Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

Duke, and very likely should be away from home for a little while. So that’s all right and tight.”

She could not be perfectly satisfied, but since there was plainly no hope of turning Tom from his purpose, and she was besides thankful not to be obliged to journey alone to London, she said no more to dissuade him.

“That’s a good girl!” he said, correctly interpreting her silence. “Lord, I call it a famous lark, don’t you? If only we don’t run into snow, and I must own I don’t like the look of the sky above half.”

“No, nor I, but if we can but reach Reading I shan’t care for anything else, for even if it was discovered which way we were gone I don’t think I should be looked for there.”

“Oh, we shall reach Reading!” Tom said cheerfully.

She drew a long breath, and said in a thankful tone: “Tom, I can’t tell you how much I’m obliged to you! To own the truth, I didn’t at all want to go all by myself, but now—oh, now I can be easy!”

7

Breakfast was served at Austerby, on all but hunting-days, at ten o’clock, which, in Sylvester’s opinion, was at least an hour too early. In general, the custom obtaining at country house-parties was for guests to breakfast at eleven, or even twelve o’clock. Lady Marlow knew it, but she told Sylvester that she disapproved of such hours. Sylvester, to whom the imperative summons of the bell had been an offence, received this information with a slight smile, and a polite inclination of the head, but offered no comment.

It was not long before Lord Marlow, noticing the absence of his daughter, wondered aloud where she could be. Her ladyship, speaking with careful restraint, replied that she fancied she must have gone out for a walk.

“Gone out for a walk!” repeated Lord Marlow, chuckling. “Not she! Gone down to the stables, more like. You must know, Salford, that there is no keeping that girl of mine away from the horses. I wish you might have seen her in the field. A capital seat, good, even hands, and the most bruising little rider you ever saw! Never any need to tell her to throw her heart over! Anything her horse can take she will too: stake-and-bound, a double, an in-and-out, a ridge and furrow—all one to Phoebe! I’ve seen her laid on her back in a ditch, but much she cared!”

Oblivious to his wife’s attempts to catch his eye, he would have continued talking in this strain had Firbank not come into the parlour just then, with the intelligence that Mrs. Orde wished to speak to him.

He was surprised, and Lady Marlow still more so. She thought it an extraordinary circumstance, and said: “Depend upon it, she wishes to see me, Marlow. I do not know why she should disturb us at such an hour. It is not at all the thing. Inform Mrs. Orde, Firbank, that I am at breakfast, but will come to her presently.”

He withdrew, but came back again almost immediately, looking harassed, and with a plump, bright-eyed lady hard on his heels.

“I regret, ma’am, to be obliged to break in on you with so little ceremony,” announced Mrs. Orde, who appeared to be labouring under strong emotion, “but my business will not await your pleasure!”

“Not at all! Delighted to welcome you, ma’am!” said Lord Marlow hastily. “Always happy to be of service! You wish to see me—precisely, yes!”

“On a matter of the utmost urgency!” she said. “Your daughter, sir, has run away with my son!”

The company was not unnaturally startled into silence by this announcement. Without giving her hosts time to recover from the shock Mrs. Orde loosed the vials of her pent-up wrath upon them. “I don’t know why you should look amazed!” she declared, her eyes snapping at Lady Marlow. “You have left no stone unturned to achieve this result! I guessed how it would be from the instant my son told me what his reception has been in this house for the past ten days! I pass over the insulting nature of your conduct, ma’am, but I shall take leave to inform you that nothing is farther from the wishes of his parents than an alliance between Tom and your family! I am excessively attached to Phoebe, poor child, but his father and I have other plans for Tom, and they don’t, let me assure you, include his marriage at the age of nineteen!”

“Nonsense! Such a thought was never in either of their heads!” exclaimed Lord Marlow, in an attempt to stem this blistering eloquence.

He was promptly demolished. “No! Never until her ladyship planted it there!” Mrs. Orde said fiercely. “If I had viewed their friendship with apprehension I should have thought myself a ninnyhammer to have acted as she has! And what has been the result? Exactly what might have been foreseen!”

“Upon my word!” broke in Lady Marlow. “I could almost believe you to have taken leave of your senses, ma’am! A very odd rage you have flown into, and all because my daughter-in-law (as I do not doubt!) has gone out riding with Mr. Thomas Orde!”

“Gone out riding!” Mrs. Orde exclaimed contemptuously. “She has run away from this house, and for that, Lady Marlow, you are to blame, with your Turkish treatment of her, poor little soul! Oh, I have no patience to talk to you! My errand is not to you, but to Phoebe’s father! Read that, my lord!”

With these peremptory words she thrust a single sheet of paper into Lord Marlow’s hand. While he perused the few lines Tom had scrawled to allay any anxiety his mother might feel, Lady Marlow commanded him to show her the note, and Sylvester retired discreetly into the window embrasure. A man of delicacy, he knew, would seize this opportunity to withdraw from the parlour. He accepted with fortitude the realization that he was lacking in delicacy, and wondered whether there was any chance of his being allowed a glimpse of a missive which was exercising so powerful an effect upon his host.

“My dear Mama,” Tom had scribbled, “I am obliged to go away without taking leave of you, but do not be in a worry. I have taken my father’s curricle, and may be absent for some few days, I cannot say precisely how many. Things have come to such a pass at Austerby that there is no bearing it. I must rescue Phoebe, and am persuaded you and my father will understand how it is when you know the whole, and think I did right, for you have always held her in affection.”

As he read these lines Lord Marlow’s cheeks lost some of their ruddy colour. He allowed his wife to twitch the paper out of his hand, stammering: “Impossible! I do not credit it! P-pray, where could they have gone?”

“Exactly! Where?” demanded Mrs. Orde. “That question is what brings me here! If my husband were not in Bristol at this moment—but so it is always! Whenever a man is most needed he is never to be found!”

“I do not know what this message means,” announced Lady Marlow. “I do not pretend to understand it. For my part I strongly suspect Mr. Thomas Orde to have been inebriated when he wrote it.”

“How dare you?” flashed Mrs. Orde, her eyes sparkling dangerously.

“No, no, of course he was not!” interposed Lord Marlow hurriedly. “My love, let me beg of you—Not but what it is so extraordinary that—Though far be it from me to suggest—”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Orde, stamping her foot, “don’t stand there in that addle-brained fashion, saying nothing to the purpose, my lord! Is it nothing to you that your daughter is at this very moment eloping? You must go after her! Discover where she meant to go! Surely Susan might know! Or Miss Battery! She may have let fall a hint—or one of them, better acquainted with her than you, might guess!”

Lady Marlow was inclined to brush this suggestion aside, but her lord, the memory of his overnight interview with Phoebe lively in his mind, was by this time seriously alarmed. He said at once that Susan and Miss Battery should be sent for, and hastened to the door, shouting to Firbank. While a message was carried up to the schoolroom, Mrs. Orde at once relieved her overcharged nerves and paid off every arrear of a debt of rancour that had been mounting in her bosom for years by telling Lady Marlow exactly what she thought of her manners, conduct, insensibility, and gross stupidity. Lord Marlow was inevitably drawn into the altercation; and in the heat of battle Sylvester’s presence was forgotten. He did nothing to attract attention to himself. The moment for that had not yet come, though he had every hope that it was not far distant. Meanwhile he listened to Mrs. Orde’s masterly indictment of his hostess, gratefully storing up in his memory the several anecdotes illustrative of Lady Marlow’s depravity, every detail of which Mrs. Orde had faithfully carried in her mind for years past.