The Toll-Gate Read online

  ‘Lord, no! I’ll take what I want in a saddlebag, and shan’t have the least need of him.’

  ‘When,’ demanded Fanny, a look of foreboding in her eyes, ‘do you mean to return to Mildenhurst?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ said her maddening brother. ‘In a week or so, I daresay. Why?’

  Fanny, prohibited by a quelling glance from her mama from answering this question, merely looked her disapprobation. Mrs Staple said: ‘It is not of the smallest consequence. I have friends coming to stay at Mildenhurst next week, so you are not to be thinking that I may be lonely, John.’

  ‘Oh, that’s famous, then!’ he said, relieved. ‘You know, Mama, I don’t know how it is – whether it’s my uncle, with his bamboozling ways, or Aunt Caroline, or Lucius’s laugh, or Ralph Tackenham prosing on for ever, or young Geoffrey aping the dandy-set, or just the devilish propriety of Easterby – but I can’t stand it here!’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ his mother assured him.

  He bent, giving her a hug and a kiss. ‘You are the best mother in the world!’ he said. ‘What’s more, that’s a very fetching nightcap, ma’am! I must go: Melksham wants to start a faro-bank now, and Bevis don’t like it above half. Poor old fellow! He’ll never be able to handle Melksham – not when Melksham’s muddled, which he is, six days out of the seven. Christened with pump-water, that lad! He’ll be as drunk as an artillery-man before morning.’

  With this ominous prophecy, the Captain then took himself off, leaving his parent unperturbed, and his sister seething. Hardly had the door closed behind him, than she exclaimed: ‘I think John is the most vexatious creature alive! How could you let him go, Mama? You know what he is! I daresay you won’t set eyes on him again for a month! And now he won’t even meet Elizabeth!’

  ‘It is unfortunate, but I don’t despair,’ replied Mrs Staple, smiling faintly. ‘As for letting him go, a man of nine-and-twenty, my love, is not to be held in leading-strings. Moreover, had I obliged him to come home to meet Elizabeth I am persuaded he would have taken her in aversion from the outset.’

  ‘Well,’ said Fanny crossly, ‘I think he is odiously provoking, ma’am!’

  ‘Very true, my dear: all men are odiously provoking,’ agreed Mrs Staple. ‘Now I am going to bed, and you had best do the same.’

  ‘Yes, or Lichfield will wonder what has become of me,’ Fanny said, getting up from her chair.

  ‘Not at all,’ responded her mother coolly. ‘Lichfield, dear child, is no less provoking than any other man, and is at this moment – I have no doubt – playing faro downstairs.’

  Fanny acknowledged the probable truth of this pronouncement by bidding her parent a dignified good night.

  Two

  Captain Staple was not destined to leave Easterby at an early hour on the following morning. Thanks to the nocturnal habits of Lord Melksham, it was daylight before he went to bed. That amiable but erratic peer, dissuaded from opening a faro-bank, had challenged the company to a quiet game of loo; and since the elders of the party, who included besides the Archdeacon, his brother-in-law, Mr Yatton, and Mr Merridge the Earl’s chaplain, had retired soon after the ladies, and the Earl was plainly unable to keep the situation within bounds, Captain Staple had not the heart to desert him. The Earl was grateful, but he would not permit him to break up the party, which he was perfectly willing to do. He said: ‘No, no! If Melksham is determined – He is my guest, you know, and, besides – Well, you will understand how it is!’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said John bluntly. ‘And if I were you, old fellow, I would order things as I liked in my own house!’

  No one, after as much as one glance at the Captain’s goodhumoured but determined countenance, could doubt this. The Earl said fretfully: ‘Yes, but you don’t understand! It’s all very well for you – However, that don’t signify! The thing is, you know what Lucius is, and that stupid brother-in-law of mine! And here’s my Uncle Yatton taken himself off, and left young Geoffrey to do as he pleases! I wish you will stay, and help me to see that they keep the line!’

  So Captain Staple, no gamester, stayed; and if he failed to keep the stakes as low as his noble cousin would have wished he did contrive to prevent the quiet game of loo from becoming an extremely noisy game of loo. By the time Lord Melksham had wearied of this sport, and inaugurated a game of brag, young Mr Yatton had succumbed to his potations, which, as the Captain cheerfully informed the Earl, was a very happy circumstance, since it cut his losses short.

  Having carried Geoffrey up to bed, he presently held his own brother-in-law’s head under the pump in the scullery, guided his cousin Arthur’s wavering steps up the stairs, and gently but firmly convinced Lord Melksham that it would be better to retire to bed than to try the power of a hunting-horn discovered in the Great Hall.

  After so strenuous a night it was not surprising that the Captain should have slept far into the morning. He did not leave Easterby until past noon, and had he attended to the representations made to him by his host and his sister he would not have left it at all that day. It was pointed out to him that the sky threatened bad weather, that he could not hope to achieve more than a few miles of his journey, and that he would do well to abandon the whole project of riding to Leicestershire. But the probability of rain did not much trouble any man who was accustomed to bivouacking under the worst of conditions in the Peninsula and the Pyrenees; and the possibility of having to rack up for the night at some wayside inn seemed to him infinitely preferable to another of Lord Melksham’s convivial evenings. So at noon, Cocking, the private servant who had been with him through all his campaigns, brought his big, Roman-nosed bay horse up to the house, and strapped to the saddle a heavy frieze cloak, and the bag which contained all that the Captain considered to be necessary for his journey. The rest of the Captain’s luggage consisted of a couple of portmanteaux, and these he instructed Cocking to despatch by carrier to Edenhope, Mr Babbacombe’s hunting-box in Leicestershire. The sight of two such modest pieces caused Lord Melksham’s man, a very superior person, to wonder that any gentleman should care to travel about the country so meagrely provided for. His own master, he said, never stirred from home without several trunks, a dressing-case, and himself: a highly talented valet. However, the bubble of his conceit was swiftly pricked, Cocking replying without hesitation that there was nothing for him to hold his nose up at in that. ‘If the Captain was a tallow-faced twiddle-poop, mounted on a pair o’ cat-sticks, I dessay he’d need a snirp like you to pad his calves out, and finify him,’ he said. ‘Only he ain’t! Would there be anything more you was wishful to say about the Captain?’

  Lord Melksham’s man prudently decided that there was nothing more he wished to say, explaining this forbearance later to his colleagues as being due to his reluctance to bandy words with a vulgar make-bait. Cocking, left in possession of the field, carefully loaded the Captain’s pistols, placed them in the saddle-holsters, and led the bay up to the house. The Captain, attired in buckskin breeches and top-boots, and a coat of slightly military cut, gave him a few last instructions, and mounted the big horse. Keeping a hand on the bridle, Cocking looked up at him, and asked if he was to join him at Edenhope, when he had escorted the mistress safely home.

  ‘No, you might not find me there. Besides, I shan’t need you.’

  ‘Well, sir, that’s as may be, but what I should like to know is who’s going to clean them leathers?’ demanded his henchman.

  ‘I don’t know. Mr Babbacombe’s man, I daresay.’

  ‘Ho!’ said Cocking. ‘That’ll put Mr Babbacombe’s man in prime twig, that will! Howsever, it’s just as you wish, sir, out of course!’

  He then watched his master ride off down the avenue, slowly shaking his head. A sparrow, hopping about within a few yards of him, was the recipient of his next cryptic confidence. ‘Resty, very resty!’ he said, staring very hard at the bird. ‘If you was to ask me, I should say we sha