A Gentleman Player Part 21

"I say only that there is a strange circ.u.mstance in all this business, that may not yet be opened to you. Well, I see that till time shall permit explanation, I must despair of seeming other to you than stained with your brother's blood. My word of honor, my oath, avail not--"

"Speak you of oaths and words of honor? There was some talk of oaths two days ago, before the constable of Clown!"

Hal sighed. He did not notice that, in drawing him further into conversation, she had drawn him further from the coach, which was indeed now hidden behind a slight turn of the road.

"Well," quoth he, resignedly, "time shall clear me; and show, too, why I have had to put so admired a lady to so irksome a constraint."

"Say, rather, time shall give your prisoner revenge for all constraint.

Think not you have put me to much distress! What says the play? Women can endure mewing up, so that you tie not their tongues!"

"I thank heaven you have not given me cause to tie your tongue!"

"Given you cause,--how?" she asked, looking full at him.

"Why, suppose, in the towns we pa.s.sed, you had cried out from the coach to people, and I had found the closed curtain of no avail."

"What would you have done then?"

"Bound with a silken kerchief the shapeliest mouth in England! Ay, with these very hands of mine!"

"Ere that were done, I should have made stir enough to draw a concourse.

Were I hard put to it, be sure I would attract questioners to whom you'd have to give account."

"Account were easy given. I should declare you were a mad woman committed to my charge."

"More perjury!"

"Nay, there is truly some madness in a woman's taking vengeance into her own small hands."

She answered nothing, and presently they returned to the coach. Captain Rumney stood pensively by his horse, his gaze averted, as if he thought of the past or the far away. He now looked mildly up, and mounted. The other robbers were already on their horses, Bottle at their head.

Mistress Hazlehurst let Hal lift her into the coach. Francis followed.

Marryott then whistled for Anthony, and got into the saddle.

"The snow falls thicker and thicker," remarked Captain Rumney, in a bland, sociable tone, while the caravan waited for the Puritan.

As soon as Anthony was in place, Hal motioned to Bottle, at whose word the robbers, with whip and rein, set their horses in motion. The harness strained, the coach creaked, the wheels turned reluctantly in the snow.

The procession moved forward a short distance; then, suddenly, there was a splitting sound, a rear wheel fell inward, and the adjacent part of the coach dropped heavily to the ground. The vehicle, thereupon, was still, halting the horses with a violent jerk.

Anthony Underhill leaped from his saddle, and turned over the loose wheel. A single glance revealed that the axle had been, within a very short time past, cut nearly through with a saw.

Anthony looked at Master Marryott, who gazed at the axle with a singularly self-communing, close-mouthed expression. All was very clear to Master Marryott; a train of events had rushed through his mind in an eye's twinkling: Mistress Hazlehurst's subjugation of Captain Rumney by the use of her eyes; the nocturnal visit of her page to the robber in the single opportunity afforded by Hal's movements; the walk in which she had drawn Hal from the coach at a time when Anthony was on guard and Kit Bottle concerned with the horses. A few words would have sufficed for the message borne by Francis to Rumney, such as, "My mistress desires you to wreck the coach; she will make an opportunity." She had not asked Rumney to rescue her by force, for he might prove a worse captor than her present one. She had not asked him to injure the horses during the night, for the watch kept by Hal might prevent that, or the robber might be unwilling to sacrifice his own animals. What she sought was delay for the coming of Barnet; not an open revolt of the robbers, which might be so victorious as to put her at their mercy. And Rumney had obeyed her to the letter; had, doubtless, after receiving her message, searched the outhouses for a suitable tool; and probably carried at the present moment, beneath his leather jerkin, the hand-saw with which, during Hal's walk with Mistress Hazlehurst, he had severed the axle.

But, whatever lay concealed under his jerkin or his skull, Captain Rumney was now looking down at the wheel with a most surprised, puzzled, curious, how-in-G.o.d's-name-could-this-have-come-to-pa.s.s expression of face.

It was but the early morning of the fourth day of the flight. Could Hal but defer the inevitable break with his ally, for this day and another!

Until the five days were up, an open breach with, or secret flight from, these robbers, meant the risk of either his mission or her safety. For such break or flight might leave her in their hands. This horrible issue could be provided against only by Hal's consigning her to protection in some town or some gentleman's house; but such provision he dared not make till his mission was accomplished, lest she defeat that mission by disclosures that would either cause his own seizure or raise doubts in Barnet as to his ident.i.ty.

Decidedly, patience was the proper virtue here, and the best policy was that of temporizing.

"'Tis a curious smooth break," said Hal, with an indescribable something in his voice for the benefit of Anthony, and of Kit, who had ridden back to see what stayed the coach. "But I have seen wood break so, when decay hath eaten a straight way through it. Mistress, I rejoice to see you are not hurt by the sudden jar."

He spoke to her through the coach doorway. Both she and Francis were sitting quite undisturbed. The jar had, in fact, not been sudden to them. As Hal knew, they had expected the breakdown. But his dissembling must be complete.

"Here's delay!" put in Captain Rumney, most sympathetically vexed.

"Yes," said Marryott, very dismally, as if bereft of hope. His wisest course lay in holding the plotters pa.s.sive by making them think they had already accomplished enough. If Mistress Hazlehurst supposed that sufficient delay was now obtained, she would not further instigate Rumney. And without instigation Rumney was not likely to invite open warfare at a place only two miles from Keighley. In fact, he would not, of his own initiative, have chosen a spot so near a town, for causing the breakdown, which might result in tumult. He would have waited for a more solitary neighborhood. He was of no mind for needlessly chancing any kind of violent contact with the authorities. Mistress Hazlehurst, not divining his feelings on this point, had created the opportunity at this spot, and he had taken the risk. But he was well content that the supposed Sir Valentine accused him not. In roads more remote, accusation might be positively welcome; but not in close vicinity to a centre of law and order.

With a kind of vague, general sense of what Captain Rumney's mental att.i.tude must be, Marryott felt that he need fear no interruption to the plan his mind now formed, in a moment's time, for an early resumption of the flight. But he did not communicate this plan to any but Anthony, who alone was necessary to its inauguration. Even Bottle was kept in the dark, in order that Rumney might not find, in being excepted from a council of leaders, a pretext for subsequent complaint.

As for his instructions to the Puritan, Hal gave them very quickly, in whispers, leaning down from his saddle to approach more nearly the other's ear.

Anthony, having listened without speech or sign, remounted his horse, rode to the house at which the breakfast had been obtained, and made a few brief inquiries of the man who came to the door.

The result of his questions was evidently not satisfactory; for he rode from the door, shaking his head in the negative to Master Marryott; and forthwith cantered off through the falling snow, toward Keighley.

Bottle, who had sat his horse in silent observation of these movements, as had Rumney also, now glanced at Hal as if to question the propriety of sending the Puritan away.

"Fear not," said Hal, rea.s.suringly. "If he see thy friend Barnet ere he find what he seeks, he will drop all and come back a-flying. And then we shall meet Barnet, or dodge him, in what manner we must!"

It has been told that Marryott was always prepared, as a last resource, to use his forces in resistance to the pursuivant. A close meeting was to be avoided to the utmost, however; not only for its uncertainty of issue to the immediate partic.i.p.ants, but for its likelihood of informing Barnet that the pursued man was not Sir Valentine. In the event of that disclosure, Hal saw safety for his mission in one desperate course; that was, to kill or disable the pursuivant and all his men. But such a feat of arms was barely within possibility, a fact which made Master Hal extremely unwilling that matters should come to an encounter. Therefore he groaned and fretted inwardly during the minutes of inaction that followed Anthony's departure. He sought relief from thoughts of a possible combat with his pursuers, in following out his plan for his forward movement; and saw with joy that the very method he had chosen for going on with his prisoner was the better adapted to his bearing her safely off from Rumney in case of a conflict with that gentleman.

"Have your men take their horses from the coach. Captain Rumney," Hal had said very soon after Anthony had departed. The words were spoken lightly, not as if they accorded with a plan, but as if they indeed had no other inspiration than was shown when Hal added, "'Tis no use now keeping them hitched to this moveless heap of lumber."

Prompt obedience had been given to an order so suggestive of greater delay. And now the robbers idly sat their horses, jesting, railing at one another, grumbling, and some of them wondering in dull discontent whither in the fiend's name they were bound. Anne and her page kept their places in the derelict vehicle, withholding their thoughts. Bottle and Rumney rode up and down, saying little. They were old soldiers, and used to waiting. Moreover, in the days of slow transit, patience was a habit, especially with those who travelled.

At last Anthony's figure reappeared, rising and falling in the whirling snow as his movements obeyed those of his horse. His manner showed that he did not bear any tidings of Barnet. He brought with him an old pillion and a collection of battered hunting-horns, the former behind his saddle, the latter all slung upon a single cord. It was to procure these things that he had gone back to Keighley, where there were saddlers, innkeepers, hostlers, smiths, and others from whom such articles were to be had. Hal's companions looked with curiosity at these acquisitions.

Marryott now ordered both Anthony and Kit to dismount. He then had the horse formerly ridden by Francis led back to the coach doorway. Here he caused Bottle to hold the animal, and Anthony to adjust the pillion behind the saddle thereon.

"Now, mistress," said Hal, when this was done, "pray let me aid you to the pillion."

From her seat in the coach she did not move, nor made she the smallest answer. She merely cast a look at Captain Rumney.

Hal saw the need of swift action; delay would give her mute appeal to the robber time to take effect. Summary proceedings would bewilder him.

"Tom Cobble, hold my horse," he said, and was afoot in an instant. In another, he was inside the coach, raising Mistress Hazlehurst bodily from her seat, and conveying her out of the doorway to the pillion, which was not too high or far to permit his placing her upon it. Taken quite by surprise, she found herself on horseback ere she thought to brace herself for physical resistance.

"The cord, Anthony," called Hal. The Puritan threw it to him, having already unfastened it from the hunting-horns. Before Mistress Hazlehurst had time to think of sliding from the pillion to the ground. Hal had her waist twice encircled by the cord, of which he retained both ends. He then, from the coach doorway, mounted the saddle in front of her, brought the rope's ends together before him, joined them in a knot, and let Kit Bottle lead the horse a few paces forward so that his prisoner might not impede matters by seizing hold of the coach.

"And now the boy, Anthony. Carry him on your saddle-bow," said Marryott. The Puritan, reaching into the coach with both arms, laid hold of the page, and placed him on the saddle-bow; then, at a gesture, mounted behind him.

"Take one of the horns, Kit," was Hal's next command. "Give one to me, one to Anthony, one to Captain Rumney, and the other to Tom Cobble. John Hatch, lead the spare horse. And now all to your saddles. Kit, ride at the head. Anthony, you shall go at my right hand; Tom Cobble, at my left. Captain Rumney shall choose his place. And heed this, all of you: When I sound this horn, all ye that have like instruments, blow your loudest; the rest, halloo your l.u.s.tiest; and every mother's son set his horse a-galloping till I call halt, taking heed to keep together. And now, forward!"

A minute later, the cavalcade was moving through the downcoming flakes, leaving the wrecked coach to bury itself in the snow.

Mistress Hazlehurst could not but see her captor's reason for the order of which a blast from his horn was to be the signal. Now that she was no longer concealed in the coach, it would be easier--the temptation would be greater--for her to make an outcry when pa.s.sing habitations. The noise of the horns and of the hallooing would drown the words she might utter, and the galloping would rob her gesticulations of their intended effect. The conduct of the whole party would strike beholders as the sportive ebullition of a company of merry blades bent on astonis.h.i.+ng the natives; and any cries or motions she might make would seem, in the flash of time while they might be witnessed, but of a piece with the behavior of her boisterous companions. There were roysterers of the gentler s.e.x in those days,--witness Mary Frith, otherwise "Moll Cutpurse," who was indeed a very devil of a fellow.[28] Such roaring women were not of Mistress Hazlehurst's quality; but who would have time to discern her quality in the brief while of the company's mad transit through such small towns as lay before them?

It was less clear to her why her enemy should have placed her on the same horse with himself, when he might have bound her upon another, of which he could have retained hold of the bridle. But the case was thus: Though a possible contest with Rumney or Barnet might result in Hal's own personal escape, such a contest might, were she on another horse, enable her to free herself, and either make disclosures fatal to Hal's mission, or fall prisoner to the robber. But, she being on his horse, and unable to act independently of him, Hal's escape would leave her still his captive. That escape he must, then, contrive to make. He thus simplified his course in the event of an encounter; twined two threads into one; united two separate lines of possible befalling--his line and hers--so that they might be determined by a single, concentrated exertion of his own prowess.