When Mr. Solly entered the Bullman Arms and sat down quietly in a corner, no one seemed to notice him.
Mr. Dady, who managed Farmer Mere’s large dairy of cows, was there, Dillar the labourer, and Thomas Huddy. As Solly entered, Mr. Huddy was explaining to the company why it was that his daughter, Daisy, behaved so naughtily.
“’Twas she’s mother who first taught her,’” observed Mr. Huddy.—Dillar looked surprised at this news.—“She were religious, I do know,” said Huddy, “and died good, but she always taught Daisy to do what she was told.”
“And how could that have done the harm?” inquired Mr. Titball.
“’Tain’t always good that a maid be told to do,” answered Huddy meaningly.
Though the company had not noticed Mr. Solly, Mr. Titball now observed him. No new customer ever escaped the landlord’s eye, but it was not only the hope of gain that made Mr. Titball like to see a new face. He had another, and a more lofty reason than that—he wished to show him a book.
Before he came to the Dodder tavern, Mr. Titball had been, for many years, in service with Lord Bullman as butler, and from his nearness to so great a man he had come to regard my lord as an equal to—or even greater than—God Almighty.
Mr. Titball had served Lord Bullman so long and so faithfully that, as a reward for his service, when he left the Hall, Lord Bullman presented him with a second-hand picture-book, together with the second housemaid.
Mr. Titball married the one, and admired the other.
At the Bullman Arms, he always kept his wife in the kitchen and the picture-book in the parlour. He was ashamed of his wife, and for this reason. It had been Mary’s privilege to make my lord and my lady’s bed, but once the housekeeper discovered that she had not turned the mattress in my lord’s room—and so, in Mr. Titball’s opinion, she was shamed for ever.
Mr. Titball considered his wife to be a common slut, a mere drudge, a betrayer of her former master.
The picture-book was different. It contained all the houses of the great, beginning with Arundel Castle, and ending with the king’s residence in Norfolk. Exactly in the middle, where a large marker taken from a family Bible had been placed, was a fine picture of West Dodder Hall.
As soon as Mr. Solly was settled in his place, Mr. Titball, treading noiselessly, took the book in his hands, carried it to Solly—as if it were an infant—and placed it gently upon his knees.
Mr. Solly, who did not know the ways of the place, and felt the book a weighty burden, rose quietly and returned it to the table from whence it had been taken. Mr. Titball who, even with his back turned, noticed everything, saw what Solly had done.
The landlord was a stout little man, with a mottled complexion and a fiery eye; he could forgive everything in the world except an insult to his former master. He had thought his wife a slut, and now he believed that Solly was an atheist, and so he brought him the worst gin—for he considered that only those who opened and enjoyed his fine book deserved the best.
Though Mr. Titball’s book did not interest Solly, he liked the smell of Mr. Titball’s parlour. Smells change according to the seasons indoors as well as out-of-doors. Each visitor who enters an inn brings with him an odour from outside. About Mr. Huddy there was always the scent of damp clay, together with the smell that comes out of the ground when the furrow is newly turned. Dillar stank of the stable and Mr. Dady of cow dung, and by such mixtures did the Dodder Inn parlour get its summer scent.
Mr. Solly sipped his gin and decided that he preferred cows to horses. No one heeded his presence. He had chosen a corner to sit in that was rarely occupied by any one, unless it were Tinker Jar, who used sometimes to enter the inn to drink a pint of sixes.
Mr. Solly might as well have been Jar for all the notice that was taken of him.
Presently the tavern door opened and Mr. Mere appeared, and took the chief seat upon a stool that was only left for the gentry.
Mr. Mere spoke to Dady. He asked whether a cow that was being fattened was ready for the butcher. He needed money, he said, for a new purchase.
“I have bought Joe Bridle’s grass,” he said, “to cut and to carry. The grass is growing thick and green, and ’twill make a fine stack.”
“Master be the woon for a bargain,” cried out Dillar.
“The field is a strange one,” observed Mr. Mere thoughtfully. “Besides the pond and the elm tree, there are mounds here and there, and deep hidden places that prevent a haycutter from being used. When the grass grows a little more, I must hire a mower for it.”
“’Tis said that Bridle is a bankrupt,” observed the landlord, who filled Mr. Mere’s glass. “I trust that he does not owe anything to my lord, who has not bought a pipe of port wine since I lived at the Hall. And who deserves more wine than he?”
“If ’twere beer,” said Mr. Dillar, with a wink, “’tis I who deserve it.”
Mr. Titball frowned; the joke was ill-timed.
“Folk do say,” remarked Mr. Dillar, thinking it best to change the subject, “that Joe Bridle be the one to want money, and maybe ’e have a mind to a furry doe-rabbit to keep company wi’ wold camel in ’s house.”
“’Tis a rabbit that others do want as well as he,” said Mr. Dady, looking at Mere.
“Master be a knowing one,” cried old Huddy. “’E do like to take all; ’e be the one to fancy folk’s fields and houses, and where a pretty maid be, there will Mr. Mere be also.” Mr. Huddy was the church clerk.
Dillar grinned. All wished to please Mere and to minister to his wants. Mr. Dady sat near to the inn window; he liked that place best because he could enjoy himself there, killing flies.
Thus he enjoyed life; for by killing he always obtained pleasure, sometimes profit. Whenever he killed a pig—though it was Mr. Mere’s—he was always able to get something for himself. Besides meat in an animal, there is blood, and Mr. Dady liked a blood pudding.
Mr. Dady believed in art—the art of killing. He liked to kill slowly. He would approach a fly, with his thumb going nearer and yet nearer, and the fly supposed that all was well. Then Mr. Dady would squeeze the insect against the pane.
When he had killed all the flies that were there, Mr. Dady happened to notice James Dawe, leaning against the bank, near to the inn. Dawe appeared to be there for no purpose other than to look at the inn signboard that was in front of him.
Though he seemed to rest so innocently amongst the daisies, all Dodder knew why he was there. He was a merchant who waited. When Mr. Dawe waited like that, all knew that he had something to sell.
That was his gait, his manner, when he had goods to part with. Even when his wife was alive, he offered to sell her in the same way. He would wait until a man spoke to him, and then, after speaking of the weather, he would talk of women.
“In these lean times, a poor farmer do want a bit of fun,” he would observe. “And there be something at home to please ’ee.”
Mr. Dawe was a cunning one; he never spoke first, but he liked to hear what was being said. Village tales that had no meaning to others had a meaning to him.
Mr. Dawe was a man who looked underneath appearances.