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She laughed curtly. "The last time he spoke your name, he said he would put his hand in his pocket to pay the sexton that dug your grave and would find pleasure in so doing; but that he'd then let you lie with never a stone to mark the place, and if the world forgot you as soon as he, the better for him."
"But sure he could not mean it?"
"He did."
Martin swore vilely under his breath.
From the kitchen came the landlady's voice. "Nell Entick, Nell, I say! Gad-about! Good-for-nought!"
"Go to the stable," she whispered, "and tell them I sent you to wait there. She'll be in better humour in an hour's time. It may be I can even bring you in here."
She shot another glance over Martin's shoulder at the slim form of Phil Marsham and went away smiling.
Few in the stable looked twice at the two strangers in worn coats and dusty shoes who entered and sat on a bench by the wall, for there is as much pride of place in a stable as in a palace. There was talk of racing and hunting and fairs, and the beasts champed their oats, and everywhere was the smell of horses and harness. Presently there came from the inn a coachman in livery and him they greeted with nods and good-morrows, for he was sleek and well fed and, after a manner, haughty, which commanded their respect. He sat down among them affably, as one conscious of his place in the world but desiring—provided they recognized him as a man of position—to be magnanimous to all; and after inquiring into the welfare of his horses he spoke of the weather and the roads.
"Hast come far?" a wrinkled old man asked.
"Aye, from Larwood."
"The horses stood the day's travel well?"
"Aye, they are good beasts. But much depends on proper handling. It makes a deal of difference who holds the reins." He looked about with an air of generous patronage. "That, and their meat." He nodded toward one of the men. "'Tis well, though, when at night they are well fed, to fill the rack with barley-straw or wheat ere leaving them, as I showed thee, that perceiving it is not pleasant they may lie down and take their rest, which is in itself as good as meat for the next day's work."
A general murmur of assent greeted this observation.
"Goest far?" another asked.
"Aye, to Lincoln."
A rumble of surprise ran about the stable and the deference of the stablemen visibly increased.
"Hast been long away?"
"Aye, six weeks to the day."
"It do take a deal of silver to travel thus."
"Aye, aye." He condescended to smile. "But there are few of the clergy in England can better afford a journey to the Isle o' Wight than the good Dr. Marsham, and he is one who grudges nought when his lady hath been ill. 'Tis wonderful what travel will do for the ailing. Aye, he hath visited in many great houses and I have seen good company while we have been on the road."
Phil had looked up. "Where is this Doctor Marsham's home?" he asked.
All frowned at the rash young man's temerity in thus familiarly accosting the powerful personage in livery, and none more accusingly than the personage himself; but with a scornful lift of his brows he replied in a manner to tell all who were present that such as he were above mere arrogance. "Why, young man, he comes from a place you doubtless never heard of, keeping as you doubtless do, so close at home: from Little Grimsby."
Martin glanced at Phil. "The name, it seems, is thine own. Hast ever been at Little Grimsby?"
"Never."
And with that they forgot Philip Marsham, or at all events treated him as if he had never existed.
"'Tis few o' the clergy ride in their own coaches," someone said, with an obsequiousness that went far to conciliate the magnificent coachman.
"Aye, very few," he said smiling, "but Dr. Marsham is well connected and a distant relation some years since left him a very comfortable fortune—not to mention that in all England there are few better livings than his. There is no better blood in the country than runs in his veins. You'd be surprised if I was to tell you of families he's connected with."
So the talk ran.
Presently a little boy appeared from the darkness beyond the door and hunting out Martin, touched his shoulder and beckoned. Martin, having long nursed his ill temper, rose. "It is time," he said, "yea, more than time." With swagger and toss he elbowed his way out past the liveried coachman; but missing Phil he turned and saw him still sitting on the bench, his eyes fixed on the harness hanging on the opposite wall.
"Come, come," he called loudly. "Come, make haste! Where are thy wits? Phil, I say!"
Starting suddenly awake from his revery, Phil got up and followed Martin out of the stable, seeing no one, and so blindly pressed at his heels, so little heeded what went on about him, that the sudden burst of laughter his absence of mind had occasioned passed unheard over his head.
In the kitchen, whither the boy led them, they found places laid at one end of a great table and Nell Entick waiting to serve them, who gave Martin cold glances but looked long and curiously at Phil Marsham. The mistress and the other girls were gone. The boy sat in the corner, by the great fireplace where the roast had been turning on the now empty spit. Nell set before them a pitcher of beer and all that was left of a venison pasty.
Martin ate greedily and whispered to her and talked in a mumbling undertone, but she gave him short answers till his temper flew beyond his grasp and he knocked over his beer in reaching for her. "Witch!" he snarled. "Yea, look him in the eye! His wits are a-wandering again."
Looking up, Phil met her eyes staring boldly into his. He leaned back and smiled, for she was a comely lass.
"Have the two guests who came tonight in a coach gone yet to bed?" he asked.
"How should I know that?"
His question baffled her and she looked at him from under her long lashes, half, perhaps, in search of some hidden meaning in his words, but certainly a full half because she knew that her eyes were her best weapons and that the stroke was a telling one. She made little of his meaning but her thrust scored.
He looked at her again and marked the poise of her shapely head, the curves of neck and shoulders, the full bosom, the bare arms. But his mind was still set on that other matter and he persisted in his design. "I want," he said slowly, "to see them—to see them without their knowing or any one's knowing—except you and me." Here he met her at her own game, and he was not so far carried away but that he could inwardly smile to see his own shot tell.
"They have supped in the little parlor and are sitting there by the fire," she whispered. "It may cost me my place—but—"
Again she looked at him under her long lashes. He gave her as good as she sent, and she whispered, "Come, then—come."
Martin gave an angry snort over his beer, but she returned a hot glance and an impatient gesture. With Phil pressing close at her heels she led the way out of the kitchen and down a long passage. Stopping with her finger on her lips, she very quietly opened a door and motioned him forward. Again her finger at her lips! With her eyes she implored silence.
Without so much as the creaking of a board he stepped through the door. A second door, which stood ajar, led into the little parlor and through the crack he saw an old man with long white hair and beard—an old man with a kindly face mellowed by years of study, perhaps by years of disappointment and anxiety. The old man's eyes were shut, for he was dozing. In a chair on the other side of the hearth a lady sat, but only the rich border of her gown showed through the partly open door.
The lad stood there with a lump in his throat and a curious mingling of emotions in his heart and head. It had happened so suddenly, so strangely, he felt that baffling sense of unreality which comes sometimes to all of us. He touched the wall to make sure he was not dreaming. Had he but stayed in school, as his father had desired, and gone back to Little Grimsby, who knew what might have come of it? But no! He was a penniless vagabond, a waif astray on the highroads of England. He was now of a mind to speak out; now of a mind to slip like a fox to earth. His gay, gallant ne'er-do-
weel of a father was gone. He was alone in the world save for his chance acquaintance of the road, which was perhaps worse than being entirely alone. What madness—he wondered as he looked at the kindly face of the drowsy old man—had led Tom Marsham away from his home? Or was it more than a mere mad prank? Had the manners of a country vicarage so stifled him that he became desperate? As Phil thought of Martin drinking in the kitchen, a wave of revulsion swept over him; but after all, his father had kept such company in his own life, and though he had brought up the boy to better things, the father's reckless and adventurous nature, in spite of his best intentions, had drawn the son into wild ways. Something rose in Phil's throat and choked him, but the hot pride that came straightly and honestly from his father now flamed high. He knew well enough that Tom Marsham had had his faults, and of a kind to close upon him the doors of such a home as the vicarage at Little Grimsby; but he had been a lovable man none the less and Tom Marsham's son was loyal.
The girl, daring not speak, was tugging at Phil's coat in an agony of misgivings. He stepped softly back, closed the door on a world he might have entered, and carried away with him the secret that would have brought peace—if a sad, almost bitter peace—to two lonely souls.
He paused in the passage and the girl stopped beside him. There was no one in sight or hearing, and he kissed her. Such is the curious complexity with which impressions and emotions crowd upon one, that even while the vicarage at Little Grimsby and his dead father were uppermost in his thoughts, he was of a mind then and for many a long day thereafter to come back and marry her. Since he had closed the door through which he might have passed, this was a golden dream to cling to in hard times and glad, he thought. For he had caught her fancy as well as she his and she kissed him full on the lips; and being in all ways his father's son, he fell victim to a kitchen wench's bright eyes at the very moment when Little Grimsby was within his reach, as has father had done before him. Then they walked out into the kitchen, trying to appear as if nothing had happened, and Martin, perceiving their red cheeks, only sneered.
"You must sleep on the hay," she whispered; and to Martin, "I'll send him word before morning and give you his reply."
So they again followed the little boy through the darkness to the stable by a back way, and climbed a ladder to the great mow and crawled behind a mountain of hay, and lay with their thoughts to bear them company while men far below talked of country affairs, horses were trampling uneasily in their stalls, and the little boy was off through the night with a message.
CHAPTER V
SIR JOHN BRISTOL
There was not a cloud in the sky at dawn. Cocks crowed lustily, near and loud or far and faint. The blue light grew stronger and revealed the sleeping village and the rambling old inn and the great stable, where the horses stood in their stalls and pulled at the hay and pease in the racks or moved uneasily about. The stars became dim and disappeared. The rosy east turned to gold and the dark hills turned to blue and the village stirred from its sleep.
The master of the inn came down, rubbing his eyes and yawning, to the great room where one of the maids, bedraggled with sleep, was brushing the hearth and another was clearing a table at which two village roysterers had sat late. The master was in an evil temper, but for the moment there was no fault to be found with the maids, so he left them without a word and went through the long passage to the kitchen.
Seeing there a candle, which had burned to a pool of tallow, still guttering faintly in its socket, he cried out at the waste and reached to douse the feeble flame, then stopped in anger, for in a chair by the table, on which he had rested his head and arms, the little boy sat fast asleep.
"Hollo!" the master bawled.
Up started the little boy, awake on the instant and his eyes wide with fear.
"What in the fiend's name hast thou been up to, this night?" quoth the master in a fierce bellow.
The little boy burst into tears. "He'll have nought to do with him," he wailed. "'Twas a long way and fearful dark but I went it, every step, and ferreted him out and gave him the message; and he swore most wickedly and bade me tell the man go to a place I don't like to name, and bade me tell Nell Entick he took it ill of her to traffic with such as that brother of his."
"Ah-ha!" cried the host, belting his breeches tighter. "Most shrewdly do I suspect there have been strange doings hereabouts. Where's Nell Entick? Nell Entick, I say, Nell Entick!" His voice went through the house like thunder. The sashes rattled and the little boy quaked.
Down came the hostess and in came the maids—all but Nell Entick.
"Nell Entick! Where's Nell Entick, I say! Fiend take the wench—where's Nell Entick?"
Then in came the sleepy hostlers, and the coachman, his livery all awry from his haste—but not Nell Entick. For Nell Entick, a-tremble with well-founded apprehensions, having gone late to bed and slept heavily, had risen just after the host, had followed him down the passage and, after listening at the door until she made sure her worst fears were realized, had darted back along the passage and out through the inn yard to the stable where as loudly as she dared, but not loudly enough to rouse the weary sleepers above, she was calling, "Martin! Martin! Awake, I say, or they'll all be upon thee! Martin, awake!"
The host in fury seized the little boy by the ear and dragged him shrieking across the table. "Now, sirrah," quoth he, "of whom mak'st thou this squalling and squealing? A stick laid to thy bum will doubtless go far to keep thy soul from burning."
"Unhand me!" he squalled. "She'll kill me, an I tell."
"An thou tellest not, thou slubbering noddy, I'll slice thee into collops of veal." And still holding the unhappy child by the ear, the host, making a ferocious face, reached for a long and sharp knife.
"I'll tell—I'll tell—'Tis the two men that slept in the hay."
"Ha! The hounds are in cry."
And with that the host released his victim and dashed, knife in hand, out the kitchen door. The household trailed at his heels. The sleeping guests woke in their chambers and faces appeared at curtained windows.
Nell Entick fled from the stable as he came roaring, but seeing her not, he mounted the ladder and plunged into the hay with wild thrusts of his knife in all directions. "Hollo! Hollo!" he yelled. "At 'em, dogs, at 'em!" And the two sleepers in the far corner of the mow, as the household had done before them, started wide awake.
For the second time since they had met, Martin, crouching in the hay, crossed himself, then shot a scared glance at Phil. Martin was white round the lips and his hands were shaking like the palsy. "Said he aught of hanging?" he whispered. But Philip Marsham was then in no mood to heed his chance companion, whose bubble of bluster he had seen pricked three times.
What had occurred was plain enough and the two were cornered like rats; but Phil got up on his toes, shielded from sight by a mound of hay, and squatting low, got in his arms as much of the hay as he could grasp.
Bawling curses and thrusting this way and that with his knife, the host came steadily nearer. He passed the mound. He saw the two. Knife in hand he plunged at them over the hay, with a yell of triumph. But his footing was none of the best, and as he came, Phil rose with a great armful of hay to receive the knife-thrust and sprang at him.
Thus thrown off his balance, the man fell and the lad, catching his wrist and dexterously twisting it, removed the knife from his hand and flung it into the darkest corner of the great mow.
"Help! Treason! Murder! Thieves!"
With his hand on the host's throat, Phil shoved him deeper in the hay and held him at his mercy, but Martin was already scrambling over the mow, and with a last thrust Phil left the blinded and choking host to dig himself out at his leisure and followed, dirk in hand. As the two leaped down on the stable floor, the flashing dirk bought them passage to the rear, whither they fled apace, and out the door and away.
They passed Nell Entick at the gate, her hands clasped in terror, who cried to Martin, "He'll have nought of you. Hard words were all he s
ent."
To Phil she said nothing but her glance held him, and he whispered, "I will come back and marry you."
She smiled.
"You will wait for me?" he whispered, and kissed her.
She nodded and he kissed her again ere he fled after Martin.
When they had left the village behind them they stopped to breathe and rest.
Leaning against a tree, Martin mopped the sweat from his brow. "Had I but a sword," he cried, "I'd ha' given them theme for thought, the scurvy knaves!"
"It seems thy brother, of whom we were to have got so much, bears thee little love." And Phil smiled.
For this Martin returned him an oath, and sat upon a stone.
On the left lay the village whence they had come, and, though the sun was not yet up, the spire of the church and the thatched roofs of the cottages were very clearly to be seen in the pure morning air. Smoke was rising from chimneys and small sounds of awakening life came out to the vagabonds on the lonely road, as from the woods at their back came the shrill, loud laugh of the yaffle, and from the marsh before them, the croaking of many frogs.
Martin's shifty eyes ranged from the cows standing about the straw rack in a distant barton in the east to a great wooded park on a hill in the west. "I will not go hungry," he cried with an oath, "because it is his humour to deny me. We shall see what we shall see."
He rose and turned west and with Phil at his heels he came presently to the great park they had seen from a distance.
"We shall see what we shall see."
With that he left the road and following a copse beside a meadow entered the wood, where the two buried themselves deep in the shade of the great trees. The sun was up now and the birds were fluttering and clamouring high overhead, but to the motion and clamour of small birds they gave no heed. From his pocket Martin drew a bit of strong thread, then, looking about, he wagged his head and pushed through the undergrowth. "Hare or pheasant, I care not which. Here we shall spread our net—here—and here." Whereupon he pulled down a twig and knotted the thread and formed a noose with his fingers. "Here puss shall run," he continued, "and here, God willing, we shall eat."