by John Buchan
“You’ve an ill-scraped tongue,” said Mr Dott.
“No me. I’m an auld and tried servant o’ the family, and I ken my place, but among friends I can open my mind. I’ve said naething against Miss Kirsty. She’s mindfu’ and mensefu’ and as bonny as a simmer day.”
“What like’s her auntie, Miss what-d’ye-call her?”
Mr Pitten’s voice sank, and he looked nervously round him. “Speak not evil of dignitaries,” he answered, “lest the birds of the air carry it. But them inside will no hear me with the rummle o’ this coach. Miss Georgie” — his voice sank lower—”is a braw manager and a grand heid for business, but she is like the upper and the nether millstone. She’s a great woman, but an awfu’ one, and she has a tongue in her heid that would deafen the solans. The best place for her would be wi’ the sodgers, for I wager she’d fricht Bonyparte if she ever won near him.”
They were rolling along a flat road close to the shore, and the easy motion predisposed Mr Lammas’s companions to sleep. The first change of horses was accomplished with the precision of a military movement and in not more than sixty seconds. “Behold,” said Mr Lammas to himself, “how use creates skill, and skill habit.” After that Mr Dott seemed to sink inside his great-coat, like a mole going back to earth, and his steady breathing, accompanied by an occasional gurgle, soon proclaimed that he was asleep. The Balbarnit butler presently followed suit, snoring portentously, with his mouth open and his head wagging over the coach’s side. The noise caught the coachman’s ear, and, when he observed that Mr Lammas was alone wakeful, he showed himself inclined to conversation.
“Let ‘em snore,” he said. “They’ll be shook up and wakened right enough on Kitterston hill. Was I right? Are all three o’ you japanned?”
“You were wrong. I am the only one in holy orders, and I am not a minister but a professor.”
The other brooded over this information, and seemed to be puzzled.
“Professor,” he said. “They ‘ave ‘em in Oxford, but you’re not that breed. The only others I know of are the professors that cure corns and rheumatiz at the fairs. There was one at Mitcham, I mind, that had a crown piece off me and left me lamer nor a duck. That your line o’ country?”
“No,” said Mr Lammas. “I am a professor of philosophy.”
The coachman grinned.
“I’ll shake hands with you on that. A philosopher — that’s what they calls me. ‘George Tolley,’ they says, ‘you’re a philosopher and no mistake. You always comes up smilin’. Never a grumble from you, George. And the philosophic way you handles your cattle is a fair treat to be’old.’ So we’re two of a trade, you and me, though we works different roads. How long have you been at it? Three years? It’s thirty-seven years come Ladyday since I first took up the ribbons and started in on philosophy.”
Mr Lammas asked if he had always driven the Royal Mail.
“Lord bless you, no. They don’t let any amateur serve his Majesty. The Mail, as you might say, is the last stage for a philosopher. I began when I was a nipper as stable-boy at Badminton, with the old Dook. Then I was allowed to take a ‘and with his Grace’s private coach, and then for four years I drove the Beaufort back and forward from Gloucester to the Bull and Mouth. After that I come north, and took the York Express from Leeds to London. One hunner and ninety-six miles, and I have done it in sixteen hours. It’s them north-country roads as larns you your job, for any ordinary tidy whip can push along the Brighton Age or the Bristol Triumph. It’s nussin’ horses that’s the philosophy of coachin’ — not, as young bloods think, the knack of flicking a fly off a leader’s ear. Just you watch,” said Mr Tolley. “That off leader there is a bit too fresh. What does I do with him?”
The horse in question was fretting and fidgeting, and suddenly broke into a canter which upset the balance of the team. Mr Tolley promptly pulled in the wheelers, with the result that the leaders also were held back and made to feel the collar.
“A young spark,” he said, “would have tried to pull him up by the bit, and would ha’ made him wuss by bringin’ him back on the bar. I pulls him up by his harness, all as sweet as sugar. That’s what I means by philosophy.”
Mr Lammas was a willing pupil in this novel branch of his subject. He asked the inevitable question. There were many amateur drivers abroad, gentlemen who owned their own coaches, or for a hobby drove a stage. How did such compare with the regulars?
It was a subject on which Mr Tolley felt deeply, but, being a philosopher, he was a just man. With his whip hand he rubbed his smooth chin.
“That ain’t easy to answer. The college boys that drives the Oxford and Cambridge stages are of no particular account, though some of ‘em larns the job in time. And there’s heaps o’ gentlemen as can make a pretty show with four nicely matched tits past Hyde Park Corner that I wouldn’t trust for ser’ous work. But there’s no doubt that the gentleman when he sets his mind to it makes a fine whip, for he does for love what me and my likes does for hire, and love helps any game. Besides, he has eddication, and can think about things and find the reasons for ‘em, while my philosophy is just what God Almighty has larned me by ‘ard knocks. But Lord save us! some of ‘em are terrible pernickety. They’ve mostly all got some fad, and I’ve ‘ad gentlemen come lecturin’ me about ‘aving a short wheel rein, and fastening the buckles of my ribbons, and sich like. ‘You may be right, my lord,’ I says, very polite, but under my breath I says, ‘Go and teach your grandma.’”
“The best?” Mr Tolley continued reflectively. “Well, there was a Scotch gentleman, Captain Barclay, that drove this very Mail all the four hundred miles from Edinbro’ to London. But I don’t reckon ‘im a finished whip, more what they calls a ‘Ercules. But there’s three — four — yes, five gentlemen I allows to be my equal, and the equal of any professional coachman that ever drew on gloves. There’s Sir John Fagg in Kent. In Oxfordshire there’s Sir Henry Peyton with his greys, and Mr Harrison with his browns. There’s Mr Warde as works from Warwickshire into Shropshire, and Mr John Walker down Sussex way. Them five I calls my equals, but there’s one gentleman to whom I gives best every time. Whatever stakes he enters for George Tolley withdraws, for he knows his master. And that gent is Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet, of Wood Rising ‘All, in the county of Norfolk. Well I knows the name, for he sends my missus a brace of pheasants every Christmas.”
Mr Lammas started.
“Sir Turnour Wyse! I did not know that he was a famous whip.”
“Well, you know now. The famousest! A pink! An out-and-outer,” cried Mr Tolley enthusiastically. “He sometimes travels with me, and then I keeps my ears open to pick up what I can. Not that he ‘asn’t his fads. Short wheel reins — that’s the wust of ‘em. I saw him this very day in Edinbro’, and I was hopin’ to have him sittin’ to-night where you’re sittin’. But if he’s comin’ south it’ll likely be in his own chaise.”
Mr Lammas’s eyes were growing heavy, and this the coachman observed. “We’ll dry up now,” he said, “and you’d best have a nap. We’re comin’ into hilly ground, and will have to slacken down a bit. In three hours we’ll be at Berwick, where you’ll get a glass of summat, and at Newcastle you’ll have your bellyful of breakfast.”
So Mr Lammas dozed uneasily, and woke up to find the Mail halted at an inn for a change of horses. The little cold wind which precedes the dawn was blowing, and he drew the collar of his coat about his ears. A light fog, too, was rolling up from the sea, which blanketed the ground, but left the inn gables and a tall tree sticking out in a dim grey half-light. He found Mr Tolley in a bad temper.
“This cussed fog,” he grumbled. “Wuss than black darkness, for the lights don’t show. I wouldn’t mind it if we ‘ad decent narrow roads atween ‘edges, but this stage is mostly in the open, and what’s to hinder us from bumpin’ into loose cattle. Likewise these new quads are not up to the mark, and I’ll be shot if I don’t report Mackutcheon for bad hosses. It ain’t the first time he’s done it. Them wheelers is to
o small and weak for Kitterston hill, and we can’t slow down, for we’re behind time already. And I’ll be shot if that near leader ‘asn’t ‘ad the megrims. I don’t like the stiff neck of him, and the way he’s snatchin’ at his collar.”
Sunrise was not far off, but the mist dimmed the first premonition of it from the east, and though the nostrils smelt dawn the eyes were still in night. The morning was windless, except for tiny salt airs that rose like exhalations from the abyss on the left which was the sea. The road had become a sort of switchback among shallow glens, and the befogged lamps showed that it was bounded by no paling or hedge or drystone dyke, but marched directly with bent and heather. Curlews were beginning to call like souls lost in the brume. They reminded Mr Lammas of spring days at Snowdoun under the Ochils and at Catlaw in Tweeddale; they also reminded him of his former pupil and his difficult errand, and so drove out the last dregs of sleep. He observed that his companions were also awake. Mr Dott’s head had emerged like a turtle from his overcoat, and he was blinking and sniffing the raw air, while the Balbarnit butler, yawning extravagantly, was searching in some inner pocket for snuff.
The easy motion of the earlier hours had gone, and Mr Tolley seemed to have his hands full with his horses, and to be disinclined for conversation. As compared with the ordinary stage-coach the Mail was lightly laden; nevertheless, with five passengers and much baggage, it carried a full burden for its make. The horsing at the last halt had not been good — even Mr Lammas’s unpractised eye could see that. The wheelers were small and light and moved badly together, and the off one, when he felt the weight behind pressing on him, was inclined to break into a canter. The near leader, a weedy bay with poor shoulders, seemed to be only half broken, for it kept its head jerked away from its partner, and was perpetually shouldering the pole. In these circumstances the driver’s tactics were to force the pace, taking most of the short descents at a gallop and thereby acquiring momentum for the next hill. The speed was exhilarating, but it was also nerve-shaking, for the coach swayed ominously, and at one hill with a crook in it Mr Lammas was convinced that they were over.
Mr Dott was nervous.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered between his clenched teeth. “These are awesome hills if that fog would let us see them — I’ve travelled this road before — and it would have been wiser-like to have had a lock-wheel or a drag chain instead of taking each brae as if it was the finish of Musselburgh races. What the — !”
His words were jerked out of him like squeaks from a bladder. “Forgive me, but this will betray me into profane swearing. Hey, coachman — driver — are you determined to break all our necks?”
Mr Tolley disdained to answer, but after the fourth or fifth appeal he condescended to address Mr Lammas.
“Best way with this raw stuff is to sweat it, and in five minutes we’ll have Kitterston hill behind us. Keep an easy mind, sir, for I’ve ‘andled wuss cattle on wuss roads. We’d ‘ave daylight if only this blasted fog would lift.”
Presently they topped a rise, and after a hundred yards on the flat the road seemed to tilt forward into an immense trough of shadow. It did not take Mr Dott’s fervent “It’s Kitterston — God be kind to us” to tell Mr Lammas that they were descending no ordinary hill. Close to the top there was a patch of special steepness which brought the coach’s weight down upon the wheelers and set them cantering. Mr Tolley whipped the canter into a gallop, and, swaying sickeningly at the corners, they rocketed down into the abyss. Mr Lammas felt an awful exhilaration, for never had he known movement so swift and so mysterious. He sat tight, clutching the handrail, his feet braced against the foot-board, while from his companions behind came little noises that may have been prayers. Mr Tolley knew his job, for even in what seemed a reckless gallop he steered a course. The surface of the road was hard hill gravel on which the wheels scarcely bit, but on the left side was a rut of softer ground, and by keeping the coach’s near wheels there he made it act like a brake.
The fog thinned as they descended. Presently Mr Lammas realised that they were over the worst, for he felt the gradient lessen and saw the road sweep before them in a gentler slope. They must be nearing the bottom, and at the bottom there would be a stream, and either a ford or a bridge. Once they were past the water hazard they could breathe freely. . . . Then, as the vapour thinned he realised that it was actually daylight. The sun was showing through the cotton-wool layers, and the smell of the sea came with a pungent freshness. His spirits rose, his mouth shaped itself to whistling, and he was embarking on “Dunbarton’s Drums,” when he saw something which froze the music on his lips. For in the vanishing fog the road had cleared right to the valley bottom, and there, not ten yards off, was a flock of sheep, which had drifted down from the moor and were taking their ease on the King’s highway.
Mr Tolley saw it too, for he rose in his seat and endeavoured to pull up his team. It was too late, for the galloping leaders were into the flock. They both fell, the main bar unhooked, and the wheelers were on the top of them. The coach lurched, slewed round as the wheelers swung sharp to the right, and then with a violent grating and creaking bowed forward into a shallow ditch. Mr Tolley did not lose his seat, and Mr Dott and the butler kept theirs by a desperate clutch on the rail, but Mr Lammas, who had got to his feet in readiness to jump clear, was catapulted by the shock into a bush of heather.
He picked himself up, shaken but with unbroken bones, and hurried back to the place of disaster. There he was the witness of a wild spectacle. The leaders were wallowing under the splinter-bar and Mr Tolley was struggling to disengage them, while the guard dealt with the half-frantic wheelers. Barring cut knees the horses seemed to have taken no harm, but the pole of the coach had snapped. Mr Dott, still on the roof, was investigating a brown leather satchel to see that his papers were safe, and the butler was descending with difficulty to resume his duties. For his two ladies had emerged from the coach’s interior, and one, who was still masked and shawled like a highwayman, was filling the morning air with her complaints. The other, who had rid herself of her cloak, revealed a very pretty face under a green travelling hat. “Hold your tongue, Aunt Georgie,” she was saying. “There is no harm done. You’re screaming like a seagull over nothing.”
Suddenly beside the wrecked Mail there drew up another vehicle, also coming from the north. It was a curious make of chaise, very broad, with a dicky behind it; it had a pole instead of the usual shafts, and it was drawn by two cobs who seemed to have come fast and far. In the dicky sat a servant in a dark livery, and the driver was a tall man, who wore a white beaver and one of the massive frieze coats called dreadnoughts. He was on the ground in a second, and strode to the struggling Mr Tolley at the coach’s head. He seemed to know his work, for he unbuckled certain straps and helped to get the leaders on to their feet, quieting the near one with curious pattings and strokings. Then he cast an eye over the broken pole and the panting wheelers.
“You’ve made a pretty mess of it, George,” he said. “I always warned you what would happen.”
The driver raised a furious red face, but one glance at the speaker was enough to compose his features into respect. He touched the rim of his hat.
“‘Twas bad hosses as done it, your honour,” he grumbled. “Bad hosses and them bloody sheeps.”
“Bad horses be hanged and bloody sheep be crucified,” was the answer. “You hadn’t control of your team or you could have pulled up in time. The fog has been lightening for twenty minutes — I watched it coming down the hill. It’s the old story. If you had had short wheel reins and breechings to your harness, this need never have happened. How often have I told you that?”
Mr Tolley would no doubt have made answer, but the tall man gave him no chance. “Bustle along, George,” he said, “for his Majesty’s business can’t wait. Let the guard — who is it? — Ribston? — take one of the wheelers and ride the four miles to Berwick, for the mails must be in time for the morning Highflyer. Take you the other wheeler and go
hunt for a smith — that pole is smith’s work — and put up the leaders at the inn here. They won’t be fit for much for a week. Ribston will bring out fresh beasts, and you should be in Berwick by midday. . . . As for these gentlemen, my advice is that they look for breakfast and then take a chaise to Berwick. Ah, you have ladies?” he added, as he caught sight of the two figures who were striving with the shaken Mr Pitten. He advanced with hat in hand, and addressed the elder.
“Madam,” he said, “I have the good fortune to be travelling the same road. Can I have the felicity of serving you? I can offer you two seats in my humble chariot, and my servant can assist yours in bringing on the baggage. I can promise you that in half an hour I will turn you over to the chambermaids at the Red Lion.”
Miss Georgie seemed about to raise difficulties and Miss Kirsty to make polite protests, but he smilingly ignored them. This was a man of action, for in three minutes the elder woman was sitting at his side and the younger in the seat behind, he had taken the reins, lifted his whip, and the cobs were trotting Berwick-wards. His orders about the coach, too, were being exactly fulfilled. The leaders were limping to the inn stables in the charge of Mr Tolley, and the guard, laden with mail bags, had set forth on one of the wheelers. The other passengers, having secured their valises, were making shift to carry them to the inn, and the two servants were struggling with the ladies’ baggage. As they reached the door, Mr Tolley was leaving on his quest for a smith, and he shook hands ruefully with Mr Lammas.
“That was an accident as no mortal man could prevent,” he declared. “He’s wrong — you take my word for it — clean wrong. It ‘ad nothing to do with long wheel-reins or breechin’ to the ‘arness. It was bad hosses and bloody sheeps. For all his wisdom he ‘as his megrims, just like that cussed near leader.”
“Who was the gentleman?” Mr Lammas asked.
“Why, Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet — him I was tellin’ you about.”