CHAPTER XXV.
"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 unobserved 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 pass 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 balusters, 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 passage. 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 pass 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, passed half-way through it, glanced with dreading eyes down a narrow passage conducting from it, and saw, in a street beyond, the waiting horse.
How he covered the length of the passage, 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 passions, 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:
"God be thanked! I dared not hope for this!"
"Nor I," he replied. "Whither do we ride?"
"You, to the Lincolnshire 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 God'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!"
"Nay, 'tis not goodness alone—"
And she finished with a look straight and deep into his eyes. He seized her hand, and kissed it fervently.
"And thou'lt wait?" he whispered.
"Forever, if need!—but let it not be so long."
With his free hand, he grasped Kit Bottle's, and wrung from the old soldier a husky "God bless thee, boy!" Then he spurred forward in the direction silently pointed out by Anthony. At a bend of the street, he turned in his saddle, and cast a look back. His friends were motionless upon their horses, gazing after him with saddened, softened faces. A slight movement of Mistress Hazlehurst's gloved hand, and his horse had carried him from the scene; but he bore that scene ever in his heart's eye, day and night, to the coast, which, thanks to his good start and tireless riding, he reached uncaught; over sea to France, where Anthony soon brought him into sight of Sir Valentine Fleetwood, who had arrived at Dieppe not a day sooner than Hal had disembarked at Boulogne; in Paris, where Hal got an honorable post in a great man's household through the influence of Sir Valentine's wife,—for it turned out that the knight, unknown to Queen Elizabeth, had a wife, after all, a French lady whose virtue and beauty easily explained her husband's willingness to save his life at another's risk.
She was of great wealth, and, it happened, of equal gratitude; whence it fell out that, when Master Marryott returned to England, after the accession of King James, he came as owner of an estate previously purchased in his name by Anthony Underhill; an estate sold by the crown, under confiscation,—no other estate, in fact, than that pertaining to Foxby Hall, in Yorkshire.
Now it had come out that Mistress Hazlehurst's brother, before getting himself killed by Sir Valentine Fleetwood, had overladen his estate with debt, and, in conspiracy with his sister's man of business, had made way with her portion also. When the courts of law had finally established beyond doubt that she was penniless, Master Marryott was about returning to his own country, fully informed, by Anne's correspondence, of the state of her affairs. So there was afforded the unique spectacle of a lady who had remained unmarried while she was supposably an heiress, obtaining a husband the moment she was shown to be a beggar.
"I think, love," said Sir Harry (he was knighted under King James, on no better pretext than having, with his own servants, rid the northern counties of a famous robber called Rumney the Highway, whom Marryott's man Bottle slew in single combat), "I think I will write my memoirs, as everybody in France does." He sat idly touching a viol in an upper window-seat of Foxby Hall, one summer evening, while Lady Marryott as idly fingered a virginal near him.
"How now, Hal? Hast done aught wonderful in thy time? 'Faith, thou shouldst have told me!"
"Rail an thou wilt, sweet! But there is much for wonder in the matter that brought us together,—not in any doing of mine, forsooth, but in Fortune's doing. For look you, had I not indeed tarried here that night you counterfeited illness in this room, you might perforce have talked with Roger Barnet ere the six days were done, and he have sent back to Sir Valentine, who left not Fleetwood house till the last hour. Thus, perchance, Sir Valentine had not escaped to France; had he not done so, I had not fared well there, and met his lady, whose gratitude took the shape of filling my purse. I had not then come back as owner of Foxby Hall at the very time my love was disowned of Fortune. But for the sad quarrel 'twixt your brother and Sir Valentine, and for my having taken up the queen's thankless errand, I had not met you in the road that night; but for the continuance of my pretence to be Sir Valentine, thou hadst not followed me to the end we wot of."
The queen's death had unsealed his lips,—though only to his wife, who was one woman that could keep a secret,—regarding her Majesty's commission.
"Why, then," said Anne, "but for the queen's lingering love of the knight, and but for her dread of seeming weak to her councillors,—for that I will take oath was her reason,—we should not be here together this moment. Ne'ertheless, 'twas a cruel queen, merely to save her pride a brief unpleasantness, to send a young gentleman to risk his life!"
"Marry, Anne, I have heard of ladies who were not queens, sending great lords further, for less! But look you, I took the errand for no reward, being minded like to Master Spenser's knight:
"'Upon a great adventure he was bond.
That greatest Gloriana to him gave
(That greatest glorious Queen of Faerie land).
To win him worship, and her grace to have.'
"Nay, I know thou'lt say, much virtue in her grace! But bethink you, if I looked for no other direct reward, and got none, neither did I look for the indirect rewards Fortune took it on herself to pay me withal. If I sought only the queen's grace, and mayhap received small share of that, was I not put in the way of winning thy grace, my sweet, and of all else I have?"
"Nay, perhaps Fortune had found other ways to bring these things to thee. Look out of the window, Harry, and bid Kit Bottle not make little Will run so fast. Thine old bully is the child's undoing!"
"Nay, the lad is safe with Kit; though indeed the old rascal spoils him some. What was he doing yesterday, but teaching him to counterfeit Anthony Underhill's psalm-singing? A steward of Anthony's years deserves more courtesy."
"If the boy grow up as brave a gentleman as thou, Hal, I shall be content. There be honors waiting for him in the world, I trow."
"Why, he hath some honor already, methinks, in being Will Shakespeare's godson. 'Sooth, the players will not know him for the same lad when we go again to London, he hath shot up so tall. But thou wert speaking of that night, when thy feigned tears conquered me in this room—"
"Nay, thou wert speaking of it, love."
"Thou hast never told me; never have I dared ask: was—all—counterfeit that night?"
"Why,—my lord,—the illness, indeed, was counterfeit; but the kisses—though perhaps I had withheld them, save for my purpose—were real enough. God wot, once my lips were loosed! And I marvel I could still cling to my revenge, yet yield myself to thine arms so willingly! Nay, Hal, there's no need to act the scene anew! Out on thee, madcap, thou'st crushed my kirtle—!"
THE END.