In the hall of the _Green Dragon_ their reception was almost servile. Great Cobblebury, for all its pompous name, was too near to Curtain Wells to attract the attention of many travellers, and the _Green Dragon_ depended for custom almost entirely on the thirstiness of the surrounding population. Guests, therefore, received very excellent service for their money. The host, one George Upex, had watched the advance of the chaise with sleek arms beneath a protuberant apron and thumbs that twiddled sleepily; but the smash aroused his hospitable instincts, and by the time Mr. Ripple and Mrs. Courteen had reached the doorway of the inn, he was back from the kitchen, where he had hastily ordered the immediate insertion into the capacious oven of several dishes, and was ready to usher the stranded travellers into the parlour.
"And what will your good lady take?" he inquired, with his rubicund face cocked at what he considered a very appetizing angle.
"She is not my good lady, sirrah," rapped out the Beau.
"Not at all, your honour--beg pardon," said Mr. Upex, putting up a gigantick hand to an equally gigantick mouth as if he would force the latter feature to eat the indiscreet question it had so grossly emitted.
"How long will it take to mend the damage to my chaise?" demanded Mr. Ripple.
The landlord made a rough calculation in his mind.
"About an hour to cook the--to mend the--er--chaise," he replied.
"Have you a bed?" asked the Beau.
The landlord beamed. They were going to spend the night under his roof, and mentally he saw himself on the next day obscuring the sunlight of the parlour with a very long bill.
"A bed, your honour? Yes, indeed! Oh! yes." Mr. Upex paused. "A bed?"
"Yes! a bed--a b-e-d--bed."
"For one night?"
"One night--no! now, sirrah, now." Mr. Ripple stamped his little foot, probably to shake off the mud of the humiliating accident.
"Now?" Mr. Upex looked surprized, that is to say the mouth of Mr. Upex remained fixed in a cavernous gape.
"Why not now?" exclaimed the peremptory Beau. "Ain't your beds aired, landlord? Ain't they made yet?"
"Oh, certainly, your honour."
"Then show me upstairs at once. I shall lie down until the wheel of my chaise is mended. And shew this lady another room, and send two or three chambermaids to attend to her."
Mr. Upex looked much relieved.
It was not such a shameless affair as he had been led by wanton ambiguity of phrase to believe.
"What about the duck?"
"What duck? What duck?" asked Mr. Ripple fretfully.
"The duck your honour ordered--that is, was about to order when I interrupted your honour."
"Send up three slices of the breast on a small tray to my chamber, and don't put any stuffing on the plate, the odour of sage upsets my appetite."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Upex, quite frankly interested by such a nasal idiosyncrasy.
"Yes, and send out a woman of taste and discretion to purchase a nightcap."
"I wouldn't say, your honour, as how one of the maids wouldn't oblige your--er--the good lady."
"For myself, landlord, for myself."
"I beg your honour's pardon."
Mr. Upex hurried off to execute his guest's requirement and presently returned to escort them to their rooms.
"When my man comes in," said the Beau, "send him up to me with the nightcap."
Pridgeon had rescued the wheel from the pond and, having successfully directed two bumpkins to trundle it to the blacksmith, arrived at the inn with an admiring retinue of idlers, whom he regaled with quarts of bitter beer. The woman of taste entrusted with the purchase of the nightcap (she was the scullerymaid) returned with the vestment neatly wrapped in paper, and, meeting her master on the stairs, was told to hand it to the diminutive groom, who chucked her under the chin with the parcel and took his bow-legged way upstairs to Mr. Ripple's temporary apartment.
Outside he rapped smartly on the door, which was cautiously opened sufficiently wide to allow the urbane countenance of the Beau to peer round the corner.
"Is that you, Pridgeon?"
"Me, y'r honour, with a present from Great Cobblebury."
The Beau took the nightcap, and in its place handed muddied smallcloaths, smeared coat, and wrinkled waistcoat.
"Have these cloaths thoroughly brushed."
"Yes, y'r honour."
"And bring me three slices of breast in an hour's time."
"Yes, y'r honour."
"And don't get drunk to celebrate your carelessness."
"No, y'r honour."
"Poor clod," murmured the Beau to his polite self, as he closed the door of his chamber and double locked it against intrusion.
I think it would certainly be indiscreet to spy upon Mr. Ripple's retirement. How did he spend his time in bed? The whisper of book-leaves tempts me to suppose that he read several of the bitterest odes, very possibly a whole satire of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, that poet so fierce but withal so urbane. Meanwhile Mrs. Courteen, surrounded by three maids, respectively known as Susan, Joan, and Elizabeth, held forth upon her misfortunes to a sympathetick audience.
She stood in the middle of her chamber, a massive figure pouring forth ludicrous complaint. It was as if a stork should seek to emulate a nightingale.
Susan knelt on the floor and industriously stitched away at the ragged train; Joan knelt with innumerable pins stuck between her pearly teeth and judiciously fastened several gaps in her attire, while Elizabeth, who was being courted by Johnny, the _Green Dragon's_ sibilant hostler, rubbed away at the mud with as near an imitation of the sounds produced by her lover's stringy throat as the softness of her own would allow.
"I have been greatly distressed," said the widow, "grossly deceived, intolerably put about for, though Mr. Ripple has the character of a block of marble, it don't become a woman to be seen alone with a man anywhere, especially in a yellow chaise which attracts everybody's attention. I vow I heard that odious young Miss Kitcat laugh from her balcony as we flew past--yes, flew--and such bumping! I dare swear I'm bruised from head to foot, and my skin shows the smallest mark. I remember when I was a young woman, I stepped a minuet with young Mr. Heavibois of Heavibois Hall, and I declare he might have been taking the grossest liberties all through the evening, for the way my wrist was marked. Lud! it was as purple as my grandmother's silk coverlet that was given to her by a young lieutenant in the Navy, and was thought to belong to the wife of the Cham of Tartary, though I dare say he bought it in Cheapside for ten shillings, being a young gentleman on whose word nobody could rely, that is the worst of men, young women, you cannot trust 'em. And now my own daughter has run away with a London spark, and I, her own mother, must give up half a score routs and my Lady Pickadilly's drum--the most fashionable affair of the kind that will ever be known in Curtain Wells, for my Lady Pickadilly is newly come from town with her second son the Hon. John Hyde, as quiet a young gentleman as ever said Bo! to a goose, and here we are nearly into April, and if my daughter drowns herself from London Bridge, why then I shall be wearing black at the Fetes Champetres and a pretty figure I shall be truly! though, indeed, if one had the courage to wear a white velvet vizard, I might very well pass for an Allegory of Moonlight--and yet that would never do, for to be sure that malicious creature Mrs. Dudding, whose Conversazione last month was the completest failure ever known, would make one of her odious epigrams about poor Mr. Moon, the best natured of gentlemen and the very personification of the milk of human kindness. To be sure, his ankles are very big, but indeed I vow if one were to regard all the defects in humanity, very few of us would be able to hold up our heads. Mr. Ripple himself is the smallest man in the Wells, but nobody esteems him the less for that. To be sure, I think he was very ill-advised,--though for that matter he was never known to take anybody's advice but his own--very ill-advised, I say, not to speak more severely to my daughter. I was always so careful of her modesty that I never allowed her to sit in the Maze with an odious little nudity in stone always hovering about, till I declare they should have planted ivy to climb up his shameless legs. I'm sure nothing could be more Biblical than such vegetable apparel. Cupid they call him: Stupid I call it." Mrs. Courteen here paused to take a longer breath and Susan exclaimed:
"La! ma'am, what to do wi' your petticoat I doan't know. It comes peaping through your gown like Tom o' Coventry in the Christmas mumming."
"Pin it, child, pin it," said the widow.
"La! ma'am, we ha' used nigh forty pins already, and thee'll be like a hedgehog soon."
"No matter, child, no matter how I appear. I must do my duty as a mother, but I vow I blush when I think that near everybody takes us for man and wife. To be sure, I don't mind, and always say that if the world wishes to talk, the world will talk; and there once was a time when I was talked about from one corner of the county to the other. And now this improper affair of my daughter's will set every idle tongue wagging again. My own maid Betty, who was privy to the whole unhappy intrigue, was truly frightened when she found how far ignorance and wilfulness had taken her. 'What will they say at Courteen Grange, ma'am, and what will Mr. Rumble the carrier say, and Mrs. Rumble and the old widow who keeps the shop and poor old Jonas the gardener and all the good folk of the shire?' 'Ah,' said I, 'what indeed?' Ugh! child, you're running pins into my--into my legs!"