THE MAKING OF A PLAYER
Master Will Shakspere was in town! The thought ran through Nick
Attwood’s head like a half-remembered tune. Once or twice he had all but
sung it instead of the words of his part. Master Will Shakspere was
in town!
Could he but just find Master Shakspere, all his trouble would be over;
for the husband of his mother’s own cousin would see justice done him in
spite of the master-player and the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in
his ear—of that he was sure.
But there seemed small chance of its coming about; for the doors of
Gaston Carew’s house were locked and barred by day and by night, as much
to keep Nick in as to keep thieves out; and all day long, when Carew was
away, the servants went about the lower halls, and Gregory Goole’s
uncanny face peered after him from every shadowy corner; and when he
went with Carew anywhere, the master-player watched him like a hawk,
while always at his heels he could hear the clump, clump, clump of the
bandy-legged man following after him.
Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not where to turn; for
the Lord Chamberlain’s company would not be at the Blackfriars
play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master
Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for
a needle in a haystack.
To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain’s men were still playing
at the theater in Shoreditch; for Master Carew had taken Cicely there to
see the “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” But just where Shoreditch was, Nick
had only the faintest idea—somewhere away off by Finsbury Fields,
beyond the city walls to the north of London town—and all the wide
world seemed north of London town; and the way thither lay through a
bewildering tangle of streets in which the din and the rush of the crowd
were never still.
From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its
shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to
be locked in Gaston Carew’s house. It were better to be a safe-kept
prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing
this, he made the best of it.
But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that was something. It
seemed somehow less lonely just to think of it.
Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for the
master-player kept him closely at his strange, new work, and taught him
daily with the most amazing patience.
He had Nick learn no end of stage parts off by heart, with their cues
and “business,” entrances and exits; and worked fully as hard as his
pupil, reading over every sentence twenty times until Nick had the
accent perfectly. He would have him stamp, too, and turn about, and
gesture in accordance with the speech, until the boy’s arms ached, going
with him through the motions one by one, over and over again,
unsatisfied, but patient to the last, until Nick wondered. “Nick, my
lad,” he would often say, with a tired but determined smile, “one little
thing done wrong may spoil the finest play, as one bad apple rots the
barrelful. We’ll have it right, or not at all, if it takes a month
of Sundays.”
So, often, he kept Nick before a mirror for an hour at a time, making
faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing as best
seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own
looks. Then sometimes, more often as the time slipped by, Carew would
clap his hands with a boyish laugh, and have a pie brought and a cup of
Spanish cordial for them both, declaring that he loved the lad with all
his heart, upon the remnant of his honour: from which Nick knew that he
was coming on.
Cicely Carew’s governess was a Mistress Agnes Anstey. By birth she had
been a Harcourt of Ankerwyke, and she was therefore everywhere esteemed
fit by birth and breeding to teach the young mind when to bow and when
to beckon. She came each morning to the house, and Carew paid her double
shillings to see to it that Nick learned such little tricks of cap and
cloak as a lady’s page need have, the carriage best fitted for his
place, and how to come into a room where great folks were. Moreover, how
to back out again, bowing, and not fall over the stools—which was no
little art, until Nick caught the knack of peeping slyly between his
legs when he bowed.
His hair, too, was allowed to grow long, and was combed carefully every
day by the tiring-woman; and soon, as it was naturally curly, it fell in
rolling waves about his neck.
On the heels of the governess came M’sieu de Fleury, who, it was said,
had been dancing-master to Hatton, the late Lord Chancellor of England,
and had taught him those tricks with his nimble heels which had capered
him into the Queen’s good graces, and so got him the chancellorship.
M’sieu spoke dreadful English, but danced like the essence of agility,
and taught both Nick and Cicely the latest Italian coranto, playing the
tune upon his queer little pochette.
Cicely already danced like a pixy, and laughed merrily at her comrade’s
first awkward antics, until he flushed with embarrassment. At that she
instantly became grave, and, when M’sieu had gone, came across the room,
and putting her arm about Nick, said repentantly, “Don’t thou mind me,
Nick. Father saith the French all laugh too soon at nothing; and I have
caught it from my mother’s blood. A boy is not good friends with his
feet as a girl is; but thou wilt do beautifully, I know; and M’sieu
shall teach us the galliard together.”
And often, after the lesson was over and M’sieu departed, she would
have Nick try his steps over and over again in the great room, while she
stood upon the stool to make her tall, and cried, “Sa—sa!” as the
master did, scolding and praising him by turns, or jumping down in
pretty impatience to tuck up her little silken skirts and show him the
step herself; while the cook’s knave and the scullery-maids peeped at
the door and cried: “La, now, look ’e, Moll!” at every coupee.
It made a picture quaint and pretty to see them dancing there. The smoky
light, stealing in through the narrow casements over the woodwork dark
with age, dropped in little yellow chequers upon old chests of oak, of
walnut, and of strange, purple-black wood from foreign lands, giving a
weird life to the griffins and twisted traceries carved upon their
sides. High-backed, narrow chairs stood along the wall, with cushioned
stools inlaid with shell. Twinklings of light glinted from the brass
candlesticks. On the wall above the wainscot the faded hangings wavered
in the draught, crusted thickly with strange embroidered flowers. And
dancing there together in the semi-gloom, the children seemed quaint
little figures stepped down from the tapestry at the touch of a
magic wand.
And so the time went slipping by, very pleasantly upon the whole, and
Nick’s young heart grew stout again within his breast; for he was strong
and well, and in those days the very air was full of hope, and no man
knew what might betide with the rising of to-morrow’s sun.
Every day, from two till three o’clock, he was at Master Gyles’s
private singing-room at the old cathedral school, learning to read music
at first sight, and to sing offhand the second, third, and fourth parts
of queer intermingled fugues or wonderfully constructed canons.
At first his head felt stuffed like a feasted glutton with all the
learning that the old precentor poured into it; but by and by he found
it plain enough, and no very difficult thing to follow up the prickings
in the paper with his voice, and to sing parts written at fifths and
fourths and thirds with other voices as easily as to carry a song alone.
But still he sang best his own unpointed songs, the call and challenge
of the throstle and the merle, the morning glory of the lark, songs that
were impossible to write. And those were the songs that the precentor
was at the greatest pains to have him sing in perfect tones, making him
open his mouth like a little round and let the music float out
of itself.
Like the master-player, nothing short of perfection pleased old
Nathaniel Gyles, and Nick’s voice often wavered with sheer weariness as
he ran his endless scales and sang absurd fa-la-la-las while his teacher
beat the time in the air with his lean forefinger like a grim automaton.
The old man, too, was chary of his praise, though Nick tried hard to
please him, and it was only by little things he told his satisfaction.
He touzed the ears of the other boys, and sometimes smartly thumped
their crowns; but with Nick he only nipped his ruddy cheek between his
thumb and finger, or laid his hand upon his shoulder when the hard day’s
work was done, saying, “_Satis cantorum_—it is enough. Now be off to
thy nest, sir; and do not forget to wash thy throat with good cold water
every day.”
* * * * *
All this time the busy sand kept running in the glass. July was gone,
and August at its heels. The hot breath of the summer had cooled, and
the sun no longer burned the face when it came in through the windows.
Nick often shut his eyes and let the warm light fall upon his closed
lids. It made a ruddy glow like the wild red poppies that grow in the
pale green rye. In fancy he could almost smell the queer, rancid odor of
the crimson bloom crushed beneath the feet of the farmers’ boys who cut
the butter-yellow mustard from among the bearded grain.
“Heigh-ho and alackaday!” thought Nick. “It is better in the country
than in town!” For there was no smell in all the town like the clean,
sweet smell of the open fields just after a summer rain, no colors like
the bright heart’s-ease and none-so-pretty, or the honeysuckle over the
cottage door, and no song ever to be heard among the sooty chimney-pots
like the song of the throstle piping to the daisies on the hill.
But he had little time to dream such dreams, for every day from four to
six o’clock the children’s company played and sang in public, at their
own school-hall, or in the courtyard of the Mitre Inn on Bread street
near St. Paul’s.
They were the pets of London town, and their playing-place was thronged
day after day. For the bright young faces and sweet, unbroken voices of
the richly costumed lads made a spot in sordid London life like a pot of
posies in a window on a dark street; so that both the high and the low,
the rich and the poor, came in to see them play and dance, to hear them
sing, and to laugh again at the witty things which were written for
them to say.
The songs that were set for Nick to sing were always short, sweet,
simple things that even the dull-eyed, toil-worn folk upon the rough
plank benches in the pit could understand. Many a silver shilling came
clinking down at the heels of the other boys from the galleries of the
inn, where the people of the better classes, wealthy merchants, ladies
and their dashing gallants, watched the children’s company; but when
Nick’s songs were done the common people down below seemed all gone
daft. They tossed red apples after him, ripe yellow pears, fat purple
plums by handfuls, called him by name and brought him back, and cried
for more and more and more, until the old precentor shook his head
behind the prompters-screen, and waved Nick off with a forbidding frown.
Yet all the while he chuckled to himself until it seemed as if his dry
old ribs would rattle in his sides; and every day, before Nick sang, he
had him up to his little room for a broken egg and a cup of
rosy cordial.
“To clear thy voice and to cheer the cockles of thine heart,” said he;
“and to tune that pretty throat of thine _ad gustum Reginae_—which is
to say, ‘to the Queen’s own taste,’—God bless Her Majesty!”
The other boys were cast for women’s parts, for women never acted then;
and a queer sight it was to Nick to see his fellows in great
farthingales of taffeta and starchy cambric that rustled as they
walked, with popinjay blue ribbon in their hair, and flowered stomachers
sparkling with paste jewels.
And, truth, it was no easy thing to tell them from the real affair, or
to guess the made from the maiden, so slender and so graceful were they
all, with their ruffs and their muffs and their feathered fans, and all
the airs and mincing graces of the daintiest young miss.
But old Nat Gyles would never have Nick Attwood play the girl. “The lad
is good enough for me just as he is,” said he; and that was all there
was of it.