Young Mr Ware, on being hailed in such startling accents, jumped as though he had been shot, and dragged his horse to a standstill. ‘Gideon!’ he gasped. ‘You here? Gideon, something has happened to Gilly! Something must have happened, because – oh, we can’t talk here, in the road!’
‘Yes, something has indeed happened to Gilly,’ replied his cousin. ‘But what the devil are you doing here, and what do you know about it?’
Mr Ware looked extremely wretched, and said: ‘It is all my fault, and I wish I had never consented to let him – But how was I to guess – though I told him I knew something would happen to him if he persisted! And then, when Nettlebed came to Oxford and told me –’
‘I suspicioned Mr Matthew had a hand in it,’ said Nettlebed, with ghoulish satisfaction. ‘Sitting up till all hours, and keeping his Grace from his bed, the way he was, the very day before he went off! If I hadn’t been so set-about, I should have thought of Mr Matthew sooner, no question!’
‘I never asked him to do it, and I would not have!’ Matthew said hotly. ‘He would go, in spite of all I could say!’
‘Come to the George!’ commanded Gideon. ‘I’d better get to the bottom of this before I do anything else. I suppose you’re in a scrape again!’
‘Gideon, where is Gilly?’ Matthew called after him urgently.
‘Kidnapped!’ Gideon threw over his shoulder, and drove on towards the posting-inn.
Mr Liversedge, who had been sitting wrapped in his own thoughts, gave a genteel little cough, and said: ‘Another relative, I collect, Captain Ware? Possibly – er – Mr Matthew Ware?’
‘You seem to be remarkably well-acquainted with my family!’ returned Gideon shortly.
‘No,’ said Mr Liversedge sadly. ‘Had I been better acquainted with them – But it is useless to repine! So that is Mr Ware! Dear me, yes! Strange how the dice will sometimes fall against one, do what one will! I wish I had had the good fortune to have met Mr Ware earlier. He is just the kind of young man I had supposed him to be. I am not one of those who are unable to judge a matter dispassionately, and I will own that although I might have a personal preference for Mr Ware, his Grace is the better man.’
‘You are right,’ said Gideon, ‘but what you are talking about I have not the remotest guess!’
‘And I wish with all my heart,’ said Mr Liversedge, with feeling, ‘that you might never have the remotest guess, sir!’
Both carriages had by this time reached the George. Gideon sprang down from the curricle, and strode into the house, closely followed by his agitated young cousin, but any hope that Mr Liversedge might fleetingly have cherished of making good his escape was frustrated by Wragby, who conducted him into the inn in a manner strongly reminiscent of his days in the army.
Gideon having demanded a private parlour, the whole party was conducted to a small apartment on the first floor. Matthew was barely able to contain himself until the door was closed. He burst out into speech as soon as the waiter had withdrawn, exclaiming: ‘You said he had been kidnapped! But I don’t understand! It was all over! He wrote to me that it was!’
‘What was all over?’ demanded Gideon.
‘Oh, Gideon!’ said Matthew wretchedly, ‘it is all my fault! I wish I had never told Gilly about it! Who has kidnapped him? And how did you come to hear of it?’
‘Ah, you have not yet been presented to Mr Liversedge!’ said Gideon, with a wave of his hand. ‘Allow me to make him known to you! He kidnapped Gilly, and has been so very obliging as to offer to sell his life to me.’ He paused, perceiving that this speech had had a strange effect upon Matthew, who was staring at Mr Liversedge in mingled wrath and bewilderment. ‘Now what is the matter?’ he asked.
‘So it was you!’ said Matthew, his eyes still fixed on Mr Liversedge’s face. ‘You – you damned scoundrel! You did it for revenge! By God, I have a mind to kill you, you –’
‘Nothing of the sort!’ said Mr Liversedge earnestly. ‘No such paltry notion has ever crossed my brain, sir! I bore your cousin no ill-will – not the least in the world!’
‘Sit down!’ commanded Gideon. ‘Matt, what do you know of this fellow, and what’s your part in this coil?’
‘Ay!’ nodded Nettlebed, grimly surveying Matthew. ‘That’s what I’d like to know, sir, and tell me he will not!’
‘I ought to have told you, Gideon!’ Matthew said, sinking into a chair by the table.
‘You are going to tell me.’
‘Yes, but I mean I should have told you before, and never breathed a word to Gilly! Only I thought very likely you would say something cutting, or – But I should have told you! It was breach of promise, Gideon!’
His cousin was not unnaturally mystified by this abrupt statement. Mr Liversedge seized the opportunity to interpolate an expostulation. Such ugly words, he said, had never soiled his pen. Wragby then commanded him to shut his bone-box, and Captain Ware, in the voice of one who has reached the limits of his patience, requested Matthew to be a little more explicit. Matthew then favoured him with a somewhat disjointed account of the affair, to which Captain Ware listened with knit brows, and an air of deepening exasperation. He said at last: ‘You young fool! You’re not of age!’
Matthew blinked at him. ‘What has that to say to anything? I tell you –’
‘It has this to say to it! No action for breach of promise can lie against you while you are a minor!’
There was a shocked silence. Mr Liversedge broke it. ‘It is perfectly true,’ he said. ‘Sir, I shall not conceal from you that this has been a blow to me. How I came to overlook such a circumstance I know not, but that I did overlook it I shall not attempt to deny. I am chagrined – I never thought to be so chagrined!’
‘Oh, Gideon, I wish I had told you!’ gasped Matthew. ‘None of this dreadful business need have been at all!’
‘No, it need not,’ said Gideon. ‘But why the devil didn’t Gilly come to me?’
‘It was because he was tired of being told always what he should do next,’ explained Matthew. ‘He said here was something he might do for himself, and that it would be an adventure, and that if he could not outwit a fellow like this Liversedge he must be less of a man than he believed!’
Mr Liversedge bowed his head in approval. ‘Very true! And outwit me he did, sir. Yes, yes, I am not ashamed to own it! I was quite rolled-up. Your noble relative obtained possession of your letters, Mr Ware, and without expending as much as a guinea on the business. You have every reason to feel pride in his achievement, I assure you.’
Both the Wares turned to stare at him. Gideon said: ‘How did he outwit you?’
Mr Liversedge sighed, and shook his head. ‘Had he not appeared to me to be so young, and so innocent, I should not have fallen a victim to such a trick! But my suspicions were lulled. I thought no ill. Taking advantage, I regret to say, of my trust, he drove a heavy table against my legs, as I was in the act of rising, and felled me to the ground, where, striking my head against the fender of the grate, I lost consciousness. By the time I had regained my senses, his Grace had made good his escape, bearing with him, to my chagrin, the fatal letters.’
A slow smile curled Gideon’s uncompromising mouth. ‘Adolphus!’ he said softly. ‘Well done, my little one! So here was your dragon!’
‘Drove the table against your legs?’ repeated Matthew. ‘Gilly? Well, by God!’
‘So far, so good,’ said Gideon. ‘But how came he to fall again into your clutches?’
‘That,’ said Mr Liversedge evasively ‘is a long story, sir. But it should be borne in mind that it is I who have been the humble instrument whereby your interesting relative has met with the adventure his soul craved.’
Nettlebed, who had been listening to this interchange with scarcely concealed impatience, interrupted to say fiercely: ‘You gallowscheat, you’ll say where you have h
is Grace hid, or you’ll have it choked out of you!’
‘This fellow lives at the Bird in Hand, that I do know,’ Matthew declared. ‘And there Gilly found him, for he told me so!’
‘Ay, that’s what you say, Master Matthew, but a solid hour have we been in this town, trying to find where this place may be, and not a soul able to tell us!’ said Nettlebed bitterly. ‘And if we can’t discover it, how can his Grace have done so?’
‘His Grace would appear to have his own ways of going about his business,’ remarked Gideon, his eyes glinting. ‘We need exercise no ingenuity, however, for Mr Liversedge will now guide us to the Bird in Hand. Eh, Mr Liversedge?’
‘Sir,’ said Mr Liversedge, with hauteur, ‘I must perforce yield to force majeure.’
But when, half an hour later, the curricle and the tilbury drew up outside the shell of the Bird in Hand, he was at last bereft of all power of self-expression, and could only gaze upon the blackened ruins in incredulous dismay. Both Wragby and Nettlebed were inclined to make an end to him then and there, but his amazement was so patent that Gideon intervened to restrain them. ‘Well, Mr Liversedge?’ he said. ‘What now have you to say?’
‘Sir,’ said Mr Liversedge, in some agitation, ‘when last I saw this hostelry it was indeed a poor place, but, I assure you, intact! What can have occurred to reduce it to this pitiful skeleton, I know not! And what has become of its owner, or, I may add, its noble guest, are matters wholly beyond my powers of conjecture! I confess that they are matters which do not, at this present, exercise my mind profoundly. I have no reason to suppose, Captain Ware, that you are a man of feeling, but even your hardened heart may be touched by the reflection that the few worldly possessions remaining to me were encased in that unworthy building!’
‘My hardened heart remains untouched. I want my cousin!’ Gideon said brusquely, and touched up his horse. ‘There must be someone in the village who can tell us when this fire broke out!’
Enquiry in Arlesey led him presently to the cottage inhabited by the Shotterys. Their account of the fire was necessarily imperfect, but they knew enough to be able to convince Gideon that it had been started by his enterprising cousin. He listened to them at first in surprise, and then with his crooked smile. But Nettlebed was quite thunderstruck, and said roundly that he had never known his Grace to do the like, and didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Peace, fool!’ said Gideon. ‘You know nothing about his Grace – as little as the rest of us! So he won free without our help! He is doing very well, in fact.’
‘Captain Ware,’ said Mr Liversedge warmly, ‘you are in the right of it! Though I am a sufferer from his ingenuity, I bear him no malice. Indeed, it is very gratifying to see a man so young and so untried acquit himself so creditably! You will permit me to tell you that this little adventure has been the making of him. When I saw him first he was uncertain of himself: he had been too much cosseted, too carefully shielded from contact with the world. The experiences he has passed through will have done him a great deal of good: I have no scruple in asserting it, and it is a happiness to me to reflect that he owes his emancipation to me.’
This was too much for Nettlebed, who advanced upon Mr Liversedge with such deadly purpose that he had to be called sharply to order. ‘Master Gideon!’ he said explosively, ‘I’ve known you from your cradle, and stand by while that gaol-bird gammons you with his talk I will not! And his Grace, the while in the lord knows what case!’
‘If one thing is more plain than another,’ responded Gideon, ‘it is that his Grace stands in no need of our help! I own, if I had known what dangers he would run into I would not have let him set out as I did, but by God I am glad I did not know! This fellow is a rogue, but he is speaking the truth: his Grace has found himself. I wonder what took him to Hitchin?’
Matthew, who had been puzzling over it in silence, said: ‘Well, I don’t understand any of it! Why did he not go home when he had done what he came to do? What should have kept him in Hertfordshire?’
‘Ay, and it’s my belief you can answer that!’ said Nettlebed, addressing himself to Mr Liversedge.
‘Fellow,’ said Mr Liversedge loftily, ‘do not try my patience too far, or you will regret it! I have so far held my peace, but if you provoke me I shall disclose certain information so damaging to the Duke’s reputation that you will be sorry!’
Nettlebed wrung his hands. ‘Master Gideon!’ he said imploringly, ‘it’s more than flesh and blood can bear! If you won’t let me make him swallow his lying words, will you give him over to the Law, and be done with it?’
‘Captain Ware,’ said Mr Liversedge, ‘if you do any such thing, I must throw my scruples to the wind, and bring an action against your noble relative for abducting my ward!’
At these words, Matthew gave a start, and exclaimed: ‘Belinda? Good God! No, no, he would not – !’
‘I never heard the like of it, not in all my days!’ exploded Nettlebed. ‘To think I’d be standing here listening to such wicked slanders! His Grace never abducted no one, nor never would!’
‘He seduced her – I say it with confidence! – with promises of rich raiment!’ announced Mr Liversedge. ‘And let me tell you, Captain Ware, that my ward has not yet attained the age of seventeen! An innocent flower, who has now suffered doubly at the hands of your family!’
Matthew drew his cousin a little apart, an urgent hand grasping his elbow. ‘Gideon, if that is so it is the most devilish coil! No, no, I don’t mean that he abducted her, but you don’t know Belinda! Indeed, it will not do! We must instantly find them, and rescue him! She is the loveliest creature, and I’m sure I don’t blame him for – But it will not do, Gideon!’
‘What nonsense, Matt!’ Gideon said impatiently. ‘Gilly became engaged to Harriet only a week ago!’
‘Yes, I know, but you haven’t seen Belinda!’ said Matthew simply.
Gideon suddenly remembered a passage in the Duke’s letter to him. ‘Good God!’ he muttered. ‘No, it’s ridiculous! I never knew Gilly to be in the petticoat-line. As for abduction – fustian!’
‘Well, of course, but you don’t know what a fellow this Liversedge is!’ Matthew said, under his breath. ‘He will make trouble for Gilly if he can, and he is Belinda’s uncle – or so he says.’
‘He’ll have no opportunity to make trouble,’ replied Gideon shortly.
‘He will if you hand him over to the Law,’ Matthew warned him. ‘I don’t mean he could succeed in a charge, but it would make the devil of a stir, you know! But what are we to do with him?’
‘It seems to me,’ said Gideon, ‘that I had best find Adolphus, and discover just what mischief he is brewing. I’ll take Liversedge along with me, and Adolphus can decide what is to be done with him. As for you, had you leave to come here?’
‘Oh yes, I told the Bag-wig I was wanted on urgent family affairs, and he gave me an exeat. But, you know, Gideon, I do think Nettlebed needs a set-down! It is the outside of enough for him to come searching for me at Oxford, and behaving as though I were a schoolboy, and threatening to go to the Bag-wig himself if I would not tell him where he could find Gilly!’
‘I wish he might have done so!’ said his cousin unsympathetically. ‘What in thunder do you mean by saddling Adolphus with your damned follies? No thanks to you he is not now being bled white! Get back to Oxford, and if you can’t keep out of silly scrapes, for God’s sake bring ’em to me in future, and don’t encourage Gilly to risk his neck in your service!’
Matthew was so much incensed by this unfeeling speech that he embarked on a long and indignant vindication of himself. Gideon broke in on it without compunction, and told him to spare his breath. Matthew glared at him, and said: ‘Well, it is just as much my affair as yours, and I shall go with you to Hitchin!’
‘You may do that, for it’s on your way, but you’ll go no farther with me!’ said Gide
on, turning away.
He found that he was being anxiously watched by Nettlebed and Wragby, in whom dislike of Mr Liversedge had engendered a temporary alliance. Mr Liversedge was seated at his ease in the curricle, his plump hands folded and a benign, not to say saintly expression on his countenance. Mr Liversedge saw in his sudden recollection of Belinda the hand of Providence working powerfully on his behalf, and was able to meet Captain Ware’s hard eyes with an indulgent smile.
‘We are now bound for Hitchin, my hopeful friend,’ said Gideon. ‘It appears to me that my noble relative might be glad to have you delivered into his hands!’
‘If,’ retorted Mr Liversedge superbly, ‘your noble relative has the least regard for justice, sir, he will see in me a benefactor!’
‘Master Gideon, only let me darken his daylights!’ implored Nettlebed tearfully.
This favour having been denied him, he climbed up sulkily into Matthew’s hired tilbury. Gideon took his place on the box of the curricle, and gathered up the reins. Mr Liversedge said kindly: ‘May I proffer a piece of advice, sir? I apprehend you are about to make some stir in Hitchin by enquiring for the Duke of Sale. Speaking as one who has his Grace’s true interests at heart, I would counsel you to enquire rather for Mr Rufford, under which sobriquet I have reason to believe him to be travelling.’
Gideon, who was beginning to be amused by his effrontery, thanked him, and, upon arrival at the Sun Inn, followed his advice. The result was not happy. The landlord regarded him with patent hostility, and said that if ever he had had an inkling of the trouble which was to come upon him through giving this precious Mr Rufford house-room he would have put up his shutters rather than have faced it.
‘And if it’s that pesky boy of his as you’re after, it ain’t no manner of use asking me,’ he added. ‘Because it’s none of my business, nor never was! And if it’s rooms you’re wanting, the house is full!’