This mood of gentle elation suffered a set-back upon his arrival at the White Horse. The inn appeared to have become the focus of interest in the town, for a large and motley crowd was gathered before it, in the centre of which the impressive figure of the town-beadle seemed to be haranguing a heated and flustered Mrs. Appleby. Then the Duke perceived that one of the beadle’s ham-like hands was grasping young Mr. Mamble by the coat-collar, and a sense of foreboding crept over him. He drew up, and prepared to step down from the gig.
Nearly everyone was too much absorbed in the strife raging between the beadle, Mrs. Appleby, a weedy man in a black suit, a farmer with a red face, and a stout lady in a mob-cap, whose voice was even shriller than Mrs. Appleby’s, to have any attention to spare for the arrival of a gig; but the melancholy waiter, who had been surveying the scene with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has foreseen trouble from the outset, chanced to look up as the Duke rose from the driving-seat, and exclaimed: “Ah, here is the gentleman!”
The effect of these simple words was slightly overwhelming. Tom, taking advantage of an involuntary slackening of the grip on his collar, twisted himself free, and thrust his way through the crowd, crying thankfully: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford!
He had scarcely reached the Duke’s side, and clutched his arm, when Mrs. Appleby had seized the other arm, saying indignantly: “Thank goodness you’ve come, sir! Such goings-on as I never saw, and me not knowing which way to turn!”
“Hif you are the cove as is responsible for this young varmint,” said the beadle, reaching the Duke a bare fifteen seconds later than Mrs. Appleby, “hit is my dooty to inform you—”
The rest of this pronouncement was lost in the instant hubbub that arose. The weedy man, the fanner, and the lady in the mob-cap all broke into impassioned speech. The Duke, stunned by Mrs. Appleby’s voice in one ear, and Tom’s in the other, begged them to speak to him one at a time, but was not attended to. Various members of the crowd thought it incumbent upon them to take sides in the dispute, and for a few minutes the fragments of their observations reached the Duke in a confused medley. Such phrases as he caught could not be regarded as other than ominous. The words “lock-up house”—“upsetting of the Mail”—and “a-smashing of Mr. Badby’s good cart” were being freely bandied about; and whereas one half of the crowd seemed disposed to take a lenient view of whatever it was that Tom had done, the other and more vociferous half was urgent with the beadle for his immediate transportation.
“I didn’t! I did not! ” Tom asserted passionately. “Oh, sir, pray tell them I did not!”
“Sir!” began the beadle portentously,
“Mr. Rufford, sir, do you make him attend, for listen to me he will not!” besought Mrs. Appleby.
A sudden lull fell, and the Duke realized with dismay that everyone, with the exception of the beadle, was looking at him in the evident expectation that he would instantly take command of the situation. He had never regretted the absence of his entourage more. He even wished that his Uncle Lionel could have been suddenly and miraculously wafted to the scene. The very sight of Lord Lionel’s imposing figure and aristocratic visage would be enough to cause the crowd to disperse, while any well-trained footman would have cleaved a way for his Grace in a fashion haughty enough to have quelled even the beadle. But the Duke found himself bereft of all whose business in life it was to shield him from contact with the vulgar herd, and was obliged to fend once more for himself. He contrived to shake off the two frenzied grips on his arms, and to say in his usual gentle way: “Pray let us go into the house! And do not, I beg of you, all talk to me at once, for I can distinguish nothing that you say!”