The Cloister and the Hearth Part 57

"Preach away, comrade. Fling a byword or two at our heads. Know, girls, that he is a very Solomon for bywords. Methinks he was brought up by hand on 'em."

"Be thy friendship a byword!" retorted Gerard. "The friendship that melts to nought at sight of a farthingale."

"Malheureux!" cried Denys, "I speak but pellets, and thou answerest daggers."

"Would I could," was the reply. "Adieu."

"What a little savage!" said one of the girls.

Gerard opened the door and put in his head. "I have thought of a byword," said he spitefully,

"'Qui hante femmes et dez Il mourra en pauvretez.'

There." And having delivered this thunderbolt of antique wisdom he slammed the door viciously ere any of them could retort.

And now, being somewhat exhausted by his anxieties, he went to the bar for a morsel of bread and a cup of wine. The landlord would sell nothing less than a pint bottle. Well then he would have a bottle: but, when he came to compare the contents of the bottle with its size, great was the discrepancy: on this he examined the bottle keenly, and found that the gla.s.s was thin where the bottle tapered, but towards the bottom unnaturally thick. He pointed this out at once.

The landlord answered superciliously that he did not make bottles: and was nowise accountable for their shape.

"That we will see presently," said Gerard. "I will take this thy pint to the vice-bailiff."

"Nay, nay, for Heaven's sake," cried the landlord changing his tone at once. "I love to content my customers. If, by chance this pint be short, we will charge it and its fellow three sous, instead of two sous each."

"So be it. But much I admire that you, the host of so fair an inn, should practise thus. The wine too smacketh strongly of spring water."

"Young sir," said the landlord, "we cut no travellers' throats at this inn, as they do at most. However, you know all about that. The 'White Hart' is no lion, nor bear. Whatever masterful robbery is done here, is done upon the poor host. How then could he live at all if he dealt not a little crooked with the few who pay?"

Gerard objected to this system root and branch. Honest trade was small profits, quick returns; and neither to cheat nor be cheated.

The landlord sighed at this picture. "So might one keep an inn in heaven, but not in Burgundy. When foot soldiers going to the wars are quartered on me, how can I but lose by their custom? Two sous per day is their pay, and they eat two sous' worth, and drink into the bargain. The pardoners are my good friends, but palmers and pilgrims, what think you I gain by them? marry, a loss. Minstrels and jongleurs draw custom, and so claim to pay no score, except for liquor. By the secular monks I neither gain nor lose, but the black and grey friars have made vow of poverty, but not of famine; eat like wolves and give the poor host nought but their prayers; and mayhap not them: how can he tell? In my father's day we had the weddings: but now the great gentry let their houses and their plates, their mugs, and their spoons, to any honest couple that want to wed, and thither the very mechanics go with their brides and bridal train. They come not to us: indeed we could not find seats and vessels for such a crowd as eat and drink and dance the week out at the homeliest wedding now. In my father's day the great gentry sold wine by the barrel only; but now they have leave to cry it, and sell it by the galopin, in the very market-place. How can we vie with them? They grow it. We buy it of the grower. The coroner's quests we have still, and these would bring goodly profit, but the meat is aye gone ere the mouths be full."

"You should make better provision," suggested his hearer.

"The law will not let us. We are forbidden to go into the market for the first hour. So, when we arrive, the burghers have bought all but the refuse. Besides the law forbids us to buy more than three bushels of meal at a time: yet market day comes but once a week. As for the butchers, they will not kill for us unless we bribe them."

"Courage!" said Gerard kindly, "the shoe pinches every trader somewhere."

"Ay: but not as it pinches us. Our shoe is trode all o' one side as well as pinches us lame. A savoir, if we pay not the merchants we buy meal, meat, and wine of, they can cast us into prison and keep us there till we pay or die. But we cannot cast into prison those who buy those very victuals of us. A traveller's horse we may keep for his debt; but where in Heaven's name? In our own stable, eating his head off at our cost.

Nay, we may keep the traveller himself, but where? In gaol? Nay, in our own good house, and there must we lodge and feed him gratis. And so fling good silver after bad? merci; no: let him go with a wanion. Our honestest customers are the thieves. Would to Heaven there were more of them. They look not too close into the shape of the canakin, nor into the host's reckoning: with them and with their purses 'tis lightly come, and lightly go. Also they spend freely, not knowing but each carouse may be their last. But the thief-takers, instead of profiting by this fair example, are for ever robbing the poor host. When n.o.ble or honest travellers descend at our door, come the provost's men pretending to suspect them, and demanding to search them and their papers. To save which offence the host must bleed wine and meat. Then come the excise to examine all your weights and measures. You must stop their mouths with meat and wine. Town excise. Royal excise. Parliament excise. A swarm of them, and all with a wolf in their stomachs and a sponge in their gullets. Monks, friars, pilgrims, palmers, soldiers, excis.e.m.e.n, provost-marshals and men, and mere bad debtors, how can the 'White Hart'

b.u.t.t against all these? Cutting no throats in self-defence as do your 'Swans' and 'Roses' and 'Boar's Heads' and 'Red Lions' and 'Eagles,'

your 'Moons,' 'Stars,' and 'Moors,' how can the 'White Hart' give a pint of wine for a pint? And everything risen so. Why, lad, not a pound of bread I sell but costs me three good copper deniers, twelve to the sou; and each pint of wine, bought by the tun, costs me four deniers; every sack of charcoal two sous, and gone in a day. A pair of partridges five sous. What think you of that? Heard one ever the like? five sous for two little beasts all bone and feather? A pair of pigeons, thirty deniers.

'Tis ruination!!! For we may not raise _our_ pricen with the market. Oh no. I tell thee the shoe is trod all o' one side as well as pinches the water into our eyn. We may charge nought for mustard, pepper, salt, or firewood. Think you we get them for nought? Candle it is a sou the pound. Salt five sous the stone, pepper four sous the pound, mustard twenty deniers the pint: and raw meat, dwindleth it on the spit with no cost to me but loss of weight? Why what think you I pay my cook? But you shall never guess. A HUNDRED SOUS A YEAR AS I AM A LIVING SINNER.

"And my waiter thirty sous, besides his perquisites. He is a hantle richer than I am. And then to be insulted as well as pillaged. Last Sunday I went to church. It is a place I trouble not often. Didn't the cure lash the hotel-keepers? I grant you he hit all the trades, except the one that is a byword for looseness, and pride, and sloth, to wit the clergy. But, mind you, he stripeit the other lay estates with a feather, but us hotel-keepers with a neat's pizzle: G.o.dless for this, G.o.dless for that, and most G.o.dless of all for opening our doors during ma.s.s. Why the law forces us to open at all hours to travellers from another town, stopping, halting, or pa.s.sing: those be the words. They can fine us before the bailiff if we refuse them, ma.s.s or no ma.s.s: and, say a townsman should creep in with the true travellers, are we to blame? They all vow they are tired wayfarers; and can I ken every face in a great town like this? So if we respect the law our poor souls are to suffer, and if we respect it not, our poor lank purses must bleed at two holes, fine and loss of custom."

A man speaking of himself in general, is "a babbling brook;" of his wrongs, "a shining river."

"Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."

So luckily for my readers, though not for all concerned, this injured orator was arrested in mid career. Another man burst in upon his wrongs with all the advantage of a recent wrong; a wrong red hot. It was Denys cursing and swearing and crying that he was robbed.

"Did those hussies pa.s.s this way? who are they? where do they bide? They have ta'en my purse and fifteen golden pieces: raise the hue and cry!

ah! traitresses! vipers! These inns are all guetapens."

"There now," cried the landlord to Gerard.

Gerard implored him to be calm and say how it had befallen.

"First one went out on some pretence: then after a while the other went to fetch her back, and, neither returning, I clapped hand to purse and found it empty: the ungrateful creatures, I was letting them win it in a gallop: but loaded dice were not quick enough; they must claw it all in a lump."

Gerard was for going at once to the alderman and setting the officers to find them.

"Not I," said Denys. "I hate the law. No: as it came so let it go."

Gerard would not give if up so.

At a hint from the landlord he forced Denys along with him to the provost-marshal. That dignitary shook his head. "We have no clue to occasional thieves, that work honestly at their needles, till some gull comes and tempts them with an easy booty, and then they pluck him."

"Come away," cried Denys furiously. "I knew what use a bourgeois would be to me at a pinch:" and he marched off in a rage.

"They are clear of the town ere this," said Gerard.

"Speak no more on't if you prize my friendship. I have five pieces with the bailiff, and ten I left with Marion, luckily: or these traitresses had feathered their nest with my last plume. What dost gape for so? Nay, I do ill to vent my choler on thee: I'll tell thee all. Art wiser than I. What saidst thou at the door? No matter. Well then I did offer marriage to that Marion."

Gerard was dumbfoundered.

"What? you offered her what?"

"Marriage. Is that such a mighty strange thing to offer a wench?"

"'Tis a strange thing to offer to a strange girl in pa.s.sing."

"Nay, I am not such a sot as you opine. I saw the corn in all that chaff. I knew I could not get her by fair means, so I was fain to try foul. 'Mademoiselle,' said I, 'marriage is not one of my habits, but struck by your qualities I make an exception: deign to bestow this hand on me.'"

"And she bestowed it on thine ear."

"Not so. On the contrary she--Art a disrespectful young monkey. Know that here, not being Holland or any other barbarous state, courtesy begets courtesy. Says she a colouring like a rose, 'Soldier, you are too late. He is not a patch on you for looks, but then--he has loved me a long time.'

"'He? who?'

"'T'other.'

"'What other?'

"'Why he that was not too late.' Oh, that is the way they all speak, the loves; the she-wolves. Their little minds go in leaps. Think you they marshal their words in order of battle? their tongues are in too great a hurry. Says she, 'I love him not; not to say love him: but he does me, and dearly: and for that reason I'd sooner die than cause him grief, I would.'"

"Now I believe she did love him."