A Gentleman Player Part 32

Thought failed her, and she stood leaning on the shoulder of her page, pallor and inertia betokening the utter consternation of her heart.

CHAPTER XXII.

SPEECH WITHOUT WORDS.

"Her eye discourses; I will answer it."--_Romeo and Juliet._

Late in the afternoon of that day--Tuesday. March 10th--there rode into Skipton from the north, and took lodging for the night at the princ.i.p.al inn, a party of hors.e.m.e.n, commanded by a stout, hard-browed, black-bearded man, and conducting a pale, tired young gentleman whose hands were tied behind him and whose ankles were fastened with a rope that pa.s.sed beneath the body of his led horse.

When the troop had come to a halt, and accommodations, had been bespoken, the leader caused two of his men to release the prisoner's legs, but not his hands, and then marched with him, preceded and followed by guards, to an upper room overlooking the stableyard. Here four armed men were left with the prisoner, to whom presently supper was brought. Though without weapons, his wrists were still kept tied; his food had to be conveyed to his mouth by one of his guards. He might sleep on the bed when he chose; but asleep or awake he must remain thus guarded and bound.

Five minutes after the arrival of this troop at the inn, a smaller party appeared from the same direction. Its chief figure was a weary-looking young lady, deeply buried in her thoughts, and attended by a youthful page whose head was bandaged, a boldfaced old fellow, and a lean and sad-visaged man in sombre garments. This company, finding the first inn now full, sought and obtained lodging at a smaller one, not far away.

On the journey thither, these two groups of riders had been more than once in sight of each other. Both Marryott and Barnet had observed that Captain Bottle and the Puritan were serving Mistress Hazlehurst as escort,--a circ.u.mstance that seemed to the pursuivant quite natural, since the lady was no friend of Marryott's and the two men were, in Barnet's belief, Marryott's betrayers. Barnet himself had offered to let her ride under his protection on the southward journey; but she had refused, and had watched in silence, with Kit and Anthony, the departure of the prisoner from Foxby Hall. Whatever arrangement she had made with the two men must have been made after that departure.

Hal explained matters to himself by the supposition that Kit Bottle and Anthony, whom she, too, must regard as his betrayers, had offered her their escort, that they might with less suspicion follow close upon the heels of his captors toward London. He knew that she was ill supplied in purse for the homeward journey, and he guessed that she had obtained of Anthony a loan of money to pay the escort and inn charges. In this guess, he was right; but it was scarce possible that he should have divined what other understanding had pa.s.sed between the lady and his two adherents.

He was glad, in the dull way in which thought and feeling now worked within him, that she had found so good an escort. When she had declined Barnet's offer, he had feared she might unwittingly expose herself to new danger, though he had believed that Kit and Anthony, knowing his own wishes, would protect her, in spite of herself, to some gentleman's house where she might procure both money and servants.

As for the robbers who had shared his siege at Foxby Hall, Hal knew, by their absence from Mistress Hazlehurst's party, that they had been left to choose their own ways. The money he had given them would enable them to transport themselves to distant parts of the kingdom ere Rumney was likely to traverse again the neighborhood of Foxby Hall.

Hal slept lightly but calmly. His slumber was but half slumber, even as his waking state was a kind of lethargic dream. He recked not of past, present, or future.

At dawn breakfast was brought to him and readily eaten. So indifferent had he become, so little feeling was active in him, so little emotion was there to affect his physical state, that not even his appet.i.te was altered; his body led a healthy, normal existence, save for the fatigue from which it was already recovering, but his mind and heart languished half inert.

After breakfast the southward road was resumed, with no deviation from the order of the previous day. Anne's party rode out from the other inn as Barnet's was pa.s.sing. Was this mere accident, thought Hal, or was it by precaution of Kit Bottle?

The way was choked with snow. In some places this had drifted so as to bury the fences, where it happened--as was rare--that the road was flanked by such enclosures. In other spots, the earth was swept bare.

The drifting still continued, for, though the day was clear, another high wind had arisen. It blew the fine, biting crystals into the riders'

faces, reddened their cheeks and eyelids, and seemed to add to the discomfort of Roger Barnet.

For the sufferings of the pursuivant, due to the use of the wounded leg when it demanded rest, were now plainly telling upon him. His face was haggard; under his breath, he was fretful; such manifestations, on the part of a man so obstinate against the show of pain, meant that he was in physical agony.

At Halifax, he ordered a rest for dinner. The day being very cold, Marryott was led to a room in the inn's topmost story, where he dined with four guards precisely as he had supped at Skipton. Before entering the town, he had lost sight of Mistress Hazlehurst's party; indeed, it was not often, on the journey, that he availed himself of some bend of the road to turn his head and look back.

When he had finished his dinner, Marryott let his glance stray idly through the window. He had a view of a side lane that ran, apparently, from a street beneath his room. The lane ended at its junction with another street. Up and down that other street, so as to cross the end of the lane at brief intervals, a riderless horse was being led by a boy whose head was wrapped around with handkerchiefs. Was not the boy Francis? And why was he exercising a saddled horse in such a place so far from this inn, not perceptibly near any other? The question dwelt in Hal's mind for a moment: then fled, at Barnet's summons to horse.

Not till he had covered several miles out of Halifax did Marryott catch his next glimpse of Anne and her three attendants. They were then at a good distance behind; but gradually during the afternoon they decreased the distance,--a natural enough thing to do, for the proximity of Barnet's martial-looking troop was a protection. That evening both parties lodged at Barnesley. The state of the roads, and of Barnet's leg, had forbidden faster progress. It was not quite dark when Hal was led into the chamber where he was to sup and sleep. He sat down on a joint-stool by the window.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed. Awaiting his supper, he was still looking listlessly out of the window at the darkening evening. Was not that Anthony Underhill yonder, leading a riderless horse to and fro upon the green that was visible through a gap in the row of houses opposite the inn? It was odd that he should haply be repeating in Hal's view at supper-time the action that Francis had performed in Hal's sight at dinner-time. The arrival of pickled herrings and ale drew Marryott's eyes from the window, and his mind from the spectacle.

The next morning, on arising to depart, Marryott by chance beheld, this time with a touch of wondering amus.e.m.e.nt, another repet.i.tion of the same performance, with the single difference that now the leader of the horse was Kit Bottle.

When some hours of the forenoon journey had been spent, Marryott, looking back, saw with a little surprise that Anne's party was close behind his own. Barnet rode at his side, leading his horse; half of the escort rode two and two in front, the other half in the rear. These rear hors.e.m.e.n intervened between Hal and Anne; but as he ascended the side of a hollow he could look over the heads behind him to her as she descended the farther side.

Her glance met his; and in it was a kind of message, which she seemed to have long awaited the moment for delivering. With all possible eloquence of eyes and face, she appeared to express apology, a request for pardon, a wish to serve him! Ere he could a.s.sure himself by keener inspection whether he had read aright the look that had thrilled him out of his lethargy, he had reached the crest of the ascent, and the men behind him had closed his view.

Poignantly alive now in mind and heart, he tormented himself for several miles with conjectures whether her expression had been intentional on her part or correctly translated on his. This he could best ascertain by sending her, at the first opportunity, a look in reply.

When he was next in line of sight with her, he glanced back his answer.

It consisted merely of a faint smile, soft and kindly, by which he hoped to say that he understood, forgave, and loved.

To his unutterable joy, she instantly responded with a smile that was the echo of his own.

This conversation, carried on so silently and at such distance, but so decisive and full of import, was of course so conducted that Marryott's captors suspected nothing of it. A certain curiosity as to whether his supposed betrayers were following him toward London was natural on the part of one in his situation, and it accounted, in Barnet's mind, for his looking back.

At Clown, dining in the very ale-house chamber whence Mistress Hazlehurst had looked at his detention by the constable's men, Marryott saw, some way down the lane from which the coach had been drawn, a riderless horse led back and forth by Francis. It flashed upon him at last that the continual recurrence of this scene must be more than mere coincidence.

In the afternoon, Marryott had but one opportunity to exchange looks with Anne. This was where the road turned sharply in such direction that, by glancing sidewise and across the back of Barnet's horse, he could see her through a spa.r.s.e copse that filled the angle. Her expression now suggested alertness and craft, as if for his imitation; and she pointed with her forefinger to the horse ridden by Francis at her side. The trees cut off his view ere the gesture was complete; but he understood; it meant, "You will find a horse ready, if you can break from your guards!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LONDON ROAD.

"How many miles to London town?"--_Old Song._

And now Master Marryott was himself again, with the will to break away if he could, and the eye for the opportunity if it should occur. It was plain that she had ceased to view him with antagonism or indifference.

And her interest in him--an interest so strong as to overcome or exclude resentment toward him as the agent of Sir Valentine Fleetwood's escape from her as well as from the government--surely sprang from some more powerful feeling than mere regret for a man placed by her in a peril she had designed for another. To have caused her to order or sanction the holding of the horse in readiness, her interest must have fully taken up her mind. Perhaps to this fact was due her evident relinquishment of revenge upon Sir Valentine, as much as to that knight's present inaccessibility, and to the stupefying blow her vengeful impulse had received in the disclosure that her far and toilsome quest in its service had but led her from the right object to the wrong one.

Whence had this interest arisen? Doubtless from her musing on the love he had shown in staying to protect her that night at Foxby Hall; on the annoyances and delays to which she had subjected him during his long flight, and on his uniform gentleness to her in his necessary severity toward her.

Could he indeed break from his guards and escape, that he might satisfy himself on these questions, and profit in his love by that interest!

But Roger Barnet's vigilance, like his iron grip on Marryott's bridle when they rode, and on Marryott's arm when they alighted, seemed to increase with his increasing distress of body.

This night they ate and slept at Nottingham. Barnet occupied a second bed in Marryott's chamber. More than once Hal was awakened from sleep--a sleep in which his dreams carried out the wildest plans of escape--by the pursuivant's groans of pain. At dawn Roger's face was that of a man who had neither slept nor known a moment's ease. It was with a desperate stiffening of muscles and clenching of teeth that he forced himself to rise for the continuance of his journey.

Marryott had taken pains to view out the whereabouts of the led horse the previous evening, when, as usual, it had appeared in sight of his window. He marvelled not that his friends never failed to find a spot on which his gaze might alight. Kit Bottle, as he knew, had ways of learning, from inn menials of either s.e.x, what room was taken for the prisoner. This morning the horse was at a place some distance from where it had been yesternight. Bottle was leading it; and the picture had a new figure, in the shape of a horse a little farther off. This second horse had a rider,--Anne Hazlehurst!

What would he not give now for means of escape? But there, hemming him in, were his four silent, stalwart guards; and beyond them, with cold eyes now red-rimmed from a restless night but fixed implacably on him, was the equally silent Barnet.

The wind had blown itself to other regions; the day was as fair as it was serene; it was milder, too, than days had been of late. But Hal's captors made poor travelling. Barnet had to halt often, as he could now scarce endure the pain caused by the movement of his horse. He stopped for dinner when he had ridden no farther than to Melton Mowbray and when it was no later than eleven o'clock.

Marryott took what scant comfort of mind he could, in this slowness of the journey toward London. Yet slow as it was, it was all too fast.

London was but little more than a hundred miles away, now. Only a hundred miles of opportunity for that miracle of accident, or ingenuity and skill, by which he might save himself for the joys awaiting him in Anne Hazlehurst's love! Life had begun to taste ineffably sweet. The world was marvellously beautiful on such a day. But when he faced the terrible likelihood of a speedy hurling hence to "that undiscovered country," where there could not be a fairer sky to look upon, or purer air to breathe, and where there was no Anne Hazlehurst, the beauty of the day mocked him.

And the sight of the horse, too, mocked him, as it pa.s.sively waited to bear him far from the reclaiming pursuit of death the moment he might slip from death's arms closing tighter around him. His heart cried "Avaunt, death! I am not for thee! Love and beauty await me; they, and this glad earth even now waking to joy at the first breath of spring! I am for this world, with its music and its wine, its laughter and its poetry, its green fields and its many-colored cities, its pleasures of good-fellowship, its smiles of the woman beloved! Unhand me, death; go your ways, black monster; I am life's own!" He had moments wherein he was half mad, not with the fear of death, but with the love of life; yet his madness had so much method in it that he gave no outward sign of it, lest his alertness for some means of escape might be suspected.

Back in the saddle, after dinner, to decrease by another afternoon's riding: those hundred miles to London town, Marryott observed in Barnet's face the fierce resolution which a man gathers for a last fight against physical anguish. So these two rode side by side, the captor concealing tortures of the body, the prisoner veiling tortures of the mind. At two o'clock they clattered into Oakham. When they arrived before the gate of a large inn, Roger Barnet suddenly called a halt, and said, in tones whose gruffness was somewhat broken by a note of bodily suffering: