Sylvester Read online

  ‘You’re welcome if you do,’ said Miss Scaling, setting out the dishes on the table with hearty good-will. ‘And no need to fear going short tomorrow, because you’re going to have a boiled turkey. I shall wring his neck first thing in the morning, and into the pot he’ll go the instant he’s plucked and drawed. That way he won’t eat tough,’ she explained. ‘We hadn’t meant to have killed him, but Mother says dukes is more important than a gobblecock, even if he is a prime young ’un. And after that we’ll have Mr Shap’s pig off of him, and there’ll be the legs and the cheeks, and the loin, and the chitterlings and all, your honour! No, your grace! I do be forgetting!’ she said, beaming apologetically.

  ‘It makes no matter what you call me, but pray don’t wring your turkey’s neck on my account!’ he said, with a quelling glance at Phoebe, who showed every sign of succumbing to an unseemly fit of giggling.

  ‘What’s a turkey?’ said Miss Scaling, in a large-minded spirit. ‘Happen we can come by another of them, but dukes ain’t found under every bush, that’s what Mother says.’

  On this piece of worldly wisdom she withdrew, pulling the door shut behind her with enough vigour to drown Phoebe’s sudden peal of laughter.

  ‘What an atrocious girl you are!’ remarked Sylvester. ‘Don’t you know better than to laugh at yokels?’

  ‘It was your face, when she said you were more important than a gobblecock!’ explained Phoebe, wiping her eyes. ‘Has anyone ever told you that before?’

  ‘No, never. I take it to be a handsome compliment. But she mustn’t slay that turkey.’

  ‘Oh, you have only to give her the price of another bird and she will be perfectly satisfied!’

  ‘But nothing would prevail upon me to eat a bird that had been thrust warm into the pot!’ he objected. ‘And what are chitterlings?’

  ‘Well, they are the inside parts of the pig,’ said Phoebe, bubbling over again.

  ‘Good God! Heaven send it may stop snowing before we come to that! In the meantime, shall I carve these chickens, or will you?’

  ‘Oh, no! You do it, if you please!’ she replied, seating herself at the table. ‘You cannot imagine how hungry I am!’

  ‘I can, for I am very hungry myself. I wonder why quite half this bird has been removed? Oh, I suppose it was for Orde! How is he, by the by?’

  ‘Well, he seems to be going on quite prosperously, but the doctor said he must not get up for a week. I don’t know how I shall contrive to keep him in bed, for he will find it a dead bore, you know.’

  He agreed to this, reflecting, however, that Tom would not be the only one to find a prolonged sojourn at the inn a dead bore.

  Conversation during the meal was desultory, Sylvester being tired and Phoebe careful to inaugurate no topic for discussion that might lead him to ask embarrassing questions. He asked her none, but his mind was not so much divorced from interest in her adventure as she supposed. Between the snow and Tom’s broken leg it seemed probable that they would all of them be chained to the Blue Boar for some appreciable time. Sylvester had taken his own measures to invest Phoebe’s situation with a certain measure of propriety, but very little doubt existed in his brain that it was the part of a man of the world at least to do what lay within his power to frustrate an elopement. The evils of so clandestine an adventure might not be apparent to a countrybred boy of nineteen, but Sylvester, older than Tom by far more than the eight years that lay between them, was fully alive to them. He supposed he could do no less than bring them to Tom’s notice. He had not the smallest intention of discussing the affair with Phoebe: an awkward task in any circumstances, and in her case likely to prove fruitless, since her entire freedom from the confusion natural to a girl discovered in an escapade she must know to be grossly improper argued a singularly brazen disposition.

  As soon as dinner was over she withdrew to Tom’s room, to find that he had been devoting considerable thought to her predicament. One aspect of it had struck him forcibly, and he lost no time in presenting it to her.

  ‘You know what we were saying, when Keighley brought in my dinner? About the Duke’s not wishing to offer for you? Well, if that’s the case, Phoebe, you need not go to London after all! What a pair of gudgeons we were not to have thought of that before! I have been racking my brains to hit upon a way of getting you there, too!’

  ‘I did think of it,’ replied Phoebe. ‘But even though the Duke won’t be a danger I am quite determined to go to my grandmother. It isn’t only being afraid of Mama, Tom – though when I consider how angry she will be with me for running away, I own I feel sick with terror! – it is – oh, having once escaped I cannot – will not – go back! You see, even Papa doesn’t love me very much. Not enough to support me, when I implored him to do so. When he held it over my head that if I wouldn’t accept an offer from Salford he would tell Mama I felt myself free from every bond.’

  ‘But you aren’t, Phoebe,’ Tom pointed out. ‘You are under age, and he is your father, you know. Your grandmother has no power to keep you against his will.’

  ‘Oh, no! And perhaps, if he truly wished for my return, I should go back willingly. But he won’t. If I can prevail upon Grandmama to keep me with her I think Papa will be as glad as Mama to be rid of me. At any rate, he won’t care whether I am at Austerby or not, except that he will miss me a little when he discovers how unreliable Sawley is when there is no one to watch over the stables.’

  Tom did not know what to say to this. He had thought it reasonable enough that she should have fled from her home when faced (as she had believed) with a distasteful marriage; but that she should do so for no other reason than that she was not happy there shocked him a little. He could not approve; on the other hand he was well aware of the misery she would be made to suffer if she were forced to return to Austerby after such an exploit, and he was much too fond of her to withhold whatever help he could render. So he said presently: ‘What can I do, Phoebe? I’ve made a mull of it, but if there is anything I can do I promise you I will.’

  She smiled warmly at him. ‘You didn’t make a mull of it: it was all that wretched donkey! Perhaps, if we are not discovered before you are able to help yourself, I might still go to London on the stage-coach, and you will buy my ticket for me. But there is no question of that yet.’

  ‘No, not while the snow lasts. And in any event –’

  ‘In any event I hope you don’t think I would leave you in this case! I’m not so shabby! No, don’t tease yourself, Tom! I shall come about, see if I don’t! Perhaps, when the Duke goes away – I should think he would do so as soon as it may be possible, wouldn’t you? – he will carry a letter to Grandmama for me.’

  ‘Phoebe, has he said anything? About your having run away, I mean?’ Tom asked abruptly.

  ‘No, not a word! Isn’t it fortunate?’ she replied.

  ‘I don’t know that. Seems to me – Well, he must think it excessively odd! What happened at Austerby, when it was discovered that you had gone away? Hasn’t he even told you that?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t ask him.’

  ‘Good God! I hope he does not think – Phoebe, did he say if he meant to come up to visit me presently?’

  ‘No, do you wish him to?’ she asked. ‘Shall I send him to you? That is, if he has not already gone to look at Trusty for me. He promised he would do so, and put on a fresh poultice if it should be needed.’

  ‘Phoebe!’ uttered Tom explosively. ‘If you made him do so it was perfectly outrageous! You are treating him as though he were a lackey!’

  She gave an involuntary chuckle. ‘No, am I? I daresay it would do him a great deal of good, but I didn’t make him go out to attend to the horses. He offered to do so, and I own I was surprised. Why do you wish him to visit you?’

  ‘That’s my concern. Keighley will be coming in before he goes to bed, and I’ll ask him to convey a civil message to the Duke. You are not to go dow