THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY INN

It was called simply the “Bear” inn, and had no idea of styling itself “hotel.” Embowered in trees, it stood well back from the road, for it was modest and shy. A besom was placed outside the door, and on it the yokels who were the inn’s chief customers scraped off the sticky clay of the ploughlands they had been tramping all day. The entrance-passage was floored with great stone flags. On one side you saw the tap, its floor sprinkled with sawdust, and on the other was a kind of sacred “best parlour,” furnished with a round table loaded with the impossible, unreadable books of more than half a century ago, and a number of chairs and a sofa, upholstered in horse-hair. In the rear was the family kitchen, “keeping-room,” and drawing-room, all in one.

The cyclist of thirty-odd years ago—only he was a “bicyclist” then—sprang lightly off his giraffe-like steed of steel, and, leaning it against the white-washed wall, called for food and drink. The landlady, a smiling, simple, motherly woman, in answer to his inquiry, told him that she and her family were just sitting down to dinner, and he could have some of it, if he wished. No need to tell him what it was: for there was a scent of hot roast beef which seemed to him, who had breakfasted light and early, the most desirable thing on earth for a hungry man.

The landlady was for clearing the table in the sacred parlour and placing his dinner there, but our early bicyclist was a man of the world—a kind of secular St. Paul, “all things to all men”—and he suggested that, if she didn’t mind, and it was no intrusion, he would as soon have dinner with the family. “Well, sir,” said she, “you’re very welcome, I’m sure,” and so he sat him down in company with two fresh-coloured daughters in neat print dresses, and a silent, but not unamiable, son in corduroys and an ancient jacket.

That was a memorable dinner. There was good ale, in its native pewter, and the roast beef was followed by a strange but delightful dish—whortleberry tart—and that by a very Daniel Lambert of a cheese, of majestic proportions and mellow taste. The talk at table was of crops and the likelihood of the squire coming back to live in the long-deserted neighbouring mansion.

When he rose to go, and asked what he owed, the landlady, with much diffidence, “for you see, sir, we ain’t used to seeing many strangers,” thought perhaps tenpence would not be too much. That early tourist paid the modest sum with enthusiasm.

Preparing to mount his high bicycle again, the whole family must needs come to see him off. They had never before set eyes upon such a contrivance, and wondered how it could be kept upright. “Come thirty miles on it to-day!” exclaimed the landlady: “well, I’m sure! You’ll never catch me on one of ’em.”

The bicyclist glanced whimsically at the stout, middle-aged matron, and suppressed a smile at the thought.

The next season saw that early wheelman upon the road again. He was now not the only one who straddled across the top of some fifty inches of wheel, and, as the novelty of such things had worn off, the cottagers no longer rushed to doors and windows to gaze after him. Perhaps he did not mind that so very much.

He came again to the inn, and there he found subtle changes. Ploughmen and clodhoppers in general were obviously now discouraged, for the besom had disappeared. There was, too, a something of sufficiency in the manner of the landlady, and one no longer would have desired to sit down to table with her—nor she possibly have agreed, for the parlour had now lost something of its sacramental detachedness, and had become a sort of dining-room. Again roast beef, but cold, and whortleberry tart—with fewer berries and more crust—and instead of the cheese that invited you to cut and come again, a mere slice; while pewter was obviously reckoned vulgar, for a glass was provided instead. The price had risen to one and six.

“Many bicycliss’ calls here now,” said the landlady. Behind a newly constructed bar stood her son. His cords were more baggy at the hips and tighter at the knees, and he obviously knew a thing or two: beside him was one of the daughters, garishly apparelled.

In another year or so the village itself had changed. There was an epidemic of mineral waters, and every aforetime simple cottager sold them, professing to know nothing of the old-fashioned “stone bottle” ginger-beer. The inn had now got a new window, something in the “Queen Anne” way, that projected beyond the general building-line of the house and converted what had been the tap into a “saloon” where two golden-haired barmaids presided. The landlady had by this time got a black satin dress, and was plentifully hung with gold chains. A highly varnished suite of unreliable furniture from Curtain Road filled the dining-room, whose walls were hung with the advertisements of pushful distillery companies’ latest liqueurs. “Lunch,” consisting of a plate of indifferent cold beef, some doubtful salad, bottled beer, a fossil roll, and a small piece of American cheese, cost half a crown.

One phase alone remains of this “strange, eventful history.” The old-time bicyclist, long since shorn of his first syllable—and of much else in this vale of tears—comes now to his ancient haunt along a road thickly overhung with dust-fog created by swift motor-cars, and finds a new wing built, with—in the odd spirit of contradiction—an elaborate wrought-iron sign projecting from it, proclaiming this to be “Ye Old Beare.” He further learns that it has “Accommodation for Motorists,” sells petrol, and boasts a “Garage and Inspection Pit.” An ostler, or a something black and greasy in the mechanic line, leads his cycle away in custody into the yard.

The landlady has now risen to the dignity of diamond rings, and the dining-room to that of separate round tables, menus, serviettes and a depressed and dingy waiter. Lager-beer, and something vinegary of the claret order afford an indifferent choice, and if the house still possesses a pewter tankard, it probably is cherished on some shelf as a curious relic of savage times. The house professes to supply luncheons at three shillings, but sweets and “attendance” are “extras.”