The Foundling Read online

  ‘And,’ pursued the Duke, opening the door, and casting a mischievous look at his cringing servitor, ‘I shall not engage a new valet!’

  ‘Now, your Grace!’ said Nettlebed, in quite a different voice.

  But the Duke had gone.

  He rode out towards Willsbridge beside his bailiff in a mood of gay good-humour, which much rejoiced that worthy man’s heart. By his request, they gave Cheyney a wide berth, the Duke having no desire to encounter his uncle while going upon an errand of which Lord Lionel would violently disapprove, and Moffat understanding this without the Duke’s having the least need to explain it to him. They reached Furze Farm without meeting anyone with whom the Duke was acquainted, and, tethering the horses to the gate-posts, walked across the yard to the open kitchen-door. A girl in a cotton apron and a mob-cap, who had stepped out to empty a pail of water, dropped a curtsy to Moffat, and informed him that Missus was in the kitchen, rolling out the pastry. Her voice brought a spare, middle-aged woman to the door. She had a worn, kindly face, and after casting the Duke a doubtful look, smiled at Moffat, and said: ‘Come you in, Mr Moffat! Now, if I’d but known you would be passing this way to-day – !’

  ‘Mrs Mudgley, ma’am, I’ve brought his Grace to see your Jasper,’ said Moffat, indicating his companion.

  She gave a gasp, and made haste to curtsy and to wipe the flour from her hands at the same time. ‘Your Grace! Oh, Mr Moffat! And me all unprepared, and Jasper out in the fields, and you bringing his Grace to the kitchen, instead of round the front, as is fitting! I do not know what to say, your Grace, but I’m sure I beg your pardon! If you would please to step into the parlour, I will send directly to fetch my son!’

  ‘Will you let me rather come into your kitchen, and talk to you, Mrs Mudgley?’ he said, with his shy smile.

  She looked rather wildly at Moffat, faltering that it was not fit. The bailiff said in a heartening tone: ‘Take his Grace in, ma’am: I’ll warrant he will like it very well!’

  She dropped another curtsy, and the Duke stepped over the threshold, and laid his hat and gloves down on a chair, saying, as he looked round the room: ‘Yes, indeed I do. How comfortable it is! Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘Oh, no, indeed, your Grace!’ she assured him. She saw how young he was, and suddenly felt less nervous. She set a chair for him, whisked her pastry up into a damp cloth, and said diffidently: ‘If your Grace would partake of a little refreshment after the ride? Just a sup of my cowslip wine, belike?’

  ‘Thank you: you are very good!’ he said, hoping that it would not disagree with him as much as he feared it would. ‘Moffat, while I am talking to Mrs Mudgley, will you be so good as to find her son for me?’

  Mrs Mudgley looked a little scared at being left without support, but by the time she had poured out a glass of her wine for the guest, and he had tasted it, and said how good it was, and had asked her how it was made, she began to forget his exalted status, and even allowed herself to be persuaded to sit down in a chair opposite to him.

  He said: ‘Moffat has been telling me about the Five-acre field. I am sorry my agent would not let your son buy it, but, you see, he has had to be so very careful while I was a minor.’

  She murmured something about her son’s being able to give a fair price for it.

  ‘Well, I think I shall not sell it to him,’ said the Duke. ‘I should like to give it to his bride, for her dowry.’

  She looked at him in a puzzled way. ‘Your Grace is very good, but –’

  ‘Mrs Mudgley, I didn’t come for that reason, but to ask you if you recall a girl named Belinda?’

  She jumped. ‘Belinda!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, and indeed I do, your Grace! Jasper was that taken with her he’ll not look at another wench! Poor thing, it wasn’t what I wished for him, sir, but seeing him so set on her, and him no more changeable than his father was before him, I would have let him wed her, and said naught, for she was so pretty you couldn’t but compassion her, and good-natured besides, even if she hadn’t much sense in her head, which dear knows she hadn’t! But she ran off from the woman she was apprenticed to, and try as he would my boy could never discover what had become of her. Why, sir, it couldn’t be that you know where she is?’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ he replied. ‘She fell into the hands of a plausible rogue, who wished to use her for his own ends, and I think she has been very unhappy since she ran away from Bath. But although she has been drifting about the country, and is a very silly girl, I am quite sure she is still quite an innocent girl.’ He paused. ‘I think I ought to tell you all I know of her,’ he said, meeting her startled blue eyes candidly. ‘You won’t judge her harshly, I believe, and – and it would not be right not to tell you!’

  She looked anxiously at him, but said nothing. But as he gently unfolded Belinda’s story to her the anxiety faded. She shook her head over it often, and clicked her tongue in censure, but at the end sighed, and said: ‘It all comes of her being a foundling, your Grace, and no one to bring her up right. Not that they don’t do their best at the Foundling Hospital, I’m sure, but it’s not the same, and never could be. It’s like as if the poor children don’t have the feelings they would with homes of their own, and folks to care for them. It always seemed to me that Belinda was just like that leaf that’s just blown in through the door, sir, cast about she didn’t know where, and nothing to hold to, if your Grace takes my meaning.’ He nodded. ‘I never thought she was a bad girl, for all the silly notions she had in her head.’

  ‘No, that I know she is not,’ he replied. ‘But she has the most dreadful way of going off with anyone who offers to give her silk dresses, or trinkets, I can’t deny!’

  ‘Ah, but they did say at the Foundling Hospital, where my boy went to ask if they had no news of her, that her father was Quality, which would account for it, sir, the Quality being very easy in their ways,’ explained Mrs Mudgley simply. ‘A love-child, she was. I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I was to tell your Grace I’m wishful my son should wed with her, but see him in the dumps, like he’s been ever since he lost her, I can’t. She won’t go trapesing off once she’s got a home of her own, and babies, and I daresay I shall be able to show her the way she should go on, for she was mightily taken with the farm, and they did teach her to bake and make at the Foundling Hospital, that I will say!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking round. ‘She would be happy here. She is not happy in Laura Place, I think. It’s strange to her, and she is a little afraid of Lady Ampleforth. And she thinks a great deal of your son, and of you.’ He smiled. ‘You were very kind to her: she told me, finding it strange that any woman should show her kindness.’

  Her heart was touched; she said: ‘Poor little dear! Do you bring her to me, sir, and don’t let her fear to be scolded, for it’s no manner of use scolding a pretty, silly creature like her!’

  A shadow darkened the doorway; the Duke looked up, and saw a sturdy young man confronting him, in breeches, and leggings, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled half-way up his tanned arms. He had a stolid, open countenance, in which a pair of widely set grey eyes squarely met the Duke’s. His mother jumped up, and went to him, chiding him for not having put on his coat and washed his hands before coming into the house, but he put her gently aside, saying, with his eyes still fixed on the Duke: ‘Mr Moffat told me his Grace of Sale had news of Belinda, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but make your bow, Jasper, do!’ she adjured him. ‘His Grace has been so kind, you would not believe!’

  ‘Has he?’ said Mr Mudgley heavily.

  ‘Jasper, will you mind your manners? I don’t know what his Grace must be thinking of you, standing there like a gowk! And him giving the Five-acre to Belinda, as he will!’

  The lines about Mr Mudgley’s jaw seemed to harden. ‘I don’t care for that,’ he said. ‘Nor I don’t rightly know why he should do any such thing, Mother.’