Esther was preparing for the Cambridge Local Examination at Christmas,
and making a special study of "The Merchant of Venice," as the play
chosen for the year. Fräulein explained the notes, and expatiated on
the Venice of the past and the manners and customs of its inhabitants,
but it was Mr. Asplin who had the brilliant idea of holding a
Shakespeare reading which should make the play live in the imagination
of the young people, as no amount of study could do. The suggestion was
made one day at dinner and was received with acclamation by everyone
present.
"Oh, how lovely, father! It will help me ever so much!" said Esther.
"And Peggy must be Portia."
"I'd like to be that funny little man Launcelot--what do you call
it?--only I know I couldn't do it," said Mellicent humbly. "I'll be
the servants and people who come in and give messages. But, of course,
Peggy must be Portia."
"Peggy shall be Portia, and I'll be the Jew, and snarl at her
across the court," said Rob, with an assurance which was not at all
appreciated by his companions.
"I've rather a fancy to try Shylock myself," Max declared. "Oswald
would make a capital Bassanio, and you could manage Antonio all right
if you tried, for he has not so much to do. Let me see: Peggy--Portia;
Esther--Nerissa; Mellicent--Jessica (she's so like a Jewess, you see!);
you and Oswald--Bassanio and Antonio; Shylock--my noble self. Father
and mother to help out with the smaller characters. There you are! A
capital cast, and everyone satisfied. I'm game to be Shylock, but I
can't do the sentimental business. You two fellows will have to take
them, and we'll divide the smaller fry among us."
"Indeed, we will do nothing of the kind. I'm not going to take
Bassanio; I couldn't do it, and I won't try. I'll have a shot at
Shylock if you like, but I can't do anything else. The cast is all
wrong, except so far as Peggy is concerned. Of course she is Portia."
"Proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously that Peggy is Portia!"
said Mr. Asplin, smiling across the table at that young lady, who
tried to look modest and unconcerned, but was plainly aglow with
satisfaction. "For Shylock, as the character seems so much in demand,
we had better draw lots. I will write the names on slips of paper, and
you must all agree to take what comes and make the best of it. I will
fill in the gaps, and I am sure mother will help all she can----"
"Lemonade in the intervals, and coffee for those who prefer it, with
some of my very best company cake," said Mrs. Asplin briskly. "It will
be quite an excitement. I should rather like to be Shylock myself, and
defy Peggy and her decree; but I'll give it up to the boys, and make
myself generally useful. Why couldn't we begin to-night?"
"Oh, Mrs. Asplin, no! It will take me days to get up my part! And
the costumes--consider the costumes!" cried Peggy anxiously. And her
hostess raised her hands in surprise.
"The costumes! Are you going to dress up? I never thought of that!"
"Surely that is unnecessary, Peggy! You can read the play without
changing your clothes!" echoed the Vicar; but, from the chorus of
disclaimer which greeted his words, it appeared that the young people
could do nothing of the sort.
Max wanted to know how a fellow could possibly "talk Shylock" in a
white tie and an evening jacket. Oswald thought it equally ridiculous
to pose as an Italian lover in English clothing; and Peggy turned up
her eyes and said she could not really abandon herself to her part if
her costume were inappropriate. Even Esther, the sober-minded, sided
with the rest, so the Vicar laughed and gave way, only too pleased to
sanction anything which helped the object which he had at heart.
"Dress up by all means, if it pleases you. It will be interesting to
see the result. But, of course, I must be absolved from any experiments
of the kind."
"Oh, of course! And mother, too, if she likes, though I should love to
see her made-up as Shylock! You must not see or ask about our dresses
until the night arrives. They must be a secret. You will lend us all
your fineries, mother--won't you?"
"Bless your heart, yes! But I haven't got any!" said Mrs. Asplin, in
her funny Irish way. "They were all worn out long, long ago." She gave
a little sigh for the memory of the days when she had a wardrobe full
of pretty things and a dozen shimmery silk dresses hanging on the
pegs, and then flashed a loving smile at her husband, in case he might
think that she regretted their loss. "If there is anything about the
rooms that would do, you are welcome to use them," she added, glancing
vaguely at the sideboard and dumb waiter, while the boys laughed loudly
at the idea of finding any "properties" in the shabby old dining-room.
Peggy, however, returned thanks in the most gracious manner, and sat
wrapped in thought for the rest of the evening, gazing darkly around
from time to time, and scribbling notes on sheets of note-paper.
Short of playing Shylock, which in the end fell to Maxwell's share,
it seemed as if all the responsibility of the performance fell on
Peggy's shoulders. She was stage manager, selecting appropriate pieces
of furniture from the different rooms and piling them together behind
the screen in the study, whence they could be produced at a moment's
notice, to give some idea of the different scenes. She coached Esther
and Mellicent in their parts, designed and superintended the making of
the costumes, and gave the finishing touches to each actor in turn when
the night of the "Dramatic Reading" arrived.
"Taking one consideration with another," as Max remarked, "the costumes
were really masterpieces of art."
To attire two young gentlemen as Italian cavaliers, and a third as a
bearded Jew, with no materials at hand beyond the ordinary furnishings
of a house, is a task which calls for no small amount of ingenuity, yet
this is exactly what Peggy had done.
Antonio and Bassanio looked really uncommonly fine specimens, with
cycling knickerbockers, opera cloaks slung over their shoulders,
and flannel shirts pouched loosely over silk sashes, and ornamented
with frills of lace at wrists and neck. Darkened eyebrows gave them
a handsome appearance and distinguished air, and old straw hats and
feathers sat jauntily on their tow wigs.
The Vicar sat in the arm-chair by the fire, Shakespeare in hand,
waiting to fill in the odd parts with his wife's help, and simultaneous
cries of astonishment and admiration greeted the appearance of the two
actors at the beginning of the first scene.
"It's wonderful! Did I ever see such children! What in the world have
they got on their heads? Milly's old leghorn, I declare, and my pink
feathers. My old pink feathers! Deary me! I'd forgotten all about them.
I've never worn them since the year that----"
"'In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,'" quoth the wearer of the
feathers, scowling darkly at the frivolous prattler who straightway hid
her head behind her book, and read Salanio's first speech in a tone of
meek apology.
There was a good deal of confusion about the first scene, for four
people had to read the parts of six, and one of the number was so much
occupied with gazing at the costumes of the actors that she invariably
lost her place, and had to be called to order by significant coughs and
glances. By this time it generally happened that the Vicar had made up
his mind to come to the rescue, and both husband and wife would begin
to read at the same moment, to their own amusement, and to the disgust
of the two lads, who felt uncomfortable in their borrowed plumes,
and keenly sensitive about their precious dignity. Antonio mumbled
his last speech in undignified haste, and followed Bassanio out of
the room prepared to echo his statement that this sort of thing was
"tom-foolery," and that he wasn't going to make an idiot of himself
any longer to please Peggy Saville, or any other girl in the world.
But the words died on his lips, for outside, in the hall, stood Peggy
herself, or rather Portia, and such a Portia as made him fairly blink
with amazement! Amidst the bustle of the last few days Portia's own
costume had been kept a secret, so that the details came as a surprise
to the other members of the party. Nerissa stood by her side, clad in a
flowing costume, the component parts of which included a dressing-gown,
an antimacassar, and a flowered chintz curtain; but despite the nature
of the materials, the colouring was charming, and frizzled hair,
flushed cheeks, and sparkling eyes, transformed the sober Esther into
a very personable attendant on the lady of Belmont. There was nothing
of the dressing-gown character about Portia's own attire, however. Its
magnificence took away the breath of the beholders. The little witch
had combed her hair to the top of her head, and arranged it in a high
coil, which gave height and dignity to her figure. A string of pearls
was twisted in and out among the dark tresses; her white silk frock
was mysteriously lengthened and ornamented by two large diamond-shaped
pieces of satin encrusted with gold, one placed at the bottom of the
skirt, and the other hanging loosely from the square-cut neck of the
bodice. Long yellow silk sleeves fell over the bare arms and reached
the ground; and from the shoulders hung a train of golden-hued plush,
lined with a paler shade of yellow. Bassanio and Gratiano stood aghast,
and Portia simpered at them sweetly in the intervals between dispensing
stage directions to the boot boy, who was clad in his best suit for the
occasion, and sent to and fro to change the arrangement of the scenery.
He wheeled the sofa into the centre of the room, piled it up with blue
cushions, and retired to make way for the two ladies, who were already
edging in at the door.
A gasp of astonishment greeted their appearance, but when Peggy dragged
her heavy train across the room, threw herself against the cushions in
an attitude calculated to show off all the splendour of her attire,
when she leant her pearl-decked head upon her hand, turned her eyes
to the ceiling, and said, with a sigh as natural and easy as if they
were her own words which she was using, and not those of the immortal
Shakespeare himself, "'By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a-weary
of this great world!'"--then the Vicar broke into a loud "Hear! Hear!"
of delight, and Mrs. Asplin seized the poker and banged uproarious
applause upon the fender. For the first few minutes amazement and
admiration held her dumb, but as the girls moved to and fro, and the
details of their costumes became more apparent, she began to utter
spasmodic cries of recognition, somewhat trying to the composure of the
actors.
Portia's description of her lovers was interrupted by a cry of "My
table centres! The Turkish squares I bought at the Exhibition, and have
never used! Wherever did they find them?" while a little later came
another cry, as the identity of the plush train made itself known, "My
_portière_ from the drawing-room door! My beautiful _portière_--with
the nice new lining! Oh, dear, dear! it's dragging about all over the
dirty carpet! Don't sit on it, dear! For pity's sake, don't sit on it!"
"Mother!" cried Esther, in a deep tone of remonstrance; but Portia
was unconscious of interruption. The other actors held their books in
their hands, and, for the most part, read their speeches; but Peggy
trusted entirely to memory, and sighed and yawned over the denunciation
of her lovers, with evident satisfaction to herself as well as to the
beholders. Nerissa read her part "conscientiously," as the newspapers
would say, punctuating her sentences in exemplary fashion, and laying
the emphasis upon the right words as directed by the stage manageress,
but such is the contrariness of things that, with all her efforts,
the effect was stiff and stifled, while Peggy drawled through her
sentences, or gabbled them over at break-neck speed, used no emphasis
at all or half-a-dozen running, at her own sweet will, and was so truly
Portia that the Vicar wondered dreamily if he should have to interview
the Duke of Morocco in his study, and Mrs. Asplin sighed unconsciously,
and told herself that the child was too young to be troubled with
lovers. She must not dream of accepting any one of them for several
years to come!
At the end of the scene, however, anxiety about her beloved _portière_
overpowered everything else in the mind of the Vicar's wife, and she
rushed after the actors to call out eager instructions. "Hang it up
at once, there's good children. If you put it down on a chair, Peggy
will sit on it as sure as fate! And oh! My table centres! Put them back
in the drawer if you love me! Wrap them up in the tissue paper as you
found them!"
"Mother, you are a terrible person! Go back there's a dear, and do keep
quiet!" cried a muffled voice from behind the dining-room door, as
Shylock dodged back to escape observation, and Mrs. Asplin retreated
hastily, aghast at the sight of a hairy monster in whom she failed
to recognise a trace of her beloved son and heir. Shylock's make-up
was, in truth, the triumph of the evening. The handsome lad had been
transformed into a bent, misshapen old man, and anything more ugly,
frowsy, and generally unattractive than he now appeared it would be
impossible to imagine. A cushion gave a hump to his shoulders, and over
this he wore an aged purple dressing-gown, which had once belonged
to the Vicar. The dressing-gown was an obvious refuge, but who but
Peggy Saville would have thought of the trimming which was the making
of the shaggy, unkempt look so much desired? Peggy had sat with her
hands clasped on her lap, and her head on one side, staring at the
gown when it was held out for her approval two days before, then had
suddenly risen, and rushed two steps at a time upstairs to the topmost
landing, a wide, scantily-furnished space which served for a playground
on wet afternoons. An oilcloth covered the floor, a table stood in a
corner, and before each of the six doors was an aged wool rug, maroon
as to colouring, with piebald patches here and there where the skin
of the lining showed through the scanty tufts. Peggy gave a whoop of
triumph, tucked one after the other beneath her arm, and went flying
down again, dropping a mat here and there, tripping over it, and nearly
falling from top to bottom of the stairs. Hair-breadth escapes were,
however, so much a part of her daily existence that she went on her
way unperturbed, and carried her bundle into the study where the girls
sniffed derisively, and the boys begged to know what she intended to do
with all that rubbish.
"'They that have no invention should be hanged,'" quoted Peggy,
unperturbed. "Give me a packet of pins, and I'll soon show you what
I am going to do. Dear, dear, dear, I don't know what you would do
without me! You are singularly bereft of imagination."
She tossed her pig-tail over her shoulder, armed herself with the
largest pins she could find, and set to work to fasten the mats down
the front of the gown, and round the hem at the bottom, so that the
wool hung in shaggy ends over the feet. The skins were thick, the heads
of the pins pressed painfully into her fingers, but she groaned and
worked away until the border was arranged for stitching, and could be
tried on to show the effect.
"Perfectly splendid!" was the verdict of the beholders. And so the
matter of Shylock's gown was settled; but his beard still remained to
be provided, and was by no means an easy problem to solve.
"Tow!" suggested Mellicent; but the idea was hooted by all the others.
The idea of Shylock as a blonde was too ridiculous to be tolerated.
False hair was not to be bought in a small village, and Maxwell's
youthful face boasted as yet only the faintest shadow of a moustache.
The question was left over for consideration, and an inspiration came
the same afternoon, when Robert hurled one of the roller-like cushions
of the sofa at Oswald's head, and Oswald, in catching it, tore loose a
portion of the covering.
"Now you've done it!" he cried. "The room will be covered with
feathers, and then you will say it was my fault! We shall have to
fasten the stupid thing up somehow or other!" He peered through the
opening as he spoke and his face changed. "It's not feathers--it's
horsehair! Here's a find! What about that wig for Shylock?"
Esther was dubious.
"It would take a great deal of horsehair to make a wig. It would spoil
the cushion if the horsehair were taken away; it would spoil the sofa
if the cushion were small; it would spoil the room if the sofa----"
Peggy interrupted with a shriek of laughter.
"Oh, oh, oh! It's like the 'House that Jack built'! How long do you
intend to go on like that? Nonsense, my dear! It would be perfectly
easy to take out what we want and put it back afterwards. I'll
promise to do it myself and sew it up tightly, though, if you desire my
opinion, I think the cushion would be improved by letting in a little
air. You might as well lean your head on a Bath brick. Max, you are a
made man! You shall have a beautiful, crinkly black wig, and a beard
to match. We will sew them to your turban, and fasten them with black
elastic. It will never show, and I'll finish off the joins after you
are dressed. You'll see!"
"You can do as you like! I'm in your hands!" said Max easily. And when
the night of the reading arrived, and he was attired in wig and gown,
Peggy seated him in a chair and tucked a towel under his chin with an
air of business. She had a number of small accessories on a table near
at hand, and Max was first instructed to stick pieces of black plaster
over alternate teeth so that he might appear to possess only a few
isolated fangs, and then made to lie back in his chair, while she stood
over him with a glue-brush in one hand and a bunch of loose horsehair
in the other.
"Shut your eyes!" she cried loudly. And before he could say "Jack
Robinson" a tuft of the wiry stuff covered his eyebrows. "Keep your
face still!" And, to his horror, the gum was daubed from the borders of
the beard half-way up to his eyes, and little prickly ends of hair were
held in Peggy's palm and pressed against his cheeks until they were
firmly attached.
This, indeed, was more than he had bargained for! He jerked back his
head and began a loud-voiced protest, only to be interrupted by shrieks
of excitement.
"Oh, oh, oh! It's beautiful--beautiful! What a fright! What a delicious
fright! No one would know you! You look an old hairy monster who would
gobble up half a dozen Christians. Do look at yourself!"
Peggy felt the pride of an artist in the result of her efforts, and Max
was hardly less delighted than herself as he stood before the glass,
gazing at his hairy cheeks and leering horribly to admire his toothless
gums. If the result were so hideous as to astonish even those who had
watched the process of his make-up, what wonder that the effect upon
Shylock's fond parents was of a stupefying nature!
Horror kept Mrs. Asplin silent until the middle of the scene between
Shylock and Antonio when the bond is signed, and then her agitation
could no longer be controlled, and Shylock's little speeches were
interrupted by entreaties to take that horrid stuff off his teeth, to
use plenty of hot water in washing his face, and to be sure to anoint
it plentifully with cold cream after doing so.
An ordinary lad would have lost his temper at these interruptions; but
Max adored his mother, and could never take anything she did in a wrong
spirit. Anger being therefore impossible, the only other resource was
to laugh, which, in Peggy's opinion, was even worse than the former.
A Shylock who chuckled between his speeches, and gave a good-humoured
"Ha! ha!" just before uttering his bitterest invective, was a
ridiculous parody of the character, with whom it would be impossible to
act. It would be hard, indeed, if all her carefully-rehearsed speeches
lost their effect, and the famous trial scene were made into a farce
through these untimely interruptions!
The second part of the play went more smoothly, however, as the
audience settled down to a more attentive hearing and the actors became
less self-conscious and embarrassed. If four out of the six were
sticks, who never for a moment approached the verge of the natural,
Portia and Shylock did nobly, and when the reading was over and the
young people gathered round the fire in the drawing-room, it was
unanimously agreed that they had acquired a more intimate knowledge of
the play by this one evening's representation than by weeks of ordinary
study.
"I feel so much more intimate with it!" said Esther. "It seems to have
made it alive, instead of just something I have read in a book. It was
a delightful thought, father, and I am grateful to you for proposing
it. I wish I could do all my lessons in the same way."
"I've not enjoyed myself so much for ages. You just did beautifully,
all of you, and the dresses were a sight to behold. As for Peggy, she's
a witch, and could make up costumes on a desert island if she were put
to it! But I don't know what is going to happen to my poor, dear boy's
face. Oswald, what is he doing? Isn't he coming to have some lemonade
and cake?" asked Mrs. Asplin anxiously. And Oswald chuckled in a
heartless fashion.
"Pride must abide. He would be Shylock whether we liked it or not, so
let him take the consequences. He is fighting it out with cold cream in
the bath-room, and some of the horsehair sticks like fun. I'll go up
and tell him we have eaten all the cake. He was getting savage when I
came down, and it will sweeten his temper!"
(_To be continued._)
The Old Year's Grief.
[Illustration]
When the young year walked the woodlands or climbed the mountain side
He wooed a gentle maiden and won her for his bride.
She brought him golden sunshine & wheresoe'er he trod
She reared a starry blossom to decorate the sod.
From vale to vale they wandered; from hill to hill they went,
Still leaving in their footsteps a harvest of content.
But woe is me! when Autumn had climbed the green hill-side,
Mid wailing of the woodlands the Year's sweet consort died.
No more the soft winds dallied where bracken crowned the hill,
To waft the brown bee's murmur across some golden rill.
The throstle's song was silent. The year's sad step was slow,
And whereso'er he wandered, he wandered through the snow.
His constant song of sorrow was borne by northern gales
Across the leafless forests & through the misty vales.
He rambled by the river where often he had seen
The mirrored face of beauty--his dear departed queen.
But round the frozen sedges deep snow had drifted wide
And ice, with Death's indifference, had bound the pleasant tide.
In vain, in vain. The glory that once his vision knew
Had left, in his dominion, no trace of where it flew.
His days grow short & shorter. 'Twill soon be time to go
And the white year's badge of sorrow is the pure and frosty snow.
[Illustration]
_JOHN LEA_
[Illustration]
"SISTER WARWICK": A STORY OF INFLUENCE.
BY H. MARY WILSON, Author of "In Warwick Ward," "In Monmouth Ward,"
"Miss Elsie," etc.