How long I walked, or where, I know not. The faces about me on the street I saw dimly, as though in some dream—indistinct, faint, which on the morn comes to the mind in broken fragments. Thou knowest that such thoughts, such faces, have passed before thine eyes, but when and where thou canst not tell.
I strode on rapidly, looking neither to right nor left, not knowing or caring whither I went; glad that I was occupied, and not sitting idle, tortured with painful thoughts of the morrow. Many I passed thus, some of whom stopped to look back at me as I left them behind in my rapid walk. Some sound of their conversation came to my ears as they whispered after me.
I was coming now into the less frequented part of London, where I did not remember to have ever been before. The crowd upon the streets was smaller here, and was of the poorer class, mostly laborers and tradesmen, and the sight of a well-dressed stranger must have created some sensation in their minds. They said naught to me, however, and I passed on.
I had halted at a corner to let a cart pass by, and moved by some impulse of the moment, I now looked back. A man stood by a house a few feet away, and as he caught my look he shrank against the wall, as though to conceal himself from my sight. I had seen him before—a short, squat man, with a dark bronzed face, and thick black hair sprinkled with gray. He was dressed in the garb of a well-to-do tradesman, but there was an indescribable something in his appearance or manner, I know not exactly what, that suggested the sea to me. It may have been his walk, rolling and clumsy, or the slits in his ears, which showed where once there had been ear-rings, that made me think of a seaman.
I had seen him several times within the last few days, hanging around the corners near my apartments, as though watching for someone. Once on coming down my steps, I ran full into his arms as he stood on the landing, and as I disengaged myself, he glanced keenly into my face as though to fix it in his mind, and with a word of apology passed on. It seemed as though he followed my footsteps, for half an hour later, on passing a fruit stand near the Thames, I had seen him gazing intently at me through the lattice.
And now the same man was just behind me, and when I glanced at him, innocently enough, he shrank back as though to avoid my look. Could it be that he dogged my steps, and for some purpose of his own wished to keep me in sight? I knew not why he should do so. I had no enemy in the city, who would go to so much trouble on my account. But it was worth looking into, and so I turned into an alley, and stepping quickly into a dark doorway, I waited.
A few moments, and footsteps sounded on the pavement, and the figure of my pursuer, for pursuer he undoubtedly was, came in sight. Pausing at the entrance of the lane, he looked cautiously into it, no doubt pondering where I could have disappeared so suddenly. The moonlight shone full in his face as he stood there, and from my hiding place I could see every sinister feature, as like a baffled hound he sought to rediscover the lost scent. An instant thus he stood, as if undecided; then silently he stole into the dark alley, and passing the doorway where I stood melted away in the gloom.
Waiting a few minutes where I was, I stepped down, and turning strode out of the lane and back to the corner whence I had come only a moment ago. Congratulating myself on the fact that I had shaken this spy, I resumed my walk. Through strange twisted streets, overhung with gabled, many-windowed houses; by dark shops, now closed for the day; and along ill-paved crooked lanes I strode, engaged with my own thoughts, as black and gloomy as my surroundings.
What was I to do? Turn my back upon London and all my friends, and one bright lady, more than all the rest to me? I could not remain among those where once I held high sway, the chief amidst the gay throng—now poor, despised, forsaken, stripped of my rank and means, for I had been dependent upon the old lord, my father, for all that I had. Monthly he had sent to me through a London bank, a good round sum in shining gold, which I had promptly sown to the four winds.
The life of a gentleman of leisure in the reign of Elizabeth was no cheap thing, I can tell thee. There were many new doublets, made of silk and satin, of varied colors and shapes, which were ever changing, even as a maid blushes—and as readily. There were the routs and balls; playhouses where the painted actors strutted and declaimed; the dice games in the evenings at the houses of the noble ladies who entertained, where we threw for the golden coin, stacked high upon the table, until daylight peeped in at the closed shutters, and shone upon the flushed, haggard faces and disheveled hair of the lords and ladies. Then there were our servants, many and skillful; our horses and hounds; our wines and dinners; our banquets and routs—all the most elegant. No wonder the sovereigns melted from our purses as snow before a summer sun.