The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

midst of her minauderies, she gave a loud shriek and bounded out of her chair like hare from form, and ran backwards out of the room uttering little screams, and holding her farthingale tight down to her ankles with both hands. And as she scuttled out of the door a mouse scuttled back to the wainscot in a state of equal, and perhaps more reasonable terror. The guests, who had risen in anxiety at the principal yell, now stood irresolute awhile, then sat down laughing. The tender Denys, to whom a woman's cowardice, being a sexual trait, seemed to be a lovely and pleasant thing, said he would go comfort her and bring her back.

      “Nay! nay! nay! for pity's sake let her bide,” cried Gerard earnestly. “Oh, blessed mouse! sure some saint sent thee to our aid.”

      Now at his right hand sat a sturdy middle-aged burgher, whose conduct up to date had been cynical. He had never budged nor even rested his knife at all this fracas. He now turned on Gerard and inquired haughtily whether he really thought that “grimaciere” was afraid of a mouse.

      “Ay. She screamed hearty.”

      “Where is the coquette that cannot scream to the life? These she tavern-keepers do still ape the nobles. Some princess or duchess hath lain here a night, that was honestly afeard of a mouse, having been brought up to it. And this ape hath seen her, and said, 'I will start at a mouse, and make a coil,' She has no more right to start at a mouse than to wear that fur on her bosom, and that velvet on her monkey's head. I am of the town, young man, and have known the mijauree all her life, and I mind when she was no more afeard of a mouse than she is of a man.” He added that she was fast emptying the inn with these “singeries.” “All the world is so sick of her hands, that her very kinsfolk will not venture themselves anigh them.” He concluded with something like a sigh, “The 'Tete d'Or' was a thriving hostelry under my old chum her good father; but she is digging its grave tooth and nail.'

      “Tooth and nail? good! a right merry conceit and a true,” said Gerard. But the right merry conceit was an inadvertence as pure as snow, and the stout burgher went to his grave and never knew what he had done: for just then attention was attracted by Denys returning pompously. He inspected the apartment minutely, and with a high official air: he also looked solemnly under the table; and during the whole inquisition a white hand was placed conspicuously on the edge of the open door, and a tremulous voice inquired behind it whether the horrid thing was quite gone.

      “The enemy has retreated, bag and baggage,” said Denys: and handed in the trembling fair, who, sitting down, apologized to her guests for her foolish fears, with so much earnestness, grace, and seeming self-contempt, that, but for a sour grin on his neighbour's face, Gerard would have been taken in as all the other strangers were. Dinner ended, the young landlady begged an Augustine friar at her right hand to say grace. He delivered a longish one. The moment he began, she clapped her white hands piously together, and held them up joined for mortals to admire; 'tis an excellent pose for taper white fingers: and cast her eyes upward towards heaven, and felt as thankful to it as a magpie does while cutting off with your thimble.

      After supper the two friends went to the street-door and eyed the market-place. The mistress joined them, and pointed out the town-hall, the borough gaol, St. Catherine's church, etc. This was courteous, to say the least. But the true cause soon revealed itself; the fair hand was poked right under their eyes every time an object was indicated; and Gerard eyed it like a basilisk, and longed for a bunch of nettles. The sun set, and the travellers, few in number, drew round the great roaring fire, and omitting to go on the spit, were frozen behind though roasted in front. For if the German stoves were oppressively hot, the French salles manger were bitterly cold, and above all stormy. In Germany men sat bareheaded round the stove, and took off their upper clothes, but in Burgundy they kept on their hats, and put on their warmest furs to sit round the great open chimney places, at which the external air rushed furiously from door and ill-fitting window. However, it seems their mediaeval backs were broad enough to bear it: for they made themselves not only comfortable but merry, and broke harmless jests over each other in turn. For instance, Denys's new shoes, though not in direct communication, had this day exploded with twin-like sympathy and unanimity. “Where do you buy your shoon, soldier?” asked one.

      Denys looked askant at Gerard, and not liking the theme, shook it off. “I gather 'em off the trees by the roadside,” said he surlily.

      “Then you gathered these too ripe,” said the hostess, who was only a fool externally.

      “Ay, rotten ripe,” observed another, inspecting them.

      Gerard said nothing, but pointed the circular satire by pantomime. He slily put out both his feet, one after another, under Denys's eye, with their German shoes, on which a hundred leagues of travel had produced no effect. They seemed hewn out of a rock.

      At this, “I'll twist the smooth varlet's neck that sold me mine,” shouted Denys, in huge wrath, and confirmed the threat with singular oaths peculiar to the mediaeval military. The landlady put her fingers in her ears, thereby exhibiting the hand in a fresh attitude. “Tell me when he has done his orisons, somebody,” said she mincingly. And after that they fell to telling stories.

      Gerard, when his turn came, told the adventure of Denys and Gerard at the inn in Domfront, and so well, that the hearers were rapt into sweet oblivion of the very existence of mijauree and hands. But this made her very uneasy, and she had recourse to her grand coup. This misdirected genius had for a twelvemonth past practised yawning, and could do it now at any moment so naturally as to set all creation gaping, could all creation have seen her. By this means she got in all her charms. For first she showed her teeth, then, out of good breeding, you know, closed her mouth with three taper fingers. So the moment Gerard's story got too interesting and absorbing, she turned to and made yawns, and “croix sur la bouche.”

      This was all very fine: but Gerard was an artist, and artists are chilled by gaping auditors. He bore up against the yawns a long time; but finding they came from a bottomless reservoir, lost both heart and temper, and suddenly rising in mid narrative, said, “But I weary our hostess, and I am tired myself: so good night!” whipped a candle off the dresser, whispered Denys, “I cannot stand her,” and marched to bed in a moment.

      The mijauree coloured and bit her lips. She had not intended her byplay for Gerard's eye: and she saw in a moment she had been rude, and silly, and publicly rebuked. She sat with cheek on fire, and a little natural water in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly and interesting than she had done all day. The desertion of the best narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the meditative mijauree, and invited her in the most flattering terms to gamble with him. She started from her reverie, looked him down into the earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered all in a moment what a show of hands gambling admitted.

      The soldier and the mijauree rattled the dice. In which sport she was so taken up with her hands, that she forgot to cheat, and Denys won an “ecu au soleil” of her. She fumbled slowly with her purse, partly because her sex do not burn to pay debts of honour, partly to admire the play of her little knuckles peeping between their soft white cushions. Denys proposed a compromise.

      “Three silver franks I win of you, fair hostess. Give me now three kisses of this white hand, and we'll e'en cry quits.”

      “You are malapert,” said the lady, with a toss of her head; “besides, they are so dirty. See! they are like ink!” and to convince him she put them out to him and turned them up and down. They were no dirtier than cream fresh from the cob and she knew it: she was eternally washing and scenting them.

      Denys read the objection like the observant warrior he was, seized them and mumbled them.

      Finding him so appreciative of her charm, she said timidly, “Will you do me a kindness, good soldier?”

      “A thousand, fair hostess, an you will.”

      “Nay, I ask but one. 'Tis to tell thy comrade I was right sorry to lose his most thrilling story, and I hope he will tell me the rest to-morrow morning. Meantime I shall not sleep for thinking on't. Wilt tell him that—to pleasure me?”

      “Ay, I'll tell the young savage. But he is not worthy of your condescension, sweet hostess.