“Yes, some other time he will,” said the Duke, recklessly committing his cousin. “But not, I think, tonight, for it is growing late, and—” He broke off suddenly, catching sight of his valet, standing in the doorway, and dumbly regarding him. “Nettlebed! But, good God, how in the world—?”
“I brought him along with me,” explained Gideon. “Found him with Matt, in Baldock, hunting for you.”
“My lord!” said Nettlebed, in a queer voice. “My lord! I thank God I’ve found your Grace! I shall never forgive myself, never!”
“Oh, no, no, no!” said the Duke, laying a hand on his arm, and shaking it playfully. “Now, Nettlebed, pray don’t be upset for nothing! You see I am very well! Yes, and extremely glad to have you with me again, for I have missed you very much, I assure you. But I do wish you had not left London! I sent an express to Scriven last night, desiring him to tell you to come to me, with all my gear!”
“My lord, I had to do it!” Nettlebed said. “But I will never do anything your Grace does not wish again, if only your Grace will forgive me!”
“But I have nothing in the world to forgive,” the Duke said gently. “Oh, are you thinking how cross you were with me on the morning I ran away from you all? Well, I meant you to be cross, so perhaps it is I who should be begging your pardon. Now, do pray go and set all to rights in my room, Nettlebed! I am not the least hand at keeping my traps in order, and I shall be very glad to have them tidied for me again.”
This request had the desired effect of making Nettlebed pull himself together. His eye brightened, and he assured the Duke that he had no longer any need to trouble his head over such matters. Before he left the room, he swept the cloth from the table, which the waiter had neglected to do, made up the fire, and straightened the cushions on the sofa, as though in the performance of these acts of service his wounded soul found balm. After that, he withdrew, but saw to it that his presence should still be felt by sending up the waiter with another bottle of port, and one of brandy.
The Duke, who wanted to be alone with his cousin, was then guilty of a piece of strategy. He told Tom that it was time he went off to bed. This aroused Mr. Mamble from some dream of grandeur, and he not only endorsed the command, but said that it was time he went back to the White Horse. He seemed undecided whether to remove from this house to the Pelican on the morrow, or to wrest the unwilling Tom from the Duke. The possibility of having Mr. Mamble as a fellow-guest wrought so powerfully on the Duke’s mind that the first thing he said to his cousin, when he returned from seeing one Mamble off, and the other to his bedchamber, was: “There’s only one thing to be done! I’ll send them both to Cheyney! I promised Tom he should go there to shoot, and I expect his father would like of all things to stay in a Duke’s house.”
Gideon grinned. “No doubt he would! What very queer company you are keeping, Adolphus! I wonder how Mamble and Liversedge will deal together?”
The Duke stared at him. “Liversedge?”
“Not knowing what else to do with him,” explained Gideon. “I have left him at Cheyney, in Wragby’s care—”
“Gideon, you have not brought that fat rogue here with you?” the Duke said incredulously.
“But I have,” replied Gideon. “He awaits your judgment, my little one.”
“But I don’t want him!” objected the Duke, looking harassed. “Really, Gideon, it is quite absurd of you! I have enough on my hands without your adding Liversedge to the rest!”
Gideon was amused. “Are you aware that he not only kidnapped you, but would have been prepared to murder you, for a suitable recompense?”
“Yes, you told me so. I am glad I did not know it while I lay in that cellar! I should have been frightened out of my wits! I supposed that ransom was what was wanted of me, but now I come to think of it the other fellow did utter a number of dark threats, which I set no store by. Did Liversedge really think you would pay him to murder me? He is the most amusing villain!”
Gideon regarded him with a flickering smile. “Am I to understand that you are going to condone his villainy?”
“Well, what else can I do?” asked the Duke reasonably. “If I hand him over to justice, what a stir there would be! Now, Gideon, if you had been captured by a veritable child’s trick, and stowed away in a cellar, would you wish the whole world to know of it?”
“I would not, I own. At the same time, I should desire to discourage any more such attempts.”
“Oh, I am not so green as to fall a victim twice! And I burned down his house, or, at any rate, the only lodging he seemed to have, and took Belinda away from him, so I think he has been pretty well punished, don’t you?”
“I must have a more vengeful disposition than you, Adolphus. No.”
The Duke smiled. “Well, he did you no service, after all. But I cannot but feel that he did me a great deal of service. Only wait until I have told you the sum of my adventures! You will be bound to agree that but for Liversedge nothing in the least out of the way would ever have happened to me. No, no, it would be the shabbiest thing to hand him over to the Law! Besides, he made me laugh!” He looked speculatively at his cousin. “And if you forced him to lead you to my prison, Gideon, I will hazard a guess that you used him very roughly first.”
“Yes, was it not odd of me?” retorted Gideon. “But this will not do, my child! He is not less villainous for making us laugh. If you had not written to me from Baldock, I should not have known where to look for you, and all might have gone very ill indeed with you.”
“Nothing of the sort!” said the Duke, with one of his impish smiles. “You did not rescue me from my cellar, Gideon! I rescued myself! You can have no notion of how much I am set up in my own esteem! Liversedge shall go free. I have more important things to think about.”
Gideon poured himself out a glass of port, and sat down, stretching his long legs before him. “Very well, let it be as you please! But what is to be done with him? He appears to be penniless, and has informed me, with his engaging candour, that of all towns in the world Bath is the one where he least desires to show his face. It would not surprise me if you found it hard to be rid of him. He has effrontery enough for anything!”
“Oh, let him make himself useful at Cheyney, until I have time to consider what must be done with him!” said the Duke carelessly. “If I can induce Mamble to take Tom there, they will be glad of an extra servant in the house. I daresay he may make an excellent butler.”
This made Gideon choke over his port, but when he had recovered he admitted that there was much in what his cousin said, as well he knew, since the moment of his reaching Reading on the previous evening Liversedge had taken it upon himself to act as a major-domo. “I have no doubt he was intent only on softening my hard heart, but I will own that no one could have been more zealous to discover some trace of you, Adolphus. In fact, I owe it to him that we did at last pick up the scent, for when no one could be brought to remember a little fellow in an olive-green coat, he enquired for your inamorata, describing her in terms which has given me an overmastering desire to meet her. There was no difficulty then: no one, it seems, could fail to remember the lady!”
“No, very true! She is the most dazzling girl! You shall certainly see her, but mind, Gideon! you are not to seduce her with promises of a purple silk gown!”
“Good God, could I?”
“Yes, she will go off with anyone who does so. Oh, Gideon, I am glad you have come! I have so much to tell you!” He refilled the glasses, and sat down opposite his cousin. “No sooner am I clear of one scrape than I fall into another! Harriet had to rescue me from the Roundhouse here only this afternoon, and you would not believe what an odious reputation I have in Hertfordshire!”
“Would I not? You forget that I sought for you in Hitchin! But begin at the beginning, Gilly! By the by, I sent that young fool, Matt, back to Oxford with a flea in his ear. He ought to be flogged for embroiling you in his silly starts!”
“Poor Matt, he did not embroil me: I embroil
ed myself. But how came he into the business?”
“Nettlebed recalled that he had been closeted with you the night before you disappeared, and went after him. I met the pair of them in Baldock. Never mind that now! Proceed with your story!”
Thus adjured, the Duke settled down to regale his cousin with the entire history of his adventures. Gideon interpolated so many questions, and laughed so much that the candles were burning low in their sockets before the Duke had ended the tale. Then he demanded to know Gideon’s share in it, and this amused him quite as much as his own part had amused Gideon. When he heard of Lord Lionel’s discovery of his ring in Gideon’s desk, he gave such a crack of mirth that a fellow-guest in the adjoining room thumped indignantly on the wall.
“Yes, excessively droll, no doubt!” said Gideon, thrusting a hand into his pocket, and bringing out the ring. He tossed it into the Duke’s hand. “Take your ill-omened bauble! And now, little cousin, I will break to you a trifle of knowledge you do not appear to have been informed of before! No action for breach of promise can lie against a minor.”
For a moment the Duke stared at him. Then he said blankly: “Do you mean that I did it all for nothing?”
“That is what I mean, Adolphus,” replied Gideon, grinning at him.
This struck the Duke as being so exquisitely humorous that the gentleman in bed in the next room was obliged to thump on the wall again.
“Oh, but I am glad I didn’t know it!” gasped the Duke, wiping his eyes. “Yes, I know you think it ought to be a lesson to me in future to ask my big cousin’s advice, but I would not have missed my adventures for a fortune!”
“No,” said Gideon, regarding him under his drooping eyelids. “I have a notion you are not going to ask anyone’s advice in the future, Adolphus. Shall you be sorry to return to all your dignities?”
“Yes—no! I had a most diverting time, but some of it was most uncomfortable, and I own that I do not care to be without a valet, or a change of raiment! I do trust that Scriven will not delay to send someone here with my baggage!”
“I fancy you need not be anxious on that head,” said Gideon dryly. “What ismore, I have my own guess as to who will appear in Bath before we are much older!”
“Good God! Not my uncle? What the devil shall I do with him, if you are right? I must find this fellow, Mudgley, and I am sure my uncle will be the greatest hindrance to me!”
Gideon’s eyes gleamed appreciatively at the unconscious change in his cousin which made it possible for him to contemplate the possibility of his being able to do anything at all with Lord Lionel, but he replied gravely: “You had best send him to join your new friend at Cheyney.”
“Yes, I think I had,” said the Duke, quite seriously. “He dislikes hotels, so perhaps he will choose to go there. I wonder, will he think Mamble preferable to the damp sheets he is convinced all landlords put upon their beds? And then there is Liversedge! Gideon, I charge you most straitly not to say one word to your father about Liversedge! He would raise such a breeze! And for heaven’s sake, try to think of some plausible tale for me to fob him off with! It would never do for him to know the truth,”
“Turning him up sweet? You won’t do it!”
“I must do it. There is Matt to be thought of, remember! But first I do think I should get rid of Mamble. If he stays in Bath I shall never be able to shake him off. Gideon, you shall drive him and Tom out to Cheyney for me tomorrow!”
Gideon groaned. “And tell Tom how I got my wound? I thank you!”
“Nonsense! It will not hurt you to tell him about a battle, and you are just the sort of’ fellow to give him other ambitions than highroad robbery.”
“Rid your mind of the hope that you are going to fob your hell-born babe off on me!” recommended Gideon.
But the Duke only smiled at him with deep, if rather sleepy, affection, and murmured: “Kind Gideon! Not really a hell-born babe, you know, just a trifle wild! I daresay he will mind you tolerably well. I am glad you are come to Bath!”
He said the same thing when he took himself off to bed, and found Nettlebed waiting to attend on him. Nettlebed had contrived, in some inexplicable way, to make his bedchamber much more comfortable, and there would be no denying that it was extremely pleasant to find candles already burning there, the fire made up, his nightshirt laid out in readiness, and a devoted servitor to pull off his boots, pour out hot water for him, and tenderly divest him of his raiment. He said: “It has done me a great deal of good to be without you, Nettlebed, for it has made me appreciate you as I never did before! Can anything be done, do you think, to make me respectable enough to be seen abroad?”
“Now, don’t you worry your head over that, your Grace!” Nettlebed admonished him. “I will soon have your coat fit to wear, never fear!”
“Thank you. I brought some new neckcloths today, so—”
“Your Grace won’t have to wear them,” said Nettlebed repressively.
“I was afraid you would not quite like them,” said the Duke, in a meek voice.
Nettlebed was not deceived; he was still to much chastened to treat this demure mischief as it deserved, but he shook his head at the Duke, and said severely, as he drew the curtains round the bed: “Ay, right well your Grace knew I wouldn’t like them, and a good thing his lordship isn’t here to see the case you’re in! Now, you go to sleep, your Grace, and no more of your tricks!”
Chapter XXIII
In the morning it was discovered that not only had Nettlebed removed the stains and the creases from the Duke’s coat, but he had also furbished up Tom’s apparel. Nettlebed by no means approved of Master Mamble, but if his master chose to take under his wing a youth of vulgar parentage there was nothing for it but to do what lay in his power to make him respectable. From having attended the Duke and his various cousins in their boyhood, he was perfectly well able to deal with even so recalcitrant a subject as Tom, even succeeding in sending him in to breakfast with his neck clean, and his hair brushed.
Tom, no sufferer from matutinal moroseness, enlivened the board with a ceaseless flow of conversation. As much of this took the form of pertinacious questions addressed to Captain Ware, his victim revised his overnight decision, and grimly informed the Duke that he would obey his behests with the utmost willingness. “And how you have borne it for close on a week, I know not, Adolphus!” he said.
The Duke laughed, but bade Tom postpone his questions. “For my cousin is always very cross at breakfast,” he explained, “and you will have, besides, plenty of opportunity to ask him what you like presently. I have been thinking that you might like to go out to Cheyney, and stay there for a day or two. Captain Ware will tell my head-keeper to look after you, and you may take a gun out, and very likely see Shillingford’s ferrets, and go ratting as well.”
The magnificence of his proposal served not only to render Tom speechless for quite ten minutes, but to make him assail his parent, upon his arrival at the Pelican, with such eager entreaties to him to permit him to accept the most splendid invitation of his life that Mr. Mamble was almost dazed by them. When he understood more clearly what the invitation was, he protested that he did not wish to be any longer separated from his heir. This made it easy for the Duke to extend the invitation to him, and so adroitly did he do it that Mr. Mamble had no suspicion that he was being got rid of, and Gideon had to hide an appreciative grin. Fortunately for the success of the Duke’s scheme, Mr. Mamble had fallen foul of the landlord, the boots, and one of the waiters at the White Horse, and had already declared his intention of shaking the dust of this hostelry from his feet. If he thought an invitation to stay at Cheyney while its owner remained in Bath irregular, this consideration was outweighed in his mind by the prospect of being able to floor his oldest crony and chief rival in Kettering with the careless announcement that he had been visiting the Duke of Sale at his house near Bath. He accepted with a low bow, and in a speech in which the words Condescension, Your Grace, Distinguishing Attention, and All Obligation occ
urred so frequently that the Duke could only be grateful to Tom, who interrupted it without ceremony, demanding to know when they might set forward on the journey.
“You may come with me there at once,” said Gideon. “We will go ahead of your father in my curricle, and see all in readiness.”
“Oh, sir! and may I drive it? May I? Do, pray, say I may!”
His parent bade him mind his manners, and recommended Captain Ware to give him a clout if he should be troublesome. Gideon, however, nodded, and bade him make haste and pack up his valise. Tom dashed off at once, and in a very short time the Duke was alone, and able to set forth on his quest of Mr. Mudgley.
He found it disagreeably reminiscent of his earlier quest for the Bird in Hand. None of the more obvious places of enquiry seemed ever to have heard of Mr. Mudgley, and visits to two gentlemen who bore names slightly resembling Mudgley proved abortive. The Duke drove back to the Pelican in the gig he had hired for these visits in a mood of considerable misgiving. He found that his cousin had returned from Cheyney, and that Nettlebed had had the forethought to bespeak suitable accommodation for them both at the Christopher. He nodded absently, and said: “Yes, very well, when my baggage has arrived. I must go round to Laura Place.”
“What’s amiss, Adolphus?” enquired his cousin.
“The devil’s in it that no one has heard of Mudgley. If I can’t discover him, I shall be in a worse scrape than any! That unfortunate child has nowhere to go, and no relatives who will own her, and what in thunder am I to do with her?”
Gideon raised his brows. “From what you have told me I should suppose that she will pretty speedily find a nest to settle in,” he said caustically.
“That is the very thing I am seeking to prevent!” said the Duke, irritated.
“Is it worth the pains?”
“Good God, can you not understand that I made myself responsible for her? She is only a child! A pretty fellow I should be if I were to abandon her at this stage! I must try if I cannot induce her to recall more particularly where Mudgley lives. Did you leave all well at Cheyney?”
The Foundling Page 34
