A Gentleman Player Part 14

"Have you seen aught of a key I lost?" said Hal, ere he thought. "I need it to unlock my door and get out of my room, as I am in some haste!"

She turned deep crimson at the jest; her eyes shot a glance of fire, her lips closed tight; and, without a word, she glided past him, and out to her horses. He saw in her look a new sense of the insufficiency of easy and obvious means, and a resolution to rise to the needs of her purpose.

"Her eyes are opened," mused Hal, following her and Francis to the yard.

"Her next step is like to be more considerable!"

Meeting Kit and the horses just within the inn yard gate, Hal and Anthony mounted. Anne and her page were prompt to follow their example.

With courtesy, Hal held back his horses for her to precede him out to the road. A minute afterward the five riders, so strangely brought into a single group, were pushing northward in the cold, waning afternoon.

She had slept some, and was the better for the food she had taken. Yet this riding was manifestly a wearier business than it could have been at the time of her setting out. It was a chilly business, too, for March had begun to turn out very January-like, and was steadily becoming more so. The look of dogged endurance that mingled on her face with the new resolution there, continually touched Hal's tender and pitying side. His countenance as continually showed his feelings, and she perceived them with deep and ill-concealed resentment.

But she at last attained a degree of stolid iciness at which she remained. It imposed upon Hal, riding at her side, a silence that became the harder to break as it became the less bearable. And the further she tried to put herself out of his pity, the greater his pity grew, for the effort she was required to make. The more his admiration increased, too; and if pity is ever akin to love, it is certainly so when united to admiration. Her determination had not the mannish mien, nor her dislike the acrid, ill-bred aspect that would have repelled; they were of the womanly and high-born character that made them rather pique and allure.

Partly to provoke her feelings to some change of phase, partly to elicit relief from the impa.s.siveness in which she had sought refuge, partly for the cruel pleasure sometimes inexplicably found in torturing the tender and beautiful,--a pleasure followed by penitence as keen,--he made two or three delicate jests about the locked door; these were received with momentary glints of rage from her dark eyes, succeeded by coldness more freezing than before.

The silence created--and diffused--by her enveloped the whole party, making the ride even more bleak than it was already from the wintry day and the loneliness of the road. It was bad weather for travelling, less by reason of the present cold than of the signs of impending storm.

"There is snow in the air," growled Anthony Underhill to himself, as if he smelled it. Of the country through which they pa.s.sed, the most was open, only the pasture-land and the grounds pertaining immediately to gentlemen's houses being fenced. Enclosures were a new thing in those days, defended by the raisers of sheep and cattle, bewailed by the farmers who tilled the soil. Where the road did not run between woods or over wild moors, it gave views of far-off sheep-cotes, of mills, and here and there of distant castle-towers, or the gables of some squire's rambling manor-house; or it pa.s.sed through straggling villages, each with a central green having a may-pole and an open pool.

But most human life was indoors upon this evening of belated winter; still and brown was the landscape. Once, soon after they had pa.s.sed from Rutlandshire into Leicestershire, a burst of yokelish laughter struck their ears from among some trees, like a sudden ray of light and warmth in a cold, dead world. It came from some yeomen's sons who were destroying the eggs of birds of prey. The population of Melton Mowbray was housed and at supper, as they rode through that town in the early dusk without stop.

On into Nottinghamshire they went; and at last, checked alike by darkness and by weariness, they came to a halt before a little, low, wobbly-looking wood-and-plaster inn at the junction of the Nottingham road with the cross-road to Newark.

CHAPTER XI.

WINE AND SONG.

"He's in the third degree of drink; he's drowned."--_Twelfth Night._

The inn people coming forth with a light, Hal made similar arrangements to those effected at his two previous stopping-places, with this difference, that he himself was to watch for two hours, and then be succeeded by Anthony. Anne could not exactly repeat her precautions taken at Oakham, for Hal procured the only available fresh horses before she applied for any; nor could she arrange that her own horses should be held in readiness before the inn. She caused them, however, to be fed and kept in an unlocked shed, from which her page might speedily take them out; and she was successful in bespeaking information in case of the enemy's departure.

Though Hal left her sight in riding back to keep watch, she now knew that he would not flee without calling his attendants, nor could he continue his flight in either practicable direction--toward Nottingham or toward Newark--without pa.s.sing the inn. So she went to her room--one of the few with which the low upper story of the house was provided--in confident mind, stationing Francis on a bench where he might, in a state of half slumber, watch the door of Kit and Anthony. As for the window of the room taken by these two, it was not far from her own, and by keeping the latter open she counted upon hearing any exit made through the former. She lay down, and dozed wakefully.

Hal's watch was without event. As he moved up and down the silent road with his horses, he continued to ask himself whether she might yet have formed a plan of action against him; and from this question he fell to considering what plan might be possible. He tried to devise one for her, but could invent none that he saw himself unable to defeat.

He returned to the inn at the end of his two hours, and summoned Anthony by a whistle previously agreed upon. Anthony came down by the stairs, and went silently on guard. Hal, who had not yet eaten, now entered the inn with a ready appet.i.te for the supper he had previously ordered. As he stepped from the outer wind into the pa.s.sage, he noticed that the door was open which led thence to the inn parlor. Just within that door stood a figure. He glanced at it. By the light of the candles farther in the room, he saw that it was Mistress Hazlehurst.

"Sir," she said to him, in a dry tone, which, as also her face, she tried to rob of all expression save that of ordinary, indifferent civility, "I learn you bespoke supper to be sent to your room. I am having mine own served here. We have full understanding of each other's intent. There is open warfare between us. Yet while we be fellow travellers, each set upon the other's defeat, meseems we should as well comport ourselves as fellow travellers till one win the other's undoing.

Though writ down in blood as bitter foes, in birth we are equal, and our lands are neighbor. So I do offer that we sup together, as becometh people of civility upon the same journey, though enemies they be to the death."

To this proposal, so congenial with his inclinations, what could Master Marryott do but forthwith a.s.sent, too dazzled by the prospect to torture his brain for a likely motive on her part? With a "Right readily, mistress!" he hastened to give the necessary orders, and then entered the parlor, which had no occupant but Mistress Anne. The last tippler of the night had sought his bed.

At one side of the low room was a fire in a wide hearth. At another side, beneath a deep, long, horizontal window was a table, on which some dishes were already set. The floor was covered with stale rushes. There were no hangings on the besmoked, plastered, timbered walls. The poor candles shed a wavering light. This was no Mermaid tavern, indeed. Yet Hal felt mightily, dangerously comfortable here.

He opened a cas.e.m.e.nt a little, that he might hear any alarm from Anthony, and then he sat down at the table, opposite Anne. He saw that Francis, who seemed of wire, and proof against fatigue and lack of sleep, stood ready to wait upon his mistress. He saw, too, that her wine was placed on a rude kind of sideboard, to be served from thence each time a sip might be wanted, as in the private houses of gentlefolk. When a tapster came, sleepy and muttering to himself, with Hal's wine, Master Marryott ordered it put as the lady's was; and then Mistress Hazlehurst proposed, in the manner she had used before, that the inn servant be dismissed and Francis wait upon them both.

"It is but fair repayment," she added, "for the protection I receive upon the road by the presence of your men."

Hal was nothing loath. He would not show suspicion, if he felt any, at being invited to be left alone with his enemy and her servant. Francis was but a slip of a boy,--and yet, in his tirelessness, his reposeful manner, his discreet look, the closeness of his mouth, there was sufficient of the undisclosed, of the possibly latent, to put a wise man on his guard. Hal kept a corner of his eye upon the page, therefore, while with the rest of it he studied the fine face and graceful motions--motions the more effective for being few--of the page's mistress.

The early part of the meal went in silence, Francis attending to the dishes and serving the wine noiselessly, with neither haste nor tardiness. Hal saw in the looks of both lady and page the reviving effects of a short sleep and of cold water. Anne ate, not as if hungry, but as if providing against possible exposure and fasting. That Francis might not have to depart unfed, she bade him partake of certain dishes as he bore them from before her. He contrived to do this, and yet to see that Master Marryott never wanted for wine.

And, indeed, Master Marryott, warmed, comforted, made to see things rosily, put into mood of rare good-feeling and admiration, kept Francis busy and busier between the sideboard and the wine-cup at Hal's hand.

Finally, the page, when he should have taken the flagon back to the sideboard, set it down on the table, that he might thereafter fill the cup without even the loss of time involved in traversing the rush-covered floor. Was this the boy's own happy thought, or was it in obedience to a meaning glance from his mistress? Hal did not query himself on this point; he had observed no meaning glance. He was entering the seventh heaven of wine; it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should find the flagon constantly at his elbow. And suddenly this silence, so long maintained, appeared absurd, unaccountable. G.o.d-'a'-mercy! why should people sit tongue-tied in this manner? Wherefore he spoke:

"Truly 'twas well thought on that we might use civil courtesy between us, enemies though you will have us! 'Tis like the exchange of gentleness 'twixt our n.o.blest soldiers and those of Spain, in times of truce, or even in the breathing moments 'tween sword-thrusts. Truly, courtesy sweeteneth all transactions, even those of enmity and warfare!

'Tis like this wine that giveth a soft and pleasing hue, as of its own color, to all one sees and hears when one has drunk of it. Taste it, madam, I pray. Your gla.s.s hath not been once refilled. Nay, an you spare the wine so, I shall say you but half act upon your own offer!"

She drank what remained in her cup, and let Francis fill it again.

"No doubt the ladies of France drink more wine than we of England," she said, as if at the same time to account for his importunity and her moderation. He perceived the allusion to Sir Valentine's long residence in France, and was put on his guard against betraying himself. He ought to have taken more into mind that she regarded him as her brother's slayer, and that her tone was strangely urbane for such regarding, even though courtesy had been agreed upon. But by this time he had too much wine in. He had long since exhausted the contents of his own flagon, and was now being served from hers.

"The ladies of France," he replied, "are none the better of the ladies of England for that."

"I have heard there is a certain facility and grace in them, that we lack," she answered, having noticed that he drank at the end of each speech he made.

"It may be," he said, "but 'tis the facility and grace of the cat, with claws and teeth at the back of it." He had to speak of French ladies entirely from hearsay. "For softness, united with strength and candor, for amplitude and warmth of heart, commend me to the English ladies."

Euphuism was still the fashion, and people of breeding had the knack of conversing offhand in sentences that would now seem studied.

The cup-lifting that followed this remark was accompanied by so direct a look at her that she could not but know for which particular English lady the compliment was intended. She gave no outward sign of anger.

"The French excel us in their wine, at least," she replied, sipping from her cup as if to demonstrate the sincerity of her words,--an action that instantly moved Master Hal to further and deeper potations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE GAVE NO OUTWARD SIGN OF ANGER."]

"Why, I should be an ingrate to gainsay that," said he. "Tis indeed matter for thanks that we, sitting by night in this lone country ale-house,--'tis little better,--with the March wind howling wolf-like without, may imbibe, and cheer our souls with, the sunlight that hath fallen in past years upon French hillsides. But we should be churls to despise the vineyards of Spain or Italy, either! Or the Rhenish, that hath gladdened so many a heart and begot so many a song! Lovest thou music, madam?"

She kept a startled silence for a moment, at a loss how to receive the change from "you" to "thou" in his style of addressing her. In truth the familiarity was on his part unpremeditated and innocent. But, for another reason than that, she speedily decided to overlook it, and she answered, in words that gave Hal a sudden thrill, for they were those of one of Master Shakespeare's own comedies, often played by the company:

"The man that hath no music in himself.

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

She paused here, as if struck with the thought that the speech might not be known to the Catholic knight.

"'Tis Lorenzo's speech in 'The Merchant,'" said Hal, quite ecstatic.

"I--" he caught himself in time to avoid saying, "know the part by heart, having studied it in hope of some-day playing it," and added, instead, "saw the comedy in London when 'twas first played, and a friend sent me a book of it last year, that he bought in Paul's Churchyard.

Thou'st seen the play, I ween."

"And read it," she answered, this time filling his gla.s.s herself, for Francis had stolen from the room with a flagon in quest of more wine at the bar.

"Know'st thou the full speech," said he, "beginning, 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank'?" Without waiting for an answer, and being now in the vinous rage for reciting, he went on through the scene to its interruption by the entrance of Portia and Nerissa. It was nothing wonderful, in those days, that a gentleman should speak verse well; yet she viewed him with some astonishment, in which was a first faint touch of regret that circ.u.mstance made this man, in whom otherwise she might find certain admirable qualities, irrevocably her foe, to become inevitably her victim. This regret she instantly put from her, and set herself the more to plying him with wine.

"I'll warrant thou hast music at the end of thy tongue, and of thy fingers also," said Hal. "Would there were an instrument here! Heavenly must be the offspring, when such hands wed string of lute, or key of virginal! But thy lips are here. Wilt sing? All are abed. I prithee, a song!"

"Nay, 'twere better you should sing," she answered, by way of evading a course of importunities, and seeing that he was in ripe mood for compliance.