WINE AND SONG.
"He's in the third degree of drink; he's drowned."--_Twelfth Night._
The inn people coming forth with a light, Hal made similar arrangements
to those effected at his two previous stopping-places, with this
difference, that he himself was to watch for two hours, and then be
succeeded by Anthony. Anne could not exactly repeat her precautions
taken at Oakham, for Hal procured the only available fresh horses before
she applied for any; nor could she arrange that her own horses should be
held in readiness before the inn. She caused them, however, to be fed
and kept in an unlocked shed, from which her page might speedily take
them out; and she was successful in bespeaking information in case of
the enemy's departure.
Though Hal left her sight in riding back to keep watch, she now knew
that he would not flee without calling his attendants, nor could he
continue his flight in either practicable direction--toward Nottingham
or toward Newark--without passing the inn. So she went to her room--one
of the few with which the low upper story of the house was provided--in
confident mind, stationing Francis on a bench where he might, in a state
of half slumber, watch the door of Kit and Anthony. As for the window of
the room taken by these two, it was not far from her own, and by keeping
the latter open she counted upon hearing any exit made through the
former. She lay down, and dozed wakefully.
Hal's watch was without event. As he moved up and down the silent road
with his horses, he continued to ask himself whether she might yet have
formed a plan of action against him; and from this question he fell to
considering what plan might be possible. He tried to devise one for her,
but could invent none that he saw himself unable to defeat.
He returned to the inn at the end of his two hours, and summoned Anthony
by a whistle previously agreed upon. Anthony came down by the stairs,
and went silently on guard. Hal, who had not yet eaten, now entered the
inn with a ready appetite for the supper he had previously ordered. As
he stepped from the outer wind into the passage, he noticed that the
door was open which led thence to the inn parlor. Just within that door
stood a figure. He glanced at it. By the light of the candles farther in
the room, he saw that it was Mistress Hazlehurst.
"Sir," she said to him, in a dry tone, which, as also her face, she
tried to rob of all expression save that of ordinary, indifferent
civility, "I learn you bespoke supper to be sent to your room. I am
having mine own served here. We have full understanding of each other's
intent. There is open warfare between us. Yet while we be fellow
travellers, each set upon the other's defeat, meseems we should as well
comport ourselves as fellow travellers till one win the other's undoing.
Though writ down in blood as bitter foes, in birth we are equal, and our
lands are neighbor. So I do offer that we sup together, as becometh
people of civility upon the same journey, though enemies they be to the
death."
To this proposal, so congenial with his inclinations, what could Master
Marryott do but forthwith assent, too dazzled by the prospect to torture
his brain for a likely motive on her part? With a "Right readily,
mistress!" he hastened to give the necessary orders, and then entered
the parlor, which had no occupant but Mistress Anne. The last tippler of
the night had sought his bed.
At one side of the low room was a fire in a wide hearth. At another
side, beneath a deep, long, horizontal window was a table, on which some
dishes were already set. The floor was covered with stale rushes. There
were no hangings on the besmoked, plastered, timbered walls. The poor
candles shed a wavering light. This was no Mermaid tavern, indeed. Yet
Hal felt mightily, dangerously comfortable here.
He opened a casement a little, that he might hear any alarm from
Anthony, and then he sat down at the table, opposite Anne. He saw that
Francis, who seemed of wire, and proof against fatigue and lack of
sleep, stood ready to wait upon his mistress. He saw, too, that her wine
was placed on a rude kind of sideboard, to be served from thence each
time a sip might be wanted, as in the private houses of gentlefolk. When
a tapster came, sleepy and muttering to himself, with Hal's wine, Master
Marryott ordered it put as the lady's was; and then Mistress Hazlehurst
proposed, in the manner she had used before, that the inn servant be
dismissed and Francis wait upon them both.
"It is but fair repayment," she added, "for the protection I receive
upon the road by the presence of your men."
Hal was nothing loath. He would not show suspicion, if he felt any, at
being invited to be left alone with his enemy and her servant. Francis
was but a slip of a boy,--and yet, in his tirelessness, his reposeful
manner, his discreet look, the closeness of his mouth, there was
sufficient of the undisclosed, of the possibly latent, to put a wise man
on his guard. Hal kept a corner of his eye upon the page, therefore,
while with the rest of it he studied the fine face and graceful
motions--motions the more effective for being few--of the page's
mistress.
The early part of the meal went in silence, Francis attending to the
dishes and serving the wine noiselessly, with neither haste nor
tardiness. Hal saw in the looks of both lady and page the reviving
effects of a short sleep and of cold water. Anne ate, not as if hungry,
but as if providing against possible exposure and fasting. That Francis
might not have to depart unfed, she bade him partake of certain dishes
as he bore them from before her. He contrived to do this, and yet to see
that Master Marryott never wanted for wine.
And, indeed, Master Marryott, warmed, comforted, made to see things
rosily, put into mood of rare good-feeling and admiration, kept Francis
busy and busier between the sideboard and the wine-cup at Hal's hand.
Finally, the page, when he should have taken the flagon back to the
sideboard, set it down on the table, that he might thereafter fill the
cup without even the loss of time involved in traversing the
rush-covered floor. Was this the boy's own happy thought, or was it in
obedience to a meaning glance from his mistress? Hal did not query
himself on this point; he had observed no meaning glance. He was
entering the seventh heaven of wine; it seemed the most natural thing in
the world that he should find the flagon constantly at his elbow. And
suddenly this silence, so long maintained, appeared absurd,
unaccountable. God-'a'-mercy! why should people sit tongue-tied in this
manner? Wherefore he spoke:
"Truly 'twas well thought on that we might use civil courtesy between
us, enemies though you will have us! 'Tis like the exchange of
gentleness 'twixt our noblest soldiers and those of Spain, in times of
truce, or even in the breathing moments 'tween sword-thrusts. Truly,
courtesy sweeteneth all transactions, even those of enmity and warfare!
'Tis like this wine that giveth a soft and pleasing hue, as of its own
color, to all one sees and hears when one has drunk of it. Taste it,
madam, I pray. Your glass hath not been once refilled. Nay, an you spare
the wine so, I shall say you but half act upon your own offer!"
She drank what remained in her cup, and let Francis fill it again.
"No doubt the ladies of France drink more wine than we of England," she
said, as if at the same time to account for his importunity and her
moderation. He perceived the allusion to Sir Valentine's long residence
in France, and was put on his guard against betraying himself. He ought
to have taken more into mind that she regarded him as her brother's
slayer, and that her tone was strangely urbane for such regarding, even
though courtesy had been agreed upon. But by this time he had too much
wine in. He had long since exhausted the contents of his own flagon, and
was now being served from hers.
"The ladies of France," he replied, "are none the better of the ladies
of England for that."
"I have heard there is a certain facility and grace in them, that we
lack," she answered, having noticed that he drank at the end of each
speech he made.
"It may be," he said, "but 'tis the facility and grace of the cat, with
claws and teeth at the back of it." He had to speak of French ladies
entirely from hearsay. "For softness, united with strength and candor,
for amplitude and warmth of heart, commend me to the English ladies."
Euphuism was still the fashion, and people of breeding had the knack of
conversing offhand in sentences that would now seem studied.
The cup-lifting that followed this remark was accompanied by so direct a
look at her that she could not but know for which particular English
lady the compliment was intended. She gave no outward sign of anger.
"The French excel us in their wine, at least," she replied, sipping from
her cup as if to demonstrate the sincerity of her words,--an action that
instantly moved Master Hal to further and deeper potations.
[Illustration: "SHE GAVE NO OUTWARD SIGN OF ANGER."]
"Why, I should be an ingrate to gainsay that," said he. "Tis indeed
matter for thanks that we, sitting by night in this lone country
ale-house,--'tis little better,--with the March wind howling wolf-like
without, may imbibe, and cheer our souls with, the sunlight that hath
fallen in past years upon French hillsides. But we should be churls to
despise the vineyards of Spain or Italy, either! Or the Rhenish, that
hath gladdened so many a heart and begot so many a song! Lovest thou
music, madam?"
She kept a startled silence for a moment, at a loss how to receive the
change from "you" to "thou" in his style of addressing her. In truth the
familiarity was on his part unpremeditated and innocent. But, for
another reason than that, she speedily decided to overlook it, and she
answered, in words that gave Hal a sudden thrill, for they were those of
one of Master Shakespeare's own comedies, often played by the company:
"The man that hath no music in himself.
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."
She paused here, as if struck with the thought that the speech might not
be known to the Catholic knight.
"'Tis Lorenzo's speech in 'The Merchant,'" said Hal, quite ecstatic.
"I--" he caught himself in time to avoid saying, "know the part by
heart, having studied it in hope of some-day playing it," and added,
instead, "saw the comedy in London when 'twas first played, and a friend
sent me a book of it last year, that he bought in Paul's Churchyard.
Thou'st seen the play, I ween."
"And read it," she answered, this time filling his glass herself, for
Francis had stolen from the room with a flagon in quest of more wine at
the bar.
"Know'st thou the full speech," said he, "beginning, 'How sweet the
moonlight sleeps upon this bank'?" Without waiting for an answer, and
being now in the vinous rage for reciting, he went on through the scene
to its interruption by the entrance of Portia and Nerissa. It was
nothing wonderful, in those days, that a gentleman should speak verse
well; yet she viewed him with some astonishment, in which was a first
faint touch of regret that circumstance made this man, in whom otherwise
she might find certain admirable qualities, irrevocably her foe, to
become inevitably her victim. This regret she instantly put from her,
and set herself the more to plying him with wine.
"I'll warrant thou hast music at the end of thy tongue, and of thy
fingers also," said Hal. "Would there were an instrument here! Heavenly
must be the offspring, when such hands wed string of lute, or key of
virginal! But thy lips are here. Wilt sing? All are abed. I prithee, a
song!"
"Nay, 'twere better you should sing," she answered, by way of evading a
course of importunities, and seeing that he was in ripe mood for
compliance.
"Willingly, an thou'lt engage to sing in thy turn," he replied.
She gave her promise, thinking she would not have to keep it; for when a
gentleman in wine becomes vocally inclined, he is apt to go on like a
wound-up clock till he be stopped, or till he run down into slumber.
So Hal began, with Shakespeare's "O mistress mine, where are you
roaming?" as a song whose line, "That can sing both high and low," was
appropriate to their recent subject. And this led naturally to the song
"It was a lover and his lass," which in turn called up Ben Jonson's song
on a kiss, from the masque of "Cynthia's Revels." Then something gave a
convivial shift to Hal's thoughts, and he offered King Henry VIII.'s
"Pastime with good company," from which he went to the old drinking song
from "Gammer Gurton's Needle."
Mistress Hazlehurst, having perceived that singing hindered his
drinking, though each lapse between songs was filled with a hasty
draught, was now willing enough to keep her promise; and she made bold
to remind him of it. He was quite eager to hear her, though it should
require silence on his own part. She sang Shakespeare's "When icicles
hang by the wall," in a low and melodious voice, of much beauty in a
limited range,--a voice of the same quality as her ordinary speaking
tones. Seeing that Hal, who gazed in admiration, broke his own inaction
by constant applications to the flagon, which the clever Francis had
succeeded in filling at the bar, she followed this song immediately with
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind."
Hal was now ready to volunteer with "Under the greenwood tree," but she
cut him short, and drove him to repeated uses of the cup, by starting
John Heywood's song of "The green willow," which she selected as suiting
her purpose by reason of its great length.
When this was at last finished, Hal, who had been regarding her steadily
with eyes that sometimes blinked for drowsiness, opened his mouth to put
in practice a compliment he had for some minutes been meditating,--that
of singing "Who is Sylvia?" in such manner as should imply that Mistress
Hazlehurst embodied all the excellences of her who "excelled each mortal
thing upon the dull earth dwelling." She silenced him at the outset by
taking up Heywood's "Be merry, friends," at which, despite how much he
admired her face and was thrilled by her voice, he sat back in
resignation; for the old song she had this time hit upon was as nearly
endless as it was monotonous. Hal's nurse had many times droned him to
sleep with it, in his infancy.
And now its somnolent effect was as great as ever. Save for her voice,
in the unvarying rhythm of the countless four-line stanzas marked by the
refrain. "Be merry, friends!" at the end of each, and for a frequent
moan or whine of the wind without, the utmost stillness reigned. Francis
had effaced himself on a high-backed seat in a dark corner of the
fireplace. The candles burned dimly for want of snuffing, and they were
just so far from Hal's arm that, in his drowsy state, it was too great
an effort to reach them. Indeed, it had now become too great an effort
to draw the wine flagon toward him. His brain swam a little. He sat back
limp in his oaken settle, his head fell more and more heavily toward his
breast. Things became vaguer and vaguer before him; the face from whose
lips the soporific melody proceeded was blended more and more with the
ambient shadows. His eyelids closed.
She continued the song more softly, a triumphant light slowly increasing
in her eyes. At last her voice was still. The supposed Sir Valentine
moved not, lifted not his head, opened not his eyes. Only his regular
breathing, the heavy breathing of vinous stupor, was heard in the room.
Mistress Hazlehurst rose without noise.
"He will not be in riding mood for ten hours to come," she said,
quietly, to Francis. "An his men waken him, he'll be for calling them
hard names, and off to sleep again! God-'a'-mercy, what an ocean of wine
hath he swallowed in three short hours! Come. Francis, we may sleep with
ease of mind to-night. He is stayed beyond even the will to go on. And I
thank heaven, for I am well-nigh as drowsy, and as loath to ride in this
weather, as he must be!"
It was sleepily indeed that she stepped, with as little sound as could
be, over the crackling rushes to the door. To keep her enemy in the
drinking mood, and to dissemble her purpose, she had taken an unusual
quantity of wine herself. Ladies did not drink as much in Elizabeth's
outwardly decent reign as they came to drink a few years later, under
Scottish Jeames, when, if Sir John Harrington lied not in 1606, those of
the court did "abandon their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in
intoxication." And Mistress Hazlehurst was the last woman in the world
to violate the prevalent seemliness under the virgin queen. But she had
sipped enough to augment the languor induced by her recent exertions.
She put a hand upon the door-post to support herself as she approached
it.
There was a wild, swift beating of horses' hoofs on the road outside; an
abrupt stoppage just before the inn; a shrill whistle, and this shout
from Anthony Underhill:
"What, ho! Halloo, halloo!"
Hal raised his head, and looked drowsily around with blinking eyes.
There was a noise overhead of a heavy tread,--that of Captain Bottle,
responding to the alarm. In a trice old Kit was heard clearing the
stairs at a bound, and then seen dashing through the passage and out
into the darkness. He had unbarred the outer door with a single
movement.
Hal stared inquiringly at Mistress Hazlehurst. Her eyes had a glow of
confident expectation. That was her blunder.
Her look told him all,--that she had supped with him, sung for him,
incited him to drink, in order that he might be unfit for flight or
action. He sprang to his feet, clapped on his hat, threw off his
tipsiness with one backward jerk of the shoulders; was himself again,
with clear eyes and strong, steady limbs.
"To horse, madam, if you would still ride with us!" he cried. "I have
some thirty miles or so to go to-night!"
And he strode past her, and out after Kit Bottle.
"'Tis Barnet's men, methinks, by the sound of the horses yonder," said
Anthony, composedly, pointing southward, as Hal rose into the saddle.
Hal looked back toward the open door of the inn. In a moment Anne came
out with Francis, who ran at once to the shed wherein her horses were.
In the doorway between parlor and passage she had undergone a moment of
sickening chagrin. Not only had she failed ridiculously a second time,
but she must now abandon her clutch upon her enemy, or face with him
that thirty miles of night ride in biting weather! Francis looked at her
for commands. She tightened her lips again, imitated Hal's own motion of
casting away lassitude, drew her cloak close around her, put up her
hood, and hastened out to the windy night.
Hal made great stir with his horses before moving off, that the inn
people might be awakened and some of them note which road he took. This
precaution, used for the benefit of Roger Barnet, gave Anne time to join
Hal's party.
When the pursuivant and his fellows rode up, soon afterward, on half
dead horses, that stumbled before the inn, the fugitives were well
forward on the Nottingham road. It was a bitter, black night.
"Fellow travellers still!" quoth Master Marryott, to the dark figure
that rode galloping, with flying cloak, beside him.
"And shall be till I see you caught, though I must ride sleepless till I
drop!" was the reply.