Sir Tristram, standing once more beside Sylvester’s bed, was a little shocked to perceive already a change in him. Sylvester was still propped up by a number of pillows, and he still wore his wig, but he seemed suddenly to have grown frailer and more withdrawn. Only his eyes were very much alive, startlingly dark in his waxen face.
Sir Tristram said in his deep voice: “I’m sorry, sir: I believe my visit has too much exhausted you.”
“Thank you, I am the best judge of what exhausts me,” replied Sylvester. “I shan’t last much longer, I admit, but by God, I’ll last long enough to settle my affairs! Are you going to marry that chit?”
“Yes, I’ll marry her,” said Shield. “Will that content you?”
“I’ve a fancy to see the knot well tied,” said Sylvester. “Fortunately, she’s not a Papist. What do you make of her?”
Sir Tristram hesitated. “I hardly know. She’s very young.”
“All the better, as long as her husband has the moulding of her.”
“You may be right, but I wish you had broached this matter earlier.”
“I’m always right. What did you want to do? Come a-courting her?” jibed Sylvester. “Poor girl!”
“You are forcing her to a marriage she may easily regret. She is romantic.”
“Fiddledeedee!” said Sylvester. “Most women are, but they get the better of it in time. Is that damned mincing puppy-dog downstairs?”
“Yes,” said Shield.
“He’ll put you in the shade if he can,” said Sylvester warningly.
Sir Tristram looked contemptuous. “Well, if you expect me co vie with his graces you’ll be disappointed, sir.”
“I expect nothing but folly from any of my family!” snapped Sylvester.
Sir Tristram picked up a vinaigrette from the table by the bed and held it under his great-uncle’s nose. “You’re tiring yourself, sir.”
“Damn you!” said Sylvester faintly. He lifted his hand with a perceptible effort and took the bottle, and lay in silence for a time, breathing its aromatic fumes. After a minute or two his lips twitched in a wry smile, and he murmured: “I would give much to have been able to see the three of you together. What did you talk of?”
“Ludovic,” replied Shield with a certain cool deliberation.
Sylvester’s hand clenched suddenly; the smile left his face. He said scarcely above a whisper: “I thought you knew his name is never to be mentioned in this house! Do you count me dead already that you should dare?”
“You’re not a greater object of awe to me on your deathbed, Sylvester, than you have ever been,” said Shield.
Sylvester’s eyes flashed momentarily, but his sudden wrath vanished in a chuckle. “You’re an impudent dog, Tristram. Did you ever care for what I said?”
“Very rarely,” said Shield.
“Quite right,” approved Sylvester. “Damme, I always liked you for it! What have you been saying about the boy?”
“Eustacie wanted to hear the story. Apparently you told her he was dead.”
“He is dead to me,” said Sylvester harshly. “Of what use to let her make a hero of him? You may depend upon it she would. Did you tell her?”
“Basil told her.”
“You should have stopped him.” Sylvester lay frowning, his fingers plucking a little at the gorgeous coverlet. “Basil believed the boy’s story,” he said abruptly.
“I have never known why, sir.”
Sylvester flashed a glance at him. “You didn’t believe it, did you?”
“Did any of us, save only Basil?”
“He said we should have let him stand his trial. I wonder. I wonder.”
“He was wrong. We did what we could for Ludovic when we shipped him to France. Why tease yourself now?”
“You never liked him, did you?”
“You have only to add that I am something of a collector of antique jewellery, Sylvester, and you will have said very much what Basil has been saying, far more delicately, below stairs.”
“Don’t be a fool!” said Sylvester irritably. “I told you he’d do what he could to spoil your chances. Send him about his business!”
“You will have to excuse me, sir. This is not my house.”
“No, by God, and nor is it his! “ said Sylvester, shaken by a gust of anger. “The estate will be in ward when I die, and I have not made him a trustee!”
“Then you are doing him an injustice, sir. Who are your trustees?”
“My lawyer, Pickering, and yourself,” answered Sylvester.
“Good God, what induced you to name me?” said Shield. “I have not the smallest desire to manage your affairs!”
“I trust you, and I don’t trust him,” said Sylvester. “Moreover,” he added with a spark of malice, “I’ve a fancy to make you run in my harness even if I can only do it by dying. Pour me out a little of that cordial.”
Sir Tristram obeyed his behest, and held the glass to Sylvester’s lips. Perversely, Sylvester chose to hold it himself, but it was apparent that even this slight effort was almost too great a tax on his strength.
“Weak as a cat!” he complained, letting Shield take the glass again. “You’d better go downstairs before that fellow has time to poison Eustacie’s mind. I’ll have you married in this very room just as soon as I can get the parson here. Send Jarvis to me; I’m tired.”
When Sir Tristram reached the drawing-room again the tea table had been brought in. Beau Lavenham inquired after his great-uncle, and upon Sir Tristram’s saying that he found him very much weaker, shrugged slightly, and said: “I shall believe Sylvester is dead when I see him in his coffin. I hope you did not forget to tell him that I am dutifully in attendance?”
“He knows you are here,” said Shield, taking a cup and saucer from Eustacie, “but I doubt whether he has strength enough to see any more visitors tonight.”
“My dear Tristram, are you trying to be tactful?” inquired the Beau, amused. “I am quite sure Sylvester said that he would be damned if he would see that frippery fellow Basil.”
Shield smiled. “Something of the sort. You should not wear a sugarloaf hat.”
“No, no; it cannot be my taste in dress which makes him dislike me so much, for that is almost impeccable,” said the Beau, lovingly smoothing a wrinkle from his satin sleeve. “I can only think that it is because I stand next in the succession to poor Ludovic, and that is really no fault of mine.”
“For all we know you may be further removed than that,” said Tristram. “Ludovic may be married by now.”
“Very true,” agreed the Beau, sipping his tea. “And in some ways a son of Ludovic’s might best solve the vexed question of who is to reign in Sylvester’s stead.”
“The estate is left in trust.”
“From your gloomy expression, Tristram, I infer that you are one of the trustees,” remarked the Beau. “Am I right?”
“Oh yes, you’re right. Pickering is joined with me. I told Sylvester he should have named you.”
“You are too modest, my dear fellow. He could not have made a better choice.”
“I am not modest,” replied Shield. “I don’t want the charge of another man’s estate; that is all.”
The Beau laughed, and setting down his tea cup turned to Eustacie. “It has occurred to me that I am here merely in the role of chaperon to a betrothed couple,” he said. “I do not feel that I am cut out for such a role, so I shall go away now. Dear cousin!—” He raised her hand to his lips. “Tristram, my felicitations. If we do not meet before we shall certainly meet at Sylvester’s funeral.”
There was a short silence after he had gone. Sir Tristram snuffed a candle which was guttering, and glanced down at Eustacie, sitting still and apparently pensive by the fire. As though aware of his look, she raised her eyes and gazed at him in the intent, considering way which was so peculiarly her own.
“Sylvester wants to see us married before he dies,” Shield said.
“Basil does not think he will die.”
“I believe he is nearer to it than we know. What did the doctor say?”
“He said he was very irreligious, and altogether insupportable,” replied Eustacie literally.
Sir Tristram laughed, surprising his cousin, who had not imagined that his countenance could lighten so suddenly. “I dare say he might, but was that all he said?”
“No, he said also that it was useless for him to come any more to see Grandpère, because when he said he should have gruel Grandpère at once sent for a green goose and a bottle of burgundy. The doctor said that it would kill him, and du vrai, I think he is piqued because it did not kill Grandpère at all. So perhaps Grandpère will not die, but on the contrary get quite well again.”
“I am afraid it is only his will which keeps him alive.” Shield moved towards the fire and said, looking curiously down at Eustacie: “Are you fond of him? Will it make you unhappy if he dies?”
“No,” she replied frankly. “I am a little fond of him, but not very much, because he is not fond of anybody, he. It is not his wish that one should be fond of him.”
“He brought you out of France,” Shield reminded her.
“Yes, but I did not want to be brought out of France,” said Eustacie bitterly.
“Perhaps you did not then, but you are surely glad to be in England now?”
“I am not at all glad, but, on the contrary, very sorry,” said Eustacie. “If he had left me with my uncle I should have gone to Vienna, which would have been not only very gay, but also romantic, because my uncle fled from France with all his family, in a berline just like the King and Queen.”
“Not quite like the King and Queen if he succeeded in crossing the frontier,” said Shield.
“I will tell you something,” said Eustacie, incensed. “Whenever I recount to you an interesting story you make me an answer which is like—which is like those snuffers— enfin! ”
“I’m sorry,” said Shield, rather startled.
“Well, I am sorry too,” said Eustacie, getting up from the sofa, “because it makes it very difficult to converse. I shall wish you good night, mon cousin.”
If she expected him to try to detain her she was disappointed. He merely bowed formally and opened the door for her to pass out of the room.
Five minutes later her maid, hurrying to her bedchamber in answer to a somewhat vehement tug at the bellrope, found her seated before her mirror, stormily regarding her own reflection.
“I will undress, and I will go to bed,” announced Eustacie.’
“Yes, miss.”
“And I wish, moreover, that I had gone to Madame Guillotine in a tumbril, alone! ”
Country-bred Lucy, a far more appreciative audience than Sir Tristram, gave a shudder, and said: “Oh, miss, don’t speak of such a thing! To think of you having your head cut off, and you so young and beautiful!”
Eustacie stepped out of her muslin gown, and pushed her arms into the wrapper Lucy was holding. “And I should have worn a white dress, and even the sans-culottes would have been sorry to have seen me in a tumbril!”
Lucy had no very clear idea who the sans-culottes might be, but she assented readily, and added, in all sincerity, that her mistress would have looked lovely.
“Well, I think I should have looked nice,” said Eustacie candidly. “Only it is no use thinking of that, because instead I am going to be married.”
Lucy paused on her task of taking the pins out of her mistress’s hair to clasp her hands, and breathe ecstatically: “Yes, miss, and if I may make so bold as I do wish you so happy!”
“When one is forced into a marriage infinitely distasteful one does not hope for happiness,” said Eustacie in a hollow voice.
“Good gracious, miss, his lordship surely isn’t a-going to force you?” gasped Lucy. “I never heard such a thing!”
“Oh!” said Eustacie. “Then it is true what I have heard in France, that English ladies are permitted to choose for themselves whom they will marry!” She added despondently: “But I have not seen anyone whom I should like to have for my husband, so it does not signify in the least.”
“No, miss, but—but don’t you like Sir Tristram, miss? I’m sure he’s a very nice gentleman, and would make anyone a good husband.”
“I do not want a good husband who is thirty-one years old and who has no conversation!” said Eustacie, her lip trembling.
Lucy put down the hairbrush. “There, miss, you’re feeling vapourish, and no wonder, with everything come upon you sudden, like it has! No one can’t force you to marry against your true wishes—not in England, they can’t, whatever they may do in France, which everyone knows is a nasty murdering place!”
Eustacie dried her eyes and said: “No, but if I do not marry my cousin I shall have to live with a horrid chaperon when my grandpapa dies, and that would be much, much worse. One must resign oneself.”
Downstairs Sir Tristram had just reached the same conclusion. Since, sooner or later, he would have to marry someone, and since he had determined never again to commit the folly of falling in love, his bride might as well be Eustacie as another. She seemed to be tiresomely volatile, but no sillier than any other young woman of his acquaintance. She was of good birth (though he thought her French blood to be deplored) , and in spite of the fact that if he had a preference it was for fair women, he was bound to admit that she was very pretty. He could have wished she were older, but it was possible that Sylvester, whose experience was undoubtedly wide, knew what he was talking about when he said that her extreme youth was in her favour. In fact, one must resign oneself.
Upon the following morning the betrothed couple met at the breakfast-table and took fresh stock of each other. Sir Tristram, whose mulberry evening dress had not met with Eustacie’s approval, had had the unwitting tact to put on a riding-suit, in which severe garb he looked his best; and Eustacie, who had decided that, if she must marry her cousin, it was only proper that he should be stimulated to admiration of her charms, had arrayed herself in a bergere gown of charming colour and design. Each at first glance felt moderately pleased with the other, a complacent mood which lasted for perhaps ten minutes, at the end of which time Sir Tristram was contemplating with grim misgiving the prospect of encountering vivacity at the breakfast-table for the rest of his life, and Eustacie was wondering whether her betrothed was capable of uttering anything but the most damping of monosyllables.
During the course of the morning, Sir Tristram was sent for to Sylvester’s bedroom. He found his great-uncle propped up very high in bed, and alarmingly brisk, and learned from him that his nuptials would be celebrated upon the following day. When he reminded Sylvester that marriages could not be performed thus out of hand, Sylvester flourished a special licence before his eyes, and said that he was not so moribund that he could not still manage his affairs. Sir Tristram, who liked being driven as little as most men, found this instance of his great-uncle’s forethought so annoying that he left him somewhat abruptly, and went away to cool his temper with a gallop over the Downs. When he returned it was some time later, and he found the doctor’s horse being walked up and down before the Court, and the household in a state of hushed expectancy. Sylvester, having managed his affairs to his own satisfaction, drunk two glasses of Madeira, and thrown his snuffbox at his valet for daring to remonstrate with him, had seemed suddenly to collapse. He had sunk into a deep swoon from which he had been with difficulty brought round, and the doctor, summoned post-haste, had announced that the end could not now be distant more than a few hours.
Regaining consciousness, Sylvester had, in a painful but determined whisper, declined the offices of a clergyman, recommended the doctor to go to hell, forbidden the servants to open his doors to his nephew Basil, announced his intention of dying without a pack of women weeping over him, and demanded the instant attendance of his nephew Tristram.
Sir Tristram, hearing these details from the butler, stayed only to cast his hat and coat on a chair, and went quickly up the stairs to the Great Chamber.
Both the valet and the doctor were in the room, the valet looking genuinely grieved and the doctor very sour. Sylvester was lying flat in the huge bed with his eyes shut, but when Tristram stepped softly on to the dais, he opened them at once, and whispered: “Damn you, you have kept me waiting!”
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“I did not mean to die until tomorrow,” said Sylvester, labouring for breath. “Damme, I’ve a mind to make a push to last the night if only to spite that snivelling leech!... Tristram!”
“Sir?”
Sylvester grasped his wrist with thin, enfeebled fingers. “You’ll marry that child?”
“I will, Sylvester: don’t tease yourself!”
“Always meant Ludovic to have her ... damned young scoundrel! Often wondered. Do you think he was telling the truth—after all?”
Shield was silent. Sylvester’s pale lips twisted. “Oh, you don’t eh? Well, you can give him my ring if ever you see him again—and tell him not to pledge it! Take it: I’ve done with it.” He slid the great ruby from his finger as he spoke, and dropped it into Shield’s hand. “That Madeira was a mistake. I ought to have kept to the Burgundy. You can go now. Don’t let there be any mawkish sentiment over my death!”
“Very well, sir,” said Shield. He bent, kissed Sylvester’s hand, and without more ado turned and went out of the room.
Sylvester died an hour later. The doctor who brought the news to Shield, and to Beau Lavenham, both waiting in the library, said that he had only spoken once more before the end.
“Indeed, and what did he say?” inquired the Beau.
“He made a remark, sir—I may say, a gross remark!—derogatory to my calling!” said the doctor. “I shall not repeat it!”
Both cousins burst out laughing. The doctor cast a look of shocked dislike at them and went away, disgusted but not surprised by their behaviour. A wild, godless family he thought. They were not even profitable patients, these Lavenhams: he was glad to be rid of them.
“I suppose we shall never know what it was that he said,” remarked the Beau. “I am afraid it may have been a trifle lewd.”
“I should think probably very lewd,” agreed Shield.
“But how right, how fitting that Sylvester should die with a lewd jest on his lips!” said the Beau. He patted his ruffles. “Do you still mean to be married tomorrow?”
“No, that must be postponed,” Shield answered.
“I expect you are wise. Yet one cannot help suspecting that Sylvester would enjoy the slightly macabre flavour of a bridal presided over by his mortal remains.”
“Possibly, but I never shared Sylvester’s tastes,” said Shield.
The Beau laughed gently, and bent to pick up his hat and cane from the chair on which he had laid them. “Well, I do not think I envy you the next few days, Tristram,” he said. “If I can be of assistance to you, do by all means call upon me! I shall remain at the Dower House for some little time yet.”
“Thank you, but I don’t anticipate the need. I rely on Pickering. The charge of the estate would be better borne by him than by me. God knows what is to be done, with the succession in this accursed muddle!”
“There is one thing which ought to be done,” said the Beau. “Some effort should be made to find Ludovic.”
“A good deal easier said than done!” replied Sir Tristram. “He could not set foot in England if he were found, either. If he stayed in France he may have lost his head for all we know. It would be extremely like him to embroil himself in a revolution which was no concern of his.”
“Well,” said the Beau softly, “I do not want to appear unfeeling, but if Ludovic has lost his head, it would be of some slight interest to me to hear of it.”
“Naturally. Your position is most uncertain.”
“Oh, I am not repining,” smiled the Beau. “But I still think you ought—as trustee—to find Ludovic.”
During the next few days, however, Sir Tristram had enough to occupy him without adding a search for the heir to his duties. Upon the arrival of the lawyer, Sylvester’s will was read, a document complicated enough to try the temper of a more patient man than Shield. A thousand and one things had to be done, and in addition to the duties attendant upon the death of Sylvester there was the problem of Eustacie to worry her betrothed.
She accepted both her bereavement and the postponement of her wedding day with perfect fortitude, but when Sir Tristram asked her to name some lady living in the neighbourhood in whose charge she could for the present remain, she declared herself quite unable to do so. She had no acquaintance in Sussex, Sylvester having quarrelled with one half of the county and ignored the other half. “Besides,” she said, “I do not wish to be put in charge of a chaperon. I shall stay here.”
Sir Tristram, feeling that Sylvester had in his time created enough scandal in Sussex, was strongly averse from giving the gossips anything further to wag their tongues over. Betrothed or not, his and Eustacie’s sojourn under the same roof was an irregularity which every virtuous dame who thought the Lavenhams a godless family would be swift to pounce upon. He said: “Well, it is confoundedly awkward, but I don’t see what I can do about it. I suppose I shall have to let you stay.”
“I shall stay because I wish to,” said Eustacie, bristling. “I do not have to do what you say yet!”
“Don’t be silly!” said Sir Tristram, harassed, and therefore irritable.
“I am not silly. It is you who have a habit which I find much more silly of telling me what I must do and what I must not do. I am quite tired of being bien elevèe, and I think I will now arrange my own affairs.”
“You are a great deal too young to manage your own affairs, I am afraid.”
“That we shall see.”
“We shall, indeed. Have you thought to order your mourning clothes? That must be done, you know.”
“I do not know it,” said Eustacie. “Grandpère said I was not to mourn for him, and I shall not.”
“That may be, but this is a censorious world, my child, and it will be thought very odd if you don’t accord Sylvester’s memory that mark of respect.”
“Well, I shan’t,” said Eustacie simply.
Sir Tristram looked her over in frowning silence.
“You look very cross,” said Eustacie.
“I am not cross,” said Sir Tristram in a somewhat brittle voice, “but I think you should know that while I am prepared to allow you all the freedom possible, I shall expect my wife to pay some slight heed to my wishes.”
Eustacie considered this dispassionately. “Well, I do not think I shall,” she said. “You seem to me to have very stupid wishes—quite absurd, in fact.”
“This argument is singularly pointless,” said Sir Tristram, quelling a strong desire to box her ears. “Perhaps my mother will know better how to persuade you.”
Eustacie pricked up her ears at that. “I did not know you had a mother! Where is she?”
“She is in Bath. When the funeral is over I am going to take you to her, and put you in her care until we can be married.”
“As to that, it is not yet decided. Describe to me your mother! Is she like you?”
“No, not at all.”
“ Tant mieux! What, then, is she like?”
“Well,” said Sir Tristram lamely, “I don’t think I know how to describe her. She will be very kind to you, I know.”
“But what does she do?” demanded Eustacie. “Does she amuse herself at Bath? Is she gay?”
“Hardly. She does not enjoy good health, you see.”
“Oh!” Eustacie digested this. “No parties?”
“I believe she enjoys card parties.”
Eustacie grimaced expressively. “Me, I know those card parties. I think she plays Whist, and perhaps Commerce.”
“I dare say she does. I know of no reason why she should not,” said Shield rather stiffly.
“There is not any reason, but I do not play Whist or Commerce, and I find such parties quite abominable.”
“That need not concern you, for whatever Sylvester’s views may have been, I feel sure that my mother will agree that it would be improper for you to go out in public immediately after his death.”
“But if I am not to go to any parties, what then am I to do in Bath?”
“Well, I suppose you will have to reconcile yourself to a period of quiet.”
“Quiet?” gasped Eustacie. “ More quiet? No, and no, and no!”
He could not help laughing, but said: “Is it so terrible?”
“Yes, it is!” said Eustacie. “First I have to live in Sussex, and now I am to go to Bath—to play backgammon! And after that you will take me to Berkshire, where I expect I shall die.”
“I hope not!” said Shield.
“Yes, but I think I shall,” said Eustacie, propping her chin in her hands and gazing mournfully into the fire. “After all, I have had a very unhappy life without any adventures, and it would not be wonderful if I went into a decline. Only nothing that is interesting ever happens to me,” she added bitterly, “so I dare say I shall just die in childbed, which is a thing anyone can do.”
Sir Tristram flushed uncomfortably. “Really, Eustacie!” he protested.
Eustacie was too much absorbed in the contemplation of her dark destiny to pay any heed to him. “I shall present to you an heir,” she said, “and then I shall die.” The picture suddenly appealed to her; she continued in a more cheerful tone: “Everyone will say that I was very young to die, and they will fetch you from the gaming hell where you—”
“Fetch me from where?” interrupted Sir Tristram, momentarily led away by this flight of imagination.
“From a gaming hell,” repeated Eustacie impatiently. “Or perhaps the Cock Pit. It does not signify; it is quite unimportant! But I think you will feel great remorse when it is told to you that I am dying, and you will spring up and fling yourself on your horse, and ride ventre a terre to come to my deathbed. And then I shall forgive you, and—”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” demanded Sir Tristram. “Why should you forgive me? Why should—What is this nonsense?”
Eustacie, thus rudely awakened from her pleasant dream, sighed and abandoned it. “It is just what I thought might happen,” she explained.
Sir Tristram said severely: “ It seems to me that you indulge your fancy a deal too freely. Let me assure you that I don’t frequent gaming hells or cockpits! Nor,” he added, with a flicker of humour, “am I very much in the habit of flinging myself upon my horses.”
“No, and you do not ride ventre a terre. It does not need that you should tell me so. I know!”
“Well, only on the hunting-field,” said Sir Tristram.
“Do you think you might if I were on my deathbed?” asked Eustacie hopefully.
“Certainly not. If you were on your deathbed it is hardly likely that I should be from home. I wish you would put this notion of dying out of your head. Why should you die?”
“But I have told you!” said Eustacie, brightening at this sign of interest. “I shall—”
“Yes, I know,” said Sir Tristram hastily. “You need not tell me again. There will be time enough to discuss such matters when we are married.”
“But I thought it was because you must have an heir that you want to marry me?” said Eustacie practically. “Grandpère explained it to me, and you yourself said—”
“Eustacie,” interposed Sir Tristram, “if you must talk in this extremely frank vein, I’ll listen, but I do beg of you not to say such things to anyone but me! It will give people a very odd idea of you.”
“Grandpère,” said Eustacie, with the air of one quoting a major prophet, “told me not to mind what I said, but on no account to be a simpering little innocente.”
“It sounds to me exactly the kind of advice Sylvester would give you,” said Shield.
“And you sound to me exactly the kind of person I do not at all wish to have for my husband!” retorted Eustacie. “It will be better, I think, if we do not marry!”
“Possibly!” said Sir Tristram, nettled. “But I gave my word to Sylvester that I would marry you, and marry you I will!”
“You will not, because I shall instantly run away!”
“Don’t be a little fool!” said Sir Tristram unwisely, and walked out of the room, leaving her simmering with indignation.
Her wrath did not last long, for by the time she had taken a vow to put her threat into execution, all the adventurous possibilities of such a resolve struck her so forcibly that Sir Tristram’s iniquities were quite ousted from her mind. She spent a pleasurable hour in thinking out a number of plans for her future. These were varied, but all of them impracticable, a circumstance which her common sense regretfully acknowledged. She was forced in the end to take her handmaiden into her confidence, having abandoned such attractive schemes as masquerading in male attire, or taking London by storm by enacting an unspecified tragic role at Drury Lane. It was a pity, but if one had the misfortune to be a person of Quality one could not become an actress; and although the notion of masquerading as a man appealed strongly to her, she was quite unable to carry her imagination farther than the first chapter of this exciting story. One would naturally leap into the saddle and ride off somewhere, but she could not decide where, or what to do.
Lucy, at first scandalized by the idea of a young lady setting out into the world alone, was not a difficult person to inspire. The portrait drawn for her edification of a shrinking damsel condemned to espouse a tyrant of callous instincts and brutal manners profoundly affected her mind, and by the time Eustacie had graphically described her almost inevitable demise in childbed, she was ready to lend her support to any plan her mistress might see fit to adopt. Her own brain, though appreciative, was not fertile, but upon being adjured to think of some means whereby a lady could evade a distasteful marriage and arrange her own life, she had the happy notion of suggesting a perusal of the advertisements in the Morning Post.
Together mistress and maid pored over the columns of this useful periodical. It was not, at first glance, very helpful, for most of its advertisements appeared to be of Well-matched Carriage Horses, or Superb Residences to be Hired for a Short Term. Further study, however, enlarged the horizon. A lady domiciled in Brook Street required a Governess with a knowledge of Astronomy, Botany, Water-Colour Painting, and the French Tongue to instruct her daughters. Dismissing the first three requirements as irrelevancies, Eustacie triumphantly pointed to the last, and said that here was the very thing.
That a governess’s career was unlikely to prove adventurous was a consideration that did not weigh with her for more than two minutes, for it did not take her longer than this to realize that her young charges would possess a handsome brother, who would naturally fall in love with his sisters’ governess. Persecution from his Mama was to be expected but after various vicissitudes it would be discovered that the humble governess was an aristocrat and an heiress, and all would end happily. Lucy, in spite of never having read any of the romances which formed her mistress’s chief study, saw nothing improbable in this picture, but doubted whether Sir Tristram would permit his betrothed to leave the Court.
“He will know nothing about it,” said Eustacie, “because I shall escape very late at night when he thinks I am in bed, and ride to Hand Cross to catch the mail coach to London.”
“Oh, miss, you couldn’t do that, not all by yourself!” said Lucy. “It wouldn’t be seemly!”
Paying no heed to this poor-spirited criticism, Eustacie clasped her hands round her knees, and began to ponder the details of her flight. The scheme itself might be fantastical, but there was a streak of French rationality in her nature which could be trusted to cope with the intricacies of the wildest escapade. She said: “We shall need the stable keys.”
“ We, miss?” faltered Lucy.
Eustacie nodded. “But yes, because I have never saddled a horse, and though I think it would be a better adventure if I did everything quite by myself, one must be practical, after all. Can you saddle a horse?”
“Oh yes, miss!” replied Lucy, a farmer’s daughter, “but—”
“Very well, then, that is arranged. And it is you, moreover, who must steal the stable keys. That will not be a great matter. And you will pack for me two bandboxes, but not any more, because I cannot carry much on horseback. And when I reach Hand Cross I shall let Rufus go, and it is certain that he will find his way home, and that will put my cousin Tristram in a terrible fright when he sees my horse quite riderless. I dare say he will think I am dead.”
“Miss, you don’t really mean it?” said Lucy, who had been listening open-mouthed.
“But of course I mean it,” replied Eustacie calmly. “When does the night mail reach Hand Cross?”
“Just before midnight, miss, but they do say we shall be having snow, and that would make the mail late as like as not. But, miss, it’s all of five miles to Hand Cross, and the road that lonely, and running through the Forest—oh, I’d be afeard!”
“I am not afraid of anything,” said Eustacie loftily.
Lucy sank her voice impressively. “Perhaps you haven’t ever heard tell of the Headless Horseman, miss?”
“No!” Eustacie’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me at once all about him!”
“They say he rides the Forest, miss, but never on a horse of his own,” said Lucy throbbingly. “You’ll find him up behind you on the crupper with his arms round your waist.”
Even in the comfortable daylight this story was hideous enough to daunt the most fearless. Eustacie shuddered, but said stoutly: “I do not believe it. It is just a tale!”
“Ask anyone, miss, if it’s not true!” said Lucy.
Eustacie, thinking this advice good, asked Sir Tristram at the first opportunity.
“The Headless Horseman?” he said. “Yes, I believe there is some such legend.”
“But is it true?” asked Eustacie breathlessly.
“Why, no, of course not!”
“You would not then be afraid to ride through the Forest at night?”
“Not in the least. I’ve often done so, and never encountered a headless horseman, I assure you!”
“Thank you,” said Eustacie. “Thank you very much!”
He looked a little surprised, but as she said nothing more very soon forgot the episode.
“My cousin Tristram,” Eustacie told Lucy, “says that it is nothing but a legend. I shall not regard it.”