Sir Gareth, an amused observer of this by-play, thought it time to call a halt. If this romantic and impressionable youth saw much more of Amanda, it seemed likely that his walking tour would be ruined by a severe attack of frustrated calf-love, which would be rather too bad, for he looked just the kind of over-sensitive boy to be seriously upset by it. So he bade him a kind but firm goodnight, shaking hands with him, and saying that perhaps they had better call it goodbye, since he and Amanda would be leaving Kimbolton very early in the morning.
He then swept Amanda inexorably away. Mr Ross, bent on making an assignation with this distressed damsel, conceived the happy notion of slipping a note under her bedroom door, and suddenly realized that he had no idea which room had been allotted to her. The only way of discovering this seemed to be to go upstairs himself, as though on his way to bed, and listen carefully at all the possible doors for some sound that would disclose her exact whereabouts. He was pretty sure that she would talk to Joseph while she made herself ready for bed, and in this hope he too mounted the stairs.
Twelve
He found, when he reached the square landing at the head of the stairs, that it was going to be a simpler matter than he had feared to locate Amanda’s room. The sound of her voice came to him, from the corridor that led from the landing to the end of the house, and it was evident that instead of retiring immediately to bed she had detained Sir Gareth to engage him in hot argument.
‘You have no right to force me to go with you!’
‘Very well: I have no right, but nevertheless you will go with me,’ Sir Gareth replied, rather wearily. ‘For heaven’s sake, stop arguing, and go to bed, Amanda!’
Hildebrand hesitated. By all the canons of his upbringing he ought either to advertise his presence, or to go away. He had almost started to tiptoe down the stairs again when it occurred to him that too scrupulous a regard for his own honour in this instance might militate against his being able to rescue Amanda. He remained where he was, not, indeed, quite comfortable, but fairly well persuaded that Amanda at least would raise no objection to his eavesdropping. Her next words almost brought tears of sympathy to his eyes.
‘Oh, if you had a heart you would let me go!’ she said tragically.
From the chuckle that followed this impassioned outburst, it was to be inferred that Sir Gareth was not at all moved by it. ‘That is a splendid line, and very creditably delivered,’ he approved. ‘Now you must ring down the curtain, for fear of falling into anticlimax! Have you everything you need for the night?’
She paid no heed to this, but said, in a voice trembling with indignation: ‘I was never so deceived in anyone! No, or those others!’
‘What others?’
‘All of them! – that fat landlady, and the Ninfields, and now Mr Ross! You made them all l-like you, because you have ch-charming manners, and address, and they believed you when you told the w-wickedest untruths, and you make it so that it is no use for me to tell them that you are not a gentleman at all, but a snake!’
‘Poor Amanda! Now, listen, you foolish child! I know I seem to you to be heartless, and detestably tyrannical, but, believe me, you’ll thank me for it one day. Come, now, dry your eyes! Anyone would suppose that I really was going to carry you off to that mouldering castle of mine! Instead of that I am taking you to London. Is that so dreadful? I daresay you will enjoy it. How would it be if I took you to the play?’
‘No!’ she said passionately. ‘I am not a child, and I won’t be bribed like that! How dare you talk to me of going to a stupid play, when you are determined to ruin my life? You are detestable, and I see that it is useless to appeal to your better nature, because you haven’t got a better nature!’
‘Black to the core – like Queen Katherine’s heart,’ agreed Sir Gareth gravely. ‘Go to bed, my child: the future won’t look so ill in the morning. There is, however, just one thing I must tell you before I bid you goodnight. Much as I regret the necessity, I am going to lock your door.’
‘No!’ cried Amanda pantingly. ‘You shan’t, you shan’t! Give me back that key! Give it back to me instantly!’
‘No, Amanda. I warned you that you were not dealing with a flat. If I gave it to you, you would run away as soon as you thought I was asleep. You are not going to escape again.’
‘You can’t be so inhuman as to lock me up! I might be ill!’
‘Oh, I don’t think you will be!’
‘I might die!’ she urged.
‘Well, if you did that, it wouldn’t signify whether you were locked in, or not, would it?’
‘Oh, how hateful you are! I might be burnt in my bed!’
‘If the house should happen to catch fire, I will engage not only to rescue you, but Joseph as well. Goodnight – and dream of a revenge on me!’
Mr Ross heard the click of a closing door, and the grating of the key in the lock. He moved softly forward to peep round the angle of the wall, and was in time to see Sir Gareth withdraw the key from the lock of a door, and cross the corridor to a room directly opposite.
For several minutes Mr Ross remained on the landing, not knowing just what he ought to do. When he had heard Amanda beg Sir Gareth not to lock her door, his impulse had been to dash to her support. But before he could do so, all the awkwardness of his situation had been realized, and he had hesitated. Profoundly shocked though he was, and burning to perform some heroic deed for Amanda’s sake, he yet could not feel that he would be justified in intervening, or even, perhaps, successful. It was cruel of Sir Gareth to lock the door on Amanda, but if he was her guardian no one could gainsay his right to do so. The things Amanda had said to him certainly indicated that he had behaved very badly to her, but what he had done, or why she was so reluctant to accompany him to London, could at present be matters only for conjecture.
He decided that his first step must be to find a way of approaching Amanda, and he did not immediately perceive how this was to be accomplished. A whispered conversation through the keyhole would be a very indifferent way of communicating with her, and might well bring Sir Gareth out upon him. A little further consideration, however, put him in mind of the fact that her bedroom must, from its position, look out on to the small, walled garden at the back of the inn, and he conceived the happy idea of walking out into this, and of attracting Amanda’s attention by throwing stones at her window.
Fortunately, since he might have been hard put to it to distinguish her window amongst several others which looked on to the garden, this expedient was found to be unnecessary. Amanda’s window stood open, and Amanda was kneeling at it, clearly silhouetted by the candle behind her, her elbows on the ledge, and her face propped between her hands.
Thrust firmly into her room, and the door closed on her, the agitation from which she was suffering had found relief in a burst of tears. Without having precisely decided on a course of action, she had been turning over in her mind a plan of escaping from the White Lion as soon as it was light; and the discovery that Sir Gareth had been aware of this provoked her to quite irrational fury. Though she meant to outwit him if she could, it was insulting of him to suspect her; and his calm air of mastery made her want to hit him. Well, she would show him!
The first step towards showing him had been to run to the window, to ascertain whether it were possible to climb down from it, or even, since the upper storey of the house was at no great height from the ground, to drop down from it. She had not previously thought of this way of escape, and so had not inspected the window. It needed only the most cursory inspection now to inform her that to squeeze herself through it would be impossible. She began to cry again, and was still convulsively sobbing when Mr Ross came cautiously into the garden through a wicket-gate opening into the stable-yard, and saw her.
The moon was up, brightly illuminating the scene, so there was really no need for Mr Ross, softly treading along the flagged path until he sto
od immediately beneath Amanda’s window, to attract her attention by saying, thrillingly, ‘Hist!’ Amanda had seen him as soon as he entered the garden, and had moodily watched his approach. She could think of no way in which he could be of assistance to her.
‘Miss Smith! I must have speech with you!’ piercingly whispered Mr Ross. ‘I heard all!’
‘All what?’ said Amanda crossly.
‘All that you said to Sir Gareth! Only tell me what I can do to help you!’
‘No one can help me,’ replied Amanda, sunk in gloom.
‘I can, and will,’ promised Mr Ross recklessly.
A faint interest gleamed in her eyes. She abandoned her despairing pose, and looked down at his upturned face. ‘How? He locked me in, and the window is too small for me to get out of.’
‘I will think of a way. Only we cannot continue talking like this. Someone may hear us! Wait! There is bound to be a ladder in the stables! If I can contrive to do so unobserved, I’ll fetch it, and climb up to you!’
Amanda began to feel more hopeful. Up till now she had not considered him in the light of a possible rescuer, for he seemed to her very young, and no match for a man of Sir Gareth’s fiendish ingenuity. He now appeared to be a man of action and resource. She waited.
Time passed, and the slight hope she was cherishing dwindled. Then, just as she was thinking that there was nothing to do but to go to bed, Mr Ross came back, bearing a short ladder, which was used for climbing into the hay-loft. He set this up against the wall of the house, and mounted it. He had to climb to the topmost rung before his head rose above the window-sill, and his hands could grasp it, and the last part of the ascent was somewhat precariously accomplished.
‘Oh, pray be careful!’ begged Amanda, alarmed but admiring.
‘It’s quite safe,’ he assured her. ‘I beg pardon for having been such an age: I had to wait, you see, because that man – your guardian’s groom – was giving the head ostler all manner of directions. Why are you locked in?’
‘Because Sir Gareth is determined not to let me escape,’ she replied bitterly.
‘Yes, but – You see, I did not perfectly understand from what you was saying to him why you wish to escape, or what he means to do with you. Of course, I saw how much you feared him long before!’
‘Saw how much I – Oh! Oh, yes!’ said Amanda, swallowing with an effort her very natural indignation. ‘I am wholly in his power!’
‘Yes, well, I suppose – I mean, if he’s your guardian, you must be. But what has he done to frighten you? Why did you say he was a snake?’
Amanda did not answer for a moment. She was feeling tired, quite unequal to the task of rapidly composing a suitable explanation. A sigh broke from her. The sadness of this sound wrought powerfully upon Mr Ross. He ventured to remove one hand from the sill, and to lay it tenderly on hers. ‘Tell me!’ he said.
‘He is abducting me,’ said Amanda.
Mr Ross was so much astonished that he nearly fell off the ladder. ‘Abducting you?’ he gasped. ‘You cannot be serious!’
‘Yes, I am! And, what is more, it’s true!’ said Amanda.
‘Good God! I would not have believed it to have been possible! My dear Miss Smith, you may be easy! I will instantly have you set free! There will be no difficulty. I have but to inform the parish constable, or perhaps a magistrate – I am not perfectly sure, but I shall speedily discover –’
‘No, no!’ she interrupted hastily. ‘It would be useless! Pray do not do so!’
‘But I am persuaded it is what I should do!’ he expostulated. ‘How should it be useless?’
She sought wildly for some explanation which would satisfy him. None occurred to her, until, just as she was wondering whether she dared tell him the truth, or whether (which she suspected) he would disapprove as heartily as Sir Gareth of her plan of campaign, there flashed into her brain a notion of transcendent splendour. It almost took her breath away, for not only was it an excellent story in itself: it would, properly handled, afford her the means of being exquisitely revenged on Sir Gareth. It was Sir Gareth’s own story, now to prove his undoing. ‘You see,’ said Amanda, drawing a deep, ecstatic breath. ‘I am an heiress.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Ross, rather at a loss.
‘I was left an orphan at an early age,’ she continued, embellishing Sir Gareth’s crude handiwork. ‘Alas! I am quite alone in the world, without kith or kin.’
Mr Ross, himself a great reader of romances, found nothing to object to in the style of this narrative, but cavilled a little at the matter. ‘What, have you no relations at all?’ he asked incredulously. ‘No cousins, even?’
Amanda thought him unnecessarily captious, but obligingly presented him with a relative. ‘Yes, I have an uncle,’ she conceded. ‘But he cannot help me, so –’
‘But why not? Surely –’
Amanda, regretting the creation of an uncle who seemed likely to prove an embarrassment, with great presence of mind placed him beyond Mr Ross’s reach. ‘He is in Bedlam,’ she said. ‘So we need not think any more about him. The thing is that –’
‘Mad?’ interrupted Mr Ross, in horrified accents.
‘Raving mad,’ said Amanda firmly.
‘How very dreadful!’
‘Yes, isn’t it? Because I have no one to turn to but Sir Gareth.’
‘Is he a dangerous madman?’ asked Mr Ross, apparently fascinated by the uncle.
‘I do wish you would stop asking questions about my uncle, and attend to what I am saying!’ said Amanda, exasperated.
‘I beg pardon! It must be excessively painful for you!’
‘Yes, and it is quite beside the point, too. Sir Gareth, wishing to possess himself of my fortune, is determined to force me into marriage with himself, and for this purpose is carrying me to London.’
‘To London? I should have thought –’
‘To London,’ repeated Amanda emphatically. ‘Because that is where he lives, and he means to incarcerate me in his house until I submit. And it’s no use saying the parish constable would stop him, because Sir Gareth would deny every word, and say that he was taking me to live with his sister, who is a very disagreeable woman, and would do anything to oblige him. And everyone would believe him, because they always do. So you would only make a great noise, which I should very much dislike, and all to no purpose.’
Mr Ross could see that this was very likely, but he was still puzzled. ‘Where have you been living?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t perfectly understand. You said he abducted you; haven’t you been residing under his roof?’
‘No, no, I have hitherto resided with a very respectable woman, who –’ She stopped, and decided to eliminate a possible danger. ‘– who is dead. I mean, she died two years ago, and Sir Gareth then placed me in a seminary, which is exactly the sort of thing he would do! Only now that I am old enough to be married, he came and removed me, and naturally I was pleased, because then I believed him to be everything that was amiable. But when he told me that I must marry him –’
‘Good God, I should have thought he would have had more address!’ exclaimed Mr Ross. ‘Told you that you must marry him when he had only that instant removed you from the seminary?’
‘Oh, no! The thing was that he supposed I should like the notion, because previously I had been excessively attached to him, on account of his being so handsome, and agreeable. Only, of course, I never thought of marrying him. Why, he’s quite old! So then I was in a great fright, and I ran away from the place where we were staying last night, and he chased me all day, and found me at last, and brought me here. And I cannot think how to escape again, and oh, I am so very unhappy!’
The passionate sincerity with which these final words were uttered pierced Mr Ross to the heart. He was ashamed to think that he had for a moment doubted the story, and in some agitation im
plored Amanda not to cry. Amanda, between sobs, told him of her earlier adventures. These had been wholly enjoyable at the time, but regarded in retrospect, now that she was tired and defeated, the day seemed to her to have been one of unrelieved misery and discomfort.
Mr Ross had no difficulty in believing this at least. He would, indeed, have found it impossible to have believed that anything less than the direst necessity could have induced a gently-born young female to have taken so unprecedented and perilous a step as to cast herself upon the world as she had done. From the moment of her escape, the poor little thing had been mercilessly hounded. It did not surprise him to learn that the fat old gentleman who had with such false kindness offered to carry her to Oundle had tried to take advantage of her innocence. His sensitive nature made it easy for him to imagine the desperation of terror which must have had her in its grip; and the thought of so fragile and lovely a creature cowering on the floor of a farmcart made him shudder, not the smallest suspicion entering his head that she had thoroughly enjoyed this part of her adventure. The description of the devilish cunning employed by Sir Gareth to regain possession of her lost nothing in the telling. Sir Gareth began, in Mr Ross’s mind, to assume an aspect of smiling villainy. He wondered how he should have been taken-in by his pleasant manners, until he remembered certain warnings given him by his father against too readily trusting smooth-tongued and apparently creditable gentlemen of fashionable appearance. The world, said the Squire, was full of plausible banditti on the look-out for green young men of fortune. Their stock-in-trade was winning charm, and they frequently bestowed titles upon themselves, generally military. No doubt they were also on the look-out for rich wives, but naturally the Squire had not thought it necessary to tell his son this.
Had some chance brought Mr Ross face to face with Sir Gareth again, it was possible that his leaping imagination would have suffered a check. But Sir Gareth had gone to bed, and Mr Ross’s last sight of him had been of him on the corridor, locking Amanda into her room. Every word he had said to Amanda bore out the truth of her story, and of his cynical heartlessness there could be no doubt. Only a hardened scoundrel, in Mr Ross’s opinion, could have laughed at Amanda’s anguish. Sir Gareth, not content with laughing, had mocked at her distress. He had also (now one came to think of it) tried to deceive her with promises of generous entertainment in London.