PISTOL. And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And happy news of price.
FALSTAFF. I prithee now deliver them like to men of this world.
PISTOL. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!
I speak of Africa, and golden joys. --HENRY IV. PART II.
The public room of the Black Bear at Cumnor, to which the scene of
our story now returns, boasted, on the evening which we treat of,
no ordinary assemblage of guests. There had been a fair in the
neighbourhood, and the cutting mercer of Abingdon, with some of the
other personages whom the reader has already been made acquainted with,
as friends and customers of Giles Gosling, had already formed their
wonted circle around the evening fire, and were talking over the news of
the day.
A lively, bustling, arch fellow, whose pack, and oaken ellwand studded
duly with brass points, denoted him to be of Autolycus's profession,
occupied a good deal of the attention, and furnished much of the
amusement, of the evening. The pedlars of those days, it must be
remembered, were men of far greater importance than the degenerate
and degraded hawkers of our modern times. It was by means of these
peripatetic venders that the country trade, in the finer manufactures
used in female dress particularly, was almost entirely carried on; and
if a merchant of this description arrived at the dignity of travelling
with a pack-horse, he was a person of no small consequence, and company
for the most substantial yeoman or franklin whom he might meet in his
wanderings.
The pedlar of whom we speak bore, accordingly, an active and unrebuked
share in the merriment to which the rafters of the bonny Black Bear
of Cumnor resounded. He had his smile with pretty Mistress Cicely, his
broad laugh with mine host, and his jest upon dashing Master Goldthred,
who, though indeed without any such benevolent intention on his own
part, was the general butt of the evening. The pedlar and he were
closely engaged in a dispute upon the preference due to the Spanish
nether-stock over the black Gascoigne hose, and mine host had just
winked to the guests around him, as who should say, "You will have mirth
presently, my masters," when the trampling of horses was heard in the
courtyard, and the hostler was loudly summoned, with a few of the newest
oaths then in vogue to add force to the invocation. Out tumbled Will
Hostler, John Tapster, and all the militia of the inn, who had slunk
from their posts in order to collect some scattered crumbs of the mirth
which was flying about among the customers. Out into the yard sallied
mine host himself also, to do fitting salutation to his new guests; and
presently returned, ushering into the apartment his own worthy nephew,
Michael Lambourne, pretty tolerably drunk, and having under his escort
the astrologer. Alasco, though still a little old man, had, by altering
his gown to a riding-dress, trimming his beard and eyebrows, and so
forth, struck at least a score of years from his apparent age, and
might now seem an active man of sixty, or little upwards. He appeared at
present exceedingly anxious, and had insisted much with Lambourne that
they should not enter the inn, but go straight forward to the place of
their destination. But Lambourne would not be controlled. "By Cancer and
Capricorn," he vociferated, "and the whole heavenly host, besides all
the stars that these blessed eyes of mine have seen sparkle in the
southern heavens, to which these northern blinkers are but farthing
candles, I will be unkindly for no one's humour--I will stay and salute
my worthy uncle here. Chesu! that good blood should ever be forgotten
betwixt friends!--A gallon of your best, uncle, and let it go round to
the health of the noble Earl of Leicester! What! shall we not collogue
together, and warm the cockles of our ancient kindness?--shall we not
collogue, I say?"