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The guests thereby at once acquitted themselves of their burden of gratitude for their entertainer's kindness, encouraged the trade of his change-house, did honour to the place which afforded harbour to their horses, and indemnified themselves for the previous restraints imposed by private hospitality, by spending what Falstaff calls the sweet of the night in the genial license of a tavern.
We had passed some weeks at our entertainer's cottage when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed for many a year the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington society. The son of Lord W was about to come of age, and the event was to be celebrated by grand doings; a varied string of entertainments, to be wound up, so it was whispered, by a great parti-coloured or fancy ball.
"But for you," continued the Pasha, partly raising himself, "that cut had never been, and the light of those eyes would now be quenched in death!" The Pasha looked at his guest more fixedly than ever, and Lancey, now feeling convinced of his entertainer's madness, began to think uneasily of the best way to humour him. It was Jacob Lancey!" Lancey's eyes opened and his lower jaw dropped.
After having been presented to his wife, we proceeded to shake hands with the other guests, most of whom I already knew; and I was glad to find that, at all events in Iceland, people do not consider it necessary to pass the ten minutes which precede the announcement of dinner, as if they had assembled to assist at the opening of their entertainer's will, instead of his oysters.
She had seldom visited at a country-house, and knew little of the ordinary composition of a group of visitors within its walls; but the present assemblage seemed to want much of that old-fashioned stability and quaint monumental dignity she had expected to find under this historical roof. Nobody of her entertainer's own rank appeared. Not a single clergyman was there.
At every new mistake or blunder, and with each fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's watch and produce it intact from some unexpected place of concealment, the spectators rocked and roared.
There were curtains still to the windows, and a piece of Turkey carpet lay upon the floor; those windows were two in number, looking out, through the trunks of the trees close to the house, upon the lake. It needed all the fire, and all the pleasant associations of my entertainer's red nose, to light up this melancholy chamber.
There was, however, something in his entertainer's face that somehow encouraged frankness; it had the sociability of surprise it hadn't the chill. Mitchy saw at the same time that this friend of old Van's would never really understand him; though that was a thing he at times liked people as much for as he liked them little for it at others.
Then their impression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces, several taken from the little window and others extracted from a cupboard behind the counter dusky, in the rather low-browed place, despite its glass doors each bid for their attention spoke, however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer's pretensions was promptly enough given.
The guests arrived and sat wedged together, shoulder to shoulder, within the hot and suffocating lodge. The Stabber, for that was our entertainer's name, had killed an old buffalo bull on his way. This veteran's boiled tripe, tougher than leather, formed the main item of the repast. For the rest, it consisted of wild cherries and grease boiled together in a large copper kettle.
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