The Horseman on the Roof Read Free

timid.”
    â€œKnow what I’d do in your place?” said the man. “I’d unstrap my saddlebag and put it inside on a couple of chairs.”
    â€œThere are no robbers here,” said Angelo.
    â€œWhat about me?” said the man. “Opportunity puts fat on the pig.”
    â€œTrust me to keep your bacon lean,” said Angelo dryly.
    â€œYou’re a joker too,” said the man. “I don’t mind merchants of sudden death. Come and have a glass of piquette, ” and he gave Angelo a hearty slap on the shoulder.
    The promised piquette was a light red wine, but quite good. “The boys in skirts at the monastery trot their half mile through the woods to sip a half pint of this,” said the man.
    â€œI thought,” said Angelo innocently, “they wouldn’t drink anything but the water from their beautiful fountain by the roadside under the trees. Besides, are they permitted to come here and drink wine?”
    â€œIf you look at it that way,” said the man, “nothing’s permitted. Is an ex-noncom of the 27th Light Infantry permitted to set up as an innkeeper on a road that only foxes use? Is that written in the Rights of Man? These people in skirts are good fellows. They ring their bells every now and then, and they have a parade with banners and trumpets on Rogation days, but their real work is farming. I can tell you they don’t lie down on the job. And what farmer ever spits on red wine? Besides, their own commander said: ‘Drink, this is My Blood.’ All I did was to send away my niece. She worried them. Because of her skirts, I guess. It’s annoying, when you wear them through conviction, to see someone who wears them by necessity. Now I’m all alone in this hole; what does it matter if they wet their whistles from time to time? Everybody’s happy; isn’t that the main thing? Anyway,” he continued, “they do it like gentlemen. They don’t come by the road. They make a big detour through the woods (which means something when you’re thirsty), by way of penance and all that, which is their specialty, not mine. And they come in by the back—I always leave the stable door open—and that’s a mortification too for anyone with a proud heart. All the same, who’d have told me that one day I’d be a bartender?”
    Angelo enjoyed some deep reflection. He could see how, living alone in these silent woods, one couldn’t help needing company and talking to the firstcomer. “With my love for the people,” he told himself, “I’m like this noncom by his road where only foxes pass. Love is absurd. ‘Devil take you!’ people will say. ‘Truth lies in the bare shoulders of that woman who gave you coffee. They were beautiful, and their dimples smiled charmingly in spite of sunburn. What more do you want? Did you turn up your nose just now at the fountain, or even at the cool shade of that beech and those poplars? They too sparkled very charmingly.’ But with the beech, the poplar, and the fountain one can be an egoist. Who will teach me to be an egoist? There’s no denying that with his red waistcoat over his bare skin this man is perfectly at peace and he can discuss what he wants to with the firstcomer.” Angelo had been much affected by the silence of the woods.
    â€œI don’t have a dining-room,” the peaceful man said to him at last, “and usually I take my grub on that marble table over there. I think it’d be silly for us to feed at two separate tables. Especially as I’d have to be getting up all the time to serve you. Would you be put out if I laid the same table for us both? My manners are all right if you agree, but I’m alone, and…” (This word decided Angelo.) In the end he managed to get paid for what he drank of his own wine.
    His manners were indeed all right: he had learned in camp to eat without dirtying his