Master Skylark: A Story of Shakspere's Time by John Bennett (top rated books of all time txt) 📕

a-plenty thus coming so easily into his hands,—money for dicing, for luxuries, for all his wild sports, money for Cicely, money for keeps, money to play chuckie-stones with if he chose,—there was no bridle to Gaston Carew’s wild career. His boon companions were spendthrifts and gamesters, dissolute fellows, of whom the least said soonest mended; and with them he was brawling early and late, very often all night long. And though money came in fast, he wasted it faster, so that matters went from bad to worse. Duns came spying about his door, and bailiffs hunted after him around the town with unpaid tradesmen’s bills. Yet still he laughed and clapped his hand upon his poniard in the old bold way.

September faded away in wistful haze along the Hampstead hills. The Admiral’s men came riding back with keen October ringing at their heels, and all the stalls were full of red-cheeked apples striped with emerald and gold. November followed, with its nipping frost, and all St. George’s merry green fields turned brown and purple-gray. The old year was waning fast.

The Queen’s Day was but a poor holiday, in spite of the shut-up shops; for it was grown so cold with sleet and rain that it was hard to get about, the gutters and streets being very foul, and the by-lanes impassable. And now the children of Paul’s gave no more plays in the yard of the Mitre Inn, but sang in their own warm hall; for winter was at hand.

There came black nights when an ugly wind moaned in the shivering chimneys and howled across the peaked roofs, nights when there was no playing at the Rose, but it was hearty to be by the fire. Then sometimes Carew sat at home all evening long, with Cicely upon his knee, and told strange tales of lands across the sea, where he had traveled when he was young, and where none spoke English but chance travelers, and even the loudest shouting could not serve to make the people understand.

While he spun these wondrous yarns Nick would curl up on the hearth and blow the crackling fire, sometimes staring at the master-player’s stories, sometimes laughing to himself at the funny faces carved upon the sides of the chubby Dutch bellows, and sometimes neither laughing nor listening, but thinking silently of home. Then Carew, looking at him there, would quickly turn his face away and tell another tale.

But oftener the master-player stayed all night at the Falcon Inn with Dick Jones, Tom Hearne, Humphrey Jeffs, and other reckless roysterers, dicing and flipping shillings at shovel-board until his finger-nails were sore. Then Nick would read aloud to Cicely out of the “Hundred Merry Tales,” or pop old riddles at her puzzled head until she, laughing, cried, “Enough!” But most of all he liked the story of brave Guy of Warwick, and would tell it again and again, with other legends of Arden Wood, till bedtime came.

In the gray of the morning Carew would come home, unshaven and leaden-eyed, with his bandy-legged varlet trotting like a watch-dog at his heels; and then, if the gaming had gone well, he was a lord, an earl, a duke, at least, so merry and so sprightly would he be withal; but if the dice had fallen wrong, he would by turns be raving mad or sodden as a sunken pie.

Yet, be his temper what it might, he was but one thing always to Cicely, and doffed ill humor like a shabby hat when she came running to meet him in the shadows of the hall; so that when he came into the lighted room, with her upon his shoulder, his face was smiles, his step a frolic, and his bearing that of a happy boy.

But day by day the weather grew worse, with snow and ice paving the streets with a glassy glare and choking the frozen drains; and there was trouble and want among the poor in the wretched alleys near Carew’s house: for fuel was high and food scarce, and there were many deaths, so that the knell was tolling constantly.

Cicely cried until her eyes were red for the very sadness of it all, since she might do nothing for them, and hated the sound of the sullen bell.

“Pshaw, Cicely!” said Nick; “why should ye cry? Ye do na know them; so ye need na care.”

“But, Nick,” said she, “nobody seems to care! And, sure, somebody ought to care; for it may be some one’s mother that is dead.”

At that Nick felt a very queer choking in his own throat, and did not rest quite easy in his mind until he had given the silver buckle from his cloak to a boy who stood crying with cold and hunger in the street, and begged a farthing of him for the love of the good God.

Then came a thaw, with mist and fog so thick that people were lost in their own streets, and knocked at their next-door neighbor’s gate to ask the way home. All day long, down by the Thames drums beat upon the wharves and bells ding-donged to guide the watermen ashore; but most of those who needs must fare abroad went over London Bridge, because there, although they might in no wise see, it felt, at least, as if the world were still beneath their feet.

At noon the air was muddy brown, with a bitter taste like watered smoke; at night it was a blinding pall; and though, after mid-December, by order of the Council, every alderman and burgess hung a light before his door, torches, links, and candles only sputtered feebly in the gloom, of no more use than jack-o’-lanterns gone astray, and none but blind men knew the roads.

The city watch was doubled everywhere; and all night long their shouts went up and down—“’Tis what o’clock, and a foggy night!”—and right and left their hurrying staves came thumping helplessly along the walls to answer cries of “Murder!” and of “Help! Watch! Help!” For under cover of the fog great gangs of thieves came down from Hampstead Heath, and robberies were done in the most frequented thoroughfares, between the very lights set up by the corporation; so that it was dangerous to go about save armed and wary as a cat in a crowd.

While such foul days endured there was no singing at St. Paul’s, nor stage-plays anywhere, save at Blackfriars play-house, which was roofed against the weather. And even there at last the fog crept in through cracks and crannies until the players seemed but moving shadows talking through a choking cloud; and Master Will Shakspere’s famous new piece of “Romeo and Juliet,” which had been playing to crowded houses, taking ten pound twelve the day, was fairly smothered off the boards.

“NICK GAVE THE SILVER BUCKLE FROM HIS CLOAK TO A BOY WHO STOOD CRYING WITH COLD AND HUNGER IN THE STREET.”

Nick was eager to be out in all this blindman’s holiday; but, “Nay,” said Carew; “not so much as thy nose. A fog like this would steal the croak from a raven’s throat, let alone the sweetness from a honey-pot like thine—and bottom crust is the end of pie!” With which, bang went the door, creak went the key, and Carew was off to the Falcon Inn.

So went the winter weather, and so went Carew; for there was no denying that both had fallen into a very bad way. Yet another change came creeping over Carew all unaware.

Nick’s face had from the first attracted him; and now, living with the boy day after day, housed up, a prisoner, yet cheerful through it all, the master-player began to feel what in a better man had been the prick of conscience, but in him was only an indefinite uneasiness like a blunted cockle-bur. For the lad’s patient perseverance at his work, his delight in singing, and the tone of longing threaded through his voice, crept into the master-player’s heart in spite of him; and Nick’s gentle ways with Cicely touched him more than all the rest: for if there was one thing in all the world that Gaston Carew truly loved, it was his daughter Cicely. So for her sake, as well as for Nick’s own, the master-player came to love the lad. And this was shown in queer ways.

In the wainscot of the dining-hall there was a carven panel just above the Spanish chest. At night, when the house was still and all the rest asleep, Carew often came and stood before this panel, with a queer, hesitating look upon his hard, bold face; and stretching out his hand, would press upon the head of a cherub cut in the bevel edge. Whereupon the panel slipped away within the wainscot, leaving a little closet in the hollow of the wall, in which a few strange things were stowed: an empty flask, an inlaid rosewood box, a little slipper, and a dusty gittern with its strings all snapped and a faded ribbon tied about its neck.

The rosewood box he would take down, and with it open in his lap would sit beside the fire like a man within a dream, until the hearth grew white and cold, and the draught had blown the ashes out in streaks across the floor. In the box was a woman’s riding-glove and a miniature upon ivory, Cicely’s mother’s face, painted at Paris in other days.

One night, while they were sitting all together by the fire, Nick and Cicely snug in the chimney-seat, Carew spoke up suddenly out of a little silence which had fallen upon them all. “Nick,” said he, quite softly, with a look on his face as if he were thinking of other things, “I wonder if thou couldst play?”

“What, sir?” asked Nick; “a game?” and made the bellows whistle in his mouth.

“Nay, lad; a gittern.”

Nick and Cicely looked up, for his manner was very odd.

“Why, sir, I do na know. I could try. I ha’ heard one played, and it is passing sweet.” “Ay, Nick, ’tis passing sweet,” said Carew, quickly—and no more; but spoke of France, how the lilies grow in the ditches there, and the tall trees stand like soldiers by the road that runs to the land of sunny hills and wine; and of the radiant women there, with hair like night and eyes like the summer stars. Then all at once he stopped as if some one had clapped a hand upon his mouth, and sat and stared into the fire.

But in the morning at breakfast there was a gittern at Nick’s place—a rare old yellow gittern, with silver scrolls about the tail-piece, ivory pegs, and a head that ended in an angel’s face. It was strung with bright new silver strings, but near the bridge of it there was a little rut worn into the wood by the tips of the fingers that had rested there while playing, and the silken shoulder-ribbon was faded and worn.

Nick stopped, then put out both his hands as if to touch it, yet did not, being half afraid.

“Tut, take it up!” said Carew, sharply, though he had not seemed to heed. “Take it up—it is for thee.”

“For me?” cried Nick—“not for mine own?”

Carew turned and struck the table with his hand, as if suddenly wroth. “Why should I say it was for thee? if it were not to be thine own?”

“But, Master Carew—” Nick began.

“‘Master Carew’ fiddlesticks! Hold thy prate. Do I know my own mind, or do I filter my wits through thee? Did I not say that it is thine? Good, then—’tis thine, although it were thrice somebody else’s; and thrice as much thy very own through having other owners. Dost hear? Well, then, enough—we’ll have no words about it!”

Rising abruptly as he spoke, he clapped his hat upon his head and left the room, Nick standing there beside the table, staring after him, with the gittern in his hands.