The Fortunes of Garin

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER IX

  GARIN SEEKS HIS FORTUNE

  ONE day, from sunrise to sunset, Garin kept company with the train ofthe Abbot of Saint Pamphilius. As the day dropped toward eve the roadtouched a stream that, reflecting the western sky, blushed like a pieceof coral. It was the monks’ home stream. The ford passed, their abbeywould ere long rise before them. Some were tired of travel and had beenhomesick for garden and refectory, cell and chapel—homesick as a dogfor its master, a child for its mother, a plant for its sunshine. Somewere not tired of travel and were not homesick. So there were bothglad and sorry in the fellowship that, midway of the ford, checkedthe fat abbey mules and horses to let them drink. The beasts stoopedtheir necks to the pink water; monks and lay brothers and abbey knaveslooked at the opposite slope. When they reached its crest they wouldsee before them Saint Pamphilius, grey and rich. The abbot’s muledrank first as was proper, raised its head first, and with a breath ofsatisfaction splashed forward. The two monks immediately attendant uponthe Reverend Father must pull up their horses’ heads before they hadhalf drunken and follow their superior.

  The abbot, mounting the gently shelving bank, looked at his sons inGod, yet dotting the small bright river. He just checked his mule.“That limping youth is no longer in our company.”

  The monk nearest him spoke. “Reverend Father, as we came through thewood a mile back, he gave Brother Anselm thanks, then slipped frombehind him. Brother Bartholomew called to him, but he went away amongthe trees.”

  “Ah!” said the abbot; “in which direction?”

  “Reverend Father, southwardly.”

  Abbot Arnaut sat silent a moment, then shook the reins and his muleclimbed on toward the hill-top. “Ah,” he said to himself, and he saidit piously. “He is young, and when you are young perils do not imperil!When you are young, you are an eel to slip through—I have done what Icould! Doubtless he will escape.”

  That night there rose a great round moon. It lighted Garin through thewood until he was ready to sleep,—it showed him where he could findthe thickest bed and covering of leaves,—and when he waked in thenight he saw it like a shield overhead. All day, riding behind BrotherAnselm, the monks about him, black as crows, he had felt dull anddead. Waking now in the night, forest around him and moon above, sheerunfamiliarity and wonder at his plight made him shiver and start likea lost child. All that he had lost passed before him. Foulque passed,transfigured in his eyes, he was so lonely and sick for home. Raimbautthe Six-fingered passed, transfigured. The rude hall in Raimbaut’skeep, the smoky fire and the lounging men—they were desirable tohim; he felt a cold pang when it crossed him that he would never winback. He strove to plunge, head to heel, into the rich depths of thefeeling before this feeling, to recall the glow out of which he hadspoken at Castel-Noir, to go back to the nightingale’s singing. It wasthere, that feeling; he knew that it had been born and was living. Butto-night half a chill and empty world was between him and it. Therein the forest, beneath the round moon, he had a bewildered brain andan aching heart. Then at last he crossed the half-world to some faintsweetness, and so slept.

  With the dawn he was afoot. He had a piece of bread in his pouch, andas he walked he ate this, and a streamlet gave him drink. The woodthinned. In the first brightness of the day he came upon a road of sofair a width and goodness that he saw it must be a highway and beadedwith towns. Apparently it ran northeast and southwest, though so brokenwas the country that at short range it rounded almost any corner youmight choose. Where he was going he did not know, but he took the trendthat led him south by west. Dimly he thought of making his way intoSpain. Barcelona—there was a great town—and King Alfonso of Aragonwas known for a gallant king, rich, liberal and courtly. Garin lookeddown at his serf’s tunic and torn shoon—but then he felt within hisbreast. Foulque’s purse was there.

  When he waked, it had been first to bewilderment and then to mererelief in warmth and sunlight. Now as he walked courage returned,the new energy and glow. Early as it was, the road had its travelwhich increased with the strengthening day. It was a country rich inbeauty. He had never been so far from home. The people upon the roadwere like people he had seen before. Yet there existed small, regionaldifferences, and his eye was quick at noting these. They pleased him;imagination played. The morning was fair without and within.

  A driver of mules—twenty with twenty loads of sawn wood and sacks ofsalt and other matters—caught up with him. Garin and he walked sideby side and the former learned whence the road came and where it went.As for the world hereabouts, it belonged to Count Raymond of Toulouse.Garin, walking, began to sing.

  “You sing well, brother,” said the muleteer. “If you dwelt with animalsas I do, your voice would crack! They do not understand me when I sing.They think that I mean that they may stand still and admire.—Ha! MayGod forget and the devil remember you there! Get up!”

  They travelled with pauses, jerks, and starts, so at last Garin said,“Farewell, brother!” and swung on alone. Half an hour later he, inturn, came up with a pedlar, a great pack wrapt in cloth on his back,sitting resting by the wayside. “Who’ll buy?” called the pedlar.“Here’s your fine pennyworths!”

  Garin stopped beside him and considered the pack. Travelling merchantsof a different grade, going with laden horses from fair to fair, mighthave with them, cut, fashioned and sewed, a dress that would do for anesquire. But not a poor pack-aback like this. He shook his head.

  “No money?” asked the pedlar. “Thumb of Lazarus! how this sicknessspreads!”

  Other wayfarers came in sight. “Who’ll buy?” called the pedlar. “Here’syour fine pennyworths!”

  Garin left him chaffering with a rich villein, and went his own wayalong the sunny road.

  Toward noon, rounding a hill, he came upon a little village. He boughtfrom the nearest house bread and cheese and a cup of goat’s milk, andsat down under a mulberry tree to eat and drink. As he made an end ofthe feast, two girls came and stood in the house door. They studied hisappearance, and it seemed to find favour. He smiled back at them.

  “Where do you live?” asked one.

  “In the moon.”

  “Ha!” said the girl. “It was as round as an egg last night. You musthave dropped out. And where are you going?”

  “To the sun.”

  “Hè! You will be sunburned. Whose man are you?”

  “Lord Love’s.”

  The girls laughed for joy in him. “Hè! We see his collar around yourneck! What does he make you do?”

  “He makes me to serve a lady.”

  “‘Ladies!’ We do not like ‘ladies’! They are as proud as they were madeof sugar!”

  “In the court of Lord Love,” said Garin, “every woman mounts into alady.”

  One of the girls laughed more silently than the other. “Oh, thepleasant fool!” she said. “You go on a long pilgrimage when you go toCompostella. But to that court would be the longest I have ever heardtell of!”

  The other dug her bare foot into the ground. “If you are in no hurry,the house can give you work to do, and for it supper and lodging.”

  “I have to reach the sun. And who would do that,” said Garin, “must betravelling.”

  He stood up, left the mulberry tree, and because they were young andnot unfair, and there was to be seen in it no harm or displeasure, hekissed them both. They laughed and pushed him away, then, their handson his shoulders, each kissed back.

  Leaving them and the hamlet behind, he came again into fair countrywhere the blue sky touched the hill-tops. Morning had slipped intoafternoon. Not far away would be a town he had heard of. He meant toget there a different dress. It was necessary to do that. Wanderingso, in this serf’s wear, he might at any hour be taken up, called toaccount, made to name his master. “Lord Love” would not answer far. Saythat, without fathomless trouble, he got the dress, what was going tofollow upon the getting? He did not know.

  Ahead of him walked a thin figure wrapped in a black mantle and wearinga wide hat
somewhat like a palmer’s. Garin lessened the distancebetween them. The black-clad one was talking, or more correctly,chanting to himself as he walked, and that with such abstraction fromthe surrounding world that he did not hear the other moving closebehind him. Garin listened before speaking.

  “In Ethiopia is found basilisk, cockatrice, and phœnix; in certainparts of Greece the centaur, and in the surrounding seas mermaiden.The dolphin is of all beasts the tenderest-hearted. Elephants worshipthe sun.... Pliny tells us that there are eleven kinds of lightning.Clap your hands when it lightens.... The elements are four—earth, air,fire and water. To each of these pertaineth a spirit—gnome, sylph,salamander, ondine. By long and great study a scholar at last mayperceive sylph or salamander. Such an one rises to strange wisdom....The earth is not a plain as we were taught. Impossible for our humanmind to conceive how it may be round, and yet the most learned holdthat it is so. Holy Church denieth, _in toto_, the Antipodes, andone must walk warily. Yet, if it is fancied a square, there aredifficulties. Aristotle—”

  Garin came even with him. “God save you, sir!”

  The black mantle started violently, returned the salutation, but lookedaround him nervously. Then, seeing in a neighbouring field half a dozenpeasants, men and women, he recovered his equanimity. Moreover, whenhe looked at him closely, the youth had not the face of a robber. Headdressed Garin in a slightly sing-song voice. “Do you know this road?How far is it to the town?”

  “I do not know the road. It is not much further, I think.”

  The man in the black mantle was a thin, pale, ascetic-looking person.He had a hungry look, or what, at first, Garin thought was such. Theesquire had seen hungry men, peasants starved and wolfish, prisonerswith a like aspect, fasting penitents. But it was the man’s eyes, Garindecided, that gave him the look, and it was not one of hunger forbread. They were large and clear, and they seemed to seek somethingafar.

  Their owner at first looked askance and with a somewhat peevish prideat the peasant keeping beside him. Garin had forgotten his garb and thestation it assigned him. But the feeling, such as it was, seemed todrift out of the black-clad’s mind. “I grow weary,” he said, “and shallbe glad to beg a night’s shelter.”

  “Have you travelled far?”

  “From Bologna.”

  “Bologna! That is in Italy.”

  “Yes. The University there. I am going to Paris. It may be that I shallgo to Oxford.”

  “Ah,” said Garin, with respect. “I understand now why you were talkingto yourself. You are a student.”

  “That am I. One day I may be Magister or Doctor.” He walked with alifted gaze. “I serve toward that—and toward the gaining of Knowledge.”

  Garin was silent; then he said with some wistfulness, “I, too, wouldhave learning and knowledge.”

  The other walked with a rapt gaze. “It is the true goddess,” he said,“it is the Great Love.”

  But Garin dissented from that with a shake of the head and a shortlaugh of rapture.

  The student turned his large eyes upon him. “You love a woman.—What isher name?”

  “I do not know,” said Garin. “Nor the features of her face, nor whereshe lives.” Suddenly as he moved, he made a name. “The Fair Goal,” hesaid, “I have named her now.”

  The interest of the man in black had been but momentary. “Study is aharsh mistress,” he said; “fair, but terrible! It would irk any pityingsaint to see how we students fare! Hunger and cold and nakedness.Books, without warmth or cheer or light where we can con them. And weoften want books and nowhere can procure them. We live in booths or incorners of other men’s dwellings, and none care to give us livelihoodwhile we master knowledge. There were several thousand of us inBologna, and in Paris there are more, and at Oxford they say there aremany thousands. I have seen us go blind, and I have seen us die ofhunger, and I have seen us unwitted—”

  “But you go on,” said Garin.

  “It is the only life,” answered the black mantle.

  They walked in silence. After a few moments a thought seemed to occurto the journeyer from Bologna. He looked more closely at his companion.“By your dress you are out of the fields. But your tongue speakscastle-wise.”

  Garin had his vanity of revealment. “My tongue is my own, but thisdress is not,” he said; then, repenting his rashness, “Do not betrayme! I am fleeing from trouble.”

  “No, I will not,” answered the student with simplicity. “I knowtrouble, and he is hard to escape. You are, perchance, a young knight?”

  “I was my lord’s esquire. But it is my meaning to become a knight.—Iwould make poems, too.”

  “Ah!” said the student, “a troubadour.”

  Garin made no answer, but the word sank in. He had a singing heartto-day. You could be knight and troubadour both. He wished now to writea beautiful song for the Fair Goal.

  They came in sight of the town. It was fairly large, massed, like mosttowns, about a castle. As in all towns, you saw churches and churchesrising above the huddled houses.

  “I will find,” said the student, “some house of monks. I will givethem all the news I know, and they will give me food and a pallet. Bestcome with me.”

  But Garin would not try the monastery.

  The afternoon was waning. They entered the town not more than an hourbefore the gates would shut, and parted in the shadow of the wall. WhenGarin had gone twenty paces, he looked back. The student was standingwhere he had left him, in a brown study, but now he spoke across theuneven, unpaved way. “Choose knowledge!” he said.

  Garin, going on through a narrow, dark, and tortuous lane, foundin his mind the jongleur to whom he had talked on the road fromRoche-de-Frêne. “Choose love!” had said the jongleur. Garin laughed. “Ichoose what I must!” The dark way seemed to blossom with roses; jewelsand perfumes were in his hands.

  He found, after an hour of wandering and enquiry, lodging in a high,old, ruinous house above a black alley. Here he got a Spartan supper,and went to bed, tired but hopeful. Morning seemed to come at once. Herose in a high, clear dawn, ate what they gave him, sallied forth, andin the first sunshine came to a shop where was standing a Jew merchantin a high cap. Garin bought shirt, hose and breeches, tunic and mantle,shoes and cap. The Jew looked questions out of his small, twinklingblack eyes, but asked none with his tongue.

  Back to his lodging went Garin, his purchases under his arm, shiftedfrom serf’s garb into these, and stood forth in russet and blue—asquire again to the eye, though not the squire of any knight or lord ofwealth. He counted over the moneys yet in his purse, and then, havingpaid to a half-blind old woman the price of his lodging, went forthagain, and at a place for weapons bought a dagger with sheath and belt.Near the weapon shop was a church porch. Garin wished to think thingsout a little, so he went across to this and took his seat upon thesteps in the sunshine, his back to a pillar.