Captain Ravenshaw
By Robert Neilson Stephens
The ill-clad person who clutched the cooked fowl, which accident had thus summarily bestowed upon him, made short work of fleeing down the stairs and out into the black, chill February night. Once outside, though he could not see his hand before his face, he turned toward Cheapside and stumbled forward along the miry way. He desired to put himself so far from the Windmill tavern that he might not be overtaken by anyone who could claim the fowl. The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from the spit, had to grope through an inky wind.
He listened for possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, so he chuckled inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of security. Now and then, he raised it to his nostrils in anticipation of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting place he had in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he passed. Still, it was so dark that downlookers could no more have seen him than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting windows, and gabled roof peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow street he fled.
At one place, a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him for a moment and showed a young man’s face with sharp features and a soft expression. Still, the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and there was no other nightwalker abroad in the street to have seen it while it was visible. “Surely,” he meditated as he went, “the time of miracles has returned. And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven’s interposition. With the arrogance of the hungry, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs, and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to steal a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table.
And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. I make the canary my own in three swallows, just in time to set down the pot before a tapster comes in. I fake it. I am searching for friends who must be in the other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must look in at t’other chamber door; behold, some follower of Mars, who seems as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry.
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Robert Neilson Stephens
Robert Neilson Stephens (July 22, 1867 – January 20, 1906) was an American novelist and playwright.
Biography.
An Enemy to the King, a play and a novel, was one of his best-known works. An Enemy to the King was also adapted for the cinema under the same title, An Enemy to the King, in 1916. Stephens was born in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1867, to James Andrew and Rebecca (Neilson) Stephens. His father died when he was 9, and his mother then became a teacher. He graduated from the high school in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, then worked at a printing office, followed by a book store and railroad office, until the Philadelphia Press hired him in December 1886.
He was the drama editor of that paper until 1893, and by that time, had also published short stories in magazines. He subsequently became a theatrical agent in New York City and began writing plays. His first play, On the Bowery, featured famous bridge jumper Steve Brodie. On the Bowery and his other early plays were intended for widespread consumption, not critical acclaim, hoping he could produce more severe pieces. Stephens married Maude Helfenstein in 1889. Long in ill health, Stephens went to England in 1899 and died in Bournemouth, England, on January 20, 1906.
Robert Neilson Stephens
