Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (317 page)

‘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.’