Chapter Two
WHEN THE LONDON ROAD leaves Mangonell Bagpize it plunges down a hill so steep that horses must be led. The bottom of the hill was a favourite place with highwaymen, because coaches coming or going were obliged to be almost at a standstill there – highwaymen with strong nerves, that is, for the more timid or fanciful were put off and discouraged by the sight of the gallows at the top of the hill, where their unsuccessful brother Medical Dick (a former apothecary’s boy) swung as a silent warning in chains, carefully tarred against the weather.
Tobias had eyed Medical Dick with a professional interest that could not possibly be shared by his companion, but he had not stopped talking; and still, as they walked down the hill with their horses stepping carefully behind them, they talked on with the same eagerness.
‘… but the final thing, the thing I could not stand, was her sending her servant to destroy my animals. That woman, that termagant, if termagant be not too warm an expression – do you consider termagant too warm an expression, Jack?’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I should have called her a termagant myself, if I had thought of it.’
‘– always disliked me, and I know she told Mr Elwes that my presence was an obstacle to their union. It gave me a great deal of uneasiness, I assure you; yet I felt that I was bound to stay, because of my indenture – when Mr Buchanan wrote, offering to take me to Jamaica as his assistant – to study the West Indian birds, you know – I felt obliged to refuse, on those grounds.’
‘And yet my cousin said he was trying to have it put aside. My cousin was there when Mr Elwes came in front of the magistrates to have your articles undone, but they would not. Could not, I think he said.’
‘I know. I heard him discussing it with the new lawyer, that very morning.’
‘Well, at least it means that he won’t be sending people in chase of you.’
‘No,’ said Toby: and after a pause he added, ‘It was the knowledge that he was willing to be rid of me that did away with my last scruples.’
‘He is an infernal scrub,’ said Jack; and when Tobias made no answer he went on, ‘And for that matter, I am not very well pleased with Cousin Edward, either. I thought he would have come out of it with more credit. “Hark ‘ee, Jack,” says he. “I can’t have anything to do with it: I know Elwes is an infernal scrub,” he says, looking rather like a pickpocket, as well he might, with me looking damnably scornful and Georgiana roaring and bawling, “but I can’t be seen in the affair. I’m a magistrate, an’t I? I can’t give any countenance to such goings-on, damn it. You ought never to have told me before the event, Jack. I mean, if it was all over now – if he had run off a week ago, and if he was in London now, why then, that would be a fait accompli, as they say. It would be quite different; and then a man might do something friendly. But I can’t have it said that I induced Elwes’ young fellow to run away. Here’s a present for thee, Jack,” says he, looking at me very hard and giving me fifteen guineas in my hand – he would only have given me five ordinarily, at the best of times. It was pretty handsome, and I knew well enough what he meant; but I think he might not have shuffled so.’
Jack,’ cried Tobias, suddenly stopping, ‘did you remember the lesser pettichaps?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I did. I opened the door of her cage before I went up with Georgiana’s bat. She gave me a note for you. But don’t you think we look a pretty couple of fools, with our horses in our hands?’
They had, in fact, walked right down Gallows Hill and half a mile beyond; they were now in perfectly level open country, still leading their horses with anxious care. ‘Thankee,’ said Tobias, taking the note and mounting. Dear Toby, read the note, I shall take extreame great Care of the dear Batt. Yr affct. G. Chaworth. ‘That is an excellent girl,’ he said, folding the paper carefully into his pocket. ‘It does me good to think of her.’
Here the road ran wide over a common, and the horses began to dance a little with the grass under their feet. ‘Come on,’ cried Jack. ‘If we are to get there tomorrow, we must canter whenever we can.’
There is nothing like a long sweet gallop on a well-paced horse for changing a melancholy state of mind: Jack’s horse was a high-blooded dashing chestnut, the property of his elder brother, and Toby’s was a grey cob that belonged to Cousin Charles. The Chaworths and the Byrons formed a large, closely interrelated tribe, and there was always some of them coming or going between Medenham and Newstead and London, sometimes with a servant, sometimes without; the result of this restlessness was that the horses tended to accumulate at one end or the other, in droves – the grey, for example, had been left by Cousin Charles when he had gone back to London from Newstead in Uncle Norwood’s chariot – and long ago a tradition had arisen in the family, a tradition of employing any means whatsoever to maintain a reasonable balance of horses in each place. It is almost certain that if a neighbour had been going up to London to receive a sentence of death, he would have been asked to ride thither on one of the Medenham horses, and to be so obliging as to leave it at Marlborough Street before he was hanged.
Mr Chaworth would not – in all decency could not – acknowledge Tobias’ flight; but the opportunity was too good to be missed, and the grey made a silent appearance beside Jack’s horse in the morning, tacitly understood by one and all. The two of them, then, being mounted far above their stations, had the good sense to make the most of it while it lasted, and they flew along over the smooth green miles with their spirits rising like larks in the sky. When the going grew hard again, and they reined in, Jack observed that his friend was more than usually elated; this being so he permitted himself to say, ‘Toby,’ said he, ‘you will not be offended, will you?’
‘No,’ said Toby.
‘I mean, you are an amazing good horseman, of course.’
Just so,’ said Toby.
‘I don’t mean to imply that you ride badly. But people tend to stare so – very foolish in them – and it would oblige me uncommonly if you would sit like a Christian.’
Tobias had an entirely personal way of riding upon a horse: he would sit upon various pieces of his mount, facing whichever view pleased him most, and from time to time he would stretch himself at length, to the amazement of all beholders. At this moment he was kneeling upright on the cob’s broad bottom, staring fixedly backwards into a waving meadow.
‘I believe it was a spotted crake,’ he said. ‘What did you say, Jack?’
Jack patiently repeated his request, and Tobias received it so well, promising amendment and desiring to be reminded if he should forget, that Jack added, ‘And would you mind changing your slippers, before we come into Melton Mowbray?’
‘Slippers?’ cried Tobias, gazing first at one foot and then at the other.
‘You cannot conceive how barbarous they look,’ said Jack. ‘List slippers.’
‘I am heartily sorry for it, if they offend you,’ said Tobias, ‘but I have nothing else to put on.’
‘Why then,’ cried Jack, ‘it don’t signify.’ But from time to time he looked wistfully at his friend’s stirrups.
‘Do you see that farmhouse?’ cried Toby, after they had trotted another mile. ‘Over there beyond the turnips. I went there once: Mr Elwes took me to see a remarkable case of hydrophobia. But I have never
