“An original flavour,” he soliloquised. “Yes—I think I like it.” Then, donning a dressing-gown, he crossed to the fireplace and rang the bell.
“Saakes alive,” said the worthy Lancashire landlady, “ye’ll never be goin’ to get oop with that ’eavy cold an’ all?”
“Duty before ailments,” observed Eliphalet gravely. “May I have a can of warm water here, and a plate of soup and a rack of toast when I come downstairs?”
When the water arrived, accompanied by advice to get back to bed, he set about to shave a twenty-hours’ stubble from his chin. It was a spasmodic effort, and he reflected how rapidly his cold had pulled him down.
“We are getting old and palsied,” he confided to his reflection in the mirror.
While washing, he experienced a novel and peculiar sensation—just as if all his nerves were transmitting electric messages to their various centres—messages which seemed to run, “I’m having a riotous time here—what’s the news with you?” Moreover, he had a curious conviction that his brain-cells were opening and closing in the most unusual way. Little glimpses of long-forgotten incidents raced across his mental screen, to disappear or be obliterated by some succeeding impression. During the process of putting on his collar and tie quite right such pictures came and went.
He saw himself as a tiny boy, dressed up in a white suit and white shoes and socks, going to a circus with his father. He remembered how Eliphalet No. 1 had stopped to speak to a friend, and how he had filled in the weary wait by paddling through a four-inch slough of mud, swept up by the roadside. He was on the point of laughing at the recollection when it struck him that there was nothing to laugh at in a man’s last words to his wife—how vividly the trumpery appointments of that room recurred to him, and the silly threats she had made—and how—they applauded on his first appearance in “The Corsican Brothers.” He had held his head high that night, and the pavement outside the stage-door was thronged with an eager and waiting crowd, and—all the theatrical profession were there when Eliphalet senior was laid to rest. “A Great Tragedian,” old Toole had said, and he had replied, “A wonderful father, sir.” And what a night of it they had (the early ’seventies, wasn’t it)—He and a dozen other bloods put a barricade of beer-barrels across the top of the Hay-market—Jermyn and Panton Street—and no one was allowed to go past without a drink. He was not a teetotaler then. That had been proved by the magistrate’s comments at the Police Court on the following morning. How his head had ached. Was his head aching now? Not a bit—a little dizzy, perhaps—that was from the cold—but the cold was better—much better. Fine stuff Enoch’s Instantaneous—Enoch!
“And forty little laughing boys
Came running out of school.”
Was that Enoch Arden—or Eugene Aram? Either or neither? What did it matter? Where was his coat?—where was it?