I should have said,’ returned the hostess, sensible of having made an awkward mistake.
‘Nor my father’ said the young lady. ‘Nor,’ she added, slightly smiling with a quick perception of what the landlady was going to add, ‘Nor my uncle. We are not related.’
‘Oh dear me!’ returned the landlady, still more embarrassed than before; ‘how could I be so very much mistaken; knowing, as anybody in their proper senses might that when a gentleman is ill, he looks so much older than he really is? That I should have called you “Miss,” too, ma’am!’ But when she had proceeded thus far, she glanced involuntarily at the third finger of the young lady’s left hand, and faltered again; for there was no ring upon it.
‘When I told you we were not related,’ said the other mildly, but not without confusion on her own part, ‘I meant not in any way. Not even by marriage. Did you call me, Martin?’
‘Call you?’ cried the old man, looking quickly up, and hurriedly drawing beneath the coverlet the paper on which he had been writing. ‘No.’
She had moved a pace or two towards the bed, but stopped immediately, and went no farther.
‘No,’ he repeated, with a petulant emphasis. ‘Why do you ask me? If I had called you, what need for such a question?’
‘It was the creaking of the sign outside, sir, I dare say,’ observed the landlady; a suggestion by the way (as she felt a moment after she had made it), not at all complimentary to the voice of the old gentleman.
‘No matter what, ma’am,’ he rejoined: ‘it wasn’t I. Why how you stand there, Mary, as if I had the plague! But they’re all afraid of me,’ he added, leaning helplessly backward on his pillow; ‘even she! There is a curse upon me. What else have I to look for?’
‘Oh dear, no. Oh no, I’m sure,’ said the good-tempered landlady, rising, and going towards him. ‘Be of better cheer, sir. These are only sick fancies.’
‘What are only sick fancies?’ he retorted. ‘What do you know about fancies? Who told you about fancies? The old story! Fancies!’
‘Only see again there, how you take one up!’ said the mistress of the Blue Dragon, with unimpaired good humour. ‘Dear heart alive, there is no harm in the word, sir, if it is an old one. Folks in good health have their fancies, too, and strange ones, every day.’
Harmless as this speech appeared to be, it acted on the traveller’s distrust, like oil on fire. He raised his head up in the bed, and, fixing on her two dark eyes whose brightness was exaggerated by the paleness of his hollow cheeks, as they in turn, together with his straggling locks of long grey hair, were rendered whiter by the tight black velvet skullcap which he wore, he searched her face intently.
‘Ah! you begin too soon,’ he said, in so low a voice that he seemed to be thinking it, rather than addressing her. ‘But you lose no time. You do your errand, and you earn your fee. Now, who may be your client?’
The landlady looked in great astonishment at her whom he called Mary, and finding no rejoinder in the drooping face, looked back again at him. At first she had recoiled involuntarily, supposing him disordered in his mind; but the slow composure of his manner, and the settled purpose announced in his strong features, and gathering, most of all, about his puckered mouth, forbade the supposition.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘tell me who is it? Being here, it is not very hard for me to guess, you may suppose.’
‘Martin,’ interposed the young lady, laying her hand upon his arm; ‘reflect how short a time we have been in this house, and that even your name is unknown here.’
‘Unless,’ he said, ‘you – ’ He was evidently tempted to express a suspicion of her having broken his confidence in favour of the landlady, but either remembering her tender nursing, or being moved in some sort by her face, he checked himself, and changing his uneasy posture in the bed, was silent.
‘There!’ said Mrs Lupin; for in that name the Blue Dragon was licensed to furnish entertainment, both to man and beast. ‘Now, you will be well again, sir. You forgot, for the moment, that there were none but friends here.’
‘Oh!’ cried the old man, moaning impatiently, as he tossed one restless arm upon the coverlet; ‘why do you talk to me of friends! Can you or anybody teach me to know who are my friends, and who my enemies?’
‘At least,’ urged Mrs Lupin, gently, ‘this young lady is your friend, I am sure.’
‘She has no temptation to be otherwise,’ cried the old man, like one whose hope and confidence were utterly exhausted. ‘I suppose she is. Heaven knows. There, let me try to sleep. Leave the candle where it is.’
As they retired from the bed, he drew forth the writing which had occupied him so long, and holding it in the flame of the taper burnt it to ashes. That done, he extinguished the light, and turning his face away with a heavy sigh, drew the coverlet about his head, and lay quite still.
This destruction of the paper, both as being strangely inconsistent with the labour he had devoted to it, and as involving considerable danger of fire to the Dragon, occasioned Mrs Lupin not a little consternation. But the young lady evincing no surprise, curiosity, or alarm, whispered her, with many thanks for her solicitude and company, that she would remain there some time longer; and that she begged her not to share her watch, as she was well used to being alone, and would pass the time in reading.
Mrs Lupin had her full share and dividend of that large capital of curiosity which is inherited by her sex, and at another time it might have been difficult so to impress this hint upon her as to induce her to take it. But now, in sheer wonder and amazement at these mysteries, she withdrew at once, and repairing straightway to her own little parlour below stairs, sat down in her easy-chair with unnatural composure. At this very crisis, a step was heard in the entry, and Mr Pecksniff, looking sweetly over the half-door of the bar, and into the vista of snug privacy beyond, murmured:
‘Good evening, Mrs Lupin!’
‘Oh dear me, sir!’ she cried, advancing to receive him, ‘I am so very glad you have come.’
‘And I am very glad I have come,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘if I can be of service. I am very glad I have come. What is the matter, Mrs Lupin?’
‘A gentleman taken ill upon the road, has been so very bad upstairs, sir,’ said the tearful hostess.
‘A gentleman taken ill upon the road, has been so very bad upstairs, has he?’ repeated Mr Pecksniff. ‘Well, well!’
Now there was nothing that one may call decidedly original in this remark, nor can it be exactly said to have contained any wise precept theretofore unknown to mankind, or to have opened any hidden source of consolation; but Mr Pecksniff’s manner was so bland, and he nodded his head so soothingly, and showed in everything such an affable sense of his own excellence, that anybody would have been, as Mrs Lupin was, comforted by the mere voice and presence of such a man; and, though he had merely said ‘a verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person, my good friend,’ or ‘eight times eight are sixty-four, my worthy soul,’ must have felt deeply grateful to him for his humanity and wisdom.
‘And how,’ asked Mr Pecksniff, drawing off his gloves and warming his hands before the fire, as benevolently as if they were somebody else’s, not his; ‘and how is he now?’
‘He is better, and quite tranquil,’ answered
