The Bankside was demure. But for the distant baying of dogs which kept
him shivering, our apprentice had been disappointed in the wickedness
of it.
He had looked to meet with roisterers, to pass amid a riot of taverns,
to happen, belike, upon a street scuffle, to see swords drawn or
perchance to come upon a body stretched across the roadway and hear the
murderers' footsteps in the darkness, running. These were the pictures
his imagination had drawn and shuddered at: for he was a youth of small
courage.
But the Bankside was demure; demure as Chepe. The waterside lanes
leading to Mistress Witwold's at the corner of Paris Gardens differed
only from Chepe in this--that though the hour was past midnight, every
other door stood open or at least ajar, showing a light through the
fog. Through some of these doorways came the buzz and murmur of voices,
the tinkling of stringed instrument. Others seemed to await their
guests. But the lanes themselves were deserted.
From the overhanging upper storeys lights showed here and there through
the chinks of shutters or curtains. Once or twice in the shadows
beneath, our apprentice saw, or thought he saw, darker shadows draw
back and disappear: and gradually a feeling grew upon him that all
these shadows, all these lidded upper windows, were watching, following
him with curious eyes. Again, though the open doorways were bright
as for a fête, a something seemed to subdue the voices within--a
constraint, perhaps an expectancy--as though the inmates whispered
together in the pauses of their talk and between the soft thrumming of
strings. He remarked, too, that his companions had fallen silent.
Mother Witwold's door, when they reached it, stood open like the rest.
Her house overhung a corner where from the main street a short alley
ran down to Paris Garden stairs. Nashe, who had been leading along
the narrow pavement, halted outside the threshold to extinguish his
lantern; and at the same moment jerked his face upward. Aloft, in one
of the houses across the way, a lattice had flown open with a crash of
glass.
"Jesu! help!"
The cry ended in a strangling sob. The hands that had thrust the
lattice open projected over the sill. By the faint foggy light of
Mother Witwold's doorway our apprentice saw them out-stretched for a
moment; saw them disappear, the wrists still rigid, as some one drew
them back into the room. But what sent the horror crawling through the
roots of his hair was the shape of these hands.
"You there!" called Nashe, snatching the second lantern from Burbage's
hand and holding it aloft towards the dim house-front. "What's wrong
within?"
A woman's hand came around the curtain and felt for the lattice
stealthily, to close it. There was no other answer.
"What's wrong there?" demanded Nashe again.
"Go your ways!" The voice was a woman's, hoarse and angry, yet
frightened withal. The curtain still hid her. "Haven't I trouble enough
with these tetchy dwarfs, but you must add to it by waking the streets?"
"Dwarfs?" Nashe swung the lantern so that its rays fell on the
house-door below: a closed door and stout, studded with iron nails.
"Dwarfs?" he repeated.
"Let her be," said Burbage, taking his arm. "I know the woman. She
keeps a brace of misbegotten monsters she picked up at Wapping off a
ship's captain. He brought 'em home from the Isle of Serendib, or
Cathay, or some such outlandish coast, or so she swears his word was."
"Swears, doth she? Didst hear the poor thing cry out?"
"Ay, like any Christian; as, for aught I know, it may be. There's
another tale that she found 'em down in Gloucestershire, at a country
fair, and keeps 'em pickled in walnut juice. But monsters they be,
whether of Gloucester or Cathay, for I have seen 'em; and so hath the
Queen, who sent for them the other day to be brought to Westminster,
and there took much delight in their oddity."
While the others hesitated, William Shakespeare turned on his heel and
walked past them into Mother Witwold's lighted doorway.
His father glanced after him. "Well, to be sure, the poor thing cried
out like a Christian," he said. "But dwarfs and monsters be kittle
cattle to handle, I am told." As the lattice closed on their debate
he linked his arm in the apprentice's, and they too passed into the
doorway.
From it a narrow passage led straight to a narrow staircase; and at
the stairs' foot the apprentice had another glimpse into the life of
this Bankside. A door stood wide there upon an ill-lighted room, and
close within the door sat two men--foreigners by their black-avised
faces--casting dice upon a drumhead. In a chair, beyond, a girl,
low-bodiced, with naked gleaming shoulders, leaned back half asleep;
and yet she did not seem to sleep, but to regard the gamesters with a
lazy scorn from under her dropped lashes. A tambourine tied with bright
ribbons rested in the lap of her striped petticoat, kept from sliding
to the floor by the careless crook--you could see it was habitual--of
her jewelled fingers. The two men looked up sharply, almost furtively,
at the company mounting the stairs. The girl scarcely lifted her eyes.
Scornful she looked, and sullen and infinitely weary, yet she was
beautiful withal. The apprentice wondered while he climbed.
"Yes," his patron was saying, "'tis the very mart and factory of
pleasure. Ne'er a want hath London in that way but the Bankside can
supply it, from immortal poetry down to--to----"
"--Down to misshapen children. Need'st try no lower, my master."
"There be abuses, my son: and there be degrees of pleasure, the
lowest of which (I grant you) be vile, sensual, devilish. Marry, I
defend not such. But what I say is that a great city should have
delights proportionate to her greatness; rich shows and pageants
and processions by land and water; plays and masques and banquets
with music; and the men who cater for these are citizens as worthy
as the rest. Take away Bankside, and London would be the cleaner of
much wickedness: yet by how much the duller of cheer, the poorer in
all that colour, that movement which together be to cities the spirit
of life! Where would be gone that glee of her that lifts a man's
lungs and swells his port when his feet feel London stones? Is't of
her money the country nurses think when to wondering children they
fable of streets all paved with gold? Nay, lad: and this your decent,
virtuous folk know well enough--your clergy, your aldermen--and use
the poor players while abusing them. Doth the parish priest need a
miracle-play for his church? Doth my Lord Mayor intend a show? To the
Bankside they hie with money in their purses: and if his purse be long
enough, my Lord Mayor shall have a fountain running with real wine,
and Mass Thomas a Hell with flames of real cloth-in-grain, or at least
a Lazarus with real sores. Doth the Court require a masque, the Queen
a bull-baiting, the City a good roaring tragedy, full of blood and
impugned innocence----Will! Will, I say! Tarry a moment!"
They had reached the landing, and looked down a corridor at the end
of which, where a lamp hung, Shakespeare waited with his hand on a
door-latch. From behind the door came a buzz of many voices.
"Lad, lad, let us go in together! Though the world's applause weary
thee, 'tis sweet to thine old father."
As he pressed down the latch the great man turned for an instant with a
quick smile, marvellously tender.
"He _can_ smile, then?" thought the apprentice to himself. "And I was
doubting that he kept it for his writing!"
Within the room, as it were with one shout, a great company leapt to
its feet, cheering and lifting glasses. Shakespeare, pausing on the
threshold, smiled again, but more reservedly, bowing to the homage as
might a king.
V
Three hours the feast had lasted: and the apprentice had listened
to many songs, many speeches, but scarcely to the promised talk of
gods. The poets, maybe, reserved such talk for the Mermaid. Here they
were outnumbered by the players and by such ladies as the Bankside
(which provided everything) furnished to grace the entertainment; and
doubtless they subdued their discourse to the company. The Burbages,
Dick and Cuthbert, John Heminge, Will Kempe--some half-a-dozen of
the crew perhaps--might love good literature: but even these were
pardonably more elate over the epilogue than over the play. For months
they, the Lord Chamberlain's servants, had felt the eyes of London
upon them: to-night they had triumphed, and to-morrow London would
ring with appreciative laughter. It is not every day that your child
of pleasure outwits your man of business at his own game: it is not
once in a generation that he scores such a hit as had been scored
to-day. The ladies, indeed, yawned without dissembling, while Master
Jonson--an ungainly youth with a pimply face, a rasping accent, and
a hard pedantic manner--proposed success to the new comedy and long
life to its author; which he did at interminable length; spicing
his discourse with quotations from Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian,
the _Ars Poetica_, Persius, and Seneca, authors less studied than
the Aretine along Bankside. He loved Will Shakespeare.... A comedy
of his own (as the company might remember) owed not a little to his
friend Will Shakespeare's acting.... Here was a case in which love
and esteem--yes, and worship--might hardly be dissociated.... In
short, speaking as modestly as a young man might of his senior, Will
Shakespeare was the age's ornament and, but for lack of an early
gruelling in the classics, might easily have been an ornament for any
age. Cuthbert Burbage--it is always your quiet man who first succumbs
on these occasions--slid beneath the table with a vacuous laugh and lay
in slumber. Dick Burbage sat and drummed his toes impatiently. Nashe
puffed at a pipe of tobacco. Kempe, his elbows on the board, his chin
resting on his palms, watched the orator with amused interest, mischief
lurking in every crease of his wrinkled face. Will Shakespeare leaned
back in his chair and scanned the rafters, smiling gently the while.
His speech, when his turn came to respond, was brief, almost curt. He
would pass by (he said) his young friend's learned encomiums, and come
to that which lay nearer to their thoughts than either the new play or
the new play's author. Let them fill and drink in silence to the demise
of an old friend, the vanished theatre, the first ever built in London.
Then, happening to glance at Heminge as he poured out the wine--"Tut,
Jack!" he spoke up sharply: "keep that easy rheum for the boards.
Brush thine eyes, lad: we be all players here--or women--and know the
trade."
It hurt. If Heminge's eyes had begun to water sentimentally, they
flinched now with real pain. This man loved Shakespeare with a dog's
love. He blinked, and a drop fell and rested on the back of his hand as
it fingered the base of his wine-glass. The apprentice saw and noted it.
"And another glass, lads, to the Phoenix that shall arise! A toast,
and this time not in silence!" shouted John Shakespeare, springing up,
flask in one hand and glass in the other. Meat or wine, jest or sally
of man or woman, dull speech or brisk--all came alike to him. His
doublet was unbuttoned; he had smoked three pipes, drunk a quart of
sack, and never once yawned. He was enjoying himself to the top of his
bent. "Music, I say! Music!" A thought seemed to strike him; his eyes
filled with happy inspiration. Still gripping his flask, he rolled to
the door, flung it open, and bawled down the stairway--
"Ahoy! Below, there!"
"Ahoy, then, with all my heart!" answered a voice, gay and youthful,
pat on the summons. "What is't ye lack, my master?"
"Music, an thou canst give it. If not----"
"My singing voice broke these four years past, I fear me."
"Your name, then, at least, young man, or ever you thrust yourself upon
private company."
"William Herbert, at your service." A handsome lad--a boy,
almost--stood in the doorway, having slipped past John Shakespeare's
guard: a laughing, frank-faced boy, in a cloak slashed with
orange-tawny satin. So much the apprentice noted before he heard a
second voice, as jaunty and even more youthfully shrill, raised in
protest upon the stairhead outside.
"And where the master goes," it demanded, "may not his page follow?"
John Shakespeare seemingly gave way to this second challenge as to the
first. "Be these friends of thine, Will?" he called past them as a
second youth appeared in the doorway, a pretty, dark-complexioned lad,
cloaked in white, who stood a pace behind his companion's elbow and
gazed into the supper-room with eyes at once mischievous and timid.
"Good-evening, gentles!" The taller lad comprehended the feasters and
the disordered table in a roguish bow. "Good-evening, Will!" He singled
out Shakespeare, and nodded.
"My Lord Herbert!"
The apprentice's eye, cast towards Shakespeare at the salutation given,
marked a dark flush rise to the great man's temples as he answered the
nod.
"I called thee 'Will,'" answered Herbert lightly.
"You called us 'gentles,'" Shakespeare replied, the dark flush yet
lingering on either cheek. "A word signifying bait for gudgeons, bred
in carrion."
"Yet I called thee Will," insisted Herbert more gently. "'Tis my name
as well as thine, and we have lovingly exchanged it before now, or my
memory cheats me."
"'Tis a name lightly exchanged in love." With a glance at the
white-cloaked page Shakespeare turned on his heel.
"La, Will, where be thy manners?" cried one of the women. "Welcome, my
young Lord; and welcome the boy beside thee for his pretty face! Step
in, child, that I may pass thee round to be kissed."
The page laughed and stepped forward with his chin defiantly tilted.
His eyes examined the women curiously and yet with a touch of fear.
"Nay, never flinch, lad! I'll do thee no harm," chuckled the one who
had invited him. "Mass o' me, how I love modesty in these days of
scandal!"
"Music? Who called for music?" a foreign voice demanded: and now in
the doorway appeared three newcomers, two men and a woman--the same
three of whom the apprentice had caught a glimpse within the room at
the stairs' foot. The spokesman, a heavily built fellow with a short
bull-neck and small cunning eyes, carried a drum slung about his
shoulders and beat a rub-a-dub on it by way of flourish. "Take thy
tambourine and dance, Julitta--
_Julie, prends ton tambourin;
Toi, prends ta flute, Robin_,"
he hummed, tapping his drum again.
"So? So? What foreign gabble is this?" demanded John Shakespeare,
following and laying a hand on his shoulder.
"A pretty little carol for Christmas, Signore, that we picked up on our
way through Burgundy, where they sing it to a jargon I cannot emulate.
But the tune is as it likes you--
_Au son ces instruments--
Turelurelu, patapatapan--
Nous dirons Noël gaîment!_
Goes it not trippingly, Signore? You will say so when you see my
Julitta dance to it."
"Eh--eh? Dance to a carol?" a woman protested. "'Tis inviting the earth
to open and swallow us."
"Why, where's the harm on't?" John Shakespeare demanded. "A pretty
little concomitant, and anciently proper to all religions, nor among
the heathen only, but in England and all parts of Christendom--
_In manger wrapped it was--
So poorly happ'd my chance--
Between an ox and a silly poor ass
To call my true love to the dance!
Sing O, my love, my love, my love...._
There's precedent for ye, Ma'am--good English precedent. Zooks! I'm a
devout man, I hope; but I bear a liberal mind and condemn no form of
mirth, so it be honest. The earth swallow us? Ay, soon or late it will,
not being squeamish. Meantime, dance, I say! Clear back the tables
there, and let the girl show her paces!"
Young Herbert glanced at Burbage with lifted eyebrow, as if to demand,
"Who is this madman?" Burbage laughed, throwing out both hands.
"But he is gigantic!" lisped the page, as with a wave of his two great
arms John Shakespeare seemed to catch up the company and fling them
to work pell-mell, thrusting back tables, piling chairs, clearing the
floor of its rushes. "He is a whirlwind of a man!"
[Illustration: WHIRLED DOWN THE LENGTH OF THE ROOM.]
"Come, Julitta!" called the man with the drum. "Francisco, take thy
pipe, man!--
_Au son de ces instruments--
Turelurelu, patapatapan_--"
As the music struck up, the girl, still with her scornful, impassive
face, leapt like a panther from the doorway into the space cleared
for her, and whirled down the room in a dance the like of which our
apprentice had never seen nor dreamed of. And yet his gaze at first was
not for her, but for the younger foreigner, the one with the pipe. For
if ever horror took visible form, it stood and stared from the windows
of that man's eyes. They were handsome eyes, too, large and dark and
passionate: but just now they stared blindly as though a hot iron had
seared them. Twice they had turned to the girl, who answered by not so
much as a glance; and twice with a shudder upon the man with the drum,
who caught the look and blinked wickedly. Worst of all was it when
the music began, to see that horror fixed and staring over a pair of
cheeks ludicrously puffing at a flageolet. A face for a gargoyle! The
apprentice shivered, and glanced from one to other of the company: but
they, one and all, were watching the dancer.
It was a marvellous dance, truly. The girl, her tambourine lifted high,
and clashing softly to the beat of the music, whirled down the length
of the room, while above the pipe's falsetto and rumble of the drum the
burly man lifted his voice and trolled--
"_Turelurelu, patapatapan--
Au son de ces instruments
Faisons la nique à Satan!_"
By the barricade of chairs and tables, under which lay Cuthbert Burbage
in peaceful stupor, she checked her onward rush, whirling yet, but
so lazily that she seemed for the moment to stand poised, her scarf
outspread like the wings of a butterfly: and so, slowly, very slowly,
she came floating back. Twice she repeated this, each time narrowing
her circuit, until she reached the middle of the floor, and there began
to spin on her toes as a top spins when (as children say) it goes to
sleep. The tambourine no longer clashed. Balanced high on the point
of her uplifted forefinger, it too began to spin, and span until its
outline became a blur. Still, as the music rose shriller and wilder,
she revolved more and more rapidly, yet apparently with less and less
of effort. Her scarf had become a mere filmy disc rotating around a
whorl of gleaming flesh and glancing jewels.
A roar of delight from John Shakespeare broke the spell. The company
echoed it with round upon round of hand-clapping. The music ceased
suddenly, and the dancer, dipping low until her knees brushed the
floor, stood erect again, dropped her arms, and turned carelessly to
the nearest table.
"Bravo! bravissimo!" thundered John Shakespeare. "A cup of wine for
her, there!"
The girl had snatched up a crust of bread and was gnawing it
ravenously. He thrust his way through the guests and poured out wine
for her. She took the glass with a steady hand, scarcely pausing in her
meal to thank him.
"But who is your master of ceremonies?" demanded the page's piping
voice.
William Shakespeare heard it and turned. "He is my father," said he
quietly.
But John Shakespeare had heard also. Wheeling about, wine-flask in
hand, he faced the lad with a large and mock-elaborate bow. "That,
young Sir, must be my chief title to your notice. For the rest, I am
a plain gentleman of Warwickshire, of impaired but (I thank God)
bettering fortune; my name John Shakespeare; my coat, or, a bend sable,
charged with a lance proper. One of these fine days I may bring it to
Court for you to recognise: but, alas! says Skelton--
_Age is a page
For the Court full unmeet,
For age cannot rage
Nor buss her sweet sweet._
I shall bide at home and kiss the Queen's hand, through my son, more
like."
"Indeed," said the page, "I hear reports that her Majesty hath already
a mind to send for him."
"Is that so, Will?" His father beamed, delighted.
"In some sort it is," answered Herbert, "and in some sort I am her
messenger's forerunner. She will have a play of thee, Will."
"The Queen?" Shakespeare turned on him sharply. "This is a fool's trick
you play on me, my Lord." Yet his face flushed in spite of himself.
"I tell thee, straight brow and true man, I heard the words fall from
her very lips. 'He shall write us a play,' she said; 'and this Falstaff
shall be the hero on't, with no foolish royalties to overlay and clog
his mirth.'"
"And, you see," put in the page maliciously, "we have come express to
the Boar's Head to seek him out."
"That," Herbert added, "is our suit to-night."
"Will, lad, thy fortune's made!" John Shakespeare clapped a hand on his
son's shoulder. "I shall see thee Sir William yet afore I die!"
If amid the general laughter two lines of vexation wrote themselves for
a moment on Shakespeare's brow they died out swiftly. He stood back a
pace, eyed his father awhile with grave and tender humour, and answered
the pair of courtiers with a bow.
"Her Majesty's gracious notion of a play," said he, "must needs be her
poor subject's pattern. If then I come to Court in motley, you, Sirs,
at least will be indulgent, knowing how much a suit may disguise." The
page, meeting his eye, laughed uneasily. "'Tis but a frolic----" he
began.
"Ay, there's the pity o't," interrupted a deep voice--Kempe's.
The page laughed again, yet more nervously. "I should have said the
Queen--God bless her!--desires but a frolic. And I had thought"--here
he lifted his chin saucily and looked Kempe in the face--"that on
Bankside they took a frolic less seriously."
"Why, no," answered Kempe: "they have to take it seriously, and the
cost too,--that being their business."
"'Tis but a frolic, at any rate, that her Majesty proposes, with a
trifling pageant or dance to conclude, in which certain of the Court
may join."
A harsh laugh capped this explanation. It came from the dancing-girl,
who, seated at the disordered table, had been eating like a hungry
beast. She laid down her knife, rested her chin on her clasped hands,
and, munching slowly, stared at the page from under her sullen,
scornful brows.
"Wouldst learn to dance, child?" she demanded.
"With thee for teacher," the page answered modestly. "I have no skill,
but a light foot only."
"A light foot!" the woman mimicked and broke into a laugh horrible to
hear. "Wouldst achieve such art as mine with a light foot? I tell thee
that to dance as I dance thy feet must go deep as hell!" She pushed
back her plate, and, rising, nodded to the musicians. "Play, you!" she
commanded.
This time she used no wild whirl down the room to give her impetus. She
stood in the cleared space of floor, her arms hanging limp, and at the
first shrill note of the pipe began to revolve on the points of her
toes, her eyes, each time as they came full circle, meeting the gaze of
the page, and slowly fascinating, freezing it. As slowly, deliberately,
her hand went up, curved itself to the armpit of her bodice; and lo! as
she straightened it aloft, a snake writhed itself around her upper arm,
lifting its head to reach the shining bracelets, the jewelled fingers.
A curving lift of the left arm, and on that too a snake began to coil
and climb. Effortless, rigid as a revolving statue, she brought her
finger-tips together overhead and dipped them to her bosom.
A shriek rang out, piercing high above the music.
"Catch her! She faints!" shouted Kempe, darting forward. But it was
Shakespeare who caught the page's limp body as it dropped back on his
arm. Bearing it to the window, he tore aside the curtain and thrust
open a lattice to the dawn. The unconscious head drooped against his
shoulder.
"My Lord"--he turned on Herbert as though the touch maddened him--"you
are a young fool! God forgive me that I ever took you for better! Go,
call a boat and take her out of this."
"Nay, but she revives," stammered Herbert, as the page's lips parted in
a long, shuddering sigh.
"Go, fetch a boat, I say!--and make way there, all you by the door!"