THE personage was a young woman of some eighteen years, breathing youth and its sorcery in every line. She was tall, well grown, of a beauty that was remarkable. She stepped with a lithe grace, a springing freedom that Atalanta would not have disdained. Her long quilted riding-coat was the last cry of the fashion, and on the left hand she wore a large hawking-gauntlet. But that which at once caught the eye both of the tailor and of the player, and made the charming figure still more memorable, was an audacious pair of leather breeches. These clothed her nether limbs, and below them were a long pair of boots of untanned leather.
Now Master Tidey it was who had built this fine pair of hawking-breeches to the explicit order of the wearer, yet even he could hardly forbear to be scandalized when he marked its effect. As for the player—but he had a larger, a more liberal, a more sophisticated mind. For one thing he had seen the fine ladies of the Court ride out hawking in this guise. To be sure he had heard some very salutary criticism of a style of dress that was creeping into vogue among the highest in the land, but he was not of those who condemned it. Mr. William Shakespeare, unlike his friend Nicholas Tidey, betrayed not the least surprise at this young woman’s appearance. Certainly his curiosity was fully aroused, but perhaps that was less on account of the garment itself than because of the look of its wearer.
In point of fact, Mr. William Shakespeare, whose eye was very sure in such matters, was charmed by the spectacle. Swiftly he moved aside, in order that this young gentlewoman might proceed to the tailor’s counter. Moreover, as he performed this polite action he removed his hat with a touch of gallantry, as became an acquaintance with courts.
“Good Master Tailor,” said the wearer of the garment, with an air so fine as to delight Mr. William Shakespeare still more, “I make you my compliments upon these hawking-breeches you have been so good as to devise for me. They are a little tight around the left knee, otherwise they do excellently well. I make you my compliments upon them, Master Tailor, and have the goodness to devise me a second pair in every particular as the first.”
Master Tidey bowed obsequiously. “I attend your pleasure, madam,” he said.
The young woman then drew off a glove, and with some little difficulty was able to produce a purse from the recesses of her attire. “What is your charge, friend, for this excellent garment, which gives me such ease in the saddle that from this day I am minded to wear no other style of habiliment.”
“Two angels, if it please you, madam.”
“Here be four, my friend.”
She opened the purse and counted out in gold pieces twice the sum that was asked.
“Good Master Tailor,” she said, “you have right excellent craft and your garment pleases me. And if I must speak the truth, I had never learned until this day what ease and freedom comes of the wearing of galligaskins.”
She used such a grave air, as of one expressing a most serious and private thought, that Mr. William Shakespeare, who all this time had been regarding her covertly, although taking care to appear lost in contemplation of the coffin-cloth the tailor had now discarded, could not forbear from giving forth a dry, stealthy chuckle.
Mistress Anne Feversham half turned for the purpose of visiting such a presumption with an imperious eye. The clear gaze said as plainly as woman could express it: “And who, pray, are you, sir? Whoever you are I’ll thank you to be pretty careful.”
Howbeit, in the matter of looking down this presumptuous individual, young Mistress Anne Feversham, it seemed, had undertaken a task a little beyond her present powers. There was hardly one among the burgesses of the town who could have sustained that gaze. But with this quiet and mild-looking individual, whose coat and sword were so modest, it was a different matter.
The impact of the proud eyes of Mistress Insolence was met with perfect composure. Moreover, there was just a suspicion of laughter. In the opinion of the lady there was no ground for levity. Yet it was almost as if this person, whose dress was so little pretentious as to be hardly that of a gentleman, was daring to say in his heart, “Madam, think not ill of me if I confess that, far from being abashed by your air, I am rather amused by it.”
That at least was the quick and sensitive feminine interpretation of the subtle face whose owner was hardly entitled to such a look of arch and humorous self-confidence. Mistress Anne Feversham felt a slight wound in her dignity. Who, pray, was this impertinent?
By some means best known to himself, Mr. William Shakespeare appeared to read the thoughts of the lady. At least the sly smile that had crept into those somber but wonderful eyes had deepened to a look of roguery. Mistress Anne grew crimson; the disdainful head went up; she bit her lip; and then realizing that such a display of embarrassment was wholly unworthy of the daughter of the Constable of Nottingham Castle, the pride of youth chastened her so sorely that she turned her back abruptly on the cause of her defeat.
Soon, however, the ever-abiding sense of place and power came to her aid and she was able to command herself sufficiently to address the tailor.
“I see the town is full of play-acting rogues,” she said. “Whence do they come?”
“From London, madam, I believe,” said Master Tidey, without venturing to look in the direction of his friend.
“I am afraid they are a saucy-looking crew. My groom”—perhaps it was well that the voice of Mistress Anne did not reach the ears of the haughty young falconer who was taking charge of her horse at the tailor’s door—“my groom pointed them out to me as I passed the Moot Hall. As soon as I return to the Castle I will inform my father the Constable, and I will see if they cannot be put in the stocks, which to my mind is where they belong.”
As became the shrewd man he was, Master Nicholas Tidey made no reply. He was content to nod his head gravely, as if he tacitly approved, while at the same time he contrived to keep a tail of an eye upon his distinguished friend. There might or there might not have been a ghost of a smile upon that prim and cautious mouth.
Indeed, very wisely, Master Tidey left it to the play-actor himself to try a fall with such a formidable adversary. And this that daring individual proceeded to do in a manner quite cool and leisurely, and yet with a vastly considered air. In his eye, it was true, there was a suspicion of something far other than gravity. That of course was regrettable; but it was undoubtedly there.
Mr. William Shakespeare’s first act was to remove his hat with its single short cock’s feather, and then he bowed very low indeed, in the manner of one quite well aware of addressing a social superior.
“Cry you mercy, mistress,” he said, “but as one who is himself a poor actor may he ask wherein his guild has had the unhappiness to offend you?”
Mistress Anne Feversham met this effrontery with a disdain that was wonderful. Her chief concern at the moment was to show her great contempt without a descent into downright ill-breeding. But as soon as she met the somber eyes of this individual, in which a something that was rare and strange was overlaid by a subtle mockery, this natural instinct took wings and fled. In those eyes was something that hardly left her mistress of herself, in spite of her father the Constable, her young blood-horse and her incomparable pair of galligaskins.
“My father the Constable would have all play-actors whipped,” said Mistress Anne Feversham.
But her voice was not as she had intended it to be. Moreover, her father the Constable had yet to deliver himself of such an illiberal sentiment. And this graceless individual seemed to be fully aware that this was the case.
“Whipped, mistress!” His look of grave consternation did not deceive her. “You would whip a poor actor!”
“All who are actors, sir, my father would.”
“Is it conceivable?—the gentlest, the humblest, the most industrious, the most law-abiding of men!”
“My father cares not for that, sir. He says they are masterless rogues.”
“Then by my faith, mistress, that is very froward in your father.”
“He says they are the scum of taverns and alehouses and they corrupt the public mind.”
“Ods my life! how comes so crabbed a sire to have a daughter so fair, so feat, so charming!”
It began to seem hopeless for Mistress Anne to continue in such a strain of severity. For a moment she used her will in order to punish this audacity, but in the next she was trembling upon the verge of open laughter. Still the consciousness that she was no less a person than the only daughter and heiress of Sir John Feversham, the Constable of Nottingham Castle and chief justice of the forest of Sherwood, was just able to save her from that which could only have been regarded in the light of a disaster.
“I would fain inform you, mistress, there are play-actors whom even the Queen approves.”
Alas! Mistress Anne had a full share of the cynical irreverence of youth.
“I am not at all surprised to learn that, sir. I have even been told that the Queen dyes her hair.”
The effect of a speech so daring was to startle Master Tidey quite visibly. The world looks to one of his craft to have a conventional mind, and there was no doubt the times were perilous. The shears almost fell from his hand. If this was not treason, might he never sew another doublet!
The play-actor, however, was of a fiber less delicate. It was as much as Mr. William Shakespeare could do to refrain from open laughter.
“May I ask, mistress,” he said, “what is your warrant for such a grave charge against the Queen’s Majesty?”
“The warrant of my own eyes, sir. Her hair was certainly dyed when she stayed at the Castle a month since.”
“But bethink you, mistress, might it not appear less treasonable if Gloriana’s true subjects presumed her hair to be a wig?”
“Let them presume nothing, sir, but that which is the truth.”
“To so pious a resolve even a poor actor may say amen.”
Mistress Anne realized that she was no match for this man. The only hope for her dignity lay in a cool scorn of him. Suddenly the gloriously straight back was turned disdainfully. Let the greatest lady for ten miles beware how she chopped logic with a strolling actor.
“Master Tailor, I would have you devise me a second pair of these right excellent breeches, in every particular as the first, and do you have them at the Castle against the first of May.”
Master Tidey bowed low.
“Good-day to you, Master Tailor.”
Master Tidey bowed still lower with that clear and proud speech in his ears.
With chin held high, and with an arrogant, free-swinging carriage, Mistress Anne Feversham went forth of the tailor’s shop. But even then, abrupt as was the manner of her going, she had to submit to the play-actor’s leaping to the door before she could reach it herself. He opened it and held it for her with the grace and dignity of a courtier. She passed imperiously, without yielding him a glance or a “Thank you.”
A dashing young man in the livery of a falconer was holding the young blood-horse of Mistress Anne outside the tailor’s door. He was handsomely mounted on an animal similar to the one he held for his mistress. On his fist was a small falcon, hoodwinked and fessed.
Very agile was the lady in finding her way into the saddle. For all that she was not quite clever enough to defeat this incorrigible play-actor. He sprang to her stirrup while she had one foot still on the ground and hoisted her up with an address that enforced her respect, and with so grave an air of courtesy as tacitly to compel her own.
All the same she was angry. And she had sense enough to know that it was illogical to be so. Yet she swung her horse around sharply in order to give expression to her state of mind. And as the falconer, John Markham by name, confided the merlin to the accustomed wrist of his mistress, he turned back an instant to scowl at the player. It was even as if he would ask him who the devil he was, and what the devil he did there.
The player removed his hat with its single cock’s feather in a manner that was almost tenderly ironical. It had hardly been a display of Court manners of which he had been the recipient. But he was too much a man of the world to look for those everywhere. And above all here was youth in its glamour, youth in its sorcery. For the sake of a stuff so precious he would forgive a crudity greater than this.
With a sigh of delight the player stood at the tailor’s door to watch this fine pair ride very slowly and haughtily down the street. For all their air of class consciousness and their open contempt of the townspeople, which their youth alone saved from being ridiculous, they made a glorious pair in the eye of the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre, London.
That was an eye to judge men and things as none other since the world began. Neither Mistress Anne Feversham nor the falconer was aware of that fact, and had they been aware of it they had not cared a button. All that they did know and all that they cared was that the worthy burgesses of Nottingham were stealing glances of awe and admiration at them. In a word, they were causing a sensation, and were very pleasantly alive to the fact.
Yes, undoubtedly a gallant pair. John Markham, in spite of his superior condition and rising renown, rode behind his mistress at a respectful distance of ten yards. They sat their horses with great skill and assurance. First one and then the other, as they walked them slowly down the street, would touch them gently with the spur, in order to enjoy the pleasure of showing them off in the sight of the townspeople.
The player, still standing at the tailor’s door, could not take his eyes from the spectacle. Almost wistfully, and yet in a kind of entrancement, he watched them until at last there came a turn in the street and they were lost to view. Then he went within to rejoin his scandalized friend, who to compose his mind had had recourse already to the needle and shears.
“I never saw the like o’ that,” said Master Nicholas Tidey. “It’s rare to be the quality. But that’s nothing to you, Master Shakespeare. I reckon you see it every day o’ the week.”
“It’s a fine thing, I grant you, when it rides proud in the sight of heaven,” said the player abstractedly.
“Aye, Master Shakespeare, and even when it goes afoot!” said the tailor, whose mind was more pedestrian. “It does a man good, I always think, to have a sight of the quality now and again. But as I say, Master Shakespeare, it is nothing to you who go to Court like a gentleman.”
But the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre was not heeding the words of his friend. The light that never was on sea or land had come into those somber eyes. Suddenly his hand struck the tailor’s counter a great blow. “That is an adorable miniard,” he said. “By my soul, if Gloriana requires a comedy, here is matter for a comedy for Gloriana!”