The Foundling

by Джорджетт Хейер

  The Duke drew up his chair to the table, and began to write a note to his betrothed.

  “My dear Harriet,” he scrawled rapidly, “J fear you will utterly cast me off, for I am now under arrest for being a dangerous rogue. Unless I can convince Mr. Mamble that I am indeed myself, nothing short of my instant incarceration in a dungeon will satisfy him. I beg your pardon for putting you to so much trouble, but pray tell Gaywood the whole, and desire him, with my compliments, to come to the Roundhouse and identify me. Ever yours, Sale.”

  He folded this missive, wrote Harriet’s name and direction upon it, and handed it to the constable with instructions to have it conveyed immediately to Laura Place. The constable said he would do this, and added apologetically that duty was duty, and he hoped, if he should have made a mistake, that it would not be held against him.

  The Duke reassured him on this head, but Mr. Mamble exploded with wrath, and said that all this tomfoolery was not helping him to find his boy.

  “Well, I will help you to find you, provided you go to look for him yourself, and do not send this objectionable fellow to bully him into saying what he wants him to,” said the Duke. “You may then ask him if I kidnapped him, and I hope you will be satisfied that I did not.”

  “Where is he?” demanded Mr. Mamble.

  “Are you going to go yourself?”

  “Damn your impudence, yes, I am!”

  “He is in Sydney Gardens, probably lost in one of the labyrinths. And don’t storm and roar at him, for it doesn’t answer at all!”

  “I don’t need you to tell me how to treat my own son!” said Mr. Mamble angrily.

  “That is precisely what you do need,” replied the Duke, his serene tones in striking contrast to Mr. Mamble’s explosive method of speech. “Presently I shall have a good deal to say to you on that score, but you had best find Tom first. I don’t know where you are putting up in Bath, but you may send this fellow to await you there. I’ve no wish for his company.”

  Mr. Mamble glared at him, but he was a fair-minded man, and, having endured Mr. Snape’s unadulterated society for several days, he could not but admit the reasonableness of the Duke’s request. He told Mr. Snape to go back to the White Horse, since he was of no use to anyone, being a muttonheaded fool, no more fit to be in charge of a guinea-pig than of a growing lad. He then said that if the Duke was trying to fob him off while his accomplices spirited Tom away he would rend him limb from limb, and departed, calling loudly for a hack.

  The Duke resigned himself to await Lord Gaywood’s arrival. As the minutes crawled by, it began to be borne in upon him that the messenger had not found Lady Harriet at home. He hoped very much that her return to Laura Place would not be long delayed, for not only did he find the chair on which he was sitting excessively uncomfortable, but he fancied that the constable was regarding him with increasing suspicion.

  After about three quarters of an hour a diversion took place. Tom, looking heated and pugnacious, bounced into the room, and launched himself upon the Duke, grasping him by the arm with painful violence, and crying: “They shan’t arrest you! They shan’t! I’ll fight them all! Oh, sir, don’t let Pa take me away, for I won’t go with him, I won’t!”

  Mr. Mamble, who had followed his son into the room, said: “You young rascal, that’s a pretty way to talk! And me your Pa! Ay, and as for you, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, if you didn’t kidnap my boy—which, mind you, I’m not by any means sure you didn’t—you’ve properly cozened him out of his senses with your smooth talk! And what’s more, he says you’re no more the Duke of Sale than what I am!”

  “No, he doesn’t know I am,” said the Duke.

  “Sir, you’re not!” said Tom, apparently feeling that it must be to his discredit.

  “Well, yes, Tom, I’m afraid I am,” said the Duke apologetically.

  “You’re Mr. Rufford! Oh, do say you are, sir! I know you are only bamming! Dukes are grand, stuffy people, and you aren’t!”

  “No, of course I am not,” said the Duke soothingly. “I cannot help being a Duke, you know. You need not let it distress you! I am still your Mr. Rufford, after all!”

  The sullen look, which indicated that he was very much upset, descended upon Tom’s face. He said gruffly: “Well, I don’t care! I won’t go home with Pa, at all events! I hate Pa! He has spoiled everything!”

  “That is not a proper way to speak of your Papa, Tom, and it is moreover quite untrue,” replied the Duke, removing the clutch from his arm.

  “What you need,” Mr. Mamble informed his son bodingly, “is to have your jacket well dusted, my lad! Ay, and it’s what you’ll get before you’re much older!”

  “And that,” said the Duke, “is hardly a felicitous way of recommending yourself to your son, sir.”

  What Mr. Mamble might have replied to this was never known, for at that moment the constable who had been sent to Laura Place ushered Lady Harriet into the room.

  The Duke leaped to his feet, exclaiming: “Harriet!”

  She put back her veil, blushing, and saying in her soft shy voice: “I thought I should come myself. Gaywood is gone out, and you know how he would roast you! I am so very sorry you have been kept in this horrid place for so long! I had gone out with Belinda, and this poor man was obliged to stay till I returned.

  The Duke took her hand, and kissed it. “I would not have had you come for the world!” he said. “Indeed, I don’t know what I deserve for dragging you into such a coil! You did not come alone!”

  “No, indeed, the constable brought me,” she assured him. “I beg your pardon if you do not like it, Gilly, but I did not wish to bring my maid, or James, for they would have been bound to gave gossiped about it, you know. What is it I must do to have you set at liberty?”

  She looked enquiringly towards the senior constable as she spoke, who bowed very low, and said that if it was not troubling her ladyship too much he would be obliged to her for stating whether or not the gentleman was the Duke of Sale.

  “Oh, yes, certainly he is!” she said. She blushed more than ever, and added: “I am engaged to be married to him, so, you see, I must know.”

  Mr. Mamble drew a large handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his face with it. “I don’t know what to say!” he announced. “To think of my Tom going about with a Duke, and me being so taken-in—Well, your Grace will have to pardon me if I might perhaps have said anything not quite becoming!”

  “Yes, of course I pardon you, but do pray withdraw the charge against me, so that I may escort Lady Harriet home!” said the Duke.

  Mr. Mamble hastened to do this, and would have embarked on an elaborate apology had not the Duke cut him short. “My dear sir, pray say no more! I wish you will go with Tom to the Pelican, and await me there. I hope you will give me your company at dinner, for there are several things I wish to talk to you about.”

  “Your Grace,” said Mr. Mamble, bowing deeply, “I shall be highly honoured!”

  “But it isn’t dinner-time yet!” objected Tom. “I don’t want to go back to the Pelican! Pa took me away from those jolly gardens before I had even seen the grotto! And I had paid my sixpence, too!”

  “Well, ask your Papa for another sixpence, and go back to the gardens—that is, if he will permit you to.”

  “You do just what his Grace tells you, and keep a civil tongue in your head!” Mr. Mamble admonished his son. “Here’s a crown for you: you can take a hack, and see you ain’t late for dinner!”

  Tom, his spirits quite restored by this generosity, thanked him hurriedly, and dashed off. The rest of the party then dispersed, the Duke handing Harriet up into a hackney, and Mr. Mamble setting out in a chastened and bemused frame of mind to walk to the Pelican.

  Having given the direction to the coachman, the Duke got into the hackney beside Harriet, and took her in his arms, and kissed her. “Harry, I don’t know how you found the courage to do it, for you must have hated it excessively, my poor love, but I am very sure I am the most fortunate, unde
serving dog alive!” he declared.

  She gave a gasp, and trembled. “Oh, Gilly!” she said faintly, timidly clasping the lapel of his coat. “Are you indeed sure?”

  “I am indeed sure,” he said steadily.

  Her eyes searched his face. “When you offered for me, I did not think—” Her voice failed. She recovered it. “I know, of course, that persons of our rank do not look for—for the tenderer passions in marriage, but—”

  “Did your mother tell you so, my love?” he interrupted.

  “Oh, yes, and indeed I do not mean to embarrass you with—with—”

  “Infamous! It is precisely what my uncle said to me! Was that what made you so shy, that dreadful day? I know I was ready to sink! My uncle told me I must not look for love in my wife, but only complaisance!”

  “Oh, Gilly, how could he say so? Mama said it would give you a disgust of me if I seemed—if I seemed to care for you very much!”

  “What very odd creatures they are! They should deal extremely together. As extremely as we shall!”

  She sighed, and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “How comfortable this is!” she said. “And so delightfully vulgar! Does plain Mr. Dash put his arm round ladies in hackney coaches?”

  “When not in gaol he does,” the Duke responded.

  Chapter XXII

  When Tom returned from his second visit to Sydney Gardens, he was relieved to find his parent in a subdued frame of mind. He had been half afraid that he might discover Mr. Snape at the Pelican, but when he peeped cautiously into the private parlour he saw only the Duke and his father, seated on either side of a small coal fire, and drinking sherry. Mr. Mamble had not imbibed enough to put him at his ease, and he was sitting rather on the edge of his chair, and treating his host with a deference which the Duke disliked even more than he had disliked his earlier manner. He had not neglected, however, to turn Mr. Mamble’s reverence for a title to good account, but had lectured him with great authority on his mishandling of his son.

  “He’s my only one, your Grace,” Mr. Mamble explained. “I never had any advantages, not being one who came into the world hosed and shod, like you did, and by the time I was as you see me now—and I fancy I’m as well-equipped as anyone!—I doubt it was too late for me to be thinking of learning to be a fine gentleman. They say black will take no other hue, and black I’ll remain to the end of my days. But if it busts me I’ll see my boy a regular out-and outer! I won’t deny I’ve been disappointed in Snape—though, mind you, he came to me out of a lord’s house, and he was mighty well spoken of, else I wouldn’t have hired him, for I’m one as likes good value for my money, ay, and gets it, what’s more! But a tutor he must have, like the nobs, for if he don’t, how will he learn to behave gentlemanly, and to speak the way you do?”

  “Send him to school,” said the Duke.

  Mr. Mamble eyed him suspiciously. “Begging your Grace’s pardon, was that what your father did with you?”

  “My father died before I was born. I hope he would have, had he lived. As it was, my guardian had so great a care for me that he saddled me with a tutor. But I was very sickly, which Tom is not. Even so, I can assure you that it is wretched for a boy to be educated in such a way. I used to envy my cousins very much, for they were all at school.”

  “Ah, I daresay, your Grace!” said Mr. Mamble gloomily. “But the sort of school I want for Tom maybe wouldn’t have him, on account of me not being a gentleman born.”

  “I expect,” said the Duke diffidently, “I might be able to help you. I fancy I have an interest at one good school at least.”

  Mr. Mamble drew a breath. “By God!” he said, with deep feeling, “if your Grace will speak for Tom there’s no saying where he won’t end!”

  Thus it was that by the time Tom came in for his dinner, his parent greeted him with the tidings that if he would be a good boy, and mind his book, and abjure low company, he should go to a school of his Grace’s choosing.

  Tom was at once amazed and overjoyed by this unexpected piece of good fortune, and as soon as he could master his tongue expressed his readiness to conform in every way to his sire’s wishes.

  Mr. Mamble grunted, regarding him with a fond but sceptical eye. “Ay, I daresay! Prate is prate, but it’s the duck lays the eggs,” he observed. “You be off, and make yourself tidy! You ought to know better than to come into his Grace’s room looking like a clodpole!”

  “Oh, bother, he don’t give a fig for that!” said Tom cheerfully. “Oh, sir, shan’t I go to London with you, after all?”

  “Yes, indeed you shall, if your Papa will let you,” the Duke said, smiling at him reassuringly. “Perhaps you might come to me after Christmas, and see the pantomime, and all the famous sights. I will invite two of my young cousins as well—only you must not lead them into mischief!”

  “Oh, no.’” Tom said earnestly. “I promise faithfully I will not!” Another thought occurred to him; he said anxiously: “And shall I go shooting at your house here? You said I should!”

  “Yes, certainly, unless your Papa wishes to take you home directly.”

  Mr. Mamble, who was ecstatically rubbing his knees at the thought of his son’s approaching visit to a ducal mansion, said that he didn’t know but what he might not remain in Bath for a few days after all. The Duke mentally chid himself for the feeling of dismay which invaded his breast.

  Mr. Mamble became more loquacious over dinner, and by far more natural. He even ventured to ask the Duke why he had elected to wander round the country under a false name.

  “Because I was tired of being a Duke,” replied his host. “I wanted to see how it would be to be a nobody.”

  Mr. Mamble laughed heartily at this, and said he warranted some people didn’t know when they were well off.

  “Oh, Pa!” exclaimed Tom, looking up from his plate. “He isn’t! But I told, him you would pay him back for all the money he spent on me, and you will, won’t you?”

  Mr. Mamble said that he would certainly do so, and showed an embarrassing tendency to produce his purse then and there. The Duke hastily assured him that his difficulties were only of a temporary nature.

  Mr. Mamble begged him not to be shy of mentioning it if he would like the loan of a few bills. He said that he knew that the nobs were often at low tide through gaming and racing and such, which, though he did not hold with them himself, were very genteel pastimes. He then said in a very lavish way that he hoped that the Duke would not trouble himself about his shot at the inn, but hang it up, since he would count himself honoured to be allowed to stand huff, and would question no expense.

  “No, no, indeed I am only awaiting a draft from London!” the Duke said, in acute discomfort. “And pray do not try to reimburse me on Tom’s account! I should dislike it excessively!”

  Mr. Mamble, fortified by several glasses of burgundy, then set himself to discover the extent of the Duke’s fortune. The Duke, who had not previously encountered his kind, gazed at him quite blankly, and wondered of what interest his fortune could be to anyone but himself. Mr. Mamble said that he supposed it was derived mostly from rents, and asked him a great many questions about the management of large estates, which, while they certainly showed considerable shrewdness, reduced the Duke to weary boredom. The covers were removed, the port had sunk low in the bottle, and still Mr. Mamble seemed to have no intention of taking his leave. A horrible suspicion that he had brought his baggage from the White Horse to the Pelican, and meant to take up his quarters there, had just entered the Duke’s head when the door was opened, and he looked up to see his cousin Gideon standing upon the threshold. The expression of gentle resignation was wiped from his face. He sprang up, exclaiming: “Gideon!”

  Captain Ware grinned at him, but stepping across the room grasped him urgently by the shoulders, and shook him, saying: “Adolphus, I think I will murder you!”

  The Duke laughed, wrenching the big hands from his shoulders, and holding them hard. “I’m told you’re already thought to
have done so! Oh, but I am glad to see you, Gideon! How the devil did you know where I was?”

  “I have tracked you all the way from Arlesey, my abominable cousin—and a rare dance you have led me!”

  “From Arlesey!” The Duke stared up at him, the liveliest astonishment in his face. “Good—God, how comes this about? You cannot have known that I was there!”

  “But I did know it. Your amiable friend Liversedge very handsomely offered to sell you to me. He thought I might like to succeed to your dignities. I don’t know what mischief you have been brewing, Adolphus, but if ever you cause me to lose so much sleep on your account again I will make you sorry you were ever born!”

  “No, that you won’t!” suddenly interjected Tom, who had been gazing upon this scene with strong disapprobation. He doubled his fists, and eyed Captain Ware belligerently. “I won’t let anybody touch him, and so I warn you!”

  Gideon was amused. “Famous! Now, had I known you had such a stout bodyguard, Adolphus, I need not have worried about you!”

  “Well, you let him alone, for I mean it!” said Tom.

  The Duke laughed. “No, no, Tom, you must not pick a quarrel with my big cousin, for he takes very good care of me, I promise you! Gideon, I must make you known to Mr. Mamble, who is Tom’s father. Mr. Mamble, Captain Ware!”

  Mr. Mamble got up ponderously from his chair, and executed a bow. Tom, a fanatical light in his eye, demanded: “Is he a soldier?”

  “Yes, he is,” said the Duke.

  “Cavalry?” said Tom anxiously.

  “Lifeguards!” said the Duke, in thrilling accents.

  Tom drew a deep, worshipful breath, and uttered: “And you never told me! Sir, were you ever in a battle?”

  “I was in a skirmish at Genappe, and in a battle at Waterloo,” replied Gideon.

  “Wounded?” Tom asked hopefully.

  “Just a scratch,” said Gideon.

  “Tell me all about it, sir, please!”