The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

jaws like a grave, and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up, up, till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate. The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the bough, then pounded the earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below, and the very next instant a cry of dismay, for Gerard had swooned, and without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous height.

      CHAPTER XXV

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      Denys caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck, or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy carcass his head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not so harmless; and soon she breathed her last; and the judicious Denys propped Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear around him, rolled away, yelling.

      “Courage,” cried Denys, “le diable est mort.”

      “Is it dead? quite dead?” inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been for some time.

      “Behold,” said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened her jaws and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst of which Gerard was violently sick.

      Denys laughed at him.

      “What is the matter now?” said he, “also, why tumble off your perch just when we had won the day?”

      “I swooned, I trow.”

      “But why?”

      Not receiving an answer, he continued, “Green girls faint as soon as look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever fainted up a tree?”

      “She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have overpowered me! Faugh! I hate blood.”

      “I do believe it potently.”

      “See what a mess she has made me

      “But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy you.”'

      “You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the colour of your shirt.”

      “Let us distinguish,” said Denys, colouring; “it is permitted to tremble for a friend.”

      Gerard, for answer, flung his arms round Denys's neck in silence.

      “Look here,” whined the stout soldier, affected by this little gush of nature and youth, “was ever aught so like a woman? I love thee, little milksop—go to. Good! behold him on his knees now. What new caprice is this?”

      “Oh, Denys, ought we not to return thanks to Him who has saved both our lives against such fearful odds?” And Gerard kneeled, and prayed aloud. And presently he found Denys kneeling quiet beside him, with his hands across his bosom after the custom of his nation, and a face as long as his arm. When they rose, Gerard's countenance was beaming.

      “Good Denys,” said he, “Heaven will reward thy piety.”

      “Ah, bah! I did it out of politeness,” said the Frenchman. “It was to please thee, little one. C'est egal, 'twas well and orderly prayed, and edified me to the core while it lasted. A bishop had scarce handled the matter better; so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted with us—marchons.”

      Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. “By-the-by, the cub!”

      “Oh, no, no!” cried Gerard.

      “You are right. It is late. We have lost time climbing trees, and tumbling off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting, and praying; and the brute is heavy to carry. And now I think on't, we shall have papa after it next; these bears make such a coil about an odd cub. What is this? you are wounded! you are wounded!”

      “Not I.”

      “He is wounded; miserable that I am!”

      “Be calm, Denys. I am not touched; I feel no pain anywhere.”

      “You? you only feel when another is hurt,” cried Denys, with great emotion; and throwing himself on his knees, he examined Gerard's leg with glistening eyes.

      “Quick! quick! before it stiffens,” he cried, and hurried him on.

      “Who makes the coil about nothing now?” inquired Gerard composedly.

      Denys's reply was a very indirect one.

      “Be pleased to note,” said he, “that I have a bad heart. You were man enough to save my life, yet I must sneer at you, a novice in war. Was not I a novice once myself? Then you fainted from a wound, and I thought you swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly, I have a bad tongue and a bad heart.”

      “Denys!”

      “Plait-il?”

      “You lie.”

      “You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to you,” mumbled the remorseful Denys.

      Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg contracted and stiffened, till presently Gerard could only just put his toe to the ground, and that with great pain.

      At last he could bear it no longer.

      “Let me lie down and die,” he groaned, “for this is intolerable.”

      Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty; and cold and hunger ill companions; and that it would be unreasonable to lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct. So Gerard leaned upon his axe, and hobbled on; but presently he gave in, all of a sudden, and sank helpless in the road.

      Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his crossbow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them keep aloof; and should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces. “Honest men keep the path; and, knaves in a wood, none but fools do parley with them.” With this he snatched up Gerard's axe, and set off running—not, as Gerard expected, towards Dusseldorf, but on the road they had come.

      Gerard lay aching and smarting; and to him Rome, that seemed so near at starting, looked far, far off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it would be one day to hold Margaret's hand, and tell her all he had gone through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him; and in the midst of pain and irritation of the nerves be lay resigned, and sweetly, though faintly, smiling.

      He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts; and the next moment something struck a tree hard by, and quivered in it.

      He looked, it was an arrow.

      He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell, for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated, that a stranger is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air. Presently there was a lull; then he heard the fierce galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans; and above all, strange and terrible sounds, like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphurous smoke came drifting over his head. And all was still.