Robin’s house of Abbot’s Gap was less than twenty miles away from Hilbury Melcombe, and though he was brought up in the Protestant faith, it seemed well to his uncle and guardian, who was busy with his own affairs at the western end of the county, as it did to Sir Robert Bannet, that the two boys should share the same tutor at Eton. The tutor, however, was Mr Charles Stafford, who was Sir Robert Bannet’s secretary. He was chosen by Sir Robert, and the good, easy uncle at the other end of the county acquiesced in the choice, since it saved him a deal of trouble.
The three of them occupied the last house in the long, single street of Eton. It was commodious enough to provide a study and a bedroom apiece, accommodation for their servants and a common room for their meals and recreations.
On this evening Robin slipped quietly into his study and sat down in his window seat above the meadows to fight his battle out. He had made plans, sacred plans, and had never thought for a moment that he could dream of forswearing them. But he had never dreamed that this glittering temptation of the queen’s favour would be dangled before his eyes as it had been this afternoon. He despised himself, but he was honest. He was tempted. The fame of Elizabeth’s court was high and splendid. There was none like it for gaiety and colour, for amusement and opportunity. It was presided over by a lady, herself of high spirits and gaiety. By a scratch of her pen she dispensed power and wealth. There was the dark side, of course, to that shining mirror, but how should a boy let it frighten him? A page at the queen’s court! Robin drew up his knees to his chin on the window seat and clasping his hands about them with a little wriggle of pleasure, saw the world opening like the dawn. There would be the months of progress during the summer, the tournaments, the great houses ringing with laughter.
“I could spare a few years,” he argued. “In any case, I must wait till I’m a man.”
But when he was a grown man, perhaps with a pleasant, profitable office, wouldn’t he put off year after year the thing he had sworn to do? Wouldn’t he gradually cease to feel the shame of a man forsworn, covering it all up under the fat of his indolence? Until middle age came and the chance was gone. He saw himself suddenly as in a distorting glass, mean, a fugitive from himself, despicable, and not knowing it.
“No!” he cried, and he got to his feet; and, having washed himself vigorously as though with that clean water he washed the foulness of his thoughts away, he went into the common room very late for his supper. He found Mr Stafford and Humphrey nearly at the end of theirs.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, with a bow to Mr Stafford, “I wasn’t noticing the time.”
Mr Stafford raised a protesting hand.
“Not a word, I pray you! Humble people like Humphrey and myself must not be so foolish as to expect good manners from a queen’s favourite. It is condescension enough if he takes his supper with us at all.”
Robin did not answer. He had indeed a sense of guilt rather than of triumph. He had always taken the second place without troubling his head about it. Sir Robert Bannet, of Hilbury Castle, was a much more important figure in the County of Dorset than fourteen-year-old Robin Aubrey. Mr Stafford, too, was a dependent of that house. It was in the natural order that Mr Stafford should set Humphrey forward and thrust Robin back, and for the humiliating consequences both to Humphrey and the tutor Robin was inclined to reproach himself. He looked unhappily across the table at Humphrey, a black-haired lad of Robin’s own height, handsome enough in his doublet of grey velvet, but with such a scowl upon his face as took all his good looks away. Robin tried again to make easier a difficult moment.
“I am very sorry,” he said. “Not sorry for what happened to me. There’s no boy in the world but would give a year of his life for so gracious a favour, but I wish with all my heart that it had happened without” — and he searched for a phrase which would not reopen wounds— “causing either of you pain.”
Humphrey Bannet worked his shoulders angrily.
“Let’s not talk of it,” he rapped out, and there the debate might have ended but for Mr Stafford. He could not let a resentment die. He must worry a grievance until it was once more raw. Smiling and suave as velvet he interrupted:
“No, but, my dear Humphrey, we must talk of it. This is Robin’s day. Very likely he will never know such another. It will be his annus Domini. He will reform his calendar to keep its memory green. It would be ungenerous to Robin not to make the most of it, as he will, we may be sure. For even now he must come back to it with a kindly hope that his triumph has not given the rest of us poor people pain.”
“Sir,” Robin stammered miserably, “you go out of your way to put me in the wrong. If I spoke of — of this afternoon again — —”
“And you did, dear lad, you did!”
“It was merely to wish that it would make no difference between Humphrey and me, and that — —”
“No, but you may be satisfied it will make none,” said Mr Stafford. He seldom let anyone finish a sentence, and as a rule prefaced his interruption with a “no, but,” even though the interruption was merely to repeat in other words what had already been said. “It is not now, Robin, that we listen to you with impatience. A little bragging and bravado is more than pardonable. But I pray you to be careful in afteryears. We shall have you saying: ‘When Walsingham had his head cut off — —’ ” and Mr Stafford’s face suddenly contracted with such a fury of rage in his eyes that Robin was startled. It was only for a second that the hatred showed and Mr Stafford was back in his vein of banter. But during that second a veil had dropped. A ferret indeed! Robin saw a man dangerous with the cold hatred of a snake. “ ’When did Sir Francis die on the block?’ you will ask Robin. ‘Let me think, sir! A moment and I shall tell you. It was two years after the queen gave me a ribbon from her sleeve.’ ”
Humphrey Bannet laughed stridently, and Robin shifted his body in his chair.
“Or it will be,” continued Mr Stafford, again imitating waggishly some prosy old bore stuffed full of tedious reminiscences, “ ’Humphrey Bannet went first as ambassador to France — a minute, and I have it. It was in the summer just fifteen years after Her Grace called me forward and was pleased to approve of my velvet cape and my pretty face.’ And then our Robin will sigh and pluck at his grey beard and tell for the thousandth time the story of that famous moment.”
Robin’s cheeks flamed. A schoolboy is as defenceless against the raillery of his tutor as a private on a parade ground against the sarcasms of a sergeant major. However poor and heavy the wit, Robin was the butt ready-made. He was wise enough not to answer, and the most uncomfortable meal which he could remember dragged miserably to its end. Mr Stafford rose at the end of it a little disappointed. He had always resented Robin’s ability to withdraw within a fortress of dreams and hold his own there against all invaders. Mr Stafford looked down at the young head of his pupil. The candlelight burnished the brown waves of hair; there was an odd contrast between the gaiety of his shining doublet, his stiffly starched white ruff, and the lonely brooding look of his face, which might have touched even an enemy to a gentler mood. But Mr Stafford only foresaw another opportunity of sport. He smiled suddenly.
“Come! We are wasting time,” he said genially. “We have work to do.”
He moved to the door, called aloud for the table to be cleared, and set himself to arrange the furniture at the other end of the long room. For a moment Robin and Humphrey were alone, and rather timidly Robin stretched out his hand across the table.
“Humphrey!” he pleaded in a low voice.
“Well, and what now?”
Humphrey would not see that outstretched hand.
“I think that if Mr Stafford had been less busy it is very likely you whom Her Grace would have called out — —”
Humphrey interrupted him with a bitter cry:
“Her Grace! Her Grace! We hear too much of Her Grace, I am thinking. There are other names for her, I think, less polite but more apt. Wait but a little! They are only muttered now.
We shall hear them in the street, be sure. ‘Mere English’ — oh, no doubt, but born in Babylon, eh — —”
Humphrey came to an abrupt stop. At the other end of the room, behind Robin’s back, Mr Stafford was flapping his hand up and down in the air in consternation. Humphrey was brought to his senses. He saw Robin staring up at him with startled, incredulous eyes.
“I was talking like a fool and meant not a word of it,” he said quickly. “It was lucky no one was listening but you, Robin. Else that fine appointment in France which Mr Stafford there has reserved for me would go to someone else.” He laughed heartily and clapped his hand into Robin’s. “There! We are friends again. Envy, Robin, envy! But not even Her Grace shall come between us”; and he held Robin’s hand until he saw that the dismay had faded out of his face and a smile had made it warm again.
The table was cleared. Mr Stafford set a chair for himself in the middle of the room and took up from a table a book of manuscript.
“That chair on the left-hand side is the garden door. The court cupboard at the back represents the exterior of the Prince of Padua’s palace. The chest on the right is a garden seat. Lorenzo, son of the Prince of Padua — that’s you, Humphrey — is discovered seated.”
It was the custom of the school to act a play before the summer holiday began, and this year the master had adapted, and at the same time duly mitigated, a comedy by Terence. The Greek landowner had become the Prince of Padua, his scapegrace son the prince’s heir, and the crafty slave, whose tricks and rogueries were the Roman poet’s stock in trade, was now a valet in the prince’s retinue. Mr Stafford was going to devote this evening to a rehearsal of the scenes which the two boys had together, and he looked forward to a considerable amount of enjoyment.
“Carlo Manucci — that’s you, Robin — the valet, cautiously opens the garden door, hisses out, ‘Sst! Sst!’ to attract his young master’s attention, and then sneaks in. Now begin!”
Robin pretended to open the door and thrust his head in. He whispered, “Sst! Sst!” and then crept onto the stage on tiptoe. No doubt the cunning was exaggerated; no doubt, on Robin’s entrance, the most unobservant of men must have smelt conspiracy a mile away — indeed, why Robin was ever cast for the artful valet no one but Mr Stafford could have explained. His knavery was so transparent, his shiftiness so explicit, that even a Prince of Padua must have taken a stick to him in the first hour of his service.
Mr Stafford, however, held the stick.
“No, but, Robin, the secrecy is overdone. Carlo Manucci sneaks in. Those are the directions of the master, writ in his own hand. He sneaks in. No more than that, Robin. If you are natural, that is all that he wants. Sneak in, Robin! Try it again. Be natural.”
Robin tried it again:
“Hist, my young lord!”
Mr Stafford set his book down on his knee and gazed despairingly about the room.
“Well,” he said at length in a hopeless voice, “go on! Lorenzo leaps up in terror.”
“My father?” cried Humphrey in dismay.
“Oh, very good!” exclaimed Mr Stafford. At last he had acting to content him. “My dear Humphrey, admirable! The true note of terror! Carlo Manucci takes him up, playing on his terror. You, Robin.”
The dialogue went on:
Carlo. Home he comes,
A Roman father with the down-turned thumbs.
Lorenzo. I’ll hide!
(“Bravo!” came from the mouth of Mr Stafford.)
Carlo. And lose your hide!
Mr Stafford uttered a groan.
“That’ll never do. It’s a jest, Robin, a play upon words! ‘I’ll hide,’ says he. ‘And lose your hide!’ you answer. The audience should laugh. Try it again, my boy!”
And the more he tried, the more self-conscious and awkward he became. He could not let his arms hang quietly at his sides. He must do something with them. He felt that his hands had swollen to the size of melons and that his feet were as clumsy as an elephant’s.
Mr Stafford shook his head.
“I am not sure but what you’d do it better on all fours. However, let it go! Now Carlo unfolds his plan. But cringe, sir, cringe! The supple back, the leering, unpleasant face! Let us see you bend, my good Robin! We know that you can. We saw you bending to the ground this afternoon, a proper lackey!”
Mr Stafford could not keep his thoughts long away from the humiliation of that afternoon. Mr Ferret, was he? He wanted schooling more than the scholars, did he? He heard the ripple of laughter running along the ranks of the boys, and he tingled with shame so that his feet beat upon the floor. Robin was to blame for it. If Robin had modestly effaced himself instead of thrusting forward in his fine new clothes — Mr Ferret indeed! He could get no redress from the queen — as yet, at all events. What was it that good Cardinal Allan at Rheims called her? “The beast that troubles the world.” Mr Stafford smiled as he recollected the words. A good phrase that! Better than Gloriana! Well, they would see what they would see. Meanwhile her exquisite young sycophant was not enjoying himself — there was consolation in that — Mr Stafford had managed to break through the boy’s armour at last. Robin was red one moment and white the next. His lips were trembling. Another turn or two of the levers and there might be tears. In fact, there ought to be tears. And since there ought to be, there should be. What else was a tutor for except to make sure that what ought to be should be?
“You would be the gallant, the gentleman cap-a-pie, would you, Robin? Oh, no, no, no! You’re the varlet, sleek and slippery, and mean. We must strip you of that pretty shining doublet. A leather jerkin, sir, and you’ll forget the ribbon knot within your shirt, as Her Grace has forgot it these many hours past.”
Mr Stafford was in full flight. On his rare visits from Hilbury Melcombe to London he had slipped away to Paris Garden and discovered a new and acute enjoyment in the baiting of bull and bear. He had felt himself pinched and tumbled with the mastiffs and yet still found himself upon his feet. He had shaken his ears with big Bruin, imagined his own flesh torn by the dogs and knew that it was not torn. The sharp teeth had crunched on the bone, yet there was never a mark, never a speck of blood. He had revelled in the thrill and not suffered from the pain. Tonight he was doing the baiting himself, and the enjoyment was more exquisite than any even to be got at Bankside. He was the mastiff, Robin the bear, chained by his silken leg and muzzled by his duty into the bargain. He could have hallooed himself on, like the rabble — he, Mr Stafford, the tutor. His little eyes sparkled, the long nose twitched; and then, when the sport was at its height, the boy who should be bursting into tears was looking over his head with such an expression of relief as filled the tutor with fury.
“What is this? You pay no heed to me now!” he cried, and he swung round in his chair.
The door in the corner of the room was open, and in the doorway stood an elderly man in the frieze jacket and cloth hose of a servant.
“Dakcombe!” said Mr Stafford angrily. “We have not done here. Off with you! Robin, you should order your servants better!”
Dakcombe stood his ground.
“A gentleman wants to see Master Robin.”
“Let him come, then, at a more reputable hour, and if Master Robin’s conduct has been seemly, he shall see him.”
“Mrs Parker says that Master Robin must not keep the gentleman waiting.”
“Oh, she does, does she?” Mr Stafford began very sarcastically and came to a dead stop. He had been set down once that day for taking too much authority upon himself. He had no wish that a second humiliation of this same kind should be his lot in the evening. He was merely the private tutor of the two boys. His charges were paid by Sir Robert Bannet of Hilbury Melcombe on the one hand and by Robin Aubrey’s uncle and guardian on the other. He had no independent prerogative. But Mrs Parker was the hostess appointed by the school. In the last resort she was the real authority. As Mr Stafford sat in doubt Robin stepped forward from the scene.
“By your leave, sir?” he asked, and t
he boy’s movement recalled to him another movement made by quite another person in the yard before the lower school that afternoon.
“Oh yes,” he said to himself.
Even in the midst of his resentment and shame Mr Stafford’s eyes had been alert. Someone in the queen’s neighbourhood had moved, had spoken. In a twinkling he was all honey and smiles.
“Certainly you must not keep your visitor waiting,” he said suavely. “And you will remember, Robin, that in the edge and stress of rehearsals, sharp things are said which are of no account afterwards.”
“I shall certainly remember, sir, that sharp things are said,” Robin answered gently; and he followed Dakcombe out of the common room and closed the door behind him.
Mr Stafford made sure that the door was closed. Then he went to Humphrey Bannet and said in a low voice:
“You let your tongue run away, boy. To talk of the queen so — it was madness.”
Humphrey nodded his head.
“Robin thought it just the froth of my humiliation. But I was mad. I can’t always guard my tongue when I’m talking to Robin,” and he added slowly, looking down upon the ground, “I hate him so.”
“Why?”
Humphrey did not answer. He beat gently upon the chest on which he sat with the palm of his hand and still looked at the floor.
“Why, Humphrey?” Mr Stafford insisted.
The answer came with a quiet malignancy which in a boy’s mouth came near to shocking even this partisan of a tutor.
“Because he’s always one place ahead of me. At our books, at our games, in our good-looks, in the favour we are received with. Always. Are we together? Who has a compliment, a smile, a glance for me until he has had his fill of them? And what is he after all, Robin Aubrey, compared with me? Why am I second always?” With a quick gesture he covered his face with his hands. “I’ll never forget this afternoon.”
Mr Stafford laid his hand upon his favourite’s shoulder.
“It’ll not be always so, Humphrey. Great changes are coming, great reversals. Robin Aubrey will be on his knees to you one of these days.” Mr Stafford grinned like a wolf, but Humphrey was still looking at the floor and got no comfort from his expression.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 662