Complete Works of Howard Pyle

by Howard Pyle

  “Ay, there’s money in the pocket,” he said; “but I spoke truth when I said I had none. This is not mine; ’tis another man’s, to whom I must pay it to-morrow.”

  “Let the other man give us charity, then!” cried the fat woman.

  “Ay, we’d as lief have another man’s money as yours,” said the white-bearded rogue, aiming the pistol. The lean hag tried to force her hand into Ravenshaw’s pocket, and men caught his clothing by the hooks at the ends of their staves.

  “Nay, maunderers!” cried Ravenshaw; “shall not a gentry cove that cuts ben whids, and hath respect for the salamon, pass upon the pad but ye would be foisting and angling?” —

  “Marry, you can cant,” said the white-bearded beggar, his manner changing to one of approval, which spread at once to his associates.

  “As ben pedlar’s French as any clapperdudgeon of ye all,” replied the captain.

  “Belike you are a prigger of prancers,” said the beggar, looking at the horse.

  “No, my upright man, a poor gentry cuffin, as I have said, but one that hath passed many a night out-of-doors, and now fallen into a little poor service that I am like to forfeit by my delay. As for the lour in my pocket, I am a forsworn man if I deliver it not to-morrow. So I beg, in the name of all the maunders I have stood friend to in my time—”

  “A ben cove,” said the upright man. “Mort, take off your fambles; brother rufflers, down with your filches and cudgels. By the salamon, the canting cuffin shall go free upon the pad.”

  Released on every side, no more threatened, and his dagger restored to its sheath, the captain looked gratefully down upon the grotesque crew. As he did so, his nose became sensible of a faint, delicious odour, borne from a distance. He sniffed keenly.

  “Cackling-cheats,” said the chief beggar. “Our doxies and dells are roasting ’em in a glade yonder. Plump young ones, and fresh. We filched ’em but last darkmans. We be toward a ben supper, and you are welcome, — though we lack bouze.”

  The captain sighed. He had not dined; the fresh air of the country had whetted his stomach; roast chickens were good eating, hot or cold; and he had gathered, from the vague replies Jerningham had made to his inquiries about provisions, that his diet at the Grange would be a rather spare one of salt meat, stockfish, milk, and barley-cakes.

  “Alas, if I durst but tarry!” He looked to see how far behind him the sun was, and then shook his head and gathered up his reins. “I must hasten on — tis a sweet smell of cookery, forsooth! — how soon, think you, will they be roasted?”

  “Oh, half an hour, to be done properly.”

  “Then I must e’en thank ye, and ride on. I durst not—” He broke off to sniff the air again. “Marry, I have a thought. You lack bouze, say you? Now at the place whither I am bound, there is ale, or my gentleman has lied to me. I shall be in a sort the master there, with only a country wench and an old doting man — Know you Marshleigh Grange?”

  “Ay,” spoke up a very old cripple; “the lone house ‘twixt the hills and the marshes; there hath been no ben filching there this many a year; the wild rogues pass it by as too far from the pads; neither back nor belly-cheats to be angled there.”

  Ravenshaw addressed himself again to the bearded chief of the beggars, received answer, passed a jovial compliment, and rode on alone in cheerful mood. In due time he turned into the by-road which accorded with Jerningham’s description; and at length, emerging from a woody, bushy tract, he came upon a lonely plain wherein the one object for the eye was a gray-brown house, huddled against barn and outbuildings, at the left of the vanishing road, — a house of timber and plaster, warped and weather-beaten, its cracked gables offering a wan, long-suffering aspect to the sun and breeze. This was the Grange.

  A short canter brought Ravenshaw to the rude wooden gate, studded with nails, in the stone wall that separated the courtyard from the road, which here came to an end. Ere the captain had time to knock, or cry “Ho, within!” the gate swung inward on its crazy hinges, and a thin, bent old man, with sparse white hair and blinking eyes, shambled forward to take the horse. At the same time, as further proof that Ravenshaw had been looked for, a woman appeared in the porched doorway of the house, and called out:

  “Jeremy will see to your horse. Come within.”

  Ravenshaw looked at her with a little surprise; this robust, erect, full-coloured, well-shaped creature, upon whom common rustic clothes took a certain grace, and whose head stood back in the proud attitude natural to beauty, was scarce the country wench he had expected to meet. But he said nothing, and followed her into the hall. This was a wide, high apartment of some pretension, its ceiling, rafters, and walls being of oak. Bare enough, it yet had the appearance of serving as the chief living-room of the occupants of the house. Upon an oak table, at which was an old chair, stood a flagon of wine and some cakes. Meg offered Ravenshaw this repast by a gesture, while she scrutinised him with interest.

  “Wine?” quoth he, promptly setting to. “’Tis more than I had thought to find.”

  “There is some left since the time when — when Master Jerningham used to come to the Grange oftener,” said Meg. “Ale serves for me and old Jeremy.”

  “Troth — your health, mistress! — I am glad you have ale in store. Would there be enough to entertain a few guests withal — some dozen or score poor friends of mine, if they were travelling this way? To tell the truth, I should not like to waste this wine upon such.”

  “Travellers never pass this way,” said Meg, plainly not knowing what to make of him.

  “Oh, we are some way from the highroad here, indeed; but a foolish friend or so might turn out a mile for the pleasure of my company.”

  “I know not what you’d set before ’em to eat, if there were a dozen.”

  “Marry, they would have to bring eatables with ’em, — my reason for having ’em as guests. Only so there be ale enough.”

  “Oh, there is ale,” said Meg, without further comment.

  Ravenshaw, munching the cakes, and oft wetting his throat, looked around the hall. The front doorway faced a wide fireplace at the rear, now empty. At the right was a door to a small apartment, a kind of porter’s room, lighted by a single high narrow window; farther back in the hall was the entrance to a passage communicating with other parts of the house; and still farther back, a door leading to the kitchen. At the left hand were, first, a door to a large room, and, second, the opening to a passage like that on the right.

  By way of this left-hand passage, and a narrow staircase which led from it, the captain was presently shown by old Jeremy to his chamber. It was large and bare, hung with rotten arras, and contained a bed, a joint-stool, and a table with ewer and basin; its window looked into the courtyard.

  He flung his bruised body on the bed, and soon sank deliciously to sleep.

  Meanwhile old Jeremy, returning to the hall, found Meg sitting with her chin upon her hands, and gazing into the empty fireplace.

  “A sturdy fellow,” whispered the old man, pointing backward with his thumb, and taking on a jocular air. “Cast eyes on him; a goodly husband mends all; cast eyes on him!”

  “Thou’rt a fool; go thy ways!” quoth Meg; but she did not move.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE POET AS A MAN OF ACTION.

  “O father, where’s my love? were you so careless

  To let an unthrift steal away your child?”

  — The Case Is Altered.

  Millicent, after the riot had ceased and dinner had been eaten, passed the day with a palpitating heart but a resolved mind. Under cover of her usual needlework, she fashioned a sort of large linen wallet, in which to carry the few things she wished to take with her. Her emotions were, in a less degree, similar to those which had affected her in the hours preceding her former attempt to run away. At supper she looked often with a hidden tenderness at the composed, unsuspecting face of her mother. When the light of evening faded she slipped to her chamber, and put a few chosen objects into the receptacle
she had made, wrapped this in a hooded cloak, and dropped it from her window into the concealed space behind the garden shrubbery. She then waited, watching from the window that part of Friday Street in which Master Holyday must appear.

  At last his slender figure lurched into view in the dusk, and came to a stop outside the gate.

  Millicent sped across her chamber. At the door she turned, with fast-beating heart, and cast an affectionate, tearful look at the place in which she had spent so much of her childhood and youth, and which seemed to share so many of her untold thoughts. It appeared for an instant to reproach her sorrowfully; but when in her swift thought she justified her action, its aspect changed to that of wishing her Godspeed, and counselling her to hasten.

  She hurried through the house as if upon some indoor quest, found herself alone in the garden, recovered her cloak and parcel, and went to unfasten the gate.

  “’Tis I, Master Holyday,” she said, in a low tone, as she loosened the bolt.

  “Good! good! excellent!” came the scholar’s reply from outside the gate, in a voice rather parched and excited.

  Having slid back the bolt, she made to pull the gate open, but it would not move.

  “What is the matter?” quoth she. “I cannot open it. Push it from your side.”

  She heard his hands laid against it, then his shoulder, then his back. But it would not budge. She examined it closely in the dusky light, and suddenly gave a little cry of despair.

  “Oh, me! There is a new lock on the gate, and God knows where is the key!”

  During the afternoon, in fact, Master Etheridge, alarmed by the easy entrance obtained by Ravenshaw and Gregory the previous night, and by Ravenshaw’s exit from the garden that day, — an exit after which the gate had been left open, — had caused an additional lock to be put on, a lock to be opened by means of a key which the goldsmith thought best to keep in his own care.

  “Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, after a futile tug at the lock.

  “Is there no other way to come out?” queried Holyday, in perturbation.

  “Alas, no! There’s the street door from the gallery, but my father locks it himself at supper-time and keeps the key. I durs’n’t go through the shop; if it isn’t closed, my father may be in the back shop and the apprentices will surely be in front.”

  “God’s name, I know not what—” began the poet, agitated with perplexity and fear of failure, but broke off to “Can’t you make another pretext to go out? — drop another wedding-ring into the street, or something?”

  “Nay, they would sure stop my going or follow me out at this hour. Oh, would I could leap the wall! By St. Anne, ’tis too bad — Ha! wait a minute.”

  Under the impulse of her thought she sped away without listening for answer, unconscious that her last words had been spoken too low to go beyond the gate.

  Hence she did not know that Master Holyday, attacked by an idea at the same moment, and expressing himself with equal inaudibility, had as suddenly made off toward the White Horse Tavern.

  She was in the house ere it occurred to her that she ought to have rid herself of her burden by throwing it over the wall. She thought best not to retrace her steps. So she ran up-stairs and along the passage to a small window that looked down on Friday Street. She pushed open the casement, saw that no one was passing below, and dropped the parcel, trusting it to the darkness. She had a moment’s idea of calling to Holyday to come and take it, but a second thought was wiser; she cast a single glance toward the gate, but was uncertain whether she made out his form or not in the decreasing light. Then she went down-stairs, and boldly into the back shop. Her father sat at his small table counting by candle-light the day’s money.

  “Eh! what is it?” he asked, looking sharply up. “What dost thou here, baggage?”

  “I have an order for George,” she replied, quietly, forcing her voice to steadiness, and praying that her throbbing heart and pale face might not betray her.

  George was an apprentice whom, for his cleverness, Mistress Etheridge was wont to employ on errands. Millicent could see him now in the outer shop, busy with other apprentices in covering the cases and closing up the front.

  “‘Zooks!” grumbled the goldsmith; “thy mother would best take the lad for a page, and be done with it.”

  Millicent passed on to the front shop.

  “George,” said she, when out of her father’s hearing, but in that of one or two of the other apprentices, “you are to come with me to Mistress Carroll’s next door; there is something to fetch back. Nay, wait till you have done here; I’ll run ahead, ’tis but a step.”

  Upon the hazard that her father, in the rear shop, would not lift up his eyes from his money for some little time, she passed out to Cheapside. In a breath she was around the corner, from the crowd and the window-lights, into the dusk and desertion of Friday Street. She stooped and picked up her cloak and bag; then ran on, to the gate.

  “Speed! speed! there’s not a moment to lose!” she whispered, catching the elbow of the man who stood there, and who had not heard her coming swiftly up behind him.

  He turned and stared, putting his eyes close to hers on account of the darkness; she saw that he had a great, scarred, bearded face, and that his body was twice the breadth of Master Holyday’s.

  “Oh, God!” she exclaimed, drawing back. “I thought you were Master Holyday.”

  “Master Holyday, eh?” growled the man. “What of him?”

  “I — I was to meet him here,” she faltered, looking around with a sinking heart.

  “Oh! — God’s light! — you are the maid, belike? Well, troth, beshrew me but that’s the hell of it!” And the fellow grinned with silent laughter.

  “What mean you? What maid? Know you aught — ?”

  “Of Master Holyday? Sooth, do I! He’s on t’other side of this gate.”

  She stared at the closed gate in bewilderment. “What? In the garden?”

  “Ay, in the garden.” The man raised his voice a little. “Sure thou’rt there, Master Holyday?”

  “Ay,” came the reply in the scholar’s unmistakable voice. “But the maid is not. Hang her, whither is she gone?”

  “Here I am,” answered the maid, for herself. “In God’s name, how got you in there?”

  “In God’s name, how got you out there?” said Holyday, vexatiously. “A minute ago you were here, and I was there. You could not come out, so I went for this gentleman, who lifted me to the top of the wall—”

  “Which was a service not included in the contract,” remarked Cutting Tom.

  “And here I dropped, thinking to find you,” continued Holyday, in exasperation, “and to help you out as he helped me in. And now—”

  “Well, I am out, nevertheless,” she replied, quickly. “So come you out, pray, without more ado; my father may discover at any moment—”

  “Why, devil take me!” cried Holyday, in despair. “I cannot climb the wall; there’s none here to give me a shoulder.”

  “Is there nothing there you can climb upon?” queried Cutting Tom.

  “Yes,” cried Millicent, taking the answer upon herself; “there are benches. Oh, pray, make haste, Master Holyday!”

  Soon Master Holyday could be heard dragging a bench across the sward; in its ordinary position it would not give him sufficient height, so he seemed to busy himself in placing it properly for his purpose. “Nomine patris!” he exclaimed as he bruised his fingers. Finally a thud against the upper part of the gate indicated that he had fixed the bench slantwise. Mounting the incline chiefly by means of hands and knees, he stood trembling at the top, high enough to get a purchase of his elbows on the gate, and so to wriggle his body over.

  Millicent breathed more freely as soon as his head and shoulders appeared; but, as he was righting himself on the gate-top in order to drop safely outside, there came a voice from within the garden:

  “Hey? How now? Good lack, more comings and goings!”

  “Oh, God! that meddling Sir Pere
grine!” cried Millicent. “We are found out. Hurry, Master Holyday!”

  The poet, startled, was still upon the gate, staring back into the garden. With a revival of earlier agility, the old knight came up the sloping bench at a run, took hold of the gate’s top with one hand, and of Master Holyday’s neck with the other. His eyes fell upon the pair waiting outside. It was not too dark for him to recognise a figure which he had oft observed with the interest of future ownership.

  “What! Mistress Millicent! And who’s this? Master Holyday, o’ my life! ‘Zooks and ‘zounds! here’s doings!”

  The poet, suddenly alive, jerked his neck from the old knight’s grasp, and threw himself from the gate without thought of consequences. Luckily, Tom caught him by the body, and saved his neck, though both men were heavily jarred by the collision.

  “Come!” cried Millicent, seizing Holyday by the sleeve ere he had got his balance. She darted down Friday Street, the poet staggering headlong after her, Cutting Tom close in the rear.

  “What, ho!” cried Sir Peregrine, astonished out of his wits. “Stop! stay! The watch! constables! Master Etheridge! Runaways, runaways, runaways!”

  His voice waned in the distance behind Millicent as she hastened on. She still held the poet’s sleeve; he breathed fast and hard, but said nothing. In front of the White Horse, four men, at a gruff word from Cutting Tom, fell in with the fugitives, and the whole party of seven ran on without further speech. For a short time, tramping and breathing were the only sounds in Millicent’s ears; but soon there came a renewed and multiplied cry of “Runaways! stop them!” whereby she knew that Sir Peregrine had given the alarm, and that her father and his lads had started in pursuit.

  “God send we get to the boat in time!” she said, as she halted for a single step so that Master Holyday might take the lead. She cast a swift look over her shoulder, and saw two or three torches flaring in the distance.