The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

gathered complacency as she reflected that by a strange turn of fortune all this bright pewter was to be hers.

Meantime the landlord went downstairs, and falling in with our friends drew them aside into the bar.

He then addressed Denys with considerable solemnity. “We are old acquaintances, and you want not for sagacity: now advise me in a strait. My custom is somewhat declining: this girl Manon is the talk of the town; see how full the inn is to-night. She doth refuse to be my chambermaid. I have half a mind to marry her. What think you? shall I say the word?”

Denys in reply merely open his eyes wide with amazement.

The landlord turned to Gerard with a half-inquiring look,

“Nay, sir,” said Gerard; “I am too young to advise my seniors and betters.”

“No matter. Let us hear your thought.”

“Well, sir, it was said of a good wife by the ancients, 'bene quae latuit, bene vixit,' that is, she is the best wife that is least talked of: but here 'male quae patuit' were as near the mark. Therefore, an you bear the lass good-will, why not club purses with Denys and me and convey her safe home with a dowry? Then mayhap some rustical person in her own place may be brought to wife her.”

“Why so many words?” said Denys. “This old fox is not the ass he affects to be.”

“Oh! that is your advice, is it?” said the landlord testily. “Well then we shall soon know who is the fool, you or me, for I have spoken to her as it happens; and what is more, she has said Ay, and she is polishing the flagons at this moment.”

“Oho!” said Denys drily, “'twas an ambuscade. Well, in that case, my advice is, run for the notary, tie the noose, and let us three drink the bride's health, till we see six sots a-tippling.”

“And shall. Ay, now you utter sense.”

In ten minutes a civil marriage was effected upstairs before a notary and his clerk and our two friends.

In ten minutes more the white hind, dead sick of seclusion, had taken her place within the bar, and was serving out liquids, and bustling, and her colour rising a little.

In six little minutes more she soundly rated a careless servant-girl for carrying a nipperkin of wine awry and spilling good liquor.

During the evening she received across the bar eight offers of marriage, some of them from respectable burghers. Now the landlord and our two friends had in perfect innocence ensconced themselves behind a screen, to drink at their ease the new couple's health. The above comedy was thrown in for their entertainment by bounteous fate. They heard the proposals made one after another, and uninventive Manon's invariable answer—“Serviteur; you are a day after the fair.” The landlord chuckled and looked good-natured superiority at both his late advisers, with their traditional notions that men shun a woman “quae patuit,” i.e. who has become the town talk.

But Denys scarce noticed the spouse's triumph over him, he was so occupied with his own over Gerard. At each municipal tender of undying affection, he turned almost purple with the effort it cost him not to roar with glee; and driving his elbow into the deep-meditating and much-puzzled pupil of antiquity, whispered, “Le peu que sont les hommes.”

The next morning Gerard was eager to start, but Denys was under a vow to see the murderers of the golden-haired girl executed.

Gerard respected his vow, but avoided his example.

He went to bid the cure farewell instead, and sought and received his blessing. About noon the travellers got clear of the town. Just outside the south gate they passed the gallows; it had eight tenants: the skeleton of Manon's late wept, and now being fast forgotten, lover, and the bodies of those who had so nearly taken our travellers' lives. A hand was nailed to the beam. And hard by on a huge wheel was clawed the dead landlord, with every bone in his body broken to pieces.

Gerard averted his head and hurried by. Denys lingered, and crowed over his dead foes. “Times are changed, my lads, since we two sat shaking in the cold awaiting you seven to come and cut our throats.”

“Fie, Denys! Death squares all reckonings. Prithee pass on without another word, if you prize my respect a groat.”

To this earnest remonstrance Denys yielded. He even said thoughtfully, “You have been better brought up than I.”

About three in the afternoon they reached a little town with the people buzzing in knots. The wolves, starved by the cold, had entered, and eaten two grown-up persons overnight, in the main street: so some were blaming the eaten—“None but fools or knaves are about after nightfall;” others the law for not protecting the town, and others the corporation for not enforcing what laws there were.

“Bah! this is nothing to us,” said Denys, and was for resuming their march.

“Ay, but 'tis,” remonstrated Gerard.

“What, are we the pair they ate?”

“No, but we may be the next pair.”

“Ay, neighbour,” said an ancient man, “'tis the town's fault for not obeying the ducal ordinance, which bids every shopkeeper light a lamp o'er his door at sunset, and burn it till sunrise.”

On this Denys asked him somewhat derisively, “What made him fancy rush dips would scare away empty wolves? Why, mutton fat is all their joy.”

“'Tis not the fat, vain man, but the light. All ill things hate light; especially wolves and the imps that lurk, I ween, under their fur. Example; Paris city stands in a wood like, and the wolves do howl around it all night: yet of late years wolves come but little in the streets. For why, in that burgh the watchmen do thunder at each door that is dark, and make the weary wight rise and light. 'Tis my son tells me. He is a great voyager, my son Nicholas.”

In further explanation he assured them that previously to that ordinance no city had been worse infested with wolves than Paris; a troop had boldly assaulted the town in 1420, and in 1438 they had eaten fourteen persons in a single month between Montmartre and the gate St. Antoine, and that not a winter month even, but September: and as for the dead, which nightly lay in the streets slain in midnight brawls, or assassinated, the wolves had used to devour them, and to grub up the fresh graves in the churchyards and tear out the bodies.

Here a thoughtful citizen suggested that probably the wolves had been bridled of late in Paris, not by candle-lights, but owing to the English having been driven out of the kingdom of France. “For those English be very wolves themselves for fierceness and greediness. What marvel then that under their rule our neighbours of France should be wolf-eaten?” This logic was too suited to the time and place not to be received with acclamation. But the old man stood his ground. “I grant ye those islanders