HOW THE PAGE WALKED IN HIS SLEEP.
"I spy a black, suspicious, threatening cloud."--_Henry VI., Part III._
Master Marryott had lost nearly two hours at Clown, through his
detention by the constable, his waiting to enlist the highway robbers,
and his measures for putting the coach into service. And such was the
badness of the road, that he had consumed more than an hour in covering,
with alternate dashes and delays, the seven miles from Clown to the
place where he had overtaken Anne. Almost another hour had been used in
awaiting the coming of the coach, and lodging the prisoner therein. It
was, thus, between two and three in the afternoon when the northward
journey was again taken up.
Hal, as he rode beside the coach, considered his situation with regard
to his pursuer, Roger Barnet. The latter, arriving with tired horses at
the scene of Hal's wine-drinking, and thereafter compelled to stop often
for traces of the fugitives, must have been as great a loser of time as
Hal had been; and this accounted for his non-appearance during either of
the recent delays. But, by this time, he was probably not very far
behind; and hereafter Hal's rate of speed must be, by reason of the
coach, considerably slower. The latter circumstance would offset, in
Barnet's favor, the two disadvantages under which he labored. Moreover,
upon learning at Clown what company Hal had reinforced himself with, the
pursuivant would find the track easier, and hence speedier, to follow;
the passage of so numerous and ill-looking a band being certain to
attract more attention than would that of a party of three or five.
But Hal counted upon one likelihood for a compensating gain of a few
hours,--the likelihood that Barnet, to strengthen himself for possible
conflict with Hal's increased force, would tarry to augment his own
troop with men from the neighborhood, and that, in his subsequent
pursuit, as well as in this measure, his very reliance on his advantages
would make him less strenuous for speed.
Cheering himself with the best probabilities, though not ignoring the
worst, Master Marryott pressed steadily on, after the manner of the
tortoise. When bad spots in the road appeared, Kit Bottle, at the head
of the line, caused the robbers to whip up their horses; and if this did
not avail to keep the coach from being stayed, Hal had the men dismount
and put their shoulders to the wheels. A grumbling dislike to this kind
of service evinced itself, but Captain Rumney, flattered by the
courteous way in which Hal gave him the necessary orders for
transmission, checked with peremptory looks the discontent. Hal conceded
a short stop, at a solitary tavern, for a refection of beer and
barley-cakes. During this pause, and also while passing through
villages, Hal remained at the coach-opening, ready to close its curtain
with his own hand, on the least occasion from the inmates.
But Anne and her page, whose flight from Scardiff that morning had
shortened their sleeping-time, were too languid for present effort. In
attitudes best accommodated to the movements of the coach, they sat--or
half reclined--with their backs against the side of the vehicle for
support. With changeless face and lack-lustre eyes, Anne viewed what of
the passing country she could see through the opening; heedless whether
Hal's figure interrupted her vision or not; whether she passed
habitations, or barren heath, or fields, or forest. Yet she did not
refuse the repast that Hal handed into the coach, which, when resort was
had to the lone tavern, he had caused to stop at some distance from the
house.
Only once during the afternoon did he take the precaution of shutting
the coach entrance; it was while passing through the considerable town
of Rotherham.
Night fell while the travellers were toilsomely penetrating further into
the West Riding of Yorkshire. When at last Hal gave the word to halt,
they found themselves before a rude inn with numerous mean outbuildings,
on a hill about six miles beyond Rotherham.
Hal had now to provide, because of new conditions, somewhat otherwise
than he had done at his previous stopping-places. Anne and Francis were
to be closely guarded, a repressive hand held ready to check the least
hostile act or communication. Fresh horses could not be obtained in
number equal to the company. Ere he had ordered the halt, Master
Marryott had formed his plans.
At first it seemed that he might not unopposedly have his way with the
frowsy-headed landlord who appeared in the doorway's light in response
to his summons. But when the blinking host became aware of the
numerousness of the company, and when Captain Rumney rode forward into
the light, he instantly grew hospitable. Evidently the captain and the
innkeeper were old acquaintances, if not occasional partners in trade.
So Hal arranged a barter for what fresh horses were at the fellow's
command; took lodgings for the night in the several outhouses, caused
open fires to be made on the earthen floors therein, and ordered food
and drink. He had the coach drawn into shelter, near one of the fires,
and bedding placed in it, with other comforts from the inn.
He then informed Anne that she was to remain in her prison overnight;
and he assigned to Francis a sleeping-place on a pile of straw, within
sword reach of where he himself intended to guard the curtained opening
of the coach. Anthony, on one of the fresh horses, should keep the usual
watch for Barnet's party. Bottle, who had watched at Scardiff, was to
sleep in the stable-loft, as was also Rumney, whose men were to occupy
different outbuildings. No one was to remove his clothes, and, in case
of alarm, all were to unite in hitching the horses, and to resume the
flight.
The horses themselves were placed in stalls, but in as forward a state
of readiness as was compatible with their easy resting. It was made
clear that, should any of these movements be interrupted or followed by
attack from a pursuing party, all the resistance necessary was to be
offered.
The supper ordered was brought on wooden platters, and eaten in the
light of the fires. Hal, as before, served Anne through the coach
doorway, and she accepted the cakes and ale with neither reluctance nor
thanks. But under her passiveness. Hal saw no abandonment of her
purpose. He saw, rather, a design to gather clearness of mind and
strength of body, for the invention and execution of some plan not only
possible to her restraint, but likely to be more effectual than any she
had tried when free.
When the company had supped, and the robbers could be heard snoring in
the adjacent sheds, and Francis lay in the troubled sleep of excessive
fatigue, and the regular breathing of Anne herself was audible through
the coach curtain; when, in fine, every member of his strange caravan
slept, save Anthony watching at the hill's southeastern brow, Master
Marryott sat upon a log, and gazed into the sputtering fire on the
ground, and mused. He marvelled to think how many and diverse and
cumbrous elements he had assembled to his hand, and undertaken to keep
in motion, for what seemed so small a cause.
To herd with robbers; to lavish the queen's money; to deceive a
woman--the object of his love--so that he brought upon himself her hate
meant for another; to carry off this woman by force, and put her to the
utmost fatigue and risk; to wear out the bodies, and imperil the necks,
of himself and so many others,--was it worth all this merely to create a
fair opportunity--not a certainty--of escape for a Frenchified English
Catholic, whose life was of no consequence to the country? Hal laughed
to think how unimportant and uninteresting was the man in whose behalf
all these labors and discomforts were being undergone by so many people,
some of whom were so much more useful and ornamental to the world.
And yet he knew that the business _was_ worth the effort; worth all the
toil and risk that he himself took, and that he imposed upon other
people. It was worth all this, perhaps not that a life might be saved,
but that a debt might be paid, a promise made good,--his debt of
gratitude to Sir Valentine, his promise to the queen. It was worth any
cost, that a gentleman should fulfil his obligations, however incurred.
To an Englishman of that time, moreover, it was worth a world of
trouble, merely to please the queen.
But what most and deepest moved Hal forward, and made turning back
impossible, was the demand in him for success on its own account, the
intolerableness of failure in any deed that he might lay upon himself.
Manly souls daily strain great resources for small causes, or for no
cause worth considering, for the reason that they cannot endure to fail
in what they have, however thoughtlessly, undertaken. The man of mettle
will not relinquish; he will die, but he will not let go. It is because
the thing most necessary to him is his own applause; he will not forfeit
that, though he must pay with his life to retain it. Once his hand is
to the plow, though he find too late that the field is barren, he will
furrow that field through, or he will drop in his tracks; what concerns
him is, not the reason or the reward, but the mere fact of success or
failure in the self-assigned work. Men show this in their sports;
indeed, the game that heroes play with circumstance and destiny, for the
mere sake of striving to win, is to them a sport of the keenest. "Maybe
it was not worth doing, but I told myself I would do it, and I did it!"
Hal fancied the deep elation that must attend those words, could he
truly say them three days hence.
About three hours after midnight he awoke his people, had the horses put
to the coach, sent for Anthony by one of the robbers,--a renegade London
apprentice, Tom Cobble by name, whose face he liked for its bold
frankness,--and rode forth with his company toward Barnesley. They
passed through this town in the early morning of Friday. March 6th, the
third day of the flight. Though Anne showed the utmost indifference to
her surroundings. Hal closed her curtain, as he had done at Rotherham,
until the open country was again reached.
Soon after this, Mistress Hazlehurst changed her place to the forward
part of the coach, and her position so as to face the backward part. She
could thus be seen by any one riding at the side of the coach's rear,
and glancing obliquely through the opening. It was, at present, Anthony
Underhill that benefited by this new arrangement.
Five miles after Barnesley, Master Marryott ordered a halt for
breakfast. As before, food was brought to the prisoners. The stop gave
Captain Rumney an opportunity of peering in through the coach doorway.
When, at nine o'clock, the journey was resumed. Rumney, without a word,
took the place behind Marryott, formerly kept by Anthony.
"By your leave, sir," said the Puritan, forced by this usurpation to
drop behind the coach, "that is where I ride."
"Tut, man!" replied Rumney, with an insolent pretence of carelessness;
"what matters it?"
"It matters to me that I ride where I have been commanded to," said the
Puritan, with quiet stubbornness, heading his horse to take the place
from which he expected the other to fall out.
"And it matters to me that I ride where I please to," retorted Rumney,
with a little less concealment of the ugliness within him.
Anthony frowned darkly, and looked at Marryott, who had turned half
around on his horse at the dispute. Rumney regarded Hal narrowly through
half shut eyes, in which defiance lurked, ready to burst forth on
provocation. Hal read his man, choked down his feelings, considered that
an open break was not yet to be afforded, and to make the matter in
which he yielded seem a trifle, said, quietly:
"My commands were too narrow, Anthony. So that you ride behind me, one
side of the road will do as well as another. The fault was mine, Captain
Rumney."
So Anthony fell back without protest or complaint. He cast his look
earthward, that it might not seem to reproach Master Marryott. And a
bitter moment was it to Master Marryott, for his having had to fail of
supporting his own man against this rascal outlaw. A moment of keener
chagrin followed, when Hal caught a swift glance of swaggering
triumph--a crowing kind of half smile--that Rumney sent to Mistress
Hazlehurst, with whom he was now in line of vision. It seemed to say,
"You see, mistress, what soft stuff this captor of yours shall prove in
my hands?" And in Anne's eyes, as Hal clearly beheld, was the light of a
new hope, as if she perceived in this robber a possible instrument or
champion.
But Master Marryott let none of his thoughts appear; he hardened his
face to the impassibility of a mask, and seemed neither to suspect nor
to fear anything; seemed, indeed, to feel himself above possibility of
defeat or injury. He realized that here was a case where danger might
be precipitated by any recognition of its existence.
During the next six hours, he saw, though appeared not to heed, that
Anne kept her gaze fixed behind him, upon the robber captain. There was
no appeal in her eyes, no promise, no overture to conspiracy; nothing
but that intentional lack of definite expression, which makes such eyes
the more fascinating, because the more mysterious. Even savages like
Rumney are open to the witchery of the unfathomable in a pair of fine
eyes. Hal wondered how long the inevitable could be held off. He avoided
conversation with Rumney, did not even look back at him, lest pretext
might be given for an outbreak. He was kept informed of the knave's
exact whereabouts by the noise of the latter's horse, and, most of the
time, by the direction of Mistress Hazlehurst's look. He had no fear of
a sudden attack upon himself, for he knew that Anthony Underhill held
the robber in as close a watch as Mistress Hazlehurst did.
In mid-afternoon, the caravan stopped within three miles of Halifax, for
food and rest. Master Marryott stayed near the coach. Rumney, too,
hovered close; but as yet a kind of loutish bashfulness toward a woman
of Anne's haughtiness, rather than a fear of Master Marryott,--at least,
so Hal supposed,--checked him from any attempt to address her. Marryott
called Kit Bottle, and, while apparently viewing the surrounding
country as if to plan their further route, talked with him in whispers:
"Thy friend Rumney," said Hal, "seems a cur as ready to jump at one's
throat as to crawl at one's feet."
"'Twas lack of forethought, I'm afeard, to take up with the knave, where
a woman was to be concerned," replied Kit. "It was about a red and white
piece of frailty that he dealt scurvily with me in the Netherlands. Were
there no she in the case, we might trust him; he hath too great shyness
of law officers, on his own account, to move toward selling us."
"If he had a mind, now, to rescue this lady from us--" began Hal.
"'Twould be a sorry rescue for the lady!" put in Bottle.
Hal shuddered.
"And yet she would throw herself into his hands, to escape ours, that
she might be free to work me harm," said he.
"An she think she would find freedom that way, she knows not Rumney. If
thine only care were to be no more troubled of her, thou couldst do
little better than let Rumney take her off thy hands."
"I would kill thee, Kit, if I knew not thou saidst that but to rally me!
Yet I will not grant it true, either. She might contrive to tame this
Rumney beast, and work us much harm. Well, smile an thou wilt! Thine
age gives thee privileges with me, and I will confess 'tis her own
safety most concerns me in this anxiety. Sink this Rumney in
perdition!--why did I ever encumber us with him and his rascals?"
"Speaking of his rascals, now," said Kit, "I have noticed some of them
rather minded to heed your wishes than Rumney's commands. There hath
been wrangling in the gang."
"There is one, methinks," assented Hal, "that would rather take my
orders than his leader's. 'Tis the round-headed, sharp-eyed fellow, Tom
Cobble. He is a runagate 'prentice from London, and seemeth to have more
respect for town manners than for Rumney's."
"And there is a yeoman's son, John Hatch, that rides near me," added
Kit. "He hath some remnant of honesty in him, or I mistake. And one Ned
Moreton, who is of gentle blood and mislikes to be overborne by such
carrion as Rumney. And yon scare-faced, fat-paunched fellow, Noll Bunch
they call him, hath been under-bailiff in a family that hath fled the
country. I warrant he hath no taste for robbery; methinks he took to the
road in sheer need of filling his stomach, and would give much to be
free of his bad bargain. There be two or three more that might make
choice of us, in a clash with their captain; but the rest are of the
mangiest litter that was ever bred among two-legged creatures."
"Then win over quietly whom thou canst, Kit. But let us have no clash
till we must."
Rumney and his men looked almost meek while passing through Halifax. And
herein behold mankind's horror of singularity. In other towns these
robbers had been under as much possibility of recognition and detention;
but in those towns the result of their arrest would have been no worse
than hanging, and was not hanging the usual, common, and natural ending
of a thief? But in Halifax there was that unique "Gibbet Law," under
which thieves were beheaded by a machine something like the guillotine
which another country and a later century were yet to produce. There was
in such a death an isolation, from which a properly bred thief, brought
up to regard the hempen rope as his due destiny, might well shrink.
But the robbers could sleep with easy minds that night, for Master
Marryott put Halifax eight miles behind ere he rested.
Similar arrangements to those of the preceding night were made at the
inn chosen as a stopping-place. The coach, furnished for comfortable
repose, stood near a fire, under roof. Hal, who thought that he had now
mastered the art of living without sleep, set himself to keep guard
again, by Francis, near the coach doorway. It was Anthony's night to
share Rumney's couch of straw; Kit Bottle's to watch for Barnet's men.
Master Marryott, sitting by the fire, was assailed by fears lest the
pursuivant had abandoned the false chase. If not, it was strange, when
the slow progress with the coach was considered, that he had not come in
sight. Hal reassured himself by accounting for this in more ways than
one. Barnet must have been detained long in recruiting men to join in
the pursuit. He may have been hindered by lack of money, also, for he
had left London without thought of further journey than to Welwyn. He
could press all necessary means into service, in the queen's name, as he
went; but in doing this he must experience much delay that ready coin
would have avoided. True, Barnet would have learned at Clown that the
supposed Sir Valentine had named himself as a London player; but he
would surely think this a lie, as Mistress Hazlehurst had thought it.
A slight noise--something like a man yawning aloud, or moaning in
sleep--turned Marryott's musings into another channel. The sound had
come from one of the other outhouses, probably that in which were
Captain Rumney and Anthony Underhill. It put dark apprehensions into
Hal's mind, because of its resemblance to the groan a man might give if
he were stabbed to death in slumber.
Suppose, thought he, this Rumney were minded for treason and robbery.
How could he better proceed, in order to avoid all stir, than to avail
himself of the present separation of Hal's party; to slay Anthony first,
while Bottle was away on the watch; and thus have Marryott and Kit each
in position to be dealt with single-handed?
Hal now saw the error of having Anthony sleep out of his sight; for the
Puritan was one who watched while he watched, and slept while he slept.
The present situation ought not to be continued a moment longer. Yet how
was Hal to summon Anthony? To awaken him by voice, one would have to
raise such clamor as would alarm the robbers and perchance excite their
leader's suspicions. A touch on the shoulder would accomplish the
desired result quietly. Might Hal venture from his present post for the
brief time necessary to his purpose?
Francis lay near the fire, his eyes closed, his respirations long and
easy. The softer breathing of the prisoner in the coach was as deep and
measured. Hal stole noiselessly out, and made for the shed in which the
Puritan slept.
Anthony lay in his cloak, on a pile of hay, his back turned to that of
Rumney. The highway robber's eyes were closed; whether he slept or not,
Hal could not have told. But there was no doubt of the somnolent state
of the Puritan. A steady gentle shaking of his shoulder caused him to
open his eyes.
"Come with me," whispered Hal. The Puritan rose, without a word, and
followed from the one shed to the other, and to the fire by the coach.
"'Tis best you sleep in my sight, beside the lad," said Marryott,
turning toward the designated spot as he finished. In the same instant,
he stared as if he saw a ghost, and then stifled an oath.
Francis was gone.
Hal looked about, but saw nothing human in range of the firelight. He
hastened to the curtained opening of the coach. The same soft
breathing--there could be no mistaking it--still came from within.
"She is here, at least," Hal said, quickly, to the somewhat mystified
Anthony. "But he hath flown on some errand of her plotting, depend on't!
He must have feigned sleep, and followed me out. He can't be far, as
yet. 'Tis but a minute since. Watch you by the coach!"
With which order, Master Marryott seized a brand from the fire, and ran
out again to the yard.
But he had scarce cast a swift glance around the place, ere he saw
Francis coming out of the very shed from which Hal himself had led
Anthony a few moments earlier.
"What is this?" cried Marryott, grasping the boy's arm, and thrusting
the firebrand almost into his face.
Francis stared vacantly for an instant, then gave a start, blinked, and
looked at Hal as if for the first time conscious of what was going on.
"What's afoot, you knave?" said Hal, squeezing the page's arm. "What
deviltry are you about, following me from your bed, hiding in the
darkness while I pass, and going to yonder shed? You bore some message
from your mistress to Master Rumney. I'll warrant! Confess, or 'twill go
ill!"
"I know not where I've been, or what done," replied the boy, coolly. "I
walk in my sleep, sir."
Hal searchingly inspected the lad's countenance, but it did not flinch.
Pondering deeply, he then led the way back to his fire, and commanded
the page to lie down. Francis readily obeyed.
Bidding the puzzled but unquestioning Puritan sleep beside the boy, Hal
soon lost himself in his thoughts,--lost himself so far that it did not
occur to him to step now and then to the door and look out into the
night; else he might presently have seen a dark figure move stealthily
from outhouse to outhouse as if in search of something. It would then
have appeared that Captain Rumney, also, was given to walking in his
sleep.