A Gentleman Player Part 30

CHAPTER XXI.

ROGER BARNET CONTINUES TO SMOKE TOBACCO.

"The best man best knows patience."--_Thierry and Theodoret._

The day dragged on,--grayest of gray Sundays. The snowfall ceased, but the sky remained ashen, and the wind still moaned intermittently, though with subdued and failing voice. In the great, silent house, faint creaks had the startling effect of detonations, and the flapping of tapestry in the wind seemed fraught with mysterious omen.

Marryott, in the course of his next round of the mansion, told the men of the loss of the provisions. Some of them had already known of it. No complaint was uttered. The men replied with a half respectful, half familiar jest, or with good-humored expression of willingness to fast awhile. Fortunately, the supply of water was such as to obviate any near dread of the tortures of thirst.

When he went to the room adjoining Mistress Hazlehurst's chamber, Marryott found Tom, Francis, and the robber, all three quiescent under the ministrations of Oliver Bunch. Anthony Underhill, seated on a trunk that he had placed on the end of the prostrate ladder, was observing the Sabbath by singing to himself a psalm. Scarce audible as was his voice, it still had something of that whine which the early English Puritans, like the devoutest of the French Huguenots, put into their vocal worship, and from which some think the nasal tw.a.n.g of the Puritans' New England descendants is derived.

Mistress Hazlehurst either was, or wished to seem, asleep; for when Marryott knocked softly upon her half open door, that he might more courteously explain to her the lack of food, she gave no answer.

He, thereupon, sent Kit Bottle to the oriel window to sound Roger Barnet's mind toward supplying the prisoner, who was indeed to be considered the pursuivant's ally, with food.

Kit put the necessary question, taking care to show no more of his person than was needful, and to keep his eyes upon the firearms of the pursuivant and the two guards in the court.

But Roger Barnet, who still sat smoking with a kind of hard, surly impa.s.sibility, made no movement as to his pistols. Neither did he show a thought of ordering his men to fire. He evinced a certain grim satisfaction at the evidence that the besieged had no provisions. He then expressed a suspicion that Kit was using the lady's name in order to obtain food for his own party, and said that if Sir Valentine Fleetwood desired the lady not to hunger, Sir Valentine might set her free. He, Barnet, would provide her with an escort to some neighboring inn or gentleman's house.

But Marryott, who was listening unseen at Kit's elbow, dared not yet risk her describing himself as Sir Valentine Fleetwood to the pursuivant; and so he prompted Kit to reply that the lady was too ill to go at present from the house. To which Roger, between vast puffs of smoke, tranquilly replied that he feared the lady must for the present go hungry.

Afire with wrath at this stolid churlishness, Hal caused Kit to remind Barnet that the lady had come into her present case through aiding the pursuivant himself. Roger answered that he had not requested the lady's a.s.sistance. At Marryott's further whispered orders, Kit informed Barnet that, but for her work, the latter should not at that moment have had Sir Valentine surrounded. Roger replied that he had only Kit's word for that; moreover, what mattered it? He was not responsible for the lady's ill fortune, even if she were creditable with his good fortune. In short, and by G.o.d's light, he would not let any food enter that house unless he and his men went in with it!

"When your bellies will no more away with their emptiness, open the door and let us in," he added, phlegmatically, and replaced his pipe in his mouth as if the last word had been said.

"Nay, thou swinish rogue," said Kit, "we're better taught than to leave doors open in March weather!" He then bombarded his old-time comrade of Walsingham's day with hard names. Barnet showed no resentment, but continued to smoke stolidly. At last, when his reviler had well-nigh exhausted the vocabulary of Thersites, Roger began to finger abstractedly the b.u.t.t of one of his pistols; at which gentle intimation, Kit suddenly disappeared from the window.

"There is no help for it," said he to Marryott. "She must starve with the rest of us unless you set her free."

"That I must not do till Tuesday morning," said Hal, with an inward sigh. He went from the gallery, and told Francis, for Mistress Hazlehurst's information should she inquire, of the failure of his attempt to obtain food for her. She still slept, or feigned sleep.

Marryott then newly a.s.signed the posts to be guarded, dividing the company into two watches, one headed by himself, the other by Bottle.

The latter took the first period of duty. The men who were thus for a time relieved were prompt to a.s.suage their thirst, though water was a beverage unusual to them; then they stretched themselves on the rushes in the hall to sleep. Hal also slept.

At evening, being awakened by Kit, he and his quota of men arose to do sentinel duty during the first half of the night.

"Is Barnet still yonder?" he asked Kit, before leaving the hall.

"No; he has set Hudsdon in's place. Roger has divided his troop into watches. He and some of his men have made their beds in the outhouses.

Hudsdon and the rest have planted torches in a line around the house.

There's not an ell's distance of the mansion's outside, from ground to second story, that cannot be seen by the torch-light. The men are posted beyond the line, out of our sight; only here and there you may catch now and then the light of a slow-match that some fellow blows. If we made a sortie from the house into their torch-light, they would mow us down with muskets and arquebuses from the dark."

Marryott sat out his watch in a partly torpid state of mind. The deception that Mistress Hazlehurst had practised upon him, though he acknowledged an avowed enemy's and unwilling prisoner's right to practise it, had struck down his heart, benumbed it, robbed it of hope and of its zest for life. He thought of nothing but present trifles--the writhing of the flames in the fireplace, the snoring of the sleepers on the hall floor--and his chances of accomplishing his mission. All things, he felt, could be endured,--all but failure in the task he had so far carried toward success. Regarding his life, which indeed seemed to be doomed, he was apathetic.

During the second half of the night, Marryott slumbered, Bottle watched.

Dawn found Roger Barnet again at the fountain's edge, again smoking.

But, as Kit observed while furtively inspecting him through a window, he puffed a little more vehemently, was somewhat petulant in his motions, more often changed position. Bottle, from having known him of old, and from his slight lameness, took it that he was in some pain.

His injured leg was, indeed, a seat of great torment; but of this, being stoical as well as taciturn, the frowning man of iron gave no other sign than the tokens of irritation noticed by Kit.

"I'm afeard Roger will be, later, of a mind to hasten matters," said the captain. "Peradventure his tobacco is falling low."

"I pray 'twill last till the morrow," said Marryott.

This morning (Monday) the sky was clear, but it was a cold sun that shone down upon the world of snow around beleaguered Foxby Hall.

Marryott was on the watch till noon. Then, Kit having taken his place, and before lying down to sleep, he went to see if Mistress Hazlehurst had aught to request. He felt that, though his position as her captor was one of necessity, it nevertheless required of him a patient attention to all complaints and reproaches she might make.

But she made none. To his inquiry, spoken after a gentle knock upon her door, she answered that she desired of him nothing under heaven but to be left alone. If she must starve, she would choose to starve not before spectators. He informed her that he intended to give her, on the morrow, her freedom, as the royal pursuivant had offered her an escort and might be trusted to treat a lady with respect. To this she made no reply. Hal thereupon went away.

When he was awakened to resume guard duty, at evening, he learned from Kit that the afternoon had been without occurrence. Roger Barnet had continued to show signs of an ailing body, and hence of an ailing temper, but had not deviated from his policy of waiting. The men in the house were very hungry; they had ceased jesting about their enforced fast, and had betaken themselves to dumb endurance. Hal was made aware by his own pangs of the stomach, his own feverish weakness of the body, how they must be suffering, though only two days of abstinence had pa.s.sed.

The precautions of the besiegers this evening were like those of the preceding night. Marryott looked more than once, through narrow openings in the windows, at the torches lighting up redly the snow that stretched away from the walls of the mansion.

Some time after dark, while Marryott was pacing the hall, Kit Bottle suddenly awoke, and after gazing around a few moments, said, quietly:

"Methinks, lad, 'tis eight o'clock, or after."

"'Tis so, I think," replied Hal, softly.

"Then 'tis full six days since we rode from Sir Valentine Fleetwood's gate."

"Ay, just six days."

"Then thy work is done, boy!"

"'Tis done, old Kit; and thanks to thee and Anthony, with your true hearts, strong bodies, and shrewd heads!"

"Thou'rt a valiant and expert gentleman, Hal; beshrew me else!"

Whereupon the old soldier turned upon his side, and slept again, and Hal looked dreamily into the fire.

Their words had been no louder than whispers. Nor was Hal's feeling aught like the bursting elation, the triumph that would shout, the joy that intoxicates. It was but a gentle transition from suspense to relief, from anxiety to ease of mind; a mild but permeating glow of satisfaction; a sweet consciousness of having done a hard task, a consciousness best expressed by a single sigh of content, a faint smile of self-applause.

At midnight, giving place again to Kit, Marryott sank into a troubled sleep, in which he dreamed of juicy beef, succulent ham, every kind of plump fowl, well basted, and the best wines of France, Spain. Italy, and the Rhine. He woke to tortures of the stomach, and the news that Roger Barnet was still smoking, but peevishly walking, despite his lameness of leg, to and fro in the courtyard.

"I tell thee, Hal," said Bottle, after imparting this information, "we may look to see things afoot soon! If Roger is a devil of pertinacity when he is upon the chase, and a devil of patience when he waits, he is a devil of activity when his body ails overmuch!"

"We shall be the sooner forced, then, to set our lives upon a cast!"

"Ay, and better work losing them, than stretching them out to the anguish of our bellies! This fasting is an odious business. The men are chewing the fire-wood and their leather jerkins."

"Have they complained?" asked Hal.

"Not a dog among 'em! These be choice rascals all! They bear hunger with no more words than dumb beasts. They'll starve with thee, or die with thee, to the last knave of them!"