underfoot, among the brooms and pans. It ain’t like aboard ship, sir, the marriage-?state.’
‘Ain’t it, Pullings?’ said Jack looking at him wistfully.
Stephen went on with his dictation: ‘Surprise, to carry H.M. envoy to the Sultan of Kampong. Mr Taylor at the Admiralty is au courant: has the necessary papers all ready. I calculate that if you take the Bath road and fork off at Dayrolle’s you should pass Wolmer Cross at about four in the morning of the third, thus going aboard during the debtors’ truce of Sunday. I shall wait for you at the Cross for a while in a chaise, and if I am not so fortunate as to see you, I shall proceed with Bonden and expect you at the Blue Posts. She is a frigate, it appears, of the smaller kind; she is short of officers, men, and - unless Sir Joseph spoke in jocular hyperbole - of a bottom.
In haste-
Mend your pace, Sophie. Come come. You would never grow fat as a scrivener. Cannot you spell hyperbole? Is it done at last, for all love? Show.’
‘Never,’ cried Sophie, folding it up.
‘I believe you have put in more than ever I said,’ said Stephen, narrowing his eyes. ‘You blush extremely. Have you at least the rendezvous just so?’
‘Wolmer Cross at four in the morning of the third. Stephen, I shall be there. I shall get out of my window and over the garden wall: you must take me up at the corner.’
‘Very well. But why will you not walk out at the front door like a Christian? And how are you going to get back? You will be hopelessly compromised if you are seen stalking about Bath at dawn.’
‘So much the better,’ said Sophie. ‘Then I shall have no reputation left whatsoever, and shall have to be married as soon as possible - why did I not think of that before? Oh Stephen, you have beautiful ideas.’
‘Well. At the corner, then, at half past three. Put on a warm cloak, two pair of stockings, and thick woollen drawers. It will be cold; we may have to wait a great while; and even then as like as not we shall not see him, which will chill you even more - for you are to consider, that a disappointment on top of the falling damps - hush: give me the letter.’
Half past three in the morning; a strong north-?easter howling among the chimney-?pots of Bath; the sky clear, and a lop-?sided moon peering down into the Paragon. The door of number seven opened just enough to let Sophie out and then slammed with a most horrid crash, drawing the attention of a group of drunken soldiers, who instantly gave tongue. Sophie walked with a great air of resolution and purpose towards the corner, seeing with despair no sign of a coach - nothing but a row of doorways stretching on for ever under the moon, quite unearthly, strange, inhuman, deserted, and inimical. Steps behind her, overtaking - faster and faster; a low cry, ‘It’s me, miss, Bonden,’ and in a moment they were round the corner, climbing into the old leather smell of the first of two post-?chaises drawn up at a discreet distance from the house. The postboys’ red jackets looked black in the moon.
Her heart was going so fast that she could hardly speak for five minutes. ‘How strange it is at night,’ she said when they were climbing out of the town. ‘As though everyone were dead. Look at the river - it is perfectly black. I have never been out at this time before.’
‘No, my dear, I do not suppose you have,’ said Stephen.
‘Is it like this every night?’
‘It is sweeter sometimes - this cursed wind blows warm in other latitudes - but always at night the old world comes into its own. Hark there, now. Do you hear her? She must be in the woods above the church.’ The hellish shrieking of a vixen it was, enough to chill the blood of an apostle; but Sophie was busy peering at Stephen in the faint moonlight, plucking his garments. ‘Why,’ she cried, ‘you have come out without even so much as your dreadful torn old greatcoat. Oh, Stephen, how can you be so abandoned? Let me wrap you in my cloak; it is lined with fur.’
Stephen eagerly resisted the cloak, explaining that once the skin had a certain degree of protection, once it was protected from dissipating its natural heat by a given depth of integument, then all other covering was not only superfluous but harmful.
‘The case is not the same with a horseman, however,’ he said. ‘I strongly recommended Thomas Pullings to place a sheet of oiled silk between his waistcoat and his shirt before setting out; the mere motion of the horse, independently of the velocity of the wind, would carry away the emanent cushion of warmth, could it pierce so far. In a reasonably-?constructed coach, on the other hand, we need fear nothing of the kind. Shelter from the wind is everything; the contented Eskimo, sheltered in his house of snow, laughs at the tempest, and passes his long winter’s night in hospitable glee. A reasonably-?constructed carriage, I say: I should never advise you to career over the steppes of Tartary in a tarantass with your bosom bare to the winds, or covered only with a cotton shift. Nor yet a jaunting-?car.’
Sophia promised that she should never do so; and wrapped in this capacious cloak they once again calculated the distance from London to Bath, Pullings’s speed in going up, Jack’s in coming down. ‘You must make up your mind not to be disappointed, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘The likelihood of his keeping - not the appointment, but rather the suggestion that I threw out, is very slight. Think of the accidents in a hundred miles of road, the possibility, nay the likelihood, of his falling off - the horse flinging him down and breaking its knees, the dangers of travel, such as footpads, highwaymen . . . but hush, I must not alarm you.’
The post-?chaises had slowed to little more than a walk. ‘We must be near the Cross,’ said Stephen, looking out of the window. Here the road mounted between trees - the white ribbon was lost in long patches of total darkness. Into the trees, whistling and sighing in the north-?easter; and there, in one of the pools of light among them, stood a horseman. The postboy caught sight of him at the same moment, reined in, and called back to the chaise behind, ‘It’s Butcher Jeffrey, Tom. Shall ee turn around?’
‘There’s two more of un behind us, terrible great murdering devils. Do ee bide still, Amos, and be meek. Mind master’s horses, and tip ‘em the civil.’
The quick determined clip of hooves, and Sophia whispered, ‘Don’t shoot, Stephen.’
Glancing back from the open window, Stephen said, ‘My dear, I have no intention of shooting. I have -,
But now here was the horse pulled up at the window, its hot breath steaming in, and a great dark form leaning low over its withers, shutting out the moonlight and filling the chaise with the civilest murmur in the world, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, for troubling you -,
‘Spare me,’ cried Stephen. ‘Take all I have - take this young woman - but spare me, spare me!’
