Fanny acknowledged the probable truth of this pronouncement by bidding her parent a dignified goodnight.
Chapter 2
CAPTAIN STAPLE was not destined to leave Easterby at an early hour on the following morning. Thanks to the nocturnal habits of Lord Melksham, it was daylight before he went to bed. That amiable but erratic peer, dissuaded from opening a faro bank, had challenged the company to a quiet game of loo; and since the elders of the party, who included besides the Archdeacon, his brother-in-law, Mr. Yatton, and Mr. Merridge the Earl’s chaplain, had retired soon after the ladies, and the Earl was plainly unable to keep the situation within bounds, Captain Staple had not the heart to desert him. The Earl was grateful, but he would not permit him to break up the party, which he was perfectly willing to do. He said: “No, no! If Melksham is determined——He is my guest, you know, and, besides—Well, you will understand how it is!”
“No, I don’t,” said John bluntly. “And if I were you, old fellow, I would order things as I liked in my own house!”
No one, after as much as one glance at the Captain’s good-humored but determined countenance, could doubt this. The Earl said fretfully: “Yes, but you don’t understand! It’s all very well for you—However, that don’t signify! The thing is, you know what Lucius is, and that stupid brother-in-law of mine! And here’s my Uncle Yatton taken himself off, and left young Geoffrey to do as he pleases! I wish you will stay, and help me to see that they keep the line!”
So Captain Staple, no gamester, stayed; and if he failed to keep the stakes as low as his noble cousin would have wished he did contrive to prevent the quiet game of loo from becoming an extremely noisy game of loo. By the time Lord Melksham had wearied of this sport, and inaugurated a game of brag, young Mr. Yatton had succumbed to his potations, which, as the Captain cheerfully informed the Earl, was a very happy circumstance, since it cut his losses short.
Having carried Geoffrey up to bed, he presently held his own brother-in-law’s head under the pump in the scullery, guided his cousin Arthur’s wavering steps up the stairs, and gently but firmly convinced Lord Melksham that it would be better to retire to bed than to try the power of a hunting-horn discovered in the Great Hall.
After so strenuous a night it was not surprising that the Captain should have slept far into the morning. He did not leave Easterby until past noon, and had he attended to the representations made to him by his host and his sister he would not have left it at all that day. It was pointed out to him that the sky threatened bad weather, that he could not hope to achieve more than a few miles of his journey, and that he would do well to abandon the whole project of riding to Leicestershire. But the probability of rain did not much trouble any man who was accustomed to bivouacking under the worst of conditions in the Peninsula and the Pyrenees; and the possibility of having to rack up for the night at some wayside inn seemed to him infinitely preferable to another of Lord Melksham’s convivial evenings. So at noon, Cocking, the private servant who had been with him through all his campaigns, brought his big, Roman-nosed bay horse up to the house, and strapped to the saddle a heavy frieze cloak, and the bag which contained all that the Captain considered to be necessary for his journey. The rest of the Captain’s luggage consisted of a couple of portmanteaux, and these he instructed Cocking to despatch by carrier to Edenhope, Mr. Babbacombe’s hunting-box in Leicestershire. The sight of two such modest pieces caused Lord Melksham’s man, a very superior person, to wonder that any gentleman should care to travel about the country so meagrely provided for. His own master, he said, never stirred from home without several trunks, a dressing-case, and himself: a highly talented valet. However, the bubble of his conceit was swiftly pricked, Cocking replying without hesitation that there was nothing for him to hold his nose up at in that. “If the Captain was a tallow-faced twiddle-poop, mounted on a pair o’ cat-sticks, I dessay he’d need a snirp like you to pad his calves out, and finify him,” he said. “Only he ain’t! Would there be anything more you was wishful to say about the Captain?”
Lord Melksham’s man prudently decided that there was nothing more he wished to say, explaining this forbearance later to his colleagues as being due to his reluctance to bandy words with a vulgar make-bait. Cocking, left in possession of the field, carefully loaded the Captain’s pistols, placed them in the saddle-holsters, and led the bay up to the house. The Captain, attired in buckskin breeches and topboots, and a coat of slightly military cut, gave him a few last instructions, and mounted the big horse. Keeping a hand on the bridle, Cocking looked up at him, and asked if he was to join him at Edenhope, when he had escorted the mistress safely home.
“No, you might not find me there. Besides, I shan’t need you.”