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Page 29
She laid before me an excellent supper on a little table somewhat
removed beside a curtained window. And while I ate I watched, and
listened, not at all displeased with my entertainment.
The room in which we sat was low-ceiled and cheerful, but rather
close after the rainy night-air. Gay pictures beautified the walls.
Here a bottle, a cheese, grapes, a hare, a goblet--in a clear brown
light that made the guest's mouth water to admire. Here a fine
gentleman toasting a simpering chambermaid. Above the chimney-piece a
bloated old man in vineleaves that might be Silenus. And over against
the door of the parlour what I took to be a picture of Potiphar's wife,
she looked out of the paint so bold and beauteous and craftily. Birds
and fishes in cases stared glassily,--owl and kestrel, jack and eel
and gudgeon. All was clean and comfortable as a hospitable inn can be.
But they who frequented it interested me much more--as various and
animated a gathering as any I have seen. Yet in some peculiar manner
they seemed one and all not to the last tittle quite of this world.
They were, so to speak, more earthy, too definite, too true to the
mould, like figures in a bleak, bright light viewed out of darkness.
Certainly not one of them was at first blush prepossessing. Yet who
finds much amiss with the fox at last, though all he seems to have be
cunning?
Near beside me, however, sat retired a man a little younger and more
at his ease than most of the many there, and as busy with his eyes and
ears as I. His name, I learned presently, was Reverie; and from him I
gathered not a little information regarding the persons who talked and
sipped around us.
He told me at whiles that his house was not in the village, but in a
valley some few miles distant across the meadows; that he sat out
these bouts of argument and slander for the sheer delight he had in
gathering the myriad strands of that strange rope Opinion; that he
lived (heart, soul, and hope) well-nigh alone; that he deeply
mistrusted this place, and the company we were in, yet not for its
mistress's sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to
the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order. He
told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name
them, since the least sibilant of the sound of the voice incites to
treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with,
one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder
flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the
rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside
Mr. Stubborn on the settle by the fire.
When, then, I had finished my supper, I drew in my chair a little
closer to Mr. Reverie's and, having scribbled my wants on the
Landlady's slate, turned my attention to the talk.
At the moment when I first began to listen attentively they seemed to
be in heated dispute concerning the personal property of a certain Mr.
Christian, who was either dead or had inexplicably disappeared. Mr.
Obstinate, I gathered, had taken as his right this Christian's
"easy-chair"; a gentleman named Smoothman most of his other goods for
a debt; while a Parson Decorum had appropriated as heretical his
books and various peculiar MSS.
But there now remained in question a trifling sum of money which a Mr.
Liar loudly demanded in payment of an "affair of honour." This,
however, he seemed little likely to obtain, seeing that an elderly
uncle by marriage of Christian's, whose name was Office, was as eager
and affable and frank about the sum as he was bent on keeping it; and
rattled the contents of his breeches' pocket in sheer bravado of his
means to go to law for it.
"He left a bare pittance, the merest pittance," he said. "What could
there be of any account? Christian despised money, professed to
despise it. That alone would prove my wretched nephew queer in the
head--despised _money_!
"Tush, friend!" cried Obstinate from his corner. "Whether the money is
yours, or neighbour Liar's--and it is as likely as not neither's--that
talk about despising money's what but a silly lie? 'Twas all sour
grapes--sour grapes. He had cunning enough for envy, and pride enough
for shame; and at last there was naught but cunning left wherewith to
patch up a clout for him and his shame to be gone in. I watched him
set out on his pestilent pilgrimage, crazed and stubborn, and not a
groat to call his own."
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