The Blue Pavilions | Page 2

a long-flapped blue waistcoat, black breeches and stockings. Enormous buckles adorned the thick-soled shoes which he drummed impatiently against the legs of his chair.
The barber--a round, bustling fellow--stropped his razor and prattled gossip. On a settle to the right a couple of townsmen smoked, listened, and waited their turn with an educated patience.
"Changes, indeed, since you left us, Captain John," the barber began, his razor hovering for the first scrape.
"Wait a moment. You were about to take hold of me by the nose. If you do it, I'll run you through. I thought you'd like to be warned, that's all. Go on with your chatter."
"Certainly, Captain John--'tis merely a habit--"
"Break yourself of it."
"I will, sir. But, as I was saying, the changes will astonish you that have been at sea so long. In the first place, a riding-post started from hence to London and from London hither a-gallop with brazen trumpet and loaded pistols, to keep his Majesty certified every day of the Fleet's doings, and the Fleet of his Majesty's wishes; and all Harwich a-tremble half the night under its bedclothes, but consoled to find the King taking so much notice of it. And the old jail moved from St. Austin's Gate, and a new one building this side of Church Street, where Calamy's Store used to stand--with a new town-hall, too--"
Here, as he paused to scrape the captain's cheek, one of the two townsmen on the settle--a square man in grey, with a red waistcoat-- withdrew the long pipe from his mouth and groaned heavily.
"What's that?" asked the hunchback snappishly.
"That, sir, is Mr. Pomphlett," the barber explained. "He disapproves of the amount spent in decorating the new hall with pillars, rails, balusters, and what not; for the king's arms, to be carved over the mayor's seat and richly gilt, are to be a private gift of Mr. Isaac Betts, and the leathern fire-buckets to be hung round the wall--"
Mr. Pomphlett emitted another groan, which the barber good-naturedly tried to drown in talk. Captain Barker heard it, however.
"There it is again!"
"Yes, sir. You see Mr. Pomphlett allows his public spirit to run high. He says--"
The little captain jerked round in his chair, escaping a gash by a hair's-breadth, and addressed the heavy citizen--
"Mr. Pomphlett, sir, it was not for the sake of listening to your observations upon public affairs that I came straight off my ship to this shop, but to hear the news."
The barber coughed. Mr. Pomphlett feebly traced a curve in the air with his pipe-stem, and answered sulkily--
"I s-said nun-nothing. I f-felt unwell."
"He suffers," interposed Mr. Pomphlett's neighbour on the settle, a long-necked man in brown, "from the wind; don't you, Pomphlett?"
Mr. Pomphlett nodded with an aggrieved air, and sucked his pipe.
"Death," continued the man in brown, by way of setting the conversation on its legs again, "has been busy in Harwich, Barker."
"Ah! now we come to business! Barber, who's dead?"
"Alderman Croten, sir."
"Tut-tut. Croten gone?"
"Yes, sir; palsy took him at a ripe age. And Abel's gone, the Town Crier; and old Mistress Pinch's bad leg carried her from us last Christmas Day, of all days in the year; and young Mr. Eastwell was snatched away by a chain-shot in the affair with the Smyrna fleet; and Mistress Salt--that was daughter of old Sir Jabez Tellworthy, and broke her father's heart--she's a widow in straitened circumstances, and living up at the old house again--"
"What!"
Captain Barker bounced off his chair like a dried pea from a shovel.
"There now! Your honour's chin is wounded."
"P'sh! give me your towel." He snatched it from the barber's arm and mopped away the blood and lather from his jaw. "Mistress Salt a widow? When? How?"
"I thought, maybe, your honour would know about it."
"Don't think. Roderick Salt dead? Tell me this instant, or--"
"He was drowned, sir, in a ditch, they tell me, but two months after he sailed with his company of Foot Guards, in the spring of this year. It seems 'twas a ditch that the Marshal Turenne had the misfortune to forget about--"
"My hat--where is it? Quick!"
Already Captain Barker had plucked the napkin from his throat, caught up his sword from a chair, and was buckling on the belt in a tremendous hurry.
"But your honour forgets the wig, which is but half curled; and your honour's face shaved on the one side only."
The hunchback's answer was to snatch his wig from between the apprentice's tongs, clap it on his head, ram his hat on the top of it, and flounce out at the shop door.
The streets were full of folk, but he passed through them at an amazing speed. His natural gait on shipboard was a kind of anapaestic dance--two short steps and a long--and though the crowd interrupted its cadence and coerced him to a quick bobbing motion, as of a