CHAPTER XVI.

THE POET AS A MAN OF ACTION.

"O father, where's my love? were you so careless To let an unthrift steal away your child?" --_The Case Is Altered._

Millicent, after the riot had ceased and dinner had been eaten, passed the day with a palpitating heart but a resolved mind. Under cover of her usual needlework, she fashioned a sort of large linen wallet, in which to carry the few things she wished to take with her. Her emotions were, in a less degree, similar to those which had affected her in the hours preceding her former attempt to run away. At supper she looked often with a hidden tenderness at the composed, unsuspecting face of her mother. When the light of evening faded she slipped to her chamber, and put a few chosen objects into the receptacle she had made, wrapped this in a hooded cloak, and dropped it from her window into the concealed space behind the garden shrubbery. She then waited, watching from the window that part of Friday Street in which Master Holyday must appear.

At last his slender figure lurched into view in the dusk, and came to a stop outside the gate.

Millicent sped across her chamber. At the door she turned, with fast-beating heart, and cast an affectionate, tearful look at the place in which she had spent so much of her childhood and youth, and which seemed to share so many of her untold thoughts. It appeared for an instant to reproach her sorrowfully; but when in her swift thought she justified her action, its aspect changed to that of wishing her Godspeed, and counselling her to hasten.

She hurried through the house as if upon some indoor quest, found herself alone in the garden, recovered her cloak and parcel, and went to unfasten the gate.

"'Tis I, Master Holyday," she said, in a low tone, as she loosened the bolt.

"Good! good! excellent!" came the scholar's reply from outside the gate, in a voice rather parched and excited.

Having slid back the bolt, she made to pull the gate open, but it would not move.

"What is the matter?" quoth she. "I cannot open it. Push it from your side."

She heard his hands laid against it, then his shoulder, then his back. But it would not budge. She examined it closely in the dusky light, and suddenly gave a little cry of despair.

"Oh, me! There is a new lock on the gate, and God knows where is the key!"

During the afternoon, in fact, Master Etheridge, alarmed by the easy entrance obtained by Ravenshaw and Gregory the previous night, and by Ravenshaw's exit from the garden that day,--an exit after which the gate had been left open,--had caused an additional lock to be put on, a lock to be opened by means of a key which the goldsmith thought best to keep in his own care.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she cried, after a futile tug at the lock.

"Is there no other way to come out?" queried Holyday, in perturbation.

"Alas, no! There's the street door from the gallery, but my father locks it himself at supper-time and keeps the key. I durs'n't go through the shop; if it isn't closed, my father may be in the back shop and the apprentices will surely be in front."

"God's name, I know not what--" began the poet, agitated with perplexity and fear of failure, but broke off to "Can't you make another pretext to go out?--drop another wedding-ring into the street, or something?"

"Nay, they would sure stop my going or follow me out at this hour. Oh, would I could leap the wall! By St. Anne, 'tis too bad--Ha! wait a minute."

Under the impulse of her thought she sped away without listening for answer, unconscious that her last words had been spoken too low to go beyond the gate.

Hence she did not know that Master Holyday, attacked by an idea at the same moment, and expressing himself with equal inaudibility, had as suddenly made off toward the White Horse Tavern.

She was in the house ere it occurred to her that she ought to have rid herself of her burden by throwing it over the wall. She thought best not to retrace her steps. So she ran up-stairs and along the passage to a small window that looked down on Friday Street. She pushed open the casement, saw that no one was passing below, and dropped the parcel, trusting it to the darkness. She had a moment's idea of calling to Holyday to come and take it, but a second thought was wiser; she cast a single glance toward the gate, but was uncertain whether she made out his form or not in the decreasing light. Then she went down-stairs, and boldly into the back shop. Her father sat at his small table counting by candle-light the day's money.

"Eh! what is it?" he asked, looking sharply up. "What dost thou here, baggage?"

"I have an order for George," she replied, quietly, forcing her voice to steadiness, and praying that her throbbing heart and pale face might not betray her.

George was an apprentice whom, for his cleverness, Mistress Etheridge was wont to employ on errands. Millicent could see him now in the outer shop, busy with other apprentices in covering the cases and closing up the front.

"'Zooks!" grumbled the goldsmith; "thy mother would best take the lad for a page, and be done with it."

Millicent passed on to the front shop.

"George," said she, when out of her father's hearing, but in that of one or two of the other apprentices, "you are to come with me to Mistress Carroll's next door; there is something to fetch back. Nay, wait till you have done here; I'll run ahead, 'tis but a step."

Upon the hazard that her father, in the rear shop, would not lift up his eyes from his money for some little time, she passed out to Cheapside. In a breath she was around the corner, from the crowd and the window-lights, into the dusk and desertion of Friday Street. She stooped and picked up her cloak and bag; then ran on, to the gate.

"Speed! speed! there's not a moment to lose!" she whispered, catching the elbow of the man who stood there, and who had not heard her coming swiftly up behind him.

He turned and stared, putting his eyes close to hers on account of the darkness; she saw that he had a great, scarred, bearded face, and that his body was twice the breadth of Master Holyday's.

"Oh, God!" she exclaimed, drawing back. "I thought you were Master Holyday."

"Master Holyday, eh?" growled the man. "What of him?"

"I--I was to meet him here," she faltered, looking around with a sinking heart.

"Oh!--God's light!--you are the maid, belike? Well, troth, beshrew me but that's the hell of it!" And the fellow grinned with silent laughter.

"What mean you? What maid? Know you aught--?"

"Of Master Holyday? Sooth, do I! He's on t'other side of this gate."

She stared at the closed gate in bewilderment. "What? In the garden?"

"Ay, in the garden." The man raised his voice a little. "Sure thou'rt there, Master Holyday?"

"Ay," came the reply in the scholar's unmistakable voice. "But the maid is not. Hang her, whither is she gone?"

"Here I am," answered the maid, for herself. "In God's name, how got you in there?"

"In God's name, how got you out there?" said Holyday, vexatiously. "A minute ago you were here, and I was there. You could not come out, so I went for this gentleman, who lifted me to the top of the wall--"

"Which was a service not included in the contract," remarked Cutting Tom.

"And here I dropped, thinking to find you," continued Holyday, in exasperation, "and to help you out as he helped me in. And now--"

"Well, I am out, nevertheless," she replied, quickly. "So come you out, pray, without more ado; my father may discover at any moment--"

"Why, devil take me!" cried Holyday, in despair. "I cannot climb the wall; there's none here to give me a shoulder."

"Is there nothing there you can climb upon?" queried Cutting Tom.

"Yes," cried Millicent, taking the answer upon herself; "there are benches. Oh, pray, make haste, Master Holyday!"

Soon Master Holyday could be heard dragging a bench across the sward; in its ordinary position it would not give him sufficient height, so he seemed to busy himself in placing it properly for his purpose. "_Nomine patris!_" he exclaimed as he bruised his fingers. Finally a thud against the upper part of the gate indicated that he had fixed the bench slantwise. Mounting the incline chiefly by means of hands and knees, he stood trembling at the top, high enough to get a purchase of his elbows on the gate, and so to wriggle his body over.

Millicent breathed more freely as soon as his head and shoulders appeared; but, as he was righting himself on the gate-top in order to drop safely outside, there came a voice from within the garden:

"Hey? How now? Good lack, more comings and goings!"

"Oh, God! that meddling Sir Peregrine!" cried Millicent. "We are found out. Hurry, Master Holyday!"

The poet, startled, was still upon the gate, staring back into the garden. With a revival of earlier agility, the old knight came up the sloping bench at a run, took hold of the gate's top with one hand, and of Master Holyday's neck with the other. His eyes fell upon the pair waiting outside. It was not too dark for him to recognise a figure which he had oft observed with the interest of future ownership.

"What! Mistress Millicent! And who's this? Master Holyday, o' my life! 'Zooks and 'zounds! here's doings!"

The poet, suddenly alive, jerked his neck from the old knight's grasp, and threw himself from the gate without thought of consequences. Luckily, Tom caught him by the body, and saved his neck, though both men were heavily jarred by the collision.

"Come!" cried Millicent, seizing Holyday by the sleeve ere he had got his balance. She darted down Friday Street, the poet staggering headlong after her, Cutting Tom close in the rear.

"What, ho!" cried Sir Peregrine, astonished out of his wits. "Stop! stay! The watch! constables! Master Etheridge! Runaways, runaways, runaways!"

His voice waned in the distance behind Millicent as she hastened on. She still held the poet's sleeve; he breathed fast and hard, but said nothing. In front of the White Horse, four men, at a gruff word from Cutting Tom, fell in with the fugitives, and the whole party of seven ran on without further speech. For a short time, tramping and breathing were the only sounds in Millicent's ears; but soon there came a renewed and multiplied cry of "Runaways! stop them!" whereby she knew that Sir Peregrine had given the alarm, and that her father and his lads had started in pursuit.

"God send we get to the boat in time!" she said, as she halted for a single step so that Master Holyday might take the lead. She cast a swift look over her shoulder, and saw two or three torches flaring in the distance.

Holyday led across Knightrider Street obliquely, then down the lower part of Bread Street, along a little of Thames Street, and through a short passage to Queenhithe. This wharf enclosed three sides of a somewhat rounded basin, wherein a number of craft now lay at rest in the black water that lapped softly as stirred by the tide and a light wind. Houses were built close together on all three sides.

The poet made straight along the east side of the basin, and down a narrow flight of stairs to a large boat that lay there. A man started up in the boat, and held out his hand to help the maid aboard, lighting her steps with a lantern in his other hand,--for a veil of clouds had swept across the sky from the west, and the only considerable light upon the wharf was from a lantern before one of the gabled houses, and from the lattice windows of a tavern. Other boatmen steadied the vessel, so that Millicent boarded without accident; Holyday, coming next, and setting foot blindly upon the gunwale, rather fell than stepped in. Cutting Tom and his men huddled aboard, and the whole party crowded together astern, to leave room forward for the rowers.

"Whither?" asked the waterman in command.

"Why, down-stream, of course," replied Holyday. "Know you not--how now? Where is Bill Tooby?"

"Bill Tooby? He is yonder in his boat, waiting for some that have bespoke him." The man pointed across the basin.

Holyday was stricken faint of voice. "Oh, _miserere_!" he wailed. "He is waiting for us. We have come to the wrong stairs."

"Hark!" cried Millicent.

Cries of "Runaways! Stop them! Stop the maid!" were approaching from, apparently, the vicinity of Knightrider Street.

"We must e'en change to the other boat," said Holyday, despairingly.

"Oh, heaven, there is not time!" cried Millicent.

"If you be in haste," said the waterman, "stay where ye are. Whither shall we carry ye?"

"Nay, nay, I durst not!" cried Holyday, and yet stood in helpless indecision.

"Come, then!" said Millicent, and leaped from the boat to the stairs. Reaching back for Holyday's hand, she pulled him after her, dragged him up the steps, and led him around the three sides of the basin, their five protectors following close.

A larger boat, manned with a more numerous crew, was in waiting at the western stairs. The waterman with whom Ravenshaw had bargained in the morning, making sure of Holyday's face in the light of a lantern, guided the fugitives aboard with orderly swiftness. But already the noise of pursuit was in Thames Street; ere the last man--a slim fellow with a thickly bearded face, which he carried well forward from his body--was embarked, the cries, swelling suddenly as the pursuers emerged from the narrow passage, were upon the wharf, and the red flare of torches came with them.

The party in chase was headed by the goldsmith himself, no covering on his head, his gray hair standing out in the breeze; then came his apprentices, and sundry persons who had joined in the hue and cry; the rear was brought up by Sir Peregrine, lamed and winded. Master Etheridge made out the party in the boat at once, and, with threatening commands to the waterman to stop, led his people around to the stairs.

"Cast off!" growled Bill Tooby, the waterman, pulling the slim fellow aboard. The order was obeyed, and Millicent, who had sat more dead than alive since her father had come into sight, saw the wharf recede, and a strip of black water spread between the boat and the torch-lit party that stood gazing from the stairs.

"Oh, wench, I'll make thee rue this day!" cried the goldsmith, shaking his arms after the boat. As for Sir Peregrine, he looked utterly nonplussed.

Then her father spoke hurriedly to his followers, and called loudly for a boat. The waterman to whom Holyday had first led his own party was quick to respond. Meanwhile Tooby's craft headed down-stream. Millicent, looking anxiously back over the water, saw the other boat, or its lantern and one of the torches, shoot out from the stairs.

"Think you they will catch us?" she asked Master Holyday.

"I think nothing," said the poet, dejectedly, really thinking very small of himself for the mistake which had enabled the goldsmith to come upon their heels.

Surprised at the apparent change in Master Holyday since the forenoon, she turned to Tooby. "What think you, waterman?"

"Why, mistress, an they make better speed than we, belike they'll catch us; but, an we make better speed than they, belike they'll not catch us," growled Tooby.

"And that's the hell of it!" quoth Cutting Tom.