"But--" began Kenelm.
"Get in, or I shall go mad." Kenelm obeyed; the boy gave him the reins, and seizing the whip himself, applied it l.u.s.tily to the cob. On sprang the cob. "Stop, stop, stop, thief! villain! Holloa! thieves! thieves!
thieves! stop!" cried a voice behind. Kenelm involuntarily turned his head and beheld the stout man perched upon the gate and gesticulating furiously. It was but a glimpse; again the whip was plied, the cob frantically broke into a gallop, the gig jolted and b.u.mped and swerved, and it was not till they had put a good mile between themselves and the stout man that Kenelm succeeded in obtaining possession of the whip and calming the cob into a rational trot.
"Young gentleman," then said Kenelm, "perhaps you will have the goodness to explain."
"By and by; get on, that"s a good fellow; you shall be well paid for it, well and handsomely."
Quoth Kenelm, gravely, "I know that in real life payment and service naturally go together. But we will put aside the payment till you tell me what is to be the service. And first, whither am I to drive you? We are coming to a place where three roads meet; which of the three shall I take?"
"Oh, I don"t know; there is a finger-post. I want to get to,--but it is a secret; you"ll not betray me? Promise,--swear."
"I don"t swear except when I am in a pa.s.sion, which, I am sorry to say, is very seldom; and I don"t promise till I know what I promise; neither do I go on driving runaway boys in other men"s gigs unless I know that I am taking them to a safe place, where their papas and mammas can get at them."
"I have no papa, no mamma," said the boy, dolefully and with quivering lips.
"Poor boy! I suppose that burly brute is your schoolmaster, and you are running away home for fear of a flogging."
The boy burst out laughing; a pretty, silvery, merry laugh: it thrilled through Kenelm Chillingly. "No, he would not flog me: he is not a schoolmaster; he is worse than that."
"Is it possible? What is he?"
"An uncle."
"Hum! uncles are proverbial for cruelty; were so in the cla.s.sical days, and Richard III. was the only scholar in his family."
"Eh! cla.s.sical and Richard III.!" said the boy, startled, and looking attentively at the pensive driver. "Who are you? you talk like a gentleman."
"I beg pardon. I"ll not do so again if I can help it."--"Decidedly,"
thought Kenelm, "I am beginning to be amused. What a blessing it is to get into another man"s skin, and another man"s gig too!" Aloud, "Here we are at the fingerpost. If you are running away from your uncle, it is time to inform me where you are running to."
Here the boy leaned over the gig and examined the fingerpost. Then he clapped his hands joyfully.
"All right! I thought so, "To Tor-Hadham, eighteen miles." That"s the road to "Tor-Hadham."
"Do you mean to say I am to drive you all that way,--eighteen miles?"
"Yes."
"And to whom are you going?"
"I will tell you by and by. Do go on; do, pray. I can"t drive--never drove in my life--or I would not ask you. Pray, pray, don"t desert me!
If you are a gentleman you will not; and if you are not a gentleman, I have got L10 in my purse, which you shall have when I am safe at Tor-Hadham. Don"t hesitate: my whole life is at stake!" And the boy began once more to sob.
Kenelm directed the pony"s head towards Tor-Hadham, and the boy ceased to sob.
"You are a good, dear fellow," said the boy, wiping his eyes. "I am afraid I am taking you very much out of your road."
"I have no road in particular, and would as soon go to Tor-Hadham, which I have never seen, as anywhere else. I am but a wanderer on the face of the earth."
"Have you lost your papa and mamma too? Why, you are not much older than I am."
"Little gentleman," said Kenelm, gravely, "I am just of age, and you, I suppose, are about fourteen."
"What fun!" cried the boy, abruptly. "Isn"t it fun?"
"It will not be fun if I am sentenced to penal servitude for stealing your uncle"s gig, and robbing his little nephew of L10. By the by, that choleric relation of yours meant to knock down somebody else when he struck at me. He asked, "Are you the villain?" Pray who is the villain?
he is evidently in your confidence."
"Villain! he is the most honourable, high-minded--But no matter now: I"ll introduce you to him when we reach Tor-Hadham. Whip that pony: he is crawling."
"It is up hill: a good man spares his beast."
No art and no eloquence could extort from his young companion any further explanation than Kenelm had yet received; and indeed, as the journey advanced, and they approached their destination, both parties sank into silence. Kenelm was seriously considering that his first day"s experience of real life in the skin of another had placed in some peril his own. He had knocked down a man evidently respectable and well to do, had carried off that man"s nephew, and made free with that man"s goods and chattels; namely, his gig and horse. All this might be explained satisfactorily to a justice of the peace, but how? By returning to his former skin; by avowing himself to be Kenelm Chillingly, a distinguished university medalist, heir to no ign.o.ble name and some L10,000 a year.
But then what a scandal! he who abhorred scandal; in vulgar parlance, what a "row!" he who denied that the very word "row" was sanctioned by any cla.s.sic authorities in the English language. He would have to explain how he came to be found disguised, carefully disguised, in garments such as no baronet"s eldest son--even though that baronet be the least ancestral man of mark whom it suits the convenience of a First Minister to recommend to the Sovereign for exaltation over the rank of Mister--was ever beheld in, unless he had taken flight to the gold-diggings. Was this a position in which the heir of the Chillinglys, a distinguished family, whose coat-of-arms dated from the earliest authenticated period of English heraldry under Edward III. as Three Fishes _azure_, could be placed without grievous slur on the cold and ancient blood of the Three Fishes?
And then individually to himself, Kenelm, irrespectively of the Three Fishes,--what a humiliation! He had put aside his respected father"s deliberate preparations for his entrance into real life; he had perversely chosen his own walk on his own responsibility; and here, before half the first day was over, what an infernal sc.r.a.pe he had walked himself into! and what was his excuse? A wretched little boy, sobbing and chuckling by turns, and yet who was clever enough to twist Kenelm Chillingly round his finger; twist _him_, a man who thought himself so much wiser than his parents,--a man who had gained honours at the University,--a man of the gravest temperament,--a man of so nicely critical a turn of mind that there was not a law of art or nature in which he did not detect a flaw; that he should get himself into this mess was, to say the least of it, an uncomfortable reflection.
The boy himself, as Kenelm glanced at him from time to time, became impish and Will-of-the-Wisp-ish. Sometimes he laughed to himself loudly, sometimes he wept to himself quietly; sometimes, neither laughing nor weeping, he seemed absorbed in reflection. Twice as they came nearer to the town of Tor-Hadham, Kenelm nudged the boy, and said, "My boy, I must talk with you;" and twice the boy, withdrawing his arm from the nudge, had answered dreamily, "Hush! I am thinking."
And so they entered the town of Tor-Hadham, the cob very much done up.
CHAPTER III.
"NOW, young sir," said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but peremptory,--"now we are in the town, where am I to take you? and wherever it be, there to say good-by."
"No, not good-by. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to feel frightened, and I am so friendless;" and the boy, who had before resented the slightest nudge on the part of Kenelm, now wound his arm into Kenelm"s, and clung to him caressingly.
I don"t know what my readers have hitherto thought of Kenelm Chillingly: but, amid all the curves and windings of his whimsical humour, there was one way that went straight to his heart; you had only to be weaker than himself and ask his protection.
He turned round abruptly; he forgot all the strangeness of his position, and replied: "Little brute that you are, I"ll be shot if I forsake you if in trouble. But some compa.s.sion is also due to the cob: for his sake say where we are to stop."
"I am sure I can"t say: I never was here before. Let us go to a nice quiet inn. Drive slowly: we"ll look out for one."
Tor-Hadham was a large town, not nominally the capital of the county, but, in point of trade and bustle and life, virtually the capital. The straight street, through which the cob went as slowly as if he had been drawing a Triumphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated appearance. The shops had handsome facades and plate-gla.s.s windows; the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evidently not merely of business, but of pleasure, for a large proportion of the pa.s.sers-by was composed of the fair s.e.x, smartly dressed, many of them young and some pretty. In fact a regiment of her Majesty"s -----th Hussars had been sent into the town two days before; and, between the officers of that fortunate regiment and the fair s.e.x in that hospitable town, there was a natural emulation which should make the greater number of slain and wounded. The advent of these heroes, professional subtracters from hostile and multipliers of friendly populations, gave a stimulus to the caterers for those amus.e.m.e.nts which bring young folks together,--archery-meetings, rifle-shootings, concerts, b.a.l.l.s, announced in bills attached to boards and walls and exposed at shop-windows.
The boy looked eagerly forth from the gig, scanning especially these advertis.e.m.e.nts, till at length he uttered an excited exclamation, "Ah, I was right: there it is!"
"There what is?" asked Kenelm,--"the inn?" His companion did not answer, but Kenelm following the boy"s eye perceived an immense hand-bill.
"TO-MORROW NIGHT THEATRE OPENS.
"RICHARD III. Mr. COMPTON."
"Do just ask where the theatre is," said the boy, in a whisper, turning away his head.