The Foundling Read online

  He was too much touched to point out to her the slight inaccuracy contained in this speech. ‘My poor child, I wish indeed that you had some guardian to take care of you! Or that I could find your friend, Mrs Street. But I have enquired at the receiving-office, and at upwards of twenty shops, and no one can give me the least intelligence of her. In fact, the only Street living in Hitchin is an old man, who is stone deaf, and knows nothing of your Maggie! Can you not –’

  He was interrupted. Belinda broke into a peal of merry laughter. ‘Oh, but she is not Mrs Street!’ she told him. ‘How came you to think she was, dear sir? She was Maggie Street when she worked at Mrs Buttermere’s establishment, but then, you know, she was married!’

  For one horrifying moment, the Duke recognised in himself an affinity with Mr Liversedge, who had boxed Belinda’s ears. Then the absurdity of it most forcibly struck him, and he began to laugh. Belinda regarded him in faint surprise, and Tom, entering the room at that moment, instantly demanded to be told what the jest might be.

  The Duke shook his head. ‘Nothing! Tom, if you would please me, go and wash your face!’

  ‘I was just about to do so,’ said Tom, with great dignity, and even greater mendacity. ‘By Jupiter, I never wanted my dinner more! I am quite gutfoundered!’

  On this elegant expression, he vanished, leaving the Duke to ask Belinda, in a failing voice, if she knew what her friend’s surname might now be. He was by this time sufficiently well acquainted with Belinda to feel no surprise at her reply.

  ‘Oh, no! I daresay she may have told me, but I did not attend particularly, you know, for why should I?’

  ‘Then what,’ demanded Gilly, ‘are we to do?’

  He had no very real expectation of receiving an answer to this question, but Belinda, assuming an expression of profound thought, suddenly said: ‘Well, do you know, sir, I think I would as lief marry Mr Mudgley after all?’

  The introduction into his life of this entirely new character slightly staggered the Duke. He said: ‘Who, Belinda, is Mr Mudgley?’

  Belinda’s eyes grew soft with memory. ‘He is a very kind gentleman,’ she sighed.

  ‘I am sure he is,’ agreed the Duke. ‘Did he promise you a purple silk gown?’

  ‘No,’ said Belinda mournfully, ‘but he took me to see his farm and his mother, driving me in his own gig! And he said he was wishful to marry me, only Uncle Swithin told me I should go away with him, and be a real lady, and so of course I went.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Duke. ‘Did you know Mr Mudgley when you lived in Bath?’

  ‘Oh, yes! And he has the prettiest house, and his mother was kind to me, and now I am sorry that I went with Uncle Swithin, for Mr Ware didn’t marry me, and he didn’t give me a great deal of money either. I was quite taken in!’

  Here the door opened to admit both Tom and the waiter. While the latter laid the covers for dinner, Tom plunged into an animated account of his activities at the Fair, and displayed for the Duke’s admiration the Belcher handkerchief he had won in the sack race. He was with difficulty deterred from knotting this about his neck at once. The waiter set the dishes on the table, and withdrew, and the Duke was again able to touch upon the question of Belinda’s destination. He asked her if Mr Mudgley lived near Bath. She replied, after her usual fashion: ‘Oh, yes!’ but seemed unable to supply any more detailed information. Tom, surprised, demanded enlightenment, and upon being told that Belinda had forgotten Maggie Street’s married name, said disgustedly: ‘You are the most henwitted girl! I daresay she don’t live at Hitchin at all, but at Ditchling, or – or Mitcham, or some such place!’

  Belinda looked much struck, and said ingenuously: ‘Yes, she does!’

  The Duke was in the act of conveying a portion of braised ham to his mouth, but he lowered his fork at this, and demanded, ‘Which?’

  ‘The one Tom said,’ replied Belinda brightly.

  ‘My dear child, he said Ditchling or Mitcham! Surely –’

  ‘Well, I am not quite sure,’ Belinda confessed. ‘It was some place that sounded like those.’

  The prospect of travelling about England to every place that sounded faintly like Hitchin was not one which the Duke found himself able to contemplate for as much as a minute. He said rather fatalistically: ‘Mr Mudgley it must be!’

  ‘Yes, but I dare not go back to Bath,’ objected Belinda. ‘Because, you know, if Mrs Pilling were to find me she would very likely put me in prison for having broken my indentures.’

  The Duke had no very clear idea of what the laws were governing apprentices, but it had occurred to him that in Bath he would find Lady Harriet. She might not be the bride of his choosing, but she was one of the friends of his childhood, and never in any childish exploit had she failed to lend him a helping hand whenever it had lain in her power to do so. That she might not feel much inclination to extend this hand to Belinda he did not consider. It seemed to him that since he had been forced into the position of Belinda’s protector, and could not find it in his heart to abandon her, he must find for her (failing Mr Mudgley) a suitable chaperon. He could think of none more suitable than Harriet, and he began to feel that he had been a great simpleton not to have carried Belinda to Bath at the outset.

  Tom interrupted these meditations with a demand to know whether the proposed trip to Bath would preclude his being taken to London. If, he said, that were so, he thought he should be well advised to leave the party, and to make his own way either to London or to some likely sea-port. As it was obvious that the merest hint of returning him to his parent would drive him into precipitate flight, the Duke refrained from making this suggestion, but assured him that although he must certainly write to Mr Mamble from Bath, he should beg to be allowed the pleasure of his son’s company on a visit to the Metropolis. Tom seemed a little doubtful about this, but allowed himself to be overborne. Belinda reiterated her fear of Mrs Pilling, and the Duke wondered whether his Harriet would also be able to deal with this awe-inspiring lady. He was just about to say that he would hire a post-chaise to take them all to Cheyney on the morrow, when it suddenly occurred to him that his arrival at any one of his houses, accompanied by Belinda, would give rise to more scandalous comment than he felt at all able to face. He decided to seek out the quietest inn in Bath, and to lose no time in calling upon Harriet, in Laura Place.

  While he and his young friends were eating their dinners, Mr Liversedge and Mr Shifnal were taking counsel together. Mr Shifnal’s suggestion that Mr Liversedge should also hire a room at the Sun, and should smother the Duke in his bed at dead of night, was ill-received by his partner, who demanded to know how that could serve any good purpose. He said that even supposing that Mr Shifnal were there to give his assistance it was hardly to be supposed that they could smuggle out of a busy inn an unconscious guest. Mr Shifnal, a little damped, was still trying to think out an alternative scheme when the Duke’s party issued forth from the inn, and began walking in the direction of the Fair-ground. Protected by the tilt of the cart, the confederates watched them go, and could scarcely believe their good fortune.

  ‘Sam,’ said Mr Shifnal, ‘if we can’t nabble that Dook while everyone’s watching the fireworks we don’t deserve no thirty thousand pounds!’

  The Fair, when the Duke reached it again, was the scene of even denser crowds than it had been during the daylight hours. All the shopkeepers of Hitchin seemed to have thronged there, and although the open-air competitions were over, the various booths were packed with people, either staring at some monstrosity, or taking part in wrestling, boxing, or single-stick bouts. A large prize was offered to any sportsman able to knock out a professional bruiser with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear, and it was with difficulty that the Duke dissuaded Tom from instantly throwing his hat into the Ring. He took him instead to witness a stirring drama, entitled Monk and Murderer! or The Skeleton Spectre, which gave both him a