Doctor Syn A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh (24 page)

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“There’s something in the way of the door, you clumsy clodhopper!” called the voice of Mrs. Whyllie from outside.

“I know there is, my love,” faltered the husband, and then to Imogene he said: “Oh, please let her come in. She will be quiet, I’m sure.” Then in a louder tone: “You will be quiet, won’t you, my love?”

“Antony,” called the voice of the spouse, “are you addressing yourself to that handsome girl? Are you calling her your love?” Then in a tone of doom: “Wait till I get in!”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, she’s misunderstanding me again. Don’t let her come in now, for heaven’s sake!” But Imogene had already opened the door and in had burst the little lady, and without heeding Imogene she rushed across the room and administered with her mittened hand a very resounding and sound box upon her husband’s ear.

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“Now perhaps you will behave yourself like a respectable married man, like an old fogey that you are, like everything in fact that you ought to be, but aren’t and never will be! Will you behave yourself now, you truly terrible old man?”

“Certainly, my love,” meekly replied the lawyer, “but do look at this young lady.”

“Sakes alive!” she exclaimed when she did look at Imogene, “for if she hasn’t got a pistol in her hand, you’re no fool, Antony!”

“She has got a pistol in her hand, my love, and I’ll not only be a fool, but a dead fool, if you don’t find some way out of the difficulty.”

“And what is the difficulty, pray?” she asked, looking from her terrified husband to the extraordinary girl. “Oh, keep that pistol down, will you, my dear? for there is no immediate danger of my eating you. Just because I keep this fool of a husband of mine in his place, you mustn’t think me an utter virago.”

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“I am afraid it is me that you will be thinking a virago,” answered the girl, still feigning fear in her voice, “but indeed I cannot help myself. This unpleasant situation has been forced upon me.”

But the old lady cut in again with: “I beseech you both to cease making melodramatic idiots of yourselves and tell me calmly and clearly what all this to-do is about. Now, Antony, speak up and tell me all about it. Come along, sir, make haste and tell me if you have any ideas left in that silly head of yours. No doubt you’ve been getting yourself into another pretty mess. Isn’t it enough for you that you go out, sir, a-driving and get robbed of your coach and cattle? I should really have thought that had been quite enough to keep you out of mischief for a day or two. But no! Here you are in trouble again. No doubt you have quite forgotten the little dinner lecture I read to you upon that occasion?”

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“No, my dear, I cannot forget it, I assure you. It is still very vivid to me, I promise you.” For indeed the little old man was still very conscious of a strange feeling of slippers whenever he chanced to sit down.

“Oh, yes, you have forgotten it,” went on the irrepressible lady. “You must have done so. Now tell me what on earth have you been doing to make this handsome girl behave in such a ridiculous fashion?”

With one hand still rubbing his boxed ear and with the other holding out to his wife the terrible letter, the lawyer explained as coherently as possible the whole situation. He told the facts in a timid voice, for he was greatly troubled as to how his wife would take it, but her manner was the most shocking surprise to him, it was so entirely different from anything he might have expected, for when she heard about the press gang, she clapped her little mittens together, and, laughing aloud, urged her husband to go on with the tale which she found the most refreshing she had heard for a month of Sundays, and

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at the conclusion she gave way to the most extraordinary capers of excitement, literally tripping round and round the table, exclaiming that nothing could have been more fortunate. “La, sir,” she cried, “this little affair is truly a Godsend to me.”

“In whatever way?” asked the amazed lawyer.

“Why, you disproportionate dullard! Who is head of the press gang, eh? Answer me that now, and you’ve got it.”

“Captain Tuffton, isn’t it, my love?” said the lawyer.

“Captain Tuffton, of course it is,” said his wife, “Captain Tuffton of a truth. That insufferable coxcomb, that atrociously obnoxious scent-smelling profligate on whom I shall now be able to pay off old scores.”

“Old scores, my love? Old scores?”

“La, sir, have you utterly forgotten how he snubbed me at Lady Rivers’s card party and again at his lordships’s water picnic? Has that slipped your

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memory, too? How he got that appallingly painted besom of a Parisian actress to imitate me to my face? Lord love you, Mister Whyllie, I have long sworn to get even with that young idiot. Why, it was only this morning that I was puzzling out a thousand schemes all through church for his undoing, and here comes a direct answer to my prayers, and you seem to have covered yourself with the blues about it. Why, Mister Whyllie, here is not only a chance to humble him to the dust, but a most admirable occasion for his disgrace as well.”

“I am truly glad to hear you say so,” was the husband’s comment. “But I’m danged if I can see how you are to set about it.”

“Through the help of this girl here, stupid, and by the bewitching charms of your handsome niece from India, who has returned to England with her large fortune inherited from the British East India Company.”

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The lawyer stared at his wife blankly, then genuine concern for that lady’s health getting the better of his amazement, he said: “Can I fetch you your salts or anything, my love? Your pounce box or your vinaigrette? For I declare that you are wandering in your mind, my poor dear. I never had a niece in all my life, my love, and as for the British East India Company—well, I have heard of it, of course, but little else indeed—very little else.”

“Well, for to-day you will have to know a good deal about it,” said Mrs. Whyllie, “so you had better step into the library and read up its history, and as to your niece, your favourite niece, you will please do me the favour of remembering that you possess her, too, sir. Now, then, Mistress,” addressing Imogene, “as soon as this husband of mine has taken himself off, I’ll tell you your part in this affair.” Taking the hint, the lawyer beat a retreat to the library, gladly leaving the difficult business in the hands of his wife. “Now, girl,” she went on when they were alone, “I suppose I shouldn’t be very far wrong if I

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surmised that you are head over ears in love with this young man that the press

gang has taken, eh?”

“Yes, I love him,” said the girl quietly.

“Ah!” sighed the lady, “that’s all right, and I suppose I’m also not far out if I suppose that you would do a good deal to save him from being shipped off to the wars, eh?”

“I will do anything to save him from that danger,” said the girl.

“Good!” replied the old lady. “Then come upstairs with me.”

Out of the room and across the little hall they went, and so up the broad white staircase to the dearest little bedroom imaginable, with a small four-posted bed with chintz frills and hangings, and a dressing-table set with bright silver ornaments.

“Now this room is for you, my dear, for my handsome niece from India, you understand? And now I must ask you to change your clothes and get into some

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pretty frock or other, and I must have you to know, my dear, that I have been married twice, and by my first marriage I must tell you, my dear, that I had a daughter, a really beautiful daughter. This was years ago, of course, but she was just about your age as I remember her— By the way, what is your age, my dear?”

“About sixteen, or I might be seventeen perhaps,” said Imogene.

“Ah, well, my daughter was nineteen when she died,” went on the old lady. “She was all I had in the world, for her father had died when she was quite a child. Yes, she was all that I had to love for fifteen years, and when she was taken I was so desperately lonely that in a weak moment I married that foolish Mister Whyllie, who is really very kind-hearted and quite a good man, but oh! how dull! Indeed, my dear, he would never have been in the position he is now if I hadn’t pushed him there. You see, my dear, he hasn’t much brain. Why, he cannot boast a third of my power, but on the whole I am glad that I married

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him, because he has given me such a lot to do helping him deceive other people that he isn’t a born fool. But I really must not talk such a lot, for we have a deal to do, my dear. But I must just explain this: I spent a good deal of money upon pretty frocks for my daughter, and, oh! how sweet she used to look in them. Well worth the money it was, my dear, to see her look so pretty. Now every one of these dresses I have kept, and kept carefully, too. If the sweet child came back to me now, she would find all her things as well cared for, as clean, and as fresh as when she left me, for this was her room (this house belongs to me, my dear, not to that fool downstairs), and in these chests and in that oaken tallboy there I have kept everything that reminds me of my darling. See!” And taking a key from a casket upon the chimney-piece she unlocked the tall oak cupboard, displaying to Imogene’s gaze a sight to make her stand entranced. The daintiest dresses were there, and in the brass-bound coffer at the end of the bed the most costly laces and fine linen, and all kept sweet and pure in a strong scent of

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lavender. From these sacred treasures the old lady made selections, and by the time that the gong had sounded for the three o’clock dinner, instead of the handsome, dashing fisher-girl, there sat before the mirror, having the finishing touches put to her beautiful hair, done in the height of the fashion then existing, a beautiful young girl in a gown of country splendour, jewels glistening in her hair, and a diamond brooch of great beauty clasped into a lace fichu which set off her shapely neck to great advantage.

While she had been dressing the girl the old lady had with great tact got all of Imogene’s history out of her, at least as much of it as she knew, and just before they stepped from the room, as she surveyed her protégée with admiration, she held up her quaint little face and requested Imogene to kiss her, which she did.

“And now, my dear, we will go down to dinner, and the while we are eating I will tell you exactly what we are to do, and,” she added with enthusiasm, “if

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that squire’s son, whom I regard as a fortunate young fellow, does not marry you—well, I’ll horsewhip him myself, aye, both him and his father, and adopt you as my own daughter, for what a relief it would be to have you in the house to look at, for you know, my dear, you are vastly prettier than my foolish Mister Whyllie,” saying which she tripped lightly down the stairs followed by the dazzling Imogene.

Had Imogene been in reality the old lady’s daughter, returned to her from the dim side of the veil, she could not have been shown more kindly love and attention. Even Mr. Whyllie got a happy time of it, for the little old lady was in the best of tempers, entirely at peace and light-hearted. Indeed at the conclusion of the meal the lawyer found himself pushed into a comfortable chair with a small table at his side upon which stood a fine old bottle of port, and to his utter astonishment his wife standing near with a churchwarden pipe filled with tobacco and a lighted paper spill all ready for him. So he also began to bless the

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coming of his niece from India, wishing that she had been invented sooner and that she was going to remain in the house to the end of the proverbial chapter.

Then Mrs. Whyllie, over a dish of tea with Imogene, unfolded her plan of campaign for the rescue of young Denis, and the manner in which this plan was carried out is set forth in a following chapter.

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That insufferable coxcomb Captain Tuffton was in the act of sprinkling his lace handkerchief with the scent that old Mrs. Whyllie found so atrociously obnoxious when his valet entered the room with a note. The insufferable one went on with his sprinkling and languidly inquired who the note was from. “I really cannot say, sir,” returned the valet. “Cannot say?” repeated the insufferable, lifting his pencilled eyebrows into the higher regions of astonishment. “Indeed, my good Transome—and you call

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yourself a valet, don’t you now? It is not a bill, I trust, strayed in upon the Sabbath out of cunning, for I have not seen a bill these many years now, and the sight, I feel convinced, might upset my stomach.”

“I think, sir, that there is no valet in Europe so quick to smell out a bill or so nimble at tearing them up as your humble servant.” Transome could be tremendous upon occasions and he certainly was when he added: “And under your livery, sir, I venture to suggest that my practice of bill nosing has been unlimited.”

“Now, come, my good Transome, you disrespectful dog, I’ll not have you chiding me, upon my soul I won’t, for I have a most damned head on me this forenoon. I generally do get a damned bad head on me o’ Sundays. All a-buzz, I declare, and it’s those damned exasperating church bells. I never met anything so persistent in my life. They go on, they go on, and there’s no stopping them, now is there? As plentiful as bills are church bells and just as taxing to the

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nerves. If ever I have to oblige the blasted Parliament by sleeping in it, I shall endeavour to keep awake to vote for the abolishment of church bells.”

“And you might, sir, at the same time do away with bills. It would be most convenient, wouldn’t it, sir?”

“Well, I suppose it would. If I ever do get in, which I think extremely unlikely, for which I most heartily thank my Maker, knowing how unutterably bored I should become, but if ever I do get in, I will most certainly abolish bills and bells, and if there should be any other little thing that you think might sensibly be abolished, why, you must jog my memory, Transome, and jog it hard, won’t you, my dear fellow, for you know what a memory I have? Damned bad, upon my soul it is!”