He began upon the abstract origin of it: he had lost his place in Sir Willoughby's establishment, and was obliged to look about for work where it was to be got, and though he knew he had no right to be where he was, he hoped to be forgiven because of the mouths he had to feed as a flyman attached to the railway station, where this gentleman, the colonel, hired him, and he believed Sir Willoughby would excuse him for driving a friend, which the colonel was, he recollected well, and the colonel recollected him, and he said, not noticing how he was rigged: "What! Flitch! back in your old place? Am I expected?" and he told the colonel his unfortunate situation. "Not back, colonel; no such luck for me" and Colonel De Craye was a very kind-hearted gentleman, as he always had been, and asked kindly after his family. And it might be that such poor work as he was doing now he might be deprived of, such is misfortune when it once harpoons a man; you may dive, and you may fly, but it sticks in you, once do a foolish thing.
"May I humbly beg of you, if you'll be so good, Sir Willoughby," said Flitch, passing to evidence of the sad mishap. He opened the door of the fly, displaying fragments of broken porcelain.
"But, what, what! what's the story of this?" cried Sir Willoughby.
"What is it?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, pricking up her ears.
"It was a vaws," Flitch replied in elegy.
"A porcelain vase!" interpreted Sir Willoughby.
"China!" Mrs. Mountstuart faintly shrieked.
One of the pieces was handed to her inspection.
She held it close, she held it distant. She sighed horribly.
"The man had better have hanged himself," said she.
Flitch bestirred his misfortune-sodden features and members for a continuation of the doleful narrative.
"How did this occur?" Sir Willoughby peremptorily asked him.
Flitch appealed to his former master for testimony that he was a good and a careful driver.
Sir Willoughby thundered: "I tell you to tell me how this occurred."
"Not a drop, my lady! not since my supper last night, if there's any truth in me!" Flitch implored succour of Mrs Mountstuart.
"Drive straight," she said, and braced him.
His narrative was then direct.
Near Piper's mill, where the Wicker brook crossed the Rebdon road, one of Hoppner's wagons, overloaded as usual, was forcing the horses uphill, when Flitch drove down at an easy pace, and saw himself between Hoppner's cart come to a stand and a young lady advancing: and just then the carter smacks his whip, the horses pull half mad. The young lady starts behind the cart, and up jumps the colonel, and, to save the young lady, Flitch dashed ahead and did save her, he thanked Heaven for it, and more when he came to see who the young lady was.
"She was alone?" said Sir Willoughby in tragic amazement, staring at Flitch.
"Very well, you saved her, and you upset the fly," Mountstuart jogged him on.
"Bardett, our old head-keeper, was a witness, my lady, had to drive half up the bank, and it's true--over the fly did go; and the vaws it shoots out against the twelfth mile-stone, just as though there was the chance for it! for nobody else was injured, and knocked against anything else, it never would have flown all to pieces, so that it took Bardett and me ten minutes to collect every one, down to the smallest piece there was; and he said, and I can't help thinking myself, there was a Providence in it, for we all come together so as you might say we was made to do as we did."
"So then Horace adopted the prudent course of walking on with the ladies instead of trusting his limbs again to this capsizing fly,"
Sir Willoughby said to Mrs. Mountstuart; and she rejoined: "Lucky that no one was hurt."
Both of them eyed the nose of poor Flitch, and simultaneously they delivered a verdict in "Humph!"
Mrs. Mountstuart handed the wretch a half-crown from her purse.
Sir Willoughby directed the footman in attendance to unload the fly and gather up the fragments of porcelain carefully, bidding Flitch be quick in his departing.
"The colonel's wedding-present! I shall call to-morrow." Mrs.
Mountstuart waved her adieu.
"Come every day!--Yes, I suppose we may guess the destination of the vase." He bowed her off, and she cried:
"Well, now, the gift can he shared, if you're either of you for a division." In the crash of the carriage-wheels he heard, "At any rate there was a rogue in that porcelain."
These are the slaps we get from a heedless world.
As for the vase, it was Horace De Craye's loss. Wedding-present he would have to produce, and decidedly not in chips. It had the look of a costly vase, but that was no question for the moment:--What was meant by Clara being seen walking on the high-road alone?--What snare, traceable ad inferas, had ever induced Willoughby Patterne to make her the repository and fortress of his honour!
