CHAPTER IX
I am not of a nature to be long overwhelmed. All that night and far into
the next day I lay upon Voewood, alternately sleeping and bewailing the
chance which tossed me to and fro upon the restless ocean of time, and
then I arose. I threw my arms round each in turn of those dear, callous
ones in the chapel, and pushed back the brambles from them, and wept a
little, and told myself the pleasure-store of life was now surely spent to the
very last coin; then, with a mighty effort, tore myself away. Again and
again, while the smooth swell of the grassy mound under which the
foundations of the long-destroyed Saxon homestead with the little chapel
by the rivulet were in sight, I turned and turned, loath and sad. But no
sooner had the leafy screen hid them than I set off and ran whither I knew
not, nor cared -- indeed, I was so terribly drawn by that spot -- so close in
the meshes of its association, so thralled by the presence of the dust of all I
had had to loss or live for, that I feared, if the best haste were not made, I
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should neither haste nor fly from that terribly sweet hillock of
lamentations forever.
What could it matter where my wandering feet were turned? All the world
was void and vapid, east and west alike indifferent, to one so homeless;
and thus I stalked on through glades and coppices for hours and days, with
my chin upon my chest, and feeling marvelously cheap and lonely. But
enough of this. never yet did I crave sympathy of any man; why should I
seem to seek it of you -- skeptical and remote?
There were they who appeared at that time to take compassion on me
unasked, and I remember the countrywomen at whose cottage doors I
hesitated a moment -- yearning with pent-up affection over their curly-
headed little ones -- added to the draught of water I begged such food as
their slender stores provided. One of these gave me a soiled green
forester's cape and jerkin; another put shoes of leather Upon my feet; and
a third robbed her husband's pegs to find me head-wear, and so through
the gifts of their unspoken good-will I came by degrees into the raiment of
the time.
But nothing seemed to hide the inexpressible strangeness I began to carry
about with me. No sorry apparel, no woodman's cap drawn down over
my brows, no rustic clogs upon my wandering feet, masked me for a
moment from the awe and wonder of these good English people. None of
them dared ask me a question, how I came or where I went, but
everywhere it was the same. They had but to look upon me, and up they
rose, and in silence, and drawn involuntarily by that stern history of mine
they knew naught of, they ministered to me according to their means. The
women dropped their courtesies, and -- unasked, unasking -- fed the grim
and ragged stranger from their cleanest platter, the men stood by and
uncapped them to my threadbare russet, and whole groups would watch
spell-bound upon the village mounds as I paced moodily away.
In course of time my grief began to mend, so that it was presently possible
to take a calmer view of the situation, and to bend my thoughts upon what
it were best to do next. Though I love the greenwood, and am never so
happy as when solitary, yet my nature was not made, alas! for sylvan
idleness. I felt I had the greatest admiration and brotherhood with those
who are recluse and shun the noisy struggles of the world; yet had I
always been a leader of men, I now remembered, as all the pages of my
past history came one by one before me, and I meditated upon them day
and night. No; I was not made to walk these woods alone, and if another
argument
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were wanting, it were found in the fact that I was here exposed to every
weather, hungry and shelterless. I could not be forever begging from door
to door, eternally throwing my awe-inspiring shadow across the lintels of
these gentle-mannered woodland folk, and my tastes, though never
gluttonous, rebelled most strongly against the perpetual dietary of herbs
and roots and limpid brooks.
Reflecting on these things one day, as I lay friendless and ragged in the
knotty elbow of a great oak's earth-bare roots, after some weeks of
homeless wandering, I fell asleep, and dreamed all the fair shining
landscape were a tented field, and all the rustling rushes down by the
neighboring streamlet's banks were the serried spears of a great concourse
of soldiers defiling by, the sparkle of the sunlight on the ripples seeming
like the play of rays upon their many warlike trappings, the yellow flags
and water-flowers making no poor likeness of dancing banners and
bannerets.
'Twas a simple dream, such as came of an empty stomach and a full head,
yet somehow I woke from that sleep with more of my old pulse of
pleasure and life beating in my veins than had been there for a long time.
And with the wish for another spell of bright existence spent in the merry
soldier mood that suited me so well, came the means to attain it.
In the first stages of these wanderings, while still fresh from the cloister
shrine, I had paid but the very smallest heed to my attire and its details. I
was clad in clean, sufficient wraps, so much was certain, with a linen belt
about me, and sandals upon my feet; yet even this was really more than I
noticed with any closeness. But as I ran and walked, and my flesh grew hot
and nervous with the fever of my sorrow, a constant chafing of my feet
and hands annoyed me. I had stopped by a wood-side river bank, and
there discovered with wrathful irritation that upon my bare apostolic toes
and upon my sanctified thumbs -- those soldier thumbs still flat and strong
with years of pressing sword-hilts and bridle-reins -- there were glistening
in holy splendor such a set of gorgeous gems as had rarely been taken for
a scramble through the woods before. 'There were beryls and sapphires
and pearls, and ruddy great rubies from the caftans of Paynim chiefs slain
by long-dead crusaders, and onyx and emerald from Cyprus and the
remotest east set in rude red gold by the rough artificers of rearward ages,
and all these put upon me, no doubt, after the manner in which at that
time credulous piety was wont to bedeck the shrines and images of saints
and martyrs. I was indeed at that moment the wealthiest beggar who ever
sat forlorn
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and friendless on a grassy lode. But what was all this glistening store to
me, desolate and remorseful, with but one remembrance in my heart, with
but one pitiful sight before my eyes? I pulled the shining gems angrily
from my swollen fingers and toes, and hurled them one by one, those
princely toys, into the muddy margin of the stream, and there, in that rude
setting, a-blazing, red, and green, and white, and hot, and cool, with their
wonderful scintillations they mocked me. They mocked me as I sat there
with my chin in my palms, and twinkled and shone among the sludge and
scum so merrily to the flickering sunshine, that presently I laughed a little
at those cheerful trinkets that could shine so bravely in the contumacy of
chance, and after a time I picked one up and rinsed it and held it out in the
sunshine, and found it very fair -- so fair, indeed, that a glimmer of listless
avarice was kindled within me, and later on I broke a hawthorn spray and
groped among the sedge and mire, and hooked out thus, in better mood,
the greater part of my strange inheritance.
Then, here I was, upon this other bank, waking after my dream, and,
turning over the better to watch the fair landscape stretching below, my
waist-cloth came unbound, and out upon the sand amid the oak-roots
rolled those ambient, glistening rings again.. At first I was surprised to see
such jewels in such a place, staring in dull wonderment while I strove to
imagine whence they came, but soon I remembered piece by piece their
adventure as has been told to you, and now, with the warm blood in my
veins again, I did not throw them by, but lay back against the oak and
chuckled to myself as my ambitious heart fluttered with pleasure under
my draughty rags, and crossed my legs, and weighed upon my finger-tips,
and inventoried, and valued, all in the old merchant spirit, those friendly
treasures.
How unchanging are the passions of humanity! I tossed those radiant
playthings up in the sunlight and caught them; I counted and recounted
them; I tore shreds from my clothing and cleaned and polished each in
turn; I started up angry and suspicious as a kite's wheeling shadow fell
athwart my hoard. Forgotten was hunger and houselessness; I no longer
mourned so keenly the emptiness of the world or the brevity of
friendships -- I, to whom these treasures should have been so light,
overlooked nearly all my griefs in them, and was as happy for the
moment in this unexpected richness as a child.
And then, after an hour or so of cheerful avarice, I sat up sage and
reflective, and, having swathed and wrapped my store safely next my
heart, I must needs climb the first grassy knoll
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showing above the woodlands and search the horizon for some place
wherein a beginning might be made of spending it. Nothing was to be
seen from thence but a goodly valley spread out at a distance, and there
my steps were turned, for men, like streams, ever converge upon the
lowlands.
Now that I had the heart to fall into beaten tracks, coming out of the
sheltering thicket by-ways for the first time since quitting the mounds over
the ashes of Voewood, I observed more of the new people and times
among whom fate had thus thrown me. And truly it was a very strange
meeting with these folk, who were they whom I had known when last I
walked these woods, and yet were not. I would stare at them in perplexity,
marveling at the wondrous blend of nations I saw in face and hair and
eyes. Their very clothes were novel to me, and unaccountable, while their
speech seemed now the oddest union of many tongues -- all foreign, yet
upon these English lips most truly native -- and wondrous to listen to. I
would pass a sturdy yokel leading out his teams to plowing, and when I
spoke to him it made my ears tingle to hear how antique Roman went
hand in hand with ancient British, and good Norman was linked upon his
lips with better Saxon. That polyglot youth, knowing no tongue but one,
was most scholarly in his ignorance. To him 'twas English that he spoke;
but to me, who had lived through the making of that noble speech, who
knew each separate individual quantity that made that admirable whole,
his jargon was most wonderful.
Nor was I yet fully reconciled to the unity of these new people and their
mutual kinsmanship. I could not remember all feuds were ended. when
down the path would come a more than usually dusky wayfarer -- a
trooper, perhaps, with leather jerkin, shield on back, and sword by side -- I
would note his swart complexion and dark black hair, and then 'twas " Ho!
ho! a Norman villain straying from his band." And back I would step
among the shadows, and, gripping the staff that was my only weapon,
scowl on him while he whistled by, half mindful, in my forgetfulness, to
help the Saxon cause by rapping the fellow over his head. On the other
hand, if one chanced upon me who had the flaxen hair and pleasant eyes of
those who once were called my comrades -- if he wore the rustic waistless
smock, as many did still, of hind or churl -- why, then, I was mighty glad to
see that Saxon, and crossed over, friendly, to his pathway, bespeaking him
in the pure tongue of his forefathers, asked him of garth and homestead
and how fared his thane and beretoga -- all of which, it grieved me
afterward to notice, perplexed him greatly.
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Not only in these ways was there much for me to learn. but, with speech
and fashions, modes and means of life had changed. At one time I met a
strange piebald creathre, all tags and tassels, white and red with a hundred
little bells upon him, a cap with peaks hanging dowh like asses' ears, and a
staff, with more bells, tucked away under his arm. He was plodding along
dejected, so I called to him civilly.
"Why, friend, who are you?"
"I am a fool, sir!"
"Never mind," I replied, cheerfully, "there is the less likelihood of your ever
treading this earth companionless."
"Why, that is true enough," he said, "for it was too much wisdom that sent
me thus solitary afield;" and he went on to tell me how he had been ejected
that morning from a neighboring castle. "I had belanded and admired my
master for years; therein I had many friends, yet was a fool. Yesterday we
quarreled about some trifle; I called him beast and tyrant, and therein,
being just and truthful, I lost my place and comrades over the first wise
thing I said for years. It is a most sorry, disorderly world." (The Phoenician
must have failed to recognize in the new finery of the time the latest
representative of a brotherhood that had long existed.)
This strange individual, it seemed, lived by folly, and, though I had often
noticed that wit was not a fat profession, I could not help regarding him
with wonder. He was, under his veneer of shallowness, a most gentle and
observant jester. Long study in the arts of pleasing had given him a very
delicate discrimination of moods and men. He could fit a merriment to the
capacity of any man's mind with extraordinary acumen. He had stores of
ill-assorted learning in the empty galleries of his head, and wherewithal a
kindly, gentle heart, a whimsical companionship for sad-eyed humanity
which made him haste to laugh at everything through fear of crying over
it. We were companions before we had gone a mile, and many were the
things I learned of him. When our way parted I pressed one of my rings
into his hand. "Good-bye, fool," I said.
"Good-bye, friend," he called; "you are the first wise man with whom I ever
felt akin;" and, indeed, as his poor buffoon's coat went shining up the path,
I felt bereft and lonely again for a spell.
Then I found another craftsman of this curious time. A little way further
on, near by to a lordly house standing in
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wide stretches of meadow and park lands, a most plaintive sound came
from a thicket lying open to the sun. Such a dismal moaning enlisted my
compassion, for here, I thought, is some luckless wight just dying, or, at
least, in bitterest extremity of sorrow; so I approached, stepping lightly
round the blossoming thicket, peering this way and that, and now down
on my hands and knees to look under the bushes, and now on tiptoe,
craning my neck that I might see over, and so, presently, I found the
source of the sighs and moans. It was a young man of most dainty
proportions, with soft, fine combed hair upon his pretty sloping shoulders,
his sleeves so long they trailed upon the moss, his shoes laced with golden
threads, and toed and tasseled in monstrous fashion. A most delicate
perfume came from him; his clothes were greener than grass in spring-
time, turned back, and puffed with damask. In his hand he had a scroll
whereon now and again he looked, and groaned in most plaintive sort.
"Why, man," I asked, "what ails you? Why that dreadful moaning? What
are you, and what is yon scroll?" So absorbed was he, however, it was only
when I had walked all round him to spy the wound, if it might be, that he
suffered from, and finally stood directly in his sunshine, repeating the
question, that he looked up.
"Interrupter of inspiration! Hast thou asked what I am, and what this is?"
"Yes; and more than once."
"Fy! not to see! I am a minstrel -- a bard; my lord's favorite poet up at
yonder castle, and this is an ode to his mistress's eyebrows. I was in travail
of a rhyme when thy black shadow fell upon the page."
"Give me the leaf. why, it is the sickliest stuff that ever did dishonor to
virgin paper! There, take it back," I said, angry to find so many fools
abroad, "and listen to me. You may be a poet, for I have no experience of
them, but as I am a man thou art not a bard! You a bard? You the likeness
and descendant of Howell ap Griffith and an hundred other Saxon
gleemen? You one of the guild of Gryffith ap Conan -- you a scop or a
skald? Why, boy, they could write better stuff than thou canst though they
had been drunk for half a day. You a stirrer of passions -- you a minstrel --
you a tightener of the strong sinews of warrior hearts -- fy! for shame
upon your silly trivial sonnets, your particolored suits and sweet insipid
vaporings! Out, I say! Get home to thy lady's footstool, or, by Thor and
Odin! I will give thee a beating out of pure respect for noble rhyming!"
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The poet did not wait to argue. I was angry and rough, and the rudest-clad
champion that ever swung a flail in the cause of the Muses. So he took to
his heels, and as I watched that pretty butterfly aiming across the sunny
meadows for his master's portals, and Stopping not for hedge or ditch, "By
Hoth!" I said, laughing scornfully, "we might have been friends if he could
but have writ as well as he can run."
Then I went on again, and had not gone far when down the road there
came ambling on a mule a crafty-looking churchman, with big wallets
hanging at his saddle-bows, a portentous rosary round his neck, and bare
unwashed feet hanging stirrupless by his palfrey's side.
"Now here's another tradesman," I muttered to myself, "of this most
perplexing age. Heaven grant his wares are superior to the last ones!
Good-morning, father."
"Good-morning, son. Art going into the town to take up arms for Christ
and His servant Edward?"
"Yes," I answered, "I am bound to the town, but I have not yet chosen a
master."
"Then you are all the more sure to go to the fighting, for every one just
now who has no other calling is apprentice to arms."
"It will not be the first time I have taken that honorable indenture,"
"No, I guess not," said the shrewd friar, eying me under his pent-house
eyebrows, "for thou art a stout and wiry-looking fellow, and may I never
read anything better than my breviary again if I can not construe in your
face a good and varied knowledge of camps and cities. But there was
something else I had to say to you. ("Here comes the point of the
narrative," I thought to myself.) "Now, so trim a soldier as you, and one
wherewithal so reflective, would surely not willingly go where hostile
swords are waving and cruel French spears are thicker than yonder tall-
bladed grass, unshriven -- with all thy sins upon thy back?"
"Why, then, monk, I must stay at home. Is that what you would say?"
"Nay, not at all. There is a middle way. But soft! Hast any money with
thee?"
"Enough to get a loaf of bread and a cup of ale."
"Oh," said the secret pardoner (for his calling was then under ban and fine),
a little disappointedly, "that is somewhat small; but yet, nevertheless," he
muttered, partly to himself, "these are poor times, and when all plump
partridges are abroad Mother Church's falcons must necessarily
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fly at smaller game. Look here, good youth, forego thy mortal appetites,
defer thy bread and ale, and for that money saved thereby I will sell thee
one of these priceless parchments here in my wallet -- scrolls, young man,
hot from the holy footstool of our blessed father in Rome, and carrying
complete unction and absolution to the soul of their possessor! Think,
youth; is not eternal redemption worth a cup of muddy ale? Fy to hesitate!
Line thy bosom with this blessed scroll, and go to war cleaner-hearted than
a new-born babe. There! I will not be exacting. For one of those silver
groats I fancy I see tied in thy girdle I will give thee absolute admittance
into the blessed company of saints and martyrs. I tell thee, man, for half a
sequin I will make thee comrade of Christ and endow thee with eternity! Is
it a bargain?"
Silent and disdainful, I, who had seen a dozen hierarchies rise and set in the
various peopled skies of the world, took the parchment from him and
turned away and read it. It was, as he said -- more shame on human
intellect! -- a full pardon of the possessor's sins written out in bad Norman-
Latin, and bearing the sign and benediction of St. Peter's chair. I read it
from top to bottom, then twisted its red tapes round it again, and threw it
back to that purveyor of absolutions. Yes; and I turned upon that reverend
traveler and scorned and scouted him and his contemptible baggage. I told
him I had met two sad fools since noon, but he was worse than either. I
scoffed him, just as my bitter mood suggested, until I had spent both
breath and invention, then turned contemptuous, and left him at bay,
mumbling inarticulate maledictions upon my biting tongue.
No more of these shallow panderers fell in my path to vex and irritate me,
and before the white evening star was shining through the brilliant
tapestry of the sunset over the meadow-lands in the west I had drawn
near to and entered the strong, shadowy, moated walls of my first English
city.
CHAPTER X.
To Contents Page
Chapter 10
