It is likewise needless to say that the driver, if he had any such
hopes as those above stated, was grossly disappointed; and that the
worthy Baronet whom he drove to the City did not give him one single
penny more than his fare. It was in vain that Jehu appealed and
stormed; that he flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter at the
'Necks, and swore he would take the law of his fare.
"You'd better not," said one of the ostlers; "it's Sir Pitt Crawley."
"So it is, Joe," cried the Baronet, approvingly; "and I'd like to see
the man can do me."
"So should oi," said Joe, grinning sulkily, and mounting the Baronet's
baggage on the roof of the coach.
"Keep the box for me, Leader," exclaims the Member of Parliament to the
coachman; who replied, "Yes, Sir Pitt," with a touch of his hat, and
rage in his soul (for he had promised the box to a young gentleman from
Cambridge, who would have given a crown to a certainty), and Miss Sharp
was accommodated with a back seat inside the carriage, which might be
said to be carrying her into the wide world.
How the young man from Cambridge sulkily put his five great-coats in
front; but was reconciled when little Miss Sharp was made to quit the
carriage, and mount up beside him--when he covered her up in one of his
Benjamins, and became perfectly good-humoured--how the asthmatic
gentleman, the prim lady, who declared upon her sacred honour she had
never travelled in a public carriage before (there is always such a
lady in a coach--Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?), and the
fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside--how the
porter asked them all for money, and got sixpence from the gentleman
and five greasy halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage at
length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon
clattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by the
strangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now
departed to the world of shadows--how they passed the White Bear in
Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the market-gardens of
Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen, Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need
not be told here. But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in
former days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable
journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and tender regret. Where
is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea
or Greenwich for the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where
are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead? and the
waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of
beef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking
pail, where is he, and where is his generation? To those great
geniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved
reader's children, these men and things will be as much legend and
history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard. For them
stage-coaches will have become romances--a team of four bays as
fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as
the stable-men pulled their clothes off, and away they went--ah, how
their tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they
demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we shall never hear the
horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more.
Whither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us?
Let us be set down at Queen's Crawley without further divagation, and
see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there.