IV
Perturbation
They drove very slowly. Tom was groping in a geographical chaos, and paused every now and then. My Aunt inquired angrily, demanding the production of the cross-mills. Tom asked ten minutes, and half a mile more, and promised the profert; but after half an hour’s driving, with no result, my Aunt grew extremely frightened and exasperated, and Tom sulkily admitted that he had his doubts as to their topographical position.
Tom halted, and stood up in the dickey, as before. My Aunt Margaret descended, and looking at the moonlit prospect from the bank by the roadside, harangued the troubled driver in strong and shrill language; and Winnie, whose grief was more sedentary, sat in the vehicle, and spoke not, but stared through the window, with a fat and fatigued sadness, in vague apprehension.
There were plenty of old stories of highwaymen afloat through their scared fancies; and here was a lonely heath—two helpless maidens also, with a trunk, a basket of “prog,” and four pounds seven and sixpence in a purse, and a driver without small or backsword, and no pistols!
“We’ll, sure, get on the London road in two miles more or less, and then we’re all right,” said Tom.
“London, fiddle! It’s my belief, Thomas Teukesbury, you have not the faintest idea where we are; you haven’t, sir, no more than myself.”
“There isn’t a light nor a house. D⸺n the place!” retorted Tom, bitterly.
“Don’t curse—we’re bad enough. No impiety, please. You should command yourself, I think, if I do, while we are in this helpless and utterly unprotected situation.”
“There’s a man coming,” said Tom, hopefully.
“Good gracious!” cried my Aunt.
“No, there aint,” said Tom, dejectedly.
“Heaven be praised!” said my Aunt, with a gasp. “I look on it, sir, we’re in danger here on this dreadful moor, to which you, sir, have brought us. What a shame, Thomas, to pretend you knew the way! Winnie, Winnie Dobbs, we’re lost—lost on a heath! Tom has lost us!”
Winnie’s fat, forlorn face filled the back window of the vehicle.
“Lost on a heath, Winnie, in the middle of the night!”
“What’ll we best do, ma’am?” imploringly asked Winnie, who was accustomed to derive her stock of wisdom in all emergencies from my Aunt Margaret’s inspiration.
“Ask Thomas Teukesbury up there—he’s our guide. He brought us here, though he does not seem to know a way out. Ask him. I don’t know, no more than the man in the moon there.”
“I dessay we’re all right enough, after all,” said Tom, “only I don’t know it by this light. Will you get in, ma’am, and we’ll git on a bit, and we’ll, sure, light on a hinn or a public afore long.”
Well, she did get in. The horse was unmistakably fatigued, with a disposition to draw up every now and then, by an old tree, or under a steep bank, or sometimes without any special landmark to invite.
Tom got down, and walked by the brute’s dejected head; and my Aunt, who had given up the sarcastic and ironical mood as her alarms deepened, scolded him occasionally from the front window. As the back of his head and shoulders were presented, Tom walked on, not caring to turn about to reply, but, I am afraid, making some disrespectful remarks in the dark.
In fact, the poor horse, who, if he had but understood and spoken our language, could, probably, have saved them and himself a world of trouble, was so evidently done up that Tom insisted he must have his oats, and accordingly, he partook of that refreshment in a nosebag. Here was another delay. My Aunt’s watch had been frequently consulted, by the moonlight, during that anxious journey. It was now out again. The night was a little sharp, too; and the whole party, who had made no provision for such a climate and such hours, were rather cold. You may be sure my Aunt’s temper was not growing more agreeable.
There was just the alternative of a bivouac where they stood, or following, on chance, the road they had been pursuing. My Aunt adopted the latter. Affairs had grown so serious that she now never removed her face from the little front window, through which she looked ahead, with hope deferred, and a sick heart.
She had been so often deceived by marly banks and thickets, that it was not until they had almost reached it, to her inexpressible relief, she plainly saw the whitewashed front of a low, two-storied public, standing back from the road a few yards, and snugly sheltered among some thick and stunted trees.
My Aunt held the reins through the window, and Tom got down and summoned mine host. A red streak of candlelight shot out through the door of the pothouse, and there was a parley which she could not hear.