The Nonesuch

“Oh, I don’t fear they’ll do that!” he said impatiently. “Merely break their necks, trying to outdo their precious Nonesuch! Would you believe it?—even my Arthur, slow-top though he is, has smashed my phaeton, trying to drive through my west farm-gate with never a check—nor any precision of eye neither! As for Banningham’s cub, riding that goose-rumped gray of his up the stairs at Brent Lodge, and your Courtenay hunting the squirrel on the Harrogate road—but mum for that! No harm done, and a rare trimming he got from old Adstock—for it was the wheels of his carriage the young chucklehead was trying to graze! Driving to an inch! ‘You can’t drive to an ell!’ Adcock told him. But you won’t repeat that!”

She assured him that she would not; and as they had by this time reached the main gates of Staples he took his leave of her, saying sardonically, as he hoisted himself into the saddle, that they might think themselves fortunate Joseph Calver hadn’t gone to roost in the middle of the hunting season, when every cawker for miles round, after first pledging his father’s credit for white-topped boots, would have crammed his horse at a stake-and-bound, and would have been brought home on a hurdle.

“Mark my words!” he admonished Miss Trent “You’ll see Underhill rigged out in a coat with a dozen shoulder-capes, and buttons the size of saucers before you’re much older! I told Arthur not to think I’d help him to make a cake of himself, aping the out-and-outers, but I don’t doubt Courtenay will get what he wants out of his mother! All the same, you females!”

Chapter 3

it was perhaps inevitable that the Nonesuch’s arrival at Broom Hall should fall a long way short of expectation.

Young Mr Mickleby, the Squire’s son, was able to report to his cronies that Sir Waldo had sent his horses on ahead, for he had himself seen two grooms turn in at the gates of Broom Hall. But the horses they led were only coverhacks: good-looking prads, but nothing marvellous, and no more than two of them. They were followed by a travelling-carriage, which was later discovered to contain only a couple of soberly-clad servants, and a disappointingly small amount of baggage. It soon became known that Sir Waldo was driving himself from London, by easy stages; and although this accorded, in the main, with the younger gentlemen’s ideas of how a noted whip should travel, easy stages fell tamely on their ears, spoiling visions of some sporting vehicle, slap up to the echo, swirling through the village in a cloud of dust.

No one of more note than the ostler at the Crown witnessed Sir Waldo’s arrival in Oversett, and his account of this momentous event was discouraging. Instead of a curricle-and-four, which even provincials knew to be the highest kick of fashion. Sir Waldo was driving a phaeton; and so far from swirling through the village he had entered it at a sedate trot, and had pulled up his team outside the Crown, to ask the way to Broom Hall, No, said Tom Ostler, it wasn’t a high-perch phaeton: just an ordinary perch-phaeton, drawn by four proper good ’uns—a bang-up set-out of blood and bone! There was another gentleman with Sir Waldo, and a groom riding behind. Very pleasant-spoken, Sir Waldo, but not at all the regular dash Tom Ostler had been led to expect: he wasn’t rigged out half as fine as Mr Ash, for instance, or even Mr Underhill.

This was dispiriting, and worse was to follow. The Squire, paying his promised call, was agreeably surprised by Sir Waldo: a circumstance which might please the Squire’s contemporaries but which conjured up in the minds of Mr Underhill, Mr Banningham, and, indeed, Mr Arthur Mickleby as well, a sadly dull picture. No buck of the first head, it was gloomily felt, would have met with the Squire’s approval. Arthur ventured to ask if he was a great swell.

“How the devil should I know?” said his father irascibly. “He ain’t all daintification, if that’s what you mean.” He eyed Arthur’s exquisitely starched shirt-points, and the wonderful arrangement of his neckcloth, and added, with awful sarcasm: “You’ll cast him quite into the shade! Lord, he’ll be like a farthing-candle held to the sun!”

To his wife he was rather more forthcoming. Mrs Mickleby was as eager as her son to learn what Sir Waldo was like, and far less easy to snub. Goaded, the Squire said: “Fashionable? Nothing of the sort! Turns out in excellent style, and looks the gentleman—which is more than Arthur does, since he took to aping the smarts!”

“Oh, don’t be so provoking!” exclaimed Mrs Mickleby. “My cousin told me he was of the first style of elegance—bang-up to the nines,he said! You know his droll way!”

“Well, he ain’t bang-up to the nines. Not the kind of man to be cutting a dash amongst a set of quiet folk like us, my dear!”

Mrs Mickleby opened her mouth to utter a retort, saw the malicious gleam in the Squire’s eye, and shut it again.