On the way her spirits rose. The fact that we met no one seemed to her a proof that nothing much was the matter. Sounds of drunken revelry reached us long before the inn came in sight.
“I will wait here,” she said, as we reached the broadening of the road. I left her and went on.
“We’ll all be merry,
Drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
If he can’t come, we’ll ask his son.”
The chorus was trolled forth in disjointed snatches, showing the singers to be very far gone indeed. The door stood ajar and I went in. So convinced was I of the necessity of playing my part thoroughly that I looked carefully round to see if Harry Gascoyne were present. The half-dozen or so roysterers looked up stupidly with open mouths. As a matter of fact, they were none of them drinking whisky, wine or sherry, but had very substantial mugs of ale before them. The atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with the reek from peasant limbs. The landlord, with a figure that threatened apoplexy, surveyed them from the other side of the bar with an approving smile as if he were presiding over an assemblage of highly well-behaved infants. To me he suggested a genial but relentless ghoul, callous to the feelings of the mothers and children who were to welcome home these repulsive sots as governors and lords of their lives and welfare.
They sat waiting for me to speak.
“Has Mr. Gascoyne been here to-night?” I asked.
The landlord looked round the room, and, having as it were satisfied himself that none of the others knew of the young man being concealed unknown to himself, answered slowly:
“I ain’t seen ’im.”
“No more ain’t I,” came in phlegmatic chorus.
“Are you quite sure?”