CHAPTER IV.A REAL ENTHUSIAST.I amafraid it is rather taken for granted by parents in general, as regards any behaviour they may adopt towards their offspring, that religion is always upon their own side. And yet there is a very noteworthy text about ‘provoking our children to wrath,’ which it is a mistake to ignore. Wise and reverend signors may well have learnt by experience to take trifling annoyances with equanimity; but theamour propreof the young is a tender shoot, and very sensitive to rough handling.The most sensitive plant of all is the lad with a turn for literature; and, as a rule, parents have the least patience with him. When the turn is not a mere taste, but a natural gift, this does not much matter; no true flame was everput out by the breath of contempt: but when it halts midway the youth has a bad time of it. He shivers at every sneer, without the means of giving it the lie. ‘Like a dart it strikes to his liver,’ because his armour, unlike that of true genius, is not arrow-proof. He knows that he is not the fool that his folk take him for, but he has an uneasy consciousness that they are partly right; that his powers are not equal to his pretensions. This was the case with William Henry Erin.He had a turn for literature, and, if an uncommon facility for writing indifferent verses is any proof of it, even for poetry; and he found nobody to admit it, not even Margaret. ‘It is very good, Willie, for a first attempt,’ was the fatal eulogium she once passed upon the most cherished of his poetical productions; and his father, as we have seen, made no scruple of ridiculing his literary efforts. If the boy’s predilection for such matters had interfered with his professional duties, it might have been excusable enough; but the conveyancers to whom William Henry was articled were quitesatisfied with him. He was very careful and diligent, and though he had come to years of indiscretion, far from dissipated. If he loitered on his way to his employers’ chambers in theNew Inn, it was to turn over the leaves of some old poem on a book-stall, rather than to gaze on the young woman who might be behind it. Still, not being perfection, it was natural that he should feel resentment at his father’s harshness, and at the slights to which his muse was exposed at his unsympathising hands. He had never had any one to sympathise with his poetical aspirations except his friend Reginald Talbot, a fellow-clerk of his own age, who was also devoted to the Muses; and Talbot’s praise had its drawbacks. First, he did not think it worth much; and secondly, it could not be obtained without reciprocity; and it went against William Henry’s conscience to praise Talbot’s poems.‘Well,’ thought the young man, as he looked out of his attic window, which commanded a distant view of Stratford Church, ‘there lies a man who was as little appreciated at my age as I am; and yet he made some noise in the world. He, too, some say, was a scrivener’s clerk. He, too, was called Will—which is at least an interesting coincidence. He, too, fellin love at my age.’ Here his reflections ended with a sigh, for the parallel extended no further. Shakespeare had not only wooed, but—with a little too much ease, indeed—had won; whereas Margaret Slade was far out of his reach. He had a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Erin intended her to marry Dennis, and had brought him down with him to Stratford ‘to throw the young people together,’ as he would doubtless express it. Young people, indeed! why, Frank Dennis was old enough—well, scarcely, to be her father, unless he had been unusually precocious, but certainly to know better. ‘Crabbed age’—the man was thirty if he was a day—‘and youth cannot live together.’ It was a most monstrous proposition! On the other hand, what could he, poor William Henry, do? If he could persuade Maggie to run away with him to-morrow, they must literally run, for he had hardly money enough, after that Bristol trip, to pay the first pike out of Stratford, and far less a post-chaise.As he thought of his unacknowledged merits, and of the many obstacles to his union,he grew bitter against the whole scheme of creation. If poetic impulse could have projected him fifty years forward, he would doubtless have exclaimed, with the bard of Bon Gaultier,—Cussed be the clerk and the parson,Cussed be the whole concern!but not having that vent for his feelings, he only loosened his neckcloth a bit and looked moody. Poor fellow! he had but two wishes in the world—to marry Margaret, and to get into print; and both these desires, just because he had no money, were denied him.At that very time, Margaret at her window was thinking of him. She was not—she was certain she was not, the idea was quite ridiculous—in love with him; but, thanks to his father’s conduct, she felt that pity for him which is akin to love. And he was certainly very handsome, and very fond of her. He had been foolish to come down to Stratford when it was clear her uncle didn’t want him; but it was ‘very nice of him,’ too, and since he was there and upon his holiday—his one holiday in the year, poor fellow—it wascruel to snub him! Frank Dennis didn’t snub him, that she would say for Frank: he was a kind, honest fellow, though rather old-fashioned, and just a trifle heavy in hand. She wished William Henry would talk like him when addressing his father; though when addressingher, she confessed to herself that she preferred William Henry’s way. It was really distressing to see her uncle and his son together; they mixed no better than oil and vinegar. She was well pleased to remember that Mr. Jervis, the Stratford poet, was coming that morning to breakfast with them, since his presence would prevent anything unseemly; moreover, he would probably take her uncle and Frank Dennis away with him to investigate antiquities, which would leave William Henry and herself to themselves.John Jervis was but a carpenter in a small way of business, but he was much respected in the town, and had made himself a name beyond it, on account of the interest he took in all Shakespearean matters. The gentry in the neighbourhood spoke of him as ‘a civil and inoffensive creature,’ but he was ‘correspondedwith’ by men of letters and learning in London. His position would have been better than it was had he not been so foolish as to publish a volume of poems—to be paid by subscription. This had subjected him to something much worse than criticism—to patronage. Every one who had advanced a few shillings for the appearance of that unfortunate volume became in a sense his master, and some of them exacted interest for their investment in advice, remonstrance, and dictation. It was a foolish thing of John Jervis to set up his trade—not carpentering, but the other—in Stratford-on-Avon. In Paisley there are, I have heard say, at this present moment fifty poets, all complaining that the world which will give them a monument after their death, in the meantime permits them to starve; but Paisley is a place which is scarcely poetic to begin with, whereas to be a local poet in Stratford was like setting up a shed for small coal in Newcastle. The good man had become quite aware of this by this time; he was very dissatisfied with his published productions (it is a common case; whatwe have in our desk seems as superior to what lies on our table as that which moves in our brain is to what lies in our desk). He would have given as much to suppress his little volume as William Henry would have given to gethisown broadcast over an admiring land. And yet there was no question of comparison between them as respected merit. John Jervis was, within certain narrow limits, a true poet: what he saw he noted, what he noted he felt; so far he followed his great master. He even emitted a modest light of his own, which was not reflected: he was not a star, but he was a glow-worm. Most of us are but worms without the glow.Every one who came to Stratford at that time for Shakespeare’s sake—and no one came for any other reason—was recommended to apply to John Jervis for information. On receiving any summons of this nature he put aside his carpenter’s tools, took off his apron, and donned his Sabbath garb. A carpenter in his Sunday clothes in these days is a sad sight; he represents one branch of his business only,that of the undertaker: but in the times of which we write it was not so. Wigs were not yet gone out of fashion in Warwickshire, but John Jervis could not afford what was called the ‘Citizen’s Sunday Buckle’ or ‘Bob Major,’ because it had three tiers of curls. He had too much good taste to use the ‘Minor Bob’ or Hair Cap, short in the neck to show the stock buckle, and stroked away from the face so as to seem (like Tristram Shandy) as though the wearer had been skating against the wind. He wore his own grey hair and a modest grey suit, in which, however, none but a flippant young fellow like Master William Henry Erin could have likened him to a master baker. His face was homely but pleasant, and had a certain dignity; his manner retiring but not reticent. It was his business to answer questions, but he did not volunteer information. He had, indeed, a secret contempt for the majority of his clients; they had more appetite for the Shakespearean husks, the few dry details that could be picked up concerning their Idol, than for the corn—what manner of man he had been inspirit, or how the scenery about his home had affected his writings. Jervis found Mr. Erin to be no better than his other visitors: hungry for facts, greedy for particulars, and combative. He talked of the Confession of Faith found in the roof of the house in Henley Street, and rubbed his hands, notwithstanding that his enemy had since retracted his belief in it, over Malone’s credulity.‘“An unworthy member of the Holy Catholic religion,” indeed! It is monstrous, incredible.’‘That phrase had reference to the father, however,’ observed Jervis.‘True, but that was the art of the forger, himself of the old faith, no doubt. He wished to make our Shakespeare a born Papist. Now, that he was a good Protestant is indubitable. “I’d beat him like a dog,” says Sir Andrew. “What! for being a Puritan?” returns Sir Toby. What irony! You are of my opinion, I hope, Mr. Jervis?’‘I have scarcely formed an opinion upon the matter,’ was the modest reply. ‘Shakespearewas Catholic in one sense, but I agree with you that he was not one to be much comforted by the “holy sacrifice of the mass,” as the so-called Confession put it.’‘I should think not, indeed. He was not partial to priests. “When thou liesthowling,”’ quoted Mr. Erin triumphantly.‘Still, being a stage-player, I doubt if he was partial to the Puritans. No; such things moved him neither way; religious controversies he looked upon as on other quarrels, as “valour misbegot.” If he could not see into the future, he saw five hundred years ahead of his contemporaries, who were burning Francis Kett for heresy at Norwich.’Mr. Erin was not certain whether Kett was a Protestant or a Catholic (on which depended his view of the circumstance), so he only shook his head.‘You mean, Mr. Jervis,’ said Margaret timidly, ‘that in Shakespeare’s eyes there were no heretics?’The man in grey looked at his gentle inquirer and bowed his head assentingly. ‘None,as I think, young lady, save those who disbelieved in good.’‘That is not established,’ said Mr. Erin argumentatively.‘I am afraid your uncle thinksmea heretic,’ said Mr. Jervis, smiling. Then, perceiving that Margaret looked interested, he told her of the marvellous boy—name unknown, but whose fame still survived—who had been Shakespeare’s contemporary at Stratford. How, so the legend ran, he had been thought his equal in genius, and his future greatness been prophesied with the same confidence, but who had died in youth, a mute, inglorious Shakespeare.‘I often picture to myself,’ said the old man dreamily, ‘the friendship of those two boys.’‘Do you think they went out poaching together?’ inquired William Henry demurely. He was not without humour, and was also perhaps a little jealous of the attention Margaret paid their visitor.‘Poaching!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin angrily, ‘how gross and contemptible are your ideas, sir!’‘Still,’ interposed Dennis, his sense of justiceaiding his wish to stand between Mr. Erin’s wrath and its object—Margaret’s cousin—‘Shakespeare did transgress in that way. It is not likely that he strained at a hare if he swallowed a deer.’‘No doubt he poached,’ admitted Jervis gravely. ‘He was very human, and did all things that became a boy. But I was thinking rather of the companionship of the two boys than their pursuits. Their talk was not of hares nor of rabbits. How one would like to know their boyish confidences! what were their ambitions, their aspirations, their views of life; which one was about to leave, and in which the other was to fill so large a space in the thoughts of man—for ever. It was in this little town they lived and talked together; learnt their lessons from one book perhaps, in yonder school, each without a thought of the other’s immortality, albeit of such different kinds.’The solemnity of the speaker’s manner, and the genuineness of feeling which his tone displayed, had no little effect upon his audience,but on each in a different way. Margaret’s mind was stirred to its depths by this simple dream-picture, and seeing her so the two young men felt a touch of sympathy with it.‘Is there any sure foundation to go upon as to this playmate of Shakespeare’s?’ inquired Mr. Erin, note-book in hand—‘any record, any document?’The visitor shook his head. ‘Nothing, but wherever, in the country round, Shakespeare’s youth is alluded to, this story of his friend is told. It is a local legend, that is all; but it seems to me to have life in it. The world outside knows nothing of it. It interests itself in Shakespeare only, and but little in his belongings; but with us, breathing the air he breathed, walking on the same ground he trod, things are different; we still fancy him amongst us, and not alone. There is Hamnet, too; we still speak of Hamnet.’It was fortunate for William Henry that he repressed the observation that rose to his lips. He was about to say, ‘You don’t mean Hamlet, do you?’The same idea I am afraid occurred to Mr. Dennis, but for even a briefer space; he felt that there must be some mistake somewhere; but also that he himself might be making it.‘Buried here, August the 11th, 1596,’ observed Mr. Erin, as though he was reading from the register itself.‘Just so,’ continued Jervis, ‘only a little over two hundred years ago. He was eleven years old, too young to understand the greatness of him who begat him, yet old enough to have an inkling of it. Once a year or so, as it is believed, his father came home to Stratford fresh from the companionship of the great London wits and poets—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Camden, and Selden. What meetings must those have been with his only son; the boy whom he fondly hoped, but hoped in vain, would inherit the proceeds of his fame! I wonder how his mother used to speak of her husband to her children? Did she excuse to them his long absence, his dwelling afar off, ordid she inveigh against it? Did she recognise the splendour of his genius, or did she only love him? Or did she not love him?’‘Let us hope she was not unworthy of him,’ said Mr. Erin, his enthusiasm, stirred by the other’s eloquence, rising on a stronger wing than usual.‘As a wife she was sorely tried,’ murmured Mr. Jervis. ‘I love to think of her less than of Hamnet, so lowly born in one sense, and in the other of such illustrious parentage. The news of his father’s growing fame must have reached the boy, and the contrast could not fail to have struck him. Then to have seen that father bending over his little bed, to have kissed that noble face, and felt himself in his embrace; to have known that he was the child whom Shakespeare’s soul loved best in all the world, what a sensation, what an experience!’‘Some mementoes of the immortal bard are, I hope, still to be purchased?’ observed Mr. Erin curtly. He had engaged Mr. Jervis’sservices for practical purposes, and began to resent this waste of time—which was money—upon sentimental hypothesis. Shakespeare’s wife was a topic one could sympathise with; there was documentary evidence in existence concerning her, but over little Hamnet’s grave there was not even a tombstone.‘Mementoes? Yes, there is mulberry-wood enough to last some time,’ said Mr. Jervis slily; ‘you shall have your pick of them.’‘But no MSS.?’‘Not that I know of. There has been a report, however, of late, that Mr. Williams, of Clopton House, has found some that were removed from New Place at the time of the fire.’‘Great heavens!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, with much excitement, ‘what, from New Place, Shakespeare’s own home? Let us go at once; all other things can wait.—William Henry, come along with us, and bring your little book.—You can stay here with Maggie, Dennis, till I come back.’If he could have dispensed with thepresence of John Jervis himself, he would have been glad to do so; for what is true of a feast is also true of treasure-trove, ‘the fewer (the finders) the better the fare.’CHAPTER V.THE OLD SETTLE.WILLIAM HENRY, far from sharing his father’s enthusiasm at any time, was on this occasion less than ever inclined to applaud it. If Clopton House should be found full of Shakespearean MSS., it would not afford him half the pleasurehe would have derived from atête-à-têtewith his cousin Margaret; a treat which, it seemed, was to be thrown away upon Frank Dennis. Why didn’t Mr. Erin selecthimto take notes for him from the musty documents? A question the folly of which only a high state of irritation could excuse. He knew perfectly well that his own dexterity and promptness in copying had caused himself to be chosen for the undesirable task, and that knowledge irritated him the more. It was only when he could be of some material use to him, as in the present instance, that his father took the least account of him. If he could bring himself to steal one of those precious documents, was his bitter reflection, and secrete it as some wretched slave secretes a diamond in the mines of Golconda, then, perhaps, and then only, he might be permitted to marry Margaret. For a bit of parchment with Shakespeare’s name upon it, most certainly for a whole play in his handwriting, Mr. Samuel Erin, it was probable, would have bartered fifty nieces, and thrown his own soul into the bargain. Our young friend, however, was quiteaware of what a poet of a later date would have told him, that ‘an angry fancy’ is a poor ware to go to market with; so, with as good a grace as he could, he put on his hat and accompanied Mr. Erin and his cicerone to Clopton House, which was but a few yards down the street.It was a good-sized mansion of great antiquity, but had fallen into disrepair and even decay. Its present tenant, Mr. Williams, was a farmer in apparently far from prosperous circumstances. Half of the many chambers were in total darkness, the windows having been bricked up to save the window tax, and the handsome old-world furniture was everywhere becoming a prey to the moth and the worm. As a matter of fact, however, these were not evidences of poverty. Mr. Williams had enough and to spare of worldly goods, only of some of them he did not think so much as other people of more cultivated taste would have done. A Warwickshire farmer of to-day would have considered many things as valuable in Clopton House which their unappreciative proprietor had relegated to the cock-loft. It was to thatapartment, indeed, that Mr. Erin was led as soon as the nature of his inquiries—which he had stated generally, and to avoid suspicion of his actual object, to be concerning antiquities—was understood. The room was filled with mouldering household goods of remote antiquity, chiefly of the time of Henry VII., in whose reign the proprietor of the house, Sir Hugh Clopton, had been Lord Mayor of London. Among other things, for example, there was an emblazoned representation on vellum of Elizabeth, Henry’s wife, as she lay in state in the chapel of the Tower, where she died in child-birth.‘You may have that if you like,’ said Mr. Williams to his visitor carelessly. He was a fat, coarse man, but very good-natured. ‘For, being on vellum, it is no use to light the fire with.’‘You don’t mean to say you light your fire with anything I see here?’ gasped Mr. Erin.‘Well, no, there’s nothing much left of that sort of rubbish; we made a clean sweep of it all about a fortnight since.’‘There were no old MSS., I hope?’‘MSS.! Heaps on ’em. They came from New Place at the time of the fire, you see, though Heaven knows why any one should have thought them worth saving. They were all piled in that little room yonder, and as I wanted a place for some young partridges as I am bringing up, I burnt the whole lot of ‘em.’‘You looked at them first, of course, to make sure that there was nothing of consequence?’‘Well, of course I did. I hope Dick Williams ain’t such a fool as to burn law documents. No, they were mostly poetry and that kind of stuff.’‘But did you make certain about the handwriting? Else, my good sir, it might have been that of Shakespeare himself.’‘Shakespeare! Well, what of him? Why, there was bundles and bundles with his name wrote upon them. It was in this very fireplace I made a regular bonfire of them.’There was a solitary chair in the little chamber, set apart for the partridges, intowhich Mr. Samuel Erin dropped, as though he had been a partridge himself, shot by a sportsman.‘You—made—a—bonfire—of—Shakespeare’s—poems!’ he said, ejaculating the words very slowly and dejectedly, like minute guns. ‘May Heaven have mercy upon your miserable soul!’‘Isay,’ cried Mr. Williams, turning very red, ‘what the deuce do you mean by talking to me as if I was left for execution? What have I done? I’ve robbed nobody.’‘You have robbed everybody—the whole world!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin excitedly. ‘In burning those papers you burnt the most precious things on earth. A bonfire, you call it! Nero, who fiddled while Rome was burning, was guiltless compared to you. You are a disgrace to humanity. Shakespeare had you in his eye, sir, when he spoke of “a marble-hearted fiend.”’Mr. Samuel Erin had his favourite bard by heart, and was consequently in no want of ‘base comparisons,’ but he stopped a momentfor want of breath. Annoyance and indignation had had the same effect upon Mr. Williams. He had never been ‘bully-ragged’ in his own house for ‘nothing’—except by his wife—before. Purple and speechless, he regarded his antagonist with protruding eyes, a human Etna on the verge of eruption.Mr. John Jervis knew his man. Up to this point he had taken no part in the controversy; but he now seized Mr. Erin by the arm, and led him rapidly downstairs. Their last few steps were accomplished with dangerous velocity, for a flying body struck both of them violently on the back. This was William Henry, who, unable to escape the wild rush of the bull, had described a parabola in the air.‘If there’s law in England, you shall smart for this,’ roared the infuriated animal over the banisters.‘Perhaps I ought to have told you that Mr. Williams was of a hasty disposition,’ observed Mr. Jervis apologetically, when they found themselves in the street.‘Hasty!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, whose mind was much too occupied with sacrilege to concern himself with assault; ‘a more thoughtless and precipitate idiot never breathed. The idea of his having burnt those precious papers! I suppose, after what has happened, it would be useless to inquire just now whether any scrap of them has escaped the flames; otherwise my son can go back—— ‘‘I am sure that wouldn’t do,’ interposed Mr. Jervis confidently.William Henry breathed a sigh of relief. The impressions of Stratford-on-Avon seemed to him indelible; they had left on him such ‘local colouring’ as time itself, he felt, could hardly remove. Fortunately for hisamour propre, not a word was said by his father of their reception at Clopton House. His whole mind was monopolised by the literary disappointment. The inconvenience that had happened to his son did not weigh with him a feather.The whole party now proceeded to Mr. Jervis’s establishment, where the remains ofthe famous mulberry tree were kept in stock. Mr. Erin was haunted by the notion that some Shakespearean fanatic might step in and buy the whole of it before he could secure some mementoes, whereas the birthplace in Henley Street could ‘wait;’ an idea at which, for the life of him, the proprietor of the sacred timber could not restrain a dry smile. It was the general opinion that enough tobacco stoppers, busts, and wafer seals had already been sold to account for a whole grove of mulberry trees. Mr. Erin was very energetic with his new acquaintance on the road, about precautions against fire (insurance against it was out of the question, of course), but when he had possessed himself of what he wanted, and the matter was again referred to as they came away, it was noticeable that he had not another word to say upon the side of prudence.‘He declaimed against Mr. Williams’ rashness,’ whispered William Henry to Margaret; ‘but my belief is that he would now set fire to that timber yard without a scruple in order to render his purchases unique.’Maggie held up her finger reprovingly, but her laughing eyes belied the gesture.Both these young people, indeed, had far too keen a sense of fun to be enthusiasts.To Mr. Hart the butcher (who at that time occupied the house in Henley Street), as an indirect descendant of the immortal bard, through his sister, Mr. Erin paid a deference that was almost servile. He examined his lineaments, in the hopes of detecting a likeness to the Chandos portrait, with a particularity that much abashed the object of his scrutiny, and even tried to get him to accompany him to the church, that he might compare his features with those of the bust of the bard in the chancel.But it was in the presence of the bust itself that Mr. Erin exhibited himself in the most characteristic fashion. Standing on what was to him more hallowed ground than any blessed by priests, and within a few feet of the ashes of his idol, he was nevertheless unable to restrain his indignation against the commentator Malone, through whose influence the coloured bust hadrecently been painted white. Instead of bursting into Shakespearean quotation, as it was his wont to do on much less provocation, he repeated with malicious gusto the epigram to which the act of vandalism in question had given birth:—Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,Invoke the poet’s curses on Malone,Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays,And daubed his tombstone as he marred his plays.His rage, indeed, so rose at the spectacle, that for the present he protested that he found himself unable to pursue his investigations within the sacred edifice, and proposed that the party should start forthwith to visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage at Shottery.There was at present no more need for Mr. Jervis’s services, so that gentleman was left behind. Mr. Erin and Frank Dennis led the way by the footpath across the fields that had been pointed out to them, and William Henry and Margaret followed. It was a lovely afternoon; the trees and grass, upon which a slight shower had recently fallen, emitted a fragranceinexpressibly fresh. All was quiet save for the song of the birds, who were giving thanks for the sunshine.‘How different this is from Norfolk Street!’ murmured Margaret.‘It is the same to me,’ answered her companion in a low tone, ‘because all that makes life dear to me is where you are. When you are not there, Margaret, I have no home.’‘You should not talk of your home in that way,’ returned she reprovingly.‘Yet you know it is the truth, Margaret; that there is no happiness for me under Mr. Erin’s roof, and that my very presence there is unwelcome to him.’‘I wish you would not call your father Mr. Erin,’ she exclaimed reproachfully.‘Did you not know, then, that he was not my father?’‘What?’ In her extreme surprise she spoke in so loud a key that it attracted the attention of the pair before them. Mr. Erin looked back with a smile. ‘Shakespeare musthave taken this walk a thousand times, Maggie,’ he observed.She nodded and made some suitable reply, but for the moment she was thinking of things nearer home. She now remembered that she had heard something to the disadvantage of Mr. Erin’s deceased wife, one of those unpleasant remarks concerning some one connected with her which a modest girl hears by accident, and endeavours to forget. Until Mr. Erin had become a widower Margaret had never been permitted by her mother to visit Norfolk Street. Mrs. Erin had been a widow—a Mrs. Irwyn—but she had not become Mr. Erin’s wife at first, because her husband had been alive. It was probable, then, that what William Henry had said was true; he was Mrs. Erin’s son, but not Mr. Erin’s, though he passed as such. This was doubtless the reason why her uncle and he were on such distant terms with one another, and why he never called him father. On the other hand, it was no reason why her uncle should be so harsh with the young man, and treat him with such scant consideration. Somewomen would have despised the lad for the misfortune of his birth, but Margaret was incapable of an injustice; her knowledge of his unhappy position served to draw him closer to her than before.By the blush that, in spite of her efforts to repress it, spread over her face, William Henry understood that she gave credit to his statement, and by the tones of her voice he felt that it had done him no injury in her eyes. It was a matter, however, which, though necessary to be made plain, could not be discussed.‘What your uncle says is very true, Maggie,’ he quietly remarked. ‘This must have been Shakespeare’s favourite walk, for love never goes by the high road when it can take the footpath. The smell of that bean-field, the odour of the hay of that very meadow, may have come to his nostrils as it comes to ours. His heart as he drew nigh to yonder village must have beat as mine beats, because he knew his love was near him.’‘There is the cottage,’ cried Mr. Erin excitedly, pointing in front of him, and addressinghis niece. ‘Is it not picturesque, with its old timbers and its mossy roof?’‘It will make an excellent illustration for your book,’ observed Frank Dennis the practical.‘It has been illustrated already pretty often,’ returned the other drily, ‘or we should not recognise it so easily.’‘Let us hope it’s the right one,’ muttered William Henry, ‘for it will be poor I who will have to suffer for it if it is not.’Fortunately, however, there was no mistake. They stepped across the little brook, and stood in the garden with its well and its old-world flowers. Before them was the orchard ‘for whispering lovers made,’ and on the right the low vine-clad cottage with the settle, or courting-seat, at its door.Here Shakespeare came to win and woo his wife; whatever doubt may be thrown on his connection with any other dwelling, that much is certain. On the threshold of the cottage Mr. Erin took off his hat, not from courtesy, for he was not overburdened with politeness,but from the same reverence with which he had doffed it at the church. He entered without noticing whether he was followed by the others or not. A descendant of Anne Hathaway’s, though not of her name, received him; fit priest for such a shrine. That he had not read a line of Shakespeare in no way detracted from his sacred character. Frank Dennis, himself not a little moved, went in likewise. As Margaret was following him, William Henry gently laid his hand upon her wrist and led her to the settle, which was very ancient and worm-eaten.‘Sit here a moment, Maggie; this is the very seat, as Mr. Jervis tells me, on which Shakespeare sat with her who became his wife. Here, on some summer afternoon like this, perhaps, he told her of his love.’Margaret trembled, but sat down.‘It is amazing to think of it,’ she said; ‘he must have looked on those same trees, and on this very well.’‘But he did not look atthem, Maggie,’ said the young man tenderly; ‘he looked at theface beside him, as I am looking now, and I will wager that it was not so fair a face.’‘What nonsense you talk, Willie! Why do you not give yourself up as your—as Mr. Erin does—to the associations of the place? They are so interesting.’‘It’s just what I am doing, dear Maggie. It was here they interchanged their vows; a different pair, indeed, though not altogether so superior, since to my mind you excel Anne Hathaway as much as I fall short of her marvellous bridegroom. That I am no Shakespeare is very true; yet it seems to me, Maggie, that when I say, “I love you,” even he could have said nothing more true and deep. I love you, I love you, I love you—do you hear me?’ continued the young man passionately.‘You frighten me, Willie,’ answered Maggie in trembling tones. ‘And then it is so foolish, since you know, that even if I said—what you would have me say—it could be of no use.’‘But you think it, youthinkit? That is all I ask,’ urged the other earnestly. ‘If matters were not as they are; if I got Mr.Erin’s consent; if I had sufficient means to offer you a home—not indeed worthy of you, for then it must needs be a palace—but comfort, competence, you would not say “Nay?” Dearest Maggie, my own dear darling Maggie, give me hope. “The miserable,” as Shakespeare tells us, “have no other medicine:” and I am very, very miserable; give me hope, the light of hope.’‘It would be a will-of-the-wisp, Willie.’‘No matter; I would bless it if it led me to my grave. If I had it, I could work, I could win fortune, even fame perhaps. You doubt it? Try me, try me!’ he continued vehemently, ‘and if after some time, a little, little time, no harvest comes of it, and my brain proves barren, why, then I will confess myself a dreamer: only in the meantime be mine in spirit; do not promise yourself to another; let us say a year; well, then, six months; you can surely wait six months for me, Maggie?’‘It would be six months of delusion, Willie.’‘Let it be so; a fool’s paradise, but still for me a paradise. I have not had so many happy hours that fate should grudge me these. I know I am asking a strange thing; still I am not like those selfish lovers who, being in the same pitiful case with me as to means, exact, like dogs in the manger, vows of eternal fidelity from those whom they will, in all probability, be never in a position to wed. I ask you not for your heart, Maggie, but for the loan of it; for six months’ grace, probation. If I fail to show myself worthy of you—if I fail to make a name—or rather to show the promise of making it within that time, then I return the loan. I do not say, as was doubtless said by him who sat here before me, “Be my wife!” I only say, “For six months to come, betroth yourself to no other man.” Come, Maggie, Frank Dennis is not so very pressing.’It was a dangerous card to play, this mention of his rival’s name, but it won the game. Dennis was as true as steel, but through a modest mistrust of his own merits—a thing that did not trouble William Henry—he was a backwardlover. He had had opportunities of declaring himself which he had neglected, thinking of himself too lowlily, or that the time was not yet ripe; or preferring the hope that lies in doubt, to the despair that is begotten of denial; and this, I think, had a little piqued the girl. She liked him well enough, well enough even to marry him; but she liked William Henry better, and other things being equal, would have preferred him for a husband. They were not equal, but it was possible—just possible, for the moment she had caught from her reputed cousin some of that confidence he felt in his own powers—that they might be made so. At all events, six months was not a space to ‘delve the parallels in beauty’s brow;’ and then it was so hard to deny him.‘You shall have your chance, Willie,’ she murmured, ‘though, as I have warned you, it is a very poor one.’He drew her nearer to him, despite some pretence of resistance, and would have touched her cheek with his lips, when the cottage doorwas suddenly thrown open behind them, and Mr. Erin appeared with an old chair in his hands, which he brandished like a quarter-staff above his head. He looked so flushed and excited that William Henry thought his audacious proposal had been overheard, and that he was about to be separated from his Margaret for ever by a violent death.‘It is mine! It is mine!’ cried the antiquary triumphantly. ‘I have bought Anne Hathaway’s chair.’CHAPTER VI.AN AUDACIOUS CRITICISM.Inthe case of crime, every person who is concerned in its detection looks very properly to motive: the law, indeed, in its award of punishment, disregards it, but then, as a famous authority (and himself in authority), namely, Mr. Bumble, observes, ‘the law is a hass.’ Where mankind falls into error is in looking for motive in all cases, whether criminal or otherwise. A very large number of persons are actuated by causes for which motive is far too serious a term. They are often moved by sudden impulse, nay, even by whim or caprice, to take very important steps. When interrogated, after the mischief has been done, as to why they did this or that, they reply, ‘I don’t know,’ and are discredited. Yet, as a matter of fact, themotive was so slight, or rather so momentary (for it was probably strong enough while it lasted), that they have really forgotten all about it.William Henry Erin, of whose character the world subsequently took a very different and erroneous view, was essentially a man of impulse. He had attributes, it is true, of another and even of an antagonistic kind. He was very punctual and diligent in his habits, he was neat and exact in his professional work; though a poet, his views of life, or at all events of his own position in it, were practical enough, yet he was impatient, passionate, and impulsive. His proposition to Margaret Slade had been made with such stress and energy that it was no wonder (albeit she knew his character better than most people) that she thought it founded upon some scheme for the future already formed in his own mind. Of its genuineness there could be no shadow of doubt, but she also took it for granted that he had some ground for expectation, which, at all events to his own mind, seemed solid, that within the space of time he had mentioned, something would occur to placehim in a better social position. Her impression, or rather her apprehension (for she did not much believe in his literary talents—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which showed that she was by no means over head and ears in love with him), was that he trusted to the publication of his poems to place him on the road to prosperity; his use of the words ‘fame and fortune’ certainly seemed to point to that direction, and what other road was there open to him?Whereas, as a matter of fact, there was not even that poor halfpennyworth of substratum for his hopes. Circumstances—the finding himself alone with her he loved on Shakespeare’s courting-seat—had, of course, been the immediate cause of his amazing appeal, but they were also the chief cause. The knowledge that Frank Dennis was of the party and could gain her ear at any moment, with the certainty of Mr. Erin’s advocacy to back him, had, moreover, made the young man madly jealous. To secure his beloved Margaret, even for a little while, from so dreaded a rival, was something gained; and then there was the chapter ofaccidents. We know not what a day may bring forth, how much less what may happen within six months! William Henry was but a boy, yet how many a grown man trusts to such contingencies! In the city, ‘twenty-four hours to turn about in’ is often considered time enough for a total change of fortune. It might be added that, unless Margaret should turn traitress and reveal his secret (which was impossible), he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his delay; but, to do the young man justice, that idea had not entered into his mind. Passion with the bit between her teeth had run away with him.As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr.Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—But, by all above,These blenches gave my heart another youth.He does not put his tongue in his cheek atmorality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy dayssnatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.In association with Mr. Jervis the young man ransacked the little town for mementoes of its patron saint, and was fortunate enough to discover a few, which, though of doubtful authenticity, were very welcome to the enthusiastic collector. If they were not the rose,i.e.actual relics, they were near the rose, as proximity is counted in such cases. No doubt it is the same with more sacred relics—in a deficiency of toe-nails of any particular saint it must be something, though not of course so rapturous, to secure a toe-nail of some saint in the next century. As regards Shakespeare, it is certainly one of the marvels in connection with that marvellous man that not a scrap ofthe handwriting, save his autograph, of one who wrote so much ever turns up to reward the pains of the searcher; nay, there is only one letter extant, even of those that were written to him—a commonplace request for a loan from the man who afterwards became his son-in-law; under which circumstances, when one comes to think about it, there may be some excuse for the language used by Mr. Samuel Erin to that reckless incendiary, Mr. Williams, of Clopton House.If to be indifferent, as William Henry had been suspected of being, to the charms of Shakespeare was a crime in Mr. Erin’s eyes, it may be easily imagined how he resented the least imputation of any portion of his idol having been composed of clay. There were circumstances connected with his union with Anne Hathaway, and also with that little adventure of his with Justice Shallow’s deer, which were dangerous to allude to in Mr. Erin’s presence; and if the moral qualities of his hero (albeit, we may have gathered, Mr. Erin was himself, though Protestant, by no means Puritan) could not insafety be called in question, any suggestion of weakness in him as a writer was still more unendurable. Nevertheless, even prudent Frank Dennis contrived to put his foot in it in this very matter, and thereby narrowly escaped falling out of Mr. Erin’s good graces for the term of his natural life. It was during an expedition to Charlecote; the little party, having left their vehicle at the gate, were walking through the park, Mr. Erin wrapped in contemplation—endeavouring perhaps to identify the very oak (in ‘As You Like It’) where the poor sequestered stag had ‘come to languish’—while the young people a few paces behind were indulging in a little quiet banter upon the forbidden subject of deer-stealing.‘I suppose that he did steal that deer?’ observed Margaret slily in a hushed whisper.‘There is no doubt of it,’ answered Frank; ‘he had to fly from Stratford to London for that very reason, to get out of Sir Thomas’s way.’‘Nay, nay,’ put in William Henry, I am afraid with some slight imitation of his father’ssolemn manner when dealing with the sacred topic; ‘let us not say steal, it was what “the wise do call convey.” We do a good deal of it in New Inn ourselves.’‘Yonder are our “velvet friends,”’ said Mr. Erin, pointing to a herd of deer in the distance.The allusion caused some trepidation in his companions, as chiming in only too opportunely with their late disloyal remarks; and it was much to their relief that Mr. Erin proceeded, as was his wont, to indulge himself in quotation.‘And indeed, my lord,The wretched animal heaved forth such groansThat their discharge did stretch his leather coatAlmost to bursting; and the big round tearsCoursed one another down his innocent noseIn piteous chase.’‘What a graphic picture! “His innocent nose.” Who but Shakespeare would have dared to write “his innocent nose?”’‘Very true, sir,’ said William Henry gravely. ‘“His innocent nose.”’Not a muscle of his face betrayed thedrollery within him. He certainly possessed some tricks of the actor’s trade. Margaret stooped to pluck a daisy, an action which sufficed to account for the colour rushing to her cheeks. Frank Dennis, whose wits were not of the nimble sort fitted for such sudden emergency, felt he was about to suffocate. It seemed to him he had no alternative between speech—the act of saying something, no matter what—and an explosion.‘With regard to deer shedding tears,’ he observed, ‘I have a friend who is a great naturalist, who tells me, as a matter of fact, that they can’t do it.’‘Can’t do what?’ inquired Mr. Erin curtly.‘He says that from the peculiar formation of the ducts of the deer, or perhaps from the absence of them—— I know nothing about the matter myself, sir,’ put in the unhappy Frank precipitately, for the antiquary was looking daggers at him.‘You know quite as much about it as your friend then,’ thundered Mr. Erin. ‘Great heavens! that a man like him, or you, or anybody,should venture to pick a hole in one of the noblest descriptions of the language: to find faults in Shakespeare himself! You remind me, sir, of the sacrilegious fellow in France, the other day, who gave it as his opinion that if he had been present at the Creation, he could have suggested improvements.’‘But indeed, sir, it was not my opinion.’‘It is quite as bad to quote those of infamous persons as to originate them yourself.’Mr. Frank Dennis had very little of the serpent in him, not even its prudence; his sense of justice was shocked by this outrageous speech.‘But it is a mere question of fact and science—— ‘‘Science,’ interrupted the other vehemently, ‘that is the argument of the Atheist against the Scriptures. Science, indeed! what is science when compared with the genius of Shakespeare? He told you, sir, that deer shed tears, and if they don’t, why—damn their eyes—they ought to!’f98‘Science:’ interrupted the antiquary, vehemently. ‘That is the argument of the atheist against the Scriptures.’The argument was, at least, conclusive; nothing more remained to be said, or was said. Mr. Erin stalked on like a turkey-cock ruffled; his idol had been insulted, and he felt that he had done well to be angry. Every deer he saw stimulated his wrath. ‘Confound the fellow!’ he murmured as he passed the antlered herd, ‘it would serve him right if they tossed him.’ It even crossed his mind perhaps that Margaret was right after all in receiving Dennis’s attentions so coldly; that he was certainly a very pig-headed young man.Frank Dennis, too, good-natured as he was, was not a little put out. For the moment he felt almost as disrespectful towards Shakespeare as Sydney Smith’s friend was to the Equator; but his eye fell on Margaret, and he put a bridle on his tongue.His sense of annoyance soon faded away, but with the antiquary it was not so easily effaced. This incident was of considerable advantage to William Henry and his little plan. In a company of three, when one of them has fallen out of our favour, one naturally rather‘cottons’ to the other, if it is only to show the offender what he has forfeited by his misconduct; and from thenceforward Mr. Erin showed himself at least less severe towards the young man who bore his name. Nay, what was of more consequence, the symptoms he had exhibited of favouring Frank Dennis’s pretensions to his niece’s hand manifestly slackened; he no longer troubled himself to throw the young people together. On the other hand, though of course with no idea that there was risk in it (for he both despised him and ‘despised his youth’), he suffered William Henry and Margaret to ‘foregather’ as much as they pleased. He still felt so resentful to Frank’s sacrilegious ideas as respected the customs of deer when under emotion, that it was distasteful to him to be shut up with him as a companion; and in order to mitigate his society he took an inside place for William Henry (notwithstanding that, except in the matter of MSS. and first editions, he had a frugal mind) in the coach to town.
CHAPTER IV.A REAL ENTHUSIAST.I amafraid it is rather taken for granted by parents in general, as regards any behaviour they may adopt towards their offspring, that religion is always upon their own side. And yet there is a very noteworthy text about ‘provoking our children to wrath,’ which it is a mistake to ignore. Wise and reverend signors may well have learnt by experience to take trifling annoyances with equanimity; but theamour propreof the young is a tender shoot, and very sensitive to rough handling.The most sensitive plant of all is the lad with a turn for literature; and, as a rule, parents have the least patience with him. When the turn is not a mere taste, but a natural gift, this does not much matter; no true flame was everput out by the breath of contempt: but when it halts midway the youth has a bad time of it. He shivers at every sneer, without the means of giving it the lie. ‘Like a dart it strikes to his liver,’ because his armour, unlike that of true genius, is not arrow-proof. He knows that he is not the fool that his folk take him for, but he has an uneasy consciousness that they are partly right; that his powers are not equal to his pretensions. This was the case with William Henry Erin.He had a turn for literature, and, if an uncommon facility for writing indifferent verses is any proof of it, even for poetry; and he found nobody to admit it, not even Margaret. ‘It is very good, Willie, for a first attempt,’ was the fatal eulogium she once passed upon the most cherished of his poetical productions; and his father, as we have seen, made no scruple of ridiculing his literary efforts. If the boy’s predilection for such matters had interfered with his professional duties, it might have been excusable enough; but the conveyancers to whom William Henry was articled were quitesatisfied with him. He was very careful and diligent, and though he had come to years of indiscretion, far from dissipated. If he loitered on his way to his employers’ chambers in theNew Inn, it was to turn over the leaves of some old poem on a book-stall, rather than to gaze on the young woman who might be behind it. Still, not being perfection, it was natural that he should feel resentment at his father’s harshness, and at the slights to which his muse was exposed at his unsympathising hands. He had never had any one to sympathise with his poetical aspirations except his friend Reginald Talbot, a fellow-clerk of his own age, who was also devoted to the Muses; and Talbot’s praise had its drawbacks. First, he did not think it worth much; and secondly, it could not be obtained without reciprocity; and it went against William Henry’s conscience to praise Talbot’s poems.‘Well,’ thought the young man, as he looked out of his attic window, which commanded a distant view of Stratford Church, ‘there lies a man who was as little appreciated at my age as I am; and yet he made some noise in the world. He, too, some say, was a scrivener’s clerk. He, too, was called Will—which is at least an interesting coincidence. He, too, fellin love at my age.’ Here his reflections ended with a sigh, for the parallel extended no further. Shakespeare had not only wooed, but—with a little too much ease, indeed—had won; whereas Margaret Slade was far out of his reach. He had a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Erin intended her to marry Dennis, and had brought him down with him to Stratford ‘to throw the young people together,’ as he would doubtless express it. Young people, indeed! why, Frank Dennis was old enough—well, scarcely, to be her father, unless he had been unusually precocious, but certainly to know better. ‘Crabbed age’—the man was thirty if he was a day—‘and youth cannot live together.’ It was a most monstrous proposition! On the other hand, what could he, poor William Henry, do? If he could persuade Maggie to run away with him to-morrow, they must literally run, for he had hardly money enough, after that Bristol trip, to pay the first pike out of Stratford, and far less a post-chaise.As he thought of his unacknowledged merits, and of the many obstacles to his union,he grew bitter against the whole scheme of creation. If poetic impulse could have projected him fifty years forward, he would doubtless have exclaimed, with the bard of Bon Gaultier,—Cussed be the clerk and the parson,Cussed be the whole concern!but not having that vent for his feelings, he only loosened his neckcloth a bit and looked moody. Poor fellow! he had but two wishes in the world—to marry Margaret, and to get into print; and both these desires, just because he had no money, were denied him.At that very time, Margaret at her window was thinking of him. She was not—she was certain she was not, the idea was quite ridiculous—in love with him; but, thanks to his father’s conduct, she felt that pity for him which is akin to love. And he was certainly very handsome, and very fond of her. He had been foolish to come down to Stratford when it was clear her uncle didn’t want him; but it was ‘very nice of him,’ too, and since he was there and upon his holiday—his one holiday in the year, poor fellow—it wascruel to snub him! Frank Dennis didn’t snub him, that she would say for Frank: he was a kind, honest fellow, though rather old-fashioned, and just a trifle heavy in hand. She wished William Henry would talk like him when addressing his father; though when addressingher, she confessed to herself that she preferred William Henry’s way. It was really distressing to see her uncle and his son together; they mixed no better than oil and vinegar. She was well pleased to remember that Mr. Jervis, the Stratford poet, was coming that morning to breakfast with them, since his presence would prevent anything unseemly; moreover, he would probably take her uncle and Frank Dennis away with him to investigate antiquities, which would leave William Henry and herself to themselves.John Jervis was but a carpenter in a small way of business, but he was much respected in the town, and had made himself a name beyond it, on account of the interest he took in all Shakespearean matters. The gentry in the neighbourhood spoke of him as ‘a civil and inoffensive creature,’ but he was ‘correspondedwith’ by men of letters and learning in London. His position would have been better than it was had he not been so foolish as to publish a volume of poems—to be paid by subscription. This had subjected him to something much worse than criticism—to patronage. Every one who had advanced a few shillings for the appearance of that unfortunate volume became in a sense his master, and some of them exacted interest for their investment in advice, remonstrance, and dictation. It was a foolish thing of John Jervis to set up his trade—not carpentering, but the other—in Stratford-on-Avon. In Paisley there are, I have heard say, at this present moment fifty poets, all complaining that the world which will give them a monument after their death, in the meantime permits them to starve; but Paisley is a place which is scarcely poetic to begin with, whereas to be a local poet in Stratford was like setting up a shed for small coal in Newcastle. The good man had become quite aware of this by this time; he was very dissatisfied with his published productions (it is a common case; whatwe have in our desk seems as superior to what lies on our table as that which moves in our brain is to what lies in our desk). He would have given as much to suppress his little volume as William Henry would have given to gethisown broadcast over an admiring land. And yet there was no question of comparison between them as respected merit. John Jervis was, within certain narrow limits, a true poet: what he saw he noted, what he noted he felt; so far he followed his great master. He even emitted a modest light of his own, which was not reflected: he was not a star, but he was a glow-worm. Most of us are but worms without the glow.Every one who came to Stratford at that time for Shakespeare’s sake—and no one came for any other reason—was recommended to apply to John Jervis for information. On receiving any summons of this nature he put aside his carpenter’s tools, took off his apron, and donned his Sabbath garb. A carpenter in his Sunday clothes in these days is a sad sight; he represents one branch of his business only,that of the undertaker: but in the times of which we write it was not so. Wigs were not yet gone out of fashion in Warwickshire, but John Jervis could not afford what was called the ‘Citizen’s Sunday Buckle’ or ‘Bob Major,’ because it had three tiers of curls. He had too much good taste to use the ‘Minor Bob’ or Hair Cap, short in the neck to show the stock buckle, and stroked away from the face so as to seem (like Tristram Shandy) as though the wearer had been skating against the wind. He wore his own grey hair and a modest grey suit, in which, however, none but a flippant young fellow like Master William Henry Erin could have likened him to a master baker. His face was homely but pleasant, and had a certain dignity; his manner retiring but not reticent. It was his business to answer questions, but he did not volunteer information. He had, indeed, a secret contempt for the majority of his clients; they had more appetite for the Shakespearean husks, the few dry details that could be picked up concerning their Idol, than for the corn—what manner of man he had been inspirit, or how the scenery about his home had affected his writings. Jervis found Mr. Erin to be no better than his other visitors: hungry for facts, greedy for particulars, and combative. He talked of the Confession of Faith found in the roof of the house in Henley Street, and rubbed his hands, notwithstanding that his enemy had since retracted his belief in it, over Malone’s credulity.‘“An unworthy member of the Holy Catholic religion,” indeed! It is monstrous, incredible.’‘That phrase had reference to the father, however,’ observed Jervis.‘True, but that was the art of the forger, himself of the old faith, no doubt. He wished to make our Shakespeare a born Papist. Now, that he was a good Protestant is indubitable. “I’d beat him like a dog,” says Sir Andrew. “What! for being a Puritan?” returns Sir Toby. What irony! You are of my opinion, I hope, Mr. Jervis?’‘I have scarcely formed an opinion upon the matter,’ was the modest reply. ‘Shakespearewas Catholic in one sense, but I agree with you that he was not one to be much comforted by the “holy sacrifice of the mass,” as the so-called Confession put it.’‘I should think not, indeed. He was not partial to priests. “When thou liesthowling,”’ quoted Mr. Erin triumphantly.‘Still, being a stage-player, I doubt if he was partial to the Puritans. No; such things moved him neither way; religious controversies he looked upon as on other quarrels, as “valour misbegot.” If he could not see into the future, he saw five hundred years ahead of his contemporaries, who were burning Francis Kett for heresy at Norwich.’Mr. Erin was not certain whether Kett was a Protestant or a Catholic (on which depended his view of the circumstance), so he only shook his head.‘You mean, Mr. Jervis,’ said Margaret timidly, ‘that in Shakespeare’s eyes there were no heretics?’The man in grey looked at his gentle inquirer and bowed his head assentingly. ‘None,as I think, young lady, save those who disbelieved in good.’‘That is not established,’ said Mr. Erin argumentatively.‘I am afraid your uncle thinksmea heretic,’ said Mr. Jervis, smiling. Then, perceiving that Margaret looked interested, he told her of the marvellous boy—name unknown, but whose fame still survived—who had been Shakespeare’s contemporary at Stratford. How, so the legend ran, he had been thought his equal in genius, and his future greatness been prophesied with the same confidence, but who had died in youth, a mute, inglorious Shakespeare.‘I often picture to myself,’ said the old man dreamily, ‘the friendship of those two boys.’‘Do you think they went out poaching together?’ inquired William Henry demurely. He was not without humour, and was also perhaps a little jealous of the attention Margaret paid their visitor.‘Poaching!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin angrily, ‘how gross and contemptible are your ideas, sir!’‘Still,’ interposed Dennis, his sense of justiceaiding his wish to stand between Mr. Erin’s wrath and its object—Margaret’s cousin—‘Shakespeare did transgress in that way. It is not likely that he strained at a hare if he swallowed a deer.’‘No doubt he poached,’ admitted Jervis gravely. ‘He was very human, and did all things that became a boy. But I was thinking rather of the companionship of the two boys than their pursuits. Their talk was not of hares nor of rabbits. How one would like to know their boyish confidences! what were their ambitions, their aspirations, their views of life; which one was about to leave, and in which the other was to fill so large a space in the thoughts of man—for ever. It was in this little town they lived and talked together; learnt their lessons from one book perhaps, in yonder school, each without a thought of the other’s immortality, albeit of such different kinds.’The solemnity of the speaker’s manner, and the genuineness of feeling which his tone displayed, had no little effect upon his audience,but on each in a different way. Margaret’s mind was stirred to its depths by this simple dream-picture, and seeing her so the two young men felt a touch of sympathy with it.‘Is there any sure foundation to go upon as to this playmate of Shakespeare’s?’ inquired Mr. Erin, note-book in hand—‘any record, any document?’The visitor shook his head. ‘Nothing, but wherever, in the country round, Shakespeare’s youth is alluded to, this story of his friend is told. It is a local legend, that is all; but it seems to me to have life in it. The world outside knows nothing of it. It interests itself in Shakespeare only, and but little in his belongings; but with us, breathing the air he breathed, walking on the same ground he trod, things are different; we still fancy him amongst us, and not alone. There is Hamnet, too; we still speak of Hamnet.’It was fortunate for William Henry that he repressed the observation that rose to his lips. He was about to say, ‘You don’t mean Hamlet, do you?’The same idea I am afraid occurred to Mr. Dennis, but for even a briefer space; he felt that there must be some mistake somewhere; but also that he himself might be making it.‘Buried here, August the 11th, 1596,’ observed Mr. Erin, as though he was reading from the register itself.‘Just so,’ continued Jervis, ‘only a little over two hundred years ago. He was eleven years old, too young to understand the greatness of him who begat him, yet old enough to have an inkling of it. Once a year or so, as it is believed, his father came home to Stratford fresh from the companionship of the great London wits and poets—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Camden, and Selden. What meetings must those have been with his only son; the boy whom he fondly hoped, but hoped in vain, would inherit the proceeds of his fame! I wonder how his mother used to speak of her husband to her children? Did she excuse to them his long absence, his dwelling afar off, ordid she inveigh against it? Did she recognise the splendour of his genius, or did she only love him? Or did she not love him?’‘Let us hope she was not unworthy of him,’ said Mr. Erin, his enthusiasm, stirred by the other’s eloquence, rising on a stronger wing than usual.‘As a wife she was sorely tried,’ murmured Mr. Jervis. ‘I love to think of her less than of Hamnet, so lowly born in one sense, and in the other of such illustrious parentage. The news of his father’s growing fame must have reached the boy, and the contrast could not fail to have struck him. Then to have seen that father bending over his little bed, to have kissed that noble face, and felt himself in his embrace; to have known that he was the child whom Shakespeare’s soul loved best in all the world, what a sensation, what an experience!’‘Some mementoes of the immortal bard are, I hope, still to be purchased?’ observed Mr. Erin curtly. He had engaged Mr. Jervis’sservices for practical purposes, and began to resent this waste of time—which was money—upon sentimental hypothesis. Shakespeare’s wife was a topic one could sympathise with; there was documentary evidence in existence concerning her, but over little Hamnet’s grave there was not even a tombstone.‘Mementoes? Yes, there is mulberry-wood enough to last some time,’ said Mr. Jervis slily; ‘you shall have your pick of them.’‘But no MSS.?’‘Not that I know of. There has been a report, however, of late, that Mr. Williams, of Clopton House, has found some that were removed from New Place at the time of the fire.’‘Great heavens!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, with much excitement, ‘what, from New Place, Shakespeare’s own home? Let us go at once; all other things can wait.—William Henry, come along with us, and bring your little book.—You can stay here with Maggie, Dennis, till I come back.’If he could have dispensed with thepresence of John Jervis himself, he would have been glad to do so; for what is true of a feast is also true of treasure-trove, ‘the fewer (the finders) the better the fare.’
A REAL ENTHUSIAST.
I amafraid it is rather taken for granted by parents in general, as regards any behaviour they may adopt towards their offspring, that religion is always upon their own side. And yet there is a very noteworthy text about ‘provoking our children to wrath,’ which it is a mistake to ignore. Wise and reverend signors may well have learnt by experience to take trifling annoyances with equanimity; but theamour propreof the young is a tender shoot, and very sensitive to rough handling.
The most sensitive plant of all is the lad with a turn for literature; and, as a rule, parents have the least patience with him. When the turn is not a mere taste, but a natural gift, this does not much matter; no true flame was everput out by the breath of contempt: but when it halts midway the youth has a bad time of it. He shivers at every sneer, without the means of giving it the lie. ‘Like a dart it strikes to his liver,’ because his armour, unlike that of true genius, is not arrow-proof. He knows that he is not the fool that his folk take him for, but he has an uneasy consciousness that they are partly right; that his powers are not equal to his pretensions. This was the case with William Henry Erin.
He had a turn for literature, and, if an uncommon facility for writing indifferent verses is any proof of it, even for poetry; and he found nobody to admit it, not even Margaret. ‘It is very good, Willie, for a first attempt,’ was the fatal eulogium she once passed upon the most cherished of his poetical productions; and his father, as we have seen, made no scruple of ridiculing his literary efforts. If the boy’s predilection for such matters had interfered with his professional duties, it might have been excusable enough; but the conveyancers to whom William Henry was articled were quitesatisfied with him. He was very careful and diligent, and though he had come to years of indiscretion, far from dissipated. If he loitered on his way to his employers’ chambers in theNew Inn, it was to turn over the leaves of some old poem on a book-stall, rather than to gaze on the young woman who might be behind it. Still, not being perfection, it was natural that he should feel resentment at his father’s harshness, and at the slights to which his muse was exposed at his unsympathising hands. He had never had any one to sympathise with his poetical aspirations except his friend Reginald Talbot, a fellow-clerk of his own age, who was also devoted to the Muses; and Talbot’s praise had its drawbacks. First, he did not think it worth much; and secondly, it could not be obtained without reciprocity; and it went against William Henry’s conscience to praise Talbot’s poems.
‘Well,’ thought the young man, as he looked out of his attic window, which commanded a distant view of Stratford Church, ‘there lies a man who was as little appreciated at my age as I am; and yet he made some noise in the world. He, too, some say, was a scrivener’s clerk. He, too, was called Will—which is at least an interesting coincidence. He, too, fellin love at my age.’ Here his reflections ended with a sigh, for the parallel extended no further. Shakespeare had not only wooed, but—with a little too much ease, indeed—had won; whereas Margaret Slade was far out of his reach. He had a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Erin intended her to marry Dennis, and had brought him down with him to Stratford ‘to throw the young people together,’ as he would doubtless express it. Young people, indeed! why, Frank Dennis was old enough—well, scarcely, to be her father, unless he had been unusually precocious, but certainly to know better. ‘Crabbed age’—the man was thirty if he was a day—‘and youth cannot live together.’ It was a most monstrous proposition! On the other hand, what could he, poor William Henry, do? If he could persuade Maggie to run away with him to-morrow, they must literally run, for he had hardly money enough, after that Bristol trip, to pay the first pike out of Stratford, and far less a post-chaise.
As he thought of his unacknowledged merits, and of the many obstacles to his union,he grew bitter against the whole scheme of creation. If poetic impulse could have projected him fifty years forward, he would doubtless have exclaimed, with the bard of Bon Gaultier,—
Cussed be the clerk and the parson,Cussed be the whole concern!
but not having that vent for his feelings, he only loosened his neckcloth a bit and looked moody. Poor fellow! he had but two wishes in the world—to marry Margaret, and to get into print; and both these desires, just because he had no money, were denied him.
At that very time, Margaret at her window was thinking of him. She was not—she was certain she was not, the idea was quite ridiculous—in love with him; but, thanks to his father’s conduct, she felt that pity for him which is akin to love. And he was certainly very handsome, and very fond of her. He had been foolish to come down to Stratford when it was clear her uncle didn’t want him; but it was ‘very nice of him,’ too, and since he was there and upon his holiday—his one holiday in the year, poor fellow—it wascruel to snub him! Frank Dennis didn’t snub him, that she would say for Frank: he was a kind, honest fellow, though rather old-fashioned, and just a trifle heavy in hand. She wished William Henry would talk like him when addressing his father; though when addressingher, she confessed to herself that she preferred William Henry’s way. It was really distressing to see her uncle and his son together; they mixed no better than oil and vinegar. She was well pleased to remember that Mr. Jervis, the Stratford poet, was coming that morning to breakfast with them, since his presence would prevent anything unseemly; moreover, he would probably take her uncle and Frank Dennis away with him to investigate antiquities, which would leave William Henry and herself to themselves.
John Jervis was but a carpenter in a small way of business, but he was much respected in the town, and had made himself a name beyond it, on account of the interest he took in all Shakespearean matters. The gentry in the neighbourhood spoke of him as ‘a civil and inoffensive creature,’ but he was ‘correspondedwith’ by men of letters and learning in London. His position would have been better than it was had he not been so foolish as to publish a volume of poems—to be paid by subscription. This had subjected him to something much worse than criticism—to patronage. Every one who had advanced a few shillings for the appearance of that unfortunate volume became in a sense his master, and some of them exacted interest for their investment in advice, remonstrance, and dictation. It was a foolish thing of John Jervis to set up his trade—not carpentering, but the other—in Stratford-on-Avon. In Paisley there are, I have heard say, at this present moment fifty poets, all complaining that the world which will give them a monument after their death, in the meantime permits them to starve; but Paisley is a place which is scarcely poetic to begin with, whereas to be a local poet in Stratford was like setting up a shed for small coal in Newcastle. The good man had become quite aware of this by this time; he was very dissatisfied with his published productions (it is a common case; whatwe have in our desk seems as superior to what lies on our table as that which moves in our brain is to what lies in our desk). He would have given as much to suppress his little volume as William Henry would have given to gethisown broadcast over an admiring land. And yet there was no question of comparison between them as respected merit. John Jervis was, within certain narrow limits, a true poet: what he saw he noted, what he noted he felt; so far he followed his great master. He even emitted a modest light of his own, which was not reflected: he was not a star, but he was a glow-worm. Most of us are but worms without the glow.
Every one who came to Stratford at that time for Shakespeare’s sake—and no one came for any other reason—was recommended to apply to John Jervis for information. On receiving any summons of this nature he put aside his carpenter’s tools, took off his apron, and donned his Sabbath garb. A carpenter in his Sunday clothes in these days is a sad sight; he represents one branch of his business only,that of the undertaker: but in the times of which we write it was not so. Wigs were not yet gone out of fashion in Warwickshire, but John Jervis could not afford what was called the ‘Citizen’s Sunday Buckle’ or ‘Bob Major,’ because it had three tiers of curls. He had too much good taste to use the ‘Minor Bob’ or Hair Cap, short in the neck to show the stock buckle, and stroked away from the face so as to seem (like Tristram Shandy) as though the wearer had been skating against the wind. He wore his own grey hair and a modest grey suit, in which, however, none but a flippant young fellow like Master William Henry Erin could have likened him to a master baker. His face was homely but pleasant, and had a certain dignity; his manner retiring but not reticent. It was his business to answer questions, but he did not volunteer information. He had, indeed, a secret contempt for the majority of his clients; they had more appetite for the Shakespearean husks, the few dry details that could be picked up concerning their Idol, than for the corn—what manner of man he had been inspirit, or how the scenery about his home had affected his writings. Jervis found Mr. Erin to be no better than his other visitors: hungry for facts, greedy for particulars, and combative. He talked of the Confession of Faith found in the roof of the house in Henley Street, and rubbed his hands, notwithstanding that his enemy had since retracted his belief in it, over Malone’s credulity.
‘“An unworthy member of the Holy Catholic religion,” indeed! It is monstrous, incredible.’
‘That phrase had reference to the father, however,’ observed Jervis.
‘True, but that was the art of the forger, himself of the old faith, no doubt. He wished to make our Shakespeare a born Papist. Now, that he was a good Protestant is indubitable. “I’d beat him like a dog,” says Sir Andrew. “What! for being a Puritan?” returns Sir Toby. What irony! You are of my opinion, I hope, Mr. Jervis?’
‘I have scarcely formed an opinion upon the matter,’ was the modest reply. ‘Shakespearewas Catholic in one sense, but I agree with you that he was not one to be much comforted by the “holy sacrifice of the mass,” as the so-called Confession put it.’
‘I should think not, indeed. He was not partial to priests. “When thou liesthowling,”’ quoted Mr. Erin triumphantly.
‘Still, being a stage-player, I doubt if he was partial to the Puritans. No; such things moved him neither way; religious controversies he looked upon as on other quarrels, as “valour misbegot.” If he could not see into the future, he saw five hundred years ahead of his contemporaries, who were burning Francis Kett for heresy at Norwich.’
Mr. Erin was not certain whether Kett was a Protestant or a Catholic (on which depended his view of the circumstance), so he only shook his head.
‘You mean, Mr. Jervis,’ said Margaret timidly, ‘that in Shakespeare’s eyes there were no heretics?’
The man in grey looked at his gentle inquirer and bowed his head assentingly. ‘None,as I think, young lady, save those who disbelieved in good.’
‘That is not established,’ said Mr. Erin argumentatively.
‘I am afraid your uncle thinksmea heretic,’ said Mr. Jervis, smiling. Then, perceiving that Margaret looked interested, he told her of the marvellous boy—name unknown, but whose fame still survived—who had been Shakespeare’s contemporary at Stratford. How, so the legend ran, he had been thought his equal in genius, and his future greatness been prophesied with the same confidence, but who had died in youth, a mute, inglorious Shakespeare.
‘I often picture to myself,’ said the old man dreamily, ‘the friendship of those two boys.’
‘Do you think they went out poaching together?’ inquired William Henry demurely. He was not without humour, and was also perhaps a little jealous of the attention Margaret paid their visitor.
‘Poaching!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin angrily, ‘how gross and contemptible are your ideas, sir!’
‘Still,’ interposed Dennis, his sense of justiceaiding his wish to stand between Mr. Erin’s wrath and its object—Margaret’s cousin—‘Shakespeare did transgress in that way. It is not likely that he strained at a hare if he swallowed a deer.’
‘No doubt he poached,’ admitted Jervis gravely. ‘He was very human, and did all things that became a boy. But I was thinking rather of the companionship of the two boys than their pursuits. Their talk was not of hares nor of rabbits. How one would like to know their boyish confidences! what were their ambitions, their aspirations, their views of life; which one was about to leave, and in which the other was to fill so large a space in the thoughts of man—for ever. It was in this little town they lived and talked together; learnt their lessons from one book perhaps, in yonder school, each without a thought of the other’s immortality, albeit of such different kinds.’
The solemnity of the speaker’s manner, and the genuineness of feeling which his tone displayed, had no little effect upon his audience,but on each in a different way. Margaret’s mind was stirred to its depths by this simple dream-picture, and seeing her so the two young men felt a touch of sympathy with it.
‘Is there any sure foundation to go upon as to this playmate of Shakespeare’s?’ inquired Mr. Erin, note-book in hand—‘any record, any document?’
The visitor shook his head. ‘Nothing, but wherever, in the country round, Shakespeare’s youth is alluded to, this story of his friend is told. It is a local legend, that is all; but it seems to me to have life in it. The world outside knows nothing of it. It interests itself in Shakespeare only, and but little in his belongings; but with us, breathing the air he breathed, walking on the same ground he trod, things are different; we still fancy him amongst us, and not alone. There is Hamnet, too; we still speak of Hamnet.’
It was fortunate for William Henry that he repressed the observation that rose to his lips. He was about to say, ‘You don’t mean Hamlet, do you?’
The same idea I am afraid occurred to Mr. Dennis, but for even a briefer space; he felt that there must be some mistake somewhere; but also that he himself might be making it.
‘Buried here, August the 11th, 1596,’ observed Mr. Erin, as though he was reading from the register itself.
‘Just so,’ continued Jervis, ‘only a little over two hundred years ago. He was eleven years old, too young to understand the greatness of him who begat him, yet old enough to have an inkling of it. Once a year or so, as it is believed, his father came home to Stratford fresh from the companionship of the great London wits and poets—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Camden, and Selden. What meetings must those have been with his only son; the boy whom he fondly hoped, but hoped in vain, would inherit the proceeds of his fame! I wonder how his mother used to speak of her husband to her children? Did she excuse to them his long absence, his dwelling afar off, ordid she inveigh against it? Did she recognise the splendour of his genius, or did she only love him? Or did she not love him?’
‘Let us hope she was not unworthy of him,’ said Mr. Erin, his enthusiasm, stirred by the other’s eloquence, rising on a stronger wing than usual.
‘As a wife she was sorely tried,’ murmured Mr. Jervis. ‘I love to think of her less than of Hamnet, so lowly born in one sense, and in the other of such illustrious parentage. The news of his father’s growing fame must have reached the boy, and the contrast could not fail to have struck him. Then to have seen that father bending over his little bed, to have kissed that noble face, and felt himself in his embrace; to have known that he was the child whom Shakespeare’s soul loved best in all the world, what a sensation, what an experience!’
‘Some mementoes of the immortal bard are, I hope, still to be purchased?’ observed Mr. Erin curtly. He had engaged Mr. Jervis’sservices for practical purposes, and began to resent this waste of time—which was money—upon sentimental hypothesis. Shakespeare’s wife was a topic one could sympathise with; there was documentary evidence in existence concerning her, but over little Hamnet’s grave there was not even a tombstone.
‘Mementoes? Yes, there is mulberry-wood enough to last some time,’ said Mr. Jervis slily; ‘you shall have your pick of them.’
‘But no MSS.?’
‘Not that I know of. There has been a report, however, of late, that Mr. Williams, of Clopton House, has found some that were removed from New Place at the time of the fire.’
‘Great heavens!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, with much excitement, ‘what, from New Place, Shakespeare’s own home? Let us go at once; all other things can wait.—William Henry, come along with us, and bring your little book.—You can stay here with Maggie, Dennis, till I come back.’
If he could have dispensed with thepresence of John Jervis himself, he would have been glad to do so; for what is true of a feast is also true of treasure-trove, ‘the fewer (the finders) the better the fare.’
CHAPTER V.THE OLD SETTLE.WILLIAM HENRY, far from sharing his father’s enthusiasm at any time, was on this occasion less than ever inclined to applaud it. If Clopton House should be found full of Shakespearean MSS., it would not afford him half the pleasurehe would have derived from atête-à-têtewith his cousin Margaret; a treat which, it seemed, was to be thrown away upon Frank Dennis. Why didn’t Mr. Erin selecthimto take notes for him from the musty documents? A question the folly of which only a high state of irritation could excuse. He knew perfectly well that his own dexterity and promptness in copying had caused himself to be chosen for the undesirable task, and that knowledge irritated him the more. It was only when he could be of some material use to him, as in the present instance, that his father took the least account of him. If he could bring himself to steal one of those precious documents, was his bitter reflection, and secrete it as some wretched slave secretes a diamond in the mines of Golconda, then, perhaps, and then only, he might be permitted to marry Margaret. For a bit of parchment with Shakespeare’s name upon it, most certainly for a whole play in his handwriting, Mr. Samuel Erin, it was probable, would have bartered fifty nieces, and thrown his own soul into the bargain. Our young friend, however, was quiteaware of what a poet of a later date would have told him, that ‘an angry fancy’ is a poor ware to go to market with; so, with as good a grace as he could, he put on his hat and accompanied Mr. Erin and his cicerone to Clopton House, which was but a few yards down the street.It was a good-sized mansion of great antiquity, but had fallen into disrepair and even decay. Its present tenant, Mr. Williams, was a farmer in apparently far from prosperous circumstances. Half of the many chambers were in total darkness, the windows having been bricked up to save the window tax, and the handsome old-world furniture was everywhere becoming a prey to the moth and the worm. As a matter of fact, however, these were not evidences of poverty. Mr. Williams had enough and to spare of worldly goods, only of some of them he did not think so much as other people of more cultivated taste would have done. A Warwickshire farmer of to-day would have considered many things as valuable in Clopton House which their unappreciative proprietor had relegated to the cock-loft. It was to thatapartment, indeed, that Mr. Erin was led as soon as the nature of his inquiries—which he had stated generally, and to avoid suspicion of his actual object, to be concerning antiquities—was understood. The room was filled with mouldering household goods of remote antiquity, chiefly of the time of Henry VII., in whose reign the proprietor of the house, Sir Hugh Clopton, had been Lord Mayor of London. Among other things, for example, there was an emblazoned representation on vellum of Elizabeth, Henry’s wife, as she lay in state in the chapel of the Tower, where she died in child-birth.‘You may have that if you like,’ said Mr. Williams to his visitor carelessly. He was a fat, coarse man, but very good-natured. ‘For, being on vellum, it is no use to light the fire with.’‘You don’t mean to say you light your fire with anything I see here?’ gasped Mr. Erin.‘Well, no, there’s nothing much left of that sort of rubbish; we made a clean sweep of it all about a fortnight since.’‘There were no old MSS., I hope?’‘MSS.! Heaps on ’em. They came from New Place at the time of the fire, you see, though Heaven knows why any one should have thought them worth saving. They were all piled in that little room yonder, and as I wanted a place for some young partridges as I am bringing up, I burnt the whole lot of ‘em.’‘You looked at them first, of course, to make sure that there was nothing of consequence?’‘Well, of course I did. I hope Dick Williams ain’t such a fool as to burn law documents. No, they were mostly poetry and that kind of stuff.’‘But did you make certain about the handwriting? Else, my good sir, it might have been that of Shakespeare himself.’‘Shakespeare! Well, what of him? Why, there was bundles and bundles with his name wrote upon them. It was in this very fireplace I made a regular bonfire of them.’There was a solitary chair in the little chamber, set apart for the partridges, intowhich Mr. Samuel Erin dropped, as though he had been a partridge himself, shot by a sportsman.‘You—made—a—bonfire—of—Shakespeare’s—poems!’ he said, ejaculating the words very slowly and dejectedly, like minute guns. ‘May Heaven have mercy upon your miserable soul!’‘Isay,’ cried Mr. Williams, turning very red, ‘what the deuce do you mean by talking to me as if I was left for execution? What have I done? I’ve robbed nobody.’‘You have robbed everybody—the whole world!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin excitedly. ‘In burning those papers you burnt the most precious things on earth. A bonfire, you call it! Nero, who fiddled while Rome was burning, was guiltless compared to you. You are a disgrace to humanity. Shakespeare had you in his eye, sir, when he spoke of “a marble-hearted fiend.”’Mr. Samuel Erin had his favourite bard by heart, and was consequently in no want of ‘base comparisons,’ but he stopped a momentfor want of breath. Annoyance and indignation had had the same effect upon Mr. Williams. He had never been ‘bully-ragged’ in his own house for ‘nothing’—except by his wife—before. Purple and speechless, he regarded his antagonist with protruding eyes, a human Etna on the verge of eruption.Mr. John Jervis knew his man. Up to this point he had taken no part in the controversy; but he now seized Mr. Erin by the arm, and led him rapidly downstairs. Their last few steps were accomplished with dangerous velocity, for a flying body struck both of them violently on the back. This was William Henry, who, unable to escape the wild rush of the bull, had described a parabola in the air.‘If there’s law in England, you shall smart for this,’ roared the infuriated animal over the banisters.‘Perhaps I ought to have told you that Mr. Williams was of a hasty disposition,’ observed Mr. Jervis apologetically, when they found themselves in the street.‘Hasty!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, whose mind was much too occupied with sacrilege to concern himself with assault; ‘a more thoughtless and precipitate idiot never breathed. The idea of his having burnt those precious papers! I suppose, after what has happened, it would be useless to inquire just now whether any scrap of them has escaped the flames; otherwise my son can go back—— ‘‘I am sure that wouldn’t do,’ interposed Mr. Jervis confidently.William Henry breathed a sigh of relief. The impressions of Stratford-on-Avon seemed to him indelible; they had left on him such ‘local colouring’ as time itself, he felt, could hardly remove. Fortunately for hisamour propre, not a word was said by his father of their reception at Clopton House. His whole mind was monopolised by the literary disappointment. The inconvenience that had happened to his son did not weigh with him a feather.The whole party now proceeded to Mr. Jervis’s establishment, where the remains ofthe famous mulberry tree were kept in stock. Mr. Erin was haunted by the notion that some Shakespearean fanatic might step in and buy the whole of it before he could secure some mementoes, whereas the birthplace in Henley Street could ‘wait;’ an idea at which, for the life of him, the proprietor of the sacred timber could not restrain a dry smile. It was the general opinion that enough tobacco stoppers, busts, and wafer seals had already been sold to account for a whole grove of mulberry trees. Mr. Erin was very energetic with his new acquaintance on the road, about precautions against fire (insurance against it was out of the question, of course), but when he had possessed himself of what he wanted, and the matter was again referred to as they came away, it was noticeable that he had not another word to say upon the side of prudence.‘He declaimed against Mr. Williams’ rashness,’ whispered William Henry to Margaret; ‘but my belief is that he would now set fire to that timber yard without a scruple in order to render his purchases unique.’Maggie held up her finger reprovingly, but her laughing eyes belied the gesture.Both these young people, indeed, had far too keen a sense of fun to be enthusiasts.To Mr. Hart the butcher (who at that time occupied the house in Henley Street), as an indirect descendant of the immortal bard, through his sister, Mr. Erin paid a deference that was almost servile. He examined his lineaments, in the hopes of detecting a likeness to the Chandos portrait, with a particularity that much abashed the object of his scrutiny, and even tried to get him to accompany him to the church, that he might compare his features with those of the bust of the bard in the chancel.But it was in the presence of the bust itself that Mr. Erin exhibited himself in the most characteristic fashion. Standing on what was to him more hallowed ground than any blessed by priests, and within a few feet of the ashes of his idol, he was nevertheless unable to restrain his indignation against the commentator Malone, through whose influence the coloured bust hadrecently been painted white. Instead of bursting into Shakespearean quotation, as it was his wont to do on much less provocation, he repeated with malicious gusto the epigram to which the act of vandalism in question had given birth:—Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,Invoke the poet’s curses on Malone,Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays,And daubed his tombstone as he marred his plays.His rage, indeed, so rose at the spectacle, that for the present he protested that he found himself unable to pursue his investigations within the sacred edifice, and proposed that the party should start forthwith to visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage at Shottery.There was at present no more need for Mr. Jervis’s services, so that gentleman was left behind. Mr. Erin and Frank Dennis led the way by the footpath across the fields that had been pointed out to them, and William Henry and Margaret followed. It was a lovely afternoon; the trees and grass, upon which a slight shower had recently fallen, emitted a fragranceinexpressibly fresh. All was quiet save for the song of the birds, who were giving thanks for the sunshine.‘How different this is from Norfolk Street!’ murmured Margaret.‘It is the same to me,’ answered her companion in a low tone, ‘because all that makes life dear to me is where you are. When you are not there, Margaret, I have no home.’‘You should not talk of your home in that way,’ returned she reprovingly.‘Yet you know it is the truth, Margaret; that there is no happiness for me under Mr. Erin’s roof, and that my very presence there is unwelcome to him.’‘I wish you would not call your father Mr. Erin,’ she exclaimed reproachfully.‘Did you not know, then, that he was not my father?’‘What?’ In her extreme surprise she spoke in so loud a key that it attracted the attention of the pair before them. Mr. Erin looked back with a smile. ‘Shakespeare musthave taken this walk a thousand times, Maggie,’ he observed.She nodded and made some suitable reply, but for the moment she was thinking of things nearer home. She now remembered that she had heard something to the disadvantage of Mr. Erin’s deceased wife, one of those unpleasant remarks concerning some one connected with her which a modest girl hears by accident, and endeavours to forget. Until Mr. Erin had become a widower Margaret had never been permitted by her mother to visit Norfolk Street. Mrs. Erin had been a widow—a Mrs. Irwyn—but she had not become Mr. Erin’s wife at first, because her husband had been alive. It was probable, then, that what William Henry had said was true; he was Mrs. Erin’s son, but not Mr. Erin’s, though he passed as such. This was doubtless the reason why her uncle and he were on such distant terms with one another, and why he never called him father. On the other hand, it was no reason why her uncle should be so harsh with the young man, and treat him with such scant consideration. Somewomen would have despised the lad for the misfortune of his birth, but Margaret was incapable of an injustice; her knowledge of his unhappy position served to draw him closer to her than before.By the blush that, in spite of her efforts to repress it, spread over her face, William Henry understood that she gave credit to his statement, and by the tones of her voice he felt that it had done him no injury in her eyes. It was a matter, however, which, though necessary to be made plain, could not be discussed.‘What your uncle says is very true, Maggie,’ he quietly remarked. ‘This must have been Shakespeare’s favourite walk, for love never goes by the high road when it can take the footpath. The smell of that bean-field, the odour of the hay of that very meadow, may have come to his nostrils as it comes to ours. His heart as he drew nigh to yonder village must have beat as mine beats, because he knew his love was near him.’‘There is the cottage,’ cried Mr. Erin excitedly, pointing in front of him, and addressinghis niece. ‘Is it not picturesque, with its old timbers and its mossy roof?’‘It will make an excellent illustration for your book,’ observed Frank Dennis the practical.‘It has been illustrated already pretty often,’ returned the other drily, ‘or we should not recognise it so easily.’‘Let us hope it’s the right one,’ muttered William Henry, ‘for it will be poor I who will have to suffer for it if it is not.’Fortunately, however, there was no mistake. They stepped across the little brook, and stood in the garden with its well and its old-world flowers. Before them was the orchard ‘for whispering lovers made,’ and on the right the low vine-clad cottage with the settle, or courting-seat, at its door.Here Shakespeare came to win and woo his wife; whatever doubt may be thrown on his connection with any other dwelling, that much is certain. On the threshold of the cottage Mr. Erin took off his hat, not from courtesy, for he was not overburdened with politeness,but from the same reverence with which he had doffed it at the church. He entered without noticing whether he was followed by the others or not. A descendant of Anne Hathaway’s, though not of her name, received him; fit priest for such a shrine. That he had not read a line of Shakespeare in no way detracted from his sacred character. Frank Dennis, himself not a little moved, went in likewise. As Margaret was following him, William Henry gently laid his hand upon her wrist and led her to the settle, which was very ancient and worm-eaten.‘Sit here a moment, Maggie; this is the very seat, as Mr. Jervis tells me, on which Shakespeare sat with her who became his wife. Here, on some summer afternoon like this, perhaps, he told her of his love.’Margaret trembled, but sat down.‘It is amazing to think of it,’ she said; ‘he must have looked on those same trees, and on this very well.’‘But he did not look atthem, Maggie,’ said the young man tenderly; ‘he looked at theface beside him, as I am looking now, and I will wager that it was not so fair a face.’‘What nonsense you talk, Willie! Why do you not give yourself up as your—as Mr. Erin does—to the associations of the place? They are so interesting.’‘It’s just what I am doing, dear Maggie. It was here they interchanged their vows; a different pair, indeed, though not altogether so superior, since to my mind you excel Anne Hathaway as much as I fall short of her marvellous bridegroom. That I am no Shakespeare is very true; yet it seems to me, Maggie, that when I say, “I love you,” even he could have said nothing more true and deep. I love you, I love you, I love you—do you hear me?’ continued the young man passionately.‘You frighten me, Willie,’ answered Maggie in trembling tones. ‘And then it is so foolish, since you know, that even if I said—what you would have me say—it could be of no use.’‘But you think it, youthinkit? That is all I ask,’ urged the other earnestly. ‘If matters were not as they are; if I got Mr.Erin’s consent; if I had sufficient means to offer you a home—not indeed worthy of you, for then it must needs be a palace—but comfort, competence, you would not say “Nay?” Dearest Maggie, my own dear darling Maggie, give me hope. “The miserable,” as Shakespeare tells us, “have no other medicine:” and I am very, very miserable; give me hope, the light of hope.’‘It would be a will-of-the-wisp, Willie.’‘No matter; I would bless it if it led me to my grave. If I had it, I could work, I could win fortune, even fame perhaps. You doubt it? Try me, try me!’ he continued vehemently, ‘and if after some time, a little, little time, no harvest comes of it, and my brain proves barren, why, then I will confess myself a dreamer: only in the meantime be mine in spirit; do not promise yourself to another; let us say a year; well, then, six months; you can surely wait six months for me, Maggie?’‘It would be six months of delusion, Willie.’‘Let it be so; a fool’s paradise, but still for me a paradise. I have not had so many happy hours that fate should grudge me these. I know I am asking a strange thing; still I am not like those selfish lovers who, being in the same pitiful case with me as to means, exact, like dogs in the manger, vows of eternal fidelity from those whom they will, in all probability, be never in a position to wed. I ask you not for your heart, Maggie, but for the loan of it; for six months’ grace, probation. If I fail to show myself worthy of you—if I fail to make a name—or rather to show the promise of making it within that time, then I return the loan. I do not say, as was doubtless said by him who sat here before me, “Be my wife!” I only say, “For six months to come, betroth yourself to no other man.” Come, Maggie, Frank Dennis is not so very pressing.’It was a dangerous card to play, this mention of his rival’s name, but it won the game. Dennis was as true as steel, but through a modest mistrust of his own merits—a thing that did not trouble William Henry—he was a backwardlover. He had had opportunities of declaring himself which he had neglected, thinking of himself too lowlily, or that the time was not yet ripe; or preferring the hope that lies in doubt, to the despair that is begotten of denial; and this, I think, had a little piqued the girl. She liked him well enough, well enough even to marry him; but she liked William Henry better, and other things being equal, would have preferred him for a husband. They were not equal, but it was possible—just possible, for the moment she had caught from her reputed cousin some of that confidence he felt in his own powers—that they might be made so. At all events, six months was not a space to ‘delve the parallels in beauty’s brow;’ and then it was so hard to deny him.‘You shall have your chance, Willie,’ she murmured, ‘though, as I have warned you, it is a very poor one.’He drew her nearer to him, despite some pretence of resistance, and would have touched her cheek with his lips, when the cottage doorwas suddenly thrown open behind them, and Mr. Erin appeared with an old chair in his hands, which he brandished like a quarter-staff above his head. He looked so flushed and excited that William Henry thought his audacious proposal had been overheard, and that he was about to be separated from his Margaret for ever by a violent death.‘It is mine! It is mine!’ cried the antiquary triumphantly. ‘I have bought Anne Hathaway’s chair.’
THE OLD SETTLE.
WILLIAM HENRY, far from sharing his father’s enthusiasm at any time, was on this occasion less than ever inclined to applaud it. If Clopton House should be found full of Shakespearean MSS., it would not afford him half the pleasurehe would have derived from atête-à-têtewith his cousin Margaret; a treat which, it seemed, was to be thrown away upon Frank Dennis. Why didn’t Mr. Erin selecthimto take notes for him from the musty documents? A question the folly of which only a high state of irritation could excuse. He knew perfectly well that his own dexterity and promptness in copying had caused himself to be chosen for the undesirable task, and that knowledge irritated him the more. It was only when he could be of some material use to him, as in the present instance, that his father took the least account of him. If he could bring himself to steal one of those precious documents, was his bitter reflection, and secrete it as some wretched slave secretes a diamond in the mines of Golconda, then, perhaps, and then only, he might be permitted to marry Margaret. For a bit of parchment with Shakespeare’s name upon it, most certainly for a whole play in his handwriting, Mr. Samuel Erin, it was probable, would have bartered fifty nieces, and thrown his own soul into the bargain. Our young friend, however, was quiteaware of what a poet of a later date would have told him, that ‘an angry fancy’ is a poor ware to go to market with; so, with as good a grace as he could, he put on his hat and accompanied Mr. Erin and his cicerone to Clopton House, which was but a few yards down the street.
It was a good-sized mansion of great antiquity, but had fallen into disrepair and even decay. Its present tenant, Mr. Williams, was a farmer in apparently far from prosperous circumstances. Half of the many chambers were in total darkness, the windows having been bricked up to save the window tax, and the handsome old-world furniture was everywhere becoming a prey to the moth and the worm. As a matter of fact, however, these were not evidences of poverty. Mr. Williams had enough and to spare of worldly goods, only of some of them he did not think so much as other people of more cultivated taste would have done. A Warwickshire farmer of to-day would have considered many things as valuable in Clopton House which their unappreciative proprietor had relegated to the cock-loft. It was to thatapartment, indeed, that Mr. Erin was led as soon as the nature of his inquiries—which he had stated generally, and to avoid suspicion of his actual object, to be concerning antiquities—was understood. The room was filled with mouldering household goods of remote antiquity, chiefly of the time of Henry VII., in whose reign the proprietor of the house, Sir Hugh Clopton, had been Lord Mayor of London. Among other things, for example, there was an emblazoned representation on vellum of Elizabeth, Henry’s wife, as she lay in state in the chapel of the Tower, where she died in child-birth.
‘You may have that if you like,’ said Mr. Williams to his visitor carelessly. He was a fat, coarse man, but very good-natured. ‘For, being on vellum, it is no use to light the fire with.’
‘You don’t mean to say you light your fire with anything I see here?’ gasped Mr. Erin.
‘Well, no, there’s nothing much left of that sort of rubbish; we made a clean sweep of it all about a fortnight since.’
‘There were no old MSS., I hope?’
‘MSS.! Heaps on ’em. They came from New Place at the time of the fire, you see, though Heaven knows why any one should have thought them worth saving. They were all piled in that little room yonder, and as I wanted a place for some young partridges as I am bringing up, I burnt the whole lot of ‘em.’
‘You looked at them first, of course, to make sure that there was nothing of consequence?’
‘Well, of course I did. I hope Dick Williams ain’t such a fool as to burn law documents. No, they were mostly poetry and that kind of stuff.’
‘But did you make certain about the handwriting? Else, my good sir, it might have been that of Shakespeare himself.’
‘Shakespeare! Well, what of him? Why, there was bundles and bundles with his name wrote upon them. It was in this very fireplace I made a regular bonfire of them.’
There was a solitary chair in the little chamber, set apart for the partridges, intowhich Mr. Samuel Erin dropped, as though he had been a partridge himself, shot by a sportsman.
‘You—made—a—bonfire—of—Shakespeare’s—poems!’ he said, ejaculating the words very slowly and dejectedly, like minute guns. ‘May Heaven have mercy upon your miserable soul!’
‘Isay,’ cried Mr. Williams, turning very red, ‘what the deuce do you mean by talking to me as if I was left for execution? What have I done? I’ve robbed nobody.’
‘You have robbed everybody—the whole world!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin excitedly. ‘In burning those papers you burnt the most precious things on earth. A bonfire, you call it! Nero, who fiddled while Rome was burning, was guiltless compared to you. You are a disgrace to humanity. Shakespeare had you in his eye, sir, when he spoke of “a marble-hearted fiend.”’
Mr. Samuel Erin had his favourite bard by heart, and was consequently in no want of ‘base comparisons,’ but he stopped a momentfor want of breath. Annoyance and indignation had had the same effect upon Mr. Williams. He had never been ‘bully-ragged’ in his own house for ‘nothing’—except by his wife—before. Purple and speechless, he regarded his antagonist with protruding eyes, a human Etna on the verge of eruption.
Mr. John Jervis knew his man. Up to this point he had taken no part in the controversy; but he now seized Mr. Erin by the arm, and led him rapidly downstairs. Their last few steps were accomplished with dangerous velocity, for a flying body struck both of them violently on the back. This was William Henry, who, unable to escape the wild rush of the bull, had described a parabola in the air.
‘If there’s law in England, you shall smart for this,’ roared the infuriated animal over the banisters.
‘Perhaps I ought to have told you that Mr. Williams was of a hasty disposition,’ observed Mr. Jervis apologetically, when they found themselves in the street.
‘Hasty!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, whose mind was much too occupied with sacrilege to concern himself with assault; ‘a more thoughtless and precipitate idiot never breathed. The idea of his having burnt those precious papers! I suppose, after what has happened, it would be useless to inquire just now whether any scrap of them has escaped the flames; otherwise my son can go back—— ‘
‘I am sure that wouldn’t do,’ interposed Mr. Jervis confidently.
William Henry breathed a sigh of relief. The impressions of Stratford-on-Avon seemed to him indelible; they had left on him such ‘local colouring’ as time itself, he felt, could hardly remove. Fortunately for hisamour propre, not a word was said by his father of their reception at Clopton House. His whole mind was monopolised by the literary disappointment. The inconvenience that had happened to his son did not weigh with him a feather.
The whole party now proceeded to Mr. Jervis’s establishment, where the remains ofthe famous mulberry tree were kept in stock. Mr. Erin was haunted by the notion that some Shakespearean fanatic might step in and buy the whole of it before he could secure some mementoes, whereas the birthplace in Henley Street could ‘wait;’ an idea at which, for the life of him, the proprietor of the sacred timber could not restrain a dry smile. It was the general opinion that enough tobacco stoppers, busts, and wafer seals had already been sold to account for a whole grove of mulberry trees. Mr. Erin was very energetic with his new acquaintance on the road, about precautions against fire (insurance against it was out of the question, of course), but when he had possessed himself of what he wanted, and the matter was again referred to as they came away, it was noticeable that he had not another word to say upon the side of prudence.
‘He declaimed against Mr. Williams’ rashness,’ whispered William Henry to Margaret; ‘but my belief is that he would now set fire to that timber yard without a scruple in order to render his purchases unique.’
Maggie held up her finger reprovingly, but her laughing eyes belied the gesture.
Both these young people, indeed, had far too keen a sense of fun to be enthusiasts.
To Mr. Hart the butcher (who at that time occupied the house in Henley Street), as an indirect descendant of the immortal bard, through his sister, Mr. Erin paid a deference that was almost servile. He examined his lineaments, in the hopes of detecting a likeness to the Chandos portrait, with a particularity that much abashed the object of his scrutiny, and even tried to get him to accompany him to the church, that he might compare his features with those of the bust of the bard in the chancel.
But it was in the presence of the bust itself that Mr. Erin exhibited himself in the most characteristic fashion. Standing on what was to him more hallowed ground than any blessed by priests, and within a few feet of the ashes of his idol, he was nevertheless unable to restrain his indignation against the commentator Malone, through whose influence the coloured bust hadrecently been painted white. Instead of bursting into Shakespearean quotation, as it was his wont to do on much less provocation, he repeated with malicious gusto the epigram to which the act of vandalism in question had given birth:—
Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,Invoke the poet’s curses on Malone,Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste displays,And daubed his tombstone as he marred his plays.
His rage, indeed, so rose at the spectacle, that for the present he protested that he found himself unable to pursue his investigations within the sacred edifice, and proposed that the party should start forthwith to visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage at Shottery.
There was at present no more need for Mr. Jervis’s services, so that gentleman was left behind. Mr. Erin and Frank Dennis led the way by the footpath across the fields that had been pointed out to them, and William Henry and Margaret followed. It was a lovely afternoon; the trees and grass, upon which a slight shower had recently fallen, emitted a fragranceinexpressibly fresh. All was quiet save for the song of the birds, who were giving thanks for the sunshine.
‘How different this is from Norfolk Street!’ murmured Margaret.
‘It is the same to me,’ answered her companion in a low tone, ‘because all that makes life dear to me is where you are. When you are not there, Margaret, I have no home.’
‘You should not talk of your home in that way,’ returned she reprovingly.
‘Yet you know it is the truth, Margaret; that there is no happiness for me under Mr. Erin’s roof, and that my very presence there is unwelcome to him.’
‘I wish you would not call your father Mr. Erin,’ she exclaimed reproachfully.
‘Did you not know, then, that he was not my father?’
‘What?’ In her extreme surprise she spoke in so loud a key that it attracted the attention of the pair before them. Mr. Erin looked back with a smile. ‘Shakespeare musthave taken this walk a thousand times, Maggie,’ he observed.
She nodded and made some suitable reply, but for the moment she was thinking of things nearer home. She now remembered that she had heard something to the disadvantage of Mr. Erin’s deceased wife, one of those unpleasant remarks concerning some one connected with her which a modest girl hears by accident, and endeavours to forget. Until Mr. Erin had become a widower Margaret had never been permitted by her mother to visit Norfolk Street. Mrs. Erin had been a widow—a Mrs. Irwyn—but she had not become Mr. Erin’s wife at first, because her husband had been alive. It was probable, then, that what William Henry had said was true; he was Mrs. Erin’s son, but not Mr. Erin’s, though he passed as such. This was doubtless the reason why her uncle and he were on such distant terms with one another, and why he never called him father. On the other hand, it was no reason why her uncle should be so harsh with the young man, and treat him with such scant consideration. Somewomen would have despised the lad for the misfortune of his birth, but Margaret was incapable of an injustice; her knowledge of his unhappy position served to draw him closer to her than before.
By the blush that, in spite of her efforts to repress it, spread over her face, William Henry understood that she gave credit to his statement, and by the tones of her voice he felt that it had done him no injury in her eyes. It was a matter, however, which, though necessary to be made plain, could not be discussed.
‘What your uncle says is very true, Maggie,’ he quietly remarked. ‘This must have been Shakespeare’s favourite walk, for love never goes by the high road when it can take the footpath. The smell of that bean-field, the odour of the hay of that very meadow, may have come to his nostrils as it comes to ours. His heart as he drew nigh to yonder village must have beat as mine beats, because he knew his love was near him.’
‘There is the cottage,’ cried Mr. Erin excitedly, pointing in front of him, and addressinghis niece. ‘Is it not picturesque, with its old timbers and its mossy roof?’
‘It will make an excellent illustration for your book,’ observed Frank Dennis the practical.
‘It has been illustrated already pretty often,’ returned the other drily, ‘or we should not recognise it so easily.’
‘Let us hope it’s the right one,’ muttered William Henry, ‘for it will be poor I who will have to suffer for it if it is not.’
Fortunately, however, there was no mistake. They stepped across the little brook, and stood in the garden with its well and its old-world flowers. Before them was the orchard ‘for whispering lovers made,’ and on the right the low vine-clad cottage with the settle, or courting-seat, at its door.
Here Shakespeare came to win and woo his wife; whatever doubt may be thrown on his connection with any other dwelling, that much is certain. On the threshold of the cottage Mr. Erin took off his hat, not from courtesy, for he was not overburdened with politeness,but from the same reverence with which he had doffed it at the church. He entered without noticing whether he was followed by the others or not. A descendant of Anne Hathaway’s, though not of her name, received him; fit priest for such a shrine. That he had not read a line of Shakespeare in no way detracted from his sacred character. Frank Dennis, himself not a little moved, went in likewise. As Margaret was following him, William Henry gently laid his hand upon her wrist and led her to the settle, which was very ancient and worm-eaten.
‘Sit here a moment, Maggie; this is the very seat, as Mr. Jervis tells me, on which Shakespeare sat with her who became his wife. Here, on some summer afternoon like this, perhaps, he told her of his love.’
Margaret trembled, but sat down.
‘It is amazing to think of it,’ she said; ‘he must have looked on those same trees, and on this very well.’
‘But he did not look atthem, Maggie,’ said the young man tenderly; ‘he looked at theface beside him, as I am looking now, and I will wager that it was not so fair a face.’
‘What nonsense you talk, Willie! Why do you not give yourself up as your—as Mr. Erin does—to the associations of the place? They are so interesting.’
‘It’s just what I am doing, dear Maggie. It was here they interchanged their vows; a different pair, indeed, though not altogether so superior, since to my mind you excel Anne Hathaway as much as I fall short of her marvellous bridegroom. That I am no Shakespeare is very true; yet it seems to me, Maggie, that when I say, “I love you,” even he could have said nothing more true and deep. I love you, I love you, I love you—do you hear me?’ continued the young man passionately.
‘You frighten me, Willie,’ answered Maggie in trembling tones. ‘And then it is so foolish, since you know, that even if I said—what you would have me say—it could be of no use.’
‘But you think it, youthinkit? That is all I ask,’ urged the other earnestly. ‘If matters were not as they are; if I got Mr.Erin’s consent; if I had sufficient means to offer you a home—not indeed worthy of you, for then it must needs be a palace—but comfort, competence, you would not say “Nay?” Dearest Maggie, my own dear darling Maggie, give me hope. “The miserable,” as Shakespeare tells us, “have no other medicine:” and I am very, very miserable; give me hope, the light of hope.’
‘It would be a will-of-the-wisp, Willie.’
‘No matter; I would bless it if it led me to my grave. If I had it, I could work, I could win fortune, even fame perhaps. You doubt it? Try me, try me!’ he continued vehemently, ‘and if after some time, a little, little time, no harvest comes of it, and my brain proves barren, why, then I will confess myself a dreamer: only in the meantime be mine in spirit; do not promise yourself to another; let us say a year; well, then, six months; you can surely wait six months for me, Maggie?’
‘It would be six months of delusion, Willie.’
‘Let it be so; a fool’s paradise, but still for me a paradise. I have not had so many happy hours that fate should grudge me these. I know I am asking a strange thing; still I am not like those selfish lovers who, being in the same pitiful case with me as to means, exact, like dogs in the manger, vows of eternal fidelity from those whom they will, in all probability, be never in a position to wed. I ask you not for your heart, Maggie, but for the loan of it; for six months’ grace, probation. If I fail to show myself worthy of you—if I fail to make a name—or rather to show the promise of making it within that time, then I return the loan. I do not say, as was doubtless said by him who sat here before me, “Be my wife!” I only say, “For six months to come, betroth yourself to no other man.” Come, Maggie, Frank Dennis is not so very pressing.’
It was a dangerous card to play, this mention of his rival’s name, but it won the game. Dennis was as true as steel, but through a modest mistrust of his own merits—a thing that did not trouble William Henry—he was a backwardlover. He had had opportunities of declaring himself which he had neglected, thinking of himself too lowlily, or that the time was not yet ripe; or preferring the hope that lies in doubt, to the despair that is begotten of denial; and this, I think, had a little piqued the girl. She liked him well enough, well enough even to marry him; but she liked William Henry better, and other things being equal, would have preferred him for a husband. They were not equal, but it was possible—just possible, for the moment she had caught from her reputed cousin some of that confidence he felt in his own powers—that they might be made so. At all events, six months was not a space to ‘delve the parallels in beauty’s brow;’ and then it was so hard to deny him.
‘You shall have your chance, Willie,’ she murmured, ‘though, as I have warned you, it is a very poor one.’
He drew her nearer to him, despite some pretence of resistance, and would have touched her cheek with his lips, when the cottage doorwas suddenly thrown open behind them, and Mr. Erin appeared with an old chair in his hands, which he brandished like a quarter-staff above his head. He looked so flushed and excited that William Henry thought his audacious proposal had been overheard, and that he was about to be separated from his Margaret for ever by a violent death.
‘It is mine! It is mine!’ cried the antiquary triumphantly. ‘I have bought Anne Hathaway’s chair.’
CHAPTER VI.AN AUDACIOUS CRITICISM.Inthe case of crime, every person who is concerned in its detection looks very properly to motive: the law, indeed, in its award of punishment, disregards it, but then, as a famous authority (and himself in authority), namely, Mr. Bumble, observes, ‘the law is a hass.’ Where mankind falls into error is in looking for motive in all cases, whether criminal or otherwise. A very large number of persons are actuated by causes for which motive is far too serious a term. They are often moved by sudden impulse, nay, even by whim or caprice, to take very important steps. When interrogated, after the mischief has been done, as to why they did this or that, they reply, ‘I don’t know,’ and are discredited. Yet, as a matter of fact, themotive was so slight, or rather so momentary (for it was probably strong enough while it lasted), that they have really forgotten all about it.William Henry Erin, of whose character the world subsequently took a very different and erroneous view, was essentially a man of impulse. He had attributes, it is true, of another and even of an antagonistic kind. He was very punctual and diligent in his habits, he was neat and exact in his professional work; though a poet, his views of life, or at all events of his own position in it, were practical enough, yet he was impatient, passionate, and impulsive. His proposition to Margaret Slade had been made with such stress and energy that it was no wonder (albeit she knew his character better than most people) that she thought it founded upon some scheme for the future already formed in his own mind. Of its genuineness there could be no shadow of doubt, but she also took it for granted that he had some ground for expectation, which, at all events to his own mind, seemed solid, that within the space of time he had mentioned, something would occur to placehim in a better social position. Her impression, or rather her apprehension (for she did not much believe in his literary talents—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which showed that she was by no means over head and ears in love with him), was that he trusted to the publication of his poems to place him on the road to prosperity; his use of the words ‘fame and fortune’ certainly seemed to point to that direction, and what other road was there open to him?Whereas, as a matter of fact, there was not even that poor halfpennyworth of substratum for his hopes. Circumstances—the finding himself alone with her he loved on Shakespeare’s courting-seat—had, of course, been the immediate cause of his amazing appeal, but they were also the chief cause. The knowledge that Frank Dennis was of the party and could gain her ear at any moment, with the certainty of Mr. Erin’s advocacy to back him, had, moreover, made the young man madly jealous. To secure his beloved Margaret, even for a little while, from so dreaded a rival, was something gained; and then there was the chapter ofaccidents. We know not what a day may bring forth, how much less what may happen within six months! William Henry was but a boy, yet how many a grown man trusts to such contingencies! In the city, ‘twenty-four hours to turn about in’ is often considered time enough for a total change of fortune. It might be added that, unless Margaret should turn traitress and reveal his secret (which was impossible), he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his delay; but, to do the young man justice, that idea had not entered into his mind. Passion with the bit between her teeth had run away with him.As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr.Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—But, by all above,These blenches gave my heart another youth.He does not put his tongue in his cheek atmorality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy dayssnatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.In association with Mr. Jervis the young man ransacked the little town for mementoes of its patron saint, and was fortunate enough to discover a few, which, though of doubtful authenticity, were very welcome to the enthusiastic collector. If they were not the rose,i.e.actual relics, they were near the rose, as proximity is counted in such cases. No doubt it is the same with more sacred relics—in a deficiency of toe-nails of any particular saint it must be something, though not of course so rapturous, to secure a toe-nail of some saint in the next century. As regards Shakespeare, it is certainly one of the marvels in connection with that marvellous man that not a scrap ofthe handwriting, save his autograph, of one who wrote so much ever turns up to reward the pains of the searcher; nay, there is only one letter extant, even of those that were written to him—a commonplace request for a loan from the man who afterwards became his son-in-law; under which circumstances, when one comes to think about it, there may be some excuse for the language used by Mr. Samuel Erin to that reckless incendiary, Mr. Williams, of Clopton House.If to be indifferent, as William Henry had been suspected of being, to the charms of Shakespeare was a crime in Mr. Erin’s eyes, it may be easily imagined how he resented the least imputation of any portion of his idol having been composed of clay. There were circumstances connected with his union with Anne Hathaway, and also with that little adventure of his with Justice Shallow’s deer, which were dangerous to allude to in Mr. Erin’s presence; and if the moral qualities of his hero (albeit, we may have gathered, Mr. Erin was himself, though Protestant, by no means Puritan) could not insafety be called in question, any suggestion of weakness in him as a writer was still more unendurable. Nevertheless, even prudent Frank Dennis contrived to put his foot in it in this very matter, and thereby narrowly escaped falling out of Mr. Erin’s good graces for the term of his natural life. It was during an expedition to Charlecote; the little party, having left their vehicle at the gate, were walking through the park, Mr. Erin wrapped in contemplation—endeavouring perhaps to identify the very oak (in ‘As You Like It’) where the poor sequestered stag had ‘come to languish’—while the young people a few paces behind were indulging in a little quiet banter upon the forbidden subject of deer-stealing.‘I suppose that he did steal that deer?’ observed Margaret slily in a hushed whisper.‘There is no doubt of it,’ answered Frank; ‘he had to fly from Stratford to London for that very reason, to get out of Sir Thomas’s way.’‘Nay, nay,’ put in William Henry, I am afraid with some slight imitation of his father’ssolemn manner when dealing with the sacred topic; ‘let us not say steal, it was what “the wise do call convey.” We do a good deal of it in New Inn ourselves.’‘Yonder are our “velvet friends,”’ said Mr. Erin, pointing to a herd of deer in the distance.The allusion caused some trepidation in his companions, as chiming in only too opportunely with their late disloyal remarks; and it was much to their relief that Mr. Erin proceeded, as was his wont, to indulge himself in quotation.‘And indeed, my lord,The wretched animal heaved forth such groansThat their discharge did stretch his leather coatAlmost to bursting; and the big round tearsCoursed one another down his innocent noseIn piteous chase.’‘What a graphic picture! “His innocent nose.” Who but Shakespeare would have dared to write “his innocent nose?”’‘Very true, sir,’ said William Henry gravely. ‘“His innocent nose.”’Not a muscle of his face betrayed thedrollery within him. He certainly possessed some tricks of the actor’s trade. Margaret stooped to pluck a daisy, an action which sufficed to account for the colour rushing to her cheeks. Frank Dennis, whose wits were not of the nimble sort fitted for such sudden emergency, felt he was about to suffocate. It seemed to him he had no alternative between speech—the act of saying something, no matter what—and an explosion.‘With regard to deer shedding tears,’ he observed, ‘I have a friend who is a great naturalist, who tells me, as a matter of fact, that they can’t do it.’‘Can’t do what?’ inquired Mr. Erin curtly.‘He says that from the peculiar formation of the ducts of the deer, or perhaps from the absence of them—— I know nothing about the matter myself, sir,’ put in the unhappy Frank precipitately, for the antiquary was looking daggers at him.‘You know quite as much about it as your friend then,’ thundered Mr. Erin. ‘Great heavens! that a man like him, or you, or anybody,should venture to pick a hole in one of the noblest descriptions of the language: to find faults in Shakespeare himself! You remind me, sir, of the sacrilegious fellow in France, the other day, who gave it as his opinion that if he had been present at the Creation, he could have suggested improvements.’‘But indeed, sir, it was not my opinion.’‘It is quite as bad to quote those of infamous persons as to originate them yourself.’Mr. Frank Dennis had very little of the serpent in him, not even its prudence; his sense of justice was shocked by this outrageous speech.‘But it is a mere question of fact and science—— ‘‘Science,’ interrupted the other vehemently, ‘that is the argument of the Atheist against the Scriptures. Science, indeed! what is science when compared with the genius of Shakespeare? He told you, sir, that deer shed tears, and if they don’t, why—damn their eyes—they ought to!’f98‘Science:’ interrupted the antiquary, vehemently. ‘That is the argument of the atheist against the Scriptures.’The argument was, at least, conclusive; nothing more remained to be said, or was said. Mr. Erin stalked on like a turkey-cock ruffled; his idol had been insulted, and he felt that he had done well to be angry. Every deer he saw stimulated his wrath. ‘Confound the fellow!’ he murmured as he passed the antlered herd, ‘it would serve him right if they tossed him.’ It even crossed his mind perhaps that Margaret was right after all in receiving Dennis’s attentions so coldly; that he was certainly a very pig-headed young man.Frank Dennis, too, good-natured as he was, was not a little put out. For the moment he felt almost as disrespectful towards Shakespeare as Sydney Smith’s friend was to the Equator; but his eye fell on Margaret, and he put a bridle on his tongue.His sense of annoyance soon faded away, but with the antiquary it was not so easily effaced. This incident was of considerable advantage to William Henry and his little plan. In a company of three, when one of them has fallen out of our favour, one naturally rather‘cottons’ to the other, if it is only to show the offender what he has forfeited by his misconduct; and from thenceforward Mr. Erin showed himself at least less severe towards the young man who bore his name. Nay, what was of more consequence, the symptoms he had exhibited of favouring Frank Dennis’s pretensions to his niece’s hand manifestly slackened; he no longer troubled himself to throw the young people together. On the other hand, though of course with no idea that there was risk in it (for he both despised him and ‘despised his youth’), he suffered William Henry and Margaret to ‘foregather’ as much as they pleased. He still felt so resentful to Frank’s sacrilegious ideas as respected the customs of deer when under emotion, that it was distasteful to him to be shut up with him as a companion; and in order to mitigate his society he took an inside place for William Henry (notwithstanding that, except in the matter of MSS. and first editions, he had a frugal mind) in the coach to town.
AN AUDACIOUS CRITICISM.
Inthe case of crime, every person who is concerned in its detection looks very properly to motive: the law, indeed, in its award of punishment, disregards it, but then, as a famous authority (and himself in authority), namely, Mr. Bumble, observes, ‘the law is a hass.’ Where mankind falls into error is in looking for motive in all cases, whether criminal or otherwise. A very large number of persons are actuated by causes for which motive is far too serious a term. They are often moved by sudden impulse, nay, even by whim or caprice, to take very important steps. When interrogated, after the mischief has been done, as to why they did this or that, they reply, ‘I don’t know,’ and are discredited. Yet, as a matter of fact, themotive was so slight, or rather so momentary (for it was probably strong enough while it lasted), that they have really forgotten all about it.
William Henry Erin, of whose character the world subsequently took a very different and erroneous view, was essentially a man of impulse. He had attributes, it is true, of another and even of an antagonistic kind. He was very punctual and diligent in his habits, he was neat and exact in his professional work; though a poet, his views of life, or at all events of his own position in it, were practical enough, yet he was impatient, passionate, and impulsive. His proposition to Margaret Slade had been made with such stress and energy that it was no wonder (albeit she knew his character better than most people) that she thought it founded upon some scheme for the future already formed in his own mind. Of its genuineness there could be no shadow of doubt, but she also took it for granted that he had some ground for expectation, which, at all events to his own mind, seemed solid, that within the space of time he had mentioned, something would occur to placehim in a better social position. Her impression, or rather her apprehension (for she did not much believe in his literary talents—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which showed that she was by no means over head and ears in love with him), was that he trusted to the publication of his poems to place him on the road to prosperity; his use of the words ‘fame and fortune’ certainly seemed to point to that direction, and what other road was there open to him?
Whereas, as a matter of fact, there was not even that poor halfpennyworth of substratum for his hopes. Circumstances—the finding himself alone with her he loved on Shakespeare’s courting-seat—had, of course, been the immediate cause of his amazing appeal, but they were also the chief cause. The knowledge that Frank Dennis was of the party and could gain her ear at any moment, with the certainty of Mr. Erin’s advocacy to back him, had, moreover, made the young man madly jealous. To secure his beloved Margaret, even for a little while, from so dreaded a rival, was something gained; and then there was the chapter ofaccidents. We know not what a day may bring forth, how much less what may happen within six months! William Henry was but a boy, yet how many a grown man trusts to such contingencies! In the city, ‘twenty-four hours to turn about in’ is often considered time enough for a total change of fortune. It might be added that, unless Margaret should turn traitress and reveal his secret (which was impossible), he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his delay; but, to do the young man justice, that idea had not entered into his mind. Passion with the bit between her teeth had run away with him.
As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.
Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr.Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.
This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—
But, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth.
He does not put his tongue in his cheek atmorality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.
And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy dayssnatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.
In association with Mr. Jervis the young man ransacked the little town for mementoes of its patron saint, and was fortunate enough to discover a few, which, though of doubtful authenticity, were very welcome to the enthusiastic collector. If they were not the rose,i.e.actual relics, they were near the rose, as proximity is counted in such cases. No doubt it is the same with more sacred relics—in a deficiency of toe-nails of any particular saint it must be something, though not of course so rapturous, to secure a toe-nail of some saint in the next century. As regards Shakespeare, it is certainly one of the marvels in connection with that marvellous man that not a scrap ofthe handwriting, save his autograph, of one who wrote so much ever turns up to reward the pains of the searcher; nay, there is only one letter extant, even of those that were written to him—a commonplace request for a loan from the man who afterwards became his son-in-law; under which circumstances, when one comes to think about it, there may be some excuse for the language used by Mr. Samuel Erin to that reckless incendiary, Mr. Williams, of Clopton House.
If to be indifferent, as William Henry had been suspected of being, to the charms of Shakespeare was a crime in Mr. Erin’s eyes, it may be easily imagined how he resented the least imputation of any portion of his idol having been composed of clay. There were circumstances connected with his union with Anne Hathaway, and also with that little adventure of his with Justice Shallow’s deer, which were dangerous to allude to in Mr. Erin’s presence; and if the moral qualities of his hero (albeit, we may have gathered, Mr. Erin was himself, though Protestant, by no means Puritan) could not insafety be called in question, any suggestion of weakness in him as a writer was still more unendurable. Nevertheless, even prudent Frank Dennis contrived to put his foot in it in this very matter, and thereby narrowly escaped falling out of Mr. Erin’s good graces for the term of his natural life. It was during an expedition to Charlecote; the little party, having left their vehicle at the gate, were walking through the park, Mr. Erin wrapped in contemplation—endeavouring perhaps to identify the very oak (in ‘As You Like It’) where the poor sequestered stag had ‘come to languish’—while the young people a few paces behind were indulging in a little quiet banter upon the forbidden subject of deer-stealing.
‘I suppose that he did steal that deer?’ observed Margaret slily in a hushed whisper.
‘There is no doubt of it,’ answered Frank; ‘he had to fly from Stratford to London for that very reason, to get out of Sir Thomas’s way.’
‘Nay, nay,’ put in William Henry, I am afraid with some slight imitation of his father’ssolemn manner when dealing with the sacred topic; ‘let us not say steal, it was what “the wise do call convey.” We do a good deal of it in New Inn ourselves.’
‘Yonder are our “velvet friends,”’ said Mr. Erin, pointing to a herd of deer in the distance.
The allusion caused some trepidation in his companions, as chiming in only too opportunely with their late disloyal remarks; and it was much to their relief that Mr. Erin proceeded, as was his wont, to indulge himself in quotation.
‘And indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groansThat their discharge did stretch his leather coatAlmost to bursting; and the big round tearsCoursed one another down his innocent noseIn piteous chase.’
‘What a graphic picture! “His innocent nose.” Who but Shakespeare would have dared to write “his innocent nose?”’
‘Very true, sir,’ said William Henry gravely. ‘“His innocent nose.”’
Not a muscle of his face betrayed thedrollery within him. He certainly possessed some tricks of the actor’s trade. Margaret stooped to pluck a daisy, an action which sufficed to account for the colour rushing to her cheeks. Frank Dennis, whose wits were not of the nimble sort fitted for such sudden emergency, felt he was about to suffocate. It seemed to him he had no alternative between speech—the act of saying something, no matter what—and an explosion.
‘With regard to deer shedding tears,’ he observed, ‘I have a friend who is a great naturalist, who tells me, as a matter of fact, that they can’t do it.’
‘Can’t do what?’ inquired Mr. Erin curtly.
‘He says that from the peculiar formation of the ducts of the deer, or perhaps from the absence of them—— I know nothing about the matter myself, sir,’ put in the unhappy Frank precipitately, for the antiquary was looking daggers at him.
‘You know quite as much about it as your friend then,’ thundered Mr. Erin. ‘Great heavens! that a man like him, or you, or anybody,should venture to pick a hole in one of the noblest descriptions of the language: to find faults in Shakespeare himself! You remind me, sir, of the sacrilegious fellow in France, the other day, who gave it as his opinion that if he had been present at the Creation, he could have suggested improvements.’
‘But indeed, sir, it was not my opinion.’
‘It is quite as bad to quote those of infamous persons as to originate them yourself.’
Mr. Frank Dennis had very little of the serpent in him, not even its prudence; his sense of justice was shocked by this outrageous speech.
‘But it is a mere question of fact and science—— ‘
‘Science,’ interrupted the other vehemently, ‘that is the argument of the Atheist against the Scriptures. Science, indeed! what is science when compared with the genius of Shakespeare? He told you, sir, that deer shed tears, and if they don’t, why—damn their eyes—they ought to!’
f98
‘Science:’ interrupted the antiquary, vehemently. ‘That is the argument of the atheist against the Scriptures.’
‘Science:’ interrupted the antiquary, vehemently. ‘That is the argument of the atheist against the Scriptures.’
‘Science:’ interrupted the antiquary, vehemently. ‘That is the argument of the atheist against the Scriptures.’
The argument was, at least, conclusive; nothing more remained to be said, or was said. Mr. Erin stalked on like a turkey-cock ruffled; his idol had been insulted, and he felt that he had done well to be angry. Every deer he saw stimulated his wrath. ‘Confound the fellow!’ he murmured as he passed the antlered herd, ‘it would serve him right if they tossed him.’ It even crossed his mind perhaps that Margaret was right after all in receiving Dennis’s attentions so coldly; that he was certainly a very pig-headed young man.
Frank Dennis, too, good-natured as he was, was not a little put out. For the moment he felt almost as disrespectful towards Shakespeare as Sydney Smith’s friend was to the Equator; but his eye fell on Margaret, and he put a bridle on his tongue.
His sense of annoyance soon faded away, but with the antiquary it was not so easily effaced. This incident was of considerable advantage to William Henry and his little plan. In a company of three, when one of them has fallen out of our favour, one naturally rather‘cottons’ to the other, if it is only to show the offender what he has forfeited by his misconduct; and from thenceforward Mr. Erin showed himself at least less severe towards the young man who bore his name. Nay, what was of more consequence, the symptoms he had exhibited of favouring Frank Dennis’s pretensions to his niece’s hand manifestly slackened; he no longer troubled himself to throw the young people together. On the other hand, though of course with no idea that there was risk in it (for he both despised him and ‘despised his youth’), he suffered William Henry and Margaret to ‘foregather’ as much as they pleased. He still felt so resentful to Frank’s sacrilegious ideas as respected the customs of deer when under emotion, that it was distasteful to him to be shut up with him as a companion; and in order to mitigate his society he took an inside place for William Henry (notwithstanding that, except in the matter of MSS. and first editions, he had a frugal mind) in the coach to town.