The table before him was cover’d with bottles and flasks, in the middle of which stood a silver lamp burning, and over it a silver saucepan that sent up a rare fragrance as the liquid within it simmer’d and bubbled. So eager was the old gentleman in watching the progress of his mixture, that he merely glanc’d up at my entrance, and then, holding up a hand for silence, turn’d his eyes on the saucepan again.
The second man was the broad-shouldered lackey I had seen riding behind the coach: and now stood over the saucepan with a twisted flask in his hand, from which he pour’d a red syrup very gingerly, drop by drop, with the tail of his eye turn’d on his master’s face, that he might know when to cease.
Now it may be that my entrance upset this experiment in strong drinks. At any rate, I had scarce come to a stand about three paces inside the door, when the little old gentleman bounces up in a fury, kicks over his chair, hurls the nearest bottles to right and left, and sends the silver saucepan spinning across the table to my very feet, where it scalded me clean through the boot, and made me hop for pain.
“Spoil’d—spoil’d!” he scream’d: “drench’d in filthy liquor, when it should have breath’d but a taste!”
And, to my amazement, he sprang on the strapping servant like a wild-cat, and began to beat, cuff, and belabor him with all the strength of his puny limbs.
’Twas like a scene out of Bedlam. Yet all the while the girl lean’d quietly against the mantelshelf, and softly touched the strings of her instrument; while the servant took the rain of blows and slaps as though ’twere a summer shower, grinning all over his face, and making no resistance at all.
Then, as I stood dumb with perplexity, the old gentleman let go his hold of the fellow’s hair, and, dropping on the floor, began to roll about in a fit of coughing, the like of which no man can imagine. ’Twas hideous. He bark’d, and writhed, and bark’d again, till the disorder seem’d to search and rack every innermost inch of his small frame. And in the intervals of coughing his exclamations were terrible to listen to.
“He’s dying!” I cried; and ran forward to help.
The servant pick’d up the chair, and together we set him in it. By degrees the violence of the cough abated, and he lay back, livid in the face, with his eyes closed, and his hands clutching the knobs of the chair. I turn’d to the girl. She had neither spoken nor stirr’d, but now came forward, and calmly ask’d my business.
“I think,” said I, “that your name is Killigrew?”