The Foundling Read online

  Young Mr Ware, on being hailed in such startling accents, jumped as though he had been shot, and dragged his horse to a standstill. ‘Gideon!’ he gasped. ‘You here? Gideon, something has happened to Gilly! Something must have happened, because – oh, we can’t talk here, in the road!’

  ‘Yes, something has indeed happened to Gilly,’ replied his cousin. ‘But what the devil are you doing here, and what do you know about it?’

  Mr Ware looked extremely wretched, and said: ‘It is all my fault, and I wish I had never consented to let him – But how was I to guess – though I told him I knew something would happen to him if he persisted! And then, when Nettlebed came to Oxford and told me –’

  ‘I suspicioned Mr Matthew had a hand in it,’ said Nettlebed, with ghoulish satisfaction. ‘Sitting up till all hours, and keeping his Grace from his bed, the way he was, the very day before he went off! If I hadn’t been so set-about, I should have thought of Mr Matthew sooner, no question!’

  ‘I never asked him to do it, and I would not have!’ Matthew said hotly. ‘He would go, in spite of all I could say!’

  ‘Come to the George!’ commanded Gideon. ‘I’d better get to the bottom of this before I do anything else. I suppose you’re in a scrape again!’

  ‘Gideon, where is Gilly?’ Matthew called after him urgently.

  ‘Kidnapped!’ Gideon threw over his shoulder, and drove on towards the posting-inn.

  Mr Liversedge, who had been sitting wrapped in his own thoughts, gave a genteel little cough, and said: ‘Another relative, I collect, Captain Ware? Possibly – er – Mr Matthew Ware?’

  ‘You seem to be remarkably well-acquainted with my family!’ returned Gideon shortly.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Liversedge sadly. ‘Had I been better acquainted with them – But it is useless to repine! So that is Mr Ware! Dear me, yes! Strange how the dice will sometimes fall against one, do what one will! I wish I had had the good fortune to have met Mr Ware earlier. He is just the kind of young man I had supposed him to be. I am not one of those who are unable to judge a matter dispassionately, and I will own that although I might have a personal preference for Mr Ware, his Grace is the better man.’

  ‘You are right,’ said Gideon, ‘but what you are talking about I have not the remotest guess!’

  ‘And I wish with all my heart,’ said Mr Liversedge, with feeling, ‘that you might never have the remotest guess, sir!’

  Both carriages had by this time reached the George. Gideon sprang down from the curricle, and strode into the house, closely followed by his agitated young cousin, but any hope that Mr Liversedge might fleetingly have cherished of making good his escape was frustrated by Wragby, who conducted him into the inn in a manner strongly reminiscent of his days in the army.

  Gideon having demanded a private parlour, the whole party was conducted to a small apartment on the first floor. Matthew was barely able to contain himself until the door was closed. He burst out into speech as soon as the waiter had withdrawn, exclaiming: ‘You said he had been kidnapped! But I don’t understand! It was all over! He wrote to me that it was!’

  ‘What was all over?’ demanded Gideon.

  ‘Oh, Gideon!’ said Matthew wretchedly, ‘it is all my fault! I wish I had never told Gilly about it! Who has kidnapped him? And how did you come to hear of it?’

  ‘Ah, you have not yet been presented to Mr Liversedge!’ said Gideon, with a wave of his hand. ‘Allow me to make him known to you! He kidnapped Gilly, and has been so very obliging as to offer to sell his life to me.’ He paused, perceiving that this speech had had a strange effect upon Matthew, who was staring at Mr Liversedge in mingled wrath and bewilderment. ‘Now what is the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘So it was you!’ said Matthew, his eyes still fixed on Mr Liversedge’s face. ‘You – you damned scoundrel! You did it for revenge! By God, I have a mind to kill you, you –’

  ‘Nothing of the sort!’ said Mr Liversedge earnestly. ‘No such paltry notion has ever crossed my brain, sir! I bore your cousin no ill-will – not the least in the world!’

  ‘Sit down!’ commanded Gideon. ‘Matt, what do you know of this fellow, and what’s your part in this coil?’

  ‘Ay!’ nodded Nettlebed, grimly surveying Matthew. ‘That’s what I’d like to know, sir, and tell me he will not!’

  ‘I ought to have told you, Gideon!’ Matthew said, sinking into a chair by the table.

  ‘You are going to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean I should have told you before, and never breathed a word to Gilly! Only I thought very likely you would say something cutting, or – But I should have told you! It was breach of promise, Gideon!’

  His cousin was not unnaturally mystified by this abrupt statement. Mr Liversedge seized the opportunity to interpolate an expostulation. Such ugly words, he said, had never soiled his pen. Wragby then commanded him to shut his bone-box, and Captain Ware, in the voice of one who has reached the limits of his patience, requested Matthew to be a little more explicit. Matthew then favoured him with a somewhat disjointed account of the affair, to which Captain Ware listened with knit brows, and an air of deepening exasperation. He said at last: ‘You young fool! You’re not of age!’

  Matthew blinked at him. ‘What has that to say to anything? I tell you –’

  ‘It has this to say to it! No action for breach of promise can lie against you while you are a minor!’

  There was a shocked silence. Mr Liversedge broke it. ‘It is perfectly true,’ he said. ‘Sir, I shall not conceal from you that this has been a blow to me. How I came to overlook such a circumstance I know not, but that I did overlook it I shall not attempt to deny. I am chagrined – I never thought to be so chagrined!’

  ‘Oh, Gideon, I wish I had told you!’ gasped Matthew. ‘None of this dreadful business need have been at all!’

  ‘No, it need not,’ said Gideon. ‘But why the devil didn’t Gilly come to me?’

  ‘It was because he was tired of being told always what he should do next,’ explained Matthew. ‘He said here was something he might do for himself, and that it would be an adventure, and that if he could not outwit a fellow like this Liversedge he must be less of a man than he believed!’

  Mr Liversedge bowed his head in approval. ‘Very true! And outwit me he did, sir. Yes, yes, I am not ashamed to own it! I was quite rolled-up. Your noble relative obtained possession of your letters, Mr Ware, and without expending as much as a guinea on the business. You have every reason to feel pride in his achievement, I assure you.’

  Both the Wares turned to stare at him. Gideon said: ‘How did he outwit you?’

  Mr Liversedge sighed, and shook his head. ‘Had he not appeared to me to be so young, and so innocent, I should not have fallen a victim to such a trick! But my suspicions were lulled. I thought no ill. Taking advantage, I regret to say, of my trust, he drove a heavy table against my legs, as I was in the act of rising, and felled me to the ground, where, striking my head against the fender of the grate, I lost consciousness. By the time I had regained my senses, his Grace had made good his escape, bearing with him, to my chagrin, the fatal letters.’

  A slow smile curled Gideon’s uncompromising mouth. ‘Adolphus!’ he said softly. ‘Well done, my little one! So here was your dragon!’

  ‘Drove the table against your legs?’ repeated Matthew. ‘Gilly? Well, by God!’

  ‘So far, so good,’ said Gideon. ‘But how came he to fall again into your clutches?’

  ‘That,’ said Mr Liversedge evasively ‘is a long story, sir. But it should be borne in mind that it is I who have been the humble instrument whereby your interesting relative has met with the adventure his soul craved.’

  Nettlebed, who had been listening to this interchange with scarcely concealed impatience, interrupted to say fiercely: ‘You gallowscheat, you’ll say where you have h