He was a man whose constitutional good-nature underlay whole stories of determination. The topmost of these was to temporize with no discomfort, moral or physical; but to strike at the root of the trouble before analyzing it. He would never have a tooth that pained him stopt; but must suffer the moment’s wrench to save days of dull aching.
Now it was that he saw the centre of the unaccountable to be that same beetled-browed tavern. To the “Dog and Duck” he would ride forthwith, and so seek counsel of the very heart of the mystery.
CHAPTER XVII.
Oppressive dusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined. The steely thrust of wind at night—a morning cold and fair and pure, such as ever seems an earnest of weeks of serene tranquillity—and then, as noon ticked into evening, a dull fall in the barometer, and gathering battalions of clouds rolling to the front, with a noise of rumbling in them like the labouring wheels of gun-carriages—such was the record of twenty-four hours.
Glancing with frowning eyes, at the little forlorn building livid above him against a wall of menacing purple, the horseman pricked his nag to the slight ascent, and, clattering up to the inn door, flung himself out of the saddle and looped his reins to a ring set in the lintel-post.
Straightway he crossed the threshold, and turning sharply to the left, found himself in the room of the bay-window and the tap of the “Dog and Duck.”
Not a soul was in it—no sign of life, but, somewhere, a distant murmuring of voices.
It was a paltry little shop, with a pewtered counter, and under it, on the customer-side, a ditch or groove set in the floor and filled with sawdust for obvious purposes. A few beer-barrels; a squat flask or two of schiedam on a shelf; some common earthenware mugs, white with a blue band, and bearing the excise stamp on a tin bottom—these were the important features of the bar. Above the latter, from a blackened beam, hung a great ship’s lantern, eloquent of rancid oil; and to the back was a glazed door leading into a room no larger than a cabin, in which a little fire blinked a red eye like a drowsy watch-dog.
Mr. Tuke—fingering in the pocket of his riding-coat the butt of a duelling pistol, loaded and primed—rapped on the counter with his riding-whip.
Listening, he was conscious of a sudden cessation of the murmuring sounds—of an appreciable pause; and then a door opened gently, and somebody came into the bar-parlour. This new-comer, whoever he was—for he took stock in the dusk without showing himself—seemed to go out softly again after a moment’s scrutiny; and following his exit, the other was dimly aware of the sounds again, but more subdued, and broken with an intermittent cough that was like suppressed laughter.