The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1902-02-27
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X RALPH HARDELOTS =
II MEDIATION 4
n VI
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BY WILLIAM MIMIC

The canon's eyes, suffused with alcoholic
glitter, and turbid with dyspepsia,
stood out of his head like boiled goose
berries when he was excited. Docket
never looked excited and his large,
bluish-gray eyes were his most remark
able feature. A large, full, stolid eye
was Will Docket's, set in clear-com-
lexioned, broad face. If stranger had
caught that eye staring at him he would
have interpreted the stare as meaning
nothing but placid curiosity, and would
have paid no further attention to it.
If he had paid attention, it would have
been all the same; Docket would have
continued to stare immovably, like a
Illuminating OK, and his steady gaze
would have betrayed no secret. There
seemed to be no intelligence behind
that inexpensive look; it seemed to in
dictate only the peaceful, healthful
operation of organic processes in the
system of Docket, consequent upon the
introduction of large quantities of ale.
And yet Docket was what would be de-
scribed in modern days as very wide
awake young man. Chowley knew we'll,
and often remarked that, when Docket
emptied his face of all expression, and
looked absorbed in vegetable functions,
he was slowly cogitating some plan
which, like all Dockett's plans, had
his own private advantage in view.
Before Reginald came in, the eye
Docket had two, but the gaze was SO
concentrated and steady that you were
conscious of only one--had been di-
rected in this apparently unmeaning,
but really very significant manner, on
two strangers to Sudbury, who occupied
a settle on the opposite side of the
room. 1t was near the time of the
great autumn fair at Stourbridge, near
Cambridge, and the strangers, who had
arrived at White Hart that morning,
were understood to be found for the
famous medieval market. They had
told the inquisitive host that they had
travelled from Harwich, choosing the
road by Sudbury as the safest in those
troubled times. They seemed Flemish
in their dress.
They sat with Chowley and Docket
on the higher level of the floor at one
end of the long room, fireplace-freless
at this season-between the two couples,
small windows in the end on each side
of the fireplace throwing marked traces
of light into the room. Their men sat
with other undistinguished customers
on the lower level of the body of the
room, lighted by long, shallow win
dow on the courtyard side. The furni-
ture was simple-two tables, each with
a settle on the higher level, and long
table flanked by settles running length
wise down the principal floor. The
main room in medieval hostelry had
to serve three purposes; it had to be
dormitory on occasion, as well as tap
room and a salle-a-manger. We find
a difficulty now in cOnceiving how fur
niture could be constructed to serve as
bed, or seat, or table, with equal readi-
ness, as occasion demanded. But the
ingenuity of our forefathers was equal
to the occasion. The settles had long
and straight backs; you had only to lay
one on its back with the top end to
the wall, and you had an excellent
framework for a bed The tables,
which, when used as tables, were
mounted on trestles, had only to be in
verted and laid on the floor, when their
under side was seen to be box into
which rushes or bracken or sacks or
mattresses might be laid to form as soft
and comfortable a couch as the most
luxurious sleeper could desire. There
might be room for improvement in the
way of cleanliness and ventilation, but
the arrangement had all the beauty of
economy and simplicity.
We are not concerned, however, with
the furniture of the middle ages, but
with the ways and fortunes of one or
two medieval individuals. When,
then, Reginald Hardelot was shown
into the public room and marshaled to
place on the higher level, Docket had
been regarding the notwithstanding
strangers with meditative, but appar-
emily meaningless placidity, while
Chowley, having finished game at
"tables," or draughts, with his friend
as they came in, had been discoursing
to the same strangers in continuous
flow, with the whole lower floor for an
audience. His text had been the out
break against the tax-farmer, from
which he had enlarged on the unset
thing tendencies of the time, denounc-
ing, in particular, the monstrous here
sizes, political and religious, of Wycliffe,
and the dangerous opening given to
raw, crude, presumptuous, self-conceit-
ed dolts by his new institution of poor
priests. .