Part 27 (1/2)

This punishment was a boon to Gerard, for thus he lay on the sh.o.r.e 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 grat.i.tude ended in a wry face, for the beer was muddy, and had a strange medicinal tw.a.n.g 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-pa.s.sengers 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 sh.e.l.l, 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.