'All right, my lady,' he answered, without lifting his eyes from the carpet. 'Now you know. It will be your doing. I shall force her off, and if I am taken and hanged I will be hanged at Papworth. You took fine pains last night, but I'll take pains to-day. If I don't have her I shall never have a wife. But I will have her.'
'Fools cry for the moon,' said my lady. 'Any way, get out of my room. You are a fine talker, but I warrant you will take care of your neck.'
'I shall carry her off and marry her,' he repeated, his chin sunk on his breast, his hand rattling the money in his pocket.
'It is a distance to Gretna,' she answered. 'You'll be nearer it outside my door, my lad. So be stepping, will you? And if you take my advice, you will go to my lord.'
'All right; you know,' he said sullenly. 'For that sneak there, if he comes in my way, I'll break every bone in his body. Good-day, my lady. When I see you again I will have Miss with me.'
'Like enough; but not Madam,' she retorted. 'You are not such a fool as that comes to. And there is the Act besides!'
That was her parting shot; for all the feeling she had shown, from the opening to the close of the interview, she might have been his worst enemy. Yet after a fashion, and as a part of herself, she did love him; which was proved by her first words after the door had closed upon him.
'Lord!' she said uneasily. 'I hope he will play no Ferrers tricks, and disgrace us all. He is a black desperate fellow, is Dunborough, when he is roused.'
The crestfallen tutor could not in a moment recover himself; but he managed to say that he did not think Mr. Dunborough suspected Sir George; and that even if he did, the men had fought once, in which case there was less risk of a second encounter.
'You don't know him,' my lady answered, 'if you say that. But it is not that I mean. He'll do some wild thing about carrying her off. From a boy he would have his toy. I've whipped him till the blood ran, and he's gone to it.'
'But without her consent,' said Mr. Thomasson, 'it would not be possible.'
'I mistrust him,' the viscountess answered. 'So do you go and find this baggage, and drop a word to her--to go in company you understand. Lord! he might marry her that way yet. For once away she would have to marry him--ay, and he to marry her to save his neck. And fine fools we should look.'
'It's--it's a most surprising, wonderful thing she did not take him,' said the tutor thoughtfully.
'It's God's mercy and her madness,' quoth the viscountess piously. 'She may yet. And I would rather give you a bit of a living to marry her--ay, I would, Thomasson--than be saddled with such a besom!'
Mr. Thomasson cast a sickly glance at her ladyship. The evening before, when the danger seemed imminent, she had named two thousand pounds and a living. Tonight, the living. To-morrow--what? For the living had been promised all along and in any case. Whereas now, a remote and impossible contingency was attached to it. Alas! the tutor saw very clearly that my lady's promises were pie-crust, made to be broken.
She caught the look, but attributed it to another cause. 'What do you fear, man?' she said. 'Sho! he is out of the house by this time.'
Mr. Thomasson would not have ventured far on that assurance, but he had himself seen Mr. Dunborough leave the house and pass to the stables; and anxious to escape for a time from his terrible patroness, he professed himself ready. Knowing where the rooms, which the girl's party occupied, lay, in the west wing, he did not call a servant, but went through the house to them and knocked at the door.
He got no answer, so gently opened the door and peeped in. He discovered a pleasant airy apartment, looking by two windows over a little grass plot that flanked the house on that side, and lay under the shadow of the great Druid mound. The room showed signs of occupancy--a lady's cloak cast over a chair, a great litter of papers on the table. But for the moment it was empty.
He was drawing back, satisfied with his survey, when he caught the sound of a heavy tread in the corridor behind him. He turned; to his horror he discerned Mr. Dunborough striding towards him, a whip in one hand, and in the other a note; probably the note was for this very room. At the same moment Mr. Dunborough caught sight of the tutor, and bore down on him with a view halloa. Mr. Thomasson's hair rose, his knees shook under him, he all but sank down where he was. Fortunately at the last moment his better angel came to his assistance. His hand was still on the latch of the door; to open it, to dart inside, and to shoot the bolt were the work of a second. Trembling he heard Mr. Dunborough come up and slash the door with his whip, and then, contented with this demonstration, pass on, after shouting through the panels that the tutor need not flatter himself--he would catch him by-and-by.
Mr. Thomasson devoutly hoped he would not; and, sweating at every pore, sat down to recover himself. Though all was quiet, he suspected the enemy of lying in wait; and rather than run into his arms was prepared to stay where he was, at any risk of discovery by the occupants. Or there might be another exit. Going to one of the windows to ascertain this, he found that there was; an outside staircase of stone affording egress to the grass plot. He might go that way; but no!--at the base of the Druid mound he perceived a group of townsfolk and rustics staring at the flank of the building--staring apparently at him. He recoiled; then he remembered that Lord Chatham's rooms lay in that wing, and also looked over the gardens. Doubtless the countryfolk were watching in the hope that the great man would show himself at a window, or that, at the worst, they might see the crumbs shaken from a tablecloth he had used.
This alone would have deterred the tutor from a retreat so public: besides, he saw something which placed him at his ease. Beyond the group of watchers he espied three people strolling at their leisure, their backs towards him. His sight was better than Lady Dunborough's; and he had no difficulty in making out the three to be Julia, her mother, and the attorney. They were moving towards the Bath road. Freed from the fear of interruption, he heaved a sigh of relief, and, choosing the most comfortable chair, sat down on it.
It chanced to stand by the table, and on the table, as has been said, lay a vast litter of papers. Mr. Thomasson's elbow rested on one. He went to move it; in the act he read the heading: 'This is the last will and testament of me Sir Anthony Cornelius Soane, baronet, of Estcombe Hall, in the county of Wilts.'
'Tut-tut!' said the tutor. 'That is not Soane's will, that is his grandfather's.' And between idleness and curiosity, not unmingled with surprise, he read the will to the end. Beside it lay three or four narrow slips; he examined these, and found them to be extracts from a register. Apparently some one was trying to claim under the will; but Mr. Thomasson did not follow the steps or analyse the pedigree--his mind was engrossed by perplexity on another point. His thoughts might have been summed up in the lines--
'Not that the things themselves are rich or rare, The wonder's how the devil they got there'--
in a word, how came the papers to be in that room? 'These must be Soane's rooms,' he muttered at last, looking about him. 'And yet--that's a woman's cloak. And that old cowskin bag is not Sir George's. It is odd. Ah! What is this?'
This was a paper, written and folded brief-wise, and indorsed: 'Statement of the Claimant's case for the worshipful consideration of the Eight Honourable the Earl of Chatham and others the trustees of the Estcombe Hall Estate. Without Prejudice.'
'So!' said the tutor. 'This may be intelligible.' And having assured himself by a furtive glance through the window that the owners of the room were not returning, he settled himself to peruse it. When he again looked up, which was at a point about one-third of the way through the document, his face wore a look of rapt, incredulous, fatuous astonishment.
CHAPTER XIV
A GOOD MAN'S DILEMMA
Ten minutes later Mr. Thomasson slid back the bolt, and opening the door, glanced furtively up and down the passage. Seeing no one, he came out, closed the door behind him, and humming an air from the 'Buona Figlinola,'