But he kept his sententiousness to himself. The thought was timely, but not timely to be spoken. He gave greeting to the newcomer.
‘Good evening to you, Mr Timms. Your servant, friend.’
‘Come you in, Coachy,’ cried Dick Mykelborne. ‘Come in and warm yourself, old gennelman.’
Coachy Timms, having shut the door behind him, stood with his bent back against it and peered at the company with his small cornflower-blue eyes. He had somewhat the look of an ancient and benign elf, being spare of body, with thin legs and small feet, and a head larger than the rest of him seemed to warrant. This suggestion of top-heaviness gave to his every movement an air of singular adroitness, as though he were a tight-rope walker. You half expected to see him lose his balance, and the wonder of him was that he encouraged this expectation while never satisfying it. He had a neatness, a grace of movement. His face was round and rosy, having the hard glossiness, as well as the colour, of a certain kind of ripe apple; and a nimbus of white beard, still stained with its original yellow, encircled this face without concealing its contours. The upper lip was clean-shaven; the cheeks were polished and hairless; the eyebrows made a thin high arch above the candid eyes. A tall hat hid the baldness of his crown, and set off to advantage the fringe of grey curls that remained to him. Withal his nose was thin, like the beak of a bird; thin and small and straight, the nostrils delicately curved and mettlesome with humour.
Coachy Timms regarded the company with twinkling irony. ‘God-a-mercy, neighbours. Tis a laamentable bright fresh night,’ he said. And the men round the fire began nudging each other, seeing in this simple remark far more than the words would have seemed to warrant. For that was the effect of Coachy Timms. He moved to the fire and was plied with drink. ‘A bright fresh night,’ he repeated, after a pause, smiling to feel the warmth of the liquor tingling through his body. ‘There be frost in ut, and a round moon, and stars a-plenty. As pretty a mixture as Goddle Mighty ever made. I’ll wager a clapped his hands and called his mother when a’d finished.’
‘Have a care, friend,’ said the innkeeper. ‘That smells to me of popery.’
‘Then thy nose be longer than thy years, Mus Bailey,’ retorted Coachy. He took a long swig from his glass. ‘But that’s all one. Twas a manner of speaking. As for popery, I’m no pope’s man, nor never was. But there be some we knows on that is, and haply what be good enough for Squire Marden be good enough for poor folk.’
His audience did not quite know what to make of this oracular utterance. They were baffled and silenced: no new experience for them. To the soberest among them, Mykelborne and Bailey, it sounded mighty like sedition; and they wondered what King George would have had to say about it had he been present. But Coachy Timms, when his tongue ran away with him, was notoriously a wilful and harmless old party: with which reflection the innkeeper quickly recovered his good humour. ‘Have a care you don’t let Parson hear you talk that way,’ said he, indulgently.
‘Parson?’ echoed Coachy, He gazed into his glass and shook his head solemnly, as if to say he could see no parson there. ‘There be parsons and there be parsons. Tis like harses. There be big and liddle, tempersome and quiet. There be them do goo camsteery at sound of a hedge-sparry, and them that will pick their road as choice as you please through a black starm, wi’ thunderbolts dancen like fleas in a hen-cup. There be all sarts and all manners; likewise all colours and kinds. Some do need the whip to make ’em trot, and others’ll race for a chirrup. Some goo gansing-gay if you give ’em rein a-plenty and ask no questions, but they won’t be druv. Try and putt they in double harness, and ups ’em goo on their hind legs like a preachen Methody. Yet others’ll run so sweet in pair as a brace of young ladies gwain to charch in their best bonnets. So you may take ut from Coachy Timms: there be harses and harses.’
‘And I’ll tell you something, old gennelman.’ Young Broome pushed his face forward with an air of great cleverness. ‘I’ll tell you something about harses.’
Coachy raised his eyes and glanced at the speaker in a way that would have silenced a more sensitive man. ‘I’m young yet, Master Broome. I’ll haply learn if you’ll pudder wi’ me.’
Broome struggled to ignore the laughter he had brought upon his head. ‘Yes, I know a thing or two, gaffer. There be stolen harses, tellee, besides this kind and that kind. There be stolen harses.’ He looked round in triumph.
‘Ay, tis true,’ said several of the company, nodding to each other. ‘Tis true enough.’
Coachy Timms rose slowly from his seat and turned frostily to the innkeeper. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
His host begged him to be seated again. ‘There’s no offence, neighbour. No offence in the world, I’m sure. Twas for stealing a horse they hanged yon fellow from Glatting today. Farmer Broome here was telling us but now how he fared on the gallows.’
Broome eagerly took up the tale. ‘Ay, a villainous fellow a was. A countable ugly face on him, a had.’
‘Ah!’ said the company, greatly relishing the story. ‘Countable ugly, was he?’ said one. ‘A savage customer, I bluv,’ said another. The rest, impatient for a repetition of details they had already heard, said nothing, but stared expectantly at the enterprising Broome, who had travelled many miles and missed a day’s work to see this execution and was now come home with a rich treasure of memory.
With a selfconscious swagger Broome called to the potman for another pint. All eyes, except Coachy’s, were upon him. ‘He’ll steal no more harses, sartain sure.’ He laughed cockily, as though to himself belonged the credit of this achievement. And his neighbours, seeming to concede this point of view, took up the laugh with admiration.
‘So they hanged the villain, did ’em?’ said Roger Peakod invitingly.
‘You’re right, Roger,’ said Broome, with a lordly smile. ‘Hang un they did, I bluv. And with these two eyes I seen ’em.’
‘Sarve un fair for a thief,’ grumbled Mykelborne, with, nevertheless, a troubled look in his eyes.