NICHOLAS ATTWOOD’S HOME
Nick 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 i’ the morning to do the
job, and a lovely mess he will make o’ the house!”
“Do na fret thee, Simon,” said Mistress Attwood, gently. “The rushes
need a changing, and I ha’ pined this long while to lay the floor wi’
new clay from Shottery common. ’Tis the sweetest earth! Nick shall take
the 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 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?”
“I be up to no folly at all,” said Nick, “but down, sir. I fell from the
stool. There is 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?” “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-begging, 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 thoroughfare, 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; beyond 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.
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 contrast with his father’s unkempt ways. He used to
think that, in her worsted gown, with its falling collar of Antwerp
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 platters, pewter cups, and old horn
spoons in place. Breakfast 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 a stage-play at
the guildhall to-morrow before Master Davenant the Mayor and the town
burgesses.”
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 a very good
company, they say.”
Mistress Attwood looked quickly at her husband. “What will they play?”
she asked.
“I can 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.
“I will do my work beforehand, sir,” replied Nick, quietly, though his
hand trembled a little as he brushed up the crumbs.
“It 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, “’tis 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 play-actor, ’tis 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 breakfast—thou hast been up a long while.”
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.