“What! and a houseful of soldiers, John?”
“Oh! dun–not speak on it, Ben,” he cried. “It’s a ruined man I shall be if this goes on another month. It’s ‘John’ here and ‘landlord’ there from morning till night or till next morning rather. And paying for their drink is just the last thing they think of. Th’ kitchen door is white wi’ chalk, and, well I know it’s no use keeping the scores. It’s just force of habit.
“But surely, John, you need not serve them unless they pay.”
“It’s easy talking, Ben. Th’ law’s one thing, but a house full o’ soldiers is another. And aw cannot be everywhere an’ my dowter an’ th’ servant, an’ for owt aw know th’ missus hersen are all just in a league to ruin me. Their heads are all turned wi’ th’ soldiers an’ such carryin’s on in a decent man’s house wer nivver seen before or since.”
“But what about the officer in command?”
“What, him! Complaining to him is just like falling out with the devil an’ going to hell for justice. Sometimes he laughs at me, sometimes he swears at me, sometimes he sneers at me, and to cap all, when I turn, as a trodden worm will turn at times, he just tells me to go clean the pewters, and send mi dowter to amuse him. An’ th’ warst on it is ’oo’s willin’ enough to go. What will be th’ end of it all, is fair beyond me. But nine months ’ll tell a tale i’ Marsden, or my name’s not John Race.”
John would have run on for ever, but I was anxious to get my own business done so I bade him show me up to the Captain’s room. The landlord’s own private sitting room and an adjoining bedroom had been appropriated by the officer, and I followed John up the narrow, creaking, stairs. At a door on the landing he knocked, and a thin voice within called on us to enter and be damned to us.
The room was small and low and packed with furniture of all styles and ages, more like a dealer’s shop than an ordinary room. Folk said that many a quaint and costly ornament had found its way to John Race’s in settlement of ale shots and gone to deck the room which was his wife’s delight. But Captain Northman or his friends had treated it with scant reverence. On a table in the centre were a pack or two of cards and a couple of candles, that had guttered in the socket. A decanter half full of brandy stood by their side, whilst another, empty, and the fragments of a glass, lay on the floor. Boots, spurs, gloves, swords canes, were strewn about on the chairs, and the scent of stale tobacco reek and fumes of strong waters filled the room. A table, with an untasted breakfast set upon it, was drawn to the window, and by it, in a cushioned chair, sat a young man of some five and twenty years, dressed in his small clothes and a gaudy dressing–gown, yawning wofully and raising with unsteady hand a morning draught to his tremulous lips. He had evidently had a night of it and his temper was none the better for it. I raised my hand respectfully to my forehead as I had seen soldiers do, but he only stretched out his legs and stared me rudely in the face.
“Well, fellow,” he said at length, “what’s your pleasure of me that you must break in on my breakfast?”
“My name, sir, is Benjamin Bamforth.”