A more timid or a more suspicious woman might have refused to leave the road, or to tempt the chances of the dark avenue, in his company. But Julia, whose thoughts were bitterly employed, complied without thought or hesitation, perhaps unconsciously. The gate swung to behind them, and they plodded a hundred yards between the trees arm in arm; then one and then a second light twinkled out in front. These as they approached were found to proceed from two windows in the ground floor of a large house. The travellers had not advanced many paces towards them before the peaks of three gables rose above them, vandyking the sky and docking the last sparse branches of the elms.
Mr. Thomasson's exclamation of relief, as he surveyed the building, was cut short by the harsh rattle of a chain, followed by the roar of a watch-dog, as it bounded from the kennel; in a second a horrid raving and baying, as of a score of hounds, awoke the night. The startled tutor came near to dropping his companion's hand, but fortunately the threshold, dimly pillared and doubtfully Palladian, was near, and resisting the impulse to put himself back to back with the girl--for the protection of his calves rather than her skirts--the reverend gentleman hurried to occupy it. Once in that coign of refuge, he hammered on the door with the energy of a frightened man.
When his anxiety permitted him to pause, a voice made itself heard within, cursing the dogs and roaring for Jarvey. A line of a hunting song, bawled at the top of a musical voice and ending in a shrill 'View Halloa!' followed; then 'To them, beauties; to them!' and the crash of an overturned chair. Again the house echoed with 'Jarvey, Jarvey!' on top of which the door opened and an elderly man-servant, with his wig set on askew, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his mouth twisted into a tipsy smile, confronted the wanderers.
CHAPTER XXIII
BULLY POMEROY
The man held a candle in a hand that wavered and strewed tallow broadcast; the light from this for a moment dazzled the visitors. Then the draught of air extinguished it, and looking over the servant's shoulder--he was short and squat--Mr. Thomasson's anxious eyes had a glimpse of a spacious old-fashioned hall, panelled and furnished in oak, with here a blazon, and there antlers or a stuffed head. At the farther end of the hall a wide easy staircase rose, to branch at the first landing into two flights, that returning formed a gallery round the apartment. Between the door and the foot of the staircase, in the warm glow of an unseen fire, stood a small heavily-carved oak table, with Jacobean legs, like stuffed trunk-hose. This was strewn with cards, liquors, glasses, and a china punch-bowl; but especially with cards, which lay everywhere, not only on the table, but in heaps and batches beneath and around it, where the careless hands of the players had flung them.
Yet, for all these cards, the players were only two. One, a man something under forty, in a peach coat and black satin breeches, sat on the edge of the table, his eyes on the door and his chair lying at his feet. It was his voice that had shouted for Jarvey and that now saluted the arrivals with a boisterous 'Two to one in guineas, it's a catchpoll! D'ye take me, my lord?'--the while he drummed merrily with his heels on a leg of the table. His companion, an exhausted young man, thin and pale, remained in his chair, which he had tilted on its hinder feet; and contented himself with staring at the doorway.
The latter was our old friend, Lord Almeric Doyley; but neither he nor Mr. Thomasson knew one another, until the tutor had advanced some paces into the room. Then, as the gentleman in the peach coat cried, 'Curse me, if it isn't a parson! The bet's off! Off!' Lord Almeric dropped his hand of cards on the table, and opening his mouth gasped in a paroxysm of dismay.
'Oh, Lord,' he exclaimed, at last. 'Hold me, some one! If it isn't Tommy! Oh, I say,' he continued, rising and speaking in a tone of querulous remonstrance, 'you have not come to tell me the old man's gone! And I'd pitted him against Bedford to live to--to--but it's like him! It is like him, and monstrous unfeeling. I vow and protest it is! Eh! oh, it is not that! Hal--loa!'
He paused there, his astonishment greater even than that which he had felt on recognising the tutor. His eye had lighted on Julia, whose figure was now visible on the threshold.
His companion did not notice this. He was busy identifying the tutor. 'Gad! it is old Thomasson!' he cried, for he too had been at Pembroke. '_And_ a petticoat! _And_ a petticoat!' he repeated. 'Well, I am spun!'
The tutor raised his hands in astonishment. 'Lord!' he said, with a fair show of enthusiasm, 'do I really see my old friend and pupil, Mr. Pomeroy of Bastwick?'
'Who put the cat in your valise? When you got to London--kittens? You do, Tommy.'
'I thought so!' Mr. Thomasson answered effusively. 'I was sure of it! I never forget a face when my--my heart has once gone out to it! And you, my dear, my very dear Lord Almeric, there is no danger I shall ever--'
'But, crib me, Tommy,' Lord Almeric shrieked, cutting him short without ceremony, so great was his astonishment, 'it's the Little Masterson!'
'You old fox!' Mr. Pomeroy chimed in, shaking his finger at the tutor with leering solemnity; he, belonging to an older generation at the College, did not know her. Then, 'The Little Masterson, is it?' he continued, advancing to the girl, and saluting her with mock ceremony. 'Among friends, I suppose? Well, my dear, for the future be pleased to count me among them. Welcome to my poor house! And here's to bettering your taste--for, fie, my love, old men are naughty. Have naught to do with them!' And he laughed wickedly. He was a tall, heavy man, with a hard, bullying, sneering face; a Dunborough grown older.
'Hush! my good sir. Hush!' Mr. Thomasson cried anxiously, after making more than one futile effort to stop him. Between his respect for his companion, and the deference in which he held a lord, the tutor was in agony. 'My good sir, my dear Lord Almeric, you are in error,' he continued strenuously. 'You mistake, I assure you, you mistake--'
'Do we, by Gad!' Mr. Pomeroy cried, winking at Julia.' Well, you and I, my dear, don't, do we? We understand one another very well.'
The girl only answered by a fierce look of contempt. But Mr. Thomasson was in despair. 'You do not, indeed!' he cried, almost wringing his hands. 'This lady has lately come into a--a fortune, and to-night was carried off by some villains from the Castle Inn at Marlborough in a--in a post-chaise. I was fortunately on the spot to give her such protection as I could, but the villains overpowered me, and to prevent my giving the alarm, as I take it, bundled me into the chaise with her.'
'Oh, come,' said Mr. Pomeroy, grinning. 'You don't expect us to swallow that?'
'It is true, as I live,' the tutor protested. 'Every word of it.'
'Then how come you here?'
'Not far from your gate, for no reason that I can understand, they turned us out, and made off.'
'Honest Abraham?' Lord Almeric asked; he had listened open-mouthed.
'Every word of it,' the tutor answered.
'Then, my dear, if you have a fortune, sit down,' cried Mr. Pomeroy; and seizing a chair he handed it with exaggerated gallantry to Julia, who still remained near the door, frowning darkly at the trio; neither ashamed nor abashed, but proudly and coldly contemptuous. 'Make yourself at home, my pretty,' he continued familiarly, 'for if you have a fortune it is the only one in this house, and a monstrous uncommon thing. Is it not, my lord?'
'Lord! I vow it is!' the other drawled; and then, taking advantage of the moment when Julia's attention was engaged elsewhere--she dumbly refused to sit, 'Where is Dunborough?' my lord muttered.
'Heaven knows,' Mr. Thomasson whispered, with a wink that postponed inquiry. 'What is more to the purpose,' he continued aloud, 'if I may venture to make the suggestion to your lordship and Mr. Pomeroy, Miss Masterson has been much distressed and fatigued this evening. If there is a respectable elderly woman in the house, therefore, to whose care you could entrust her