The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

CHAPTER XX

The courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove. Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage was perfect as far as it went. He had met and baffled many dangers in the course of his rude life, and these familiar dangers he could face with Spartan fortitude, almost with indifference; but he had never been hunted by a bloodhound, nor had he ever seen that brute's unerring instinct baffled by human cunning. Here then a sense of the supernatural combined with novelty to ungenteel his heart. After going a few steps, he leaned on his bow, and energy and hope oozed out of him. Gerard, to whom the danger appeared slight in proportion as it was distant, urged him to flight.

“What avails it?” said Martin sadly; “if we get clear of the wood we shall die cheap; here, hard by, I know a place where we may die dear.”

“Alas! good Martin,” cried Gerard, “despair not so quickly; there must be some way to escape.”

“Oh, Martin!” cried Margaret, “what if we were to part company? Gerard's life alone is forfeit. Is there no way to draw the pursuit on us twain and let him go safe?”

“Girl, you know not the bloodhound's nature. He is not on this man's track or that; he is on the track of blood. My life on't they have taken him to where Ghysbrecht fell, and from the dead man's blood to the man that shed it that cursed hound will lead them, though Gerard should run through an army or swim the Meuse.” And again he leaned upon his bow, and his head sank.

The hound's mellow voice rang through the wood.

A cry more tunable Was never halloed to, nor cheered with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, or in Thessaly.

Strange that things beautiful should be terrible and deadly' The eye of the boa-constrictor, while fascinating its prey, is lovely. No royal crown holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light playing ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it loses all power of motion, and trembles, and awaits his death and even so, to compare hearing with sight, this sweet and mellow sound seemed to fascinate Martin Wittenhaagen. He stood uncertain, bewildered, and unnerved. Gerard was little better now. Martin's last words had daunted him, He had struck an old man and shed his blood, and, by means of that very blood, blood's four-footed avenger was on his track. Was not the finger of Heaven in this?

Whilst the men were thus benumbed, the woman's brain was all activity. The man she loved was in danger.

“Lend me your knife,” said she to Martin. He gave it her.

“But 'twill be little use in your hands,” said he.

Then Margaret did a sly thing. She stepped behind Gerard, and furtively drew the knife across her arm, and made it bleed freely; then stooping, smeared her hose and shoes; and still as the blood trickled she smeared them; but so adroitly that neither Gerard nor Martin saw. Then she seized the soldier's arm.

“Come, be a man!” she said, “and let this end. Take us to some thick place, where numbers will not avail our foes.”

“I am going,” said Martin sulkily. “Hurry avails not; we cannot shun the hound, and the place is hard by;” then turning to the left, he led the way, as men go to execution.

He soon brought them to a thick hazel coppice, like the one that had favoured their escape in the morning.

“There,” said he, “this is but a furlong broad, but it will serve our turn.”

“What are we to do?”

“Get through this, and wait on the other side; then as they come straggling through, shoot three, knock two on the head, and the rest will kill us.”

“Is that all you can think of?” said Gerard.

“That is all.”

“Then, Martin Wittenhaagen, I take the lead, for you have lost your head. Come, can you obey so young a man as I am?”

“Oh, yes, Martin,” cried Margaret, “do not gainsay Gerard! He is wiser than his years.”

Martin yielded a sullen assent.

“Do then as you see me do,” said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning round twisted them breast-high behind him among the standing shoots. Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had thus painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the bloodhound's deep bay came nearer and nearer, less and less musical, louder and sterner.

Margaret trembled.

Martin went down on his stomach and listened.

“I hear a horse's feet.”

“No,” said Gerard; “I doubt it is a mule's. That cursed Ghysbrecht is still alive: none other would follow me up so bitterly.”

“Never strike your enemy but to slay him,” said Martin gloomily.

“I'll hit harder this time, if Heaven gives me the chance,” said Gerard.

At last they worked through the coppice, and there was an open wood. The trees were large, but far apart, and no escape possible that way.

And now with the hound's bay mingled a score of voices hooping and hallooing.

“The whole village is out after us,” said Martin.

“I care not,” said Gerard. “Listen, Martin. I have made the track smooth to the dog, but rough to the men, that we may deal with them apart. Thus the hound will gain on the men, and as soon as he comes out of the coppice we must kill him.”

“The hound? There are more than one.”

“I hear but one.”

“Ay! but one speaks, the others run mute; but let the leading hound lose the scent, then another shall give tongue. There will be two dogs, at least, or devils in dog's hides.”

“Then we must kill two instead of one. The moment they are dead, into the coppice again, and go right back.”

“That is a good thought, Gerard,” said Martin, plucking up heart.

“Hush! the men are in the wood.”

Gerard now gave his orders in a whisper.

“Stand you with your bow by the side of the coppice—there, in the ditch. I will go but a few yards to yon oak-tree, and hide behind it; the