The Admiral's Daughter

by Margaret Stuart Lane

At the outset, she had been forced to recognise one drag on her speed: she dare not press the greys beyond their strength, nor dare she leave them at some posting-house and take fresh horses for the succeeding stages of the journey. That she risked her father's displeasure in any case, in returning thus, she was certain. She saw her position from his point of view: merely because she could not bear to stay behind, she had come home; but that was no reason why she should ruin the horses. Therefore it was needless for Zacchary to preach rest and caution. At the inn where they stopped for the night, Marion saw to it that the weight of her purse and the new-born authority of her manner ensured the best stabling and food the house afforded. She had done all she could. Everything now depended on the coach and the animals. But in the meantime only some few hours had passed since she left London, and long days lay ahead during which she must perforce sit idle.

The morrow found her in the same gloomy condition, her desperate fancy dwelling on each coming stage of the interminable road. One day pressed on to another without any incident to ease her unhappy mood. Slowly the sun rose, and slowly sank to rest; the young moon over her casement mocked her restless sleep; and for Marion the incomparable beauty of the green summer turned into the spite of prison walls.

Simone, unobtrusively watching her young mistress, began to be concerned for her state, and would have almost welcomed an accident, a stray highwayman, if only the face in the corner would lose its set look.

But so far no such ill hap had occurred. Travelling only by daylight, and so well guarded, and, as the men on the box averred, protected by a special fate, the coach had gone on its way unmolested. Tony the valiant, as Simone had dubbed him, was indeed worth the three men of his master's boast, and his splendid horsemanship and elegant livery had called for no few admiring glances from the farm lads and rosy-cheeked wenches who stood at times to watch the coach and its outrider go by. The travellers had done almost half the journey before Simone found out that while Zacchary and Reuben slept in a hayloft above the horses' stalls, Tony chose for his bed the boards of the landing outside the ladies' bedchamber. Simone herself, water jug in hand, had come suddenly upon this unexpected barricade one morning when Master Tony had overslept himself. She had all but fallen headlong over the prostrate body, and her exclamation finding its way into his dreams, the young man had become aware of a slippered foot within reach of his hand. At once his fingers closed on the foot, while he wriggled into a position that would enable him to see who was daring to pass so close to the door behind which his fair charges were sleeping. Scarcely had he brought his drowsy eyes to rest on Simone's dainty face before the few drops of water left in the ewer trickled on to his own. Her foot released, Simone stood back with a smile. 'So 'tis thyself who snores so loudly that my mistress and I have feared our walls were but thin boards! Snore on, valiant warrior,' said Simone over her shoulder, as she went along the passage. 'Henceforth the sound of thy slumbers shall be music to our ears.'

In the late afternoon of the fourth day the coach was making a rather slow progress along the Ilminster Road. Zacchary had discovered, or imagined, as Marion asserted, a slight lameness in the inside leader. Nothing would induce him to hurry his pace, and Marion had been obliged to bow to his will.

To Simone's unbounded relief, Marion's attack of depression had worn itself out. The consciousness that in a few more days, granted no ill fortune, she would cross the boundary into Cornwall, lent an added buoyancy to her reacting mood.

The sound of the broad Dorset speech, which had induced a home-coming sensation in Marion, had greatly diverted Simone. Marion, giving her a lesson in west country dialect, did not notice the narrow lane, deep ditched at one side, into which they had passed, and was unaware of any danger until, with a sickening heave, the coach slanted down into the hollow, and rested there.

'Bide where you be, Mistress,' came Zacchary's call. 'Us'll shift un all right!'

For a few seconds the men struggled at the horses' heads, the Cornishman's cries to the struggling greys running into a high falsetto and an affectionate reviling that made even Marion smile.

''Tis nothing,' she said to Simone, as the two balanced themselves against the list of the coach floor. 'We toppled into a ditch coming down, and were soon on the road again. Zacchary must have been careless for once. There! 'Twas a splendid pull. Ah—stay! What was that?'