This speech greatly incensed the pessimistic man, who demanded to be told when the next coach to Bath was due. The coachman said: ?
?Lor’ bless you, sir, we’ll be snowbound a week, I dessay! Nothing won’t get beyond Reading, not if this weather holds!’
There was a general outcry at this; Miss Trent exclaimed: ‘Snowbound a week! But I must reach Bath tomorrow!’
‘Can one hire a chaise in Woolhampton?’ asked Joseph suddenly.
‘Well, you might be able to,’ acknowledged the coachman.
‘I’ll ride in with the guard!’ Joseph decided.
Miss Trent started. Stretching up a hand, she grasped a fold of his coat, saying sharply: ‘Joseph, if you mean to go on by chaise you’ll take me with you?’
‘No, by God!’ he retorted. ‘I didn’t ask you to come to Bath, and I shan’t help you to get there! You may hire a chaise for yourself!’
‘You know I haven’t enough money!’ she said, in a low, trembling voice.
‘Well, it’s no concern of mine,’ he said sulkily. ‘A pretty fool I should be to take you along with me! Besides, you can’t go without your woman.’
Miss Trent’s eyes were bright with tears, but she would not let them fall. She said passionately: ‘I’ll get to Bath if I have to trudge there, Joseph – and then we shall see!’
He responded to this merely with a jeering laugh, and moved away to confer with the guard. Miss Trent made no further attempt to detain him, and in a very few minutes he had ridden off with the guard in the direction of Woolhampton.
With the departure of the guard a new and more fearful mood descended upon the coachman. He became obsessed by the idea that highwaymen would descend upon the wrecked coach, grasped his blunderbuss nervously, started at shadows, and ended by firing the weapon at the mere sound of muffled hoofbeats.
The sound of horses plunging and snorting was almost immediately followed by the appearance round the bend in the road of a curricle and pair, which drew up alongside the coach. A wrathful voice demanded: ‘What in hell’s name do you mean by firing at me you fat-witted, cow-handed ensign-bearer?’
The coachman, reassured by this form of address, lowered his weapon, and said that he was sure he begged pardon. The gentleman in the curricle, having by this time taken in the group by the wayside, briefly commanded the groom beside him to go to the horses’ heads, and himself jumped down from the curricle, and approached Miss Trent, still kneeling beside her stricken attendant. ‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘How is she hurt?’
‘I very much fear that she has broken her leg,’ Miss Trent replied worriedly. ‘She is my maid, and I am a wretch to have brought her!’
The gentleman, whose momentary outburst of wrath had swiftly given place to an air of languor which seemed habitual, said calmly: ‘Then I had better take you both up, and convey you to the nearest town.’
Miss Trent said impulsively: ‘Would you do that, sir? I should be so very grateful! Not only on poor Sarah’s account, but on my own! I must reach the next town quickly!’
‘In that case,’ responded the gentleman, rather amused, ‘let us waste not a moment. I’ll drive you into Newbury.’
The farmer and the pessimistic man, both applauding this scheme, at once volunteered to extricate Miss Trent’s baggage from the boot, and to strap it on to the back of the curricle; Sarah was soon lifted up into the carriage, and made as comfortable as possible; and the groom, resigning himself to a most uneasy drive, perched on the baggage behind.
Miss Trent, squeezed between Sarah and her very tall and broad-shouldered rescuer, bade farewell to her old travelling companions, and looked buoyantly towards the future.
This seemed, at the moment, to consist only of snowflakes. The light, moreover, was beginning to fail, so that she would not have been surprised had the curricle, like the coach, plunged off the road into a drift. But its driver seemed to be very sure of his ability to keep the track, and drove his pair along at a steady pace, his eyes, between narrowed lids, fixed on the road ahead.
‘How well you drive!’ remarked Miss Trent, with a sort of impulsive candour, as engaging as it was naïve.
A slight smile touched his lips. ‘Thank you!’
‘I do trust we shall reach Newbury,’ confided Miss Trent. ‘For one thing, I must have poor Sarah attended to, and for another, I must get to Bath!’
‘I collect that it is of importance to you to reach Bath immediately?’
‘Of vital importance!’ asserted Miss Trent.
‘You might be able to hire a chaise,’ he suggested. ‘I fear there will be no stage-coaches running for some days.’
‘That,’ said Miss Trent bitterly, ‘is what my cousin means to do! He can afford it, and he knows very well I cannot, and he won’t take me along with him. He is an odious man!’
‘He sounds quite abominable,’ agreed the gentleman gravely. ‘Is he one of the unfortunates we were obliged to leave by the wayside?’