The clock had proclaimed it to be morning-time, but as yet it was a morning darker than the night it had displaced: dark with a kind of drifting darkness, and cold with a coldness that lacked the splendour of moon and stars to give it spirit. The street had a ghostly air, and Noke, standing whey-faced on the threshold, looked like the last forlorn survivor in a country of the dead. The sound of munching drew Mr Bailey’s eyes to where, at a couple of yards distance, stood a horse and cart.
Receiving no answer from his visitor, the landlord repeated his remark, adding: ‘Marketing already? But that’s a rare ugly bruise you’ve found for yourself, Who’s been fighting ye?’
‘Horse’ll be all right,’ said Noke, stepping into the house without waiting for an invitation. ‘I’ve putten the nosebag on un.’
‘I heartily wish you might put one on me, Harry Noke,’ said Mr Bailey bitterly, as he lit the candles. The thought of a horse filling itself with good corn while he himself still fasted was almost more than he could bear. But he was glad of Noke’s company, and obscurely comforted by the sound of his voice, which seemed the only friendly thing in a bleak universe. ‘Now you’re here, neighbour, we’ll have bite and sup together if so be you’re agreeable. I’ve been waking the night through, and fasting to boot. So what d’you say?’
‘God bless the giver, say I,’ answered Noke. ‘I be empty as a drum, and that’s gospel, Mus Bailey. What’s more, I took and had a nasty fall smarnen. That be how I got this face on me. A pesty stump of tree twas, and me a trifle consarned in drink.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Bailey, nodding wisely, ‘and that’ll be why you’re not feeling yourself this morning. Now do you try kindling the fire, willee, while I go find food for us.’
‘There be a spark or two left still twinklen,’ remarked Noke, setting about his task at once. ‘Bythen you’re back twill be pretty-sure crackling.’ He was as good as his word, for by the time Mr Bailey returned with bread and boiled bacon on a tray he had coaxed the few sparks into a small blaze and added a handful of brushwood from the pile at the hearthside. He stared hungrily at the crackling brightness, and stretched out his hands to it as though he would gather it into himself and be warmed for ever. ‘A tarrible heartening sight is a fire on the hearth,’ he remarked with relish. ‘I’ve never breathed a day so raw as this day.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that,’ said Mr Bailey, already more cheerful. ‘It’s dark enough yet, and chill. But there’s no poisonous dank in it same as I’ve known in my time.’
Noke shivered. ‘Dank enough, Mus Bailey. It do rot a man’s bones in the rathe of morning, when there baint no wink of light, and you can hear the unfroze gobs of dew dripping from the branches on the roof of your house. It plenty do rot a man’s bones.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Bailey, who had the knack, when he chose, of suiting his diction to his company, ‘I see what it is. You’re feeling a bit low in yourself. I can see that with half an eye. Does it give you much pain, that face of yours? Ah, I’ll ’low it does. You want a wife to keep you comforted. Tis lonely of a cold dark morning in that little house of yours, I rackon. Come, fall to, man, and get a bit of this fine fat bacon inside yourself. There’s nothing like it to drive away melancholy. Yes, tis a wife you need. A hearty wench that ud keep you warm of nights and make you so cross and crusty in the morning, with her chatter and her rattle and her hurry-skurry manners, or else with her lazy sluggabed doings and devices, for tis one or tother: she’d make you so cross and crusty, I say, that you’d never have time for sighing or sadness till you was downstairs safe and sound with your breakfast in your belly. . . . Take a drop of small ale with that bacon, my friend. You’ll find they go lovingly together.’
‘Ay,’ agreed Noke, with his mouth full, ‘there be no beverage to beat ut for breakfast. A man,’ he explained, as if for the benefit of an uninstructed audience, ‘daun’t want a heavy lumpish liquor to wash down his breakfast with. Do he now?’ He seemed to implore this hypothetical audience to use its commonsense and be reasonable. ‘Stands to sense, Mus Bailey, that what a man do want is a spry thinnish liquor with a kindly smatch of bitterness to un, bainta now? As for wenches,’ he added, after a pause for munching, ‘dear knows there’s a plenty wenches’ll come for the asken without bit or bridle or wedden-ring nuther.’ He spoke not vaingloriously nor with evident pride, but rather in the tone of his former melancholy. ‘And there be naught that goo better with a drop of small ale, master, than a collop of bacon the like of this. And fat bacon too. There be virtue and goodness in fat. Fat do travel the body and oil the innards and keep a man’s sperrit burnen bright. Lean daun’t. A waste of good time be lean. Three pun of bacon off the thick end: the thick end, minda. That’s what I do goo for in the market when I’ve means enough to pay for un.’