The crowd before him was one dispersing after a short afternoon performance[3] at both theaters. It was smaller than usual and was the last of the season. The Plague had firmly engrafted itself in the city, and was gathering new life with increase of deaths.
Even in the suburbs the red crosses were being marked upon the doors of infected houses. A week previously, the Lord Mayor had issued a proclamation prohibiting the holding open of places of amusement during the prevalence of the epidemic. This order, aimed at the gathering of multitudes where germs of disease might be readily propagated, was nugatory outside the city walls, but it had had its effect upon the theater-going public. It was a warning of greater force than those thundered from the pulpits. The hegira of the wealthier class of people to the country had begun, and the poorer classes were closing their doors and venturing out only as necessity compelled.
It was this condition of affairs that had caused the managers of the play-houses in Finbury Fields to announce a closing of their doors, and the prospect of a reopening before the fall, or possibly the winter season, was not encouraging.
Such a cessation of occupation assured discomfort and perhaps misery to the man described; for his livelihood depended upon the prosperity of the theaters; but if he had at any time seriously considered the matter, the consideration had in no wise affected his perennial good humor. He laughed at the unsuccessful attempts of several crows at lighting upon one of the wings of a near windmill that turned slightly one way and then another in the shifting breeze. And then again he was amused at the actions of an apparently intoxicated man, who, having stumbled from the path, had in the fog encountered the wall near by, and with one hand against it was repeating in loud voice the lines he had lately heard from the lips of a ranting actor: “Swing back the gates, thou triple-headed fiend,
Or by the gods this hand will draw a blade
To make thy shoulders strangers to thy head.”
The laugh which these words and gestures awakened on the part of the quiet observer just described was joined in by another man who was approaching by the same path. The latter had been whistling with all the ardor and enthusiasm of tender years and an undisturbed mind, until the loud voice of the drunkard provoked him to laughter.
He was a beardless youth of apparently twenty years of age. As he laughed his little blue eyes were almost closed beneath his red eyebrows, so that their expression alone was enough to excite the merriment of an observer. His wide open mouth revealed two rows of white teeth, separated by at least two inches of space at the moment that the loudest peal of laughter came forth. His round cheeks were red with superabundance of health, and proclaimed contact with country air. It was not an overshrewd face nor one showing resolution; but it was so open, so frank and good natured, that even a person injured by carelessness on the part of its owner would have paused in expressing a natural remonstrance.
One would have expected to have seen a rough doublet of Kendal green, or of homespun russet, with patched trousers and low cockers upon the slender figure beneath this face; but, on the contrary, he was attired in a neat-fitting garb appropriate for the page of a lord or rich country squire. His blue coat, with velvet facing, had even an Italian ruff with a hundred double turnings upon it. A short sword was belted at his waist, and his trunks, of strong material, disappeared into top boots. The latter, however, were patched, of crude manufacture, and looked to have been worn through plowed fields at some recent period. Neither was his hat in keeping with his new body apparel, but was one evidently picked, for wearing on this particular expedition, out of some pile of discarded garments of the man whom he served.
As he saw the man first described a gleam of recognition showed in his face.
“Ho!” he exclaimed, joyfully, “Is that you?”
“None else,” returned the other, carelessly, as though the discovery of himself by the stranger was of the least concern.