The Goose Girl and Other Stories (29 page)

Some of Brother Bonamy's adventures had been told to Queen
Perdis, but in a poor and illiterate manner by her nurse or in a weak and disgusting way by the ladies of her bedchamber. Hearing them in this fashion it was natural that she should dislike them and their author, for whatever its subject a story is a good story or a bad story only by virtue of the style in which it is told. The ladies of the bedchamber also insisted that Malis was so ugly that he was repulsive to look at.

One thing in particular made the Queen think ill of Malis, and that was a saying he had attributed to Brother Bonamy and which had become famous throughout Jocynthia. The saying was, ‘God likes them plain', and it referred to women. Brother Bonamy was frequently busy, in a way that may be guessed, with the women of the villages and hamlets through which he wandered. With equal ardour he made love to widow, wife and maid, but though their state might be different they had always this in common, that they were pretty. And Brother Bonamy would defend his irrational prejudice for beauty with the grave assertion that it was due only to humility, since God, he said, preferred homely women to handsome ones, and a poor friar might not trespass among his Lord's most favoured servants. He must be content with those on whom God looked with an indifferent eye. That is to say, the pretty ones.

This peculiar virtue of the friar's appealed to many of those who listened to the stories that Malis made about him, and the saying was repeated every day of the week in Jocynthia by men well pleased with so plausible an excuse for visiting some light and lovely girl, when they should have been more legitimately employed with a virtuous woman who had, it may be, an obliquity in her vision, or a few black teeth. ‘God likes them plain', they would say; and who, knowing the righteousness so agreeable to Heaven of uncomely women, may doubt the truth of that assertion?

But Perdis thought the saying was blasphemous.

Her first meeting with Malis was due to one of Fate's oldest and most successful tricks. A thunderstorm burst with instant silver and purple violence out of a pale calm sky while the Queen was riding, with only a few attendants, some miles from her palace. Though Perdis possessed several natural gifts other than beauty, she had only a poor seat and small understanding of equitation, so when her horse, terrified by a near flash of lightning, reared and bolted with her she very soon fell off. Her small retinue, themselves upset by the storm and now unnerved by the accident to their mistress, scattered in foolish pursuit of her horse or in a search, equally vain, for doctors and nurses. One companion
only remained with the Queen, a sensible woman called Graine, who soon discovered that Perdis was unhurt, and opportunely remembered that the inn of The Poor Peasant and his Cow was no more than half a mile away. Thither, with as little delay as possible, the two women repaired, and were received with great kindness although they did not disclose their identity; for there were times when Perdis grew tired of the loud noise of loyalty. They were given an upper room in which a fire was lighted, a meal prepared, and dry clothes brought in exchange for their soaked skirts and mantles; and there they prepared to wait till someone arrived to take them home.

The storm soon passed, and the sun came out again to shine on wet roofs and small puddles, a rick of yellow straw, and a score of starlings shaking small jewels out of their draggled feathers. From the inn yard under the Queen's window rose a noise of mocking voices, and looking out Perdis saw a man, dressed rather shabbily, whom a lot of children had encircled and were teasing. He was an ugly man whose face was bright as autumn leaves with the beating of the weather upon it and the frequent drumming of wine in its veins. His nose, which was long and irregular in shape, was the brightest red of all, and his eyebrows rose in a Satanic slant towards the outer corners of his forehead. But in spite of their devilish angle his expression, at the moment, was foolish rather than wicked, for he was somewhat bewildered by the noise of the children. They were demanding that he should tell them a story, and they did not trouble to be polite to him as would older people in similar circumstances. On the contrary they assured him that his last story had been shockingly dull, and that his bald head looked more and more like a brown hen's egg every day. At this the man tried to smooth his untidy black hair over the bare dome from which it had receded, but the wind caught it and blew it out like little black wings, and the children laughed louder than ever.

But in a minute or two they grew quiet, for the man sat himself on a tub turned upside down and began to tell them a story.

‘I'll tell you how the thunder and the lightning got into the sky,' he said, ‘the thunder that you heard beating its drums just now, and the lightning you saw shaking its sword. But when I've told you, you must promise to keep it a dead secret, for it's valuable information I'm going to give you, and I wouldn't like to see it wasted among all the fools and common people in Jocynthia. So keep it dark, do you see?

‘Well then, a long time ago, when all the animals talked the same language as men, and men would talk to the animals as often as they would to their brothers and sisters, and so learned a very great deal that we know nothing about; in those days there was once a very
important feast given by the richest man in the country for the very fine reason that it is the pleasantest thing in the world to give a good dinner to the proper kind of people. And to make sure that the proper kind of people were there, the rich man invited everybody. And after the feast there was dancing. Now all the best musicians in the country were there, and the best dancers, too, and as the musicians played better and better the dancers danced higher and higher. And the higher they danced the louder the musicians played. And the louder the music the better was the dancing. And so it went on, because one good thing always breeds another, except in family matters.

‘By and by the noise of the dancing reached an old man who lived far away in a wood. He had been invited to the feast, but he had not gone because when he was young he had been the best dancer in the country, and he didn't want to let people see how age had crippled him. But when he heard the pipes pealing and the drums roaring through the wood he couldn't resist the temptation to go and dance for the last time, so he put on his shoes and hurried to the feast. By the time he got there the dancers were leaping so prodigiously high that you wouldn't believe me if I told you. The old man, however, was not dismayed, but shouted loudly, “I can dance better than any of you!” and went to join them.

‘But he had forgotten his sword, and it was a sword-dance they were dancing at the time. So the old man borrowed a sword from a mole, who was one of the guests, for all the animals had been invited as well as all the people, which was only fair. The mole, who had no ear for music, and wasn't much good at dancing either, was just watching, so he lent his sword very willingly to the old man.

‘Then the old man began to dance, and to show them how much better the world had been when he was young—which is what the old men believe—he danced higher than anyone else. In a little while the others stopped to watch him, for no one had ever leapt so high or waved his sword so beautifully. And the drummers banged their drums still louder, and the old man danced higher and higher, and waved his sword like falling stars, and shook it in great silver patterns round his head. Then the drums all banged together, and the old man leapt right up to the roof of the sky, and the drummers were so excited they all followed him, and there, on the roof of the sky, they're still beating their drums, for when you hear thunder it's their drums you hear, and the lightning is the shaking of the old man's sword as he dances all over the roof of the sky. You can see it for yourselves, and seeing is believing.'

‘But what happened to the mole?' asked one of the children.

‘The mole began to build a mountain to climb into the sky and get his sword back,' said the storyteller, ‘and he's still trying to build one high enough. You can see that for yourselves in the field over there, and seeing is believing.'

Now some of the children were dissatisfied with the story and said they did not believe it, but Perdis, who had listened to it all from the window, was delighted, and called to Graine, the sensible woman who had stayed with her, to ask her if she knew the storyteller's name.

Graine looked down and said in a disagreeable voice, ‘Mother of God! don't tell me you've been listening to his filthy jesting?'

‘Why, who is he?' asked Perdis.

‘Malis,' said Graine.

‘But he has just told a beautiful story about an old man who jumped into the sky,' said Perdis.

‘You probably misunderstood him,' answered Graine. ‘Malis's stories are all about old men jumping into other people's beds.'

Perdis, however, knew that she had not been mistaken, and that the story was both innocent and charming. It was so different from all she had been led to expect of Malis that she was puzzled, and during the next hour or two thought a great deal about him, with the natural result that she determined to see him at least once again, although he was ugly, and to hear at the very least one more of his stories, despite the evil account of them given to her by Graine.

After supper she inquired of a chambermaid whether Malis was still at the inn, and was told that he was even then telling stories in the kitchen to a company of rustics.

‘There's a small gallery opening on the darkest wall of the kitchen, from which you can hear and see all that's going on without yourself being visible,' suggested the chambermaid, who had recognised Perdis's interest in the storyteller, and thought it not unreasonable.

She led the Queen to the gallery and left her there. It was hot, and a smell of late cooking rose to assail the Queen's nostrils. But the offence to her nose was forgotten in the entertainment that came to her eyes from the spectacle, smoky and blurred under a few dim candles, of some eighteen or twenty men and women, rough creatures most of them, red-faced and poorly clad, eagerly attentive to the story that Malis was telling; and now disturbing the shadows as violently they bent back on their stools, and clapped their heavy hands on their thick resounding thighs, and tossed back their heads, laughing so hugely at some happy impropriety in the narration.

For Perdis speedily found that this was a very different tale from that which he had told the children. It was indeed one of the adventures
of Brother Bonamy, whose creed in love was that, as God preferred plain women, a humble friar must be content with pretty ones. And while Perdis listened to the story she grew angry with Malis, and a little angry with herself, because sometimes she felt moved to laugh with the ignorant persons below, and like them she was curiously fascinated by the wicked slant of the storyteller's eyebrows, and even by the bright knob of his irregular long nose when the candle-light gleaming on it made it shine like a cherry.

The story that Malis told had to do with the misadventures of a greedy lawyer, lured from his house at midnight by the falsehood of Brother Bonamy to visit an ugly rich old woman who, the friar said, was dying and wanted to make her will before she departed. But the old woman, so far from dying, was reading a young poet's praise of love and all its hot delight, and thinking that she herself was not yet too old to have a sweetheart. And while the lawyer was in this embarrassing situation—for the old woman soon made known her will, though it was not that will which the lawyer had contemplated—Brother Bonamy was consoling the lawyer's pretty young wife for her husband's absence.

Having discovered the nature of his consolation, Perdis thought it time to go, and returning to her room she remembered that she was Queen of Jocynthia, and had not only power over her subjects but a duty to reprove and punish them for any naughtiness in which they were discovered. So she called to her the host of the inn and ordered him to bring Malis to her room.

When the storyteller came, Perdis was sitting in a chair with a high straight back, and the yellow light of a lamp fell upon her yellow hair, and her grave sweet face, and the white hands folded in her lap.

‘I am Queen Perdis,' she said, ‘and I have just listened with great displeasure to your story of Brother Bonamy and the lawyer's wife.'

Malis fell on his knees, and his red face took on a foolish expression of anxiety and bewilderment.

‘I also heard your tale of how thunder and lightning came into the sky,' said the Queen, ‘and that I thought was interesting and even beautiful. But this other was both dull and disgusting. Why do you tell such a story, who have the gift to make lovely ones?'

‘Poor men must laugh,' said Malis.

‘Not at immorality,' said the Queen.

In ordinary circumstances Malis would have had much to say about such a prohibition and about the several domains of the storyteller which it threatened. But now he was silent, for he had never seen anyone so beautiful as Perdis, and the sight of much beauty often
confused him. Her forehead was smooth and white, and her yellow hair tangled deliciously of its own accord, as though a tiny zephyr, caught by sweet perfume, had made there its nest and played too happily in those fair tresses ever to leave them. Her eyes were the blue of Jocynthia's April sky, and her nose was straight, her chin round as an egg. But her mouth made Malis despair, for his trade was words, and no words could ever describe its tender hue of rose petals before they have taken on the summer richness of roses, and the fine moulding of her lips, so firm in appearance but in reality so deliciously soft. Those lines, the tiny young-rose pouting of her lips, would perish at a touch, and give instead of beauty a wild and fleeting pleasure, sweet drunkenness to her lover's heart and solace afterwards as sweet. To think of her lips was madness, and Malis felt his heart grow weak and dizziness come around his head. But Perdis, waiting for an answer and receiving none, became stern, and when she tried to look stern the corners of her lips turned a little down, and her mouth seemed like a child's mouth who is puzzled and hurt by what she does not understand. Malis closed his eyes, because he did not dare look longer at the Queen's lips.