AT THE GREEN DRAGON II
BY BEATRICE HARRADEN
HIERONYMUS STAYS.
Hieronymus Howard had only intended to pass one night at the Green Dragon. But his sharp encounter with the gypsies altered his plans. He was battered and bruised and thoroughly shaken, and quite unable to do anything else except rest in the arm-chair and converse with Gamboge, who had attached herself to him, and evidently appreciated his companionship. His right hand was badly sprained. Mrs. Benbow looked after him most tenderly, bemoaning all the time that he should be in such a plight because of her. There was nothing that she was not willing to do for him; it was a long time since Hieronymus Howard had been so petted and spoiled. Mrs. Benbow treated every one like a young child that needed to be taken care of. The very men who came to drink her famous ale were under her strict motherly authority. “There now, Mr. Andrew, that’s enough for ye,” she would say; “not another glass to-night. No, no, John Curtis; get you gone home. You’ll not coax another half-pint out of me.”
She was generally obeyed; even Hieronymus Howard, who refused rather peevishly to take a third cup of beef-tea, found himself obliged to comply. When she told him to lie on the sofa, he did so without a murmur. When she told him to get up and take his dinner while it was still hot, he obeyed like a well-trained child. She cut his food, and then took the knife away.
“You mustn’t try to use your right hand,” she said sternly. “Put it back in the sling at once.”
Hieronymus obeyed. Her kind tyranny pleased and amused him, and he was not at all sorry to go on staying at the Green Dragon. He was really on his way to visit some friends just on the border between Shropshire and Wales, to form one of a large house-party, consisting of people both interesting and intellectual: qualities, by the way, not necessarily inseparable. But he was just at the time needing quiet of mind, and he promised himself some really peaceful hours in this little Shropshire village, with its hills, some of them bare, and others girt with a belt of trees, and the brook gurgling past the wayside inn. He was tired, and here he would find rest. The only vexatious part was that he had hurt his hand. But for this mishap he would have been quite content.
He told this to Mr. Benbow, who returned that afternoon, and who expressed his regret at the whole occurrence.
“Oh, I am well satisfied here,” said Hieronymus cheerily. “Your little wife is a capital hostess: somewhat of the tyrant, you know. Still, one likes that; until one gets to the fourth cup of beef-tea! And she is an excellent cook, and the Green Dragon is most comfortable. I’ve nothing to complain of except my hand. That is a nuisance, for I wanted to do some writing. I suppose there is no one here who could write for me.”
“Well,” said Mr. Benbow, “perhaps the missus can. She can do most things. She’s real clever.”
Mrs. Benbow, being consulted on this matter, confessed that she could not do much in that line.
“I used to spell pretty well once,” she said brightly; “but the brewing and the scouring and the looking after other things have knocked all that out of me.”
“You wrote to me finely when I was away,” her husband said. He was a quiet fellow, and proud of his little wife, and liked people to know how capable she was.
“Ah, but you aren’t over-particular, Ben, bless you,” she answered, laughing, and running away to her many duties. Then she returned to tell Hieronymus that there was a splendid fire in the kitchen, and that he was to go and sit there.
“I’m busy doing the washing in the back-yard,” she said. “Ben has gone to look after the sheep. Perhaps you’ll give an eye to the door, and serve out the ale. It would help me mighty. I’m rather pressed for time to-day. We shall brew to-morrow, and I must get the washing done this afternoon.”
She took it for granted that he would obey, and of course he did. He transferred himself, his pipe, and his book to the front kitchen, and prepared for customers. Hieronymus Howard had once been an ambitious man, but never before had he been seized by such an overwhelming aspiration as now possessed him–to serve out the Green Dragon ale!
“If only some one would come!” he said to himself scores of times.
No one came. Hieronymus, becoming impatient, sprang up from his chair and gazed anxiously out of the window, just in time to see three men stroll into the opposite inn.
“Confound them!” he cried; “why don’t they come here?”
The next moment four riders stopped at the rival public-house, and old Mrs. Howells hurried out to them, as though to prevent any possibility of them slipping across to the other side of the road.
This was almost more than Hieronymus could bear quietly. He could scarcely refrain from opening the Green Dragon door and advertising in a loud voice the manifold virtues of Mrs. Benbow’s ale and spirits. But he recollected in time that even wayside inns have their fixed code of etiquette, and that nothing remained for him but to possess his soul in patience. He was rewarded; in a few minutes a procession of wagons filed slowly past the Green Dragon; he counted ten horses and five men. Would they stop? Hieronymus waited in breathless excitement. Yes, they did stop, and four of the drivers came into the kitchen. “Where is the fifth?” asked Hieronymus sharply, having a keen eye to business. “He is minding the horses,” they answered, looking at him curiously. But they seemed to take it for granted that he was there to serve them, and they leaned back luxuriously in the great oak settle, while Hieronymus poured out the beer, and received in exchange some grimy coppers.
After they had gone the fifth man came to have his share of the refreshments; and then followed a long pause, which seemed to Hieronymus like whole centuries.
“It was during a lengthened period like this,” he remarked to himself, as he paced up and down the kitchen–”yes, it was during infinite time like this that the rugged rocks became waveworn pebbles!”
Suddenly he heard the sound of horses’ feet.
“It is a rider,” he said. “I shall have to go out to him.” He hastened to the door, and saw a young woman on a great white horse. She carried a market basket on her arm. She wore no riding-habit, but was dressed in the ordinary way. There was nothing picturesque about her appearance, but Hieronymus thought her face looked interesting. She glanced at him as though she wondered what he could possibly be doing at the Green Dragon.
“Well, and what may I do for you?” he asked. He did not quite like to say, “What may I bring for you?” He left her to decide that matter.
“I wanted to see Mrs. Benbow,” she said.
“She is busy doing the washing,” he answered. “But I will go and tell her, if you will kindly detain any customer who may chance to pass by.”
He hurried away, and came back with the answer that Mrs. Benbow would be out in a minute.
“Thank you,” the young woman said quietly. Then she added: “You have hurt your arm, I see.”
“Yes,” he answered; “it is a great nuisance. I cannot write. I have been wondering whether I could get any one to write for me. Do you know of any one?”
“No,” she said bitterly; “we don’t write here. We make butter and cheese, and we fatten up our poultry, and then we go to market and sell our butter, cheese, and poultry.”
“Well,” said Hieronymus, “and why shouldn’t you?”
He looked up at her, and saw what a discontented expression had come over her young face.
She took no notice of his interruption, but just switched the horse’s ears with the end of her whip.
“That is what we do year after year,” she continued, “until I suppose we have become so dull that we don’t care to do anything else. That is what we have come into the world for: to make butter and cheese, and fatten up our poultry, and go to market.”
“Yes,” he answered cheerily, “and we all have to do it in some form or other. We all go to market to sell our goods, whether they be brains, or practical common-sense (which often, you know, has nothing to do with brains), or butter, or poultry. Now I don’t know, of course, what you have in your basket; but supposing you have eggs, which you are taking to market. Well, you are precisely in the same condition as the poet who is on his way to a publisher’s, carrying a new poem in his vest pocket. And yet there is a difference.”
“Of course there is,” she jerked out scornfully.
“Yes, there is a difference,” he continued, placidly; “it is this: you will return without those eggs, but the poet will come back still carrying his poem in his breast-pocket!”
Then he laughed at his own remark.
“That is how things go in the great world, you know,” he said. “Out in the great world there is an odd way of settling matters. Still they must be settled somehow or other!”
“Out in the world!” she exclaimed. “That is where I long to go.”
“Then why on earth don’t you?” he replied.
At that moment Mrs. Benbow came running out.
“I am so sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Hammond,” she said to the young girl; “but what with the washing and the making ready for the brewing to-morrow, I don’t know where to turn.”
Then followed a series of messages to which Hieronymus paid no attention. And then Miss Hammond cracked her whip, waved her greetings with it, and the old white horse trotted away.
“And who is the rider of the horse?” asked Hieronymus.
“Oh, she is Farmer Hammond’s daughter,” said Mrs. Benbow. “Her name is Joan. She is an odd girl, different from the other girls here. They say she is quite a scholar too. Why, she would be the one to write for you. The very one, of course! I’ll call to her.”
But by that time the old white horse was out of sight.