‘God blind ye,’ cried he. ‘Why in thunder do you keep me standing at your door! Speak, fellow!’ he shouted at the trembling potman. ‘Is this a company of mutes?’
The landlord hurried forward, and bowed obsequiously. ‘Good evening, sir. Was your worship requiring anything?’
‘My worship,’ said the stranger bitterly, ‘is requiring a meal, a roof, and a bed, if such things are to be had in this benighted place.’
A shrill but not unmusical noise interrupted this dialogue. Coachy Timms was enjoying a joke.
‘Benighted, sir, now that’s a very true word, sir. Because why, says you. Because the sun be garn down, says I. Now that be the sooth of it in these parts. When sun goo down, then tis night-time. Tis haply otherways where you come from, sir?’
The stranger, affecting not to hear these remarks, addressed himself to Bailey. ‘Are you the landlord here, my good man?’
‘At your service, sir.’
‘Then be good enough to see to the horses. On one of them you’ll find a lady. To be plain with you, my sister. Do you hear, landlord?’
‘Will the lady be taking a meal, sir, same as yourself?’
‘To be sure she will. Do you expect her to take her supper from a nosebag with the horses?’
This sally so greatly amused its author as to put him at once into a better humour. ‘Get along, old blockhead,’ he said gaily, slapping the landlord on the back, ‘persuade your good woman to prepare a meal for us, the best she can muster. And I will go bring the lady in.’ The better to display his magnificence, he removed his hat, revealing a stylish wig tied at the nape with a black ribbon.
Mr Bailey, being a somewhat timid man with an excessive respect for the gentry, was slightly confused by the variety of his instructions, and stood like a dog at a fair, not knowing which way to run: whether to set about stabling the horses or to rouse his wife from her kitchen and set her busying herself in the preparation of a meal. He was a man of sensibility, reflective by nature, distrustful of impulse. Having allowed this stranger to begin teaching him his duty as host, he seemed as unable to disregard his tutor’s orders as to execute them. But, the stranger offering no further remarks, but swaggering out into the road, the landlord was left with no alternative but to collect his own wits and obey their prompting. He followed his imperious guest, saw the lady assisted to the ground, and taking the two horses by their bridles led them round the house to the stables, which were approached from the other side. In his brief absence the potman had warned Mrs Bailey of what was toward, and Bailey returned to find that the gentleman and his sister had been conducted by that resourceful woman to the private parlour, where, by the intervention of a stout oak door, their ears would be protected from the conversation of low persons. No sooner, however, had Mr Bailey resumed his seat by the fire, with perhaps some hope of hearing what remained of the unfinished song, than that same oak door was opened, and a voice summoned him.
‘Ask the company to drink our health, my good man,’ commanded the stranger.
Mr Bailey, protesting that his honour was too kind, received sundry silver coins and came back into the public room with a respectful smile still lingering about his lips. ‘A pleasant enough gentleman,’ he remarked, ‘if you know how to manage him. And what if he does talk like a playactor—there’s room for all sorts in the world, surely? When first he came he was all for damning us and swearing and blaspheming, but when he saw I wasn’t a man to be treated so, did ye mark the change in him, neighbours? It comes of knowing how to handle folk. I claim no credit for it.
Why, we’re as thick as thieves now, he and I. We might have been born brothers.’
‘Thieves,’ said Coachy Timms, ‘is a good word and a true. But if you was yarnder gennelman’s brother, Mus Bailey, I’d as lief be pullen your nose as drinken good ale in your parlour. And talken of saucy coxcombs,’ went on Coachy, raising his voice a little, ‘talken of fine gennelmen with more money than manners, and more manners than arnesty, and more arnesty than looks, God help ’em; and talken of a gimsy jackass as comes asken beds of arnest folk when what he do need is a halter, twould do me good, neighbours, and twould do my heart good, and twould give my old eyes a rare cantle of joy, to have such in the shafts before me, harnessed tight and true, and drive him on his hands and knees down Glatting road in flood.’
‘He sartain sure do make a countable gurt hoe about naun,’ said Mykelborne. ‘And now we’ll haply have the dregs of our song, Gipsy. Always so be there’s no bawdry to it, for tis too late an hour for bawdry.’