I noticed that his face was scarred and furrowed. He had no doubt led a hard life, and from his erect bearing I thought that he might possibly have risen to the rank of sergeant-major during the war. His keen black eyes seemed to search everywhere, while his nose was almost hawk-like. His cravat too, attracted me. It was of soft black silk, neatly tied, but in it was an onyx scarf-pin, oval and dark with a thin white line around the edge. It reminded me most forcibly of a miniature human eye.
As we sat together he gossiped about the bad state of trade, the craze for cheap dress materials and the consequent low prices.
“Things are horribly bad in Bradford,” he declared. “Most of the mills are only working half-time. In the cotton trade it is just the same. Oldham has been very hard hit, now that the boom has passed. Why, when that boom in cotton-mills was at its height, men became semi-millionaires in a single week. I know a man who was a clerk living in a seven-room house and keeping no servants who made a clear profit of a quarter of a million within six weeks, and he made a further hundred thousand in the same year. He’s just bought a pretty estate in Devonshire. And now the slump has come and other people are bearing the burden which the lucky ones unloaded on them.”
He took a cigarette case from his pocket and offered me one. I took it and for a further quarter of an hour we smoked.
“Yes,” he said. “This is a pretty comfortable place. I’ve known it for twenty years—and it’s always been the same. Old Brimelow, who used to be the landlord, was a queer old fellow. He’s dead now. He used to make us some wonderful rum-punch in the commercial room at Christmas-time. His father kept the place before him, and he could remember the stage-coaches, the York coach, the Lincoln coach, the Birmingham coach and the Edinburgh coach, and tell tales of all of them.”
“Of highwaymen?” I asked laughing.
“No. Not exactly that,” he said merrily. “But sometimes he told us tales of hold-ups that he had heard from his father. Why, King George the Third once got snowed up at the Colly Weston cross-roads and slept there. Oh! this is a very historic old place.”
After lighting another of his cigarettes I left my entertaining companion and ascended the broad oak staircase to my room, which was on the first floor.
It was a fine old apartment, three sides of which were paneled in dark oak. The floor, on which a few rugs were strewn, was of polished oak and creaked as I entered, while through the open window the moon cast a long white beam.
After a glance out upon the silent courtyard I half closed the window, drew down the blind and lit the gas. Then, having turned the key in the door, I undressed and retired.