Opportunity for gossip! Thing’s well done—down it goes: you know that. You can’t have a word over it—eh? Thing’s done fit to toss on a dungheap, aha! Then there’s a cackle! My belief is, you do it on purpose. Can’t be such rank idiots. You do it on purpose. All done for gossip!”
“Oh, sir, no!” The landlady half curtsied.
“Oh, ma’am, yes!” The old gentleman bobbed his head.
“No, indeed, sir!” The landlady shook hers.
“Damn it, ma’am, I swear you do!”
Symptoms of utter wrath here accompanied the declaration; and, with a sigh and a very bitter feeling, Mrs. Hawkshaw allowed him to have the last word. Apparently this—which I must beg to call the lady’s morsel—comforted his irascible system somewhat; for he remained in a state of composure eight minutes by the clock. And mark how little things hang together. Another word from the landlady, precipitating a retort from him, and a gesture or muttering from her; and from him a snapping outburst, and from her a sign that she held out still; in fact, had she chosen to battle for that last word, as in other cases she might have done, then would he have exploded, gone to bed in the dark, and insisted upon sleeping: the consequence of which would have been to change this history. Now while Mrs. Hawkshaw was up-stairs, Mrs. Mel called the servant, who took her to the kitchen, where she saw a prime loin of mutton; off which she cut two chops with a cunning hand: and these she toasted at a gradual distance, putting a plate beneath them, and a tin behind, and hanging the chops so that they would turn without having to be pierced. The bell rang twice before she could say the chops were ready. The first time, the maid had to tell the old gentleman she was taking up his water. Her next excuse was, that she had dropped her candle. The chops ready—who was to take them?
“Really, Mrs. Harrington, you are so clever, you ought, if I might be so bold as say so; you ought to end it yourself,” said the landlady. “I can’t ask him to eat them: he was all but on the busting point when I left him.”
“And that there candle did for him quite,” said Mary, the maid.
“I’m afraid it’s chops cooked for nothing,” added the landlady.
Mrs. Mel saw them endangered. The maid held back: the landlady feared.
“We can but try,” she said.
“Oh! I wish mum, you’d face him, ’stead o’ me,” said Mary; “I do dread that old bear’s den.”
“Here, I will go,” said Mrs. Mel. “Has he got his ale? Better draw it fresh, if he drinks any.”
And up-stairs she marched, the landlady remaining below to listen for the commencement of the disturbance. An utterance of something certainly followed Mrs. Mel’s entrance into the old bear’s den. Then silence. Then what might have been question and answer. Then—was Mrs. Mel assaulted? and which was knocked down? It really was a chair being moved to the table. The door opened.
“Yes, ma’am; do what you like,” the landlady heard. Mrs. Mel descended, saying: “Send him up some fresh ale.”
“And you have made him sit down obedient to those chops?” cried the landlady. “Well might poor dear Mr. Harrington—pleasant man as he was!—say, as he used to say, ‘There’s lovely women in the world, Mrs. Hawkshaw,’ he’d say, ‘and there’s duchesses,’ he’d say, ‘and there’s they that can sing, and can dance, and some,’ he says, ‘that can cook.’ But he’d look sly as he’d stoop his head and shake it. ‘Roll ’em into one,’ he says, ‘and not any of your grand ladies can match my wife at home.’ And, indeed, Mrs. Harrington, he told me he thought so many a time in the great company he frequented.”
Perfect peace reigning above, Mrs. Hawkshaw and Mrs. Mel sat down to supper below; and Mrs. Hawkshaw talked much of the great one gone. His relict did not care to converse about the dead, save in their practical aspects as ghosts; but she listened, and that passed the time. By and by the old gentleman rang, and sent a civil message to know if the landlady had ship’s rum in the house.
“Dear! here’s another trouble,” cried the poor woman. “No—none!”
“Say, yes,” said Mrs. Mel, and called Dandy, and charged him to run down the street to the square, and ask for the house of Mr. Coxwell, the maltster, and beg of him, in her name, a bottle of his ship’s rum.
“And don’t you tumble down and break the bottle, Dandy. Accidents with spirit-bottles are not excused.”
Dandy went on the errand, after an energetic grunt of “Iron!”
In due time he returned with the bottle, whole and sound, and Mr. Coxwell’s compliments. Mrs. Mel examined the cork to see that no process of suction had been attempted, and then said:
“Carry it up to him, Dandy. Let him see there’s a man in the house besides himself.”
“Why, my dear,” the landlady turned to her, “it seems natural to you to be mistress where you go. I don’t at all mind, for ain’t it my profit? But you do take us off our legs.”
“Iron!” was heard in muttered thunder from Dandy aloft.
Then the landlady, warmed by gratitude towards Mrs. Mel, told her that the old gentleman was the great London brewer, who brewed there with his brother, and brewed for himself five miles out of Fallowfield, half of which and a good part of the neighbourhood he owned, and his name was Mr. Tom Cogglesby.
“Oh!” went Mrs. Mel. “And his brother is Mr. Andrew.”
“That’s it,” said the landlady. “And because he took it into his head to go and to choose for himself, and be married, no getting his brother, Mr. Tom, to speak to him. Why not, indeed? If there’s to be no marrying, the sooner we lay down and give up, the better, I think. But that’s his way. He do hate us women, Mrs. Harrington. I have heard he was crossed. Some say it was the lady of Beckley Court, who was a beauty when he was only a poor cobbler’s son.”
Mrs. Mel breathed nothing of her relationship