Читать книгу Wrecked in Port. A Novel онлайн

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A quiet, secluded little place, sand-floored and spittoon-decorated, with a cosy clock, and a cosy red-faced fire, singing with steaming kettles, and cooking chops, and frizzling bacon, with a sleepy cat, a pet of the customers, dozing before the hearth, and taking occasional quarter-of-an-hour turns round the room, to be back-rubbed and whisker-scratched, and tit-bit fed, with tea and coffee and cocoa, in thick blue china half-pint mugs, and with bacon in which the edge was by no means to be cut off and thrown away, but was thick, and crisp, and delicious as the rest of it, on willow-pattern plates, with little yellow pats of country butter, looking as if the cow whose impressed form they bore had only fed upon buttercups, as different from the ordinary petrified cold cream which in London passes current for butter as chalk from cheese. "Bliffkins's"--the house was supposed to have been leased to Bliffkins as the Elephant, and appeared under that title in the Directories; but no one knew it but as Bliffkins's--was a Somersetshire house, and kept a neat placard framed and glazed in its front window to the effect that the Somerset County Gazette was taken in. So that among the thin, pale London folk who "used" the house you occasionally came upon stalwart giants, big-chested, horny-handed, deep-voiced, with z's sticking out all over their pronunciation, jolly Zummerzetshire men, who brought Bliffkins the latest gossip from his old native place of Bruton and its neighbourhood, and who, during their stay--and notably at cattle-show period--were kings of the house. At ordinary times, however, the frequenters of the house never varied--indeed, it was understood that Bliffkins's was a "connection," and did not in the least depend upon chance custom. Certain people sat in certain places, ordered certain refreshment, and went away at certain hours, never varying in the slightest particular. Mr. Byrne, a wizened old man, who invariably bore on his coat and on his hair traces of fur and fluff and wool, who was known to be a bird-stuffer by trade, and an extreme Radical in politics, and who was reputed to be the writer of some of those spirit-stirring letters in the weekly press signed "Lucius Junius Brutus" and "Scrutator," sat in the right-hand corner box nearest the door, where he was out of the draught, and had the readiest chance of pouncing upon the boy who brought in the evening papers, and securing them before his rival, Mr. Wickwar, could effect a seizure. Mr. Wickwar, who was a retired tailor, and had plenty of means, the sole bane of his life being the danger to the Constitution from the recklessly advanced feeling of the times, sat at the other end of the room, being gouty and immobile, contented himself with glaring at his democratic enemy, and occasionally withering him with choice extracts from the Magna Charta weekly journal. The box between them was usually devoted of an evening to Messrs. O'Shane and Begson, gentlemen attached to the press, capital company, full of anecdote and repartee, though liable to be suddenly called away in the exigence of their literary pursuits. The top of the policeman's helmet or the flat cap of the fireman on duty just protruded through the swing-door in this direction acted as tocsins to these indefatigable public servants, cut them off in the midst of a story, and sent them flying on the back of an engine, or at the tail of a crowd, to witness scenes which, portrayed by their graphic pencils, afforded an additional relish to the morning muffin at thousands of respectable breakfast-tables. Between these gentlemen and a Mr. Shimmer, a youngish man, with bright eyes, hectic colour, and a general sense of nervous irritation, there was a certain spirit of camaraderie which the other frequenters of Bliffkins's could not understand. Mr. Shimmer invariably sat alone, and during his meal habitually buried himself in one of the choice volumes of Bliffkins's library, consisting of old volumes of Blackwood's, Bentley's, and Tait's magazines, from which he would occasionally make extracts in a very small hand in a very small note-book. It was probably from the fact of a printer's boy having called at Bliffkins's with what was understood to be a "proof," that a rumour arose and was received throughout the Bliffkins's connection that Mr. Shimmer edited the Times newspaper. Be that as it might, there was no doubt, both from external circumstances and from the undefined deference paid to him by the other gentlemen of the press, that Mr. Shimmer was a literary man of position, and that Bliffkins held him in respect, and, what was more practical for him, gave him credit on that account. An ex-parish clerk, who took snuff and sleep in alternate pinches; a potato salesmen in Covent Garden, who drank coffee to keep himself awake, and who went briskly off to business when the other customers dropped off wearily to bed; a "professional" at an adjoining bowling-alley, who would have been a pleasant fellow had it not been for his biceps, which got into his head and into his mouth, and pervaded his conversation; and a seedsman, a terrific republican, who named his innocent bulbs and hyacinths after the most sanguinary heroes of the French revolution,--filled up the list of Bliffkins's "regulars."