Patricia at the inn

by J. C. Snaith

Gamaliel was cunning enough; but, after all, cunning is a quality with grievous limitations. It is the offspring of a mean mind, and is therefore of value only up to a particular point. Therefore what should have been by now as clear as day to the innkeeper was still quite obscure. Instead of reading the plain, simple truth, he went deeper than a more straightforward person would have done, and missed it altogether. He was convinced that the woman and the man—whoever he was, he was no serving-man—stood one to the other in a guilty relation. The previous night he had witnessed an assignation; and, further, now that the woman had to choose between this fellow and her husband, she was ready to sacrifice her husband.

There never was anything so plain, the landlord thought, yet he flattered himself that it was not everyone who would have found it so. This fine theory was doomed to perish almost as soon as it was born, however. Despite all that the woman had done to urge him to prudence, this strangest of serving-men insisted, in his cool, smiling, slightly indifferent manner, on going his own way.

“My dear madam,” he said, in a louder tone than any he had yet employed, “we honour your devotion and your solicitude; we shall ever cherish it vastly. But we are a-weary of this mumming, of this intolerable play-acting; we yawn to death. ’Twere better far to perish of the axe than to die thus incontinently. Besides, we are hungry and thirsty. The food our landlord reserves for his servants is fit only for swine. Landlord, have the goodness to hold your peace, and fetch us a cup of sack and a nuncheon of bread and meat. ’Od’s body! never was a king’s belly so sharp before.”

At last the landlord saw. At first his bewilderment was so great that he could have been easily felled by a feather. Every emotion that the old rogue had was suddenly laid stark naked by this wonderful revelation of the King; indeed, his behaviour was so ludicrous that that frank young man burst out a-laughing at him. Too excited to speak, too dumbfounded to act, too paralysed with all the conflicting sensations let loose in his head to be able to think, he was as one suddenly become deaf, dumb, and blind. He could neither see nor hear; he could neither speak nor lift a finger. The occasion was too great for him; he had lost control of his own entity.

In the meantime the anguish of the poor lady was even more terrible, more unutterable than before.

“Oh, my King! my King!” she wailed, “what hast thou done? My God! what hast thou done?”

The King put his hand upon her shoulder, gently.

“Peace, dear lady, peace,” he said. “This is no season for your tears. Landlord, I asked you a minute since for a cup of sack. ’Od’s fish! you must obey me, landlord; I am no longer your servitor, to be kicked and cuffed and bullied, but your King. I wonder if the royal coat was ever tarnished with such dirty hands before.”

The King looked a little deprecatingly at the sleeve of his leather jerkin. In lieu of the morose, thick-witted Will Jackson, he now stood forth a frank and jovial rogue enough. For all the disguise of his dirt and his rags, his kingship seemed suddenly to make him a gentleman. As a serving-man or a wandering vagabond he would still have been excellent; but granted his kingliness, he made no such very bad specimen of a monarch. The title shone forth in his swarthy looks, added a freedom to his manners, and a grace to his bearing, as, in the fashion of a simple commoner, he drank his sack and munched his nuncheon, and offered words of gallantry and comfort to his beautiful, distressed companion. But in the absence of the title, he would still have done very well for Will Jackson. As is the way with many another, the coat was the man. It required the label of King to make him one; but once affixed, it certainly suited him admirably.

“Is my lord strong enough to receive me,” he asked the lady as he disposed of the last morsel of his bread and meat.