‘Yes,’ said the Duke blankly. ‘What –’
The large man, who was puffing alarmingly, exclaimed: ‘Ha! He owns it! Impudent rogue! Officer, arrest him! You villain, where is my son?’
‘Good God!’ said the Duke. ‘Are you Mr Mamble?’
‘Ay, my lad, I am Mr Mamble, as you’ll find to your cost!’ said the large gentleman grimly. ‘Snape, is this the fellow who gave you a ding on the head?’
The third gentleman, who was nearly as brawny as his employer, said hastily: ‘I never saw the man, sir! You know I told you I was taken unawares!’
‘Well, it don’t make any odds!’ said Mr Mamble. ‘He admits he’s this Rufford. Ay, and I’ll soon Rufford you, my lad! Why don’t you arrest him, you fool?’
‘On what charge?’ asked the Duke calmly.
‘Charge of kidnapping!’ the constable informed him. ‘You come along, quiet now, and no argy-bargy!’
‘Nonsense!’ said the Duke. ‘I haven’t kidnapped your son, Mr Mamble. In fact, I have just sent you an express concerning him.’
Mr Mamble’s countenance slowly assumed a purple hue. ‘You heard that, Snape?’ he said. ‘He’s sent me an express! By God, if ever I met such a brazen rogue! So you want a ransom, do you, my cully? Well, you ain’t going to get one! The man hasn’t been foaled as can diddle Sam Mamble, and when he is he won’t be a snirp the like of you, that I can tell you!’
‘I don’t want a ransom, I did not knock Mr Snape on the head, or kidnap your son, and my name is not Rufford!’ said the Duke.
‘Now, that won’t do!’ the constable said severely. ‘I axed you, and you admitted it! You’ll come along to the Round-house, that’s what you’ll do!’
‘I wish you will not be so hasty!’ the Duke said, addressing himself to Mr Mamble. ‘If you will accompany me to the Pelican inn, I will engage to satisfy you on all counts, but I really cannot do so in the open street!’
‘You perceive, sir, what an artful rogue he is!’ Mr Snape said, plucking at Mr Mamble’s sleeve. ‘Do not trust him!’
‘Sam Mamble never trusted no one!’ announced Mr Mamble comprehensively. ‘Where’s my son, villain?’
The Duke opened his mouth, and shut it again. He had taken an instant dislike to the unctuous Mr Snape, and felt that to betray Tom’s whereabouts at this stage would be a dastardly act.
‘Ha! So you think you won’t say, do you? We’ll see to that!’ said Mr Mamble.
‘On the contrary, I am perfectly willing to restore your son to you,’ replied the Duke. ‘But I have a few things to say to you first!’
‘If I have to listen to any more of this fellow’s impudence, I’ll bust!’ said Mr Mamble. ‘What the devil makes you stand there like a fool, Snape? Go and call up a hack!’
Mr Snape said obsequiously that he had only been awaiting a command to do so, and hurried off. The Duke tried to remove the constable’s hand from his shoulder, failed, and said wearily: ‘You are making a mistake, you know. If you must have it, I’m the Duke of Sale!’
This disclosure produced anything rather than the desired effect. Both his auditors were for the moment struck dumb by such effrontery, and then combined to revile him. Upon reflection, he was obliged to own that their disbelief was not surprising. Several passers-by had by this time gathered round, and rather than run the risk of creating a scene in the street the Duke abandoned the attempt to argue with his captors. When Mr Snape presently reappeared in a hackney, he got into it without protest, and allowed himself to be driven to the Round-house. Mr Mamble was urgent with the constable to seek out a magistrate directly, but the constable seemed to think that the matter first called for closer investigation. So the whole party trooped into the Round-house, where the Duke speedily learned that he was being accused of having (with or without accomplices) laid a cunning plot to kidnap Tom, felled Mr Snape to the earth, and made off with his charge with intent to hold him to ransom. He glanced contemptuously at the tutor, and said: ‘Yes, I had thought from what Tom told me that you were a shabby, mean sort of a fellow, and I suppose it might be expected that you would concoct some such tale to protect yourself! It was Tom who hit you on the head, and I think you know that, and are hoping that he will be too much frightened to tell the truth.’
‘Sir, I am persuaded I have no need to deny such a wicked charge!’ said Mr Snape, looking appealingly at his employer.
‘The truth,’ said the Duke, ignoring him, ‘is that I came upon your son, sir, near Baldock. He informed me that he had escaped from his tutor, and was desirous of going either to London, or to the sea-coast, where he had some notion of shipping on a barque as cabin-boy. He had had the misfortune to fall in with a couple of foot-scamperers, who had man-handled, and robbed him. He was in a sad case, and I took him back to the inn where I was putting-up.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps I should have insisted on his returning to you then and there, but I had a great deal of sympathy with him, for I was much beset by tutors myself.’ He added reflectively: ‘And I don’t know that I could have made him do it, for he would undoubtedly have run away had I suggested any such thing. Altogether it seemed to me that he would be safer in my company than wandering alone about the country. I had intended to have taken him to London, but various unforeseen circumstances arose which made it imperative for me to come instead to Bath. That is the whole matter in a nutshell.’
Mr Mamble, who had listened in fulminating wrath, expressed the opinion that he was a practised rogue, and besought the constable to do his duty. The constable, who had been slightly impressed by the Duke’s manner, said in an aloof way that he knew his duty without being told it, and asked the Duke for his full name.
‘Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware,’ responded the Duke coolly. ‘Would you wish me also to recite my titles to you?’
Mr Mamble roared out: ‘Stow that foolery, will you? Your name’s Rufford!’
‘No, that is merely one of my minor titles,’ said the Duke.
The constable laid down his pen. ‘Now, look’ee here!’ he said mildly. ‘If so be you’re his Grace of Sale, you’ll have to prove it, because it don’t seem a likely tale, and you don’t look like no Duke, nor you wouldn’t be staying at the Pelican!’
Mr Snape smiled with malign satisfaction. ‘No doubt you have your visiting-card upon you, sir?’ he said.
‘Ay, that’s the dandy!’ agreed the constable, brightening, and looking hopefully at the Duke.
The Duke, now quite confirmed in his dislike of Mr Snape, said, flushing slightly: ‘No, I have not. I – I am travelling strictly incognito.’
Mr Mamble gave a crack of sardonic mirth. ‘Ay, I’ll be bound you are! How much more time am I to waste kicking my heels here?’
‘But I have got my watch!’ suddenly remembered the Duke, drawing it from his pocket, and laying it upon the table. ‘You will perceive that it is engraved with my arms on one side, and with the letter S on the other.’
All three men closely inspected the timepiece, and the constable began to look uneasy. However, Mr Snape pointed out that such a daring rogue would make nothing of picking pockets, and was felt to have scored a point. The constable then had a happy thought, and said with some relief: ‘It’s easy settled, and it won’t do for me to go making no mistakes. I’ll have a man go out to Cheyney, which is his Grace of Sale’s place, and if this gentleman is the Duke he can easy be identified by them as knows him!’
Mr Mamble, who had been watching the Duke, said shrewdly: ‘Don’t like the sound of that, eh, my fine fellow?’
The Duke did not like the sound of it at all. It seemed to him more than probable that those in charge at Cheyney would spurn with contumely the suggestion that he might be in the Round-house at Bath; while if it was disclosed to them that he had come to Bath with one coat and no attendants they would quite certainly refuse to believe it. He was not really at all anxio
us that they should believe it, either, for they would be very much shocked, and he would find himself obliged to enter into long and fatiguing explanations.
‘No, I do not like it,’ he said. ‘I’ve no desire to sit here for the rest of the day, while someone goes to Cheyney and back. I have a better notion than that.’ He turned to the constable. ‘Are you familiar with Lord Gaywood?’ he asked.
The constable said bitterly that he was very familiar with Lord Gaywood, and added some pungent criticisms on high-spirited young gentlemen’s notions of amusement.
‘Does he box the Watch?’ asked the Duke sympathetically. ‘I don’t do it myself, but I feel sure Gaywood does, when he is in his cups. Let me have a pen and some paper, if you please.’
Mr Mamble at once protested against this further waste of time, but the constable, on whom (for all his dislike of that young gentleman) Lord Gaywood’s name was working powerfully, fetched some writing materials, and told Mr Mamble it would be as well not to act hasty.
The Duke drew up his chair to the table, and began to write a note to his betrothed.
‘My dear Harriet,’ he scrawled rapidly, ‘I 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 Round-house 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 him, 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 have 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 much 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.’
&
nbsp; ‘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, undeserving dog alive!’
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!’