Chapter Thirty
The journey to London had taken two days, and he was counting on the same to get home, but Andrew was unlucky.
The drizzle that had been a feature of his short stay in London became a full-fledged storm as he began the journey back.
The wind was full in his and Jenny’s face, and the rain turned the roads into a quagmire.
The going was very slow, and then impossible.
He had hoped to get as far as Basingstoke that first day.
That ancient town had been mentioned in the Domesday Book and was still an important staging post between London and Winchester.
It boasted a number of inns, but both he and his horse were wet through and freezing cold long before that, and he knew it was foolhardy to try to keep going.
He decided to stay overnight in Frimley, a town some twenty miles short of Basingstoke. He stopped a man in a dirty smock leading a bull down the road, to ask if there was an inn there.
“You’ll be visitin’ the lunatics in that ’sylum will yer?” asked the yokel.
“No, should I?” asked Andrew.
“Nay, not ’less yer got someone in there, I reckon.”
“I daresay my brother belongs in there,” said Andrew ironically, “but so far, he’s escaped confinement.”
“Well, folks usually stops at the White Hart,” said the man. “Jist keep goin’ and y’ll see it.” He winked at Andrew. “The landlady’s known t’give extra service, t’ them that wants that sort of thing.”
“Thanks for the warning!” Andrew laughed.
Sure enough, he soon found the White Hart, an ancient-looking place.
But before going inside, he went to the stables in the back and thankfully handed Jenny over to the ostler, giving him sixpence, and telling him rub her down well and give her an extra feed of oats.
The lad bit the silver coin between his far from clean front teeth and nodded.
“Oi’ll be lookin’ after ’er, don’t yer worry,” he said.
Andrew went inside and was shown by the taciturn landlord to a low room with a timbered ceiling and a sloping floor.
He asked about a hot meal and the man grunted, “five o’clock.
” He changed his wet garments for the Lunnon clothes, as Ruby called them, that he was carrying in his bag, and went downstairs to sit by the fire.
The landlady, a buxom charmer with a come-hither expression in her eye, delighted by a sketch he did of her on the back of the hand-written Bill of Fare, whispered that the girl would put a pan of coals in his bed, but he’d only to say if he needed more warming than that.
He thanked her but said he was too tired to do justice to her very obvious charms, and after consuming an indifferent meal, took himself off to bed, alone.
The next morning the storm had passed, and after a sustaining breakfast, Andrew found Jenny comfortable and dry in the stable, and began the second day of his trip.
It was Friday, and Harriet’s wedding was the following morning.
He knew he couldn’t get home that night, but estimated that if he got far enough and took off early Saturday morning, he could make it in time.
It was the middle of the afternoon and he was well past Basingstoke when fate struck again.
Jenny cast a shoe. Her gait suddenly altered, and though she gamely did her best, he knew she was having trouble.
He got down and led her into the next village, which wasn’t a village at all, just a series of cottages strung out along the road.
He asked a man pushing a wheelbarrow if there was a smith in the neighborhood and was told that yes, it were down along there, nigh the plough.
“What plough?” asked Andrew.
The man looked at him as if he was mad. “The plough,” he repeated, and made the universal hand signal of someone drinking.
“Oh!” said Andrew, “You mean The Plough?”
“Yerse, like Oi said, the plough.” The man walked away, shaking his head. Those folks from Lunnon, he was thinking, weren’t ’alf a queer lot.
The smith, a huge man with arms like oak trunks and a chest like a barrel, was busy when he arrived, and told him to get himself a jar in The Plough and come back in an hour.
Andrew took Jenny to the back of the inn, and found a stable being watched over by a small boy who burst into speech on seeing him.
“Please, sir,” he said, “Me dad tole me t’ say we’s not ’irin’ out our King bein’ as Squire ’as took ’im fer th’ day.”
Andrew took king to refer to a horse, not the reigning monarch, and replied, “I don’t want to hire King, but I would like you to give Jenny here a bucket of water and some hay. She’s hungry and thirsty. Can you do that? I’ll pay your father inside, but this is for your trouble.”
He gave the boy a thrupenny bit.
“Coo!” said the lad, who couldn’t have been more than six or seven, looking at the coin as if it were an apparition. “I ain’t never ’ad a thruppence afore. Wait till I tells our Alfie.”
“Who’s Alfie?”
“’E’s me bruvver. ’E’s working over to Squire’s.”
“Well, if he’s anything like my big brother, I shouldn’t tell him. He’s liable to take it away from you.”
“Is ’e called Alfie an’ all?”
“No his name is Richard, but big brothers are all the same.”
The boy thought for a minute, and nodded his head. “Yuss, yer right. Oi’ll keep it ter meself.”
“Good lad,” said Andrew and walked around the inn to the front door.
It was already beginning to get dark, and he wondered about the wisdom of going any further that night.
He told the publican about Jenny and enquired about a room.
The man replied that that there was room for Jenny in the stable, and he was welcome to the one room they had for travelers, not being a place many stopped at.
That being arranged, Andrew had a jar of ale and a pie.
Chatting with the publican after his meal, he discovered he was in the village of East Stratton.
“Is there a West Stratton?” he asked.
“Not that Oi knows of, sir,” he replied. “Only ever bin East Stratton, far as Oi knows. It all belongs to Sir Francis, o’ course, bein’ as ’e bought Stratton Park back in 1801. This place weren’t ’ere then, and Oi weren’t neither!”
The smith made short work of Jenny’s shoe, and sent both of them back to The Plough, jingling the two shillings in his pocket. His attitude towards Londoners was not that different from the man with the wheelbarrow. A queer lot, they were, paying two shillin’ for a job that only cost one.
The pub was obviously the evening gathering place for the estate workers, and it soon filled up and became rowdy.
Andrew took himself off to his bed early, meaning to be up and off at first light, but it was a long time before the company downstairs departed to their own homes.
He didn’t get to sleep until the small hours, and was consequently deaf to the crowing of the cock at the break of dawn.
Andrew cursed when he awoke and saw the morning well advanced.
He had about sixteen miles to go and though Jenny should be well rested, he didn’t want to push her.
He thought there was little chance of arriving in time for the wedding, especially as he would have to go home and change, but he should be able to make it to the breakfast that was to be offered at Harriet’s afterwards. He would see his Cynthia there.