Читать книгу The Dwarf's Chamber - Fergus Hume - Страница 3

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THE railway is responsible for the transmutation of sleepy villages into noisy manufacturing towns; of picturesque inns into gaudy hotels. Wheresoever that iron road runs, hamlets, as vitalized by its touch, begin to throw out lines of suburban villas, to gather into clumps of roaring factories; while the rustic alehouse, of yore the parliament of rural politicians, swells into a bloated, three-storey barrack, all glass, and glitter, and bare discomfort. The portly host doffs his apron for the smart vulgarities of a publican, and trim Phyllis, changing sex and attractiveness, shrinks to a lean, black-coated, white-cravated scarecrow, avaricious of “tips,” and servile in demeanour. This may be progress, but it is neither beauty nor comfort; and in stirring up mediaeval sloth to modern activity, laudable though the task may be, the utilitarian spirit of the age is apt to overlook the claims of eye and soul to lovely sights and artistic suggestiveness.

Yet, as on the verge of the maddest whirlpool lie broad still pools wherein collect flotsam and jetsam thrown off from the central gyration, so beyond the radius of railroad and mushroom town lie somnolent parishes untouched by the restless spirit of the nineteenth century. Here may be found the pleasant hamlets of old time, huddled in a confusion of picturesque houses round the square-towered church, grey and solemn. Here the market-place with cross and inn, yonder the dwelling of the Lord of the Manor, showing red roofs and lean chimneys above the park tree-tops. At the end of the crooked street a narrow bridge bestrides a swift stream, and beyond, the dusty high-road, leaving behind its rusticity, runs straightly towards the smoky towns which skirt the maelstrom of modern existence. Such a village is Dalesford.

Artists, pioneers of the great tourist tribe as they are, knew it well, and often had its quaint houses, its ivy-clad church, its gorse-besprinkled common figured on the walls of the Academy. So sleepy, so peaceful, so idle it was, that here, if anywhere, Thomson might have built his pleasant Castle of Indolence. Buried in fertile pasture lands thirty miles from the nearest railway, Dalesford was lamentably lethargic, and heard as in a dream the tumult of the century roaring far away. Notwithstanding, its proximity to the high-road, it did not seem to recognize that it was its bounden duty to increase its houses, to multiply its population. Not a single dwelling had been erected there for the last half-century, and its rural population was limited still to three hundred souls (inclusive of the surrounding farms), as in the Middle Ages. No battles had been fought in its vicinity, no great man had sprung from its inhabitants, no industry of lace, or cloth, or straw-weaving was peculiar to the place. In a word, Dalesford was, to all useful purposes, dead, and no artist in love with its somnolent beauty ever wished it to be alive.

Against the high-road near the bridge stood the “Lelanro Arms,” a quaint little hostel dating from the days of the Stewarts, and now presided over by Mistress Sally Ballard. She, a comfortable old spinster, round and rosy as an apple, was dubbed Mistress out of courtesy to her age and respectability. A famous housewife was Mistress Sally, learned in pickling, and baking, and brewing; and her inn was scrupulously clean and eminently comfortable. Here one slept in low-ceilinged rooms, with diamond-paned casements, wherein were set pots of mignonette and balsam; here the sheets smelt of lavender, and the breakfast-table was set forth with freshly-caught trout, rich cream, and the sweetest of home-made bread. Three maid-servants and an ostler formed the staff of this unpretentious hostel, and these Mistress Sally governed with a rod of iron. But she was a kindly creature, and her rule was beneficent.

Hither in the evening came labourer and farmer to taste the ale for which the “Lelanro Arms” was famous. They sat in high-backed settles, with their tankards before them, and discussed such scraps of news as came from the outside world until it struck ten, when Mistress Sally, with many a laugh and jest, bundled them out, so that they might not infringe the respectability of her house by keeping midnight hours. The parish clerk, the verger, the steward from Lelanro Manor, even the parson himself, knew that mellow taproom and the smack of the home-brew. Painters in search of the picturesque stayed at the hostel of Mistress Sally, and sketched its white-washed front, its high red roof, the twisted stack of chimneys, and those rustic casements opening on to the village green. Once a lean and hungry poet came, who abode a week in the best bedroom, and then decamped without paying his bill, save in the following jingle:

Oh, Mistress Sally, ask me not

In kingly gold to pay my shot,

For I have fallen on evil times:

But lest you should be harsh and wild

With one who is the Muses’ child,

I pay my debt in lordly rhymes.

Over which sufficiently bad verses Mistress Sally laughed till the tears bestreaked her ruddy cheeks; and framing the “lordly rhymes,” she had them hung up in the bar-parlour. Had the lean poet appeared again, he would no doubt have been permitted to pay a second bill in the like coin.

“I’m sorry for the poor creature and his bits of verse,” said Mistress Sally, with a large-hearted geniality.

At the sunset hour she stood under the porch, looking across the green, to where the bridge spanned the stream. Already in twos and threes, with uncouth salutations, the customers of the “Lelanro Arms” were passing within; and from the windows of the taproom glimmered the flame of the early-lighted lamps. Shrill-voiced children played round the old stone cross, but Mistress Sally, heedless of their noisy pranks, stared at the gables of the distant Manor House as they loomed menacingly against the clear evening sky. She had been a still-room maid in the service of the Lelanros, and, as was natural, took a deep interest in the family. What she was thinking of it is impossible to say, but she pursed up her lips and wrinkled her brow in a manner which, to those who knew her, betokened unpleasant thoughts.

“Better if you were burnt down,” murmured the landlady, apostrophizing the distant mansion; “the fairy curse is on you and yours, though none know it but me. I—”

This somewhat recondite speech, which hinted at family secrets, was interrupted by a merry whistle. Across the bridge stepped a tall stripling with the tune of “Garryowen” on his lips; and straightly he bore down on Mistress Sally, who had already smoothed her brow to a hospitable smile. That amiable greeting took a yet more approving twist as she saw before her as handsome a young man as ever had crossed the threshold of her inn. Mistress Sally was no acidulated spinster to scorn the male sex on the sour grape principle, and, in her own heart, she secretly admired a strapping lad with a well-looking face. She had no fault to find on this score with the new-comer.

He was over the middle height, with a well-knit figure, an aristocratic and rather haughty countenance; but there lurked a twinkle in his dark eyes which did away with the reserve impressed on lip and brow. Well worn as was his dress, a shabby shooting-suit of brown corduroy, Mistress Sally saw that he was, as she expressed it, “every inch a gentleman.” And notwithstanding the bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and the fiddle under his arm, she acted on her first impression and addressed him accordingly.

“Good-even, sir,” said she, with a curtsey, “it is bed and board you want, I’ll be bound.”

“You’re right there, ma’am,” replied the wayfarer, taking his seat on a bench, and placing bundle and fiddle beside him, “but I’ll have board before bed, as my hunger is greater than my weariness.”

“Would you like a broiled trout, sir, or a chicken nicely roasted? And there’s a cold round of beef in the larder fit for a lord.”

The stranger flushed a trifle through the tan of his skin, and laughed in a somewhat embarrassed fashion.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said, with a half sigh, “my purse will not permit of such dainties. A pot of beer and some bread and cheese out here are all I require. After that a bed for the night.”

“Are you a poet, sir?” demanded the landlady, astonished at this moderation, and mindful of the rhymes in the bar-parlour.

“Why, no, ma’am,” answered the other, with an amused smile. “I have scribbled verses in my time, but I do not claim to be a rhymer. As you see,” he added, touching the violin, “I fiddle for my living.”

Mistress Sally looked at his handsome face, considered his gently bred air, and smilingly denied the truth of this remark. What is more, she supplied a reason for his making it.

“I understand, sir,” she said, with a broad smile. “You are a young gentleman who is doing this for a wager.”

“A charitable supposition, but incorrect. I am really and truly a simple fiddler, tramping my way up to London. Look at my bundle, my clothes, my violin, and—”

“And at your face, sir,” replied Mistress Sally, laughing. “It isn’t dress makes the gentry. Oh, I’ve lived with them in my time, sir. But as it pleases you to be merry it is not my place to say anything, though I wish,” added she, stepping back into the doorway, “that you would stay your stomach with something more substantial than ale and bread.”

The young man laughed as she disappeared, but the laugh gave place to a sad look when he examined his lean purse. Therein were two half-crowns and a piece of gold.

“Fifteen shillings,” the owner of this wealth said to himself, “and I am still over a hundred miles from London. Unless I earn more money with my fiddle I am afraid it is many a meal I shall have to go without, and many a night I shall be forced to sleep under the stars. Well, who cares? I am young and healthy, and after all there is something pleasant in this Bohemianism.”

He spoke in a refined manner, and his speech and accent betrayed education. That so apparently gently nurtured a young gentleman should be tramping the country had puzzled more heads than Mistress Sally’s. In spite of his denials the rustics persisted in attributing his ragged attire and fiddling propensities to eccentricity, and they firmly believed that he had plenty of gold on his person, wherewith to ride in a coach and dress in gay raiment were he so minded.

At every turn this greatness was thrust upon him till he grew weary of insisting upon his poverty and humble birth.

“That old lady is as sceptical as the rest,” said he, reclining full length on the bench to rest his weary limbs. “She thinks also that I am a lord in disguise. Well, who knows? It may be so, though I am ignorant of birth and title and wealth. Humph!” he added, catching sight of the sign, “that is a queer picture.”

One of the numerous artists who visited the inn had painted the sign, discharging his bill, as had the poet, by means of his art. The scene depicted was a stormy sea, whereon tossed a cockle-shell boat. This held three figures, a lady with outstretched arms standing up in the stern, a dead man lying in the bows, and midway a rower toiling at the oars. In the distance a lurid sunset flamed behind the gaunt towers of a castle. Beneath this mysterious picture was written “The Lelanro Arms” and four lines of verse, which could not be deciphered by the fiddler owing to the gathering darkness. It was an odd picture to swing before a village inn, and required explanation.

His attention was drawn from the sign by the reappearance of the landlady with his supper, to which she had added a small meat-pie. Seeing him colour at the sight of this addition, Mistress Sally hastily disclaimed any wish to offend.

“But sure,” said she in a kindly tone, “a lad like you needs good food after a long walk. You must eat well for health’s sake, sir.”

“Very good, ma’am. But if I can’t pay for my appetite?”

“Why, then you can give us a tune on your fiddle. I dearly love a country dance, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Warwick, ma’am. Algernon Warwick,” said the stranger, smiling at her simple craft, “and I’ll give you a tune with pleasure when I finish my supper.”

This he did, greatly to the delight of the taproom topers and the children on the green. No great hand at holding her tongue, Mistress Sally had already hinted her impression that the fiddler was a gentleman on the tramp out of sheer love for adventure; and every one was agog with excitement to hear what tunes this lord in disguise—for some foolishly imagined as much—could draw from the strings. Warwick proved to be a veritable magician of the bow, a strolling Orpheus, and moved their heartstrings by the magic of his melodies. How that fiddle talked, and cried, and laughed, and trilled, only those who were present could tell. Mistress Sally nodded benignly in the porch, and tapped her foot to the air of “Chloe, come kiss me,” or sighed when she heard the sad melody, “Jenny flouted Jessamy.” Then again he played brisk country dances, to which the delighted children footed it merrily; anon he changed to a minor key, so mournful, that the wine-bibbers within shook their grizzled heads over their cups; and finished with a wild Hungarian dance which stung slow, bucolic brains to unaccustomed excitement.

“A brave fiddler,” said Mistress Sally, when he laid by bow and instrument, “and, mind ye, a gentleman born, or I’m no true woman.”