The Talisman Ring (16 page)

This feat seemed to call for celebration, and Miss Thane, descending into the cellar in search of them some time later, found that they had broached a keg of Nantes brandy, and had no immediate intention of returning to upper ground. Invigorated by the brandy, Sir Hugh was seized by a desire to emulate Ludovic’s skill – but without Clem’s assistance. His efforts, unattended by success, brought Nye down to put a stop to a sport which was not only riddling the walls of the cellar, but creating enough noise to lead anyone above-stairs to suppose that the inn was being besieged.

Since he was not allowed to step outside the Red Lion, and dissuaded from wandering about at large in it, it was a fortunate circumstance that Eustacie was staying under the same roof with Ludovic. Her presence beguiled the most tedious hour, and her vehement way of saying: ‘But no, Ludovic, you shall not!’ had the power of restraining him where Miss Thane’s reasoned arguments might have failed. He taught Eustacie how to throw dice and how to play piquet; he told her hair-raising and entirely apocryphal tales of adventures to be met with at sea; he teased her, and laughed at her, and ended inevitably by catching her in his sound arm and kissing her.

No sooner had he done it than he recollected the impropriety of such conduct. He released her at once, and said, rather pale, and with the laugh quite vanished from his eyes: ‘I’m sorry! Forgive me!’

Eustacie said earnestly: ‘Oh, I did not mind at all! Besides, you kissed me before, do you not remember?’

‘Oh, that!’ he said. ‘That was a mere cousinly kiss!’

‘And this one, not?’ she said simply. ‘I am glad.’

He ran his hand through his fair locks. ‘I’m a villain to have kissed you at all! Forget that I did! I had no right – I ought to be shot for doing such a thing!’

Eustacie stared at him in the blankest surprise. ‘
Voyons
, I find that you are excessively rude! I thought you wanted to kiss me!’

‘Of course I wanted to! Oh, devil take it, this won’t do! Eustacie, if everything were different: if I were not a smuggler and an exile I should beg you to marry me. But I am these things, and –’

‘I do not mind about that,’ she interrupted. ‘It is not at all
convenable
that you should kiss me and then refuse to marry me. I am quite mortified.’

‘I wish to God I could ask you to marry me!’

‘It doesn’t signify,’ said Eustacie, handsomely waiving this formality. ‘If it is against your honour you need not make me an offer. We will just be betrothed without it.’

‘No, we won’t. Not until I have cleared my name.’

‘Yes, but if you cannot clear your name, what then are we to do?’ she demanded.

‘Forget we ever met!’ said Ludovic with a groan.

This Spartan resolve did not commend itself to Eustacie at all. Two large tears sparkled on the ends of her eyelashes, and she said in a forlorn voice: ‘But me, I have a memory of the very longest!’

Ludovic, seeing the tears, could not help putting his arm round her again. ‘Sweetheart, don’t cry! I can’t possibly let you marry me if I’m to remain an exile all my life.’

Eustacie stood on tiptoe, and kissed his chin. ‘Yes, you can. It is quite my own affair. If I want to marry an exile I shall.’

‘You won’t.’

‘But yes, I have thought of a very good plan. We will go and live in Austria, where my uncle the Vidame is.’

‘Nothing would induce me to live in Austria!’

‘
Bien
, then we will live in Italy, at Rome.’

‘Not Rome,’ objected Ludovic. ‘Too many English there.’

‘Oh! Then you will choose for us some place where there are not any English people, and Tristram who is a – is a trustee will arrange that you can have some money there.’

‘Tristram is more likely to send you to Bath and kick me out of the country,’ said Ludovic. ‘What’s more, I don’t blame him.’

But Sir Tristram, when the news of the betrothal was broken to him, did not evince any desire to resort to such violent methods. He did not even show much surprise, and when Ludovic, half defiant, half contrite, said: ‘I ought never to have done it, I know,’ he merely replied: ‘I don’t suppose you did do it.’

Eustacie, taking this as a compliment, said cordially: ‘You are quite right,
mon cousin
: it was I who did it, which was not perhaps
comme il faut
, but entirely necessary, on account of Ludovic’s honour. And if we do not find that ring we shall go away to Italy, and you will arrange for Ludovic to have his money there, will you not?’

‘I expect so,’ said Shield. ‘But if you are determined to marry Ludovic I think we had better find the ring.’

Miss Thane, who had come into the parlour in the middle of this speech, thought it proper to assume an expression of astonishment and to say incredulously: ‘Do I understand, Sir Tristram, that this betrothal has your blessing?’

He turned. ‘Oh, you are there, are you? No, it has
not
my blessing, though I have no doubt it has yours?’

‘Of course it has,’ said Miss Thane. ‘I think it is delightful. Have you discovered when the Beau means to go to London?’

But this he had been unable to do, the Beau having apparently decided to postpone the date. Shield had come to inform Ludovic of it, and to warn him that this change of plan might well mean that the Beau’s suspicions had been aroused. When he heard from Nye that Gregg had visited the inn on the previous day for the ostensible purpose of purchasing a keg of brandy for his master, he felt more uneasy than ever, and said that if only Ludovic had not entered upon an ill-timed engagement he would have had no hesitation in forcibly removing him to Holland.

Miss Thane, to whom, in the coffee-room, this remark was addressed, said that the betrothal, though perhaps a complication, had been inevitable from the start.

‘Quite so, ma’am. But if you had not encouraged Eustacie to remain here it need not have been inevitable.’

‘I might have known you would lay it at my door!’ said Miss Thane in a voice of pious resignation.

‘I imagine you might, since you are very well aware of having fostered the engagement!’ retorted Shield. ‘I had thought you a woman of too much sense to encourage such an insane affair.’

‘Oh!’ said Miss Thane idiotically, ‘but I think it is so romantic!’

‘Don’t be so foolish!’ said Sir Tristram, refusing to smile at this sally.

‘How cross you are!’ marvelled Miss Thane. ‘I suppose when one reaches middle age it is difficult to sympathize with the follies of youth.’

Sir Tristram had walked over to the other side of the room to pick up his coat and hat, but this was too much for him, and he turned and said with undue emphasis: ‘It may interest you to know, ma’am, that I am one-and-thirty years old, and not yet in my dotage!’

‘Why, of course not!’ said Miss Thane soothingly. ‘You have only entered upon what one may call the sober time of life. Let me help you to put on your coat!’

‘Thank you,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘Perhaps you would also like to give me the support of your arm as far as to the door?’

She laughed. ‘Can I not persuade you to remain a little while? This has been a very fleeting visit. Do you not find it dull alone at the Court?’

‘Very, but I am not going to the Court. I am on my way to Brighton, to talk to the Beau’s late butler.’

She said approvingly: ‘You may be shockingly cross, but you are certainly not idle. Tell me about this butler!’

‘There is nothing to tell as yet. He was in the Beau’s employment at the time of Plunkett’s murder, and it occurred to me some days ago that it might be interesting to trace him, and discover what he can remember of the Beau’s movements upon that night.’

This scheme, though it would not have appealed to Eustacie, who preferred her plans to be attended by excitement, seemed eminently practical to Miss Thane. She parted from Sir Tristram very cordially, and went back into the parlour to tell Ludovic that although he might still be unable to do anything towards his reinstatement, his cousin had the matter well in hand.

As she had expected, Eustacie did not regard Sir Tristram’s errand with much favour. She said that it was very well for Tristram, but for herself she preferred that there should be adventure.

But upon the following morning, when Miss Thane had gone out with her brother for a sedate walk, adventure took Eustacie unawares and in a guise that frightened her a good deal more than she liked.

She was seated in the parlour, waiting for Ludovic, who was dressing, to come downstairs, when the mail-coach from London arrived. She heard it draw up outside the inn, but paid no attention to it, for it was a daily occurrence, and the coach only stopped at the Red Lion to change horses. But a minute or two later Clem put his head into the room, and said, his face as white as his shirt: ‘It’s the Runners, miss!’

Eustacie’s embroidery-frame slipped out of her hands. She gazed at Clem in horror, and stammered: ‘The B-Bow Street Runners?’

‘Yes, miss, I’m telling you! And there’s Mr Ludovic trapped upstairs, and Mr Nye not in!’ said Clem, wringing his hands.

Eustacie pulled herself together. ‘He must instantly go into the cellar. I will talk to the Runners while you take him there.’

‘It’s too late, miss! Whoever it was sent them knew about the cellars, for there’s one of them standing over the backstairs at this very moment! I never knew they was even on the coach till they come walking into the place, as bold as brass!’

‘They may be searching the house now!’ exclaimed Eustacie in sudden alarm. ‘You should not have left them! Oh dear, do you think my cousin will shoot them? If he does we must bury them quickly, before anyone knows!’

‘No, no, miss, it ain’t as bad as that yet! What they wants is to see Mr Nye. They daren’t go searching the place afore ever they tell him what they’re here for. They think I’ve gone to look for him, but what I’ve got to do is to hide the young master, and lordy, lordy, how can I get upstairs without them knowing when one of ’em’s lounging round the backstairs, and t’other sitting in the coffee-room?’

‘Go immediately, and find Nye!’ ordered Eustacie. ‘He must think of a way. I will talk to these Runners, and if I can I will coax the one in the coffee-room to come into the parlour.’

With this praiseworthy resolve in mind, and an uncomfortable feeling of panic in her breast, she sailed forth from the parlour and made her way to the coffee-room. Here, at a table in the middle of the room which commanded a view of the staircase and the front door, was seated a stockily-built individual in a blue coat and a wide-brimmed hat, casually glancing over the contents of a folded journal, which he had extricated from one capacious pocket. Eustacie, surveying him from the open doorway, noticed that his figure was on the portly side, a circumstance which afforded her a certain amount of satisfaction, since it seemed improbable that a stout, middle-aged man would have much hope of catching Ludovic if that young gentleman were forced to take to his heels.

Summoning up a smile, and a look of inquiry, Eustacie said, as though startled: ‘Oh! Why, who are you?’

The Bow Street officer looked up, and finding that he was being addressed by a young and enchantingly pretty female, laid the journal down upon the table and rose to his feet. He touched his hat, and said that he was wishful to see the landlord.

‘But yes, of course!’ said Eustacie. ‘You have come on the mail-coach,
sans doute
, and you want a drink! I understand!’

By this time the Runner had assimilated the fact that she was not English. He did not care for foreigners, but her instant grasp of his most pressing need inclined him to regard her with less disapproval than he might otherwise have done. He did not precisely admit that he wanted a drink, but he said that it was a very cold, raw day to be sure, and waited hopefully to see what she would do about it.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and it is, moreover, very draughty in a coach. I think you ought to have some cognac.’

The Runner thought so too. He had not wanted to come down to Sussex on what would probably turn out to be a wild-goose chase. He felt gloomily that he would not have been chosen for the task if the authorities over him had set much store by the information lodged with them, for he was not at the moment in very good odour at Bow Street. Such epithets as Blockhead and Blunderer had been used in connection with his last case, since when he had not been employed upon any very important business. In his more optimistic moments he dreamed rosily of the glory attaching to the capture of so desperate a character as Ludovic Lavenham, but when his throat was dry and his fingers chilled he did not feel optimistic.

‘When Nye comes he must at once give you some cognac,’ announced Eustacie. ‘But I do not understand what you are doing here and you have not told me who you are.’

The Runner was not much acquainted with the Quality, but it did occur to him that it was a little unusual for young ladies to address strange men in public coffee-rooms. He bent a penetrating and severe eye upon her, and replied, awe-inspiringly, that he was an Officer of the Law.

Eustacie at once clasped her hands together, and cried: ‘I
thought
you were! Are you perhaps a Bow Street Runner?’

The Runner was accustomed to having his identity discovered with fear, or even loathing, but he had not till now encountered anyone who became ecstatic upon learning his dread profession. He admitted that he was a Runner, but looked so suspiciously at Eustacie that she made haste to explain that in France they had no such people, which was the reason why she was so particularly anxious to meet one.

When she mentioned France the Runner’s brow cleared. The French, what with their guillotines and one thing and another, were the worst kind of foreigners, and it was no use being surprised at them behaving queerly. They were born that way; there wasn’t any sense in them; and the silly habit they had of holding that everyone was equal accounted for this young lady speaking so friendly to a mere Bow Street Runner.

‘You are one of the famous Runners!’ said Eustacie, regarding him with rapt admiration. ‘You must be very brave and clever!’