The Quiet Gentleman

Half an hour later, the Earl set forth for Kentham, Chard seated beside him in the curricle, with his arms primly folded. This was one of his few concessions to the etiquette governing the conduct to be expected of a private gentleman’s groom, but neither this nor his tall, cockaded hat make him look like anything but a soldier. He had known the Earl throughout his army career, had fought in the same engagements, shared the same discomforts, and was wholly devoted to his interests. He thought it a pity that his master should have sold out, for he had a poor opinion of all but military men (and, indeed, a rather poor opinion of such military men as belonged to any other regiment than his own), but after the first strangeness of riding out in a plain coat, with no accoutrements and no sabre, had worn off he found that he did not dislike his new position. An Earl’s head-groom was a personage of considerable consequence, particularly when his master travelled. He might be sure of the best accommodation for his horses at every inn on the road, and excellent attention for himself. More important, this Earl was a good master, who reposed complete confidence in him, and treated him with the easy familiarity Turvey so much deplored. Thus it was that consideration for the Earl, and not the fear of incurring a chilly set-down, held him silent for the first part of the drive. The grays were fresh, and the country lanes both rough and narrow, so that the Earl’s attention was fully occupied in handling his horses. It was not until they had covered a couple of miles that Chard ventured to distract him by remarking that he should not be surprised if one of Lord Ulverston’s wheelers had a splint forming. Since the Earl knew that Chard and the Viscount’s Clarence, who had been his private groom in France, were old foes, he paid very little heed to this, or to several dark strictures on the customs his lordship allowed to be followed in his stables.

“Very reprehensible,” he said. “I daresay he washes the mud from the legs of his lordship’s horses, too.”

“That, me lord, I don’t say,” replied Chard severely.

“How wretched for you that you cannot! What will you do when his lordship leaves Stanyon on Monday? You will be obliged to turn your attention to the iniquities of Mr. Martin’s head-groom.”

“Young Hickling,” said Chard. “No, me lord, I should call him very adecuado — with his horses.”

“How do you go on with him?”

“Well, me lord, bearing in mind what you said to me at the outset, we haven’t had a batalla campal,but that ain’t to say we won’t, because one of these days I shall catch him a bofetada,and then we’ll have a real turn-up.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Chard frankly, “it’s his idea that everything has got to be the way Mr. Martin wants it, and that ain’t by any means my idea. I daresay if I was as meek as what he’d like me to be we should have to stable our horses in a cow-byre no one don’t happen to be using.” Without moving his eyes from the road ahead, he added: “No se moleste usted! as they used to say to us in Spain, whenever anything went wrong. I can handle young Hickling, me lord. The trouble with him is he’s kind of growed up alongside of Mr. Martin, and, like every Johnny Raw you ever saw, he hasn’t got many notions in his silly head that came there natural, as you might say. Put there, they were, though it ain’t for me to say who put them there.”

The Earl did not reply for a minute; when he did speak it was in his usual soft, untroubled voice. Chard, straining his ears to catch a note in it of comprehension, or even of anger, could detect none. “Continue to handle him, Chard — without a pitched battle, if you please.”

“No objection to me keeping my eyes open, me lord?”

“None. But don’t mistake shadows for the enemy!”

“I have been posted as vedette in my time, me lord,” said Chard. “They didn’t, so to say, encourage us to give the alarm when a hare hopped across the path.”

The Earl only smiled, so his slightly offended henchman relapsed into correct silence.