“But if there’s nothing to be done till tomorrow we can surely eat dinner tonight!” said Adam. “What’s your choice, sir?”

“I don’t know as I’ll be staying — Oh, well, anything you fancy, my lord! The ordinary will do for me.”

Adam began to think that there must be something very wrong, if his father-in-law’s appetite had failed. He looked at him for a moment, and then turned to his valet. “Tell them to send up a neat dinner, Kinver, at seven — and some sherry immediately, if you please!” He smiled at Mr Chawleigh, saving, as Kinver went out of the room: “I’ve a mind to give you a scold, sir, for not ordering that for yourself. Now, what is it? Why was it necessary for me to come up to town?”

“It’s bad news, my lord,” Mr Chawleigh said heavily. “It’s damned bad news! We’ve been beat!”

Adam’s brows snapped together. “Who says so? Where did you learn that?”

“Never you mind where I learned it! You’d be none the wiser if I was to tell you, but it ain’t a hoax, nor yet a mere rumour. There’s those in the City whose business it is to know what’s going on abroad, and they’ve agents all over, ay, and other ways of getting the news before it’s known elsewhere! We’ve been gapped, my lord! Beaten all hollow!”

“Moonshine!” Adam was a little pale, but he gave a scornful laugh. “Good God, sir, did you bring me all this way just to tell me a Canterbury tale?”

“No, I didn’t, and it ain’t moonshine either! They’ve been fighting over there these two days past, let me tell you!”

“That I can well believe,” Adam responded coolly. “But that we’ve been beaten all hollow — no!”

Mr Chawleigh began to champ his jaws. “No? Don’t believe Boney’s sitting in Brussels at this very minute, I daresay? Or that those Prussians were rolled up — finished! — at the very outset? Or that Boney was too quick for your precious Wellington, and took him by surprise? I knew how it would be! Didn’t I say from the start we’d have him rampaging all over again?”

The entrance of a waiter checked him. He was obliged to contain himself until the man had gone away again; and when he next spoke it was in a milder tone. “There’s no sense in you and me coming to cuffs, my lord. You’ve got your notions, and it don’t matter what mine may be, because what I’m telling you ain’t anyone’s notion: it’s the truth! It came straight from. Ghent, where maybe they know a trifle more than we do here! The town’s packed full of refugees, and Antwerp too!”

Adam poured out two glasses of sherry, and handed one to him. “That might well be, if the Army is on the retreat — which might also be. You say the Prussians suffered a bad reverse. I can believe that, but consider, sir! If Blücher was obliged to fall back, Wellington must have done so too, to maintain his communications with him. Any soldier could tell you that! — and also that Boney’s first objective must have been to cut them!” He smiled reassuringly. “I’ve taken part in a good few retreats under old Hookey’s command, sir, and you may believe me when I tell you that he’s never more masterly than when he retires!”

Mr Chawleigh, swallowing his sherry at a gulp, choked, and ejaculated: “Retires? For God’s sake, boy, can’t you understand plain English? It’s a damned rout!”

“Apparently I can’t!” Adam said, rather mischievously. “But I’ve no experience of damned routs, you know — unless you count Salamanca a rout? We rompéd Marmont in prime style, but I shouldn’t have called his retreat a rout.”

“Marmont! This is Bonaparte!”

“Very true, but I still find it impossible to believe in your rout.” He saw that Mr Chawleigh’s colour was rising, and said: “Don’t let us argue an that head, sir! Tell me why I’m here! Even if your information were correct, I don’t understand why it is of such importance that I should be in London. What the devil can I do to mend matters?”

“You can save your bacon!” replied Mr Chawleigh grimly. “Not all of it, but some, I do trust! Eh, I blame myself! I should have warned you weeks ago — same as I should have pulled out myself, the moment I knew the jobbers had closed their books! I’ve dropped a tidy penny, my lord, and so I tell you!”

“Have you, sir? I’m excessively sorry to hear it,” said Adam, refilling the glasses. “How did you come to do that?”

Mr Chawleigh drew an audible breath, eyeing him much as a choleric schoolmaster might have eyed a doltish pupil. Speaking with determined patience, he said: “Your blunt’s invested in the Funds, ain’t it? Never mind these rents of yours! I’m talking about your private fortune. Well, I know it is — what was left of it! Me and your man Wimmering went into things pretty thoroughly before you was married to my Jenny. Not to wrap it up in clean linen, your pa played wily beguiled with his blunt, so that what was left don’t amount to much, not to my way of thinking. Nor your rents don’t either — and don’t waste your breath telling me what they might bring you in, because it don’t signify, not at this moment! The thing is, I wouldn’t want you to lose your fortune, my lord. I don’t say I ain’t ready to stand the nonsense, but well I know it ’ud fairly choke you if you was forced to be obliged to me for every groat you spent! Proud as an apothecary you are, for all you’ve tried to hide it, which I don’t deny you have, let alone behaving to me as affable and as respectful as if you was my own son!” He paused, observing Adam’s sudden flush with an indulgent eye. “No need to colour up, my lord,” he said kindly. “And no need for any roundaboutation either! They’ll tell you in the City that Jonathan Chawleigh’s a sure card. Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t, but I’m not a nodcock, lad, and well I know why you don’t drive the curricle I gave you, nor wouldn’t let me set up this farm of yours! You don’t choose to be beholden, and I like you the better for it! Which is why I bid you come up to town, for there’s naught to be done without you’re here to give the word. I’ve seen Wimmering: he knows what’s to be done, but he can’t move without he has your authority.”

“Have I any?” Adam interrupted, as pale as he had previously been flushed.

“Don’t talk so silly!” begged Mr Chawleigh. “It stands to reason your man of business can’t act without you tell him to!”

“So I had supposed! But I’m sadly ignorant: I had also supposed that my man of business would have shown the door to anyone — even my father-in-law! — who came to tell him what to do with my affairs!”

“Well, so he did, in a manner of speaking!” said Mr Chawleigh, keeping his temper. “Now, don’t fly into your high ropes, my lord! We ain’t after anything but your good, Wimmering and me, nor he never had any intention of acting arbitrary. But he’s a deep old file, and he knows, if you don’t, what’s the worth of a nudge from Jonathan Chawleigh, and a mighty poor man of business he’d be if he didn’t pay heed to it, and act according! Why, if I’d waited to drum it into your head, without a word spoken to Wimmering, it would have been too late to do anything by the time I’d done it, and you’d told Wimmering — which likely you’d have made a mull of, you having no more understanding of business than a babe unborn!”

Adam’s anger cooled a little. “Very well, and what is it that must be done?”

“Sell, of course! Sell, my lord, and at the best price you can get! If it can be done — if it ain’t too late already — you’ll suffer a loss, same as I have myself, but you’ll save yourself from ruin! It’ll be bad, and I don’t deny it, but see if I don’t put you in the way of making a recover presently! But there’s no time to be lost: once the news is made known there’ll be no selling the stock, not if you was to offer it at a grig! Forty-nine was all I got for mine, and they was standing at fifty-seven and a half when the jobbers closed their books! Eh, it don’t bear thinking of! A bubble-merchant, that’s what they’ll be calling me!”

He sounded so tragic that Adam might have supposed that he was facing ruin had he not had every reason to think that however large a part of his private fortune had been invested in the Funds it represented only a tithe of his enormous wealth. He said: “I’m afraid I don’t perfectly understand, sir. How am I to sell my shares if there’s no dealing being done?”

“You leave that to Wimmering!” said Mr Chawleigh. “He’ll know how to do the thing, never you fear! What’s more, he’s ready and anxious to do it, the moment you say the word. He’ll be here to wait on you first thing tomorrow morning, and you’ll find he’ll advise you the same as I have.”

He glanced shrewdly at Adam. “Well, he did so when that Bonaparte first broke out again, didn’t he?”

Adam nodded. Mr Wimmering had written to him in March, venturing to suggest that in view of the uncertain political situation it might be wise for his lordship to consider the advisability of realizing his holding in Government stock, but he had not considered it either advisable or proper to do so, and had replied quite unequivocally.

“Eh, if you’d only listened to him!” mourned Mr Chawleigh, shaking his head.

Adam looked at him thoughtfully. It was plainly a waste of tune to attempt to persuade him that a strategic withdrawal was not a rout: civilians were always cast into panic by a retreat, just as they were wildly elated by quite minor victories. So he refrained from telling Mr Chawleigh that his own confidence was unshaken, and tried instead to discover the exact nature of the news which had been whispered in his ear. It was not easy to do this, but by the time the neat dinner had been disposed of, and Mr Chawleigh took his leave, Adam had formed his own conclusions. It was certain that hostilities had begun; it seemed fairly certain that Napoleon, so far from being a spent force, had moved with all his former, disconcerting rapidity. It was possible that Wellington had been taken by surprise, and had been obliged to oppose the enemy with only his advance troops: it sounded like that; and it sounded too as if the action had been fought on ground not of his choosing. In which case, he would certainly retreat; and no doubt the flocks of pleasure-seeking visitors to Brussels would take fright immediately, and make for the coast. It was more difficult to assess the probable extent of the Prussian reverse. Adam had never seen the Prussians in action, but he knew the Hanoverian troops well, and he thought that if the Prussians were at all like the men of the King’s German Legion there would be little fear that they would run away, even if they had suffered a repulse. Mr Chawleigh talked as though Napoleon had smashed that army; Adam thought this unlikely, because the Allied Army had also been engaged, which meant that Napoleon must have been fighting on two fronts.