Shakespeare's Christmas and Other Stories. Arthur Quiller-Couch
the demise of an old friend, the vanished theatre, the first ever built in London. Then, happening to glance at Heminge as he poured out the wine—"Tut, Jack!" he spoke up sharply: "keep that easy rheum for the boards. Brush thine eyes, lad: we be all players here—or women—and know the trade."
It hurt. If Heminge's eyes had begun to water sentimentally, they flinched now with real pain. This man loved Shakespeare with a dog's love. He blinked, and a drop fell and rested on the back of his hand as it fingered the base of his wine-glass. The apprentice saw and noted it.
"And another glass, lads, to the Phœnix that shall arise! A toast, and this time not in silence!" shouted John Shakespeare, springing up, flask in one hand and glass in the other. Meat or wine, jest or sally of man or woman, dull speech or brisk—all came alike to him. His doublet was unbuttoned; he had smoked three pipes, drunk a quart of sack, and never once yawned. He was enjoying himself to the top of his bent. "Music, I say! Music!" A thought seemed to strike him; his eyes filled with happy inspiration. Still gripping his flask, he rolled to the door, flung it open, and bawled down the stairway—
"Ahoy! Below, there!"
"Ahoy, then, with all my heart!" answered a voice, gay and youthful, pat on the summons. "What is't ye lack, my master?"
"Music, an thou canst give it. If not——"
"My singing voice broke these four years past, I fear me."
"Your name, then, at least, young man, or ever you thrust yourself upon private company."
"William Herbert, at your service." A handsome lad—a boy, almost—stood in the doorway, having slipped past John Shakespeare's guard: a laughing, frank-faced boy, in a cloak slashed with orange-tawny satin. So much the apprentice noted before he heard a second voice, as jaunty and even more youthfully shrill, raised in protest upon the stairhead outside.
"And where the master goes," it demanded, "may not his page follow?"
John Shakespeare seemingly gave way to this second challenge as to the first. "Be these friends of thine, Will?" he called past them as a second youth appeared in the doorway, a pretty, dark-complexioned lad, cloaked in white, who stood a pace behind his companion's elbow and gazed into the supper-room with eyes at once mischievous and timid.
"Good-evening, gentles!" The taller lad comprehended the feasters and the disordered table in a roguish bow. "Good-evening, Will!" He singled out Shakespeare, and nodded.
"My Lord Herbert!"
The apprentice's eye, cast towards Shakespeare at the salutation given, marked a dark flush rise to the great man's temples as he answered the nod.
"I called thee 'Will,'" answered Herbert lightly.
"You called us 'gentles,'" Shakespeare replied, the dark flush yet lingering on either cheek. "A word signifying bait for gudgeons, bred in carrion."
"Yet I called thee Will," insisted Herbert more gently. "'Tis my name as well as thine, and we have lovingly exchanged it before now, or my memory cheats me."
"'Tis a name lightly exchanged in love." With a glance at the white-cloaked page Shakespeare turned on his heel.
"La, Will, where be thy manners?" cried one of the women. "Welcome, my young Lord; and welcome the boy beside thee for his pretty face! Step in, child, that I may pass thee round to be kissed."
The page laughed and stepped forward with his chin defiantly tilted. His eyes examined the women curiously and yet with a touch of fear.
"Nay, never flinch, lad! I'll do thee no harm," chuckled the one who had invited him. "Mass o' me, how I love modesty in these days of scandal!"
"Music? Who called for music?" a foreign voice demanded: and now in the doorway appeared three newcomers, two men and a woman—the same three of whom the apprentice had caught a glimpse within the room at the stairs' foot. The spokesman, a heavily built fellow with a short bull-neck and small cunning eyes, carried a drum slung about his shoulders and beat a rub-a-dub on it by way of flourish. "Take thy tambourine and dance, Julitta—
Julie, prends ton tambourin;
Toi, prends ta flute, Robin,"
he hummed, tapping his drum again.
"So? So? What foreign gabble is this?" demanded John Shakespeare, following and laying a hand on his shoulder.
"A pretty little carol for Christmas, Signore, that we picked up on our way through Burgundy, where they sing it to a jargon I cannot emulate. But the tune is as it likes you—
Au son ces instruments—
Turelurelu, patapatapan—
Nous dirons Noël gaîment!
Goes it not trippingly, Signore? You will say so when you see my Julitta dance to it."
"Eh—eh? Dance to a carol?" a woman protested. "'Tis inviting the earth to open and swallow us."
"Why, where's the harm on't?" John Shakespeare demanded. "A pretty little concomitant, and anciently proper to all religions, nor among the heathen only, but in England and all parts of Christendom—
In manger wrapped it was—
So poorly happ'd my chance—
Between an ox and a silly poor ass
To call my true love to the dance!
Sing O, my love, my love, my love....
There's precedent for ye, Ma'am—good English precedent. Zooks! I'm a devout man, I hope; but I bear a liberal mind and condemn no form of mirth, so it be honest. The earth swallow us? Ay, soon or late it will, not being squeamish. Meantime, dance, I say! Clear back the tables there, and let the girl show her paces!"
Young Herbert glanced at Burbage with lifted eyebrow, as if to demand, "Who is this madman?" Burbage laughed, throwing out both hands.
"But he is gigantic!" lisped the page, as with a wave of his two great arms John Shakespeare seemed to catch up the company and fling them to work pell-mell, thrusting back tables, piling chairs, clearing the floor of its rushes. "He is a whirlwind of a man!"
"Come, Julitta!" called the man with the drum. "Francisco, take thy pipe, man!—
Au son de ces instruments— Turelurelu, patapatapan—"
As the music struck up, the girl, still with her scornful, impassive face, leapt like a panther from the doorway into the space cleared for her, and whirled down the room in a dance the like of which our apprentice had never seen nor dreamed of. And yet his gaze at first was not for her, but for the younger foreigner, the one with the pipe. For if ever horror took visible form, it stood and stared from the windows of that man's eyes. They were handsome eyes, too, large and dark and passionate: but just now they stared blindly as though a hot iron had seared them. Twice they had turned to the girl, who answered by not so much as a glance; and twice with a shudder upon the man with the drum, who caught the look and blinked wickedly. Worst of all was it when the music began, to see that horror fixed and staring over a pair of cheeks ludicrously puffing at a flageolet. A face for a gargoyle! The apprentice shivered, and glanced from one to other of the company: but they, one and all, were watching the dancer.
It was a marvellous dance, truly. The girl, her tambourine lifted high, and clashing softly to the beat of the music, whirled down the length of the room, while above the pipe's falsetto and rumble of the drum the burly man lifted his voice and trolled—
"Turelurelu, patapatapan— Au son de ces instruments Faisons la nique à Satan!"
By the barricade of chairs and tables, under which lay Cuthbert Burbage in peaceful stupor, she checked her onward rush, whirling yet, but so lazily that she seemed for the moment to stand poised, her scarf outspread like the wings of a butterfly: and so, slowly, very slowly, she came floating back. Twice she repeated this, each time narrowing her circuit, until she reached the middle of the floor, and there began to spin on her toes