The red-gold light of evening beat into the bar of the White Hart Inn at Moretonhampstead, and its rich quality imparted a lustre not only to the shining pewter, the regiments of bottles, and the handles of the beer-engines, but also to the countenances of several customers. The day’s work was done; a moment for leisure had fallen; and it happened that amongst those that evening assembled were many known to us as well as to each other.
Mr Beer and Mr Bartley drank together and discussed the times from different points of view; but both agreed that they were bad. The constable deplored their quietude, for nothing ever happened to advance his interests or offer him an opportunity; and Mr Beer protested that history grew more and more colourless. For a week there had happened nothing to inspire so much as a couplet. Plenty of incident, however, fell out before the publican had finished drinking. Titus Sim dropped in and a murmur greeted his arrival, for behind him walked a tall negro. The black man was clothed in a long coat that reached to his feet, and a big slouch hat came low over his forehead and concealed most of his brows.
“’Tis Mister Henry’s new servant,” explained Sim. “He’s deaf and dumb, poor beggar, but harmless as an infant. I’m just taking him for an airing.”
The company regarded this man, thus removed from them by barriers impassable, with great interest.
“How do you make him understand?” asked Bartley.
“All by signs. There are a few very simple signs, and he knows them. Never was a creature less trouble, and certainly as a valet he couldn’t be beat. He looks after the new motor-car, too; but there’s a doubt if he can drive it, being deaf.”
Titus tapped a glass and the black man nodded and grinned.
“Give him rum and water, please; he don’t drink nothing else. He comes from Tobago, where the Vivian sugar estates are, you know. I asked Mister Harry however he could choose a poor lad minus two senses, and he said they were senses that a valet might do without. And so he can. Only we’ve got to tell him when his master’s bell goes. He can’t hear anything.”
“To think how many of these poor black varmints was choked off like flies when poor Dan Sweetland died,” said Mr Beer. “He’s a fine figure of a man for all his blackness, and since he’s deaf and dumb, he can’t do much evil. Though whether the devil creeps into us more through the ear than the eye be a nice question. Why, he’d be almost handsome if he wasn’t such a sooty soul.”
“Mister Henry has a good word for the niggers and says they’m just as teachable as dogs every bit. But the whites out there have given him more trouble than all the blacks put together.”