Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (325 page)

What would you have?  It was not the wisest thing in the world to buy a chaise within a dozen miles of my uncle’s house; but in this way I got my horses for the next stage.  And by any other it appeared that I should have to wait.  Accordingly I paid the money down — perhaps twenty pounds too much, though it was certainly a well-made and well-appointed vehicle — ordered it round in half an hour, and proceeded to refresh myself with breakfast.

The table to which I sat down occupied the recess of a bay-window, and commanded a view of the front of the inn, where I continued to be amused by the successive departures of travellers — the fussy and the offhand, the niggardly and the lavish — all exhibiting their different characters in that diagnostic moment of the farewell: some escorted to the stirrup or the chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids and the waiters almost in a body, others moving off under a cloud, without human countenance.  In the course of this I became interested in one for whom this ovation began to assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the under-servants, but the barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the postmaster himself, crowding about the steps to speed his departure.  I was aware, at the same time, of a good deal of merriment, as though the traveller were a man of a ready wit, and not too dignified to air it in that society.  I leaned forward with a lively curiosity; and the next moment I had blotted myself behind the teapot.  The popular traveller had turned to wave a farewell; and behold! he was no other than my cousin Alain.  It was a change of the sharpest from the angry, pallid man I had seen at Amersham Place.  Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension.  He reminded me at once of a royal duke, or an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman.  A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the road to London.

I breathed again.  I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how lucky I had been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the hostelry door, and what a fine occasion of meeting my cousin I had lost by the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise!  The next moment I remembered that there was a waiter present.  No doubt but he must have observed me when I crouched behind the breakfast equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on this unusual and undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I should do something to remove the impression.

‘Waiter!’ said I, ‘that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just drove off, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir: Viscount Carwell we calls him,’ he replied.

‘Ah, I thought as much,’ said I.  ‘Well, well, damn all these Frenchmen, say I!’

‘You may say so indeed, sir,’ said the waiter.  ‘They ain’t not to say in the same field with our ‘ome-raised gentry.’

‘Nasty tempers?’ I suggested.

‘Beas’ly temper, sir, the Viscount ‘ave,’ said the waiter with feeling.  ‘Why, no longer agone than this morning, he was sitting breakfasting and reading in his paper.  I suppose, sir, he come on some pilitical information, or it might be about ‘orses, but he raps his ‘and upon the table sudden and calls for curacoa.  It gave me quite a turn, it did; he did it that sudden and ‘ard.  Now, sir, that may be manners in France, but hall I can say is, that I’m not used to it.’

‘Reading the paper, was he?’ said I.  ‘What paper, eh?’

‘Here it is, sir,’ exclaimed the waiter.  ‘Seems like as if he’d dropped it.’

And picking it off the floor he presented it to me.

I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to expect; but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating.  There it was: the fulfilment of Romaine’s apprehension was before me; the paper was laid open at the capture of Clausel.  I felt as if I could take a little curacoa myself, but on second thoughts called for brandy.  It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed the waiter’s eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition; made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain; and became aware — as by a revelation — of the fool’s part I had been playing.  For I had now managed to put my identification beyond a doubt, if Alain should choose to make his inquiries at Aylesbury; and, as if that were not enough, I had added, at an expense of seventy pounds, a clue by which he might follow me through the length and breadth of England, in the shape of the claret-coloured chaise!  That elegant equipage (which I began to regard as little better than a claret-coloured ante-room to the hangman’s cart) coming presently to the door, I left my breakfast in the middle and departed; posting to the north as diligently as my cousin Alain was posting to the south, and putting my trust (such as it was) in an opposite direction and equal speed.

CHAPTER XXII — CHARACTER AND ACQUIREMENTS OF MR.  ROWLEY

I am not certain that I had ever really appreciated before that hour the extreme peril of the adventure on which I was embarked.  The sight of my cousin, the look of his face — so handsome, so jovial at the first sight, and branded with so much malignity as you saw it on the second — with his hyperbolical curls in order, with his neckcloth tied as if for the conquests of love, setting forth (as I had no doubt in the world he was doing) to clap the Bow Street runners on my trail, and cover England with handbills, each dangerous as a loaded musket, convinced me for the first time that the affair was no less serious than death.  I believe it came to a near touch whether I should not turn the horses’ heads at the next stage and make directly for the coast.  But I was now in the position of a man who should have thrown his gage into the den of lions; or, better still, like one who should have quarrelled overnight under the influence of wine, and now, at daylight, in a cold winter’s morning, and humbly sober, must make good his words.  It is not that I thought any the less, or any the less warmly, of Flora.  But, as I smoked a grim segar that morning in a corner of the chaise, no doubt I considered, in the first place, that the letter-post had been invented, and admitted privately to myself, in the second, that it would have been highly possible to write her on a piece of paper, seal it, and send it skimming by the mail, instead of going personally into these egregious dangers, and through a country that I beheld crowded with gibbets and Bow Street officers.  As for Sim and Candlish, I doubt if they crossed my mind.

At the Green Dragon Rowley was waiting on the doorsteps with the luggage, and really was bursting with unpalatable conversation.

‘Who do you think we’ve ‘ad ‘ere, sir?’ he began breathlessly, as the chaise drove off.  ‘Red Breasts’; and he nodded his head portentously.

‘Red Breasts?’ I repeated, for I stupidly did not understand at the moment an expression I had often heard.

‘Ah!’ said he.  ‘Red weskits.  Runners.  Bow Street runners.  Two on’ em, and one was Lavender himself!  I hear the other say quite plain, “Now, Mr. Lavender,
if
you’re ready.”  They was breakfasting as nigh me as I am to that postboy.  They’re all right; they ain’t after us.  It’s a forger; and I didn’t send them off on a false scent — O no!  I thought there was no use in having them over our way; so I give them “very valuable information,” Mr. Lavender said, and tipped me a tizzy for myself; and they’re off to Luton.  They showed me the ‘andcuffs, too — the other one did — and he clicked the dratted things on my wrist; and I tell you, I believe I nearly went off in a swound!  There’s something so beastly in the feel of them!  Begging your pardon, Mr. Anne,’ he added, with one of his delicious changes from the character of the confidential schoolboy into that of the trained, respectful servant.

Well, I must not be proud!  I cannot say I found the subject of handcuffs to my fancy; and it was with more asperity than was needful that I reproved him for the slip about the name.

‘Yes, Mr. Ramornie,’ says he, touching his hat.  ‘Begging your pardon, Mr. Ramornie.  But I’ve been very piticular, sir, up to now; and you may trust me to be very piticular in the future.  It were only a slip, sir.’

‘My good boy,’ said I, with the most imposing severity, ‘there must be no slips.  Be so good as to remember that my life is at stake.’

I did not embrace the occasion of telling him how many I had made myself.  It is my principle that an officer must never be wrong.  I have seen two divisions beating their brains out for a fortnight against a worthless and quite impregnable castle in a pass: I knew we were only doing it for discipline, because the General had said so at first, and had not yet found any way out of his own words; and I highly admired his force of character, and throughout these operations thought my life exposed in a very good cause.  With fools and children, which included Rowley, the necessity was even greater.  I proposed to myself to be infallible; and even when he expressed some wonder at the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise, I put him promptly in his place.  In our situation, I told him, everything had to be sacrificed to appearances; doubtless, in a hired chaise, we should have had more freedom, but look at the dignity!  I was so positive, that I had sometimes almost convinced myself.  Not for long, you may be certain!  This detestable conveyance always appeared to me to be laden with Bow Street officers, and to have a placard upon the back of it publishing my name and crimes.  If I had paid seventy pounds to get the thing, I should not have stuck at seven hundred to be safely rid of it.

And if the chaise was a danger, what an anxiety was the despatch-box and its golden cargo!  I had never had a care but to draw my pay and spend it; I had lived happily in the regiment, as in my father’s house, fed by the great Emperor’s commissariat as by ubiquitous doves of Elijah — or, my faith! if anything went wrong with the commissariat, helping myself with the best grace in the world from the next peasant!  And now I began to feel at the same time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution.  There were ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it under my hand all day, I dreamed of it at night.  In the inns, I was afraid to go to dinner and afraid to go to sleep.  When I walked up a hill I durst not leave the doors of the claret-coloured chaise.  Sometimes I would change the disposition of the funds: there were days when I carried as much as five or six thousand pounds on my own person, and only the residue continued to voyage in the treasure-chest — days when I bulked all over like my cousin, crackled to a touch with bank paper, and had my pockets weighed to bursting-point with sovereigns.  And there were other days when I wearied of the thing — or grew ashamed of it — and put all the money back where it had come from: there let it take its chance, like better people!  In short, I set Rowley a poor example of consistency, and in philosophy, none at all.

Little he cared!  All was one to him so long as he was amused, and I never knew any one amused more easily.  He was thrillingly interested in life, travel, and his own melodramatic position.  All day he would be looking from the chaise windows with ebullitions of gratified curiosity, that were sometimes justified and sometimes not, and that (taken altogether) it occasionally wearied me to be obliged to share.  I can look at horses, and I can look at trees too, although not fond of it.  But why should I look at a lame horse, or a tree that was like the letter Y?  What exhilaration could I feel in viewing a cottage that was the same colour as ‘the second from the miller’s’ in some place where I had never been, and of which I had not previously heard?  I am ashamed to complain, but there were moments when my juvenile and confidential friend weighed heavy on my hands.  His cackle was indeed almost continuous, but it was never unamiable.  He showed an amiable curiosity when he was asking questions; an amiable guilelessness when he was conferring information.  And both he did largely.  I am in a position to write the biographies of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Rowley’s father and mother, his Aunt Eliza, and the miller’s dog; and nothing but pity for the reader, and some misgivings as to the law of copyright, prevail on me to withhold them.

A general design to mould himself upon my example became early apparent, and I had not the heart to check it.  He began to mimic my carriage; he acquired, with servile accuracy, a little manner I had of shrugging the shoulders; and I may say it was by observing it in him that I first discovered it in myself.  One day it came out by chance that I was of the Catholic religion.  He became plunged in thought, at which I was gently glad.  Then suddenly —

‘Odd-rabbit it!  I’ll be Catholic too!’ he broke out.  ‘You must teach me it, Mr. Anne — I mean, Ramornie.’

I dissuaded him: alleging that he would find me very imperfectly informed as to the grounds and doctrines of the Church, and that, after all, in the matter of religions, it was a very poor idea to change.  ‘Of course, my Church is the best,’ said I; ‘but that is not the reason why I belong to it: I belong to it because it was the faith of my house.  I wish to take my chances with my own people, and so should you.  If it is a question of going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman with your ancestors.’

‘Well, it wasn’t that,’ he admitted.  ‘I don’t know that I was exactly thinking of hell.  Then there’s the inquisition, too.  That’s rather a cawker, you know.’

‘And I don’t believe you were thinking of anything in the world,’ said I — which put a period to his respectable conversion.

He consoled himself by playing for awhile on a cheap flageolet, which was one of his diversions, and to which I owed many intervals of peace.  When he first produced it, in the joints, from his pocket, he had the duplicity to ask me if I played upon it.  I answered, no; and he put the instrument away with a sigh and the remark that he had thought I might.  For some while he resisted the unspeakable temptation, his fingers visibly itching and twittering about his pocket, even his interest in the landscape and in sporadic anecdote entirely lost.  Presently the pipe was in his hands again; he fitted, unfitted, refitted, and played upon it in dumb show for some time.