Master Skylark Part 19

Carew shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Come, Master Gyles, this is fool play. I told thee that the boy could sing, and thou hast not yet heard him try. Thou knowest right well I am no such simple gull as to mistake a jay for a nightingale; and I tell thee, sir, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour, he has the voice that thou dost need if thou wouldst win the favor of the Queen. He has the voice, and thou the thingumbobs to make the most of it. Don't be a fool, now; hear him sing. That's all I ask. Just hear him once. Thou'lt p.a.w.n thine ears to hear him twice."

The music-school stood within the old cathedral grounds. Through the windows came up distantly the murmur of the throng in Paul's Yard. It was mid-afternoon, quite warm; blundering flies buzzed up and down the lozenged panes, and through the dark hall crept the humming sound of childish voices reciting eagerly, with now and then a sharp, small cry as some one faltered in his lines and had his fingers rapped. Somewhere else there were boyish voices running scales, now up, now down, without a stop, and other voices singing harmonies, two parts and three together, here and there a little flat from weariness.

The stairs were very dark, Nick thought, as they went up to another floor; but the long hall they came into there was quite bright with the sun.

At one end was a little stage, like the one at the Rose play-house, with a small gallery for musicians above it; but everything here was painted white and gold, and was most scrupulously clean. The rush-strewn floor was filled with oaken benches, and there were paintings hanging upon the wall, portraits of old head-masters and precentors. Some of them were so dark with time that Nick wondered if they had been blackamoors.

Master Gyles closed the great door and pulled a cord that hung by the stage. A bell jangled faintly somewhere in the wall. Nick heard the m.u.f.fled voices hush, and then a shuffling tramp of slippered feet came up the outer stair.

"Pouf!" said the precentor, crustily. "_Tempus fugit_--that is to say, we have no time to waste. So, marry, boy, _venite, exultemus_--in other words, if thou canst sing, be up and at it. Come, _cantate_--sing, I bid thee, and that instanter--if thou canst sing at all."

The under-masters and monitors were pus.h.i.+ng the boys into their seats.

Carew pointed to the stage. "Thou'lt do thy level best!" he said in a low, hard tone, and something clashed beneath his cloak like steel on steel.

Nick went up the steps behind the screen. It seemed cold in the room; he had not noticed it before. Yet there were sweat-drops upon his forehead.

He felt as if he were a jackanapes he had seen once at the Stratford fair, which wore a crimson jerkin and a cap. The man who had the jackanapes played upon a pipe and a tabor; and when he said, "Dance!"

the jackanapes danced, for it was sorely afraid of the man. Yet when Nick looked around and did not see the master-player anywhere in the hall, he felt exceedingly lonely all at once without him, though he both feared and hated him.

There still was a shuffling of feet and a low talking; but soon it became very quiet, and they all seemed to be waiting for him to begin.

He did not care, but supposed he might as well: what else could he do?

There was a clock somewhere ticking quickly with its sharp, metallic ring. As he listened, lonely, his heart cried out for home. In his fancy the wind seemed rippling over the Avon, and the elm-leaves rustled like rain upon the roof above his bed. There were red and white wild-roses in the hedge, and in the air a smell of clover and of new-mown hay. The mowers would be working in the clover in the moonlight. He could almost see the sweep of the s.h.i.+ning scythes, and hear the c.h.i.n.k-a-chank, c.h.i.n.k-a-chank of the whetstone on the long, curving blades. c.h.i.n.k-a-chank, c.h.i.n.k-a-chank--'twas but the clock, and he in London town.

Carew, sitting there behind the carven prompter's-screen, put down his head between his hands and listened. There were murmurings a little while, then silence. Would the boy never begin? He pressed his knuckles into his temples and waited. Bow Bells rang out the hour; but the room was as still as a deep sleep. Would the boy never begin?

The precentor sniffed. It was a contemptuous, incredulous sniff. Carew looked up--his lips white, a fierce red spot in each cheek. He was talking to himself. "By the whistle of the Lord High Admiral!" he said--but there he stopped and held his breath. Nick was singing.

Only the old madrigal, with its half-forgotten words that other generations sang before they fell asleep. How queer it sounded there! It was a very simple tune, too; yet, as he sang, the old precentor started from his chair and pressed his wrinkled hands together against his breast. He quite forgot the sneer upon his face, and it went fading out like breath from a frosty pane.

He had twelve boys who could sing a hundred songs at sight from unfamiliar notes; who kept the beat and marked the time as if their throats were pendulums; could syncopate and floriate as readily as breathe. And this was only a common country song.

But--"That voice, that voice!" he panted to himself: for old Nat Gyles was music-mad; melody to him was like the very breath of life. And the boy's high, young voice, soft as a flute and silver clear, throbbed in the air as if his very heart were singing out of his body in the sound.

And then, like the skylark rising, up, up it went, and up, up, up, till the older choristers held their breath and feared that the vibrant tone would break, so slender, film-like was the trembling thread of the boy's wild skylark song. But no; it trembled there, high, sweet, and clear, a moment in the air; and then came running, rippling, floating down, as though some one had set a song on fire in the sky, and dropped it quivering and bright into a shadow world. Then suddenly it was gone, and the long hall was still.

The old precentor stepped beyond the screen.

Gaston Carew's face was in his hands, and his shoulders shook convulsively. "I'll leave thee go, lad,_--ma foi_, I'll leave thee go.

But, nay, I dare not leave thee go!"

Some one came and tapped him on the shoulder. It was the sub-precentor.

"Master Gyles would speak with thee, sir," said he, in a low tone, as if half afraid of the sound of his own voice in the quiet that was in the hall.

Carew drew his hand hastily over his face, as if to take the old one off and put a new one on, then arose and followed the man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THAT VOICE, THAT VOICE,' NAT GYLES PANTED TO HIMSELF."]

The old precentor stood with his hands still clasped against his breast. "_Mirabile_!" he was saying with bated breath. "It is impossible, and I have dreamed! Yet _credo_--I believe--_quia impossibile est_--because it is impossible. Tell me, Carew, do I wake or dream--or, stay, was it a soul I heard? Ay, Carew, 'twas a soul: the lad's own white, young soul. My faith, I said he was of no account!

_Satis verborum_--say no more. _Humanum est errare_--I am a poor old fool; and there's a sour bug flown in mine eye that makes it water so!"

He wiped his eyes, for the tears were running down his cheeks.

"Thou'lt take him, then?" asked Carew.

"Take him?" cried the old precentor, catching the master-player by the hand. "Marry, that will I; a voice like that grows not on every bush.

Take him? Pouf! I know my place--he shall be entered on the rolls at once."

"Good!" said Carew. "I shall have him learn to dance, and teach him how to act myself. He stays with me, ye understand; thy school fare is miserly. I'll dress him, too; for these students' robes are shabby stuff. But for the rest--"

"Trust me," said Master Gyles; "he shall be the first singer of them all. He shall be taught--but who can teach the lark its song, and not do horrid murder on it? Faith, Carew, I'll teach the lad myself; ay, all I know. I studied in the best schools in the world."

"And, hark 'e, Master Gyles," said Carew, sternly all at once; "thou'lt come no royal placard and seizure on me--ye have sworn. The boy is mine to have and to hold with all that he earns, in spite of thy prerogatives."

For the kings of old had given the masters of this school the right to take for St. Paul's choir whatever voices pleased them, wherever they might be found, by force if not by favor, barring only the royal singers at Windsor; and when men have such privileges it is best to be wary how one puts temptation in their way.

"Thou hadst mine oath before I even saw the boy," said the precentor, haughtily. "Dost think me perjured--_Primus Magister Scholarum, Custos Morum, Quartus Custos Rotulorum?_ Pouf! I know my place. My oath's my oath. But, soft; enough--here comes the boy. Who could have told a skylark in such popinjay attire?"

CHAPTER XXIII

A NEW LIFE

And now a strange, new life began for Nicholas Attwood, in some things so grand and kind that he almost hated to dislike it.

It was different in every way from the simple, pinching round in Stratford, and full of all the comforts of richness and plenty that make life happy--excepting home and mother.

Master Gaston Carew would have nothing but the best, and what he wanted, whether he needed it or not; so with him money came like a summer rain, and went like water out of a sieve: for he was a wild blade.

They ate their breakfast when they pleased; dined at eleven, like the n.o.bility; supped at five, as was the fas.h.i.+on of the court. They had wheat-bread the whole week round, as only rich folk could afford, with fruit and berries in their season, and honey from the Surrey bee-farms that made one's mouth water with the sight of it dripping from the flaky comb; and on Fridays spitchc.o.c.ked eels, pickled herrings, and plums, with simnel-cakes, poached eggs and milk, cream cheese and cordial, like very kings; so that Nick could not help thriving.

The master-player very seldom left him by himself to mope or to be melancholy; but, while ever vaguely promising to let him go, did everything in his power to make him rather wish to stay; so that Nick was constantly surprised by the free-handed kindness of this man whom he had every other reason in the world, he thought, for deeming his worst enemy.

When there were any new curiosities in Fleet street,--wild men with rings in their noses, wondrous fishes, puppet-shows, or red-capped baboons whirling on a pole,--Carew would have Nick see them as well as Cicely; and often took them both to Bartholomew's Fair, where there was a giant eating raw beef and a man dancing upon a rope high over the heads of the people. He would have had Nick every Thursday to the bear-baiting in the Paris Garden circus beside; but one sight of that brutal sport made the boy so sick that they never went again, but to the stage-plays at the Rose instead, which Nick enjoyed immensely, for Carew himself acted most excellently, and Master Tom Heywood always came and spoke kindly to the lonely boy.

For, in spite of all, Nick's heart ached so at times that he thought it would surely break with longing for his mother. And at night, when all the house was still and dark, and he alone in bed, all the little, unconsidered things of home--the beehives and the fragrant mint beside the kitchen door, the smell of the baking bread or frying carrots, the sound of the red-cheeked harvest apples dropping in the orchard, and the plump of the old bucket in the well--came back to him so vividly that many a time he cried himself to sleep, and could not have forgotten if he would.

On Midsummer Day there was a Triumph on the river at Westminster, with a sham-fight and a great shooting of guns and hurling of b.a.l.l.s of wild-fire. The Queen was there, and the amba.s.sadors of France and Venice, with the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel and Southampton. Master Carew took a wherry to Whitehall, and from the green there they watched the show.

The Thames was fairly hidden by the boats, and there was a grand state bark all trimmed with silk and velvet for the Queen to be in to see the pastime. But as for that, all Nick could make out was the high carved stern of the bark, painted with England's golden lions, and the bark was so far away that he could not even tell which was the Queen.

Coming home by Somerset House, a large barge pa.s.sed them with many watermen rowing, and fine carpets about the seats; and in it the old Lord Chamberlain and his son my Lord Hunsdon, who, it was said, was to be the Lord Chamberlain when his father died; for the old lord was failing, and the Queen liked handsome young men about her.

In the barge, beside their followers, were a company of richly dressed gentlemen, who were having a very gay time together, and seemed to please the old Lord Chamberlain exceedingly with the things they said.

They were somebodies, as Nick could very well see from their carriage and address; and, so far as the barge allowed, they were all cl.u.s.tered about one fellow in the seat by my Lord Hunsdon. He seemed to be the chiefest spokesman of them all, and every one appeared very glad indeed to be friendly with him. My Lord Hunsdon himself made free with his own n.o.bility, and sat beside him arm in arm.

What he was saying they were too far away to hear in the shouting and splash; but those with him in the barge were listening as eagerly as children to a merry tale. Sometimes they laughed until they held their sides; and then again as suddenly they were very quiet, and played softly with their tankards and did not look at one another as he went gravely on telling his story. Then all at once he would wave his hand gaily, and his smile would sparkle out; and the whole company, from the old Lord Chamberlain down, would brighten up again, as if a new dawn had come over the hills into their hearts from the light of his hazel eyes.