THE personage was a young woman of some eighteen years, breathing
youth and its sorcery in every line. She was tall, well grown, of a
beauty that was remarkable. She stepped with a lithe grace, a springing
freedom that Atalanta would not have disdained. Her long quilted
riding-coat was the last cry of the fashion, and on the left hand she
wore a large hawking-gauntlet. But that which at once caught the eye
both of the tailor and of the player, and made the charming figure
still more memorable, was an audacious pair of leather breeches. These
clothed her nether limbs, and below them were a long pair of boots of
untanned leather.
Now Master Tidey it was who had built this fine pair of
hawking-breeches to the explicit order of the wearer, yet even he could
hardly forbear to be scandalized when he marked its effect. As for the
player--but he had a larger, a more liberal, a more sophisticated mind.
For one thing he had seen the fine ladies of the Court ride out hawking
in this guise. To be sure he had heard some very salutary criticism
of a style of dress that was creeping into vogue among the highest
in the land, but he was not of those who condemned it. Mr. William
Shakespeare, unlike his friend Nicholas Tidey, betrayed not the least
surprise at this young woman’s appearance. Certainly his curiosity was
fully aroused, but perhaps that was less on account of the garment
itself than because of the look of its wearer.
In point of fact, Mr. William Shakespeare, whose eye was very sure in
such matters, was charmed by the spectacle. Swiftly he moved aside,
in order that this young gentlewoman might proceed to the tailor’s
counter. Moreover, as he performed this polite action he removed his
hat with a touch of gallantry, as became an acquaintance with courts.
“Good Master Tailor,” said the wearer of the garment, with an air so
fine as to delight Mr. William Shakespeare still more, “I make you my
compliments upon these hawking-breeches you have been so good as to
devise for me. They are a little tight around the left knee, otherwise
they do excellently well. I make you my compliments upon them, Master
Tailor, and have the goodness to devise me a second pair in every
particular as the first.”
Master Tidey bowed obsequiously. “I attend your pleasure, madam,” he
said.
The young woman then drew off a glove, and with some little difficulty
was able to produce a purse from the recesses of her attire. “What is
your charge, friend, for this excellent garment, which gives me such
ease in the saddle that from this day I am minded to wear no other
style of habiliment.”
“Two angels, if it please you, madam.”
“Here be four, my friend.”
She opened the purse and counted out in gold pieces twice the sum that
was asked.
“Good Master Tailor,” she said, “you have right excellent craft and
your garment pleases me. And if I must speak the truth, I had never
learned until this day what ease and freedom comes of the wearing of
galligaskins.”
She used such a grave air, as of one expressing a most serious and
private thought, that Mr. William Shakespeare, who all this time had
been regarding her covertly, although taking care to appear lost in
contemplation of the coffin-cloth the tailor had now discarded, could
not forbear from giving forth a dry, stealthy chuckle.
Mistress Anne Feversham half turned for the purpose of visiting such a
presumption with an imperious eye. The clear gaze said as plainly as
woman could express it: “And who, pray, are you, sir? Whoever you are
I’ll thank you to be pretty careful.”
Howbeit, in the matter of looking down this presumptuous individual,
young Mistress Anne Feversham, it seemed, had undertaken a task a
little beyond her present powers. There was hardly one among the
burgesses of the town who could have sustained that gaze. But with this
quiet and mild-looking individual, whose coat and sword were so modest,
it was a different matter.
The impact of the proud eyes of Mistress Insolence was met with perfect
composure. Moreover, there was just a suspicion of laughter. In the
opinion of the lady there was no ground for levity. Yet it was almost
as if this person, whose dress was so little pretentious as to be
hardly that of a gentleman, was daring to say in his heart, “Madam,
think not ill of me if I confess that, far from being abashed by your
air, I am rather amused by it.”
That at least was the quick and sensitive feminine interpretation of
the subtle face whose owner was hardly entitled to such a look of arch
and humorous self-confidence. Mistress Anne Feversham felt a slight
wound in her dignity. Who, pray, was this impertinent?
By some means best known to himself, Mr. William Shakespeare appeared
to read the thoughts of the lady. At least the sly smile that had crept
into those somber but wonderful eyes had deepened to a look of roguery.
Mistress Anne grew crimson; the disdainful head went up; she bit her
lip; and then realizing that such a display of embarrassment was
wholly unworthy of the daughter of the Constable of Nottingham Castle,
the pride of youth chastened her so sorely that she turned her back
abruptly on the cause of her defeat.
Soon, however, the ever-abiding sense of place and power came to her
aid and she was able to command herself sufficiently to address the
tailor.
“I see the town is full of play-acting rogues,” she said. “Whence do
they come?”
“From London, madam, I believe,” said Master Tidey, without venturing
to look in the direction of his friend.
“I am afraid they are a saucy-looking crew. My groom”--perhaps it
was well that the voice of Mistress Anne did not reach the ears of
the haughty young falconer who was taking charge of her horse at the
tailor’s door--“my groom pointed them out to me as I passed the Moot
Hall. As soon as I return to the Castle I will inform my father the
Constable, and I will see if they cannot be put in the stocks, which to
my mind is where they belong.”
As became the shrewd man he was, Master Nicholas Tidey made no reply.
He was content to nod his head gravely, as if he tacitly approved,
while at the same time he contrived to keep a tail of an eye upon his
distinguished friend. There might or there might not have been a ghost
of a smile upon that prim and cautious mouth.
Indeed, very wisely, Master Tidey left it to the play-actor himself
to try a fall with such a formidable adversary. And this that daring
individual proceeded to do in a manner quite cool and leisurely, and
yet with a vastly considered air. In his eye, it was true, there was
a suspicion of something far other than gravity. That of course was
regrettable; but it was undoubtedly there.
Mr. William Shakespeare’s first act was to remove his hat with its
single short cock’s feather, and then he bowed very low indeed, in the
manner of one quite well aware of addressing a social superior.
“Cry you mercy, mistress,” he said, “but as one who is himself a poor
actor may he ask wherein his guild has had the unhappiness to offend
you?”
Mistress Anne Feversham met this effrontery with a disdain that was
wonderful. Her chief concern at the moment was to show her great
contempt without a descent into downright ill-breeding. But as soon as
she met the somber eyes of this individual, in which a something that
was rare and strange was overlaid by a subtle mockery, this natural
instinct took wings and fled. In those eyes was something that hardly
left her mistress of herself, in spite of her father the Constable, her
young blood-horse and her incomparable pair of galligaskins.
“My father the Constable would have all play-actors whipped,” said
Mistress Anne Feversham.
But her voice was not as she had intended it to be. Moreover, her
father the Constable had yet to deliver himself of such an illiberal
sentiment. And this graceless individual seemed to be fully aware that
this was the case.
“Whipped, mistress!” His look of grave consternation did not deceive
her. “You would whip a poor actor!”
“All who are actors, sir, my father would.”
“Is it conceivable?--the gentlest, the humblest, the most industrious,
the most law-abiding of men!”
“My father cares not for that, sir. He says they are masterless rogues.”
“Then by my faith, mistress, that is very froward in your father.”
“He says they are the scum of taverns and alehouses and they corrupt
the public mind.”
“Ods my life! how comes so crabbed a sire to have a daughter so fair,
so feat, so charming!”
It began to seem hopeless for Mistress Anne to continue in such a
strain of severity. For a moment she used her will in order to punish
this audacity, but in the next she was trembling upon the verge of open
laughter. Still the consciousness that she was no less a person than
the only daughter and heiress of Sir John Feversham, the Constable of
Nottingham Castle and chief justice of the forest of Sherwood, was just
able to save her from that which could only have been regarded in the
light of a disaster.
“I would fain inform you, mistress, there are play-actors whom even the
Queen approves.”
Alas! Mistress Anne had a full share of the cynical irreverence of
youth.
“I am not at all surprised to learn that, sir. I have even been told
that the Queen dyes her hair.”
The effect of a speech so daring was to startle Master Tidey quite
visibly. The world looks to one of his craft to have a conventional
mind, and there was no doubt the times were perilous. The shears almost
fell from his hand. If this was not treason, might he never sew another
doublet!
The play-actor, however, was of a fiber less delicate. It was as much
as Mr. William Shakespeare could do to refrain from open laughter.
“May I ask, mistress,” he said, “what is your warrant for such a grave
charge against the Queen’s Majesty?”
“The warrant of my own eyes, sir. Her hair was certainly dyed when she
stayed at the Castle a month since.”
“But bethink you, mistress, might it not appear less treasonable if
Gloriana’s true subjects presumed her hair to be a wig?”
“Let them presume nothing, sir, but that which is the truth.”
“To so pious a resolve even a poor actor may say amen.”
Mistress Anne realized that she was no match for this man. The
only hope for her dignity lay in a cool scorn of him. Suddenly the
gloriously straight back was turned disdainfully. Let the greatest lady
for ten miles beware how she chopped logic with a strolling actor.
“Master Tailor, I would have you devise me a second pair of these
right excellent breeches, in every particular as the first, and do you
have them at the Castle against the first of May.”
Master Tidey bowed low.
“Good-day to you, Master Tailor.”
Master Tidey bowed still lower with that clear and proud speech in his
ears.
With chin held high, and with an arrogant, free-swinging carriage,
Mistress Anne Feversham went forth of the tailor’s shop. But even
then, abrupt as was the manner of her going, she had to submit to the
play-actor’s leaping to the door before she could reach it herself. He
opened it and held it for her with the grace and dignity of a courtier.
She passed imperiously, without yielding him a glance or a “Thank you.”
A dashing young man in the livery of a falconer was holding the
young blood-horse of Mistress Anne outside the tailor’s door. He was
handsomely mounted on an animal similar to the one he held for his
mistress. On his fist was a small falcon, hoodwinked and fessed.
Very agile was the lady in finding her way into the saddle. For all
that she was not quite clever enough to defeat this incorrigible
play-actor. He sprang to her stirrup while she had one foot still
on the ground and hoisted her up with an address that enforced her
respect, and with so grave an air of courtesy as tacitly to compel her
own.
All the same she was angry. And she had sense enough to know that it
was illogical to be so. Yet she swung her horse around sharply in order
to give expression to her state of mind. And as the falconer, John
Markham by name, confided the merlin to the accustomed wrist of his
mistress, he turned back an instant to scowl at the player. It was even
as if he would ask him who the devil he was, and what the devil he did
there.
The player removed his hat with its single cock’s feather in a manner
that was almost tenderly ironical. It had hardly been a display of
Court manners of which he had been the recipient. But he was too much a
man of the world to look for those everywhere. And above all here was
youth in its glamour, youth in its sorcery. For the sake of a stuff so
precious he would forgive a crudity greater than this.
With a sigh of delight the player stood at the tailor’s door to watch
this fine pair ride very slowly and haughtily down the street. For
all their air of class consciousness and their open contempt of the
townspeople, which their youth alone saved from being ridiculous, they
made a glorious pair in the eye of the part-proprietor of the Globe
Theatre, London.
That was an eye to judge men and things as none other since the world
began. Neither Mistress Anne Feversham nor the falconer was aware of
that fact, and had they been aware of it they had not cared a button.
All that they did know and all that they cared was that the worthy
burgesses of Nottingham were stealing glances of awe and admiration
at them. In a word, they were causing a sensation, and were very
pleasantly alive to the fact.
Yes, undoubtedly a gallant pair. John Markham, in spite of his superior
condition and rising renown, rode behind his mistress at a respectful
distance of ten yards. They sat their horses with great skill and
assurance. First one and then the other, as they walked them slowly
down the street, would touch them gently with the spur, in order to
enjoy the pleasure of showing them off in the sight of the townspeople.
The player, still standing at the tailor’s door, could not take his
eyes from the spectacle. Almost wistfully, and yet in a kind of
entrancement, he watched them until at last there came a turn in the
street and they were lost to view. Then he went within to rejoin his
scandalized friend, who to compose his mind had had recourse already to
the needle and shears.
“I never saw the like o’ that,” said Master Nicholas Tidey. “It’s rare
to be the quality. But that’s nothing to you, Master Shakespeare. I
reckon you see it every day o’ the week.”
“It’s a fine thing, I grant you, when it rides proud in the sight of
heaven,” said the player abstractedly.
“Aye, Master Shakespeare, and even when it goes afoot!” said the
tailor, whose mind was more pedestrian. “It does a man good, I always
think, to have a sight of the quality now and again. But as I say,
Master Shakespeare, it is nothing to you who go to Court like a
gentleman.”
But the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre was not heeding the words
of his friend. The light that never was on sea or land had come into
those somber eyes. Suddenly his hand struck the tailor’s counter a
great blow. “That is an adorable miniard,” he said. “By my soul, if
Gloriana requires a comedy, here is matter for a comedy for Gloriana!”