“So he would,” said Master Shakspere; “but before we put him into ‘As You Like It,’ suppose we ask him how he does like it? Nick, thou hast heard what all these gentlemen have said—what hast thou to say, my lad?”
“Why, sirs, ye are all kind,” said Nick, his voice beginning to tremble, “very, very kind indeed, sirs; but—I—I want my mother—oh, masters, I do want my mother!”
At that John Combe turned on his heel and walked out of the gate. Out of the garden-gate walked he, and down the dirty lane, setting his cane down stoutly as he went, past gravel-pits and pens to Southam’s lane, and in at the door of Simon Attwood’s tannery.
It was noon when he went in; yet the hour struck, and no one came or went from the tannery. Mistress Attwood’s dinner grew cold upon the board, and Dame Combe looked vainly across the fields toward the town.
But about the middle of the afternoon John Combe came out of the tannery door, and Simon Attwood came behind him. And as John Combe came down the cobbled way, a trail of brown vat-liquor followed him, dripping from his clothes, for he was soaked to the skin. His long gray hair had partly dried in strings about his ears, and his fine lace collar was a drabbled shame; but there was a singular untroubled smile upon his plain old face.
Simon Attwood stayed to lock the door, fumbling his keys as if his sight had failed; but when the heavy bolt was shut, he turned and called after John Combe, so that the old man stopped in the way and dripped a puddle until the tanner came up to where he stood. And as he came up Attwood asked, in such a tone as none had ever heard from his mouth before, “Combe, John Combe, what’s done ’s done,—and oh, John, the pity of it,—yet will ye still shake hands wi’ me, John, afore ye go?”
John Combe took Simon Attwood’s bony hand and wrung it hard in his stout old grip, and looked the tanner squarely in the eyes; then, still smiling serenely to himself, and setting his cane down stoutly as he walked, dripped home, and got himself into dry clothes without a word.
But Simon Attwood went down to the river, and sat upon a flat stone under some pollard willows, and looked into the water.
What his thoughts were no one knew, nor ever shall know; but he was fighting with himself, and more than once groaned bitterly. At first he only shut his teeth and held his temples in his hands; but after a while he began to cry to himself, over and over again, “O Absalom, my son, my son! O my son Absalom!” and then only “My son, my son!” And when the day began to wane above the woods of Arden, he arose, and came up from the river, walking swiftly; and, looking neither to the right nor to the left, came up to the Great House garden, and went in at the gate.