The Battle of Hexham Part 5

_1 Rob._ As rocks, Captain. Come, bullies! all to your duties. Keep your ears, and lose your tongues. Listen, in silence, for the tread of a pa.s.senger; and, when he's near enough, spring upon him, like so many cats at a mouse hole.

CATCH.

_"Buz, quoth the blue-fly."_ _Lurk o'er the green-sword;_ _Mum let us be:--_ _Lurk, and mum's the word,_ _For you and me!_ _Thro' the brake, thro' the wood, prowl, prowl around!_ _We watch the footsteps, with ears to the ground._ _Ears to the ground._

[_Exeunt ROBBERS._

_Gondi._ Here is another moment s.n.a.t.c.h'd--a short one-- To commune with myself:--yet, wherefore, think?

Why court consuming sorrow to my bosom, Which, like the nurs'ling pelican, drinks the blood Of its fond cherisher?

Why rather should not turbulence of action Shake off the tax of tyrannous remembrance?

'Tis not the mere, and actual suffering, That bends the n.o.ble spirit to the earth, And cracks the proud heart's chord:--The prisoner, Whose feverish limbs, for many a long, long year, No summer breeze has fann'd, might still be patient,-- Did not remembrance, yoked with cursed comparison, Enter his dungeon walls, and conjure up The shadows of past joys;--then, thought on thought, Like molten lead, run thro' the wretch's brain, And burning fancy mads him.--Hence, Remembrance!

How baneful art thou to me, when this course Must be thy antidote! I'll thro' the forest, And seek these wanderers.--Fell necessity, And the rude band that I am link'd withal, Demand that I should prey on them:--yet, still, My heart leans to them, tho' their fatal cause Has shorn me to the quick:--for them I fled My home, my dear loved----Oh, peace, Gondibert!

Touch not that string!--If I must think, I'll think That Heaven one day may smile. [_Exit._

SCENE II.

_Part of the Forest._

_Enter ADELINE and GREGORY._

_Gregory._ Gently, good madam; gently, for the love of corns! Where is it you mean to go?

_Adeline._ Even where chance shall carry us, Gregory.

_Gregory._ 'Faith, madam, and if chance would carry us, it would be doing us a great favour; for we have walked far enough, in all conscience.

_Adeline._ Then, here, my good fellow, we must rest ourselves.

_Gregory._ Here! what in the wood? and night coming on!

_Adeline._ Good faith even here!--here, for necessity demands it, we must pa.s.s the night: and, in the morning, the ring-dove, cooing to its mate, will wake us to our journey homeward. This is a retreat, were but the mind at ease, a king might well repose in.

_Gregory._ It must be King Nebuchadnezzar then: if we haven't some of his gra.s.s-eating qualities, we shall find ourselves badly off for a supper. 'Tis ten to one, too, but we may wander here for a week, without finding our way out again.

_Adeline._ Oh! this world! this world! I am weary on't! 'Would I had been some villager!--'twere well, now, to be a shepherd's boy--he has no cares--but while his sheep browse on the mountain's side, with vacant mind--happy in ignorance--he sinks to sleep, o'ercanopied with heaven, and makes the turf his pillow.

_Gregory._ Yes, but he has plaguy damp sheets, for all that. I'd exchange all the turf and sky in the county, for a good warm barn and a blanket; and as for the cooing doves, I would not give a crack'd tester for a forest full of them; unless I could see some of their claws stuck up through the holes of a brown piecrust.

_Adeline._ Fie! Gregory; be content, be content. Think that we are happy in this forest, in having thus escaped the enemy's fire, and be grateful in the change.

_Gregory._ Why, we are out of the fire, to be sure; but, make the best on't we can, we are still in the frying-pan. And starving is one of those blessings for which people are not very apt to be thankful. But we have escaped killing; so I'll e'en be content, as long as there is comfort in comparison. I stumbled over a fat trumpeter in the field, stript and plunder'd, with his skin full of bullets. Well, I am thankful yet--mine is a marvellous happy lot, to be better than a dead trumpeter!

_Adeline._ Truce now, Gregory; and consider how we can best dispose ourselves here, till the morning.

_Gregory._ Nay, there's no need of much consideration; there's little distinction of apartments here, madam: we shall both sleep on the ground floor--and our lodgings will be pure and airy, I warrant them.

_Adeline._ Peace, fool! nor let thy grosser mind, half fears, half levity, thus trifle with my feelings! I have borne me up against affliction, till my o'ercharged bosom can contain no longer.

_Gregory._ O the father! look if my poor dear lady be not a weeping!--why, madam--Lady Adeline--dear madam! I am but a fool as you say; but I'm as honest and as faithful as the greatest knave of them all:--and haven't I sighed, sobbed, fasted, fought, and run away, to show you that I would stand by you to the last? and haven't I----

_Adeline._ Pr'ythee, no more, Gregory! bear with, my pettishness--for, now and then, the tongue of disappointment will needs let fall some of the acid drops which misery sprinkles the heart withal.

_Gregory._ Now must I play the comforter. Why, lord, madam, I think, when a body comes to be used to it a little, this forest must be a sweet, dingy, retired, gloomy, pleasant sort of a place;--besides, what's one night? sleeping bears it out--and I'll warrant us we'll find such snug delicious beds of dry leaves, that-- [_Hard shower_.] 'Sbud!

no!--I lie--it rains like all the dogs and cats in the kingdom--there won't be a dry twig left, large enough to shelter a c.o.c.k-chafer--we shall both be sopped here, like two toasts in a tankard-- [_Thunder._

_Adeline._ Why, why should fortune sport with a weak woman thus! why, fickle G.o.ddess, wanton as boys in giddy cruelty, torture a silly fly before you kill it?

_Gregory._ 'Faith, madam, for that matter, I am but a blue-bottle of fortune's myself; and, though sorrow is dry, they say, this is a sort of soaking it does not care to be moistened with. If it would rain good barrels of ale, now, sorrow would not so much mind being out in the storm. [_Thunder again._] No; sorrow would be disappointed there too: this rumbling is enough to flatten the finest beer shower, a man would wish to take a whet in.--Lud! lud! madam! let's get out ou't, if there's a hollow tree to be found. [_Thunder._

_Adeline._ The thunder rolls awful on the ear, and strikes the soul with terror. The plunderer, too, perhaps catching the sulphurous flash, explores his wretched prey, and stalks to midnight murder.

_Gregory._ Mercy on us, madam, don't talk of that!--now I think on't, if we were to pick and chuse, for a twelvemonth, we couldn't have pitched upon a more convenient place to be knocked down in. Shelter!

dear madam! shelter.

_Adeline._ Is it thus you stand by me, Gregory? I, at least, hoped you had valour enough to--

[_ROBBERS appear behind, and slowly advance._

_Gregory._ Exactly enough; but not a morsel to spare. So we'll e'en look out for a place of safety. Not that I'm afraid though.--Stand by you?--egad, if half a dozen, now, of stout, raw-boned fellows were to dare to molest you, I would make no more of whipping this [_Drawing his Sword._] through their dirty lungs, than I would of----

[_ROBBERS surround ADELINE and GREGORY._

_1 Rob._ Stand!

_Gregory._ O mercy! mercy! I'm as dead a man as ever I was in my life.

[_Drops his Sword, and falls._

_Adeline._ Heavens! when will my miseries end! Speak, friends, what would you have?

_1 Rob._ What you have.

_Adeline._ If it is our lives you seek, they are so care worn, that in resigning them, we part with that which is scarce worth the keeping.

_Gregory._ 'Tis very true indeed. Pray don't take them, gentlemen;--they'll do you no kind of good.

_2 Rob._ Peace!

_1 Rob._ Marry, a well favoured boy. Say, youth, whence came you, and whither bound?

_Adeline._ I scarce know whither; but I came far inland; sent by my father to the wars; his sword the sole inheritance his age can leave me. This man, a faithful servant of our cottage, in simple love has followed me.

_1 Rob._ Well, youth; be of good cheer--He, who has little, has little to lose; and a soldier's pocket is seldom much lighter for emptying.

Come; you must both with us--bring them to our captain's cave.

[_Exeunt FIRST and FOURTH ROBBER._