Old Tabrum the landlord was the very man for the house--the very man to bring out all that was most worthy in his guests. He always produced good wine and a piping hot supper, never asked for his money till his guests were satisfied and always wore an apron as white as the foam of his cool deep ale.
He was eighty years old now, with a bloom on his cheeks like an autumn pippin and two limpid blue eyes that looked straight into yours and, if you had any reverence at all, made the tears well involuntarily at the sight of such gentle beauty.
Once he was a famous Basso Profundo, but now his voice was high and thin, and seemed already fraught with faint aerial music. The ancient man was a great gardener as properly became a landlord whose sign was a swinging posy. What a garden there was at the back of this glorious inn. The bowling-green surrounded by four grey walls was the finest ever known, and as for the borders, deep borders twelve feet wide, they were full of every sweet flower. There were Columbines and Canterbury Bells and blue Bells of Coventry and Lilies and Candy Goldilocks with Penny flowers or White Sattin and Fair Maids of France and Fair Maids of Kent and London Pride.
There was Herb of Grace and Rosemary and Lavender to pluck and crush between your fingers, while some one rolled the jack across the level green of the ground. In Spring there were Tulips and Jacynths, Dames' Violets and Primroses, Cowslips of Jerusalem, Daffodils and Pansies, Lupins like spires in the dusk, and Ladies' Smocks in the shadowed corners. As for Summer, why the very heart of high June and hot July dwelt in that fragrant enclosure. Sweet Johns and Sweet Williams with Dragon flowers and crimson Peaseblossom and tumbling Peonies, Blue Moonwort and the Melancholy Gentlemen, Larksheels, Marigolds, Hearts, Hollyhocks and Candy Tufts. There was Venus' Looking Glass and Flower of Bristol and Apple of Love and Blue Helmets and Herb Paris and Campion and Love in a Mist and Ladies' Laces and Sweet Sultans or Turkey Cornflowers, Gillyflower Carnations (Ruffling Rob of Westminster amongst them) with Dittany and Sops in Wine and Floramor, Widow Wail and Bergamot, True Thyme and Gilded Thyme, Good Night at Noon and Flower de Luce, Golden Mouse-ear, Princes' Feathers, Pinks, and deep-red Damask Roses.
It was a very wonderful garden indeed.
And because the old man loved flowers, tending them in the early twilight with water and releasing them from many a small weed which he was fain to destroy, but in the end always replanted in a small clearing on the shady side of his farthest meadow, because he loved flowers, the old man, whose first wife died years and years ago on a long past primrose-tide, married in the hale winter of his life a comfortable wench whom he could trust as he trusted his flowers to be true to their seasons. This second wife, more like a daughter than a wife, he delighted to surprize with fragrant rolls of gaily sprigged cloths; and never a summer morning broke but he was abroad in the dewy grass to gather her such a posy of freshness and beauty as can only be taken in the earliest hours of the morning. Mrs. Tabrum, for all she was so young and rosy, had a great feeling for the importance of her position as mistress of a famous hostelry and ordered about little Polly Patch, newly arrived from Mrs. Margery Severe's select charity school, with a great air of ladyship. Little Polly Patch was a very important young woman too; for the _Basket of Roses_ was not a large galleried inn full of grooms and hostlers and waiters and chambermaids, but a house of quite another character, where you were never bewildered by superfluous service but always received with a quiet dignity. Therefore you paid a great deal of respectful attention to little Polly Patch who had a great deal to do with your night's rest and your morning's breakfast. I think Mr. Vernon was a very wise man to choose a domestick fairyland so apt to soothe the sweet alarms of his Phyllida.
Here they would sup while the horses were being changed, and hence they would set out in the darkness, preserving, as they galloped along, a sense of peace and quiet beauty that should be to her the fortunate prelude of a happy adventure.
Vernon had sent word to the house of their arrival, hinted at the fatigues of a gay bridal, and let it be supposed they desired no intrusion.
To the ancient man such a confidence was enough to set his old brain agog with the gallant scenes of his youth. He chuckled over every tankard of ale he drew, told every one of his daffodils the merry secret and piped away at long forgotten melodies until his wife in despair sat him down in the ingle, put a broken fiddle in his hand and bade him play his fancies to sleep. The storm that rose at sunset shrieked about the inn, and the hollow groaning in the mazes of the huge chimney consorted in fitting harmonies with the old man's eerie tunes.
"March is going out wi' thunder and tempest like a roaring lion," he muttered, as a sudden gust of hail was blown against the lattice which pattered and rattled as if a crowd of elfin drummers were beating a wild tattoo without.
"Aye, 'tis a main ugly night," said Mrs. Dorothy Tabrum, who was laying the shining silver about the snowy tablecloth.
"So 'tis, my peony, so 'tis! A main ugly night for daffodils and young brides. Is her chamber ready?" he went on.
"Aye! Aye!"
"Wi' rosy curtains drawn close?"
Mrs. Tabrum nodded.
"Wi' candlelight and the cracking of logs and green bayleaves in the presses?"
"Why, do'ee think I'm gone daft to forget suchlike?"
"And a vase of daffodils by her mirrour?" the ancient one persisted.
Polly Patch came in at that moment.
"All be ready, mistress," she said in a slow voice, solemnly nodding her enormous mobcap while she spoke.
"Now Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, "lend a hand wi' this table and lets put 'un a thought nearer to the fire. Ugh! how it blows!" A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the room, and on the heels of a terrifick roar of thunder there was a cry of 'House! House!'
"Hurry, hurry, my daisies, and make who comes there welcome. Jacob! Jacob!" cried the old landlord as, much excited, he rose from his seat in the ingle and quavered towards the taproom.
"You are sure the candles are lighted, Polly?"
"Sarten, mistress."
"And the logs burning brightly?"
"'Ess mistress."
"And the curtains pinned together?"
"'Ess mistress."
"Then stand by the door, curtsey when you're spoken to, and don't put your thumb in the soup."
"No, mistress."
"Is Mary Maria watching the fowls?"
"Wi' both her eyes, mistress."
"Hark!"
"I'm harking away, mistress."
And while the mistress and the maid harked vigilantly the ancient landlord ushered Miss Phyllida Courteen into the Travellers' Room of the _Basket of Roses_ Inn.
As he entered, old Tabrum looked very much like a sexton leading a shy maid to the altar. She, flustered, expectant, murmured soft thanks into the farthest recesses of her swansdown muff, stumbled frequently to the voluble distress of her guide, and seemed afraid to look round the well-ordered comfortable room after so many miles of wind and driving rain.
"Dear soul! And where's the bridegroom?" exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum, as she led Phyllida to a high-backed chair right before the heart of the blazing fire.
Phyllida blushed as she explained Mr. Amor was travelling on horseback.
"Indeed, I expected to find him here," she stammered, "Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him."
"Now, don't 'ee fret thyself, sweet marjoram," said the ancient one, humming round her like a bee. "A'most anything might have happened to him on such a dreadful night."
"Don't 'ee hark to the ancient dodderer," interrupted the dodderer's wife.
"Killed by a falling tree, withered to a cinder by bloody lightning."
"You alarm me," exclaimed Phyllida, jumping up.
"Hold thy ancient foolish tongue," commanded Mrs. Tabrum peremptorily, "and go see that Mary Maria keeps the fowls turning a while yet."
"Very well, my gillyflower, very well," piped senility, "but don't 'ee take on, my little blue love-in-a-mist, happen 'tis no more than a broken leg has overtook your husband."
"Polly," said Mrs. Tabrum, who saw that Phyllida was on the verge of tears, "take thy ancient master away. Hark," she finished, with an impressive forefinger.
"What are us to hark to, pretty pink?"
"Ef I doant hear a great tom-cat a-scratching in the tulips, my name be'ant Dorothy Ann Tabrum."
As at this moment the tempest outside was howling with unsurpassed fury, it is extremely doubtful whether the buxom lady spoke the truth, but her husband was alert at once and hastily snatching down a blunderbuss labelled 'Loaded on Tuesday sennight' Simon Tabrum moved stealthily from the room.
"You must pardon my ancient old husband for his flowery manner of speech. 'Tis not disrespect he do mean, but love and charity wi' his neighbour, having as it were been sown a power of years ago and being now apt to let his withered branches fall on the heads of all manner of folk."
As this long sentence was evidently considered a full and proper explanation of the dodderer's inconvenient habit of prophecy, Phyllida smiled very charmingly and said she quite understood.