The Foundling Read online

  His soft voice, falling upon the ears of the crowd in striking contrast to the strident accents of the combatants, seemed to have an instant and sobering effect. Even the beadle was not unaffected by the indefinable air of dignity which wrapped the Duke round, and raised no objection to withdrawing into the coffee-room of the inn.

  ‘Come, Tom!’ the Duke said. He saw one of the ostlers standing nearby, and added: ‘You, there! Take the gig into the yard, if you please!’

  He then passed into the White Horse, and Tom, Mrs Appleby, the beadle, the weedy man, the farmer, and the lady in the mob-cap all crowded in after him. Once within the coffee-room both Tom and Mrs Appleby would have poured their stories into his ears, but he interrupted them, saying: ‘Pray wait! I will attend to you in a minute.’ He looked at the beadle, and said calmly: ‘Now will you tell me what all this bustle is about?’

  The beadle was impressed in spite of himself. Unquestionably this quiet young gentleman was a member of the Quality. His experience had taught him the value of civility in dealing with such, and it was in moderated accents that he informed the Duke that four varmints, of whom young Mr Mamble was the ringleader, had not only caused obstruction upon the King’s highway, but had effected the ruin of an honest citizen’s new cart, and had been guilty of the frightful crime of delaying and seriously incommoding the Mail, the penalty for such offence, as Mr Rufford was no doubt aware, being no less than the sum of five pounds.

  ‘Dear me!’ said the Duke. ‘And how did all this come about, Tom?’

  ‘I didn’t do those things! At least, I never meant to, and how was I to know the mail was approaching?’ said Tom, deeply aggrieved. ‘You told me I might amuse myself!’

  By this time another person had edged himself into the room, a nervous-looking man in a muffler, who awaited no invitation to describe to the Duke in detail the damage suffered by his new cart through the young cob’s rearing up in alarm, and subsequently kicking in the front of the vehicle, at the unprecedented sight of two donkeys, a cow, and Mr Datchet’s old bay gelding being ridden backwards down the main street.

  ‘It was a race!’ explained Tom.

  The beadle here took up the tale, and from his recital the Duke gathered that just as the entrants for this peculiar race reached the corner of the road, the mail swept round it, coming from the opposite direction, and narrowly escaped an overturn. One of the leaders, in fact, got a leg over the trace, the coachman had the greatest difficulty in controlling his team, and all the passengers had suffered severe shocks to their nerves.

  After recounting the exact circumstances of the crime, the beadle attempted to outline to the assembled company the ultimate fate of the sporting young gentlemen, and the immediate and awful penalties they had incurred. He was at once interrupted by the lady in the mob-cap, who asserted tearfully that her Will had always been a good boy, as well Mr Piddinghoe knew, until led astray by evil companions. She was seconded by the weedy man, who stated that nothing short of the most violent pressure could have induced his Fred so to demean himself; and by the farmer, who said loudly and belligerently that it was nobbut a boy’s prank, and he would dust Nat’s jacket for him, and no more said.

  However, a great deal more had to be said before the Duke could settle the affair. Mrs Appleby very unwisely demanded to be told what should get into the boys to make them take and run a race backwards, and this encouraged Tom to explain indignantly and at length the difficulties of handicapping fairly two donkeys, one cow, and an old horse. He seemed to think that he deserved congratulation for having hit upon so novel a solution to the problem, and dwelled so insistently on the excellent performance of the cow under these conditions that everyone but the Duke and the beadle allowed themselves to be diverted from the main point at issue, and either exclaimed several times that they would never have thought it, or argued that it stood to reason the cow would have as good a chance as the horse, particularly seeing as the horse was that broken-down old brute of Mr Datchet’s.

  The Duke, meanwhile, detached the owner of the ruined cart from the circle, and settled his claims out of hand. Much mollified, Mr Badby stowed away the money which the Duke paid him for the repair of his cart, and said that he had been young himself, and was never one to create a to-do over a trifle. It then transpired that the driver and the guard of the mail-coach had very handsomely forborne to lodge an official charge against Tom, so that with Mr Badby’s retirement from the lists, the beadle was left without any very powerful weapon to use against the miscreants. The Duke was then inspired to suggest that after so much alarm and excitement everyone must stand in need of such revivifying cordials as could be found in the tap-room, and invited the assembled company to refresh themselves there at his expense. The idea took well; and after the Duke had sternly dismissed Tom to the Pink Parlour, and had promised the beadle that he should be suitably dealt with, the whole party repaired to the tap-room, where liberal potations of ale, gin, or porter very soon induced even the beadle and the weedy man, who proved to be Baldock’s leading tailor, to look upon the late disturbance as a very good jest. The Duke’s shy smile, and quite unconscious charm were not without their effect, and since he was found to have not the least height in his manner it was not long before his obvious quality was forgotten, and he was being confided in on all manner of topics, from the Spasms endured by the lady in the mob-cap, to the shocking prices of serges, corduroys, shalloons, and tammies.

  By the time the Duke judged that he could bid farewell to his guests without causing them to think that he fancied himself above his company, Mrs Appleby had three times whispered to him that his dinner was spoiling in the oven. He took his leave at last, and went upstairs to the parlour, where he found Tom awaiting him in a mood of almost equally matched penitence and vainglory. Tom was ready to justify himself at length, but as his protector, instead of rating him, succumbed to a fit of pent-up laughter as soon as he had fairly shut the door, his aggressive manner left him abruptly, and he offered up a handsome apology for having been the cause of so much trouble and expense.

  ‘Indeed, I perceive clearly that you will soon ruin me!’ the Duke said, still laughing. ‘I don’t know what you deserve should be done to you!’

  ‘Sir, you won’t send me back to Pa and Mr Snape, will you?’ Tom demanded anxiously.

  ‘No, no, nothing short of transportation will do for you!’ the Duke told him.

  His mind relieved of its only dread, Tom grinned gratefully, and applied himself with his usual energy and appetite to his dinner.

  When he had retired to bed, which, since he was, he said, unaccountably tired, he was induced to do at an early hour, the Duke committed his cousin’s letters to the flames, and sent the waiter to obtain for him paper, ink, pens, and wafers. These commodities having been brought, the fire made up, and the blinds drawn, he sat down to write two letters. The first of these was to Matthew, at Oxford, and did not occupy him long. He sealed it with one of the wafers, wrote the direction, and was just about to scrawl his name across one corner when he recollected himself, and reopened the letter to add a postscript. ‘I fear you will have to pay some sixpences for this history,’ he wrote, smiling to himself ‘but it would never do, you know, for me to frank this. I hope you will not grudge it!’

  He then affixed a fresh wafer to his missive, laid it aside and wrote upon a new sheet of paper:

  White Horse,

  Baldock.

  My dear Gideon,

  Here the letter came to a sudden halt, it having just occurred to the Duke that he would in all probability see his dear Gideon before a letter could reach him. However, after biting the end of his quill reflectively for a few minutes, he decided that since he had nothing to read, and did not wish to retire to bed, he would write to Gideon after all. The urge to confide some part at least of his amazing new experiences to Gideon was irresistible. Besides, a description of Tom’s race and its con