Rodney Stone, Arthur Conan Doyle [the best books of all time .TXT] 📗

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?

p. 98CHAPTER 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