A Warwickshire Lad Part 2

And Will, blowing upon his nails aching with the cold, stands squarely with his small legs apart, and looks up at Father. "An' I shall be a player, too, when I'm a man," says w.i.l.l.y Shakespeare. "I shall be a player and wear a dagger like Herod, an' walk about an' draw it--so----"

and struts him up and down while his father laughs and claps hand to knee and roars again, until Mistress Shakespeare tells him he it is who spoils the child.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'An' I shall be a player, too' ... says w.i.l.l.y Shakespeare"]

But for Will Shakespeare the curtain had risen on a new world, a world of giant, of hero, of story, a world of glitter, of pageant, of scarlet and purple and gold. And now henceforth the flagstoned floor about the chimney was a stage upon which Mother and Brother and Kitty, the maid, at little Will's bidding, with Will himself, played a part; a stage where Virtue, in other words Will with the parcel-gilt goblet upside down upon his head for crown, ever triumphed over Vice, in the person of dull Kitty, with her knitting on the stool; or where, according to the play, in turn, Noah or Abraham or Jesus Christ walked in Heaven, while Herod or Pilate, Cain or Judas, burned in yawning h.e.l.l.

VI

But as spring came, the garden offered a broader stage for life. The Shakespeare house was in Henley Street, and a fine house it was--too fine, some held, for a man in John Shakespeare's circ.u.mstances--two-storied, of timber and plaster, with dormer-windows and a penthouse over its door. And like its neighbors, the house stood with a yard at the side, and behind, a garden of flowers and fruit and herbs. And here the boy played the warm days through, his mother stepping now and then to the lattice window to see what he was about.

And, gazing, often she saw him through tears, because of a yearning love over him, the more because of the two children dead before his coming.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "His mother stepping now and then to the lattice window ..."]

And Will, seeing her there, would tear into the house and drag her by the hand forth into the sweet, rain-washed air.

"An' see, Mother," he would tell her, as he haled her on to the sward beyond the arbor, "here it is, the story you told us yester-e'en. Here is the ring where they danced last night, the little folk, an' here is the glow-worm caught in the spider's web to give them light."

But something had changed Mary Shakespeare's mood. John Shakespeare, chief bailiff and burgess of Stratford, was being sued for an old debt, and one which Mary Shakespeare had been allowed to think was paid.

Thereupon came to light other outstanding debts of which she had not known which must be met. John Shakespeare, with irons in so many fires, seemed forever to have put money out, in ventures in leather, in wool, in corn, in timber, and to have drawn none in. And now he talked of a mortgage on the Asbies estate.

"Never," Mary told herself, with a look at little Will, at toddling Gilbert at her feet, with a thought for the unborn child soon to add another inmate to the household--"not with my consent. When the time comes they are grown, what will be left for them?"

She was bitter about the secrecy of those debts incurred unknown to her.

And yet to set herself against John!

Wandering with the children down the garden-path, idly she plucked a red rose and laid its cheek against a white one already in her hand. A kingdom divided against itself.

She sighed, then became conscious of the boy pulling at her sleeve.

"Tell us a story, Mother," he was begging, "a story with fighting an' a sword."

"A story, Will, with fighting and a sword?" Never yet could she say the child nay. She held her roses from her and pondered while she gazed. And her heart was bitter.

"There was an Arden, child, whose blood is in your veins, who fought and fell at Barnet, crying shrill and fierce, 'Edward my King, St. George and victory!' And the young Edward, near him as he fell, called to a knight to lay hand to his heart, for Edward knew and loved him well, and had received of him money for a long-forgotten debt which young Edward's father would not press. So Edward called to a knight to lay hand upon his heart. But he was dead. 'A soldier and a knight,' said he who was afterward the King, 'and more--an honest man.'"

Then she pushed the boy aside and going swiftly to the house ran to her room; and face laid in her hands she wept. What had she said in the bitterness of her feeling? What--even to herself--had she said?

Yet money must be had, she admitted that. But to enc.u.mber the estate!

She shrank from her own people knowing; she had inherited more of her father's estate than her sisters, and there had been feeling, and her brothers-in-law, Lambert and Webb, would be but upheld in their prophecies about her husband's capacity to care for her property. She would not have them know. "Talk it over first with your father, John,"

she told her husband, "or with your brother Henry. Let us not rush blindly into this thing. You had promised anyhow, you remember, to take Will out to the sheep-shearing."

VII

So the next morning John Shakespeare swung Will up on the horse before him, and the two rode away through the chill mistiness of the dawn, Will kissing his hand back to Mother in the doorway. Bound for Grandfather's at Snitterfield they were. So out through the town, past the scattering homesteads with their gardens and orchards, traveled Robin, the stout gray cob, small Will's chattering voice as high-piped as the bird-calls through the dawn; on into the open country of meadows and cultivated fields, the mists lifting rosy before the coming sun, through lanes with mossy banks, cobwebs spun between the blooming hedgerows heavy with dew, over the hills, past the straggling ash and hawthorn of the dingles. And everywhere the cold, moist scent of dawn, and peep and call of nest-birds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Bound for Grandfather's at Snitterfield they were"]

And so early has been their start and so good stout Robin's pace, that reaching the Snitterfield farm, they find everything in the hurly-burly of preparation for sheep-shearing. So, after a hearty kissing by the womenfolk, aunts and cousins, Will, with a cake hot from the baking thrust into his hand, goes out to the steading to look around. At Snitterfield there are poultry, and calves, too, in the byre, and little pigs in the pen back of the barn. Then comes breakfast in the kitchen with the farm-hands with their clattering hobnailed shoes and tarry hands, after which follows the business of sheep-was.h.i.+ng, which Will views from the shady bank of the pool, and in his small heart he is quite torn because of the plaintive bleatings of the frightened sheep.

But he swallows it as a man should. There is a pedler haunting the sheep-shearing festivals of the neighborhood. The women have sent for him to bring his pack to Snitterfield, and Dad bids Will choose a pair of scented gloves for Mother--and be quick; they must be off for Stratford before the noon.

Dad seems short and curt. Grandfather, his broad, florid face upturned to Dad astride Robin, shakes his h.o.a.ry head. "Doan' you do it, son John," says Grandfather; "'tis a-building on sand is any man who thinks to prosper on a mortgage. Henry and I'll advance you a bit. After which, cut down your living in Henley Street, son John, an' draw in the purse-strings."

VIII

But baby years pa.s.s. When Will Shakespeare is six, he hears that he is to go to school. But not to nod over a hornbook at the petty school--not John Shakespeare's son! Little Will Shakespeare is entered at King's New College, which is a grammar-school.

But, dear me! Dear me! It was a dreary place and irksome. At first small Will sat among his kind awed. When Schoolmaster breathed Will breathed, but when Schoolmaster glanced frowningly up from under overhanging brows like penthouse roofs, then the heart of Will Shakespeare quaked within him.

But that was while he was six. At seven, when the elements of Latin grammar confronted him, Will had already found grammar-school an excellent place to plead aching tooth or heavy head to stay away from.

At eight, a dreary traveling for him to cover did his "_Sententiae Pueriles_" prove, and idle paths more pleasing.

At nine, he had learned to know many things not listed at grammar-school. For instance, he knew one Bardolph of the brazen, fiery nose, the tapster at the tavern. It was Bardolph who drew him out from under the knee and belaboring fists of one Thomas Chettle, another grammar-school boy, who had him down, behind High Cross in the Rother Market.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "For instance, he knew one Bardolph ... the tapster at the tavern"]

"In the devil's name," said Bardolph, setting him on his feet, "with your nose all gore an' never an eye you can open--what do you mean, boy, to be letting the like of _that_ come over you?" "That" meant Thomas Chettle, his fists squared, and as red as any fighting turkey, held off at arm's-length by Bardolph.

"Come over me!" cries Will, with a rush at Thomas, head down, for all his being held off by Bardolph's other hand. "Who says he has come over me?"

Now the matter stood thus. The day before, Will Shakespeare had followed a company of strolling mountebanks about town instead of going to school. And Thomas Chettle had told Schoolmaster, and he had told Father. When Will reached home the evening before, Dad was telling as much to Mother and blaming her for it. "An' Chettle's lad admits Will had ever rather see the swords an' hear a drum than look upon his lessons----"

This Father was saying as Will sidled in. Will heard him say it. And so Thomas Chettle had to answer for it.

"Come over me!" says Will to Bardolph who is holding him off and contemplating him, a battered wreck. "Come over me!" spitting blood and drawing a sleeve across his gory countenance, "I'd like to see him do it!" Will Shakespeare was not one to know when he was beaten.

IX

A year or two more, and school grew more irksome. Father fumed, and Mother sighed and drew Will against her knee whereon lay new little Sister Ann while little Sister Joan toddled about the floor. "Canst not seem to care for your books at all, son?" Mother asked, brus.h.i.+ng Will's red brown hair out of his eyes. "Canst not see how it frets Father, who would have his oldest son a scholar and a gentleman?"

He meant to try. But hadn't Dad himself let him off one day to tramp at heels after him and Uncle Henry in Arden Forest? Will Shakespeare at eleven is a sorry student.