To-morrow was Sunday; and Bolton thought of a certain manuscript, not quite finished, lying on his desk at home. He glanced again at the stranger, and possibly, in the orthodoxy of his heart, did not feel particularly grieved at the disappointment probably in store for the itching ears of the S—— non-conformists.
“Well, good-night, Haines,” said he. But seeing his late companion still standing in the road, looking rather helpless, and hesitating to leave him altogether to the tender mercies of the coachman, “I am walking in the direction of the village inn,” he continued, “and if I can show you the way, I shall be very glad to do so. I dare say I can also find some one to fetch your luggage.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the other. “I cannot do better than follow your example;” and he at once selected and shouldered, with some activity for a man obviously on the wrong side of forty, a carpet-bag of more cumbersome dimensions than Bolton’s; and they strode down the road together, nearly in darkness, and with the rain still falling.
They had nearly reached the curate’s humble cottage, without much further conversation, when the stranger repeated his inquiries as to the distance to the inn, and the probability of his obtaining there any tolerable accommodation. “A clean bed,” he said, “would content him; was he likely to find one?”
A struggle had been going on, from the time they left the coach, between Harry Bolton’s good-nature, and what he thought his due dignity. Every word his fellow-passenger had uttered had convinced him, more and more, that he was a man of education and good sense, to say the least; a totally different being from the class of whom Jabez Green, who expounded at Mount Pisgah in his own parish on Sundays, and did a little shoemaking and poaching on week-days, formed a specimen ever before his eyes; and if it had not seemed a ludicrous misapplication of hospitality to have entertained the great gun of schism within the lares of the “persona ecclesia” he would long ago have offered the very respectable and mild-mannered gentleman, dropped by an unlucky accident almost at his door, at least a good fire and a pair of clean sheets for the night. Sleep at the Crown and Thistle!—why, on consideration, it was scarcely creditable to himself to send him there. The landlord was one of the most disreputable fellows in the parish, and, by ten o’clock on a Saturday night, was usually so drunk as to be more likely to refuse a guest any accommodation at all, than to take any extra pains for him. And the dirt, and the noise, and the etceteras! No, Dr Bates had better have stuck to the inside of the coach than have tried the Crown and Thistle. But where else was he to go? There was a good spare bedroom, no doubt, at Barby farm, within half a mile; but it had not been occupied since Harry had slept in it himself on his first arrival in the parish, and then it took a week’s notice to move the piles of wool and cheese, and have it duly aired. The stranger coughed, Harry grew desperate, and spoke out.
“We are close to my little place now, sir. I think I can offer you what you will hardly find at the inn—a clean room and a well-aired bed; and it seems a mere act of common civility to beg you to accept it.”
With many thanks, but with the natural politeness and ease with which a gentleman receives from another the courtesy which he is always ready to offer himself, the hospitable invitation was at once freely accepted: and in five minutes they had passed the little gate, and were awaiting the opening of the door.
This service was performed by the whole available force of Harry’s establishment. One active little elderly woman, who was there on resident and permanent duty, in all capacities, assisted on this occasion by Samuel Shears, parish clerk, sexton, barber, bird-fancier, fishing-tackle maker, &c. &c. &c.; and acting gardener, valet, butler, and footman, when required, to the reverend the curate. Loud was the welcome he received from both. “Had he walked through all the rain, surely! The coach was very late then; they’d ’most given him up: no, Sam hadn’t, ’cause of service to-morrow;” when their volubility was somewhat checked by the sight of his companion; and the old lady’s face underwent no very favourable change when informed she must prepare a second bed.
“Walk in, pray, and warm yourself—that room—Sam, take these bags;” and Harry stepped aside into the kitchen, to negotiate with his housekeeper for the strange accommodation; a matter not to be effected but by some little tact; for Molly, like servants of higher pretensions, did not like being put out of her way, by people “coming tramping in,” as she said, at all hours of the night; and if Bolton had replied to her close inquiries, as to who and whence the new guest was, with the statement that he was a stray Methodist preacher, it is probable that Molly, who had lived with clergymen since she was a child, and would sooner have missed her dinner than “her church,” would have resigned her keys of office at once in high disgust.
“The gentleman will sleep in my room, of course, Molly, and I shall have my things put into the other;—anything will do for supper—bread and cheese, Molly, quite well—toast a little, will you? Poor man, he seems to have a cough.”