CHAPTER XV.
A GENTLEMAN VALET.
I breakfasted next morning with my three titled friends, and during the discussion we held it was agreed that the best way to keep suspicion from me—for they were apparently quite as apprehensive of my being taken by the authorities as an escaped prisoner as I was myself—was for me to assume the position of private servant for the nonce to my patron and kind friend Monsieur de Brissac.
We started about nine o'clock in the morning along the post-road to the eastward, with a ride of some hundred and ten miles and over before us, I was informed.
The two gentlemen drove ahead in a high-wheeled chaise, while I and the servant of Monsieur le Marquis de Senez followed by the coach within a few minutes of their starting. It was our intention to pass the night at Oxford, and we expected to reach London on the afternoon of the following day.
They had spoken very openly before me, and although they had not indulged in any explanations, I garnered from the earnestness of their talk, and from the substance of it, that they had not given up all ideas of dwelling once more in France, and returning to the grandeur they had been accustomed to. Their bitterness against Napoleon was extreme, but with him out of it, I do not see how they ever expected to live in a country whose inhabitants they hated as a nation; for if the common and middle class of people do not compose a nation's blood and body, I miss my reckoning.
The view from the coach-top as we descended the hill from the inn was extremely fine. The river below took a bend almost in the shape of the crook of a man's elbow, and enclosed an island covered with houses, connected with the shore by a large bridge. But soon we had shut the view of the water behind us, and as we progressed inland the smell of the sea disappeared entirely.
The man Baptiste, alongside of whom I was sitting on the second seat, had the impassive, expressionless face of the trained servant. As he was not disposed to be communicative, and had evidently been told to treat me with respect, I grew reserved, and out of caution I kept silent; but nevertheless my enjoyment was not prevented from being of the very keenest.
I could crowd these pages by detailing my sensations. I could have sung or shouted, so high were my spirits. And I had to keep all this to myself; and being but a lad, as I say, it was far from easy. Two or three times I got down to stretch my legs, and thus I found myself walking behind the coach as we entered the little hamlet of Witney. In fact I did not know that we were so close to a village until I saw the guard get out his horn to toot it, as was his custom when approaching one.
Running after the coach, I swung myself on board just as we rolled across a bridge over a small clear stream. We had taken on fresh horses at a place called Burford, if I remember rightly, some short time back, and we would not have stopped at the little place we were entering at all (the driver was pleased with himself and proud of the rate at which we had been travelling), but as we went by the gate of a private park we were hailed, and looking over the side, I saw two officers in regimentals waiting to be taken up on the coach. One of them had the uniform of the Somersetshire regiment that had been stationed at the Stapleton prison. In fact I recognized the man before he had seated himself as one of my former guardians. But he glanced carelessly at us, and stared rather insolently into the face of a young country lass who was evidently leaving home, as she had had her handkerchief to her eyes for the past hour or more.