The trail of the serpent
more tall factory chimneys; a few more young factory ladies in cotton
jackets and coral necklaces all the week, and in rustling silks and
artificial flowers on Sunday; the new town--that dingy hanger-on of
the old town--may have spread a little farther out towards the bright
and breezy country; and the railway passenger may perhaps see a larger
veil of black smoke hanging in the atmosphere as he approaches the
Slopperton station than he saw eight years ago.
Mr. Peters, being no longer a householder in the town, takes up his
abode at a hostelry, and, strange to say, selects the little river-side
public-house in which he overheard that conversation between the usher
and the country girl, the particulars of which are already known to the
reader.
He is peculiar in his choice of an hotel, for “The Bargeman’s Delight”
certainly does not offer many attractions to any one not a bargeman.
It is hard indeed to guess what the particular delight of the bargeman
may be, which the members of that guild find provided for them in the
waterside tavern alluded to. The bargeman’s delight is evidently not
cleanliness, or he would go elsewhere in search of that virtue; neither
can the bargeman affect civility in his entertainers, for the host and
that one slip-shod, young person who is barmaid, barman, ostler, cook,
chambermaid, and waiter all in one, are notoriously sulky in their
conversation with their patrons, and have an aggrieved and injured
bearing very unpleasant to the sensitive customer. But if, on the other
hand, the bargeman’s delight should happen to consist in dirt, and
damp, and bad cooking, and worse attendance, and liquors on which the
small glass brandy-balls peculiar to the publican float triumphantly,
and pertinaciously refuse to go down to the bottom--if such things as
these be the bargeman’s delight, he has them handsomely provided for
him at this establishment.
However this may be, to “The Bargeman’s Delight” came Mr. Peters on the
very day of the Count’s arrest, with a carpet-bag in one hand and a
fishing-rod in the other, and with no less a person than Mr. Augustus
Darley for his companion. The customer, by the bye, was generally
initiated into the pleasures of this hostelry by being tripped up or
tripped down on the threshold, and saluting a species of thin soup of
sawdust and porter, which formed the upper stratum of the floor, with
his olfactory organ. The neophyte of the Rosicrucian mysteries and of
Freemasonry has, I believe, something unpleasant done to him before he
can be safely trusted with the secrets of the Temple; why, then, should
not the guest of the Delight have _his_ initiation? Mr. Darley,
with some dexterity, however, escaped this danger; and, entering the
bar safely, entreated with the slip-shod and defiant damsel aforesaid.
“Could we have a bed?” Mr. Darley asked; “in point of fact, two beds?”
The damsel glared at him for a few minutes without giving any answer at
all. Gus repeated the question.
“We’ve got two beds,” muttered the defiant damsel.
“All right, then,” said Gus. “Come in, old fellow,” he added to Mr.
Peters, whose legs and bluchers were visible at the top of the steps,
where he patiently awaited the result of his companion’s entreaty with
the priestess of the temple.
“But I don’t know whether you can have ’em,” said the girl, with a more
injured air than usual. “We ain’t in general asked for beds.”
“Then why do you put up that?” asked Mr. Darley, pointing to a board on
which, in letters that had once been gilt, was inscribed this legend,
“Good Beds.”
“Oh, as for that,” said the girl, “that was wrote up before we took
the place, and we had to pay for it in the fixtures, so of course we
wasn’t a-goin’ to take it down! But I’ll ask master.” Whereon she
disappeared into the damp and darkness, as if she had been the genius
of that mixture; and presently reappeared, saying they could have
beds, but that they couldn’t have a private sitting-room because there
wasn’t one--which reason they accepted as unanswerable, and furthermore
said they would content themselves with such accommodation as the
bar-parlour afforded; whereon the slip-shod barmaid relaxed from her
defiant mood, and told them that they would find it quite cheerful, as
there was a nice look-out upon the river.
Mr. Darley ordered a bottle of wine--a tremendous order, rarely known
to be issued in that establishment--and further remarked that he should
be glad if the landlord would bring it in, as he would like five
minutes’ conversation with him. After having given this overwhelming
order, Gus and Mr. Peters entered the parlour.
It was empty, the parlour; the bargeman was evidently taking his
delight somewhere else that afternoon. There were the wet marks of
the bargeman’s porter-pots of the morning, and the dry marks of the
bargeman’s porter-pots of the day before, still on the table; there
were the bargeman’s broken tobacco-pipes, and the cards wherewith
he had played all-fours--which cards he had evidently chewed at the
corners in aggravation of spirit when his luck deserted him--strewn
about in every direction. There were the muddy marks of the bargeman’s
feet on the sandy floor; there was a subtle effluvium of mingled
corduroy, tobacco, onions, damp leather, and gin, which was the perfume
of the bargeman himself; but the bargeman in person was not there.
Mr. Darley walked to the window, and looked out at the river. A
cheerful sight, did you say, slip-shod Hebe? Is it cheerful to look
at that thick dingy water, remembering how many a wretched head its
current has flowed over; how many a tired frame has lain down to find
in death the rest life could not yield; how many a lost soul has found
a road to another world in that black tide, and gone forth impenitent,
from the shore of time to the ocean of eternity; how often the golden
hair has come up in the fisherman’s net; and how many a Mary, less
happy, since less innocent than the heroine of Mr. Kingsley’s melodious
song, has gone out, never, never to return! Mr. Darley perhaps thinks
this, for he turns his back to the window, calls out to the barmaid to
come and light a fire, and proceeds to fill man’s great consoler, his
pipe.
I very much wonder, gentle readers of the fair sex, that you have never
contrived somehow or other to pick a quarrel with the manes of good,
cloak-spoiling, guinea-finding, chivalrous, mutineer-encountering,
long-suffering, maid-of-honour-adoring Walter Raleigh--the importer of
the greatest rival woman ever had in the affections of man, the tenth
Muse, the fourth Grace, the uncanonized saint, Tobacco. You are angry
with poor Tom, whom you henpeck so cruelly, Mrs. Jones, because he came
home last night from that little business dinner at Greenwich slightly
the worse for the salmon and the cucumber--not the iced punch!--oh,
no! he scarcely touched that! You are angry with your better half, and
you wish to give him, as you elegantly put it, a bit of your mind. My
good soul, what does Tom care for you--behind his pipe? Do you think
he is listening to _you_, or thinking of _you_, as he sits
lazily watching with dreamy eyes the blue wreaths of smoke curling
upwards from that honest meerschaum bowl? He is thinking of the girl
he knew fourteen years ago, before ever he fell on his knees in the
back-parlour, and ricked his ancle in proposing to you; he is thinking
of a picnic in Epping Forest, where he first met _her_; when
coats were worn short-waisted, and Plancus was consul; when there was
scaffolding at Charing Cross, and stage-coaches between London and
Brighton; when the wandering minstrel was to be found at Beulah Spa,
and there was no Mr. Robson at the Olympic. He is looking full in your
face, poor Tom! and attending to every word you say--as you think! Ah!
my dear madam, believe me, he does not see one feature of your face,
or hear one word of your peroration. He sees _her_; he sees her
standing at the end of a green arcade, with the sunlight flickering
between the restless leaves upon her bright brown curls, and making
arabesques of light and shade on her innocent white dress; he sees
the little coquettish glance she flings back at him, as he stands in
an attitude he knows now was, if anything, spooney, all amongst the
_débris_ of the banquet--lobster-salads, veal-and-ham pies, empty
champagne-bottles, strawberry-stalks, parasols, and bonnets and shawls.
He hears the singing of the Essex birds, the rustling of the forest
leaves, her ringing laugh, the wheels of a carriage, the tinkling of a
sheep-bell, the roar of a blacksmith’s forge, and the fall of waters
in the distance. All those sweet rustic sounds, which make a music
very different to the angry tones of your voice, are in his ears; and
you, madam--you, for any impression you can make on him, might just as
well be on the culminating point of Teneriffe, and would find quite as
attentive a listener in the waste of ocean you might behold from that
eminence!
And who is the fairy that works the spell? Her earthly name is Tobacco,
_alias_ Bird’s-eye, _alias_ Latakia, _alias_ Cavendish;
and the magician who raised her first in the British dominions was
Walter Raleigh. Are you not glad now, gentle reader, that the sailors
mutinied, that the dear son was killed in that far land, and that the
mean-spirited Stuart rewarded the noblest and wisest of his age with a
life in a dungeon and the death of a traitor?
I don’t know whether Augustus Darley thought all this as he sat over
the struggling smoke and damp in the parlour of the “Bargeman’s
Delight,” which smoke and damp the defiant barmaid told him would soon
develop into a good fire. Gus was not a married man; and, again, he and
Mr. Peters had very particular business on their hands, and had very
little time for sentimental or philosophical reflections.
The landlord of the “Delight” appeared presently, with what, he assured
his guests, was such a bottle of port as they wouldn’t often meet with.
There was a degree of obscurity in this commendation which savoured
of the inspired communications of the priestess of the oracle. Æacida
might conquer the Romans, or the Romans might annihilate Æacida; the
bottle of port might be unapproachable by its excellence, or so utterly
execrable in quality as to be beyond the power of wine-merchant to
imitate; and either way the landlord not forsworn. Gus looked at the
bright side of the question, and requested his host to draw the cork
and bring another glass--“that is,” he said, “if you can spare half an
hour or so for a friendly chat.”
“Oh, as for that,” said the landlord, “I can spare time enough, it
isn’t the business as’ll keep me movin’; it’s never brisk except on wet
afternoons, when they comes in with their dirty boots, and makes more
mess than they drinks beer. A ‘found drowned’ or a inquest enlivens us
up now and then; but Lord, there’s nothing doing nowadays, and even
inquests and drownin’ seems a-goin’ out.”
The landlord was essentially a melancholy and blighted creature; and
he seated himself at his own table, wiped away yesterday’s beer with
his own coat-sleeve, and prepared himself to drink his own port, with
a gloomy resignation sublime enough to have taken a whole band of
conspirators to the scaffold in a most creditable manner.
“My friend,” said Mr. Darley, introducing Mr. Peters by a wave of his
hand, “is a foreigner, and hasn’t got hold of our language yet; he
finds it slippery, and hard to catch, on account of the construction of
it, so you must excuse his not being lively.”
The landlord nodded, and remarked, in a cheering manner, that he didn’t
see what there was for the liveliest cove goin’ to be lively about
nowadays.
After a good deal of desultory conversation, and a description of