It was only eight o'clock then, and very much astonished the Black Lion was, to see him come walking in with dust upon his feet at that early hour, with no grey mare to bear him company. But as he ordered breakfast to be got ready with all speed, and on its being set before him gave indisputable tokens of a hearty appetite, the Lion received him, as usual, with a hospitable welcome; and treated him with those marks of distinction, which, as a regular customer, and one within the freemasonry of the trade, he had a right to claim.
This Lion or landlord,—for he was called both man and beast, by reason of his having instructed the artist who painted his sign, to convey into the features of the lordly brute whose effigy it bore, as near a counterpart of his own face as his skill could compass and devise,—was a gentleman almost as quick of apprehension, and of almost as subtle a wit, as the mighty John himself. But the difference between them lay in this: that whereas Mr Willet's extreme sagacity and acuteness were the efforts of unassisted nature, the Lion stood indebted, in no small amount, to beer; of which he swigged such copious draughts, that most of his faculties were utterly drowned and washed away, except the one great faculty of sleep, which he retained in surprising perfection. The creaking Lion over the house-door was, therefore, to say the truth, rather a drowsy, tame, and feeble lion; and as these social representatives of a savage class are usually of a conventional character (being depicted, for the most part, in impossible attitudes and of unearthly colours), he was frequently supposed by the more ignorant and uninformed among the neighbours, to be the veritable portrait of the host as he appeared on the occasion of some great funeral ceremony or public mourning.
“What noisy fellow is that in the next room?” said Joe, when he had disposed of his breakfast, and had washed and brushed himself.
“A recruiting serjeant,” replied the Lion.
Joe started involuntarily. Here was the very thing he had been dreaming of, all the way along.
“And I wish,” said the Lion, “he was anywhere else but here. The party make noise enough, but don't call for much. There's great cry there, Mr Willet, but very little wool. Your father wouldn't like “em, I know.”
Perhaps not much under any circumstances. Perhaps if he could have known what was passing at that moment in Joe's mind, he would have liked them still less.
“Is he recruiting for a—for a fine regiment?” said Joe, glancing at a little round mirror that hung in the bar.
“I believe he is,” replied the host. “It's much the same thing, whatever regiment he's recruiting for. I'm told there an't a deal of difference between a fine man and another one, when they're shot through and through.”
“They're not all shot,” said Joe.
“No,” the Lion answered, “not all. Those that are—supposing it's done easy—are the best off in my opinion.”
“Ah!” retorted Joe, “but you don't care for glory.”
“For what?” said the Lion.
“Glory.”
“No,” returned the Lion, with supreme indifference. “I don't. You're right in that, Mr Willet. When Glory comes here, and calls for anything to drink and changes a guinea to pay for it, I'll give it him for nothing. It's my belief, sir, that the Glory's arms wouldn't do a very strong business.”
These remarks were not at all comforting. Joe walked out, stopped at the door of the next room, and listened. The serjeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love-making. A battle was the finest thing in the world—when your side won it— and Englishmen always did that. “Supposing you should be killed, sir?” said a timid voice in one corner. “Well, sir, supposing you should be,” said the serjeant, “what then? Your country loves you, sir; his Majesty King George the Third loves you; your memory is honoured, revered, respected; everybody's fond of you, and grateful to you; your name's wrote down at full length in a book in the War Office. Damme, gentlemen, we must all die some time, or another, eh?”
The voice coughed, and said no more.
Joe walked into the room. A group of half-a-dozen fellows had gathered together in the taproom, and were listening with greedy ears. One of them, a carter in a smockfrock, seemed wavering and disposed to enlist. The rest, who were by no means disposed, strongly urged him to do so (according to the custom of mankind), backed the serjeant's arguments, and grinned among themselves. “I say nothing, boys,” said the serjeant, who sat a little apart, drinking his liquor. “For lads of spirit'—here he cast an eye on Joe—'this is the time. I don't want to inveigle you. The king's not come to that, I hope. Brisk young blood is what we want; not milk and water. We won't take five men out of six. We want topsawyers, we do. I'm not a-going to tell tales out of school, but, damme, if every gentleman's son that carries arms in our corps, through being under a cloud and having little differences with his relations, was counted up'—here his eye fell on Joe again, and so good-naturedly, that Joe beckoned him out. He came directly.
“You're a gentleman, by G—!” was his first remark, as he slapped him on the back. “You're a gentleman in disguise. So am I. Let's swear a friendship.”
Joe didn't exactly do that, but he shook hands with him, and thanked him for his good opinion.
“You want to serve,” said his new friend. “You shall. You were made for it. You're one of us by nature. What'll you take to drink?”
“Nothing just now,” replied Joe, smiling faintly. “I haven't quite made up my mind.”
“A mettlesome fellow like you, and not made up his mind!” cried the serjeant. “Here—let me give the bell a pull, and you'll make up your mind in half a minute, I know.”
“You're right so far'—answered Joe, “for if you pull the bell here, where I'm known, there'll be an end of my soldiering inclinations in no time. Look in my face. You see me, do you?”
“I do,” replied the serjeant with an oath, “and a finer young fellow or one better qualified to serve his king and country, I never set my—” he used an adjective in this place—'eyes on.
“Thank you,” said Joe, “I didn't ask you for want of a compliment, but thank you all the same. Do I look like a sneaking fellow or a liar?”
The serjeant rejoined with many choice asseverations that he didn't; and that if his (the serjeant's) own father were to say he did, he would run the old gentleman through the body cheerfully, and consider it a meritorious action.
Joe expressed his obligations, and continued, “You can trust me then, and credit what I say. I believe I shall enlist in your regiment to-night. The reason I don't do so now is, because I don't want until to-night, to do what I can't recall. Where shall I find you, this evening?”
His friend replied with some unwillingness, and after much ineffectual entreaty having for its object the immediate settlement of the business, that his quarters would be at the Crooked Billet in Tower Street ; where he would be found waking until midnight, and sleeping until breakfast time to-morrow.
“And if I do come—which it's a million to one, I shall—when will you take me out of London ?” demanded Joe.
“To-morrow morning, at half after eight o'clock,” replied the serjeant. “You'll go abroad—a country where it's all sunshine and plunder—the finest climate in the world.”
“To go abroad,” said Joe, shaking hands with him, “is the very thing I want. You may expect me.”
“You're the kind of lad for us,” cried the serjeant, holding Joe's hand in his, in the excess of his admiration. “You're the boy to push your fortune. I don't say it because I bear you any envy, or would take away from the credit of the rise you'll make, but if I had been bred and taught like you, I'd have been a colonel by this time.”
“Tush, man!” said Joe, “I'm not so young as that. Needs must when the devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an unhappy home. For the present, good-bye.”
“For king and country!” cried the serjeant, flourishing his cap.
“For bread and meat!” cried Joe, snapping his fingers. And so they parted.
He had very little money in his pocket; so little indeed, that after paying for his breakfast (which he was too honest and perhaps too proud to score up to his father's charge) he had but a penny left. He had courage, notwithstanding, to resist all the affectionate importunities of the serjeant, who waylaid him at the door with many protestations of eternal friendship, and did in particular request that he would do him the favour to accept of only one shilling as a temporary accommodation. Rejecting his offers both of cash and credit, Joe walked away with stick and bundle as before, bent upon getting through the day as he best could, and going down to the locksmith's in the dusk of the evening; for it should go hard, he had resolved, but he would have a parting word with charming Dolly
