On the Lightship Part 3

"But he could not find the soldier anywhere," Mr. Hopworthy interposed.

"Why should he want to find the confounded soldier?" demanded the narrator, fiercely.

"Why, to get his cowl, of course."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Mabel, clapping her hands.

"He--he----" the author stammered, and again the other lent a friendly tongue to say:

"_Ignatius_ returned to the monastery at once. And what should he discover there but _The Soldier_, seated in the chair of office, presiding at the council. But, see here, old chap, perhaps you had better finish your own story yourself?"

"Sir!" cried the author, springing to his feet. "I detect your perfidy, and I call this about the shabbiest trick one gentleman ever attempted to play upon another. I shall not hesitate to denounce you far and wide as one capable of the smallest meanness!"

"That is what _The Almoner_ told _The Soldier_," Mr. Hopworthy explained to Mabel, in a whisper, but the other, becoming almost violent, went on:

"You are unfit, sir, to a.s.sociate with people of refinement, and, when I meet you alone, it will give me a lively satisfaction to repeat the observation!"

"That is what _The Soldier_ replied to _The Almoner_," Mr. Hopworthy again explained. But the other gentleman had lifted his hat, and was moving rapidly toward the striped tent, where ices were to be had.

"I shall never forgive him for leaving the story unfinished," announced the lady of the bench. "And, don't you think his manner toward the end was rather strange?"

Mr. Hopworthy sighed, and shook his head.

"Those magazine men are all a trifle odd," he said. "Does not that parasol fatigue your hand?"

"Yes, you may hold it, if you like," she answered. "I am glad everybody does not tell stories."

THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST

One May morning in the brave year 1594, Mistress Betty Hodges, from the threshold of the narrowest house in the narrowest of the narrow streets in the ancient parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, observed with more than pa.s.sing interest the movements of a gentleman in black.

"Whist, neighbor!" she called out to Mistress Judd, whose portly person well-nigh filled a kindred doorway just across the street. "Yonder stranger should be by every sign in quest of lodgings, and by my horoscope this is a day most favorable for affairs of business. I pray thee, get thy knitting, lest he take us for no better than a pair of idle gossips."

"In faith," retorted Mistress Judd, folding her arms complacently after a side glance in the loiterer's direction, "an he should ever lodge with thee let us hope his shillings prove more nimble than his feet."

The gentleman indeed advanced with much deliberation, pausing from time to time to look about him as a man who balances advantages and disadvantages one against the other. It was a quaint old-mannered thoroughfare he moved in; a crooked street of overhanging eaves and jutting gable ends which nearly met against the sky; a shadowy, sunless, damp, ill-savored street, paved with round pebbles and divided in the middle by a trickling stream of unattractive water. For London, still in happy, dirty infancy, had yet to learn her lessons at the hands of those grim teachers, plague and fire.

"A proper man enough!" Mistress Judd added, "though I'll warrant over-cautious and of no great quality. To me he looks a traveling leech."

"Better a country student of divinity," suggested Mistress Hodges.

"Or better, a minor cleric, or at best some writing-master," Mistress Judd opined.

"Please G.o.d, then he can read," rejoined her neighbor, already debating within herself a small advance of rent. "Mayhap he might acquaint me whether those rolls of paper left by Master Christopher in his oaken chest be worth the ten shillings he died owing me."

"An they would fetch as many pence," sniffed Mistress Judd, "our master poet had long ago resolved them into Malmsey."

"Nay, speak not harshly of the dead," protested Mistress Hodges, conveying furtively a corner of her ap.r.o.n to one eye.

"Marry, if Master Kit did sometimes sing o' nights 'twas but to keep the watch awake. I'd wipe my shutter clean and willingly to hear his merry catch again. Ah, he was ever free with money when he had it. And 'twas a pleasure to see him with his bottle. In faith, he'd speak to it and kiss it as a woman would her child."

"And kiss it he did once too often, to my thinking," murmured Mistress Judd unsympathetically, "the night he got to brawling in the street and met his death."

"Marry, he was no brawler," Mistress Hodges protested warmly, "but ever cheerfullest when most in drink. They were thieving knaves who set upon him, and, G.o.d be good to sinners, ran him through the heart before the poor young man could so much as recite a couplet to prove himself a poet."

"How thinkst thou poetry would save him?" Mistress Judd demanded curtly.

"Marry, come up! What thief would kill a poet for his purse?" cried Mistress Hodges. "Quick, neighbor, get thy knitting!" she added hurriedly, and catching up a pewter plate began to polish with her ap.r.o.n as the stranger, attracted by their chatter, quickened his pace.

He was a slight man, apparently of thirty or thereabout, with deep-set, penetrating eyes and a lean face ending in the short, sharp, pointed beard in fashion at the time.

"Give you good-morrow, dames," he said, when within speaking distance; "can you direct me to some proper lodging here-about?"

Mistress Hodges dropped a deeper courtesy to draw attention to herself as the person of most importance.

"In truth an't please you, sir," she said, "'tis my good fortune to have this moment ready for your worship the fairest chambers to be had in all the town at four and six the week. Gentility itself could ask no better, for doth not the Lord Mayor live around the corner in his newly purchased Crosby Hall, the tallest house in London, and near at hand do not the gardens of Sir John Gresham stretch from Bishopsgate to Broad Street like a park? And if one would seek recreation, 'tis not five minutes to Cornhill, which is amusing as a fair o' pleasant evenings, with the jugglers and peddlers and goldsmiths and----"

"Ah, by my faith," the stranger interrupted gravely, "I should seek elsewhere, for I am not a man born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor under Jupiter, that loveth business, for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly."

"An you be disposed toward contemplation," interposed Mistress Hodges, quickly, "there can be found no purer place in London for such diversion than is my second story back. From thence one may contemplate at will either the almshouse gardens and the woodland beyond Houndsditch, or the turrets of the Tower itself, in winter when the leaves are gone."

"Please Heaven the leaves are thick at present!" said the stranger with a grim half smile. "Nevertheless, I have a mind to look from your back windows. The almshouse gardens may at least teach one resignation."

"Enter an't please you, sir," replied the landlady with a low obeisance.

The stranger made a close inspection of the chamber, peering into cupboards, testing the bed and stools and chairs, and finally pausing before a small oak box secluded in a corner.

"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added, raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen ma.n.u.scripts or more, bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?"

The stranger laughed and shook his head.

"'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's presence.

"In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without merit."

"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady ventured to inquire.

"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of his murder--" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges checked him.

"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale."

More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation of the doc.u.ments she declared her purpose to burn the last of them unread.

"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret.

The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own employment."