The newcomer sank down in a manner of extreme weariness in a vacant chair. He sighed heavily.
“A cup of the muscadel for Sir Walter,” said the man at the table-head. “And lively about it, boy. No need to tell us what has happened, Wat. But we did not think it was so bad as all this. We did not think it possible that Will could fail. Is it—tell me, Wat—that Gloriana has smelt some affront in the new piece? Well, well, she is getting old, and even in her prime she was—well, shall we say?—what shall we say?—why, body o’ God, what’s the matter with the fellow?”
The speaker had good reason to ask the question. Raleigh—the brown-faced courtier was no less than he—seemed utterly overcome. Something untoward had most certainly happened. There was more than a mere matter of a play’s failure or success in the dismay of that strong face which shone a bleak gray in the uncertain light of the room.
“Why, what’s the matter? Tell us, for the love of God!”
But Raleigh shook his head haplessly. He who knew not the meaning of fear in the presence of bodily peril, he whose resolution never failed in great crises, was wholly unable to tell the news he bore.
“Is it Will?” A sense of foreboding had descended suddenly upon all. “Tell us, I pray you.”—The eagerly anxious voices sank in the oddest manner. “Has aught happened to Will Shakespeare?”
Raleigh did not answer. But that face so eloquent of power and high capacity seemed to grow a little bleaker. And then twenty pairs of eyes that were turned almost fiercely upon it saw that a rush of sudden tears was shining there.
The man at the head of the table laid a hand to his heart.
“Oh!”
His exclamation went echoing through the silence of the long room. Again the solemn hush descended. That which Walter Raleigh had not courage to tell, not one of these men could muster the courage to ask.