DISOWNED
Night 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 Attwood. “This be no
way to do. 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-afternoon, then supper-time
again; and supper-time crept into dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood.
His mother grew uneasy; but his father only growled: “We’ll reckon up
when he cometh home. Master Brunswood tells me he was na at the school
the whole day yesterday—and he be feared to show his face. I’ll _fear_
him with a bit of birch!”
“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mistress 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!”
“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, Muster 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 disobedience, 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 collar none too gently.
“Here, 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.”
“I was na,” snarled Hodge. “Nick Attwood threshed 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 sudden sinking at heart in
spite of his wrath.
“How should I know? A went away wi’ a play-actoring fellow in a
plum-colored cloak; and play-actoring fellow 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, ’tis all I know!”
“Is’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 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.