CHAPTER II
II
During the days following Christmas, One Tree Inn was given over to festivity. It had always been a favoured spot with the young people from Stratford and Shottery. In spring they came trooping to Master Thornbury's meadow, bringing their flower-crowned queen and ribbon-decked May-pole. It was there they had their games of barley-break, blindman's buff and the merry cushion dance during the long summer evenings; and when dusk fell they would stroll homeward through the lanes sweet with flowering hedges, each one of them all carrying a posy from Deb Thornbury's garden—for where else grew such wondrous clove-pinks, ragged lady, lad's love, sweet-william and Queen Anne's lace, as there? So now these old playmates of Darby's came one by one to welcome him home and gaze at him in unembarrassed admiration.
Judith Shakespeare, who was a friend and gossip of Debora's, spent many evenings with them, and those who knew the little maid best alone could say what that meant, for never was there a gayer lass, or one who had a prettier wit. To hear Judith enlarging upon her daily experiences with people and things, was to listen to thrilling tales, garnished and gilded in fanciful manner, till the commonplace became delightful, and life in Stratford town a thing to be desired above the simple passing of days in other places.
No trivial occurrence went by this little daughter of the great poet without making some vivid impression upon her mind, for she viewed the every-day world lying beside the peaceful Avon through the wonderful rose-coloured glasses of youth, and an imagination bequeathed to her direct from her father.
It was on an evening when Judith Shakespeare was with them and Deb was roasting chestnuts by the hearth, that they fell to talking of London, and the marvellous way people had of living there.
A sudden storm had blown up, flakes of frozen snow came whirling against the windows, beating a fairy rataplan on the frosted glass, while the heavy boughs of the old oak creaked and groaned in the wind. Darby and the two girls listened to the sounds without and drew their chairs nearer the fire with a sense of the warm comfort of the long cheery room. They chatted about the city and the pleasures and pastimes that held sway there, doings that seemed so extravagant to country-bred folk, and that often turned night into day—a day moreover not akin to any spent elsewhere on top of the earth.
"Dost sometimes act in the same play with my father, Darby, at the Globe Theatre?" asked Judith, after a pause in the conversation, and at a moment when the innkeeper had just left the room.
The girl was sitting in a chair whose oaken frame was black with age. Now she grasped the arms of it tightly, and Darby noted the beautiful form of her hands and the tapering delicate fingers; he saw also a nervous tremor go through them as she spoke.
"Oh! I would know somewhat of my father's life in London," continued Judith, "and of the people he meets there. He hath acquaintance with many gentlemen of the Queen's Court and Parliament, for he hath twice been bidden to play in Her Majesty's theatre in the palace at Greenwich. Yet of all those doings of his and of the nobles who make much of him he doth say so little, Darby."