Sylvester Read online

  ‘For the lord’s sake take care what you’re about!’ Tom warned her, as soon as Sylvester had left the room. ‘If he should read your book I wouldn’t wager a groat against the chance of his recalling all this mummery of yours, and then putting two and two together, for he’s no fool! You know, Phoebe, I do think you should make a push to alter that book! I mean, after the way he has behaved to us it seems the shabbiest thing to make him out a villain! I can’t think why you should have done so, either, or have supposed him to be insufferably proud. Why, he hasn’t the least height in his manner!’

  ‘I must own I never expected him to be so amiable,’ she acknowledged. ‘Not but what to be assuming the airs of a great man in such a place as this would be quite absurd, and I give him credit for knowing it.’

  ‘Phoebe, you must change the book!’ he urged. ‘First, we know that he reads novels, and now he says he has a nephew! Lord, I didn’t know where to look!’

  ‘No, I was ready to sink myself,’ she agreed. ‘However, I don’t think it signifies so very much. Everyone has nephews, after all! I daresay he may have several of them, but the thing is, remember, that Maximilian was wholly in Count Ugolino’s power, being an orphan. There can be no resemblance!’

  ‘What is Salford’s family?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know precisely. There are quite a number of Raynes, but how nearly they may be related to him I haven’t a notion.’

  ‘I must say, Phoebe, I think you should have discovered just how it was before you put him into your book!’ said Tom, in accents of strong censure. ‘Surely your father must have a Peerage?’

  ‘I don’t know if he has,’ she said guiltily. ‘I never thought – I mean, when I wrote the book I didn’t imagine it would be published! I own, I wish now that I hadn’t made Salford the villain, but, after all, Tom, if I can but change his appearance no one will ever guess who Ugolino is! It is all the fault of his wretched eyebrows: if Salford had not had that tigerish look I should never have thought of making him a villain!’

  ‘What a bag of moonshine!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘Tigerish look, indeed! He has a most agreeable countenance!’

  ‘Now that is coming it too strong!’ interrupted Phoebe, roused to indignation. ‘His smile is agreeable, but in general his expression is one of haughty indifference! I had nearly said disdain, but he is not disdainful of his fellows because he scarcely notices them.’

  ‘I suppose you think he has scarcely noticed me?’ said Tom, with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘No, because he took a fancy to you, and so it pleases him to treat you with flattering distinction. And also,’ Phoebe pursued, her eyes narrowing as though to bring Sylvester’s image into perspective, ‘I believe it piqued him to be told that I disliked him.’

  ‘I wish I had not said anything about that!’

  ‘Oh, don’t tease yourself over it! I am persuaded it has done him a great deal of good!’ she said blithely. ‘I assure you, Tom, when I met him previously, in London, his manners were very different. Then he had no thought of engaging the good opinion of such a poor little dab as I am; now he bestows every degree of attention on me, until I daresay I shall soon find myself obliged to be in raptures about him.’

  ‘You may well!’ returned Tom. ‘Let me tell you, Phoebe, that if you do contrive to reach London it will be thanks to his good offices, not to mine! He says he will escort you there in his chaise, so for the lord’s sake be civil to him!’

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did he say so indeed? Well, I must own that that’s excessively handsome of him, but it won’t answer, of course: I can’t leave you here alone, and in such a case! Why, what a monster I should be to think of doing anything so inhuman!’ She added naughtily: ‘So I need not be civil after all, need I?’

  Eleven

  Sylvester, when presently applied to, gave his support to both contestants. He said that Tom must certainly not be abandoned to his fate; but he also said that Phoebe had no need to delay her journey on that account, since he himself would remain at the Blue Boar, delegating to Keighley the task of conveying her to her grandmother. She could not but be grateful to him for so practical a solution to her difficulty, her only remaining anxiety being the fear that she would be overtaken by her father before the arrival of Sylvester’s chaise at the Blue Boar.

  ‘I can only say, Miss Marlow,’ responded Sylvester to this confidence, ‘that if the first vehicle to reach us from the west is not my chaise two Hounslow-bred postilions will shortly be seeking situations in some other household than mine!’

  In fact, his chaise arrived two days later, within a very short time of the snow’s ceasing to fall. Since it had taken the postilions more than two hours to accomplish the stage between Marlborough and Hungerford, Swale’s graphic description of the perils overcome in the cause of duty were not needed to convince Phoebe that the condition of the roads was still too bad to make her father’s appearance on the scene anything but a remote contingency.

  Sylvester sent his chaise on to the Halfway House, a couple of miles up the road, but kept Swale at the Blue Boar. Swale, discovering that he must share a bedchamber with Keighley, and eat all his meals in the kitchen, was so much affronted that he hovered for as much as thirty seconds on the brink of tendering his resignation to his noble employer. He bowed stiffly when commanded to wait upon Mr Orde, and sought solace for his lacerated sensibilities in treating that hapless young gentleman with such meticulous politeness that Tom was very soon begging Sylvester to leave him to the less expert but less intimidating ministrations of Will Scaling. Tom’s shyness of Sylvester had not survived forty-eight hours of depending upon him for his every need; and within an hour of having lodged this laughing complaint with him he was taking him roundly to task for having acted upon it in an ill-judged manner. ‘The lord knows what you said to the poor fellow, but if I’d guessed you would say anything at all I never would have told you about it!’ he said. ‘It was worse than anything! He has been in here, begging my pardon, and telling me a bamboozling tale of having been feeling out of sorts, and hoping I shan’t have cause to complain to you again! Lord! I promise you I was never more mortified in my life! A pretty sneaksby you made me, Salford! Did you threaten to turn him off, just because he don’t care to wait on me?’

  ‘I’m not so high-handed, Thomas. I only asked him to tell me if he was quite happy in my service.’

  ‘Oh, was that all?’ exclaimed Tom. ‘No wonder he was looking so Tyburn-faced! And you say you’re not high-handed! Well, I think you’re mediaeval!’

  That made Sylvester laugh. ‘But in what way am I mediaeval? I pay him a handsome wage, you know.’

  ‘But you didn’t hire him to take care of me!’

  ‘My dear Thomas, what in the world has he to do besides?’ Sylvester interrupted, a little impatiently. ‘All the work he has to do for me in this hedge-tavern could not occupy him for as much as a couple of hours out of the twenty-four!’

  ‘No, but he is your valet, not mine! You might as well have ordered him to groom your horses, or sweep the floor. And beyond all else you told him he must share Keighley’s room! Now, Salford, you must know that your valet is much above your groom’s touch!’

  ‘Not in my esteem.’

  ‘Very likely not, but –’

  ‘But nothing, Thomas! In my own household my esteem is all that signifies. Does that seem mediaeval to you? If it seems so to Swale he may leave me: he’s not my slave!’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Keighley is more my slave, I assure you – and I never engaged him, and could never dismiss him. Now, what is there in that to make you frown at me?’

  ‘I wasn’t – I mean, I can’t explain it, only my father always says one should take care not to offend the sensibilities of inferior persons, and though I daresay you didn’t intend to do so, it does seem to me as if – But I should not say so!’ Tom ended, rather hurriedly.

  ‘Well, you have sai