In five minutes I was of no account in the scheme of things at Toft End,
and I began to wonder why I had come. Stirling, my sole protector, had
vanished up the dark stairs of the house, following a stout, youngish
woman in a white apron, who bore a candle. Jos Myatt, behind, said to
me: "Happen you'd better go in there, mester," pointing to a half-open
door at the foot of the stairs. I went into a little room at the rear of
the bar-parlour. A good fire burned in a small old-fashioned grate, but
there was no other light. The inn was closed to customers, it being past
eleven o'clock. On a bare table I perceived a candle, and ventured to
put a match to it. I then saw almost exactly such a room as one would
expect to find at the rear of the bar-parlour of an inn on the outskirts
of an industrial town. It appeared to serve the double purpose of a
living-room and of a retreat for favoured customers. The table was
evidently one at which men drank. On a shelf was a row of bottles, more
or less empty, bearing names famous in newspaper advertisements and in
the House of Lords. The dozen chairs suggested an acute bodily
discomfort such as would only be tolerated by a sitter all of whose
sensory faculties were centred in his palate. On a broken chair in a
corner was an insecure pile of books. A smaller table was covered with a
chequered cloth on which were a few plates. Along one wall, under the
window, ran a pitch-pine sofa upholstered with a stuff slightly
dissimilar from that on the table. The mattress of the sofa was uneven
and its surface wrinkled, and old newspapers and pieces of brown paper
had been stowed away between it and the framework. The chief article of
furniture was an effective walnut bookcase, the glass doors of which
were curtained with red cloth. The window, wider than it was high, was
also curtained with red cloth. The walls, papered in a saffron tint,
bore framed advertisements and a few photographs of self-conscious
persons. The ceiling was as obscure as heaven; the floor tiled, with a
list rug in front of the steel fender.
I put my overcoat on the sofa, picked up the candle and glanced at the
books in the corner: Lavater's indestructible work, a paper-covered
_Whitaker_, the _Licensed Victuallers' Almanac, Johnny Ludlow_, the
illustrated catalogue of the Exhibition of 1856, _Cruden's Concordance_,
and seven or eight volumes of _Knight's Penny Encyclopædia_. While I was
poring on these titles I heard movements overhead--previously there had
been no sound whatever--and with guilty haste I restored the candle to
the table and placed myself negligently in front of the fire.
"Now don't let me see ye up here any more till I fetch ye!" said a
woman's distant voice--not crossly, but firmly. And then, crossly: "Be
off with ye now!"
Reluctant boots on the stairs! Jos Myatt entered to me. He did not speak
at first; nor did I. He avoided my glance. He was still wearing the
cut-away coat with the line of mud up the back. I took out my watch, not
for the sake of information, but from mere nervousness, and the sight of
the watch reminded me that it would be prudent to wind it up.
"Better not forget that," I said, winding it.
"Ay!" said he, gloomily. "It's a tip." And he wound up his watch; a
large, thick, golden one.
This watch-winding established a basis of intercourse between us.
"I hope everything is going on all right," I murmured.
"What dun ye say?" he asked.
"I say I hope everything is going on all right," I repeated louder, and
jerked my head in the direction of the stairs, to indicate the place
from which he had come.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, as if surprised. "Now what'll ye have, mester?" He
stood waiting. "It's my call to-night."
I explained to him that I never took alcohol. It was not quite true, but
it was as true as most general propositions are.
"Neither me!" he said shortly, after a pause.
"You're a teetotaller too?" I showed a little involuntary astonishment.
He put forward his chin.
"What do _you_ think?" he said confidentially and scornfully. It was
precisely as if he had said: "Do you think that anybody but a born ass
would _not_ be a teetotaller, in my position?"