The man, who is shrewd, and has, in his time, fetched and carried many gentlemen of the first quality hither and yon, takes this one’s measure and sets off at a tearing pace down to the city, past the Tower, across the Bridge, into Southwark, back over Southwark, up to Westminster; to Pimlico,—past the very Puffled Hen where, at this very moment, Sir Robin McTart, himself, and not his soidisant, sits huddled in his upper room over a fire, cheering his small soul with dreams of murder and love. On to Chelsea, and a whirligig ’round again to that region which froths foully over to the Thames bank in Little Boy Yard, and the jutting, rotting, creaking old Dove Pier.
“This be’s a young nobleman,” soliloquized the cabman, “wot’s in love, or else is a-meditatin’ on a-takin’ ’is own life, or a-runnin’ away from the Jews, or from his gamin’ debts, or I’m not James Finney. An’ this here’s the spot for him to be dropped at; the river most ’andy, also deep, and h’if he’s bound to make an end of hisself, no man wot owns a hoss is as worthy of the reward wot’ll be published for the recovery of His Lordship’s corp, as me.” With which pious reflection the chaise is brought to a sharp standstill, causing Percy to start from his melancholy and look out of the pane.
“Where are we?” asks he, not at first, such is the depth of his suffering, recognizing a spot with which, as Sir Robin had been at pains and expense to have discovered for him, he was indeed of late most familiar.
“This be Dove Pier, My Lord,” answered Mr. James Finney, now descending from his box and standing respectfully at the kennel.
“Ha! Yes, to be sure. I’ll get out.”
He does so and pays the fare with such a largess as makes Mr. Finney, through his tanned hide, almost blush to take it.
“Wot’s the odds, though?” remarks he to himself, “three sovereigns is better off in my pocket than actin’ as sinkers to a nobleman’s body.” To Sir Percy he says:
“I thought Your Lordship’d fancy this bit of the river; it’s lonesome and wery pleasant and wery deep. Good-night to Your Lordship, and good luck.”
“Good luck!” echoes Sir Percy, under his breath, as he strides down the length of the rotten pier, his gaze now fixed on the black and swiftly ebbing tide, now raised to meet a sky no whit the brighter than the sobbing waters beneath it. No stars, nor moon; only a sickly thin gleam shot out of the lamp that swings far up Little Boy Yard over the door of the tavern.
Dark, sad, despairing, the whole of it, with but the lap, lap of the Thames’s life beating against the old piles, as it swirls and swings on its hurrying way to fall once again into the sea.