A Warwickshire Lad Part 3

There comes a day when he is a big boy near thirteen years old. It is a time when the soft, hot winds of spring and the scent and the pulse of growing things get in the blood, and set one sick panting for the woods and the feel of the lush green underfoot and the sound of running water.

Not that Will Shakespeare can put it into words--he only knows that when the smell of the warm, newly turned earth comes in at the schoolroom window and the hum of a wandering bee rises above the droning of the lesson, he lolls on the hacked and ink-stained desk and gazes out at the white clouds flecking the blue, and all the truant blood in his st.u.r.dy frame pulls against his promises.

Then at length comes a day when the madness is strong upon him and he hides his books, his Cato's _Maxims_, or perchance his _Confabulationes Pueriles_, under the garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily across the blue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Hidden among the willows ... he spends the morning"]

And, the wandering madness still upon him, in the afternoon he skirts about and tramps toward Shottery. It is no new thing to go to Shottery with or without Mother for a day at the Hathaways'. There always has been rebellion in the blood of Will Shakespeare, and there is a slender, wayward, grown-up somebody at Shottery who understands. Ann Hathaway has stayed often in Stratford with the Shakespeare household. Mother loves Ann; Father teases and twits her; the young men, swains and would-be sweethearts, swarm about her like b.u.mblebees about the honeysuckle at the garden gate.

And when she is there, Will himself seldom leaves her side. He has oft been a rebellious boy, whereat Mother has sighed and Father has sworn; but Ann, staying with them, and she alone, has laughed. She has understood.

And there have been times when this tall brown-haired young person has seized his hand, as if she too had moments of rebellion, and the two have run away--away from the swains and the would-be sweethearts, the Latin grammar and the scoldings, to wander about the river banks and the lanes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The two have run away ... to wander about the river banks."]

X

So this afternoon Will tramped off to Shottery. There was a consciousness in the back of his mind of wonderful leafiness and embowering, of vines and riotous bloom about Ann's home. He opened the wicket and trudged up the path, and peered in at the open door. Ann, within the doorway, saw him. She looked him in the eye, then up at the sun yet high in the sky, and laughed. And he knew she understood it--truancy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He ... trudged up the path and peered in at the open door"]

Perhaps she understood more than the fact, perhaps she understood the feeling. She threw her work aside, needle stuck therein, and clapped a wide straw hat upon her head and taking his hand dragged him down the path and out the gate and away--along the Evesham road.

But she lectured him nevertheless, this red-cheeked boy with the full as yet undisciplined young mouth and the clear, warm hazel eyes.

"You tell me that I, too, throw my work down and run away? Ay, Will, there's that hot blood within me that sweeps me out every now and then from within tame walls and from stupid people, and makes me know it is true, the old tale of some wild, gypsy blood brought home by a soldier Hathaway for wife. But there is this difference, if you please, sir; I throw down my work because I have fought my fight and conquered it, am mistress of what I will in my household craft. Think you that I love the molding of b.u.t.ter and the care of poultry, or to spin, to cut, to sew, because I do them and do them well? It is not the thing I love, Will--it is in the victory I find the joy. I would conquer them to feel my power.

Conquer your book, Will, stride ahead of your cla.s.s, then play your fill till they arrive abreast of you again. But a laggard, a stupid, or a middling! And, in faith, the last is worst."

They walked along, boy and young woman, she musing, he looking up with young ardor into her face. "You--you are so beautiful, Ann," the boy blurted forth, "and--and--no one understands as you do."

She laid a hand on his shoulder and turned her dark eyes upon him.

Teasing eyes they could be and mocking, yet sweet, too. Ah, sweet and tender through their laughter!

"Shall I tell you why I understand, Will Shakespeare, child?" Was she talking altogether to the boy, or above his head--aloud--as to herself?

"I am a woman, Will, and at nineteen most such are already wife and mother, and I am still unwed. Shall I tell you why? We are but souls wandering and lonely in the dark, Will, other souls everywhere around, but scarce a groping hand that ever meets or touches our outstretched own. In all life we feel one such touch, perchance, or two.

The rest we know no more than if they were not there. My father, great, simple, countryman's soul, I knew, Will, and Mary Shakespeare I know.

Would she might learn she could do more with John through laughter, dear heart; but the right is ever stronger with Mary than the humor of the thing. My father and Mary I have known. And you, you I knew when in your rage you fell upon the maid, baby that you were at five, and beat her with your fists because she wantonly swept your treasures--a rose petal, a beetle wing, a pebble, a feather--into her kitchen fire. I knew you then, for so I had been beating at fate my life long. I knew you, Will, and, dear child, always since I have watched and understood. Rebel if you will; be free; but to be free, forget not, is to be conqueror over that within self first."

Will caught her hand; he whispered; his voice burned hot with a child's jealousy.

"'Tis said you are to wed Abraham Stripling, Ann, an' that the foreign doctor who wants to wed you, broke Abra'm's head with his pestle."

Ann Hathaway laughed; her eyes were mocking now; she backed against the lichened trunk of a giant elm by the roadside, a young, beauteous thing, and looked at the boy in scorn. "I to marry Abraham Stripling!

Child though you are, you know me better than that. Did I not just tell you I am free now--free? That I have held fast to my duty, and so come to where I might be free? Have held them at bay--family, cousins, elders, sweethearts--until now, the rest married and gone, and the tasks as they gave them up come to be mine, my mother needs me, and my life may be my own--and free. For who has come to wed me? Did I not just say I was--I am--free? A soul groping lonely in the dark? No man's hand has reached toward mine that I, a woman and a weakling, could not shake off.

When the masterful hand, groping, seizes mine, I shall know it, and I--I will kiss it with my lips--and--and follow after."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'When the masterful hand, groping, seizes mine, I shall know it'"]

She came back to him as one from an ecstasy. "And now, child, go on home. It is late. And hurry or Mary will be fretting. You have had your cake and eaten it. Now go pay for it. 'Discipline must be maintained,'

says your Welsh schoolmaster. And sure he will flog you."

XI

But no one at home had missed him. The Henley Street house was full of hurry and confusion when he arrived. No one noticed him. The neighbors came in and out, Mistress Sadler and Mistress Snelling, and the foreign doctor who would like to wed Ann, or pa.s.sed on up to a room above, where little sister Annie, named for Ann Hathaway, lay dying of a sudden croup. And all since morning, since Will stole away.

He knows this thing called Life, this deep inbreathing, this joy of shout, of run, of leap, of vault. He knows--strong healthy young animal--he knows this thing. But the other--this strange thing called Death: the darkened room; Father with his head fallen on his breast standing at the lattice gazing out at nothing; Mother kneeling, one arm outstretched across the bed, her head fallen thereon, and Mistress Sadler trying to raise and lead her away; and this--this waxen whiteness framed in flaxen baby rings on the pillow--this little stiffening hand outside the linen cover?

Will Shakespeare cries out. He has touched little sister Annie's hand and it is cold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "This strange thing called Death...."]

XII

And after that, things went worse in the Shakespeare household. All of John Shakespeare's ventures were proving failures. Debt pressed on every side. There began talk again of a mortgage on the Asbies estate, and this time none could say nay.

Dad went about with his head sunk on his breast, and at home sat staring in moody silence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Dad ... sat staring in moody silence"]

"Don't, Mary, don't," he would say to Mother, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Take the children away. Instead of the name their father would have left them, 'John Shakespeare, Gentleman,' they are to read it--what?"

"John, John," said Mother, "is there no more then in it all--our love, our lives--than pride?"

Pride! Will Shakespeare by now knew what it meant, and his heart went out to his father. He had felt the sting of this thing himself. It had been the year before. Dad had taken him behind him on his horse to Kenilworth, to see the masks and fireworks given by the Earl of Leicester in the Queen's honor. The gay London people come down with the court had sat in stands and galleries to witness the spectacle of the water pageant, breathing their perfumed breath down upon the country people crowding the ground below. And Will Shakespeare among these, at sight of the great Queen, had cheered with a l.u.s.ty young throat and thrown his cap up with the rest. Will Shakespeare was the once chief bailiff's son. He was the son of Mary Arden of the Asbies. Though he never had thought about it one way or another, he had always known himself as good as the best.

And so at Kenilworth, standing with the crowd and looking up at the jeweled folk in fine array casting their jokes and gibes down at the trammel, he had laughed, too, as honest as any. But when the time came for the water pageant, Dad had given him a lift up and a boost to the branches of a tree. And he had heard what she said, the lady upon whom he had from the first fixed his young gaze, the dark lady, with the jewels in her dusky hair, breathing lure and beauty and glamour. As he straddled the limb of his high perch that brought him so near her, he heard her cry out, her head thrown backward on her proud young throat: "Ah, the little beast, bringing the breath of the rabble up to our nostrils."

And it was something like to what burned in young Will Shakespeare's soul then that Dad was feeling now. Will, big boy that he was, laid a hand on Dad's hand. Father looked up; their eyes met.

Dad threw an arm about his shoulder and drew him close--father and son.

Something pa.s.sed from the older to the younger. The boy squared his shoulders. The man in Will Shakespeare was born.

How best could he help Dad? So the lad pondered, meanwhile digging the sense piecemeal out of his _Ovid_ for the morrow's lesson.

"_It is the mind that makes the man, and our strength--measure--vigor_"--any one of the three words would do--"_our measure is in our immortal souls_."

Why--why is there truth in books? Had Ovid lived and been a man, a man who knew and fought it out himself?