Rodney Stone
by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #5148 · 510,557 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Rodney Stone
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5148]
Most recently updated: February 16, 2017
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5148
Credits: Transcribed from the 1921 Eveleigh Nash & Grayson edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODNEY STONE ***
Transcribed from the 1921 Eveleigh Nash & Grayson edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
RODNEY STONE
* * * * *
By
A. CONAN DOYLE
* * * * *
London
EVELEIGH NASH & GRAYSON LTD.
148, Strand
1921
PREFACE
AMONGST the books to which I am indebted for my material in my endeavour
to draw various phases of life and character in England at the beginning
of the century, I would particularly mention Ashton’s “Dawn of the
Nineteenth Century;” Gronow’s “Reminiscences;” Fitzgerald’s “Life and
Times of George IV.;” Jesse’s “Life of Brummell;” “Boxiana;”
“Pugilistica;” Harper’s “Brighton Road;” Robinson’s “Last Earl of
Barrymore” and “Old Q.;” Rice’s “History of the Turf;” Tristram’s
“Coaching Days;” James’s “Naval History;” Clark Russell’s “Collingwood”
and “Nelson.”
I am also much indebted to my friends Mr. J. C. Parkinson and Robert Barr
for information upon the subject of the ring.
A. CONAN DOYLE.
HASLEMERE,
_September_ 1, 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FRIAR’S OAK 1
II. THE WALKER OF CLIFFE ROYAL 18
III. THE PLAY-ACTRESS OF ANSTEY CROSS 33
IV. THE PEACE OF AMIENS 50
V. BUCK TREGELLIS 65
VI. ON THE THRESHOLD 86
VII. THE HOPE OF ENGLAND 98
VIII. THE BRIGHTON ROAD 121
IX. WATIER’S 136
X. THE MEN OF THE RING 153
XI. THE FIGHT IN THE COACH-HOUSE 179
XII. THE COFFEE-ROOM OF FLADONG’S 201
XIII. LORD NELSON 221
XIV. ON THE ROAD 234
XV. FOUL PLAY 253
XVI. CRAWLEY DOWNS 261
XVII. THE RING-SIDE 277
XVIII. THE SMITH’S LAST BATTLE 294
XIX. CLIFFE ROYAL 314
XX. LORD AVON 326
XXI. THE VALET’S STORY 340
XXII. THE END 355
CHAPTER I.
FRIAR’S OAK.
ON this, the first of January of the year 1851, the nineteenth century
has reached its midway term, and many of us who shared its youth have
already warnings which tell us that it has outworn us. We put our
grizzled heads together, we older ones, and we talk of the great days
that we have known; but we find that when it is with our children that we
talk it is a hard matter to make them understand. We and our fathers
before us lived much the same life, but they with their railway trains
and their steamboats belong to a different age. It is true that we can
put history-books into their hands, and they can read from them of our
weary struggle of two and twenty years with that great and evil man.
They can learn how Freedom fled from the whole broad continent, and how
Nelson’s blood was shed, and Pitt’s noble heart was broken in striving
that she should not pass us for ever to take refuge with our brothers
across the Atlantic. All this they can read, with the date of this
treaty or that battle, but I do not know where they are to read of
ourselves, of the folk we were, and the lives we led, and how the world
seemed to our eyes when they were young as theirs are now.
If I take up my pen to tell you about this, you must not look for any
story at my hands, for I was only in my earliest manhood when these
things befell; and although I saw something of the stories of other
lives, I could scarce claim one of my own. It is the love of a woman
that makes the story of a man, and many a year was to pass before I first
looked into the eyes of the mother of my children. To us it seems but an
affair of yesterday, and yet those children can now reach the plums in
the garden whilst we are seeking for a ladder, and where we once walked
with their little hands in ours, we are glad now to lean upon their arms.
But I shall speak of a time when the love of a mother was the only love I
knew, and if you seek for something more, then it is not for you that I
write. But if you would come out with me into that forgotten world; if
you would know Boy Jim and Champion Harrison; if you would meet my
father, one of Nelson’s own men; if you would catch a glimpse of that
great seaman himself, and of George, afterwards the unworthy King of
England; if, above all, you would see my famous uncle, Sir Charles
Tregellis, the King of the Bucks, and the great fighting men whose names
are still household words amongst you, then give me your hand and let us
start.
But I must warn you also that, if you think you will find much that is of
interest in your guide, you are destined to disappointment. When I look
over my bookshelves, I can see that it is only the wise and witty and
valiant who have ventured to write down their experiences. For my own
part, if I were only assured that I was as clever and brave as the
average man about me, I should be well satisfied. Men of their hands
have thought well of my brains, and men of brains of my hands, and that
is the best that I can say of myself. Save in the one matter of having
an inborn readiness for music, so that the mastery of any instrument
comes very easily and naturally to me, I cannot recall any single
advantage which I can boast over my fellows. In all things I have been a
half-way man, for I am of middle height, my eyes are neither blue nor
grey, and my hair, before Nature dusted it with her powder, was betwixt
flaxen and brown. I may, perhaps, claim this: that through life I have
never felt a touch of jealousy as I have admired a better man than
myself, and that I have always seen all things as they are, myself
included, which should count in my favour now that I sit down in my
mature age to write my memories. With your permission, then, we will
push my own personality as far as possible out of the picture. If you
can conceive me as a thin and colourless cord upon which my would-be
pearls are strung, you will be accepting me upon the terms which I should
wish.
Our family, the Stones, have for many generations belonged to the navy,
and it has been a custom among us for the eldest son to take the name of
his father’s favourite commander. Thus we can trace our lineage back to
old Vernon Stone, who commanded a high-sterned, peak-nosed, fifty-gun
ship against the Dutch. Through Hawke Stone and Benbow Stone we came
down to my father, Anson Stone, who in his turn christened me Rodney, at
the parish church of St. Thomas at Portsmouth in the year of grace 1786.
Out of my window as I write I can see my own great lad in the garden, and
if I were to call out “Nelson!” you would see that I have been true to
the traditions of our family.
My dear mother, the best that ever a man had, was the second daughter of
the Reverend John Tregellis, Vicar of Milton, which is a small parish
upon the borders of the marshes of Langstone. She came of a poor family,
but one of some position, for her elder brother was the famous Sir
Charles Tregellis, who, having inherited the money of a wealthy East
Indian merchant, became in time the talk of the town and the very
particular friend of the Prince of Wales. Of him I shall have more to
say hereafter; but you will note now that he was my own uncle, and
brother to my mother.
I can remember her all through her beautiful life for she was but a girl
when she married, and little more when I can first recall her busy
fingers and her gentle voice. I see her as a lovely woman with kind,
dove’s eyes, somewhat short of stature it is true, but carrying herself
very bravely. In my memories of those days she is clad always in some
purple shimmering stuff, with a white kerchief round her long white neck,
and I see her fingers turning and darting as she works at her knitting.
I see her again in her middle years, sweet and loving, planning,
contriving, achieving, with the few shillings a day of a lieutenant’s pay
on which to support the cottage at Friar’s Oak, and to keep a fair face
to the world. And now, if I do but step into the parlour, I can see her
once more, with over eighty years of saintly life behind her,
silver-haired, placid-faced, with her dainty ribboned cap, her
gold-rimmed glasses, and her woolly shawl with the blue border. I loved
her young and I love her old, and when she goes she will take something
with her which nothing in the world can ever make good to me again. You
may have many friends, you who read this, and you may chance to marry
more than once, but your mother is your first and your last. Cherish
her, then, whilst you may, for the day will come when every hasty deed or
heedless word will come back with its sting to hive in your own heart.
Such, then, was my mother; and as to my father, I can describe him best
when I come to the time when he returned to us from the Mediterranean.
During all my childhood he was only a name to me, and a face in a
miniature hung round my mother’s neck. At first they told me he was
fighting the French, and then after some years one heard less about the
French and more about General Buonaparte. I remember the awe with which
one day in Thomas Street, Portsmouth, I saw a print of the great Corsican
in a bookseller’s window. This, then, was the arch enemy with whom my
father spent his life in terrible and ceaseless contest. To my childish
imagination it was a personal affair, and I for ever saw my father and
this clean-shaven, thin-lipped man swaying and reeling in a deadly,
year-long grapple. It was not until I went to the Grammar School that I
understood how many other little boys there were whose fathers were in
the same case.
Only once in those long years did my father return home, which will show
you what it meant to be the wife of a sailor in those days. It was just
after we had moved from Portsmouth to Friar’s Oak, whither he came for a
week before he set sail with Admiral Jervis to help him to turn his name
into Lord St. Vincent. I remember that he frightened as well as
fascinated me with his talk of battles, and I can recall as if it were
yesterday the horror with which I gazed upon a spot of blood upon his
shirt ruffle, which had come, as I have no doubt, from a mischance in
shaving. At the time I never questioned that it had spurted from some
stricken Frenchman or Spaniard, and I shrank from him in terror when he
laid his horny hand upon my head. My mother wept bitterly when he was
gone, but for my own part I was not sorry to see his blue back and white
shorts going down the garden walk, for I felt, with the heedless
selfishness of a child, that we were closer together, she and I, when we
were alone.
I was in my eleventh year when we moved from Portsmouth to Friar’s Oak, a
little Sussex village to the north of Brighton, which was recommended to
us by my uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, one of whose grand friends, Lord
Avon, had had his seat near there. The reason of our moving was that
living was cheaper in the country, and that it was easier for my mother
to keep up the appearance of a gentlewoman when away from the circle of
those to whom she could not refuse hospitality. They were trying times
those to all save the farmers, who made such profits that they could, as
I have heard, afford to let half their land lie fallow, while living like
gentlemen upon the rest. Wheat was at a hundred and ten shillings a
quarter, and the quartern loaf at one and ninepence. Even in the quiet
of the cottage of Friar’s Oak we could scarce have lived, were it not
that in the blockading squadron in which my father was stationed there
was the occasional chance of a little prize-money. The line-of-battle
ships themselves, tacking on and off outside Brest, could earn nothing
save honour; but the frigates in attendance made prizes of many coasters,
and these, as is the rule of the service, were counted as belonging to
the fleet, and their produce divided into head-money. In this manner my
father was able to send home enough to keep the cottage and to pay for me
at the day school of Mr. Joshua Allen, where for four years I learned all
that he had to teach. It was at Allen’s school that I first knew Jim
Harrison, Boy Jim as he has always been called, the nephew of Champion
Harrison of the village smithy. I can see him as he was in those days
with great, floundering, half-formed limbs like a Newfoundland puppy, and
a face that set every woman’s head round as he passed her. It was in
those days that we began our lifelong friendship, a friendship which
still in our waning years binds us closely as two brothers. I taught him
his exercises, for he never loved the sight of a book, and he in turn
made me box and wrestle, tickle trout on the Adur, and snare rabbits on
Ditching Down, for his hands were as active as his brain was slow. He
was two years my elder, however, so that, long before I had finished my
schooling, he had gone to help his uncle at the smithy.
Friar’s Oak is in a dip of the Downs, and the forty-third milestone
between London and Brighton lies on the skirt of the village. It is but
a small place, with an ivied church, a fine vicarage, and a row of
red-brick cottages each in its own little garden. At one end was the
forge of Champion Harrison, with his house behind it, and at the other
was Mr. Allen’s school. The yellow cottage, standing back a little from
the road, with its upper story bulging forward and a crisscross of black
woodwork let into the plaster, is the one in which we lived. I do not
know if it is still standing, but I should think it likely, for it was
not a place much given to change.
Just opposite to us, at the other side of the broad, white road, was the
Friar’s Oak Inn, which was kept in my day by John Cummings, a man of
excellent repute at home, but liable to strange outbreaks when he
travelled, as will afterwards become apparent. Though there was a stream
of traffic upon the road, the coaches from Brighton were too fresh to
stop, and those from London too eager to reach their journey’s end, so
that if it had not been for an occasional broken trace or loosened wheel,
the landlord would have had only the thirsty throats of the village to
trust to. Those were the days when the Prince of Wales had just built
his singular palace by the sea, and so from May to September, which was
the Brighton season, there was never a day that from one to two hundred
curricles, chaises, and phaetons did not rattle past our doors. Many a
summer evening have Boy Jim and I lain upon the grass, watching all these
grand folk, and cheering the London coaches as they came roaring through
the dust clouds, leaders and wheelers stretched to their work, the bugles
screaming and the coachmen with their low-crowned, curly-brimmed hats,
and their faces as scarlet as their coats. The passengers used to laugh
when Boy Jim shouted at them, but if they could have read his big,
half-set limbs and his loose shoulders aright, they would have looked a
little harder at him, perhaps, and given him back his cheer.
Boy Jim had never known a father or a mother, and his whole life had been
spent with his uncle, Champion Harrison. Harrison was the Friar’s Oak
blacksmith, and he had his nickname because he fought Tom Johnson when he
held the English belt, and would most certainly have beaten him had the
Bedfordshire magistrates not appeared to break up the fight. For years
there was no such glutton to take punishment and no more finishing hitter
than Harrison, though he was always, as I understand, a slow one upon his
feet. At last, in a fight with Black Baruk the Jew, he finished the
battle with such a lashing hit that he not only knocked his opponent over
the inner ropes, but he left him betwixt life and death for long three
weeks. During all this time Harrison lived half demented, expecting
every hour to feel the hand of a Bow Street runner upon his collar, and
to be tried for his life. This experience, with the prayers of his wife,
made him forswear the ring for ever, and carry his great muscles into the
one trade in which they seemed to give him an advantage. There was a
good business to be done at Friar’s Oak from the passing traffic and the
Sussex farmers, so that he soon became the richest of the villagers; and
he came to church on a Sunday with his wife and his nephew, looking as
respectable a family man as one would wish to see.
He was not a tall man, not more than five feet seven inches, and it was
often said that if he had had an extra inch of reach he would have been a
match for Jackson or Belcher at their best. His chest was like a barrel,
and his forearms were the most powerful that I have ever seen, with deep
groves between the smooth-swelling muscles like a piece of water-worn
rock. In spite of his strength, however, he was of a slow, orderly, and
kindly disposition, so that there was no man more beloved over the whole
country side. His heavy, placid, clean-shaven face could set very
sternly, as I have seen upon occasion; but for me and every child in the
village there was ever a smile upon his lips and a greeting in his eyes.
There was not a beggar upon the country side who did not know that his
heart was as soft as his muscles were hard.
There was nothing that he liked to talk of more than his old battles, but
he would stop if he saw his little wife coming, for the one great shadow
in her life was the ever-present fear that some day he would throw down
sledge and rasp and be off to the ring once more. And you must be
reminded here once for all that that former calling of his was by no
means at that time in the debased condition to which it afterwards fell.
Public opinion has gradually become opposed to it, for the reason that it
came largely into the hands of rogues, and because it fostered ringside
ruffianism. Even the honest and brave pugilist was found to draw
villainy round him, just as the pure and noble racehorse does. For this
reason the Ring is dying in England, and we may hope that when Caunt and
Bendigo have passed away, they may have none to succeed them. But it was
different in the days of which I speak. Public opinion was then largely
in its favour, and there were good reasons why it should be so. It was a
time of war, when England with an army and navy composed only of those
who volunteered to fight because they had fighting blood in them, had to
encounter, as they would now have to encounter, a power which could by
despotic law turn every citizen into a soldier. If the people had not
been full of this lust for combat, it is certain that England must have
been overborne. And it was thought, and is, on the face of it,
reasonable, that a struggle between two indomitable men, with thirty
thousand to view it and three million to discuss it, did help to set a
standard of hardihood and endurance. Brutal it was, no doubt, and its
brutality is the end of it; but it is not so brutal as war, which will
survive it. Whether it is logical now to teach the people to be peaceful
in an age when their very existence may come to depend upon their being
warlike, is a question for wiser heads than mine. But that was what we
thought of it in the days of your grandfathers, and that is why you might
find statesmen and philanthropists like Windham, Fox, and Althorp at the
side of the Ring.
The mere fact that solid men should patronize it was enough in itself to
prevent the villainy which afterwards crept in. For over twenty years,
in the days of Jackson, Brain, Cribb, the Belchers, Pearce, Gully, and
the rest, the leaders of the Ring were men whose honesty was above
suspicion; and those were just the twenty years when the Ring may, as I
have said, have served a national purpose. You have heard how Pearce
saved the Bristol girl from the burning house, how Jackson won the
respect and friendship of the best men of his age, and how Gully rose to
a seat in the first Reformed Parliament. These were the men who set the
standard, and their trade carried with it this obvious recommendation,
that it is one in which no drunken or foul-living man could long succeed.
There were exceptions among them, no doubt—bullies like Hickman and
brutes like Berks; in the main, I say again that they were honest men,
brave and enduring to an incredible degree, and a credit to the country
which produced them. It was, as you will see, my fate to see something
of them, and I speak of what I know.
In our own village, I can assure you that we were very proud of the
presence of such a man as Champion Harrison, and if folks stayed at the
inn, they would walk down as far as the smithy just to have the sight of
him. And he was worth seeing, too, especially on a winter’s night when
the red glare of the forge would beat upon his great muscles and upon the
proud, hawk-face of Boy Jim as they heaved and swayed over some glowing
plough coulter, framing themselves in sparks with every blow. He would
strike once with his thirty-pound swing sledge, and Jim twice with his
hand hammer; and the “Clunk—clink, clink! clunk—clink, clink!” would
bring me flying down the village street, on the chance that, since they
were both at the anvil, there might be a place for me at the bellows.
Only once during those village years can I remember Champion Harrison
showing me for an instant the sort of man that he had been. It chanced
one summer morning, when Boy Jim and I were standing by the smithy door,
that there came a private coach from Brighton, with its four fresh
horses, and its brass-work shining, flying along with such a merry rattle
and jingling, that the Champion came running out with a hall-fullered
shoe in his tongs to have a look at it. A gentleman in a white
coachman’s cape—a Corinthian, as we would call him in those days—was
driving, and half a dozen of his fellows, laughing and shouting, were on
the top behind him. It may have been that the bulk of the smith caught
his eye, and that he acted in pure wantonness, or it may possibly have
been an accident, but, as he swung past, the twenty-foot thong of the
driver’s whip hissed round, and we heard the sharp snap of it across
Harrison’s leather apron.
“Halloa, master!” shouted the smith, looking after him. “You’re not to
be trusted on the box until you can handle your whip better’n that.”
“What’s that?” cried the driver, pulling up his team.
“I bid you have a care, master, or there will be some one-eyed folk along
the road you drive.”
“Oh, you say that, do you?” said the driver, putting his whip into its
socket and pulling off his driving-gloves. “I’ll have a little talk with
you, my fine fellow.”
The sporting gentlemen of those days were very fine boxers for the most
part, for it was the mode to take a course of Mendoza, just as a few
years afterwards there was no man about town who had not had the mufflers
on with Jackson. Knowing their own prowess, they never refused the
chance of a wayside adventure, and it was seldom indeed that the bargee
or the navigator had much to boast of after a young blood had taken off
his coat to him.
This one swung himself off the box-seat with the alacrity of a man who
has no doubts about the upshot of the quarrel, and after hanging his
caped coat upon the swingle-bar, he daintily turned up the ruffled cuffs
of his white cambric shirt.
“I’ll pay you for your advice, my man,” said he.
I am sure that the men upon the coach knew who the burly smith was, and
looked upon it as a prime joke to see their companion walk into such a
trap. They roared with delight, and bellowed out scraps of advice to
him.
“Knock some of the soot off him, Lord Frederick!” they shouted. “Give
the Johnny Raw his breakfast. Chuck him in among his own cinders!
Sharp’s the word, or you’ll see the back of him.”
Encouraged by these cries, the young aristocrat advanced upon his man.
The smith never moved, but his mouth set grim and hard, while his tufted
brows came down over his keen, grey eyes. The tongs had fallen, and his
hands were hanging free.
“Have a care, master,” said he. “You’ll get pepper if you don’t.”
Something in the assured voice, and something also in the quiet pose,
warned the young lord of his danger. I saw him look hard at his
antagonist, and as he did so, his hands and his jaw dropped together.
“By Gad!” he cried, “it’s Jack Harrison!”
“My name, master!”
“And I thought you were some Essex chaw-bacon! Why, man, I haven’t seen
you since the day you nearly killed Black Baruk, and cost me a cool
hundred by doing it.”
How they roared on the coach.
“Smoked! Smoked, by Gad!” they yelled. “It’s Jack Harrison the bruiser!
Lord Frederick was going to take on the ex-champion. Give him one on the
apron, Fred, and see what happens.”
But the driver had already climbed back into his perch, laughing as
loudly as any of his companions.
“We’ll let you off this time, Harrison,” said he. “Are those your sons
down there?”
“This is my nephew, master.”
“Here’s a guinea for him! He shall never say I robbed him of his uncle.”
And so, having turned the laugh in his favour by his merry way of taking
it, he cracked his whip, and away they flew to make London under the five
hours; while Jack Harrison, with his half-fullered shoe in his hand, went
whistling back to the forge.
CHAPTER II.
THE WALKER OF CLIFFE ROYAL.
SO much for Champion Harrison! Now, I wish to say something more about
Boy Jim, not only because he was the comrade of my youth, but because you
will find as you go on that this book is his story rather than mine, and
that there came a time when his name and his fame were in the mouths of
all England. You will bear with me, therefore, while I tell you of his
character as it was in those days, and especially of one very singular
adventure which neither of us are likely to forget.
It was strange to see Jim with his uncle and his aunt, for he seemed to
be of another race and breed to them. Often I have watched them come up
the aisle upon a Sunday, first the square, thick-set man, and then the
little, worn, anxious-eyed woman, and last this glorious lad with his
clear-cut face, his black curls, and his step so springy and light that
it seemed as if he were bound to earth by some lesser tie than the
heavy-footed villagers round him. He had not yet attained his full six
foot of stature, but no judge of a man (and every woman, at least, is
one) could look at his perfect shoulders, his narrow loins, and his proud
head that sat upon his neck like an eagle upon its perch, without feeling
that sober joy which all that is beautiful in Nature gives to us—a vague
self-content, as though in some way we also had a hand in the making of
it.
But we are used to associate beauty with softness in a man. I do not
know why they should be so coupled, and they never were with Jim. Of all
men that I have known, he was the most iron-hard in body and in mind.
Who was there among us who could walk with him, or run with him, or swim
with him? Who on all the country side, save only Boy Jim, would have
swung himself over Wolstonbury Cliff, and clambered down a hundred feet
with the mother hawk flapping at his ears in the vain struggle to hold
him from her nest? He was but sixteen, with his gristle not yet all set
into bone, when he fought and beat Gipsy Lee, of Burgess Hill, who called
himself the “Cock of the South Downs.” It was after this that Champion
Harrison took his training as a boxer in hand.
“I’d rather you left millin’ alone, Boy Jim,” said he, “and so had the
missus; but if mill you must, it will not be my fault if you cannot hold
up your hands to anything in the south country.”
And it was not long before he made good his promise.
I have said already that Boy Jim had no love for his books, but by that I
meant school-books, for when it came to the reading of romances or of
anything which had a touch of gallantry or adventure, there was no
tearing him away from it until it was finished. When such a book came
into his hands, Friar’s Oak and the smithy became a dream to him, and his
life was spent out upon the ocean or wandering over the broad continents
with his heroes. And he would draw me into his enthusiasms also, so that
I was glad to play Friday to his Crusoe when he proclaimed that the Clump
at Clayton was a desert island, and that we were cast upon it for a week.
But when I found that we were actually to sleep out there without
covering every night, and that he proposed that our food should be the
sheep of the Downs (wild goats he called them) cooked upon a fire, which
was to be made by the rubbing together of two sticks, my heart failed me,
and on the very first night I crept away to my mother. But Jim stayed
out there for the whole weary week—a wet week it was, too!—and came back
at the end of it looking a deal wilder and dirtier than his hero does in
the picture-books. It is well that he had only promised to stay a week,
for, if it had been a month, he would have died of cold and hunger before
his pride would have let him come home.
His pride!—that was the deepest thing in all Jim’s nature. It is a mixed
quality to my mind, half a virtue and half a vice: a virtue in holding a
man out of the dirt; a vice in making it hard for him to rise when once
he has fallen. Jim was proud down to the very marrow of his bones. You
remember the guinea that the young lord had thrown him from the box of
the coach? Two days later somebody picked it from the roadside mud. Jim
only had seen where it had fallen, and he would not deign even to point
it out to a beggar. Nor would he stoop to give a reason in such a case,
but would answer all remonstrances with a curl of his lip and a flash of
his dark eyes. Even at school he was the same, with such a sense of his
own dignity, that other folk had to think of it too. He might say, as he
did say, that a right angle was a proper sort of angle, or put Panama in
Sicily, but old Joshua Allen would as soon have thought of raising his
cane against him as he would of letting me off if I had said as much.
And so it was that, although Jim was the son of nobody, and I of a King’s
officer, it always seemed to me to have been a condescension on his part
that he should have chosen me as his friend.
It was this pride of Boy Jim’s which led to an adventure which makes me
shiver now when I think of it.
It happened in the August of ’99, or it may have been in the early days
of September; but I remember that we heard the cuckoo in Patcham Wood,
and that Jim said that perhaps it was the last of him. I was still at
school, but Jim had left, he being nigh sixteen and I thirteen. It was
my Saturday half-holiday, and we spent it, as we often did, out upon the
Downs. Our favourite place was beyond Wolstonbury, where we could
stretch ourselves upon the soft, springy, chalk grass among the plump
little Southdown sheep, chatting with the shepherds, as they leaned upon
their queer old Pyecombe crooks, made in the days when Sussex turned out
more iron than all the counties of England.
It was there that we lay upon that glorious afternoon. If we chose to
roll upon our right sides, the whole weald lay in front of us, with the
North Downs curving away in olive-green folds, with here and there the
snow-white rift of a chalk-pit; if we turned upon our left, we overlooked
the huge blue stretch of the Channel. A convoy, as I can well remember,
was coming up it that day, the timid flock of merchantmen in front; the
frigates, like well-trained dogs, upon the skirts; and two burly drover
line-of-battle ships rolling along behind them. My fancy was soaring out
to my father upon the waters, when a word from Jim brought it back on to
the grass like a broken-winged gull.
“Roddy,” said he, “have you heard that Cliffe Royal is haunted?”
Had I heard it? Of course I had heard it. Who was there in all the Down
country who had not heard of the Walker of Cliffe Royal?
“Do you know the story of it, Roddy?”
“Why,” said I, with some pride, “I ought to know it, seeing that my
mother’s brother, Sir Charles Tregellis, was the nearest friend of Lord
Avon, and was at this card-party when the thing happened. I heard the
vicar and my mother talking about it last week, and it was all so clear
to me that I might have been there when the murder was done.”
“It is a strange story,” said Jim, thoughtfully; “but when I asked my
aunt about it, she would give me no answer; and as to my uncle, he cut me
short at the very mention of it.”
“There is a good reason for that,” said I, “for Lord Avon was, as I have
heard, your uncle’s best friend; and it is but natural that he would not
wish to speak of his disgrace.”
“Tell me the story, Roddy.”
“It is an old one now—fourteen years old—and yet they have not got to the
end of it. There were four of them who had come down from London to
spend a few days in Lord Avon’s old house. One was his own young
brother, Captain Barrington; another was his cousin, Sir Lothian Hume;
Sir Charles Tregellis, my uncle, was the third; and Lord Avon the fourth.
They are fond of playing cards for money, these great people, and they
played and played for two days and a night. Lord Avon lost, and Sir
Lothian lost, and my uncle lost, and Captain Barrington won until he
could win no more. He won their money, but above all he won papers from
his elder brother which meant a great deal to him. It was late on a
Monday night that they stopped playing. On the Tuesday morning Captain
Barrington was found dead beside his bed with his throat cut.
“And Lord Avon did it?”
“His papers were found burned in the grate, his wristband was clutched in
the dead man’s hand, and his knife lay beside the body.”
“Did they hang him, then?”
“They were too slow in laying hands upon him. He waited until he saw
that they had brought it home to him, and then he fled. He has never
been seen since, but it is said that he reached America.”
“And the ghost walks?”
“There are many who have seen it.”
“Why is the house still empty?”
“Because it is in the keeping of the law. Lord Avon had no children, and
Sir Lothian Hume—the same who was at the card-party—is his nephew and
heir. But he can touch nothing until he can prove Lord Avon to be dead.”
Jim lay silent for a bit, plucking at the short grass with his fingers.
“Roddy,” said he at last, “will you come with me to-night and look for
the ghost?”
It turned me cold, the very thought of it.
“My mother would not let me.”
“Slip out when she’s abed. I’ll wait for you at the smithy.”
“Cliffe Royal is locked.”
“I’ll open a window easy enough.”
“I’m afraid, Jim.”
“But you are not afraid if you are with me, Roddy. I’ll promise you that
no ghost shall hurt you.”
So I gave him my word that I would come, and then all the rest of the day
I went about the most sad-faced lad in Sussex. It was all very well for
Boy Jim! It was that pride of his which was taking him there. He would
go because there was no one else on the country side that would dare.
But I had no pride of that sort. I was quite of the same way of thinking
as the others, and would as soon have thought of passing my night at
Jacob’s gibbet on Ditchling Common as in the haunted house of Cliffe
Royal. Still, I could not bring myself to desert Jim; and so, as I say,
I slunk about the house with so pale and peaky a face that my dear mother
would have it that I had been at the green apples, and sent me to bed
early with a dish of camomile tea for my supper.
England went to rest betimes in those days, for there were few who could
afford the price of candles. When I looked out of my window just after
the clock had gone ten, there was not a light in the village save only at
the inn. It was but a few feet from the ground, so I slipped out, and
there was Jim waiting for me at the smithy corner. We crossed John’s
Common together, and so past Ridden’s Farm, meeting only one or two
riding officers upon the way. There was a brisk wind blowing, and the
moon kept peeping through the rifts of the scud, so that our road was
sometimes silver-clear, and sometimes so black that we found ourselves
among the brambles and gorse-bushes which lined it. We came at last to
the wooden gate with the high stone pillars by the roadside, and, looking
through between the rails, we saw the long avenue of oaks, and at the end
of this ill-boding tunnel, the pale face of the house glimmered in the
moonshine.
That would have been enough for me, that one glimpse of it, and the sound
of the night wind sighing and groaning among the branches. But Jim swung
the gate open, and up we went, the gravel squeaking beneath our tread.
It towered high, the old house, with many little windows in which the
moon glinted, and with a strip of water running round three sides of it.
The arched door stood right in the face of us, and on one side a lattice
hung open upon its hinges.
“We’re in luck, Roddy,” whispered Jim. “Here’s one of the windows open.”
“Don’t you think we’ve gone far enough, Jim?” said I, with my teeth
chattering.
“I’ll lift you in first.”
“No, no, I’ll not go first.”
“Then I will.” He gripped the sill, and had his knee on it in an
instant. “Now, Roddy, give me your hands.” With a pull he had me up
beside him, and a moment later we were both in the haunted house.
How hollow it sounded when we jumped down on to the wooden floor! There
was such a sudden boom and reverberation that we both stood silent for a
moment. Then Jim burst out laughing.
“What an old drum of a place it is!” he cried; “we’ll strike a light,
Roddy, and see where we are.”
He had brought a candle and a tinder-box in his pocket. When the flame
burned up, we saw an arched stone roof above our heads, and broad deal
shelves all round us covered with dusty dishes. It was the pantry.
“I’ll show you round,” said Jim, merrily; and, pushing the door open, he
led the way into the hall. I remember the high, oak-panelled walls, with
the heads of deer jutting out, and a single white bust, which sent my
heart into my mouth, in the corner. Many rooms opened out of this, and
we wandered from one to the other—the kitchens, the still-room, the
morning-room, the dining-room, all filled with the same choking smell of
dust and of mildew.
“This is where they played the cards, Jim,” said I, in a hushed voice.
“It was on that very table.”
“Why, here are the cards themselves!” cried he; and he pulled a brown
towel from something in the centre of the sideboard. Sure enough it was
a pile of playing-cards—forty packs, I should think, at the least—which
had lain there ever since that tragic game which was played before I was
born.
“I wonder whence that stair leads?” said Jim.
“Don’t go up there, Jim!” I cried, clutching at his arm. “That must lead
to the room of the murder.”
“How do you know that?”
“The vicar said that they saw on the ceiling—Oh, Jim, you can see it even
now!”
He held up his candle, and there was a great, dark smudge upon the white
plaster above us.
“I believe you’re right,” said he; “but anyhow I’m going to have a look
at it.”
“Don’t, Jim, don’t!” I cried.
“Tut, Roddy! you can stay here if you are afraid. I won’t be more than a
minute. There’s no use going on a ghost hunt unless—Great Lord, there’s
something coming down the stairs!”
I heard it too—a shuffling footstep in the room above, and then a creak
from the steps, and then another creak, and another. I saw Jim’s face as
if it had been carved out of ivory, with his parted lips and his staring
eyes fixed upon the black square of the stair opening. He still held the
light, but his fingers twitched, and with every twitch the shadows sprang
from the walls to the ceiling. As to myself, my knees gave way under me,
and I found myself on the floor crouching down behind Jim, with a scream
frozen in my throat. And still the step came slowly from stair to stair.
Then, hardly daring to look and yet unable to turn away my eyes, I saw a
figure dimly outlined in the corner upon which the stair opened. There
was a silence in which I could hear my poor heart thumping, and then when
I looked again the figure was gone, and the low creak, creak was heard
once more upon the stairs. Jim sprang after it, and I was left
half-fainting in the moonlight.
But it was not for long. He was down again in a minute, and, passing his
hand under my arm, he half led and half carried me out of the house. It
was not until we were in the fresh night air again that he opened his
mouth.
“Can you stand, Roddy?”
“Yes, but I’m shaking.”
“So am I,” said he, passing his hand over his forehead. “I ask your
pardon, Roddy. I was a fool to bring you on such an errand. But I never
believed in such things. I know better now.”
“Could it have been a man, Jim?” I asked, plucking up my courage now that
I could hear the dogs barking on the farms.
“It was a spirit, Rodney.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I followed it and saw it vanish into a wall, as easily as an eel
into sand. Why, Roddy, what’s amiss now?”
My fears were all back upon me, and every nerve creeping with horror.
“Take me away, Jim! Take me away!” I cried.
I was glaring down the avenue, and his eyes followed mine. Amid the
gloom of the oak trees something was coming towards us.
“Quiet, Roddy!” whispered Jim. “By heavens, come what may, my arms are
going round it this time.”
We crouched as motionless as the trunks behind us. Heavy steps ploughed
their way through the soft gravel, and a broad figure loomed upon us in
the darkness.
Jim sprang upon it like a tiger.
“_You’re_ not a spirit, anyway!” he cried.
The man gave a shout of surprise, and then a growl of rage.
“What the deuce!” he roared, and then, “I’ll break your neck if you don’t
let go.”
The threat might not have loosened Jim’s grip, but the voice did.
“Why, uncle!” he cried.
“Well, I’m blessed if it isn’t Boy Jim! And what’s this? Why, it’s
young Master Rodney Stone, as I’m a living sinner! What in the world are
you two doing up at Cliffe Royal at this time of night?”
We had all moved out into the moonlight, and there was Champion Harrison
with a big bundle on his arm,—and such a look of amazement upon his face
as would have brought a smile back on to mine had my heart not still been
cramped with fear.
“We’re exploring,” said Jim.
“Exploring, are you? Well, I don’t think you were meant to be Captain
Cooks, either of you, for I never saw such a pair of peeled-turnip faces.
Why, Jim, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid, uncle. I never was afraid; but spirits are new to me,
and—”
“Spirits?”
“I’ve been in Cliffe Royal, and we’ve seen the ghost.”
The Champion gave a whistle.
“That’s the game, is it?” said he. “Did you have speech with it?”
“It vanished first.”
The Champion whistled once more.
“I’ve heard there is something of the sort up yonder,” said he; “but it’s
not a thing as I would advise you to meddle with. There’s enough trouble
with the folk of this world, Boy Jim, without going out of your way to
mix up with those of another. As to young Master Rodney Stone, if his
good mother saw that white face of his, she’d never let him come to the
smithy more. Walk slowly on, and I’ll see you back to Friar’s Oak.”
We had gone half a mile, perhaps, when the Champion overtook us, and I
could not but observe that the bundle was no longer under his arm. We
were nearly at the smithy before Jim asked the question which was already
in my mind.
“What took _you_ up to Cliffe Royal, uncle?”
“Well, as a man gets on in years,” said the Champion, “there’s many a
duty turns up that the likes of you have no idea of. When you’re near
forty yourself, you’ll maybe know the truth of what I say.”
So that was all we could draw from him; but, young as I was, I had heard
of coast smuggling and of packages carried to lonely places at night, so
that from that time on, if I had heard that the preventives had made a
capture, I was never easy until I saw the jolly face of Champion Harrison
looking out of his smithy door.
CHAPTER III.
THE PLAY-ACTRESS OF ANSTEY CROSS.
I HAVE told you something about Friar’s Oak, and about the life that we
led there. Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly
linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings
out half a dozen others that were entangled with it. I was in two minds
when I began whether I had enough in me to make a book of, and now I know
that I could write one about Friar’s Oak alone, and the folk whom I knew
in my childhood. They were hard and uncouth, some of them, I doubt not;
and yet, seen through the golden haze of time, they all seem sweet and
lovable. There was our good vicar, Mr. Jefferson, who loved the whole
world save only Mr. Slack, the Baptist minister of Clayton; and there was
kindly Mr. Slack, who was all men’s brother save only of Mr. Jefferson,
the vicar of Friar’s Oak. Then there was Monsieur Rudin, the French
Royalist refugee who lived over on the Pangdean road, and who, when the
news of a victory came in, was convulsed with joy because we had beaten
Buonaparte, and shaken with rage because we had beaten the French, so
that after the Nile he wept for a whole day out of delight and then for
another one out of fury, alternately clapping his hands and stamping his
feet. Well I remember his thin, upright figure and the way in which he
jauntily twirled his little cane; for cold and hunger could not cast him
down, though we knew that he had his share of both. Yet he was so proud
and had such a grand manner of talking, that no one dared to offer him a
cloak or a meal. I can see his face now, with a flush over each craggy
cheek-bone when the butcher made him the present of some ribs of beef.
He could not but take it, and yet whilst he was stalking off he threw a
proud glance over his shoulder at the butcher, and he said, “Monsieur, I
have a dog!” Yet it was Monsieur Rudin and not his dog who looked
plumper for a week to come.
Then I remember Mr. Paterson, the farmer, who was what you would now call
a Radical, though at that time some called him a Priestley-ite, and some
a Fox-ite, and nearly everybody a traitor. It certainly seemed to me at
the time to be very wicked that a man should look glum when he heard of a
British victory; and when they burned his straw image at the gate of his
farm, Boy Jim and I were among those who lent a hand. But we were bound
to confess that he was game, though he might be a traitor, for down he
came, striding into the midst of us with his brown coat and his buckled
shoes, and the fire beating upon his grim, schoolmaster face. My word,
how he rated us, and how glad we were at last to sneak quietly away.
“You livers of a lie!” said he. “You and those like you have been
preaching peace for nigh two thousand years, and cutting throats the
whole time. If the money that is lost in taking French lives were spent
in saving English ones, you would have more right to burn candles in your
windows. Who are you that dare to come here to insult a law-abiding
man?”
“We are the people of England!” cried young Master Ovington, the son of
the Tory Squire.
“You! you horse-racing, cock-fighting ne’er-do-weel! Do you presume to
talk for the people of England? They are a deep, strong, silent stream,
and you are the scum, the bubbles, the poor, silly froth that floats upon
the surface.”
We thought him very wicked then, but, looking back, I am not sure that we
were not very wicked ourselves.
And then there were the smugglers! The Downs swarmed with them, for
since there might be no lawful trade betwixt France and England, it had
all to run in that channel. I have been up on St. John’s Common upon a
dark night, and, lying among the bracken, I have seen as many as seventy
mules and a man at the head of each go flitting past me as silently as
trout in a stream. Not one of them but bore its two ankers of the right
French cognac, or its bale of silk of Lyons and lace of Valenciennes. I
knew Dan Scales, the head of them, and I knew Tom Hislop, the riding
officer, and I remember the night they met.
“Do you fight, Dan?” asked Tom.
“Yes, Tom; thou must fight for it.”
On which Tom drew his pistol, and blew Dan’s brains out.
“It was a sad thing to do,” he said afterwards, “but I knew Dan was too
good a man for me, for we tried it out before.”
It was Tom who paid a poet from Brighton to write the lines for the
tombstone, which we all thought were very true and good, beginning—
“Alas! Swift flew the fatal lead
Which piercéd through the young man’s head.
He instantly fell, resigned his breath,
And closed his languid eyes in death.”
There was more of it, and I dare say it is all still to be read in
Patcham Churchyard.
One day, about the time of our Cliffe Royal adventure, I was seated in
the cottage looking round at the curios which my father had fastened on
to the walls, and wishing, like the lazy lad that I was, that Mr. Lilly
had died before ever he wrote his Latin grammar, when my mother, who was
sitting knitting in the window, gave a little cry of surprise.
“Good gracious!” she cried. “What a vulgar-looking woman!”
It was so rare to hear my mother say a hard word against anybody (unless
it were General Buonaparte) that I was across the room and at the window
in a jump. A pony-chaise was coming slowly down the village street, and
in it was the queerest-looking person that I had ever seen. She was very
stout, with a face that was of so dark a red that it shaded away into
purple over the nose and cheeks. She wore a great hat with a white
curling ostrich feather, and from under its brim her two bold, black eyes
stared out with a look of anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that
she thought less of them than they could do of her. She had some sort of
scarlet pelisse with white swans-down about her neck, and she held the
reins slack in her hands, while the pony wandered from side to side of
the road as the fancy took him. Each time the chaise swayed, her head
with the great hat swayed also, so that sometimes we saw the crown of it
and sometimes the brim.
“What a dreadful sight!” cried my mother.
“What is amiss with her, mother?”
“Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her, Rodney, but I think that the
unfortunate woman has been drinking.”
“Why,” I cried, “she has pulled the chaise up at the smithy. I’ll find
out all the news for you;” and, catching up my cap, away I scampered.
Champion Harrison had been shoeing a horse at the forge door, and when I
got into the street I could see him with the creature’s hoof still under
his arm, and the rasp in his hand, kneeling down amid the white parings.
The woman was beckoning him from the chaise, and he staring up at her
with the queerest expression upon his face. Presently he threw down his
rasp and went across to her, standing by the wheel and shaking his head
as he talked to her. For my part, I slipped into the smithy, where Boy
Jim was finishing the shoe, and I watched the neatness of his work and
the deft way in which he turned up the caulkens. When he had done with
it he carried it out, and there was the strange woman still talking with
his uncle.
“Is that he?” I heard her ask.
Champion Harrison nodded.
She looked at Jim, and I never saw such eyes in a human head, so large,
and black, and wonderful. Boy as I was, I knew that, in spite of that
bloated face, this woman had once been very beautiful. She put out a
hand, with all the fingers going as if she were playing on the
harpsichord, and she touched Jim on the shoulder.
“I hope—I hope you’re well,” she stammered.
“Very well, ma’am,” said Jim, staring from her to his uncle.
“And happy too?”
“Yes, ma’am, I thank you.”
“Nothing that you crave for?”
“Why, no, ma’am, I have all that I lack.”
“That will do, Jim,” said his uncle, in a stern voice. “Blow up the
forge again, for that shoe wants reheating.”
But it seemed as if the woman had something else that she would say, for
she was angry that he should be sent away. Her eyes gleamed, and her
head tossed, while the smith with his two big hands outspread seemed to
be soothing her as best he could. For a long time they whispered until
at last she appeared to be satisfied.
“To-morrow, then?” she cried loud out.
“To-morrow,” he answered.
“You keep your word and I’ll keep mine,” said she, and dropped the lash
on the pony’s back. The smith stood with the rasp in his hand, looking
after her until she was just a little red spot on the white road. Then
he turned, and I never saw his face so grave.
“Jim,” said he, “that’s Miss Hinton, who has come to live at The Maples,
out Anstey Cross way. She’s taken a kind of a fancy to you, Jim, and
maybe she can help you on a bit. I promised her that you would go over
and see her to-morrow.”
“I don’t want her help, uncle, and I don’t want to see her.”
“But I’ve promised, Jim, and you wouldn’t make me out a liar. She does
but want to talk with you, for it is a lonely life she leads.”
“What would she want to talk with such as me about?”
“Why, I cannot say that, but she seemed very set upon it, and women have
their fancies. There’s young Master Stone here who wouldn’t refuse to go
and see a good lady, I’ll warrant, if he thought he might better his
fortune by doing so.”
“Well, uncle, I’ll go if Roddy Stone will go with me,” said Jim.
“Of course he’ll go. Won’t you, Master Rodney?”
So it ended in my saying “yes,” and back I went with all my news to my
mother, who dearly loved a little bit of gossip. She shook her head when
she heard where I was going, but she did not say nay, and so it was
settled.
It was a good four miles of a walk, but when we reached it you would not
wish to see a more cosy little house: all honeysuckle and creepers, with
a wooden porch and lattice windows. A common-looking woman opened the
door for us.
“Miss Hinton cannot see you,” said she.
“But she asked us to come,” said Jim.
“I can’t help that,” cried the woman, in a rude voice. “I tell you that
she can’t see you.”
We stood irresolute for a minute.
“Maybe you would just tell her I am here,” said Jim, at last.
“Tell her! How am I to tell her when she couldn’t so much as hear a
pistol in her ears? Try and tell her yourself, if you have a mind to.”
She threw open a door as she spoke, and there, in a reclining chair at
the further end of the room, we caught a glimpse of a figure all lumped
together, huge and shapeless, with tails of black hair hanging down.
The sound of dreadful, swine-like breathing fell upon our ears. It was
but a glance, and then we were off hot-foot for home. As for me, I was
so young that I was not sure whether this was funny or terrible; but when
I looked at Jim to see how he took it, he was looking quite white and
ill.
“You’ll not tell any one, Roddy,” said he.
“Not unless it’s my mother.”
“I won’t even tell my uncle. I’ll say she was ill, the poor lady! it’s
enough that we should have seen her in her shame, without its being the
gossip of the village. It makes me feel sick and heavy at heart.”
“She was so yesterday, Jim.”
“Was she? I never marked it. But I know that she has kind eyes and a
kind heart, for I saw the one in the other when she looked at me. Maybe
it’s the want of a friend that has driven her to this.”
It blighted his spirits for days, and when it had all gone from my mind
it was brought back to me by his manner. But it was not to be our last
memory of the lady with the scarlet pelisse, for before the week was out
Jim came round to ask me if I would again go up with him.
“My uncle has had a letter,” said he. “She would speak with me, and I
would be easier if you came with me, Rod.”
For me it was only a pleasure outing, but I could see, as we drew near
the house, that Jim was troubling in his mind lest we should find that
things were amiss.
His fears were soon set at rest, however, for we had scarce clicked the
garden gate before the woman was out of the door of the cottage and
running down the path to meet us. She was so strange a figure, with some
sort of purple wrapper on, and her big, flushed face smiling out of it,
that I might, if I had been alone, have taken to my heels at the sight of
her. Even Jim stopped for a moment as if he were not very sure of
himself, but her hearty ways soon set us at our ease.
“It is indeed good of you to come and see an old, lonely woman,” said
she, “and I owe you an apology that I should give you a fruitless journey
on Tuesday, but in a sense you were yourselves the cause of it, since the
thought of your coming had excited me, and any excitement throws me into
a nervous fever. My poor nerves! You can see for yourselves how they
serve me.”
She held out her twitching hands as she spoke. Then she passed one of
them through Jim’s arm, and walked with him up the path.
“You must let me know you, and know you well,” said she. “Your uncle and
aunt are quite old acquaintances of mine, and though you cannot remember
me, I have held you in my arms when you were an infant. Tell me, little
man,” she added, turning to me, “what do you call your friend?”
“Boy Jim, ma’am,” said I.
“Then if you will not think me forward, I will call you Boy Jim also. We
elderly people have our privileges, you know. And now you shall come in
with me, and we will take a dish of tea together.”
She led the way into a cosy room—the same which we had caught a glimpse
of when last we came—and there, in the middle, was a table with white
napery, and shining glass, and gleaming china, and red-cheeked apples
piled upon a centre-dish, and a great plateful of smoking muffins which
the cross-faced maid had just carried in. You can think that we did
justice to all the good things, and Miss Hinton would ever keep pressing
us to pass our cup and to fill our plate. Twice during our meal she rose
from her chair and withdrew into a cupboard at the end of the room, and
each time I saw Jim’s face cloud, for we heard a gentle clink of glass
against glass.
“Come now, little man,” said she to me, when the table had been cleared.
“Why are you looking round so much?”
“Because there are so many pretty things upon the walls.”
“And which do you think the prettiest of them?”
“Why, that!” said I, pointing to a picture which hung opposite to me. It
was of a tall and slender girl, with the rosiest cheeks and the tenderest
eyes—so daintily dressed, too, that I had never seen anything more
perfect. She had a posy of flowers in her hand and another one was lying
upon the planks of wood upon which she was standing.
“Oh, that’s the prettiest, is it?” said she, laughing. “Well, now, walk
up to it, and let us hear what is writ beneath it.”
I did as she asked, and read out: “Miss Polly Hinton, as ‘Peggy,’ in _The
Country Wife_, played for her benefit at the Haymarket Theatre, September
14th, 1782.”
“It’s a play-actress,” said I.
“Oh, you rude little boy, to say it in such a tone,” said she; “as if a
play-actress wasn’t as good as any one else. Why, ’twas but the other
day that the Duke of Clarence, who may come to call himself King of
England, married Mrs. Jordan, who is herself only a play-actress. And
whom think you that this one is?”
She stood under the picture with her arms folded across her great body,
and her big black eyes looking from one to the other of us.
“Why, where are your eyes?” she cried at last. “_I_ was Miss Polly
Hinton of the Haymarket Theatre. And perhaps you never heard the name
before?”
We were compelled to confess that we never had. And the very name of
play-actress had filled us both with a kind of vague horror, like the
country-bred folk that we were. To us they were a class apart, to be
hinted at rather than named, with the wrath of the Almighty hanging over
them like a thundercloud. Indeed, His judgments seemed to be in visible
operation before us when we looked upon what this woman was, and what she
had been.
“Well,” said she, laughing like one who is hurt, “you have no cause to
say anything, for I read on your face what you have been taught to think
of me. So this is the upbringing that you have had, Jim—to think evil of
that which you do not understand! I wish you had been in the theatre
that very night with Prince Florizel and four Dukes in the boxes, and all
the wits and macaronis of London rising at me in the pit. If Lord Avon
had not given me a cast in his carriage, I had never got my flowers back
to my lodgings in York Street, Westminster. And now two little country
lads are sitting in judgment upon me!”
Jim’s pride brought a flush on to his cheeks, for he did not like to be
called a country lad, or to have it supposed that he was so far behind
the grand folk in London.
“I have never been inside a play-house,” said he; “I know nothing of
them.”
“Nor I either.”
“Well,” said she, “I am not in voice, and it is ill to play in a little
room with but two to listen, but you must conceive me to be the Queen of
the Peruvians, who is exhorting her countrymen to rise up against the
Spaniards, who are oppressing them.”
And straightway that coarse, swollen woman became a queen—the grandest,
haughtiest queen that you could dream of—and she turned upon us with such
words of fire, such lightning eyes and sweeping of her white hand, that
she held us spellbound in our chairs. Her voice was soft and sweet, and
persuasive at the first, but louder it rang and louder as it spoke of
wrongs and freedom and the joys of death in a good cause, until it
thrilled into my every nerve, and I asked nothing more than to run out of
the cottage and to die then and there in the cause of my country. And
then in an instant she changed. She was a poor woman now, who had lost
her only child, and who was bewailing it. Her voice was full of tears,
and what she said was so simple, so true, that we both seemed to see the
dead babe stretched there on the carpet before us, and we could have
joined in with words of pity and of grief. And then, before our cheeks
were dry, she was back into her old self again.
“How like you that, then?” she cried. “That was my way in the days when
Sally Siddons would turn green at the name of Polly Hinton. It’s a fine
play, is _Pizarro_.”
“And who wrote it, ma’am?”
“Who wrote it? I never heard. What matter who did the writing of it!
But there are some great lines for one who knows how they should be
spoken.”
“And you play no longer, ma’am?”
“No, Jim, I left the boards when—when I was weary of them. But my heart
goes back to them sometimes. It seems to me there is no smell like that
of the hot oil in the footlights and of the oranges in the pit. But you
are sad, Jim.”
“It was but the thought of that poor woman and her child.”
“Tut, never think about her! I will soon wipe her from your mind. This
is ‘Miss Priscilla Tomboy,’ from _The Romp_. You must conceive that the
mother is speaking, and that the forward young minx is answering.”
And she began a scene between the two of them, so exact in voice and
manner that it seemed to us as if there were really two folk before us:
the stern old mother with her hand up like an ear-trumpet, and her
flouncing, bouncing daughter. Her great figure danced about with a
wonderful lightness, and she tossed her head and pouted her lips as she
answered back to the old, bent figure that addressed her. Jim and I had
forgotten our tears, and were holding our ribs before she came to the end
of it.
“That is better,” said she, smiling at our laughter. “I would not have
you go back to Friar’s Oak with long faces, or maybe they would not let
you come to me again.”
She vanished into her cupboard, and came out with a bottle and glass,
which she placed upon the table.
“You are too young for strong waters,” she said, “but this talking gives
one a dryness, and—”
Then it was that Boy Jim did a wonderful thing. He rose from his chair,
and he laid his hand upon the bottle.
“Don’t!” said he.
She looked him in the face, and I can still see those black eyes of hers
softening before the gaze.
“Am I to have none?”
“Please, don’t.”
With a quick movement she wrested the bottle out of his hand and raised
it up so that for a moment it entered my head that she was about to drink
it off. Then she flung it through the open lattice, and we heard the
crash of it on the path outside.
“There, Jim!” said she; “does that satisfy you? It’s long since any one
cared whether I drank or no.”
“You are too good and kind for that,” said he.
“Good!” she cried. “Well, I love that you should think me so. And it
would make you happier if I kept from the brandy, Jim? Well, then, I’ll
make you a promise, if you’ll make me one in return.”
“What’s that, miss?”
“No drop shall pass my lips, Jim, if you will swear, wet or shine, blow
or snow, to come up here twice in every week, that I may see you and
speak with you, for, indeed, there are times when I am very lonesome.”
So the promise was made, and very faithfully did Jim keep it, for many a
time when I have wanted him to go fishing or rabbit-snaring, he has
remembered that it was his day for Miss Hinton, and has tramped off to
Anstey Cross. At first I think that she found her share of the bargain
hard to keep, and I have seen Jim come back with a black face on him, as
if things were going amiss. But after a time the fight was won—as all
fights are won if one does but fight long enough—and in the year before
my father came back Miss Hinton had become another woman. And it was not
her ways only, but herself as well, for from being the person that I have
described, she became in one twelve-month as fine a looking lady as there
was in the whole country-side. Jim was prouder of it by far than of
anything he had had a hand in in his life, but it was only to me that he
ever spoke about it, for he had that tenderness towards her that one has
for those whom one has helped. And she helped him also, for by her talk
of the world and of what she had seen, she took his mind away from the
Sussex country-side and prepared it for a broader life beyond. So
matters stood between them at the time when peace was made and my father
came home from the sea.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PEACE OF AMIENS.
MANY a woman’s knee was on the ground, and many a woman’s soul spent
itself in joy and thankfulness when the news came with the fall of the
leaf in 1801 that the preliminaries of peace had been settled. All
England waved her gladness by day and twinkled it by night. Even in
little Friar’s Oak we had our flags flying bravely, and a candle in every
window, with a big G.R. guttering in the wind over the door of the inn.
Folk were weary of the war, for we had been at it for eight years, taking
Holland, and Spain, and France each in turn and all together. All that
we had learned during that time was that our little army was no match for
the French on land, and that our large navy was more than a match for
them upon the water. We had gained some credit, which we were sorely in
need of after the American business; and a few Colonies, which were
welcome also for the same reason; but our debt had gone on rising and our
consols sinking, until even Pitt stood aghast. Still, if we had known
that there never could be peace between Napoleon and ourselves, and that
this was only the end of a round and not of the battle, we should have
been better advised had we fought it out without a break. As it was, the
French got back the twenty thousand good seamen whom we had captured, and
a fine dance they led us with their Boulogne flotillas and fleets of
invasion before we were able to catch them again.
My father, as I remember him best, was a tough, strong little man, of no
great breadth, but solid and well put together. His face was burned of a
reddish colour, as bright as a flower-pot, and in spite of his age (for
he was only forty at the time of which I speak) it was shot with lines,
which deepened if he were in any way perturbed, so that I have seen him
turn on the instant from a youngish man to an elderly. His eyes
especially were meshed round with wrinkles, as is natural for one who had
puckered them all his life in facing foul wind and bitter weather. These
eyes were, perhaps, his strangest feature, for they were of a very clear
and beautiful blue, which shone the brighter out of that ruddy setting.
By nature he must have been a fair-skinned man, for his upper brow, where
his cap came over it, was as white as mine, and his close-cropped hair
was tawny.
He had served, as he was proud to say, in the last of our ships which had
been chased out of the Mediterranean in ’97, and in the first which had
re-entered it in ’98. He was under Miller, as third lieutenant of the
_Theseus_, when our fleet, like a pack of eager fox hounds in a covert,
was dashing from Sicily to Syria and back again to Naples, trying to pick
up the lost scent. With the same good fighting man he served at the
Nile, where the men of his command sponged and rammed and trained until,
when the last tricolour had come down, they hove up the sheet anchor and
fell dead asleep upon the top of each other under the capstan bars.
Then, as a second lieutenant, he was in one of those grim three-deckers
with powder-blackened hulls and crimson scupper-holes, their spare cables
tied round their keels and over their bulwarks to hold them together,
which carried the news into the Bay of Naples. From thence, as a reward
for his services, he was transferred as first lieutenant to the _Aurora_
frigate, engaged in cutting off supplies from Genoa, and in her he still
remained until long after peace was declared.
How well I can remember his home-coming! Though it is now
eight-and-forty years ago, it is clearer to me than the doings of last
week, for the memory of an old man is like one of those glasses which
shows out what is at a distance and blurs all that is near.
My mother had been in a tremble ever since the first rumour of the
preliminaries came to our ears, for she knew that he might come as soon
as his message. She said little, but she saddened my life by insisting
that I should be for ever clean and tidy. With every rumble of wheels,
too, her eyes would glance towards the door, and her hands steal up to
smooth her pretty black hair. She had embroidered a white “Welcome” upon
a blue ground, with an anchor in red upon each side, and a border of
laurel leaves; and this was to hang upon the two lilac bushes which
flanked the cottage door. He could not have left the Mediterranean
before we had this finished, and every morning she looked to see if it
were in its place and ready to be hanged.
But it was a weary time before the peace was ratified, and it was April
of next year before our great day came round to us. It had been raining
all morning, I remember—a soft spring rain, which sent up a rich smell
from the brown earth and pattered pleasantly upon the budding chestnuts
behind our cottage. The sun had shone out in the evening, and I had come
down with my fishing-rod (for I had promised Boy Jim to go with him to
the mill-stream), when what should I see but a post-chaise with two
smoking horses at the gate, and there in the open door of it were my
mother’s black skirt and her little feet jutting out, with two blue arms
for a waist-belt, and all the rest of her buried in the chaise. Away I
ran for the motto, and I pinned it up on the bushes as we had agreed, but
when I had finished there were the skirts and the feet and the blue arms
just the same as before.
“Here’s Rod,” said my mother at last, struggling down on to the ground
again. “Roddy, darling, here’s your father!”
I saw the red face and the kindly, light-blue eyes looking out at me.
“Why, Roddy, lad, you were but a child and we kissed good-bye when last
we met; but I suppose we must put you on a different rating now. I’m
right glad from my heart to see you, dear lad; and as to you,
sweetheart—”
The blue arms flew out, and there were the skirt and the two feet fixed
in the door again.
“Here are the folk coming, Anson,” said my mother, blushing. “Won’t you
get out and come in with us?”
And then suddenly it came home to us both that for all his cheery face he
had never moved more than his arms, and that his leg was resting on the
opposite seat of the chaise.
“Oh, Anson, Anson!” she cried.
“Tut, ’tis but the bone of my leg,” said he, taking his knee between his
hands and lifting it round. “I got it broke in the Bay, but the surgeon
has fished it and spliced it, though it’s a bit crank yet. Why, bless
her kindly heart, if I haven’t turned her from pink to white. You can
see for yourself that it’s nothing.”
He sprang out as he spoke, and with one leg and a staff he hopped swiftly
up the path, and under the laurel-bordered motto, and so over his own
threshold for the first time for five years. When the post-boy and I had
carried up the sea-chest and the two canvas bags, there he was sitting in
his armchair by the window in his old weather-stained blue coat. My
mother was weeping over his poor leg, and he patting her hair with one
brown hand. His other he threw round my waist, and drew me to the side
of his chair.
“Now that we have peace, I can lie up and refit until King George needs
me again,” said he. “’Twas a carronade that came adrift in the Bay when
it was blowing a top-gallant breeze with a beam sea. Ere we could make
it fast it had me jammed against the mast. Well, well,” he added,
looking round at the walls of the room, “here are all my old curios, the
same as ever: the narwhal’s horn from the Arctic, and the blowfish from
the Moluccas, and the paddles from Fiji, and the picture of the _Ca Ira_
with Lord Hotham in chase. And here you are, Mary, and you also, Roddy,
and good luck to the carronade which has sent me into so snug a harbour
without fear of sailing orders.”
My mother had his long pipe and his tobacco all ready for him, so that he
was able now to light it and to sit looking from one of us to the other
and then back again, as if he could never see enough of us. Young as I
was, I could still understand that this was the moment which he had
thought of during many a lonely watch, and that the expectation of it had
cheered his heart in many a dark hour. Sometimes he would touch one of
us with his hand, and sometimes the other, and so he sat, with his soul
too satiated for words, whilst the shadows gathered in the little room
and the lights of the inn windows glimmered through the gloom. And then,
after my mother had lit our own lamp, she slipped suddenly down upon her
knees, and he got one knee to the ground also, so that, hand-in-hand,
they joined their thanks to Heaven for manifold mercies. When I look
back at my parents as they were in those days, it is at that very moment
that I can picture them most clearly: her sweet face with the wet shining
upon her cheeks, and his blue eyes upturned to the smoke-blackened
ceiling. I remember that he swayed his reeking pipe in the earnestness
of his prayer, so that I was half tears and half smiles as I watched him.
“Roddy, lad,” said he, after supper was over, “you’re getting a man now,
and I suppose you will go afloat like the rest of us. You’re old enough
to strap a dirk to your thigh.”
“And leave me without a child as well as without a husband!” cried my
mother.
“Well, there’s time enough yet,” said he, “for they are more inclined to
empty berths than to fill them, now that peace has come. But I’ve never
tried what all this schooling has done for you, Rodney. You have had a
great deal more than ever I had, but I dare say I can make shift to test
it. Have you learned history?”
“Yes, father,” said I, with some confidence.
“Then how many sail of the line were at the Battle of Camperdown?”
He shook his head gravely when he found that I could not answer him.
“Why, there are men in the fleet who never had any schooling at all who
could tell you that we had seven 74’s, seven 64’s, and two 50-gun ships
in the action. There’s a picture on the wall of the chase of the _Ca
Ira_. Which were the ships that laid her aboard?”
Again I had to confess that he had beaten me.
“Well, your dad can teach you something in history yet,” he cried,
looking in triumph at my mother. “Have you learned geography?”
“Yes, father,” said I, though with less confidence than before.
“Well, how far is it from Port Mahon to Algeciras?”
I could only shake my head.
“If Ushant lay three leagues upon your starboard quarter, what would be
your nearest English port?”
Again I had to give it up.
“Well, I don’t see that your geography is much better than your history,”
said he. “You’d never get your certificate at this rate. Can you do
addition? Well, then, let us see if you can tot up my prize-money.”
He shot a mischievous glance at my mother as he spoke, and she laid down
her knitting on her lap and looked very earnestly at him.
“You never asked me about that, Mary,” said he.
“The Mediterranean is not the station for it, Anson. I have heard you
say that it is the Atlantic for prize-money, and the Mediterranean for
honour.”
“I had a share of both last cruise, which comes from changing a
line-of-battleship for a frigate. Now, Rodney, there are two pounds in
every hundred due to me when the prize-courts have done with them. When
we were watching Massena, off Genoa, we got a matter of seventy
schooners, brigs, and tartans, with wine, food, and powder. Lord Keith
will want his finger in the pie, but that’s for the Courts to settle.
Put them at four pounds apiece to me, and what will the seventy bring?”
“Two hundred and eighty pounds,” I answered.
“Why, Anson, it is a fortune!” cried my mother, clapping her hands.
“Try you again, Roddy!” said he, shaking his pipe at me. “There was the
_Xebec_ frigate out of Barcelona with twenty thousand Spanish dollars
aboard, which make four thousand of our pounds. Her hull should be worth
another thousand. What’s my share of that?”
“A hundred pounds.”
“Why, the purser couldn’t work it out quicker,” he cried in his delight.
“Here’s for you again! We passed the Straits and worked up to the
Azores, where we fell in with the _La Sabina_ from the Mauritius with
sugar and spices. Twelve hundred pounds she’s worth to me, Mary, my
darling, and never again shall you soil your pretty fingers or pinch upon
my beggarly pay.”
My dear mother had borne her long struggle without a sign all these
years, but now that she was so suddenly eased of it she fell sobbing upon
his neck. It was a long time before my father had a thought to spare
upon my examination in arithmetic.
“It’s all in your lap, Mary,” said he, dashing his own hand across his
eyes. “By George, lass, when this leg of mine is sound we’ll bear down
for a spell to Brighton, and if there is a smarter frock than yours upon
the Steyne, may I never tread a poop again. But how is it that you are
so quick at figures, Rodney, when you know nothing of history or
geography?”
I tried to explain that addition was the same upon sea or land, but that
history and geography were not.
“Well,” he concluded, “you need figures to take a reckoning, and you need
nothing else save what your mother wit will teach you. There never was
one of our breed who did not take to salt water like a young gull. Lord
Nelson has promised me a vacancy for you, and he’ll be as good as his
word.”
So it was that my father came home to us, and a better or kinder no lad
could wish for. Though my parents had been married so long, they had
really seen very little of each other, and their affection was as warm
and as fresh as if they were two newly-wedded lovers. I have learned
since that sailors can be coarse and foul, but never did I know it from
my father; for, although he had seen as much rough work as the wildest
could wish for, he was always the same patient, good-humoured man, with a
smile and a jolly word for all the village. He could suit himself to his
company, too, for on the one hand he could take his wine with the vicar,
or with Sir James Ovington, the squire of the parish; while on the other
he would sit by the hour amongst my humble friends down in the smithy,
with Champion Harrison, Boy Jim, and the rest of them, telling them such
stories of Nelson and his men that I have seen the Champion knot his
great hands together, while Jim’s eyes have smouldered like the forge
embers as he listened.
My father had been placed on half-pay, like so many others of the old war
officers, and so, for nearly two years, he was able to remain with us.
During all this time I can only once remember that there was the
slightest disagreement between him and my mother. It chanced that I was
the cause of it, and as great events sprang out of it, I must tell you
how it came about. It was indeed the first of a series of events which
affected not only my fortunes, but those of very much more important
people.
The spring of 1803 was an early one, and the middle of April saw the
leaves thick upon the chestnut trees. One evening we were all seated
together over a dish of tea when we heard the scrunch of steps outside
our door, and there was the postman with a letter in his hand.
“I think it is for me,” said my mother, and sure enough it was addressed
in the most beautiful writing to Mrs. Mary Stone, of Friar’s Oak, and
there was a red seal the size of a half-crown upon the outside of it with
a flying dragon in the middle.
“Whom think you that it is from, Anson?” she asked.
“I had hoped that it was from Lord Nelson,” answered my father. “It is
time the boy had his commission. But if it be for you, then it cannot be
from any one of much importance.”
“Can it not!” she cried, pretending to be offended. “You will ask my
pardon for that speech, sir, for it is from no less a person than Sir
Charles Tregellis, my own brother.”
My mother seemed to speak with a hushed voice when she mentioned this
wonderful brother of hers, and always had done as long as I can remember,
so that I had learned also to have a subdued and reverent feeling when I
heard his name. And indeed it was no wonder, for that name was never
mentioned unless it were in connection with something brilliant and
extraordinary. Once we heard that he was at Windsor with the King.
Often he was at Brighton with the Prince. Sometimes it was as a
sportsman that his reputation reached us, as when his Meteor beat the
Duke of Queensberry’s Egham, at Newmarket, or when he brought Jim Belcher
up from Bristol, and sprang him upon the London fancy. But usually it
was as the friend of the great, the arbiter of fashions, the king of
bucks, and the best-dressed man in town that his reputation reached us.
My father, however, did not appear to be elated at my mother’s triumphant
rejoinder.
“Ay, and what does he want?” asked he, in no very amiable voice.
“I wrote to him, Anson, and told him that Rodney was growing a man now,
thinking, since he had no wife or child of his own, he might be disposed
to advance him.”
“We can do very well without him,” growled my father. “He sheered off
from us when the weather was foul, and we have no need of him now that
the sun is shining.”
“Nay, you misjudge him, Anson,” said my mother, warmly. “There is no one
with a better heart than Charles; but his own life moves so smoothly that
he cannot understand that others may have trouble. During all these
years I have known that I had but to say the word to receive as much as I
wished from him.”
“Thank God that you never had to stoop to it, Mary. I want none of his
help.”
“But we must think of Rodney.”
“Rodney has enough for his sea-chest and kit. He needs no more.”
“But Charles has great power and influence in London. He could make
Rodney known to all the great people. Surely you would not stand in the
way of his advancement.”
“Let us hear what he says, then,” said my father; and this was the letter
which she read to him—
14, Jermyn Street, St. James’s,
“April 15th, 1803.
“MY DEAR SISTER MARY,
“In answer to your letter, I can assure you that you must not
conceive me to be wanting in those finer feelings which are the chief
adornment of humanity. It is true that for some years, absorbed as I
have been in affairs of the highest importance, I have seldom taken a
pen in hand, for which I can assure you that I have been reproached
by many _des plus charmantes_ of your charming sex. At the present
moment I lie abed (having stayed late in order to pay a compliment to
the Marchioness of Dover at her ball last night), and this is writ to
my dictation by Ambrose, my clever rascal of a valet. I am
interested to hear of my nephew Rodney (_Mon dieu_, _quel nom_!), and
as I shall be on my way to visit the Prince at Brighton next week, I
shall break my journey at Friar’s Oak for the sake of seeing both you
and him. Make my compliments to your husband.
“I am ever, my dear sister Mary,
“Your brother,
“CHARLES TREGELLIS.”
“What do you think of that?” cried my mother in triumph when she had
finished.
“I think it is the letter of a fop,” said my father, bluntly.
“You are too hard on him, Anson. You will think better of him when you
know him. But he says that he will be here next week, and this is
Thursday, and the best curtains unhung, and no lavender in the sheets!”
Away she bustled, half distracted, while my father sat moody, with his
chin upon his hands, and I remained lost in wonder at the thought of this
grand new relative from London, and of all that his coming might mean to
us.
CHAPTER V.
BUCK TREGELLIS.
NOW that I was in my seventeenth year, and had already some need for a
razor, I had begun to weary of the narrow life of the village, and to
long to see something of the great world beyond. The craving was all the
stronger because I durst not speak openly about it, for the least hint of
it brought the tears into my mother’s eyes. But now there was the less
reason that I should stay at home, since my father was at her side, and
so my mind was all filled by this prospect of my uncle’s visit, and of
the chance that he might set my feet moving at last upon the road of
life.
As you may think, it was towards my father’s profession that my thoughts
and my hopes turned, for from my childhood I have never seen the heave of
the sea or tasted the salt upon my lips without feeling the blood of five
generations of seamen thrill within my veins. And think of the challenge
which was ever waving in those days before the eyes of a coast-living
lad! I had but to walk up to Wolstonbury in the war time to see the
sails of the French chasse-marées and privateers. Again and again I have
heard the roar of the guns coming from far out over the waters. Seamen
would tell us how they had left London and been engaged ere nightfall, or
sailed out of Portsmouth and been yard-arm to yard-arm before they had
lost sight of St. Helen’s light. It was this imminence of the danger
which warmed our hearts to our sailors, and made us talk, round the
winter fires, of our little Nelson, and Cuddie Collingwood, and Johnnie
Jarvis, and the rest of them, not as being great High Admirals with
titles and dignities, but as good friends whom we loved and honoured
above all others. What boy was there through the length and breadth of
Britain who did not long to be out with them under the red-cross flag?
But now that peace had come, and the fleets which had swept the Channel
and the Mediterranean were lying dismantled in our harbours, there was
less to draw one’s fancy seawards. It was London now of which I thought
by day and brooded by night: the huge city, the home of the wise and the
great, from which came this constant stream of carriages, and those
crowds of dusty people who were for ever flashing past our window-pane.
It was this one side of life which first presented itself to me, and so,
as a boy, I used to picture the City as a gigantic stable with a huge
huddle of coaches, which were for ever streaming off down the country
roads. But, then, Champion Harrison told me how the fighting-men lived
there, and my father how the heads of the Navy lived there, and my mother
how her brother and his grand friends were there, until at last I was
consumed with impatience to see this marvellous heart of England. This
coming of my uncle, then, was the breaking of light through the darkness,
though I hardly dared to hope that he would take me with him into those
high circles in which he lived. My mother, however, had such confidence
either in his good nature or in her own powers of persuasion, that she
already began to make furtive preparations for my departure.
But if the narrowness of the village life chafed my easy spirit, it was a
torture to the keen and ardent mind of Boy Jim. It was but a few days
after the coming of my uncle’s letter that we walked over the Downs
together, and I had a peep of the bitterness of his heart.
“What is there for me to do, Rodney?” he cried. “I forge a shoe, and I
fuller it, and I clip it, and I caulken it, and I knock five holes in it,
and there it is finished. Then I do it again and again, and blow up the
bellows and feed the forge, and rasp a hoof or two, and there is a day’s
work done, and every day the same as the other. Was it for this only, do
you think, that I was born into the world?”
I looked at him, his proud, eagle face, and his tall, sinewy figure, and
I wondered whether in the whole land there was a finer, handsomer man.
“The Army or the Navy is the place for you, Jim,” said I.
“That is very well,” he cried. “If you go into the Navy, as you are
likely to do, you go as an officer, and it is you who do the ordering.
If I go in, it is as one who was born to receive orders.”
“An officer gets his orders from those above him.”
“But an officer does not have the lash hung over his head. I saw a poor
fellow at the inn here—it was some years ago—who showed us his back in
the tap-room, all cut into red diamonds with the boat-swain’s whip. ‘Who
ordered that?’ I asked. ‘The captain,’ said he. ‘And what would you
have had if you had struck him dead?’ said I. ‘The yard-arm,’ he
answered. ‘Then if I had been you that’s where I should have been,’ said
I, and I spoke the truth. I can’t help it, Rod! There’s something here
in my heart, something that is as much a part of myself as this hand is,
which holds me to it.”
“I know that you are as proud as Lucifer,” said I.
“It was born with me, Roddy, and I can’t help it. Life would be easier
if I could. I was made to be my own master, and there’s only one place
where I can hope to be so.”
“Where is that, Jim?”
“In London. Miss Hinton has told me of it, until I feel as if I could
find my way through it from end to end. She loves to talk of it as well
as I do to listen. I have it all laid out in my mind, and I can see
where the playhouses are, and how the river runs, and where the King’s
house is, and the Prince’s, and the place where the fighting-men live. I
could make my name known in London.”
“How?”
“Never mind how, Rod. I could do it, and I will do it, too. ‘Wait!’
says my uncle—‘wait, and it will all come right for you.’ That is what
he always says, and my aunt the same. Why should I wait? What am I to
wait for? No, Roddy, I’ll stay no longer eating my heart out in this
little village, but I’ll leave my apron behind me and I’ll seek my
fortune in London, and when I come back to Friar’s Oak, it will be in
such style as that gentleman yonder.”
He pointed as he spoke, and there was a high crimson curricle coming down
the London road, with two bay mares harnessed tandem fashion before it.
The reins and fittings were of a light fawn colour, and the gentleman had
a driving-coat to match, with a servant in dark livery behind. They
flashed past us in a rolling cloud of dust, and I had just a glimpse of
the pale, handsome face of the master, and of the dark, shrivelled
features of the man. I should never have given them another thought had
it not chanced that when the village came into view there was the
curricle again, standing at the door of the inn, and the grooms busy
taking out the horses.
“Jim,” I cried, “I believe it is my uncle!” and taking to my heels I ran
for home at the top of my speed. At the door was standing the dark-faced
servant. He carried a cushion, upon which lay a small and fluffy lapdog.
“You will excuse me, young sir,” said he, in the suavest, most soothing
of voices, “but am I right in supposing that this is the house of
Lieutenant Stone? In that case you will, perhaps, do me the favour to
hand to Mrs. Stone this note which her brother, Sir Charles Tregellis,
has just committed to my care.”
I was quite abashed by the man’s flowery way of talking—so unlike
anything which I had ever heard. He had a wizened face, and sharp little
dark eyes, which took in me and the house and my mother’s startled face
at the window all in the instant. My parents were together, the two of
them, in the sitting-room, and my mother read the note to us.
“My dear Mary,” it ran, “I have stopped at the inn, because I am somewhat
_ravagé_ by the dust of your Sussex roads. A lavender-water bath may
restore me to a condition in which I may fitly pay my compliments to a
lady. Meantime, I send you Fidelio as a hostage. Pray give him a
half-pint of warmish milk with six drops of pure brandy in it. A better
or more faithful creature never lived. _Toujours à toi_.—Charles.”
“Have him in! Have him in!” cried my father, heartily, running to the
door. “Come in, Mr. Fidelio. Every man to his own taste, and six drops
to the half-pint seems a sinful watering of grog—but if you like it so,
you shall have it.”
A smile flickered over the dark face of the servant, but his features
reset themselves instantly into their usual mask of respectful
observance.
“You are labouring under a slight error, sir, if you will permit me to
say so. My name is Ambrose, and I have the honour to be the valet of Sir
Charles Tregellis. This is Fidelio upon the cushion.”
“Tut, the dog!” cried my father, in disgust. “Heave him down by the
fireside. Why should he have brandy, when many a Christian has to go
without?”
“Hush, Anson!” said my mother, taking the cushion. “You will tell Sir
Charles that his wishes shall be carried out, and that we shall expect
him at his own convenience.”
The man went off noiselessly and swiftly, but was back in a few minutes
with a flat brown basket.
“It is the refection, madam,” said he. “Will you permit me to lay the
table? Sir Charles is accustomed to partake of certain dishes and to
drink certain wines, so that we usually bring them with us when we
visit.” He opened the basket, and in a minute he had the table all
shining with silver and glass, and studded with dainty dishes. So quick
and neat and silent was he in all he did, that my father was as taken
with him as I was.
“You’d have made a right good foretopman if your heart is as stout as
your fingers are quick,” said he. “Did you never wish to have the honour
of serving your country?”
“It is my honour, sir, to serve Sir Charles Tregellis, and I desire no
other master,” he answered. “But I will convey his dressing-case from
the inn, and then all will be ready.”
He came back with a great silver-mounted box under his arm, and close at
his heels was the gentleman whose coming had made such a disturbance.
My first impression of my uncle as he entered the room was that one of
his eyes was swollen to the size of an apple. It caught the breath from
my lips—that monstrous, glistening eye. But the next instant I perceived
that he held a round glass in the front of it, which magnified it in this
fashion. He looked at us each in turn, and then he bowed very gracefully
to my mother and kissed her upon either cheek.
“You will permit me to compliment you, my dear Mary,” said he, in a voice
which was the most mellow and beautiful that I have ever heard. “I can
assure you that the country air has used you wondrous well, and that I
should be proud to see my pretty sister in the Mall. I am your servant,
sir,” he continued, holding out his hand to my father. “It was but last
week that I had the honour of dining with my friend, Lord St. Vincent,
and I took occasion to mention you to him. I may tell you that your name
is not forgotten at the Admiralty, sir, and I hope that I may see you
soon walking the poop of a 74-gun ship of your own. So this is my
nephew, is it?” He put a hand upon each of my shoulders in a very
friendly way and looked me up and down.
“How old are you, nephew?” he asked.
“Seventeen, sir.”
“You look older. You look eighteen, at the least. I find him very
passable, Mary—very passable, indeed. He has not the _bel_ air, the
_tournure_—in our uncouth English we have no word for it. But he is as
healthy as a May-hedge in bloom.”
So within a minute of his entering our door he had got himself upon terms
with all of us, and with so easy and graceful a manner that it seemed as
if he had known us all for years. I had a good look at him now as he
stood upon the hearthrug with my mother upon one side and my father on
the other. He was a very large man, with noble shoulders, small waist,
broad hips, well-turned legs, and the smallest of hands and feet. His
face was pale and handsome, with a prominent chin, a jutting nose, and
large blue staring eyes, in which a sort of dancing, mischievous light
was for ever playing. He wore a deep brown coat with a collar as high as
his ears and tails as low as his knees. His black breeches and silk
stockings ended in very small pointed shoes, so highly polished that they
twinkled with every movement. His vest was of black velvet, open at the
top to show an embroidered shirt-front, with a high, smooth, white cravat
above it, which kept his neck for ever on the stretch. He stood easily,
with one thumb in the arm-pit, and two fingers of the other hand in his
vest pocket. It made me proud as I watched him to think that so
magnificent a man, with such easy, masterful ways, should be my own blood
relation, and I could see from my mother’s eyes as they turned towards
him that the same thought was in her mind.
All this time Ambrose had been standing like a dark-clothed, bronze-faced
image by the door, with the big silver-bound box under his arm. He
stepped forward now into the room.
“Shall I convey it to your bedchamber, Sir Charles?” he asked.
“Ah, pardon me, sister Mary,” cried my uncle, “I am old-fashioned enough
to have principles—an anachronism, I know, in this lax age. One of them
is never to allow my _batterie de toilette_ out of my sight when I am
travelling. I cannot readily forget the agonies which I endured some
years ago through neglecting this precaution. I will do Ambrose the
justice to say that it was before he took charge of my affairs. I was
compelled to wear the same ruffles upon two consecutive days. On the
third morning my fellow was so affected by the sight of my condition,
that he burst into tears and laid out a pair which he had stolen from
me.”
As he spoke his face was very grave, but the light in his eyes danced and
gleamed. He handed his open snuff-box to my father, as Ambrose followed
my mother out of the room.
“You number yourself in an illustrious company by dipping your finger and
thumb into it,” said he.
“Indeed, sir!” said my father, shortly.
“You are free of my box, as being a relative by marriage. You are free
also, nephew, and I pray you to take a pinch. It is the most intimate
sign of my goodwill. Outside ourselves there are four, I think, who have
had access to it—the Prince, of course; Mr Pitt; Monsieur Otto, the
French Ambassador; and Lord Hawkesbury. I have sometimes thought that I
was premature with Lord Hawkesbury.”
“I am vastly honoured, sir,” said my father, looking suspiciously at his
guest from under his shaggy eyebrows, for with that grave face and those
twinkling eyes it was hard to know how to take him.
“A woman, sir, has her love to bestow,” said my uncle. “A man has his
snuff-box. Neither is to be lightly offered. It is a lapse of taste;
nay, more, it is a breach of morals. Only the other day, as I was seated
in Watier’s, my box of prime macouba open upon the table beside me, an
Irish bishop thrust in his intrusive fingers. ‘Waiter,’ I cried, ‘my box
has been soiled! Remove it!’ The man meant no insult, you understand,
but that class of people must be kept in their proper sphere.’
“A bishop!” cried my father. “You draw your line very high, sir.”
“Yes, sir,” said my uncle; “I wish no better epitaph upon my tombstone.”
My mother had in the meanwhile descended, and we all drew up to the
table.
“You will excuse my apparent grossness, Mary, in venturing to bring my
own larder with me. Abernethy has me under his orders, and I must eschew
your rich country dainties. A little white wine and a cold bird—it is as
much as the niggardly Scotchman will allow me.”
“We should have you on blockading service when the levanters are
blowing,” said my father. “Salt junk and weevilly biscuits, with a rib
of a tough Barbary ox when the tenders come in. You would have your
spare diet there, sir.”
Straightway my uncle began to question him about the sea service, and for
the whole meal my father was telling him of the Nile and of the Toulon
blockade, and the siege of Genoa, and all that he had seen and done. But
whenever he faltered for a word, my uncle always had it ready for him,
and it was hard to say which knew most about the business.
“No, I read little or nothing,” said he, when my father marvelled where
he got his knowledge. “The fact is that I can hardly pick up a print
without seeing some allusion to myself: ‘Sir C. T. does this,’ or ‘Sir C.
T. says the other,’ so I take them no longer. But if a man is in my
position all knowledge comes to him. The Duke of York tells me of the
Army in the morning, and Lord Spencer chats with me of the Navy in the
afternoon, and Dundas whispers me what is going forward in the Cabinet,
so that I have little need of the _Times_ or the _Morning Chronicle_.”
This set him talking of the great world of London, telling my father
about the men who were his masters at the Admiralty, and my mother about
the beauties of the town, and the great ladies at Almack’s, but all in
the same light, fanciful way, so that one never knew whether to laugh or
to take him gravely. I think it flattered him to see the way in which we
all three hung upon his words. Of some he thought highly and of some
lowly, but he made no secret that the highest of all, and the one against
whom all others should be measured, was Sir Charles Tregellis himself.
“As to the King,” said he, “of course, I am _l’ami de famille_ there; and
even with you I can scarce speak freely, as my relations are
confidential.”
“God bless him and keep him from ill!” cried my father.
“It is pleasant to hear you say so,” said my uncle. “One has to come
into the country to hear honest loyalty, for a sneer and a gibe are more
the fashions in town. The King is grateful to me for the interest which
I have ever shown in his son. He likes to think that the Prince has a
man of taste in his circle.”
“And the Prince?” asked my mother. “Is he well-favoured?”
“He is a fine figure of a man. At a distance he has been mistaken for
me. And he has some taste in dress, though he gets slovenly if I am too
long away from him. I warrant you that I find a crease in his coat
to-morrow.”
We were all seated round the fire by this time, for the evening had
turned chilly. The lamp was lighted and so also was my father’s pipe.
“I suppose,” said he, “that this is your first visit to Friar’s Oak?”
My uncle’s face turned suddenly very grave and stern.
“It is my first visit for many years,” said he. “I was but
one-and-twenty years of age when last I came here. I am not likely to
forget it.”
I knew that he spoke of his visit to Cliffe Royal at the time of the
murder, and I saw by her face that my mother knew it also. My father,
however, had either never heard of it, or had forgotten the circumstance.
“Was it at the inn you stayed?” he asked.
“I stayed with the unfortunate Lord Avon. It was the occasion when he
was accused of slaying his younger brother and fled from the country.”
We all fell silent, and my uncle leaned his chin upon his hand, looking
thoughtfully into the fire. If I do but close my eyes now, I can see the
light upon his proud, handsome face, and see also my dear father,
concerned at having touched upon so terrible a memory, shooting little
slanting glances at him betwixt the puffs of his pipe.
“I dare say that it has happened with you, sir,” said my uncle at last,
“that you have lost some dear messmate, in battle or wreck, and that you
have put him out of your mind in the routine of your daily life, until
suddenly some word or some scene brings him back to your memory, and you
find your sorrow as raw as upon the first day of your loss.”
My father nodded.
“So it is with me to-night. I never formed a close friendship with a
man—I say nothing of women—save only the once. That was with Lord Avon.
We were of an age, he a few years perhaps my senior, but our tastes, our
judgments, and our characters were alike, save only that he had in him a
touch of pride such as I have never known in any other man. Putting
aside the little foibles of a rich young man of fashion, _les
indescrétions d’une jeunesse dorée_, I could have sworn that he was as
good a man as I have ever known.”
“How came he, then, to such a crime?” asked my father.
My uncle shook his head.
“Many a time have I asked myself that question, and it comes home to me
more to-night than ever.”
All the jauntiness had gone out of his manner, and he had turned suddenly
into a sad and serious man.
“Was it certain that he did it, Charles?” asked my mother.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“I wish I could think it were not so. I have thought sometimes that it
was this very pride, turning suddenly to madness, which drove him to it.
You have heard how he returned the money which we had lost?”
“Nay, I have heard nothing of it,” my father answered.
“It is a very old story now, though we have not yet found an end to it.
We had played for two days, the four of us: Lord Avon, his brother
Captain Barrington, Sir Lothian Hume, and myself. Of the Captain I knew
little, save that he was not of the best repute, and was deep in the
hands of the Jews. Sir Lothian has made an evil name for himself
since—’tis the same Sir Lothian who shot Lord Carton in the affair at
Chalk Farm—but in those days there was nothing against him. The oldest
of us was but twenty-four, and we gamed on, as I say, until the Captain
had cleared the board. We were all hit, but our host far the hardest.
“That night—I tell you now what it would be a bitter thing for me to tell
in a court of law—I was restless and sleepless, as often happens when a
man has kept awake over long. My mind would dwell upon the fall of the
cards, and I was tossing and turning in my bed, when suddenly a cry fell
upon my ears, and then a second louder one, coming from the direction of
Captain Barrington’s room. Five minutes later I heard steps passing down
the passage, and, without striking a light, I opened my door and peeped
out, thinking that some one was taken unwell. There was Lord Avon
walking towards me. In one hand he held a guttering candle and in the
other a brown bag, which chinked as he moved. His face was all drawn and
distorted—so much so that my question was frozen upon my lips. Before I
could utter it he turned into his chamber and softly closed the door.
“Next morning I was awakened by finding him at my bedside.
“‘Charles,’ said he, ‘I cannot abide to think that you should have lost
this money in my house. You will find it here upon your table.’
“It was in vain that I laughed at his squeamishness, telling him that I
should most certainly have claimed my money had I won, so that it would
be strange indeed if I were not permitted to pay it when I lost.
“‘Neither I nor my brother will touch it,’ said he. ‘There it lies, and
you may do what you like about it.’
“He would listen to no argument, but dashed out of the room like a
madman. But perhaps these details are familiar to you, and God knows
they are painful to me to tell.”
My father was sitting with staring eyes, and his forgotten pipe reeking
in his hand.
“Pray let us hear the end of it, sir,” he cried.
“Well, then, I had finished my toilet in an hour or so—for I was less
exigeant in those days than now—and I met Sir Lothian Hume at breakfast.
His experience had been the same as my own, and he was eager to see
Captain Barrington; and to ascertain why he had directed his brother to
return the money to us. We were talking the matter over when suddenly I
raised my eyes to the corner of the ceiling, and I saw—I saw—”
My uncle had turned quite pale with the vividness of the memory, and he
passed his hand over his eyes.
“It was crimson,” said he, with a shudder—“crimson with black cracks, and
from every crack—but I will give you dreams, sister Mary. Suffice it
that we rushed up the stair which led direct to the Captain’s room, and
there we found him lying with the bone gleaming white through his throat.
A hunting-knife lay in the room—and the knife was Lord Avon’s. A lace
ruffle was found in the dead man’s grasp—and the ruffle was Lord Avon’s.
Some papers were found charred in the grate—and the papers were Lord
Avon’s. Oh, my poor friend, in what moment of madness did you come to do
such a deed?”
The light had gone out of my uncle’s eyes and the extravagance from his
manner. His speech was clear and plain, with none of those strange
London ways which had so amazed me. Here was a second uncle, a man of
heart and a man of brains, and I liked him better than the first.
“And what said Lord Avon?” cried my father.
“He said nothing. He went about like one who walks in his sleep, with
horror-stricken eyes. None dared arrest him until there should be due
inquiry, but when the coroner’s court brought wilful murder against him,
the constables came for him in full cry. But they found him fled. There
was a rumour that he had been seen in Westminster in the next week, and
then that he had escaped for America, but nothing more is known. It will
be a bright day for Sir Lothian Hume when they can prove him dead, for he
is next of kin, and till then he can touch neither title nor estate.”
The telling of this grim story had cast a chill upon all of us. My uncle
held out his hands towards the blaze, and I noticed that they were as
white as the ruffles which fringed them.
“I know not how things are at Cliffe Royal now,” said he, thoughtfully.
“It was not a cheery house, even before this shadow fell upon it. A
fitter stage was never set forth for such a tragedy. But seventeen years
have passed, and perhaps even that horrible ceiling—”
“It still bears the stain,” said I.
I know not which of the three was the more astonished, for my mother had
not heard of my adventures of the night. They never took their wondering
eyes off me as I told my story, and my heart swelled with pride when my
uncle said that we had carried ourselves well, and that he did not think
that many of our age would have stood it as stoutly.
“But as to this ghost, it must have been the creature of your own minds,”
said he. “Imagination plays us strange tricks, and though I have as
steady a nerve as a man might wish, I cannot answer for what I might see
if I were to stand under that blood-stained ceiling at midnight.”
“Uncle,” said I, “I saw a figure as plainly as I see that fire, and I
heard the steps as clearly as I hear the crackle of the fagots. Besides,
we could not both be deceived.”
“There is truth in that,” said be, thoughtfully. “You saw no features,
you say?”
“It was too dark.”
“But only a figure?”
“The dark outline of one.”
“And it retreated up the stairs?”
“Yes.”
“And vanished into the wall?”
“Yes.”
“What part of the wall?” cried a voice from behind us.
My mother screamed, and down came my father’s pipe on to the hearthrug.
I had sprung round with a catch of my breath, and there was the valet,
Ambrose, his body in the shadow of the doorway, his dark face protruded
into the light, and two burning eyes fixed upon mine.
“What the deuce is the meaning of this, sir?” cried my uncle.
It was strange to see the gleam and passion fade out of the man’s face,
and the demure mask of the valet replace it. His eyes still smouldered,
but his features regained their prim composure in an instant.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Charles,” said he. “I had come in to ask you if
you had any orders for me, and I did not like to interrupt the young
gentleman’s story. I am afraid that I have been somewhat carried away by
it.”
“I never knew you forget yourself before,” said my uncle.
“You will, I am sure, forgive me, Sir Charles, if you will call to mind
the relation in which I stood to Lord Avon.” He spoke with some dignity
of manner, and with a bow he left the room.
“We must make some little allowance,” said my uncle, with a sudden return
to his jaunty manner. “When a man can brew a dish of chocolate, or tie a
cravat, as Ambrose does, he may claim consideration. The fact is that
the poor fellow was valet to Lord Avon, that he was at Cliffe Royal upon
the fatal night of which I have spoken, and that he is most devoted to
his old master. But my talk has been somewhat _triste_, sister Mary, and
now we shall return, if you please, to the dresses of the Countess
Lieven, and the gossip of St. James.”
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE THRESHOLD.
MY father sent me to bed early that night, though I was very eager to
stay up, for every word which this man said held my attention. His face,
his manner, the large waves and sweeps of his white hands, his easy air
of superiority, his fantastic fashion of talk, all filled me with
interest and wonder. But, as I afterwards learned, their conversation
was to be about myself and my own prospects, so I was despatched to my
room, whence far into the night I could hear the deep growl of my father
and the rich tones of my uncle, with an occasional gentle murmur from my
mother, as they talked in the room beneath.
I had dropped asleep at last, when I was awakened suddenly by something
wet being pressed against my face, and by two warm arms which were cast
round me. My mother’s cheek was against my own, and I could hear the
click of her sobs, and feel her quiver and shake in the darkness. A
faint light stole through the latticed window, and I could dimly see that
she was in white, with her black hair loose upon her shoulders.
“You won’t forget us, Roddy? You won’t forget us?”
“Why, mother, what is it?”
“Your uncle, Roddy—he is going to take you away from us.”
“When, mother?”
“To-morrow.”
God forgive me, how my heart bounded for joy, when hers, which was within
touch of it, was breaking with sorrow!
“Oh, mother!” I cried. “To London?”
“First to Brighton, that he may present you to the Prince. Next day to
London, where you will meet the great people, Roddy, and learn to look
down upon—to look down upon your poor, simple, old-fashioned father and
mother.”
I put my arms about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my
seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with
such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman’s knack of quiet tears,
that it finally turned her own grief to laughter.
“Charles would be flattered if he could see the gracious way in which we
receive his kindness,” said she. “Be still, Roddy dear, or you will
certainly wake him.”
“I’ll not go if it is to grieve you,” I cried.
“Nay, dear, you must go, for it may be the one great chance of your life.
And think how proud it will make us all when we hear of you in the
company of Charles’s grand friends. But you will promise me not to
gamble, Roddy? You heard to-night of the dreadful things which come from
it.”
“I promise you, mother.”
“And you will be careful of wine, Roddy? You are young and unused to
it.”
“Yes, mother.”
“And play-actresses also, Roddy. And you will not cast your
underclothing until June is in. Young Master Overton came by his death
through it. Think well of your dress, Roddy, so as to do your uncle
credit, for it is the thing for which he is himself most famed. You have
but to do what he will direct. But if there is a time when you are not
meeting grand people, you can wear out your country things, for your
brown coat is as good as new, and the blue one, if it were ironed and
relined, would take you through the summer. I have put out your Sunday
clothes with the nankeen vest, since you are to see the Prince to-morrow,
and you will wear your brown silk stockings and buckle shoes. Be guarded
in crossing the London streets, for I am told that the hackney coaches
are past all imagining. Fold your clothes when you go to bed, Roddy, and
do not forget your evening prayers, for, oh, my dear boy, the days of
temptation are at hand, when I will no longer be with you to help you.”
So with advice and guidance both for this world and the next did my
mother, with her soft, warm arms around me, prepare me for the great step
which lay before me.
My uncle did not appear at breakfast in the morning, but Ambrose brewed
him a dish of chocolate and took it to his room. When at last, about
midday, he did descend, he was so fine with his curled hair, his shining
teeth, his quizzing glass, his snow-white ruffles, and his laughing eyes,
that I could not take my gaze from him.
“Well, nephew,” he cried, “what do you think of the prospect of coming to
town with me?”
“I thank you, sir, for the kind interest which you take in me,” said I.
“But you must be a credit to me. My nephew must be of the best if he is
to be in keeping with the rest of me.”
“You’ll find him a chip of good wood, sir,” said my father.
“We must make him a polished chip before we have done with him. Your
aim, my dear nephew, must always be to be in _bon ton_. It is not a case
of wealth, you understand. Mere riches cannot do it. Golden Price has
forty thousand a year, but his clothes are disastrous. I assure you that
I saw him come down St. James’s Street the other day, and I was so
shocked at his appearance that I had to step into Vernet’s for a glass of
orange brandy. No, it is a question of natural taste, and of following
the advice and example of those who are more experienced than yourself.”
“I fear, Charles, that Roddy’s wardrobe is country-made,” said my mother.
“We shall soon set that right when we get to town. We shall see what
Stultz or Weston can do for him,” my uncle answered. “We must keep him
quiet until he has some clothes to wear.”
This slight upon my best Sunday suit brought a flush to my mother’s
cheeks, which my uncle instantly observed, for he was quick in noticing
trifles.
“The clothes are very well for Friar’s Oak, sister Mary,” said he. “And
yet you can understand that they might seem _rococo_ in the Mall. If you
leave him in my hands I shall see to the matter.”
“On how much, sir,” asked my father, “can a young man dress in town?”
“With prudence and reasonable care, a young man of fashion can dress upon
eight hundred a year,” my uncle answered.
I saw my poor father’s face grow longer.
“I fear, sir, that Roddy must keep his country clothes,” said he. “Even
with my prize-money—”
“Tut, sir!” cried my uncle. “I already owe Weston something over a
thousand, so how can a few odd hundreds affect it? If my nephew comes
with me, my nephew is my care. The point is settled, and I must refuse
to argue upon it.” He waved his white hands as if to brush aside all
opposition.
My parents tried to thank him, but he cut them short.
“By the way, now that I am in Friar’s Oak, there is another small piece
of business which I have to perform,” said he. “I believe that there is
a fighting-man named Harrison here, who at one time might have held the
championship. In those days poor Avon and I were his principal backers.
I should like to have a word with him.”
You may think how proud I was to walk down the village street with my
magnificent relative, and to note out of the corner of my eye how the
folk came to the doors and windows to see us pass. Champion Harrison was
standing outside the smithy, and he pulled his cap off when he saw my
uncle.
“God bless me, sir! Who’d ha’ thought of seein’ you at Friar’s Oak? Why,
Sir Charles, it brings old memories back to look at your face again.”
“Glad to see you looking so fit, Harrison,” said my uncle, running his
eyes over him. “Why, with a week’s training you would be as good a man
as ever. I don’t suppose you scale more than thirteen and a half?”
“Thirteen ten, Sir Charles. I’m in my fortieth year, but I am sound in
wind and limb, and if my old woman would have let me off my promise, I’d
ha’ had a try with some of these young ones before now. I hear that
they’ve got some amazin’ good stuff up from Bristol of late.”
“Yes, the Bristol yellowman has been the winning colour of late. How
d’ye do, Mrs. Harrison? I don’t suppose you remember me?”
She had come out from the house, and I noticed that her worn face—on
which some past terror seemed to have left its shadow—hardened into stern
lines as she looked at my uncle.
“I remember you too well, Sir Charles Tregellis,” said she. “I trust
that you have not come here to-day to try to draw my husband back into
the ways that he has forsaken.”
“That’s the way with her, Sir Charles,” said Harrison, resting his great
hand upon the woman’s shoulder. “She’s got my promise, and she holds me
to it! There was never a better or more hard-working wife, but she ain’t
what you’d call a patron of sport, and that’s a fact.”
“Sport!” cried the woman, bitterly. “A fine sport for you, Sir Charles,
with your pleasant twenty-mile drive into the country and your
luncheon-basket and your wines, and so merrily back to London in the cool
of the evening, with a well-fought battle to talk over. Think of the
sport that it was to me to sit through the long hours, listening for the
wheels of the chaise which would bring my man back to me. Sometimes he
could walk in, and sometimes he was led in, and sometimes he was carried
in, and it was only by his clothes that I could know him—”
“Come, wifie,” said Harrison, patting her on the shoulder. “I’ve been
cut up in my time, but never as bad as that.”
“And then to live for weeks afterwards with the fear that every knock at
the door may be to tell us that the other is dead, and that my man may
have to stand in the dock and take his trial for murder.”
“No, she hasn’t got a sportin’ drop in her veins,” said Harrison. “She’d
never make a patron, never! It’s Black Baruk’s business that did it,
when we thought he’d napped it once too often. Well, she has my promise,
and I’ll never sling my hat over the ropes unless she gives me leave.”
“You’ll keep your hat on your head like an honest, God-fearing man,
John,” said his wife, turning back into the house.
“I wouldn’t for the world say anything to make you change your
resolutions,” said my uncle. “At the same time, if you had wished to
take a turn at the old sport, I had a good thing to put in your way.”
“Well, it’s no use, sir,” said Harrison, “but I’d be glad to hear about
it all the same.”
“They have a very good bit of stuff at thirteen stone down Gloucester
way. Wilson is his name, and they call him Crab on account of his
style.”
Harrison shook his head. “Never heard of him, sir.”
“Very likely not, for he has never shown in the P.R. But they think
great things of him in the West, and he can hold his own with either of
the Belchers with the mufflers.”
“Sparrin’ ain’t fightin’,” said the smith.
“I am told that he had the best of it in a by-battle with Noah James, of
Cheshire.”
“There’s no gamer man on the list, sir, than Noah James, the guardsman,”
said Harrison. “I saw him myself fight fifty rounds after his jaw had
been cracked in three places. If Wilson could beat him, Wilson will go
far.”
“So they think in the West, and they mean to spring him on the London
talent. Sir Lothian Hume is his patron, and to make a long story short,
he lays me odds that I won’t find a young one of his weight to meet him.
I told him that I had not heard of any good young ones, but that I had an
old one who had not put his foot into a ring for many years, who would
make his man wish he had never come to London.
“‘Young or old, under twenty or over thirty-five, you may bring whom you
will at the weight, and I shall lay two to one on Wilson,’ said he. I
took him in thousands, and here I am.”
“It won’t do, Sir Charles,” said the smith, shaking his head. “There’s
nothing would please me better, but you heard for yourself.”
“Well, if you won’t fight, Harrison, I must try to get some promising
colt. I’d be glad of your advice in the matter. By the way, I take the
chair at a supper of the Fancy at the Waggon and Horses in St. Martin’s
Lane next Friday. I should be very glad if you will make one of my
guests. Halloa, who’s this?” Up flew his glass to his eye.
Boy Jim had come out from the forge with his hammer in his hand. He had,
I remember, a grey flannel shirt, which was open at the neck and turned
up at the sleeves. My uncle ran his eyes over the fine lines of his
magnificent figure with the glance of a connoisseur.
“That’s my nephew, Sir Charles.”
“Is he living with you?”
“His parents are dead.”
“Has he ever been in London?”
“No, Sir Charles. He’s been with me here since he was as high as that
hammer.”
My uncle turned to Boy Jim.
“I hear that you have never been in London,” said he. “Your uncle is
coming up to a supper which I am giving to the Fancy next Friday. Would
you care to make one of us?”
Boy Jim’s dark eyes sparkled with pleasure.
“I should be glad to come, sir.”
“No, no, Jim,” cried the smith, abruptly. “I’m sorry to gainsay you,
lad, but there are reasons why I had rather you stayed down here with
your aunt.”
“Tut, Harrison, let the lad come!” cried my uncle.
“No, no, Sir Charles. It’s dangerous company for a lad of his mettle.
There’s plenty for him to do when I’m away.”
Poor Jim turned away with a clouded brow and strode into the smithy
again. For my part, I slipped after him to try to console him, and to
tell him all the wonderful changes which had come so suddenly into my
life. But I had not got half through my story, and Jim, like the good
fellow that he was, had just begun to forget his own troubles in his
delight at my good fortune, when my uncle called to me from without. The
curricle with its tandem mares was waiting for us outside the cottage,
and Ambrose had placed the refection-basket, the lap-dog, and the
precious toilet-box inside of it. He had himself climbed up behind, and
I, after a hearty handshake from my father, and a last sobbing embrace
from my mother, took my place beside my uncle in the front.
“Let go her head!” cried he to the ostler, and with a snap, a crack, and
a jingle, away we went upon our journey.
Across all the years how clearly I can see that spring day, with the
green English fields, the windy English sky, and the yellow,
beetle-browed cottage in which I had grown from a child to a man. I see,
too, the figures at the garden gate: my mother, with her face turned away
and her handkerchief waving; my father, with his blue coat and his white
shorts, leaning upon his stick with his hand shading his eyes as he
peered after us. All the village was out to see young Roddy Stone go off
with his grand relative from London to call upon the Prince in his own
palace. The Harrisons were waving to me from the smithy, and John
Cummings from the steps of the inn, and I saw Joshua Allen, my old
schoolmaster, pointing me out to the people, as if he were showing what
came from his teaching. To make it complete, who should drive past just
as we cleared the village but Miss Hinton, the play-actress, the pony and
phaeton the same as when first I saw her, but she herself another woman;
and I thought to myself that if Boy Jim had done nothing but that one
thing, he need not think that his youth had been wasted in the country.
She was driving to see him, I have no doubt, for they were closer than
ever, and she never looked up nor saw the hand that I waved to her. So
as we took the curve of the road the little village vanished, and there
in the dip of the Downs, past the spires of Patcham and of Preston, lay
the broad blue sea and the grey houses of Brighton, with the strange
Eastern domes and minarets of the Prince’s Pavilion shooting out from the
centre of it.
To every traveller it was a sight of beauty, but to me it was the
world—the great wide free world—and my heart thrilled and fluttered as
the young bird’s may when it first hears the whirr of its own flight, and
skims along with the blue heaven above it and the green fields beneath.
The day may come when it may look back regretfully to the snug nest in
the thornbush, but what does it reck of that when spring is in the air
and youth in its blood, and the old hawk of trouble has not yet darkened
the sunshine with the ill-boding shadow of its wings?
CHAPTER VII.
THE HOPE OF ENGLAND.
MY uncle drove for some time in silence, but I was conscious that his eye
was always coming round to me, and I had an uneasy conviction that he was
already beginning to ask himself whether he could make anything of me, or
whether he had been betrayed into an indiscretion when he had allowed his
sister to persuade him to show her son something of the grand world in
which he lived.
“You sing, don’t you, nephew?” he asked, suddenly.
“Yes, sir, a little.”
“A baritone, I should fancy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your mother tells me that you play the fiddle. These things will be
of service to you with the Prince. Music runs in his family. Your
education has been what you could get at a village school. Well, you are
not examined in Greek roots in polite society, which is lucky for some of
us. It is as well just to have a tag or two of Horace or Virgil: ‘sub
tegmine fagi,’ or ‘habet fœnum in cornu,’ which gives a flavour to one’s
conversation like the touch of garlic in a salad. It is not _bon ton_ to
be learned, but it is a graceful thing to indicate that you have
forgotten a good deal. Can you write verse?”
“I fear not, sir.”
“A small book of rhymes may be had for half a crown. Vers de Société are
a great assistance to a young man. If you have the ladies on your side,
it does not matter whom you have against you. You must learn to open a
door, to enter a room, to present a snuff-box, raising the lid with the
forefinger of the hand in which you hold it. You must acquire the bow
for a man, with its necessary touch of dignity, and that for a lady,
which cannot be too humble, and should still contain the least suspicion
of abandon. You must cultivate a manner with women which shall be
deprecating and yet audacious. Have you any eccentricity?”
It made me laugh, the easy way in which he asked the question, as if it
were a most natural thing to possess.
“You have a pleasant, catching laugh, at all events,” said he. “But an
eccentricity is very _bon ton_ at present, and if you feel any leaning
towards one, I should certainly advise you to let it run its course.
Petersham would have remained a mere peer all his life had it not come
out that he had a snuff-box for every day in the year, and that he had
caught cold through a mistake of his valet, who sent him out on a bitter
winter day with a thin Sèvres china box instead of a thick tortoiseshell.
That brought him out of the ruck, you see, and people remember him. Even
some small characteristic, such as having an apricot tart on your
sideboard all the year round, or putting your candle out at night by
stuffing it under your pillow, serves to separate you from your
neighbour. In my own case, it is my precise judgment upon matter of
dress and decorum which has placed me where I am. I do not profess to
follow a law. I set one. For example, I am taking you to-day to see the
Prince in a nankeen vest. What do you think will be the consequence of
that?”
My fears told me that it might be my own very great discomfiture, but I
did not say so.
“Why, the night coach will carry the news to London. It will be in
Brookes’s and White’s to-morrow morning. Within, a week St. James’s
Street and the Mall will be full of nankeen waistcoats. A most painful
incident happened to me once. My cravat came undone in the street, and I
actually walked from Carlton House to Watier’s in Bruton Street with the
two ends hanging loose. Do you suppose it shook my position? The same
evening there were dozens of young bloods walking the streets of London
with their cravats loose. If I had not rearranged mine there would not
be one tied in the whole kingdom now, and a great art would have been
prematurely lost. You have not yet began to practise it?”
I confessed that I had not.
“You should begin now in your youth. I will myself teach you the _coup
d’archet_. By using a few hours in each day, which would otherwise be
wasted, you may hope to have excellent cravats in middle life. The whole
knack lies in pointing your chin to the sky, and then arranging your
folds by the gradual descent of your lower jaw.”
When my uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous
light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was
a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural
fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the
very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity
of my own. When I thought of the way in which he had spoken of his
unhappy friend, Lord Avon, upon the evening before, and of the emotion
which he showed as he told the horrible story, I was glad to think that
there was the heart of a man there, however much it might please him to
conceal it.
And, as it happened, I was very soon to have another peep at it, for a
most unexpected event befell us as we drew up in front of the Crown
hotel. A swarm of ostlers and grooms had rushed out to us, and my uncle,
throwing down the reins, gathered Fidelio on his cushion from under the
seat.
“Ambrose,” he cried, “you may take Fidelio.”
But there came no answer. The seat behind was unoccupied. Ambrose was
gone.
We could hardly believe our eyes when we alighted and found that it was
really so. He had most certainly taken his seat there at Friar’s Oak,
and from there on we had come without a break as fast as the mares could
travel. Whither, then, could he have vanished to?
“He’s fallen off in a fit!” cried my uncle. “I’d drive back, but the
Prince is expecting us. Where’s the landlord? Here, Coppinger, send
your best man back to Friar’s Oak as fast as his horse can go, to find
news of my valet, Ambrose. See that no pains be spared. Now, nephew, we
shall lunch, and then go up to the Pavilion.”
My uncle was much disturbed by the strange loss of his valet, the more so
as it was his custom to go through a whole series of washings and
changings after even the shortest journey. For my own part, mindful of
my mother’s advice, I carefully brushed the dust from my clothes and made
myself as neat as possible. My heart was down in the soles of my little
silver-buckled shoes now that I had the immediate prospect of meeting so
great and terrible a person as the Prince of Wales. I had seen his
flaring yellow barouche flying through Friar’s Oak many a time, and had
halloaed and waved my hat with the others as it passed, but never in my
wildest dreams had it entered my head that I should ever be called upon
to look him in the face and answer his questions. My mother had taught
me to regard him with reverence, as one of those whom God had placed to
rule over us; but my uncle smiled when I told him of her teaching.
“You are old enough to see things as they are, nephew,” said he, “and
your knowledge of them is the badge that you are in that inner circle
where I mean to place you. There is no one who knows the Prince better
than I do, and there is no one who trusts him less. A stranger
contradiction of qualities was never gathered under one hat. He is a man
who is always in a hurry, and yet has never anything to do. He fusses
about things with which he has no concern, and he neglects every obvious
duty. He is generous to those who have no claim upon him, but he has
ruined his tradesmen by refusing to pay his just debts. He is
affectionate to casual acquaintances, but he dislikes his father, loathes
his mother, and is not on speaking terms with his wife. He claims to be
the first gentleman of England, but the gentlemen of England have
responded by blackballing his friends at their clubs, and by warning him
off from Newmarket under suspicion of having tampered with a horse. He
spends his days in uttering noble sentiments, and contradicting them by
ignoble actions. He tells stories of his own doings which are so
grotesque that they can only be explained by the madness which runs in
his blood. And yet, with all this, he can be courteous, dignified, and
kindly upon occasion, and I have seen an impulsive good-heartedness in
the man which has made me overlook faults which come mainly from his
being placed in a position which no one upon this earth was ever less
fitted to fill. But this is between ourselves, nephew; and now you will
come with me and you will form an opinion for yourself.”
It was but a short walk, and yet it took us some time, for my uncle
stalked along with great dignity, his lace-bordered handkerchief in one
hand, and his cane with the clouded amber head dangling from the other.
Every one that we met seemed to know him, and their hats flew from their
heads as we passed. He took little notice of these greetings, save to
give a nod to one, or to slightly raise his forefinger to another. It
chanced, however, that as we turned into the Pavilion Grounds, we met a
magnificent team of four coal-black horses, driven by a rough-looking,
middle-aged fellow in an old weather-stained cape. There was nothing
that I could see to distinguish him from any professional driver, save
that he was chatting very freely with a dainty little woman who was
perched on the box beside him.
“Halloa, Charlie! Good drive down?” he cried.
My uncle bowed and smiled to the lady.
“Broke it at Friar’s Oak,” said he. “I’ve my light curricle and two new
mares—half thorough-bred, half Cleveland bay.”
“What d’you think of my team of blacks?” asked the other.
“Yes, Sir Charles, what d’you think of them? Ain’t they damnation
smart?” cried the little woman.
“Plenty of power. Good horses for the Sussex clay. Too thick about the
fetlocks for me. I like to travel.”
“Travel!” cried the woman, with extraordinary vehemence. “Why, what
the—” and she broke into such language as I had never heard from a man’s
lips before. “We’d start with our swingle-bars touching, and we’d have
your dinner ordered, cooked, laid, and eaten before you were there to
claim it.”
“By George, yes, Letty is right!” cried the man. “D’you start
to-morrow?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Well, I’ll make you an offer. Look ye here, Charlie! I’ll spring my
cattle from the Castle Square at quarter before nine. You can follow as
the clock strikes. I’ve double the horses and double the weight. If you
so much as see me before we cross Westminster Bridge, I’ll pay you a cool
hundred. If not, it’s my money—play or pay. Is it a match?”
“Very good,” said my uncle, and, raising his hat, he led the way into the
grounds. As I followed, I saw the woman take the reins, while the man
looked after us, and squirted a jet of tobacco-juice from between his
teeth in coachman fashion.
“That’s Sir John Lade,” said my uncle, “one of the richest men and best
whips in England. There isn’t a professional on the road that can handle
either his tongue or his ribbons better; but his wife, Lady Letty, is his
match with the one or the other.”
“It was dreadful to hear her,” said I.
“Oh, it’s her eccentricity. We all have them; and she amuses the Prince.
Now, nephew, keep close at my elbow, and have your eyes open and your
mouth shut.”
Two lines of magnificent red and gold footmen who guarded the door bowed
deeply as my uncle and I passed between them, he with his head in the air
and a manner as if he entered into his own, whilst I tried to look
assured, though my heart was beating thin and fast. Within there was a
high and large hall, ornamented with Eastern decorations, which
harmonized with the domes and minarets of the exterior. A number of
people were moving quietly about, forming into groups and whispering to
each other. One of these, a short, burly, red-faced man, full of fuss
and self-importance, came hurrying up to my uncle.
“I have de goot news, Sir Charles,” said he, sinking his voice as one who
speaks of weighty measures. “_Es ist vollendet_—dat is, I have it at
last thoroughly done.”
“Well, serve it hot,” said my uncle, coldly, “and see that the sauces are
a little better than when last I dined at Carlton House.”
“Ah, mine Gott, you tink I talk of de cuisine. It is de affair of de
Prince dat I speak of. Dat is one little _vol-au-vent_ dat is worth one
hundred tousand pound. Ten per cent., and double to be repaid when de
Royal pappa die. _Alles ist fertig_. Goldshmidt of de Hague have took
it up, and de Dutch public has subscribe de money.”
“God help the Dutch public!” muttered my uncle, as the fat little man
bustled off with his news to some new-comer. “That’s the Prince’s famous
cook, nephew. He has not his equal in England for a _filet sauté aux
champignons_. He manages his master’s money affairs.”
“The cook!” I exclaimed, in bewilderment.
“You look surprised, nephew.”
“I should have thought that some respectable banking firm—”
My uncle inclined his lips to my ear.
“No respectable house would touch them,” he whispered. “Ah, Mellish, is
the Prince within?”
“In the private saloon, Sir Charles,” said the gentleman addressed.
“Any one with him?”
“Sheridan and Francis. He said he expected you.”
“Then we shall go through.”
I followed him through the strangest succession of rooms, full of curious
barbaric splendour which impressed me as being very rich and wonderful,
though perhaps I should think differently now. Gold and scarlet in
arabesque designs gleamed upon the walls, with gilt dragons and monsters
writhing along cornices and out of corners. Look where I would, on panel
or ceiling, a score of mirrors flashed back the picture of the tall,
proud, white-faced man, and the youth who walked so demurely at his
elbow. Finally, a footman opened a door, and we found ourselves in the
Prince’s own private apartment.
Two gentlemen were lounging in a very easy fashion upon luxurious
fauteuils at the further end of the room and a third stood between them,
his thick, well-formed legs somewhat apart and his hands clasped behind
him. The sun was shining in upon them through a side-window, and I can
see the three faces now—one in the dusk, one in the light, and one cut
across by the shadow. Of those at the sides, I recall the reddish nose
and dark, flashing eyes of the one, and the hard, austere face of the
other, with the high coat-collars and many-wreathed cravats. These I
took in at a glance, but it was upon the man in the centre that my gaze
was fixed, for this I knew must be the Prince of Wales.
George was then in his forty-first year, and with the help of his tailor
and his hairdresser, he might have passed as somewhat less. The sight of
him put me at my ease, for he was a merry-looking man, handsome too in a
portly, full-blooded way, with laughing eyes and pouting, sensitive lips.
His nose was turned upwards, which increased the good-humoured effect of
his countenance at the expense of its dignity. His cheeks were pale and
sodden, like those of a man who lived too well and took too little
exercise. He was dressed in a single-breasted black coat buttoned up, a
pair of leather pantaloons stretched tightly across his broad thighs,
polished Hessian boots, and a huge white neckcloth.
“Halloa, Tregellis!” he cried, in the cheeriest fashion, as my uncle
crossed the threshold, and then suddenly the smile faded from his face,
and his eyes gleamed with resentment. “What the deuce is this?” he
shouted, angrily.
A thrill of fear passed through me as I thought that it was my appearance
which had produced this outburst. But his eyes were gazing past us, and
glancing round we saw that a man in a brown coat and scratch wig had
followed so closely at our heels, that the footmen had let him pass under
the impression that he was of our party. His face was very red, and the
folded blue paper which he carried in his hand shook and crackled in his
excitement.
“Why, it’s Vuillamy, the furniture man,” cried the Prince. “What, am I
to be dunned in my own private room? Where’s Mellish? Where’s
Townshend? What the deuce is Tom Tring doing?”
“I wouldn’t have intruded, your Royal Highness, but I must have the
money—or even a thousand on account would do.”
“Must have it, must you, Vuillamy? That’s a fine word to use. I pay my
debts in my own time, and I’m not to be bullied. Turn him out, footman!
Take him away!”
“If I don’t get it by Monday, I shall be in your papa’s Bench,” wailed
the little man, and as the footman led him out we could hear him, amidst
shouts of laughter, still protesting that he would wind up in “papa’s
Bench.”
“That’s the very place for a furniture man,” said the man with the red
nose.
“It should be the longest bench in the world, Sherry,” answered the
Prince, “for a good many of his subjects will want seats on it. Very
glad to see you back, Tregellis, but you must really be more careful what
you bring in upon your skirts. It was only yesterday that we had an
infernal Dutchman here howling about some arrears of interest and the
deuce knows what. ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘as long as the Commons
starve me, I have to starve you,’ and so the matter ended.”
“I think, sir, that the Commons would respond now if the matter were
fairly put before them by Charlie Fox or myself,” said Sheridan.
The Prince burst out against the Commons with an energy of hatred that
one would scarce expect from that chubby, good-humoured face.
“Why, curse them!” he cried. “After all their preaching and throwing my
father’s model life, as they called it, in my teeth, they had to pay
_his_ debts to the tune of nearly a million, whilst I can’t get a hundred
thousand out of them. And look at all they’ve done for my brothers!
York is Commander-in-Chief. Clarence is Admiral. What am I? Colonel of
a damned dragoon regiment under the orders of my own younger brother.
It’s my mother that’s at the bottom of it all. She always tried to hold
me back. But what’s this you’ve brought, Tregellis, eh?”
My uncle put his hand on my sleeve and led me forward.
“This is my sister’s son, sir; Rodney Stone by name,” said he. “He is
coming with me to London, and I thought it right to begin by presenting
him to your Royal Highness.”
“Quite right! Quite right!” said the Prince, with a good-natured smile,
patting me in a friendly way upon the shoulder. “Is your mother living?”
“Yes, sir,” said I.
“If you are a good son to her you will never go wrong. And, mark my
words, Mr. Rodney Stone, you should honour the King, love your country,
and uphold the glorious British Constitution.”
When I thought of the energy with which he had just been cursing the
House of Commons, I could scarce keep from smiling, and I saw Sheridan
put his hand up to his lips.
“You have only to do this, to show a regard for your word, and to keep
out of debt in order to insure a happy and respected life. What is your
father, Mr. Stone? Royal Navy! Well, it is a glorious service. I have
had a touch of it myself. Did I ever tell you how we laid aboard the
French sloop of war _Minerve_—hey, Tregellis?”
“No, sir,” said my uncle. Sheridan and Francis exchanged glances behind
the Prince’s back.
“She was flying her tricolour out there within sight of my pavilion
windows. Never saw such monstrous impudence in my life! It would take a
man of less mettle than me to stand it. Out I went in my little
cock-boat—you know my sixty-ton yawl, Charlie?—with two four-pounders on
each side, and a six-pounder in the bows.”
“Well, sir! Well, sir! And what then, sir?” cried Francis, who appeared
to be an irascible, rough-tongued man.
“You will permit me to tell the story in my own way, Sir Philip,” said
the Prince, with dignity. “I was about to say that our metal was so
light that I give you my word, gentlemen, that I carried my port
broadside in one coat pocket, and my starboard in the other. Up we came
to the big Frenchman, took her fire, and scraped the paint off her before
we let drive. But it was no use. By George, gentlemen, our balls just
stuck in her timbers like stones in a mud wall. She had her nettings up,
but we scrambled aboard, and at it we went hammer and anvil. It was a
sharp twenty minutes, but we beat her people down below, made the hatches
fast on them, and towed her into Seaham. Surely you were with us,
Sherry?”
“I was in London at the time,” said Sheridan, gravely.
“You can vouch for it, Francis!”
“I can vouch to having heard your Highness tell the story.”
“It was a rough little bit of cutlass and pistol work. But, for my own
part, I like the rapier. It’s a gentleman’s weapon. You heard of my
bout with the Chevalier d’Eon? I had him at my sword-point for forty
minutes at Angelo’s. He was one of the best blades in Europe, but I was
a little too supple in the wrist for him. ‘I thank God there was a
button on your Highness’s foil,’ said he, when we had finished our
breather. By the way, you’re a bit of a duellist yourself, Tregellis.
How often have you been out?”
“I used to go when I needed exercise,” said my uncle, carelessly. “But I
have taken to tennis now instead. A painful incident happened the last
time that I was out, and it sickened me of it.”
“You killed your man—?”
“No, no, sir, it was worse than that. I had a coat that Weston has never
equalled. To say that it fitted me is not to express it. It _was_
me—like the hide on a horse. I’ve had sixty from him since, but he could
never approach it. The sit of the collar brought tears into my eyes,
sir, when first I saw it; and as to the waist—”
“But the duel, Tregellis!” cried the Prince.
“Well, sir, I wore it at the duel, like the thoughtless fool that I was.
It was Major Hunter, of the Guards, with whom I had had a little
_tracasserie_, because I hinted that he should not come into Brookes’s
smelling of the stables. I fired first, and missed. He fired, and I
shrieked in despair. ‘He’s hit! A surgeon! A surgeon!’ they cried. ‘A
tailor! A tailor!’ said I, for there was a double hole through the tails
of my masterpiece. No, it was past all repair. You may laugh, sir, but
I’ll never see the like of it again.”
I had seated myself on a settee in the corner, upon the Prince’s
invitation, and very glad I was to remain quiet and unnoticed, listening
to the talk of these men. It was all in the same extravagant vein,
garnished with many senseless oaths; but I observed this difference,
that, whereas my uncle and Sheridan had something of humour in their
exaggeration, Francis tended always to ill-nature, and the Prince to
self-glorification. Finally, the conversation turned to music—I am not
sure that my uncle did not artfully bring it there, and the Prince,
hearing from him of my tastes, would have it that I should then and there
sit down at the wonderful little piano, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
which stood in the corner, and play him the accompaniment to his song.
It was called, as I remember, “The Briton Conquers but to Save,” and he
rolled it out in a very fair bass voice, the others joining in the
chorus, and clapping vigorously when he finished.
“Bravo, Mr. Stone!” said he. “You have an excellent touch; and I know
what I am talking about when I speak of music. Cramer, of the Opera,
said only the other day that he had rather hand his bâton to me than to
any amateur in England. Halloa, it’s Charlie Fox, by all that’s
wonderful!”
He had run forward with much warmth, and was shaking the hand of a
singular-looking person who had just entered the room. The new-comer was
a stout, square-built man, plainly and almost carelessly dressed, with an
uncouth manner and a rolling gait. His age might have been something
over fifty, and his swarthy, harshly-featured face was already deeply
lined either by his years or by his excesses. I have never seen a
countenance in which the angel and the devil were more obviously wedded.
Above, was the high, broad forehead of the philosopher, with keen,
humorous eyes looking out from under thick, strong brows. Below, was the
heavy jowl of the sensualist curving in a broad crease over his cravat.
That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the
philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the
twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of
the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet
to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were
as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits
seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the
best and the worst man of his age.
“I’ve run down from Chertsey, sir, just to shake you by the hand, and to
make sure that the Tories have not carried you off.”
“Hang it, Charlie, you know that I sink or swim with my friends! A Whig
I started, and a Whig I shall remain.”
I thought that I could read upon Fox’s dark face that he was by no means
so confident about the Prince’s principles.
“Pitt has been at you, sir, I understand?”
“Yes, confound him! I hate the sight of that sharp-pointed snout of his,
which he wants to be ever poking into my affairs. He and Addington have
been boggling about the debts again. Why, look ye, Charlie, if Pitt held
me in contempt he could not behave different.”
I gathered from the smile which flitted over Sheridan’s expressive face
that this was exactly what Pitt did do. But straightway they all plunged
into politics, varied by the drinking of sweet maraschino, which a
footman brought round upon a salver. The King, the Queen, the Lords, and
the Commons were each in succession cursed by the Prince, in spite of the
excellent advice which he had given me about the British Constitution.
“Why, they allow me so little that I can’t look after my own people.
There are a dozen annuities to old servants and the like, and it’s all I
can do to scrape the money together to pay them. However, my”—he pulled
himself up and coughed in a consequential way—“my financial agent has
arranged for a loan, repayable upon the King’s death. This liqueur isn’t
good for either of us, Charlie. We’re both getting monstrous stout.”
“I can’t get any exercise for the gout,” said Fox.
“I am blooded fifty ounces a month, but the more I take the more I make.
You wouldn’t think, to look at us, Tregellis, that we could do what we
have done. We’ve had some days and nights together, Charlie!”
Fox smiled and shook his head.
“You remember how we posted to Newmarket before the races. We took a
public coach, Tregellis, clapped the postillions into the rumble, and
jumped on to their places. Charlie rode the leader and I the wheeler.
One fellow wouldn’t let us through his turnpike, and Charlie hopped off
and had his coat off in a minute. The fellow thought he had to do with a
fighting man, and soon cleared the way for us.”
“By the way, sir, speaking of fighting men, I give a supper to the Fancy
at the Waggon and Horses on Friday next,” said my uncle. “If you should
chance to be in town, they would think it a great honour if you should
condescend to look in upon us.”
“I’ve not seen a fight since I saw Tom Tyne, the tailor, kill Earl
fourteen years ago. I swore off then, and you know me as a man of my
word, Tregellis. Of course, I’ve been at the ringside _incog._ many a
time, but never as the Prince of Wales.”
“We should be vastly honoured if you would come _incog._ to our supper,
sir.”
“Well, well, Sherry, make a note of it. We’ll be at Carlton House on
Friday. The Prince can’t come, you know, Tregellis, but you might
reserve a chair for the Earl of Chester.”
“Sir, we shall be proud to see the Earl of Chester there,” said my uncle.
“By the way, Tregellis,” said Fox, “there’s some rumour about your having
a sporting bet with Sir Lothian Hume. What’s the truth of it?”
“Only a small matter of a couple of thous to a thou, he giving the odds.
He has a fancy to this new Gloucester man, Crab Wilson, and I’m to find a
man to beat him. Anything under twenty or over thirty-five, at or about
thirteen stone.”
“You take Charlie Fox’s advice, then,” cried the Prince. “When it comes
to handicapping a horse, playing a hand, matching a cock, or picking a
man, he has the best judgment in England. Now, Charlie, whom have we
upon the list who can beat Crab Wilson, of Gloucester?”
I was amazed at the interest and knowledge which all these great people
showed about the ring, for they not only had the deeds of the principal
men of the time—Belcher, Mendoza, Jackson, or Dutch Sam—at their fingers’
ends, but there was no fighting man so obscure that they did not know the
details of his deeds and prospects. The old ones and then the young were
discussed—their weight, their gameness, their hitting power, and their
constitution. Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to
whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own
with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the
deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be
remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the finest speech
of his generation?
The name of Champion Harrison came very early into the discussion, and
Fox, who had a high idea of Crab Wilson’s powers, was of opinion that my
uncle’s only chance lay in the veteran taking the field again. “He may
be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the
kick of a horse. When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the
outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators. If he
isn’t absolutely stale, Tregellis, he is your best chance.”
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“If poor Avon were here we might do something with him, for he was
Harrison’s first patron, and the man was devoted to him. But his wife is
too strong for me. And now, sir, I must leave you, for I have had the
misfortune to-day to lose the best valet in England, and I must make
inquiry for him. I thank your Royal Highness for your kindness in
receiving my nephew in so gracious a fashion.”
“Till Friday, then,” said the Prince, holding out his hand. “I have to
go up to town in any case, for there is a poor devil of an East India
Company’s officer who has written to me in his distress. If I can raise
a few hundreds, I shall see him and set things right for him. Now, Mr.
Stone, you have your life before you, and I hope it will be one which
your uncle may be proud of. You will honour the King, and show respect
for the Constitution, Mr. Stone. And, hark ye, you will avoid debt, and
bear in mind that your honour is a sacred thing.”
So I carried away a last impression of his sensual, good-humoured face,
his high cravat, and his broad leather thighs. Again we passed the
strange rooms, the gilded monsters, and the gorgeous footmen, and it was
with relief that I found myself out in the open air once more, with the
broad blue sea in front of us, and the fresh evening breeze upon our
faces.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRIGHTON ROAD.
MY uncle and I were up betimes next morning, but he was much out of
temper, for no news had been heard of his valet Ambrose. He had indeed
become like one of those ants of which I have read, who are so accustomed
to be fed by smaller ants that when they are left to themselves they die
of hunger. It was only by the aid of a man whom the landlord procured,
and of Fox’s valet, who had been sent expressly across, that his toilet
was at last performed.
“I must win this race, nephew,” said he, when he had finished breakfast;
“I can’t afford to be beat. Look out of the window and see if the Lades
are there.”
“I see a red four-in-hand in the square, and there is a crowd round it.
Yes, I see the lady upon the box seat.”
“Is our tandem out?”
“It is at the door.”
“Come, then, and you shall have such a drive as you never had before.”
He stood at the door pulling on his long brown driving-gauntlets and
giving his orders to the ostlers.
“Every ounce will tell,” said he. “We’ll leave that dinner-basket
behind. And you can keep my dog for me, Coppinger. You know him and
understand him. Let him have his warm milk and curaçoa the same as
usual. Whoa, my darlings, you’ll have your fill of it before you reach
Westminster Bridge.”
“Shall I put in the toilet-case?” asked the landlord. I saw the struggle
upon my uncle’s face, but he was true to his principles.
“Put it under the seat—the front seat,” said he. “Nephew, you must keep
your weight as far forward as possible. Can you do anything on a yard of
tin? Well, if you can’t, we’ll leave the trumpet. Buckle that girth up,
Thomas. Have you greased the hubs, as I told you? Well, jump up,
nephew, and we’ll see them off.”
Quite a crowd had gathered in the Old Square: men and women, dark-coated
tradesmen, bucks from the Prince’s Court, and officers from Hove, all in
a buzz of excitement; for Sir John Lade and my uncle were two of the most
famous whips of the time, and a match between them was a thing to talk of
for many a long day.
“The Prince will be sorry to have missed the start,” said my uncle. “He
doesn’t show before midday. Ah, Jack, good morning! Your servant,
madam! It’s a fine day for a little bit of waggoning.”
As our tandem came alongside of the four-in-hand, with the two bonny bay
mares gleaming like shot-silk in the sunshine, a murmur of admiration
rose from the crowd. My uncle, in his fawn-coloured driving-coat, with
all his harness of the same tint, looked the ideal of a Corinthian whip;
while Sir John Lade, with his many-caped coat, his white hat, and his
rough, weather-beaten face, might have taken his seat with a line of
professionals upon any ale-house bench without any one being able to pick
him out as one of the wealthiest landowners in England. It was an age of
eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which
surprised even the out-and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous
highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover. She was
perched by his side, looking very smart in a flowered bonnet and grey
travelling-dress, while in front of them the four splendid coal-black
horses, with a flickering touch of gold upon their powerful, well-curved
quarters, were pawing the dust in their eagerness to be off.
“It’s a hundred that you don’t see us before Westminster with a quarter
of an hour’s start,” said Sir John.
“I’ll take you another hundred that we pass you,” answered my uncle.
“Very good. Time’s up. Good-bye!” He gave a _tchk_ of the tongue,
shook his reins, saluted with his whip; in true coachman’s style, and
away he went, taking the curve out of the square in a workmanlike fashion
that fetched a cheer from the crowd. We heard the dwindling roar of the
wheels upon the cobblestones until they died away in the distance.
It seemed one of the longest quarters of an hour that I had ever known
before the first stroke of nine boomed from the parish clock. For my
part, I was fidgeting in my seat in my impatience, but my uncle’s calm,
pale face and large blue eyes were as tranquil and demure as those of the
most unconcerned spectator. He was keenly on the alert, however, and it
seemed to me that the stroke of the clock and the thong of his whip fell
together—not in a blow, but in a sharp snap over the leader, which sent
us flying with a jingle and a rattle upon our fifty miles’ journey. I
heard a roar from behind us, saw the gliding lines of windows with
staring faces and waving handkerchiefs, and then we were off the stones
and on to the good white road which curved away in front of us, with the
sweep of the green downs upon either side.
I had been provided with shillings that the turnpike-gate might not stop
us, but my uncle reined in the mares and took them at a very easy trot up
all the heavy stretch which ends in Clayton Hill. He let them go then,
and we flashed through Friar’s Oak and across St. John’s Common without
more than catching a glimpse of the yellow cottage which contained all
that I loved best. Never have I travelled at such a pace, and never have
I felt such a sense of exhilaration from the rush of keen upland air upon
our faces, and from the sight of those two glorious creatures stretched
to their utmost, with the roar of their hoofs and the rattle of our
wheels as the light curricle bounded and swayed behind them.
“It’s a long four miles uphill from here to Hand Cross,” said my uncle,
as we flew through Cuckfield. “I must ease them a bit, for I cannot
afford to break the hearts of my cattle. They have the right blood in
them, and they would gallop until they dropped if I were brute enough to
let them. Stand up on the seat, nephew, and see if you can get a glimpse
of them.”
I stood up, steadying myself upon my uncle’s shoulder, but though I could
see for a mile, or perhaps a quarter more, there was not a sign of the
four-in-hand.
“If he has sprung his cattle up all these hills they’ll be spent ere they
see Croydon,” said he.
“They have four to two,” said I.
“_J’en suis bien sûr_. Sir John’s black strain makes a good, honest
creature, but not fliers like these. There lies Cuckfield Place, where
the towers are, yonder. Get your weight right forward on the splashboard
now that we are going uphill, nephew. Look at the action of that leader:
did ever you see anything more easy and more beautiful?”
We were taking the hill at a quiet trot, but even so, we made the
carrier, walking in the shadow of his huge, broad-wheeled, canvas-covered
waggon, stare at us in amazement. Close to Hand Cross we passed the
Royal Brighton stage, which had left at half-past seven, dragging heavily
up the slope, and its passengers, toiling along through the dust behind,
gave us a cheer as we whirled by. At Hand Cross we caught a glimpse of
the old landlord, hurrying out with his gin and his gingerbread; but the
dip of the ground was downwards now, and away we flew as fast as eight
gallant hoofs could take us.
“Do you drive, nephew?”
“Very little, sir.”
“There is no driving on the Brighton Road.”
“How is that, sir?”
“Too good a road, nephew. I have only to give them their heads, and they
will race me into Westminster. It wasn’t always so. When I was a very
young man one might learn to handle his twenty yards of tape here as well
as elsewhere. There’s not much really good waggoning now south of
Leicestershire. Show me a man who can hit ’em and hold ’em on a
Yorkshire dale-side, and that’s the man who comes from the right school.”
We had raced over Crawley Down and into the broad main street of Crawley
village, flying between two country waggons in a way which showed me that
even now a driver might do something on the road. With every turn I
peered ahead, looking for our opponents, but my uncle seemed to concern
himself very little about them, and occupied himself in giving me advice,
mixed up with so many phrases of the craft, that it was all that I could
do to follow him.
“Keep a finger for each, or you will have your reins clubbed,” said he.
“As to the whip, the less fanning the better if you have willing cattle;
but when you want to put a little life into a coach, see that you get
your thong on to the one that needs it, and don’t let it fly round after
you’ve hit. I’ve seen a driver warm up the off-side passenger on the
roof behind him every time he tried to cut his off-side wheeler. I
believe that is their dust over yonder.”
A long stretch of road lay before us, barred with the shadows of wayside
trees. Through the green fields a lazy blue river was drawing itself
slowly along, passing under a bridge in front of us. Beyond was a young
fir plantation, and over its olive line there rose a white whirl which
drifted swiftly, like a cloud-scud on a breezy day.
“Yes, yes, it’s they!” cried my uncle. “No one else would travel as
fast. Come, nephew, we’re half-way when we cross the mole at Kimberham
Bridge, and we’ve done it in two hours and fourteen minutes. The Prince
drove to Carlton House with a three tandem in four hours and a half. The
first half is the worst half, and we might cut his time if all goes well.
We should make up between this and Reigate.”
And we flew. The bay mares seemed to know what that white puff in front
of us signified, and they stretched themselves like greyhounds. We
passed a phaeton and pair London-bound, and we left it behind as if it
had been standing still. Trees, gates, cottages went dancing by. We
heard the folks shouting from the fields, under the impression that we
were a runaway. Faster and faster yet they raced, the hoofs rattling
like castanets, the yellow manes flying, the wheels buzzing, and every
joint and rivet creaking and groaning, while the curricle swung and
swayed until I found myself clutching to the side-rail. My uncle eased
them and glanced at his watch as we saw the grey tiles and dingy red
houses of Reigate in the hollow beneath us.
“We did the last six well under twenty minutes,” said he. “We’ve time in
hand now, and a little water at the Red Lion will do them no harm. Red
four-in-hand passed, ostler?”
“Just gone, sir.”
“Going hard?”
“Galloping full split, sir! Took the wheel off a butcher’s cart at the
corner of the High Street, and was out o’ sight before the butcher’s boy
could see what had hurt him.”
_Z-z-z-z-ack_! went the long thong, and away we flew once more. It was
market day at Redhill, and the road was crowded with carts of produce,
droves of bullocks, and farmers’ gigs. It was a sight to see how my
uncle threaded his way amongst them all. Through the market-place we
dashed amidst the shouting of men, the screaming of women, and the
scuttling of poultry, and then we were out in the country again, with the
long, steep incline of the Redhill Road before us. My uncle waved his
whip in the air with a shrill view-halloa.
There was the dust-cloud rolling up the hill in front of us, and through
it we had a shadowy peep of the backs of our opponents, with a flash of
brass-work and a gleam of scarlet.
“There’s half the game won, nephew. Now we must pass them. Hark
forrard, my beauties! By George, if Kitty isn’t foundered!”
The leader had suddenly gone dead lame. In an instant we were both out
of the curricle and on our knees beside her. It was but a stone, wedged
between frog and shoe in the off fore-foot, but it was a minute or two
before we could wrench it out. When we had regained our places the Lades
were round the curve of the hill and out of sight.
“Bad luck!” growled my uncle. “But they can’t get away from us!” For
the first time he touched the mares up, for he had but cracked the whip
over their heads before. “If we catch them in the next few miles we can
spare them for the rest of the way.”
They were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Their breath came quick
and hoarse, and their beautiful coats were matted with moisture. At the
top of the hill, however, they settled down into their swing once more.
“Where on earth have they got to?” cried my uncle. “Can you make them
out on the road, nephew?”
We could see a long white ribbon of it, all dotted with carts and waggons
coming from Croydon to Redhill, but there was no sign of the big red
four-in-hand.
“There they are! Stole away! Stole away!” he cried, wheeling the mares
round into a side road which struck to the right out of that which we had
travelled. “There they are, nephew! On the brow of the hill!”
Sure enough, on the rise of a curve upon our right the four-in-hand had
appeared, the horses stretched to the utmost. Our mares laid themselves
out gallantly, and the distance between us began slowly to decrease. I
found that I could see the black band upon Sir John’s white hat, then
that I could count the folds of his cape; finally, that I could see the
pretty features of his wife as she looked back at us.
“We’re on the side road to Godstone and Warlingham,” said my uncle. “I
suppose he thought that he could make better time by getting out of the
way of the market carts. But we’ve got the deuce of a hill to come down.
You’ll see some fun, nephew, or I am mistaken.”
As he spoke I suddenly saw the wheels of the four-in-hand disappear, then
the body of it, and then the two figures upon the box, as suddenly and
abruptly as if it had bumped down the first three steps of some gigantic
stairs. An instant later we had reached the same spot, and there was the
road beneath us, steep and narrow, winding in long curves into the
valley. The four-in-hand was swishing down it as hard as the horses
could gallop.
“Thought so!” cried my uncle. “If he doesn’t brake, why should I? Now,
my darlings, one good spurt, and we’ll show them the colour of our
tailboard.”
We shot over the brow and flew madly down the hill with the great red
coach roaring and thundering before us. Already we were in her dust, so
that we could see nothing but the dim scarlet blur in the heart of it,
rocking and rolling, with its outline hardening at every stride. We
could hear the crack of the whip in front of us, and the shrill voice of
Lady Lade as she screamed to the horses. My uncle was very quiet, but
when I glanced up at him I saw that his lips were set and his eyes
shining, with just a little flush upon each pale cheek. There was no
need to urge on the mares, for they were already flying at a pace which
could neither be stopped nor controlled. Our leader’s head came abreast
of the off hind wheel, then of the off front one—then for a hundred yards
we did not gain an inch, and then with a spurt the bay leader was neck to
neck with the black wheeler, and our fore wheel within an inch of their
hind one.
“Dusty work!” said my uncle, quietly.
“Fan ’em, Jack! Fan ’em!” shrieked the lady.
He sprang up and lashed at his horses.
“Look out, Tregellis!” he shouted. “There’s a damnation spill coming for
somebody.”
We had got fairly abreast of them now, the rumps of the horses exactly
a-line and the fore wheels whizzing together. There was not six inches
to spare in the breadth of the road, and every instant I expected to feel
the jar of a locking wheel. But now, as we came out from the dust, we
could see what was ahead, and my uncle whistled between his teeth at the
sight.
Two hundred yards or so in front of us there was a bridge, with wooden
posts and rails upon either side. The road narrowed down at the point,
so that it was obvious that the two carriages abreast could not possibly
get over. One must give way to the other. Already our wheels were
abreast of their wheelers.
“I lead!” shouted my uncle. “You must pull them, Lade!”
“Not I!” he roared.
“No, by George!” shrieked her ladyship. “Fan ’em, Jack; keep on fanning
’em!”
It seemed to me that we were all going to eternity together. But my
uncle did the only thing that could have saved us. By a desperate effort
we might just clear the coach before reaching the mouth of the bridge.
He sprang up, and lashed right and left at the mares, who, maddened by
the unaccustomed pain, hurled themselves on in a frenzy. Down we
thundered together, all shouting, I believe, at the top of our voices in
the madness of the moment; but still we were drawing steadily away, and
we were almost clear of the leaders when we flew on to the bridge. I
glanced back at the coach, and I saw Lady Lade, with her savage little
white teeth clenched together, throw herself forward and tug with both
hands at the off-side reins.
“Jam them, Jack!” she cried. “Jam the—before they can pass.”
Had she done it an instant sooner we should have crashed against the
wood-work, carried it away, and been hurled into the deep gully below.
As it was, it was not the powerful haunch of the black leader which
caught our wheel, but the forequarter, which had not weight enough to
turn us from our course. I saw a red wet seam gape suddenly through the
black hair, and next instant we were flying alone down the road, whilst
the four-in-hand had halted, and Sir John and his lady were down in the
road together tending to the wounded horse.
“Easy now, my beauties!” cried my uncle, settling down into his seat
again, and looking back over his shoulder. “I could not have believed
that Sir John Lade would have been guilty of such a trick as pulling that
leader across. I do not permit a _mauvaise plaisanterie_ of that sort.
He shall hear from me to-night.”
“It was the lady,” said I.
My uncle’s brow cleared, and he began to laugh.
“It was little Letty, was it?” said he. “I might have known it. There’s
a touch of the late lamented Sixteen-string Jack about the trick. Well,
it is only messages of another kind that I send to a lady, so we’ll just
drive on our way, nephew, and thank our stars that we bring whole bones
over the Thames.”
We stopped at the Greyhound, at Croydon, where the two good little mares
were sponged and petted and fed, after which, at an easier pace, we made
our way through Norbury and Streatham. At last the fields grew fewer and
the walls longer. The outlying villas closed up thicker and thicker,
until their shoulders met, and we were driving between a double line of
houses with garish shops at the corners, and such a stream of traffic as
I had never seen, roaring down the centre. Then suddenly we were on a
broad bridge with a dark coffee-brown river flowing sulkily beneath it,
and bluff-bowed barges drifting down upon its bosom. To right and left
stretched a broken, irregular line of many-coloured houses winding along
either bank as far as I could see.
“That’s the House of Parliament, nephew,” said my uncle, pointing with
his whip, “and the black towers are Westminster Abbey. How do, your
Grace? How do? That’s the Duke of Norfolk—the stout man in blue upon
the swish-tailed mare. Now we are in Whitehall. There’s the Treasury on
the left, and the Horse Guards, and the Admiralty, where the stone
dolphins are carved above the gate.”
I had the idea, which a country-bred lad brings up with him, that London
was merely a wilderness of houses, but I was astonished now to see the
green slopes and the lovely spring trees showing between.
“Yes, those are the Privy Gardens,” said my uncle, “and there is the
window out of which Charles took his last step on to the scaffold. You
wouldn’t think the mares had come fifty miles, would you? See how _les
petites cheries_ step out for the credit of their master. Look at the
barouche, with the sharp-featured man peeping out of the window. That’s
Pitt, going down to the House. We are coming into Pall Mall now, and
this great building on the left is Carlton House, the Prince’s Palace.
There’s St. James’s, the big, dingy place with the clock, and the two
red-coated sentries before it. And here’s the famous street of the same
name, nephew, which is the very centre of the world, and here’s Jermyn
Street opening out of it, and finally, here’s my own little box, and we
are well under the five hours from Brighton Old Square.”
CHAPTER IX.
WATIER’S.
MY uncle’s house in Jermyn Street was quite a small one—five rooms and an
attic. “A man-cook and a cottage,” he said, “are all that a wise man
requires.” On the other hand, it was furnished with the neatness and
taste which belonged to his character, so that his most luxurious friends
found something in the tiny rooms which made them discontented with their
own sumptuous mansions. Even the attic, which had been converted into my
bedroom, was the most perfect little bijou attic that could possibly be
imagined. Beautiful and valuable knick-knacks filled every corner of
every apartment, and the house had become a perfect miniature museum
which would have delighted a virtuoso. My uncle explained the presence
of all these pretty things with a shrug of his shoulders and a wave of
his hands. “They are _des petites cadeaux_,” said he, “but it would be
an indiscretion for me to say more.”
We found a note from Ambrose waiting for us which increased rather than
explained the mystery of his disappearance.
“My dear Sir Charles Tregellis,” it ran, “it will ever be a subject of
regret to me that the force of circumstances should have compelled me to
leave your service in so abrupt a fashion, but something occurred during
our journey from Friar’s Oak to Brighton which left me without any
possible alternative. I trust, however, that my absence may prove to be
but a temporary one. The isinglass recipe for the shirt-fronts is in the
strong-box at Drummond’s Bank.—Yours obediently, AMBROSE.”
“Well, I suppose I must fill his place as best I can,” said my uncle,
moodily. “But how on earth could something have occurred to make him
leave me at a time when we were going full-trot down hill in my curricle?
I shall never find his match again either for chocolate or cravats. _Je
suis desolé_! But now, nephew, we must send to Weston and have you
fitted up. It is not for a gentleman to go to a shop, but for the shop
to come to the gentleman. Until you have your clothes you must remain
_en retraite_.”
The measuring was a most solemn and serious function, though it was
nothing to the trying-on two days later, when my uncle stood by in an
agony of apprehension as each garment was adjusted, he and Weston arguing
over every seam and lapel and skirt until I was dizzy with turning round
in front of them. Then, just as I had hoped that all was settled, in
came young Mr. Brummell, who promised to be an even greater exquisite
than my uncle, and the whole matter had to be thrashed out between them.
He was a good-sized man, this Brummell, with a long, fair face, light
brown hair, and slight sandy side-whiskers. His manner was languid, his
voice drawling, and while he eclipsed my uncle in the extravagance of his
speech, he had not the air of manliness and decision which underlay all
my kinsman’s affectations.
“Why, George,” cried my uncle, “I thought you were with your regiment.”
“I’ve sent in my papers,” drawled the other.
“I thought it would come to that.”
“Yes. The Tenth was ordered to Manchester, and they could hardly expect
me to go to a place like that. Besides, I found the major monstrous
rude.”
“How was that?”
“He expected me to know about his absurd drill, Tregellis, and I had
other things to think of, as you may suppose. I had no difficulty in
taking my right place on parade, for there was a trooper with a red nose
on a flea-bitten grey, and I had observed that my post was always
immediately in front of him. This saved a great deal of trouble. The
other day, however, when I came on parade, I galloped up one line and
down the other, but the deuce a glimpse could I get of that long nose of
his! Then, just as I was at my wits’ end, I caught sight of him, alone
at one side; so I formed up in front. It seems he had been put there to
keep the ground, and the major so far forgot himself as to say that I
knew nothing of my duties.”
My uncle laughed, and Brummell looked me up and down with his large,
intolerant eyes.
“These will do very passably,” said he. “Buff and blue are always very
gentlemanlike. But a sprigged waistcoat would have been better.”
“I think not,” said my uncle, warmly.
“My dear Tregellis, you are infallible upon a cravat, but you must allow
me the right of my own judgment upon vests. I like it vastly as it
stands, but a touch of red sprig would give it the finish that it needs.”
They argued with many examples and analogies for a good ten minutes,
revolving round me at the same time with their heads on one side and
their glasses to their eyes. It was a relief to me when they at last
agreed upon a compromise.
“You must not let anything I have said shake your faith in Sir Charles’s
judgment, Mr. Stone,” said Brummell, very earnestly.
I assured him that I should not.
“If you were my nephew, I should expect you to follow my taste. But you
will cut a very good figure as it is. I had a young cousin who came up
to town last year with a recommendation to my care. But he would take no
advice. At the end of the second week I met him coming down St. James’s
Street in a snuff-coloured coat cut by a country tailor. He bowed to me.
Of course I knew what was due to myself. I looked all round him, and
there was an end to his career in town. You are from the country, Mr.
Stone?”
“From Sussex, sir.”
“Sussex! Why, that is where I send my washing to. There is an excellent
clear-starcher living near Hayward’s Heath. I send my shirts two at a
time, for if you send more it excites the woman and diverts her
attention. I cannot abide anything but country washing. But I should be
vastly sorry to have to live there. What can a man find to do?”
“You don’t hunt, George?”
“When I do, it’s a woman. But surely you don’t go to hounds, Charles?”
“I was out with the Belvoir last winter.”
“The Belvoir! Did you hear how I smoked Rutland? The story has been in
the clubs this month past. I bet him that my bag would weigh more than
his. He got three and a half brace, but I shot his liver-coloured
pointer, so he had to pay. But as to hunting, what amusement can there
be in flying about among a crowd of greasy, galloping farmers? Every man
to his own taste, but Brookes’s window by day and a snug corner of the
macao table at Watier’s by night, give me all I want for mind and body.
You heard how I plucked Montague the brewer!”
“I have been out of town.”
“I had eight thousand from him at a sitting. ‘I shall drink your beer in
future, Mr. Brewer,’ said I. ‘Every blackguard in London does,’ said he.
It was monstrous impolite of him, but some people cannot lose with grace.
Well, I am going down to Clarges Street to pay Jew King a little of my
interest. Are you bound that way? Well, good-bye, then! I’ll see you
and your young friend at the club or in the Mall, no doubt,” and he
sauntered off upon his way.
“That young man is destined to take my place,” said my uncle, gravely,
when Brummell had departed. “He is quite young and of no descent, but he
has made his way by his cool effrontery, his natural taste, and his
extravagance of speech. There is no man who can be impolite in so
polished a fashion. He has a half-smile, and a way of raising his
eyebrows, for which he will be shot one of these mornings. Already his
opinion is quoted in the clubs as a rival to my own. Well, every man has
his day, and when I am convinced that mine is past, St. James’s Street
shall know me no more, for it is not in my nature to be second to any
man. But now, nephew, in that buff and blue suit you may pass anywhere;
so, if you please, we will step into my _vis-à-vis_, and I will show you
something of the town.”
How can I describe all that we saw and all that we did upon that lovely
spring day? To me it was as if I had been wafted to a fairy world, and
my uncle might have been some benevolent enchanter in a high-collared,
long-tailed coat, who was guiding me about in it. He showed me the
West-end streets, with the bright carriages and the gaily dressed ladies
and sombre-clad men, all crossing and hurrying and recrossing like an
ants’ nest when you turn it over with a stick. Never had I formed a
conception of such endless banks of houses, and such a ceaseless stream
of life flowing between. Then we passed down the Strand, where the crowd
was thicker than ever, and even penetrated beyond Temple Bar and into the
City, though my uncle begged me not to mention it, for he would not wish
it to be generally known. There I saw the Exchange and the Bank and
Lloyd’s Coffee House, with the brown-coated, sharp-faced merchants and
the hurrying clerks, the huge horses and the busy draymen. It was a very
different world this from that which we had left in the West—a world of
energy and of strength, where there was no place for the listless and the
idle. Young as I was, I knew that it was here, in the forest of merchant
shipping, in the bales which swung up to the warehouse windows, in the
loaded waggons which roared over the cobblestones, that the power of
Britain lay. Here, in the City of London, was the taproot from which
Empire and wealth and so many other fine leaves had sprouted. Fashion
and speech and manners may change, but the spirit of enterprise within
that square mile or two of land must not change, for when it withers all
that has grown from it must wither also.
We lunched at Stephen’s, the fashionable inn in Bond Street, where I saw
a line of tilburys and saddle-horses, which stretched from the door to
the further end of the street. And thence we went to the Mall in St.
James’s Park, and thence to Brookes’s, the great Whig club, and thence
again to Watier’s, where the men of fashion used to gamble. Everywhere I
met the same sort of men, with their stiff figures and small waists, all
showing the utmost deference to my uncle, and for his sake an easy
tolerance of me. The talk was always such as I had already heard at the
Pavilion: talk of politics, talk of the King’s health, talk of the
Prince’s extravagance, of the expected renewal of war, of horse-racing,
and of the ring. I saw, too, that eccentricity was, as my uncle had told
me, the fashion; and if the folk upon the Continent look upon us even to
this day as being a nation of lunatics, it is no doubt a tradition handed
down from the time when the only travellers whom they were likely to see
were drawn from the class which I was now meeting.
It was an age of heroism and of folly. On the one hand soldiers,
sailors, and statesmen of the quality of Pitt, Nelson, and afterwards
Wellington, had been forced to the front by the imminent menace of
Buonaparte. We were great in arms, and were soon also to be great in
literature, for Scott and Byron were in their day the strongest forces in
Europe. On the other hand, a touch of madness, real or assumed, was a
passport through doors which were closed to wisdom and to virtue. The
man who could enter a drawing-room walking upon his hands, the man who
had filed his teeth that he might whistle like a coachman, the man who
always spoke his thoughts aloud and so kept his guests in a quiver of
apprehension, these were the people who found it easy to come to the
front in London society. Nor could the heroism and the folly be kept
apart, for there were few who could quite escape the contagion of the
times. In an age when the Premier was a heavy drinker, the Leader of the
Opposition a libertine, and the Prince of Wales a combination of the two,
it was hard to know where to look for a man whose private and public
characters were equally lofty. At the same time, with all its faults it
was a _strong_ age, and you will be fortunate if in your time the country
produces five such names as Pitt, Fox, Scott, Nelson, and Wellington.
It was in Watier’s that night, seated by my uncle on one of the red
velvet settees at the side of the room, that I had pointed out to me some
of those singular characters whose fame and eccentricities are even now
not wholly forgotten in the world. The long, many-pillared room, with
its mirrors and chandeliers, was crowded with full-blooded, loud-voiced
men-about-town, all in the same dark evening dress with white silk
stockings, cambric shirt-fronts, and little, flat chapeau-bras under
their arms.
“The acid-faced old gentleman with the thin legs is the Marquis of
Queensberry,” said my uncle. “His chaise was driven nineteen miles in an
hour in a match against the Count Taafe, and he sent a message fifty
miles in thirty minutes by throwing it from hand to hand in a
cricket-ball. The man he is talking to is Sir Charles Bunbury, of the
Jockey Club, who had the Prince warned off the Heath at Newmarket on
account of the in-and-out riding of Sam Chifney, his jockey. There’s
Captain Barclay going up to them now. He knows more about training than
any man alive, and he has walked ninety miles in twenty-one hours. You
have only to look at his calves to see that Nature built him for it.
There’s another walker there, the man with a flowered vest standing near
the fireplace. That is Buck Whalley, who walked to Jerusalem in a long
blue coat, top-boots, and buckskins.”
“Why did he do that, sir?” I asked, in astonishment.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“It was his humour,” said he. “He walked into society through it, and
that was better worth reaching than Jerusalem. There’s Lord Petersham,
the man with the beaky nose. He always rises at six in the evening, and
he has laid down the finest cellar of snuff in Europe. It was he who
ordered his valet to put half a dozen of sherry by his bed and call him
the day after to-morrow. He’s talking to Lord Panmure, who can take his
six bottles of claret and argue with a bishop after it. The lean man
with the weak knees is General Scott who lives upon toast and water and
has won £200,000 at whist. He is talking to young Lord Blandford who
gave £1800 for a Boccaccio the other day. Evening, Dudley!”
“Evening, Tregellis!” An elderly, vacant-looking man had stopped before
us and was looking me up and down.
“Some young cub Charlie Tregellis has caught in the country,” he
murmured. “He doesn’t look as if he would be much credit to him. Been
out of town, Tregellis?”
“For a few days.”
“Hem!” said the man, transferring his sleepy gaze to my uncle. “He’s
looking pretty bad. He’ll be going into the country feet foremost some
of these days if he doesn’t pull up!” He nodded, and passed on.
“You mustn’t look so mortified, nephew,” said my uncle, smiling. “That’s
old Lord Dudley, and he has a trick of thinking aloud. People used to be
offended, but they take no notice of him now. It was only last week,
when he was dining at Lord Elgin’s, that he apologized to the company for
the shocking bad cooking. He thought he was at his own table, you see.
It gives him a place of his own in society. That’s Lord Harewood he has
fastened on to now. Harewood’s peculiarity is to mimic the Prince in
everything. One day the Prince hid his queue behind the collar of his
coat, so Harewood cut his off, thinking that they were going out of
fashion. Here’s Lumley, the ugly man. ‘_L’homme laid_’ they called him
in Paris. The other one is Lord Foley—they call him No. 11, on account
of his thin legs.”
“There is Mr. Brummell, sir,” said I.
“Yes, he’ll come to us presently. That young man has certainly a future
before him. Do you observe the way in which he looks round the room from
under his drooping eyelids, as though it were a condescension that he
should have entered it? Small conceits are intolerable, but when they
are pushed to the uttermost they become respectable. How do, George?”
“Have you heard about Vereker Merton?” asked Brummell, strolling up with
one or two other exquisites at his heels. “He has run away with his
father’s woman-cook, and actually married her.”
“What did Lord Merton do?”
“He congratulated him warmly, and confessed that he had always underrated
his intelligence. He is to live with the young couple, and make a
handsome allowance on condition that the bride sticks to her old duties.
By the way, there was a rumour that you were about to marry, Tregellis.”
“I think not,” answered my uncle. “It would be a mistake to overwhelm
one by attentions which are a pleasure to many.”
“My view, exactly, and very neatly expressed,” cried Brummell. “Is it
fair to break a dozen hearts in order to intoxicate one with rapture?
I’m off to the Continent next week.”
“Bailiffs?” asked one of his companions.
“Too bad, Pierrepoint. No, no; it is pleasure and instruction combined.
Besides, it is necessary to go to Paris for your little things, and if
there is a chance of the war breaking out again, it would be well to lay
in a supply.”
“Quite right,” said my uncle, who seemed to have made up his mind to
outdo Brummell in extravagance. “I used to get my sulphur-coloured
gloves from the Palais Royal. When the war broke out in ’93 I was cut
off from them for nine years. Had it not been for a lugger which I
specially hired to smuggle them, I might have been reduced to English
tan.”
“The English are excellent at a flat-iron or a kitchen poker, but
anything more delicate is beyond them.”
“Our tailors are good,” cried my uncle, “but our stuffs lack taste and
variety. The war has made us more _rococo_ than ever. It has cut us off
from travel, and there is nothing to match travel for expanding the mind.
Last year, for example, I came upon some new waist-coating in the Square
of San Marco, at Venice. It was yellow, with the prettiest little twill
of pink running through it. How could I have seen it had I not
travelled? I brought it back with me, and for a time it was all the
rage.”
“The Prince took it up.”
“Yes, he usually follows my lead. We dressed so alike last year that we
were frequently mistaken for each other. It tells against me, but so it
was. He often complains that things do not look as well upon him as upon
me, but how can I make the obvious reply? By the way, George, I did not
see you at the Marchioness of Dover’s ball.”
“Yes, I was there, and lingered for a q
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