‘Alas! Shall you give me a sharp set-down when you come back from your adventure?’
‘Very likely,’ said Gilly, putting down his empty glass.
Wragby came into the room to set the dishes on the table. His master told him that he need not wait, and the Duke said, as he took his seat: ‘How snug this is! Shall I carve this bird? I can, you know! My uncle says a man should know how to carve anything that is set before him. I can shoe a horse, too. Now, why do you suppose he should have thought I must learn such a thing as that? He is the strangest creature! How angry he will be with me when he hears what I have been about! It makes me shake like a blancmanger only to think of it.’
‘Amongst the many odd fancies that come into my head, Adolphus,’ said his cousin dryly, ‘is the fancy – I have often been conscious of it! – that in spite of your meekness you do not shake like a blancmanger before my father!’
‘No, of course I don’t: he is a great deal too kind to me. But I do not like it when he storms at me, and arguing gives me the headache. I always try to slip away, and being so small and unremarkable I can in general manage to do so,’ said the Duke serenely.
Gideon smiled. ‘Your elusive ways are well known to me. And, by God, it is just what you are doing, now I come to think of it! Don’t try to gammon me with your hints of adventures to be embarked on! You are merely slipping away to rather more purpose than usual. What lying story have you fobbed your devoted servants off with?’
The Duke looked up with rather a guilty twinkle in his eyes. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t,’ he confessed. ‘You cannot slip away unobserved if you tell people you mean to go!’
‘Gilly, for God’s sake – ! Have you left them without a word?’ exclaimed Gideon.
The Duke nodded. For a moment Gideon sat staring at him with knit brows. Then he burst out laughing. ‘It’s the maddest quirk I ever heard tell of, and who – who would have guessed that you had it in you to do it?’ he said. ‘Adolphus, I no longer despair of you! You will undoubtedly set your whole household by the ears, from my father down to your lowliest footman, and it will do them a great deal of good! Don’t come back too soon! Let them learn their lesson past fear of forgetting it: you may then enjoy some peace hereafter. Fill up your glass! We’ll have a toast to your emancipation. No daylights, no heel-taps!’
The Duke obeyed, and pushed the bottle across the table. ‘No, we shall drink to the adventures of Mr Dash!’ he said.
‘Anything you please!’ grinned his cousin, and tossed off his wine with a flourish.
The Duke followed suit. As he lowered his glass, the ring on his finger caught his eye. He drew it off. ‘Keep that for me!’ he said, handing it to Gideon. ‘It quite ruins my disguise!’
Eight
The Duke did not enjoy a very restful night’s repose in his room at the Saracen’s Head. The feather-bed upon which he twisted and turned seemed to be composed largely of lumps; and no one else in the inn appeared to go to bed at all. The noise in the tap-room went on until far into the night; doors banged; footsteps clumped down the passages; and an occasional clatter suggested that kitchenmaids enjoyed no respite from their labours. He was also very much too hot, the bed being piled high with blankets, and having been warmed for him by a chambermaid who was directed to take up a warming-pan for the Quality in No. 27 as soon as he arrived in his hackney from Albany.
He had remained with his cousin until an advanced hour, and was consequently tired when he reached the inn. If he had owned the truth to himself, which he resolutely refused to do, he would not have been ill-pleased to have found Nettlebed awaiting him, ready to have unpacked his valise, pulled off his boots, and poured out hot water for him to wash his face and hands in. His bedchamber, which was small, and rather stuffy, seemed oddly friendless when he entered it, and was lit by only one candle, which was set down on the dressing-table by the boots who escorted him upstairs. Had Nettlebed been with him, he would have found his familiar belongings already laid out for him, his own sheets upon the bed, and – but had Nettlebed been with him he would not, of course, have been staying at an inn of this class, but at some posting-house which despised stage-coach travellers, and catered only for the Nobility and Gentry. The Duke firmly banished Nettlebed from his mind, and put himself to bed.
It naturally did not occur to him that he must ask to be called in the morning, but fortunately the boots took his measure, and suggested to him that he should state the hour at which he would wish to have a jug of shaving-water brought up to him. In the event, he underestimated the time it would take him to shave, dress himself, and pack his valise, and it was consequently in a somewhat flurried and breathless state that he ran down to the coffee-room to partake of a hasty breakfast. As he had forgotten to set his top-boots outside his door, these had not been cleaned, and looked, to his fastidious eye, very dull and dusty. But when he came out of the coffee-room into the yard, he found that amongst the many irrelevant persons assembled there was a shoe-black, of whose services he instantly availed himself.
While this individual laboured upon his boots, he had leisure to observe the activities going on around him, and was so much entertained that any regrets he might have had that he had embarked on such an impulsive adventure left him.
The Highflyer, upon which he was to travel, had been dragged into the yard, and was being loaded with all manner of baggage. All the heavy cases were hoisted on to the roof, and the Duke’s eyes widened as corded trunk after corded trunk was piled up, until it seemed as though the coach could scarcely escape an overturn at the first bend in the road, so top-heavy had it become. While this was going forward, several persons were assisting the guard to stow into the boot all manner of smaller packages, including the Duke’s valise. When this was full, all the articles which still littered the yard, such as a basket of fish, several bandboxes, and some parcels done up in paper, were lashed to the hind axle-tree, or to the lamp-irons.
Meanwhile, the coachman, a burly gentleman in a multiplicity of coats, and with an enormous nosegay in his buttonhole, stood at one of the doors leading into the inn enjoying a flirtation with a housemaid. He paid no heed to the equipage he was about to drive until the ostlers led out from the stables a team of chestnuts, when he ran his eye critically over them, and delivered himself of various scraps of advice and instruction, which included an alarming command to take care not to let the near-wheeler touch the roller-bolt.
The passengers were most of them engaged in arguments with the guard, and in fretfully waving away half the street-cries of London, who, for reasons which the Duke was unable to fathom, had assembled in the yard for the purpose of offering travellers every imaginable comfort upon their journey, from Holland socks, at only four shillings the pair, to hot spiced gingerbread. He had himself been obliged several times to refuse a rat-trap, a bag of oranges, and a paper of pins. One or two of the travellers, notably a thin man, muffled in a greatcoat, muffler, and a plaid shawl, seemed inclined to be querulous; and two elderly ladies were fast driving the guard to distraction by their repeated and shrill enquiries as to the exact location of a number of bandboxes and string-bags. Two of the gentlemen proposing to travel had not found the time to shave; and another was engaged in an acrimonious altercation with the jarvey who had driven him to the inn in a hackney.
The horses having been poled-up, the coachman took a regretful leave of the housemaid and rolled into the centre of the yard, casting an indulgent eye over his way-bill. The Duke thrust a silver coin into the shoe-black’s hand, and mounted on to his seat on the roof; the thin man besought the coachman to assure him that the near-wheeler was not an arrant kicker; the two elderly ladies were cast into a flutter of agitation; and the guard warned everyone to make haste, as they were about to be off, and the Highflyer didn’t wait for no one.
The coachman, having cast an experienced eye over his cattle, and warned an ostler in corduroy br
eeches and a greasy plush waistcoat not to take off the twitch from the young ’oss’s nose until he gave him the word, crammed the way-bill into his pocket, and mounted ponderously on to his very uncomfortable box-seat, and gathered up the reins. He was apparently contemptuous of the passengers, for, having taken his whip in his hand, he commanded the ostlers to let ’em go, without troubling himself to cast more than a casual glance behind. A brief recommendation to the passengers to look out for themselves was all the notice he deigned to bestow upon them; and it was left to the guard to warn them to mind their heads as the coach passed under the archway into the narrow street.
The morning was damp and misty, and the Duke was rather sorry that he had not had the forethought to provide himself with a rug. But the coachman, who, after a sidelong scrutiny, had decided that he would be good for half a guinea, assured him genially that the day was going to be a rare fine one by the time they reached Islington Green.
While the coach wended its way through the London streets, the coachman was too much taken up with avoiding collision with market-carts, and occasional droves of cattle that were still coming into town, to have leisure for conversation, but when they began to draw out of the Metropolis, he responded to the incessant fire of nervous questions from the thin man, who was seated just behind the Duke, saying with great good-humour that he had worked a coach for thirty years, and never had an upset. The thin man said severely that if he should attempt to race any other coach encountered upon the road he should report him to his proprietor; and informed the company at large that it was his usual practice to travel upon the Mail, in which excellent service armed guards were provided, and the dragsmen very strictly watched for any infringement of the rules. The coachman favoured the Duke with a wink, and began to tell a number of hair-raising stories about the terrible accidents met with by mail-coachmen, all of whom, he asserted, raced one another with an utter indifference to the safety or comfort of their passengers. And as for the guards provided by the Post Office, why, he could tell the thin man that time was when not a highwayman upon the road as was a highwayman would have failed to have had a touch at the mails.
The first advertised stage on the road was Barnet, where those passengers who had not yet breakfasted would be allowed fifteen minutes in which to eat and drink what they could; but when the turnpike at Islington was passed, and the tall elms on the green came into sight, the coachman reined-in. From the number of coaches standing outside the Peacock Inn, or pulling away from it, it seemed that this halt was customary. An ostler shouted out the name of the coach as it drew up; a man came hurrying out of the inn, buttoning up his coat, and clutching a carpet-bag in one hand; and a woman with a shawl drawn over her head entered into negotiations with the guard for the delivery of two ducks at some point farther along the road. The thin man said suspiciously that he dared say the man with the carpet-bag was not on the way-bill; but his neighbour, a more tolerant man, retorted that a bit of shouldering hurt nobody. This led the coachman into a bitter dissertation on the ways of informers, who, if he was to be believed, lurked at every point on the road, spying on honest coachmen, and trying to snatch the bread from their mouths. The Duke responded sympathetically, and the business with the beshawled woman being by this time concluded, the coach set off again, passing the village pound, where a solitary cow lowed, and a small shop which offered in large lettering to beaver old hats.
The Holloway road was soon reached, and gave the coachman the opportunity of curdling the thin man’s blood with a series of reminiscences of all the desperate characters who had ever frequented it.
‘Was it not on this stretch that Grimaldi was once robbed?’ asked the Duke, who, as a small boy, had been regaled with all these stories.
‘Ah, that it was!’ nodded the coachman approvingly. ‘And only ten or so years ago! But ven they took his vatch, d’ye see, it had his phiz drawed on it, a-singing of “Me and my Neddy,” and they gave it to him back again, because he was werry well-liked.’
‘I saw him once,’ the Duke said. ‘At Sadler’s Wells, I think it was. I remember he made me laugh very much.’
‘Vell, and so he would do, sir, seeing as that was his lay, in a manner of speaking. And how far am I to have the pleasure of carrying of you, sir?’
‘Only to Baldock,’ the Duke replied.
The coachman shook his head, and said that it was a pity, as there were few stretches of road this side of Biggleswade where he would care to run the risk of handing over the reins to one who, he clearly perceived, was fair itching to tool the coach. The thin man, who overheard this, instantly raised such a storm of protest that the Duke felt obliged to set his mind at rest, and assure him that he had no desire to take the reins. The tolerant man, who seemed to have taken a dislike to his neighbour, gave his dispassionate opinion of spoilsports in general, and Friday-faced ones in particular; and a consequential gentleman embarked on a long story about a spirited team of blood-horses which he was in the habit of driving.
When Finchley Common, with all its lurking dangers, had been safely passed, most of the passengers were feeling too sharp-set to think of much beyond the breakfast awaiting them in Barnet; and when the coach drove into the yard of the inn at Barnet, nearly everyone hurried into the coffee-room, where a couple of over-driven waiters were running about with piled trays, and mechanical cries of ‘Coming directly, sir!’
The Duke had consumed little more than a running banquet at the Saracen’s Head, but he did not feel inclined to join in the scramble for coffee and ham, and instead wandered a little way up the street to stretch his legs. On his previous journeys to the north, he had changed horses at the Red Lion, but this noted house did not condescend to stage-coaches, although its landlord resorted to some extremely low stratagems to snatch custom from his hated rival at the Green Man, farther up the street. It was not an unknown thing for his ostlers to rush out into the road to intercept some private carriage whose owner had no notion of changing horses, and to drag it into the yard, and forcibly to provide a fresh pair for it. The Duke had the good fortune to witness a spirited bout of fisticuffs between two of the yellow-jacketed post-boys hired by the Red Lion against three blue-habited ones from the Green Man; and watched with amused appreciation the efforts of an old gentleman in a chaise-and-pair to convince the ostlers of the Red Lion that since he was only travelling as far as to Welwyn he stood in no need of fresh horses.
When he returned to the coach, and climbed again on to the roof, the Duke found that everyone but the coachman, who had been regaled in the yard with strong drink and flattery, was in a ruffled frame of mind. Even the tolerant man said that to be asked to pay the full price for breakfast when one had had barely time to swallow two scalding mouthfuls of coffee, and had been unable to eat the ham for want of a knife and fork, was a scandalous state of affairs which ought to be looked to.
The Duke had long since discovered that riding on the roof of a stage-coach did not agree with his constitution. It had held the amusement of novelty for a few miles, but the swaying and lurching, added as they were to a very uncomfortable seat, soon made even the coachman’s instructive conversation pall upon him. His head had begun to ache; he had never, he remembered, been a good traveller. Baldock seemed to be a very long way off; and by the time Stevenage was reached, and the coachman attempted to lure him into making a bet as to which of the famous Six Hills were the longest distance apart, he refused to humour him, merely replying wearily: ‘The first and the last. I learned that when I was still in short-coats.’
The coachman was disappointed in him, for this time-honoured catch was generally good for a drink at the next halt. He began to think the box-seat passenger a mean-spirited young man, but revised his opinion when, upon setting him down outside the White Horse at Baldock, he received a guinea from him. He decided then that the Duke was half-flash, and half-foolish, and was sorry to be seeing the last of him.
The guard h
aving unearthed the Duke’s valise from the recesses of the boot, his Grace was left standing with it at his feet in the road, waiting for someone to run out and carry it into the inn.
But it appeared that inns patronised by stage-coach travellers were not staffed by servants falling over themselves to wait upon guests, so the Duke was obliged to pick up the valise, and to carry it into the inn himself.
The front door opened into a passage, leading at the back of the premises into a lobby, from which the stairs rose to an upper floor. The coffee-room and the tap-room both gave on to the passage, the former of these being an old-fashioned apartment with only one table, which ran its length.
The Duke set down his valise, and as he did so a door opened at the back of the house, and a stout landlady issued forth. She greeted the Duke civilly, but sharply, saying: ‘Good-day, sir, and what may I do for you?’
‘I should like to hire a room, if you please,’ said the Duke, with his gentle dignity.
Her eyes ran over him. ‘Yes, sir. How long would you be staying, if I may ask?’
‘I am not perfectly sure. A day or two, perhaps.’
Her quick scrutiny having taken in every detail of the quiet elegance which characterised his dress, she directed her gaze to his face. She seemed to like what she saw there, and allowed her features to relax their severity. She said, still briskly, but in a tone that held a hint of motherliness: ‘I see, sir. A nice front bedchamber you would like, and a private parlour, I daresay. You won’t care to be sitting in that noisy coffee-room.’