“Mighty few. A parcel enlisted at Manchester. And, to be sure, there was the garrison at Carlisle that declared for him. And some had gone to Scotland before that to meet him,—madmen, I call them. But he had no English of any family, barring a few that came with him from France, I hear:—chips of the old block, they were, dyed-in-the-wool Jacobites, from the old breed, that lived abroad for their health, eh? Well, ’tis all over now—all over now.”
Mr. Betteridge looked gratified as he said it, but there was a suppressed sigh beneath his content. Had he, too, in his day, sometimes held his glass over a bowl of water in drinking the king’s health?
“Except the hangings and beheadings,” he added, as an afterthought.
Caleb made no reply, being busy with his food lest his master might arrive before he had satisfied his hunger. The post-chaise which bore that gentleman was now approaching the town from the South, under the guidance of a despondent-looking postilion. Within the chaise, beside the gentleman, sat a young lady, and on the seat improvised on the bar in front was a lady’s maid. Between the young lady and the gentleman, who was middle-aged, silence prevailed. They did not look at each other; and something in the air of both seemed to denote a lack of mutual sympathy.
When we describe the gentleman as middle-aged, we mean as ages went in the reign of George II., for it is a vulgar error to suppose that people generally lived as long in the “good” old days as they do now. Not to speak of the wars and the hangman, there were bad sanitation and medical ignorance to shorten the careers of a vast number, and “drink and the devil did for the rest.” This gentleman in the post-chaise, then, was not over forty. Drink and the devil had made good headway upon him: one could see that in his face, which was otherwise a face of good breeding, wit, and accomplishment; a handsome face, lighted by keen, gray eyes, but marred by the traces of riotous living and cynical thoughts, and by a rooted discontent. He was tall and gracefully formed. His dress betokened fallen fortunes. The worn velvet of his coat and breeches was faded from a deep colour resembling that of the wine he had too much indulged in. The embroidery of his satin waistcoat, the lace of his three-cornered hat, the buckles of his shoes, the handle of his sword, and the mounting of his pistols, were of silver, but badly tarnished. His white silk stockings were mended in more places than one; his linen, however, was immaculate. He wore his own hair, tied behind with a ribbon.
The young lady beside him was very young, indeed; and very pretty, indeed, having wide-open blue eyes, a delicately coloured face, a charming little nose, an equally charming mouth, and a full, shapely chin. Her look was at once sweet-tempered and high-spirited; for the time being, it contained something of disapproval and rebellion. As for this young lady’s clothes, the present historian’s admiration for handsome dress on women is equalled by his dislike of describing it—or hearing it described—in detail. Enough to say that her gown of dark crimson, with its high waist, seemed to belong by nature to the small, slender, and graceful figure it encased; and was free from the excess—deplored by good judges then as now—so dear to overdressed dowdiness. She had, too, the secret still lacked by some of her fair countryfolk, of poising a hat gracefully, thus not to look top-heavy; hers was a hat of darker shade than her gown, with a good sweep of brim.
As for the maid, on the seat in front, she, too, was rather a young thing,—slim and tall, with a wholesome complexion, longish features, and the artful-artless, variable-vacuous, consequential-conciliating expression of her tribe. An honest, unlettered, shallow, not ill-meaning creature; cast by circumstance for a super’s part in the drama of life, never to be anything more than an accessory.
But the pretty young lady, left to her own thoughts, of what was she thinking? Did her mind cling regretfully to the life she had just left?—to the small, well-ordered home of her widowed old aunt; the decorous society of the staid cathedral town in the South, with its regular and deliberate gaieties, its exceeding regard for “politeness”? Or did it concern itself with the home for which she was bound, the country-house she had not seen since childhood, but which she remembered vaguely as old and half-ruinous then?—with what manner of life she was to lead there in the society of this strange, profligate-seeming uncle, who manifestly did not like her any more than she could find it in her heart to like him? Or did she have some vague intimation of great things about to happen unexpectedly?—of matters of deep import to her future life, destined to result from the chance coming together of certain people at the inn ahead?
Probably Miss Georgiana Foxwell had no such thought; but ’tis a fact that at the very time when her post-chaise was coming into sight of the church-tower of this town, other conveyances were bringing other travellers to the same town, to the great though unintended influencing of her destiny. To begin at the top, for that was an age of arbitrary social distinctions, a private coach, drawn by six horses and followed by a mounted servant, was lumbering along slowly from the North. Then from the East cantered two well-fed horses, bearing, as anybody could see, their owner and his man servant. From the North again, but far behind and out of ken of the coach-and-six, came three post-horses under saddle, one of the riders being the custodian and guide. And lastly, somewhere between the private carriage and the hired horses, but not within sight of either, a stage-coach ground its way over the rugged eighteenth-century highway. Of all the vehicles and horses that raised the dust on English roads that day, only these—with the post-chaise—concern us.
The first to arrive at the inn, where Caleb had by this time stayed his stomach and stepped out to look things over in the yard, were the two well-fed horses. Their owner, a robust, red-faced, round-headed, important-looking country gentleman of about five and thirty, slid off his steed with agility, and, leaving the animals to the care of his man, was met at the entry door by the landlady.