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John Loder, 13 Clifford's Inn." On the morning following the night of fog Chilcote woke at nine. He woke at the moment that his man Allsopp tiptoed across the room and laid the salver with his early cup of tea on the table beside the bed.
Chilcote drew the clothes more tightly round his shoulders. "Oh, anywhere nowhere!" he said. "I don't care." Allsopp softly withdrew. Left to himself, Chilcote sat up in bed and lifted the salver to his knees. The sudden movement jarred him physically; he drew a handkerchief from under the pillow and wiped his forehead; then he held his hand to the light and studied it.
The ale which was brought to me was thin washy stuff, which though it did not taste much of hop, tasted still less of malt, made and sold by one Allsopp, who I am told calls himself a squire and a gentleman as he certainly may with quite as much right as many a lord calls himself a nobleman and a gentleman; for surely it is not a fraction more trumpery to make and sell ale than to fatten and sell game.
She was herself nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and her elfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the same vivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seem younger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she were still a child, a wilful child. "Eh, Matilda," he said, "you're just a child. No more nor less, just a child.
"Yes, sir." Allsopp crossed the hall. As the door was opened Chilcote passed his handkerchief from one hand to the other in the tension of hope and fear; then, as the sound of his own name in the shrill tones of a telegraph-boy reached his ears, he let the handkerchief drop to the ground. Allsopp took the yellow envelope and carried it to his master. "A telegram, sir," he said.
As he waited in unconcealed impatience for an answer to his summons, he caught sight of his man Allsopp at the head of the stairs. "Come here!" he called, pleased to find some one upon whom to vent his irritation. "Has that wire come for me?" "No, sir. I inquired five minutes back." "Inquire again." "Yes, sir." Allsopp disappeared.
He no longer moved jerkily, his eyes looked brighter, his pale skin more healthy. "Ah, Allsopp," he said, "there are some moments in life, after all. It isn't all blank wall." "I ordered breakfast in the small morning-room, sir," said Allsopp, without a change of expression. Chilcote breakfasted at ten. His appetite, always fickle, was particularly uncertain in the early hours.
"A battery of servants in the house and nobody to open the hall door!" Allsopp looked embarrassed. "Crapham is coming directly, sir. He only left the hall to ask Jeffries " Chilcote turned. "Confound Crapham!" he exclaimed. "Go and open the door yourself." Allsopp hesitated, his dignity struggling with his obedience. As he waited, the bell sounded again. "Did you hear me?" Chilcote said.
Let us have some more of it. And he shouted, 'Master! at the top of his voice. 'More of this, said Lockwood, touching the measure. 'Beer or ale, which is it? 'Castle Bellingham, sir, replied the landlord; 'beats all the Bass and Allsopp that ever was brewed. 'You think so, eh? 'I'm sure of it, sir.
He was done with noxious liquids, and proposed to bathe his spirit clear in the vats of Bass and Allsopp. Wilder was-not outside the sphere of reformation, and Guinness would share with the others the credit of his uprising. He drank a tankard or two of each and either as an evidence of good faith, and he left an hour after midnight, more sober than Paul had ever known him at such a time.
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