Which is where on the last day of our strange courtship he was waiting for me.
I had not even got down from the cabriolet when the piece of goods straightened and approached me. I cannot say that his hat was in his hands, I cannot say where it was. These humble types have a way with their hats (and with their hands too I shouldn’t wonder). Why I remark this at all is that for days now he had been playing the milepost for me as I rode by and now his deference seemed as absolute as an act of aggression. If he had stepped out into the road that first day to halt my progress I could not have been more alarmed. Yet apparently he meant no harm, for all he did once he approached was done with an appropriate respect and shyness.
“Sir,” says he, and so awkward as positively to seem to be directing his remarks into the horse’s behind. “Sir, er, ah, uh,” he says as if trying out strange new vowels he’d learned. “Squire…”
“Yes,” says I. “What is it?”
“I am a good worker,” says the brute.
“You are certainly excellent at finding the edge of a field and planting yourself in it,” says I.
“You may ask Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones or any of them. I am a good worker.”
“Yes, well, I congratulate you,” says I, and remind him, “yet it is only what God expects of all of us.”
“But, sir, I am no farmer,” he says with some warmth.
“No,” says I, “you are a scarecrow.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind. What is it you want?”
“To be your coachman. To drive your coach.”
“What, this?” say I, indicating the topless, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage in which I sat.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are a coachman?”
“I would be,” says he, “oh, squire, I would be!”
“Then must you first study your trade and learn to recognize what a coach exactly is.”
In brief, old friend, he had no more idea as to the various sorts of vehicles that abound in his profession than I had regarding the whereabouts of his hat.
I told him I was a busy man. I told him he must go to the blacksmith and there make inquiries about the kinds of conveyances there be. I told him he must go to the inns and taverns along the post roads and there observe them. I told him he must undertake to learn what he could of harness and tack. “Why it is as necessary that you brief yourself in these matters,” I told him, “as for a sailor to learn about ropes and rigging, sails and stars.” Then, bethinking myself of you, I thought to add that if he could successfully demonstrate to me that he had become possessed of at least the basics of his would-be profession, I had an acquaintance in London who ran the most important public hack and livery system in all of England to whom I might recommend him.
Naturally I thought never to see him again.
He was back within the week, his mouth stuffed with definition, speaking so blithely of barouche, phaeton and sociable, buckboard, calashe, brougham and droshky that one would have thought he was as accustomed to equipage as he was to the very straws he sucked on. We went to my stables, where he challenged me as to the wisdom of using a particular thickness of harness on an animal whose feet had been shod with a certain shape of nail.
We went for a ride in the cabriolet. He drove. Brilliantly.
Of course I am reluctant to foist upon you someone whom you may not absolutely require, yet I did give my word and as the fellow, on the evidence, at least seems teachable, I overreach myself to the point that, amateur though I may be as to the requirements of the London livery trade, I send you an aspirant I have every reason to believe is one upon whose loyalties you may absolutely rely and who may, at the very least, do you some good on the new broad avenues of Regent Street.
In the hope that we may all soon meet again in the shining city, and in the further hope that such reunion prove propitious and jubilant, I remain ever your servant and now procurer …
The country’s greatest landowner?
A gross Dutchman whose family cannot have been in England over a hundred years?
The King read and reread the prolix letter.
The pun intended? What pun? What word games? What had he missed? Why had he grown so old?
Exile? Exile?
George Mills waited while the King read.
Waited patiently. No: humbly. No: proudly. No: all atwitter. No: all of them. All of them all at once. Not one time thinking, He’s going to do something for me. Not one time.
While the King read and reread, while he examined the anomalies and ambiguities, while he pored over the double Dutch double entendre, the political acrostic he took the letter to be. But the man is dead, he thought. Discovered and assassinated they told me. The most important public hack and livery system in all of England and all its jarvey spies and post-boy plotters shut down, under new management. (The wonder of their plain arrangements! King George thought. They had simply to overhear my clerks and ministers as they drove them down Pall Mall or along the embankment. And spring and summer the best time for spying they told me, during the mild weather, the carriage windows open to the breezes, and our Stuart enemies all ears on a fine day. Secrets lost to the warm front, to balm and ease. Very Nature a co-conspirator.) Not even understanding all of it, confused by their complicated shenanigans, by all held historical grudge, devotees, faction, the partisan life and the boring obsession of blood. Blood, he thought. Blood and milk. He didn’t care a damn really. It was simply inconvenient to abdicate. And he would miss a king’s perks. He had to admit. The handsome expense account, the lovely tributes. But I don’t understand my enemies! The pains they take, the troubles and lengths they go to. And why would they send me this, this aspirant? (Yet his mind nagged: It could be a mistake; I could be attributing to machination what perhaps ought to be put down to the simple disfigurement of style.) Still, he thought, I suppose I have to resist. Who’s King here anyway?
And Mills not only not thinking: He’s taking too long, he’s probably going to do something for me. But not even thinking: He’s taking too long, he’s probably going to do something to me.
The King looked up from the letter Mills had shown him and, seeing the expression of sly puzzlement on the young man’s face, mildly asked, “What?”
“Oh, sir,” George said, reddening, evasively shrugging.
“What?” he repeated.
“Well it’s just …”
“What? It’s just what?”
“What you told me. You know. All those things. About yourself.”
“Didn’t I also say that our nasty stories neither ascend nor descend but stay within their class of origin?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, you did.”
“Well,” the King said, “there you are. It would seem you’re one of us then, George.”
“Oh, sir. You’re teasing me, ain’t you, sir?”