GRIEF, consternation, horror surged through that room. For the moment, the shock of the announcement was more than they could bear. It was as if each man present had been stunned by a blow. But the calm was for the moment only. In the next came a babel of tongues framing a score of incoherent questions.
Richard Burbage replied to none of these. He stood an instant swaying, his ashen face framed in the eerie glow of the candles. And then without a further word he turned and passed like a ghost through the door of the room with the same abruptness with which he had entered it. He went headlong, stumbling and creaking, down the ricketty stairs of the old tavern and out into the July evening.
In the street, hard by the signboard, under the shadow of the tavern wall, two men lay in wait for the tragedian. One of these was his fellow-player, William Kemp, the other John Heming the manager of the Globe Theatre. These also were men of strong feelings, but they had them under control, whereas Richard Burbage who might almost be said to worship the ground on which the poet trod, had been carried completely away by this direst of tragedies, which he knew not how to face.
As became good men, true friends, staunch comrades, Kemp and Heming were fully determined not to let Burbage pass out of their sight during the remainder of that night. But they must not show themselves in his. Already he had resented their presence fiercely, had cursed them when they had sought to console him, and had so far fallen from that poise of mind and temper which at ordinary times made him a most agreeable companion, as to threaten to do them violence, “if they would not have the goodness to keep themselves to themselves and stand out of his light.”
Thus William Kemp and John Heming remained well in the shadow of the tavern wall. But when their distracted friend came out of the inn, perhaps a little sooner than they had expected him to do so, they proceeded to follow him at a respectful distance. Without betraying their own presence, they contrived to keep him well in view.
Certainly there was very good ground for such solicitude. The tragedian swayed about from side to side like a ship in a gale, now up one deserted street, now down another. And all these dark purlieus of the city swarmed with perils at that hour of the night. Moreover, the ostensible condition of this pedestrian, the vagaries of whose gait certainly resembled those of a man far gone in liquor, seemed to cry aloud for the attentions of the vigilant cutpurse or the lurking footpad.
With unseeing eyes, with unstable limbs, with mind insensible of its surroundings, with steps not knowing whither they were bent, the tragedian walked the byways of the city during the whole of that night. Like the fate-riven figures in those soul-shaking tragedies in whose delineation he excelled all men, he was at the mercy of an anguish of mind that was tearing him in pieces.
This was a large and noble nature. And bitterly it was rent because it had not been more vigilant. Richard Burbage felt himself unworthy of the sacred duty imposed upon him by his fraternal intimacy with the poet. He had an insight into human nature which enabled him to understand a certain weakness that must inevitably attend such transcendent powers as those of William Shakespeare. And this understanding seemed to lay the charge upon him of watching over this man who was not as other men.
To this trust Burbage felt he had not been true. Yet it was not easy to know by what means he could have saved his friend from his terrible pass. Times and again he had besought him to be prudent, and his counsels had been urged with intense conviction. None realized more clearly than Burbage that it was indeed a perilous hour for any man to be concerned with treason. The Queen’s temper was implacable. She who had done to death a kinswoman and a queen because her own personal safety was held to be remotely threatened was not likely to know the meaning of pity in the case of an humble play-actor who had mingled so openly in the cause of a condemned traitor.
Burbage mourned the madness of his friend. Pacing the dark streets of the city during the watches of the night in a state of mind bordering upon frenzy, he was a man self-tormented. Yet after all, he was in no wise to blame. No grace of his, no vigilance, indeed, no human foresight could have averted this tragic issue.
The two comrades of the tragedian kept the swaying figure ever in view. Wherever it went that night they followed it. Hour after hour Burbage wandered purposeless about the city. His grief, silent and contained though it was, was a thing dreadful to behold.
Towards midnight he came to the river. A new fear then gripped the hearts of his comrades. Very stealthily they crept up closer behind him. What more likely than that one in such a frame of mind should have recourse to those dark waters which have done so much to ease the misery of the world? Bareheaded, unsteady of gait, wild of mien, the tragedian walked hour by hour upon the very brink of death. And all that time his two friends watched and waited yet dared not show themselves.
The night was oppressively hot. The summer air was charged with pent-up forces, and while it was still dark these sought opportunity to wreak themselves upon the thirsting earth. The moon and stars were hid; all the heavens were a dense mass of pitch; presently came lightning and peal upon peal of thunder. It was the prelude to a terrific storm and the man by the verge of the river welcomed it with every fiber of his being.
The words of Lear were yet unborn. But in such a night and tempest of the soul was to walk that figure which this unhappy man was one day to teach the ages to pity. His head was bare and unbent to the storm; a hurricane lashed the upturned face; he was drenched to the skin; and yet this rage of heaven was as nought to the tumult in the mind of one poor tragedian.
And like their friend, wholly undefended from this wild fury of the elements, William Kemp and John Heming stood cowering a little way off in the lee of a wall. All the long night through, in spite of darkness and tempest, they never left him. And when at last came the dawn, and with it some abatement of the frenzy of the heavens, they stood with him still by the bank of the grim river.
Drenched to the skin, and utterly weary and wretched as they were, they did not once allow Richard Burbage to pass out of their sight. Wherever he went they must go also; to all that he did they must be a party. Yet only in the last resort must they venture to declare themselves to him.
The slow hours passed. Richard Burbage still lingered by that river which in one brief instant would have eased him of his pain. But at last, just as the hour of eight was told by the churches of the city, resolve appeared to brace and quicken the exhausted frame. A new purpose, a new strength enfolded that unhappy figure. Burbage suddenly started to walk briskly along the river bank in the direction of Richmond.
Hungry, exhausted, profoundly miserable, his two comrades continued to follow him. All night had they been waiting for some such manifestation of design, for this was a man of powerful and resolute character. It was now more imperative than ever that this vigilance should not relax. They knew not what secret spring of action had moved him. And in his present mood there was nothing of which he was not capable.
On and on he walked, briskly now and with an appearance of ever-increasing resolve. Through fair meadows and riverside gardens and hamlets they passed. By ten o’clock, they had left the river below them and were ascending the steep and gloriously wooded slopes of Richmond Hill.
Every fiber of the tragedian’s being seemed now in the thrall of his new purpose. Not once did he tarry or look back. All unaware that he was being so closely followed, he turned at the top of the hill into Richmond Park.
It was a morning such as makes of earth a paradise. The air was cool, fragrant, delicious after the great storm of the night. Long shafts of gold light pierced the branches of the trees; the wet bracken shone with crystals; the sky was one wide unbroken promise of a gorgeous noon; the deer flitted in and out of the clean-washed spaces, between low-hanging canopies of leaves. Earth was rejoicing this morning of July in the solace and refreshment that the night had brought to her. All was well with her now. Her fainting energies had been renewed. And all was now well with one among her children, one poor and frail tragedian.
The squat, rather ungainly figure, striding wide as though the boards of the playhouse were still its theater, neither passed nor faltered in its course. Bared head upflung, a curious rigidity in the face, there was high purpose in every movement now.
Richard Burbage sought the broad path that led to the Queen’s palace. And no sooner had he come to it, than he greatly increased the pace at which he walked. Indeed, as the row of imposing turrets of the royal demesne came into view at a turn in the road, he almost broke into a run.
William Kemp and John Heming, so exhausted by now that they could scarcely drag one foot after the other, suddenly awoke with a kind of bewildered dismay to the fact that the Queen’s palace was, beyond a doubt, the goal of their quarry. Breathlessly, they followed ever in his wake, but in the last hundred yards or so, he had gained upon them considerably.
Before the gate of the palace, however, Richard Burbage had to call a halt. Certain formalities had to be observed before the halberdiers on guard could be induced to pass a stranger through. And to their question of who this stranger was and what was his pleasure, the two comrades of the actor were able to come up to the gate just in time to hear his reply.
“I am Richard Burbage, the tragedian, and I desire to see the Queen without delay on a matter of the most urgent importance.”
Moreover, these words were spoken in that magnificently rotund and authoritative voice that never failed to send a thrill through the Globe Theatre.
And even now in these strange circumstances, it did not fail of its effect. The guards of the Queen were no more than mortal men. And this man with great eyes burning in an ashen face was more than mortal now. He was in the thrall of a divine idea. It was not for those on a lower plane of being to deny such an imperious instancy. Without delay, Richard Burbage, the tragedian, was permitted to pass through the gate.
William Kemp and John Heming stood at the threshold of the Queen’s palace to watch the tragedian pass from their view. But when they also were asked by the sentinels at the gate who they were and what they sought, they did not venture to proclaim either their business or themselves.
They drew off silently a little way into the bracken, there to await the issue. Sick at heart, overcome with despair, they flung their completely exhausted bodies into the wet grass.