First, some one in the yard laughed out—a shock-headed ironmonger’s apprentice, “Whoy, bullies, there be hayseed in his hair. ’Tis took off pasture over-soon. I fecks! they’ve plucked him green!”
There was a hoarse, exasperating laugh. Nick hesitated in his lines. The player at his back tried to prompt him, but only made the matter worse, and behind the green curtain at the door a hand went “clap” upon a dagger-hilt. The play lagged, and the crowd began to jeer. Nick’s heart was full of fear and of angry shame that he had dared to try. Then all at once there came a brief pause, in which he vaguely realized that no one spoke. The man behind him thrust him forward, and whispering wrathfully, “Quick, quick—sing up, thou little fool!” stepped back and left him there alone.
A viol overhead took up the time, the gittern struck a few sharp notes. This unexpected music stopped the noise, and all was still. Nick thought of his mother’s voice singing on a summer’s evening among the hollyhocks, and as the viol’s droning died away he drew a deep breath and began to sing the words of “Heywood’s newest song”:
“Pack, clouds, away, and welcome, day;
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow!”
It was only a part of a madrigal, the air to which they had fitted the words,—the same air that Nick had sung in the woods,—a thing scarce meant ever to be sung alone, a simple strain, a few plain notes, and at the close one brief, queer, warbling trill like a bird’s wild song, that rose and fell and rose again like a silver ripple.
The instruments were still; the fresh young voice came out alone, and it was done so soon that Nick hardly knew that he had sung at all. For a moment no one seemed to breathe. Then there was a very great noise, and all the court seemed hurling at him. A man upon the stage sprang to his feet. What they were going to do to him Nick did not know. He gave a frightened cry, and ran past the green curtain, through the open door, and into the master-player’s excited arms.
“Quick, quick!” cried Carew. “Go back, go back! There, hark!—dost not hear them call? Quick, out again—they call thee back!” With that he thrust Nick through the door. The man upon the stage came up, slipped something into his hand—Nick, all bewildered, knew not what; and there he stood, quite stupefied, not knowing what to do. Then Carew came out hastily and led him down the stage, bowing, and pressing his hand to his heart, and smiling like a summer sunrise; so that Nick, seeing this, did the same, and bowed as neatly as he could; though, to be sure, his was only a simple, country-bred bow, and no such ceremonious to-do as Master Carew’s courtly London obeisance.
Every one was standing up and shouting so that not a soul could hear his ears, until the ironmonger’s apprentice bellowed above the rest; “Whoy, bullies!” he shouted, amid a chorus of cheers and laughter, “didn’t I say ’twas catched out in the fields—it be a skylark, sure enough! Come, Muster Skylark, sing that song again, an’ thou shalt ha’ my brand-new cap!”