Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (345 page)

CHAPTER IV
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MR. JUSTICE STARELEIGH, having bolted an immense plateful of venison and cherry-sauce, and having imbibed a full half-bottle of French brandy, struck his enormous fist upon the table, and addressed to Mr. Roland Bettesworth, who sat opposite him, the words —

“Sir Robert will drag us all to the devil. To hell with Walpole and peace!”

Mr. Roland laughed, and raised his glass.

“Why, to hell with him with all my heart!” he repeated.

Mr. Bestwell, who in spite of his diminutive stature was a trencherman even more formidable than his brother Justice, laid down his knife and fork to say—”I am with the young bloods. This peace is ruining us. We have had peace now this twenty year, if I do not mistake. When I was young it was different; it was all wars, bloody wars. Now we rot and moulder and grow fat. Why, I could lead a regiment myself!”

Mr. Roland was very concerned to keep Mr. Williamson at least half sober. And whilst Mr. Williamson was reaching over with a candle to singe the hind wig of Mr. Stareleigh, Mr. Roland carefully poured fresh water into his brandy.

“Aye!” Mr. Bestwell commented, “when I was young — not that I am so very old — I could singe a wig with any blade. Why, I could do it still. I will wager that I singe both your wigs before we rise from the table. I am such a one as few others be. I should be a mohock, there should be no man safe where I should pass.”

“Aye,” Mr. Roland said, “we could do with you well in the Town of London.’Tis grown a deadly quiet place, with too little of frolic and fuss.” Mr. Stareleigh exclaimed once more: “To hell with Sir Robert Walpole, who will give us all wooden shoes!” and then fell forward on his plate.

“Aye,” Mr. Bestwell repeated, “Sir Robert will give us all wooden shoes. For whilst here we moulder the French make preparations against us, and exercise themselves in all the arts of war. I have long been certain of this, and if I come to London I will make Sir Robert and the Ministers dance to the tune of ‘The Shaking of the Sheets,’ for I have warned many, and all and sundry, that this peace would be the ruin of us. What are Frenchmen for but to be warred upon, and Ministers but to find occasions for war? And here you find flat proof of what I have preached. Sir, there is not one man in this country that would not have a war, and this plaguy Minister is all for peace and the excise.”

Mr. Stareleigh attempted to rise from his plate and to shout “To hell with the excise!” but, his weight being very considerable, he thought better of the attempt. He babbled the words to the tablecloth; and, one of his servants having loosened his neckcloth, he slumbered contentedly in that position, which he preferred to one under the table. The room was small and panelled. It reeked with the smell of candles, of meats, and of warm brandy-and-water. Mr. Bestwell grew more excited, more marshal, more patriotic. He said that the fact that the Duke of Berwick, with his Jacobite forces, had reached that neighbourhood, was proof of the justness of the warnings he had so frequently given, that ever since the treaty of Münster the French had been preparing forces, and the Jacobites gathering together in France. And when Mr. Roland questioned him as to his having any doubts about the identity of the Duke, the little fiery man exclaimed that to doubt this at all was to be guilty of treason, since he, Mr. Bestwell himself, had so frequently prophesied this incursion. Moreover, it was an act of Providence, for the Ministers must now declare war upon France — and it would be a very bloody war. And when Mr. Roland Bettesworth suggested that the Duke of Berwick, whom he had once seen, must be a man very much older; or, in the event of his death, which had been for some months expected, his heir must be a much younger man; Mr. Bestwell, with an air of friendly superiority, — for he was by this time of opinion that he was in the finest company in the world, — Mr. Bestwell insisted that Mr. Roland did not know the Jacobites. They were men of the most devilish ingenuities, so that they could counterfeit their faces and forge their statures. Nay, they could grow humps and make one leg shorter than the other. And this was for the purpose of plotting and spying in His Majesty’s dominion. And, unconsciously, Mr. Bestwell aided Mr. Roland in his designs, for being very convinced that the occasion was one of great peril, and called for watchfulness on the parts of magistrates and the like, he heartily concurred in Mr. Roland’s plan that they should make a sober night of it. Thus, after the cloth was drawn, no spirits and but a bottle and a half of claret a man were put upon the board. Mr. Bestwell called for a pipe and tobacco, and continued his orationing. The atmosphere grew more cloudy, Mr. Williamson sang ballads to himself, Mr. Roland waited. He learned that the Justices intended next morning to send messengers to the Privy Council to say that they had taken the Duke of Berwick, and to ask whether they should send him under guard to London or whether they should hang him upon the spot. Mr. Bestwell was of opinion that the Privy Council would desire the former alternative, and in that case he would, himself, conduct the Duke to London, where he expected great honours, the very least of which would be that the King should make him a Minister of State.

It wanted ten minutes of midnight when Major Penruddock threw the door open. He was a little in his cups, having freely tasted of the wine at Ashford Manor-house. His face was flushed, he laughed jovially and struck his high boots with his riding-whip.

“Ho!” he exclaimed, “we have taken a very notable woman prisoner, and the Jacobites are in retreat towards the town of Dover.”

Mr. Justice Bestwell started to his feet. “In retreat!” he exclaimed. “By God, I will pursue them!”

The Major looked at him with a pleasantly sardonic smile. “Pursue them!” he exclaimed. “Egad! a famous notion. You have at most a hundred men, and they should be twoscore thousand.”

“Sir,” Mr. Bestwell exclaimed, — and by this time, through having observed the rule of sobriety, he was no more than three parts in liquor,—”I would have you know that a hundred of our men of Kent—”

“Sir,” the Major replied, “God forbid that you should think me discouraging to you in this most excellent scheme. On the contrary, I am most anxious that you should begone, only I say take with you every man that you can take, — not that I doubt your personal valour, but that you may do the more bloody execution upon those flying traitors.”

In his martial enthusiasm the little Justice had already drawn his sword. “Gentlemen!” he exclaimed, “for our credit I would the rather have fewer men or none, so the fewer would share in my glory; but what you say of dispatching as many of these traitors as may be has great weight with me.”

“Mr. Bestwell,” the Major said, “I advise you to draw off every man from this town. For myself, I wish I could be of your company, but my plain duty is to stay and guard the prisoners we have taken. But I warrant you this, that you leave this town of Ashford in my safe keeping whilst you sally forth. And you may deliver over to me the keys of your jail — nay, it is your duty to deliver over to me the keys of your jail — so that you may take with you the jail wards, who I have observed to be lusty men and well armed with pikes and lanterns.”

Mr. Justice Bestwell, in whom the martial instinct stirred to a preternatural degree, he having avowed all his life that his sole passion was to be up and at them, and to paint the fields with gore, earning blood-besmirched laurels, — Mr. Justice Bestwell, to his credit, wasted, a minute upon attempting to recover his brother Justice from his stupor, but Mr. Stareleigh lay across the tablecloth in an oblivion that was to him an Elysium more fine than could be found in whole groves of laurel bushes; and Mr. Bestwell, pulling his hat over his eyes and brandishing his sword forward as if inciting troops into the smoke of battle, rushed from the room.

Major Penruddock burst into peals of laughter. He bent double, he raised himself again, and his face was the colour of his scarlet coat.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I cannot but laugh.”

“Oh, laugh till you split your guts,” Mr. Jack Williamson said, “and there will be the less loss.”

“To think,” Major Penruddock continued, “of those poor devils pursuing into the pitchy marshlands — and it’s a damned cold, inclement temperature, and blacker than a closed wine-closet — to think of them pursuing in those quagmires a foe that hath no existence.”

“Then there are no Jacobites,” Mr. Roland said. “Jacobites!” the Major laughed. “Why, there have been none this twenty years! They are gone and forgotten. If it had not been that Mr. Justice Bestwell had this bee in his bonnet no such thought would ever have come into my head, and then your brother must have been arrested as a mere highwayman instead of as the Duke of Berwick.”

“My brother will be infinitely obliged to you,” Mr. Roland said.

“Why,” the Major laughed, “he has cause to be; and you too, for, since we had to put you all out of the way, I think it has been monstrous delicately done.”

“Why, for delicacy,” Mr. Roland said, “‘tis the prettiest piece of perjury I have ever seen.”

The Major bowed to him. “I have never myself designed anything better,” he said.

“Then it is to you alone that we are indebted?” Mr. Roland asked.

“Oh, three heads are better than one,” he got his answer. “Mr. Chuckel was very desirous that your brother should be put out of the way, and was ready to act the common informer. Mr. Harcourt remembered, what he has a trick of forgetting, that he is of His Majesty’s Privy Council, and so of authority over these Justices. And he was ready to aver that Mr. Bettesworth was a sneak thief. But I had chanced to meet these Justices in the Court Hall, where they were dispatching of harlots and sectarians in clean defiance of the law, but to the greater glory of God. And finding that Mr. Justice Bestwell had this whimsey of Jacobites and French, and Dukes created by James Stewart, I was seized with this monstrous ridiculous idea of having him laid by the heels for the Duke of Berwick, though for the life of me I do not know what make of man this Duke may be, nor how old he is, nor what he looks like. But it is all one; and I have never seen Justices so glad even when they were sentencing poachers to the gallows.”

“And you have done all this to gain three hours with Lydia Chuckel,” Mr. Roland said; “and Lydia Chuckel is now in your possession?”

“Sir,” the Major said, “I have done all this to gain three hours with Lydia Chuckel, and Lydia Chuckel is now in the possession of Mr. Harcourt and myself, being well out upon the London road and surrounded by a strong body of horsemen.”

Mr. Roland stood wide-eyed, and at last saluted the Major’s smirk of triumph with an extraordinary peal of laughter. Where Major Penruddock had once bent double. Mr. Roland did it six times, and at last, staggering back on a chair, he shook till he was exhausted.

“Why, thank God I am not a miller!” he said. The Major, whose jocularity had given way to some imitation, asked, “Sir, even why?”

“Because,” Mr. Roland answered, “you would see so far through my millstones.”

There had come at that moment into the Major’s head a consideration that he had not foreseen. It occurred to him that he had taken no precautions to secure Lydia Chuckel in case the Honourable Mr. Harcourt should desire to make an even further rape of her. She was at that moment upon the road, with a rendezvous appointed at the village of Great Chart. And it suddenly occurred to him that Mr. Harcourt might steal a march, and might progress further, or might deflect into the dark and unsearchable recesses of the Weald that lay very little to the south. It had been his intention to disable Mr. Harcourt and to steal Lydia from him before they could reach London. In that way Mr. Harcourt would have lost his bet to Sir Francis Dashwood, with whom the Major was in alliance, and the Major would procure for himself a desirable mistress, and one calculated, in all the circumstances, to do him credit, and to be for a season the cynosure of all the Town. It was, therefore, under the influence of this unpleasant reflection that the Major spoke with some acerbity.

“Mr. Roland Bettesworth,” he said, “I have no leisure to bandy words with you, and the laugh is all on my side, since, by my action, your brother has lost twenty thousand pounds to me and others. And he, and you his assistants, have become thè laughing-stocks of the Town, together with these Justices, and some others. And I would recommend you to fetch your brother out from the jail and to addressing himself to hanging of Mr. Chuckel, who would be all the better for it. For this is a task better adapted to the talents of Mr. Bettesworth than the mingling in the society of his equals.”

“Sir,” Mr. Roland said, “my brother keeps his money in a very strong box, and he laughs best who laughs the last.”