“And this is the Red Horse Inn?”
“The Red Horse Inn! Yes, mem!”
“Where, then, is Geoffrey Crayon’s Sceptre?” looking at the grate.
He vanished, and was back in a moment, holding something wrapped in red plush. A steel poker, clean, bright and slender, and, engraved upon one flat side in neat characters,—“Geoffrey Crayon’s Sceptre.”
I took it in speechless reverence. The others gathered about me and it.
“Now”—said Caput, in excruciating and patient politeness, wheeling up the biggest arm-chair,—“if you will have the goodness to sit down, and tell us what it all means!”
I had read the story thirty years before in a bound volume of the “New York Mirror,” itself then, at least ten years old. But it came back to me almost word for word, (what we read in those days, we digested!) as I sat there, the sceptre upon my knee, and rehearsed the tale to the circle of listeners.
Since our return to America I have hunted up the old “Mirror,” and take pleasure in transcribing a portion of Mr. Willis’ pleasant story of the interview between himself and the landlady who remembered Mr. Irving’s visit.
“Mrs. Gardiner proceeded: ‘I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he arrived, mem, and I sees directly, by his modest ways and his timid look, that he was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers. They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem, ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit, and after their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So I says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ‘that nice gentleman can’t get near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it shan’t cost him nothing, for I like the looks on him.’ Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after his tea he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o’clock. The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate, now and then, in number three, and every time I heard it I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I, ‘Go into number three and upset something, for I am sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.’ ‘La, ma’am!’ says Sarah, ‘I don’t dare.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I’ll go!’ So I opens the door and I says—‘If you please, sir, did you ring?’ little thinking that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem.”
(She had already showed to her listeners “a much-worn copy of the Sketch-Book,” in which Mr. Irving records his pilgrimage to Stratford.)