Regency Buck Read online

  As ill-luck would have it, Peregrine’s start had made him tighten the reins involuntarily, and the farmer’s horse began to back. Peregrine stopped him in a moment, but not in time to prevent his right mudguard just grazing the curricle’s left one. He could have sworn aloud from annoyance.

  The gentleman in the curricle turned, brows lifted in pained astonishment. ‘My very good sir,’ he began, and then stopped. The astonishment gave place to an expression of resignation. ‘I might have known,’ he said. ‘After all, you did promise yourself this meeting, did you not?’

  It was said quite quietly, but Peregrine, hot with chagrin, felt that it must have drawn all eyes upon himself. Certainly the gentleman in the high collar was leaning forward to look at him across the intervening curricle. He blurted out: ‘I hardly touched your carriage! I could not help it if I did!’

  ‘No, that is what I complain of,’ sighed his tormentor. ‘I’m sure you could not.’

  Very red in the face, Peregrine said: ‘You needn’t be afraid, sir! This place will no longer do for me, I assure you!’

  ‘But what is the matter? What are you saying, Julian?’ demanded Lord Worcester curiously. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘An acquaintance of mine,’ replied the gentleman in the cur-ricle. ‘Unsought, but damnably recurrent.’

  Peregrine gathered up his reins in hands that were by no means steady; he might not find another place, but stay where he was he would not. He said: ‘I shall relieve you of my presence, sir!’

  ‘Thank you,’ murmured the other, faintly smiling.

  The gig drew out of the line without mishap and was driven off with unusual care through the press of people. There was by this time no gap in the first row of carriages into which a gig might squeeze its way, and after driving down the length of the long line Peregrine began to regret his hastiness. But just as he was about to turn up an avenue left in the ranks to get to the rear a young gentleman in a smart-looking whisky hailed him good-naturedly, and offered to pull in a little closer to the coach on his right, and so contrive a space for the gig.

  Peregrine accepted this offer thankfully, and after a little manoeuvring and some protests from a party of men seated on the roof of the coach, room was made, and Peregrine could be comfortable again.

  The owner of the whisky seemed to be a friendly young man. He had a chubby, smiling countenance, with a somewhat roguish pair of eyes. He was dressed in a blue single-breasted coat with a long waist, a blue waistcoat with inch-wide yellow stripes, plush breeches, tied at the knee with strings and rosettes, short boots with very long tops, and an amazing cravat of white muslin spotted with black. Over all this he wore a driving-coat of white drab, hanging negligently open, with two tiers of pockets, a Belcher handkerchief, innumerable capes, and a large nosegay.

  Having satisfied himself that Peregrine, in spite of his gig and his old-fashioned dress, was not a mere Johnny Raw, he soon plunged into conversation; and in a very little while Peregrine learned that his name was Henry Fitzjohn, that he lived in Cork Street, was not long down from Oxford, and had come to Thistleton Gap in the expectation of joining a party of friends there. However, either because they had not yet arrived, or because the crowd was too dense to allow him to discover their position, he had missed them, and been forced to take up a place without them or lose his chance of seeing the fight. His dress was the insignia of the Four Horse Club, to which, as he naïvely informed Peregrine, he had been elected a member that very year.

  He had backed the Champion to win the day’s fight, and as soon as he discovered that Peregrine had never laid eyes on him – or, indeed, on any other of the notables present – he took it upon himself to point out every one of interest. That was Berkeley Craven, one of the stake-holders, standing by the ring now with Colonel Hervey Aston. Aston was one of the Duke of York’s closest friends, and a great patron of the ring. Did Peregrine see that stoutish man with the crooked shoulder approaching Jackson? That was Lord Sefton, a capital fellow! And there, over to the right, was Captain Barclay, talking to Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, who was always to be seen at every fight. Mr Fitzjohn fancied that none of the Royal Dukes was present; he could not see them, though he had heard that Old Tarry Breeks – Clarence, of course – was expected to be there.

  Peregrine drank it all in, feeling very humble and ignorant. In Yorkshire he had been used to know everyone and be known everywhere, but it was evident that in London circles it was different. Beverley Hall and the Taverner fortune counted for nothing; he was only an unknown provincial here.

  Mr Fitzjohn produced an enormous turnip watch from his pocket and consulted it. ‘It’s after twelve,’ he announced. ‘If the magistrates have got wind of this and mean to stop it it will be a damned hum!’

  But just at that moment some cheering, not unmixed with cat-calls and a few derisive shouts, was set up, and Tom Molyneux, accompanied by his seconds, Bill Richmond, the Black, and Bill Gibbons, arbiter of sport, came up to the ring.

  ‘He looks a strong fellow,’ said Peregrine, anxiously scruti nising as much as he could see of the negro for the enveloping folds of his greatcoat.

  ‘Weighs something between thirteen and fourteen stone,’ said Mr Fitzjohn knowledgeably. ‘They say he loses his temper. You weren’t at the fight last year? No, of course you weren’t: I was forgetting. Well, y’know it was bad, very bad. The crowd booed him. Don’t know why, for they don’t boo at Richmond and he’s a Black, too. I daresay it was just from everyone’s wanting Cribb to win. But it was not at all the thing, and made the Black think he had not been fairly treated, though that was all my eye and Betty Martin, of course. Cribb is the better man, best fighter I ever saw in my life.’

  ‘Did you ever see Belcher?’ asked Peregrine.

  ‘Well, no,’ admitted Mr Fitzjohn regretfully. ‘Before my time, you know, though I did have the chance of being at his last fight, a couple of years ago, when he was beaten by Cribb. But I don’t know that I’m sorry I missed it.They say he was past it and then, of course, there was his eye – he only had one then, you know. My father said there was never a boxer to come near him in his day. Always remember my father telling me how he was at Wimbledon when Belcher knocked Gamble out in five rounds. Fight only lasted seven minutes. There were twenty thousand people there to see it. My father told me how the ring was within sight of the gibbet, and all the while they could hear Jerry Abershaw, who was hanging there in chains, creaking every time the wind caught him. Holla, this looks like business! There’s old Gibbons tying his man’s colours to the ropes. Crimson and orange, you see. Cribb sports the old blue bird’s eye. Ha, there’s John Gully! Cribb must have arrived! Who is his bottle-holder, I wonder? They’ll be throwing their castors in the ring any moment now. Cribb was lying at the Blue Bull on Witham Common last night, and I believe Molyneux was at the Ram Jam. Can’t make out why they’re behind time. Lord, listen to them cheering! That must be Cribb sure enough! Yes, there he goes! He has Joe Ward with him. He must be his bottle-holder. Looks to be in fine feather, don’t he? I’ve laid a monkey on him, and another he gives the first knock-down.The only thing is that he is slow. No denying it. But excellent bottom, never shy at all.’

  The Champion’s hat had been tossed into the ring by now, and he had followed it, and was acknowledging with a broad smile, and a wave of his hand, the cheers and yells of encouragement that greeted him. He was an inch and a half taller than the Black, a heavy-looking fighter, but neat on his feet. He did indeed look to be in fine feather, but so, too, did Molyneux, emerging from his greatcoat. The Black had an enormous reach, and huge muscular development. He looked a formidable customer, but the betting was steady at three to one on Cribb.

  In another few moments the seconds and bottle-holders left the ring, and at eighteen minutes past twelve precisely (as Mr Fitzjohn verified by a glance at his watch) the fight began.

  For about a minute both men sparred cautiously, then Cribb made play right and left, and Molyneux returning slightly to the head,