Here sat a solitary gentleman. He was a man apparently of five-and-thirty; tall, considerably handsome; a face of the oval character, nose a little aquiline, hair dark, eyebrows dark and strong, and a light, clear, self-possessed look, that showed plainly enough that he was a man of active mind, and well to do in the world. You would have thought, from his gentlemanly air, and by no means commercial manner, that he would have found his way in at the great front door, and into one of the private rooms; but he came over night by the mail, and, on being asked, on entering the house, by the waiter, to what sort of room he would be shown, answered, carelessly and abruptly, "any where."
Here he was, seated in the back left-hand corner of the room, a large screen between himself and the door, and before him a table spread with a goodly breakfast apparatus—coffee, eggs, fresh broiled trout from the neighboring Weye, and a large round of corned beef, as a dernier ressort.
It was a morning as desperately and delugingly rainy as any that showery region can send down. In the phrase of the country, it siled down, or run, as if through a sieve. Straight down streamed the plenteous element, thick, incessant, and looking as if it would hold on the whole day through. It thundered on the roof, beat a sonorous tune on porches and projections of door and window, splashed in torrents on window-sills, and streaming panes, and rushed along the streets in rivers. The hills were hidden, the very fowls driven to roost—and not a soul was to be seen out of doors.
Presently there was a sound of hurrying wheels, a spring-cart came up to the side door, with two men in it, in thick great coats, and with sacks over their shoulders; one huge umbrella held over their heads, and they and their horse yet looking three parts drowned. They lost no time in pitching their umbrella to the hostler, who issued from the passage, descending and rushing into the inn. In the next moment the two countrymen, divested of their sacks and great coats, were ushered into this room, the waiter, making a sort of apology, because there was a fire there—it was in the middle of July. The two men, who appeared Peak farmers, with hard hands, which they rubbed at the fire, and tanned and weather-beaten complexions, ordered breakfast—of coffee and broiled ham—which speedily made its appearance, on a table placed directly in front of the before solitary stranger, between the side look-out window and the front one.
They looked, and were soon perceived by our stranger to be, father and son. The old man, of apparently upward of sixty, was a middle-sized man, of no Herculean mould, but well knit together, and with a face thin and wrinkled as with a life-long acquaintance with care and struggle. His complexion was more like brown leather than any thing else, and his hair, which was thin and grizzled, was combed backward from his face, and hung in masses about his ears. The son was much taller than the father, a stooping figure, with flaxen hair, a large nose, light blue eyes, and altogether a very gawky look.
The old man seemed to eat with little appetite, and to be sunk into himself, as if he was oppressed by some heavy trouble. Yet he every now and then roused himself, cast an anxious look at his son, and said, "Joe, lad, thou eats nothing."
"No, fayther," was the constant reply; "I towd you I shouldn't. This reen's enough te tak any body's appetite—and these t'other things," casting a glance at the stranger.
The stranger had, indeed, his eyes fixed curiously upon the two, for he had been watching the consumptive tendency of the son; not in any cough or hectic flush, or peculiar paleness, for he had a positively sunburnt complexion of his own, but by the extraordinary power he possessed of tossing down coffee and ham, with enormous pieces of toast and butter. Under his operations, a large dish of broiled ham rapidly disappeared, and the contents of the coffee-pot were in as active demand. Yet the old man, ever and anon, looked up from his reverie, and repeated his paternal observation:
"Joe, lad, thou eats nothing!"