‘Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?’ pointing to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse. ‘He see you get in this morning under Mr. Ramornie—I was very piticular to Mr. Ramornie you, if you remember, sir—and he see you get in again under Mr. Saint Eaves, and whatever’s he going to see you get out under? that’s what worries me, sir. It don’t seem to me like as if the position was what you call stratetegic!’
‘Parrrbleu! will you let me be!’ I cried. ‘I have to think; you cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.’
‘Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,’ said he; and the next moment, ‘You wouldn’t like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?’
‘Certainly not,’ said I. ‘Play upon your flageolet.’
The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.
Conscience doth make cowards of us all! I was so downcast by my pitiful mismanagement of the morning’s business that I shrank from the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into his idle tootling.
I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a needle and thread. There is nothing more conducive to thought, above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually gained a clearness upon my affairs. I must be done with the claret-coloured chaise at once. It should be sold at the next stage for what it would bring. Rowley and I must take back to the road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names! So much trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time, and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!
CHAPTER XXIV—THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE
I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was dear to my heart. Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with the niceties and civilities of drill. We would pass through the little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation, inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part. It was a heavy thought to me, as we drew up before the inn at Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be enacted for the last time. Alas! and had I known it, it was to go of with so inferior a grace!
I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and four. My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood before me, his eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced. It was plain he anticipated something extraordinary by way of a pourboire; and considering the marches and counter-marches by which I had extended the stage, the military character of our affairs with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I had set before him at the archdeacon’s, something exceptional was certainly to be done. But these are always nice questions, to a foreigner above all: a shade too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much smells of hush-money. Fresh from the scene at the archdeacon’s, and flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the responsibilities of the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his hands five guineas; and the amount served only to waken his cupidity.