The sun was setting over Hexham in Northumberland as the last
remnants of the Lancastrian force broke and scattered before the
explosive charges of the Yorkists under Montacute, Warden of the East
Marches. Thenceforth all was mad flight and frenzied pursuit. No
quarter was given or expected. The hurtling fragments of the rout flew
in a thousand directions, to be pursued and overtaken and stamped to
extinction where they fell. Steel and flesh and harness, swept into
mangled heaps, dotted acres of the country, like manure laid ready for
its potent dressing. Hardly a cry or a movement issued from these
fermenting masses. Montacute had ordered his work thoroughly, and the
chase as it swept on and away had seen to it that the fallen should
yield no hangman’s perquisites. Only a spark struck out from steel
here and there witnessed to the sharp eviction of a soul betrayed
through its agony.
The young May moon stole up and out, and, in sickness at the sight,
drew a passing cloud across her face. The horse that, miles away,
carried a frantic woman and her child, stumbled in the shadow, and,
half recovering itself, and again sinking, pitched its riders upon the
turf.
They rose immediately, to find themselves upon the fringe of a dense
wood, remote, unknown, but a haven of desperate refuge in their
plight.
“Art thou hurt, child?” whispered the breathless woman.
“No, mother.”
“Come, then. No other choice is ours but death and outrage. We must
take shelter where we can.”
She seized his hand--he was a pretty, delicate boy of eleven--and
together they entered among the trees. All was strange and voiceless
there, yet the leaves were not so full-grown but that the moonlight
penetrating might help them a little on their way. It sparkled softly
on the woman’s girdle, and on her little turbaned cap, and on the
jewels, which she had not thought in her haste to remove or hide,
clasped about her white neck; it peopled the glades with moving
phantoms, mystic and watchful. She felt the little hand in hers clutch
and quiver, and squeezed it, drearily responsive.
“Better,” she said, “these thousand spectres than a single sword of
the usurper.”
She was only thirty-four, and of those years she had spent five in the
Tower. Yet, born as she was a child of sorrow, always the sport of
faction, her baby rattle the roll of drums, her games real warriors
and real warfare, her indomitable spirit, wasting itself for ever in
fruitless struggles and on timorous souls, refused still to
acknowledge its own eclipse. She had fought, had she known it, her
weak husband’s cause to within sight of the end, but the fire in her
heart, though in the full front of this disaster, was not yet wholly
extinguished. Only a tragic woe lined her beautiful face, and she
clung half hysterically to this one shadow out of all her dreams which
remained to her.
She had been a child herself when her gentle boy was born. They were
even now more like brother and mothering sister than son and parent.
What hope remained to her was centred entirely in him and his
passionate preservation. She carried him into the woods, as a
frightened woodcock bears its fledgling, with one only instinct--to
put as far and as obscure an interval as possible between their
enemies and themselves.
Yet, in the end, worn with grief and terror and the actual fatigues of
that bloody day, they faltered and sunk down exhausted at the lip of
a little clearing situated but a few hundred yards within the
forest-edge. There was a mossy bank there, and on it, under the shadow
of a spreading oak-tree, they fell and clung together.
“Neddy, my babe, my little woeful prince!” wept the mother. “There,
hide thee thy face within my bosom, and try to sleep. It shall force
my bursting heart to still itself to be thy quiet pillow.”
The boy obeyed, crying silently. Yet, so it happened that, spent with
emotion, in a little a merciful oblivion overtook him, and, listening
to his regular breathing as to soft music, the woman too sank
presently drowned in a sea of forgetfulness. And there they lay at
peace in the quiet night, with moss for their bedding and green leaves
for their canopy.
A sense of light, of human neighbourhood, awoke them almost at the
same moment, and they sat up together with a start. It was bright
morning in the forest, and three evil, uncouth men stood gloating down
upon them.
The woman’s heart seemed to stop. The rose and warmth of slumber,
mortal lures to villainy, froze upon her cheek. Instinctively her hand
stole to the haft of a little dagger stuck at her waist. For minutes
dead silence prevailed, and then she spoke, in a voice which strove
vainly to command itself:
“Pray you mercy, gentle sirs! What would you with us? O, not to betray
our weakness!”
Her very plea was provocation to such cattle--a reassurance and an
invitation. She had supposed them, in the first shock of discovery, to
be Yorkist soldiers, but a moment’s thought had undeceived her.
Shaggy, unkempt, grossly attired and rudely armed, there was nothing
to associate these with the bearing of regular troops. They were mere
prowling revers of the woods, beasts and marauders, who took their
toll of lonely travellers, and ravished and murdered as the chance
came to them.
One of the three, a huge, bull-like ruffian, in hood and battered
breastplate, rose from the bow on which he leaned, and turned to his
comrades.
“What say you, gossips--a pretty finch to pull? Their weakness, sooth!
Do we not love all weakness in such guise?”
One, who stood behind in a high scarlet cap, peering over his friend’s
shoulders, clucked in his throat, and cracked his fingers. He was
grotesquely tall, lean, misshapen, with long, hungry chaps and a
frosty nose.
“Gossips,” he said, in a thin, sharp-set voice, “shall we not pluck
this pigeon ere we feast on her? My blood is cold, and sack would be
very warming.”
The Queen wrenched a gold chain from her arm, and, rising hurriedly,
flung it to the ground.
“Take it, in God’s pity,” she said, “and let us go! Gentlemen--sweet
gentlemen! a broken woman throws herself upon your charity. O, teach
her that some mercy still remains to men!”
“A’s unprotected,” said the third fellow, his eyes burning--“likely
some little sow that flees and squeaks before the boars of York.”
“We’ll make her squeak, I warrant,” said the first speaker.
The lank creature skipped to the front, and snatched up the chain.
“Drink first,” he cried, “drink, drink! I’ll with this to the
‘Chequers’ and return anon with sack.”
The bull-headed man threw himself on him in a fury; in a second they
were all fighting together for possession of the chain. The strongest,
the first-mentioned, secured it.
“Drink,” he roared. “Much drink, I trow, for those remaining. Trust
_thee_ the chain, Jake Andrews? Marry I will when Tib’s eve is come.”
The other wriggled, cracking his finger-joints.
“Take it thyself, then, Cuckoo, only speed fast and bring us good
store.”
They wrangled yet awhile, but in the end the holder of the chain went
off, with threats of fierce reprisals should the two remaining venture
to take advantage of his absence. They leered at one another oddly as
he disappeared.
“A’ll claim, as ever, the first and the best of everything,” growled
the short, thick-set man under his breath.
“Shall he now, Thomas Kite, shall he?” answered the long scarecrow
eagerly. Bending with a grotesque writhe, he jerked himself suddenly
stiff again, a staring smile on his face. “Cometh our chance long
sought, Thomas Kite,” he whispered. “Shall the Cuckoo always claim the
Cuckoo’s share? Not if one be quick and clever, gossip.”
He squeaked, and leaping, dodged and screwed behind the other. The
Queen, knife in hand, her teeth set, her muscles rigid, was almost
upon them. As she lifted her arm, the stubby rogue ran under, and
caught her round the waist.
She struck and struck at him, but her shortened blows fell harmless.
She could not get one home so long as he held her thus, and he knew it
and cried out, straining:
“Cut me the whelp’s throat, Jake Andrews, and so get behind her.”
The boy, terror-struck and whimpering, held to his mother’s skirts.
With a mortal effort, she wrenched herself free from her captor, and,
throwing down her blade, which Jake instantly secured, seized the
child convulsively into her clutch.
“No, no!” she cried, “I am disarmed. In God’s name spare him! See, we
will stand like the wretched sheep, dumbly beseeching your mercy.
There, take all I have--my jewels----”
She began, with feverish fingers, to unclasp the collet from her neck.
Jake, leering and humping his shoulders, stopped her mid-way.
“What now,” growled the Kite; “shall they not be ours, then?”
“Patience, good gossip, patience!” said the other softly in his ear.
“Would not the Cuckoo, returning, note at once their absence, and so
be moved to fury? No suspicion, Thomas Kite--none. Lull him, lull him,
and then--one blow, and all is ours--wine, jewels, gold, and--hum!” He
hugged himself, gluttonously contorted. “Is not a half share better
than a third,” he said, “or none at all? And as for the little pretty,
pleasant tit-bit----”
The Kite roared out suddenly on the captives:
“Down with ye both asquat on grass bank yonder, and move so much as an
eyelid at your peril!”
Trembling and distraught, the Queen dragged the boy to a place beside
her on the turf, and so, clasped together, they cowered, awaiting the
end.
Despair was in her heart. So remote, so utterly unfriended, she knew
not where to look for hope or remedy. Cursed and proscribed in the
thick of enemies, no self-confession that she might venture but must
prove her worst damnation. Outlawed herself, she was the natural prey
to outlaws. To reveal her identity were to forgo the smallest
consideration a threat of vengeful justice might otherwise perhaps
enforce--were to unmuzzle these ravening beasts finally and
effectively. And yet she dared not threaten justice, lest passions so
reckless should be fired thereby to instant retaliation.
She could only pray to her gods in a dumb agony of supplication to
contrive some means for their escape; for herself she could think of
no possible way, unless at the last to snatch death from some
ill-guarded weapon.
What long torture of mind she endured while sitting there facing her
brutal captors, awaiting the Cuckoo’s return and thereafter the final
struggle, one may imagine in a measure. A suffocating lump seemed to
rise in her throat when at length she heard his footsteps on the
twig-strewn turf, and her arm tightened convulsively about her boy.
The returned ruffian, when he hove into sight, had been obviously
priming himself for the affray. He was not drunk, but his huge cheeks
were blistered red and a fire blinked in his eyes. He carried over his
shoulder a net containing a jar of sack and a couple of curved
drinking-horns, and, striding across to his comrades, he bent, with a
fierce inquiring oath, to sling his burden to the grass. As he thus
stooped, Jake and the Kite, standing on either side of him, drove each
a sudden knife, handle-deep, into the thick of his neck. The monster,
with one slobbering choke, heaved forward and went down like an ox.
His fingers raked, his legs jerked for a little, and then the whole
welter relaxed and subsided. Simultaneously with its cessation of
movement the two murderers, as if by one impulse, made for the
wine-jar. Their hands were shaking, their cheeks spotted with white.
They spilled as much as they gained, but each in the end succeeded in
gulping a hornful between his chattering teeth. And then!----
The woods echoed with their screeches; they writhed like scalded
snakes upon the grass. For the Cuckoo, coveting not a half but the
whole of the spoil, had gone even a step further than his
confederates, and had poisoned the wine he brought them with some
swift corrosive acid snatched up from the “Chequers” harness-room.
Was the biter bit ever mangled with a longer tooth? The pale Queen,
risen throughout this bloody drama, watching half-paralysed its
course, with but reason enough left to hold the child’s face hidden
from it, was even minutes in guessing the truth. But when at length
she realised it, with a sob of thankfulness she seized her boy’s hand,
and, avoiding those prostrate, faintly-gasping horrors, fled deep and
deeper into the forest, until, as history relates, she found that
chivalrous one whose generosity was to obtain her means to cross the
water.
“KING COLLEY”
“We will now, my dear people,” said Mr. Cibber, “proceed to
investigate the ecclesiastical Phœnix which has reared its giant head
from the ashes of the conflagration, and to criticise its claims to a
greatness commensurate with its bulk.”
He spoke of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which, in this summer of 1721, had
stood some years completed, the stupendous “monument without a tomb”
to its creator’s genius.
Mr. Cibber had been entertaining a party of provincial actors and
actresses to luncheon at the “Globe” tavern, in Fleet Street, where,
amongst other things, they had consumed a half-gallon of arrack punch
at six shillings the quart. The company was in consequence very merry,
and, though still properly impressed with the magnitude of the
occasion, a little more inclined than heretofore, perhaps, to
familiarity with its host, and even to a touch of that professional
sportiveness whose cheap but characteristic quality seems somehow to
this day to suggest the missing link, much sought and unaccountably
overlooked, between men and monkeys. Mr. Cibber, however, genial as
always in self-sufficiency, recked nothing of the change. He walked at
the height of pompous good-humour, his usually pasty countenance
flushed, his hat under his arm, and his full wig pushed a trifle back
from his forehead. He wore a heavily embroidered claret-coloured coat
with stiff skirts, buttoned at the waist alone, black velvet breeches,
ruffles, and a “bosom” of Mechlin lace, pearl silk stockings with gold
clocks, and scarlet heels to his shoes. His magnificence put into the
shade the somewhat meretricious finery of his companions, and that was
exactly as it should have been. King Colley would have wished to
impress upon the public in general the fact that he was merely acting
cicerone, in a spirit of tolerant condescension, to certain country
insignificances whom it was his humour to patronise, and that there
was something a little fine in his taking these humble,
unsophisticated souls under his personal protection, and exhibiting to
them the lions of the Metropolis.
The party, chattering, laughing, and gaping, went down Fleet Street,
and paused a moment at the ruined gateway on Ludgate Hill. It had been
gutted by the great fire, but the mutilated statues of King Lud and
his sons still remained to its west front. Mr. Cibber pointed out the
middle figure.
“King Lud,” he said.
“Lud!” responded Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mr. Barney Bellingham, low
comedian, laughed suddenly, and then looked preternaturally solemn.
They were some five or six in all, including a “heavy father” and
spouse, “Sweet Corinna,” so called, the most affectedly rapturous of
_ingénues_, and the two above-mentioned. Mrs. Lightfoot, a faded
coquette in a soiled “paysanne,” had once played Hypolita in the
Laureate’s own “She Would and She Would Not,” and could claim some
kinship with genius.
“A fabulous monarch,” said Mr. Cibber grandiloquently, “and therefore
figuring not inappropriately on the portal, as one might call it, to
Pretence. Your servant, sir.”
He addressed a little old gentleman who at that moment had alighted
from a chair which had been deposited close beside the speaker. The
stranger was the most withered small creature it was possible to
conceive--a nonagenarian at least by his looks--a fledgling of second
childhood, his head, naked and skinny, in a great wig like a nest. His
eyes were dim, his nose was a rasped claw, his fingers were horny
talons. He was dressed very plainly, almost like a farmer, in a
drab-coloured coat and breeches; and something of rustic vigour showed
in the positive sprightliness with which, in spite of his years, he
stepped out upon the stones. Mr. Cibber, a practised reader of
character, distinguished the country cousin in him at once, and was
moved to some affable patronage.
“If you are going our way, sir,” he said, “and an arm would be of any
service to you? My name is Cibber--Colley Cibber, sir, of whom it is
just possible you may have heard.”
“O, indeed!” said the old gentleman, with a kindly, nervous lift of
his eyes. “Mr. Cibber is it? A very gratifying accident. I must live
remote beyond conception, sir, to be ignorant of that name. Thank you,
Mr. Cibber. You were saying, sir, as I alighted----?”
“I was saying, sir,” said the Laureate, “that a fabulous monarch, like
him above, fittingly adorns the portal to pretence.”
“Meaning----?” said the old gentleman, pointing forward with his
stick.
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Cibber--“meaning the vast but ineffective fane
towards which we are now directing our steps.”
“Ah!” said the old gentleman. “It will have its faults, no doubt.”
“We will consider them,” said the poet loftily. “Is this possibly your
first visit, sir? Well, better late than never, as old Heywood has it.
You will find much to surprise and more to disapprove, or I am
mistaken in myself. I am doing showman at the moment, sir, to a party
of country cousins”--he whispered, “plain, unsophisticated folk, but
respectable--and if you care to join us----”
“With pleasure, Mr. Cibber,” said the old fellow. “It is a most happy
chance for me--and not less for the support of your arm than of your
opinion. I thought I should like to approach the Cathedral on foot--to
have its dimensions gradually revealed to me; but I find in good truth
the hill trying to my old bones. I am eighty-nine, Mr. Cibber. Would
you believe it?”
“It is a creditable venture, sir,” said the poet. “Ulysses himself in
his old age never made a bolder.”
They approached, as he spoke, the extended space on which the building
stood, and divers exclamations of wonder broke from the lips of the
little party--“My stars!” “Prodigious fine, on my word!” “’Tis mighty
likeable!” “Why--why, the sweetest regale!” “Are you not properly
struck, Barney, my boy?” “Mum, mum,” and so on. Mr. Cibber, with the
air of one magnificently responsible for the show, stood leaning
familiarly against one of the posts which encompassed the paved area
before the west door, and remained silent pending the recovery of his
company. But he took snuff, and laughed patronisingly from time to
time over the fervour of its ejaculations.
“Rat me, my dears,” he said by and by, when the volume of enthusiasm
had spent itself; “but your artlessness refreshes me--upon my soul and
honour, it refreshes me. This is the very respectable work of a
journeyman builder, and as full of holes as poor Tom’s coat.”
“La, Mr. Cibber!” said the sweet Corinna, with a giggle, “I always
thought the gentleman was at the top of his trade.”
“‘They say best men are moulded out of faults,’” murmured Mr.
Bellingham, with a wink at the heavy mother.
The poet saw the wink, and waxed a little emphatic. It was Dr. Johnson
who had once said of his art of conversation that “he had but half to
furnish, since one-half was oaths.” But he was after all a
good-natured man.
“Then, God judge me,” he cried, straining his voice, which was none of
the strongest, “if he hadn’t a title to be called perfection!”
Mrs. Lightfoot, alarmed by his heat, stopped a levity on her lips
half-way, and addressed the great man very soberly.
“I prithee, sir,” she said, “to correct our untutored visions,
naturally dazzled in their first contemplation of so unaccustomed a
sight.”
“Why, my dear,” said the Laureate, mollified at once, “I can quite
understand your naïve enthusiasm; but it is a fact that in order to
criticise an achievement one must know something of the principles of
the art which designed it.”
“No greater architect of his own fortune than King Colley!” cried Mr.
Bellingham.
“I thank you, sir,” answered Mr. Cibber stiffly; then added, blazing
out again, “You will oblige me by holding your damned tongue!”
The old gentleman, anxious and conciliatory, put in a word:
“Your professional knowledge, sir, must make your comments doubly
instructive. Pray inform us to what details of the building you take
particular exception.”
“That is a very reasonable demand, sir,” answered the Laureate, daring
the offending and rather elated low comedian from the corner of his
eye. “I have no doubt that to the uninformed in such matters the
magnitude of this conception palliates, or even overpowers, the
meretriciousness of its details. But you mistake me on one point. My
_profession_, though it embodies all the arts, specialises in none,
and if I claim a dictatorial right in this instance, it is simply
because as an actor I represent the trinity in unity of the creative
faculty.”
“I see, I see,” said the old gentleman. “It is merely accident which
has kept dormant your architectural proclivities.”
“Well, sir,” said the poet, with a smile, “I flatter myself I could
have evolved, under compulsion, a more faultless erection than this.”
The stranger nodded with an air of satisfied acquiescence.
“I shall be really grateful to Mr. Cibber,” he said, “if he will help
me to the right point of view. To my uninstructed intelligence, I
confess, the pile seems to stand well.”
The poet laughed tolerantly.
“A good fortune it owes to its site. O, you must really pardon me,
sir! It is in truth a cold, heavy, tasteless affair, imposing in no
more than bulk, lacking the inspiration of sacramentality. Bear with
me, now bear with me, while I strip off for your edification a little
of the monster’s pretence. You will observe its most prominent
feature, the dome? Very well, sir; that dome sums up in itself the
hollowness of the entire conception. It violates the first principles
of the art it professes, with a monstrous impertinence, to crown. Its
height bears no relation to the proportions of the structure within,
and is fixed thus arbitrarily for no other purpose than effect.”
“But is not the effect good?” ventured the old gentleman.
“Why, stap my vitals, sir!” said Mr. Cibber, “have you the assurance
to condone a whited sepulchre? The greater the audacity, the worse the
pretence. The cupola proper to this design lies within that external
sham like a head under a steel basinet. What we look on is a mere
exuberance, supporting nothing but itself. Will you tell me that that
is in accordance with the principles of art, which demand that each
part should naturally progress in lines of beauty from the parent
stock?”
“No,” said the stranger--“no. You teach me much, sir.”
“That pretence,” continued the poet triumphantly, “is not confined to
the head, though naturally it finds there its most swollen
expression.”
“By the Lord, that’s true,” murmured Mr. Bellingham, and the sweet
Corinna choked a little laugh into her handkerchief.
“Those side elevations, for instance,” went on Mr. Cibber, with a
doubtful glance askance at the lady, “concealing as they do the
buttresses and clerestory windows of the nave, constitute in their
upper order a mere mask to the real form and construction of the
building. Now, in a perfect design there should be no screening of
structural necessities, but an ingenious adaptation of all such to the
general conception. These, sir, are a few of the most patent defects,
upon which, saving your patience, I could enlarge at pleasure. But I
trust I have said enough to correct your point of view to its
necessary focus; and if some disenchantment is the result----”
“Well, well, Mr. Cibber,” interrupted the old gentleman--“well, well.
But I don’t know that I can quite confess to that.”
“O, very good, sir!” cried the poet ironically. “And according to what
impenetrable illusion, if you please, do you persist in your faith?”
“Why,” said the old gentleman--“why, you see, Mr. Cibber, I designed
the thing myself.”
“Sir Christopher, Sir Christopher!” cried a breathless gentleman who
came hurrying up at the moment. “We had lost you, sir. This was
naughty of you to venture up the hill alone.”
Mr. Bellingham, with one look at the rueful Laureate, sat flat down
upon the pavement and delivered himself to hysterics.