Brother Dusty-Feet (21 page)

The next evening the brown man with the crinkly eyes was in the gallery again, and the boy was with him, but not the little girl or her mother. All through the play the man watched Hugh very closely – leaning forward with his brown hands on the carved rail – in a way that made him feel prickly up the back of his neck. And afterwards, when they were changing, Will the stable-man suddenly appeared in the doorway, looking very disapproving (he didn’t like nasty dirty Players all over his nice clean stable) and said, ‘I wants the young ’un. He’m to come with me d’rectly.’

Everybody looked at Hugh, and then at each other, and Jonathan asked, ‘What do you want him for?’

‘’Tisn’t me as wants him,’ said the stable-man, with a sniff. ‘Gentleman in the Mistress’s garden wants him most particular; don’t ask me
why
.’

Suddenly Hugh had the queerest feeling inside, a kind of tingling ‘something-is-going-to-happen’ feeling; and he didn’t want to go. But Jonathan punted him gently towards the door.

‘Go along with you, Dusty,’ he said.

And Hugh went. The surly stable-man grabbed the back of his neck-band, and marched him across the yard rather as though he was a beadle and Hugh was under arrest, and thrust him in through the inn doorway.

‘Yere ’ee be, Missis,’ said the man, while Hugh rubbed the back of his neck and glared.

Then the mistress of the house, who was large and billowy and much kinder than her stable-man, bounced out from an inner room, and said, ‘Dear heart alive! What have you been doing to the child? Here, pull your neck-band straight, my chuck, it’s half-way down your back. That’s right. Now come along with me. Mr Heritage is in my private garden.’

Mr Heritage! That was the name of the friend his father had served at Oxford! Hugh felt as though he must be dreaming and would wake up at any moment. ‘Here! mistress!’ he gasped, as they scurried along through the crowded common room into the family’s private rooms beyond. ‘Is it – Mr Anthony Heritage?’

‘Aye, that’s him, Mr Anthony Heritage from Prior’s Caundle,’ said the inn-wife, and she opened yet another door, and pushed Hugh out into a long, narrow strip of garden between high yew hedges, and shut the door behind him with a determined little slam.

It was a nice garden, with a straight strip of camomile lawn like a green riband leading down it instead of a path, and on either side a lovely drift of snapdragon and sweet-smelling yellow musk all humming with brown velvet bees. Right at the far end was a shady green vine-arbour; and in the arbour sat the crinkly-eyed man and the dark boy who looked as if he would be nice to have adventures with.

They got up when they saw Hugh, and stood waiting for him. They both looked very clean; their ruffs were crisp and fresh and their doublets fitted them beautifully; and as he looked at them, Hugh felt
how brown and dusty he was, and how patched and ragged his clothes were, and how his shoes were stuffed with rags because their soles were worn out. But he couldn’t keep Mr Heritage waiting; so he pushed back his shoulders and straightened his legs as the Players had taught him, and marched down the green riband to the arbour.

‘You sent for me, sir,’ he said.

The man said, ‘Yes, I sent for you.’ And he put his hands on Hugh’s shoulders, and looked down at him, very searchingly, but so kindly that Hugh forgot about his dust and the holes in his shoes. ‘What is your name?’ asked the brown man.

‘Hugh,’ said Hugh. ‘Hugh Copplestone.’

‘I thought so,’ said the man. ‘You’re very like your father. Mine is Anthony Heritage.’

‘The inn-wife told me that,’ said Hugh.

‘Have you ever heard my name before?’

Hugh nodded. ‘My father used to talk about you often. He was your servitor at Oriel.’

Mr Heritage sat down again, and looked at him without a trace of his crinkly smile. ‘And how comes Peter Copplestone’s son to be trapesing about the country with a band of Strolling Players?’

Hugh took a deep breath and explained – about his father having died, and about Aunt Alison, and about Argos. ‘And I couldn’t let her have Argos knocked on the head; so we ran away.’

‘Bravo!’ said the dark boy, who had stood quite still all this while. ‘Oh, bravo, Hugh!’

‘And we hadn’t got any friends, or anywhere to go, so I thought we’d go to Oxford. Father used to tell me about Oxford, and Master Bodley’s lectures and – and everything; he always meant me to
go to Oriel; he said we’d manage somehow. So I thought if we went to Oxford, perhaps we’d make our fortunes somehow; and then on the second day we met Master Pennifeather and the others, and they took us on with them.’

‘I see.’ Mr Heritage stuck his arms akimbo, and watched one of the Abbey pigeons flying overhead with the evening sunlight under its wings. ‘Poor old Peter! I wish I’d kept in touch with him,’ he said in a raw, regretful voice. Then he stopped watching the pigeon, and looked down at Hugh again. ‘My son Martin, here, is just home from Oriel for the summer holidays,’ he said. ‘When he goes back, would you like to go with him?’

Hugh simply gazed at him, with mouth wide enough open, as Master Pennifeather would have said, to catch a cuckoo in it. ‘You mean – go to Oriel? – Properly?’ he stammered at last. ‘Be his servitor like my father was yours – and go to lectures and things?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Heritage. ‘Take your time.’

Hugh looked at Martin, and Martin looked back, and they liked each other with a quick, strong liking. Then Hugh looked down at his own feet, and went on looking at them very hard indeed, without seeing them at all. It was a long time since he had really thought about going to Oxford, except in a dreamy sort of way that people think about places afar off, where they would like to go one day before they are old. But he had never quite forgotten; and now, when Mr Heritage spoke about it, all his old longing to read books and have his share in the New Learning flamed up bright inside him, and he wanted most desperately to go with Martin. And then he remembered
the Players, Jonathan more than all the rest, and he wanted just as desperately to stay with them and go on strolling the roads of England. Besides, they were his friends, and he couldn’t leave them just because he had got a chance that they had not.

When you want to do two different things with a great and terrible wanting, and you can only do one of them, it isn’t easy to make up your mind, especially when things like loyalty come into it. Hugh found that. On one side was his loyalty to the Players, who had been true friends to him; and on the other was a queer kind of loyalty to his father, who had told him about the New Learning, and meant him to go to Oxford. That made the choice even harder than it would have been otherwise, and by the time he had made up his mind, he felt as though something deep inside him had been torn in two. But he did make it up.

‘Thank you very much, sir, but – I
can’t
,’ he said huskily.

‘Why not, Hugh?’ asked Mr Heritage.

‘Well, you see, there’s Argos,’ said Hugh.

‘Argos would come too, of course. You couldn’t take him to Oxford with you, but we would be very kind to him while you were away, and you would be together in the holidays.’

Hugh shook his head without a word.

‘You don’t want to leave the Players; that is the real reason, isn’t it?’

Hugh turned bright pink under his tan. He would have liked to scuffle his feet, but the Players had long ago taught him not to do that.

‘They’re my
friends
,’ he said very firmly.

‘I see. You’re a loyal friend, Hugh.’

Hugh turned from pink to scarlet, but he didn’t say anything; and after a moment Mr Heritage laughed and got up, saying: ‘I shan’t take no for an answer this evening. I shall come back. By the way, how long shall you be playing in Sherborne?’

‘We are starting for Shaftesbury in the morning.’

‘So soon? Then I shall come back in the morning before you start out, just in case you have changed your mind. And now Martin and I will be on our way, and leave you to think it over.’

So they all went back to the inn. But there was no way out into the street excepting through the common room, and in the common room the Players had by this time gathered for their supper. There they were lounging at ease in the fire-glow with their pasties on their knees, and Argos sound asleep in their midst with his front to the leaping warmth, and several town tradesmen watching them with open mouths as though it was tremendously surprising to see Players eating like ordinary people.

They all looked up when Mr Heritage came in, and Mr Heritage turned aside to them in a friendly way; and they all swallowed their mouthfuls of pasty and got to their feet, and there were ‘Good evenings’ all round. Then of course the whole story came out. Hugh had known that it would, the moment he saw that the Players were there, and his heart sank into his broken shoes. He dodged in to Jonathan’s side, and stood there, utterly miserable, while Mr Heritage explained how Hugh’s father had been his servitor at Oxford, and how he wanted Hugh to come and live with him and go to Oxford as servitor to his son Martin.

When he had finished, everyone began to talk at once; everyone except Hugh and Jonathan, that is. And Master Pennifeather, who was the first to get over the gasping and exclaiming stage, swept Hugh the most prodigious bow, and said: ‘Did I not say you would make your fortune, if you joined our Company, my lord?’

Ben Bunsell turned to Mr Heritage and said, ‘We shall be main sorry to lose him, sir, but we’re all glad of his good fortune. And I’ll tell you this, master, you wouldn’t find a better lad to take into your house, not in all the South Country. All is not gold that glitters,
I
always say, and he certainly don’t glitter much – not at present, anyways – but he’s a good lad for all that.’

‘I am sure you are right,’ said Mr Heritage. ‘The only difficulty is – that he won’t come.’

Everybody stopped talking and simply stared at Mr Heritage, while Argos got up and smelled his shoes very carefully, to make sure that he was trustworthy, and then sat down and scratched behind his left ear. Usually when Argos did that people told him not to, but this time no one even noticed, and so he scratched on – and on – and on.

‘Won’t come?’ said Master Pennifeather at last. ‘Did you say “Won’t
come
”, sir?’

Everyone stopped staring at Mr Heritage and stared at Hugh instead, and Hugh stood with his feet planted a little apart, and his curly mouth tight shut, and stared back, as stubbornly as ever he knew how.

‘I have told him not to make his choice tonight,’ said Mr Heritage. ‘It’s difficult to decide important things in a hurry. I shall come back in the morning before you take the road.’ Then he turned to Hugh
and brought a hand down on his shoulder, saying, ‘I hope you’ll change your mind, Hugh.’

And almost before Hugh knew what was happening, he had gone, and Martin with him.

Everyone went on staring at Hugh, and Nicky let out a shrill, derisive whistle, and said, ‘My eye! You don’t know when you’re in luck, you don’t!’

But Jonathan, who had not spoken a word all the time, said, ‘Don’t plague him, Nicky; he’s had enough,’ and gave Hugh his supper, which had been keeping warm for him before the fire.

And Master Pennifeather said, ‘Quite right, Johnnie. The lad’s old enough to know his own mind. Therefore let us leave the subject while we enjoy these noble viands.’

So they finished their supper, talking pleasantly about the weather and the prospects of the harvest, and how well they had done in Sherborne, and things like that.

But when supper was over, Jonathan said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to push on to bed, now, Dusty?’

The other Players glanced at each other, and Hugh knew quite well that they wanted him out of the way so that they could talk about what had happened, without him being there to hear what they said; at least, Jonathan wanted that. So he got up and faced them all.

‘I’ll go to bed, but I won’t go to Oxford, you know!’ he said, and he stalked out with his nose in the air, across the twilit courtyard to the stable where they all slept, and kicked off his shoes and burrowed into the straw beside Argos, and lay there watching the shadows creeping in from the corners.

Quite soon Jonathan came and lit the stable lantern
hanging from its beam, and sat down cross-legged to mend a torn costume, just as he had done on the first night that Hugh had spent with the Players; only this time it was his own spangled tumbler’s tights, instead of the green dragon’s skin. Hugh lay and watched him, and watched the lantern, and watched the gay blue flowers of his periwinkle that looked almost purple in the lantern light. And it was all so like that first night, that it made him feel quite odd, as though everything that had happened since then had been a dream.

Jonathan did not say anything until he had threaded his needle and began to sew. Then he said, more seriously than Hugh had ever heard him speak before, ‘Dusty, we have been talking about what happened this evening, and I think – well, we all do, that you should go with Mr Heritage.’

But Hugh knew quite well that it was all Jonathan’s idea, and that was what made it hurt. He said very firmly, ‘But I don’t
want
to!’

But for once Jonathan did not seem to be listening. He just went straight on talking, very quietly, but just as firmly as Hugh, pointing out the advantages of an education, and things like that. And when Hugh demanded to know who would play the girls’ parts if he wasn’t there, he said, ‘I daresay we could find another boy, Dusty.’

At that a dreadful, aching misery swelled up suddenly in Hugh’s inside, and he rolled over on to his front and said in a small, husky, furious voice, ‘You want to get rid of me!’

Just for a moment nothing happened, and then, ‘Don’t you ever dare to say a thing like that again,
Dusty,’ said Jonathan’s voice, with a queer, harsh sound in it.

And when he rolled over again, he saw that Jonathan had that tightened-up look that people have sometimes when they have a bad pain and are too proud to mention it.

Hugh sat up and looked at him forlornly. ‘Well, then, why are you trying to make me go? – Why, Jonathan?’