was staggered by this sudden communication, and his colour came and went. Then he clenched his teeth with ire. For men of any spirit at all are like the wild boar; he will run from a superior force, owing perhaps to his not being an ass; but if you stick to his heels too long and too close, and, in short, bore him, he will whirl, and come tearing at a multitude of hunters, and perhaps bore you. Gerard then set his teeth and looked battle, But the next moment his countenance fell, and he said plaintively, “And my axe is in Rhine.”
They consulted together. Prudence bade them avoid that village; hunger said “buy food.”
Hunger spoke loudest. Prudence most convincingly. They settled to strike across the fields.
They halted at a haystack and borrowed two bundles of hay, and lay on them in a dry ditch out of sight, but in nettles.
They sallied out in turn and came back with turnips. These they munched at intervals in their retreat until sunset.
Presently they crept out shivering into the rain and darkness, and got into the road on the other side of the village.
It was a dismal night, dark as pitch, and blowing hard. They could neither see, nor hear, nor be seen, nor heard; and for aught I know, passed like ghosts close to their foes. These they almost forgot in the natural horrors of the black tempestuous night, in which they seemed to grope and hew their way as in black marble. When the moon rose they were many a league from Dusseldorf. But they still trudged on. Presently they came to a huge building.
“Courage!” cried Denys, “I think I know this convent. Aye it is. We are in the see of Juliers. Cologne has no power here.”
The next moment they were safe within the walls.
CHAPTER XXX
Here Gerard made acquaintance with a monk, who had constructed the great dial in the prior's garden, and a wheel for drawing water, and a winnowing machine for the grain, etc., and had ever some ingenious mechanism on hand. He had made several psalteries and two dulcimers, and was now attempting a set of regalles, or little organ for the choir.
Now Gerard played the humble psaltery a little; but the monk touched that instrument divinely, and showed him most agreeably what a novice he was in music. He also illuminated finely, but could not write so beautifully as Gerard. Comparing their acquirements with the earnestness and simplicity of an age in which accomplishments implied a true natural bent, Youth and Age soon became like brothers, and Gerard was pressed hard to stay that night. He consulted Denys, who assented with a rueful shrug.
Gerard told his old new friend whither he was going, and described their late adventures, softening down the bolster.
“Alack!” said the good old man, “I have been a great traveller in my day, but none molested me.” He then told him to avoid inns; they were always haunted by rogues and roysterers, whence his soul might take harm even did his body escape, and to manage each day's journey so as to lie at some peaceful monastery; then suddenly breaking off and looking as sharp as a needle at Gerard, he asked him how long since he had been shriven? Gerard coloured up and replied feebly—
“Better than a fortnight.”
“And thou an exorcist! No wonder perils have overtaken thee. Come, thou must be assoiled out of hand.”
“Yes, father,” said Gerard, “and with all mine heart;” and was sinking down to his knees, with his hands joined, but the monk stopped him half fretfully—
“Not to me! not to me! not to me! I am as full of the world as thou or any be that lives in't. My whole soul it is in these wooden pipes, and sorry leathern stops, which shall perish—with them whose minds are fixed on such like vanities.”
“Dear father,” said Gerard, “they are for the use of the Church, and surely that sanctifies the pains and labour spent on them?”
“That is just what the devil has been whispering in mine ear this while,” said the monk, putting one hand behind his back and shaking his finger half threateningly, half playfully, at Gerard. “He was even so kind and thoughtful as to mind me that Solomon built the Lord a house with rare hangings, and that this in him was counted gracious and no sin. Oh! he can quote Scripture rarely. But I am not so simple a monk as you think, my lad,” cried the good father, with sudden defiance, addressing not Gerard but—Vacancy. “This one toy finished, vigils, fasts, and prayers for me; prayers standing, prayers lying on the chapel floor, and prayers in a right good tub of cold water.” He nudged Gerard and winked his eye knowingly. “Nothing he hates and dreads like seeing us monks at our orisons up to our chins in cold water. For corpus domat aqua. So now go confess thy little trumpery sins, pardonable in youth and secularity, and leave me to mine, sweet to me as honey, and to be expiated in proportion.”
Gerard bowed his head, but could not help saying, “Where shall I find a confessor more holy and clement?”
“In each of these cells,” replied the monk simply (they were now in the corridor) “there, go to Brother Anselm, yonder.”
Gerard followed the monk's direction, and made for a cell; but the doors were pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook; for just as he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in an agitated whisper, “Nay! nay! nay!” He turned, and there was the monk at his cell-door, in a strange state of anxiety, going up and down and beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard really thought the cell he was at must be inhabited by some dangerous wild beast, if not by that personage whose presence in the convent had been so distinctly proclaimed. He looked back inquiringly and went on to the next door. Then his old friend nodded his head rapidly, bursting in a moment into a comparatively blissful expression of face, and shot back into his den. He took his hour-glass, turned it, and went to work on his regalles; and often he looked up, and said to himself, “Well-a-day, the sands how swift they run when the man is bent over earthly toys.”
Father Anselm was a venerable monk, with an ample head, and a face all dignity and love. Therefore Gerard in confessing to him, and replying to his gentle though searching questions, could not help thinking, “Here is a head!—Oh dear! oh dear! I wonder whether you will let me draw it when I have done confessing.” And so his own head got confused, and he forgot a crime or two. However, he did not lower the bolstering this time, nor was he so uncandid as to detract from the pagan character of the bolstered.
The penance inflicted was this: he was to enter the convent church, and prostrating himself, kiss the lowest step of the altar three times; then kneeling on the floor, to say three paternosters and a credo: “this done, come back to me on the instant.”
Accordingly, his short mortification performed, Gerard returned, and found Father Anselm spreading plaster.
“After the soul the body,” said he; “know that I am the chirurgeon here, for want of a better. This is going on thy leg; to cool it, not to burn it; the saints forbid.”
During the operation the monastic leech, who had naturally been interested by the Dusseldorf branch of Gerard's confession, rather sided with Denys upon “bleeding.” “We Dominicans seldom let blood nowadays; the lay leeches say 'tis from timidity and want of skill; but, in sooth, we have long found that simples will cure most of the ills that can be cured at all. Besides, they never kill in capable hands; and other remedies slay like thunderbolts. As for the blood, the Vulgate saith expressly it is
