The Cloister and the Hearth Part 26

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 a.s.sailant. 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 a.n.a.lysis, that of these the garlic described the smallest aerial 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 ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sembly; and zoological eyes were upon him--he felt them. He leaned against the wall and sighed audibly.

At this fresh zoological trait a t.i.tter 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 a.s.sailant; 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 impa.s.sive 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 mult.i.tude. 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.