And then individually to himself, Kenelm, irrespectively of the Three Fishes,—what a humiliation! He had put aside his respected father’s deliberate preparations for his entrance into real life; he had perversely chosen his own walk on his own responsibility; and here, before half the first day was over, what an infernal scrape he had walked himself into! and what was his excuse? A wretched little boy, sobbing and chuckling by turns, and yet who was clever enough to twist Kenelm Chillingly round his finger; twist him, a man who thought himself so much wiser than his parents,—a man who had gained honours at the University,—a man of the gravest temperament,—a man of so nicely critical a turn of mind that there was not a law of art or nature in which he did not detect a flaw; that he should get himself into this mess was, to say the least of it, an uncomfortable reflection.
The boy himself, as Kenelm glanced at him from time to time, became impish and Will-of-the-Wisp-ish. Sometimes he laughed to himself loudly, sometimes he wept to himself quietly; sometimes, neither laughing nor weeping, he seemed absorbed in reflection. Twice as they came nearer to the town of Tor-Hadham, Kenelm nudged the boy, and said, “My boy, I must talk with you;” and twice the boy, withdrawing his arm from the nudge, had answered dreamily, “Hush! I am thinking.”
And so they entered the town of Tor-Hadham, the cob very much done up.
CHAPTER III
“NOW, young sir,” said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but peremptory,—“now we are in the town, where am I to take you? and wherever it be, there to say good-by.”
“No, not good-by. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to feel frightened, and I am so friendless;” and the boy, who had before resented the slightest nudge on the part of Kenelm, now wound his arm into Kenelm’s, and clung to him caressingly.
I don’t know what my readers have hitherto thought of Kenelm Chillingly: but, amid all the curves and windings of his whimsical humour, there was one way that went straight to his heart; you had only to be weaker than himself and ask his protection.
He turned round abruptly; he forgot all the strangeness of his position, and replied: “Little brute that you are, I’ll be shot if I forsake you if in trouble. But some compassion is also due to the cob: for his sake say where we are to stop.”
“I am sure I can’t say: I never was here before. Let us go to a nice quiet inn. Drive slowly: we’ll look out for one.”
Tor-Hadham was a large town, not nominally the capital of the county, but, in point of trade and bustle and life, virtually the capital. The straight street, through which the cob went as slowly as if he had been drawing a Triumphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated appearance. The shops had handsome facades and plate-glass windows; the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evidently not merely of business, but of pleasure, for a large proportion of the passers-by was composed of the fair sex, smartly dressed, many of them young and some pretty. In fact a regiment of her Majesty’s ——-th Hussars had been sent into the town two days before; and, between the officers of that fortunate regiment and the fair sex in that hospitable town, there was a natural emulation which should make the greater number of slain and wounded. The advent of these heroes, professional subtracters from hostile and multipliers of friendly populations, gave a stimulus to the caterers for those amusements which bring young folks together,—archery-meetings, rifle-shootings, concerts, balls, announced in bills attached to boards and walls and exposed at shop-windows.
The boy looked eagerly forth from the gig, scanning especially these advertisements, till at length he uttered an excited exclamation, “Ah, I was right: there it is!”
“There what is?” asked Kenelm,—“the inn?” His companion did not answer, but Kenelm following the boy’s eye perceived an immense hand-bill.
“Do just ask where the theatre is,” said the boy, in a whisper, turning away his head.
Kenelm stopped the cob, made the inquiry, and was directed to take the next turning to the right. In a few minutes the compo portico of an ugly dilapidated building, dedicated to the Dramatic Muses, presented itself at the angle of a dreary, deserted lane. The walls were placarded with play-bills, in which the name of Compton stood forth as gigantic as capitals could make it. The boy drew a sigh. “Now,” said he, “let us look out for an inn near here,—the nearest.”
No inn, however, beyond the rank of a small and questionable looking public-house was apparent, until at a distance somewhat remote from the theatre, and in a quaint, old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat, newly whitewashed house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large black letters of funereal aspect, “Temperance Hotel.”
“Stop,” said the boy; “don’t you think that would suit us? it looks quiet.”
“Could not look more quiet if it were a tombstone,” replied Kenelm.
The boy put his hand upon the reins and stopped the cob. The cob was in that condition that the slightest touch sufficed to stop him, though he turned his head somewhat ruefully as if in doubt whether hay and corn would be within the regulations of a Temperance Hotel. Kenelm descended and entered the house. A tidy woman emerged from a sort of glass cupboard which constituted the bar, minus the comforting drinks associated with the beau ideal of a bar, but which displayed instead two large decanters of cold water with tumblers a discretion, and sundry plates of thin biscuits and sponge-cakes. This tidy woman politely inquired what was his “pleasure.”
“Pleasure,” answered Kenelm, with his usual gravity, “is not the word I should myself have chosen. But could you oblige my horse—I mean that horse—with a stall and a feed of oats, and that young gentleman and myself with a private room and a dinner?”
“Dinner!” echoed the hostess,—“dinner!”
“A thousand pardons, ma’am. But if the word ‘dinner’ shock you I retract it, and would say instead something to eat and drink.’”
“Drink! This is strictly a Temperance Hotel, sir.”
“Oh, if you don’t eat and drink here,” exclaimed Kenelm, fiercely, for he was famished, “I wish you good morning.”
“Stay a bit, sir. We do eat and drink here. But we are very simple folks. We allow no fermented liquors.”
“Not even a glass of beer?”
“Only ginger-beer. Alcohols are strictly forbidden. We have tea and coffee and milk. But most of our customers prefer the pure liquid. As for eating, sir,—anything you order, in reason.”
Kenelm shook his head and was retreating, when the boy, who had sprung from the gig and overheard the conversation, cried petulantly, “What does it signify? Who wants fermented liquors? Water will do very well. And as for dinner,—anything convenient. Please, ma’am, show us into a private room: I am so tired.” The last words were said in a caressing manner, and so prettily, that the hostess at once changed her tone, and muttering, “Poor boy!” and, in a still more subdued mutter, “What a pretty face he has!” nodded, and led the way up a very clean old-fashioned staircase.
“But the horse and gig, where are they to go?” said Kenelm, with a pang of conscience on reflecting how ill treated hitherto had been both horse and owner.
“Oh, as for the horse and gig, sir, you will find Jukes’s livery-stables a few yards farther down. We don’t take in horses ourselves; our customers seldom keep them: but you will find the best of accommodation at Jukes’s.”
Kenelm conducted the cob to the livery-stables thus indicated, and waited to see him walked about to cool, well rubbed down, and made comfortable over half a peck of oats,—for Kenelm Chillingly was