HOW I FOUND AN OLD FRIEND IN A STRANGE PLACE, AND HOW PTOLEMY RENEWED
HIS STUDY OF THE LATIN TONGUE
I was in the midst of a most excellent and comforting dream of Idonia,
to whom I was again happily united, and we (if I rightly call it to
mind), Duke and Duchess of Salamanca or of some place like-sounding,
when I was roughly awakened by the jogging forward of the cart, to
which succeeded that a head was thrust in betwixt the curtains of my
extemporary great bed, and a voice cried: "Woe worth the day! what
gallows'-food is here?"
Making no question but that I was arrested, yet being still bedrowsed
by sleep, I felt for my sword to deliver it up, but finding it not,
said very stately: "Master Corregidor of Biscay, I yield myself
prisoner," and so lay quiet, expecting what he should do further.
But that he did, squared so ill with all I had ever heard tell of the
manners and behaviour of Corregidors or persons anyway notable, that I
sat up and stared upon him gaping; for he gave but one look at me, and
after, with such a squealing of laughter as one might, suppose coneys
to utter when they catch a weasel sleeping, he parted the curtains
wider and leapt into the place where I lay, when he seized me by both
my hands and wrung them up and down as they were flails.
I was wide awake enough now, but yet for my life could not comprehend
the carter's apparent joy of seeing me, though as to that, 'twas a
better welcome than I had looked for, either from the Corregidor of my
dreams, or from the rabble I was so vehemently pursued by.
Now when this mad fellow had something slackened the excess of his
complacency, I took occasion to demand whether my remaining within that
frame of timber (that was none too big for us twain) were irksome to
him. "For," said I, "if it be not, I have my reasons why I should wish
not to leave it."
At this he ceased his exercise altogether and, withdrawing both his
hands from mine, regarded me reproachfully.
"Hast so soon forgot Cayphas his mitre, and the ark of Noah?" said he.
"Now of all the saints," I cried out, "'tis Ptolemy Philpot, the
pageant master!" and saw that the sanctuary into which I had entered
was within the pageant itself, I having my elbow even then resting on
the wooden box of his puppets, while about the narrow chamber were hung
the tabards, hats, pencils, fringed gowns of damask and other necessary
imagery of the interludes he showed. As to Master Ptolemy himself, he
had altered not a jot, so that I marvelled I had not sooner known him,
except that I was then heavy with sleep; for he spoke still in the same
small child's voice that issued from the middle of his bearded fierce
countenance, as a bird may twitter in the jaws of a pard that hath
caught her. Methought indeed that the agate colour was somewhat more
richly veined upon his nose, and that his body was more comfortably
overlaid than I had formerly remembered it, and supposed therefore that
his bargain with Skegs had gone happily against my fears and to his
advantage; the which he presently certified.
"But it was not by any of the miracles or moralities he sold me, that I
have prospered," said he, "for wheresoever I played it none would stay
out the Deluge, no, not even in so goodly and well-considered a town as
is Devizes, whither I went first of all, and where I enacted the same
by the special desire of one Sir Matthew Juke, a principal person there
and a famous traveller, as he said; who took upon him to condemn my
navigation of the Ark ere I had half concluded: affirming that if ever
I should use the sea as he had done, and so handled my ship in the
manner of that voyage to Ararat, he would not answer for it, but I
should be utterly cast away and my venture lost. Howbeit he gave me,
in parting, a tester, which was all I had from that place, and yet more
by a sixpence than I got at Winchester whither I proceeded, and where I
was fain to exchange the Deluge for the Miracle of Cayphas; but 'twould
not serve, and I was suddenly put forth of that town of the beadle.
Thereafter I essayed the Pageant of Melchisedec as they have it at
Chester, and though some part of it liked the people pretty well, yet I
lost as much as I gained by reason of a tempest that broke while the
piece was a playing, whereby the motion was all drenched by the rain
and the hangings torn by the wind and Father Abraham his beard came
ungummed from his jowl, so that it cost me five shillings to repair all
that damage. Then did I make shift to patch my patriarch figures with
such modern habits and familiar countenances as should betoken our
famous captains (as I told you I meant to do), and to that end paid to
a clerk of Wallingford fifteen shillings for the writing of a
history-comedy, wherein were such assaults and batterings and victories
as suited to our late accomplishments at sea; but the illiterate and
filthy vulgar would have none of it, swearing I had turned Noah into
Captain Drake, and Mount Ararat into Vigo, with so slight addition upon
their originals as 'twas scandal to behold; all which was true enough,
doubtless, but the outcome mighty unprofitable to me, who thereby
beheld my fortune to be slid from under me and myself fallen into
absolute beggary."
"How then came you to repair your fortune, Ptolemy?" said I, who had
listened with an infinite, though secret, struggling against laughter,
the while he had related his tale; "since it seemeth you no longer play
your pieces to an unkind audience."
Mr. Philpot plunged his hand into his great beard, holding his chin
thoughtfully, and after, withdrawing it, rubbed his forefinger slowly
along his nose, as though to assure himself that he had come unchanged,
and with all his attributes, through the storm and multitude of
accidents that had assailed him.
"'Tis an old saw and a true one, which saith, the miracles that happen
daily we suffer to go by us unregarded; as the sunrise, and the return
of consciousness after sleep, and so following," said the pageant
master, in his small reed voice, "and the same holds as with the rest,
with plays also; namely, that what is too well known is still
neglected, and where no itch of expectancy is, there will no wits be
scratching. 'Twas a reproach of the Athenians of old, master, that
they went continually in hopes to see or hear some new thing, and your
stage-audiences differ in nothing from your Athenians, save only in the
tongue they use, and the clothes they wear. I know not how the truth
came to be revealed to me," he proceeded pensively, "but come it did
and in a good hour; I mean the truth that every man loveth secrecy and
concealment, as a child his coral. What did I then, but clap all my
stock together, my mysteries, miracles, pageants, interludes and all,
pell mell, Herod and Pilate their proper speeches and cues to boot: the
diverting jests of Noah's wife with the admonitions of Abraham and the
sentences of the Angel; and from this medley so made I fished forth
such chanceable and ill-matched dialogues as a man must needs be
Solomon or a very ass that would read sense into them, or confess to
discovering a propriety between speaker and spoken word. Why, list but
a moment, and I will show you the whole matter," and with that he drew
forth a torn quire of unstitched papers that was marked at the head,
"The Masque of the Noble Shepherds," which word _Masque_, said Ptolemy,
served to cover all such impertinent matter as he should choose to
bring in, and acquainted me plainly with the way he had gone about his
authorship; in which, nevertheless, I perceived so great an ingenuity,
and such apparent gravity and fantastick leading up to nothing in the
world as, although I could comprehend no meaning in the piece (there
being none to comprehend) yet I could well enough imagine the curious
and close attention with which it would be heard and seen.
"I tell you I have had all sorts of men come away pleased with it,"
said Ptolemy in conclusion; "and each for a different reason, and
because he saw in it something that seemed to him to mean this, which
another said was that, and a third, the other." He looked upon me
triumphantly, and then added: "Why, I mind me how at Lambeth once,
where I played, a Bishop and two Canons of the Church thanked me
handsomely for my holding up the new sect to ridicule; and
contrariwise, a little after, a Puritanical grocer demanded of me in a
whisper how in this play I dared to rail as I did upon Church
Government."
"But do you represent your persons still as prophets and peasants as
they used to appear?"
"I do not," said Ptolemy, winking upon me very shrewdly, "but rather I
have ennobled them all, and call this one a King, and that an Earl, and
the other the Knight Alderman of Tavistock--in which place I was born;
for it behoveth us to honour the place of our birth; besides that, for
the rest, your Englishman loves nothing better than to see great
persons on the stage, and aye to follow the fashions that he sees
there."
We were interrupted at that time by the drawing aside of the curtain,
and a shock-head boy, appearing, said--
"We be arrived at the place, master. Shall I sound the tabor and speak
the prologue now?"
"Whither are we come?" I asked, for I thought I might safely leave my
city of refuge and depart.
"This is Tower Hill," said Ptolemy, "and I see we shall not lack of a
sufficient audience to-day," he added, looking forth through a chink
upon the throng that was already assembled.
Now when I heard that we were returned to the very place whence I had
fled in fear of my life, I shrank back into a corner of the frame and
begged Mr. Ptolemy to let me remain with him until the place should be
clear of folk and I able to go home without molestation. He seemed, I
thought, somewhat astonished, but at once agreed to keep me by him, and
indeed to do anything in return for the kindness I had shown him at
Dunster, only requiring me to give him as much room as I could for the
better management of his puppets, which he was now busy fitting to
their wires, while conning o'er the several parts they were due to
speak.
Surely, no hunted man hath ever been so fantastically sheltered as I,
above whose head kicked and dangled Mr. Ptolemy's wooden kings, and
Aldermen of Tavistock; and ranted their unintelligible speeches to the
delight of them that would have torn down the show in a fury had they
known how near to them I lay concealed.
In some such sort as follows the Masque commenced; the boy with the
tabor speaking:
"My worthy master Ptolemy
Hath writ this prologue painfully
To th' intent that by it ye may see
What otherwise were dim.
The scene though pastorally laid
Is traversed by an Earl, arrayed
In shepherd-guise to win a maid
That loathes the sight of him."
and so retired amidst a buzz of excitement.
We had got through about half the piece in this manner, and without
mishap, when Mr. Ptolemy, that was then in the midst of a complaint of
the wooden Earl for the unkindness of his shepherdess; Mr. Ptolemy (I
say) turned to me suddenly, quite neglecting his book, and very
eagerly--
"How now," quoth he, "here is the very opportunity come I have sought
long since, and yet had nigh forgot it. What, I prythee, is the
meaning of that little word _Quemadmodum_?"
But ere I could reply, there arose such a shrill murmur of resentment
from the auditors as no seeker after truth might withstand, and Mr.
Philpot, abruptly recalled to the necessary affairs of his love-sick
Earl, had much ado to get him to his feet again, he being by this time
all entangled by the wires of the motion. However, he did so, and the
play proceeded again.
When all was done and the boy sent round amongst the people to solicit
their gratuities, Mr. Ptolemy breathed a deep sigh, and having put up
his puppets into the box, closed the lid and returned upon me with a
courteous request that I should now deal with him at large upon the
subject of _Quemadmodum_, which word, as he told me, he had oftentimes
met with in the books he continued to collect in the Latin tongue, and
to which, when he should have acquired a competency, he intended to
devote his leisure.
"For there is nothing comparable with your Latin," said he, "to give a
cast of magnificence to that a man may say. My father had some words
of it that he used chiefly when he was wroth, and they did more, I
warrant you, than all else to bring him off happily in his
disputations. The principal saying he used was ... nay, I have forgot
it, but 'tis no great matter, for it was not of so catholick an
application as the _Quemadmodum_, nor so well sounding."
I was about to comply with his simple demand, when the lad again thrust
in his head betwixt the hangings, crying out: "Come forth, master,
instantly; for here is my Lord Lumley come from his great house above,
that requires you to answer certain reflections made upon him, as he
thinks, in that character of the rejected Earl; which will lead us the
devil's gait an' you satisfy him not of your simplicity."
"What told I you?" exclaimed the poor baulked Latinist, regarding me
with so tragick a countenance that I lost all inclination to laugh,
"there's none sees aught in all this but he hath brought it himself
hither in the thick o' the head, with a pest! and what is a poor player
to do!"
He went away very sorrowfully to my Lord Lumley's house, and I, that
saw my way open (being unwilling to attend his return), slipped from my
cover and was soon enough safe at home. This adventure ended, and the
night come and gone, I went the next day to my work again, and there
continued for above a week, casting accompts under the strict eye of
Mr. Enos Procter, and never venturing nearer to Petty Wales than
sufficed to show me there was a pretty strong guard of yeomen kept
about the broken gate, who suffered no man to approach closely, nor
none (if indeed there were any left within) to depart thence. I
guessed by this, and by their leaving unprotected that lane behind the
other half of the great house, that they knew not of the connection and
passage between the two parts; and so tried to comfort myself that
Idonia was got safely away, or if she yet remained, that she did so
without any extraordinary peril; though for all that I was very
miserable to be kept ignorant of her present lodging, but resolved
that, before many days were passed, I would forcibly undertake her
discovery and rescue, or at the least come by such certain information
as should lead to our meeting, and the renewal of our pledged troth.