Patricia at the inn

HE continued keenly to listen. The horses appeared to be approaching but slowly. They seemed to be two. The King and one of his many faithful followers, perchance, wearied to death and very cold. It was a pity the fire had fallen so low on the hearth. It was unfortunate, too, that the landlord should have so short an intimation of the royal coming. But he must contrive to give Charles Stuart some sort of a reception, because all the world over a king is still a king; and whatever one’s politics, should royalty honour one’s roof-tree, it is impossible to assert them. Therefore he called up the stairs in his greatest voice:

“Joseph, come down at once. Cicely, my wench, do you come too. The King is arriving!”

Soon the travellers were heard hard by the window, under the sign. The landlord, excited as he was, yet hung back a little from opening the door. He would let them knock, just as though they were common persons; he would pretend that he did not know one was the King.

It seemed an intolerable time ere a demand was made for their admittance. At last came the expected knock, but, strangely enough, a very gentle one. There was nothing regal in it. It had no authority, no command; it was modest to the point of timidity. If it were not the King after all! Had he not better make sure!

“Who be ye?” Gamaliel demanded, with his mouth to the door. “Who be ye? What d’ye want?”

If it really was the King, he was not supposed to be aware of the fact; and much as his pulse might leap at addressing a prince in this audacious manner, he loved to do it none the less.

The door was tried and shaken ever so lightly.

“Who be ye? What d’ye want?” the landlord repeated.

“Oh, open the door, I pray you,” a soft voice implored him from the night.

The landlord recoiled with an oath. It was the voice of a woman. His disappointment was bitter; a woman when he had looked for a prince!

Again he put his questions, this time angrily. What could a woman want at his inn on that inaccessible, inhospitable shore at that hour of the night? He met with the same reply, but this time there seemed a deeper fervour in it.

Gamaliel was so angry at his disillusion, that his first thought was to refuse admittance to these travellers. But then in a flash there came a second thought. They were refugees, of course. How foolish of him not to have surmised that. They might not be royal personages, yet might they not have their value too?

The next moment he had unbarred the door. Sure enough, a woman was on the threshold. She was masked and cloaked like one who had journeyed far: the white rime was heavy on her garments and her hair; and she looked more dead than alive with the piercing cold. Her hands shook visibly as one held her horse’s rein, and the other gathered up her riding-coat.

“I give you welcome, madam,” said the landlord, making his best leg.

He smirked and bowed as humbly as he could. He was not ill pleased by the appearance of the woman. It was sad indeed, but there was that in her bearing that plainly said she was a person of condition.

“I beseech you to succour us,” she said, with great entreaty. “My husband is stricken sore, and so spent with traveling that he must die to-night out in the cold if you do not help us.”

“God forbid!” said the landlord, piously. He liked the sweetness and the candour of her bearing. His curiosity was stimulated by it too. She thanked him with a grave simplicity, and went forth to her companion. The landlord followed with his assistance. He could dimly discern by the candle-light coming through the open door a second horse, sorely distressed by an infinite journeying. There was little to be seen of its rider beyond a shrunk, cloaked figure, huddling low to the saddle.

“My poor lad,” said the woman, staggering to his side, “there is a roof and a fire for you at last.”

She gave him her shoulder. The rider swayed towards it, and leaned so heavily upon her that Gamaliel, bustling forward with his aid, marvelled that he did not bear her to the ground.

“Don’t let ’em touch me,” the rider said in a whisper of querulous anguish. “Tell ’em to keep off.”

Amid a few groans and a few curses, the unhappy traveller was half led, half borne within on the shoulder of his wife.

“Oh, the poor gentleman!” exclaimed the servant-maid, setting the best chair near the fire and placing a soft pillow upon it. She then ran to procure an armful of fresh logs, while Joseph took the horses to the stable. The stricken man was put by the hearth, and his wife, distressed and fatigued as she was, tended him with an unremitting diligence. She took off his hat, wet cloak and gloves, and then knelt down before him to chafe his cold hands with her own even colder, and talked to him as she did so in little soothing affectionate phrases, as a mother might to a child.

Meantime the landlord was busy indeed. He hobbled about the kitchen with his gout as though the hour was three at noon instead of three of the night—now for a cup, now for a spoon, now for a stoup of the hissing liquor, steaming and vapouring in the bowl. Mine host had brewed a posset, strong, hot, searching, fit for a prince! Ha! and who knew that royal lips were not about to imbibe it. The thought was ever present in Master Hooker’s heart. Be very sure his eye was never an instant from his guests.

The lady, it is true, still wore her vizard, thereby balking his curiosity in the main particular; in her tender solicitude for her lord, she had forgot to doff her dripping cloak; she was bedraggled, weary, unkempt, chilled to the blood; but were she presently to be revealed a princess, the shrewd Gamaliel would be able to say without impropriety that from the first he had guessed so much. He knew high breeding when he saw it; he flattered himself that naught could conceal it from him. He had not seen a feature, a jewel; she had hardly given him three words; his knowledge of her attire was confined to a hood, a riding-cloak, and a mask; but there it was, the hallmark, the indescribable strange grace that misfortune could not tarnish, nor distresses hide.

As for the man, her husband with the querulous eyes and the countenance twisted with pain, there was not a button of his coat that the landlord had not already by heart. A most handsome fellow, in the very heyday of his youth. Yet he looked so pale and worn, that it seemed as if the first puff of wind might extinguish the life of him, as it would a candle-flame. He had a singular delicacy of feature, designed for sweetness and urbanity. But his face was robbed of something of its peculiar beauty by an expression of peevish arrogance, aggravated perhaps by his imminent condition, but probably sufficient at any time to mar a countenance wonderfully fair. A high spirit seemed to preside behind it, a chafing, impatient, overleaping spirit, that hated being harnessed to a maimed body. And below the resentful anguish of the young man’s face was a permanent look of weariness and disillusion that one might expect to see in that of a person who had drunk the cup of life to the very dregs until his lips revolted from its bitterness. Yet the landlord, whose scrutiny missed not a detail, could see that he was of the quality of his veiled companion. He was one accustomed to the service and the homage of his fellows; one who would not be slow to exact it, either. Still his exquisite fair curls clustering round his neck, and his blue eyes, if their insolence, their anger, and their pain could be forgotten, lent him the appearance of an angel—a soiled, ruffled, complaining angel, who, finding itself on earth, wished to be elsewhere.

His condition was certainly dire. He could hardly speak; and as he lay back on his pillow, sobbing for breath after each effort to do so, his impatient rage would have been ludicrous had it not been a thing to pity. The woman continued to chafe his hands till a little warmth crept in them, then rose from her knees to procure and arrange more cushions for him. Presently, the landlord came with the steaming tankard. The lady took one sip of it carefully, to assure herself that it was not too hot for the lips of her companion. She held it for him while he applied his mouth. He withdrew it instantly, with a splutter.

“God scald you, landlord!” he said, in a hoarse, weak voice, “you have burnt my mouth.”

“There—there, mine own,” said the lady, caressing his curls. “Drink freely. It will not hurt you, indeed; nay, it will give you ease.”

Having settled the sufferer in some degree of comfort, she asked the landlord to lead her to the stable.

“No, no, Patsy woman,” said the stricken man, “you must not leave me. You will not leave me, will you, Patsy?”

He entreated her like a child.

“I will not be five minutes away,” she answered, soothingly. “But I cannot neglect the poor, good horses, can I, mine own? You would have them lie in comfort and warmth, even as you do.”

“Prithee, stay you here, madam,” said the honest serving-girl. “And take off your wet cloak, and come about the fire. I will look to the horses.”

“No, child,” said the lady; “I must look to them myself. They have played a noble part this night.”

Despite the entreaties of the sufferer, whose demands for his wife not to leave him rose almost to a wail, she insisted on going out to see that Joseph had succoured the distressed creatures according to their deserts.

When she returned, Cicely, the serving-maid, grew truly imperative.

“I’m a-going to take them wet clothes off you, madam, by your leave,” she said. “You will surely get your death. Why, even now you look fit almost for the grave.”

The lady regarded the honest girl with a wan smile.

“Child, you are very good,” she said.

With her aid she discarded all her travelling attire except the mask.

“May I untie it for you, madam?” said the girl.

The lady hesitated.

“N-no,” she said. “Not to-night, I think.”

The landlord pricked his ears up. Gazing at her, he observed that at last the blood had come to her pale cheeks. His own pulse quickened, too. And he smiled to note how her attempt at secrecy galled her. Even with a strip of black velvet across her eyes, her face was as easy to read as a printed page. She was a simple creature, whose instincts betrayed her.

Very soon the stricken man was conveyed to the chamber that had been set for his reception. It had little to recommend it, to be sure, yet it was the best and most spacious the “Sea Rover” could boast. It had not been used for years; and when a fire was kindled in the unwilling chimney, a colony of sheltering birds were grievously perturbed.

However, Cicely the serving-maid was a bustling soul with a warm and capacious heart, into which the poor guests had been already admitted. She had aired the sheets by the kitchen fire, dusted the apartment, and adjusted the bed and its furniture, all by the time the unhappy gentleman was got up the stairs.

The landlord came at the tail of the procession. He wore a sagacious gravity. He said:

“If I can give ye a finger of assistance, madam, I shall be more than happy.”

“My husband can only suffer me about him,” said the lady. “But you are very kind.”

“And what might be his malady, if I may be so bold, ma’am?” the landlord asked.

“’Tis an incurable disease,” the lady said.

“And what might they call it, ma’am,” said the soft Gamaliel. His voice had the most persuasive humility.

Again the telltale blush showed beneath the mask.

“I—I do not know,” the woman faltered.

The landlord was much too astute to pursue the theme. He apologised for the poverty of the chamber, but it was the best he could place at their disposal. It was a lonesome inn, they must know, not in the least designed for the honour of gentry. But he would not have them conclude for the world—Master Gamaliel coughed in a most deprecatory manner—that, country person as he might be, he was ignorant of what was the due of people of quality. Assuring them of his humble duty and of his desire to promote their comfort in every way, he hoped they had blankets enough, and if they had not, would they kindly inform Cicely the serving-maid? Thereon he gave them “Good-night,” and hobbled downstairs, so deep in his thoughts that he collided with a warming-pan filled with hot brands that was being carried upstairs by the assiduous Cicely. The landlord gave a howl of pain as it shrivelled the back of his hand.

“Should mind where ye be goin’ then,” said the servant-maid, with grim satisfaction.

“You clumsy jade!” roared her master; “you insolent baggage!”

Cicely tossed her head, and passed up the stairs well satisfied.

“Wish it had been his eyes, the slimy old twöad,” she muttered under her breath piously.