The Cloister and the Hearth Part 30

"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 s.e.x; 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 pa.s.sed 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 mediaeval 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 p.r.o.ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.n.

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 pa.s.sed 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. Tw.a.n.g! went the metal string; and after an instant's suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road, he is. .h.i.t!

he is. .h.i.t!"

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 a.s.sa.s.sins: 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 Caesar, 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 G.o.d's creatures that was all alone in the world--as I am this day, in this strange land."