On the Lightship Part 6

"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers, 'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so undone!'"

"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets, not for men of learning."

"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute."

"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned forward in the candle-light to catch the answer.

"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the very finger p.r.i.c.ks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play."

"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented Master Francis.

"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth, there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a huckster's hat of rotten cherries."

"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me ambition gratified."

"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth considering?"

"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy."

"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your closet, unlock your treasure chest--" Here Master Francis gave a start, but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried."

He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher, and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale.

"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that last tobacco pipe?"

"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth that a play can be sold for so much money?"

"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written."

Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest.

"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with shrouded lanthorn and with m.u.f.fled spade to force the moldering hinges of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play."

He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first ma.n.u.script that met his hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table.

"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame--"

"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read."

"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds; here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the t.i.tle sheet. You are too modest."

"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back.

"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your offspring loose upon the world without parentage?"

"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis.

"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded the player.

"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you, say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed."

"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should the play find favor, may be at any time corrected."

And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the page:

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

"A proper t.i.tle, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more cunningly than that of Francis Bacon."

THE CARHART MYSTERY

The conversation had grown reminiscent, as conversations will when old acquaintance stirs its coffee after dinner and the blue wreaths of good tobacco-smoke float ceilingward, like pleasant specters, in the subdued light of the shaded lamps.

Barton and I, in following back some winding paths of memory now well-nigh overgrown, were in danger of forgetting our good manners till Willoughby reminded us of his presence.

"I might as well embrace this opportunity for a nap," he said, stretching his long legs to the fire, and sinking back into one of Barton's most engaging armchairs. "Just wake me up when you fellows. .h.i.t upon a subject I know something of. I happen to have been living in India during the time the thrilling tea-and-tennis episodes you recall so fondly were taking place, and, to tell the truth, they bore me."

Barton laughed.

"Oh, we have done with recollections, and now you shall have a chance to bore us with an Indian tale or so by way of recompense," he said, with the candor permissible only between men who know each other well. "Make clear to us the difference between a maharajah and a pongee pajama, and go ahead."

"At least, my stories do not deal with duels that ended in Delmonico's, and flirtations which fell flat," a.s.serted Willoughby, blowing a cloud of fragrant incense into s.p.a.ce. "I've no idea of wasting occult material on a brace of rank Philistines, but if I were so disposed----"

"Dear boy!" I put in, rather testily; for I dislike fatuous patronage even in fun. "Either Barton or I could relate to you an incident which occurred in this very room, within a yard of where you sit, remarkable enough to make your Kiplingest jungle-tale seem as tame as 'Mother Hubbard's Dog!'"

"Indeed!" he said, sinking still farther into his chair, with something very like a yawn; and Barton, as he arose and moved to the mantelpiece, cast a look of remonstrance toward me which I was careful not to recognize.

"Ah, here comes Nathan with fresh coffee," our host announced, clearly to change the subject, as the round-shouldered figure of his worthy valet appeared in the lamplight. "Pray let him fill your cups, and, if it is not strong enough, don't hesitate to tell him."

"It'th not the coffee gentlemen dethired when I wath young," commented Nathan, a trifle sadly, and with the amusing lisp which made him something of a character, albeit he was rather a dull man even for a valet.

"I never take a second cup," Willoughby declared, adding: "But, if it's all the same, I might be tempted by a sip of soda later, say in half an hour or so."

This struck me as an excellent suggestion, and Barton evidently thought the same.

"Bring soda in half an hour," he instructed the servant, "and mind you have it cold."

"It'th never any other way you've had your thoda a thingle night for fifteen yearth, thir," retorted Nathan, with quite sufficient truth, no doubt, to justify the protest; and as he shuffled from the room, "Jim"

Barton's guests chuckled.

"I move we give the half-hour to your yarn," said Willoughby, crossing his legs. "That is, if it can be told in thirty minutes."