The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

to fall in with a young man who can withstand these ancient ill customs, and gainsay brazen hussies. Shalt have thy reward.”

      “Thank you! But what are you doing with my bed?”

      “Me? oh, only taking off these sheets, and going to put on the pair the drunken miller slept in last night.”

      “Oh, no! no! You cruel, black-hearted thing! There! there!”

      “A la bonne heure! What will not perseverance effect? But note now the frowardness of a mad wench! I cared not for't a button. I am dead sick of that sport this five years. But you denied me; so then forthwith I behoved to have it; belike had gone through fire and water for't. Alas, young sir, we women are kittle cattle; poor perverse toads: excuse us: and keep us in our place, savoir, at arm's length; and so good-night!”

      At the door she turned and said, with a complete change of tone and manner: “The Virgin guard thy head, and the holy Evangelists watch the bed where lies a poor young wanderer far from home! Amen!”

      And the next moment he heard her run tearing down the stairs, and soon a peal of laughter from the salle betrayed her whereabouts.

      “Now that is a character,” said Gerard profoundly, and yawned over the discovery.

      In a very few minutes he was in a dry bath of cold, clean linen, inexpressibly refreshing to him after so long disuse: then came a delicious glow; and then—Sevenbergen.

      In the morning Gerard awoke infinitely refreshed, and was for rising, but found himself a close prisoner. His linen had vanished. Now this was paralysis; for the nightgown is a recent institution. In Gerard's century, and indeed long after, men did not play fast and loose with clean sheets (when they could get them), but crept into them clothed with their innocence, like Adam: out of bed they seem to have taken most after his eldest son.

      Gerard bewailed his captivity to Denys; but that instant the door opened, and in sailed Marion with their linen, newly washed and ironed, on her two arms, and set it down on the table.

      “Oh you good girl,” cried Gerard.

      “Alack, have you found me out at last?”

      “Yes, indeed. Is this another custom?”

      “Nay, not to take them unbidden: but at night we aye question travellers, are they for linen washed. So I came into you, but you were both sound. Then said I to the little mistress, 'La! where is the sense of waking wearied men, t'ask them is Charles the Great dead, and would they liever carry foul linen or clean, especially this one with a skin like cream? 'And so he has, I declare,' said the young mistress.”

      “That was me,” remarked Denys, with the air of a commentator.

      “Guess once more, and you'll hit the mark.”

      “Notice him not, Marion, he is an impudent fellow; and I am sure we cannot be grateful enough for your goodness, and I am sorry I ever refused you—anything you fancied you should like.”

      “Oh, are ye there,” said l'espiegle. “I take that to mean you would fain brush the morning dew off, as your bashful companion calls it; well then, excuse me, 'tis customary, but not prudent. I decline. Quits with you, lad.”

      “Stop! stop!” cried Denys, as she was making off victorious, “I am curious to know how many, of ye were here last night a-feasting your eyes on us twain.

      “'Twas so satisfactory a feast as we weren't half a minute over't. Who? why the big mistress, the little mistress, Janet, and me, and the whole posse comitatus, on tiptoe. We mostly make our rounds the last thing, not to get burned down; and in prodigious numbers. Somehow that maketh us bolder, especially where archers lie scattered about.”

      “Why did not you tell me? I'd have lain awake.”

      “Beau sire, the saying goes that the good and the ill are all one while their lids are closed. So we said, 'Here is one who will serve God best asleep, Break not his rest!'”

      “She is funny,” said Gerard dictatorially.

      “I must be either that or knavish.”

      “How so?”

      “Because 'The Three Fish' pay me to be funny. You will eat before you part? Good! then I'll go see the meat be fit for such worshipful teeth.”

      “Denys!”

      “What is your will?”

      “I wish that was a great boy, and going along with us, to keep us cheery.”

      “So do not I. But I wish it was going along with us as it is.”

      “Now Heaven forefend! A fine fool you would make of yourself.”

      They broke their fast, settled their score, and said farewell. Then it was they found that Marion had not exaggerated the “custom of the country.” The three principal women took and kissed them right heartily, and they kissed the three principal women. The landlord took and kissed them, and they kissed the landlord; and the cry was, “Come back, the sooner the better!”

      “Never pass 'The Three Fish'; should your purses be void, bring yourselves: 'le sieur credit' is not dead for you.”

      And they took the road again.

      They came to a little town, and Denys went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper was in the doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with a bow down to the ground. The customer was soon fitted, and followed to the street, and dismissed with graceful salutes from the doorstep.

      The friends agreed it was Elysium to deal with such a shoemaker as this. “Not but what my German shoes have lasted well enough,” said Gerard the just.

      Outside the town was a pebbled walk.

      “This is to keep the burghers's feet dry, a-walking o' Sundays with their wives and daughters,” said Denys.

      Those simple words of Denys, one stroke of a careless tongue, painted “home” in Gerard's heart. “Oh, how sweet!” said he.

      “Mercy! what is this? A gibbet! and ugh, two skeletons thereon! Oh, Denys, what a sorry sight to woo by!”

      “Nay,” said Denys, “a comfortable sight; for every rogue i' the air there is one the less a-foot.”

      A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a huge wheel closely studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel.

      Gerard hid his face in his hands. “Oh, to think those patches and bones are all that is left of a man! of one who was what we are now.”

      “Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than that?”

      “How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture too?”

      “None of my kith ever found their way to the gibbet, I know.”

      “The better their luck. Prithee, how died the saints?”

      “Hard. But not in Burgundy.”

      “Ye massacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime, because you read not story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that bloody day we sigh for to this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father Martin says.”

      “The blaspheming old hound!”

      “Oh, fie! fie! a holy and a book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y'had read them, that suffered there, by the bare light of the gibbet. 'Drive in the nails!' y'had cried: 'drive in the spear!' Here be three malefactors. Three 'roues.' Yet of those little three one was the first Christian saint, and another was the Saviour of the world which gibbeted him.”

      Denys assured him on his honour they managed things better in Burgundy. He added, too, after profound reflection, that the horrors Gerard had alluded to had more than