A Gentleman Player Part 34

"And played it once, when Master Crowe was--ill!"

"Why, here's good fortune! My lord, 'tis one of our actors, who hath been a time absent from us. You will enjoy to see him in the fighting.

Haste thee down, Master Marryott!"

A clapping of hands behind the entrance-curtain told Hal that the other players had heard, and that they welcomed; some, indeed, were peeping out from the edges of the curtain.

Lord Tyrrington looked across the yard, and up to the gable window, and called out, "Well met, sir!" with a kindly face; and his lady, delighted at the turn of affairs, smiled sweetly. Whereat the crowd cheered l.u.s.tily, and all eyes were fixed on Hal with approval and pleasure.

"Alas!" cried Hal. "I may not stir from here. I am a prisoner to this officer of the queen."

The smiles slowly faded from the countless faces below. Roger Barnet, who had been taken by surprise at Hal's first salutation to Sly, and whom the swift ensuing colloquy had caught at a loss, frowned, and wished he had interfered earlier.

"Nay," called Sly, "it can be for no grave offence. The--"

"'Tis a charge of aiding treason," replied Hal, to cut matters short.

Sly stood a little appalled. A deeper silence and a new interest took possession of the gazing crowd.

"Why, even so," said Sly, at last, "the officer may--"

The officer now thought it time to speak for himself. "My prisoner is my prisoner," he said, in a somewhat surly and defiant tone, "taken in the queen's name, with proper warrant; and in the queen's name I hold him here in close guard."

Will Sly, after a perplexed look at the pursuivant by Hal's side, turned his eyes in a tentative, questioning way to the young lord. The crowd followed his glance. My lord felt the pressure of the general wish upon him. His lady whispered something to him, in a kind of pouting, appealing way, with a disapproving side glance at Roger Barnet. My lady herself was only a knight's daughter. To her, a lord was a person of unlimited influence. When a wife imagines that her husband is all-powerful, he does not like to disabuse her mind. When he is deeply in love with her, and she asks him for a pleasure which he has himself offered, he will go far to obtain it. Moreover, here was a mult.i.tude looking to him, the great Lord Tyrrington, as to its champion against a vile, sport-spoiling hound of the government.

"How now, officer?" cried my lord, in a tone of lofty rebuke. "The queen's name--G.o.d save her gracious Majesty!--comes as loyally, methinks, from lips that do not make it a common byword of their trade.

Warrant, say you? Your warrant, sirrah, requires not that you guard her Majesty's prisoner rather in one part of this inn than in another part.

Let him be guarded upon yonder stage. 'Tis as safe a place, with proper watching, as the chamber you are in."

"My lord--" doggedly began Barnet, who had noted Sly's form of address.

But ere he could proceed, there arose from the yard, and was taken up by the galleries, a clamor so mandatory, so threatening to a possible thwarter of the general will, that the pursuivant, who in his day had seen a mob or two at work, became pa.s.sive. Moreover, he had been as cast down as any one at the prospect of his favorite play's being supplanted or spoiled; and deep within him was a keen curiosity to see his prisoner act on the stage. Standing at the window, therefore, Roger made a curt gesture of yielding to the unanimous will.

"My lord," said he, when the cheers of satisfaction had hushed, "sith it be your desire, and haply the pleasure of my lady, and the wish of these good people, I no more say nay. Your lordship will of a surety grant me, and require of these players, that I may dispose guards to my own liking, and for the queen's service, during the time of my prisoner's use in the play."

My lord was quick to approve of this condition. "Your prisoner, mayhap,"

he added, "will give his word not to attempt escape."

"Ay, my lord," cried Hal, at once, "if this officer rely on that word alone, and dispense with guards about me."

Marryott knew, of course, and Barnet promptly affirmed by word, that the latter would prefer to rely on his guards. Hal showed no offence at this; had he thought his word would be accepted he would not have offered it.

"Then," said he, when Barnet had expressed himself, "I will not give my word."

The pursuivant was content. He attributed Hal's att.i.tude to a mere idle punctilio which would not accept moral bonds without a reciprocal withdrawal of physical ones, even though freedom from moral bonds was useless. Barnet was accustomed, in his observations of gentlemen, to such bootless niceties in matters of honor.

The musicians were put to it for another quarter of an hour, and Barnet conducted the prisoner down-stairs and to the tiring-room. He placed a guard at each entrance to that room, stationed others in the yard so that one breasted each side of the small stage, set two upon the steps between stage and tiring-room, and established himself on a three-legged stool on the stage. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that Tybalt, even during the acts wherein he appears, is less time on the stage than off. He had put the faithful Hudsdon, however, at the door from the tiring-room to the steps behind the stage. Indeed, Hal's freedom was little more than it had been in the chamber, save that.

Tybalt being a swordsman's part, his hands were now unbound.

Barnet had a.s.sured himself that the rapiers used by the actors were blunted so as not to pierce. He knew, too, that he had won the crowd by his concession to their wish, and that he should have all the spectators, including the lord's people and the inn-folk, as active barriers against any dash the prisoner might rashly venture for liberty.

Hal's friends had crowded around him in the tiring-room, which was lighted with candles against the gloom caused by the curtain at the back of the stage. Even Burbage had pressed his hand, and uttered a hope that there might be nothing in this treason matter. "Fortune send thee safe out of it, whatever it be!" was Master Shakespeare's wish. "If thou camest to grief, Hal," said the Juliet, the same pert stripling that had played Ophelia eleven days before, "I should weep like a real girl!" Gil Crowe alone had nothing to say, for he was stretched half clad, in the corner where he had fallen, in the deepest drunken slumber.

Master Shakespeare wore the white beard and religious cowl of the Friar; a habit that had wakened in Hal's mind a thought to be quenched the next moment by Barnet's injunction to the guards of the tiring-room:

"And lose not sight of him an instant while he is here, lest during an eye-wink he slip into some player's disguise of face and body, and pa.s.s one of you unknown."

His comrades, especially Master Shakespeare and Will Sly, would have inquired more closely into the circ.u.mstances of Hal's detention, but the young man was so pleasantly exhilarated by the reunion with his friends, so carried out of himself at the prospect of playing this part, that he put direful matters aside as not to be talked of. With his dulled rapier in hand, and without having to change costume, he stood surrounded by the players, at the tiring-room door, waiting to go on the stage.

The music ceased again; the speaker of the prologue stepped out, and, while the audience came gradually to a hush, delivered his lines from the centre of the platform. A boy fastened to the curtain at the back a scroll reading, "A Street in Verona." The two Capulet serving-men came on, and their rude double-meanings made the crowd guffaw; then the two Montague men, then Benvolio, then Tybalt precipitating the brawl, then the crowd of adherents of both houses; and the ensuing fray, unduly confined by the smallness of the platform, came near involving Roger Barnet and the gallants sitting at the sides.

Noting more heedfully how dense was the crowd that pressed from the yard's farthest boundaries to the stage, and recognizing the guards about the latter. Hal had a sickening feeling of being mured around with a wall no less impa.s.sable for that it was human.

His mind reverted to the last time he had acted on a stage; to the face he had seen then. Where was she at this moment? Was the horse waiting?

Unmanned for an instant, he felt his eyes moisten.

When he made exit, after the Prince had quelled the tumult, he stood silent in the dark tiring-room, sad at heart.

Meanwhile, Roger Barnet and the audience were enjoying the performance.

The pursuivant, nearer to the great Burbage than he had ever before been during a play, drank in Romeo's every word. In due time, the stage being for a moment vacant, a boy supplanted the first card with one reading, "A Room in Capulet's House." The scene of the Nurse with Juliet and her mother drew some very conscious blushes from my lady in the gallery, the too reminiscent Nurse's part losing nothing of mellowness from its being played by a portly man. The street card reappeared, and brought on Mercutio to deepen the audience's enhancement. Another subst.i.tution introduced the masquerade, during which the Tybalt, covered with an orange-tawny cloak and wearing a black mask, was held in particular note by Barnet. Hudsdon having followed him to the stage and pointed him out in his visored appearance.

During the second act, with its balcony scene, its wisdom so impressively spoken by Master Shakespeare in the Friar's part, its wit contest between Romeo and Mercutio, Roger Barnet was in the seventh heaven. Throughout this act, Hal, seated listlessly in the tiring-room, was under the eyes of Hudsdon and other guards. The first scene of the third act, heralded by the useful street scroll, brought his great and last great occasion.

"It may be my last stage-playing in this world," he thought, and resolved it should be worthy the remembrance of his comrades.

"'By my heel, I care not,'" quoth Sly as Mercutio, and Tybalt, taking the cue, strode out with his followers, to force the deadly quarrel.

The brief exchange of defiance with Mercutio, the vain attempt of peacemaking Benvolio to lead the foes from public gaze, made keen the audience's expectation. Romeo entered; refused to be drawn by Tybalt's fierce words into fight; tried to placate the other's hot anger.

Mercutio invited the quarrel to himself, drew rapier, and belabored Tybalt with wit. Tybalt, with a ready "I am for you," flashed out his blade in turn. There was fine clashing of steel, excellent fencing.

Romeo rushed in to stop the duel, calling on Benvolio to beat down the weapons. Is it wonder that the audience was a-quiver with interest, under complete illusion? For here was a truly fiery Tybalt; here was Mercutio, the most fascinating character in Shakespeare; here as Romeo was Burbage himself, accounted the greatest actor in the world. Is it wonder that Roger Barnet, sitting not a man's length away, hung breathlessly, and with wide eyes, upon the scene?

"Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!" cried Romeo.

But Mercutio had received his thrust, and Tybalt turned to flee with his followers. Barnet heard him cry out something as he ran; got an impression of legs disappearing behind the rear curtain; and, with the greater part of the audience, kept his eyes on the group whence the youth had fled.

For Mercutio was panting in Romeo's arms; declaring himself hurt, and calling feebly a plague on both the houses; replying to Romeo's encouraging words with: "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world.

A plague o' both your houses!" And so till Benvolio led him off gasping with his dying breath, "Your houses!"

And now it was Romeo's task to hold the mult.i.tude's illusion with deploring speeches; and to work up anew its breathless sympathy, at the news of Mercutio's death and that the furious Tybalt was coming back again.

"'Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain!'" cried Burbage.

"'Away to heaven, respective lenity.

And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now.'"

And Romeo, trembling with the emotion of the situation, stood with sword ready to receive the slayer of his friend, lips ready to begin, "Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again--"

The audience stood in a suspense not less than Romeo's, every gaze intent upon the place where Tybalt should come forth.

But from that place, no one appeared.