A PLAY-HOUSE.
But Judith laughed aside these foolish fears; as it happened, far more
important matters were just at this moment occupying her mind.
She was in the garden. She had brought out some after-dinner fragments
for the Don; and while the great dun-colored beast devoured these, she
had turned from him to regard Matthew gardener; and there was a sullen
resentment on her face; for it seemed to her imagination that he kept
doggedly and persistently near the summer-house, on which she had
certain dark designs. However, the instant she caught sight of Prudence,
her eyes brightened up; and, indeed, became full of an eager animation.
"Hither, hither, good Prue!" she exclaimed, hurriedly. "Quick! quick! I
have news for you."
"Yes, indeed, Judith," said the other; and at the same moment Judith
came to see there was something wrong--the startled pale face and
frightened eyes had a story to tell.
"Why, what is to do?" said she.
"Know you not, Judith? Have you not heard? The French king is
slain--murdered by an assassin!"
To her astonishment the news seemed to produce no effect whatever.
"Well, I am sorry for the poor man," Judith said, with perfect
self-possession. "They that climb high must sometimes have a sudden
fall. But why should that alarm you, good Prue? Or have you other news
that comes more nearly home?"
And then, when Prudence almost breathlessly revealed the apprehensions
that had so suddenly filled her mind, Judith would not even stay to
discuss such a monstrous possibility. She laughed it aside altogether.
That the courteous young gentleman who had come with a letter from Ben
Jonson should be concerned in the assassination of the King of France
was entirely absurd and out of the question.
"Nay, nay, good Prue," said she, lightly, "you shall make him amends for
these unjust suspicions; that you shall, dear mouse, all in good time.
But listen now: I have weightier matters; I have eggs on the spit,
beshrew me else! Can you read me this riddle, sweet Prue? Know you by
these tokens what has happened? My father comes in to dinner to-day in
the gayest of humors; there is no absent staring at the window, and
forgetting of all of us; it is all merriment this time; and he must
needs have Bess Hall to sit beside him; and he would charge her with
being a witch; and reproach her for our simple meal, when that she might
have given us a banquet like that of a London Company, with French
dishes and silver flagons of Theologicum, and a memorial to tell each of
us what was coming. And then he would miscall your brother--which you
know, dear Prudence, he never would do were he in earnest--and said he
was chamberlain now, and was conspiring to be made alderman, only that
he might sell building materials to the Corporation and so make money
out of his office. And I know not what else of jests and laughing; but
at length he sent to have the Evesham roan saddled; and he said that
when once he had gone along to the sheep-wash to see that the hurdles
were rightly up for the shearing, he would give all the rest of the day
to idleness--to idleness wholly; and perchance he might ride over to
Broadway to see the shooting-match going forward there. Now, you wise
one, can you guess what has happened? Know you what is in store for us?
Can you read me the riddle?"
"I see no riddle, Judith," said the other, with puzzled eyes. "I met
your father as I came through the house; and he asked if Julius were at
home: doubtless he would have him ride to Broadway with him."
"Dear mouse, is that your skill at guessing? But listen now"--and here
she dropped her voice as she regarded goodman Matthew, though that
personage seemed busily enough occupied with his watering-can. "This is
what has happened: I know the signs of the weather. Be sure he has
finished the play--the play that the young prince Mamillius was in: you
remember, good Prue?--and the large fair copy is made out and locked
away in the little cupboard, against my father's next going to London;
and the loose sheets are thrown into the oak chest, along with the
others. And now, good Prue, sweet Prue, do you know what you must
manage? Indeed, I dare not go near the summer-house while that ancient
wiseman is loitering about; and you must coax him, Prue; you must get
him away; sometimes I see his villain eyes watching me, as if he had
suspicion in his mind----"
"'Tis your own guilty conscience, Judith," said Prudence, but with a
smile; for she had herself connived at this offence ere now.
"By fair means or foul, sweet mouse, you must get him away to the other
end of the garden," said she, eagerly; "for now the Don has nearly
finished his dinner, and goodman-wiseman-fool will wonder if we stay
longer here. Nay, I have it, sweet Prue: you must get him along to the
corner where my mother grows her simples; and you must keep him there
for a space, that I may get out the right papers; and this is what you
must do: you will ask him for something that sounds like Latin--no
matter what nonsense it may be; and he will answer you that he knows it
right well, but has none of it at the present time; and you will say
that you have surely seen it among my mother's simples, and thus you
will lead him away to find it and the longer you seek the better. Do you
understand, good Prue?--and quick! quick!"
Prudence's pale face flushed.
"You ask too much, Judith. I cannot deceive the poor man so."
"Nay, nay, you are too scrupulous, dear mouse. A trifle--a mere trifle."
And then Prudence happened to look up, and she met Judith's eyes; and
there was such frank self-confidence and audacity in them, and also such
a singular and clear-shining beauty, that the simple Puritan was in a
manner bedazzled. She said, with a quiet smile, as she turned away her
head again:
"Well, I marvel not, Judith, that you can bewitch the young men, and
bewilder their understanding. 'Tis easy to see--if they have eyes and
regard you, they are lost; but how you have your own way with all of us,
and how you override our judgment, and do with us what you please, that
passes me. Even Dr. Hall: for whom else would he have brought from
Coventry the green silk stockings and green velvet shoes?--you know such
vanities find little favor in his own home----"
"Quick, quick, sweetheart, muzzle me that gaping ancient!" said Judith,
interrupting her. "The Don has finished; and I will dart into the
summer-house as I carry back the dish. Detain him, sweet Prue; speak a
word or two of Latin to him; he will swear he understands you right
well, though you yourself understand not a word of it----"
"I may not do all you ask, Judith," said the other, after a moment's
reflection (and still with an uneasy feeling that she was yielding to
the wiles of a temptress), "but I will ask the goodman to show me your
mother's simples, and how they thrive."
A minute or two thereafter Judith had swiftly stolen into the
summer-house--which was spacious and substantial of its kind, and
contained a small black cupboard fixed up in a corner of the walls, a
table and chair, and a long oak chest on the floor. It was this last
that held the treasure she was in search of; and now, the lid having
been raised, she was down on one knee, carefully selecting from a mass
of strewn papers (indeed, there were a riding-whip, a sword and
sword-belt, and several other articles mixed up in this common
receptacle) such sheets as were without a minute mark which she had
invented for her own private purposes. These secured and hastily hidden
in her sleeve, she closed the lid, and went out into the open again,
calling upon Prudence to come to her, for that she was going into the
house.
They did not, however, remain within-doors at New Place, for that might
have been dangerous; they knew of a far safer resort. Just behind Julius
Shawe's house, and between that and the garden, there was a recess
formed by the gable of a large barn not quite reaching the adjacent
wall. It was a three-sided retreat; overlooked by no window whatsoever;
there was a frail wooden bench on two sides of it, and the entrance to
it was partly blocked up by an empty cask that had been put there to be
out of the way. For outlook there was nothing but a glimpse of the path
going into the garden, a bit of greensward, and two apple-trees between
them and the sky. It was not a noble theatre, this little den behind the
barn; but it had produced for these two many a wonderful pageant; for
the empty barrel and the bare barn wall and the two trees would at one
time be transformed into the forest of Arden, and Rosalind would be
walking there in her pretty page costume, and laughing at the love-sick
Orlando; and again they would form the secret haunts of Queen Titania
and her court, with the jealous Oberon chiding her for her refusal; and
again they would become the hall of a great northern castle, with
trumpets and cannon sounding without as the King drank to Hamlet.
Indeed, the elder of these two young women had an extraordinarily vivid
imagination; she saw the things and people as if they were actually
there before her; she realized their existence so intensely that even
Prudence was brought to sympathize with them, and to follow their
actions now with hot indignation, and now with triumphant delight over
good fortune come at last. There was no stage-carpenter there to
distract them with his dismal expedients; no actor to thrust his
physical peculiarities between them and the poet's ethereal visions; the
dream-world was before them, clear and filled with light; and Prudence's
voice was gentle and of a musical kind. Nay, sometimes Judith would leap
to her feet. "You shall not!--you shall not!" she would exclaim, as if
addressing some strange visitant that was showing the villainy of his
mind; and tears came quickly to her eyes if there was a tale of pity;
and the joy and laughter over lovers reconciled brought warm color to
her face. They forgot that these walls that enclosed them were of gray
mud; they forgot that the prevailing odor in the air was that of the
malt in the barn for now they were regarding Romeo in the moonlight,
with the dusk of the garden around, and Juliet uttering her secrets to
the honeyed night; and again they were listening to the awful voices of
the witches on the heath, and guessing at the sombre thoughts passing
through the mind of Macbeth; and then again they were crying bitterly
when they saw before them an old man, gray-haired, discrowned, and
witless, that looked from one to the other of those standing by, and
would ask who the sweet lady was that sought with tears for his
benediction. They could hear the frail and shaken voice:
"Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is: and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia."
And now, as they had retired into this sheltered nook, and Prudence was
carefully placing in order the scattered sheets that had been given her,
Judith was looking on with some compunction.
"Indeed I grieve to give you so much trouble, sweetheart," said she. "I
would I could get at the copy that my father has locked away----"
"Judith!" her friend said, reproachfully. "You would not take that? Why,
your father will scarce show it even to Julius, and sure I am that none
in the house would put a hand upon it----"
"If it were a book of psalms and paraphrases, they might be of another
mind," Judith said; but Prudence would not hear.
"Nay," said she, as she continued to search for the connecting pages. "I
have heard your father say to Julius that there is but little
difference; and that 'tis only when he has leisure here in Stratford
that he makes this copy writ out fair and large; in London he takes no
such pains. Truly I would not that either Julius or any of his
acquaintance knew of my fingering in such a matter: what would they say,
Judith? And sometimes, indeed, my mind is ill at ease with regard to
it--that I should be reading to you things that so many godly people
denounce as wicked and dangerous----"
"You are too full of fears, good mouse," said Judith, coolly, "and too
apt to take the good people at their word. Nay, I have heard; they will
make you out everything to be wicked and sinful that is not to their own
minds; and they are zealous among the saints; but I have heard, I have
heard."
"What, then?" said the other, with some faint color in her face.
"No matter," said Judith, carelessly. "Well, I have heard that when they
make a journey to London they are as fond of claret wine and oysters as
any; but no matter: in truth the winds carry many a thing not worth the
listening to. But as regards this special wickedness, sweet mouse,
indeed you are innocent of it; 'tis all laid to my charge; I am the
sinner and temptress; be sure you shall not suffer one jot through my
iniquity. And now have you got them all together? Are you ready to
begin?"
"But you must tell me where the story ceased, dear Judith, when last we
had it; for indeed you have a marvellous memory, even to the word and
the letter. The poor babe that was abandoned on the sea-shore had just
been found by the old shepherd--went it not so?--and he was wondering at
the rich bearing-cloth it was wrapped in. Why, here is the
name--Perdita," she continued, as she rapidly scanned one or two of the
papers--"who is now grown up, it appears, and in much grace; and this is
a kind of introduction, I take it, to tell you all that has happened
since your father last went to London--I mean since the story was broken
off. And Florizel--I remember not the name--but here he is so named as
the son of the King of Bohemia----"
A quick laugh of intelligence rose to Judith's eyes; she had an alert
brain.
"Prince Florizel?" she exclaimed. "And Princess Perdita! That were a
fair match, in good sooth, and a way to heal old differences. But to the
beginning, sweetheart, I beseech you; let us hear how the story is to
be; and pray Heaven he gives me back my little Mamillius, that was so
petted and teased by the court ladies."
However, as speedily appeared, she had anticipated too easy a
continuation and conclusion. The young Prince Florizel proved to be
enamored, not of one of his own station, but of a simple shepherdess;
and although she instantly guessed that this shepherdess might turn out
to be the forsaken Perdita, the conversation between King Polixenes and
the good Camillo still left her in doubt. As for the next scene--the
encounter between Autolycus and the country clown--Judith wholly and
somewhat sulkily disapproved of that. She laughed, it is true; but it
was sorely against her will. For she suspected that goodman Matthew's
influence was too apparent here; and that, were he ever to hear of the
story, he would in his vanity claim this part as his own; moreover,
there was a kind of familiarity and every-day feeling in the
atmosphere--why, she herself had been rapidly questioned by her father
about the necessary purchases for a sheep-shearing feast, and Susan,
laughing, had struck in with the information as to the saffron for
coloring the warden-pies. But when the sweet-voiced Prudence came to the
scene between Prince Florizel and the pretty shepherdess, then Judith
was right well content.
"Oh, do you see, now, how her gentle birth shines through her lowly
condition!" she said, quickly. "And when the old shepherd finds that he
has been ordering a king's daughter to be the mistress of the feast--ay,
and soundly rating her, too, for her bashful ways--what a fright will
seize the good old man! And what says she in answer?--again, good
Prue--let me hear it again--marry, now, I'll be sworn she had just such
another voice as yours!"
"To the King Polixenes," Prudence continued, regarding the manuscript,
"who is in disguise, you know, Judith, she says:
'Welcome, sir!
It is my father's will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o' the day:--you're welcome, sir.'
And then to both the gentlemen:
'Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.--Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!'"
"Ah, there, now, will they not be won by her gentleness?" she cried,
eagerly. "Will they not suspect and discover the truth? It were a new
thing for a prince to wed a shepherdess, but this is no shepherdess, as
an owl might see! What say they then, Prue? Have they no suspicion?"
So Prudence continued her patient reading--in the intense silence that
was broken only by the twittering of the birds in the orchard, or the
crowing of a cock in some neighboring yard; and Judith listened keenly,
drinking in every varying phrase. But when Florizel had addressed his
speech to the pretty hostess of the day, Judith could no longer forbear:
she clapped her hands in delight.
"There, now, that is a true lover; that is spoken like a true lover,"
she cried, with her face radiant and proud. "Again, good Prue--let us
hear what he says--ay, and before them all, too, I warrant me he is not
ashamed of her."
So Prudence had to read once more Florizel's praise of his gentle
mistress:
"'What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function. Each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens!'"
"In good sooth, it is spoken like a true lover," Judith said, with a
light on her face as if the speech had been addressed to herself. "Like
one that is well content with his sweetheart, and is proud of her, and
approves! Marry, there be few of such in these days; for this one is
jealous and unreasonable, and would have the mastery too soon; and that
one would frighten you to his will by declaring you are on the highway
to perdition; and another would have you more civil to his tribe of
kinsfolk. But there is a true lover, now; there is one that is courteous
and gentle; one that is not afraid to approve: there may be such in
Stratford, but God wot, they would seem to be a scarce commodity! Nay, I
pray your pardon, good Prue: to the story, if it please you--and is
there aught of the little Mamillius forthcoming?"
And so the reading proceeded; and Judith was in much delight that the
old King seemed to perceive something unusual in the grace and carriage
of the pretty Perdita.
"What is't he says? What are the very words?"
"'This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the greensward: nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself;
Too noble for this place.'"
"Yes! yes! yes!" she exclaimed, quickly. "And sees he not some likeness
to the Queen Hermione? Surely he must remember the poor injured Queen,
and see that this is her daughter? Happy daughter, that has a lover that
thinks so well of her! And now, Prue?"
But when in the course of the hushed reading all these fair hopes came
to be cruelly shattered; when the pastoral romance was brought to a
sudden end; when the King, disclosing himself, declared a divorce
between the unhappy lovers, and was for hanging the ancient shepherd,
and would have Perdita's beauty scratched with briers; and when Prudence
had to repeat the farewell words addressed to the prince by his hapless
sweetheart--
"'Wilt please you, sir, be gone?
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care: this dream of mine--
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further,
But milk my ewes, and weep--'"
there was something very like tears in the gentle reader's eyes; but
that was not Judith's mood; she was in a tempest of indignation.
"God's my life!" she cried, "was there ever such a fool as this old
King? He a king! He to sit on a throne! Better if he sate in a barn and
helped madge-howlet to catch mice! And what says the prince? Nay, I'll
be sworn he proves himself a true man, and no summer playfellow; he will
stand by her; he will hold to her, let the ancient dotard wag his beard
as he please!"
And so, in the end, the story was told, and all happily settled; and
Prudence rose from the rude wooden bench with a kind of wistful look on
her face, as if she had been far away, and seen strange things. Then
Judith--pausing for a minute or so as if she would fix the whole thing
in her memory, to be thought over afterward--proceeded to tie the pages
together for the better concealment of them on her way home.
"And the wickedness of it?" said she, lightly. "Wherein lies the
wickedness of such a reading, sweet mouse?"
Prudence was somewhat shamefaced on such occasions; she could not
honestly say that she regretted as she ought to have done, giving way to
Judith's importunities.
"Some would answer you, Judith," she said, "that we had but ill used
time that was given us for more serious purposes."
"And for what more serious purposes, good gossip? For the repeating of
idle tales about our neighbors? Or the spending of the afternoon in
sleep, as is the custom with many? Are we all so busy, then, that we may
not pass a few minutes in amusement? But, indeed, sweet Prue," said she,
as she gave a little touch to her pretty cap and snow-white ruff, to put
them right before she went out into the street, "I mean to make amends
this afternoon. I shall be busy enough to make up for whatever loss of
time there has been over this dangerous and godless idleness. For, do
you know, I have everything ready now for the new Portugal receipts that
you read to me; and two of them I am to try as soon as I get home; and
my father is to know nothing of the matter--till the dishes be on the
table. So fare you well, sweet mouse; and give ye good thanks, too: this
has been but an evil preparation for the church-going of the morrow, but
remember, the sin was mine--you are quit of that."
And then her glance fell on the roll of papers that she held in her
hand.
"The pretty Perdita!" said she. "Her beauty was not scratched with
briers, after all. And I doubt not she was in brave attire at the court;
though methinks I better like to remember her as the mistress of the
feast, giving the flowers to this one and that. And happy Perdita, also,
to have the young prince come to the sheep-shearing, and say so many
sweet things to her! Is't possible, think you, Prue, there might come
such another handsome stranger to our sheep-shearing that is now at
hand?"
"I know not what you mean, Judith."
"Why, now, should such things happen only in Bohemia?" she said, gayly,
to the gentle and puzzled Prudence, "Soon our shearing will begin, for
the weather has been warm, and I hear the hurdles are already fixed. And
there will be somewhat of a merry-making, no doubt; and--and the road
from Evesham hither is a fair and goodly road, that a handsome young
stranger might well come riding along. What then, good mouse? If one
were to meet him in the lane that crosses to Shottery--and to bid him to
the feast--what then?"
"Oh, Judith, surely you are not still thinking of that dangerous man!"
the other exclaimed.
But Judith merely regarded her for a second, with the clear-shining eyes
now become quite demure and inscrutable.