CHAPTER XI

THE LADY DOROTHY BYNG

The next traveller down the lane was a dog--a great black retriever with the most benevolent brown eyes. He came splashing down through the puddles, and overshot the mysterious heap by the roadside, though he sniffed something. Plunging back, he described a circle, with a suspicious stiffening of the tail, and smelt at Dick. "Boy" was his decision. "Strange, dirty boy; must be growled at." The dog growled accordingly, but the boy took no notice. Insufferable impertinence! With great indignation the dog lifted his nose and barked. At this point an old man in a gray livery suit, wrapped in a big cloak, came round the corner.

"What's there, Lorry?" he asked, stopping.

The dog, with every appearance of thirsting for Dick's blood, barked back that it was an orchard-robber, a stealer of chickens, a vagabond, a tramp. The old man pushed him aside, and, kneeling down, ran his fingers over Dick's bruised, bony little person.

"Case o' starvation, Lorry, my friend," he observed.

Lorry snorted, as if he knew different, and then he barked angrily, by way of discouraging the old servant still further. But the man shook his head, and lifted Dick out of the wet and muddy ditch.

"My Lady would fair eat me if I left him here to die, Lorry," he said, and wrapped the boy in his cloak.

Lorry eyed this move with contempt, and as the old man started down the lane carrying Dick in his arms, he rushed on ahead at a splashing canter and with an angry sway of the tail. He stated in a series of snapping barks that he was going on to tell someone what a very silly old man this was. With this amiable intention he found his way through a gate with stone pillars at the sides, up a broad avenue, to a door. Lorry barked for admittance, and made the steps as muddy as he could in the meantime. Presently the door opened a little, and a young lady looked out, reproachfully.

"To the back-door, an' it please you!" she said severely. "Would you have the hall flags looking thus?" She pointed down at the muddy steps.

Lorry explained by barks that this really was an exceptional occasion. Unless he informed her in time, Philip would certainly carry in at the back-door a dirty, indifferent ragamuffin of a boy. He was still arguing the case when the young lady, with her own eyes, saw Philip coming carrying a ragged boy, just as Lorry was telling her he would. Forgetting her hall flags, she ran out on the steps to call Philip. Lorry rushed in, made a swift but devastating journey round the hall and into the parlour, and out again, saying plainly: "Exactly what I said!"

Lady Dorothy Byng lived alone in the big old Tudor house at the bottom of the lane. Old Philip was her butler and house-steward, and Bridget, his wife, was her maid. She need not ask anyone's leave to have Dick carried into her oak-panelled parlour, and laid on a settle by the fire. Lorry, it is true, remonstrated to the best of his ability, but, failing to convince her, he lay down to watch operations. In his opinion, starving creatures should be restored with chicken-bones, not bread-and-milk, but he could not convince anyone of that either.

Dick opened his eyes in the strange room, and saw kind faces.

"Dream," he murmured, and shut them again. In this condition he drank milk until he was persuaded of its reality. The comfort was almost unbearable. He turned his cheek on a soft cushion, and fell asleep.

"Well, Philip," said Lady Dorothy next morning, "what think you of our little waif?"

Dick had slept the night in Philip's room.

"Well, my Lady," the old butler replied, "'tis an ill-groomed colt, to be truthful; but, begging your pardon, Bridget saith its skin is as soft and fine as your Ladyship's; bruised, all of a mass, madam, but white as milk now Bridget hath washed him. And hair, Bridget saith, like spun silk."

Lady Dorothy lifted her eyebrows.

"Upon my word, I must go up and see this prodigy, Philip. Is it asleep?"

"Not now, my Lady. But I'll carry him down if it pleases you to see him."

"No, no," she said, "I'll go up."

Dick was lying in a bed--a real bed. The butler's couch was princely after the straw of the inn-keeper's boy. He had had as much food as he wanted, and, instead of being cuffed away from the dish, had been pressed to eat more. He had been washed, and his cuts and bruises doctored. It was no dream--a reality. He kept shutting his eyes and opening them quickly. Each time everything was there: the white-washed wall, the latticed window, the bed, and himself--Dick. It was during one of these experiments that the door opened softly, and Lady Dorothy Byng came in. Dick's lids lifted quickly, and his gaze became fixed. She wore a gown of soft white material, and in the white lawn and lace at her bosom, caught in the folds, was a daffodil flower. Her fair hair was dressed in curls on her forehead and neck, and her bare arms and hands were exquisitely beautiful. She had been famous at a court where many women had been fair. To Dick she appeared the most beautiful creature ever created. Her brown eyes looked into Dick's gray ones with a gaze as fixed as his, and more troubled. For fully two minutes she stood still, and then, with a little sigh, came close to the bed.

"Are you rested?" she asked gently.

"Yes, Lady, I thank you."

"Rest as long as you like, and eat as much as you can," she said; "and when you are stronger, perhaps you will tell me whither you were going, and how I can help you."

At the inn no one had spoken like this to Dick, and he was at a loss how to answer. In fancy he fell back to the modes of Giles's master, and then, with more confidence, to Giles's own. Recalling his slow, gentle way of speaking, he said: "Your Ladyship is very good. I thank you." But there he stopped, hesitated a moment, and then dropped suddenly into the hurried tones and loose language of the inn--a quite unintelligible jargon to Lady Dorothy's ears. He tried to explain how he came to be lying by the roadside, but she shook her head.

"Never mind how you came there," she said. "You were hungry, I take it, and tired, and the side of the road was safer than the middle."

Dick remembered Giles had said something like that. He smiled faintly. Could he do nothing to show her Ladyship he was grateful before she sent him away?

"I shall not send you away, my child," she answered, smiling. "You will go when you want to."

"I shall never want to," said Dick, lifting his eyes to hers, full of tears.

Lady Dorothy caught his face between her hands, and looked eagerly at him.

"What is your name?" she enquired.

"Dick--" he began, and stopped sadly.

"What else?" she demanded. But as he did not answer, she let him go.

"Very well," she said kindly. "But if you choose to trust me, I come of people used to be trusted with anything."

Dick hid his face in the pillow. But he turned in a moment.

"Are you for the King, madam?"

"Of a certainty," she replied, as if she deemed the question unnecessary--almost foolish.

Dick sighed. She might have heard of him through father or brother, or some Cavalier friend.

"And do I harbour a young rebel?" she asked.

"No--oh, no, madam!"

"That is well; for I might love my own enemies at a pinch, Dick, but the King's--never!"

Dick sighed again.

"Do you know anyone who is with the King, madam?"

"Several gentlemen," she said, smiling. "I might claim acquaintance with many."

"If you knew who I was," stammered Dick, "you might not--you would not--"

"If you have done anything false, do not tell me," she said.

"Nothing!" he cried. "Oh, nothing, madam! But I am hunted. I am--madam, my name is--"

"Have no fear," she said. "If you have done no wrong, and are in peril, you will be safe with me. Tell me, Dick! Tell me!"

Dick could no more withstand her, now she entreated, than he could fly.

"My name is Chester, madam. Sir Richard Chester of Dent.

"Yes, Dick," she said, kneeling down by the bed, and looking at him.

"Did you know all the time?" he asked, wondering.

"Yes, I think I did, dear," she said.

She kissed him, and then stood up.

"Go to sleep now, Dick," she whispered. "And--and you must stay with me for always, dear."

She left the room swiftly, and Dick lay back wondering.