_ BOOK I. THE SILENT PLACES
CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH I MEET A DOWN-AT-HEELS GENTLEMAN
I awoke uncomfortably warm, to find the high-risen sun pouring his dazzling beams full upon me while, hard by, the Tinker's fire yet smouldered; up I started to rub my eyes and stare about me upon the unfamiliar scene. Birds piped and chirped merrily amid the leaves above and around, a rabbit sat to watch me inquisitively, but otherwise I was alone, for the Tinker had vanished and his tent with him.
Now as I sat, feeling strangely lonely and disconsolate, I espied a bulbous parcel lying in reach and, opening this, found it to contain a small loaf, three slices of bacon and a piece of cheese, together with a folded paper whereon I deciphered these words inscribed in painfully neat characters.
YOUNG SIR:
What is one thing at night is another in the morning, so I have gone my way and taken my course appointed. If you should wish to meet me again, which would be strange, I think, you shall hear of me at the White Hart nigh to Sevenoaks, or the Chequers at Tonbridge or from mostly any of the padding kind, since the high road is my home and has been long. I am glad you liked my verses, I have more I could have read you and I think better of yours than you think I thought, though you have taken Lord Byron for your model I think and he is only a poet when he forgets to be a fine gentleman. May you prosper, young sir, and find your manhood which I reckon is none so far to seek. And this is the true desire of me.
Jeremiah Jarvis.
Tinker and occasionally literary cove.
I have left you some breakfast also fire to cook same, eat hearty. You will find a frying-pan in a cleft of the tree we slept under.
Thereupon, being much more hungry than was my wont, I came to the tree in question and presently found a roomy cleft where was the frying-pan, sure enough. And now, having made up the fire, I set about cooking my breakfast for the first time in my life and found it no great business, turning the rashers this way and that in the pan until what with their delectable sight and smell, my hunger grew to a voracious desire that amazed me by its intensity. So, placing the frying-pan on the grass between my knees, I began to eat with the aid of my penknife and a hunch of crusty bread, and never in all my days enjoyed anything more.
In due time, the bacon being despatched together with the greater part of the loaf and cheese, I lay propped against the tree, blinking in the sun and drowsily content. But this blissful aftermath was presently marred by haunting memories of tea, coffee and creamy chocolate until at last, roused by an insistent and ever-growing thirst, I arose, minded to seek some means of assuaging this appetite. Thus, having scrubbed out the frying-pan with a handful of bracken, I restored it to the tree and set out. After some little while I came on a brook bubbling pleasantly amid mossy stones and yet, though it looked sweet and clean enough, I could not bring myself to drink of it, being too proud-stomached, and must go wandering on, plagued by my thirst, until, chancing on the same brook or another, I could resist no longer, and stretching myself full-length upon the bank I stooped to the murmurous water and drank my fill and found it none so ill, although a little brackish.
As the day advanced, the cool wind died away so that what with the heat and this unwonted exercise I grew distressed and was about to cast myself down in the shade of a hedge, when I espied a small tavern bowered in trees some little distance along the road, very pleasant to see, and hasted thitherward accordingly. I was yet some distance away when I became aware that something untoward was afoot, for, borne to my ears, came a sound of excited voices, dominated all at once by one deep and hoarse and loud in virtuous indignation.
"Drunk me beer, I tell 'ee--every drop! Drunk me beer at one gullup so quick's a flash--the 'eartless ruffin!"
Hereupon rose an answering chorus.
"Throw 'im out! Duck 'im! Gi'e 'un one for 'isself!"
Reaching the tavern, I halted on the threshold of a low, wide chamber, floored with red tiles and furnished with oaken tables and benches, where I beheld some half-dozen angry country-fellows grouped about a solitary individual who fronted them in very desperate and determined manner, his back to the wall; an extremely down-at-heels gentleman this, who yet cocked his hat and glared about him with an air of polite ferocity.
"In half a pig's whisper," said he, squaring his arms belligerently, "in half a pig's whisper or less, blood will flow, gore will gush and spatter--" Here, chancing to catch sight of me in the doorway, he flourished off his hat, a miserably sorry-looking object, and bowed profoundly. "Aha, Sir Oswald," quoth he, "you arrive most aptly--in the very nick, the moment, the absolute tick! If you have a mind to see a little delicate fibbing, some scientific bruising as taught by the famous Natty Bell, foot and fist-work as exhibited by Glorious John, Jem Belcher and--"
"'E swallowed all my beer, 'e did, sir!" exclaimed a red-faced man in gaiters and smock-frock, "in one gullup--so quick no 'and could stay the deed! Stole me beer an' can't deny it--"
"No, by heaven!" exclaimed the down-at-heels gentleman. "I drank the fellow's beer, every drop--could have drunk more. Our fat and furious friend labours under a delusion, for to drink good beer with a man out of that man's own pot is surely a mark of high esteem--"
"Dang your 'steem!" cried the stout fellow, flourishing his empty tankard threateningly. "A chap as thieves a chap's beer is a chap as can't be no chap's friend! 'Ow about it, you chaps?" quoth he, appealing to his fellows. "Shall us let a chap thieve a chap's beer an' not kick that chap out where that chap belongs--'ow about it?" Whereupon came the answering chorus:
"Aye, Sim, go for 'im, lad--we'm wi' 'ee! Pitch 'im out! Duck 'im in th' 'orsepond!"
At this juncture spake one I deemed to be the landlord, a gloomy being who drooped above a small bar in one corner.
"Do as ye will, neighbours all, do as ye will--only don't break nothink--them as breaks, pays!"
"One moment, please!" said I, stepping forward. "If the gentleman committed the solecism complained of, it was, I am sure, not so much a wish to offend as an error of judgment--"
"Admirably expressed, sir!" exclaimed the gentleman in question. "And suffer me to add--the exigencies of fortune and circumstance!"
"Therefore," I continued, returning the gentleman's polite bow, "I shall be happy to make such restitution on his behalf as I may."
At this there fell a strange silence during which every eye was fixed on me in somewhat disconcerting fashion, feet shuffled, heads were scratched.
"Ax your pardon, sir--" said the red-faced man at last, rasping shaven chin with tankard rim, "but if you could manage to talk a little less furrin'--more plain English-like?"
"I mean I will buy more beer for you--and any one else who--"
"D'ye hear that, landlord?" cried a voice. "The genelman do mean pots all round!"
"Do ye mean that same, sir?" enquired the landlord, glooming and doubtful.
"I will pay for as many pots as they can drink, for good-fellowship's sake," said I, and laid down a coin.
"Spoken like a true sportsman, sir!" exclaimed the down-at-heels gentleman. "Sir Oswald, permit me to bring to your notice one Anthony--myself, once blooming gayest of the gay, now, alas! a faded blossom, cankered, sir, blighted, yet not to be trodden upon with impunity and always your most obliged, humble servant!" Here he paused to lift the brimming tankard the gloomy landlord had just set before him and bow to me across the creamy foam. "Sir Oswald, your health!" said he. "And may heaven preserve you from these three fatal F's--fathers, friends and females!" Having said which, he drank thirstily and thereafter sat frowning down at his broken boots beneath the brim of his woebegone hat, apparently lost in bitter thought. And beholding him thus, his flippancy forgotten, his air of dashing ferocity laid aside, I saw he was pale and thin and haggard and much younger than I had thought. Suddenly, chancing to meet my eye, his pale cheeks flushed painfully, then, squaring his drooping shoulders, he smote his hat more over one eye than ever, nodded gaily, sprang lightly to his feet and gripped at the table to steady himself.
"E'gad, sir," said he, laughing, "they brew uncommonly strong ale in these parts, it seems!"
"Yes!" said I, well knowing it was not this had so shaken him or caused his hands to quiver as he leaned. "I was thinking," I continued, "that with such ale a crust of bread and cheese might not be amiss?"
"Cheese!" he exclaimed fiercely. "Sir--I--I detest cheese!" But as he spoke I noticed his nearest hand had clenched itself into a quivering fist.
"Why, indeed," said I, furtively watching that telltale hand, "I myself should prefer a slice of roast beef--or a rasher of ham--"
"Ham!" he murmured softly as if to himself--and then in the same tone, "Sir, I never eat ham, it is an abom--"
"'Am, sir?" sighed the gloomy landlord at this juncture, "if you gentleman was a-thinking of 'am, I've as fine a gammon as was ever smoked, leastways so my missus do say, so if you'm minded for a rasher or so--cut thick--an' say 'arf a dozen eggs--why, say the word, sir."
"The word is 'yes'--if this gentleman will honour me with his company," said I. Hereupon the down-at-heels gentleman shook his head, scowled into his tankard, sighed, and, meeting my eye, broke into a wry smile.
"With all the pleasure in life, sir!" said he.
Thus in a little while we were seated in a small, clean room with the ham and eggs smoking on a dish between us, whence emanated a savour most delectable.
"It smells very appetising!" said I, taking up knife and fork.
"So much so," said he, "so very much so, that before I accept more of your hospitality, it is as well you should know whom you would honour--" here I paused and stared down at the ham and eggs. "Sir, I am a thief!" Here I let fall the knife. "Three nights since, sir," he continued in the same passionless voice, "I broke into a farmhouse and stole a loaf and a piece of cheese. I should have stolen more but that I was interrupted and pursued. I lost the cheese clambering over a wall, the last of the loaf I finished yesterday morning, since when I have subsisted on air and an occasional mangel-wurzel--"
"Then surely it is time you ate something more substantial--this ham seems excellent and--"
"God love you, Sir Oswald--you're a trump!" he exclaimed and sitting down, fell to upon the food I had set before him.
"It is good ham!" said I.
"Sublime!" he answered, and seeing with what fervour he addressed himself to the viands, I troubled him with no further speech until, his plate empty, he leaned back in his chair and vented a sigh of blissful and utter content.
"For that--" he began haltingly, his voice a little hoarse, "for--your hospitality--accept the thanks of a starving wretch!"
"And my name is not Oswald!" said I.
"Of course not, but it answered very well with the fellows outside--nothing like a high-sounding name or title to awe your British rustic. And now," said he, with an expression half-whimsical, half-rueful, as he picked up his woebegone hat, "having by your courtesy eaten and drunk my fill, I will do my best to repay you by ridding you of my company."
"I was christened Peregrine," said I, reaching over to refill his tankard. Now at this he stood mute a space, and very still, only he fumbled nervously with his hat and I heard his breath catch oddly, wherefore I kept my gaze bent upon the jug in my hand.
"Sir," said he at last, speaking as with an effort, "when I stole the bread and cheese, I would have stolen--anything that had chanced in my reach--money--jewels--anything. I was mad and desperate with hunger. And yet many a poor rogue in the same circumstances did no more and their bodies dangle in chains on the highway. I have even contemplated turning footpad--"
"I think," said I, "you told me your name was Anthony--well, if you are going on, I will come with you, if I may."
"You will trust yourself--with me--in these solitary byways!"
"Of course," said I, rising, "because, in spite of everything, you are a gentleman!"
At this he turned very abruptly and strode to the latticed casement, while I, having summoned the landlord, paid the reckoning. Then, bidding the company good-day, we set forth together. _