Rodney Stone by Arthur Conan Doyle (affordable ebook reader txt) 📗

that he had rather hand his bâton to me than to any amateur in England.  Halloa, it’s Charlie Fox, by all that’s wonderful!”

He had run forward with much warmth, and was shaking the hand of a singular-looking person who had just entered the room.  The new-comer was a stout, square-built man, plainly and almost carelessly dressed, with an uncouth manner and a rolling gait.  His age might have been something over fifty, and his swarthy, harshly-featured face was already deeply lined either by his years or by his excesses.  I have never seen a countenance in which the angel and the devil were more obviously wedded.  Above, was the high, broad forehead of the philosopher, with keen, humorous eyes looking out from under thick, strong brows.  Below, was the heavy jowl of the sensualist curving in a broad crease over his cravat.  That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence.  That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard.  Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy.  His vices were as open as his virtues.  In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the best and the worst man of his age.

“I’ve run down from Chertsey, sir, just to shake you by the hand, and to make sure that the Tories have not carried you off.”

“Hang it, Charlie, you know that I sink or swim with my friends!  A Whig I started, and a Whig I shall remain.”

I thought that I could read upon Fox’s dark face that he was by no means so confident about the Prince’s principles.

“Pitt has been at you, sir, I understand?”

“Yes, confound him!  I hate the sight of that sharp-pointed snout of his, which he wants to be ever poking into my affairs.  He and Addington have been boggling about the debts again.  Why, look ye, Charlie, if Pitt held me in contempt he could not behave different.”

I gathered from the smile which flitted over Sheridan’s expressive face that this was exactly what Pitt did do.  But straightway they all plunged into politics, varied by the drinking of sweet maraschino, which a footman brought round upon a salver.  The King, the Queen, the Lords, and the Commons were each in succession cursed by the Prince, in spite of the excellent advice which he had given me about the British Constitution.

“Why, they allow me so little that I can’t look after my own people.  There are a dozen annuities to old servants and the like, and it’s all I can do to scrape the money together to pay them.  However, my”—he pulled himself up and coughed in a consequential way—“my financial agent has arranged for a loan, repayable upon the King’s death.  This liqueur isn’t good for either of us, Charlie.  We’re both getting monstrous stout.”

“I can’t get any exercise for the gout,” said Fox.

“I am blooded fifty ounces a month, but the more I take the more I make.  You wouldn’t think, to look at us, Tregellis, that we could do what we have done.  We’ve had some days and nights together, Charlie!”

Fox smiled and shook his head.

“You remember how we posted to Newmarket before the races.  We took a public coach, Tregellis, clapped the postillions into the rumble, and jumped on to their places.  Charlie rode the leader and I the wheeler.  One fellow wouldn’t let us through his turnpike, and Charlie hopped off and had his coat off in a minute.  The fellow thought he had to do with a fighting man, and soon cleared the way for us.”

“By the way, sir, speaking of fighting men, I give a supper to the Fancy at the Waggon and Horses on Friday next,” said my uncle.  “If you should chance to be in town, they would think it a great honour if you should condescend to look in upon us.”

“I’ve not seen a fight since I saw Tom Tyne, the tailor, kill Earl fourteen years ago.  I swore off then, and you know me as a man of my word, Tregellis.  Of course, I’ve been at the ringside incog. many a time, but never as the Prince of Wales.”

“We should be vastly honoured if you would come incog. to our supper, sir.”

“Well, well, Sherry, make a note of it.  We’ll be at Carlton House on Friday.  The Prince can’t come, you know, Tregellis, but you might reserve a chair for the Earl of Chester.”

“Sir, we shall be proud to see the Earl of Chester there,” said my uncle.

“By the way, Tregellis,” said Fox, “there’s some rumour about your having a sporting bet with Sir Lothian Hume.  What’s the truth of it?”

“Only a small matter of a couple of thous to a thou, he giving the odds.  He has a fancy to this new Gloucester man, Crab Wilson, and I’m to find a man to beat him.  Anything under twenty or over thirty-five, at or about thirteen stone.”

“You take Charlie Fox’s advice, then,” cried the Prince.  “When it comes to handicapping a horse, playing a hand, matching a cock, or picking a man, he has the best judgment in England.  Now, Charlie, whom have we upon the list who can beat Crab Wilson, of Gloucester?”

I was amazed at the interest and knowledge which all these great people showed about the ring, for they not only had the deeds of the principal men of the time—Belcher, Mendoza, Jackson, or Dutch Sam—at their fingers’ ends, but there was no fighting man so obscure that they did not know the details of his deeds and prospects.  The old ones and then the young were discussed—their weight, their gameness, their hitting power, and their constitution.  Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the finest speech of his generation?

The name of Champion Harrison came very early into the discussion, and Fox, who had a high idea of Crab Wilson’s powers, was of opinion that my uncle’s only chance lay in the veteran taking the field again.  “He may be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the kick of a horse.  When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators.  If he isn’t absolutely stale, Tregellis, he is your best chance.”

My uncle shrugged his shoulders.

“If poor Avon were here we might do something with him, for he was Harrison’s first patron, and the man was devoted to him.  But his wife is too strong for me.  And now, sir, I must leave you, for I have had the misfortune to-day to lose the best valet in England, and I must make inquiry for him.  I thank your Royal Highness for your kindness in receiving my nephew in so gracious a fashion.”

“Till Friday, then,” said the Prince, holding out his hand.  “I have to go up to town in any case, for there is a poor devil of an East India Company’s officer who has written to me in his distress.  If I can raise a few hundreds, I shall see him and set things right for him.  Now, Mr. Stone, you have your life before you, and I hope it will be one which your uncle may be proud of.  You will honour the King, and show respect for the Constitution, Mr. Stone.  And, hark ye, you will avoid debt, and bear in mind that your honour is a sacred thing.”

So I carried away a last impression of his sensual, good-humoured face, his high cravat, and his broad leather thighs.  Again we passed the strange rooms, the gilded monsters, and the gorgeous footmen, and it was with relief that I found myself out in the open air once more, with the broad blue sea in front of us, and the fresh evening breeze upon our faces.

p. 121CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRIGHTON ROAD.

My uncle and I were up betimes next morning, but he was much out of temper, for no news had been heard of his valet Ambrose.  He had indeed become like one of those ants of which I have read, who are so accustomed to be fed by smaller ants that when they are left to themselves they die of hunger.  It was only by the aid of a man whom the landlord procured, and of Fox’s valet, who had been sent expressly across, that his toilet was at last performed.

“I must win this race, nephew,” said he, when he had finished breakfast; “I can’t afford to be beat.  Look out of the window and see if the Lades are there.”

“I see a red four-in-hand in the square, and there is a crowd round it.  Yes, I see the lady upon the box seat.”

“Is our tandem out?”

“It is at the door.”

“Come, then, and you shall have such a drive as you never had before.”

He stood at the door pulling on his long brown driving-gauntlets and giving his orders to the ostlers.

“Every ounce will tell,” said he.  “We’ll leave that dinner-basket behind.  And you can keep my dog for me, Coppinger.  You know him and understand him.  Let him have his warm milk and curaçoa the same as usual.  Whoa, my darlings, you’ll have your fill of it before you reach Westminster Bridge.”

“Shall I put in the toilet-case?” asked the landlord.  I saw the struggle upon my uncle’s face, but he was true to his principles.

“Put it under the seat—the front seat,” said he.  “Nephew, you must keep your weight as far forward as possible.  Can you do anything on a yard of tin?  Well, if you can’t, we’ll leave the trumpet.  Buckle that girth up, Thomas.  Have you greased the hubs, as I told you?  Well, jump up, nephew, and we’ll see them off.”

Quite a crowd had gathered in the Old Square: men and women, dark-coated tradesmen, bucks from the Prince’s Court, and officers from Hove, all in a buzz of excitement; for Sir John Lade and my uncle were two of the most famous whips of the time, and a match between them was a thing to talk of for many a long day.

“The Prince will be sorry to have missed the start,” said my uncle.  “He doesn’t show before midday.  Ah, Jack, good morning!  Your servant, madam!  It’s a fine day for a little bit of waggoning.”

As our tandem came alongside of the four-in-hand, with the two bonny bay mares gleaming like shot-silk in the sunshine, a murmur of admiration rose from the crowd.  My uncle, in his fawn-coloured driving-coat, with all his harness of the same tint, looked the ideal of a Corinthian whip; while Sir John Lade, with his many-caped coat, his white hat, and his rough, weather-beaten face, might have taken his seat with a line of professionals upon any ale-house bench without any one being able to pick him out as one of the wealthiest landowners in England.  It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out-and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover.  She was perched by his side, looking very smart in a flowered bonnet and grey travelling-dress, while in front of them the four splendid coal-black horses, with a flickering touch of gold upon their powerful, well-curved quarters, were pawing the dust in their eagerness to be off.

“It’s a hundred that you don’t see us before Westminster with a quarter of an hour’s start,” said Sir John.

“I’ll take you another hundred that we pass you,” answered my uncle.

“Very good.  Time’s up.  Good-bye!”  He gave a tchk of the tongue, shook his reins, saluted with his whip; in true coachman’s style, and away he went, taking the curve out of the square in a workmanlike fashion that fetched a cheer from the crowd.  We heard the dwindling roar of the wheels upon the cobblestones until they died away in the distance.

It seemed one of the longest quarters of an hour that I had ever known before the first stroke of nine boomed from the parish clock.  For my part, I was fidgeting in my seat in my impatience, but my uncle’s calm, pale face and large blue eyes were as tranquil and demure as those of the most unconcerned spectator.  He was keenly on the alert, however, and it seemed to me that the stroke of the clock and the thong of his whip fell together—not in a blow, but in a sharp snap over the leader, which sent us flying with a jingle and a rattle upon our fifty miles’ journey.  I heard a roar from