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 amusement, and now and then a
scrap 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 glass tortoise.”
“It’s a chiwal glass,”
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 crash! But what
the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass
at night, man? And, look here tell me; how was
it you happened to be going glass foremost when you’d
got the glass 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 glass. 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 glass 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 assistance 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-glass 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 seashore without plunging
bang into a glass. 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 assembled 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.”
“Yes, papa,” interrupted
his daughter, “only you must consider that it
may not be convenient to take us in at this hour so
late.”
“It’s not that, miss,
begging your pardon,” said Crickledon. “I
make a point of never recommending my own house.
That’s where it is. Otherwise you’re
welcome to try us.”
“I was thinking of falling bounce
on my old schoolmate, and putting Old English hospitality
to the proof,” Mr. Smith meditated. “But
it’s late. Yes, and that confounded glass!
No, we’ll bide with you, Mr. Carpenter.
I’ll send my card across to Mart Tinman to-morrow,
and set him agog at his breakfast.”
Mr. Van Diemen Smith waved his hand
for Crickledon to lead the way.
Hereupon Ned Crummins looked up from
the card he had been turning over and over, more and
more like one arriving at a condemnatory judgment of
a fish.
“I can’t go and give my
master a card instead of his glass,” he remarked.
“Yes, that reminds me; and I
should like to know what you meant by bringing that
glass away from Mr. Tinman’s house at night,”
said Mr. Smith. “If I’m to pay for
it, I’ve a right to know. What’s the
meaning of moving it at night? Eh, let’s
hear. Night’s not the time for moving big
glasses like that. I’m not so sure I haven’t
got a case.”
“If you’ll step round
to my master along o’ me, sir,” said Crummins,
“perhaps he’ll explain.”
Crummins was requested to state who
his master was, and he replied, “Phippun and
Company;” but Mr. Smith positively refused to
go with him.
“But here,” said he, “is
a crown for you, for you’re a civil fellow.
You’ll know where to find me in the morning;
and mind, I shall expect Phippun and Company to give
me a very good account of their reason for moving
a big looking-glass on a night like this. There,
be off.”
The crown-piece in his hand effected
a genial change in Crummins’ disposition to
communicate. Crickledon spoke to him about the
glass; two or three of the others present jogged him.
“What did Mr. Tinman want by having the glass
moved so late in the day, Ned? Your master wasn’t
nervous about his property, was he?”
“Not he,” said Crummins,
and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate his
eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the
setting in of the tide of narration.
He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then
looked abashed at Miss.
Crickledon saw his dilemma. “Say
what’s uppermost, Ned; never mind how you says
it. English is English. Mr. Tinman sent for
you to take the glass away, now, did n’t he?”
“He did,” said Crummins.
“And you went to him.”
“Ay, that I did.”
“And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your
back”
“He did that.”
“That’s all plain sailing. Had he
bought the glass?”
“No, he had n’t bought it. He’d
hired it.”
As when upon an enforced visit to
the dentist, people have had one tooth out, the remaining
offenders are more willingly submitted to the operation,
insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement
that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins,
who had shrunk from speech, now volunteered whole
sentences in succession, and how important they were
deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and especially
Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations,
before they themselves were drawn into the strong current
of interest.
And this was the matter: Tinman
had hired the glass for three days. Latish, on
the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark,
he had despatched imperative orders to Phippun and
Company to take the glass out of his house on the
spot. And why? Because, as he maintained,
there was a fault in the glass causing an incongruous
and absurd reflection; and he was at that moment awaiting
the arrival of another chiwal-glass.
“Cut along, Ned,” said Crickledon.
“What the deuce does he want
with a chiwal-glass at all?” cried Mr. Smith,
endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to
the narrator that he must “hark back,”
which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a chasm
hindward. Happily his brain had seized a picture:
“Mr. Tinman, he’s a-standin’ in
his best Court suit.”
Mr. Tinmau’s old schoolmate gave a jump; and
no wonder.
“Standing?” he cried;
and as the act of standing was really not extraordinary,
he fixed upon the suit: “Court?”
“So Mrs. Cavely told me, it
was what he was standin’ in, and as I found
’m I left ’m,” said Crummins.
“He’s standing in it now?”
said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.
Crummins doggedly repeated the statement.
Many would have ornamented it in the repetition, but
he was for bare flat truth.
“He must be precious proud of
having a Court suit,” said Mr. Smith, and gazed
at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though
she was impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon’s
lodgings.
“Oh! there’s where it
is?” interjected the carpenter, with a funny
frown at a low word from Ned Crummins. “Practicing,
is he? Mr. Tinman’s practicing before the
glass preparatory to his going to the palace in London.”
“He gave me a shillin’,” said Crummins.
Crickledon comprehended him immediately.
“We sha’n’t speak about it, Ned.”
What did you see? was thus cautiously suggested.
The shilling was on Crummins’
tongue to check his betrayal of the secret scene.
But remembering that he had only witnessed it by accident,
and that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into
his confidence, he thrust his hand down his pocket
to finger the crown-piece lying in fellowship with
the coin it multiplied five times, and was inspired
to think himself at liberty to say: “All
I saw was when the door opened. Not the house-door.
It was the parlour-door. I saw him walk up to
the glass, and walk back from the glass. And
when he’d got up to the glass he bowed, he did,
and he went back’ards just so.”
Doubtless the presence of a lady was
the active agent that prevented Crummins from doubling
his body entirely, and giving more than a rapid indication
of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before
the glass. But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque,
and though it was received with becoming sobriety
by the men in the carpenter’s shop, Annette plucked
at her father’s arm.
She could not get him to depart.
That picture of his old schoolmate Martin Tinman practicing
before a chiwal glass to present himself at the palace
in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian
intelligence.
“What right has he got to go
to Court?” Mr. Van Diemen Smith inquired, like
the foreigner he had become through exile.
“Mr. Tinman’s bailiff of the town,”
said Crickledon.
“And what was his objection to that glass I
smashed?”
“He’s rather an irritable
gentleman,” Crickledon murmured, and turned to
Crummins.
Crummins growled: “He said it was misty,
and gave him a twist.”
“What a big fool he must be!
eh?” Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and the
other faces for the verdict of Tinman’s townsmen
upon his character.
They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.
“He’s no fool,” said Crickledon.
Another shook his head. “Sharp at a bargain.”
“That he be,” said the chorus.
Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman
would probably end by buying up half the town.
“Then,” said Mr. Smith,
“he can afford to pay half the money for that
glass, and pay he shall.”
A serious view of the recent catastrophe
was presented by his declaration.
In the midst of a colloquy regarding
the cost of the glass, during which it began to be
seen by Mr. Tinman’s townsmen that there was
laughing-stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed
by Crummins, if they postponed a bit their right to
the laugh and took it in doses, Annette induced her
father to signal to Crickledon his readiness to go
and see the lodgings. No sooner had he done it
than he said, “What on earth made us wait all
this time here? I’m hungry, my dear; I want
supper.”
“That is because you have had
a disappointment. I know you, papa,” said
Annette.
“Yes, it’s rather a damper
about old Mart Tinman,” her father assented.
“Or else I have n’t recovered the shock
of smashing that glass, and visit it on him.
But, upon my honour, he’s my only friend in England,
I have n’t a single relative that I know of,
and to come and find your only friend making a donkey
of himself, is enough to make a man think of eating
and drinking.”
Annette murmured reproachfully:
“We can hardly say he is our only friend in
England, papa, can we?”
“Do you mean that young fellow?
You’ll take my appetite away if you talk of
him. He’s a stranger. I don’t
believe he’s worth a penny. He owns he’s
what he calls a journalist.”
These latter remarks were hurriedly
exchanged at the threshold of Crickledon’s house.
“It don’t look promising,” said
Mr. Smith.
“I didn’t recommend it,” said Crickledon.
“Why the deuce do you let your lodgings, then?”
“People who have come once come again.”
“Oh! I am in England,”
Annette sighed joyfully, feeling at home in some trait
she had detected in Crickledon.