INSIDE THE BAR
INSIDE THE BAR
CHAPTER I
“THE GENIUS LOCI”
“I hope you feel your arm a little easier, sir, this evening?” says Miss Lushington, reappearing in her own peculiar department, fresh and blooming from the revision of her toilet, which usually takes place about seven P.M. Miss Lushington’s habits are peculiarly regular and methodical; her attractions of a dazzling, not to say gaudy, description; she is a thorough woman of business, if indeed such a designation be not a contradiction in terms; but when she does take a day’s pleasure, there are few ladies who can produce a more satisfactory effect than Miss L.
I raise my eyes to reply with becoming gratitude. The object on which they rest is no everyday sight—a full-bodied, fresh-coloured, buxom damsel, with shining hair dark and lustrous as ebony, suggestive of no small expenditure in pomatum; a pair of light-grey eyes, restless and vivacious, called black by courtesy, because fringed with lashes of jet, and surmounted by arching eyebrows of the same colour, swarthy and strong of growth: a straight well-cut nose; a wide mouth, with red lips and white teeth, large, regular, and wholesome; not forgetting those captivating manners which spring from habitual good-humour and perfect self-possession in mixed society, backed by a pair of ear-rings that would have looked rich even on the Queen of Sheba. All this I take in at a glance for the twentieth time, and catch myself confessing, also for the twentieth time, that the barmaid of the Haycock Hotel and Posting-house, Soakington, is the most fascinating, as doubtless she is the most fastidious of her sex.
Miss Lushington, I need hardly observe, is no longer young. Barmaids of tender years, albeit extremely attractive to the usual frequenters of the snug locality over which they preside, cannot be expected to possess the aplomb with which mature experience and the rejection of many offers invest the lady of more autumnal charms. They are apt to be a little flurried by the attentions of the military, and somewhat over-excited by their anxiety for the commercial interest; also prone, if good-looking, to fly away and better themselves matrimonially and otherwise. But Miss L. is far above all such weaknesses as these. Not a red-coat in the whole British army could raise a corresponding hue in her cheek by the most ardent avowal of devotion; nay, even a cornet of Hussars (and I take an officer of that rank and service to be more at his ease in female society than other children of men) has been known to retire abashed and worsted from a little match at quiet persiflage with Miss Lushington. As for the commercial gents! why, though they worship the very keys she jingles, and the lemons in the nets above her head, they would no more think of proposing to her than to the mother of the Gracchi. I have often wondered what Miss Lushington’s early history can have been. Was she ever a little girl with long tails and frills above her ankles, swinging a slate to a day-school? Had she a mother, who washed her face, and scolded her, and taught her to sew, and eventually launched her on the boards of a minor theatre; for surely those majestic manners must have been acquired before the foot-lights? Was there ever a time that she came home wearied and saddened, pressing some girlish treasure to her heart, with a thrill, half joy, half pain, and looking along an endless vista in the future, containing a house, a garden, a pig, some rosy children, a couple of bee-hives, and a fresh-coloured young man at his tea. Was she ever young? or did she descend from her attic some fine summer’s day, this perfect and finished creature of for—well! of between thirty and forty, just as Minerva sprang ready-armed from the brain of Jove, or Venus wet and glowing, with nothing on but her shells, emerged from the blushing sea? I incline to the latter supposition. I believe that Caroline Lushington (of course, with that colour on her cheek, her name is sure to be Caroline; besides, I saw it on her workbox)—I say I believe that Caroline Lushington never was the least different from what she is now, and that I should always have been as much afraid of her as I am at this present moment. I am a shy man—not too shy to confess it. I blush to the lobes of my ears, in replying to her kind inquiries; but Miss L. does not laugh at me; for, woman-like, she has a prejudice in favour of shy men, and she pities my infirmities, and my arm in a black leather sling.
“Your tea will have drawn in five minutes, sir, and your toast is down at the fire now,” says she, patting and smoothing the cushions of her own particular arm-chair in her own particular corner, that I may sit at ease despite my injuries. How kind, how thoughtful she is! And heavens! what a torso the woman has! Though her dressmaker lives over the saddler’s, in the High Street, at Waterborough, that black satin fits as if it came direct from Paris. Even now, mixing a glass of brandy-and-water for a customer, the turn of her waist and the cling of her corset would drive an artist into ecstasies. I am no artist, yet I cannot but think of Alfred de Musset’s song about his Andalusian Marquesa, of which, as the language and the sentiments are both French, I need not write them down here.