A Gentleman Player Part 35

Why did Tybalt delay? What was the matter?

It was an embarra.s.sing moment for Mr. Burbage. He whispered something to the Benvolio, who thereupon went to the curtain at the rear and pushed it aside. He disclosed a number of those actors known as servitors, waiting to come on as citizens, and behind these the Prince with Montague and Capulet and their ladies.

"Where's Marryott?" called Benvolio to these. "'Tis his cue. The stage waits for Tybalt."

Those about the doorway looked into the tiring-room. "He is not here,"

replied several.

"He is not come from the stage yet," said Hudsdon. "I have kept my eye for him."

"Why," said Benvolio to the fellows who had played Tybalt's followers, "came he not off with you?"

"I remember not," said one. "'Tis certain he ought to have."

"'Tis certain he did not," said one of the guards on the steps.

Hudsdon made his way through the group on the steps, strode upon the stage, and, going to the centre thereof, to Mr. Burbage's utter amazement, said to Roger Barnet:

"There's deviltry afoot! The prisoner came not yonder, yet he is not here!"

"What say'st thou?" replied Roger, turning dark, and springing to his feet. "Thou'st been cozened. Hudsdon! He fled yonder; I saw him!" And he pointed toward the tiring-room.

"Nay," said one of the gallants on the stage, "he fled over the balcony, into the house." The speaker indicated the balcony used by Juliet, which, as has been said, was no higher above the back of the stage than were the eyes of a man standing. "That I'll swear. He grasped the bal.u.s.trade, and drew himself up, and bent around, and put knee to the balcony's edge; and then 'twas short work over the bal.u.s.trade and across the balcony."

"Ay, 'tis so!" cried out many voices from near the stage, and from the occupied part of the balcony itself.

"Why, then, Hudsdon, take three men, and search the house," cried Roger, for whom Mr. Burbage had indignantly made way by retiring to the back of the stage. Then the pursuivant turned to his informants: "An ye had eyes for so much, had none of you the wit to call out whither he went?"

"I thought it was part of the play," lisped the gallant. "I thought he ran away lest he be taken for killing the witty gentleman."

"Why, so he did," quoth Barnet, "but he ought not to have run to the balcony!"

"Marry, look you," said the other, "he cried 'Away!' and started for the curtain; then he said, 'Nay, I'll to the balcony!' and so to the balcony he went. I thought 'twas in the play."

"I knew the play," called out a gentleman in the balcony, "but I thought the action had mayhap been changed. We all thought so, who saw him pa.s.s this way."

"Devil take prating!" muttered Barnet. "Dawkins, go you with three men and seek in the street hereabout for him, or word of him. You three, to the stables, and out with the horses! A murrain on plays and play-acting!--I don't mean that, neither. Master Shakespeare" (for the poet had hastened to the stage to see what the matter was), "but I've been a blind a.s.s this day, and I would I had your art to tell my feelings!"

And he limped after Hudsdon, to a.s.sist in the search of the house.

This was a large inn, and required long searching. As for the men ordered to seek in the adjacent streets, they were a good while hindered in making their way through the crowd in the yard. Those who went to take out the horses were similarly impeded.

Meanwhile, for a time there was clamor and confusion among the spectators. Some of the dull witted, who had lost interest in the play after the novelty of the opening scenes, followed the four men to the street. The most, thinking the prisoner might be found in the house, chose to remain where they were, deciding not to sacrifice a certain pleasure for the uncertain one of joining a hunt for an escaped prisoner. So there were calls for the play to go on. It was therefore taken up at the point where Marryott had failed to appear, Master Shakespeare a.s.suming Tybalt's part for the one short speech, and the swift death, that remained to it. Thenceforward there was no stoppage.

My lord and his lady listened with rapt attention, and when at last the two lovers lay clasped in death many of the audience had forgotten the episode that had interrupted the third act.

But Roger Barnet had other occupation than to watch the resumed play. It was not given him to end as agreeably an afternoon so pleasantly begun; yet matter to distract his thoughts from his lame leg was not lacking.

The search of the inn yielding nothing, the scouring of the immediate neighborhood being fruitless, the pursuivant sent his men throughout the town for a clue. One came back with news that a man of the prisoner's description had been seen taking the Stamford road. Another returned with word that the lady who had followed from Foxby Hall had tarried a short while at another inn; and a third brought information that this lady and her escort of three had later left the town by the road to London. She had not, indeed, had Barnet's reason for staying in Oakham, and it was quite natural that she should have continued her homeward journey. Her departure seemed not connected in any way with the prisoner's flight.

Meanwhile the horses had been waiting ready in the street during the time necessary for these inquiries.

"To saddle, then," said Barnet to Hudsdon, "every hound of us! I'll on to Fleetwood house, you to the Stamford road. 'Tis the fiend's work that your man hath two hours' start. I wonder how far he is."

Just about that time, as the players were sitting down to supper, Master Shakespeare said:

"I pray Fortune the new action Hal put in my tragedy shall prove indeed the winning of his freedom!"

CHAPTER XXV.

SIR HARRY AND LADY MARRYOTT.

"This wild-goose chase is done; we have won o' both sides."--_The Wild-Goose Chase._

Marryott, in the midst of the fight with Mercutio, had in a flash two thoughts, one springing from the contact of his glance with the balcony, the other following instantly upon the first. The first was, that a man might gain the balcony by one swift effort of agility and strength; the second was, that when momentous action holds the attention of spectators to one part of a stage, a person elsewhere on the stage may move un.o.bserved before their eyes, if his movement be swift, silent, and in harmony with what has preceded,--a fact well known to people of stage experience. No incident in the drama more focuses attention than the dying scene of Mercutio; spectators have no eyes for Tybalt, of whom they retain but a vague impression of hasty flight.

The thing was scarce thought, when the time had come to act it. To make all seem right to those he must pa.s.s near, and inspired by necessity, he indeed spoke, for their ears alone, the words, "Away! Nay, I'll to the balcony;" at the same time casting his sword against the curtain, so that it fell less loudly to the stage. He seized two bal.u.s.ters, swiftly raised himself, and then--not proceeding exactly as the rustic beau had described--lodged a foot in the angle of a brace supporting the balcony, set his other foot on the balcony's edge, and rose ready to swing his body over the rail. To do this, and to glide across the balcony and through the way left open for Juliet, was the matter of a second. He was conscious, as he crossed the balcony, of slightly surprised looks from the musicians at one side, and from a few spectators at the other; but as he plunged into the room, he heard behind him only the lamenting voice of Romeo. Most of the spectators, and those chiefly concerned in his doings, had not observed his flight; like the dupes of a juggler, in watching one thing they had missed another; and those who perforce had seen his exit thought all was as it should be.

Across the room he ran, to a door leading into a pa.s.sage. He traversed this to the end, where a window gave upon the street. Through the window ere he had time to think of possible broken bones, he hung from the ledge, and dropped. The fall was from the second story only. He slipped sidewise on alighting, jarred his elbow, and bruised his leg. But he was up in a moment. The street was deserted,--everybody in the neighborhood was at the play.

He looked in both directions, but saw no horse. Then he started on a run, to make a circuit of the inn. If the horse was not in sight on one side, it must be so on another. Fortune could not so cruelly will it that when at last he had made the dash, performed the miracle, his friends should, for the first time, fail him. He directed his steps so as first to pa.s.s the inn gate, and be gone from it ere Barnet's men should have time to sally out. This he accomplished, but without glimpse of the horse. He turned into a street on the third side of the inn; traversed it to its junction with a lane leading toward the side where he had landed from the window; darted into this lane with the fast-beating heart of a dying hope, pa.s.sed half-way through it, glanced with dreading eyes down a narrow pa.s.sage conducting from it, and saw, in a street beyond, the waiting horse.

How he covered the length of the pa.s.sage, and vaulted into the saddle, he never could recall. His first remembered impression, after sight of the horse, was of being surrounded by Anne, Kit, and Anthony, all mounted; and seeing Francis glide away afoot in quest of a horse for his own riding. There was more gravity than joy in the faces of the three; the sight of him alive and free of his guards was too marvellous for outward rejoicing. Such joy is like pa.s.sions, of which Raleigh wrote, that they--

"... are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb."

Anthony avoided Hal's glance by looking down; Kit Bottle cleared his throat; from Anne's eyes there was the least gush of tears, and her voice trembled as she spoke:

"G.o.d be thanked! I dared not hope for this!"

"Nor I," he replied. "Whither do we ride?"

"You, to the Lincolns.h.i.+re coast, with Anthony. He knows secret ways of embarkation to France."

"But you?--you waited with the horse, that you might ride with me, is't not so?"

"No; that I might see all done, with mine own eyes, and you escaped.

Anthony has money for your needs to France. I will ride home, with Captain Bottle and Francis. Tarry not another moment. You are to ride first alone. Anthony will leave this town with us, and then make by cross-ways to join you soon on the Stamford road. This paper tells where one shall wait for the other, for Anthony may ride the faster, knowing better the ways. I have writ it so, for greater surety and less delay.

Go now; here's money, of Anthony's lending. Nay, for G.o.d's sake, tarry not!"

"But thou? When shall I see or hear?"

"Anthony will tell you how to send word. Tarry not, I entreat!"

"Thou'st been too good to me!"