CHAPTER XXIV.HOW A NEW INCIDENT WAS ADDED TO AN OLD PLAY.
"If he come not, then the play is marred."—A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Thecause of Marryott's not having seen the person whose voice he now heard, or the little board platform raised to serve as a stage, was that this platform was directly below his window, and hence hidden by the balconies with which the lower stories, unlike that in which he was, were provided.
The crowding of guards around Marryott, the distraction Barnet owed to his pain, had deterred the two from noticing, when outside the gate, the playbills attached to the posts. The play announced was "The Battle of Alcazar," by Mr. George Peele. There was still a special favor for anti-Spanish plays. Fresh in memory was that English victory over Spain whence arose the impulse of expansion destined, after three centuries of glory, to repeat itself in a new Anglo-Saxondom from a victory over the same race, when the guns of Dewey and Sampson should echo back in multiplied volume the roar ofDrake's and Howard's. History has nowhere repeated itself more picturesquely.
But after the play had been selected and announced, there had arrived at the inn, with a small regiment of servants, and a good part of his household furniture for his better accommodation, young Lord Tyrrington and his newly wedded lady. A squire in my lord's service had preceded him and bespoken the entire second story of one of the wings. My lady, on taking up her quarters, had learned with delight that London actors were to give a play in the yard. She had expressed to her husband, on whom she still looked with the soft eyes of a bride of a fortnight, the wish that the piece might be a love-play. Her spouse, as yet deeply enraptured with her and with love, had sent straightways for the master of the players. The result of the interview was the oral announcement which Marryott now heard from lips whose facility was well known to him.
Prefaced by delicately hinted compliments to the noble couple, and by gross open flattery of the worthy, excellent, and good people of Oakham, the announcement was to the effect that, instead of performing "The Battle of Alcazar," the lord chamberlain's servants would enact Master William Shakespeare's most admired and lamentable tragedy of the love of "Romeo and Juliet." Whereupon there was loudand prolonged applause, and the musicians, on the inn-balcony above the rear of the stage, struck up a tune for the beguilement of the crowd until the actors should be ready to begin.
"'Twas Will Sly," said Marryott, half to himself.
"You know him, I ween," said Roger Barnet, who had listened to the announcement with close attention, and who seemed to have softened a little under the stress of some concealed inclination.
"Marry, the days and nights we have tossed the pot together!" replied Hal.
"I ween you have been gossip and comrade to all of them," went on Roger, with guarded interest. "You know Burbage, and Shakespeare, and the rest?"
"I may say I know Burbage and the rest, and I have lived under the same roof with Master Shakespeare. I am acquaint with his outer life, which is, perforce, much like other men's, and with his talk, which varies so gently between sincerity and subtle irony, that one can never be sure; but to know the man himself were to know a world."
"I like his plays better than all others," said Roger. "And of all his plays, this 'Romeo and Juliet' best. I have read Arthur Brooke's poem of the tale, and William Paynter's story in 'The Palace of Pleasure;' but they are pale dullness to this tragedy. It hath rare love-making in it!"
The steeliness of Barnet's eye had melted to a soft lustre; a warmth had come over his face. Marryott looked at him in amazement. That this hard rascal, this complacent spy and implacable man-hunter,—even in that day when rough soldiers were greedy for wit and beauty and fine thought,—should have read poems and novels, and should possess a taste for rare love-making, was indeed one of those marvels which prove how many-sided (not inconsistent) is the individual human.
"If we could hear it better than we're like to do," suggested Marryott, "'twould a little distract us from our ills of mind and body,—for I take it from your twitchings that you suffer some."
The pursuivant was careful against showing how welcome this suggestion was; for he had felt that it would better emanate from the prisoner, in whom a desire to see the play was quite proper, than from an officer who ought to hold in supreme indifference all but duty.
"Why," said he, "I wot of no reason why you may not be allowed to see this play, under guard. Dawkins, go to the landlady and require for me a room in one of yonder wings, well toward the front of the yard, that we may see the stage from it. God forbid I should deprive a doomed man of two hours' forgetfulness!"
When, some minutes later, the change of roomshad been effected, Marryott found himself looking down from a gabled window, which, being over one side of the yard, gave a complete oblique view of the stage at the yard's rear. He sat on a low stool, his hands pinioned behind him, Roger Barnet at his side. Four armed men stood close around, leaning forward for all possible view over the heads of the two.
The musicians, now visible in the gallery over the back of the stage, were still playing. The second story balcony across the yard from Hal's window was occupied by the lord and lady and their numerous attendants, a group whose rich attire presented all hues, and every kind, of silk, velvet, and costly cloth. My lady, close to the railing, and leaning expectantly over it, wore on her head a caul of golden thread; and one of her maids held a peaked Minever cap ready to be donned in case of cold. My lord, sitting at her side, bent so near that the silk rose at the end of his love-lock often brushed the cheek of her in whose honor it was still worn, despite their being now married. His lordship might have taken a seat upon the stage, but he preferred to remain where he could mark the significant love speeches to his lady's attention by gentle pressure of his hand on hers.
Three or four rustic gallants sat on the stage, and talked ostentatiously, with a great deal of very knowinglaughter, each one keeping a side glance upon the noble lady in the balcony, to see what impression he was making; for each was convinced that her softly eager looks toward the stage were cast in admiration of himself.
The stage was of rough boards upon an underwork of upright barrels and trestles. At its back there hung from the balcony a curtain behind which a few makeshift steps descended to the door of an inn parlor now used by the actors as a tiring-room. The balcony thereabove was not devoted exclusively to the musicians; like all the other galleries around the yard, and to which chambers of the inn opened, this one held crowds of spectators,—inn guests and town's people. But of this one, that part immediately over the stage had, since the change of play, been cleared of people, and now remained so, with poles placed on either side as barriers. This part was reserved as Juliet's balcony; an inn chamber gave access to it from the rear. The height of the stage was such, that the floor of the balcony would be level with Romeo's eyes; but that mattered nothing to the imagination of an Elizabethan audience.
Even the steps leading to the balconies were crowded; the yard itself, paved with cobble stones, was more densely so, and with rougher and noisier people. Here were the lowest classes represented, but not those alone; here was a rawer wit thanamong the groundlings of the Globe Theatre; here was a smaller measure of acuteness than there, and here was a loutishness that was there absent.
The inn gates were now closed, but for a narrow opening, where stood two of the players' men to receive the money of what spectators might yet arrive.
The hour when the play ought to have begun had passed. But the crowd was the more tolerant of a burden upon its patience, for the fact that "Romeo and Juliet" had been substituted for the other play. Shakespeare's love-tragedy, which at first production had made the greatest success in the brief history of English drama, was the most popular play of its time; and to a county town of the insignificance of Oakham, it was still a novelty, bright with the lustre of its London triumph.
But at length the pleasure of anticipation lost power to sweeten the delay of realization. The crowd murmured. The musicians, who had fallen to playing "I am the Duke of Norfolk," for there being nothing else left unplayed, became the targets of derisive yells; the unseen players, behind the curtain, were called upon to hasten. My lady had changed her position several times, and my lord was beginning to wonder why the devil—
And then the curtain was pushed a little aside, and Master Sly stepped forth again, now dressed for thepart he was on this occasion to enact,—that of Mercutio. The crowd gave a shout of welcome, the musicians came to an abrupt but grateful stop. "The prologue," remarked several of the knowing, and then indignantly bade others hush, who were making the same remark.
But Master Sly's air was not suggestive of an ordinary prologue. It was hesitating, embarrassed, a little dubious of consequences. He began, rather to my lord than to the audience as a whole, a halting, bungling speech, of which the purport was that, by reason of the sudden illness of an actor who played a part necessary to the movement of the tragedy, and as no unoccupied player in the company knew the part, either "Romeo and Juliet" must be for the occasion abandoned, or its performance marred by the reading of the part, "which marring must needs be the greater," said Mr. Sly, "for that it is a part of exceeding activity, and hath some furious fighting with the rapier."
Here was a damper, whose potent effect became at once manifest in blank looks on faces noble and faces common. My lord and his lady were as much disappointed as the rudest artisan or the pertest grammar-school truant. The assemblage was yet in that chilled silence which precedes murmurs of displeasure, and Mr. Sly was drawing breath to submit the alternative of another play or the marredperformance, when from a gable window high above all galleries a voice rang out:
"Go to, Will Sly! I'll wager 'tis the part of Tybalt; and that Gil Crowe's illness comes of the same old cause!"
Master Sly stared aloft at the distant speaker. So did every auditor to whom the window was visible; and those in the balconies under it leaned over the railings and twisted their necks to look upward.
"Why,—'tis thee, Harry Marryott,—i' the name of God!" cried Sly, after a moment of blinking,—for Hal's gable was sun-bathed, and blue sky was above it. "What dost here, Hal? What surprise is this you give us?"
"No matter!" answered Hal. "I said truly, did I not?"
"Surely thou didst, and a mur—! Why, boy, thou canst play Tybalt! You studied it in London!"
"And played it once, when Master Crowe was—ill!"
"Why, here's good fortune! My lord, 'tis one of our actors, who hath been a time absent from us. You will enjoy to see him in the fighting. Haste thee down, Master Marryott!"
A clapping of hands behind the entrance-curtain told Hal that the other players had heard, and that they welcomed; some, indeed, were peeping out from the edges of the curtain.
Lord Tyrrington looked across the yard, and up to the gable window, and called out, "Well met, sir!" with a kindly face; and his lady, delighted at the turn of affairs, smiled sweetly. Whereat the crowd cheered lustily, and all eyes were fixed on Hal with approval and pleasure.
"Alas!" cried Hal. "I may not stir from here. I am a prisoner to this officer of the queen."
The smiles slowly faded from the countless faces below. Roger Barnet, who had been taken by surprise at Hal's first salutation to Sly, and whom the swift ensuing colloquy had caught at a loss, frowned, and wished he had interfered earlier.
"Nay," called Sly, "it can be for no grave offence. The—"
"'Tis a charge of aiding treason," replied Hal, to cut matters short.
Sly stood a little appalled. A deeper silence and a new interest took possession of the gazing crowd.
"Why, even so," said Sly, at last, "the officer may—"
The officer now thought it time to speak for himself. "My prisoner is my prisoner," he said, in a somewhat surly and defiant tone, "taken in the queen's name, with proper warrant; and in the queen's name I hold him here in close guard."
Will Sly, after a perplexed look at the pursuivantby Hal's side, turned his eyes in a tentative, questioning way to the young lord. The crowd followed his glance. My lord felt the pressure of the general wish upon him. His lady whispered something to him, in a kind of pouting, appealing way, with a disapproving side glance at Roger Barnet. My lady herself was only a knight's daughter. To her, a lord was a person of unlimited influence. When a wife imagines that her husband is all-powerful, he does not like to disabuse her mind. When he is deeply in love with her, and she asks him for a pleasure which he has himself offered, he will go far to obtain it. Moreover, here was a multitude looking to him, the great Lord Tyrrington, as to its champion against a vile, sport-spoiling hound of the government.
"How now, officer?" cried my lord, in a tone of lofty rebuke. "The queen's name—God save her gracious Majesty!—comes as loyally, methinks, from lips that do not make it a common byword of their trade. Warrant, say you? Your warrant, sirrah, requires not that you guard her Majesty's prisoner rather in one part of this inn than in another part. Let him be guarded upon yonder stage. 'Tis as safe a place, with proper watching, as the chamber you are in."
"My lord—" doggedly began Barnet, who had noted Sly's form of address. But ere he couldproceed, there arose from the yard, and was taken up by the galleries, a clamor so mandatory, so threatening to a possible thwarter of the general will, that the pursuivant, who in his day had seen a mob or two at work, became passive. Moreover, he had been as cast down as any one at the prospect of his favorite play's being supplanted or spoiled; and deep within him was a keen curiosity to see his prisoner act on the stage. Standing at the window, therefore, Roger made a curt gesture of yielding to the unanimous will.
"My lord," said he, when the cheers of satisfaction had hushed, "sith it be your desire, and haply the pleasure of my lady, and the wish of these good people, I no more say nay. Your lordship will of a surety grant me, and require of these players, that I may dispose guards to my own liking, and for the queen's service, during the time of my prisoner's use in the play."
My lord was quick to approve of this condition. "Your prisoner, mayhap," he added, "will give his word not to attempt escape."
"Ay, my lord," cried Hal, at once, "if this officer rely on that word alone, and dispense with guards about me."
Marryott knew, of course, and Barnet promptly affirmed by word, that the latter would prefer to rely on his guards. Hal showed no offence at this;had he thought his word would be accepted he would not have offered it.
"Then," said he, when Barnet had expressed himself, "I will not give my word."
The pursuivant was content. He attributed Hal's attitude to a mere idle punctilio which would not accept moral bonds without a reciprocal withdrawal of physical ones, even though freedom from moral bonds was useless. Barnet was accustomed, in his observations of gentlemen, to such bootless niceties in matters of honor.
The musicians were put to it for another quarter of an hour, and Barnet conducted the prisoner down-stairs and to the tiring-room. He placed a guard at each entrance to that room, stationed others in the yard so that one breasted each side of the small stage, set two upon the steps between stage and tiring-room, and established himself on a three-legged stool on the stage. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that Tybalt, even during the acts wherein he appears, is less time on the stage than off. He had put the faithful Hudsdon, however, at the door from the tiring-room to the steps behind the stage. Indeed, Hal's freedom was little more than it had been in the chamber, save that. Tybalt being a swordsman's part, his hands were now unbound.
Barnet had assured himself that the rapiers usedby the actors were blunted so as not to pierce. He knew, too, that he had won the crowd by his concession to their wish, and that he should have all the spectators, including the lord's people and the inn-folk, as active barriers against any dash the prisoner might rashly venture for liberty.
Hal's friends had crowded around him in the tiring-room, which was lighted with candles against the gloom caused by the curtain at the back of the stage. Even Burbage had pressed his hand, and uttered a hope that there might be nothing in this treason matter. "Fortune send thee safe out of it, whatever it be!" was Master Shakespeare's wish. "If thou camest to grief, Hal," said the Juliet, the same pert stripling that had played Ophelia eleven days before, "I should weep like a real girl!" Gil Crowe alone had nothing to say, for he was stretched half clad, in the corner where he had fallen, in the deepest drunken slumber.
Master Shakespeare wore the white beard and religious cowl of the Friar; a habit that had wakened in Hal's mind a thought to be quenched the next moment by Barnet's injunction to the guards of the tiring-room:
"And lose not sight of him an instant while he is here, lest during an eye-wink he slip into some player's disguise of face and body, and pass one of you unknown."
His comrades, especially Master Shakespeare and Will Sly, would have inquired more closely into the circumstances of Hal's detention, but the young man was so pleasantly exhilarated by the reunion with his friends, so carried out of himself at the prospect of playing this part, that he put direful matters aside as not to be talked of. With his dulled rapier in hand, and without having to change costume, he stood surrounded by the players, at the tiring-room door, waiting to go on the stage.
The music ceased again; the speaker of the prologue stepped out, and, while the audience came gradually to a hush, delivered his lines from the centre of the platform. A boy fastened to the curtain at the back a scroll reading, "A Street in Verona." The two Capulet serving-men came on, and their rude double-meanings made the crowd guffaw; then the two Montague men, then Benvolio, then Tybalt precipitating the brawl, then the crowd of adherents of both houses; and the ensuing fray, unduly confined by the smallness of the platform, came near involving Roger Barnet and the gallants sitting at the sides.
Noting more heedfully how dense was the crowd that pressed from the yard's farthest boundaries to the stage, and recognizing the guards about the latter. Hal had a sickening feeling of being mured around with a wall no less impassable for that it was human.
His mind reverted to the last time he had acted on a stage; to the face he had seen then. Where was she at this moment? Was the horse waiting? Unmanned for an instant, he felt his eyes moisten.
When he made exit, after the Prince had quelled the tumult, he stood silent in the dark tiring-room, sad at heart.
Meanwhile, Roger Barnet and the audience were enjoying the performance. The pursuivant, nearer to the great Burbage than he had ever before been during a play, drank in Romeo's every word. In due time, the stage being for a moment vacant, a boy supplanted the first card with one reading, "A Room in Capulet's House." The scene of the Nurse with Juliet and her mother drew some very conscious blushes from my lady in the gallery, the too reminiscent Nurse's part losing nothing of mellowness from its being played by a portly man. The street card reappeared, and brought on Mercutio to deepen the audience's enhancement. Another substitution introduced the masquerade, during which the Tybalt, covered with an orange-tawny cloak and wearing a black mask, was held in particular note by Barnet. Hudsdon having followed him to the stage and pointed him out in his visored appearance.
During the second act, with its balcony scene, its wisdom so impressively spoken by Master Shakespeare in the Friar's part, its wit contest betweenRomeo and Mercutio, Roger Barnet was in the seventh heaven. Throughout this act, Hal, seated listlessly in the tiring-room, was under the eyes of Hudsdon and other guards. The first scene of the third act, heralded by the useful street scroll, brought his great and last great occasion.
"It may be my last stage-playing in this world," he thought, and resolved it should be worthy the remembrance of his comrades.
"'By my heel, I care not,'" quoth Sly as Mercutio, and Tybalt, taking the cue, strode out with his followers, to force the deadly quarrel.
The brief exchange of defiance with Mercutio, the vain attempt of peacemaking Benvolio to lead the foes from public gaze, made keen the audience's expectation. Romeo entered; refused to be drawn by Tybalt's fierce words into fight; tried to placate the other's hot anger. Mercutio invited the quarrel to himself, drew rapier, and belabored Tybalt with wit. Tybalt, with a ready "I am for you," flashed out his blade in turn. There was fine clashing of steel, excellent fencing. Romeo rushed in to stop the duel, calling on Benvolio to beat down the weapons. Is it wonder that the audience was a-quiver with interest, under complete illusion? For here was a truly fiery Tybalt; here was Mercutio, the most fascinating character in Shakespeare; here as Romeo was Burbage himself, accounted thegreatest actor in the world. Is it wonder that Roger Barnet, sitting not a man's length away, hung breathlessly, and with wide eyes, upon the scene?
"Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!" cried Romeo.
But Mercutio had received his thrust, and Tybalt turned to flee with his followers. Barnet heard him cry out something as he ran; got an impression of legs disappearing behind the rear curtain; and, with the greater part of the audience, kept his eyes on the group whence the youth had fled.
For Mercutio was panting in Romeo's arms; declaring himself hurt, and calling feebly a plague on both the houses; replying to Romeo's encouraging words with: "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses!" And so till Benvolio led him off gasping with his dying breath, "Your houses!"
And now it was Romeo's task to hold the multitude's illusion with deploring speeches; and to work up anew its breathless sympathy, at the news of Mercutio's death and that the furious Tybalt was coming back again.
"'Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain!'" cried Burbage.
"'Away to heaven, respective lenity.And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now.'"
And Romeo, trembling with the emotion of the situation, stood with sword ready to receive the slayer of his friend, lips ready to begin, "Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again—"
The audience stood in a suspense not less than Romeo's, every gaze intent upon the place where Tybalt should come forth.
But from that place, no one appeared.
Why did Tybalt delay? What was the matter?
It was an embarrassing moment for Mr. Burbage. He whispered something to the Benvolio, who thereupon went to the curtain at the rear and pushed it aside. He disclosed a number of those actors known as servitors, waiting to come on as citizens, and behind these the Prince with Montague and Capulet and their ladies.
"Where's Marryott?" called Benvolio to these. "'Tis his cue. The stage waits for Tybalt."
Those about the doorway looked into the tiring-room. "He is not here," replied several.
"He is not come from the stage yet," said Hudsdon. "I have kept my eye for him."
"Why," said Benvolio to the fellows who had played Tybalt's followers, "came he not off with you?"
"I remember not," said one. "'Tis certain he ought to have."
"'Tis certain he did not," said one of the guards on the steps.
Hudsdon made his way through the group on the steps, strode upon the stage, and, going to the centre thereof, to Mr. Burbage's utter amazement, said to Roger Barnet:
"There's deviltry afoot! The prisoner came not yonder, yet he is not here!"
"What say'st thou?" replied Roger, turning dark, and springing to his feet. "Thou'st been cozened. Hudsdon! He fled yonder; I saw him!" And he pointed toward the tiring-room.
"Nay," said one of the gallants on the stage, "he fled over the balcony, into the house." The speaker indicated the balcony used by Juliet, which, as has been said, was no higher above the back of the stage than were the eyes of a man standing. "That I'll swear. He grasped the balustrade, and drew himself up, and bent around, and put knee to the balcony's edge; and then 'twas short work over the balustrade and across the balcony."
"Ay, 'tis so!" cried out many voices from near the stage, and from the occupied part of the balcony itself.
"Why, then, Hudsdon, take three men, and search the house," cried Roger, for whom Mr. Burbage hadindignantly made way by retiring to the back of the stage. Then the pursuivant turned to his informants: "An ye had eyes for so much, had none of you the wit to call out whither he went?"
"I thought it was part of the play," lisped the gallant. "I thought he ran away lest he be taken for killing the witty gentleman."
"Why, so he did," quoth Barnet, "but he ought not to have run to the balcony!"
"Marry, look you," said the other, "he cried 'Away!' and started for the curtain; then he said, 'Nay, I'll to the balcony!' and so to the balcony he went. I thought 'twas in the play."
"I knew the play," called out a gentleman in the balcony, "but I thought the action had mayhap been changed. We all thought so, who saw him pass this way."
"Devil take prating!" muttered Barnet. "Dawkins, go you with three men and seek in the street hereabout for him, or word of him. You three, to the stables, and out with the horses! A murrain on plays and play-acting!—I don't mean that, neither. Master Shakespeare" (for the poet had hastened to the stage to see what the matter was), "but I've been a blind ass this day, and I would I had your art to tell my feelings!"
And he limped after Hudsdon, to assist in the search of the house.
This was a large inn, and required long searching. As for the men ordered to seek in the adjacent streets, they were a good while hindered in making their way through the crowd in the yard. Those who went to take out the horses were similarly impeded.
Meanwhile, for a time there was clamor and confusion among the spectators. Some of the dull witted, who had lost interest in the play after the novelty of the opening scenes, followed the four men to the street. The most, thinking the prisoner might be found in the house, chose to remain where they were, deciding not to sacrifice a certain pleasure for the uncertain one of joining a hunt for an escaped prisoner. So there were calls for the play to go on. It was therefore taken up at the point where Marryott had failed to appear, Master Shakespeare assuming Tybalt's part for the one short speech, and the swift death, that remained to it. Thenceforward there was no stoppage. My lord and his lady listened with rapt attention, and when at last the two lovers lay clasped in death many of the audience had forgotten the episode that had interrupted the third act.
But Roger Barnet had other occupation than to watch the resumed play. It was not given him to end as agreeably an afternoon so pleasantly begun; yet matter to distract his thoughts from his lameleg was not lacking. The search of the inn yielding nothing, the scouring of the immediate neighborhood being fruitless, the pursuivant sent his men throughout the town for a clue. One came back with news that a man of the prisoner's description had been seen taking the Stamford road. Another returned with word that the lady who had followed from Foxby Hall had tarried a short while at another inn; and a third brought information that this lady and her escort of three had later left the town by the road to London. She had not, indeed, had Barnet's reason for staying in Oakham, and it was quite natural that she should have continued her homeward journey. Her departure seemed not connected in any way with the prisoner's flight.
Meanwhile the horses had been waiting ready in the street during the time necessary for these inquiries.
"To saddle, then," said Barnet to Hudsdon, "every hound of us! I'll on to Fleetwood house, you to the Stamford road. 'Tis the fiend's work that your man hath two hours' start. I wonder how far he is."
Just about that time, as the players were sitting down to supper, Master Shakespeare said:
"I pray Fortune the new action Hal put in my tragedy shall prove indeed the winning of his freedom!"
CHAPTER XXV.SIR HARRY AND LADY MARRYOTT.
"This wild-goose chase is done; we have won o' both sides."—The Wild-Goose Chase.
Marryott, in the midst of the fight with Mercutio, had in a flash two thoughts, one springing from the contact of his glance with the balcony, the other following instantly upon the first. The first was, that a man might gain the balcony by one swift effort of agility and strength; the second was, that when momentous action holds the attention of spectators to one part of a stage, a person elsewhere on the stage may move unobserved before their eyes, if his movement be swift, silent, and in harmony with what has preceded,—a fact well known to people of stage experience. No incident in the drama more focuses attention than the dying scene of Mercutio; spectators have no eyes for Tybalt, of whom they retain but a vague impression of hasty flight.
The thing was scarce thought, when the time had come to act it. To make all seem right to those he must pass near, and inspired by necessity, he indeed spoke, for their ears alone, the words, "Away! Nay,I'll to the balcony;" at the same time casting his sword against the curtain, so that it fell less loudly to the stage. He seized two balusters, swiftly raised himself, and then—not proceeding exactly as the rustic beau had described—lodged a foot in the angle of a brace supporting the balcony, set his other foot on the balcony's edge, and rose ready to swing his body over the rail. To do this, and to glide across the balcony and through the way left open for Juliet, was the matter of a second. He was conscious, as he crossed the balcony, of slightly surprised looks from the musicians at one side, and from a few spectators at the other; but as he plunged into the room, he heard behind him only the lamenting voice of Romeo. Most of the spectators, and those chiefly concerned in his doings, had not observed his flight; like the dupes of a juggler, in watching one thing they had missed another; and those who perforce had seen his exit thought all was as it should be.
Across the room he ran, to a door leading into a passage. He traversed this to the end, where a window gave upon the street. Through the window ere he had time to think of possible broken bones, he hung from the ledge, and dropped. The fall was from the second story only. He slipped sidewise on alighting, jarred his elbow, and bruised his leg. But he was up in a moment. The street was deserted,—everybody in the neighborhood was at the play.
He looked in both directions, but saw no horse. Then he started on a run, to make a circuit of the inn. If the horse was not in sight on one side, it must be so on another. Fortune could not so cruelly will it that when at last he had made the dash, performed the miracle, his friends should, for the first time, fail him. He directed his steps so as first to pass the inn gate, and be gone from it ere Barnet's men should have time to sally out. This he accomplished, but without glimpse of the horse. He turned into a street on the third side of the inn; traversed it to its junction with a lane leading toward the side where he had landed from the window; darted into this lane with the fast-beating heart of a dying hope, passed half-way through it, glanced with dreading eyes down a narrow passage conducting from it, and saw, in a street beyond, the waiting horse.
How he covered the length of the passage, and vaulted into the saddle, he never could recall. His first remembered impression, after sight of the horse, was of being surrounded by Anne, Kit, and Anthony, all mounted; and seeing Francis glide away afoot in quest of a horse for his own riding. There was more gravity than joy in the faces of the three; the sight of him alive and free of his guards was too marvellous for outward rejoicing. Such joy is like passions, of which Raleigh wrote, that they —"... are likened best to floods and streams:The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."
Anthony avoided Hal's glance by looking down; Kit Bottle cleared his throat; from Anne's eyes there was the least gush of tears, and her voice trembled as she spoke:
"God be thanked! I dared not hope for this!"
"Nor I," he replied. "Whither do we ride?"
"You, to the Lincolnshire coast, with Anthony. He knows secret ways of embarkation to France."
"But you?—you waited with the horse, that you might ride with me, is't not so?"
"No; that I might see all done, with mine own eyes, and you escaped. Anthony has money for your needs to France. I will ride home, with Captain Bottle and Francis. Tarry not another moment. You are to ride first alone. Anthony will leave this town with us, and then make by cross-ways to join you soon on the Stamford road. This paper tells where one shall wait for the other, for Anthony may ride the faster, knowing better the ways. I have writ it so, for greater surety and less delay. Go now; here's money, of Anthony's lending. Nay, for God's sake, tarry not!"
"But thou? When shall I see or hear?"
"Anthony will tell you how to send word. Tarry not, I entreat!"
"Thou'st been too good to me!"
"Nay, 'tis not goodness alone—"
And she finished with a look straight and deep into his eyes. He seized her hand, and kissed it fervently.
"And thou'lt wait?" he whispered.
"Forever, if need!—but let it not be so long."
With his free hand, he grasped Kit Bottle's, and wrung from the old soldier a husky "God bless thee, boy!" Then he spurred forward in the direction silently pointed out by Anthony. At a bend of the street, he turned in his saddle, and cast a look back. His friends were motionless upon their horses, gazing after him with saddened, softened faces. A slight movement of Mistress Hazlehurst's gloved hand, and his horse had carried him from the scene; but he bore that scene ever in his heart's eye, day and night, to the coast, which, thanks to his good start and tireless riding, he reached uncaught; over sea to France, where Anthony soon brought him into sight of Sir Valentine Fleetwood, who had arrived at Dieppe not a day sooner than Hal had disembarked at Boulogne; in Paris, where Hal got an honorable post in a great man's household through the influence of Sir Valentine's wife,—for it turned out that the knight, unknown to Queen Elizabeth, had a wife, after all, a French lady whose virtue and beauty easily explained her husband's willingness to save his life at another's risk.
She was of great wealth, and, it happened, of equal gratitude; whence it fell out that, when Master Marryott returned to England, after the accession of King James, he came as owner of an estate previously purchased in his name by Anthony Underhill; an estate sold by the crown, under confiscation,—no other estate, in fact, than that pertaining to Foxby Hall, in Yorkshire.
Now it had come out that Mistress Hazlehurst's brother, before getting himself killed by Sir Valentine Fleetwood, had overladen his estate with debt, and, in conspiracy with his sister's man of business, had made way with her portion also. When the courts of law had finally established beyond doubt that she was penniless, Master Marryott was about returning to his own country, fully informed, by Anne's correspondence, of the state of her affairs. So there was afforded the unique spectacle of a lady who had remained unmarried while she was supposably an heiress, obtaining a husband the moment she was shown to be a beggar.
"I think, love," said Sir Harry (he was knighted under King James, on no better pretext than having, with his own servants, rid the northern counties of a famous robber called Rumney the Highway, whom Marryott's man Bottle slew in single combat), "I think I will write my memoirs, as everybody inFrance does." He sat idly touching a viol in an upper window-seat of Foxby Hall, one summer evening, while Lady Marryott as idly fingered a virginal near him.
"How now, Hal? Hast done aught wonderful in thy time? 'Faith, thou shouldst have told me!"
"Rail an thou wilt, sweet! But there is much for wonder in the matter that brought us together,—not in any doing of mine, forsooth, but in Fortune's doing. For look you, had I not indeed tarried here that night you counterfeited illness in this room, you might perforce have talked with Roger Barnet ere the six days were done, and he have sent back to Sir Valentine, who left not Fleetwood house till the last hour. Thus, perchance, Sir Valentine had not escaped to France; had he not done so, I had not fared well there, and met his lady, whose gratitude took the shape of filling my purse. I had not then come back as owner of Foxby Hall at the very time my love was disowned of Fortune. But for the sad quarrel 'twixt your brother and Sir Valentine, and for my having taken up the queen's thankless errand, I had not met you in the road that night; but for the continuance of my pretence to be Sir Valentine, thou hadst not followed me to the end we wot of."
The queen's death had unsealed his lips,—though only to his wife, who was one woman that couldkeep a secret,—regarding her Majesty's commission.
"Why, then," said Anne, "but for the queen's lingering love of the knight, and but for her dread of seeming weak to her councillors,—for that I will take oath was her reason,—we should not be here together this moment. Ne'ertheless, 'twas a cruel queen, merely to save her pride a brief unpleasantness, to send a young gentleman to risk his life!"
"Marry, Anne, I have heard of ladies who were not queens, sending great lords further, for less! But look you, I took the errand for no reward, being minded like to Master Spenser's knight:
"'Upon a great adventure he was bond.That greatest Gloriana to him gave(That greatest glorious Queen of Faerie land).To win him worship, and her grace to have.'
"Nay, I know thou'lt say, much virtue in her grace! But bethink you, if I looked for no other direct reward, and got none, neither did I look for the indirect rewards Fortune took it on herself to pay me withal. If I sought only the queen's grace, and mayhap received small share of that, was I not put in the way of winning thy grace, my sweet, and of all else I have?"
"Nay, perhaps Fortune had found other ways to bring these things to thee. Look out of the window,Harry, and bid Kit Bottle not make little Will run so fast. Thine old bully is the child's undoing!"
"Nay, the lad is safe with Kit; though indeed the old rascal spoils him some. What was he doing yesterday, but teaching him to counterfeit Anthony Underhill's psalm-singing? A steward of Anthony's years deserves more courtesy."
"If the boy grow up as brave a gentleman as thou, Hal, I shall be content. There be honors waiting for him in the world, I trow."
"Why, he hath some honor already, methinks, in being Will Shakespeare's godson. 'Sooth, the players will not know him for the same lad when we go again to London, he hath shot up so tall. But thou wert speaking of that night, when thy feigned tears conquered me in this room—"
"Nay, thou wert speaking of it, love."
"Thou hast never told me; never have I dared ask: was—all—counterfeit that night?"
"Why,—my lord,—the illness, indeed, was counterfeit; but the kisses—though perhaps I had withheld them, save for my purpose—were real enough. God wot, once my lips were loosed! And I marvel I could still cling to my revenge, yet yield myself to thine arms so willingly! Nay, Hal, there's no need to act the scene anew! Out on thee, madcap, thou'st crushed my kirtle—!"
THE END.