Master Skylark Part 27

In a garden near the old bear-yard, among tall rose-trees which would soon be in bloom, a merry company of men were sitting around a table which stood in the angle of a quick-set hedge beside a path graveled with white stones and bordered with mussel-sh.e.l.ls.

There was a house hard by with creamy-white walls, green-shuttered windows, and a red-tiled roof. The door of the house was open, showing a little ruddy fire upon a great hearth, kindled to drive away the damp; and in the windows facing the garden there were lights shining warmly out among the rose-trees.

The table was spread with a red damask cloth, on which were a tray of raisins and nuts and a small rally of silver cups. Above the table an apple-tree nodded its new leaves, and from an overhanging bough a lantern hung glowing like a great yellow bee.

There was a young fellow with a white ap.r.o.n and a jolly little whisper of a whistle on his puckered lips going around with a plate of cakes and a tray of honey-bowls; and the men were eating and drinking and chatting together so gaily, and seemed to be all such good friends, that it was a pleasant thing just to see them sitting there in their comfortable leather-bottomed chairs, taking life easily because the spring had come again.

One tall fellow was smoking a pipe. He held the bowl in one hand, and kept tamping down the loose tobacco with his forefinger. Now and again he would be so eagerly talking he would forget that his finger was in the bowl, and it would be burned. He would take it out with a look of quaint surprise, whereat the rest all roared. Another was a fat, round man who chuckled constantly to himself, as if this life were all a joke; and there was a quite severe, important-seeming, oldish man who said, "Hem--hem!" from time to time, as if about to speak forthwith, yet never spoke a word. There was also among the rest a raw-boned, lanky fellow who had bitten the heart out of an oat-cake and held the rim of it in his fingers like a new moon, waving it around while he talked, until the little man beside him popped it deftly out of his grasp and ate it before the other saw where it was gone. But when he made out what was become of that oat-cake he rose up solemnly, took the little man by the collar as a huntsman takes a pup, and laid him softly in the gra.s.s without a word.

What a laughing and going-on was then! It was as if they all were growing young again. And in the middle of the row a head popped over the quick-set hedge, and a most stentorian voice called out, "Here, here! Go slow--I want a piece of that!"

They all looked up, and the moment they spied that laughing face and cloak of Holland cloth, raised a shout of "What, there!" "Well met!"

"Come in, Ben." "Where hast thou tarried so long?" and the like; while the waiter ran to open the gate and let the stranger in.

A quiet man with a little chestnut-colored beard and hazel eyes, which lit up quickly at sight of the stranger over the hedge, arose from his place by the table and went down the path with hands outstretched to greet him.

"Welcome, welcome, hurly-burly Ben," said he. "We've missed thee from the feast. Art well? And what's the good word?"

"Ah, Will, thou gentle rogue!" the other cried, catching the hands of the quiet man and holding him off while he looked at him there. "How thou stealest one's heart with the glance of thine eye! I was going to give thee a piece of my mind; but a plague, old heart! who could chide thee to thy face? Am I well? Ay, exceedingly well. And the news? Jove!

the best that was baked at the Queen's to-day, and straight from the oven-door! The thing is done--huff, puff, and away we go! But come on--this needs telling to the rest."

They came up the path together, the big man crunching the mussel-sh.e.l.ls beneath his st.u.r.dy tread, and so into the circle of yellow light that came down from the lantern among the apple-leaves, the big man with his arm around the quiet man's shoulders, holding his hand; for the quiet man was not so large as the other, although withal no little man himself, and very well built and straight.

His tabard was black, without sleeves, and his doublet was scarlet silk. His collar and wrist-bands were white Holland linen turned loosely back, and his face was frank and fair and free. He was not old, but his hair was thin upon his brow. His nose and his full, high forehead were as cleanly cut as a finely chiseled stone; and his sensitive mouth had a curve that was tender and sad, though he smiled all the while, a glimpse of his white teeth showing through, and his little mustache twitching with the ripple of his long upper lip. His flowing hair was chestnut-colored, like his beard, and curly at the ends; and his melancholy eyelids told of study and of thought; but under them the kindly eyes were bright with pleasant fancy.

"What, there, all of you!" said he; "a good investment for your ears!"

"Out with it, Will!" they cried, and whirled around.

"The Queen hath made Lord Hunsdon chamberlain," the big man said.

An instant's hush fell on the garden. No one spoke; but they caught each other by the hand, and, suddenly, the silence there seemed somehow louder than a shout.

"We'll build the new Globe play-house, lads, and sweep the Bankside clean from end to end!" a st.u.r.dy voice broke sharply on the hush. And then they cheered--a cheer so loud that people on the river stopped their boats, and came ash.o.r.e asking where the fire was. And over all the cheering rose the big man's voice; for the quiet man was silent, and the big man cheered for two.

"Pull up thy rose-bushes, Will," cried one, "and set out laurels in their stead--thou'lt need them all for crowns."

"Ay, Will, our savor is not gone--Queen Bess knows salt!"

"With Will and Ben for meat and crust, and the rest of us for seasoning, the court shall say it never ate such master pie!"

"We'll make the walls of Whitehall ring come New Year next, or Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday."

"Ay, that we will, old gossip! Here's to thee!"

"Here's to the company, all of us!"

"And a health to the new Lord Chamberlain!"

"G.o.d save the Queen!"

With that, they shook each other's hands, as merry as men could be, and laughed, because their hearts ran short of words; for these were young Lord Hunsdon's men, late players to the Queen in the old Lord Chamberlain's troupe; who, for a while deprived of favor by _his_ death, were now, by this succession of his son, restored to prestige at the court, and such preferment as none beside them ever won, not even the Earl of Pembroke's company.

There was Kemp, the stout tragedian; gray John Lowin, the walking-man; Diccon Burbage, and Cuthbert his brother, master-players and managers; Robin Armin, the humorsome jester; droll d.i.c.k Tarlton, the king of fools. There was Blount, and Pope, and Hemynge, and Thomas Greene, and Joey Taylor, the acting-boy, deep in the heart of a honey-bowl, yet who one day was to play "Hamlet" as no man ever has played it since. And there were others, whose names and doings have vanished with them; and beside these--"What, merry hearts!" the big man cried, and clapped his neighbor on the back; "we'll have a supper at the Mermaid Inn. We'll feast on reason, reason on the feast, toast the company with wit, and company the wit with toast--why, pshaw, we are good fellows all!" He laughed, and they laughed with him. _That_ was "rare Ben Jonson's" way.

"There's some one knocking, master," said the boy.

A quick tap-tapping rattled on the wicket-gate.

"Who is it?" asked the quiet man.

"'Tis Edmund with the news," cried one.

"I've dished him," said Ben Jonson.

"'Tis Condell come to raise our wages," said Robin Armin, with a grin.

"Thou'lt raise more hopes than wages, Rob," said Tarlton, mockingly.

"It is a boy," the waiter said, "who saith that he must see thee, master, on his life."

The quiet man arose.

"Sit down, Will," said Greene; "he'll pick thy pocket with a doleful lie."

"There's nothing in it, Tom, to pick."

"Then give him no more than half," said Armin, soberly, "lest he squander it!"

"He saith he comes from Stratford town," the boy went on.

"Then tell him to go back again," said Master Ben Jonson; "we've sucked the sweet from Stratford town--be off with his seedy dregs!"

"Go bring him in," said the quiet man.

"Nay, Will, don't have him in. This makes the third within the month--wilt father all the strays from Stratford town? Here, Ned, give him this shilling, and tell him to be off to his cony-burrow as fast as his legs can trot."

"We'll see him first," said the quiet man, stopping the other's shilling with his hand.

"Oh, w.i.l.l.y-nilly!" the big man cried; "wilt be a kite to float all the draggle-tails that flutter down from Warwickshire?"

"Why, Ben," replied the quiet man, "'tis not the kite that floats the tail, but the wind which floats both kite and tail. Thank G.o.d, we've caught the rising wind; so, hey for draggle-tails!--we'll take up all we can."

The waiter was coming up the path, and by his side, a little back, bareheaded and flushed with running, came Nicholas Attwood. He had followed the big man through the fields from the gates of the Falcon Inn.

He stopped at the edge of the lantern's glow and looked around uncertain, for the light was in his eyes.

"Come, boy, what is it?" asked Ben Jonson.