The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

She watched him demurely.

      “I wot not whence ye come,” said she, with a relic of distrust; adding, more cordially, “but ye have been well brought up;—y' have had a good mother, I'll go bail.”

      At the door she committed the whole company to Heaven, in a formula, and disappeared. Gerard to his straw in the very corner-for the guests lay round the sacred stove by seniority, i.e. priority of arrival.

      This punishment was a boon to Gerard, for thus he lay on the shore of odour and stifling heat, instead of in mid-ocean.

      He was just dropping off, when he was awaked by a noise; and lo there was the hind remorselessly shaking and waking guest after guest, to ask him whether it was he who had picked up the mistress's feathers.

      “It was I,” cried Gerard.

      “Oh, it was you, was it?” said the other, and came striding rapidly over the intermediate sleepers. “She bade me say, 'One good turn deserves another,' and so here's your nightcap,” and he thrust a great oaken mug under Gerard's nose.

      “I thank her, and bless her; here goes—ugh!” and his gratitude ended in a wry face; for the beer was muddy, and had a strange, medicinal twang new to the Hollander.

      “Trinke aus!” shouted the hind reproachfully.

      “Enow is as good as a feast,” said the youth Jesuitically.

      The hind cast a look of pity on this stranger who left liquor in his mug. “Ich brings euch,” said he, and drained it to the bottom.

      And now Gerard turned his face to the wall and pulled up two handfuls of the nice clean straw, and bored in them with his finger, and so made a scabbard, and sheathed his nose in it. And soon they were all asleep; men, maids, wives, and children all lying higgledy-piggledy, and snoring in a dozen keys like an orchestra slowly tuning; and Gerard's body lay on straw in Germany, and his spirit was away to Sevenbergen.

      When he woke in the morning he found nearly all his fellow-passengers gone. One or two were waiting for dinner, nine o'clock; it was now six. He paid the landlady her demand, two pfenning, or about an English halfpenny, and he of the pitchfork demanded trinkgeld, and getting a trifle more than usual, and seeing Gerard eye a foaming milk-pail he had just brought from the cow, hoisted it up bodily to his lips. “Drink your fill, man,” said he, and on Gerard offering to pay for the delicious draught, told him in broad patois that a man might swallow a skinful of milk, or a breakfast of air, without putting hand to pouch. At the door Gerard found his benefactress of last night, and a huge-chested artisan, her husband.

      Gerard thanked her, and in the spirit of the age offered her a creutzer for her pudding.

      But she repulsed his hand quietly. “For what do you take me?” said she, colouring faintly; “we are travellers and strangers the same as you, and bound to feel for those in like plight.”

      Then Gerard blushed in his turn and stammered excuses.

      The hulking husband grinned superior to them both.

      “Give the vixen a kiss for her pudding, and cry quits,” said he, with an air impartial, judge-like and Jove-like.

      Gerard obeyed the lofty behest, and kissed the wife's cheek. “A blessing go with you both, good people,” said he.

      “And God speed you, young man!” replied the honest couple; and with that they parted, and never met again in this world.

      The sun had just risen: the rain-drops on the leaves glittered like diamonds. The air was fresh and bracing, and Gerard steered south, and did not even remember his resolve of overnight.

      Eight leagues he walked that day, and in the afternoon came upon a huge building with an enormous arched gateway and a postern by its side.

      “A monastery!” cried he joyfully; “I go no further lest I fare worse.” He applied at the postern, and on stating whence he came and whither bound, was instantly admitted and directed to the guestchamber, a large and lofty room, where travellers were fed and lodged gratis by the charity of the monastic orders. Soon the bell tinkled for vespers, and Gerard entered the church of the convent, and from his place heard a service sung so exquisitely, it seemed the choir of heaven. But one thing was wanting, Margaret was not there to hear it with him, and this made him sigh bitterly in mid rapture. At supper, plain but wholesome and abundant food, and good beer, brewed in the convent, were set before him and his fellows, and at an early hour they were ushered into a large dormitory, and the number being moderate, had each a truckle bed, and for covering, sheepskins dressed with the fleece on; but previously to this a monk, struck by his youth and beauty, questioned him, and soon drew out his projects and his heart. When he was found to be convent bred, and going alone to Rome, he became a personage, and in the morning they showed him over the convent and made him stay and dine in the refectory. They also pricked him a route on a slip of parchment, and the prior gave him a silver guilden to help him on the road, and advised him to join the first honest company he should fall in with, “and not face alone the manifold perils of the way.”

      “Perils?” said Gerard to himself.

      That evening he came to a small straggling town where was one inn; it had no sign; but being now better versed in the customs of the country, he detected it at once by the coats of arms on its walls. These belonged to the distinguished visitors who had slept in it at different epochs since its foundation, and left these customary tokens of their patronage. At present it looked more like a mausoleum than a hotel. Nothing moved nor sounded either in it or about it. Gerard hammered on the great oak door: no answer. He hallooed: no reply. After a while he hallooed louder, and at last a little round window, or rather hole in the wall, opened, a man's head protruded cautiously, like a tortoise's from its shell, and eyed Gerard stolidly, but never uttered a syllable.

      “Is this an inn?” asked Gerard, with a covert sneer.

      The head seemed to fall into a brown study; eventually it nodded, but lazily.

      “Can I have entertainment here?”

      Again the head pondered and ended by nodding, but sullenly, and seemed a skull overburdened with catch-penny interrogatories.

      “How am I to get within, an't please you?”

      At this the head popped in, as if the last question had shot it; and a hand popped out, pointed round the corner of the building, and slammed the window.

      Gerard followed the indication, and after some research discovered that the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small low door on its flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together, i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy ruffians.

      Gerard, having penetrated the outer fort, soon found his way to the stove (as the public room was called from the principal article in it), and sat down near the oven, in which were only a few live embers that diffused a mild and grateful heat.

      After waiting patiently a long time, he asked a grim old fellow with a long white beard, who stalked solemnly in, and turned the hour-glass, and then was stalking out, when supper would be. The grisly Ganymede counted the guests on his fingers—“When I see thrice as many here as now.” Gerard groaned.

      The grisly tyrant resented the rebellious sound. “Inns are not built for one,” said he; “if you can't wait for the rest, look out for another lodging.”

      Gerard sighed.

      At this the greybeard frowned.

      After a while company trickled steadily in, till full eighty persons of various conditions were congregated, and to our novice the place became a chamber of horrors; for here the mothers got together and compared ringworms, and the men scraped the mud off their shoes with their knives, and left it on the floor, and combed their long hair out, inmates included, and made their toilet, consisting generally of a dry rub. Water, however, was brought in ewers. Gerard pounced on one of these, but at sight of the liquid contents lost his temper and said to the waiter, “Wash you first your water, and