostle work, but betwixt the lot of them they had him over-powered, and brought him in here, and give him over to me, as is proper. Ah, and he had both his daylights darkened, but Mr. Stalybridge’s man he had had his cork drawn, so that it was wunnerful to see how the claret did flow! And once he found himself under lock and key, would he open his mummer? Not he! Downright sullen, that’s what he be now, and won’t give his name, nor where he lives, nor nothing!”
“I daresay he is frightened,” said the Duke. “He is only fifteen, you know.”
“You don’t say!” marvelled the constable. “Well, I did use to think my own boys was well-growed lads, but if that don’t beat all!”
“I thought you had boys of your own,” said the Duke softly. “Full of mischief too, I daresay?”
He had struck the right note. The constable beamed upon him, and enunciated: “Four fine lads, sir, and everyone as lawless as the town bull!”
The Duke settled down to listen sympathetically for the next twenty minutes to an exact account of the prowess of the constable’s four sons, their splendid stature, their youthful pranks, and present excellence. The time was not wasted. When the recital ended the Duke had added an officer of the law to his circle of friends and well-wishers; and the constable had agreed to allow him to visit the prisoner.
The Duke then asked to see the pistol. The constable at once produced it, and the most cursory examination was enough to show the Duke that it had never been loaded, much less fired.
The constable looked very much taken aback by this. He admitted that he had not cared to meddle with such a gun, since it looked to him like one of them murdering duelling-pistols which went off if a man so much as breathed on them. “Well, it will not do so when it is unloaded,” said the Duke. “Take a look at it now!”
The constable received the gun gingerly from him, and inspected it. Then he scratched his head. “I’m bound to say it ain’t never been fired, not from the looks of it,” he owned. “But Mr. Stalybridge and his man and the coachman, they all say as the young varmint pretty nigh shot the ear off the coachman!”
“But what does the boy say?” asked the Duke.
“Well, that’s it, sir. He don’t say nothing. Proper sullen, that’s what he is!”
The Duke rose. “He’ll talk to me. Will you take me to him?”
When the door was opened into Tom’s cell, that young gentleman was discovered seated on the bench in a dejected attitude, his head propped in his hands. He looked up defensively, disclosing a bruised countenance, but when he perceived the Duke his sulky look vanished, and he jumped up, exclaiming with a distinct sob in his voice: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford! Indeed, I am very sorry! But I didn’t do it!”
“No, I don’t think you did,” replied the Duke, in his serene way. “But you have been behaving very badly, you know, and you quite deserve to be locked up!”
Tom sniffed. “Well, when you went away, I didn’t know what to do, for I had very little money, and there was the shot to be paid, and I quite thought you had deserted us! Why did you go, sir? Where have you been?”
“To tell you the truth, I couldn’t help but go,” said the Duke ruefully. “I am very sorry to have made you uncomfortable, but I think you should have known I would not desert you. Now, tell me this, Tom! What did you do to make three persons swear that you fired at one of them?”
The cloud descended again on to Tom’s face. He flushed, glanced up under his lashes at the interested constable, and growled: “I shan’t say.”
“Then I am much afraid that you will be either hanged or transported,” replied the Duke calmly.
The constable nodded his approval of this, and Tom looked up, his ruddy colour fading swiftly, and cried: “Oh, no! No, no, they would not! I didn’t hurt anyone, nor even take the old man’s purse!”
“What did you do?” asked the Duke.
Tom was silent for a moment. Then he muttered, staring at his boots: “Well, if you will know, it was a ginger-beer bottle!”
His worst fears were realized. The constable’s jaw dropped for a moment, and then he burst into a hearty guffaw, slapping his leg with ecstasy, and saying that it beat the Dutch downright.
“ Ginger-beer bottle? ” repeated the Duke blankly.
“That’s right, sir,” said the constable, wiping his eyes. “Regular boy’s trick! You shakes the bottle up good, and out flies the cork, just like it was a pistol-shot. Lordy, lordy, to think of three growed men scared of a popping cork! It’ll be the laugh of the town, that’s what it’ll be!”
It was plain that Tom would almost have preferred to have owned to firing a pistol. He hunched his shoulder and glowered at the constable. The Duke said: “Well, thank God for that! What did you do with the bottle?”
“I threw it into the ditch,” muttered Tom. “And you need not think I meant to steal the old man’s purse, because Pa would have paid him back! And in any event it is different when one is being a highwayman.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong, young man!” said the constable severely. “There ain’t a mite of difference—not but that,” he added, turning despairingly to the Duke, “you’ll never get a young varmint like this here to believe you, tell him till Doomsday! All the same, they be, talking a pack of nonsense about Dick Turpin, and the like!”
The Duke, who could remember thinking that a career as a highwayman would be fraught with romance and adventure, refrained from comment. He merely said that the ginger-beer bottle must be searched for, to prove the veracity of Tom’s story; The constable agreed that this should be done; Tom was locked once more into his cell; and the Duke set off, with a junior constable, and in a hired gig, to the point on the road where Mr. Stalybridge had deposed that he had been held up. This, fortunately, was easy to locate, and after a short search the bottle was found. It was borne back in triumph to the senior constable; and after the Duke had slid a gleaming golden coin into his hand, to compensate him (he said) for all the trouble he had been put to, no one could have been more anxious than this comfortable officer to see Tom set at liberty. He favoured the Duke with some valuable information about Mr. Stalybridge, fortified with which the Duke set out to pay a call on this injured citizen.
He found a pompous little man, who was obviously set on vengeance. He strutted about his book-room, declaiming, and the Duke soon perceived that an appeal to his charity would be useless. He let him talk himself out, and then said gently: “It is all very bad, but the boy did no more than loose the cork of a ginger-beer bottle at your coachman, sir.”
“I do not believe you, sir!” stated Mr. Stalybridge, staring at him out of a pair of protuberant eyes.
“But it will be proved,” said the Duke. He smiled rather mischievously at his host. “I found the bottle, you know. With one of the constables. And it will be shown that the pistol has never been fired. I am so very sorry!”
“Sorry?” said Mr. Stalybridge explosively.
“Yes—but perhaps you will not care for it, after all! Only everyone will laugh so! To be giving up one’s purse because a cork flies out of a bottle—” The Duke broke off, and raised his handkerchief to his lips. “Forgive me!” he apologized. “I am sure it was enough to frighten anyone!”
“Sir!” said Mr. Stalybridge, and stopped.
“And the boy is only fifteen years old!” added the Duke, in a stifled voice.
Mr. Stalybridge spoke without drawing breath for several moments. The Duke heard him with an air of polite interest. Mr. Stalybridge sat down plump in the nearest chair, and puffed, glaring at him. The Duke sighed, and made as if to rise. “You are adamant, then,” he said. “I had best visit the magistrate—Mr. Oare, is it?”
Mr. Stalybridge swelled slightly, and delivered himself of a bitter animadversion on the jobbery that raised to posts of authority those who were demonstrably unfit to hold them. The. Duke perceived with satisfaction that the constable had not misled him: Mr. Stalybridge and Mr. Oare were at loggerheads. Mr. Stalybridge eyed him in a frustrated way, and said: “If I withdraw the charge it will be out of pity for one who is of tender years!”
“Thank you,” said the Duke, holding out his hand. “You are a great deal too good, sir. You must believe that I am excessively sorry that you should have been troubled by this badly-behaved boy. Indeed, he shall come up to beg your pardon and to thank you himself.”
Mr. Stalybridge hesitated, but after looking very hard at the Duke for a moment or two, he took the hand, saying, however: “You go too fast, young man! I said if! ”
The Duke smiled at him understandingly. “Of course!”
“And I don’t want to see the young rascal!” said Mr. Stalybridge angrily. “I only hope it may be a lesson to him, and if you are a relative of his I beg you will take better care of him in the future!”
“I shall not let him out of my sight,” promised the Duke. “And now perhaps we had best visit Mr. Oare.”
It seemed for a time that Mr. Stalybridge was going to draw back, but after the Duke had artlessly suggested that nothing should be said of the ginger-beer bottle he consented to go with him, and to withdraw his charge against Tom. By the time this had been accomplished, and all the other formalities necessary for Tom’s release fulfilled, the day was considerably advanced, and the Duke a good deal the poorer. But he bore Tom off in triumph, and that without having recourse to the use of his own title and consequence, a circumstance which pleased him so much that he quite forgave Tom for his outrageous behaviour. To have outwitted a band of kidnappers, wrested a potential felon from the hands of the Law, and dealt successfully with so inimical a gentleman as Mr. Stalybridge, all within twenty-four hours, gave him a much better idea of himself than ever he had had before. There had been times when he had regretted embarking on his odyssey, but although his efforts on Tom’s behalf had been extremely exhausting, and although his money and his stock of clean linen were both running low, he no longer regretted it. He had made an interesting discovery: the retainers who sped to anticipate his every need, and guarded him from all contact with the common world, might be irksome at times, or at times a comfort to him, but he knew now that they were no more necessary to him than his high title: plain Mr. Dash of Nowhere in Particular could fend for himself.
So it was with the hint of a smile in his eyes that he bade Tom, over a sustaining dinner, render an account of himself.
“Well, I had not enough ready on me to pay the shot here,” explained Tom.
“But you knew that I had locked my money in my dressing-table.”
“Of course I did, but a pretty fellow I should be to think of robbing you!” said Tom indignantly.
“A pretty fellow you were to think of robbing Mr. Stalybridge,” said the Duke quizzically.
“Yes, but that was different!” insisted Tom. “Besides I thought it would be an adventure!”
“You had your wish, then. Your scruples, I collect, didn’t extend to my pistol?”
“But, sir!” Tom said very earnestly. “Indeed, I only borrowed that! And I didn’t take any ball, or powder, you know, because I thought you would not like me to.”
“Well, that was very thoughtful of you,” said the Duke. “And it would have been still more thoughtful of you if you had remembered to keep out of scrapes, and to take care of Belinda.”
“I was trying to take care of her, sir!” Tom pointed out. “For when you did not come home last night, the landlord said you had loped off without paying our shot, and he was deuced unpleasant, and I quite thought it would make Belinda uncomfortable, only she is such an unaccountable girl, and heeds nothing, besides being a dead bore—anyway, I thought I must see what could be done to come off all right. And I have played that trick with a bottle before, you know, and I thought very likely it would answer, and so it would have, if only that fellow had not crept up behind me! And, oh, sir, I very nearly hit the coachman! Only fancy! For I can tell you it is not at all an easy thing to aim a ginger-beer cork.”
“Tom, you are a hopeless case, and I have a good mind to take you home to your father!”
“Oh, no, sir, pray do not! I swear I will not do it again! It would be too bad of you, when I took such pains not to give my name at that horrid Roundhouse, nor anything that could make the constable think I was me! For there is no knowing but that Mr. Snape might have enquired for me here. And if you had not gone off without saying anything to me I should not have done it!” He looked at the Duke with suddenly knit brows. “Where did you go to, sir?”
The Duke laughed. “You will never forgive me! I had a more exciting adventure than you: I was kidnapped, and held to ransom, and I only escaped by burning down my prison!”
Tom’s eyes glistened enviously. He instantly demanded to be told the whole. It did not seem to him at all strange that anyone should desire to kidnap such an unimportant person as Mr. Rufford, so the questions he eagerly asked were none of them embarrassing. He expressed his heartfelt chagrin at having had no hand in the Duke’s escape, and promised to guard him in future with all the might of his large fists. It occurred to him that Belinda might also have been kidnapped, and he began to make plans for her deliverance. But the Duke had made some enquiries about Belinda’s new protector, and he was obliged to dash Tom’s hopes. Mr. Clitheroe, according to reliable report, was an elderly gentleman of impeccable morals, who lived with his sister on the outskirts of the town, and busied himself largely with charitable works. In what circumstance he had encountered Belinda the Duke could not guess. She had gone out after she had breakfasted that morning, and had returned quite shortly under Mr. Clitheroe’s escort, to collect her two bandboxes. The landlord had been unwilling to allow these hostages out of his hands, but he seemed to stand in some awe of Mr. Clitheroe. From what the Duke had been able to discover, that stern Quaker had severely rated him for admitting seducers and abductionists into his house, and had cut short all his attempts to explain that Belinda was travelling in the company of her brother and his tutor. “And what’s the use of me telling him she has a brother when he’s bound to ask where the brother may be, and all I can answer him is that he’s clapped up in the Roundhouse?” demanded the landlord, justly aggrieved. “I’m sure I don’t know how you’ve got him out, sir, but if it’s all the same to you I’d as lief you didn’t bring him here! And—”
“It is not all the same to me,” had said the Duke, very gently indeed.
There was much that the landlord had meant to say, the chief item of information being that he would not harbour any of the Duke’s party in his house another night, but the air of hauteur which this rather insignificant young man could upon occasion assume made him uneasy, and he decided to leave it unsaid. He told his indignant wife that he hadn’t dealt with the Quality for twenty-five years without knowing when a high-up gentleman had entered his inn. “He can call himself a tutor if he so chooses,” he said, nodding darkly, “but I never saw a tutor that wore a coat like that of his, nor one that looked at you as though you was two-penn’orth of nothing.” He added philosophically: “Besides, he ain’t staying more than one night.”
So the Duke, who had now formed the intention of boarding the London stage on the following day, was allowed to remain at the Sun for one more night. Tom, delighted by this change of plan, promised very handsomely to behave with the utmost propriety, and at once began to make interest with his protector for visits to Astley’s Amphitheatre, the Royal Exchange, and other such places of interest. He was just confiding to him his burning desire to witness a bout of fisticuffs at the Fives Court, and the Wax Effigies at Madame Tussaud’s, when the door opened, and Belinda tripped into the parlour, carrying her bandboxes, and looking as unruffled as she was beautiful. She smiled blindingly upon the Duke, and said: “Oh, you are come back, sir! I am so very glad to see you again! Oh, Tom, I quite thought you had gone to Newgate!”
“Much you would have cared!” growled Tom, by no means gratified by her sudden appearance.
“Oh, no, but I am so pleased Mr. Rufford is here! It is beyond anything great! How do you do, sir?”
He had risen from his chair, staring at her. “Belinda!” he exclaimed.
She untied the strings of her bonnet and cast it on to a chair. “We have been in such a pickle!” she informed him. “Only fancy! Tom was arrested for a highwayman, sir!”
“Belinda, what became of you?” demanded the Duke.
“Oh, I was never so taken-in!” she informed him mournfully. “For when you went away, sir, and Tom was put in prison, I didn’t know what I should do. And I must tell you that they were all in an uproar here, so that it was excessively uncomfortable. And the landlord was so uncivil to me this morning that there was no bearing it! So I went out after breakfast, to look at the shops—they are the shabbiest in the world, I am sure! I saw a quiz of a hat, and was in whoops! And just as I was looking into a window where there were all manner of trinkets, but none of them in the least pretty, a very kind gentleman came up to me, and made me a bow.”
“Mr. Clitheroe?” interpolated the Duke.
She laughed. “Good gracious, no, sir! I don’t know what his name was, but he was quite a young gentleman, and modish, too, and handsome! And he asked me if I would like to have a ring to put on my finger.”
“And what,” asked the Duke, with deep misgiving, “did you reply to that?”
“I said I should like it above all things,” said Belinda innocently.
“Lord, I think girls are the stupidest things!” said Tom, in disgust. “If he had asked me, I would have told him that I would rather have a pair of stilts, or something jolly like that! Oh, Mr. Rufford, there was a man at the Fair, walking on a pair so high that I daresay he could have looked into all the upper windows in the town! If I had a pair like that, I could have such larks, and frighten all the old ladies in their beds by looking in at them! Will you buy me a pair, sir? I daresay there may be a shop which sells them, and I know I could learn to walk on them in a trice.”
“No, I will not,” answered the Duke, not mincing matters. “Belinda, didn’t I tell you you must not speak to strange men?”
“Not even when they offer to buy me a ring?” she asked.
“Least of all when they offer to buy you a ring!”
“But how shall I ever have a ring, or a silk dress, if I must not speak to any gentlemen?” she asked reasonably.
“If only you will be good, and mind what I tell you,” said the Duke,” perhaps you shall have a silk dress!”
Belinda sighed. “That is what Uncle Swithin said, only he never gave it to me,” she observed.
“Well, never mind that now! What happened when you told this buck that you would like a ring?”
“Oh, it was so sad!” she exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears. “He said we should go into the shop, and he offered his arm, and I am sure I had not so much as noticed Mr. Clitheroe, for why should I?”
“Wait a minute!” begged the Duke. “What has Mr. Clitheroe to do with all this? When did you meet him?”
“Why, just then, sir! He was standing on the other side of the road, though I did not notice him, for he is quite old, yon know, and not at all handsome. He came smash up to us, and began to abuse the kind gentleman, and he said I should not go with him. But I would have gone with him, only that he went away, as red as fire! I thought it was so poor-spirited of him! And then Mr. Clitheroe asked me where I lived, and how old was I, and all manner of things.”
“Well, I call that a great piece of impudence!” declared Tom. “You should have sent him to the deuce, only I dare swear you did not!”
“Oh, no, how could I? I told him that I did not live anywhere, but that I was staying with you, sir.”
She smiled enchantingly at the Duke as she spoke, but although he found it impossible to be angry with anyone so lovely or so ingenuous, he was easily able to refrain from returning the smile. He said, in a tone of resignation: “Did you tell him that I was a very kind gentleman, Belinda?”
She nodded, and her curls danced. “Of course I did!” she assured him. “And he said that he would like to meet you.”
The Duke shuddered. “I may readily believe it! I trust he may never have his wish granted!”
“Oh, no! he is a dead bore!” agreed Belinda. “Besides, I told him that you had gone away and left me, so he knew he could not meet you.”
The Duke sank his head in his hands. “Belinda, Belinda, if I do not speedily contrive to hand you into safe keeping I foresee that there will be scarce a town in England where I shall dare to show my face again! So you told him I had deserted you! And what then?”
“Then he said he should take me home with him, and give me something better than a silk dress, or a ring to put on my finger. And he said his sister would be very glad to take care of me. So I came back with him here, sir, and fetched my bandboxes, and he took me to his home. But I don’t think Miss Clitheroe was glad at all, for she seemed very cross to me. However, she said I might stay, and she gave me some fruit to eat, and a handkerchief to hem, and she did say that I set neat stitches. But I do not care for hemming, so when Mr. Clitheroe came in I asked him what it was that he would give me, because I would like very much to have it. And I quite thought it would be something splendid, sir, for he said it was better than a silk dress! Only it was nothing but a take-in after all! He just gave me a Bible!”
Her face of chagrin was ludicrous enough to make her harassed protector burst out laughing. “My poor Belinda!”
“Well, I do think it was a great deal too bad of him, sir! The shabbiest trick! So I said I had a Bible already, and then I thought very likely you would have returned, so I would come back here to find you. And would you believe it, they would not let me! Oh, they did prose so!”
“But what did they want you to do instead?” demanded Tom.
“I don’t know, for I didn’t listen above half. I quite saw that I must run away, and I made up my mind to do so when they should have gone to bed, only by the luckiest chance they went off to a dinner-party—or was it a prayer-meeting? It was some such thing, but I wasn’t attending particularly. So I didn’t say anything, but only smiled, and made them think I would stay, and as soon as they were gone from the house, I slipped out when the servants were not by, and came back to the inn. And, if you please, sir, I have not had any dinner.”
“Ring the bell, Tom, and bespeak dinner for her,” said the Duke. “I am going to find a coach time-table!”
“Oh, are we leaving now?” asked Belinda, brightening.
“No, tomorrow, you stupid thing!” said Tom.
“Immediately!” said the Duke, walking towards the door.
“What?” cried Tom. “Oh, famous, sir! Where do we go?”
“Beyond Mr. Clitheroe’s reach!” replied the Duke. “Constables and magistrates I can deal with to admiration, but not— not, I know well, Mr. Clitheroe!”
He returned to his charges half an hour later with the information that they were bound for Aylesbury in a hired chaise. Belinda, who was making an excellent meal, accepted this without question, but Tom thought poorly of it, and demanded to be told why they must go to such a stuffy place.
“Because I find that there is a coach which runs from Aylesbury to Reading,” replied the Duke. “We may board that tomorrow, and from Reading we can take the London stage to Bath.”
“It would be more genteel to go in a post-chaise,” said Belinda wistfully.
“It would not only be more genteel, it would be by far more comfortable,” agreed the Duke. “It would also be more expensive, and I have been drawing the bustle to such purpose this day that my pockets will soon be to let.”
“Well, I would rather go on the stage!” said Tom, his eyes sparkling. “I shall ride on the roof, and make the coachman give me the reins! I have always wanted to tool a coach! I shall gallop along at such a rate! What a jest it would be if we overturned!”
This agreeable prospect made both him and Belinda laugh heartily. The Duke sent him off to pack up his belongings, devoutly trusting that there did not exist a coachman mad enough to entrust the ribbons to him.