MISTRESS JOAN MEDLEY
‘Lucidus ordo!’ cried Raleigh. ‘I drink to the happy sequel!’
He was as good as his word, and in enthusiastic measure. He was come
at last, and sat with his young friend in a private room of the _Cock_
tavern, as brilliant a figure as that dark wainscotting had ever been
called on to enshrine. He lolled easily back, one leg crossed over the
other, and lifted his cup high, gazing benevolently at the excited
eager face of the boy, as it regarded him across the table. He had but
just been describing his tactics, conceived and developed--with a
rather unnecessary elaboration, Brion could not help but think--for
the most romantic reception of a lover by his mistress. The lover had
winced a little over the necessity of accepting any such outside
means, however devoted, to the attainment of an end so sensitively
personal; but he had to remember that it was he himself who, in the
first instance, had volunteered the confidence; and in any case the
enrapturing prospect silenced all scruples as to the methods of its
evoking. He was to see Joan again, and that was ecstasy enough.
Raleigh had explained how he had gone to work to lead up to this
ravishing consummation. He had got his friend, the ‘certain popinjay’
before mentioned, to carry him into Mistress Medley’s own presence, on
the score that he must satisfy himself as to the lady’s person and
manners before he could presume to give him advice, while repudiating
any suspicion the other might conceive as to his absolute
disinterestedness in the matter; and, having once procured that
introduction, had followed it up with a private visit to the heiress
on his own account, which, with his name and reputation, and the
glamour of the Court about him, was a thing very easily effected. And
then, no sooner was that interview secured, than he had opened with
all his arts upon his gentle hearer, first interesting, then exciting
her mind on the subject of a dear friend of his--one who for the
present must go nameless--who had seen her and been smitten to the
heart, whose cause he pleaded with all the passionate eloquence at his
command, and who craved, he said, but one brief meeting, that he might
press a suit which, lacking the romantic atmosphere of night and
secrecy, he must despair of ever urging with a hope to move her. In
short, he had sped his plea so well, and with such imaginative
enlargement of the case, making himself almost believe in his own
picture, that the lady, much moved, had consented, after a show of
reluctance, to see her unknown admirer that very night, and to admit
him, by a private way--position and hour defined--to a short interview
in the presence of a third party--which was the _lucidus ordo_
acclaimed.
Now, in this transporting statement there were, nevertheless, an
implication or so which jarred, just a thought, on its hearer’s
sensibilities. Brion did not, for one thing, quite see the necessity
for all this elaborate secrecy in a matter which had been much more
simply settled by the plain process of his friend’s furnishing him
with Joan’s address, after having paved the way,--if he so wished it,
and as he had at first proposed--by a melting invocation to the spirit
of a past and vanished passion. Still, that point he--suspecting,
perhaps, by this time, something of the Captain’s temperament, and
knowing how men of his romantic complexion valued a love affair only
in proportion as it was roundabout and complicated--was quite ready to
waive. Another which, only half consciously, disturbed him more, was
the thought of Joan, that artless child of his memory, permitting to
the ‘glamour of the Court’, like any vulgar cit, familiarities which,
in one of her own order, she might have resented; while yet a third
turned upon the unquestionable fact that she could make a tryst with a
gentleman who, for all she knew to the contrary, was utterly unknown
to her.
But he extinguished all these misgivings, as rapidly as they flickered
into his mind, and would have nothing of them, as disloyalties to his
love. Perhaps she guessed; perhaps, even, she had heard of his
friendship with Raleigh, and had formed her own conclusions as to the
meaning of the promise won from her. That was a wonderful inspiration.
He built upon it. He was to see his Joan again--there was the one
solid splendid fact--and possibly to discover that he himself was the
visitor she expected. And if his friend had brought this about by
means that seemed to him unduly fanciful, he would not carp and be
ungrateful if they were justified by such an end.
And in the meanwhile, time, place and procedure were all settled
things, and he had only to wait and prepare himself against the
blissful moment. It was arranged that Raleigh was to be at Westminster
Stairs, with a party of his own fellows and his private barge, at
seven o’clock that same evening, and that Brion was to embark with
them, and be pulled down the river to a certain point, where he was to
land and follow the directions given him, while the others watched out
his return by the waterside. He was very grateful for this arrangement
and said so; it was a real act of kindness and self-sacrifice on the
part of a friend so greatly in request as Master Walter; but why would
not that friend give him the address offhand, so that he might achieve
his own mission in his own way, without putting others to the trouble
and tedium of seeing him through with the business?
But Raleigh only laughed. He would tell him nothing about the house;
only that it was a merchant’s house in a mercantile quarter--a very
fine house, fitting to the position of such a civic dignitary as the
late Sir John Medley--and that it was situated somewhere between
Puddle Dock and London Bridge. Of course, said he, Master Middleton
might easily, if he liked, and if he were minded to discard the advice
of a friend, discover the house for himself, and present himself to
its inmate in the ordinary way of civility; only, in that case, he
would make bold to say, the enterprise would be robbed of all that
romantic mystery which was ever a leading fascination in ladies’ eyes,
and from poetry would be reduced to the dullest prose. Whereat Brion,
seeing they were on ticklish ground, very wisely withdrew the
suggestion, with the assurance that he had only made it from a desire
to save the other trouble, and that, convinced now of the truth, he
wholly deferred to a judgment which had all the shrewd experience of a
master in the art of philandering to back it.
‘To the happy sequel!’ responded he, with a great bright sigh; and
drained his own mug to the toast.
‘Is the patriot to be in the secret?’ asked Raleigh.
Brion shook his head. ‘He hath never heard our names coupled by me.
Thou art the only one who knows of her, Walter.’ He had been invited
to that familiarity by the companionable soldier.
Raleigh looked pleased. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I’ll not say I’m flattered
till I’ve proved myself.’
‘Walter’--his eyes desperately coaxed: ‘you’ll not tell me anything, I
know.’
‘Not a word.’
‘Not of how she appeared to you?’
‘She appeared to me walking on two feet, like any other woman.’
‘Ah! but is she not beautiful?’
‘Beauty, my friend’--he was drinking again, as if to avoid a direct
encounter with the look which sought his--‘is in the eyes which
perceive it.’
‘Well, did not yours perceive it?’
‘I am not in love with her. From the child we find chief beauty in
those we love.’
‘How cold you are.’
‘Discreet.’
‘How spoke she?’
‘With her lips and tongue--in the English language.’
‘There you are wrong. It is love’s own music.’
‘It did not warble for me, i’faith.’
‘Alack, you mean?’
‘Alack, of course.’
‘Well, I will question you no more.’
‘I would not, for your mind’s peace, since you will get nothing. What!
appraise another man’s mistress to his face? Not I. She is Joan
Medley: it is all summed up in that.’
It was for Brion. He spent a restless time, after the other had gone,
waiting for the evening to come. He could settle to no occupation, but
dawdled out the slow hours, feeling their length unbearable. He had
informed Clerivault that he was for a jaunt with Captain Raleigh that
night, but had not explained what there was in the prospect to make
him so excited and impatient. His mood puzzled the good fellow; but
since there was a sign in it of that imperious temper to which it was
occasionally subject, he held his tongue, and obeyed all his
directions without comment.
At last evening fell, and the young gentleman with it to a
consideration of his toilet. He had never spent so much time and care
over that in his life before, but had out all his suits--the gray with
lace of silver tissue, the plum-colour slashed with white satin, the
black velvet, and the steel blue with miniver--and debated them,
deciding, after profound cogitation, upon the last, as the one in
which, most fancying himself, he would most honour the occasion. His
short hair then received his attention, and not less the short
mustachio on his lip. He hung his rapier at his thigh; disposed his
black velvet curtmanteau to the best effect on his left shoulder,
cocked his black velvet bonnet, with the blue jay’s feather and the
blue beryl in it, at a telling angle, and, so arrayed, strode forth to
conquer. And indeed he was a pretty figure, and one to mirror itself
very alluringly in bright eyes.
He was early at the rendezvous, of course, and had to wait some
minutes on the stairs before the barge appeared to take him off. But
at length it hove out of the shadows, and received him on board; and
the great thrilling adventure was launched. They dropped down with the
tide, so cautiously, for the night was cloudy and dark, that his
impatience could scarce brook the delay; but, since ‘all overs,’ as
the proverb saith, ‘are ill, but over the water,’ the happy end came
at last, and at the moment when Brion was abandoning hope of any end
at all. Raleigh gave a low order, and the men pulled in silently to a
point on the shore he indicated. Here ran a stone slip into the water,
descending from the gullet of a narrow lane where a dismal lantern
hung and blinked, like a corpse-candle drowzy with watching. The shore
was thick with a throng of houses, timbered and gabled, ghosts in the
dim-lit darkness--great buildings some, and redolent of civic
prosperity. Barges, piled with merchandise, slumbered at anchor in the
stream. The roar of the waters under London Bridge droned in their
ears, though the monster himself was invisible. It was a crowded,
huddled settlement, with veins of the leanest cut through its
substance to connect it with the great artery of Thames Street half a
furlong away. They grounded on the slip, and, while a fellow leaped
out to hold the boat’s nose secure, Raleigh and his young friend
disembarked, and climbed the slope to the level stones above.
‘Where are we?’ asked Brion, in a low voice.
‘Dowgate,’ answered the other--‘a rich and prolific quarter. Yonder’s
the Steel yard, stronghold of the Hanse League. A murrain on
them--German swine, crunching our good English acorns, in each of
which might sleep the cradle of a lusty ship! But we’ve ringed their
snouts of late, to limit their grubbing in our native soil, and give
our own merchant adventurers a chance. Better still were they all
packed neck and crop out of the country.’ He kicked at a barrel, an
outlying one of many that littered the wharf hard by. ‘We’ve let them
rob us,’ he growled, ‘the while our tolerant courtesy hath passed for
folly or weakness with these hogs it favoured; like as though some
petted guest brazenly repaid his host by bearing off the silver plate
he’d fed on, and was honoured for his treachery. God’s truth! we can
do our own trading, I hope, and farther, it may chance, than any
Hanseatic shark can follow us. When that expedition of ours is
launched----’
‘We shall be over with to-night’s business,’ put in Brion. He was near
dancing with impatience. What were all the sixty-six Hanse towns and
their confederates to this one present corner of his own.
A distant bell struck the three-quarters. Raleigh laughed and
exclaimed:--
‘Cry you mercy, poor lover! Do you perish while I prose? Well, we are
betimes, but not more than she in her impatience, I’ll warrant. Come,
now, and I’ll set thee on thy way.’
He led the young man to the opening of the lane--which appeared as a
mere channel furrowed through a field of houses--and, bidding him
traverse it some fifty yards, take the first turning to the right, and
knock at a door he should see on his dexter hand, where was carved a
rebus of a hotchpot, signifying a medley of good things. The password
was _speedwell_, said he; and so giving him his blessing, and urging
him to make the best of his opportunity, and not consider his friend,
who in such a cause was prepared to linger out the night by the water
if need be, he thrust the lantern into his hand, and, wishing him
God-speed, went back to the boat.
Brion, his heart beating high, his feet seeming to step on air,
entered the lane and walked on. Twenty yards in he heard a casement
opened overhead, and, to a shrill cry of ‘gardy-loo,’ a pail of slops
was emptied into the street. It fell behind, and only just missed him;
but it doused his mood of exaltation as effectually as if it had made
a foul wet clout of the blue and miniver. As he sped on, keeping as
near the middle of the way as practicable, he thought of nothing else
than a possible, and more catastrophic, repetition of the performance;
and he was still agitated by the memory of it, when he found the door
and took shelter under its overhanging penthouse.
But answer came soon enough to his cautious knock to ease his mind and
justify Master Raleigh in his prediction: and there in the doorway
stood a capacious dame, who seemed to regard him with curiosity before
she spoke.
‘How now, young man?’ she said at last, in a voice half stifled behind
walls of fat. ‘What is your business here, an it please you?’
Her eyes were moist and lushy; her face was like a great red ham, with
the little ruff about her neck for a frill to it; she leaned on a
gold-knobbed cane, and for support, for she was corpulent and
rheumatic.
‘What all business wishes--to speedwell,’ answered the youth, feeling,
despite himself, a little shame in this masquerading.
She put a finger to her lips instantly, and, nodding and leering, made
way for him to enter, and closed the door behind him.
‘Leave your lantern there,’ she whispered, and, waddling heavily
before, with a little sighing groan or two, led him down a panelled
passage into a room that opened from it, and, bidding him wait there
till her return, shut him in and disappeared. He heard her going
painfully and complainingly up the flight of stairs he had observed
before him on entering, and waited glowingly for the abounding vision
which was to signalize her return.
The room in which he found himself was bare and empty, but bore traces
of some honoured occupation in the past history of the house. Its
walls, though streaked and faded, had once been gilt, and on them rods
for tapestry still rusted in their sockets. There was a noble carved
stone fireplace, with a great hood roofing it, and dogs upon the
hearth; but only a brazier burned there now, as if for the makeshift
accommodation of some casual watcher. That and the single chair set
before it, the only article of furniture in the place, saving a couple
of tapers that flared in sconces on the wall, seemed to point to a
vigil just kept in expectation of this particular visit. But kept by
whom? Obviously by her who had answered to his knock, and who had been
stationed here for that very purpose. The thought thrilled him through
and through. For that very purpose! So, she had provided for the
meeting as anxiously, with as great an excitement of expectation, as
he had felt in speeding to it.
And almost with the thought he heard her coming. There was a sound of
footsteps on the stairs. ‘Joan!’ he breathed from his bursting
heart--and the door on the moment opened, and she entered.
She came in on the arm of her governante, the blown breathless old
lady with the stick. She gave one bashful glance towards the stranger,
then looked aside, with a little mincing shrug and wriggle of her
shoulders. There was a pause, quite painful in its intensity. And then
Brion opened his mouth and gasped out an inquiry:--
‘Mistress Joan Medley?’
‘The same, young man,’ panted the governante, her voice wheezy from
her exertions. ‘What, young man, what, you speak as though you
doubted! By’r lady, you should know her, it seems, better than she
knows you. Come, whatever thy petition, speed with it, for she hath
but a little time to spare thee.’
‘Trudy!’ murmured the young lady, in a tone of coquettish
remonstrance.
_Was_ she young? There was no telling. There are those--the fortunate
ones, perhaps--who, looking like wizened age in youth, in age come to
look youthful. What Brion saw before him was a little undersized
creature, with a sharp unhealthy face and ferrety eyelashes. She was
all hung and sown with gems, after the fashion of a royal model. Her
head-dress was as monstrous as was her farthingale, over which a
jewelled stomacher came down so deep as to give to her already short
lower limbs an aspect of quite grotesque stubbiness. The red heels to
her shoes were four inches in height; the vulgarity of tasteless
wealth marked her all over; as a figurine in a gallanty show she might
have passed, but as nothing akin to nature in all the world. She
glanced up from under her pale lashes, wreathing and unwreathing her
fingers, and so down again.
‘You wished to see me, Sir,’ she said, her shoulders always in a state
of convulsion. ‘I am willing to hear what you have to say. Such a
persuasive friend as you sent--O, dear, o’my conscience!’
Brion opened his mouth to speak; but not a word would come of it. He
felt as if trapped--fairly confounded in a snare of his own setting.
The old lady broke in impatiently:--
‘Hey-day! a backward gallant on my word. What, to press a suit quotha!
Here’s not enough of “night and secrecy” for him mayhap. Well, there’s
a form of eloquence with some grows bolder as the lights go out. Hark
ye, shy lover--there’s privacy enow down here to suit an Abbot. Go to!
I’ll leave ye to your billings, pretty things, and shut the door, and
hope to find your manners mended when I ope again.’
With a leer, and a little shake of her stick, she turned to put her
threat into execution. Desperate with terror, Brion came to his wits,
and took a quick step towards her.
‘Stay, I prithee,’ said he. ‘There--there is a mistake.’
At the sound of the word the old woman stopped, and the younger one,
her countenance changed, started and turned rigid.
‘A mistake!’ whispered she; and gave a little choke.
There was nothing for the unhappy young man but instant candour. He
plunged for it, his face going scarlet.
‘This is not the lady I expected.’
‘Eh!’ cried the governante violently--‘’Tis Mistress Joan Medley.’
‘I cannot help it,’ said Brion: ‘It is not she I thought. O, I am a
humbled wretch, craving absolution! How the misconception arose I dare
not think; some--some confusion in the name, belike; yet the blame
shall be mine alone, and the full contrition. If I had had but one
clue to the truth, I had not so come to shame myself, or insult an
honoured lady to whose gracious condescension alone I am indebted for
this interview. I entreat her to forgive me, and to permit me to
withdraw from the presence I have offended, with a thousand apologies
for a presumption which was never dreamed or purposed.’
The governante looked from one fallen face to the other, and an
ineffable leer came into her own.
‘Well, well,’ said she: ‘You’re here; and there she is who knew and
knows you not from Adam. What then? If a tree is sweet and fruitful,
it may be loved without a name. She’s content, if you are, to accept
you on your merits. Go to: Take what Fortune brings you, and make no
words about it. There’s many a cross scent followed ends in tastier
game than that that was first pursued and missed.’
Brion did not answer, but panic-struck he shook his head and made for
the door. He was halted by a sudden screech, followed by a torrent of
vituperation:--
‘Base and perfidious! How dare you, Trudy, how dare you, I say--to
deal with me thus, to answer for me thus, before a common rogue and
impostor, in whose face I had detected the low villainy even before he
spoke. Content! His merits! I’d sooner touch a toad.’ Her shred of a
body heaved and stormed, threatening to burst its laces; her face was
a very spectre of rageful spite. ‘And you--to encourage him, that lewd
and pernicious enormity--to let him to think I craved his base
attentions--a common groom--I, I, that could choose among a hundred of
his masters--I’ll have him followed and exposed. I’ll have him
scourged at the cart-tail, while _she_ looks on--the one he dared to
think me--the one----’
She was gasping hysterically to an end. It came in a wind of tears,
and she dropped into the chair by the hearth. Brion, appalled a
moment, the next took his discretion in hand and bolted. He found his
lantern yet burning, seized it, opened the door with agitated fingers,
and, leaping into the night, closed it behind him. And then he
ran--ran as if the devil were at his heels, and never stopped until he
had reached the barge and jumped aboard.
‘Put off, a God’s name!’ said he. ‘I’m winded.’
Raleigh, who had been sitting wrapped in his cloak and half asleep in
the sternsheets, greeted him with some surprise:--
‘So soon! Was not the lady kind?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Not kind?’
‘It was the wrong lady--that was all.’