Part 2

Perhaps the author, thus hearing the story from another, detected here some flaw of logic, for he did not proceed at once, although Miss Dunbar waited with the most encouraging interest. The momentary pause was put to flight by Mr. Hopworthy.

"Ah, Zola never did anything more daring," he declared. "Even Zola might have hesitated to make _Ignatius_ change clothes with the intoxicated soldier, and leaping into the middle of the ballroom, shout that every glass must be filled to the brim."

"Hold on!" gasped Mr. Ferris. "There must be some mistake. I swear I never wrote anything like that in my life."

"But you have admitted it!" the other cried. "You cannot conceal it from us now. You are grand. You are sublime!"

"I deny it absolutely," returned Mr. Ferris.

"Please stop discussing, and let me hear the rest," Mabel pouted. "Do go on, Mr. Ferris."

"I can't," said Mr. Ferris, sadly. "My story has been garbled by the printer."

"But the waltz," urged Mr. Hopworthy. "Surely, that waltz was yours."

Perhaps once more the irresistible logic of events became apparent, for, with an effort, Mr. Ferris said:

"Oh, yes, that waltz was mine. Enraptured by its strains, and giddy with the fumes of wine, _The Almoner_ floated in a dream of sensuous delight till suddenly he recalled--suddenly he recalled----"

"If you will pardon another interruption," put in Mr. Hopworthy, "he did nothing of the sort. Suddenly, as you must remember, word was brought that _The Abbot_ was dead, and that _Ignatius_ had been elected in his place."

"You spoil my climax, sir," the author cried. "Dashing the wine cup from his lips, _Ignatius_ then rushed into the night----"

"But he could not find the soldier anywhere," Mr. Hopworthy interposed.

"Why should he want to find the confounded soldier?" demanded the narrator, fiercely.

"Why, to get his cowl, of course."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Mabel, clapping her hands.

"He--he----" the author stammered, and again the other lent a friendly tongue to say:

"_Ignatius_ returned to the monastery at once. And what should he discover there but _The Soldier_, seated in the chair of office, presiding at the council. But, see here, old chap, perhaps you had better finish your own story yourself?"

"Sir!" cried the author, springing to his feet. "I detect your perfidy, and I call this about the shabbiest trick one gentleman ever attempted to play upon another. I shall not hesitate to denounce you far and wide as one capable of the smallest meanness!"

"That is what _The Almoner_ told _The Soldier_," Mr. Hopworthy explained to Mabel, in a whisper, but the other, becoming almost violent, went on:

"You are unfit, sir, to associate with people of refinement, and, when I meet you alone, it will give me a lively satisfaction to repeat the observation!"

"That is what _The Soldier_ replied to _The Almoner_," Mr. Hopworthy again explained. But the other gentleman had lifted his hat, and was moving rapidly toward the striped tent, where ices were to be had.

"I shall never forgive him for leaving the story unfinished," announced the lady of the bench. "And, don't you think his manner toward the end was rather strange?"

Mr. Hopworthy sighed, and shook his head.

"Those magazine men are all a trifle odd," he said. "Does not that parasol fatigue your hand?"

"Yes, you may hold it, if you like," she answered. "I am glad everybody does not tell stories."

THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST

One May morning in the brave year 1594, Mistress Betty Hodges, from the threshold of the narrowest house in the narrowest of the narrow streets in the ancient parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, observed with more than passing interest the movements of a gentleman in black.

"Whist, neighbor!" she called out to Mistress Judd, whose portly person well-nigh filled a kindred doorway just across the street. "Yonder stranger should be by every sign in quest of lodgings, and by my horoscope this is a day most favorable for affairs of business. I pray thee, get thy knitting, lest he take us for no better than a pair of idle gossips."

"In faith," retorted Mistress Judd, folding her arms complacently after a side glance in the loiterer's direction, "an he should ever lodge with thee let us hope his shillings prove more nimble than his feet."

The gentleman indeed advanced with much deliberation, pausing from time to time to look about him as a man who balances advantages and disadvantages one against the other. It was a quaint old-mannered thoroughfare he moved in; a crooked street of overhanging eaves and jutting gable ends which nearly met against the sky; a shadowy, sunless, damp, ill-savored street, paved with round pebbles and divided in the middle by a trickling stream of unattractive water. For London, still in happy, dirty infancy, had yet to learn her lessons at the hands of those grim teachers, plague and fire.

"A proper man enough!" Mistress Judd added, "though I'll warrant over-cautious and of no great quality. To me he looks a traveling leech."

"Better a country student of divinity," suggested Mistress Hodges.

"Or better, a minor cleric, or at best some writing-master," Mistress Judd opined.

"Please God, then he can read," rejoined her neighbor, already debating within herself a small advance of rent. "Mayhap he might acquaint me whether those rolls of paper left by Master Christopher in his oaken chest be worth the ten shillings he died owing me."

"An they would fetch as many pence," sniffed Mistress Judd, "our master poet had long ago resolved them into Malmsey."

"Nay, speak not harshly of the dead," protested Mistress Hodges, conveying furtively a corner of her apron to one eye.

"Marry, if Master Kit did sometimes sing o' nights 'twas but to keep the watch awake. I'd wipe my shutter clean and willingly to hear his merry catch again. Ah, he was ever free with money when he had it. And 'twas a pleasure to see him with his bottle. In faith, he'd speak to it and kiss it as a woman would her child."

"And kiss it he did once too often, to my thinking," murmured Mistress Judd unsympathetically, "the night he got to brawling in the street and met his death."

"Marry, he was no brawler," Mistress Hodges protested warmly, "but ever cheerfullest when most in drink. They were thieving knaves who set upon him, and, God be good to sinners, ran him through the heart before the poor young man could so much as recite a couplet to prove himself a poet."

"How thinkst thou poetry would save him?" Mistress Judd demanded curtly.

"Marry, come up! What thief would kill a poet for his purse?" cried Mistress Hodges. "Quick, neighbor, get thy knitting!" she added hurriedly, and catching up a pewter plate began to polish with her apron as the stranger, attracted by their chatter, quickened his pace.

He was a slight man, apparently of thirty or thereabout, with deep-set, penetrating eyes and a lean face ending in the short, sharp, pointed beard in fashion at the time.

"Give you good-morrow, dames," he said, when within speaking distance; "can you direct me to some proper lodging here-about?"

Mistress Hodges dropped a deeper courtesy to draw attention to herself as the person of most importance.

"In truth an't please you, sir," she said, "'tis my good fortune to have this moment ready for your worship the fairest chambers to be had in all the town at four and six the week. Gentility itself could ask no better, for doth not the Lord Mayor live around the corner in his newly purchased Crosby Hall, the tallest house in London, and near at hand do not the gardens of Sir John Gresham stretch from Bishopsgate to Broad Street like a park? And if one would seek recreation, 'tis not five minutes to Cornhill, which is amusing as a fair o' pleasant evenings, with the jugglers and peddlers and goldsmiths and----"

"Ah, by my faith," the stranger interrupted gravely, "I should seek elsewhere, for I am not a man born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor under Jupiter, that loveth business, for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly."

"An you be disposed toward contemplation," interposed Mistress Hodges, quickly, "there can be found no purer place in London for such diversion than is my second story back. From thence one may contemplate at will either the almshouse gardens and the woodland beyond Houndsditch, or the turrets of the Tower itself, in winter when the leaves are gone."

"Please Heaven the leaves are thick at present!" said the stranger with a grim half smile. "Nevertheless, I have a mind to look from your back windows. The almshouse gardens may at least teach one resignation."

"Enter an't please you, sir," replied the landlady with a low obeisance.

The stranger made a close inspection of the chamber, peering into cupboards, testing the bed and stools and chairs, and finally pausing before a small oak box secluded in a corner.

"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added, raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen manuscripts or more, bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?"

The stranger laughed and shook his head.

"'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's presence.

"In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without merit."

"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady ventured to inquire.

"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of his murder--" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges checked him.

"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale."

More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them unread.

"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret. The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own employment."

"Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be, therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take himself off before his purse is empty."

The new lodger entered into possession of his chamber on the afternoon of the day on which he saw it first. His luggage, brought thither by two porters on a single barrow, and consisting chiefly of books and manuscripts, proved him to be the humble student he had represented himself, and in a week his neighbors were agreed in rating him a rather commonplace recluse. His days were spent in reverie by the open window or in writing at the parchment-littered table. If he stirred abroad at all it was but for an hour in the long twilight after supper, and his candle rarely burned later than ten o'clock. It was not until a fortnight had gone by that Mistress Hodges had the satisfaction of announcing a visitor.

"Come in!" cried Master Francis, responding to her knock at his chamber door, and not a little surprised by a summons so unusual, for the remnants of his supper had been removed, and he was himself preparing for his evening stroll.

"A gentleman attends below, an't please you, sir," she announced, entering hurriedly.

"Impossible!" her lodger protested, "for how should a visitor inquire for one who has no name?"

"By your description, an't please you, sir," replied the woman. "He drew you to the life. By my faith, there could be no mistake, and when he said you might be known as Master Francis how could I but admit him? Grand gentleman that he is, with a servant at his heels and half a score of varlets waiting within call!"

Master Francis bit his lip and moved impatiently about the room.

"Go tell this grand gentleman that you were wrong," he said. "Tell him I was requested out to supper at half an hour before seven. Tell him what falsehood slips most easily from your tongue, and as you are a woman, tell it truthfully."

"'Twould not avail, for even now your visitor, grown impatient, mounts the stair," replied the hostess, while a heavy footfall coming every moment nearer testified to the truth of her assertion.

"Then off with you and let us be alone," commanded Master Francis, stopping resolutely in his walk, while Mistress Hodges in the doorway found herself thrust unceremoniously aside to give place to a dignified man in middle life. The visitor's dress was black, relieved only by a broad white ruff, yet of so rich a quality that the appointments of the room descended in the scale from homeliness to shabbiness by contrast. But apparently he concerned himself no more with the apartment than with Mistress Hodges.

"How now, nephew?" he began at once. "What means this hiding like a hedgehog in a hole?"

Master Francis bowed with almost servile deference and clasped his hands, making at the same time a gesture with his foot intended to convey to Mistress Hodges an intimation that she was free to go.

"My uncle, this is far too great an honor that you pay me," he said, when the landlady had closed the door behind her.

"Odsblood! For once, I hear the truth from you. Why have you left your chambers in Gray's Inn for this?" the other answered with a movement of the nostrils as though the whole environment was comprehended in a whiff of Mistress Hodges' mutton broth.

"In truth, most gracious kinsman," the younger man rejoined, "since my exclusion from the Court some certain greasy bailiffs have favored me with their company a trifle over often, nor had I otherwhere to go while waiting for a fitting opportunity to recall myself to your lordship's memory."

"And pray you, to what end?" the other asked impatiently.

"You are not ignorant, uncle, of the state of my poor fortune," said the scholar.

"No," was the answer, "nor can you be forgetful, nephew, of my efforts in the past to mend that fortune."

"For all of which believe me truly grateful," responded Master Francis with a touch of irony. "'Tis to your gracious favor that I owe my appointment to the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, worth sixteen hundred pounds a year, provided that I, a weak man, survive in poverty a strong affluence. 'Tis like another man's ground buttaling upon his house, which may mend his prospect but does not fill his barn."

The other, crossing to the open window, half seated himself upon the sill, folding his arms while fixing disapproving eyes on his nephew's face.

"This attitude becomes you not at all," he said. "Through me you were returned to Parliament, and through me you might have been advanced to profitable office had you not seen fit to antagonize the Ministry, opposing, for the sake of paltry public favour, that four years' subsidy of which the Treasury stood in dire need to meet the Popish plots."

"I sought to shield the Ministry and Crown from public disapproval," replied Master Francis. "The country in my judgment was not able to endure the tax."

"'Twas most presumptuous to set up your judgment against that of your betters," said the other. "Your part is plain. This act of yours must be forgotten. It must be known that you have once for all abandoned public life for study. Publish some learned disquisition upon what you will. Absent yourself from town, and in a twelvemonth, perhaps, or less if things go well----"

"A twelvemonth!" cried Master Francis. "Unless my pockets be replenished I shall have starved to death by early summer."

The gentleman upon the window-sill remained for a space silent with knitted brows. Presently he said:

"I shall arrange to pay you an allowance, small, but sufficient for your needs, upon condition that you go at once to France, where you already have acquaintances."

"It may be you are right, my lord," responded Master Francis, "but it suits my humor not at all to exile myself, and before accepting your offer grant me permission to speak to the Earl of Essex. He has the favor of the Queen."

The other laughed a scornful laugh, and rising deliberately drew on a glove he had been holding in one hand.

"Enough!" he said. "Depend on Essex's favor with the Queen and follow him to the Tower in good time."

"But, uncle, give me your kind permission at least to speak with him."

"My kind permission and my blessing!" the uncle answered suavely, moving toward the door. With his hand upon the latch he stood to add, across his shoulder, "You are behind the times in news, nephew. Three days ago my Lord of Essex departed somewhat suddenly for his estates--upon a hunting expedition, it is said, though beldame Rumor will insist that our most gracious Queen hath turned the icy eye at last upon his fawning."

"A morning frost!" cried Master Francis with a gesture. "A frost that the recurring sun of pity turns full soon to tender dew. But 'tis a chill of which to take advantage. Let me but follow my peevish lord to his retirement, lock in my humble cause with his, and in due season claim the meet reward of faithful service."

His manner had grown so earnest that the other turned to listen, albeit with a smile of contempt.

"Look you, uncle," the younger man went on, "were I to start at once, travelling in modest state, yet as befitting the nephew of the Lord Treasurer of England, well mounted and attended by a single man-servant, the whole adventure might be managed for a matter of one hundred pounds."

"Good!" cried the other with suspiciously ready acquiescence. "Thou art in verity a diplomat. By all means put your fortunes to the test, and when you have, acquaint me with the issue."

He turned and once more laid a hand upon the latch.

"But," protested Master Francis, "I have still to find the hundred pounds----"

"A riddle for diplomacy to solve!" replied the Lord Treasurer of England, laughing sardonically. "I can tell you no more than that you shall not find it in my purse!" And so saying, he strode from the room, leaving the door wide open.

For many minutes Master Francis paced the floor, muttering to himself, now angry imprecations at his own folly, now curses on the relentless arrogance of the Lord Treasurer. As the long twilight of the season fell he caught up his wide-brimmed hat and hurried from the house.

He took his way through narrow winding streets, and after several turnings came at length to one much wider, a thoroughfare lined with little shops, whose owners when not occupied with customers stood on their thresholds soliciting the patronage of passers-by.

"What do you lack?" they cried; "hats, shoes, or hosiery; gloves, ruffs, or farthingales?" each setting forth the value of his wares in frantic effort to outshout competitors. Along the pavement worthy citizens sauntered with wives and sweethearts, or stood in interested groups about some mountebank or maker of music performing upon several ill-tuned instruments at once. On a patch of trodden grass young men played noisy games of bowls until a gilded coach in passing wantonly destroyed their goal. Here a bout with single-stick was in progress, there a contest with bare fists which must have grown serious had not the watch arrived in time to separate the belligerents with their pikes. But the centre of most interest was a seafaring man who smoked a long-stemmed pipe with rather ostentatious unconcern. The men regarded him with furtive admiration, the women disapprovingly, while children ran to catch a whiff of the strange aromatic scent. When he blew puffs of vapor from his nostrils everybody laughed.

Master Francis, moving hastily aside to make way for the smoker and his escort, came into collision with a man of his own age, whose broad good-humored face showed due appreciation of the scene.

"What think you, friend?" the stranger asked, laughing. "Will this new savagery become an institution? Have we been at such pains to banish smoke from our churches only to turn our heads into censers? Mayhap this be another Popish plot?"

"It seems to me a bit of arrant folly," Master Francis answered somewhat listlessly, "and as such, certain to become the rage."

"They tell us it will prolong the life," went on the other, "for it is well known a herring when smoked outlasts a fresh one."

"Say rather he who smokes will live the longer because the wise die young," retorted Master Francis, pleased by the conceit.

"At least," remarked the stranger, "the fashion will make trade for fairy chimneysweeps."

Some further conversation followed naturally, for Master Francis, weary of his own society, was in the mood to welcome any companionship, and, moreover, the newcomer, who seemed a man of understanding, met another's eyes too frankly to leave the question of his honesty in doubt. They spoke of tobacco as a possible feature in social life, and both agreed that a whiff of the new herb might be an interesting experiment.

"Let us go then to the Bull," the stranger suggested, "where in a small room behind the tap one may smoke a pipe for threepence under the tutelage of this very seaman, who acquired the art in our Virginia colonies."

"Agreed!" cried Master Francis willingly; though at another time he might have rejected such an offer. "'Twill be an experience to remember."

"Marry," replied the other, "'tis he who lags behind the cavalcade who must take the dust. For my part I like not to be outfaced by any idle boaster who may lisp--'Ah, 'tis an art to keep the bowl aglow! Ah, shouldst see me fill my mouth with smoke, and blow it out in rings! Odd's bodkin, the Duke himself said bravo!'"

The stranger's mimicry of the mincing gallants of the day was to the life, and as they turned their steps toward the tavern, Master Francis laughed with satisfaction at finding himself in such good company. When presently his companion quoted Horace, he ventured to inquire at what school he had read the classics.

"At none," was the reply. "Let those who will perform the threshing. I am content to pick up kernels here and there like a sleek rat in a farmer's barn. Your tippling scholar of the taproom will set forth a rasher of lean Xenophon with every cup of sack, and as for churchmen--they be all unnatural sons who so bedeck their mother tongue in scraps and shreds of foreign phrase, the poor beldame walks abroad as motley mantled as a fiddler's wanton."

"But surely--_Justitia eum cuique distribuit_--as Cicero hath it," Master Francis cried in protest against such heresy. "You will not deny that an apt quotation lends grace to our too barren English."

"'Tis a thin sauce to a rich meat," replied the other; adding modestly, "I am, an't please you, sir, but one who, having little Latin and less Greek, must make a shift with what is left to him."