Evan Harrington. Complete. George Meredith
Amadis, when it came to be told that the occupant of the waggon was likewise one of its pensioners.
Sleep had long held its reign in Fallowfield. Nevertheless, Mr. Raikes, though blind windows alone looked on him, and nought foreign was to be imputed to him in the matter of pride, had become exceedingly solicitous concerning his presentation to the inhabitants of that quiet little country town; and while Evan and—the waggoner consulted the former with regard to the chances of procuring beds and supper, the latter as to his prospect of beer and a comfortable riddance of the feminine burden weighing on them all—Mr. Raikes was engaged in persuading his hat to assume something of the gentlemanly polish of its youth, and might have been observed now and then furtively catching up a leg to be dusted. Ere the wheels of the waggon stopped he had gained that ease of mind which the knowledge that you have done all a man may do and circumstances warrant, establishes. Capacities conscious of their limits may repose even proudly when they reach them; and, if Mr. Raikes had not quite the air of one come out of a bandbox, he at least proved to the discerning intelligence that he knew what sort of manner befitted that happy occasion, and was enabled by the pains he had taken to glance with a challenge at the sign of the hostelry, under which they were now ranked, and from which, though the hour was late, and Fallowfield a singularly somnolent little town, there issued signs of life approaching to festivity.
CHAPTER XI. DOINGS AT AN INN
What every traveller sighs to find, was palatably furnished by the Green Dragon of Fallowfield—a famous inn, and a constellation for wandering coachmen. There pleasant smiles seasoned plenty, and the bill was gilded in a manner unknown to our days. Whoso drank of the ale of the Green Dragon kept in his memory a place apart for it. The secret, that to give a warm welcome is the breath of life to an inn, was one the Green Dragon boasted, even then, not to share with many Red Lions, or Cocks of the Morning, or Kings’ Heads, or other fabulous monsters; and as if to show that when you are in the right track you are sure to be seconded, there was a friend of the Green Dragon, who, on a particular night of the year, caused its renown to enlarge to the dimensions of a miracle. But that, for the moment, is my secret.
Evan and Jack were met in the passage by a chambermaid. Before either of them could speak, she had turned and fled, with the words:
‘More coming!’ which, with the addition of ‘My goodness me!’ were echoed by the hostess in her recess. Hurried directions seemed to be consequent, and then the hostess sallied out, and said, with a curtsey:
‘Please to step in, gentlemen. This is the room, tonight.’
Evan lifted his hat; and bowing, requested to know whether they could have a supper and beds.
‘Beds, Sir!’ cried the hostess. ‘What am I to do for beds! Yes, beds indeed you may have, but bed-rooms—if you ask for them, it really is more than I can supply you with. I have given up my own. I sleep with my maid Jane to-night.’
‘Anything will do for us, madam,’ replied Evan, renewing his foreign courtesy. ‘But there is a poor young woman outside.’
‘Another!’ The hostess instantly smiled down her inhospitable outcry.
‘She,’ said Evan, ‘must have a room to herself. She is ill.’
‘Must is must, sir,’ returned the gracious hostess. ‘But I really haven’t the means.’
‘You have bed-rooms, madam?’
‘Every one of them engaged, sir.’
‘By ladies, madam?’
‘Lord forbid, Sir!’ she exclaimed with the honest energy of a woman who knew her sex.
Evan bade Jack go and assist the waggoner to bring in the girl. Jack, who had been all the time pulling at his wristbands, and settling his coat-collar by the dim reflection of a window of the bar, departed, after, on his own authority, assuring the hostess that fever was not the young woman’s malady, as she protested against admitting fever into her house, seeing that she had to consider her guests.
‘We’re open to all the world to-night, except fever,’ said the hostess. ‘Yes,’ she rejoined to Evan’s order that the waggoner and his mate should be supplied with ale, ‘they shall have as much as they can drink,’ which is not a speech usual at inns, when one man gives an order for others, but Evan passed it by, and politely begged to be shown in to one of the gentlemen who had engaged bedrooms.
‘Oh! if you can persuade any of them, sir, I’m sure I’ve nothing to say,’ observed the hostess. ‘Pray, don’t ask me to stand by and back it, that’s all.’
Had Evan been familiar with the Green Dragon, he would have noticed that the landlady, its presiding genius, was stiffer than usual; the rosy smile was more constrained, as if a great host had to be embraced, and were trying it to the utmost stretch. There was, however, no asperity about her, and when she had led him to the door he was to enter to prefer his suit, and she had asked whether the young woman was quite common, and he had replied that he had picked her up on the road, and that she was certainly poor, the hostess said:
‘I ‘m sure you’re a very good gentleman, sir, and if I could spare your asking at all, I would.’
With that she went back to encounter Mr. Raikes and his charge, and prime the waggoner and his mate.
A noise of laughter and talk was stilled gradually, as Evan made his bow into a spacious room, wherein, as the tops of pines are seen swimming on the morning mist, about a couple of dozen guests of divers conditions sat partially revealed through wavy clouds of tobacco-smoke. By their postures, which Evan’s appearance by no means disconcerted, you read in a glance men who had been at ease for so many hours that they had no troubles in the world save the two ultimate perplexities of the British Sybarite, whose bed of roses is harassed by the pair of problems: first, what to do with his legs; secondly, how to imbibe liquor with the slightest possible derangement of those members subordinate to his upper structure. Of old the Sybarite complained. Not so our self-helpful islanders. Since they could not, now that work was done and jollity the game, take off their legs, they got away from them as far as they might, in fashions original or imitative: some by thrusting them out at full length; some by cramping them under their chairs: while some, taking refuge in a mental effort, forgot them, a process to be recommended if it did not involve occasional pangs of consciousness to the legs of their neighbours. We see in our cousins West of the great water, who are said to exaggerate our peculiarities, beings labouring under the same difficulty, and intent on its solution. As to the second problem: that of drinking without discomposure to the subservient limbs: the company present worked out this republican principle ingeniously, but in a manner beneath the attention of the Muse. Let Clio record that mugs and glasses, tobacco and pipes, were strewn upon the table. But if the guests had arrived at that stage when to reach the arm, or arrange the person, for a sip of good stuff, causes moral debates, and presents to the mind impediments equal to what would be raised in active men by the prospect of a great excursion, it is not to be wondered at that the presence of a stranger produced no immediate commotion. Two or three heads were half turned; such as faced him imperceptibly lifted their eyelids.
‘Good evening, sir,’ said one who sat as chairman, with a decisive nod.
‘Good night, ain’t it?’ a jolly-looking old fellow queried of the speaker, in an under-voice.
‘Gad, you don’t expect me to be wishing the gentleman good-bye, do you?’ retorted the former.
‘Ha! ha! No, to be sure,’ answered the old boy; and the remark was variously uttered, that ‘Good night,’ by a caprice of our language, did sound like it.
‘Good evening’s “How d’ ye do?”—“How are ye?” Good night’s “Be off, and be blowed to you,”’ observed an interpreter with a positive mind; and another, whose intelligence was not so clear, but whose perceptions had seized the point, exclaimed: ‘I never says it when I hails a chap; but, dash my buttons, if I mightn’t ‘a done, one day or another! Queer!’
The chairman, warmed by his joke, added, with a sharp wink: ‘Ay; it would be queer, if you hailed “Good night” in the middle of the day!’ and this among a company soaked in ripe ale,