The Story of Francis Cludde

So twice in one day, and that the gloomiest day of my life, I was succored by a woman. I have never forgotten it. I have tried to keep it always in mind; remembering too a saying of my uncle's, that "there is nothing on earth so merciful as a good woman, or so pitiless as a bad one!"

CHAPTER V

MISTRESS BERTRAM

"Ding! ding! ding! Aid ye the poor! Pray for the dead! Five o'clock and a murky morning."

The noise of the bell, and the cry which accompanied it, roused me from my first sleep in London, and that with a vengeance; the bell being rung and the words uttered within three feet of my head. Where did I sleep, then? Well, I had found a cozy resting-place behind some boards which stood propped against the wall of a baker's oven in a street near Moorgate. The wall was warm and smelt of new bread, and another besides myself had discovered its advantages. This was the watchman, who had slumbered away most of his vigil cheek by jowl with me, but, morning approaching, had roused himself, and before he was well out of his bed, certainly before he had left his bedroom, had begun-the ungrateful wretch-to prove his watchfulness by disturbing every one else.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, grinding my shoulders well against the wall for warmth. I had no need to turn out yet, but I began to think, and the more I thought the harder I stared at the planks six inches before my nose. My thoughts turned upon a very knotty point; one that I had never seriously considered before. What was I going to do next? How was I going to live or to rear the new house of which I have made mention? Hitherto I had aimed simply at reaching London. London had paraded itself before my mind-though my mind should have known better-not as a town of cold streets and dreary alleys and shops open from seven to four with perhaps here and there a vacant place for an apprentice; but as a gilded city of adventure and romance, in which a young man of enterprise, whether he wanted to go abroad or to rise at home, might be sure of finding his sword weighed, priced, and bought up on the instant, and himself valued at his own standard.

But London reached, the hoarding in Moorgate reached, and five o'clock in the morning reached, somehow these visions faded rapidly. In the cold reality left to me I felt myself astray. If I would stay at home, who was going to employ me? To whom should I apply? What patron had I? Or if I would go abroad, how was I to set about it? how find a vessel, seeing that I might expect to be arrested the moment I showed my face in daylight?

Here all my experience failed me. I did not know what to do, though the time had come for action, and I must do or starve. It had been all very well when I was at Coton, to propose that I would go up to London, and get across the water-such had been my dim notion-to the Courtenays and Killigrews, who, with other refugees, Protestants for the most part, were lying on the French coast, waiting for better times. But now that I was in London, and as good as an outlaw myself, I saw no means of going to them. I seemed farther from my goal than I had been in Warwickshire.

Thinking very blankly over this I began to munch the piece of bread which I owed to the old dame at Tottenham; and had solemnly got through half of it, when the sound of rapid footsteps-the footsteps of women, I judged from the lightness of the tread-caused me to hold my hand and listen. Whoever they were-and I wondered, for it was still early, and I had heard no one pass since the watchman left me-they came to a stand in front of my shelter, and one of them spoke. Her words made me start; unmistakably the voice was a gentlewoman's, such as I had not heard for almost a week. And at this place and hour, on the raw borderland of day and night, a gentlewoman was the last person I expected to light upon. Yet if the speaker were not some one of station, Petronilla's lessons had been thrown away upon me.

The words were uttered in a low voice; but the planks in front of me were thin, and the speaker was actually leaning against them. I caught every accent of what seemed to be the answer to a question. "Yes, yes! It is all right!" she said, a covert ring of impatience in her tone. "Take breath a moment. I do not see him now."

"Thank Heaven!" muttered another voice. As I had fancied, there were two persons. The latter speaker's tone smacked equally of breeding with the former's, but was rounder and fuller, and more masterful; and she appeared to be out of breath. "Then perhaps we have thrown him off the trail," she continued, after a short pause, in which she seemed to have somewhat recovered herself. "I distrusted him from the first, Anne-from the first. Yet, do you know, I never feared him as I did Master Clarence; and as it was too much to hope that we should be rid of both at once-they took good care of that-why, the attempt had to be made while he was at home. But I always felt he was a spy."

"Who? Master Clarence?" asked she who had spoken first.

"Ay, he certainly. But I did not mean him, I meant Philip."

"Well, I-I said at first, you remember, that it was a foolhardy enterprise, mistress!"

"Tut, tut, girl!" quoth the other tartly-this time the impatience lay with her, and she took no pains to conceal it-"we are not beaten yet. Come, look about! Cannot you remember where we are, nor which way the river should be? If the dawn were come, we could tell."

"But with the dawn-"

"The streets would fill. True, and, Master Philip giving the alarm, we should be detected before we had gone far. The more need, girl, to lose no time. I have my breath again, and the child is asleep. Let us venture one way or the other, and Heaven grant it be the right one!"

"Let me see," the younger woman answered slowly, as if in doubt. "Did we come by the church? No; we came the other way. Let us try this turning, then."

"Why, child, we came that way," was the decided answer. "What are you thinking of? That would take us straight back into his arms, the wretch! Come, come! you loiter," continued this, the more masculine speaker, "and a minute may make all the difference between a prison and freedom. If we can reach the Lion Wharf by seven-it is like to be a dark morning and foggy-we may still escape before Master Philip brings the watch upon us."

They moved briskly away as she spoke, and her words were already growing indistinct from distance, while I remained still, idly seeking the clew to their talk and muttering over and over again the name Clarence, which seemed familiar to me, when a cry of alarm, in which I recognized one of their voices, cut short my reverie. I crawled with all speed from my shelter, and stood up, being still in a line with the boards, and not easily distinguishable. As she had said, it was a dark morning; but the roofs of the houses-now high, now low-could be plainly discerned against a gray, drifting sky wherein the first signs of dawn were visible; and the blank outlines of the streets, which met at this point, could be seen. Six or seven yards from me, in the middle of the roadway, stood three dusky figures, of whom I judged the nearer, from their attitudes, to be the two women. The farthest seemed to be a man.

I was astonished to see that he was standing cap in hand; nay, I was disgusted as well, for I had crept out hot-fisted, expecting to be called upon to defend the women. But, despite the cry I had heard, they were talking to him quietly enough, as far as I could hear. And in a minute or so I saw the taller woman give him something.

He took it with a low bow, and appeared almost to sweep the dirt with his bonnet. She waved her hand in dismissal, and he stood back still uncovered. And-hey, presto! the women tripped swiftly away.

By this time my curiosity was intensely excited, but for a moment I thought it was doomed to disappointment. I thought that it was all over. It was not, by any means. The man stood looking after them until they reached the corner, and the moment they had passed it, he followed. His stealthy manner of going, and his fashion of peering after them, was enough for me. I guessed at once that he was dogging them, following them unknown to them and against their will; and with considerable elation I started after him, using the same precautions. What was sauce for the geese was sauce for the gander! So we went, two-one-one, slipping after one another through half a dozen dark streets, tending generally southward.

Following him in this way I seldom caught a glimpse of the women. The man kept at a considerable distance behind them, and I had my attention fixed on him. But once or twice, when, turning a corner, I all but trod on his heels, I saw them; and presently an odd point about them struck me. There was a white kerchief or something attached apparently to the back of the one's cloak, which considerably assisted my stealthy friend to keep them in view. It puzzled me. Was it a signal to him? Was he really all the time acting in concert with them; and was I throwing away my pains? Or was the white object which so betrayed them merely the result of carelessness, and the lack of foresight of women grappling with a condition of things to which they were unaccustomed? Of course I could not decide this, the more as, at that distance, I failed to distinguish what the white something was, or even which of the two wore it.

Presently I got a clew to our position, for we crossed Cheapside close to Paul's Cross, which my childish memories of the town enabled me to recognize, even by that light. Here my friend looked up and down, and hung a minute on his heel before he followed the women, as if expecting or looking for some one. It might be that he was trying to make certain that the watch were not in sight. They were not, at any rate. Probably they had gone home to bed, for the morning was growing. And, after a momentary hesitation, he plunged into the narrow street down which the women had flitted.

He had only gone a few yards when I heard him cry out. The next instant, almost running against him myself, I saw what had happened. The women had craftily lain in wait for him in the little court into which the street ran and had caught him as neatly as could be. When I came upon them the taller woman was standing at bay with a passion that was almost fury in her pose and gesture. Her face, from which the hood of a coarse cloak had fallen back, was pale with anger; her gray eyes flashed, her teeth glimmered. Seeing her thus, and seeing the burden she carried under her cloak-which instinct told me was her child-I thought of a tigress brought to bay.

"You lying knave!" she hissed. "You Judas!"

The man recoiled a couple of paces, and in recoiling nearly touched me.

"What would you?" she continued. "What do you want? What would you do? You have been paid to go. Go, and leave us!"

"I dare not," he muttered, keeping away from her as if he dreaded a blow. She looked a woman who could deal a blow, a woman who could both love and hate fiercely and openly-as proud and frank and haughty a lady as I had ever seen in my life. "I dare not," he muttered sullenly; "I have my orders."

"Oh!" she cried, with scorn. "You have your orders, have you! The murder is out. But from whom, sirrah? Whose orders are to supersede mine? I would King Harry were alive, and I would have you whipped to Tyburn. Speak, rogue; who bade you follow me?"

He shook his head.

She looked about her wildly, passionately, and I saw that she was at her wits' end what to do, or how to escape him. But she was a woman. When she next spoke there was a marvelous change in her. Her face had grown soft, her voice low. "Philip," she said gently, "the purse was light. I will give you more. I will give you treble the amount within a few weeks, and I will thank you on my knees, and my husband shall be such a friend to you as you have never dreamed of, if you will only go home and be silent. Only that-or, better still, walk the streets an hour, and then report that you lost sight of us. Think, man, think!" she cried with energy-"the times may change. A little more, and Wyatt had been master of London last year. Now the people are fuller of discontent than ever, and these burnings and torturings, these Spaniards in the streets-England will not endure them long. The times will change. Let us go, and you will have a friend-when most you need one."

He shook his head sullenly. "I dare not do it," he said. And somehow I got the idea that he was telling the truth, and that it was not the man's stubborn nature only that withstood the bribe and the plea. He spoke as if he were repeating a lesson and the master were present.

When she saw that she could not move him, the anger, which I think came more naturally to her, broke out afresh. "You will not, you hound!" she cried. "Will neither threats nor promises move you?"

"Neither," he answered doggedly; "I have my orders."

So far, I had remained a quiet listener, standing in the mouth of the lane which opened upon the court where they were. The women had taken no notice of me; either because they did not see me, or because, seeing me, they thought that I was a hanger-on of the man before them. And he, having his back to me, and his eyes on them, could not see me. It was a surprise to him-a very great surprise, I think-when I took three steps forward, and gripped him by the scruff of his neck.

"You have your orders, have you?" I muttered in his ear, as I shook him to and fro, while the taller woman started back and the younger uttered a cry of alarm at my sudden appearance. "Well, you will not obey them. Do you hear? Your employer may go hang! You will do just what these ladies please to ask of you."

He struggled an instant; but he was an undersized man, and he could not loosen the hold which I had secured at my leisure. Then I noticed his hand going to his girdle in a suspicious way. "Stop that!" I said, flashing before his eyes a short, broad blade, which had cut many a deer's throat in Old Arden Forest. "You had better keep quiet, or it will be the worse for you! Now, mistress," I continued, "you can dispose of this little man as you please."

"Who are you?" she said, after a pause; during which she had stared at me in open astonishment. No doubt I was a wild-looking figure.

"A friend," I replied. "Or one who would be such. I saw this fellow follow you, and I followed him. For the last five minutes I have been listening to your talk. He was not amenable to reason then, but I think he will be now. What shall I do with him?"

She smiled faintly, but did not answer at once, the coolness and resolution with which she had faced him before failing her now, possibly in sheer astonishment, or because my appearance at her side, by removing the strain, sapped the strength. "I do not know," she said at length, in a vague, puzzled tone.

"Well," I answered, "you are going to the Lion Wharf, and-"

"Oh, you fool!" she screamed out loud. "Oh, you fool!" she repeated bitterly. "Now you have told him all."

I stood confounded. My cheeks burned with shame, and her look of contempt cut me like a knife. That the reproach was deserved I knew at once, for the man in my grasp gave a start, which proved that the information was not lost upon him. "Who told you?" the woman went on, clutching the child jealously to her breast, as though she saw herself menaced afresh. "Who told you about the Lion Wharf?"

"Never mind," I answered gloomily. "I have made a mistake, but it is easy to remedy it." And I took out my knife again. "Do you go on and leave us."

I hardly know whether I meant my threat or no. But my prisoner had no doubts. He shrieked out-a wild cry of fear which rang round the empty court-and by a rapid blow, despair giving him courage, he dashed the hunting-knife from my hand. This done he first flung himself on me, then tried by a sudden jerk to free himself. In a moment we were down on the stones, and tumbling over one another in the dirt, while he struggled to reach his knife, which was still in his girdle, and I strove to prevent him. The fight was sharp, but it lasted barely a minute. When the first effort of his despair was spent, I came uppermost, and he was but a child in my hands. Presently, with my knee on his chest, I looked up. The women were still there, the younger clinging to the other.

"Go! go!" I cried impatiently. Each second I expected the court to be invaded, for the man had screamed more than once.

But they hesitated. I had been forced to hurt him a little, and he was moaning piteously. "Who are you?" the elder woman asked-she who had spoken all through.

"Nay, never mind that!" I answered. "Do you go! Go, while you can. You know the way to the Wharf."