A STRANGE DAY
There in the Great House garden under the mulberry-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 Drayton, 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 all safe and
sound—why, ’tis done like a true knight-errant!”
[Illustration: “MASTER SHAKSPERE MET THEM WITH OUTSTRETCHED HANDS.”]
Master Shakspere met them with outstretched hands. “Thou young rogue,”
said he, smiling, “how thou hast 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?”
“I 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 Shakspere 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, I’ll 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”
“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 Jonson, in his blunt,
outspoken way, “I’ll think thee a thought offhand to serve the turn.
What? Why, this tanner calls us vagabonds. Vagabonds, 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 Burbage, “this is all
very well for Will and thee; but, pray, where do Hemynge, Condell, and I
come in upon the bill? Come, man, ’tis 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, ’tis a sort of stock I want some of. Kind hearts are
trumps, my honest Ben—make it a stock company, 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; 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 beginning 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.
* * * * *
It 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 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 himself, 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 flat 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 cry 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 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.