to that particular height, in a mutual disgust of the city, they waxed friendlier, with a reserve.
Woodseer soon had experience that he was receiving exceptional treatment from Lord Fleetwood, whose manservant was on the steps of the hotel in Salzburg on the lookout for his master.
‘Sir Meeson has been getting impatient, my lord,’ said the man.
Sir Meeson Corby appeared; Lord Fleetwood cut him short: ‘You ‘re in a hurry; go at once, don’t wait for me; I join you in Baden.—Do me the favour to eat with me,’ he turned to Woodseer. ‘And here, Corby! tell the countess I have a friend to bear me company, and there is to be an extra bedroom secured at her hotel. That swinery of a place she insists on visiting is usually crammed. With you there,’ he turned to Woodseer, ‘I might find it agreeable.—You can take my man, Corby; I shall not want the fellow.’
‘Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know,’ Sir Meeson expostulated, ‘I am under orders; I don’t see how—I really can’t go on without you.’
‘Please yourself. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. Woodseer.’
Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood’s friend—the friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!—fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted interrogatives. Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow. The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable to contract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then reminded that he dealt with prickles.
‘Where have you been?’ he said, blinking to refresh his eyeballs. ‘I missed you, I ran round and round the town after you.’
‘I have been to the lake.’
‘Queer fish there!’ Sir Meeson dropped a glance on the capture.
Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer’s arm. ‘Do you eat with us?’ he asked the baronet, who had stayed his eating for an hour and was famished; so they strode to the dining-room.
‘Do you wash, sir, before eating?’ Sir Meeson said to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated themselves at table. ‘Appliances are to be found in this hotel.’
‘Soap?’ said Lord Fleetwood.
‘Soap—at least, in my chamber.’
‘Fetch it, please.’
Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that. He requested the waiter to show the gentleman to a room.
Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a handbasin and towel. ‘We’re off directly and must eat at once,’ he said.
‘Soap—soap! my dear Fleetwood,’ Sir Meeson knuckled on the table, to impress it that his appetite and his gorge demanded a thorough cleansing of those fingers, if they were to sit at one board.
‘Let the waiter fetch it.’
‘The soap is in my portmanteau.’
‘You spoke of it as a necessity for this gentleman and me. Bring it.’
Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him down. He kept an eye dead—as marble on Corby, who muttered: ‘You can’t mean that you ask me…?’ But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too strong a power of the implacable eye; there was thunder in it, a continuity of gaze forcefuller than repetitions of the word. He knew Lord Fleetwood. Men privileged to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young despot: they were sure to be called upon to expiate the faintest offence to him. He had hastily to consider, that he was banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else the mad behest must be obeyed. He protested, shrugged, sat fast, and sprang up, remarking, that he went with all the willingness imaginable. It could not have been the first occasion.
He was affecting the excessively obsequious when he came back bearing his metal soap-case. The performance was checked by another look solid as shot, and as quick. Woodseer, who would have done for Sir Meeson Corby or Lazarus what had been done for him, thought little of the service, but so intense a peremptoriness in the look of an eye made him uncomfortable in his own sense of independence. The humblest citizen of a free nation has that warning at some notable exhibition of tyranny in a neighbouring State: it acts like a concussion of the air.
Lord Fleetwood led an easy dialogue with him and Sir Meeson, on their different themes immediately, which was not less impressive to an observer. He listened to Sir Meeson’s entreaties that he should start at once for Baden, and appeared to pity the poor gentleman, condemned by his office to hang about him in terror of his liege lady’s displeasure. Presently, near the close of the meal, drawing a ring from his finger, he handed it to the baronet, and said, ‘Give her that. She knows I shall follow that.’ He added to himself:—I shall have ill-luck till I have it back! and he asked Woodseer whether he put faith in the virtue of talismans.
‘I have never possessed one,’ said Woodseer, with his natural frankness. ‘It would have gone long before this for a night’s lodging.’
Sir Meeson heard him, and instantly urged Lord Fleetwood not to think of dismissing his man Francis. ‘I beg it, Fleetwood! I beg you to take the man. Her ladyship will receive me badly, ring or no ring, if she hears of your being left alone. I really can’t present myself. I shall not go, not go. I say no.’
‘Stay, then,’ said Fleetwood.
He turned to Woodseer with an air of deference, and requested the privilege of glancing at his notebook again, and scanned it closely at one of the pages. ‘I believe it true,’ he cried; ‘I had a half recollection of it—I have had some such thought, but never could put it in words. You have thought deeply.’
‘That is only a surface thought, or common reflection,’ said Woodseer.
Sir Meeson stared at them in turn. Judging by their talk and the effect produced on the earl, he took Woodseer for a sort of conjuror.
It was his duty to utter a warning.
He drew Fleetwood aside. A word was whispered, and they broke asunder with a snap. Francis was called. His master gave him his keys, and despatched him into the town to purchase a knapsack or bag for the outfit of a jolly beggar. The prospect delighted Lord Fleetwood. He sang notes from the deep chest, flaunting like an opera brigand, and contemplating his wretched satellite’s indecision with brimming amusement.
‘Remember, we fight for our money. I carry mine,’ he said to Woodseer.
‘Wouldn’t it be expedient, Fleetwood…’ Sir Meeson suggested a treasurer in the person of himself.
‘Not a florin, Corby! I should find it all gambled away at Baden.’
‘But I am not Abrane, I’m not Abrane! I never play, I have no mania, none. It would be prudent, Fleetwood.’
‘The slightest bulging of a pocket would show on you, Corby; and they would be at you, they would fall on you and pluck you to have another fling. I ‘d rather my money should go to a knight of the road than feed that dragon’s jaw. A highwayman seems an honest fellow compared with your honourable corporation of fly-catchers. I could surrender to him with some satisfaction after a trial of the better man. I ‘ve
