LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

struck the blow; and a gentle one. This comes of taking a flying shot, and not standing up fair. And that seems all that can be said. Where lives he?’

      Farina pointed to the house of the Lilies.

      ‘Beshrew me! the dog has some right on his side. Whew! yonder he lives? He took us for some night-prowlers. Why not come up fairly, and ask my business?

      Smelling a flower is not worth a broken neck, nor defending your premises quite deserving a hole in the pate. Now, my lad, you see what comes of dealing with cut and run blows; and let this be a warning to you.’

      They took the body by head and feet, and laid him at the door of his father’s house. Here the colour came to his cheek, and they wiped off the streaks of blood that stained him. Guy proved he could be tender with a fallen foe, and Farina with an ill-fated rival. It was who could suggest the soundest remedies, or easiest postures. One lent a kerchief and nursed him; another ran to the city fountain and fetched him water. Meantime the moon had dropped, and morning, grey and beamless, looked on the house-peaks and along the streets with steadier eye. They now both discerned a body of men, far down, fronting Gottlieb’s house, and drawn up in some degree of order. All their charity forsook them at once.

      ‘Possess thyself of the truncheon,’ said Guy: ‘You see it can damage. More work before breakfast, and a fine account I must give of myself to my hostess of the Three Holy Kings!’

      Farina recovered the destructive little instrument.

      ‘I am ready,’ said he. ‘But hark! there’s little work for us there, I fancy. Those be lads of Cologne, no grunters of the wild. ‘Tis the White Rose Club. Always too late for service.’

      Voices singing a hunting glee, popular in that age, swelled up the clear morning air; and gradually the words became distinct.

                   The Kaiser went a-hunting,

                     A-hunting, tra-ra:

                With his bugle-horn at springing morn,

                The Kaiser trampled bud and thorn:

                          Tra-ra!

              And the dew shakes green as the horsemen rear,

              And a thousand feathers they flutter with fear;

              And a pang drives quick to the heart of the deer;

                For the Kaiser’s out a-hunting,

                        Tra-ra!

                   Ta, ta, ta, ta,

                   Tra-ra, tra-ra,

                   Ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra!

      the owner of the truncheon awoke to these reviving tones, and uttered a faint responsive ‘Tra-ra!’

      ‘Hark again!’ said Farina, in reply to the commendation of the Goshawk, whose face was dimpled over with the harmony.

                The wild boar lay a-grunting,

                   A-grunting, tra-ra!

              And, boom! comes the Kaiser to hunt up me?

              Or, queak! the small birdie that hops on the tree?

                        Tra-ra!

              O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!

              For a maiden in bloom, or a full-blown dame,

              Are the daintiest prey, and the windingest game,

                When Kaisers go a-hunting,

                        Tra-ra!

                   Ha, ha, ha, ha,

                     Tra-ra, tra-ra,

                   Ha-ha, tra-ra, tra-ra!

      The voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest cadence.

      ‘‘Fore Gad! well done. Hurrah! Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra! That’s a trick we’re not half alive to at home,’ said Guy. ‘I feel friendly with these German lads.’

      The Goshawk’s disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in the name of the White Rose Club. Following that, his staff was wrested from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get his famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen’s house.

      THE MISSIVES

      Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids, for Werner hung like a nightmare over him. Margarita lay and dreamed in rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the night, and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the sweetest secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden. Farina’s devotion she knew his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day witnessed. The young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily, than she loved with her whole strength. Muffed and remote came the hunting-song under her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her fair face, as it thinned but did not banish her dream. Aunt Lisbeth also heard the song, and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window were secured against the wanton Kaiser. Despite her trials, she had taken her spell of sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden belief that in cases of apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence, she crept back there, and allowed the sun to rise without her. Gottlieb’s voice could not awaken her to the household duties she loved to perform with such a doleful visage. She heard him open his window, and parley in angry tones with the musicians below.

      ‘Decoys!’ muttered Aunt Lisbeth; ‘be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!’

      He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding and railing commenced anew.

      ‘Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,’ she complained; ‘and the good heavens only can say what may result from such indiscreetness.’

      A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth’s head.

      ‘It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,’ she said: ‘only then it was night and not morning. Ursula preserve me!’

      ‘Why, Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ cried Gottlieb from below. ‘Come down! ‘tis full five o’ the morning. Here’s company; and what are we to do without the woman?’

      ‘Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men! They do not consider how different it is for us!’ which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone, enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.

      Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the good-morning of young maiden and old.

      ‘Go thou first,’ said Aunt Lisbeth.

      Margarita gaily tripped ahead.

      ‘Girl!’ cried Aunt Lisbeth, ‘what’s that thing in thy back hair?’

      ‘I have borrowed Lieschen’s arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident.’

      ‘Lieschen’s arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast, Margarita.’

      ‘Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,’ sang Margarita.

                ‘The wild boar

Скачать книгу