第80章 THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY COUPLE(4)

To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with Bellamy's two postillions.They had not the least claim on me, but one of which they were quite ignorant - that I was a fugitive.It is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity becomes a case of conscience.You must not leave behind you any one discontented nor any one grateful.But the whole business had been such a 'hurrah-boys' from the beginning, and had gone off in the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations, and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to keep it covered.It was plain it would have to be talked over in all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six months to come.It only remained for me, therefore, to settle on that gratuity which should be least conspicuous - so large that nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to boast.My decision was hastily and nor wisely taken.The one fellow spat on his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other developing a sudden streak of piety, prayed God bless me with fervour.It seemed a demonstration was brewing, and I determined to be off at once.Bidding my own post-boy and Rowley be in readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr.Greensleeves and the archdeacon.

'You will excuse me, I trust,' said I.'I think shame to interrupt this agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been privileged in some small degree to bring about.'

And at these words the storm broke.

'Small degree! small degree, sir!' cries the father; 'that shall not pass, Mr.St.Eaves! If I've got my darling back, and none the worse for that vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank.Shake hands with me - up to the elbows, sir! A Frenchman you may be, but you're one of the right breed, by God! And, by God, sir, you may have anything you care to ask of me, down to Dolly's hand, by God!'

All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so small a person.Every word was thus audible to the servants, who had followed them out of the house and now congregated about us on the terrace, as well as to Rowley and the five postillions on the gravel sweep below.The sentiments expressed were popular; some ass, whom the devil moved to be my enemy, proposed three cheers, and they were given with a will.To hear my own name resounding amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland was flattering, perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was morally persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the rate of a hundred miles a day.

Nor was that the end of it.The archdeacon must present his compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and I was carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to his lady wife.While we were at sherry in the library, ale was handed round upon the terrace.Speeches were made, hands were shaken, Missy (at her father's request) kissed me farewell, and the whole party reaccompanied me to the terrace, where they stood waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying farewells to all the echoes of the mountains until the chaise had disappeared.

The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately:

'You fool, you have done it now!'

'They do seem to have got 'old of your name, Mr.Anne,' said Rowley.'It weren't my fault this time.'

'It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,' said I, affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling.'Some one recognised me.'

'Which on 'em, Mr.Anne?' said the rascal.

'That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it was,' I returned.

'No, nor that it can't!' cried Rowley.'I say, Mr.Anne, sir, it's what you would call a jolly mess, ain't it? looks like "clean bowled-out in the middle stump," don't it?'

'I fail to understand you, Rowley.'

'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!