The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

for the travellers' souls. I never told. A month ago my lover died.

      “The soldier put me in mind of my lover. He was bearded like him I had lost. I cannot tell whether I should have interfered, if he had had no beard. I am sorry I told now.”

      The paper almost dropped from Gerard's hands. Now for the first time he saw that Manon's life was in mortal danger. He knew the dogged law, and the dogged men that executed it. He threw himself suddenly on his knees at the alderman's feet. “Oh, sir! think of the difference between those cruel men and this poor weak woman! Could you have the heart to send her to the same death with them; could you have the heart to condemn us to look on and see her slaughtered, who, but that she risked her life for ours, had not now been in jeopardy? Alas, sir! show me and my comrade some pity, if you have none for her, poor soul. Denys and I be true men, and you will rend our hearts if you kill that poor simple girl. What can we do? What is left for us to do then but cut our throats at her gallows' foot?”

      The alderman was tough, but mortal; the prayers and agitation of Gerard first astounded, then touched him. He showed it in a curious way. He became peevish and fretful. “There, get up, do,” said he. “I doubt whether anybody would say as many words for me. What ho, Daniel! go fetch the town clerk.” And on that functionary entering from an adjoining room, “Here is a foolish lad fretting about yon girl. Can we stretch a point? say we admit her to bear witness, and question her favourably.”

      The town clerk was one of your “impossibility” men.

      “Nay, sir, we cannot do that: she was not concerned in this business. Had she been accessory, we might have offered her a pardon to bear witness.”

      Gerard burst in, “But she did better. Instead of being accessory, she stayed the crime; and she proffered herself as witness by running hither with the tale.”

      “Tush, young man, 'tis a matter of law.” The alderman and the clerk then had a long discussion, the one maintaining, the other denying, that she stood as fair in law as if she had been accessory to the attempt on our travellers' lives. And this was lucky for Manon: for the alderman, irritated by the clerk reiterating that he could not do this, and could not that, and could not do t'other, said “he would show him he could do anything he chose,” And he had Manon out, and upon the landlord of “The White Hart” being her bondsman, and Denys depositing five gold pieces with him, and the girl promising, not without some coaxing from Denys, to attend as a witness, he liberated her, but eased his conscience by telling her in his own terms his reason for this leniency.

      “The town had to buy a new rope for everybody hanged, and present it to the bourreau, or compound with him in money: and she was not in his opinion worth this municipal expense, whereas decided characters like her late confederates, were.” And so Denys and Gerard carried her off, Gerard dancing round her for joy, Denys keeping up her heart by assuring her of the demise of a troublesome personage, and she weeping inauspiciously. However, on the road to “The White Hart” the public found her out, and having heard the whole story from the archers, who naturally told it warmly in her favour, followed her hurrahing and encouraging her, till finding herself backed by numbers she plucked up heart. The landlord too saw at a glance that her presence in the inn would draw custom, and received her politely, and assigned her an upper chamber: here she buried herself, and being alone rained tears again.

      Poor little mind, it was like a ripple, up and down, down and up, up and down. Bidding the landlord be very kind to her, and keep her a prisoner without letting her feel it, the friends went out: and lo! as they stepped into the street they saw two processions coming towards them from opposite sides. One was a large one, attended with noise and howls and those indescribable cries by which rude natures reveal at odd times that relationship to the beasts of the field and forest, which at other times we succeed in hiding. The other, very thinly attended by a few nuns and friars, came slow and silent.

      The prisoners going to exposure in the market-place. The gathered bones of the victims coming to the churchyard.

      And the two met in the narrow street nearly at the inn door, and could not pass each other for a long time, and the bier, that bore the relics of mortality, got wedged against the cart that carried the men who had made those bones what they were, and in a few hours must die for it themselves. The mob had not the quick intelligence to be at once struck with this stern meeting: but at last a woman cried, “Look at your work, ye dogs!” and the crowd took it like wildfire, and there was a horrible yell, and the culprits groaned and tried to hide their heads upon their bosoms, but could not, their hands being tied. And there they stood, images of pale hollow-eyed despair, and oh how they looked on the bier, and envied those whom they had sent before them on the dark road they were going upon themselves! And the two men who were the cause of both processions stood and looked gravely on, and even Manon, hearing the disturbance, crept to the window, and, hiding her face, peeped trembling through her fingers, as women will.

      This strange meeting parted Denys and Gerard. The former yielded to curiosity and revenge, the latter doffed his bonnet, and piously followed the poor remains of those whose fate had so nearly been his own. For some time he was the one lay mourner: but when they had reached the suburbs, a long way from the greater attraction that was filling the market-place, more than one artisan threw down his tools, and more than one shopman left his shop, and touched with pity or a sense of our common humanity, and perhaps decided somewhat by the example of Gerard, followed the bones bareheaded, and saw them deposited with the prayers of the Church in hallowed ground.

      After the funeral rites Gerard stepped respectfully up to the cure, and offered to buy a mass for their souls.

      Gerard, son of Catherine, always looked at two sides of a penny: and he tried to purchase this mass a trifle under the usual terms, on account of the pitiable circumstances. But the good cure gently but adroitly parried his ingenuity, and blandly screwed him up to the market price.

      In the course of the business they discovered a similarity of sentiments. Piety and worldly prudence are not very rare companions: still it is unusual to carry both so far as these two men did. Their collision in the prayer market led to mutual esteem, as when knight encountered knight worthy of his steel. Moreover the good cure loved a bit of gossip, and finding his customer was one of those who had fought the thieves at Domfront, would have him into his parlour and hear the whole from his own lips. And his heart warmed to Gerard, and he said “God was good to thee. I thank Him for't with all my soul. Thou art a good lad.” He added drily, “Shouldst have told me this tale in the churchyard. I doubt, I had given thee the mass for love. However,” said he (the thermometer suddenly falling), “'tis ill luck to go back upon a bargain. But I'll broach a bottle of my old Medoc for thee: and few be the guests I would do that for.” The cure went to his cupboard, and while he groped for the choice bottle, he muttered to himself, “At their old tricks again!”

      “Plait-il?” said Gerard.

      “I said nought. Ay, here 'tis.”

      “Nay, your reverence. You surely spoke: you said, 'At their old tricks again!'”

      “Said I so in sooth?” and his reverence smiled. He then proceeded to broach the wine, and filled a cup for each. Then he put a log of wood on the fire, for stoves were none in Burgundy. “And so I said 'At their old tricks!' did I? Come, sip the good wine, and, whilst it lasts, story for story, I care not if I tell you a little tale.”

      Gerard's eyes sparkled.

      “Thou lovest a story?”

      “As my life.”

      “Nay, but raise not thine expectations too high, neither. 'Tis but a foolish trifle compared with thine adventures.”

      THE CURE'S TALE.

      “Once upon a time, then, in the kingdom of France, and in the duchy of Burgundy, and not a day's journey from the town where now we sit a-sipping of old Medoc, there lived a cure. I say he lived; but barely. The parish was small, the parishioners greedy; and never gave their cure a doit more than he could compel. The nearer they brought him to a disembodied spirit by meagre diet, the holier should be his prayers in their behalf. I know not if this was their creed, but their practice gave it colour.