The Golden Galleon. Robert Leighton

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      "Presently, your worship—presently," answered Peter, snatching up his scissors and comb. Then, turning to his son, he added: "Thy mother is laid abed with her old illness, Tim; get thee upstairs to her for awhile."

      Timothy obediently disappeared through the door at the back of the shop, stumbling up the stairs with noisy feet and equally noisy sword; while his father, snipping his scissors merrily in his right hand and thus making a show of being exceedingly busy, offered his customer a chair where the light from the window might fall upon him.

      He was a stranger to Peter Trollope, and therefore, it must be assumed, a stranger to Plymouth also. His long, untidy hair and beard, his bronzed skin, and, indeed, his whole appearance, betokened that he had newly come off the sea. His doublet, which had once been velvet, was worn threadbare; the colour, whatever it may originally have been, had suffered by the salt water, and was now an indistinct gray, stained here and there with dark-brown patches, which Peter surmised to be the stains of hardened blood. It was plain to see that the man was in some sort a warrior as well as a traveller.

      While the barber was spreading a white napkin about him to protect his clothing from the clippings of hair which must presently fall from the scissors, he looked into the stranger's face, and perceived that the right cheek was marred by an old wound—a long straight wound like the cut of a knife, beginning below the eye and ending somewhere in the midst of his thick black beard.

      "Well?" quoth the stranger, seeing that the barber hesitated to make a start. "Cut me my hair, I say."

      "I am ready to execute your worship's will," announced Peter with a low bow, as he snipped his scissors. "Prithee, sir, will you have your worship's hair cut after the Italian manner, short and round, and then flounced with the curling-irons, or like a Spaniard's, long at the ears and curled like to the two ends of a new moon; or will you be Frenchified with a love-lock down to your shoulder, whereon you may hang your lady's favour? The English cut is base in these days of fashion, and gentlemen scorn it. Speak the word, sir; and howsoever you would have it, it shall be done."

      "Nay, a plague on your love-locks and curling-irons," the stranger cried impatiently. "Do it as you please, but howsoever you do it, do it quickly. I know naught of your strange fashions and monstrous manners of haircutting. I have been absent from England so many years, that now when I come back I am as one who hath risen from out his grave to find all things changed."

      "In truth, sir," observed the barber, "your worship will indeed find many changes, alike in government and in manners, if so be your absence hath been so long as you do say. Her Majesty's ministers and counsellors, indeed, have changed as often as the seasons. But the Queen herself, God bless her, is yet with us; so England is merry England still, and long may it so remain!"

      Peter was now busy at work shearing his customer's plenteous crop of tangled hair.

      "And how many years in all did your worship say that you had been abroad?" he ventured presently to inquire.

      "More years than I care to number," was the somewhat curt reply.

      "Ah!" responded Peter. "Then, sir, you had no hand in the glorious defeat of the great Armada of Spain? Haply your worship was in some far-distant country at that great time?"

      The stranger shifted his position in his chair. His fingers moved restlessly.

      "Haply I was," he answered. "But had I chanced to be at the very extremities of the earth, methinks I should still have heard rumour of the matter; for wherever there be Spaniards and wherever there be Englishmen, they are alike disposed to boast of their own prowess on that occasion. And from neither the one nor the other is it possible to arrive at the simple truth."

      "The simple truth is simply this, your honour," returned Peter Trollope, with a proud smile, "that the Spaniards, despite their greater ships and their greater army of soldiers, were utterly routed and defeated." And the gossiping barber proceeded to tell the whole story to his listening customer as he continued with his clipping.

      At length, having fairly come to the beard, he broke off in his wordy narrative and requested to know if his worship would have his beard cut short and to a peak like Sir Francis Drake's, or broad and round like a spade. "Or shall I shave it off," said he, "and leave only your worship's moustachios?" But he had scarcely made the last suggestion when his eye was once more caught by the cut on the man's cheek. "I would advise that the beard be left as it is," he said, "for it doth help to hide the wound upon your face. Although, indeed, there be many men in Plymouth who would be mightily proud to display so honourable a scar, for I doubt not your worship came by it in some desperate battle against our enemies of Spain."

      It was at this moment that Timothy returned into the shop. He overheard his father's remark, and noticed that for some reason the stranger winced, as though he were far from being proud of the old wound.

      "I do perceive that 'tis the cut from a sword," added the barber-surgeon, looking at the scar more closely. "I trust, for the honour of England, that you slew the rascal who gave it you."

      "'Tis no sword-cut, but a wound from an Indian's arrow, shot at me from ambush," declared the traveller; and there was a curious tone in his voice—a tone which seemed to indicate that he was in reality giving only a half explanation, or perhaps even a totally false one. In any case he hastened very plainly to change the subject.

      "You named one Francis Drake just now," said he. "Peradventure you can inform me if he be still alive?"

      "Alive? Ay, that he is! Alive and well, the Lord be praised! and in Plymouth town at this present time—ah! I beg your worship's pardon. Perhaps I caught your cheek with the point of my scissors?"

      The stranger had given a slight nervous start, and a look of displeasure if not of actual annoyance had come into his dark eyes.

      "In Plymouth at this present time?" he repeated. And then he muttered some words in a foreign tongue, which neither Timothy nor his father could comprehend.

      "Had you chanced to come in but an hour earlier you might even have encountered him," remarked the barber, "for he passed by this very door, and returned my salutation most graciously, as, indeed, he doth always do, whenever I come nigh him; for he is by no means proud, I promise you, for all that he hath done more for England than any other living man. But I am talking thus while it may be that your worship doth know him far better than I—while it may even be that you are his personal friend."

      The man with the scarred cheek made no response to this last remark, but only leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and knitting his brows. He remained silent until Trollope had clipped his beard to a satisfactory shape and was giving it the final touches. Then the warrior looked up suddenly and said with curious earnestness, as though he were seeking an answer to a most important question:

      "There dwelt in the neighbourhood of Plymouth a score of years ago or so, a certain nobleman by name Baron Champernoun. Canst tell me, master barber, if there be any of his lordship's family still dwelling in these parts?"

      Peter Trollope glanced aside at his son and smiled. Timothy strolled slowly towards the window and seated himself near the two goshawks, whence he could watch the stranger's face.

      "The name is passing well known to all men of Devon," answered Peter as he surveyed his workmanship with excusable pride. "And Lord Champernoun himself—the only Lord Champernoun that I have known—still dwelleth at his family estate nigh unto the village of Modbury. He is stricken in years and passing feeble; but clear in his mind withal, and as excellent and worthy СКАЧАТЬ