The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

put out his hand to wake Gerard. It lighted on the young man's forehead, and found it quite wet. Denys then in his quality of nurse forbore to wake him. “It is ill to check sleep or sweat in a sick man,” said he. “I know that far, though I ne'er minced ape nor gallows-bird.”

      After waiting a good hour he felt desperately hungry; so he turned, and in self-defence went to sleep again.

      Poor fellow, in his hard life he had been often driven to this manoeuvre. At high noon he was waked by Gerard moving, and found him sitting up with the straw smoking round him like a dung-hill. Animal heat versus moisture. Gerard called him “a lazy loon.” He quietly grinned.

      They set out, and the first thing Denys did was to give Gerard his arbalest, etc., and mount a high tree on the road. “Coast clear to the next village,” said he, and on they went.

      On drawing near the village, Denys halted and suddenly inquired of Gerard how he felt.

      “What! can you not see? I feel as if Rome was no further than yon hamlet.”

      “But thy body, lad; thy skin?”

      “Neither hot nor cold; and yesterday 'twas hot one while and cold another. But what I cannot get rid of is this tiresome leg.”

      “Le grand malheur! Many of my comrades have found no such difficulty.”

      “Ah! there it goes again; itches consumedly.”

      “Unhappy youth,” said Denys solemnly, “the sum of thy troubles is this: thy fever is gone, and thy wound is—healing. Sith so it is,” added he indulgently, “I shall tell thee a little piece of news I had otherwise withheld.”

      “What is't?” asked Gerard, sparkling with curiosity.

      “THE HUE AND CRY IS OUT AFTER US: AND ON FLEET HORSES.”

      “Oh!”

      CHAPTER XXIX

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      Gerard 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

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      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.