SHUDDERING with fear and gasping for breath, they lay side by side, their convulsed faces pressed into the grass. Such a nightmare of terrors as they had endured had for a time overthrown them both completely. But in their veins was youth, and very soon the courage it gives began to renew them.
Yet, as thus they lay in the grass by the bank of the river, fighting for the strength to go on, there was a grim sense already in each of their hearts that they were no more than a pair of birds in a snare. Not for an instant dare they consider how long they might hope to elude pursuit. Perhaps it might be given to them to enjoy an hour of freedom—if freedom it could be called with a desperate hue and cry upon their heels—but it was by no means certain that even so much grace as this would be vouchsafed.
They rose presently from the cool grass. Already their strength had returned. It was still early morning, not more than seven o’clock perhaps, but the day promised to be glorious. A trembling sheen, like a curtain of finest gossamer, was falling from the face of the sun; the mists were receding from the fast-flowing river. Cattle were lowing in the fields; larks were singing in the upper air. Nature in all her color and music, in all her pomp, variety and gladness, was spread before them. Every brake was alive with the song of birds; from every hedge and tree the tender green was bursting. How was it possible, amid such a pageant of young life, for either of them to think of death?
A little chilled by the grass in which they had lain, they began again to run by the side of the river. Like a pair of colts they shook their limbs free. For a mile or more they ran their hardest in order to get warm, and perhaps in order to outstrip the thought that held their souls in thrall. On and on they ran. The sense of motion, of untrammeled freedom in their pulses, was like a delicious madness now. At last they stopped, feeling very hot and breathless, and bathed their hands and faces in the river. Then they made the discovery that they were desperately hungry.
Alas! there was no means at hand of staying their pangs. And even had food been obtainable they would have been face to face with the fact that they had not so much as a penny between them. The whole of their worldly store consisted of the clothes in which they stood and a dagger whose hilt was curiously wrought in silver. But these were slender means enough to meet even the most pressing of their needs. Alas! that Anne, in the obsession of her high resolve, had forgotten the importance of putting a purse in her pocket.
It was a bitter discovery. Slowly and very surely the pangs of their hunger were mounting, so that all too soon their spirits fell. Then they sat on the grass and rested awhile and dabbled their wrists in the cool water of the fast-flowing river. Thus they gained new strength and were put in better heart. And as they now continued their strange journey at a drooping pace, they walked hand in hand with a kind of tragic tenderness.
In a little while, however, Providence again declared itself to them.
A sudden turn of the riverside path revealed a woman sitting under a hedge milking a cow. Hand in hand, like a pair of children, they approached her and humbly craved one drink apiece from her pail.
The woman was old and ill-seeming, with a very hard face, and there was nothing about her to suggest that it was her nature to be generous. But the strange request was made very politely. It was preferred in a manner not unworthy of persons of condition, but in the shrewd eyes of Mistress Poll Plackett their appearance had a grave lack of anything of the kind.
The man was without a hat, his long fair hair was lank and undressed, his clothes, though of a good sort, were covered with mud, and his face might have had considerable beauty had it been less wild, less pitifully haggard. As for his companion, good Mistress Plackett was completely at a loss to say who and what she might be. In the first place it was hard to determine her sex, let alone her degree. The shape was all slenderness, all long-flanked delicacy; a profusion of charming curls escaped in clusters from under her velvet cap; the face, full of a rare and vivid beauty, was lit by two eyes that were like twin stars of gray light. Yet she too was covered with mud and she bore a look of wild distress. And far worse even than this, to Mistress Plackett’s horror the nether limbs were clad in a pair of leather breeches.
Had it not been for this unlucky garment their good looks and good manners might have melted the heart of a prudent housewife and fearless Christian. But such a strange style of dress was a sore tax upon her forbearance.
“I don’t know what to say, and that’s the truth,” said Mistress Plackett very doubtfully indeed. “I don’t like the looks o’ ye. Can ye pay for a little drink apiece?”
“By my faith no,” said Gervase, with perfect honesty. “We cannot do that, good dame. But give us even a very little draught of your delicious milk and we will bless the day that you were born.”
“I don’t doubt ye will,” said Mistress Plackett sourly, “if ye get a drink for nix.”
Further scrutiny followed hard upon this unblushing confession of absence of wherewithal. Moreover it seemed to confirm Mistress Plackett’s unfavorable opinion.
“Do you see any green in this eye, young man?” said she. “And do you suppose that Poll Plackett has passed three-score and five winters in a hard world, and the same amount o’ summers to match ’em, not to have better wisdom than to give away milk warm from the cow to a gallus pair o’ strolling Egyptians?”
“Don’t be hard-hearted, mother, I pray you,” said the young man in his beguiling speech. “If only you knew how hungry we are! Let us drink only a very little of your delicious milk, and God will reward you.”
“Maybe, young man,” said Mistress Plackett, “and maybe He will reward me doubly for the little ye take not. However, here is the pail. Have a little drink, you Egyptian, for I am bound to say you have a very good-looking face.”
“A thousand thanks,” said Gervase, eagerly seizing the milk-pail. “But first may I offer it to—to my friend?”
“No, you may not,” said Mistress Plackett roundly.
“But why may I not, good mother? We will take but a very little apiece.”
But Mistress Plackett shook her head sternly. “Be your friend a man or a woman?” she said.
“Can you not see that she is a young gentlewoman?”
“Od burn me if I can!” said Mistress Poll. “A young woman she may be, but gentle she is not, to appear out of her sex. I will not have my honest pail go near such a shameless thing. Let her keep off, else you shall go wanting yourself.”
“But, good mother——”
“Let the young doxey keep off, I say. She shall not have a drop as I am a virtuous woman. And if I did but know where to find Master Tippet the thirdborough, she should be burned in the hand and whipped out o’ the county o’ Derby.”
So shocked was Mistress Poll Plackett when she discovered the sex of the second Egyptian, that the first, for all his beguiling speech, was like to go hungry. Gervase and Anne were desperately keen-set, and they very well knew that it was within their power to take the milk-pail from the custody of this good lady, and to soften her protests by applying the milking stool to her head. But fierce as their hunger was, they yet hesitated to take such extreme measures. Still it was driving them so hard as sorely to try their forbearance.
“The shameless hussy shall not touch a drop,” said Mistress Poll. “But you seem a proper and decent and fair-spoken youth, and ye shall sup a modest bellyful.”
“Not a drop will I touch until my sister has drunk,” said Gervase.
“Ye called her friend just now,” said Mistress Plackett grimly.
“Sister and friend,” said the young man, with a profound air. “He who finds a friend in a sister has a sister for a friend.”
Gervase spoke with much gravity, as if this gem of philosophy was worthy of the deepest consideration. He had already grasped the truth that there are occasions in life when it matters little what is said so long as it be well said. And in that age he would have been a poor-witted fellow who having been bred as a scholar could not readily assume the garb of wisdom.
Yet after all it may have been less Gervase Heriot’s whimsical readiness that prevailed with the good wife than his charming voice, his tall, fine person and his gracious, manly air. When all was said this was no Egyptian. None of the tribe of lawless wanderers could have shown such a delicacy of manners when hunger drove him hard.
“Ye can both drink your fill,” said Mistress Poll Plackett.
They needed no second invitation. Anne drank first of the warm, delicious draught, that might have been ambrosia straight from heaven. Then drank Gervase.
“Good mother,” he said as he gave back the pail, “two wayfardingers will remember you in their prayers this night. And our prayers, alas! must be your only guerdon. But from our hearts we thank you.”
Mistress Poll shook her head. “Let it be so,” she said gruffly. “Although you can’t cut ice with thank you, still I don’t begrudge the milk, young man. But my advice to you is this: when you come to a bush give your young doxey a sound beating, that she may learn not to ape her betters in such a shameless livery.”