:
Ne
i
a
é
MASTER SKYLARK
“*MASTER SKYLARK, THOU SHALT HAVE THY WISH,’ SAID QUEEN
ELIZABETH.” (See p. 264.)
MASTER SKYLARK
A Story of
Shakspere’s ‘Time
»
BY
JOHN BENNETT
ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD B. BIRCH
NEW YORK
The Century Co,
Copyright, 1896, 1897, by
THE CENTURY Co.
Copyright, 1897, by
JOHN BENNETT
PRINTED IN U. 8. A.
ALL THAT NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S MOTHER
WAS TO HIM, AND MORE, MY OWN MOTHER HAS BEEN TO ME
AND TO HER HERE I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK
WITH A NEVER-FAILING LOVE
CHAPTER
I Tue Lorp Apmrrat’s Puaynrs
II
Tif
IV
Vv
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
xX
XXI
| XXIT
CONTENTS
Nicuotas Atrwoop’s Homz
Tse Lasr Straw
Orr FoR CovENTRY
In tap Warwick Roap
Tse MASTER-PLAYER .
“Wet Sune, Master Sxruarxk!”
Tan ApMIRAL’s Company ,
THe May-pay Piay
AFTER THE Phar. : :
DisowNED . . :
A Srranep RivpzE. : :
A DasH ror Frrempom . .
At Bay : : ' :
Lonpon Town . : 7
Ma’w’seLue Cickrty Carnw
CarEw’s OFFER . ; .
Master Hrerwoop Protests
Tum Rosz Piay-HovsE
DISAPPOINTMENT . . :
“Ton CHILDREN oF Paut’s”’
TuHp SxyLarxK’s Sona . .
vii
PAGE
17
25
28
33
39
46
52
60
64
69
79
&7
91
102
113
120
127
134
140
147
viii
CHAPTER
XXII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
CONTENTS
A New Lirs : : : 5
Tue Maxine or A PLAYER
Tus WANING OF THE YEAR
To SING BEFORE THE QUEEN
Tur QUEEN’S PLAISANCE . .
CHRISTMAS WITH QUEEN BESS
Back to Gaston CarEw
At THE Fatcon Inn . . a
In THE TWINKLING OF AN Erb .
Tue Last oF Gaston CAREW
CicrLty DISAPPEARS
Tur Banpy-LeEGGED Man
A Suppren Rrsoive
Wayrarina Home
TURNED ADRIFT .
A Srranep Day :
Auu’s WELL THAT ENDS WELL .
PAGE
155
161
170
179
187
194
208
214
221
231
241
245
259
266
278
282
288
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“Master Sxyitark, Tou Saatt Have Tuy Wisu,” Sap QueENn
EnLmaBETH . . . . . uw .OCSCSC«sSCFronnttispiece
FACING PAGE
THe Lorp ApmrraL’s Piarers. Tam TRUMPETERS AND THE
Drummers Lev, THerr Horses Prancina, Waite Pitumes
WAVING INTHE BREEZE. . . . . . .
““Waor Bu-est Gorna, Nick?’? AskED Roger Dawson
“Waar! How Now?” Criep THe STRANGER, SHARPLY. ‘‘Dost
Lrge or Like Met Nor?”
“Nick THoucut or His Moruer’s Sincine on 4 SUMMER’S EvEN-
INGc—Drew a DzEep BreatH AND BeGaNn TO SING
“Nosopy Breaks Nogopy’s Hearts in Oxtp Jo-oHN SMITHSES
SHo-op,” DrawLep THe SMITH, IN HIS DreEp Voice; ‘‘Nor
Srpats Nogsopy, NorHer’”’
“Diccon Hap Orren Maps Nick WHISTLES FROM THE WILLOWS
ALONG THE Avon WHEN Nick was A TODDLER” . . .
Nick Put Onze Lze@ over THe Sint anp Looxep Back z
“Ox, Nick, THov art Most Beavtiruy To Sse!”’ CrreD CicELY
“Tsar Voicn, THAT Voice!’? Nat Gites Panrep To HImMsELF
Nick GavE THE Sitvur Buckie From His Cioax To 4 Boy WxHo
Stroop Crrine wits Co~tp AND HUNGER IN THE STREET .
So Nick Ropz Home upon THE Back or THE EARL or ARUNDEL’S
Man-at-Arms . .
“Way, Sir, I’xu Sine ror Tare Now,” Sar Nick, CHoxine
“Do Na Tuov Srraixe Me Acain, Toou Rogue!” Sar Nick
“Ou, Nick, Wuat Is Ir?” Soe Crrep ee ec eee
Master SHAKSPERE Met THEM WITH OUTSTRETCHED HANDS,
aK
6
26
34
56
88
118
132
142
152
174
210
238
250
272
282
MASTER SKYLARK
MASTER SKYLARK
CHAPTER I
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS
HERE was an unwonted buzzing in the east end of
Stratford on that next to the last day of April, 1596.
It was as if some one had thrust a stick into a hive of
bees and they had come whirling out to see.
The low stone guard-wall of old Clopton bridge, built a
hundred years before by rich Sir Hugh, sometime Mayor
of London, was lined with straddling boys, like strawber-
ries upon a spear of grass, and along the low causeway
from the west across the lowland to the town, brown-faced,
barefoot youngsters sat beside the roadway with their
chubby legs a-dangle down the mossy stones, staring
away into the south across the grassy levels of the valley
of the Stour.
Punts were poling slowly up the Avon to the bridge:
and at the outlets of the town, where the streets came down
to the waterside among the weeds, little knots of men and
serving-maids stood looking into the south and listening.
1 1
2 MASTER SKYLARK
Some had waited for an hour, some for two; yet still
there was no sound but the piping of the birds in white-
thorn hedges, the hollow lowing of kine knee-deep in
grassy meadows, and the long rush of the river through
the sedge beside the pebbly shore; and naught to see but
quiet valleys, primrose lanes, and Warwick orchards white
with bloom, stretching away to the misty hills.
But still they stood and looked and listened.
The wind came stealing up out of the south, soft and
warm and sweet and still, moving the ripples upon the
river with gray gusts; and, scudding free before the wind,
a dog came trotting up the road with wet pink tongue and
sidelong gait. At the throat of Clopton bridge he stopped
and scanned the way with dubious eye, then clapped his
tail between his legs and bolted for the town. The laugh-
ing shout that followed him into the Warwick road seemed
not to die away, but to linger in the air like the drowsy
hum of bees—a hum that came and went at intervals
upon the shifting wind, and grew by littles, taking body
till it came unbroken as a long, low, distance-muffled mur-
mur from the south, so faint as scarcely to be heard.
Nick Attwood pricked his keen young ears. “They ’re
coming, Robin—hark ’e to the trampling!”
Robin Getley held his breath and turned his ear toward
the south. The far-off murmur was a mutter now, defined
and positive, and, as the two friends listened, grew into a
drumming roll, and all at once above it came a shrill, high
sound like the buzzing of a gnat close by the ear.
Little Tom Davenant dropped from the finger-post, and
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS 3
came running up from the fork of the Banbury road, his
feet making little white puffs in the dust as he flew.
“They are coming! they are coming!” he shrieked as he
ran.
Then up to his feet sprang Robin Getley, upon the
saddle-backed coping-stones, his hand upon Nick Att-
wood’s head to steady himself, and looked away where
the rippling Stour ran like a thread of silver beside the
dust-buff London road, and the little church of Atherstone
stood blue against the rolling Cotswold Hills.
“They are coming! they are coming!” shrilled little
Tom, and scrambled up the coping like a squirrel up
a rail.
A stir ran out along the guard-wall, some crying out,
some starting up. “Sit down! sit down!” cried others,
peering askance at the water gurgling green down below.
“Sit down, or we shall all be off!”
Robin held his hand above his eyes. A cloud of dust
was rising from the London road and drifting off across
the fields like smoke when the old ricks burn in damp
weather—a long, broad-sheeted mist; and in it were bits
of moving gold, shreds of bright colors vaguely seen, and
silvery gleams like the glitter of polished metal in the
sun. And as he looked the shifty wind came down out of
the west again and whirled the cloud of dust away, and
there he saw a long line of men upon horses coming at an
easy canter up the highway. Just as he had made this out
the line came rattling to a stop, the distant drumming of
hoofs was still, and as the long file knotted itself into a
4 MASTER SKYLARK
rosette of ruddy color amid the April green, a clear, shrill
trumpet blew and blew again.
“They are coming!” shouted Robin, “they are com-
ing!” and, turning, waved his cap.
A shout went up along the bridge. Those down below
came clambering up, the punts came poling with a rush of
foam, and a ripple ran along the edge of Stratford town
like the wind through a field of wheat. Windows creaked
and doors swung wide, and the workmen stopped in the
garden-plots to lean upon their mattocks and to look.
“They are coming!” bellowed Rafe Hickathrift, the
butcher’s boy, standing far out in the street, with his red
hands to his mouth for a trumpet, “they are coming!”
and at that the doors of Bridge street grew alive with
eager eyes.
At early dawn the Oxford carrier had brought the news
that the players of the Lord High Admiral were coming
up to Stratford out of London from the south, to play on
May-day there; and this was what had set the town to
buzzing like a swarm. For there were in England then
but three great companies, the High Chamberlain’s, the
Earl of Pembroke’s men, and the stage-players of my
Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of the Realm; and
the day on which they came into a Midland market-town
to play was one to mark with red and gold upon the
calendar of the uneventful year.
Away by the old mill-bridge there were fishermen
angling for dace and perch; but when the shout came
down from the London road they dropped their poles and
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS 5
ran, through the willows and over the gravel, splashing
and thrashing among the rushes and sandy shallows, not
to be last when the players came. And old John Carter,
coming down the Warwick road with a load of hay, laid on
the lash until piebald Dobbin snorted in dismay and broke
into a lumbering run to reach the old stone bridge in time.
The distant horsemen now were coming on again, riding
in double file. They had flung their banners to the breeze,
and on the changing wind, with the thumping of horses’
hoofs, came by snatches the sound of a kettledrummer
drawing his drumhead tight, and beating as he drew, and
the muffled blasts of a trumpeter proving his lips.
Fynes Morrison and Walter Stirley, who had gone to
Cowslip lane to meet the march, were running on ahead,
and shouting as they ran: “There ’s forty men, and
sumpter-mules! and, oh, the bravest banners and attire—
and the trumpets are a cloth-yard long! Make room for
us, make room for us, and let us up!”
A bowshot off, the trumpets blew a blast so high, so
clear, so keen, that it seemed a flame of fire in the air, and
as the brassy fanfare died away across the roofs of the
quiet town, the kettledrums clanged, the cymbals clashed,
and all the company began to sing the famous old song
of the hunt:
“The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
Sing merrily we, the hunt is up!
The wild birds sing,
The dun deer fling,
The forest aisles with musie ring!
Tantara, tantara, tantara !
6 MASTER SKYLARK
“Then ride along, ride along,
Stout and strong!
Farewell to grief and care;
With a rollicking cheer
For the high dun deer
And a life in the open air!
Tantara, the hunt is up, lads;
Tantara, the bugles bray !
Tantara, tantara, tantara,
Hio, hark away!”
The first of the riders had reached old Clopton bridge,
and the banners strained upon their staves in the freshen-
ing river-wind. The trumpeters and the drummers led,
their horses prancing, white plumes waving in the breeze,
and the April sunlight dancing on the brazen horns and
the silver bellies of the kettledrums.
Then came the banners of the company, curling down
with a silky swish, and unfurling again with a snap, like
a broad-lashed whip. The greatest one was rosy red, and
on it was a gallant ship upon a flowing sea, bearing upon
its mainsail the arms of my Lord Charles Howard, High
Admiral of England. Upon its mate was a giant-bearded
man with a fish’s tail, holding a trident in his hand and
blowing upon a shell, the Triton of the seas which Eng-
land ruled; this flag was bright sea-blue. The third was
white, and on it was a red wild rose with a golden heart,
the common standard of the company.
After the flags came twoscore men, the players of the
Admiral, the tiring-men, grooms, horse-boys, and serving-
knaves, well mounted on good horses, and all of them clad
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS. “THE TRUMPETERS AND THE DRUMMERS LED,
THEIR HORSES PRANCING, WHITE PLUMES WAVING IN THE BREEZE.”
THE LORD ADMIRAL’S PLAYERS 7
in scarlet tabards blazoned with the coat-armor of their
master. Upon their caps they wore the famous badge of
the Howards, a rampant silver demi-lion; and beneath
their tabards at the side could be seen their jerkins of
many-colored silk, their silver-buckled belts, and long, thin
Spanish rapiers, slapping their horses on the flanks at
every stride. Their legs were cased in high-topped riding-
boots of tawny cordovan, with gilt spurs, and the housings
of their saddles were of blue with the gilt anchors of the
admiralty upon them. On their bridles were jingling bits
of steel, which made a constant tinkling, like a thousand
little bells very far away.
Some had faces smooth as boys and were quite young;
and others wore sharp-pointed beards with stiff-waxed mus- ~
taches, and were older men, with a tinge of iron in their hair
and lines of iron in their faces, hardened by the life they
led; and some, again, were smooth-shaven, so often and so
closely that their faces were blue with the beard beneath
the skin. But, oh, to Nicholas Attwood and the rest of
Stratford boys, they were a dashing, rakish, admirable lot,
with the air of something even greater than lords, and a
keen knowingness in their sparkling, worldly eyes that
made a common wise man seem almost a fool beside them !
And so they came riding up out of the south:
“Then ride along, ride along,
Stout and strong!
Farewell to grief and care;
With a rollicking cheer
For the high dun deer
And a life in the open air!”
8 MASTER SKYLARK
“Hurrah! hurrah! God save the Queen!”
A dropping shout went up the street like an arrow-flight
scattering over the throng; and the players, waving their
scarlet caps until the long line tossed like a poppy-garden
in a summer rain, gave a cheer that fairly set the crockery
to dancing upon the shelves of the stalls in Middle Row.
“Hurrah!” shouted Nicholas Attwood, his blue eyes
shining with delight. “Hurrah, hurrah, for the Admiral’s
men!” And high in the air he threw his cap, as a wild
cheer broke from the eddying crowd, and the arches of
the long gray bridge rang hollow with the tread of hoofs.
Whiff, came the wind; down dropped the hat upon the
very saddle-peak of one tall fellow riding along among the
rest. Catching it quickly as it fell, he laughed and tossed
it back; and when Nick caught it whirling in the air, a
shilling jingled from it to the ground.
Then up Fore Bridge street they all trooped after into
Stratford town.
“Oh,” eried Robin, “it is brave, brave!”
“Brave?” eried Nick. “It makes my very heart jump.
And see, Robin, ’t is a shilling, a real silver shilling—oh,
what fellows they all be! Hurrah for the Lord High
Admiral’s men!”
CHAPTER II
NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME
ICK Attwood’s father came home that night bitterly
wroth.
The burgesses of the town council had ordered him to
build a chimney upon his house, or pay ten shillings fine;
and shillings were none too plenty with Simon Attwood,
the tanner of Old Town.
“Soul and body o’ man!” said he, “they talk as if they
owned the world, and a man could na live upon it save by
their leave. I must build my fire in a pipe, or pay ten
shillings fine? Things ha’ come to a pretty pass—a pretty
pass, indeed!” He kicked the rushes that were strewn
upon the floor, and ground the clay with his heel. “This
litter will ha’ to be all took out. Atkins will be here at
six ? the morning to do the job, and a lovely mess he will
make o’ the house!”
“ Do na fret thee, Simon,” said Mistress Attwood, gen-
tly. “The rushes need a changing, and I ha’ pined this
long while to lay the floor wi’ new clay from Shottery
common. "T is the sweetest earth! Nick shall take the
9
10 MASTER SKYLARK
hangings down, and right things up when the chimley ’s
done.”
So at cockcrow next morning Nick slipped out of his
straw bed, into his clothes, and down the winding stair,
while his parents were still asleep in the loft, and, sousing
his head in the bucket at the well, began his work before
the old town clock in the chapel tower had yet struck four.
The rushes had not been changed since Easter, and were
full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table.
Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale
and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed
with relief and wiped his hands upon the dripping grass.
It had rained in the night,—a soft, warm rain,—and
the air was full of the smell of the apple-bloom and pear
from the little orchard behind the house. The bees were
already humming about the straw-bound hives along the
garden wall, and a misguided green woodpecker clung
upside down to the eaves, and thumped at the beams of
the house.
It was very still there in the gray of the dawn. He
could hear the rush of the water through the sedge in the
mill-race, and then, all at once, the roll of the wheel, the
low rumble of the mill-gear, and the cool whisper of the
wind in the willows.
When he went back into the house again the painted
cloths upon the wall seemed dingier than ever compared
with the clean, bright world outside. The sky-blue coat
of the Prodigal Son was brown with the winter’s smoke ;
the Red Sea towered above Pharaoh’s ill-starred host like
NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME 11
an inky mountain; and the homely maxims on the next
breadth— “ Do no Wrong,” “ Beware of Sloth,” “ Overcome
Pride,” and “Keep an Eye on the Pence”—could scarcely
be read.
Nick jumped up on the three-legged stool and began to
take them down. The nails were crooked and jammed in
the wall, and the last came out with an unexpected jerk.
Losing his balance, Nick caught at the table-board which
leaned against the wall ; but the stool capsized, and he came
down on the floor with such a flap of tapestry that the
ashes flew out all over the room.
He sat up dazed, and rubbed his elbows, then looked
around and began to laugh.
He could hear heavy footsteps overhead. A door
opened, and his father’s voice called sternly from the head
of the stair: “What madcap folly art thou up to now?”
“TI be up to no folly at all,” said Nick, “but down, sir.
J fell from the stool. There ’s no harm done.”
“Then be about thy business,” said Attwood, coming
slowly down the stairs.
He was a gaunt man, smelling of leather and untanned
hides. His short iron-gray hair grew low down upon his
forehead, and his hooked nose, grim wide mouth, and
heavy under jaw gave him a look at once forbidding and
severe. His doublet of serge and his fustian hose were
stained with liquor from the vats, and his eyes were
heavy with sleep.
The smile faded from Nick’s face. “Shall I throw the
rushes into the street, sir?”
12 MASTER SKYLARK
“Nay; take them to the muck-hill. The burgesses ha’
made a great to-do about folk throwing trash into the
highways. Soul and body o’ man!” he growled, “a man
must ask if he may breathe. And good hides going
a-begeing, too!”
Nick hurried away, for he dreaded his father’s sullen
moods.
The swine were squealing in their styes, the cattle
bawled about the straw-thatched barns in Chapel lane,
and long files of gabbling ducks waddled hurriedly down
to the river through the primroses under the hedge. He
could hear the milkmaids calling in the meadows; and
when he trundled slowly home the smoke was creeping up
in pale-blue threads from the draught-holes in the wall.
The tanner’s house stood a little back from the thor-
oughfare, in that part of Stratford-on-Avon where the
south end of Church street turns from Bull lane toward
the river. It was roughly built of timber and plaster, the
black beams showing through the yellow lime in curious
squares and triangles. The roof was of red tiles, and
where the spreading elms leaned over it the peaked gable
was green with moss.
At the side of the house was a garden of lettuce; be-
yond the garden a rough wall on which the grass was
growing. Sometimes wild primroses grew on top of this
wall, and once a yellow daffodil. Beyond the wall were
other gardens owned by thrifty neighbors, and open lands
in common to them all, where foot-paths wandered here
and there in a free, haphazard way.
NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME 13
Behind the house was a well and a wood-pile, and along
the lane ran a whitewashed paling fence with a little gate,
from which the path went up to the door through rows of
bright, old-fashioned flowers.
Nick’s mother was getting the breakfast. She was a
gentle woman with a sweet, kind face, and a little air of
quiet dignity that made her doubly dear to Nick by con-
trast with his father’s unkempt ways. He used to think
that, in her worsted gown, with its falling collar of Ant-
werp linen, and a soft, silken coif upon her fading hair,
she was the most beautiful woman in all the world.
She put one arm about his shoulders, brushed back his
curly hair, and kissed him on the forehead.
“Thou art mine own good little son,” said she, tenderly,
“and I will bake thee a cake in the new chimley on the
morrow for thy May-day feast.”
Then she helped him fetch the trestles from the buttery,
set the board, spread the cloth, and lay the wooden plat-
ters, pewter cups, and old horn spoons in place. Break-
fast being ready, she then called his father from the
yard. Nick waited deftly upon them both, so that they
were soon done with the simple meal of rye-bread, lettuce,
cheese, and milk.
As he carried away the empty platters and brought
water and a towel for them to wash their hands, he said
quietly, although his eyes were bright and eager, “The
Lord High Admiral’s company is to act astage-play at
the guildhall to-morrow before Master Davenant the
Mayor and the town burgesses.”
14 MASTER SKYLARK
Simon Attwood said nothing, but his brows drew down.
“They came yestreen from London town by Oxford
way to play in Stratford and at Coventry, and are at the
Swan Inn with Master Geoffrey Inchbold—oh, ever so
many of them, in scarlet jerkins, and cloth of gold, and
doublets of silk laced up like any lord! It is avery good
company, they say.”
Mistress Attwood looked quickly at her husband.
“What will they play?” she asked.
“T ean na say surely, mother—‘Tamburlane,’ perhaps,
or ‘The Troublesome Reign of Old King John” The play
will be free, father—may I go, sir?”
“ And lose thy time from school?”
“There is no school to-morrow, sir.”
“Then have ye naught to do, that ye waste the day in
idle folly?” asked the tanner, sternly.
“J will do my work beforehand, sir,” replied Nick,
quietly, though his hand trembled a little as he brushed
up the crumbs.
“Tt is May-day, Simon,” interceded Mistress Attwood,
“and a bit of pleasure will na harm the lad.”
“Pleasure?” said the tanner, sharply. “If he does na
find pleasure enough in his work, his book, and his home,
he shall na seek it of low rogues and strolling scape-
graces.”
“But, Simon,” said Mistress Attwood, “’t is the Lord
Admiral’s own company—surely they are not all graceless!
And,” she continued with very quiet dignity, “since mine
own cousin Anne Hathaway married Will Shakspere the
NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME 15
play-actor, ’t is scarcely kind to call all players rogues
and low.”
“No more o’ this, Margaret,” cried Attwood, flushing
angrily. “Thou art ever too ready with the boy’s part
against me. He shall na go—I ll find a thing or two for
him to do among the vats that will take this taste for
idleness out of his mouth. He shall na go: so that be all
there is on it.” Rising abruptly, he left the room.
Nick clenched his hands.
“Nicholas,” said his mother, softly.
“Yes, mother,” said he; “I know. But he should na
flout thee so! And, mother, the Queen goes to the play
—father himself saw her at Coventry ten years ago. Is
what the Queen does idle folly?”
His mother took him by the hand and drew him to her
side, with a smile that was half a sigh. “Art thou the
Queen?”
“Nay,” said he; “and it ’s all the better for England,
like enough. But surely, mother, it can na be wrong—”
“To honour thy father?” said she, quickly, laying her
finger across his lips. “Nay, lad; it is thy bounden
duty.”
Nick turned and looked up at her wonderingly.
“Mother,” said he, “art thou an angel come down out of
heaven?”
“Nay,” she answered, patting his flushed cheek; “I be
only the every-day mother of a fierce little son who hath
many a hard, hard lesson to learn. Now eat thy break-
fast—thou hast been up a long while.”
16 MASTER SKYLARK
Nick kissed her impetuously and sat down, but his heart
still rankled within him.
All Stratford would go to the play. He could hear the
murmur of voices and music, the bursts of laughter and
applause, the tramp of happy feet going up the guildhall
stairs to the Mayor’s show. Everybody went in free at the
Mayor’s show. The other boys could stand on stools and
see it all. They could hold horses at the gate of the inn
at the September fair, and so see all the farces. They
could see the famous Norwich puppet-play. But he—what
pleasure did he ever have? A tawdry pageant by a lot of
clumsy country bumpkins at Whitsuntide or Pentecost, or
a silly school-boy masque at Christmas, with the master
scolding like a heathen Turk. It was not fair.
And now he’d have to work all May-day. May-day
out of all the year! Why, there was to be a May-pole
and a morris-dance, and a roasted calf, too, in Master
Wainwright’s field, since Margery was chosen Queen of
the May. And Peter Finch was to be Robin Hood, and
Nan Rogers Maid Marian, and wear a kirtle of Kendal
green—and, oh, but the May-pole would be brave; high as
the ridge of the guildschool roof, and hung with ribbons
like a rainbow! Geoffrey Hall was to lead the dance,
too, and the other boys and girls would all be there. And
where would he be? Sousing hides in the tannery vats.
Truly his father was a hard man!
He pushed the cheese away.
CHAPTER III
THE LAST STRAW
ITTLE John Summer had a new horn-book that cost
a silver penny. The handle was carven and the
horn was clear as honey. The other little boys stood round
about in speechless envy, or murmured their A B C’s and
“ba be bi’s” along the chapel steps. The lower-form boys
were playing leap-frog past the almshouse, and Geoffrey
Gosse and the vicar’s son were in the public gravel-pit,
throwing stones at the robins in the Great House elms
across the lane.
Some few dull fellows sat upon the steps behind the
school-house, anxiously poring over their books. But the
larger boys of the Fable Class stood in an excited group
beneath the shadow of the overhanging second story of
the grammar-school, talking all at once, each louder than
the other, until the noise was deafening.
“Oh, Nick, such goings on!” called Robin Getley,
whose father was a burgess, as Nick Attwood came slowly
up the street, saying his sentences for the day over and
over to himself in hopeless desperation, having had no
2 17 .
18 MASTER SKYLARK
time to learn them at home. “Stratford Council has had
a quarrel, and there ’s to be no stage-play after all.”
“What?” cried Nick, in amazement. “No stage-play?
And why not?”
“Why,” said Robin, “it was just this way—my father
told me ofit. Sir Thomas Lucy, High Sheriff of Worces-
ter, y’ know, rode in from Charlcote yesternoon, and
with him Sir Edward Greville of Milcote. So the bur-
gesses made a feast for them at the Swan Inn. Sir
Thomas fetched a fine, fat buck, and the town stood good
for ninepence wine and twopence bread, and broached a
keg of sturgeon. And when they were all met together
there, eating, and drinking, and making merry—what?
Why, in came my Lord Admiral’s players from London
town, ruffling it like high dukes, and not caring two pops
for Sir Thomas, or Sir Edward, or for Stratford burgesses
all in a heap; but sat them down at the table straightway,
and called for ale, as if they owned the place; and not
being served as soon as they desired, they laid hands upon
Sir Thomas’s server as he came in from the buttery with
his tray full, and took both meat and drink.”
“What?” cried Nick.
“As sure as shooting, they did!” said Robin; “and
when Sir Thomas’s gentry yeomen would have seen to it
—what? Why, my Lord Admiral’s master-player clapped
his hand to his poniard-hilt, and dared them come and
take it if they could.”
“To Sir Thomas Lucy’s men?” exclaimed Nick, aghast.
“Ay, to their teeth! Sir Edward sprang up then, and
THE LAST STRAW 19
said it was a shame for players to penave so outrageously
in Will Shakspere’s own home town. And at that Sir
Thomas, who, y’ know, has always misliked Will, flared
up like a bull at a red rag, and swore that all stage-play-
ers be runagate rogues, anyway, and Will Shakspere
neither more nor less than a deer-stealing scape-gallows.”
“Surely he did na say that in Stratford Council?” pro-
tested Nick.
“Ay, but he did—that very thing,” said Robin; “and
when that was out, the master-player sprang upon the
table, overturning half the ale, and cried out that Will
Shakspere was his very own true friend, and the sweetest
fellow in all England, and that whosoever gainsaid it was
a hemp-cracking rascal, and that he would prove it upon
his back with a quarter-staff whenever and wherever he
chose, be he Sir Thomas Lucy, St. George and the Dragon,
Guy of Warwick, and the great dun cow, all rolled up in
one!”
“Robin Getley, is this the very truth, or art thou cozen-
ing me?”
“Upon my word, it is the truth,” said Robin. “And
that’s not all. Sir Edward cried out ‘Fie!’ upon the
player for a saucy varlet ; but the fellow only laughed, and
bowed quite low, and said that he took no offense from
Sir Edward for saying that, since it could not honestly be
denied, but that Sir Thomas did not know the truth from
a truckle-bed in broad daylight, and was but the remnant
of a gentleman to boot.”
“The bold-faced rogue!”
20 MASTER SKYLARK
“ Ay, that he is,” nodded Robin; “and for his boldness
Sir Thomas straightway demanded that the High Bailiff
refuse the company license to play in Stratford.”
“Refuse the Lord High Admiral’s players?”
“Marry, no one else. And then Master John Shakspere.
wroth at what Sir Thomas had said of his son Will, vowed
that he would send a letter down to London town, and lay
the whole coil before the Lord High Admiral himself.
For ever since that he was High Bailiff, the best compa-
nies of England had always been bidden to play in Strat-
ford, and it would be an ill thing now to refuse the Lord
Admiral’s company after granting licenses to both my
Lord Pembroke’s and the High Chamberlain’s.”
“ And so it would,” spoke up Walter Roche; “for there
are our own townsmen, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage,
who are cousins of mine, and John Hemynge and Thomas
Greene, besides Will Shakspere and his brother Edmund,
all playing in the Lord Chamberlain’s company in London
before the Queen. It would be a black score against them
all with the Lord Admiral—I doubt not he would pay
them out.”
“That he would,” said Robin, “and so said my father
and Alderman Henry Walker, who, y’ know, is Will
Shakspere’s own friend. And some of the burgesses who
cared not a rap for that were afeard of offending the
Lord Admiral. But Sir Thomas vowed that my Lord
Howard was at Cadiz with Walter Raleigh and the young
Earl of Sussex, and would by no means hear of it. So
Master Bailiff Stubbes, who, ’t is said, doth owe Sir Thomas
. THE LAST STRAW 21
forty pound, and is therefore under his thumb, forthwith
refused the company license to play in Stratford guild-
hall, inn-yard, or common. And at that the master-player
threw his glove into Master Stubbes’s face, and called
Sir Thomas a stupid old bell-wether, and Stratford bur-
gesses silly sheep for following wherever he chose to
jump.”
“ And so they be,” sneered Hal Saddler.
“How?” cried Robin, hotly. “My father is a burgess.
Dost thou call him a sheep, Hal Saddler?”
“Nay, nay,” stammered Hal, hastily; “’t was not thy
father I meant.”
“Then hold thy tongue with both hands,” said Robin,
sharply, ‘‘or it will crack thy pate for thee some of these
fine days.”
“But come, Robin,” asked Nick, eagerly, “ what became
of the quarrel?”
“Well, when the master-player threw his glove into
Master Stubbes’s face, the Chief Constable seized him for
contempt of Stratford Council, and held him for trial.
At that some cried ‘Shame!’ and some ‘Hurrah!’ but the
rest of the players fled out of town in the night, lest their
baggage be taken by the law and they be fined.”
“Whither did they go?” asked Nick, both sorry and
glad to hear that they were gone.
“To Coventry, and left the master-player behind in
gaol.”
“Why, they dare na use him so—the Lord Admiral’s
own man!”
22 MASTER SKYLARK
“Ay, that they don’t! Why, hark ’e, Nick! This
morning, since Sir Thomas has gone home, and the bur-
gesses’ heads have all cooled down from the sack and the
clary they were in last night, la! but they are in a pretty
stew, my father says, for fear that they have given offense
to the Lord Admiral. So they have spoken the master-
player softly, and given him his freedom out of hand, and
a long gold chain to twine about his cap, to mend the
matter with, beside.”
“Whee-ew!” whistled Nick. “I wish I were a master-
player !”
“Oh, but he will not be pleased, and says he will have
his revenge on Stratford town if he must needs wait until
the end of the world or go to the Indies after it. And
he has had his breakfast served in Master Geoffrey Inch-
bold’s own room at the Swan, and swears that he will
walk the whole way to Coventry sooner than straddle the
horse that the burgesses have sent him to ride.”
“What! Is he at the inn? Why, let’s go down and
see him.”
“Master Brunswood says that he will birch whoever
cometh late,” objected Hal Saddler.
“Birch?” groaned Nick. “Why, he does nothing but
birch! }
wes.
¢ ~
ee SN
“«WHAT! HOW NOW?’ CRIED THE STRANGER, SHARPLY. ‘DOST LIKE OR
LIKE ME NOT??”
THE MASTER-PLAYER 35
“a town like that is its own murrain—let it sicken on
itself!”
He struck an attitude, and waved his hand as if he were
talking quite as much to the trees and sky as he was to
Nick Attwood, and looked about him as if waiting for ap-
plause. Then all at once he laughed,—a rollicking, merry
laugh,—and threw off his furious manner as one does an
old coat. “ Well, boy,” said he, with a quiet smile, looking
kindly at Nick, “thou art a right stanch little friend to
all of us stage-players. And I thank thee for it in Will
Shakspere’s name; for he is the sweetest fellow of us all.”
His voice was simple, frank, and free—so different from
the mad tone in which he had just been ranting that Nick
caught his breath with surprise.
“Nay, lad, look not so dashed,” said the master-player,
merrily ; “that was only old Jem Burbage’s mighty tragic
style; and I—I am only Gaston Carew, hail-fellow-well-
met with all true hearts. Be known to me, lad; what is
thy name? I like thy open, pretty face.”
Nick flushed. “Nicholas Attwood is my name, sir.”
“Nicholas Attwood? Why, it is a good name. Nick
Attwood,—young Nick,—I hope Old Nick will never catch
thee—upon my word I do, and on the remnant of mine
honour! Thou hast taken a player’s part like a man, and
thou art a good fellow, Nicholas Attwood, and I love thee.
So thou art going to Coventry to see the players act?
Surely thine is a nimble wit to follow fancy nineteen miles.
Come; I am going to Coventry to join my fellows. Wilt
thou go with me, Nick, and dine with us this night at the
36 MASTER SKYLARK
best inn in all Coventry—the Blue Boar? Thou hast quite
plucked up my downcast heart for me, lad, imdeed thou
hast; for I was sore of Stratford town—aud I shall not
soon forget thy plucky fending for our own sweet Will
Come, say thou wilt go with me.”
“Indeed, sir,’ said Nick, bowing again, his head all in a
whirl of excitement at this wonderful adventure, “indeed
I will, and that right gladly, sir.” And with heart beat-
ing like a trip-hammer he walked along, cap in hand, not
knowing that his head was bare.
The master-player laughed a simple, hearty laugh.
“Why, Nick,” said he, laying his hand caressingly upon
the boy’s shoulder, “I am no such great to-do as all that
—upon my word, I’m not! A man of some few parts,
perhaps, not common in the world; but quite a plain
fellow, after all. Come, put off this high humility and be
just friendly withal. Put on thy cap; we are but two good
faring-fellows here.”
So Nick put on his cap, and they went on together, Nick
in the seventh heaven of delight.
About a mile beyond Stratford, Welecombe wood creeps
down along the left. Just beyond, the Dingles wind
irregularly up from the foot-path below to the crest of
Welcombe hill, through straggling clumps and briery
hollows, sweet with nodding bluebells, ash, and hawthorn
Nick and the master-player paused a moment at the top
to catch their breath and to look back.
Stratford and the valley of the Avon lay spread before
them like a picture of peace, studded with blossoming
THE MASTER-PLAYER 37
orchards and girdled with spring. Northward the forest
of Arden clad the rolling hills. Southward the fields of
Feldon stretched away to the blue knolls beyond which lay
Oxford and Northamptonshire. The ragged stretches of
Snitterfield downs scrambled away to the left; and on the
right, beyond Bearley, were the wooded uplands where
Guy of Warwick and Heraud of Arden slew the wild ox
and the boar. And down through the midst ran the Avon
southward, like a silver ribbon slipped through Kendal
green, to where the Stour comes down, past Luddington.
to Bidford, and away to the misty hills.
“Why,” exclaimed the master-player—“ why, upon my
word, it is a fair town—as fair a town as the heart of man
could wish. Wish? I wish ’t were sunken in the sea,
with all its pack of fools! Why,” said he, turning wrath-
fully upon Nick, “that old Sir Thingumbob of thine, down
there, called me a caterpillar on the kingdom of England,
a vagabond, and a common player of interludes! Called
me vagabond! Me! Why, I have more good licenses
than he has wits. And as to Master Bailiff Stubbes, I
have permits to play from more justices of the peace than
he can shake a stick at in a month of Sundays!” He
shook his fist wrathfully at the distant town, and gnawed
his mustache until one side pointed up and the other down.
“But, hark ’e, boy, I ll have my vengeance on them all—
ay, that will I, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine
honour—or else my name’s not Gaston Carew!”
“Ts it true, sir,” asked Nick, hesitatingly, “that they
despitefully handled you?”
38 MASTER SKYLARK
“With their tongues, ay,” said Carew, bitterly ; “but not
otherwise.” He clapped his hand upon his poniard, and
threw back his head defiantly. “They dared not come to
blows—they knew my kind! Yet John Shakspere is no
bad sort—he knoweth what is what. But Master Bailiff
Stubbes, I ween, is a long-eared thing that brays for
thistles. I ‘ll thistle him! He called Will Shakspere
rogue. Hast ever looked through a red glass?”
“Nay,” said Nick.
“Well, it turns the whole world red. And so it is with
Master Stubbes. He looks through a pair of rogue’s eyes
and sees the whole world rogue. Why, boy,” cried the
master-player, vehemently, “he thought to buy my
tongue! Marry, if tongues were troubles he has bought
himself a peck! What! Buy my silence? Nay, he ’ll
see a deadly flash of silence when I come to my Lord the
Admiral again!”
CHAPTER VII
“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!”
T was past high noon, and they had long since left War-
wick castle far behind. “Nicholas,” said the master-
player, in the middle of a stream of amazing stories of life
in London town, “there is Blacklow knoll.” He pointed
to a little hill off to the left.
Nick stared; he knew the tale: how grim old Guy de
Beauchamp had Piers Gaveston’s head upon that hill for
calling him the Black Hound of Arden.
“Ah!” said Carew, “times have changed since then,
boy, when thou couldst have a man’s head off for calling
thee a name—or I would have yon Master Bailiff Stubbes’s
head off short behind the ears—and Sir Thomas Lucy’s
too!” he added, with a sudden flash of anger, gritting his
teeth and clenching his hand upon his poniard. “But,
Nicholas, hast anything to eat?”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
Master Carew pulled from his pouch some barley-cakes
and half a small Banbury cheese, yellow as gold and with
a keen, sharp savour. “’T is enough for both of us,” said
39
40 MASTER SKYLARK
he, as they came to a shady little wood with a clear,
mossy-bottomed spring running down into a green meadow
with a mild noise, murmuring among the stones. “Come
along, Nicholas; we ’ll eat it under the trees.”
He had a small flask of wine, but Nick drank no wine,
and went down to the spring instead. There was a wild
bird singing in a bush there, and as he trotted down the
slope it hushed its wandering tune. Nick took the sound
up softly, and stood by the wet stones a little while,
imitating the bird’s trilling note, and laughing to hear it
answer timidly, as if it took him for some great new bird
without wings. Cocking its shy head and watching him
shrewdly with its beady eye, it sat, almost persuaded that
it was only size which made them different, until Nick
clapped his cap upon his head and strolled back, singing
as he went.
It was only the thread of an old-fashioned madrigal
which he had often heard his mother sing, with quaint
words long since gone out of style and hardly to be un-
derstood, and between the staves a warbling, wordless re-
frain which he had learned out on the hills and in the
fields, picked up from a bird’s glad-throated morning-
song.
He had always sung the plain-tunes in church without
taking any particular thought about it; and he sang
easily, with a clear young voice which had a full, flute-
like note in it like the high, sweet song of a thrush singing
in deep woods.
Gaston Carew, the master-player, was sitting with his
“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!” 41
back against an oak, placidly munching the last of the
cheese, when Nick began to sing. He started, straighten-
ing up as if some one had called him suddenly out of a
sound sleep, and, turning his head, listened eagerly.
Nick mocked the wild bird, called again with a mellow,
warbling trill, and then struck up the quaint old madrigal
with the bird’s song running through it. Carew leaped to
his feet, with a flash in his dark eyes. “My soul! my
soul!” he exclaimed in an excited undertone. “It is not
—nay, it cannot be—why, ’t is—it is the boy! Upon my
heart, he hath a skylark prisoned in his throat! Well
sung, well sung, Master Skylark!” he cried, clapping his
hands in real delight, as Nick came singing up the bank.
“Why, lad, I vow I thought thou wert up in the sky some-
where, with wings to thy back! Where didst thou learn
that wonder-song?”
Nick colored up, quite taken aback. “I do na know,
sir,” said he; “mother learned me part, and the rest just
came, I think, sir.”
The master-player, his whole face alive and eager, now
stared at Nicholas Attwood as fixedly as Nick had stared
at him.
It was a hearty little English lad he saw, about eleven
years of age, tall, slender, trimly built, and fair. A gray
cloth cap clung to the side of his curly yellow head, and
he wore a sleeveless jerkin of dark-blue serge, gray home-
spun hose, and heelless shoes of russet leather. The white
sleeves of his linen shirt were open to the elbow, and his
arms were lithe and brown. His eyes were frankly clear
42 MASTER SKYLARK
and blue, and his red mouth had a trick of smiling that
went straight to a body’s heart.
“Why, lad, lad,” cried Carew, breathlessly, “thou hast
a very fortune in thy throat!”
Nick looked up in great surprise ; and at that the master
player broke off suddenly and said no more, though such
a strange light came creeping into his eyes that Nick, after
meeting his fixed stare for a moment, asked uneasily if
they would not better be going on.
Without a word the master-player started. Something
had come into his head which seemed to more than fill his
mind ; for as he strode along he whistled under his breath
and laughed softly to himself. Then again he snapped
his fingers and took a dancing step or two across the road,
and at last fell to talking aloud to himself, though Nick
could not make out a single word he said, for it was in
some foreign language.
“Nicholas,” he said suddenly, as they passed the wind-
ing lane that leads away to Kenilworth—“ Nicholas, dost
know any other songs like that?”
“Not just like that, sir,” answered Nick, not knowing
what to make of his companion’s strange new mood;
“but I know Master Will Shakspere’s ‘Then nightly
sings the staring owl, tu-who, tu-whit, tu-who!’ and
‘The ousel-cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill,’
and then, too, I know the throstle’s song that goes with
it.”
“Why, to be sure—to be sure thou knowest old Nick
Bottom’s song, for is n’t thy name Nick? Well met, both
“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!” 43
song and singer—well met, I say! Nay,” he said hastily,
seeing Nick about to speak; “I do not care to hear thee
talk. Sing me all thy songs. I am hungry as a wolf for
songs. Why, Nicholas, I must have songs! Come, lift
up that honeyed throat of thine and sing another song.
Be not so backward; surely I love thee, Nick, and thou
wilt sing all of thy songs for me.”
He laid his hand on Nick’s shoulder in his kindly way,
and kept step with him like a bosom friend, so that Nick’s
heart beat high with pride, and he sang all the songs he
knew as they walked along.
Carew listened intently, and sometimes with a fierce
eagerness that almost frightened the boy; and sometimes
he frowned, and said under his breath, “Tut, tut, that
will not do!” but oftener he laughed without a sound,
nodding his head in time to the lilting tune, and seeming
vastly pleased with Nick, the singing, and last, but not
least, with himself.
And when Nick had ended the master-player had not
a word to say, but for half a mile gnawed his mustache in
nervous silence, and looked Nick all over with a long and
earnest look.
Then suddenly he slapped his thigh, and tossed his head
back boldly. “TI/’ll do it,’ he said; “Ill do it if I dance
on air for it! Ill have it out of Master Stubbes and
canting Stratford town, or may I never thrive! My soul!
it is the very thing. His eyes are like twin holidays, and
he breathes the breath of spring. Nicholas, Nicholas Sky-
lark,—Master Skylark, —why, it is a good name, in sooth,
44 MASTER SKYLARK
avery good name! I'll do it—I will, upon my word, and
on the remnant of mine honour!”
“Did ye speak to me, sir?” asked Nick, timidly.
“Nay, Nicholas; I was talking to the moon.”
“Why, sir, the moon has not come yet,” said Nick, star-
ing into the western sky.
“To be sure,” replied Master Carew, with a queer laugh.
“Well, the silvery jade has missed the first act.”
“Oh,” eried Nick, reminded of the purpose of his long
walk, “what will ye play for the Mayor’s play, sir?”
' “T don’t know,” replied Carew, carelessly ; “it will all
be done before I come. They will have had the free play
this afternoon, so as to catch the pence of all the May-day
erowd to-morrow.”
Nick stopped in the road, and his eyes filled up with
tears, so quick and bitter was the disappointment. “Why,”
he cried, with a tremble in his tired voice, “I thought the
free play would be on the morrow—and now I have not a
farthing to go in!”
“Tut, tut, thou silly lad!” laughed Carew, frankly ;
“am I thy friend for naught? What! let thee walk all
the way to Coventry, and never see the play? Nay, on
my soul! Why, Nick, I love thee, lad; and I ll do for
thee in the twinkling of an eye. Canst thou speak lines
by heart? Well, then, say these few after me, and bear
them in thy mind.”
And thereupon he hastily repeated some half a dozen
disconnected lines in a high, reciting tone.
“Why, sir,” cried Nick, bewildered, “it is a part!”
“WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!” 45
“Po be sure,” said Carew, laughing, “it is a part—and
a part of a very good whole, too—a comedy by young
Tom Heywood, that would make a graven image split its
sides with laughing; and do thou just learn that part,
good Master Skylark, and thou shalt say it in to-morrow’s
play.”
“What, Master Carew!” gasped Nick. “I—truly?
With the Lord Admiral’s players?”
“Why, to be sure!” cried the master-player, in great
glee, clapping him upon the back. “ Didst think I meant
a parcel of dirty tinkers? Nay, lad; thou art just the
very fellow for the part—my lady’s page should be a
pretty lad, and, soul o’ me, thou art that same! And,
Nick, thou shalt sing Tom Heywood’s newest song. It is
a pretty song; it is a lark-song like thine own.”
Nick could hardly believe his ears. To act with the
Lord Admiral’s company! To sing with them before ail
Coventry! It passed the wildest dream that he had ever
dreamed. What would the boys in Stratford say? Aha!
they would laugh on the other side of their mouths now!
“But will they have me, sir?” he asked doubtfully.
“Have thee?” said Master Carew, haughtily. “If I
say go, thou shalt go. Iam master here. And I tell thee,
Nick, that thou shalt see the play, and be the play, in part,
and—well, we shall see what we shall see.”
With that he fell to humming and chuckling to himself,
as if he had swallowed a water-mill, while Nick turned.
ecstatic cart-wheels along the grass beside the road. until
presently Coventry came in sight.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY
HE ancient city of Coventry stands upon a little hill,
with old St. Michael’s steeple and the spire of Holy
Trinity church rising above it against the sky; and as the
master-player and the boy came climbing upward from
the south, walls, towers, chimneys, and red-tiled roofs
were turned to gold by the glow of the setting sun.
To Nick it seemed as if a halo overhung the town—a
ruddy glory and a wonder bright; for here the Grey Friars
of the great monastery had played their holy mysteries
and miracle-plays for over a hundred years; here the
trade-guilds had held their pageants when the friars’ day
was done; here were all the wonders that old men told by
winter fires.
People were coming and going through the gates like
bees about a hive, and in the distance Nick could hear
the sound of many voices, the rush of feet, wheels, and
hoofs, and the shrill pipe of music. Here and there were
little knots of country folk making holiday: a father and
mother with a group of rosy children; a lad and his lass,
46
THE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY 47
spruce in new finery, and gay with bits of ribbon—merry
groups that were ever changing. Gay banners flapped
on tall ash staves. The suburb fields were filled with
booths and tents and stalls and butts for archery. The
very air seemed eager with the eve of holiday.
But what to Nick was breathless wonder was to Carew
only a twice-told tale; so he pushed through the crowded
thoroughfares, amid a throng that made Nick’s head spin
round, and came quickly to the Blue Boar Inn.
The court was crowded to the gates with horses, trav-
elers, and serving-men ; and here and there and everywhere
rushed the busy innkeeper, with a linen napkin fluttering
on his arm, his cap half off, and in his hot hand a pewter
flagon, from which the brown ale dripped in spatters on
his fat legs as he flew.
“They ’re here,” said Carew, looking shrewdly about;
“for there is Gregory Goole, my groom, and Stephen
Magelt, the tire-man. In with thee, Nicholas.”
He put Nick before him with a little air of patronage,
and pushed him into the room.
It was a large, low chamber with heavy beams overhead,
hung with leather jacks and pewter tankards. Around
the walls stood rough tables, at which a medley of guests
sat eating, drinking, dicing, playing at cards, and talking
loudly all at once, while the tapster and the cook’s knave
sped wildly about.
At a great table in the midst of the riot sat the Lord
High Admiral’s players—a score or more loud-swashing
gallants, richly clad in ruffs and bands, embroidered
48 MASTER SKYLARK
shirts, Italian doublets slashed and laced, Venetian hose,
gay velvet caps with jeweled bands, and every man a pon-
iard or a rapier at his hip. Nick felt very much like a little
brown sparrow in a flock of gaudy Indian birds.
The board was loaded down with meat and drink, and
some of the players were eating with forks, a new trick
from the London court, which Nick had never seen
before. But all the diners looked up when Carew’s face
was recognized, and welcomed him with a deafening
shout.
He waved his hand for silence.
“Thanks for these kind plaudits, gentle friends,” said
he, with a mocking air; “I have returned.”
“Yes; we see that ye have, Gaston,” they all shouted,
and laughed again.
“Ay,” said he, thrusting his hand into his pouch, “ye
fled, and left me to be spoiled by the spoiler, but ye see I
have left the spoiler spoiled.”
Lifting his hand triumphantly, he shook in their faces
the golden chain that the burgesses of Stratford had given
him, and then, laying his hand upon Nick’s shoulder,
bowed to them all, and to him with courtly grace, and said:
“Be known, be known, all! Gentlemen, my Lord Admi-
ral’s Players, Master Nicholas Skylark, the sweetest singer
in all the kingdom of England!”
Nick’s cheeks fiushed hotly, and his eyes fell; for they
all stared curiously, first at him, and then at Carew stand-
ing up behind him, and several grinned mockingly and
winked in a knowing way. He stole a look at Carew; but
THE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY 49
the master-player’s face was frank and quite unmoved, so
that Nick felt reassured.
“Why, sirs,” said Carew, as some began to laugh and to
speak to one another covertly, “it is no jest. He hath a
sweeter voice than Cyril Davy’s, the best woman’s-voice in
all London town. Upon my word, it is the sweetest voice
a body ever heard—outside of heaven and the holy
angels!” He lowered his tone and bowed his head a
little. “I?ll stake mine honour on it!”
“Hast any, Gaston?” called a jeering voice, whereat the
whole room roared.
But Carew cried again in a high voice that would be
heard above the noise: “Now, hark ’e; what I say is so.
It is, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!
And to-morrow ye shall see, for Master Skylark is to sing
and play with us.”
When he had said that, nothing would do but Nick must
sit down and eat with them; so they made a place for him
and for Master Carew.
Nick bent his head and said a grace, at which some of
them laughed, until Carew shook his head with a stern
frown ; and before he ate he bowed politely to them all, as
his mother had taught him to do. They all bowed mock-
ingly, and hilariously offered him wine, which, when he
refused, they pressed upon him, until Carew stopped them,
saying that he would have no more of that. As he spoke
he clapped his hand upon his poniard and scowled biackly.
‘Chey all laughed, but offered Nick no more wine; instead,
they picked him choice morsels, and made a great deal of
4
50 MASTER SKYLARK
him, until his silly young head was quite turned, and he
sat up and gave himself a few airs—not many, for Strat-
ford was no great place in which to pick up airs.
When they had eaten they wanted Nick to sing; but
again Carew interposed. “Nay,” said he; “he hath just
eaten his fill, so he cannot sing. Moreover, he is no jack-
daw to screech in such a cage as this. He shall not sing
until to-morrow in the play.”
At this some of the leading players who held shares in
the venture demurred, doubting if Nick could sing at
all; but—“ Hark ’e,” said Master Carew, shortly, clapping
his hand upon his poniard, “I say that he can. Do ye
take me?”
So they said no more; and shortly after’ he took Nick
away, and left them over their tankards, singing uproar-
iously.
The Blue Boar Inn had not a bed to spare, nor had the
players kept a place for Carew; at which he smiled
grimly, said he ’d not forget it, and took lodgings for
himself and Nick at the Three Tuns in the next street.
Nick spoke indeed of his mother’s cousin, with whom
he had meant to stay, but the master-player protested
warmly ; so, little loath, and much flattered by the atten-
tions of so great a man, Nick gave over the idea and said
no more about it.
When the chamberlain had shown them to their room
and they were both undressed, Nick knelt beside the bed
and said a prayer, as he always did at home. Carew
watched him curiously. It was quiet there, and the light
THE ADMIRAL’S COMPANY 51
dim ; Nick was young, and his yellow hair was very curly.
Carew could hear the faint breath murmuring through
the boy’s lips as he prayed, and while he stared at the little
white figure his mouth twitched in a queer way. But he
tossed his head, and muttered to himself, “What, Gaston
Carew, turning soft? Nay, nay. Ill do it—on my soul,
I will!” rolled into bed, and was soon fast asleep.
As for Nick, what with the excitement of the day, the
dazzling fancies in his brain, his tired legs, the weird night
noises in the town, and strange, tremendous dreams, he
scarce could get to sleep at all; but toward morning he
fell into a refreshing doze, and did not wake until the town
was loud with May.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAY-DAY PLAY
T was soon afternoon. All Coventry was thronged
with people keeping holiday, and at the Blue Boar a
scene of wild confusion reigned.
Tap-room and hall were crowded with guests, and in
the cobbled court horses innumerable stamped and whin-
nied. The players, with knitted brows, stalked about the
quieter nooks, going over their several parts, and looking
to their costumes, which were for the most part upon their
backs; while the thumping and pounding of the carpen-
ters at work upon the stage in the inn-yard were enough
to drive a quiet-loving person wild.
Nick scarcely knew whether he were on his head or on
his heels. The master-player would not let him eat at all
after once breaking his fast, for fear it might affect his
voice, and had him say his lines a hundred times until he
had them pat. Then he was off, directing here, there, and
everywhere, until the court was cleared of all that had no
business there, and the last surreptitious small boy had
52
THE MAY-DAY PLAY 58
been duly projected from the gates by Peter Hostler’s
hobnailed boot.
“Now, Nick,” said Carew, coming up all in a gale, and
throwing a sky-blue silken cloak about Nick’s shoulders,
“thou ‘It enter here”; and he led him to a hallway door
just opposite the gates. “When Master Whitelaw, as the
Duke, calls out, ‘How now, who comes?—I 11 match him
for the ale!’ be quickly in and answer to thy part; and,
marry, boy, don’t miss thy cues, or—tsst, thy head ’s not
worth a peascod!” With that he clapped his hand upon
his poniard and glared into Nick’s eyes, as if to look clear
through to the back of the boy’s wits. Nick heard his
white teeth grind, and was all at once very much afraid of
him, for he did indeed look dreadful.
So Nicholas Attwood stood by the entry door, with his
heart in his throat, waiting his turn.
He could hear the pages in the courtyard outside shout-
ing for stools for their masters, and squabbling over the
best places upon the stage. Then the gates creaked, and
there came a wild rush of feet and a great crying out
as the ’prentices and burghers trooped into the inn-yard,
pushing and crowding for places near the stage. Those
who had the money bawled aloud for farthing stools. The
rest stood jostling in a wrangling crowd upon the ground,
while up and down a girl’s shrill voice went all the time,
erying high, “ Cherry ripe, cherry ripe! Who ‘ll buy my
sweet May cherries?”
Then there was another shout, and a rattling tread of
feet along the wooden balconies that ran around the walls
54 MASTER SKYLARK
of the inn-yard, and cries from the apprentices below:
“Good-day, fair Master Harrington ! Good-day, Sir Thomas
Parkes! Good-day, sweet Mistress Nettleby and Master
Nettleby! Good-day, good-day, good-day ! ” for the richer
folk were coming in at twopence each, and all the gal-
leries were full. And then he heard the baker’s boy with
sugared cakes and ginger-nuts go stamping up the stairs.
The musicians in the balcony overhead were tuning up.
There was a flute, a viol, a gittern, a fiddle, and a drum;
and behind the curtain, just outside the door, Nick could
hear the master-player’s low voice giving hasty orders to
the others.
So he said his lines all over to himself, and cleared his
throat. Then on a sudden a shutter opened high above
the orchestra, a trumpet blared, the kettledrum crashed,
and he heard a loud voice shout:
“Good citizens of Coventry, and high-born gentles all:
know ye now that we, the players of the company of His
Grace, Charles, Lord Howard, High Admiral of England,
Ireland, Wales, Calais, and Boulogne, the marches of Nor-
mandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine, Captain-General of the
Navy and the Seas of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen—”
At that the crowd in the courtyard cheered and cheered
again.
“will, with your kind permission, play forthwith the
laughable comedy of ‘The Three Grey Gowns, by Master
Thomas Heywood, in which will be spoken many good
things, old and new, and a brand-new song will be sung.
Now, hearken all—the play begins!”
THE MAY-DAY PLAY 55
The trumpet blared, the kettledrum crashed again, and
as a sudden hush fell over the throng without Nick heard
the voices of the players going on.
It was a broad farce, full of loud jests and nonsense, a
great thwacking of sticks and tumbling about; and Nick,
with his eye to the crack of the door, listened with all his
ears for his cue, far too excited even to think of laughing
at the rough jokes, though the crowd in the inn-yard
roared till they held their sides.
Carew came hurrying up, with an anxious look in his
restless eyes.
“Ready, Nicholas!” said he, sharply, taking Nick by the
arm and lifting the latch. ‘Go straight down front now
as I told thee—mind thy cues—speak boldly—sing as thou
didst sing for me—and if thou wouldst not break mine
heart, do not failme now! I have staked it all upon thee
here—and we must win!”
“How now, who comes?” Nick heard a loud voice call
outside—the door-latch clicked behind him—he was out in
the open air and down the stage before he quite knew
where he was.
The stage was built against the wall just opposite the
gates. It was but a temporary platform of planks laid
upon trestles. One side of it was against the wall, and
around the three other sides the crowd was packed close
to the platform rail.
At the ends, upon the boards, several wealthy gallants
sat on high, three-legged stools, within arm’s reach of the
players acting there. The courtyard was a sea of heads,
56 MASTER SKYLARK
and the balconies were filled with gentlefolk in holiday
attire, eating cakes and chaffing gaily at the play. All
was one bewildered cloud of staring eyes to Nick, and the
only thing which he was sure he saw was the painted sign
that hung upon the curtain at the rear, which in the lack
of other scenery announced in large red print: “This is a
Room in Master Jonah Jackdawe’s House.”
And then he heard the last quick words, “I ’ll match
him for the ale!” and started on his lines.
It was not that he said so ill what little he had to say,
but that his voice was homelike and familiar in its sound,
one of their own, with no amazing London accent to the
words—just the speech of every-day, the sort that they all
knew.
First, some one in the yard laughed out—a shock-headed
ironmonger’s apprentice, ““ Whoy, bullies, there be hayseed
in his hair. ’T is took off pasture over-soon. I fecks!
they ’ve plucked him green!”
There was a hoarse, exasperating laugh. Nick hesitated
in his lines. The player at his back tried to prompt him,
but only made the matter worse, and behind the green cur-
tain at the door a hand went “clap” upon a dagger-hilt.
The play lagged, and the crowd began to jeer. Nick’s
heart was full of fear and of angry shame that he had
dared to try. Then all at once there came a brief pause,
in which he vaguely realized that no one spoke. The man
behind him thrust him forward, and whispering wrathfully,
“Quick, quick—sing up, thou little fool!” stepped back
and left him there alone.
| i it :
I wl
h
“NICK THOUGHT OF HIS MOTHER’S SINGING ON A SUMMER'S EVENING—DREW
A DEEP BREATH AND BEGAN TC SING.”
THE MAY-DAY PLAY 57
A viol overhead took up the time, the gittern struck a
few sharp notes. This unexpected music stopped the
noise, and all was still. Nick thought of his mother’s
voice singing on a summer’s evening among the hollyhocks,
and as the viol’s droning died away he drew a deep breath
and began to sing the words of “ Heywood’s newest song” :
“Pack, clouds, away, and welcome, day;
With night we banish sorrow ;
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow!”
It was only a part of a madrigal, the air to which they
had fitted the words,—the same air that Nick had sung in
the woods,—a thing scarce meant ever to be sung alone, a
simple strain, a few plain notes, and at the close one brief,
queer, warbling trill like a bird’s wild song, that rose and
fell and rose again like a silver ripple.
The instruments were still; the fresh young voice came
out alone, and it was done so soon that Nick hardly knew
that he had sung at all. For a moment no one seemed to
breathe. Then there was a very great noise, and all the
court seemed hurling at him. A man upon the stage
sprang to his feet. What they were going to do to him
Nick did not know. He gave a frightened cry, and ran
past the green curtain, through the open door, and into
the master-player’s excited arms.
“Quick, quick!” cried Carew. “Go back, go back!
There, hark!—dost not hear them call? Quick, out
_again—they call thee back!” With that he thrust Nick
through the door. The man upon the stage came up,
58 MASTER SKYLARK
slipped something into his hand—Nick, all bewildered,
knew not what; and there he stood, quite stupefied, not
knowing what to do. Then Carew came out hastily and
led him down the stage, bowing, and pressing his hand to
his heart, and smiling like a summer sunrise ; so that Nick,
seeing this, did the same, and bowed as neatly as he could ;
though, to be sure, his was only a simple, country-bred
bow, and no such ceremonious to-do as Master Carew’s
courtly London obeisance.
Every one was standing up and shouting so that not a
soul could hear his ears, until the ironmonger’s apprentice
bellowed above the rest; “Whoy, bullies!” he shouted,
amid a chorus of cheers and laughter, “did n’t I say ’t was
catched out in the fields—it be a skylark, sure enough!
Come, Muster Skylark, sing that song again, an’ thou shalt
ha’ my brand-new cap!”
Then many voices cried out together, “Sing it again!
The Skylark—the Skylark!”
Nick looked up, startled. “Why, Master Carew,” said
he, with a tremble in his voice, “do they mean me?”
Carew put one hand beneath Nick’s chin and turned his
face up, smiling. The master-player’s cheeks were flushed
with triumph, and his dark eyes danced with pride. “Ay,
Nicholas Skylark; ’t is thou they mean.”
The viol and the music came again from overhead, and
when they ceased Nick sang the little song once more.
And when the master-player had taken him outside, and
the play was over, some fine ladies came and kissed him,
to his great confusion; for no one but his mother or his
THE MAY-DAY PLAY 59
kin had ever done so before, and these had much perfume
about them, musk and rose-attar, so that they smelled like
rose-mallows in July. The players of the Lord Admiral’s
company were going about shaking hands with Carew and
with each other as if they had not met for years, and slap-
ping one another upon the back ; and one came over, a tall,
solemn, black-haired man, he who had written the song,
and stood with his feet apart and stared at Nick, but spoke
never a word, which Nick thought was very singular.
But as he turned away he said, with a world of pity in his
voice, “ And I have writ two hundred plays, yet never saw
thy like. Lad, lad, thou art a jewel in a wild swine’s
snout!” which Nick did not understand at all; nor why
Master Carew said so sharply, “Come, Heywood, hold thy
blabbing tongue; we are all in the same sty.”
“Speak for thyself, Gat Carew!” answered Master Hey-
wood, firmly. “TI’ll have no hand in this affair, I tell thee
once for all!”
Master Carew flushed queerly and bit his lip, and, turn-
ing hastily away, took Nick to walk about the town. Nick
then, for the first time, looked into his hand to see what
the man upon the stage had given him. It was a gold
rose-noble.
CHAPTER X
AFTER THE PLAY
HROUGH the high streets of the third city of the
realm Master Gaston Carew strode as if he were a
very king, and Coventry his kingdom.
There was music everywhere,—of pipers and fiddlers,
drums, tabrets, flutes, and horns,—and there were dan-
cing bears upon the corners, with minstrels, jugglers,
chapmen crying their singsong wares, and such a mighty
hurly-burly as Nick had never seen before. And wherever
there was a wonder to be seen, Carew had Nick see it,
though it cost a penny a peep, and lifted him to watch the
fencing and quarter-staff play in the market-place. And
at one of the gay booths he bought gilt ginger-nuts and
caraway cakes with currants on the top, and gave them
all to Nick, who thanked him kindly, but said, if Master
Carew pleased, he ’d rather have his supper, for he was
very hungry. :
“Why, to be sure,” said Carew, and tossed a silver penny
for a scramble to the crowd; *‘thou shalt have the finest
supper in the town.”
60
AFTER THE PLAY 61
Whereupon, bowing to all the great folk they met, and
being bowed to most politely in return, they came to the
Three Tuns.
Stared at by a hundred curious eyes, made way for
everywhere, and followed by wondering exclamations of
envy, it was little wonder that Nick, a simple country lad,
at last began to think that there was not in all the world
another gentleman so grand as Master Gaston Carew, and
also to have a pleasant notion that Nicholas Attwood was
no bad fellow himself.
The lordly innkeeper came smirking and bobbing
obsequiously about, with his freshest towel on his arm,
and took the master-player’s order as a dog would take a
bone.
“ Here, sirrah,” said Carew, haughtily; “fetch us some
repast, I care not what, so it be wholesome food—a green
Banbury cheese, some simnel bread and oat-cakes; a
pudding, hark ’e, sweet and full of plums, with honey and
a pasty—a meat pasty, marry, a pasty made of fat and
toothsome eels; and moreover, fellow, ale to wash it down
—none of thy penny ale, mind ye, too weak to run out of
the spigot, but snapping good brew—dost take me ?—with
beef and mustard, tripe, herring, and a good fat capon
broiled to a turn!”
The innkeeper gaped like a fish.
“How now, sirrah? Dost think I cannot pay thy
score?” quoth Carew, sharply.
“Nay, nay,” stammered the host; “but, sir, where—
where will ye put it all without bursting into bits?”
62 MASTER SKYLARK
“Be off with thee!” cried Carew, sharply. “That is
my affair. Nay, Nick,” said he, laughing at the boy’s
astonished look; “we shall not burst. What we do not
have to-night we ’ll have in the morning. ’T is the way
with these inns,—to feed the early birds with scraps,—so
the more we leave from supper the more we ’ll have for
breakfast. And thou wilt need a good breakfast to ride
on all day long.”
“Ride?” exclaimed Nick. “Why, sir, I was minded to
walk back to Stratford, and keep my gold rose-noble
whole.”
“Walk?” cried the master-player, scornfully. “Thou,
with thy golden throat? Nay, Nicholas, thou shalt ride
to-morrow like a very king, if I have to pay for the horse
myself, twelvepence the day!” and with that he began
chuckling as if it were a joke.
But Nick stood up, and, bowing, thanked him gratefully ;
at which the master-player went from chuckling to laugh-
ing, and leered at Nick so oddly that the boy would have
thought him tipsy, save that there had been nothing yet
to drink. And aqueer sense of uneasiness came creeping
over him as he watched the master-player’s eyes opening
and shutting, opening and shutting, so that one moment
he seemed to be staring and the next almost asleep ; though
all the while his keen, dark eyes peered out from between
the lids like old dog-foxes from their holes, looking Nick
over from head to foot, and from foot to head again, as if
measuring him with an ellwand.
When the supper came, filling the whole table and the
AFTER THE PLAY 63
sideboard too, Nick arose to serve the meat as he was used
at home; but, “ Nay, Nicholas Skylark, my honey-throat,”
cried Carew, “sit thee down! Thou wait on me—thou
songster of the silver tongue? Nay, nay, sweetheart; the
knave shall wait on thee, or I ll wait on thee myself—I
will, upon my word! Why, Nick, I tell thee I love thee,
and dost think I’d let thee wait or walk ?—nay, nay, thou It
ride to-morrow like a king, and have all Stratford wait for
thee!” At this he chuckled so that he almost choked upon
a mouthfui of bread and meat.
“Canst ride, Nicholas?”
“Fairly, sir.”
“Fairly? Fie,modesty! Iwarrant thou canst ride like
a very centaur. What sayest—I ‘ll ride a ten-mile race
with thee to-morrow as we go?”
“Why,” cried Nick, “are ye going back to Stratford to
play, after all?”
“To Stratford? Nay; not for a bushel of good gold
Harry shovel-boards! Bah! That town is ratsbane and
nightshade in my mouth! Nay, we ’ll not go back to
Stratford town; but we shall ride a piece with thee,
Nicholas,—we shall ride a piece with thee.”
Chuckling again to himself, he fell to upon the pasty
and said no more.
Nick held his peace, as he was taught to do unless first
spoken to; but he could not help thinking that stage-
players, and master-players in particular, were very
queer folk.
CHAPTER XI
DISOWNED
IGHT came down on Stratford town that last sweet
April day, and the pastured kine came lowing home.
Supper-time passed, and the cool stars came twinkling
out; but still Nick Attwood did not come.
“He hath stayed to sleep with Robin, Master Burgess
Getley’s son,” said Mistress Attwood, standing in the door,
and staring out into the dusk; “he is often lonely here.”
“He should ha’ telled thee on it, then,” said Simon Att-
wood. “This be no way todo. I’ve a mind to put him
to a trade.”
“Nay, Simon,” protested his wife; “he may be careless,
—he is young yet,—but Nicholas is a good lad. Let him
have his schooling out—he ll be the better for it.”
“Then let him show it as he goes along,” said Attwood,
grimly, as he blew the candle out.
But May-day dawned; mid-morning came, mid-after-
noon, then supper-time again; and supper-time crept into
dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood.
His mother grew uneasy ; but his father only growled :
64
DISOWNED 65
“Well reckon up when he cometh home. Master Bruns-
wood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yes-
terday—and he be feared to show his face. Ill fear him
with a bit of birch!”
“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mis-
tress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him ¢
He must be hurt, or he ’d ’a’ come home to his mother ”—
and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen
from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon,
the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?”
“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang ’ll
never drown!”
When, however, the next day crept around and still his
son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s
own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to
seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.
“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing
around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’
thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”
But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of
the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back
door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into
the town.
“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was
my son wi’ thee overnight?”
“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”
“Come back? From where?”
Robin hung his head.
“From where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”
&
66 MASTER SKYLARK
“From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth
would out at last, anyway.
“He went to see the players, sir,” spoke up Hal Saddler,
briskly, not heeding Robin’s stealthy kick. “He said
he ’d bide wi Diccon Haggard overnight; an’ he said he
wished he were a master-player himself, sir, too.”
Simon Attwood, frowning blackly, hurried on. It was
Nick, then, whom he had seen crossing the market-square.
Wat Raven, who swept Clopton bridge, had seen two
boys go up the Warwick road. “One were thy Nick, Mus-
ter Attwood,” said he, thumping the dirt from his broom
across the coping-stone, “and the other were Dawson’s
Hodge.”
The angry tanner turned again into the market-place.
His brows were knit, and his eyes were hot, yet his step
was heavy and slow. Above all things, he hated disobe-
dience, yet in his surly way he loved his only son; and
far worse than disobedience, he hated that his son should
disobey.
Astride a beam in front of Master Thompson’s house
sat Roger Dawson. Simon Attwood took him by the col-
lar none too gently.
“Were, leave be!” choked Roger, wriggling hard; but
the tanner’s grip was like iron. “ Wert thou in Coventry
May-day?” he asked sternly.
“Nay, that I was na,” sputtered Hodge. “A plague on
Coventry !”
“Do na lie to me—thou wert there wi’ my son Nicholas.”
“T was na,” snarled Hodge. “Nick Attwood threshed
DISOWNED 67
me in the Warrick road; an’ I be no dawg to follow at
the heels o’ folks as threshes me.”
“Where be he, then?” demanded Attwood, with a sud-
den sinking at heart in spite of his wrath.
“How should I know? A went away wi’ a play-actor.
ing fellow in a plum-colored cloak; and play-actoring fel-
low said a loved him like a’s own, and patted a’s back,
and flung me hard names, like stones at a lost dawg. Now
le’ me go, Muster Attwood—cross my heart, ’t is all I
know!”
“Ts ’t Nicholas ye seek, Master Attwood?” asked Tom
Carpenter, turning from his fleurs-de-lis. “Why, sir, he’s
gone got famous, sir. I was in Coventry mysel’ May-day ;
and—why, sir, Nick was all the talk! He sang there at
the Blue Boar inn-yard with the Lord High Admiral’s
players, and took a part in the play; and, sir, ye ’d scarce
believe me, but the people went just daft to hear him sing,
sir.”
Simon Attwood heard no more. He walked down High
street in a daze. With hard men bitter blows strike
doubly deep. He stopped before the guildhall school.
The clock struck five ; each iron clang seemed beating upon
his heart. He raised his hand as if to shut the clangor
out, and then his face grew stern and hard. “He hath
gone his own wilful way,” said he, bitterly. “Let him
follow it to the end.”
Mistress Attwood came to meet him, running in the
garden-path. “Nicholas?” was all that she could say.
“Never speak to me of him again,” he said, and passed
68 MASTER SKYLARK
her by into the house. “He hath gone away with a pack
of stage-playing rascals and vagabonds, whither no man
knoweth.”
Taking the heavy Bible down from the shelf, he lit a
rushlight at the fire, although it was still broad daylight,
and sat there with the great book open in his lap until
the sun went down and the chill night wind crept in along
the floor; yet he could not read a single word and never
turned a page.
CHAPTER XII
A STRANGE RIDE
AT-A-TAT-TAT at the first dim hint of dawn went
the chamberlain’s knuckles upon the door. To Nick
it seemed scarce midnight yet, so sound had been his sleep.
Master Carew having gotten into his high-topped rid-
ing-boots with a great puffing and tugging, they washed
their faces at the inn-yard pump by the smoky light of
the hostler’s lantern, and then in a subdued, half-wakened
way made a hearty breakfast off the fragments of the last
night’s feast. Part of the remaining cold meat, cheese,
and cakes Carew stowed in his leather pouch. The rest
he left in the lap of a beggar sleeping beside the door.
The street was dim with a chilly fog, through which a
few pale stars still struggled overhead. The houses were
all shut and barred; nobody was abroad, and the night-
watch slept in comfortable doorways here and there, with
loliing heads and lanterns long gone out. As they came
along the crooked street, a stray cat scurried away with
scared green eyes, and a kenneled hound set up a lonesome
howl.
69
70 MASTER SKYLARK
But the Blue Boar Inn was stirring like an ant-hill, with
firefly lanterns flitting up and down, and a cheery glow
about the open door. The horses of the company, scrubbed
unreasonably clean, snorted and stamped in little
bridled clumps about the courtyard, and the stable-boys,
not scrubbed at all, clanked at the pump or shook out
wrinkled saddle-cloths with most prodigious yawns. The
grooms were buckling up the packs; the chamberlain and
sleepy-lidded maids stood at the door, waiting their fare-
well farthings.
Some of the company yawned in the tap-room; some
yawned out of doors with steaming stirrup-cup in hand;
and some came yawning down the stairways pulling on
their riding-cloaks, booted, spurred, and ready for a long
day’s ride.
“G@ood-morrow, sirs,” said Carew, heartily. ‘“Good-
morrow, sir, to you,” said they, and all came over to speak
to Nicholas in a very kindly way; and one or two patted
him on the cheek and walked away speaking in under-
tones among themselves, keeping one eye on Carew all
the while. And Master Tom Heywood, the play-writer,
came out with a great slice of fresh wheat-bread, thick
with butter and dripping with yellow honey, and gave it
to Nick; and stood there silently with a very queer ex-
pression watching him eat it, until Carew’s groom led up
a stout hackney and a small roan palfrey to the block,
and the master-player, crying impatiently, “Up with thee,
Nick; we must be ambling!” sprang into the saddle of the
gray.
A STRANGE RIDE 71
The sleepy inn-folk roused a bit to send a cheery vol-
ley of, “Fare ye well, sirs; come again,” after the depart-
ing players, and the long cavalcade cantered briskly out
of the inn-yard, in double rank, with a great clinking of
bridle-chains and a drifting odor of wet leather and heavy
perfume.
Nick sat very erect and rode his best, feeling like some
errant knight of the great Round Table, ready to right the
whole world’s wrongs. “But what about the horse?” said
he. ‘We can na keep him in Stratford, sir.”
“Oh, that’s all seen to,” said the master-player. “’T is
to be sent back by the weekly carrier.”
“And where do I turn into the Stratford road, sir?”
asked Nick, as the players clattered down the cobbled
street in a cloud of mist that steamed up so thickly from
the stones that the horses seemed to have no legs, but to
float like boats.
“Some distance further on,” replied Carew, carelessly.
‘OT is not the way we came that thou shalt ride to-day ;
that is t? other end of town, and the gate not open yet.
But the longest way round is the shortest way home, so
let ’s be spurring on.”
At the corner of the street a cross and sleepy cobbler
was strapping a dirty urchin, who bellowed lustily. Nick
winced.
“Hollo!” eried Carew. “ What’s to do?”
“Why, sir,’ said Nick, ruefully, “father will thresh me
well this night.”
“Nay,” said Carew, in a quite decided tone; “that he IL
72 MASTER SKYLARK
not, I promise thee !”—and as he spoke he chuckled softly
to himself.
The man before them turned suddenly around and
grinned queerly; but, catching the master-player’s eye,
whipped his head about like a weather-vane in a gale, and
cantered on.
As they came down the narrow street the watchmen
were just swinging wide the city gates, and gave a cheer
to speed the parting guests, who gave a rouse in turn, and
were soon lost to sight in the mist which hid the valley in
a great gray sea.
“How shall I know where to turn off, sir?” asked Nick,
a little anxiously. “’T is all alike.”
“T ‘ll tell thee,” said the master-player ; “rest thee easy
on that score. I know the road thou art to ride much
better than thou dost thyself.”
He smiled quite frankly as he spoke, and Nick could
not help wondering why the man before them again turned
around and eyed him with that sneaking grin.
He did not like the fellow’s looks. He had scowling
black brows, hair cut as close as if the rats had gnawed it
off, a pair of ill-shaped bandy-legs, a wide, unwholesome
slit of a mouth, and a nose like a raspberry tart. His
whole appearance was servile and mean, and there was asly
malice in his furtive eyes. Besides that, and a thing which
strangely fascinated Nick’s gaze, there was a hole through
the gristle of his right ear, scarred about as if it had been
burned, and through this hole the fellow had tied a bow
of crimson ribbon, like a butterfly alighted upon his ear.
A STRANGE RIDE 73
“A pretty fellow!” said Carew, with a shrug. “He'll
be hard put to dodge the hangman yet; but he’s a right
good fellow in his way, and he has served me—he has
served me.”
The first loud burst of talk had ceased, and all rode
silently along. The air was chill, and Nick was grateful
for the cloak that Carew threw around him. There was
no sound but the beat of many hoofs in the dust-padded
road, and now and then the crowing of a cock somewhere
within the cloaking fog. The stars were gone, and the
sky was lighting up; and all at once, as they rode, the
clouds ahead, low down and to the right, broke raggedly
away and let a red sun-gleam shoot through across the
mist, bathing the riders in dazzling rosy light.
“Why, Master Carew,” cried Nick, no little startled,
“ there comes the sun, almost ahead! We’re riding east-
ward, sir. We ’ve missed the road!”
“Oh, no, we ’ve not,” said Carew; “ nothing of the sort.”
His tone was so peremptory and sharp that Nick said
nothing more, but rode along, vaguely wishing that he
was already clattering down Stratford High street.
The clouds scattered as the sun came up, and the morn-
ing haze drifted away into cool dales, and floated off upon
the breeze. And as the world woke up the players wa-
kened too, and rode gaily along, laughing, singing, and
chattering together, until Nick thought he had never in
all his life before seen such a jolly fellowship. His heart
was blithe as he reined his curveting palfrey by the mas-
ter-player’s side, and watched the sunlight dance and spar-
74 MASTER SKYLARK
kle along the dashing line from dagger-hilts and jeweled
clasps, and the mist-lank plumes curl crisp again in the
warmth of the rising sun.
The master-player, too, had a graceful, taking way of
being half familiar with the lad; he was besides a mar-
velous teller of wonderful tales, and whiled away the
time with jests and quips, mile after mile, till Nick forgot
both road and time, and laughed until his sides were
sore.
Yet slowly, as they rode along, it came home to him
with the passing of the land that this was country new
and strange. So he began to take notice of this and that
beside the way; and as he noticed he began to grow un-
easy. Thrice had he come to Coventry, but surely never
by a road like this.
Yet still the master-player joked and laughed and
pleased the boy with little things—until Nick laughed
too, and let the matter go. At last, however, when they
had ridden fully an hour, they passed a moss-grown abbey
on the left-hand side of the road, a strange old place that
Nick could not recall.
“Are ye sure, Master Carew,” he ventured timidly—
“are ye sure we be na going wrong, sir?” ,
At that the master-player took on so offended an air
that Nick was sorry he had spoken.
“Why, now,” said Carew, haughtily, “if thou dost know
the roads of England better than I, who have trudged and
ridden them all these years, I’ll sit me down and learn of
thee how to follow mine own nose. I tell thee I know the
A STRANGE RIDE 75
road thou art to ride this day better than thou dost thy-
self; and Ill see to it that thou dost come without fail to
the very place that thou art going. I will, upon my word,
and on the remnant of mine honour!”
But in spite of this assurance, and in spite of the mas-
ter-player’s ceaseless stream of gaiety and marvels, Nick
became more and more uneasy. The road was certainly
growing stranger and stranger as they passed. The com-
pany, too, instead of ambling leisurely along, as they had
done at first, were now spurring ahead at a good round
gallop, in answer to a shrill whistle from the master-
player; and the horses were wet with sweat.
They passed a country village, too, that was quite un-
known to Nick, and a great highway running to the north
that he had never seen before; and when they had ridden
for about two hours, the road swerved southward to a
shining ford, and on a little tableland beyond he saw the
gables of a town he did not know.
“Why, Master Carew!” he cried out, half indignant,
half perplexed, and thoroughly frightened, “this is na the
Stratford road at all. I’m going back. I will na ride
another mile!”
As he spoke he wheeled the roan sharply out of the
clattering file with a slash of the rein across the withers,
and started back along the hill past the rest of the com-
pany, who came thumping down behind.
“Stop him! Stop him there!” he heard the master-
player shout, and there was something in the fierce, high
voice that turned his whole heart sick. What right had
76 MASTER SKYLARK
they to stop him? This was not the Stratford road; he
was certain of that now. But “Stop him—stop him
there!” he heard the master-player call, and a wild, un-
reasoning fright came over him. He dug his heels into
the palfrey’s heaving sides and urged him up the hill
through the cloud of dust that came rolling down behind
the horsemen. The hindmost riders had plunged into
those before, and the whole array was struggling, shout-
ing, and wrangling in wild disorder; but out of the flurry
Carew and the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his
ear spurred furiously and came galloping after him at the
top of their speed.
Nick cried out, and beat the palfrey with the rein; but
the chase was short. They overtook him as he topped the
hill, one on each side, and, leaning over, Carew snatched
the bridle from his hand. “Thou little imp!” he panted,
as he turned the roan around and started down the hill.
“Don’t try this on again!”
“Oh, Master Carew,” gasped Nick, “what are ye going
to do wi me?”
“Do with thee?” cried the master-player, savagely
clapping his hand upon his poniard,—“ why, I am going
to do with thee just whatever I please. Dosthear? And,
hark ’e, this sort of caper doth not please me at all; and
by the whistle of the Lord High Admiral, if thou triest it
on again, thy life is not worth a rotten peascod !”
Unbuckling the rein, he tossed one end to the bandy-
legged man, and holding the other in his own hand, with
Nick riding helpiessly between them, they trotted down the
A STRANGE RIDE 17
hill again, took their old places in the ranks, and spattered
through the shallow ford.
The bandy-legged man had pulled a dagger from be.
neath his coat, and held it under his bridle-rein, shining
through the horse’s mane as they dashed through the stil]
half-sleeping town. Nick was speechless with terror.
Beyond the town’s end they turned sharply to the north-
east, galloping steadily onward for what was perhaps
half an hour, though to Nick it seemed a forever, until
they came out into a great highway running southward.
“Watling street!” he heard the man behind him say, and
knew that they were in the old Roman road that stretched
from London to the north. Still they were galloping,
though long strings dribbled from the horses’ mouths, and
the saddle-leathers dripped with foam. One or two looked
back at him and bit their lips; but Carew’s eyes were hot
and fierce, and his hand was on his poniard. The rest,
after a curious glance or two, shrugged their shoulders
earelessly and galloped on: this affair was Master Gaston
Carew’s business, not theirs.
Until high noon they hurried on with neither stop nor
stay. Then they came toa place where a little brook sang
through the grass by the roadside in a shady nook beneath
some mighty oaks, and there the master-player whistled
for a halt, to give the horses breath and rest, and to water
them at the brook-pools. Some of the players sauntered
up and down to stretch their tired legs, munching meat
and bread ; and some lay down upon the grass and slept a
little. Two of them came, offering Nick some cakes and
78 MASTER SKYLARK
cheese ; but he was crying hard and would neither eat nor
drink, though Carew urged him earnestly. Then Master
Tom Heywood, with an ugly look at Carew, and without
so much as an if-ye-please or a by-your-leave, led Nick up
the brook to a spot where it had not been muddied by the
horses, and made him wash his dusty face and hands in
the cool water and dampen his hair, though he complied
as if in a daze. And indeed Nick rode on through the
long afternoon, clinging helplessly to the pommel of his
saddle, sobbing bitterly until for very weariness he could
no longer sob.
It was after nine o’clock that night when they rode into
Towcester, and all that was to be seen was a butcher’s boy
carting garbage out of the town and whistling to keep his
courage up. The watch had long since gone to sleep
about the silent streets, but a dim light burned in the tap-
room of the Old Brown Cow; and there the players rested
for the night.
CHAPTER XIII
A DASH FOR FREEDOM
ICK awoke from a heavy, burning sleep, aching from
head to foot. The master-player, up and dressed,
stood by the window, scowling grimly out into the ashy
dawn. Nick made haste to rise, but could not stifle a
sharp cry of pain as he staggered to his feet, he was so
racked and sore with riding.
At the boy’s smothered cry Carew turned, and his dark
face softened with a sudden look of pity and concern.
“Why, Nick, my lad,” he cried, and hurried to his side,
“this is too bad, indeed!” and without more words took
him gently in his arms and carried him down to the court-
yard well, where he bathed him softly from neck to heel
in the cold, refreshing water, and wiped him with a soft,
clean towel as tenderly as if he had been the lad’s own
mother. And having dried him thoroughly, he rubbed him
with a waxy ointment that smelled of henbane and poppies,
until the aching was almost gone. So soft and so kind was
he withal that Nick took heart after a little and asked tim-
idly, “And ye will let me go home to-day, sir, will ye not?”
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80 MASTER SKYLARK
The master-player frowned.
“Please, Master Carew, let me go.”
“Come, come,” said Carew, impatiently, “enough of
this!” and stamped his foot.
“But, oh, Master Carew,” pleaded Nick, with a sob in
his throat, “my mother’s heart will surely break if I do
na come home!”
Carew started, and his mouth twitched queerly
“Rnough, I say—enough!” he cried. “I will not hear;
I ’Ilhave no more. I tell thee hold thy tongue—be dumb!
[’ll-not have ears—thou shalt not speak! Dost hear?”
He dashed the towel to the ground. “I bid thee hold
thy tongue.”
Nick hid his face between his hands, and leaned against
the rough stone wall, a naked, shivering, wretched little
chap indeed. “Oh, mother, mother, mother!” he sobbed
pitifully.
A singular expression came over the master-player’s face.
“T will not hear—I tell thee I will not hear!” he choked,
and, turning suddenly away, he fell upon the sleepy hos-
tler, who was drawing water at the well, and rated him
outrageously, to that astounded worthy’s great amazement
Nick crept into his clothes, and stole away to the kitchen
door. There was a red-faced woman there who bade him
not to cry—’t would soon be breakfast-time. Nick thought
he could not eat at all; but when the savory smell crept
out and filled the chilly air, his poor little empty stomach
would not be denied, and he ate heartily. Master Hey-
wood sat beside him and gave him the choicest bits from
A DASH FOR FREEDOM 81
his own trencher; and Carew himself, seeing that he ate,
looked strangely pleased, and ordered him a tiny mutton-
pie, well spiced. Nick pushed it back indignantly; but
Heywood took the pie and cut it open, saying quietly:
“Come, lad, the good God made the sheep that is in this
pie, not Gaston Carew. Hat it—come, ’t will do thee good!”
and saw him finish the last crumb.
From Towcester south through Northamptonshire is a
pretty country of rolling hills and undulating hollows,
ribboned with pebbly rivers, and dotted with fair parks
and tofts of ash and elm and oak. Straggling villages
now and then were threaded on the road like beads upon
a string, and here and there the air was damp and misty
from the grassy fens along some winding stream.
It was against nature that a healthy, growing lad should
be so much cast down as not to see and be interested in
the strange, new, passing world of things about him; and
little by little Nick roused from his wretchedness and
began to look about him. And a wonder grew within his
brain: why had they stolen him?—where were they tak-
ing him ?—what would they do with him there ?— or would
they soon let him go again?
Every yellow cloud of dust arising far ahead along the
road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regu-
larly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war
in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full
of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swag-
gering along on a sorry hack with an old belt full of pis-
tolets, and his long sword thumping Rosinante’s ribs.
B
82 MASTER SKYLARK
Then a peddling chapman, with a dust-white pack and a
cunning Hebrew look, limped by, sulkily doffing his greasy
hat. Two sturdy Midland journeymen, in search of south-
ern handicraft, trudged down with tool-bags over their
shoulders and stout oak staves in hand. Of wretched
beggars and tattered rogues there was an endless string.
But of any help no sign.
Here and there, like a moving dot, a ploughman turned
a belated furrow; or a sweating ditcher leaned upon his
reluctant spade and longed for night; or a shepherd, quite
as silly as his sheep, gawked up the morning hills. But
not a sign of help for Nick.
Once, passing through a little town, he raised a sudden
ery of “Help! Help—they be stealing me away!” But
at that the master-player and the bandy-legged man waved
their hands and set up such a shout that his shrill outcry
was not even heard. And the simple country bumpkins,
standing in a grinning row like so many Old Aunt Sallys
at a fair, pulled off their caps and bowed, thinking it some
company of great lords, and fetched a clownish cheer as
the players galloped by.
Then the hot dust got into Nick’s throat, and he began
to cough. Carew started with a look of alarm. “Come,
come, Nicholas, this will never do—never do in the world;
thou ‘lt spoil thy voice.”
“T do na care,” said Nick.
“But I do,” said Carew, sharply. “So we’ll have no
more of it!” and he clapped his hand upon his poniard.
“But, nay—nay, lad, I did not mean to threaten thee—’t is
A DASH FOR FREEDOM 83
but a jest. Come, smooth thy throat, and do not shriek
no more. We play in old St. Albans town to-night, and
thou art to sing thy song for us again.”
Nick pressed his lips tight shut and shook his head. He
wouid not sing for them again.
“Come, Nick, I’ve promised Tom Heywood that thou
shouldst sing his song; and, lad, there ’s no one left in all
the land to sing it if thou ‘lt not. Tom doth dearly love
thee, lad—why, sure, thou hast seen that! And, Nick, I’ve
promised all the company that thou wouldst sing Tom’s
song with us to-night. ’T will break their hearts if thou
wilt not. Come, Nick, thou ‘It sing it for us all, and set
old Albans town afire!” said Carew, pleadingly.
Nick shook his head.
“Come, Nick,” said Carew, coaxingly, “we must hear
that sweet voice of thine in Albans town to-night. Come,
there ’s a dear, good lad, and give us just one little song!
Come, act the man and sing, as thou alone in all the world
canst sing, in Albans town this night; and on my word,
and on the remnant of mine honour, I ll leave thee go
back to Stratford town to-morrow morning!”
“To Stratford—to-morrow?” stammered Nick, with a
glad, incredulous ery, while his heart leaped up within
him.
“ Ay, verily ; upon my faith as the fine fag-end of a very
proper gentleman—thou shalt go back to Stratford town
to-morrow if thou wilt but do thy turn with us to-night.”
Nick caught the master-player’s arm as they rode along,
almost crying for very joy: “Oh, that I will, sir—and do
84 MASTER SKYLARK
my very best. And, oh, Master Carew, I ha’ thought so
ill o’ thee! Forgive me, sir; I did na know thee well.”
Carew winced. Hastily throwing the rein to Nick, he
left him to master his own array.
As for Nick, as happy as a lark he learned his new
lines as he rode along, Master Carew saying them over to
him from the manuscript and over again until he made
not a single mistake; and was at great pains to teach him
the latest fashionable London way of pronouncing all the
words, and of emphasizing his set phrases. “Nay, nay,”
he would ery laughingly, “not that way, lad; but this:
‘Good my lord, I bring a letter from the duke’—as if
thou hadst indeed a letter, see, and not an empty fist.
And when thou dost hand it to him, do it thus—and not
as if thou wert about to stab him in the paunch with a
cheese-knife!” And at the end he clapped him upon the
back and said again and again that he loved him, that
he was a dear, sweet figure of a lad, and that his voice
among the rest of England’s singers, was like clear honey
dropping into a pot of grease.
But it is a long ride from Towcester to St. Albans town
in Herts, though the road runs through a pleasant, billowy
land of oak-walled lanes, wide pastures, and quiet parks ;
and the steady jog, jog of the little roan began to rack
Nick’s tired bones before the day was done.
Yet when they marched into the quaint old town to the
blare of trumpets and the crash of the kettledrums, all the
long line gaudy with the coat-armour of the Lord High
Admiral beneath their flaunting banners, and the horses
A DASH FOR FREEDOM 85
pricked up their ears and arched their necks and pranced
along the crowded streets, Nick, stared at by all the good
townsfolk, could not help feeling a thrill of pride that he
was one of the great company of players, and sat up very
straight and held his head up haughtily as Master Carew
did, and bore himself with as lordly an air as he knew how.
But when morning came, and he danced blithely back
from washing himself at the horse-trough, all ready to
start for home, he found the little roan cross-bridled as
before between the master-player’s gray and the bandy-
legged fellow’s sorrel mare.
“What, there! cast him loose,” said he to the horse-boy
who held the three. “Iam not going on with the players
—I’m to go back to Stratford.”
“Then ye go afoot,” coolly rejoined the other, grinning,
“for the hoss goeth on wi’ the rest.”
“What is this, Master Carew?” cried Nick, indignantly,
bursting into the tap-room, where the players were at ale.
“They will na let me have the horse, sir. Am I to walk
the whole way back to Stratford town?”
“To Stratford?” asked Master Carew, staring with an
expression of most innocent surprise, as he set his ale-can
down and turned around. “Why, thou art not going to
Stratford.”
“Not going to Stratford!” gasped Nick, catching at the
table with a sinking heart. “Why, sir, ye promised that
I should to-day.”
“Nay, now, that I did not, Nicholas. I promised thee
86 MASTER SKYLARK
that thou shouldst go back to-morrow—were not those my
very words?”
“ Ay, that they were,” cried Nick; “and why will ye na
leave me go?”
“Why, this is not to-morrow, Nick. Why, see, I can-
not leave thee go to-day. Thou knowest that I said to-
morrow; and this is not to-morrow—on thine honour, is
it now?”
“How can I tell?” cried Nick, despairingly. ‘ Yester-
day ye said it would be, and now ye say that it is na,
Ye ’ve twisted it all up so that a body can na tell at all.
But there is a falsehood—a wicked, black falsehood—
somewhere betwixt you and me, sir; and ye know that I
have na lied to you, Master Carew!”
‘ Through the tap-room door he saw the open street and
the hills beyond the town. Catching his breath, he sprang
across the sill, and ran for the free fields at the top of his
speed.
CHAPTER XIV
AT BAY
“AFTER him!—stop him!—catch the rogue!” cried
Carew, running out on the cobbles with his ale-can
in his hand. “A shilling to the man that brings him
back unharmed! No blows, nor clubs, nor stabbing,
hark ’e, but catch me the knave straightway; he hath
snatched a fortune from my hands!”
At that the hostler, whip in hand, and the tapster with
his bit, were off as fast as their legs could carry them,
bawling “Stop, thief, stop!” at the top of their lungs;
and at their backs every idle varlet about the inn—grooms,
stable-boys, and hangers-on—ran whooping, howling, and
hallooing like wild huntsmen.
Nick’s frightened heart was in his mouth, and his breath
came quick and sharp. Tap-a-tap, tap-a-tap went his feet
on the cobblestones as down the long street he flew, run-
ning as he had never run before.
- It seemed as if the whole town bellowed at his back;
for windows creaked above his head, and doors banged
wildly after him ; curs from every alley-way came yelping
87
88 MASTER SKYLARK
at his heels; apprentices let go the shutter-bars, and joined
in the chase; and near and nearer came the ery of “Stop,
thief, stop!” and the kloppety-klop of hob-nailed shoes in
wild pursuit.
The rabble filled the dark old street from wall to wall,
as if a cloud of good-for-naughts had burst above the town ;
and far in front sped one small, curly-headed lad, running
like a frightened fawn. He had lost his cap, and his
breath came short, half sobbing in his throat as the sound
of footfalls gained upon his ear; but even yet he might
have beaten them all and reached the open fields but
for the dirt and garbage in the street. Three times he
slipped upon a rancid bacon-rind and almost fell; and the
third time, as he plunged across the oozing drain, a dog
dashed right between his feet.
He staggered, nearly fell, threw out his hand against the
house and saved himself; but as he started on again he
saw the town-watch, wakened by the uproar, standing with
their long staves at the end of the street, barring the way.
The door of a smithy stood open just ahead, with forge-
fires glowing and the hammer ringing on the anvil. Nick
darted in, past the horses, hostlers, and blacksmith’s boys,
and caught at the leather apron of the sturdy smith himself.
“Hoo, man, what a dickens!” snorted he, dropping the
red-hot shoe on which he was at work, and staring like a
startled ox at the panting little fugitive.
“Do na leave them take me!” panted Nick. “They
ha’ stolen me away from Stratford town and will na leave
me go!”
“<‘\NOBODY BREAKS NOBODY'S HEARTS IN
? DRAWLED TH! SMITH, IN HIS DEEP VOICE;
OLD JO-OHN SMITHSES SHO-OP,
‘NOR STEALS NOBODY, NOTHER.’”’
AT BAY 89
At that Will Hostler bolted in, red-faced and scant of
wind. “Thou young rascal,” quoth he, “I have thee now!
Come out 0’ that!” and he tried to take Nick by the collar.
“So-oftly, so-oftly!” rumbled the smith, tweaking up
the glowing shoe in his great pincers, and sweeping a sput-
tering half-circle in front of the cowering lad. “ Droive
slow through the cro-owd! What hath youngster here
did no-ow?”
“Fe hath stolen a fortune from his master at the Three
Lions—and the shilling for him ’s mine!”
“Hath stealed a fortune? Whoy, huttlety-tut!” roared
the burly smith, turning ponderously upon Nick, who was
dodging around him like a boy at tag around a tree.
“Whoy, lad,” said he, scratching his puzzled head with his
great, grimy fingers, “where hast putten it?”
All the rout and the riot now came plunging into the
smithy, breathless with the chase. Master Carew himself,
his ale-can still clutched in his hand, and bearing himself
with a high air of dignity, followed after them, frowning.
“What?” said he, angrily, “have ye earthed the cub
and cannot dig him out? Hast caught him there, fellow?”
“Ay, master, that I have!” shouted Will Hostler.
“Shilling ’s mine, sir.”
“Then fetch him out of this hole!” cried Carew, sniffing
disdainfully at the low, smoky door.
“But he will na be fetched,” stammered the doughty
Will, keeping a most respectful distance from thelong black
pincers and the sputtering shoe with which the farrier stol-
idly mowed the air round about Nick Attwood and himself.
90 MASTER SKYLARK
At that the crowd set up a shout.
Carew thrust fiercely into the press, the louts and loaf-
ers giving way. “What, here! Nicholas Attwood,” said
he, harshly, “come hither.”
“Do na leave him take me,” begged Nick. “He is not
my master; I am not bound out apprentice—they are
stealing me away from my own home, and it will break
my mother’s heart.”
“Nobody breaks nobody’s hearts in old Jo-ohn Smithses
sho-op,” drawled the smith, in his deep voice; “nor steals
nobody, nother. We be honest-dealing folk in Albans
town, an’ makes as good horse-shoes as be forged in all
England”—and he went placidly on mowing the air with
the glimmering shoe.
“Here, fellow, stand aside,” commanded Master Carew,
haughtily. “Stand aside and let me pass!” As he spoke
he clapped his hand upon his poniard with a fierce snarl,
showing his white teeth like a wolf-hound.
The men about him fell back with unanimous alacrity,
making out each to put himself behind the other. But
the huge smith only puffed out his sooty cheeks as if to
blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. “So-oftly, so-oftly,
muster,” drawled he; “do na go to ruffling it here. This
shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. Ill stand
aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground.
Come, now, what wilt thou o’ the lad?—and speak thee
fair, good muster, or thou It get a dab o’ the red-hot shoe.”
As he spoke he gave the black tongs an extra whirl.
CHAPTER XV
LONDON TOWN
“NOME,” growled the blacksmith, gripping his tongs,
“what wilt thou have o’ the lad?”
“ What will I have o’ the lad?” said Master Carew, mim-
icking the blacksmith in a most comical way, with a wink
at the crowd, as if he had never been angry at all, so
quickly could he change his face—“ What will I have o’
the lad?” and all the crowd laughed. “Why, bless thy
gentle heart, good man, I want to turn his farthings into
round gold crowns—if thou and thine infernal hot shoe
do not make zanies of us all! Why, Master Smith, ’t is
to London town I’d take him, and fill his hands with
more silver shillings than there be cast-off shoes in thy
whole shop.”
“Ta, now, hearken till him!” gaped the smith, staring
in amazement.
“ And here thou needs must up and spoil it all, because,
forsooth, the silly child goes a trifle sick for home and
whimpers for his minnie!”
“But the lad saith thou hast stealed him awa-ay from ’s
91
92 MASTER SKYLARK
ho-ome,” rumbled the smith, like a doubtful earthquake ;
“and we ’li ha’ no stealing o’ lads awa-ay from ho-ome in
County Herts!”
“Nay, that we won’t!” cried one. “ Hurrah, John Smith
—fair play, fair play!” and there came an ugly, threaten-
ing murmur from the crowd.
“What! Fair play?” cried Master Carew, turning so
sharply about, with his hand upon his poniard, that each
made as if it were not he but his neighbor had growled.
“Why, sirs, what if I took any one of ye out of your pov-
erty and common clothes down into London town, horse-
back like a king, and had ye sing before the Queen, and
play for earls, and talk with the highest dames in all the
land; and fed ye well, and spoke ye fair, and lodged ye
soft, and clad ye fine, and wrought the whole town on to
cheer ye, and to fill your purses full of gold? What, sir,”
said he, turning to the gaping farrier—“ what if I promised
thee to turn thine every word to a silver sixpence, and
thy smutty grins to golden angels—what wouldst thou?
Knock me in the head with thy dirty sledge, and bawl
foul play?”
“Nay, that I’d not,” roared the burly smith, with a
stupid, ox-like grin, scratching his tousled head; “I’d say,
‘Go it, bully, and a plague on him that said thee nay!’”
“And yet when I would fill this silly fellow’s jerkin full
of good gold Harry shovel-boards for the simple drawing
of his breath, ye bawl ‘Foul play !’”
“What, here! come out, lad,” roared the smith, with a
great horse-laugh, swinging Nick forward and thwacking
LONDON TOWN 93
him jovially between the shoulders with his brawny hand;
“eome out, and go along o’ the master here,—’t is for thy
good,—and ho-ome wull keep, I trow, till thou dost come
again.”
But Nick hung back, and clung to the blacksmith’s grimy
arm, crying in despair: “I will na—oh, I will na!”
“Tut, tut!” eried Master Carew. “Come, Nicholas; I
mean thee well, I ll speak thee fair, and I ‘Il treat thee
true”—and he smiled so frankly that even Nick’s doubts
almost wavered. ‘Come, Ill swear it on my hilt,” said
he.
The smith’s brow clouded. “Nay,” said he; “we ’ll no
swearing by hilts or by holies here; the bailiff will na have
it, sir.”
“Good! then upon mine honour as an Englishman!”
eried Carew. “What, how, bullies? Upon mine honour
as an Englishman !—how is it? Here we be, all English- ©
men together!” and he clapped his hand to Will Hostler’s
shoulder, whereat Will stood up very straight and looked
around, as if all at once he were somebody instead of some-
what less than nobody at all of any consequence. “ What!
—ye are all for fair play ?—and I am for fair play, and
good Master Smith, with his beautiful shoe, here, is for
fair play! Why, sirs, my bullies, we are all for fair play ;
and what more can a man ask than good, downright Eng-
lish fair play? Nothing, say I. Fair play first, last, and
all the time!” and he waved his hand. “Hurrah for
downright English fair play !”
“Hurrah, hurrah!” bellowed the crowd, swept along
94 MASTER SKYLARK
like bubbles in a flood. “Fair play, says we—English fair
play—hurrah!” And those inside waved their hands,
and those that were outside tossed up their caps, in sheer
delight of good fair play.
“Hurrah, my bullies! That ’s the cry!” said Carew, in
his hail-fellow-well-met, royal way. “ Why, we’re the very
best of fellows, and the very fastest friends! Come, all
to the old Three Lions inn, and douse a can of brown
March brew at my expense. To the Queen, to good fair
play, and to all the fine fellows in Albans town!”
And what did the crowd do but raise a shout, like a
parcel of school-boys loosed for a holiday, and troop off to
the Three Lions inn at Master Carew’s heels, Will Hostler
and the brawny smith bringing up the rear with Nick be-
tween them, hand to collar, half forgotten by the rest, and
his heart too low for further grief.
And while the crowd were still roaring over their tank-
ards and cheering good fair play, Master Gaston Carew
up with his prisoner into the saddle, and, mounting him-
self, with the bandy-legged man grinning opposite, shook
the dust of old St. Albans from his horse’s heels.
“Now, Nicholas Attwood,” said he, grimly, as they gal-
loped away, “hark ’e well to what I have to say, and do
not let it slip thy mind. I am willed to take thee to
London town—dost mark me ?—and to London town thou
shalt go, warm or cold. By the whistle of the Lord High
Admiral, I mean just what I say! So thou mayst take thy
choice.”
He gripped Nick’s shoulder as they rode, and glared into
LONDON TOWN — 95
his eyes as if to sear them with his own. Nick heard his
poniard grating in its sheath, and shut his eyes so that he
might not see the master-player’s horrid stare; for the
opening and shutting, opening and shutting, of the blue
lids made him shudder.
“ And what ’s more,” said Carew, sternly, “I shall call
thee Master Skylark from this time forth—dost hear? And
when I bid thee go, thou’lt go; and when I bid thee come,
thou ‘It come; and when I say, ‘Here, follow me!’ thou ‘It
follow like a dog to heel!” He drew up his lip until his
white teeth showed, and Nick, hearing them gritting to-
gether, shrank back dismayed.
“There!” laughed Carew, scornfully. “He that knows
better how to tame a vixen or to cozen a pack of gulls,
now let him speak!” and said no more until they passed
by Chipping Barnet. Then, “Nick,” said he, in a quiet,
kindly tone, as if they had been friends for years, “ this is
the place where Warwick fell”; and pointed down the
field. “There in the corner of that croft they piled the
noble dead like corn upon a threshing-floor. Since then,”
said he, with quiet irony, “men have stopped making
English kings as the Dutch make dolls, of a stick and a
poll thereon.”
Pleased with hearing his own voice, he would have gone
on with many another thing ; but seeing that Nick listened
not at all to what he said, he ceased, and rode on silently
or chatting with the others.
The country through Middlesex was in most part flat,
and heavy forests overhung the road from time to time.
96 MASTER SKYLARK
There the players slipped their poniards, and rode with
rapier in hand; for many a dark deed and cruel robbery
had been done along this stretch of Watling street. And
as they passed, more than one dark-visaged rogue with
branded hand and a price upon his head peered at them
from the copses by the way.
In places where the woods crept very near they pressed
closer together and rode rapidly ; and the horse-boy and
the grooms lit up the matches of their pistolets, and
laid their harquebuses ready in rest, and blew the creep-
ing sparkle snapping red at every turn; not so much
really fearing an attack upon so stout a party of reckless,
dashing blades, as being overawed by the great, mysteri-
ous silence of the forest, the semi-twilight all about, and
the cold, strange-smelling wind that fanned their faces.
The wild spattering of hoofs in water-pools that lay un-
sucked by the sun in shadowy stretches, the grim silence
of the riders, and the wary eying of each covert as they
passed, sent a thrill of excitement into Nick’s heart too
keen for any boy to resist.
Then, too, it was no everyday tale to be stolen away
from home. It was a wild, strange thing with a strange,
wild sound to it, not altogether terrible or unpleasant to
a brave boy’s ears in that wonder-filled age, when all the
world was turned adventurer, and England led the fore ;
when Francis Drake and the “Golden Hind,” John Haw-
kins and the “Victory,” Frobisher and his cockleshells,
were gossip for every English fireside; when the whole
world rang with English steel, and the wide sea foamed
LONDON TOWN 97
with English keels, and the air was full of the blaze of the
living and the ghosts of the mighty dead. And down in
Nick’s plucky young English heart there came a spark like
that which burns in the soul of a mariner when for the
first time an unknown ocean rolls before his eyes.
So he rode on bravely, filled with a sense of daring and
the thrill of perils more remote than Master Carew’s alto-
gether too adjacent poniard, as well as. with a sturdy de-
termination to escape at the first opportunity, in spite of
all the master-player’s threats.
Up Highgate Hill they rattled in a bracing northeast
wind, the rugged country bowling back against the tumbled
sky. Far to south a rusty haze had gloomed against the
sun like a midday fog, mile after mile; and suddenly, as
they topped the range and cleared the last low hill, they
saw a city in the south spreading away until it seemed to
Nick to girdle half the world and to veil the sky in a reek
of murky sea-coal smoke.
“There !” said Carew, reining in the gray, as Nick looked
up and felt his heart almost stand still; “since Parma
burned old Antwerp, and the Low Countries are dead,
there lies the market-heart of all the big round world!”
“London!” cried Nick, and, catching his breath with a
quick gasp, sat speechless, staring.
Carew smiled. ‘Ay, Nick,” said he, cheerily; ‘“’t is
London town. Pluck up thine heart, lad, and be no more
cast down; there lies a New World ready to thine hand.
Thou canst win it if thou wilt. Come, let it be thine
Indies, thou Francis Drake, and I thy galleon to carry
’
98 MASTER SKYLARK
home the spoils! And cheer up. It grieves my heart to
see thee sad. Be merry for my sake.”
“For thy sake?” gasped Nick, staring blankly in his
face. “Why, what hast thou done for me?” A sudden
sob surprised him, and he clenched his fists—it was too
eruel irony. “Why, sir, if thou wouldst only leave me
go ! ”
“Tut, tut!” cried Carew, angrily. “Still harping on
that same old string? Why, from thy waking face I
thought thou hadst dropped it long ago. Let thee go?
Not for all the wealth in Lombard street! Dost think me
a goose-witted gull?—and dost ask what I have done for
thee? Thou simpleton! I have made thee rise above the
limits of thy wildest dream—have shod thy feet with gold
—have filled thy lap with glory—have crowned thine head
with fame! And yet, ‘What have I done for thee?’ Fie!
Thou art a stubborn-hearted little fool. But, marry come
up! I’ll mend thy mind. I’l bend thy will to suit my
way, or break it in the bending!”
Clapping his hand upon his poniard, he turned his back,
and did not speak to Nick again.
And so they came down the Kentish Town road through
a meadow-land threaded with flowing streams, the wild
hill thickets of Hampstead Heath to right, the huddling
villages of Islington, Hoxton, and Clerkenwell to left. And
as they passed through Kentish Town, past Primrose Hill
into Hampstead way, solitary farm-houses and lowly cot-
tages gave way to burgher dwellings in orderly array, with
manor-houses here and there, and in the distance palaces
LONDON TOWN 99
and towers reared their heads above the crowding chim-
ney-pots.
Then the players dressed themselves in fair array, and
flung their banners out, and came through Smithfield to
Aldersgate, mocking the grim old gibbet there with railing
gaiety ; and through the gate rode into London town, with
a long, loud cheer that brought the people crowding to
their doors, and set the shutters creaking everywhere.
Nick was bewildered by the countless shifting gables
and the throngs of people flowing onward like a stream,
and stunned by the roar that seemed to boil out of the
very ground. The horses’ hoofs clashed on the unevenly
paved street with a noise like a thousand smithies. The
houses hung above him till they almost hid the sky, and
seemed to be reeling and ready to fall upon his head
when he looked up; so that he urged the little roan with
his uneasy heels, and wished himself out of this monstrous. °
ruck where the walls were so close together that there
was not elbow-room to live, and the air seemed only heat,
thick and stifling, full of dust and smells.
Shop after shop, and booth on booth, until Nick won-
dered where the gardens were; and such a maze of lanes,
byways, courts, blind alleys, and passages that his simple
country footpath head went all into a tangle, and he could
scarcely have told Tottenham Court road from the river
Thames.
All that he remembered afterward was that, turning
from High Holborn into the Farringdon road, he saw a
great church, under Ludgate Hill, with spire burned and
100 MASTER SKYLARK
fallen, and its massive tower, black with age and smoke,
staring on the town. But he was too confused to know
whither they went or what he saw in passing; for of such
a forest of houses he had never even dreamed, with people
swarming everywhere like ants upon a hill, and among
them all not one kind face he knew.. Through the spirit
of adventure that had roused him for a time welled up a
great heart-sickness for his mother and his home.
Out of a bewildered daze he came at last to realize this
much: that the master-player’s house was very tall and
very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it
had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and
wavered along the wall in the dim light of the late after-
noon.
Then the master-player pushed him up a narrow stair-
ease and along a black corridor to a door at the end of the
passage, through which he thrust him into a darkness like
night, and slammed the door behind him.
Nick heard the bolts shoot heavily, and Master Carew
eall through the heavy panels: “Now, Jackanapes, sit
down and chew the cud of solitude awhile. It may cool
thy silly pate for thee, since nothing else will serve. When
thou hast found thy common sense, perchance thou ‘It find
thy freedom, not before.” Then his step went down the
corridor, down the stair, through the long hall—a door
banged with a hollow sound that echoed through the
house, and all was still.
At first, in the utter darkness, Nick could not see at all,
and did not move for fear of falling down some awful
LONDON TOWN 101
hole; but as his eyes grew used to the gloom he saw that
he was in a little room. The only window was boarded
up, but a dim light crept in through narrow cracks and
made faint bars across the air. Little motes floated up
and down these thin blue bars, wavering in the uncertain
light and then lost in the darkness. Upon the floor was
a pallet of straw, covered with a coarse sheet, and having
a rough coverlet of sheepskin. A round log was the only
pillow.
Something moved. Nick, startled, peered into the
shadows: it was a strip of ragged tapestry which fluttered
on the wall. As he watched it flapping fitfully there came
a hollow rattle in the wainscot, and an uncanny sound like
the moaning of wind in the chimney.
“Tet me out!” he cried, beating upon the door. “Let
me out, I say!” OU :
— nd
= ee
J —S
Spring- time, How. falt of heart a bod-y feels! Sing hey trol - ly
Repeat Refrain after 2d Stanza,
SS a SS ee 2S Sal
lol - ly!O to live is to be jol-ly, When Spring-timecometh with the Summer at her heels!
3 SSS ==
- q
; S%
e= ——— SS ee
= a a
272 MASTER SKYLARK
‘Idst fill the house with such a throng as it hath never
seen!” And in the morning she would not take a penny
for their lodging nor their keep. “Nay, nay,” said she;
“they ha’ brought good custom to the house, and left me
a brave little tale to tell for many a good long year. We
inns-folk be not common penny-grabbers; marry, no!”
and, furthermore, she made interest with a carrier to give
them a lift to Woodstock on their way.
When they came to Woodstock the carrier set them
down by the gates of a park built round by a high stone
wall over which they could not see, and with his waim
went in at the gate, leaving them to journey on together
through a little rain-shower.
The land grew flatter than before. There were few
crees upon the hills, and scarcely any springs at which to
drink, but much tender grass, with countless sheep nib-
bling everywhere. The shower was soon blown away;
the sun came out; and a pleasant wind sprang up out of
the south. Here and there beside some cottage wall the
lilacs bloomed, and the later orchard-trees were apple-pink
and cherry-white with May.
They came to a puddle in the road where there was a
dance of butterflies. Cicely clapped her hands with glee.
A goldfinch dipped across the path like a little yellow
streak of laughter in the sun. “Oh, Nick, what is it?”
she cried.
“A bird,” said he.
“A truly bird?” and she clasped her hands. “ Will it
ever come again?”
““
‘OH, NICK,
WHAT IS IT?
SHE CRIED.”
WAYFARING HOME 273
“ Again? Oh, yes, or, la! another one—there ’s plenty
in the weeds.”
And so they fared all afternoon, until at dusk they
came to Chipping Norton across the fields, a short cut to
where the thin blue supper-smoke curled up. The mists
were rising from the meadows; earth and sky were blend-
ing on the hills; a little silver sickle moon hung in the
fading violet, low in the western sky. Under an old oak
in a green place a fiddler and a piper were playing, and
youths and maidens were dancing in the brown light.
Some little chaps were playing blindman’s-buff near by,
and the older folk were gathered by the tree.
Nick came straight to where they stood, and bowing,
he and Cicely together, doffed his cap, and said in his most
London tone, “ We bid ye all good-e’en, good folk.”
His courtly speech and manner, as well as his clothes
and Cicely’s jaunty gown, no little daunted the simple
country folk. Nobody spoke, but, standing silent, all
stared at the two quaint little vagabonds as mild kine stare
at passing sheep in a quiet lane.
“We need somewhat to eat this night, and we want a
place to sleep,” said Nick. ‘The beds must be right clean
—we have good appetites. If ye can do for us, we will
dance for you anything that ye may desire—the ‘Queen’s
Own Measure,’ ‘La Donzella, the new ‘Allemand’ of my
Lord Pembroke, a pavone or a tinternell, or the ‘Gall-
iard of Savoy.” Which doth it please you, mistresses?”
and he bowed to the huddling young women, who scarcely
knew what to make of it.
18
274 MASTER SKYLARK
“La! Joan,” whispered one, “he calleth thee ‘mistress’!
Speak up, wench.” But Joan stoutly held her peace.
“Or if ye will, the little maid will dance the coranto
for you, straight from my Lord Chancellor’s dancing-
master; and while she dances I will sing.”
“Why, hark ’e, Rob,” spoke out one motherly dame,
“they two do look clean-like. Children, too—who ’d gi’
them stones when they beg for bread? Ill do for them
this night myself; and thou, the good man, and Kit can
sleep in the hutch. So there, dears; now let ’s see the
Lord Chancellor’s tantrums.”
‘OT is not a tantrums, goody,” said Nick, politely, “but
a coranto.”
“La! young master, what ’s the odds, just so we sees it
done? Some folks calls whittles ‘knives,’ and thinks ’t
wunnot cut theys fingers! ”
Nick took his place at the side of the ring. “Now,
Cicely!” said he.
“Thou ’lt call ‘Sa—sa!’ and give me the time of the
coup Warchet?” she whispered, timidly hesitant, as she
stepped to the midst of the ring.
“Ay, then,” said he, “’t is off, ’t is off!” and struck up
a lively tune, snapping his fingers for the time.
Cicely, bowing all about her, slowly began to dance.
It was a pretty sight to see: her big eyes wide and
earnest, her cheeks a little flushed, her short hair curling,
and her crimson gown fluttering about her as she danced
the quaint running step forward and back across the grass,
balancing archly, with her hands upon her hips and a little
WAYFARING HOME 275
smile upon her lips, in the swaying motion of the coupee,
eourtesying gracefully as one tiny slippered foot peeped
out from her rustling skirt, tapping on the turf, now in
front and now behind. Nick sang like a blackbird in the
hedge. And how those country lads and lasses stared to
see such winsome, dainty grace! “La me!” gaped one,
“°t is fairy folk—she doth na even touch the ground!”
“The pretty dear!” the mothers said. “Doll, why canst
thou na do the like, thou lummox?” “Tut,” sighed the
buxom Doll, “I have na wingses on my feet!”
Then Cicely, breathless, bowed, and ran to Nick’s side
asking, “ Was it all right, Nick?”
“Right?” said he, and stroked her hair; “’t was better
than thou didst ever dance it for M’sieu.”
“For why?” said she, and fiushed, with a quick light
in her eyes; “for why—because this time I danced for
thee.”
The country folk, enchanted, called for more and more.
Nick sang another song, and he and Cicely danced the
galliard together, while the piper piped and the fiddler
fiddled away like mad; and the moon went down, and the
cottage doors grew ruddy with the light inside. Then
Dame Pettiford gave them milk and oat-cakes in a bowl,
a bit of honey in the comb, and a cup of strawberries; and
Cicely fell fast asleep with the last of the strawberries in
her hand.
So they came up out of the south through Shipston-on-
Stour, in the main-traveled way, and with every mile Nick
felt home growing nearer. Streams sprang up in the
276 MASTER SKYLARK
meadow-lands, with sedgy islands, and lines of silvery
willows bordering their banks. Flocks and herds cropped
beneath tofts of ash and elm and beech. Snug homes
peeped out of hazel copses by the road. The passing carts
had a familiar look, and at Alderminster Nick saw a man
he thought he recognized.
Before he knew that he was there they topped Edge
Hill.
There lay Stratford! as he had left it lying; not one
stick or stack or stone but he could put his finger on and
say, “This place I know!” Green pastures, grassy levels,
streams, groves, mills, the old grange and the manor-house,
the road that forked in three, and the hills of Arden beyond
itall. There was the tower of the guildhall chapel above
the clustering, dun-thatched roofs among the green and
blossom-white ; to left the spire of Holy Trinity sprang up
beside the shining Avon. Bull Lane he made out dimly,
and a red-tiled roof among the trees. “There, Cicely,” he
said, “there—there!” and laughed a queer little shaky
laugh next door to crying for joy.
Wat Raven was sweeping old Clopton bridge. “ Hullo,
there, Wat! I be come home again!” Nick cried. Wat
stared at him, but knew him not at all.
Around the corner, and down High street. Fynes Mor-
rison burst in at the guildschool door. “Nick Attwood ’s
home!” he shouted; and his eyes were like two plates.
Then the last lane—and the smoke from his father’s
house!
The garden gate stood open, and there was some one
WAYFARING HOME 277
working in the yard. “Itis my father, Cicely, ” he laughed.
“Father!” he cried, and hurried in the lane.
Simon Attwood straightened up and looked across the
fence. His arms were held a little out, and his hands
hung down with bits of moist earth clinging to them.
His brows were darker than a year before, and his hair
was grown more gray; his back, too, stooped. “Art thou
a-calling me?” he asked.
Nick laughed. “Why, father, do ye na know me?” he
eried out. “’T is I—t is Nick—come home!”
Two steps the stern old tanner took—two steps to the
latchet-gate. Not one word did he speak ; but he set his
hand to the latchet-gate and closed it in Nick’s face.
CHAPTER XXXVII
TURNED ADRIFT
OWN the path and under the gate the rains had
washed a shallow rut in the earth. Two pebbles,
loosened by the closing of the gate, rolled down the rut
and out upon the little spreading fan of sand that whitened
in the grass.
There was the house with the black beams checkering
its yellow walls. There was the old bench by the door,
and the lettuce in the garden-bed. There were the bee-
hives, and the bees humming among the orchard boughs.
“Why, father, what!” cried Nick, “dost na know me
yet? See, ’t is I, Nick, thy son.”
A strange look came into the tanner’s face. “I do na
know thee, boy,” he answered heavily; “thou canst na
enter here.”
“But, father, indeed ’t is I!”
Simon Attwood looked across the town; yet he did not
see the town: across the town into the sky; yet he did
not see the sky, nor the drifting banks of cloud, nor the
sunlight shining on the clouds. “I say I do na know
278
TURNED ADRIFT 279
thee,” he replied; “be off to the place whence ye ha’
come.”
Nick’s hand was almost on the latch. He stopped. He
looked up into his father’s face. “Why, father, I’ve come
home!” he gasped.
The gate shook in the tanner’s grip. “Have I na telled
thee twice I do na know thee, boy? No house o’ mine
shall e’er be home for thee. Thou hast no part nor parcel
here. Get thee out 0’ my sight.”
“Oh, father, father, what do ye mean?” cried Nick, his
lips scarcely able to shape the words.
“Do na ye ‘father’ me no more,” said Simon Attwood,
bitterly; “I be na father to stage-playing, vagabond
rogues. And be gone, I say. Dost hear? Must I e’en
thrust thee forth?” He raised his hand as if to strike.
Nick fell away from the latchet-gate, dumb-stricken with
amazement, shame, and grief.
“Oh, Nick,” cried Cicely, “come away—the wicked,
wicked man!”
“Tt is my father, Cicely.”
She stared at him. “And thou dost hate my father so?
Oh, Nick! oh, Nick!”
_ “Will ye be gone?” called Simon Attwood, half-way
opening the gate; “must I set constables on thee?”
Nick did not move. A numbness had crept over him
like palsy. Cicely caught him by the hand. “ Come, let
us go back to my father,” she said. “He will not turn us
out.”
Searcely knowing what he did, he followed her, stum-
280 MASTER SKYLARK
bling in the level path as though he were half blind or had
been beaten upon the head. He did not cry. This was
past all erying. He let himself be led along—it made no
matter where.
In Chapel lane there was a crowd along the Great House
wall; and on the wall Ned Cooke and Martin Addenbroke
were sitting. There were heads of people moving on the
porch and in the court, and the yard was all a-bustle and
to-do. But there was nobody in the street, and no one
looked at Nick and Cicely.
The Great House did look very fair in the sun of that
May day, with its homely gables of warm.red brick and
sunburnt timber, its cheery roof of Holland tile, and with
the sunlight flashing from the diamond panes that were
leaded into the sashes of the great bay-window on the
eastern garden side.
In the garden all was stir-about and merry voices.
‘There was a little green court before the house, and a
pleasant lawn coming down to the lane from the doorway
porch. The house stood to the left of the entry-drive, and
the barn-yard to the right was loud with the blithe crowing
of the cocks. But the high brick wall shut out the street
where Nick and Cicely trudged dolefully along, and to Nick
the lane seemed very full of broken crockery and dirt, and
the sunlight allamockery. The whole of the year had not
yet been so dark as this, for there had ever been the dream
of coming home. But now—he suffered himself to be led
along; that was enough.
They had come past the Great House up from Chapel
TURNED ADRIFT 281
street, when a girl came out of the western gate, and with
her hand above her eyes looked after them. She seemed
in doubt, but looked again, quite searchingly. Then, as
one who is not sure, but does not wish to miss a chance,
called out, “Nick Attwood! Nick Attwood!”
Cicely looked back to see who called. She did not know
the girl, but saw her beckon. “There is some one calling,
Nick,” said she.
Nick stopped in a hopeless sort of way, and looked back
down the street.
When he had turned so that the girl at the gate could
see his face, she left the gate wide open behind her, and
came running quickly up the street after them. As she
drew nearer he saw that it was Susanna Shakspere, though
she was very much grown since he had seen her last. He
watched her running after them as if it were none of his
affair. But when she had caught up with them, she took
him by the shoulder smartly and drew him back toward
the gate. “Why, Nicholas Attwood,” she cried, all out of
breath, “come straightway into the house with me. My
father hath been hunting after thee the whole way up from
London town!”
CHAPTER XXXVIIi
A STRANGE DAY
HERE in the Great House garden under the mul-
berry-trees stood Master Will Shakspere, with
Masters Jonson, Burbage, Hemynge, Condell, and a
goodly number more, who had just come up from London
town, as well as Alderman Henry Walker of Stratford,
good old John Combe of the college, and Michael Dray-
ton, the poet of Warwick. For Master Shakspere had
that morning bought the Great House, with its gardens
and barns, of Master William Underhill, for sixty pounds
sterling, and was making a great feast for all his friends
to celebrate the day.
The London players all clapped their hands as Nick and
Cicely came up the garden-path, and, “Upon my word,
Will,” declared Master Jonson, “the lad is a credit to this
old town of thine. A plucky fellow, I say, a right plucky
fellow. Found the lass and brought her home ail safe
and sound—why, ’t is done like a true knight-errant!”
Master Shakspere met them with outstretched hands.
“Thou young rogue,” said he, smiling, “how thou hast
282
ED HANDS.”
TREI'CH.
TS
HEM WITH OU
T.
ER SHAKSPERE MET
“MAST.
A STRANGE DAY 283
forestalled us! Why, here we have been weeping for thee
as lost, strayed, or stolen; and all the while thou wert
nestling in the bosom of thine own sweet home. How is
the beloved little mother?”
“T ha’ na seen my mother,” faltered Nick. “Father
will na let me in.”
“What? How?”
“My father will na have me any more, sir—saith I
shall never be his son again. Oh, Master Shakspere, why
did they steal me from home?”
They were all crowding about now, and Master Shak-
spere had hold of the boy. ‘“ Why, what does this mean?”
he asked. ‘“ What on earth has happened?”
Between the two children, in broken words, the story
came out.
“Why, this is a sorry tale!” said Master Shakspere.
“Does the man not know that thou wert stolen, that thou
wert kept against thy will, that thou hast trudged half-
way from London for thy mother’s sake?”
“He will na leave me tell him, sir. He would na even
listen to me!”
“The muckle shrew!” quoth Master Jonson. “Why,
I'll have this out with him! By Jupiter, Ill read him
reason with a vengeance!” With a clink of his rapier he
made as if to be off at once.
“Nay, Ben,” said Master Shakspere; “cool thy blood—
a quarrel will not serve. This tanner is a bitter-minded,
heavy-handed man—he ’d only throw thee in a pickling-
vat.”
284 MASTER SKYLARK
“What? Then he ’d never tan another hide!”
“And would that serve the purpose, Ben? The cure
should better the disease—the children must be thought
about.”
“The children? Why, as for them,” said Master Jon-
son, in his blunt, outspoken way, “I ’ll think thee a
thought offhand to serve the turn. What? Why, this
tanner calls us vagabonds. Wagabonds, forsooth! Yet
vagabonds are gallows-birds, and gallows-birds are ravens.
And ravens, men say, do foster forlorn children. Take
my point? Good, then; let us ravenous vagabonds take
these two children for our own, Will,—thou one, I t’ other,
—and by praiseworthy fostering singe this fellow’s very
brain with shame.”
“Why, here, here, Ben Jonson,” spoke up Master Bur-
bage, “this is all very well for Will and thee; but, pray,
where do Hemynge, Condell, and I come in upon the bill?
Come, man, ’t is a pity if we cannot all stand together in
this real play as well as in all the make-believe.”
“That ’s my sort!” cried Master Hemynge. “ Why,
what? Here is a player’s daughter who has no father,
and a player whose father will not have him,—orphaned
by fate, and disinherited by folly,—common stock with us
all! Marry, ’t is a sort of stock I want some of. Kind
hearts are trumps, my honest Ben—make it a stock com-
pany, and let us all be in.”
“That’s no bad fancy,” added Condell, slowly, for Henry
Condell was a cold, shrewd man. ‘“There’s merit in the
lad beside his voice—that cannot keep its freshness long ;
A STRANGE DAY 285
but his figure ’s good, his wit is quick, and he has a very
taking style. It would be worth while, Dick. And, Will,”
said he, turning to Master Shakspere, who listened with
half a smile to all that the others said, “he ‘ll make a
better Rosalind than Roger Prynne for thy new play.”
“So he would,” said Master Shakspere; “but before
we put him into ‘As You Like It,’ suppose we ask him
how he does like it? Nick, thou hast heard what all
these gentlemen have said—what hast thou to say, my
lad?”
“Why, sirs, ye are all kind,” said Nick, his voice begin-
ning to tremble, “very, very kind indeed, sirs; but—I—I
want my mother—oh, masters, I do want my mother!”
At that John Combe turned on his heel and walked out
of the gate. Out of the garden-gate walked he, and down
the dirty lane, setting his cane down stoutly as he went, past
gravel-pits and pens to Southam’s lane, and in at the door
of Simon Attwood’s tannery.
Ir was noon when he went in; yet the hour struck,
and no one came or went from the tannery. Mistress
Attwood’s dinner grew cold upon the board, and Dame
Combe looked vainly across the fields toward the town.
But about the middle of the afternoon John Combe came
out of the tannery door, and Simon Attwood came behind
him. And as John Combe came down the cobbled way, a
trail of brown vat-liquor followed him, dripping from his
clothes, for he was soaked to the skin. His long gray hair
had partly dried in strings about his ears, and his fine lace
286 MASTER SKYLARK
collar was a drabbled shame; but there was a singular
untroubled smile upon his plain old face.
Simon Attwood stayed to lock the door, fumbling his
keys as if his sight had failed; but when the heavy bolt
was shut, he turned and called after John Combe, so that
the old man stopped in the way and dripped a puddle until
the tanner came up to where he stood. And as he came
up Attwood asked, in such a tone as none had ever heard
from his mouth before, “Combe, John Combe, what ’s
done ’s done,—and oh, John, the pity of it,—yet will ye
still shake hands wi’ me, John, afore ye go?”
John Combe took Simon Attwood’s bony hand and
wrung it hard in his stout old grip, and looked the tanner
squarely in the eyes; then, still smiling serenely to him-
self, and setting his cane down stoutly as he walked,
dripped home, and got himself into dry clothes without a
word.
But Simon Attwood went down to the river, and sat
upon a fiat stone under some pollard willows, and looked
into the water.
What his thoughts were no one knew, nor ever shall
know; but he was fighting with himself, and more than
once groaned bitterly. At first he only shut his teeth and
held his temples in his hands; but after a while he began
to ery to himself, over and over again, “O Absalom, my
son, my son! O my son Absalom!” and then only “My
son, my son!” And when the day began to wane above
the woods of Arden, he arose, and came up from the river,
walking swiftly; and, looking neither to the right nor to
A STRANGE DAY 287
the left, came up to the Great House garden, and went in
at the gate.
At the door the servant met him, but saw his face, and
let him pass without a word ; for he looked like a desperate
man whom there was no stopping.
So, with a grim light burning in his eyes, his hat in his
hand, and his clothes all drabbled with the liquor from
his vats, the tanner strode into the dining-hall.
CHAPTER XXxXIX
ALL ’8 WELL THAT ENDS WELL
HE table had been cleared of trenchers and napkins,
the crumbs brushed away, and a clean platter set
before each guest with pared cheese, fresh cherries, biscuit,
caraways, and wine.
There were about the long table, beside Master Shak-
spere himself, who sat at the head of the board, Masters
Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Condell, and Peter
Hemynge, Master Shakspere’s partners; Master Ben Jon-
son, his dearest friend; Thomas Pope, who played his
finest parts; John Lowin, Samuel Gilburne, Robert Nash,
and William Kemp, players of the Lord Chamberlain’s
company ; Edmund Shakspere, the actor, who was Master
‘William Shakspere’s younger brother, and Master John
Shakspere, his father ; Michael Drayton, the Midland bard ;
Burgess Robert Getley, Alderman Henry Walker, and
William Hart, the Stratford hatter, brother-in-law to Mas-
ter Shakspere.
On one side of the table, between Master Jonson and
Master Richard Burbage, Cicely was seated upon a high
288
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 289
chair, with a wreath of early crimson roses in her hair,
attired in the gown in which Nick saw her first a year
before. On the other side of the table Nick had a place
between Master Drayton and Robert Getley, father of his
friend Robin. Half-way down there was an empty chair.
Master John Combe was absent.
It was no common party. In all England better com-
pany could not have been found. Some few of them
the whole round world could not have matched then, and
could not match now.
It would be worth a fortune to know the things they
said,—the quips, the jests, the merry tales that went around
that board,—but time has left too little of what such men
said and did, and it can be imagined only by the brightest
wits.
"T was Master Shakspere on his feet, welcoming his
friends to his “New Place” with quiet words that made
them glad to live and to be there, when suddenly he
stopped, his hands upon the table by his chair, and stared.
The tanner stood there, silent, in the door.
Nick’s face turned pale. Cicely clung to Master Jonson’s
arm. :
Simon Attwood stepped into the room, and Master Shak-
spere went quickly to meet him in the middle of the floor.
“Master Will Shakspere,” said the tanner, hoarsely, “I
ha’ come about a matter.” There he stopped, not knowing
what to say, for he was overwrought.
“Out with it, sir,” said Master Shakspere, sternly.
“There is much here to be said.”
19
290 MASTER SKYLARK
The tanner wrung his hat within his hands, and looked
about the ring of cold, averted faces. Soft words with
him were few; he had forgotten tender things; and,
indeed, what he meant to do was no easy thing for
any man.
“Come, say what thou hast to say,” said Master Shak-
spere, resolutely ; “and say it quickly, that we may have
done.”
“There ’s nought that I can say,” said Simon Attwood,
“but that I be sorry, and I wantmyson! Nick! Nick!”
he faltered brokenly, “I be wrung for thee; will ye na
come home—just for thy mother’s sake, Nick, if ye will na
come for mine?”
Nick started from his seat with a glad ery—then stopped.
“But Cicely?” he said.
The tanner wrung his hat within his hands, and his face
was dark with trouble. Master Shakspere looked at Mas-
ter Jonson.
Nick stood hesitating between Cicely and his father,
faithful to his promise, though his heart was sick for
home.
An odd light had been struggling dimly in Simon Att-
wood’s troubled eyes. Then all at once it shone out bright
and clear, and he clapped his bony hand upon the stout
oak chair. “Bring her along,” he said. “I ha’ little
enough, but I will do the best I can. Maybe’t will some-
how right the wrong I ha’ done,” he added huskily. “And,
neighbors, I ‘ll go surety to the Council that she shall na
fall a pauper or a burden to the town.’ My trade is ill
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 291
enough, but, sirs, it will stand for forty pound the year at
a fair cast-up. Bring the lass wi’ thee, Nick—we ’1l make
out, lad, we ll make out. God will na let it all go wrong.”
Master Jonson and Master Shakspere had been nodding
and talking together in a low tone, smiling like men very
well pleased about something, and directly Master Shak-
spere left the reom.
“Wilt thou come, lad?” asked the tanner, holding out
his hands.
“Oh, father!” cried Nick; then he choked so that he
could say no more, and his eyes were so full of mist that
he could scarcely find his father where he stood.
But there was no need of more; Simon Attwood was
answered.
Voices buzzed about the room. The servants whispered
in the hall. Nick held his father’s gnarled hand in his
own, and looked curiously up into his face, as if for the
first time knowing what it was to have a father.
“Well, lad, what be it?” asked the tanner, huskily, lay-
ing his hand on his son’s curly head, which was nearly up
to his shoulder now.
“Nothing,” said Nick, with a happy smile, “ only mother
will be glad to have Cicely—won’t she?”
Master Shakspere came into the room with something
in his hand, and walking to the table, laid it down.
It was a heavy buckskin bag, tied tightly with a silken
cord, and sealed with red wax stamped with the seals of
Master Shakspere and Master Jonson.
Every one was watching him intently, and one or two
292 MASTER SKYLARK
of the gentlemen from London were smiling in a very
knowing way.
He broke the seals, and loosening the thong which closed
the bag, took out two other bags, one of which was just
double its companion’s size. They also were tied with
silken cord and sealed with the two seals on red wax.
There was something printed roughly with a quill pen
upon each bag, but Master Shakspere kept that side turned
toward himself so that the others could not see.
“Come, come, Will,” broke in Master Jonson, “don’t
be all day about it!”
“The more haste the worse speed, Ben,” said Master
Shakspere, quietly. “I have a little story to tell ye all.”
So they all listened.
“When Gaston Carew, lately master-player of the Lord
High Admiral’s company, was arraigned before my Lord
Justice for the killing of that rascal, Fulk Sandells, there
was not a man of his own company had the grace to lend
him even so much as sympathy. But there were still some
in London who would not leave him totally friendless in
such straits.”
“Some?” interrupted Master Jonson, bluntly; “then
o-n-e spells ‘some.’ The names of them all were Will
Shakspere.”
“Tut, tut, Ben!” said Master Shakspere, and went on:
“But when the charge was read, and those against him
showed their hand, it was easy to see that the game was
up. No one saw this any sooner than Carew himself; yet
he carried himself like a man, and confessed the indictment
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 293
without a quiver. They brought him the book, to read a
verse and save his neck, perhaps, by pleading benefit of
clergy. But he knew the temper of those against him,
and that nothing might avail; so he refused the plea
quietly, saying, ‘I am no clerk, sirs. All I wish to read
in this case is what my own hand wrote upon that scoun-
drel Sandells’ It was soon over. When the judge pro-
nounced his doom, all Carew asked was for a friend to
speak with a little while aside. This the court allowed;
so he sent for me—we played together with Henslowe, he
and I, ye know. He had not much to say—for once in
his life,”—here Master Shakspere smiled pityingly,—“ but
he sent his love forever to his only daughter Cicely.”
Cicely was sitting up, listening with wide eyes, and
eagerly nodded her head as if to say, “Of course.”
“He also begged of Nicholas Attwood that he would
forgive him whatever wrong he had done him.”
“Why, that I will, sir,’ choked Nick, brokenly ; “he was
wondrous kind to me, except that he would na leave
me go.”
“ After that,” continued Master Shakspere, “he made
known to me a sliding panel in the wainscot of his house,
wherein was hidden all he had on earth to leave to those
he loved the best, and who, he hoped, loved him.”
“Everybody loves my father,” said Cicely, smiling and
nodding again. Master Jonson put his arm around the
back of her chair, and she leaned her head upon it.
“Carew said that he had marked upon the bags which
were within the panel the names of the persons to whom
winnie ia i a
294 MASTER SKYLARK
they were to go, and had me swear, upon my faith as a
Christian man, that I would see them safely delivered ac-
cording to his wish. This being done, and the end come,
he kissed me on both cheeks, and standing bravely up,
spoke to them all, saying that for a man such as he had
been it was easier to end even so than to go on. I never
saw him again.”
The great writer of plays paused a moment, and his lips
moved as if he were saying a prayer. Master Burbage
crossed himself.
“The bags were found within the wall, as he had said,
and were sealed by Ben Jonson and myself until we should
find the legatees—for they had disappeared as utterly as
if the earth had gaped and swallowed them. But, by the
Father’s grace, we have found them safe and sound at last;
and all ’s well that ends well!”
Here he turned the buckskin bags around.
On one, in Master Carew’s school-boy scrawl, was
printed, “For myne Onelie Beeloved Doghter, Cicely
Carew”; on the other, “For Nicholas Attewode, alias —
Mastre Skie-lark, whom I, Gaston Carew, Player, Stole
Away from Stratford Toune, Anno Domini 1596.”
Nick stared ; Cicely clapped her hands; and Simon Att-
wood sat down dizzily.
“There,” said Master Shakspere, pointing to the second
bag, “are one hundred and fifty gold rose-nobles. In the
other just three hundred more. Neighbor Attwood, we
shall have no paupers here.”
Everybody laughed then and clapped their hands, and
ALL ’8 WELL THAT ENDS WELL 295
the London players gave a rousing cheer. Master Ben
Jonson’s shout might have been heard in Market Square.
At this tremendous uproar the servants peeped at the
doors and windows; and Tom Boteler, peering in from
the buttery hall, and seeing the two round money-bags
plumping on the table, crept away with such a look of
amazement upon his face that Mollikins, the scullery-maid,
thought he had seen a ghost, and fled precipitately into
the pantry.
“And what ’s more, Neighbor Tanner,” said Master
Richard Burbage, “had Carew’s daughter not sixpence to
her name, we vagabond players, as ye have had the scanty
grace to dub us, would have cared for her for the honour
of the craft, and reared her gently in some quiet place
where there never falls even the shadow of such evil
things as have been the end of many a right good fellow
beside old Kit Marlowe and Gaston Carew.”
“And to that end, Neighbor Attwood,” Master Shakspere
added, “we have, through my young Lord Hunsdon, who
has just been made State Chamberlain, Her Majesty’s
gracious permission to hold this money in trust for the
little maid as guardians under the law.”
Cicely stared around perplexed. “Won't Nick be
there?” she asked. “Why, then I will not go—they shall
not take thee from me, Nick!” and she threw her arms
around him. “I ’m going to stay with thee till daddy
comes, and be thine own sister forever.”
Master Jonson laughed gently, not his usual roaring
laugh, but one that was as tender as his own bluff heart.
296 MASTER SKYLARK
“Why, good enough, good enough! The woman who
mothered a lad like Master Skylark here is surely fit to
rear the little maid.”
The London players thumped the table. “Why, ’t is
the very trick,” said Hemynge. “Marry, this is better
than a play.”
“Tt is indeed,” quoth Condell. “See the plot come
out!”
“Thou ‘lt do it, Attwood—why, of course thou ’lt do it,”
said Master Shakspere. “’T is an excellent good plan.
These funds we hold in trust will keep thee easy-minded,
and warrant thee in doing well by both our little folks.
And what ’s more,” he cried, for the thought had just
come in his head, “TI have ever heard thee called an honest
man; hard, indeed, perhaps too hard, but honest as the
day is long. Now I need a tenant for this New Place of
mine—some married man with a good housewife, and
children to be delving in the posy-beds outside. What
sayst thou, Simon Attwood? They tell me thy ’prentice,
Job Hortop, is to marry in July—he ‘ll take thine old
house at a fair rental. Why, here, Neighbor Attwood,
thou toil-worn, time-damaged tanner, bless thy hard old
heart, man, come, be at ease—thou hast ground thy soul
out long enough! Come, take me at mine offer—be my
fellow. The rent shall trickle off thy finger-tips as easily
as water off a duck’s back!”
Simon Attwood arose from the chair where he had been
sitting. There was a bewildered look upon his face, and
he was twisting his horny fingers together until the
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 297
knuckles were white. His lips parted as if to speak, but
-he only swallowed very hard once or twice instead, and
looked around at them all. “Why, sir,” he said at length,
looking at Master Shakspere, “why, sirs, all of ye—I ha’
been a hard man, and summat of a fool, sirs, ay, sirs, a
very fool. I ha) misthought and miscalled ye foully many
a time, and many a time. God knows I be sorry for it
from the bottom o’ my heart!” And with that he sat
down and buried his face in his arms among the dishes on
the buffet.
“Nay, Simon Attwood,” said Master Shakspere, going
to his side and putting his hand upon the tanner’s shoulder,
“thou hast only been mistaken, that is all. Come, sit thee
up. Tosee thyself mistaken is but to be the wiser. Why,
never the wisest man but saw himself a fool a thousand
times. Come, I have mistaken thee more than thou hast
me; for, on my word, I thought thou hadst no heart at
all—and that’s far worse than having one which has but
gone astray. Come, Neighbor Attwood, sit thee up and
eat with us.”
“Nay, Ill go home,” said the tanner, turning his face
away that they might notseehistears. “Ibea spoil-sport
and a mar-feast here.”
“Why, by Jupiter, man!” cried Master Jonson, bringing
his fist down upon the board witha thump that made the
spoons all clink, “thou art the very merry-maker of the
feast. A full heart’s better than a surfeit any day. Don’t
let him go, Will—this sort of thing doth make the whole
world kin! Come, Master Attwood, sit thee down, and
298 MASTER SKYLARK
make thyself at home. ’T is not my house, but ’t is my
friend’s, and so ’t is all the same in the Lowlands. Be
free of us and welcome.”
“T thank ye, sirs,” said the tanner, slowly, turning to
the table with rough dignity. “Ye ha’ been good to my
boy. Ill ne’er forget ye while I live. Oh, sirs, there be
kind hearts in the world that I had na dreamed of. But,
masters, I ha’ said my say, and know na more. Your
pleasure wunnot be my pleasure, sirs, for I be only a com-
mon man. I will go home to my wife. There be things
to say before my boy comes home; and I ha’ muckle need
to tell her that I love her—I ha’ na done so these many
years.”
“Why, Neighbor Tanner,” cried Master Jonson, with
flushing cheeks, “thou art a right good fellow! And
here was I, no later than this morning, red-hot to spit thee
upon my bilbo like a Michaelmas goose!” He laughed a
boyish laugh that did one’s heart good to hear.
“ Ay,” said Master Shakspere, smiling, as he and Simon
Attwood looked into each other’s eyes. “Come, neighbor,
I know thou art my man—so do not go until thou drinkest
one good toast with us, for we are all good friends and
true from this day forth. Come, Ben, a toast to fit the cue.”
“Why, then,” replied Master Jonson, in a good round
voice, rising in his place, “here ’s to all kind hearts!”
“Wherever they may be!” said Master Shakspere,
softly. “It is a good toast, and we will all drink it
together.”
And so they did. And Simon Attwood went away with
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 299
a warmth and a tingling in his heart he had never known
before.
“Margaret,” said he, coming quickly in at the door, as
she went silently about the house with a heavy heart
preparing the supper, “ Margaret.”
She dropped the platter upon the board, and came to
him hurriedly, fearing evil tidings.
He took her by the hands. This, even more than his
unusual manner, alarmed her. ‘Why, Simon,” she cried,
“what is it? What has come over thee?”
“Nought,” he replied, looking down at her, his hard
face quivering; “but I love thee, Margaret.”
“Simon, what dost thou mean?” faltered Mistress Att-
wood, her heart going down like lead.
“Nought, sweetheart—but that I love thee, Margaret,
and that our lad is coming home!”
Her heart seemed to stop beating.
“Margaret,” said he, huskily, “I do love thee, lass. Is
it too late to tell thee so?”
“Nay, Simon,” answered his wife, simply, “’t is never
toolateto mend.” And with that she langhed—but in the
middle of her laughing a tear ran down her cheek.
From the windows of the New Place there came a great
sound of men singing together, and this was the quaint
old song they sang:
“Then here ’s a health to all kind hearts
Wherever they may be;
For kindly hearts make but one kin
Of all humanity.
300 MASTER SKYLARK
And here’s a rouse to all kind hearts
Wherever they be found;
For it is the throb of kindred hearts
Doth make the world go round!”
“Why, Will,” said Master Burbage, slowly setting down
his glass, “’t is altogether a midsummer night’s dream.”
“So it is, Dick,” answered Master Shakspere, with a
smile, and a far-away look in his eyes. “Come, Nicholas,
wilt thou not sing for us just the last few little lines of
‘When Thou Wakest,’ out of the play?”
Then Nick stood up quietly, for they all were his good
friends there, and Master Drayton held his hand while he
sang:
“Every man shall take his own,
In your waking shall be shown:
Jack shall have Jill,
Nought shall go ill,
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well!”
They were very still for a little while after he had done,
and the setting sun shone in at the windows across the
table. Then Master Shakspere said gently, “It is a good
place to end.”
“ Ay,” said Master Jonson, “it is.”
So they all got up softly and went out into the garden,
where there were seats under the trees among the rose-
bushes, and talked quietly among themselves, saying not
much, yet meaning a great deal.
But Nick and Cicely said “Good-night, sirs,” to them
all, and bowed; and Master Shakspere himself let them
ALL ’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 301
out at the gate, the others shaking Nick by the hand with
many kind wishes, and throwing kisses to Cicely until
they went out of sight around the chapel corner.
When the children came to the garden-gate in front of
Nick’s father’s house, the red roses still twined in Cicely’s
hair, Simon Attwood and his wife Margaret were sitting
together upon the old oaken settle by the door, looking
out into the sunset. And when they saw the children
coming, they arose and came through the garden to
meet them, Nick’s mother with outstretched hands, and her
face bright with the glory of the setting sun. And when
she came to where he was, the whole of that long, bitter
year was nothing any more to Nick.
For then—ah, then—a lad and his mother; a son come
home, the wandering ended, and the sorrow done!
She took him to her breast as though he were a baby
still; her tears ran down upon his face, yet she was smil-
ing—a smile like which there is no other in all the world:
a mother’s smile upon her only son, who was astray, but
has come home again.
Oh, the love of a lad for his mother, the love of a
mother for her son—unchanged, unchanging, for right,
for wrong, through grief and shame, in joy, in peace, in
absence, in sickness, and in the shadow of death! Oh,
mother-love, beyond all understanding, so holy that words
but make it common !
“My boy!” was all she said; and then, “My boy—my
little boy!”
And after a while, “Mother,” said he, and took her face
802 MASTER SKYLARK
between his strong young hands, and looked into her
happy eyes, “mother dear, I ha’ been to London town; I
ha’ been to the palace, and I ha’ seen the Queen; but,
mother,” he said, with a little tremble in his voice, for all
he smiled so bravely, “I ha’ never seen the place where I
would rather be than just where thou art, mother dear!”
The soft gray twilight gathered in the little garden;
far-off voices drifted faintly from the town. The day
was done. Cool and still, and filled with gentle peace,
the starlit night came down from the dewy hills; and
Cicely lay fast asleep in Simon Attwood’s arms.
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