The Nonesuch

“She couldn’t go post,” said Miss Trent decidedly. “She spent all her pin-money in Harrogate. And I must think it extremely unlikely that Mr Calver could have been able to oblige her with a loan. She would need as much as £25, you know, and how should he be carrying such a sum upon him, when all he meant to do was to take her out for a driving-lesson? And I fancy he’s not at all beforehand with the world.” She thought for a moment, and then said, in a constricted voice: “Mr Underhill, I think—I think you should drive over to Broom Hall, to consult Sir Waldo. He is Mr Calver’s cousin, and—and I think he is the person best fitted to handle this matter.”

“Well, I won’t!” declared Courtenay, reddening. “I’m not a schoolboy, ma’am, and I don’t need him to tell me what I should do, or to do it for me, I thank you! I’m going to tell ’em to bring the phaeton up to the house immediately. If that precious pair went to Leeds they must have passed through the village, and someone is bound to have seen them. And if they did, trust me to have Tiffany back by nightfall! If you ask me, I’d say good riddance to her, but I’ll be damned—begging your pardon!—if I’ll let her shab off to the Burfords as if we had made her miserable here!”

Miss Trent had no great faith in his ability to overtake a truant who had had three hours’ start; but since she felt quite as strongly as he did that every effort must be made to do it, and realized that to persist in urging that Sir Waldo should be consulted would be a waste of breath and time, she resigned herself to the prospect of an uncomfortable, and possibly nerve-racking drive. He was relieved to learn that she meant to accompany him, but he warned her that he was going to put ’em along.That he would do better to be content with putting his horses well together was an opinion which she kept to herself.

When she found that he had had a team harnessed to the phaeton her heart sank. His leaders were new acquisitions, and he was not yet very expert in pointing them, or indeed of sticking to them, as she very soon discovered. Observing that there was not a moment to be lost, Courtenay sprang his horses down the avenue to the lodge-gates. Since it was not only rather narrow, but had several bends in it as well, Miss Trent was forced to hold on for dear life. The sharp turn out of the gates was negotiated safely, though not, perhaps, in style, and they were soon bowling along the lane that led to the village. Courtenay, exhilarated by his success in negotiating the difficult turn out of the gate, confided to Miss, Trent that he had been practising the use of the whip, and rather thought he could back himself to take a fly off the leader’s ear.

“I beg you won’t do any such thing!” she replied. “I have no wish to be thrown out into the ditch!”

Nettled, he determined to show her that he was at home to a peg, and it was not long before her worst fears were realized. Within less than a quarter of a mile from Oversett, feather-edging a bend in the lane, his front-wheel came into sharp collision with a milestone, partially hidden by rank grass, and the inevitable happened. Miss Trent, picking her self up, more angry than hurt, found that one wheel of the phaeton was lying, a dismal wreck, at some distance from the carriage, that one of the wheelers was down, a trace broken, and both the leaders plunging wildly in a concerted effort to bolt. Blistering words were on the tip of her tongue, but she was a sensible woman, and she realized that there were more urgent things to do than to favour Courtenay with an exact and pithy opinion of his driving-skill. She hurried to his assistance. Between them, they managed to quieten the frightened leaders, backing them gently to relieve the drag on the crippled phaeton from the remaining trace. “Cut it!” she commanded. “I can hold this pair now. Do you get that wheeler on his feet!”

Speechless with rage and chagrin, he had just freed the leaders when, sweeping round the bend towards them, came the Nonesuch, his team of chestnuts well in hand, and his groom seated beside him. The team was pulled up swiftly, every rein holding as true as if it had been single; the groom jumped down, and ran to the wheelers’ heads; and the Nonesuch, his amused gaze travelling from Courtenay, beside his struggling wheeler, to Miss Trent, who had led the two sweating leaders to the side of the lane, said: “Dear me! Do what you can, Blyth!”

The groom touched his hat and went to Courtenay, who was suffering such agonies of mortification at being found in such a situation that he would have been hard put to it to decide whether he wished himself dead or the Nonesuch. He blurted out, scarlet-faced: “It was that curst milestone! I never saw it!”