Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

“No need to put yourself about,” Tom said. “I want a few words with his grace myself.”

“You do? Well, that’s a devilish fortunate circumstance because I think I should take a look in at her la’ship, in case she’s got wind of Salford.”

Tom shut the door upon him, and turned to confront Sylvester, standing by the table, his eyes as hard as agates, and as glittering. Tom met their challenge unwaveringly, and limped forward.

“If there was one person whom I never expected to have lent himself to this damnable affair it was you,” said Sylvester very evenly. “What, if you please, am I to understand by it?”

“From all I’ve been able to make out,” said Tom, continuing to look him in the eye, “you’re riding too damned rusty to understand anything, my lord Duke! What the devil do you think I’m doing here? Trying to serve you a backhanded turn?”

Sylvester shrugged, and turned away to lean his arm along the mantelshelf. “I suppose you to be here in support of Miss Marlow. The distinction between that and serving me a backhanded turn may be plain to you: it is not so to me.”

“The only persons who have been trying to serve you a backhanded turn, my lord Duke, are Lady Ianthe and the court-card she’s married!” said Tom. “As for Phoebe, the lord knows I didn’t wish her to meddle in this business, but when I think of all she’s done for you, and the thanks she’s had for it, damme, I’d like to call you out! Oh, I know you wouldn’t meet me! You needn’t tell me I’m not of your rank!”

Sylvester turned his head, and looked at him, a puzzled frown in his eyes. “Don’t talk to me like that, Thomas!” he said, in a quieter tone. “You had better sit down: how is that leg of yours?”

“Never mind my leg! It may interest you to know, my lord Duke—”

“For God’s sake, will you stop calling me my lord Duke every time you open your mouth?” interrupted Sylvester irascibly. “Sit down, and tell me what Miss Marlow has done for me to earn my gratitude!”

“Well, that’s what I meant to do at the start, but you made me lose my temper, which was the one thing I meant not to do,” said Tom. “And what with you fit to murder the lot of us, and Phoebe swearing she’ll starve in a ditch before she travels a yard in your company it’ll be as well if I don’t do it again!”

“She will not be asked to travel an inch in my company!”

“We’ll see that presently. If you will sit down I’ll tell you just how we both come to be here. But first I’d be glad to know if Lady Ingham’s still at Dover. Or didn’t you come by way of Dover?”

“I did, but I have no idea where Lady Ingham may be.”

“I hoped you might have passed her on the road. Looks as though she couldn’t face the jump. I take it you didn’t put up at the Ship?”

“I didn’t put up anywhere. I came down by the night-mail,” said Sylvester.

“Oh! Well, I daresay the old lady is still there. Now, the long and the short of it is, Salford, that Phoebe and I were dashed well kidnapped! I’ll tell you how it was.”

Sylvester heard him in unresponsive silence, and at the end of the recital said coldly: “I regret having done Miss Marlow an injustice, but I should feel myself obliged to her if she would confine her love of romantic adventure to her novels. If she felt she owed me some form of reparation she might, with more propriety and better effect, have written to me from Dover to tell me that Edmund had been taken to France.”

“If Fotherby hadn’t told the skipper to set sail I expect that’s what she would have done,” replied Tom equably.

“She had no business to go aboard the schooner at all. My nephew’s movements are not her concern,” said Sylvester, so haughtily that Tom had much ado not to lose his temper again.

“So I told her,” he said. “But she thought them very much her concern, and you know why! I don’t blame you for being angry with her for having written that dashed silly book. I didn’t even blame you for having given her a trimming—though I did think that it was ungentlemanly of you to have done so in public. You may be a duke, but —”

“That will do!” Sylvester said, flushing. “That episode also—I regret!—deeply regret! But if you imagine that I think my rank entitles me to behave—ungentlemanly—you are doing me as great an injustice as any that I have done Miss Marlow! You appear to believe that I set inordinate store by my dukedom: I do not! If I have pride it is in my lineage! You should understand that: your father has the same pride! We Ordes was what he said to me, when we sat at dinner together, not I am the Squire!”

“Beg pardon!” Tom said, smiling a little.

“Yes, very well! but don’t throw my rank in my face again! Good God, am I some money-grubbing Cit, sprung from obscurity, decorated with a title for political ends, and crowing like a cock on its own dunghill?” He broke off, as Tom shouted with laughter, and regarded him almost with hostility. “It was not my intention to divert you!”

“I know it wasn’t,” said Tom, wiping his eyes. “Oh, don’t fall into a miff! I see precisely how it is! You are very like my father, Salford! It’s as natural for you to be a duke as it is for him to be the Squire, and the only time when either of you remembers what you are is when some impudent fellow don’t treat you with respect! Oh, lord, and I shall be just the same myself!” He began to laugh again, but gasped: “Never mind! The thing is that you take it in snuff that Phoebe meddled in your affairs, as though she were encroaching! Well, she wasn’t. The only idea she had in her head was how to undo the harm she never meant to bring on you!”

Sylvester got up, and went back to the fire, and said, as he stirred a log with one booted foot: “You think I should be grateful to her, do you? No doubt her intentions were admirable, but when I think how easily I might but for her interference have recovered Edmund without creating the smallest noise, I am not at all grateful.”

“Yes, I do think you should be grateful!” retorted Tom. “If it hadn’t been for her looking after him on board the Betsy Anne he might have stuck his spoon in the wall! I never saw anyone in worse case, and there was no one else to care what became of him, let me tell you!”

“Then I am grateful to her for that at least. If my gratitude is tempered by the reflection that Edmund would never have been taken to sea if she had not put the notion into his mother’s head—”

“Salford, can’t you forget that trumpery novel?” begged Tom. “If you mean to brood over it all the way home, a merry journey we shall have!”

Sylvester had been looking down at the fire, but he raised his head at that. “What?”

“How do you imagine I’m to get Phoebe home?” asked Tom. “Was you meaning to leave us stranded here?”

“Stranded! I can’t conceive what need you can possibly have of my services when you appear to be on excellent terms with a man of far greater substance! I suggest you apply to Fotherby for a loan.”

“Yes, that’s what I shall be forced to do, if you’re set on a paltry revenge,” said Tom, with deliberation.

“Take care!” said Sylvester. “I’ve borne a good deal from you, Thomas, but that is a trifle too much! If I had a banking correspondent in France you might draw on me to any tune you pleased, but I have not! As for travelling Tab with Miss Marlow—no, by God, I won’t! Ask Fotherby to accommodate you. You may as well be indebted to him as to me!”

“No, I may not,” returned Tom. “You may not care for the mess Phoebe’s in, but I do! You know Lady Ingham! That business—all the kick-up over Phoebe’s book!—tried her pretty high, and she wasn’t in the best of humours when I saw her last. By now I should think she’s in a rare tweak, but you could bring her round your finger. If we go back to England with you, and you tell the old lady it was due to Phoebe you were able to recover young Edmund, all will be tidy. But if I have to take Phoebe back alone, and all you care for is to keep the business secret, we shall be lurched. You won’t be able to keep it secret, either. What about Swale? What about—”

“The only one of my servants who knows where I have gone is Keighley. Swale is not with me. I am not as green as you think, Thomas!”

A slow grin spread over Tom’s face. “I don’t think you green, Salford!” he said. “Touched in the upper works is what you are!”

Sylvester looked frowningly at him. “What the devil are you at now? Do you think me dependent on my valet? You should know better!”

“Should I? Who is going to look after Edmund on the journey?”

“I am.”

“Have you ever looked after him?” inquired Tom, grinning more widely.