CHAPTER VIII.

SIR PEREGRINE MEDWAY.

"How the roses, That kept continual spring within her cheeks, Are withered with the old man's dull embraces!" --_The Night-Walker._

As the captain entered, he heard some little bustle, as of an arrival. In the lower passage, at the door leading to the kitchen, was a strange serving-man, already on terms of banter with the cook and maids. He was provided with a torch, as yet unlighted; evidently the guest he attended would stay till after dark. Ravenshaw climbed the narrow stairs to the withdrawing-room, of which the door was open.

This was a fine large room, with an oaken ceiling and oaken panelling; with veiled pictures and veiled statues in niches; with solid chairs, carved chests and coffers, tables covered with rich Eastern "carpets;" with a wide window bulging out over Cheapside, and with a great, handsome chimneypiece. The floor was strewn with clean rushes. Some boughs burning in the fireplace gave forth a pleasant odour. A boy was lighting the candles in the sconces.

Ravenshaw's glance took in these details at the same moment in which it embraced the group of people in the room. The goldsmith and his wife stood beaming, and the woman Lettice looked on at a respectful distance, while in the centre of the room was Mistress Millicent in the grasp of a tall, lean old gentleman in gorgeous raiment, who very gallantly kissed both her cheeks and then both her hands.

"Sweet, sweet," this ancient gallant lisped to her, "I can see how thou hast pined. But all is well now; I am with thee again; my leg is mended. Thou wert not fated to lose thy Sir Peregrine for all the ramping horses in England. So cheerily, cheerily now. Smooth thy face; I see how thou'st grieved, and I love thee the better for it."

Mistress Millicent certainly looked far from happy; but her dejection at that moment seemed to proceed less from any past apprehension for the visitor's safety than from a present antipathy to his embraces. She was pale and red by turns, and she drew back from him with much relief the instant he released her. Her eyes met those of Ravenshaw, and she blushed exceedingly, and looked as if she would sink out of observation.

"Come in, Master Holyday," said the goldsmith seeing the captain in the doorway. "Come in and be known to Sir Peregrine Medway. Master Holyday's father is an old friend of mine, that was my neighbour in Kent."

"Holyday, Holyday," repeated Sir Peregrine, with indifferent thoughtfulness, looking at the captain carelessly. "My first wife had a cousin that was a Holyday, or some such name, but not of Kent. Sir, I crave your better acquaintance," to which polite expression the old knight gave the lie by turning from the captain as if he dismissed him for ever from his consciousness, and offering his hand to Mistress Etheridge to lead her to a chair.

"What withered reed of courtesy, what stockfish of gallantry, may this be?" mused Ravenshaw, striding to a corner where he might sit unregarded.

"You should have come hither straightway, bag and baggage," said Master Etheridge to the old fop. "What need was there to go to the inn first?"

"Need? Oh, for shame, sir! Would you have me seen in the clothes I travelled in? Good lack, I trow not! Thinkst thou we that live in Berkshire know not good manners?" The knight spoke in pleasantry; it was clear he accounted himself the mirror of politeness. "What sayst thou, mother?"

"Oh, what you do is ever right, Sir Peregrine," replied Mistress Etheridge, placidly. But Ravenshaw, in his corner, was almost startled into mirth at hearing the wrinkled old visitor address the youthful-looking matron as mother. What did it mean?

Sir Peregrine bowed, with his hand on his heart; in which motion his eye fell upon a speck of something black upon the lower part of his stocking. Stooping further to remove it, and striving not to bend his knees in the action, he narrowly escaped overbalancing; and came up red-faced and panting. Ravenshaw thought he detected in Mistress Millicent's face a flash of malicious pleasure at the old fellow's discomfiture. She had taken a seat by the chimneypiece, where she seemed to be nursing a kind of suppressed fury.

The knight, after his moment of peril, dropped into a chair in rather a tottering fashion, and sat complacently regarding his own figure and attire.

The figure was shrugged up, and as spare as that of Don Quixote--a person, at that time, not yet known to the world. It was dressed in a suit of peach-colour satin, with slashes and openings over cloth of silver; with wings, ribbons, and garters. His shoes were adorned with great rosettes; a ribbon was tied in the love-lock hanging by his ear; and a huge ruff compelled him to hold high a head naturally designed to sink low between his sharp shoulders. His face, a triangle with the forehead as base, was pallid and dried-up; the eyes were small and streaky, the nose long and thin, the chin tipped with a little pointed beard, which, like the up-turned moustaches and the hair of the head, was dyed a reddish brown. On this countenance reposed a look of the utmost sufficiency, that of a person who takes himself seriously, and who never dreams that any one can doubt his greatness or his charms.

From the subsequent talk, it became known to Ravenshaw that Sir Peregrine had, a few months before, been thrown by a horse on his estate in Berkshire, and had but now recovered fully from the effects. The knight described the accident with infinite detail, and with supreme concern for himself, repeating the same circumstances over and over again. He was equally particular and reiterative in his account of his slow recovery. His auditors, making show of great attention and solicitude, punctuated his narrative with many yawns and frequent noddings; but on and on he lisped and cackled.

"Good lack," said he, "there was such coming and going of neighbours for news of how I did! I never knew so much ado made in Berkshire; faith, I lamented that I should be the cause on't, such disturbance of the public peace, and I a justice. And what with the ladies coming in dozens to nurse me!--troth, that they all might have a share on't, and none be offended, I must needs be watched of three at a time--What, sweet?" He was casting a roguish look at Mistress Millicent. "Art vexed? Art cast down? Good lack! see how jealous it is! Fie, fie, sweetheart! Am I to blame if the ladies would flock around me? Comfort thyself; I am all thine."

Mistress Millicent, despite her vexation, of which the cause was other than he assumed, could not help laughing outright. The captain began to see how matters stood. But old Sir Peregrine was untouched by her brief outburst of mirth, and continued to shake a finger of raillery at her.

"Sweet, sweet, ye're all alike, all womankind. My first wife was so, and my second wife was so; and now my third that is to be."

The girl's face blazed like a poppy with fury, and her blue eyes flashed with rebellion. She looked all the more young, and fresh, and warm with life, for that; and when Ravenshaw glanced from her to the colourless, shrivelled old knight--from the humid rose in its first bloom, to the withered rush--he felt for an instant a choking sickness of disgust. But the girl's parents remained serenely callous, and the old coxcomb, with equal insensibility, prattled on, putting it to the blame of nature that he should be, without intent, so much the desire of ladies and the jealousy of his wives past and to come.

Meanwhile Mistress Etheridge, having silently left the room with the woman Lettice, returned alone, and begged Sir Peregrine to come and partake of a little supper. From the knight's alacrity in accepting, it was plain he had honoured the family doubly,--first by tarrying to change his clothes for his call, and then by not tarrying to eat before coming to them, an additional honour that Mistress Etheridge had divined. With courtly bows and flourishes, he followed her toward the dining-chamber; whither he was followed in turn, for politeness' sake, by the goldsmith, who apologised to Ravenshaw for leaving him.

Whatever were the captain's feelings, Mistress Millicent seemed glad, or at least relieved, to be alone with him.

"I wish you joy of your coming marriage," said Ravenshaw, tentatively.

"You would as well wish me joy of my death," she replied, with a mixture of anger and forlornness.

He rose and walked over to the fireplace, near her.

"Why, 'tis true," quoth he; "when the bride is young, the arms of an old husband are a grave."

"Worse! When one is dead in one's grave, one knows nothing; but to be alive in those arms--foh!"

"Your good parents will have you take this husband, I trow, whether you will or no?"

"Yes; and I shall love them the less for it," she replied, sadly.

"Has a contract passed between you?"

"Not on my part, I can swear to that! Before Sir Peregrine went back to Berkshire the last time, they tried to have a betrothal before witnesses; but I let fall both the ring he wished to force upon me and the ring I was to give him; I would not open my lips either to speak, or to return his kiss; I held my hand back, closed tight, and he had to take it of his own accord. And all this the witnesses noted, for they laughed and spoke of it among themselves."

"Is the wedding-day set?"

"It may be any day, now that Sir Peregrine is well and in London. No doubt they will get a license, to save thrice asking the banns. I hope I may die in my sleep ere the time comes!"

"'Twere pity if that hope came true," said Ravenshaw, smiling.

"I dare not hope for a better escape. I'm not like to be favoured again as I was the other time Sir Peregrine was coming to town for the marriage. Then his horse threw him, and gave me a respite--but for only three months. Now he is well again, and safe and sound in London."

"What, were you in this peril three months ago?"

"Yes. 'Twas that which made me try to run away, the night you first saw me. The next day, instead of him, came news of his accident."

"Whither would you have run?"

"To my Uncle Bartlemy's, in Kent. You know him of course; he lives near your father."

"Oh, yes, yes, certainly," replied the supposed Holyday.

"And you saw him that night; at least, you told me the watch had let him go."

"What, was that your Uncle Bartlemy?--the old gentleman you were to have met--the man my friends and I rescued from the watch!"

"I knew not 'twas you had rescued him; but 'twas he I went to meet at the Standard. Nay, then, if 'twas Uncle Bartlemy you rescued, you would have known him!"

"Oh, as for that," blundered Ravenshaw, realising how nearly he had betrayed himself, "no doubt 'twas your Uncle Bartlemy, now I think on't; but I recognised him not that night. For, look you, he took pains to keep unknown; and all was darkness and haste; and though we are neighbours, I see but little of him; and he is the last man I should expect to meet in London abroad in the streets after curfew."

"That is true enough," she said, with a smile; "and I hope you will not play the telltale upon him. If his wife knew he had been to London, there would be an end of all peace. Sure, you must promise me not to tell; for 'twas my pleading brought him to London."

"Oh, trust me. I give my word. So he came to help you run away from being married to this old knight?"

"Yes. You know there's no love lost betwixt Uncle Bartlemy and my father. But mine uncle hath doted upon me from the first, the more, perchance, because he hath no child of his own. And I think he loves me doubly, for the quarrel he has with my father."

"And so he had not the heart to refuse when you begged him to come and carry you away to his house," conjectured Ravenshaw.

"'Tis so. 'Twas the only way I could devise to escape the marriage. I thought, if all could be done by night, I might be concealed in mine uncle's house; and even if my father should think of going there to seek me, he could be put off with denials."

"But what would your uncle's wife have said to this?"

"Oh, Aunt Margaret is bitter against my father; she would delight to hoodwink him. The only doubt was how mine uncle might come and take me, without her knowing of his visit to London. For, of a truth, she would never consent to his setting foot inside London town; and there was no one else I dared trust to conduct me. And so we had it that Uncle Bartlemy should feign to go to Rochester, and then, on his way home, to have happened upon me in my flight."

"And so your aunt be none the wiser? Well, such folly deserves to be cozened--the folly of forbidding her husband coming to London."

"Oh," replied Mistress Millicent, blushing a little as she smiled, "my dear aunt is, in truth, as jealous as Sir Peregrine would have us believe his wives were. There is a lady in London that Uncle Bartlemy played servant to before he was married, and Aunt Margaret made him promise never to come within sight of the town."

"I marvel how you laid your plans with him, without discovery of your people or his."

"There was a carrier's man that goes betwixt London and Rochester, who used to come courting one of our maids. We passed letters privately by means of him, till he fell out with the maid, and now comes hither no more. The last word I had of my uncle was after that night. He told me of his mishap with the watch, and of his getting free--though he said not how. And he vowed he must leave me to my fate, for he would never venture for me again as he had done. So I was left without hope. When I recognised you to-day as my preserver that night, and remembered that the Holydays were my uncle's neighbours, I thought--mayhap--you might have some message from him; but, alas--!"

"And that is why you followed me to the garden?" said the captain, carelessly, though inwardly he winced.

"Ay. Your look seemed to promise--but woe's me! And yet you spoke of my running away again?"

"Oh, I talked wildly. I know not what possessed me. Some things I said must have been very strange."

"Why, forsooth," said she, smiling again, and colouring most sweetly, "they seemed not so strange at the time, for I had forgot you are to be married; but now that I remember that--Belike you imagined for a moment you were speaking to the lady you are to marry?"

"Belike that is so. But touching this marriage: what is to hinder your running away to your uncle's now, with a trusty person to conduct you?"

"My uncle, in his letter, said he washed his hands of my affairs. He counselled me to make the best of Sir Peregrine's estate; he gave me warning he would not harbour me if I came to him."

"A most loving uncle, truly!"

"Nay, his love had not altered. But what befell him in London that night gave him such a fright of meddling in the matter."

"Perchance his warning was only to keep you from some rash flight. And, mayhap, now that his fears have passed away, he would receive you."

"I know not. If I might try!--hush, they are coming back!"

Ravenshaw could hear Sir Peregrine's cracked voice in the passage; but he ventured, quickly:

"I'd fain talk more of this--alone with you. When?"

"When you will," she replied, hurriedly. "I know not your plans."

"In your garden, then," he said at a hazard; "to-morrow at nightfall. Let the side gate be unlocked."

"I'll try. But do not you fail."

"Trust me; and meanwhile, if they turn sudden in the matter, and resolve to have the marriage forthwith, find shift to put it off, though you must e'en fall ill to hinder it."

"I'll vex myself into a fever, if need be!"

Ravenshaw was on his feet when the elder people came in; he advanced toward them as if he had waited impatiently that he might take his leave. As for Mistress Millicent, at sight of Sir Peregrine her face took on at once the petulant, rebellious look it had worn at his departure; no one would have supposed she had conversed during his absence.

When the captain had dismissed himself, he looked back for a moment from the threshold. The limping old coxcomb, more than ever self-satisfied after his supper, was bestowing a loverlike caress upon Mistress Millicent, who shrank from him as if she were a flower whose beauty might wither at his touch. With this vision before him, Ravenshaw was let out, by the side door, into Friday Street, and made his way eastward along Cheapside to meet the scholar by appointment among the evening idlers in the Pawn of the Exchange. He thought industriously, as he went.