They waited for about half an hour, talking at intervals in a constrained, awkward way about trivial subjects. Then as Easton did not come, Ruth decided to serve Slyme without waiting any longer. With this intention she laid the baby in its cot, but the child resented this arrangement and began to cry, so she had to hold him under her left arm while she made the tea. Seeing her in this predicament, Slyme exclaimed, holding out his hands:

'Here, let me hold him while you do that.'

'Will you?' said Ruth, who, in spite of her instinctive dislike of the man, could not help feeling gratified with this attention. 'Well, mind you don't let him fall.'

But the instant Slyme took hold of the child it began to cry even louder than it did when it was put into the cradle.

'He's always like that with strangers,' apologized Ruth as she took him back again.

'Wait a minute,' said Slyme, 'I've got something upstairs in my pocket that will keep him quiet. I'd forgotten all about it.'

He went up to his room and presently returned with the rattle. When the baby saw the bright colours and heard the tinkling of the bells he crowed with delight, and reached out his hands eagerly towards it and allowed Slyme to take him without a murmur of protest. Before Ruth had finished making and serving the tea the man and child were on the very best of terms with each other, so much so indeed that when Ruth had finished and went to take him again, the baby seemed reluctant to part from Slyme, who had been dancing him in the air and tickling him in the most delightful way.

Ruth, too, began to have a better opinion of Slyme, and felt inclined to reproach herself for having taken such an unreasonable dislike of him at first. He was evidently a very good sort of fellow after all.

The baby had by this time discovered the use of the bone ring at the end of the handle of the toy and was biting it energetically.

'It's a very beautiful rattle,' said Ruth. 'Thank you very much for it. It's just the very thing he wanted.'

'I heard you say the other day that he wanted something of the kind to bite on to help his teeth through,' answered Slyme, 'and when I happened to notice that in the shop I remembered what you said and thought I'd bring it home.'

The baby took the ring out of its mouth and shaking the rattle frantically in the air laughed and crowed merrily, looking at Slyme.

'Dad! Dad! Dad!' he cried, holding out his arms.

Slyme and Ruth burst out laughing.

'That's not your Dad, you silly boy,' she said, kissing the child as she spoke. 'Your dad ought to be ashamed of himself for staying out like this. We'll give him dad, dad, dad, when he does come home, won't we?'

But the baby only shook the rattle and rang the bells and laughed and crowed and laughed again, louder than ever.

Chapter 19

The Filling of the Tank

Viewed from outside, the 'Cricketers Arms' was a pretentious-looking building with plate-gla.s.s windows and a profusion of gilding. The pilasters were painted in imitation of different marbles and the doors grained to represent costly woods. There were panels containing painted advertis.e.m.e.nts of wines and spirits and beer, written in gold, and ornamented with gaudy colours. On the lintel over the princ.i.p.al entrance was inscribed in small white letters:

'A. Harpy. Licensed to sell wines, spirits and malt liquor by retail to be consumed either on or off the premises.'

The bar was arranged in the usual way, being divided into several compartments. First there was the 'Saloon Bar': on the gla.s.s of the door leading into this was fixed a printed bill: 'No four ale served in this bar.' Next to the saloon bar was the jug and bottle department, much appreciated by ladies who wished to indulge in a drop of gin on the quiet. There were also two small 'private' bars, only capable of holding two or three persons, where nothing less than fourpennyworth of spirits or gla.s.ses of ale at threepence were served. Finally, the public bar, the largest compartment of all. At each end, separating it from the other departments, was a wooden part.i.tion, painted and varnished.

Wooden forms fixed across the part.i.tions and against the walls under the windows provided seating accommodation for the customers. A large automatic musical instrument--a 'penny in the slot'

polyphone--resembling a grandfather's clock in shape--stood against one of the part.i.tions and close up to the counter, so that those behind the bar could reach to wind it up. Hanging on the part.i.tion near the polyphone was a board about fifteen inches square, over the surface of which were distributed a number of small hooks, numbered. At the bottom of the board was a net made of fine twine, extended by means of a semi-circular piece of wire. In this net several india-rubber rings about three inches in diameter were lying. There was no table in the place but jutting out from the other part.i.tion was a hinged flap about three feet long by twenty inches wide, which could be folded down when not in use. This was the shove-ha'penny board. The coins--old French pennies--used in playing this game were kept behind the bar and might be borrowed on application. On the part.i.tion, just above the shove-ha'penny board was a neatly printed notice, framed and glazed:

NOTICE

Gentlemen using this house are requested to refrain from using obscene language.

Alongside this notice were a number of gaudily-coloured bills advertising the local theatre and the music-hall, and another of a travelling circus and menagerie, then visiting the town and encamped on a piece of waste ground about half-way on the road to Windley. The fittings behind the bar, and the counter, were of polished mahogany, with silvered plate gla.s.s at the back of the shelves. On the shelves were rows of bottles and cut-gla.s.s decanters, gin, whisky, brandy and wines and liqueurs of different kinds.

When Cra.s.s, Philpot, Easton and Bundy entered, the landlord, a well-fed, prosperous-looking individual in white shirt-sleeves, and a bright maroon fancy waistcoat with a ma.s.sive gold watch-chain and a diamond ring, was conversing in an affable, friendly way with one of his regular customers, who was sitting on the end of the seat close to the counter, a shabbily dressed, bleary-eyed, degraded, beer-sodden, trembling wretch, who spent the greater part of every day, and all his money, in this bar. He was a miserable-looking wreck of a man about thirty years of age, supposed to be a carpenter, although he never worked at that trade now. It was commonly said that some years previously he had married a woman considerably his senior, the landlady of a third-rate lodging-house. This business was evidently sufficiently prosperous to enable him to exist without working and to maintain himself in a condition of perpetual semi-intoxication. This besotted wretch practically lived at the 'Cricketers'. He came regularly very morning and sometimes earned a pint of beer by a.s.sisting the barman to sweep up the sawdust or clean the windows. He usually remained in the bar until closing time every night. He was a very good customer; not only did he spend whatever money he could get hold of himself, but he was the cause of others spending money, for he was acquainted with most of the other regular customers, who, knowing his impecunious condition, often stood him a drink 'for the good of the house'.

The only other occupant of the public bar--previous to the entrance of Cra.s.s and his mates--was a semi-drunken man, who appeared to be a house-painter, sitting on the form near the shove-ha'penny board. He was wearing a battered bowler hat and the usual shabby clothes. This individual had a very thin, pale face, with a large, high-bridged nose, and bore a striking resemblance to the portraits of the first Duke of Wellington. He was not a regular customer here, having dropped in casually about two o'clock and had remained ever since. He was beginning to show the effects of the drink he had taken during that time.

As Cra.s.s and the others came in they were hailed with enthusiasm by the landlord and the Besotted Wretch, while the semi-drunk workman regarded them with fishy eyes and stupid curiosity.

'Wot cheer, Bob?' said the landlord, affably, addressing Cra.s.s, and nodding familiarly to the others. ''Ow goes it?'

'All reet me ole dear!' replied Cra.s.s, jovially. ''Ow's yerself?'

'A.1,' replied the 'Old Dear', getting up from his chair in readiness to execute their orders.

'Well, wot's it to be?' inquired Philpot of the others generally.

'Mine's a pint o' beer,' said Cra.s.s.

'Half for me,' said Bundy.

'Half o' beer for me too,' replied Easton.

'That's one pint, two 'arves, and a pint o' porter for meself,' said Philpot, turning and addressing the Old Dear.

While the landlord was serving these drinks the Besotted Wretch finished his beer and set the empty gla.s.s down on the counter, and Philpot observing this, said to him:

''Ave one along o' me?'

'I don't mind if I do,' replied the other.

When the drinks were served, Philpot, instead of paying for them, winked significantly at the landlord, who nodded silently and un.o.btrusively made an entry in an account book that was lying on one of the shelves. Although it was only Monday and he had been at work all the previous week, Philpot was already stony broke. This was accounted for by the fact that on Sat.u.r.day he had paid his landlady something on account of the arrears of board and lodging money that had acc.u.mulated while he was out of work; and he had also paid the Old Dear four shillings for drinks obtained on tick during the last week.

'Well, 'ere's the skin orf yer nose,' said Cra.s.s, nodding to Philpot, and taking a long pull at the pint gla.s.s which the latter had handed to him.

Similar appropriate and friendly sentiments were expressed by the others and suitably acknowledged by Philpot, the founder of the feast.

The Old Dear now put a penny in the slot of the polyphone, and winding it up started it playing. It was some unfamiliar tune, but when the Semi-drunk Painter heard it he rose unsteadily to his feet and began shuffling and dancing about, singing:

'Oh, we'll inwite you to the wedding, An' we'll 'ave a glorious time!

Where the boys an' girls is a-dancing, An' we'll all get drunk on wine.'

''Ere! that's quite enough o' that!' cried the landlord, roughly. 'We don't want that row 'ere.'

The Semi-drunk stopped, and looking stupidly at the Old Dear, sank abashed on to the seat again.

'Well, we may as well sit as stand--for a few minutes,' remarked Cra.s.s, suiting the action to the word. The others followed his example.