Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much what I had anticipated: a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden, a fruit-tree that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in church, an exchange of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a silly schoolmate for a confidante, a chaise and four, and the most immediate and perfect disenchantment on the part of the little lady. ‘And there is nothing to be done!’ she wailed in conclusion. ‘My error is irretrievable, I am quite forced to that conclusion. O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have thought that I could have been such a blind, wicked donkey!’
I should have said before—only that I really do not know when it came in—that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley and Mr. Bellamy, which was the hawbuck’s name, bestriding the four post-horses; and that these formed a sort of cavalry escort, riding now before, now behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally posturing at the window and obliging us with some of his conversation. He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms, all blushes and ardour. Well, these great strokes of fortune usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!
‘Miss Dorothy,’ said I, ‘you wish to be delivered from this man?’
‘O, if it were possible!’ she cried. ‘But not by violence.’
‘Not in the least, ma’am,’ I replied. ‘The simplest thing in life. We are in a civilised country; the man’s a malefactor—’
‘O, never!’ she cried. ‘Do not even dream it! With all his faults, I know he is not that.’
‘Anyway, he’s in the wrong in this affair—on the wrong side of the law, call it what you please,’ said I; and with that, our four horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest magistrate and where he lived. Archdeacon Clitheroe, he told me, a prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road. I showed him the king’s medallion.
‘Take the lady there, and at full gallop,’ I cried.
‘Right, sir! Mind yourself,’ says the postillion.
And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the carriage to the rightabout and we were galloping south.