NOT far on this road he came upon a little group. Two men in sober suits
stood leaning lazily on each side of a horse, talking to one another.
The rider, in a silk doublet and bright green jerkin and hose, both of
English cloth, glossy as a mole, lay flat on his stomach in the
afternoon sun, and looked an enormous lizard. His velvet cloak (flaming
yellow) was carefully spread over the horse's loins.
"Is aught amiss?" inquired Gerard.
"Not that I wot of," replied one of the servants.
"But your master, he lies like a corpse. Are ye not ashamed to let him
grovel on the ground?"
"Go to, the bare ground is the best cure for his disorder. If you get
sober in bed it gives you a headache; but you leap up from the hard
ground like a lark in spring; eh, Ulric?"
"He speaks sooth, young man," said Ulric, warmly.
"What, is the gentleman drunk?"
The servants burst into a hoarse laugh at the simplicity of Gerard's
question. But suddenly Ulric stopped, and eyeing him all over, said very
gravely, "Who are you, and where born, that know not the count is ever
drunk at this hour?" and Gerard found himself a suspected character.
"I am a stranger," said he, "but a true man, and one that loves
knowledge: therefore ask I questions, and not for love of prying."
"If you be a true man," said Ulric, shrewdly, "then give us trinkgeld
for the knowledge we have given you."
Gerard looked blank. But putting a good face on it, said, "Trinkgeld you
shall have, such as my lean purse can spare, an if you will tell me why
ye have ta'en his cloak from the man, and laid it on the beast."
Under the inspiring influence of coming trinkgeld two solutions were
instantly offered Gerard at once: the one was, that, should the count
come to himself (which, being a seasoned toper, he was apt to do all in
a minute), and find his horse standing sweating in the cold, while a
cloak lay idle at hand, he would fall to cursing, and peradventure to
laying on; the other, more pretentious, was, that a horse is a poor
milksop, which drinking nothing but water, has to be cockered up and
warmed outside; but a master, being a creature ever filled with good
beer, has a store of inward heat that warms him to the skin, and renders
a cloak a mere shred of idle vanity.
Each of the speakers fell in love with his theory, and to tell the
truth, both had taken a hair or two of the dog that had bitten their
master to the brain: so their voices presently rose so high that the
green sot began to growl instead of snoring; in their heat they did not
notice this.
Ere long the argument took a turn that sooner or later was pretty sure
to enliven a discussion in that age. Hans, holding the bridle with his
right hand, gave Ulric a sound cuff with his left; Ulric returned it
with interest, his right hand being free, and at it they went ding dong
over the horse's mane, pommelling one another, and jagging the poor
beast, till he ran backward and trode with iron heel upon a promontory
of the green lord; he, like the toad stung by Ithuriel's spear, started
up howling, with one hand clapped to the smart and the other tugging at
his hilt. The servants, amazed with terror, let the horse go; he
galloped off whinnying, the men in pursuit of him crying out with fear,
and the green noble after them volleying curses, his naked sword in his
hand and his body rebounding from hedge to hedge in his headlong but
zigzag career down the narrow lane.
"In which hurtling" Gerard turned his back on them all, and went calmly
south, glad to have saved the four tin farthings he had got ready for
trinkgeld, but far too heavy hearted even to smile at their drunken
extravagance.
* * * * *
The sun was nearly setting, and Gerard, who had now for some time been
hoping in vain to find an inn by the way, was very ill at ease. To make
matters worse, black clouds gathered over the sky.
Gerard quickened his pace almost to a run.
It was in vain: down came the rain in torrents, drenched the bewildered
traveller, and seemed to extinguish the very sun; for his rays already
fading could not cope with this new assailant. Gerard trudged on, dark,
and wet and in an unknown region. "Fool! to leave Margaret," said he.
Presently the darkness thickened.
He was entering a great wood. Huge branches shot across the narrow road,
and the benighted stranger groped his way in what seemed an interminable
and inky cave with a rugged floor, on which he stumbled and stumbled as
he went.
On, and on, and on, with shivering limbs, and empty stomach, and
fainting heart, till the wolves rose from their lairs and bayed all
round the wood.
His hair bristled; but he grasped his cudgel, and prepared to sell his
life dear.
There was no wind; and his excited ear heard light feet patter at times
over the newly fallen leaves, and low branches rustled with creatures
gliding swiftly past them.
Presently in the sea of ink there was a great fiery star close to the
ground. He hailed it as he would his patron saint. "CANDLE! a CANDLE!"
he shouted, and tried to run; but the dark and rugged way soon stopped
that. The light was more distant than he had thought; but at last in the
very heart of the forest he found a house with lighted candles and loud
voices inside it. He looked up to see if there was a sign-board. There
was none. "Not an inn, after all," said he, sadly. "No matter; what
Christian would turn a dog out into the wood to-night?" and with this he
made for the door that led to the voices. He opened it slowly, and put
his head in timidly. He drew it out abruptly, as if slapped in the face,
and recoiled into the rain and darkness.
He had peeped into a large but low room, the middle of which was filled
by a huge round stove or clay oven that reached to the ceiling; round
this wet clothes were drying, some on lines, and some more compendiously
on rustics: these latter habiliments, impregnated with the wet of the
day, but the dirt of a life, and lined with what another foot traveller
in these parts calls "rammish clowns," evolved rank vapours and compound
odours inexpressible, in steaming clouds.
In one corner was a travelling family, a large one: thence flowed into
the common stock the peculiar sickly smell of neglected brats. Garlic
filled up the interstices of the air. And all this with closed window,
and intense heat of the central furnace, and the breath of at least
forty persons.
They had just supped.
Now Gerard, like most artists, had sensitive organs, and the potent
effluvia struck dismay into him. But the rain lashed him outside, and
the light and the fire tempted him in.
He could not force his way all at once through the palpable perfumes;
but he returned to the light again and again like the singed moth. At
last he discovered that the various smells did not entirely mix, no
fiend being there to stir them round. Odour of family predominated in
two corners, stewed rustic reigned supreme in the centre, and garlic in
the noisy group by the window. He found too, by hasty analysis, that of
these the garlic described the smallest aërial orbit, and the scent of
reeking rustic darted farthest; a flavour, as if ancient goats or the
fathers of all foxes, had been drawn through a river, and were here
dried by Nebuchadnezzar.
So Gerard crept into a corner close to the door. But though the solidity
of the main fetors isolated them somewhat, the heat and reeking vapours
circulated and made the walls drip: and the home-nurtured novice found
something like a cold snake wind about his legs, and his head turn to a
great lump of lead; and next he felt like choking, sweetly slumbering,
and dying, all in one.
He was within an ace of swooning, but recovered to a deep sense of
disgust and discouragement, and settled to go back to Holland at peep of
day: this resolution formed, he plucked up a little heart, and, being
faint with hunger, asked one of the men of garlic whether this was not
an inn after all?
"Whence come you who know not 'The Star of the Forest?'" was the reply.
"I am a stranger; and in my country inns have aye a sign."
"Droll country yours! What need of a sign to a public-house, a place
that every soul knows?"
Gerard was too tired and faint for the labour of argument: so he turned
the conversation, and asked where he could find the landlord.
At this fresh display of ignorance the native's contempt rose too high
for words; he pointed to a middle-aged woman seated on the other side of
the oven, and, turning to his mates, let them know what an outlandish
animal was in the room. Thereat the loud voices stopped one by one, as
the information penetrated the mass, and each eye turned as on a pivot,
following Gerard, and his every movement, silently and zoologically.
The landlady sat on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between
two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was
taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so
filling bundle two; littering the floor ankle deep, and contributing to
the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a
distinguished part in a sweet room, but went for nothing here. Gerard
asked her if he could have something to eat.
She opened her eyes with astonishment. "Supper is over this hour and
more."
"But I had none of it, good dame."
"Is that my fault? You are welcome to your share for me."
"But I was benighted, and a stranger, and belated sore against my will."
"What have I to do with that? All the world knows 'the Star of the
Forest' sups from six till eight. Come before six, ye sup well; come
before eight, ye sup as pleases Heaven; come after eight, ye get a clean
bed, and a stirrup cup, or a horn of kine's milk at the dawning."
Gerard looked blank. "May I go to bed then, dame?" said he sulkily, "for
it is ill sitting up wet and fasting, and the byword saith 'he sups who
sleeps.'"
"The beds are not come yet," replied the landlady: "you will sleep when
the rest do. Inns are not built for _one_."
It was Gerard's turn to be astonished. "The beds were not come: what in
Heaven's name did she mean?" But he was afraid to ask, for every word he
had spoken hitherto had amazed the assembly; and zoological eyes were
upon him--he felt them. He leaned against the wall and sighed audibly.
At this fresh zoological trait a titter went round the watchful company.
"So this is Germany," thought Gerard, "and Germany is a great country by
Holland. Small nations for me."
He consoled himself by reflecting it was to be his last, as well as his
first, night in the land. His reverie was interrupted by an elbow driven
into his ribs. He turned sharp on his assailant; who pointed across the
room. Gerard looked, and a woman in the corner was beckoning him. He
went towards her gingerly, being surprised and irresolute, so that to a
spectator her beckoning finger seemed to be pulling him across the floor
with a gut line. When he had got up to her, "hold the child," said she
in a fine hearty voice and in a moment she plumped the bairn into
Gerard's arms.
He stood transfixed, jelly of lead in his hands, and sudden horror in
his elongated countenance.
At this ruefully expressive face the lynx-eyed conclave laughed loud and
long.
"Never heed them," said the woman cheerfully: "they know no better; how
should they, bred an' born in a wood?" She was rummaging among her
clothes with the two penetrating hands, one of which Gerard had set
free. Presently she fished out a small tin plate and a dried pudding,
and resuming her child with one arm, held them forth to Gerard with the
other, keeping a thumb on the pudding to prevent it from slipping off.
"Put it in the stove," said she, "you are too young to lie down
fasting."
Gerard thanked her warmly: but on his way to the stove his eye fell on
the landlady. "_May_ I dame?" said he beseechingly.
"Why not?" said she.
The question was evidently another surprise, though less startling than
its predecessors.
Coming to the stove, Gerard found the oven door obstructed by "the
rammish clowns." They did not budge. He hesitated a moment: the landlady
saw, calmly put down her work, and coming up pulled a hircine man or two
hither, and pushed a hircine man or two thither, with the impassive
countenance of a housewife moving her furniture. "Turn about is fair
play," she said. "Ye have been dry this ten minutes and better."
Her experienced eye was not deceived; Gorgonii had done stewing, and
begun baking. Debarred the stove they trundled home all but one, who
stood like a table where the landlady had moved him to like a table, and
Gerard baked his pudding, and, getting to the stove, burst into steam.
The door opened, and in flew a bundle of straw.
It was hurled by a hind with a pitchfork; another and another came
flying after it till the room was like a clean farm yard. These were
then dispersed round the stove in layers like the seats in an arena, and
in a moment the company was all on its back.
The beds had come.
Gerard took out his pudding and found it delicious. While he was
relishing it, the woman who had given it him, and who was now abed,
beckoned him again. He went to her bundle side. "She is waiting for
you," whispered the woman. Gerard returned to the stove, and gobbled the
rest of his sausage, casting uneasy glances at the landlady seated
silent as fate amid the prostrate multitude. The food bolted, he went to
her and said, "Thank you kindly, dame, for waiting for me."
"You are welcome," said she calmly, making neither much nor little of
the favour; and with that began to gather up the feathers; but Gerard
stopped her. "Nay, that is my task;" and he went down on his knees and
collected them with ardour. She watched him demurely.
"I wot not whence ye come," said she with a relic of distrust; adding
more cordially, "but ye have been well brought up; y' have had a good
mother, I'll go bail."
At the door she committed the whole company to Heaven in a formula, and
disappeared. Gerard to his straw in the very corner, for the guests lay
round the sacred stove by seniority, _i. e._ priority of arrival.
This punishment was a boon to Gerard, for thus he lay on the shore of
odour and stifling heat, instead of in mid ocean.
He was just dropping off, when he was awaked by a noise, and lo! there
was the hind remorselessly shaking and waking guest after guest to ask
him whether it was he who had picked up the mistress's feathers.
"It was I," cried Gerard.
"Oh, it was you was it?" said the other, and came striding rapidly over
the intermediate sleepers. "She bade me say, 'One good turn deserves
another,' and so here's your night-cap," and he thrust a great oaken mug
under Gerard's nose.
"I thank her and bless her, here goes--ugh!" and his gratitude ended in
a wry face, for the beer was muddy, and had a strange medicinal twang
new to the Hollander.
"Trinke aus!" shouted the hind reproachfully.
"Enow is as good as a feast," said the youth, Jesuitically.
The hind cast a look of pity on this stranger who left liquor in his
mug. "Ich brings euch," said he and drained it to the bottom.
And now Gerard turned his face to the wall and pulled up two handfuls of
the nice clean straw, and bored in them with his finger, and so made a
scabbard, and sheathed his nose in it. And soon they were all asleep:
men, maids, wives, and children, all lying higgledy-piggledy, and
snoring in a dozen keys like an orchestra slowly tuning; and Gerard's
body lay on straw in Germany, and his spirit was away to Sevenbergen.
When he woke in the morning he found nearly all his fellow-passengers
gone. One or two were waiting for dinner, nine o'clock: it was now six.
He paid the landlady her demand, two pfenning, or about an English
halfpenny and he of the pitchfork demanded trinkgeld, and getting a
trifle more than usual, and seeing Gerard eye a foaming milk-pail he had
just brought from the cow, hoisted it up bodily to his lips. "Drink your
fill, man," said he, and on Gerard offering to pay for the delicious
draught, told him in broad patois, that a man might swallow a skinful of
milk, or a breakfast of air, without putting hand to pouch. At the door
Gerard found his benefactress of last night, and a huge-chested artisan,
her husband.
Gerard thanked her, and in the spirit of the age offered her a creutzer
for her pudding.
But she repulsed his hand quietly. "For what do you take me?" said she,
colouring faintly; "we are travellers and strangers the same as you, and
bound to feel for those in like plight."
Then Gerard blushed in his turn and stammered excuses.
The hulking husband grinned superior to them both.
"Give the vixen a kiss for her pudding, and cry quits," said he with an
air impartial, judge-like and Jove-like.
Gerard obeyed the loftly behest, and kissed the wife's cheek. "A
blessing go with you both, good people," said he.
"And God speed you, young man!" replied the honest couple: and with that
they parted; and never met again in this world.
The sun had just risen: the rain-drops on the leaves glittered like
diamonds. The air was fresh and bracing, and Gerard steered south, and
did not even remember his resolve of over night.
Eight leagues he walked that day, and in the afternoon came upon a huge
building with an enormous arched gateway and a postern by its side.
"A monastery!" cried he joyfully; "I go no further lest I fare worse."
He applied at the postern, and, on stating whence he came and whither
bound, was instantly admitted and directed to the guest chamber, a large
and lofty room, where travellers were fed and lodged gratis by the
charity of the monastic orders. Soon the bell tinkled for vespers, and
Gerard entered the church of the convent and from his place heard a
service sung so exquisitely it seemed the choir of heaven. But one thing
was wanting, Margaret was not there to hear it with him, and this made
him sigh bitterly amid rapture. At supper, plain but wholesome and
abundant food, and good beer, brewed in the convent, were set before him
and his fellows, and at an early hour they were ushered into a large
dormitory, and, the number being moderate, had each a truckle bed, and
for covering sheepskins dressed with the fleece on: but previously to
this a monk, struck by his youth and beauty, questioned him, and soon
drew out his projects and his heart. When he was found to be convent
bred and going alone to Rome, he became a personage, and in the morning
they showed him over the convent and made him stay and dine in the
refectory. They also pricked him a route on a slip of parchment, and the
prior gave him a silver guilden to help him on the road, and advised him
to join the first honest company he should fall in with, "and not face
alone the manifold perils of the way."
"Perils?" said Gerard to himself.
That evening he came to a small straggling town where was one inn. It
had no sign; but being now better versed in the customs of the country
he detected it at once by the coats of arms on its walls. These
belonged to the distinguished visitors who had slept in it at different
epochs since its foundation, and left these customary tokens of their
patronage. At present it looked more like a mausoleum than a hotel.
Nothing moved nor sounded either in it, or about it. Gerard hammered on
the great oak door: no answer. He hallooed: no reply. After a while he
hallooed louder, and at last a little round window or rather hole in the
wall, opened, a man's head protruded cautiously, like a tortoise's from
its shell, and eyed Gerard stolidly, but never uttered a syllable.
"Is this an inn?" asked Gerard with a covert sneer.
The head seemed to fall into a brown study; eventually it nodded, but
lazily.
"Can I have entertainment here?"
Again the head pondered and ended by nodding, but sullenly, and seemed a
skull overburdened with catch-penny interrogatories.
"How am I to get within, an't please you?"
At this the head popped in, as if the last question had shot it; and a
hand popped out, pointed round the corner of the building, and slammed
the window.
Gerard followed the indication, and after some research discovered that
the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small, low door on its
flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and
customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together,
_i. e._ when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy
ruffians.
Gerard, having penetrated the outer fort, soon found his way to the
stove (as the public room was called from the principal article in it),
and sat down near the oven, in which were only a few live embers that
diffused a mild and grateful heat.
After waiting patiently a long time, he asked a grim old fellow with a
long white beard, who stalked solemnly in, and turned the hour-glass and
then was stalking out--when supper would be. The grisly Ganymede counted
the guests on his fingers--"When I see thrice as many here as now."
Gerard groaned.
The grisly tyrant resented the rebellious sound. "Inns are not built for
one," said he; "if you can't wait for the rest, look out for another
lodging."
Gerard sighed.
At this the greybeard frowned.
After a while company trickled steadily in, till full eighty persons of
various conditions were congregated, and to our novice the place became
a chamber of horrors; for here the mothers got together and compared
ringworms, and the men scraped the mud off their shoes with their
knives, and left it on the floor, and combed their long hair out,
inmates included, and made their toilet, consisting generally of a dry
rub. Water, however, was brought in ewers. Gerard pounced on one of
these, but at sight of the liquid contents lost his temper and said to
the waiter, "Wash you first your water, and then a man may wash his
hands withal."
"An it likes you not, seek another inn!"
Gerard said nothing, but went quietly and courteously besought an old
traveller to tell him how far it was to the next inn.
"About four leagues."
Then Gerard appreciated the grim pleasantry of th' unbending sire.
That worthy now returned with an armful of wood, and, counting the
travellers, put on a log for every six, by which act of raw justice the
hotter the room the more heat he added. Poor Gerard noticed this little
flaw in the ancient man's logic, but carefully suppressed every symptom
of intelligence, lest his feet should have to carry his brains four
leagues farther that night.
When perspiration and suffocation were far advanced, they brought in the
table-cloths; but oh, so brown, so dirty, and so coarse: they seemed
like sacks that had been worn out in agriculture and come down to this,
or like shreds from the mainsail of some worn-out ship. The Hollander,
who had never seen such linen even in nightmare, uttered a faint cry.
"What is to do?" inquired a traveller. Gerard pointed ruefully to the
dirty sackcloth. The other looked at it with lack-lustre eye, and
comprehended nought.
A Burgundian soldier with his arbalest at his back came peeping over
Gerard's shoulder, and, seeing what was amiss, laughed so loud that the
room rang again, then slapped him on the back and cried, "Courage! le
diable est mort."
Gerard stared: he doubted alike the good tidings and their relevancy:
but the tones were so hearty and the arbalestrier's face,
notwithstanding a formidable beard, was so gay and genial, that he
smiled, and after a pause said drily, "Il a bien fait: avec l'eau et
linge du pays on allait le noircir à ne se reconnaître plus."
"Tiens, tiens!" cried the soldier, "v'là qui parle le Français, peu s'en
faut," and he seated himself by Gerard, and in a moment was talking
volubly of war, women, and pillage, interlarding his discourse with
curious oaths, at which Gerard drew away from him more or less.
Presently in came the grisly servant, and counted them all on his
fingers superciliously, like Abraham telling sheep, then went out again
and returned with a deal trencher and deal spoon to each.
Then there was an interval. Then he brought them a long mug apiece made
of glass, and frowned. By and bye he stalked gloomily in with a hunch of
bread apiece, and exited with an injured air. Expectation thus raised,
the guests sat for nearly an hour balancing the wooden spoons, and with
their own knives whittling the bread. Eventually when hope was extinct,
patience worn out, and hunger exhausted, a huge vessel was brought in
with pomp, the lid was removed, a cloud of steam rolled forth, and
behold some thin broth with square pieces of bread floating. This,
though not agreeable to the mind, served to distend the body. Slices of
Strasbourg ham followed, and pieces of salt fish, both so highly salted
that Gerard could hardly swallow a mouthful. Then came a kind of gruel,
and, when the repast had lasted an hour and more some hashed meat highly
peppered: and the French and Dutch being now full to the brim with the
above dainties, and the draughts of beer the salt and spiced meats had
provoked, in came roasted kids, most excellent, and carp and trout fresh
from the stream. Gerard made an effort and looked angrily at them, but
"could no more" as the poets say. The Burgundian swore by the liver and
pike-staff of the good centurion, the natives had outwitted him. Then
turning to Gerard, he said, "Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort," as
loudly as before, but not with the same tone of conviction. The canny
natives had kept an internal corner for contingencies, and polished the
kids' very bones.
The feast ended with a dish of raw animalcula in a wicker cage. A cheese
had been surrounded with little twigs and strings; then a hole made in
it and a little sour wine poured in. This speedily bred a small but
numerous vermin. When the cheese was so rotten with them that only the
twigs and string kept it from tumbling to pieces and walking off
quadrivious, it came to table. By a malicious caprice of fate cage and
menagerie were put down right under the Dutchman's organ of
self-torture. He recoiled with a loud ejaculation, and hung to the bench
by the calves of his legs.
"What is the matter?" said a traveller disdainfully. "Does the good
cheese scare ye? Then put it hither, in the name of all the saints!"
"Cheese!" cried Gerard, "I see none. These nauseous reptiles have made
away with every bit of it."
"Well," replied another, "It is not gone far. By eating of the mites we
eat the cheese to boot."
"Nay, not so," said Gerard. "These reptiles are made like us, and digest
their food and turn it to foul flesh even as we do ours to sweet: as
well might you think to chew grass by eating of grass-fed beeves, as to
eat cheese by swallowing these uncleanly insects."
Gerard raised his voice in uttering this, and the company received the
paradox in dead silence, and with a distrustful air, like any other
stranger, during which the Burgundian, who understood German but
imperfectly, made Gerard Gallicise the discussion. He patted his
interpreter on the back. "C'est bien, mon gars: plus fin que toi n'est
pas bête," and administered his formula of encouragement; and Gerard
edged away from him; for next to ugly sights and ill odours the poor
wretch disliked profaneness.
Meantime, though shaken in argument, the raw reptiles were duly eaten
and relished by the company, and served to provoke thirst, a principal
aim of all the solids in that part of Germany. So now the company drank
"garausses" all around, and their tongues were unloosed, and oh the
Babel! But above the fierce clamour rose at intervals like some hero's
war cry in battle, the trumpet-like voice of the Burgundian soldier
shouting lustily "Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!"
Entered grisly Ganymede holding in his hand a wooden dish with circles
and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table and
stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his
boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each
threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk
next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was to pay than the
others.
"What mean you?" said Ganymede roughly. "Whose fault is it you have not
drunken? Are all to suffer because one chooses to be a milksop? You will
pay no more than the rest and no less."
Gerard was abashed.
"Courage, petit, le diable est mort," hiccoughed the soldier, and flung
Ganymede a coin.
"You are as bad as he is," said the old man peevishly, "you are paying
too much;" and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out
of the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man,
whom Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago, awoke from a brown
study, in which he had been ever since, and came to him and said,
"_Yes_: but the honey is none the worse for passing through the bees'
bellies."
Gerard stared. The answer had been so long on the road he hadn't an idea
what it was an answer to. Seeing him dumbfoundered, the other concluded
him confuted, and withdrew calmed.
The bedrooms were upstairs dungeons with not a scrap of furniture except
the bed, and a male servant settled inexorably who should sleep with
whom. Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself here:
custom forbade it sternly. You might as well have asked to monopolize a
see-saw. They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black beard. He was
an honest fellow enough; but not perfect; he would _not_ go to bed, and
_would_ sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by force, and
at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing and crying at
the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest degree pathetic
or humorous, but only dead trivial. At last Gerard put his fingers in
his ears, and lying down in his clothes for the sheets were too dirty
for him to undress, contrived to sleep. But in an hour or two he awoke
cold, and found that his drunken companion had got all the feather bed;
so mighty is instinct. They lay between two beds; the lower one hard and
made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers light as down.
Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held it fast
mechanically. Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise; but instinct
was too many for him. On this he got out of bed, and, kneeling down on
his bed-fellow's unguarded side easily whipped the prize away and rolled
with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and curled the
rest round his shoulders. Before he slept he often heard something
grumbling and growling above him, which was some little satisfaction.
Thus Instinct was outwitted, and victorious Reason lay chuckling on
feathers, and not quite choked with dust.
At peep of day Gerard rose, flung the feather bed upon his snoring
companion, and went in search of milk and air.
A cheerful voice hailed him in French: "What ho! you are up with the
sun, comrade."
"He rises betimes that lies in a dog's lair," answered Gerard, crossly.
"Courage, l'ami! le diable est mort," was the instant reply. The soldier
then told him his name was Denys, and he was passing from Flushing in
Zealand to the duke's French dominions; a change the more agreeable to
him, as he should revisit his native place, and a host of pretty girls
who had wept at his departure, and should hear French spoken again. "And
who are you, and whither bound?"
"My name is Gerard, and I am going to Rome," said the more reserved
Hollander, and in a way that invited no further confidences.
"All the better; we will go together as far as Burgundy."
"That is not my road."
"All roads take to Rome."
"Ay, but the shortest road thither is my way."
"Well, then, it is I who must go out of my way a step for the sake of
good company, for thy face likes me, and thou speakest French, or
nearly."
"There go two words to that bargain," said Gerard, coldly. "I steer by
proverbs too. They do put old heads on young men's shoulders. 'Bon loup
mauvais compagnon, dit le brebis:' and a soldier, they say, is near akin
to a wolf."
"They lie," said Denys: "besides, if he is, 'les loups nese mangent pas
entre eux.'"
"Ay, but, sir soldier, I am not a wolf; and, thou knowest, 'à bien
petite occasion se saisit le loup du mouton.'"
"Let us drop wolves and sheep, being men; my meaning is, that a good
soldier never pillages--a comrade. Come, young man, too much suspicion
becomes not your years. They who travel should learn to read faces;
methinks you might see lealty in mine sith I have seen it in yourn. Is
it yon fat purse at your girdle you fear for?" (Gerard turned pale.)
"Look hither!" and he undid his belt, and poured out of it a double
handful of gold pieces, then returned them to their hiding place. "There
is a hostage for you," said he; "carry you that, and let us be
comrades," and handed him his belt, gold and all.
Gerard stared. "If I am over prudent, you have not enow." But he flushed
and looked pleased at the other's trust in him.
"Bah! I can read faces; and so must you, or you'll never take your four
bones safe to Rome."
"Soldier, you would find me a dull companion, for my heart is very
heavy," said Gerard, yielding.
"I'll cheer you, mon gars."
"I think you would," said Gerard sweetly; "and sore need have I of a
kindly voice in mine ear this day."
"Oh! no soul is sad alongside me. I lift up their poor little hearts
with my consigne: 'Courage, tout le monde, le diable est mort.' Ha! ha!"
"So be it then," said Gerard. "But take back your belt, for I could
never trust by halves. We will go together as far as Rhine, and God go
with us both!"
"Amen!" said Denys, and lifted his cap. "En avant!"
* * * * *
The pair trudged manfully on, and Denys enlivened the weary way. He
chattered about battles and sieges, and things which were new to Gerard;
and he was one of those who _make_ little incidents wherever they go. He
passed nobody without addressing him. "They don't understand it, but it
wakes them up," said he. But, whenever they fell in with a monk or
priest, he pulled a long face, and sought the reverend father's
blessing, and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in
such order as not to produce a single German sentence. He doffed his cap
to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye
discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native
tongue, well adapted to such matters: and, at each carrion crow or
magpie, down came his cross-bow, and he would go a furlong off the road
to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable
neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and
there slipped in and set it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say,
'Alack, here is Beelzebub a hatching of my eggs.'"
"No, you forget, he is dead," objected Gerard.
"So he is, so he is. But she doesn't know that, not having the luck to
be acquainted with me, who carry the good news from city to city,
uplifting men's hearts."
Such was Denys in time of peace.
Our travellers towards nightfall reached a village; it was a very small
one, but contained a place of entertainment. They searched for it, and
found a small house with barn and stables. In the former was the
everlasting stove, and the clothes drying round it on lines, and a
traveller or two sitting morose. Gerard asked for supper. "Supper? We
have no time to cook for travellers; we only provide lodging, good
lodging for man and beast. You can have some beer."
"Madman, who, born in Holland, sought other lands!" snorted Gerard in
Dutch. The landlady started.
"What gibberish is that?" asked she, and crossed herself with looks of
superstitious alarm. "You can buy what you like in the village, and cook
it in our oven; but, prithee, mutter no charms nor sorceries here, good
man; don't ye now, it do make my flesh creep so."
They scoured the village for food, and ended by supping on roasted eggs
and brown bread.
At a very early hour their chambermaid came for them. It was a
rosy-cheeked old fellow with a lanthorn.
They followed him. He led them across a dirty farm-yard, where they had
much ado to pick their steps, and brought them into a cow-house. There,
on each side of every cow, was laid a little clean straw, and a tied
bundle of ditto for a pillow. The old man looked down on this his work
with paternal pride. Not so Gerard. "What, do you set Christian men to
lie among cattle?"
"Well, it is hard upon the poor beasts. They have scarce room to turn."
"Oh! what, it is not hard on us then?"
"Where is the hardship? I have lain among them all my life. Look at me!
I am four score, and never had a headache in all my born days--all along
of lying among the kye. Bless your silly head, kine's breath is ten
times sweeter to drink nor Christians'. You try it!" and he slammed the
bedroom door.
* * * * *
"Denys, where are you?" whined Gerard.
"Here, on her other side."
"What are you doing?"
"I know not. But, as near as I can guess, I think I must be going to
sleep. What are you at?"
"I am saying my prayers."
"Forget me not in them!"
"Is it likely? Denys I shall soon have done: do not go to sleep, I want
to talk."
"Despatch then! for I feel--augh--like--like--floating--in the sky--on a
warm cloud."
"Denys!"
"Augh! eh! hallo! is it time to get up?"
"Alack, no. There, I hurried my orisons to talk; and look at you, going
to sleep! We shall be starved before morning, having no coverlets."
"Well, you know what to do."
"Not I, in sooth."
"Cuddle the cow."
"Thank you."
"Burrow in the straw then. You must be very new to the world, to grumble
at this. How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a frosty
night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me warm
but the carcass of a fellow I had been and helped kill?"
"Horrible! horrible! Tell me all about it! Oh but this is sweet."
"Well, we had a little battle in Brabant, and won a little victory, but
it cost us dear: several arbalestriers turned their toes up, and I among
them."
"Killed, Denys? come now!"
"Dead as mutton. Stuck full of pike-holes till the blood ran out of me,
like the good wine of Mâcon from the trodden grapes. It is right
bounteous in me to pour the tale in minstrel phrase for--augh--I am
sleepy. Augh--now where was I?"
"Left dead on the field of battle, bleeding like a pig; that is to say
like grapes, or something; go on, prithee go on, 'tis a sin to sleep in
the midst of a good story."
"Granted. Well, some of those vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on
the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no
further ill, because there was no need."
"No: you were dead."
"C'est convenu. This must have been at sundown; and with the night came
a shrewd frost that barkened the blood on my wounds, and stopped all the
rivulets that were running from my heart, and about midnight I awoke as
from a trance."
"And thought you were in heaven?" asked Gerard eagerly, being a youth
inoculated with monkish tales.
"Too frost bitten for that, mon gars; besides, I heard the wounded
groaning on all sides; so I knew I was in the old place. I saw I could
not live the night through without cover. I groped about shivering and
shivering; at last one did suddenly leave groaning. 'You are sped,' said
I, so made up to him, and true enough he was dead, but warm, you know. I
took my lord in my arms; but was too weak to carry him: so rolled with
him into a ditch hard by: and there my comrades found me in the morning
properly stung with nettles and hugging a dead Fleming for the bare
life."
Gerard shuddered. "And this is war; this is the chosen theme of poets
and troubadours, and Reden Ryckers. Truly was it said by the men of old
'dulce bellum _inexpertis_.'"
"Tu dis?"
"I say,--oh what stout hearts some men have!"
"N'est-ce pas, p'tit? So after that sort--thing--this sort thing is
heaven. Soft--warm--good company comradancow--cou'age--diable--m--ornk!"
And the glib tongue was still for some hours.
In the morning Gerard was wakened by a liquid hitting his eye, and it
was Denys employing the cow's udder as a squirt.
"Oh fie!" cried Gerard, "to waste the good milk:" and he took a horn out
of his wallet. "Fill this! but indeed I see not what right we have to
meddle with her milk at all."
"Make your mind easy! Last night la camarade was not nice; but what
then, true friendship dispenses with ceremony. To-day we make as free
with her."
"Why what did she do, poor thing?"
"Ate my pillow."
"Ha! ha!"
"On waking I had to hunt for my head, and found it down in the stable
gutter. She ate our pillow from us, we drink our pillow from her. A
votre santé, madame; et sans rancune;" and the dog drank her to her own
health.
"The ancient was right though," said Gerard. "Never have I risen so
refreshed since I left my native land. Henceforth let us shun great
towns, and still lie in a convent or a cow-house; for I'd liever sleep
on fresh straw than on linen well washed six months agone; and the
breath of kine it is sweeter than that of Christians, let alone the
garlic, which men and women folk affect, but cowen abhor from, and so do
I, St. Bavon be my witness!"
The soldier eyed him from head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on
your chin I should take you for a girl: and by the fingernails of St.
Luke, no ill-favoured one neither."
These three towns proved types and repeated themselves with slight
variations for many a weary league: but, even when he could get neither
a convent nor a cow-house, Gerard learned in time to steel himself to
the inevitable, and to emulate his comrade, whom he looked on as almost
superhuman for hardihood of body and spirit.
There was however a balance to all this veneration.
Denys, like his predecessor Achilles, had his weak part, his very weak
part thought Gerard.
His foible was "woman."
Whatever he was saying or doing, he stopped short at sight of a
farthingale, and his whole soul became occupied with that garment and
its inmate till they had disappeared; and sometimes for a good while
after.
He often put Gerard to the blush by talking his amazing German to such
females as he caught standing or sitting indoors or out; at which they
stared; and when he met a peasant girl on the road, he took off his cap
to her and saluted her as if she was a queen. The invariable effect of
which was, that she suddenly drew herself up quite stiff like a soldier
on parade, and wore a forbidding countenance.
"They drive me to despair," said Denys. "Is that a just return to a
civil bonnetade? They are large, they are fair, but stupid as swans."
"What breeding can you expect from women that wear no hose?" inquired
Gerard; "and some of them no shoon? They seem to me reserved, and
modest, as becomes their sex; and sober, whereas the men are little
better than beer-barrels. Would you have them brazen as well as
hoseless?"
"A little affability adorns even beauty," sighed Denys.
"Then let them alone, sith they are not to your taste," retorted Gerard.
"What, is there no sweet face in Bergundy that would pale to see you so
wrapped up in strange women?"
"Half a dozen that would cry their eyes out."
"Well then!"
"But it is a long way to Burgundy."
"Ay, to the foot, but not to the heart. I am there, sleeping and waking,
and almost every minute of the day."
"In Burgundy? Why I thought you had never--"
"In Burgundy?" cried Gerard contemptuously. "No, in sweet Sevenbergen.
Ah! well-a-day! well-a-day!"
Many such dialogues as this passed between the pair on the long and
weary road, and neither could change the other.
One day about noon they reached a town of some pretensions and Gerard
was glad, for he wanted to buy a pair of shoes: his own were quite worn
out. They soon found a shop that displayed a goodly array and made up to
it, and would have entered it; but the shopkeeper sat on the door-step
taking a nap, and was so fat as to block up the narrow doorway: the very
light could hardly struggle past his "too, too solid flesh," much less a
carnal customer.
My fair readers, accustomed, when they go shopping, to be met half way
with nods, and becks and wreathed smiles, and waived into a seat, while
almost at the same instant an eager shopman flings himself half across
the counter in a semicircle to learn their commands, can best appreciate
this mediæval Teuton, who kept a shop as a dog keeps a kennel: and sat
at the exclusion of custom, snoring like a pig.
Denys and Gerard stood and contemplated this curiosity; emblem, permit
me to remark, of the lets and hindrances to commerce that characterized
his epoch.
* * * * *
"Jump over him!"
"The door is too low."
"March through him!"
"The man is too thick."
"What is the coil?" inquired a mumbling voice from the interior:
apprentice with his mouth full.
"We want to get into your shop."
"What for, in Heaven's name??!!!"
"Shoon; lazy bones!"
The ire of the apprentice began to rise at such an explanation. "And
could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for
shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I
sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world is full long ago?"
Denys heard, but could not follow the sense. "Waste no more time talking
their German gibberish," said he; "take out thy knife and tickle his fat
ribs."
"That will I not," said Gerard.
"Then here goes; I'll prong him with this."
Gerard seized the mad fellow's arm in dismay, for he had been long
enough in the country to guess that the whole town would take part in
any brawl with the native against a stranger. But Denys twisted away
from him, and the cross-bow bolt in his hand was actually on the road to
the sleeper's ribs; but at that very moment two females crossed the road
towards him; he saw the blissful vision, and instantly forgot what he
was about, and awaited their approach with unreasonable joy.
Though companions they were not equals; except in attractiveness to a
Burgundian cross-bow man: for one was very tall, the other short, and,
by one of those anomalies which society, however primitive, speedily
establishes, the long one held up the little one's tail. The tall one
wore a plain linen coif on her head, a little grogram cloak over her
shoulders, a grey kirtle, and a short farthingale or petticoat of bright
red cloth, and feet and legs quite bare, though her arms were veiled in
tight linen sleeves.
The other a kirtle broadly trimmed with fur, her arms in double sleeves,
whereof the inner of yellow satin clung to the skin; the outer, all
befurred, were open at the inside of the elbow, and so the arm passed
through and left them dangling. Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle,
gorgeous train, bare legs. And thus they came on, the citizen's wife
strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train
devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily
enough to do it. Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a
guinea-hen stepping obsequious at its stately heel.
This pageant made straight for the shoemaker's shop. Denys louted low;
the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business on
hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her
little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet,
till with a long snarl he woke. The incarnate shutter rising and
grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice.
He retreated to his neighbor's shop the tailor's, and, sitting on the
step, protected it from the impertinence of morning calls. Neighbors
should be neighborly.
Denys and Gerard followed the dignity into the shop, where sat the
apprentice at dinner; the maid stood outside with her insteps crossed,
leaning against the wall, and tapping it with her nails.
"Those, yonder," said the dignity briefly, pointing with an imperious
little white hand to some yellow shoes gilded at the toe. While the
apprentice stood stock still, neutralized by his dinner and his duty,
Denys sprang at the shoes, and brought them to her; she smiled, and
calmly seating herself, protruded her foot, shod, but hoseless, and
scented. Down went Denys on his knees, and drew off her shoe, and tried
the new ones on the white skin devoutly. Finding she had a willing
victim, she abused the opportunity, tried first one pair, then another,
then the first again, and so on, balancing and hesitating for about half
an hour, to Gerard's disgust and Denys's weak delight. At last she was
fitted, and handed two pair of yellow and one pair of red shoes out to
her servant. Then was heard a sigh. It burst from the owner of the shop:
he had risen from slumber, and was now hovering about, like a partridge
near her brood in danger. "There go all my coloured shoes?" said he, as
they disappeared in the girl's apron.
The lady departed: Gerard fitted himself with a stout pair, asked the
price, paid it without a word, and gave his old ones to a beggar in the
street, who blessed him in the market-place, and threw them furiously
down a well in the suburbs. The comrades left the shop, and in it two
melancholy men, that looked, and even talked, as if they had been robbed
wholesale.
"My shoon are sore worn," said Denys, grinding his teeth; "but I'll go
barefoot till I reach France, ere I'll leave my money with such churls
as these."
The Dutchman replied calmly, "They seem indifferent well sewn."
As they drew near the Rhine, they passed through forest after forest,
and now for the first time ugly words sounded in travellers' mouths,
seated around stoves. "Thieves!" "black gangs!" "cutthroats!" etc.
The very rustics were said to have a custom hereabouts of murdering the
unwary traveller in these gloomy woods, whose dark and devious windings
enabled those, who were familiar with them, to do deeds of rapine and
blood undetected, or, if detected, easily to baffle pursuit.
Certain it was, that every clown they met, carried, whether for offence
or defence, a most formidable weapon; a light axe with a short pike at
the head, and a long slender handle of ash or yew, well seasoned. These
the natives could all throw with singular precision, so as to make the
point strike an object at several yards' distance, or could slay a
bullock at hand with a stroke of the blade. Gerard bought one and
practised with it, Denys quietly filed and ground his bolts sharp,
whistling the whilst; and, when they entered a gloomy wood, he would
unsling his cross-bow and carry it ready for action; but not so much
like a traveller fearing an attack as a sportsman watchful not to miss a
snap shot.
One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was
walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret, and scarce seeing the
road he trode, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his
cross-bow with glittering eye. "Hush!" said he in a low whisper that
startled Gerard more than thunder. Gerard grasped his axe tight, and
shook a little: he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the same
moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his cross-bow went to his
shoulder, even as he jumped. Twang! went the metal string; and after an
instant's suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road, he is hit!
he is hit!"
Gerard darted forward, and, as he ran, a young bear burst out of the
wood right upon him: finding itself intercepted, it went up on its hind
legs with a snarl, and, though not half grown, opened formidable jaws
and long claws. Gerard in a fury of excitement and agitation flung
himself on it and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe,
and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling with Gerard
hacking it.
"Hallo! stop! you are mad to spoil the meat."
"I took it for a robber," said Gerard panting. "I mean I had made ready
for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."
"Ay, these chattering travellers have stuffed your head full of thieves
and assassins: they have not got a real live robber in their whole
nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my cross-bow."
"We will carry it by turns then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load:
poor thing how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?"
"For supper, and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us."
"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live: and
perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves
it as ours love us; more than mine doth me."
"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month,
and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of
cloth-yard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Cæsar, with his
hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"
But Gerard would not view it jestingly: "Why then," said he, "we have
killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world--as I am
this day, in this strange land."
"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at
so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarel fly in forest nor
battle-field. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen
should turn them to a row of milk-pails: it is ended, to Rome thou goest
not alone; for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take
thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young
sister, she is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? ah! I forgot;
thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one woman man, a creature to me scarce
conceivable. Well then, I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but
a friend; some honest Bergundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons;
and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor
thou hast dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I
endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust
thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold
of milksops, thou wilt there be safe: they will hear thy words, and make
thee their duke in a twinkling."
Gerard sighed: "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf where we
are to part company, good friend."
They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the
thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a
relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to
lend him a bolt. "I have often shot with a long bow, but never with one
of these!"
"Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub," said Denys slily.
"Nay, nay, I want a clean one."
Denys gave him three out of his quiver.
Gerard strung the bow, and levelled it at a bough that had fallen into
the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him;
the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went
off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage; only the
dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew
about on the other side of the bough.
"Ye aimed a thought too high," said Denys.
"What a deadly thing! no wonder it is driving out the long-bow,--to
Martin's much discontent."
"Ay, lad," said Denys triumphantly, "it gains ground every day, in spite
of their laws and their proclamations to keep up the yewen bow, because
forsooth their grandsires shot with it, knowing no better. You see,
Gerard, war is not pastime. Men will shoot at their enemies with the
hittingest arm and the killingest, not with the longest and missingest."
"Then these new engines I hear of will put both bows down; for these,
with a pinch of black dust, and a leaden ball, and a child's finger,
shall slay you Mars and Goliah, and the Seven Champions."
"Pooh! pooh!" said Denys warmly; "petrone nor harquebuss shall ever put
down Sir Arbalest. Why, we can shoot ten times while they are putting
their charcoal and their lead into their leathern smoke belchers, and
then kindling their matches. All that is too fumbling for the field of
battle; there a soldier's weapon needs be ay ready like his heart."
Gerard did not answer; for his ear was attracted by a sound behind them.
It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard,
rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little
curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at about sixty
paces distance.
He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first; but the next moment
he turned ashy pale.
"Denys!" he cried. "Oh God! Denys!"
Denys whirled round.
It was a bear as big as a cart-horse.
It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.
The very moment he saw it Denys said in a sickening whisper:
"THE CUB!"
Oh! the concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, with
dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like a
sudden stroke of lightning in the dark--the bloody trail, the murdered
cub, the mother upon them, _and it_. DEATH.
All this in a moment of time. The next, she saw them. Huge as she was,
she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage):
she raised her head big as a bull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide
at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them,
scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.
"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot,
useless.
"Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! too late! Tree! tree!" and he
dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first
tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and, as they fled,
both men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.
With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at
the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.
Without taking her bloodshot eye off those she was hunting, she smelt it
all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead,
quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever
heard, nor dreamed to be in nature; and flew after Denys. She reared and
struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.
Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great
piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep
into the bark, and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.
Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no
very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at
the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to
spring to. There was none: and, if he jumped down, he knew the bear
would be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of
him. Moreover Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and
his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.
"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He
kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long
knife, and, clenching his teeth, prepared to jab the huge brute as soon
as it should mount within reach.
Of this combat the result was not doubtful.
The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses
of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the
man like a nut.
Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal
danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down
his tree in a moment, caught up the cross-bow, which he had dropped in
the road, and, running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body
with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned
its head irresolutely.
"Keep aloof!" cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."
"I care not;" and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it
fiercely into the bear, screaming, "Take that! take that!"
Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"
He was right: the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind him,
slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she
slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while
his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came
rearing and struck with her fore paw, and out flew a piece of bloody
cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed, and climbed; and presently he
heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He
looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards
at a slight angle; he threw his body across it, and by a series of
convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.
Then he looked round panting.
The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws
scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not
being very quick she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main
stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him, or
found by scent she was wrong: she paused; presently she caught sight of
him. She eyed him steadily; then quietly descended to the fork.
Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It
was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature
this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it
came.
Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death
below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible form.
His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless,
fascinated, tongue-tied.
As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous
thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret: the Vulgate, where it
speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps,--Rome,--Eternity.
The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man;
he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.
As in a mist he heard a twang: he glanced down; Denys, white and silent
as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang;
but crawled on. Again the cross-bow twanged; and the bear snarled; and
came nearer. Again the cross-bow twanged, and the next moment the bear
was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end,
and eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws
like a grave; and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a
pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it
stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws
held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch
shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's
straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up,
up, till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together
loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate.
The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the bough; then pounded the
earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below, and
the very next instant a cry of dismay; for Gerard had swooned, and,
without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous
height.