Part 1 (2/2)
A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the board, he bawled out, ”Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it.”
He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: ”Not unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I wonder?” The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the scream of the plane.
One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there still. ”Gentleman's got out and walked,” said Crickledon. He was informed that somebody was visible inside. ”Gentleman's wife, mayhap,”
he said. His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked, and there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop. He furnished them sound and motion for their amus.e.m.e.nt, and now and then a sc.r.a.p of conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to supper- time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly excitement of the public-house.
Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line. In the doorway stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the startling exclamation, ”Here's a pretty pickle!” and bustled to make way for a man well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on whose back hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a condensed brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed by mutely turning himself about as he entered.
”Smashed!” was the general outcry.
”I ran slap into him,” said the gentleman. ”Who the deuce!--no bones broken, that's one thing. The fellow--there, look at him: he's like a gla.s.s tortoise.”
”It's a chiwal gla.s.s,” Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star in the centre.
”Gentleman ran slap into me,” said Crummins, depositing the frame on the floor of the shop.
”Never had such a shock in my life,” continued the gentleman. ”Upon my soul, I took him for a door: I did indeed. A kind of light flashed from one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the door of old Mart Tinman's house, and dash me if I did n't go in--cras.h.!.+
But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-gla.s.s at night, man? And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going gla.s.s foremost when you'd got the gla.s.s on your back?”
”Well, 't ain't my fault, I knows that,” rejoined Crummins. ”I came along as careful as a man could. I was just going to bawl out to Master Tinman, 'I knows the way, never fear me'; for I thinks I hears him call from his house, 'Do ye see the way?' and into me this gentleman runs all his might, and smash goes the gla.s.s. I was just ten steps from Master Tinman's gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I was; I knows I did, though.”
”Why, it was me calling, 'I'm sure I can't see the way.'
”You heard me, you donkey!” retorted the bearded gentleman. ”What was the good of your turning that gla.s.s against me in the very nick when I dashed on you?”
”Well, 't ain't my fault, I swear,” said Crummins. ”The wind catches voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on one shoulder or the other. And if I'm to go and lose my place through no fault of mine----”
”Have n't I told you, sir, I'm going to pay the damage? Here,” said the gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, ”here, take this card. Read it.”
For the first time during the scene in the carpenter's shop, a certain pomposity swelled the gentleman's tone. His delivery of the card appeared to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.
”Van Diemen Smith,” he proclaimed himself for the a.s.sistance of Ned Crummins in his task; the latter's look of sad concern on receiving the card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.
An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.
”Oh, papa, has there been an accident? Are you hurt?”
”Not a bit, Netty; not a bit. Walked into a big looking-gla.s.s in the dark, that's all. A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won't stump us. But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you can't take a step in the dark, on the seash.o.r.e without plunging bang into a gla.s.s. And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman.”
”Can you,” he addressed the company, ”tell me of a clean, wholesome lodging-house? I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on your mayor, or whatever he is--my old schoolmate; but I don't so much like this beginning. A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance.”
The pebble dropped into deep water speaks of its depth by the tardy arrival of bubbles on the surface, and, in like manner, the very simple question put by Mr. Van Diemen Smith pursued its course of penetration in the a.s.sembled mind in the carpenter's shop for a considerable period, with no sign to show that it had reached the bottom.
”Surely, papa, we can go to an inn? There must be some hotel,” said his daughter.
”There's good accommodation at the Cliff Hotel hard by,” said Crickledon.
”But,” said one of his friends, ”if you don't want to go so far, sir, there's Master Crickledon's own house next door, and his wife lets lodgings, and there's not a better cook along this coast.”
”Then why did n't the man mention it? Is he afraid of having me?” asked Mr. Smith, a little thunderingly. ”I may n't be known much yet in England; but I'll tell you, you inquire the route to Mr. Van Diemen Smith over there in Australia.”
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