The Day Before Yesterday

It is not to yesterday that we would take you now, but to a day before Christmas songs lyrics innumerable yesterdays, across the dead sea of Time to a haven mutable yet immortal. For the Elizabethan era is essentially of the quick, although its dead have lain entombed for centuries. The world of that first book of adam and eve renascent period, alight with the spontaneous fire of intellectual and passionate life, shines through the space of ages as though then, for the first time, it had been cast off from a pregnant sun. No one could finish reading the first book of Adam and eve.

Overcoming the remoteness of the epoch by an appreciation of this vivid reality, we pause at the outset near the great south gate of London Bridge as it stood three centuries ago.

On a certain April afternoon the massive stones and harsh outlines served to heighten by contrast the effect of lithe grace and nonchalance apparent in the figure of a young man, who, leaning lightly against the barbacan, presented a memorable[4] picture of idleness and ease. Yet a fleeting expression in the youthful face belied the indolence of attitude. For in more ways than one “Kind Kyt Marlowe” resembled the spring-tide, whose tokens of approach he intuitively recognized. His eyes, usually soft and slumberous with the light of dreams, now and again shone brilliant like black diamonds. With all his careless incontinence, he possessed a latent power, a deep, indeterminable force, portending broad hot days and nights of storm.

His face, mobile dark and passionate, showed an almost alarming intensity. His brow, lofty but not massive, was surmounted by silken hair so black as to appear almost purple in the sunlight. He wore no beard, a small mustache adding to the refinement of his features, save for the fulness of his lips, which it could not hide. Taken as a whole, his face was the face of a man who had no common destiny; of a man who would drain the cup and leave no dregs, be the draught life-elixir or poison; of a man, in short, who might all but transcend his humanity by the fulness of life within him, or be suffocated and overwhelmed by the very superabundance of that life. For there are some seeming to be born with a double share of vitality, a portion far greater than was meant for man; and when this vitality, maturing, begins its re-creation, threatening all feebler forms with a new revolutionary condition, then the error is apparently discovered and the entire share of life recalled.

Christopher Marlowe was one of these men, but as he leaned against the Southwark Gate, that afternoon in early life, looking up the High Street through the gathering dusk, his eyes showed little more than the cheerful glow of a wood-fire, the mere hint of an unrestrainable flame underlying their expression.

[5]

Soon, however, the poet’s reverie was broken. The afternoon’s bear-baiting being over, and Southwark’s amphitheatre empty of its throngs, a number of the earliest to leave were now upon the High Street, known then as Long Southwark. Seeing them approaching him on their way to London, Marlowe turned and walked in the same direction.

At the sign of “The Three Bibles” books and broadsides were for sale. It was this small, antiquated den on London Bridge that the author sought with the unconscious step of one who follows a familiar way.

He had but just entered the low-studded, gloomy shop, and greeted Paul Merfin, its owner, when the scabbard of a sword clanked on the threshold, and a man of great stature, accoutred as a soldier, darkened the doorway. With no prelude of salutation, the new-comer demanded of Merfin, in a voice of anxiety, “Tell me, hast seen—?” Then for the first time he became aware of Marlowe’s presence, and, lowering his heavy tones to a whisper, finished his query in the bookseller’s ear.

“Nay,” was Merfin’s answer, “I have seen nothing of him.”

The soldier’s face grew yet more uneasy. “Ill fortune!” he exclaimed; “it is always so,” and he would have left the shop had not Marlowe detained him.

“Stay,” said the poet, “I could not but hear your question, for your whisper, sir, being no gentler than a March wind, nips the ear whether we will or no. So you, I take it, are that giant, Hugh Rouse, who follows the Wolf. Of you twain I have heard much, and wondered if the tales from the South were true that told of so great a courage. I have seen the man, show me now the master.”

[6]

“Would, sir, that I could, but I know not where the master is. And who, may I ask, are you, that show so deep an interest?”

“Not one to be feared,” returned Marlowe, smiling; “an idle poet who has sung of braver men than his eyes have yet beheld, and would see a man still braver than the song—Kyt Marlowe, at your service, good my Rouse,” and so saying, the poet, with a hand through the big soldier’s arm, led the way from the shop out to the High Street of Southwark. “Had you not another comrade in the wars, a vagabond of most preposterous paunch and waddling legs? I have heard that he, too, follows milord, the Wolf.”

“There is such an one,” said Rouse, “but, alack! he also is missing. I pray you, though, call not our leader ‘Wolf’ again; none save fools and his enemies so name him.”

“But I have heard that he is ferocious as a wolf, lean and very gray. The sobriquet is not ill-fitting.”

“Nay,” said the soldier, “in truth it fits most aptly in description of his looks, for though he is but five-and-thirty, his head and beard are grizzled, that before were black as night.”

“’Tis not strange,” observed the poet, leading his new acquaintance toward a favorite hostelry; “campaigning in the South ages many a man before his time.”

“Ay, but that is not all.”

“What more, then?”

“It is briefly told,” answered the soldier. “His father was sent by her Majesty, our queen, with messages to Henry of Navarre, in whose army we two fought side by side. The envoy and his wife, who were passing through Paris—”

“What!” interrupted the poet, “were they his parents? I had forgot the story. It was the night[7] when Papists murdered Huguenots, the night of St. Bartholomew. An Englishman and his wife were slain ere their son, who had come from the South to warn them, could intervene. He saw his mother struck down, saw the sword and the bared breast in the glare of a dozen torches, and saw his father killed, too, after a brief struggle. Then the youth, who had cut his way nearer to the scene, found himself beset on all sides by a bristling thicket of steel that no man could divide. He fell. The Catholics laughed and left him for dead across the bodies of his parents. But the lad was not so easily undone. He rose, despite a wound beneath the heart, and, dripping blood, carried the two dead forms to the Seine, where, in the shadow of the Pont Neuf, he weighted his burdens with stones and buried them beyond the reach of desecration. The tale came to me as come so many legends of the wars from nameless narrators. That youth, then, is—”

“John Vytal,” concluded the soldier, gravely. “He had fought before then at Jarnac and Moncontour; but now he warred against the Catholics with redoubled fury. ’Twas through him, I tell you, came the victorious peace of Beaulieu and Bergerac, and the fall of Cahors.”

“Find me this man!” The words burst from the young poet in a voice of eager, impetuous command. “I must see him!”

“He was to have been at the ‘Tabard’ two hours since,” returned the soldier, despondently, “but came not.”

“Then let us return thither and wait for him a year, if need be. He will come at last, ’tis sure.”

The narrow way on the bridge near by was now choked with its evening throngs, and, as daylight began to fade, a babble of many tongues rose[8] and fell in the streets of Southwark, with which the creaking song of tavern signs, aswing in the evening breeze, blent an invitation to innumerable stragglers from the bear-fight.

“Eh, now,” said Rouse to one of these who joined him, “do you honor the ‘Spurre,’ Tom Watkins, or the ‘King’s Head’?”

“Nay, neither, Hugh; they lack that mustiness and age which make the inn. For this there’s none like the ‘Tabard,’ that being a most ancient hostel. D’ye know what ‘Tabard’ is?”

Carl Linnaeus Love Man in his social character Elements of character Roman Patriotism Domestic Altar Loadstar of My Life You Know the Saying Our Swords Will Play the Orator The Day Before Yesterday The Cause of Troubles Precautions from the beginning Desire to Exceed One's Program The Daily Miracle Some Wonderful Efforts The Dawn of Freedom Of Our Striving The beginning of slavery Second Residence in England Return to Basle First Visit to England Life of Hans Holbein “Nay, poorly; some kind o’ garment, I’ve heard.”

“It is, Hugh; a jacket with no sleeves, slit down from the armpits and winged on the shoulders. Thou’lt see it on the tavern sign. Only the heralds wear the things to-day, and call ’em coats-of-arms in service. Now, d’ye see, it’s meet that I, a breeches-maker, should mind me of other attire as well, and not go breast-bare about the town. So, Hugh Rouse, I make my breeches by day, and I put on my tabard by night, thank the Lord, and I’m a well-arrayed coxcomb, ye’ll allow. But here we are; get you in.”

The speaker, a thin fellow of middle age and height, laughed over this oft-repeated joke till his sallow face looked like a tangle of his own leathern thongs, showing all its premature wrinkles, and his bent shoulders shook convulsively; yet there was no sound in the laughter save a kind of whispered crackle like the tearing of stiff paper.

On entering the inn, Marlowe and the soldier sought an obscure corner, but Thomas Watkins, the breeches-maker, being a character of no small popularity among the worthies of the borough, and one who had the commiseration of many, for good and sufficient reasons, seeing the tap-room already well filled, remarked thereon to the host, after his usual[9] manner of forced joviality. “How now, have I allowed myself to be forestalled and beaten in our race from the gardens to your spigot?” He surveyed the tables, with their dice-boxes, cards, and foaming cups, feigning an astonished air. Several of the guests looked up at him, laughing, with a certain indulgent, almost pitying, amusement. Simon Groat, the tavern-keeper, smiled, too, in fat good-humor.