I have mentioned our usual course, which was to eat in inconsiderable
wayside hostelries, known to King. It was a dangerous business; we went
daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the loin’s
mouth for a piece of bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would
all dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally,
and give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like
manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a
mile beyond. The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of
English—God help their pronunciation! But they did well enough to order
a rasher and a pot or call a reckoning; and, to say truth, these country
folks did not give themselves the pains, and had scarce the knowledge, to
be critical.
About nine or ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an
alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire, not far from Bedford itself. In
the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-looking fellow of
perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside,
smoking a long pipe, such as they call a yard of clay. His hat and wig
were hanged upon the knob behind him, his head as bald as a bladder of
lard, and his expression very shrewd, cantankerous, and inquisitive. He
seemed to value himself above his company, to give himself the airs of a
man of the world among that rustic herd; which was often no more than his
due; being, as I afterwards discovered, an attorney’s clerk. I took upon
myself the more ungrateful part of arriving last; and by the time I
entered on the scene the Major was already served at a side table. Some
general conversation must have passed, and I smelled danger in the air.
The Major looked flustered, the attorney’s clerk triumphant, and three or
four peasants in smock-frocks (who sat about the fire to play chorus) had
let their pipes go out.
‘Give you good evening, sir!’ said the attorney’s clerk to me.
‘The same to you, sir,’ said I.
‘I think this one will do,’ quoth the clerk to the yokels with a wink;
and then, as soon as I had given my order, ‘Pray, sir, whither are you
bound?’ he added.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am not one of those who speak either of their business
or their destination in houses of public entertainment.’
‘A good answer,’ said he, ‘and an excellent principle. Sir, do you speak
French?’
‘Why, no, sir,’ said I. ‘A little Spanish at your service.’
‘But you know the French accent, perhaps?’ said the clerk.
‘Well do I do that!’ said I. ‘The French accent? Why, I believe I can
tell a Frenchman in ten words.’
‘Here is a puzzle for you, then!’ he said. ‘I have no material doubt
myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The lack of
education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot
hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education.’
He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.
‘Now, sir,’ pursued the clerk, ‘let me have the pleasure to hear your
voice again. Where are you going, did you say?’
‘Sare, I am go-ing to Lon-don,’ said the Major.
I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so
little a gift of languages where that was the essential.
‘What think ye of that?’ said the clerk. ‘Is that French enough?’
‘Good God!’ cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive an
acquaintance, ‘is this you, Mr. Dubois? Why, who would have dreamed of
encountering you so far from home?’ As I spoke, I shook hands with the
Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, ‘Oh, sir, you may be
perfectly reassured! This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of
mine in the city of Carlisle.’
I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!
‘But he is French,’ said he, ‘for all that?’
‘Ay, to be sure!’ said I. ‘A Frenchman of the emigration! None of your
Buonaparte lot. I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as
your own.’
‘What is a little strange,’ said the clerk quietly, ‘is that Mr. Dubois
should deny it.’
I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude,
and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely
done, and make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty and life by my
proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be
supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details. Enough,
that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed
ninety-nine times in a hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to
pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages.
‘Aha!’ cries he; ‘and you are French, too! Your tongue bewrays you. Two
Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not
knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of
Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners
escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider yourselves under arrest. I
have to trouble you for your papers.’
‘Where is your warrant, if you come to that?’ said I. ‘My papers! A
likely thing that I would show my papers on the _ipse dixit_ of an
unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!’
‘Would you resist the law?’ says he.
‘Not the law, sir!’ said I. ‘I hope I am too good a subject for that.
But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham
small-clothes, why certainly! ’Tis my birthright as an Englishman.
Where’s _Magna Charta_, else?’
‘We will see about that,’ says he; and then, addressing the assistants,
‘where does the constable live?’
‘Lord love you, sir!’ cried the landlord, ‘what are you thinking of? The
constable at past ten at night! Why, he’s abed and asleep, and good and
drunk two hours agone!’
‘Ah that a’ be!’ came in chorus from the yokels.
The attorney’s clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of force;
there was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord, and the
peasants were indifferent—they only listened, and gaped, and now
scratched a head, and now would get a light to their pipes from the
embers on the hearth. On the other hand, the Major and I put a bold
front on the business and defied him, not without some ground of law. In
this state of matters he proposed I should go along with him to one
Squire Merton, a great man of the neighbourhood, who was in the
commission of the peace, the end of his avenue but three lanes away. I
told him I would not stir a foot for him if it were to save his soul.
Next he proposed I should stay all night where I was, and the constable
could see to my affair in the morning, when he was sober. I replied I
should go when and where I pleased; that we were lawful travellers in the
fear of God and the king, and I for one would suffer myself to be stayed
by nobody. At the same time, I was thinking the matter had lasted
altogether too long, and I determined to bring it to an end at once.
‘See here,’ said I, getting up, for till now I had remained carelessly
seated, ‘there’s only one way to decide a thing like this—only one way
that’s right _English_—and that’s man to man. Take off your coat, sir,
and these gentlemen shall see fair play.’ At this there came a look in
his eye that I could not mistake. His education had been neglected in
one essential and eminently British particular: he could not box. No
more could I, you may say; but then I had the more impudence—and I had
made the proposal.
‘He says I’m no Englishman, but the proof of the pudding is the eating of
it,’ I continued. And here I stripped my coat and fell into the proper
attitude, which was just about all I knew of this barbarian art. ‘Why,
sir, you seem to me to hang back a little,’ said I. ‘Come, I’ll meet
you; I’ll give you an appetiser—though hang me if I can understand the
man that wants any enticement to hold up his hands.’ I drew a bank-note
out of my fob and tossed it to the landlord. ‘There are the stakes,’
said I. ‘I’ll fight you for first blood, since you seem to make so much
work about it. If you tap my claret first, there are five guineas for
you, and I’ll go with you to any squire you choose to mention. If I tap
yours, you’ll perhaps let on that I’m the better man, and allow me to go
about my lawful business at my own time and convenience, by God; is that
fair, my lads?’ says I, appealing to the company.
‘Ay, ay,’ said the chorus of chawbacons; ‘he can’t say no fairer nor
that, he can’t. Take off thy coat master!’
The limb of the law was now on the wrong side of public opinion, and,
what heartened me to go on, the position was rapidly changing in our
favour. Already the Major was paying his shot to the very indifferent
landlord, and I could see the white face of King at the back-door, making
signals of haste.
‘Oho!’ quoth my enemy, ‘you are as full of doubles as a fox, are you not?
But I see through you; I see through and through you. You would change
the venue, would you?’
‘I may be transparent, sir,’ says I, ‘but if you’ll do me the favour to
stand up, you’ll find I can hit dam hard.’
‘Which is a point, if you will observe, that I had never called in
question,’ said he. ‘Why, you ignorant clowns,’ he proceeded, addressing
the company, ‘can’t you see the fellow’s gulling you before your eyes?
Can’t you see that he has changed the point upon me? I say he’s a French
prisoner, and he answers that he can box! What has that to do with it?
I would not wonder but what he can dance, too—they’re all dancing masters
over there. I say, and I stick to it, that he’s a Frenchy. He says he
isn’t. Well then, let him out with his papers, if he has them! If he
had, would he not show them? If he had, would he not jump at the idea of
going to Squire Merton, a man you all know? Now, you are all plain,
straightforward Bedfordshire men, and I wouldn’t ask a better lot to
appeal to. You’re not the kind to be talked over with any French gammon,
and he’s plenty of that. But let me tell him, he can take his pigs to
another market; they’ll never do here; they’ll never go down in
Bedfordshire. Why! look at the man! Look at his feet! Has anybody got
a foot in the room like that? See how he stands! do any of you fellows
stand like that? Does the landlord, there? Why, he has Frenchman wrote
all over him, as big as a sign-post!’
This was all very well; and in a different scene I might even have been
gratified by his remarks; but I saw clearly, if I were to allow him to
talk, he might turn the tables on me altogether. He might not be much of
a hand at boxing; but I was much mistaken, or he had studied forensic
eloquence in a good school. In this predicament I could think of nothing
more ingenious than to burst out of the house, under the pretext of an
ungovernable rage. It was certainly not very ingenious—it was
elementary, but I had no choice.
‘You white-livered dog!’ I broke out. ‘Do you dare to tell me you’re an
Englishman, and won’t fight? But I’ll stand no more of this! I leave
this place, where I’ve been insulted! Here! what’s to pay? Pay
yourself!’ I went on, offering the landlord a handful of silver, ‘and
give me back my bank-note!’
The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody, offered
no opposition to my design. The position of my adversary was now
thoroughly bad. He had lost my two companions. He was on the point of
losing me also. There was plainly no hope of arousing the company to
help; and watching him with a corner of my eye, I saw him hesitate for a
moment. The next, he had taken down his hat and his wig, which was of
black horsehair; and I saw him draw from behind the settle a vast hooded
great-coat and a small valise. ‘The devil!’ thought I: ‘is the rascal
going to follow me?’
I was scarce clear of the inn before the limb of the law was at my heels.
I saw his face plain in the moonlight; and the most resolute purpose
showed in it, along with an unmoved composure. A chill went over me.
‘This is no common adventure,’ thinks I to myself. ‘You have got hold of
a man of character, St. Ives! A bite-hard, a bull-dog, a weasel is on
your trail; and how are you to throw him off?’ Who was he? By some of
his expressions I judged he was a hanger-on of courts. But in what
character had he followed the assizes? As a simple spectator, as a
lawyer’s clerk, as a criminal himself, or—last and worst supposition—as a
Bow-street ‘runner’?
The cart would wait for me, perhaps, half a mile down our onward road,
which I was already following. And I told myself that in a few minutes’
walking, Bow-street runner or not, I should have him at my mercy. And
then reflection came to me in time. Of all things, one was out of the
question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart.
Until I had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my
companions—alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading
whither I knew not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend
but the holly-stick!
We came at the same time to a crossing of lanes. The branch to the left
was overhung with trees, deeply sunken and dark. Not a ray of moonlight
penetrated its recesses; and I took it at a venture. The wretch followed
my example in silence; and for some time we crunched together over frozen
pools without a word. Then he found his voice, with a chuckle.
‘This is not the way to Mr. Merton’s,’ said he.
‘No?’ said I. ‘It is mine, however.’
‘And therefore mine,’ said he.
Again we fell silent; and we may thus have covered half a mile before the
lane, taking a sudden turn, brought us forth again into the moonshine.
With his hooded great-coat on his back, his valise in his hand, his black
wig adjusted, and footing it on the ice with a sort of sober doggedness
of manner, my enemy was changed almost beyond recognition: changed in
everything but a certain dry, polemical, pedantic air, that spoke of a
sedentary occupation and high stools. I observed, too, that his valise
was heavy; and, putting this and that together, hit upon a plan.
‘A seasonable night, sir,’ said I. ‘What do you say to a bit of running?
The frost has me by the toes.’
‘With all the pleasure in life,’ says he.
His voice seemed well assured, which pleased me little. However, there
was nothing else to try, except violence, for which it would always be
too soon. I took to my heels accordingly, he after me; and for some time
the slapping of our feet on the hard road might have been heard a mile
away. He had started a pace behind me, and he finished in the same
position. For all his extra years and the weight of his valise, he had
not lost a hair’s breadth. The devil might race him for me—I had enough
of it!
And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We could not
run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we might turn a
corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some Squire Merton, in the
midst of a village whose constable was sober, or in the hands of a
patrol. There was no help for it—I must finish with him on the spot, as
long as it was possible. I looked about me, and the place seemed
suitable; never a light, never a house—nothing but stubble-fields,
fallows, and a few stunted trees. I stopped and eyed him in the
moonlight with an angry stare.
‘Enough of this foolery!’ said I.
He had tamed, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of
shrinking.
‘I am quite of your opinion,’ said he. ‘You have tried me at the
running; you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the same.
It must end the one way.’
I made my holly whistle about my head.
‘I believe you know what way!’ said I. ‘We are alone, it is night, and I
am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am not a
coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify our relations
if I tell you at the outset that I walk armed.’
Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave ground,
and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand.
‘No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!’ he said. ‘It will do me no good
to have your death at my door.’
‘Faith, nor me either!’ said I; and I lowered my stick and considered the
man, not without a twinkle of admiration. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘there is
one consideration that you appear to overlook: there are a great many
chances that your pistol may miss fire.’
‘I have a pair,’ he returned. ‘Never travel without a brace of barkers.’
‘I make you my compliment,’ said I. ‘You are able to take care of
yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at
this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we
are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be,
to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now I put it to you
pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your
continued and—excuse me—highly impudent _ingérence_ into my private
affairs?’
‘Another French word,’ says he composedly.
‘Oh! damn your French words!’ cried I. ‘You seem to be a Frenchman
yourself!’
‘I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,’ he explained.
‘Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences,
whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.’
‘You are a pompous fellow, too!’ said I.
‘Oh, I can make distinctions, sir,’ says he. ‘I can talk with
Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in
the company of a gentleman of education like yourself.’
‘If you set up to be a gentleman—’ I began.
‘Pardon me,’ he interrupted: ‘I make no such claim. I only see the
nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person.’
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ I exclaimed, ‘set my mind at rest upon one point.
In the name of mystery, who and what are you?’
‘I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,’ said he, ‘nor yet my
trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel
Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir.’
It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had
been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.
‘Romaine?’ I cried. ‘Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a
big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!’
‘Keep back, I say!’ said Dudgeon weakly.
I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I
must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol
that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that
he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my
advance.
‘Keep back, or I declare I will fire,’ he was crying. ‘Have a care, for
God’s sake! My pistol—’
He might scream as be pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I
pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed
before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his
wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep
in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears
incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering
to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me
while I was about it. But all’s well that ends well; or, as the people
in these days kept singing and whistling on the streets:—
‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
And looks out for the life of poor Jack.’
‘There!’ said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on
his shoulders, ‘_je vous ai bel et bien embrassé_—and, as you would say,
there is another French word.’ With his wig over one eye, he looked
incredibly rueful and put out. ‘Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over,
you shall be embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God’s-sake, put
away your pistol; you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or
other, depend upon it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No,
let me put it on square, and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress
of circumstances to come between you and the duty you owe to yourself.
If you have nobody else to dress for, dress for God!
‘Put your wig straight
On your bald pate,
Keep your chin scraped,
And your figure draped.
Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark,
I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a
_dilettante_.’
‘But, my dear sir!’ he exclaimed.
‘But, my dear sir!’ I echoed, ‘I will allow no man to interrupt the flow
of my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we shall have
a quarrel of it.’
‘Certainly you are quite an original,’ he said.
‘Quite,’ said I; ‘and I believe I have my counterpart before me.’
‘Well, for a choice,’ says he, smiling, ‘and whether for sense or poetry,
give me
‘“Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:
The rest is all but leather and prunello.”’
‘Oh, but that’s not fair—that’s Pope! It’s not original, Dudgeon.
Understand me,’ said I, wringing his breast-button, ‘the first duty of
all poetry is to be mine, sir—mine. Inspiration now swells in my bosom,
because—to tell you the plain truth, and descend a little in style—I am
devilish relieved at the turn things have taken. So, I dare say, are you
yourself, Dudgeon, if you would only allow it. And _à propos_, let me
ask you a home question. Between friends, have you ever fired that
pistol?’
‘Why, yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘Twice—at hedgesparrows.’
‘And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?’ I cried.
‘If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick,’ said
Dudgeon.
‘Did I indeed? Well, well, ’tis all past history; ancient as King
Pharamond—which is another French word, if you cared to accumulate more
evidence,’ says I. ‘But happily we are now the best of friends, and have
all our interests in common.’
‘You go a little too fast, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. ---: I do not know
your name, that I am aware,’ said Dudgeon.
‘No, to be sure!’ said I. ‘Never heard of it!’
‘A word of explanation—’ he began.
‘No, Dudgeon!’ I interrupted. ‘Be practical; I know what you want, and
the name of it is supper. _Rien ne creuse comme l’emotion_. I am hungry
myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you,
who are but a hunter of hedgesparrows. Let me look at your face
critically: your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a
Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old
in bottle—the right milk of Englishmen.’ Methought there seemed a
brightening in his eye and a melting about his mouth at this enumeration.
‘The night is young,’ I continued; ‘not much past eleven, for a wager.
Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say _good_, for the port
must be up to the occasion—not a headache in a pipe of it.’
‘Really, sir,’ he said, smiling a little, ‘you have a way of carrying
things—’
‘Will nothing make you stick to the subject?’ I cried; ‘you have the most
irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your profession? The
inn?’
‘Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!’ said he. ‘You must
have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by this very
road.’
‘Done!’ cried I. ‘Bedford be it!’
I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked
him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying
a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine
thin and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now
honestly done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my
great-uncle’s; I had no more fear of Mr. Dudgeon; which were all grounds
enough for jollity. And I was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of
tiny and solitary dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the
rooms decked, the moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the
floor swept and waxed, and nothing wanting but for the band to strike up
and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my heart I took the
music on myself—
‘Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker.’
I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about
Dudgeon’s waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back
a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my
example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced,
and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher
were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic
footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like
balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious
countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of
trouble the rascal had given me in the immediate past.
Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My Puritanic companion
stopped and disengaged himself.
‘This is a trifle _infra dig._, sir, is it not?’ said he. ‘A party might
suppose we had been drinking.’
‘And so you shall be, Dudgeon,’ said I. ‘You shall not only be drinking,
you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk—dead drunk, sir—and the boots
shall put you to bed! We’ll warn him when we go in. Never neglect a
precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!’
But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and
came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in
a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt
severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a
side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such a
meal as I had been dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to
remember, I had been skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold,
hunger, and an accumulation of discomforts that might have daunted the
most brave; and the white table napery, the bright crystal, the
reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the
portraits on the coffee-room wall, the placid faces of the two or three
late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and
(last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry
port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought
of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring
fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on
my palate, _amari aliquid_, like an after-taste, but was not able—I say
it with shame—entirely to dispel my self-complacency. After all, in this
world every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had
just brought to a successful end—or, at least, within view of it—an
adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr.
Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was
semi-confidential and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery
features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of kindness. The
rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would value the devil; and
if he had been pertinacious in the beginning, he had more than made up
for it before the end.
‘And now, Dudgeon, to explain,’ I began. ‘I know your master, he knows
me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may tell you, that
I am on my way to Amersham Place.’
‘Oho!’ quoth Dudgeon, ‘I begin to see.’
‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said I, passing the bottle, ‘because that is
about all I can tell you. You must take my word for the remainder.
Either believe me or don’t. If you don’t, let’s take a chaise; you can
carry me to-morrow to High Holborn, and confront me with Mr. Romaine; the
result of which will be to set your mind at rest—and to make the holiest
disorder in your master’s plans. If I judge you aright (for I find you a
shrewd fellow), this will not be at all to your mind. You know what a
subordinate gets by officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine
has not at all the face that I should care to see in anger; and I venture
to predict surprising results upon your weekly salary—if you are paid by
the week, that is. In short, let me go free, and ’tis an end of the
matter; take me to London, and ’tis only a beginning—and, by my opinion,
a beginning of troubles. You can take your choice.’
‘And that is soon taken,’ said he. ‘Go to Amersham tomorrow, or go to
the devil if you prefer—I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction.
No, you don’t find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A
good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the
sack, and I shouldn’t wonder! But, it’s a pity, too,’ he added, and
sighed, shook his head, and took his glass off sadly.
‘That reminds me,’ said I. ‘I have a great curiosity, and you can
satisfy it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr. Dubois? Why
did you transfer your attentions to me? And generally, what induced you
to make yourself such a nuisance?’
He blushed deeply.
‘Why, sir,’ says he, ‘there is such a thing as patriotism, I hope.’