Chapter VI

I’ll ne’er be drunk again but in honest and godly company,
for this trick.
SHAKSPEARE.

There was not the usual market-day bustle outside the Queen’s Head, and Farmer Darnell dismounting, followed his old mare, who well knew her way to her usual stable in the backyard through the passage, which was so narrow as to limit its accommodation to equestrians.

“Call the hostler, lad,” said the farmer from the stable to George, who had followed him into the yard; an injunction which George vociferously complied with, thinking that now the sooner he and his pony were separated the better for the indulgence of their mutual appetites.

“Eh, Sally, and who will that be calling about him?--run and see,” said a voice from the back of one of the outhouses, at the window of which the person who had thus spoken immediately appeared, and seeing George, continued, “And is it only you, my lad, making all that clatter? who taught you to call about you like a lord? They say patience saves many a pennyworth of lungs--what may you want, pray?”

“Uncle and I want our horses fed.”

“And who is your uncle?” inquired the landlady.

When, Richard Darnell presenting himself at the door of the stable, his appearance answered the question.

“And is it indeed you, Mr. Darnell--and this not market-day?--and of all days in the week that you should just look in upon me at washing-up, and I a shame to be seen,” she added, half raising her soap-suddy hands to pull her cap over her _papillotes_, till recollecting that such a contact would not be advantageous.

However, no one of her time of life could better bear to be seen at disadvantage than the Widow Westbury, for upon the whole surface of the fair fresh skin which the _papillotes_ left unshaded, forty winters had failed to leave a furrow, and during as many summers her indoor avocations had saved her even from a freckle; whilst an active disposition had prevented her full form swelling into corpulency. On this occasion, the sleeves tucked-up almost to her shoulders, displayed a well-rounded arm, and tidy habits had prevented the rest of her dress from being discomposed, or even her apron splashed. “And if that idle fellow Joe Hostler won’t be gone to the ’leatherplating sporting on the Wold! but you know where the corn is kept, Richard, and here is the key of the bin,” (throwing it to him,) “and I’ll go and see after your dinner and the lad’s.”

Now, though this was a part of the establishment upon which she much prided herself, yet, upon this occasion, with a special injunction to be careful, she consigned it exclusively to Sally, preferring to spend the next few minutes herself rather before the looking-glass than the kitchen-fire; and when George, having fed his pony, was seeking his room up-stairs, he found her coming out of hers, with the cap changed, and the _papillotes_ removed. By the excessive care she immediately took of all his comforts, she soon removed the unfavourable impression at first made on his mind by the rebuke he had received from her for his stentorian bellowing after the hostler.

During the savoury and substantial meal, George could not help remarking, how all his uncle’s tastes were consulted, with a delicate attention, which combined the zealous activity of the hostess with the acquired tact of companionship; and as he observed the exhilarating effect it had upon his spirits, and as he contrasted it with the state of subjection he suffered under at home, he no longer wondered at the fervent wish he had expressed, “that there were two market-days in every week.”

Soon after dinner, which their long ride had made rather late, the snug trio was swelled by the dropping in of two of the natives of Mayton, upon whose hands, in consequence of their fellow townsmen being more _healthy_ than _wealthy_, time occasionally hung a little heavy. These were an extra apothecary, and a supernumerary attorney, articles in which the market of Mayton had been overstocked.

They were both of them jovial companions over a bottle; an accomplishment which they had the more opportunities of cultivating, as, before their arrival, the supply of both physic and parchment had in Mayton been fully equal to the demand; and whilst there was another doctor or druggist in the neighbourhood, everybody was convinced that the apothecary had neither skill enough to write prescriptions, nor shop enough to make them up; and unless there should be some _third_ party to lawsuit beside plaintiff and defendant, no one would leave either of the two established practitioners for the new attorney.

The consequence of all this was, that they had frequently met Farmer Darnell at the Widow Westbury’s; one of which occasions had produced almost the only case in which either had been employed; having, as they walked home together late at night, literally _thrown_ into their hands a common joint job, in the shape of a sleepy “outsider,” who, swinging round the corner on the top of the very night-coach by which George was going, was chucked off at the moment they were passing by. The doctor bled the passenger, and the lawyer bled the coachmaster, in the shape of an action for damages, and the jury being more inflammable than the patient, they both succeeded beyond what their professional merits fairly earned. Having soon heard, (as what is not soon heard in a country town?) that Farmer Darnell was stopping at the Queen’s Head with his nephew, who was to go that night by the one o’clock coach, they stepped in to learn the why, and the where; and upon hearing that he was about to commence his career afloat, insisted upon drinking his future success in life in a bottle of port, or a bowl of punch. This, at first, the farmer declined, probably from not liking to exceed before his nephew, and mistrusting himself enough to know that the first was the most favourable moment for resistance, and that abstinence was easier than temperance. The hostess, though professionally interested in the affirmative of the proposal, seemed to regret, that by the interruption of her chat with her friendly guest, and her own necessary withdrawal from the drinking bout, she should pay in person what she received in purse.

The question, when a decided negative was no longer possible, having been put to Dick Darnell, in the amended form, “whether it should be _port_ or _punch_?” with the zeal of a convert he voted for _both_.

George Darnell, in whose exclusive honour they were undertaken, seemed not to participate in the pleasure the others took in these mingled potations. In fact, there were many things he regretted in the home he was leaving behind him, and it did not please him that the image of “cousin Lucy,” on which his fancy liked to dwell, should be whisked away in the rotatory evolutions of the apothecary’s red nose, and the attorney’s bushy brow, which both seemed soon to dance round him, as the mixture of _old wine_ and _new rum_ took a speedy effect upon his unseasoned head. The last thing he recollected distinctly was his kind hostess smoothing his pillow, and assuring him that he should not be too late for the coach.

When he awoke from his heavy slumber, it might have been _five hours_, or only _five minutes_ afterwards, all was perfectly stilled around, and instead of his uncle’s mellow voice singing a hunting song, and his two companions croaking in untuneful chorus, nothing met his ear but the loud ticking of the kitchen clock.

He had an indistinct recollection of old Sally having been sent on some such celestial embassy as “up to the Angel to let him know when the Star stopped.” He still dreaded being too late, and the ship sailing without him, when he found that, in spite of the wine, he had, as is often the case, waked instinctively just at the proper time, for the piercing notes of the guard’s horn were first heard in the distance, and then, as it reached the pavement, the rattling clatter of the coach echoing through the empty streets.

George hurried on his clothes, thinking, as he was left undisturbed to do so, it was lucky that he did not trust to his hostess’s promise to call him. He hastily huddled on his things, and making his way down-stairs, by the first glimmer of dawn he perceived that the door of the hostess’s room, through which he had seen her come the day before, was open; he concluded that she had just then stepped into his uncle’s to call him in time to take leave of him; as was probably the case, for they very soon descended together, the hostess ostensibly to let them out, and Darnell to escort his nephew to the coach. George took a short farewell of the kind hostess, who, being only hastily half dressed, ensconced herself behind the door she held open.

The uncle’s faculties seemed still a little offuscated with the effects of the last night’s debauch, as, after walking most of the way to the Angel in silence, he said, “You’ll not forget, George, to tell your aunt all the good advice I gave you yesterday.”

“You forget, Sir, that I am not going home, and that it will be long before I see my aunt or any of you again.”

“True, true; and perhaps, when you do, it may be as well to have clean forgotten all about this last night. Good bye, George; afore you see your old uncle Richard again, you will have seen many more men who preach better than they practise.”

Helping George up with one arm, and shaking his hand heartily with the other, he did not relinquish his friendly gripe till the horses began tugging hardly more powerfully the other. George soon lost sight of his uncle’s portly figure in the indistinctness of the misty dawn, and it was long before he again caught a glimpse of any of the previously familiar forms of his early youth.