The Talisman Ring

An uncontrollable shudder ran through her. She wrenched herself out of his embrace, and cast him such a glance of repulsion that he stepped back, the smile wiped suddenly from his face.

He looked at her with narrowed eyes, but after a slight pause the ugly gleam vanished, and he was smiling again. He moved away to the other side of the fireplace, and drawled: ‘It seems that you do not find me so sympathetic as you would have had me believe, cousin. Now, I wonder why you wanted to come here to-day?’

‘I thought you would advise me. I did not suppose that you would try to make love to me. That is quite another thing!’

He lifted an eyebrow at her. ‘Is it? But I think – yes, I think I have once or twice before informed you of my very earnest desire to marry you.’

‘Yes, but I have said already that I will not. It is finished.’

‘Perfectly,’ he bowed. ‘Let us talk of something else. There was something I had in mind to ask you, as I remember. What can it have been? Something that intrigued me.’ He half closed his eyes, as though in an effort of memory. ‘Something to do with your flight from the Court…ah yes, I have it! The mysterious groom! Who was the mysterious groom, Eustacie?’

The question came as a shock to her; her heart seemed to leap in her chest. To gain time she repeated: ‘The mysterious groom?’

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘The groom who did not exist. Do tell me!’

‘Oh!’ she said, with a rather artificial laugh, ‘that is my very own adventure, and quite a romantic history! I assure you. How did you know of it?’

‘In the simplest ways imaginable, my dear cousin. My man Gregg fell in with a certain riding-officer at Cowfold yesterday, and from him gleaned this most interesting tale. I am consumed by curiosity. A groom whom you vouched for, and whom Tristram vouched for, and who yet did not exist.’

‘Well, truly, I think it was wrong of me to save him from the riding-officer,’ confessed Eustacie, with a great air of candour, ‘but you must understand that I was under an obligation to him. One pays one’s debts, after all!’

‘Such a sentiment does you credit,’ said the Beau affably. ‘What was the debt?’

‘Oh, the most exciting thing!’ she replied. ‘I did not tell you the whole yesterday, because Sarah’s brother is a Justice of the Peace, and one must be careful, but I was captured by smugglers that night, and but for the man I saved I should have been killed. Murdered, you know. Conceive of it!’

‘How very, very alarming for you!’ said the Beau.

‘Yes, it was. There were a great many of them, and they were afraid I should betray them, and they said I must at once be killed. Only this one – the one I said was my groom – took my part, and he would not permit that I should be killed. I think he was the leader, because they listened to him.’

‘I never till now heard that chivalry existed amongst smugglers,’ remarked the Beau.

‘No, but he was not a preux chevalier, you know. He was quite rough, and not at all civil, but he had compassion upon me, and that led to a great quarrel between him and the other men. Then the riding-officers came, and my smuggler threw me up on to my horse and mounted behind me, because he said that the Excisemen must not find me, which, I see, was quite reasonable. Only the Excisemen fired at him, and he was wounded, and Rufus bolted into the Forest. And I did not know what to do, so I went to the Red Lion and asked Nye to help the smuggler, because it seemed to me that I could not give him up after he had saved me from being killed.’

The Beau was listening with his usual air of courteous interest. He said: ‘What strange, what incredible things do happen, to be sure! Now if I had heard this tale at second-hand, or perhaps read it in a romance, I should have said it was far too improbable to bear the least resemblance to the truth. It shows how easily one may be mistaken. I, for instance, on what I conceived to be my knowledge of Nye’s character, can even now scarcely credit him with so much noble disregard for his own good name. You must possess great influence over him, dear cousin.’

Eustacie felt a little uneasy, but replied carelessly: ‘Yes, perhaps I have some influence, but I am bound to confess he did not at all like it, and he would not by any means keep the smuggler in his house.’

‘Oh, the smuggler has departed, has he?’

‘But yes, the very next day! What else?’

‘I am sure I do not know. I expect I am very stupid,’ he added apologetically, ‘but there do seem to me to be one or two unexplained points to this adventure. I find myself quite at a loss to understand Tristram’s part in it. How were you able to persuade so stern a pattern of rectitude to support your story, my dear?’

Eustacie began to wish very much that Tristram and Sarah would finish their search and come to her rescue. ‘Oh, but, you see, when it was explained to him Tristram was grateful to my smuggler for saving me!’

‘Oh!’ said the Beau, blinking. ‘Tristram was grateful. Yes, I see. How little one knows of people, after all! It must have gone sadly against the grain with him, I feel. He has not breathed a word of it to me.’

‘No, and I think it is very foolish of him,’ returned Eustacie. ‘Tristram does not wish anyone to know of my adventure, because he says I have behaved with impropriety, and it had better immediately be forgotten.’

‘Ah, that is much better!’ said the Beau approvingly. ‘I feel that he may well have said that.’

This rejoinder, which seemed to convey a disturbing disbelief in the rest of her story, left Eustacie without a word to say. The Beau, seeing her discomfiture, smiled more broadly, and said: ‘You know, you have quite forgotten to tell me that your smuggler was one of Sylvester’s bastards.’

Eustacie felt the colour rise in her cheeks, and at once turned it to account, exclaiming in shocked tones: ‘Cousin!’

‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, with exaggerated concern. ‘I should have said love-children.’

She threw him a reproachful, outraged look, and replied: ‘Certainly I have not forgotten, but I do not speak of indelicate things, and I am very much émue to think that you could mention it to me.’