Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (462 page)

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 Mail 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!”