Part 37 (1/2)
Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with kindling eye.
This added fuel to the fire and brought the insulted ancient back from the impa.s.sable door, with his whisking train.
”And after that--MADNESS!
”And after that--BLACK VOMIT!
”And then--CONVULSIONS!
”And then--THAT CESSATION OF ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS THE VULGAR CALL 'DEATH,' for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence, farewell.” He went. He came. He roared, ”And think not to be buried in any Christian churchyard; for the bailiff is my good friend, and I shall tell him how and why you died: felo de se! felo de se! Farewell.”
Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat the world has unhappily lost: for as he came with his whisking train, and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face, and knocked him down like a shot, the boy's head cracked under his falling master's, and crash went the dumb-strickened orator into the basket; and there sat wedged in an inverted angle, crus.h.i.+ng phial after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar; but in a squatting posture: so that they sat in a sequence like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one of his age.
He was sitting on the hot coals.
They had singed the cloth and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled yelling over with it sideways, and lo! a great hissing: then the humane Gerard ran and wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which however, being as various and even beautiful in colour, as they were odious in taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe and painted it more gaudy than neat.
Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. ”Courage, man, 'tis but cautery; balm of Gilead; why you recommended it but now to my comrade here.”
The physician replied only by a look of concentrated spite, and went out in dead silence, thrusting his stomach forth before him in the drollest way. The boy followed him next moment, but in that slight interval he left off whining, burst in a grin, and conveyed to the culprits by an unrefined gesture his accurate comprehension of, and rapturous though compressed joy at, his master's disaster.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony from ”a bad burn.” Those were the words. For in phlogistic, as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.
His housekeeper applied some old woman's remedy mild as milk. He submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to him, meditated instant flight from the towns.h.i.+p.
Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire, and honest endeavour, to perjure himself, were baffled by a circ.u.mstance he had never foreseen nor indeed thought possible.
He had spoken the truth.
And IN AN AFFIDAVIT!
The officers, on reaching the Silver Lion, found the birds were flown.
They went down to the river, and, from intelligence they received there started up the bank in hot pursuit.
This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear, and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. ”That old fellow,” said he, ”went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers here: _the bailiff is his friend_: in five minutes we shall lie in a dungeon for a.s.saulting a Dusseldorf dignity: are you strong enough to hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to lie down in a boat instead of a bed: and what is the odds?”
”The odds? Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for Rome: for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen: and then we shall lie in the boat, but ON the Rhine, the famous Rhine: the cool, refres.h.i.+ng Rhine. I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little hop-o'-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!”
Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to their dismay that the public boat was gone this half-hour, and no other would start that day, being afternoon. By dint however of asking a great many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of a private boat from an old man and his two sons.
This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. ”The current is too strong for three oars.”
”Then my comrade and I will help row,” said the invalid.