Читать книгу The Doomington Wanderer - Louis Golding - Страница 11

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In the year 1809 there was an inn called the Horse and Dolphin in St. Martin’s Street, Leicester Square, in London, much affected by the sporting swells of that time, the Corinthians. The owner was a negro, Bill Richmond by name, who was well thought of, not only as a publican, but as a prize-fighter, for he had met the redoubtable Tom Cribb himself, and, though he had not won—for he lacked the supreme stamina of the white man—he had put up a very stout show.

One night, in the late spring of that year, the door of the inn-parlour was thrust open, and a large negro entered, whose shoulders almost filled the threshold. He had a straw basket in his hand. He put the basket down and stood staring at the assembled company, his eyes moving from face to face as if he sought someone he failed to find.

There was a silence for some moments, for the negro was a slightly disconcerting spectacle, appearing unexpectedly in the doorway there, with those purple lips that swelled like cushions, and that fuzz of jungly hair. Then the air darkened with a volley of ribaldries.

“Hello, snowball!”

“Hello, daisy!”

“Is that you, Prince Georgy? When did you leave Brighton?”

“Hi, stinkwort! You smell!”

But it might have been a drift of thistledown for all the notice the negro took of it.

“Well, brother,” cried Bill Richmond at length, “what can I do for you? Are you looking for anybody?”

“Sho’ ah’m lookin’ fer somebody. Ah’ve come from America special for to find him.”

The pleasantries on the lips of the swells faltered and ceased. All eyes were turned curiously on the stranger.

“And who might that be, my dusky friend?” an almost too refined voice asked.

Tom Molyneux stood in the doorway and squared his shoulders. He placed himself more firmly on his elephantine feet.

“Ah’ve come to find Tom Cribb. Ah’ve come to fight him, so’s when ah’ve done dat ah’ll be champion of de world!”

The silence continued for some seconds. Then suddenly, as if it had been rehearsed, the whole company broke into a guffaw so uproarious that the glasses danced on the shelves like things twitched by wires.

Tom Molyneux stood in the doorway, scowling, clenching his fists. His eye wandered dourly from mouth to bellowing mouth.

“Come this way, brother!” cried Bill Richmond from behind his counter. “Come and have something to eat. You must surely be hungry, coming all that way!” For, indeed, Bill Richmond had perceived with a clearer eye than those others what sort of customer it was that had turned up from over the sea.