Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Ay, ay, master, a grand game,” said two or three together, wagging their beards in civil backing up of the first speaker, who stood smiling at the table, running the cards through his hands like a stream of water. They all looked vaguely at Harry with a general look of invitation and goodwill in their eyes. The atmosphere of the “Red Lion” was against all strenuous action. The warmth which was so cheerful and bright made them all drowsy. They sat and blinked at it with pleasure and peacefulness, purring softly in the pervading warmth. What had young Harry to do in such a sleepy place? He let his chair come down to the floor with a noise that made the convives jump, and laughed, chiefly at himself. “Come along, then,” he said; “I’ll take a hand since there’s nothing else to do.”

So rapid were the young man’s movements that Isaac, not so impetuous, was left, standing in the same spot looking at the chair now standing composedly on its four legs for a minute after Harry had taken his place at the card-table. Isaac was astonished, but he was relieved as well. He came back slowly to the corner of the settle, looking at his pipe with an air of remonstrance, but gradually feeling his cares relax, and the pleasure of coming back to the company. “I’m bound to say,” was his first utterance, as he put himself once more into the corner and stretched his legs in front of the fire, “as people couldn’t behave more honourable. I never expected to get my own place again.”

“Sommat oop?” asked his neighbour on the settle, with a thrust of his elbow towards Harry. Isaac thrust up his shoulders to his ears, and shook his head.

“There’s always summat oop,” said Isaac, oracularly, “as long as there’s lads at home.”

“And that’s true,” said another, who took the opportunity to illustrate the statement by a long and tedious story, which had been simmering in him all the evening. After this the place relapsed into its usual aspect. The two or three men about the fire basking in the warmth listened with a mild interest to the slow current of the tale, and supplemented it by anecdotes of their own of a like tedious and inconsequent kind. But nobody was bored; the talkers were pleased with themselves, and the listeners did their part very steadily, not troubled by any idea of dulness. Isaac, sitting well up in his corner, so warm that his corduroy almost burned him when he laid his hand accidentally upon it, felt for his part that if it had not been well understood to be the very doorway and vestibule of another place, the parlour of the “Red Lion” would be a kind of little Paradise. Perhaps it was the terribly wicked and risky character of the enjoyment which gave its humdrum drowsiness so great a charm. As the evening got on the drowse increased; one or two even fell half asleep in their seats, and a reflective air stole on the “coompany.” The gentleman who had the ear of the house prosed on, taking a minute’s rest between every two words; but nobody budged. An alarmed thought of the missis did indeed now and then come over Isaac’s mind, but he was too tranquil, too comfortable, too warm to take such a decisive step as would be necessary to raise himself from the embrace of the settle and get under weigh. All this time, however, there was a little stir at the card-table, which pleased the audience round. When there was any special success, they would pause in their anecdotes and listen, with drowsy smiles. This gave a sort of rollicking character, which would otherwise have been wanting to it, to the placid gaiety. One of the quiet drinkers now and then nudged his neighbour, and asked him what he thought the stakes were. “As much as would be a fortin for you or me,” Isaac said, and there was a flutter of respectful admiration. Perhaps Isaac knew that he was exaggerating. He did it for the honour of the family, of which he was through his master a kind of relation. It was in character with the wild immorality of an evening in the Red Lion that the young men should be playing for high stakes; and this idea made the others enjoy themselves still more. When they came out, the misty whiteness of the atmosphere had cleared off a little, and consolidated itself into dark shadows in all the corners, and a flood of faint moonlight dimly marking the gray fells and the dark treeless country, with its dim lines of dykes and square grey limestone houses. Harry Joscelyn was one of the last to leave; he stood upon the bridge for some time talking with young Selwyn, with whom he had been playing. Isaac thought it was for his own confusion that the young man lingered. The sentiments likely to be entertained by the Missis became more and more clear to Isaac with every step he took after he was forced to get up from his comfortable corner in the settle. But he was still warm without and within, his corduroys keeping the heat of the fire even to the touch after their long baking, and his heart kept up by the strengthened influence of all that he had swallowed. It confused his head a little too, making it drowsy but kindly. It was through a faint little steam as of “summat” warm, dispensing its odours liberally into the air, that he seemed in imagination to see his own door, and the wrathful countenance that would look out from it; but the cold outside made this picture a great deal clearer by degrees, though it did not clear his faculties. His partial obfuscation however did not make him less sensible of his duty towards his master’s godson. He had sacrificed himself, he had incurred all those expressions of the missis’s feelings, which were already prophetically sounding in his ears, for Harry’s sake—and he could not go away now without another word. “As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,” he said to himself, when the others went clattering over the bridge and along the branching ways with their heavy boots, almost all of them feeling a good deal of alarm about the sentiments of the missis; but as Isaac lingered in the cold moonlight kicking his heels, the uneasiness grew with every moment that passed. She would hear old Jack Smethurst stumble down the way to his cottage, and she would prepare a still sharper rod in pickle for Isaac later still. “As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,” he repeated to himself. How those young fellows did talk! and what could they have to talk about after spending all the blessed night playing their games. Ah! devil’s books those cards were, beguiling folks on and on. Isaac fell half asleep, leaning against a corner in the shadow of the “Red Lion.” The lights were already out in that deserted place. There would be no gleam from the window to keep him a little cheery as he plodded down the waterside. And what a clatter these young fellows made! What could they have to talk about? He leaned against the wall and let his head droop on his breast, and for a minute or two Isaac was blissfully unconscious of everything; but at the end of that time he came to himself suddenly, and felt that his corduroys had got quite cold, and that it was very chilly, that the young men were still talking, and that he had begun to shiver. It was cruelty to keep him there, kicking his heels. All the village seemed so still, no lights anywhere, and the landlord of the “Red Lion” turning the key in the door before he mounted up the creaking stairs to bed. The creaking of these stairs went to Isaac’s heart, and the idea of being up later than the landlord of the tavern, the abode of dissipation, of which the whole valley entertained a wholesome distrust—to be out too, at that terrible hour, and still to have a mile to walk, and a talk at the end of it, all for one unruly young fellow that would stand and jabber there with young Selwyn, whom he could see quite easily to-morrow if he pleased. “He’s drunk, that’s it,” Isaac, half asleep, chilled, frightened, and remorseful, and glad to think the worst he could of Mr. Harry, said to himself. And then there was an unexpected aggravation; all at once when he had got his back comfortable at a new angle of the wall, lo! the two shook hands, and went off in a moment, one to the right hand, the other to the left, without any warning to Isaac. He had to pull himself up with a start, and the trouble he had to get himself into motion was as great as if he had been a cranky steam-engine, one of those things (he reflected, muddled, but all the more ingenious) where you have to turn a wheel here and touch a spring there—while all the while Mr. Harry’s steps were audible, young and light, skimming along the road ahead of him. He had to call after him, waking all the echoes, and making the most portentous noise as he lumbered along in his heavy boots, doing what he could to run. Luckily Harry heard him and stopped, just as he came to the cross roads. “Who is that calling me?” he said.

“It’s me, Mr. Harry. Lord bless ye, stop a moment. I’ve got a—word to say—Mr. Harry,” cried Isaac, panting. “Is that a way to keep your friends easy in their minds, to stand aw that time i’ the’ dark at the dead hour o’ th’ night, jabbering nonsense with another as ill as yourself? How are ye to give an account for this night, if there were no more? and leading others into an ill gate. What would t’ auld maister say,—or your missis if ye’d got a missis?”

“Poor old Isaac!” said Harry, laughing; “so that’s what you’re thinking of. I haven’t got a missis. I am thankful. It is you that have got to be lectured to-night. Tell her it was all my fault.”

Isaac seemed to take no notice of this contemptuous recommendation. He stuck himself against the wall that bordered the road, as a precautionary measure against fatigue and sleep, and the effect of the not extravagant potations in which he had been indulging. “I want to say—a serious word to ye. I have got something to say.”

“Then say it and make haste,” Harry cried, “don’t you feel how cold it is, and the moon will set directly? I want to get home to bed.”

“Oh-h,” cried old Isaac: “as if I wasn’t colder and worrider than the like of you; and more burdened with a nervousness—like—what you might call a nervousness for—the walk at the dead o’ t’night and sich like. But I’ve got a word to say. Mr. Harry, you’ll no go near t’auld master? Try anybody but him. I’ve set my heart on’t that you should get his money at the end, and so you will if you’ll hev patience, just hev a little patience; but don’t ye go asking money of him now; don’t you do it, Mr. Harry, and spoil aw—”