THE TRUTH ABOUT SHAKSPERE AT LAST
Miss Caroline dutifully returned the calls that were paid her, with
never a suspicion that her slavery to strong drink had been the secret
inspiration of them. She was not yet awake to our sentiments in this
matter. She had given strong waters to the minister with a heart as
innocent as their disguise of ice and leafage had made them actually
appear to that good man. And I, who was well informed, hesitated to warn
her, hoping weakly that she would come to understand. For I had seen
there were many things that Miss Caroline had not to be told in order to
know.
For one, she had quickly divined that the ladies of Little Arcady
considered her furniture to be unfortunate. She knew that they scorned
it for its unstylishness; that some of them sympathized in the
humiliation that such impossible stuff must be to her; while others
believed that she was too unsophisticated to have any proper shame in
the matter. These latter strove by every device to have her note the
right thing in furniture and thus be moved to contrast it instructively
with her own: as when Mrs. Judge Robinson borrowed for an afternoon Aunt
Delia McCormick's best blue plush rocker, Mrs. Westley Keyts's new sofa,
upholstered with gorgeous ingrain, and Mrs. Eubanks's new black walnut
combination desk and bookcase with brass trimmings and little spindled
balconies, in which could be elegantly placed the mineral specimens
picked up along the river bank, and the twin statuettes of the fluting
shepherd and his inamorata. As Mrs. Judge Robinson herself possessed new
and high-priced furniture, including a gold-and-onyx stand to occupy the
bay window and uphold the Rogers group, "Going for the Parson," as well
as two fragile gilt chairs, which considerate guests would not sit in
but leave exposed to view, and a complete new set of black walnut, the
effect that day--which included a grand smell of varnish--was nothing
less than sumptuous.
The occasion was a semi-monthly meeting of the Ladies' Home Study and
Culture Club, at which Miss Caroline was to be present. There had been a
suspension of the Club's meetings while Mrs. Potts was in abeyance, but
on this day she was to enter the world again and preside over the
meeting as "Madam President," though the ladies sometimes forgot to call
her that.
The paper read by Mrs. Potts--who was not at all ineffective in her
black--was on "The Lake Poets," with a few pointed selections from
Wordsworth and others.
Whether or not Miss Caroline was rightly impressed by the furniture
exhibit was a question not easy to determine. True, she stared at it
with something in her eyes beyond a mere perception of its lines; but
whether this was the longing passion of an awakened soul or the simple
awe of the unenlightened was not to be ascertained at the moment.
Testimony as to her enjoyment of the President's paper was more
circumstantial. In the midst of this, as the listeners were besought to
"dwell a moment on this exquisite delineation of Nature,"--expertly
pronounced "Nate-your" by Mrs. Potts,--Miss Caroline turned her head
aside as one deeply moved by the poet's magic. But Marcella Eubanks,
glancing at that moment into a mirror on the opposite wall,--a mirror in
a plush frame on which pansies had been painted,--caught the full and
frank exposure of a yawn. It was a thorough yawn. Miss Caroline had
surrendered abjectly to it, in the belief--unrecking the mirror--that
she could not be detected.
The discussion that followed the paper--as was customary at the
meetings--proved to be a bit livelier. Each lady said something she had
thought up to say, beginning, "Does it not seem--" or "Are we not forced
to conclude--"
I suspect that Miss Caroline was sleepy. Perhaps she was nettled by the
boredom she had been made to endure without just provocation; perhaps
the fashionable fumes of varnish had been toxic to her unaccustomed
senses. At any rate she now compromised herself regrettably.
Mrs. Westley Keyts had been thinking up something to say, something
choice that should yet be sufficiently vague not to incriminate her. It
had seemed that these requirements would be met if she said, in a tone
of easy patronage, "Mr. Wordsworth is certainly a very bright writer of
poetry, but as for me--give _me_ Shakspere!"
She had thought of saying "the Bard of Avon," a polished phrase coined
for his "Compendium" by the ingenious Mr. Gaskell; but, hearing her own
voice strangely break the silence, Mrs. Keyts became timid at the last
moment and let it go at "Shakspere."
"Oh, Shakspere--of _course_!" said most of the ladies at once, and those
not quick enough to utter it concertedly looked it almost reprovingly at
the speaker.
A silence fell, as if every one must have time to recover from this
trivial platitude. But it was a silence outrageously shattered by Miss
Caroline, who said:--
"O dear! I've always considered Shakspere such an overrated man!"
The silence grew more intense, only Mrs. Potts emitting a slight but
audible gasp. But swift looks flashed from each lady to her horrified
sisters. Was it possible that the unfortunate woman had been in no
condition to come among them?
"Oh, a _greatly_ overrated man!" repeated Miss Caroline, terribly, "far
too wordy--too fond of wretched puns--so much of his humor coarse and
tiresome. By the way, have you ladies taken up Byron?"
The moment was charged, almost to explosion. A crisis impended, out of
the very speechlessness of the gathering. Mrs. Potts was aghast in
behalf of William Shakspere, and Marcella Eubanks was crimsoning at the
blunt query about Byron, well knowing that he could be taken up by a
lady only with the wariest caution, and that he would much better be let
alone. The others were torn demoralizingly between these two extremes of
distress.
But the situation was saved by the ready wit of Mrs. Judge Robinson.
"I think the hour has come for refreshments, Madam President!" she said
urbanely, and the meeting was nervously adjourned. Under the animation
thus induced an approximate equilibrium was restored. The ladies gulped
down chicken salad, many of them using forks with black thread tied
about them to show they were borrowed from Mrs. Eubanks. They drank
lemonade from a fine glass pitcher that had come as a gratuitous mark of
esteem from the tea merchant patronized by the hostess; and they
congealed themselves pleasantly with vanilla ice-cream eaten from dishes
of excellent pressed glass that had come one by one as the Robinson
family consumed its baking powder.
But Miss Caroline would have been dense indeed had she not divined, even
amid that informal babbling, that she was being viewed by the ladies of
the Club with a shocked stupefaction.
Precisely what emotion this knowledge left with her I have never known.
But I do know that before the meeting broke up, it had been agreed to
hold the next one at the house of Miss Caroline herself. It may be that
she suggested and urged this in pure desperation, wishing to regain a
favor which she had felt unaccountably withdrawn; and it may be that the
ladies accepted in a similar desperation, knowing not how to inform her
that she was grossly ineligible for membership in a Home Study Club.
The intervening two weeks were filled with tales and talks of Miss
Caroline's heresy. Excitement and adverse criticism were almost
universally aroused. It was a scandal of proportions almost equal to
that of her love for strong drink. About most writers one could be
permitted to have an opinion. But it was not thought that one could
properly have an opinion about Shakspere, and, so far as we knew, no one
had ever before subjected him to this indignity. One might as well have
an opinion about Virtue or the law of gravitation. An opinion of any
sort was impossible. One favorable would be puny, futile, immodestly
patronizing. An unfavorable opinion had heretofore not been within
realms of the idlest speculation.
There were but two of us, I believe, who did not promptly condemn Miss
Caroline's violence of speech--two men of varying parts. Westley Keyts
frankly said he had never been able to "get into" Shakspere, and
considered it, as a book for reading purposes, inferior to "Cudjo's
Cave," which he had read three times. The minister, whose church Miss
Caroline now patronized,--that term being chosen after some
deliberation,--held up both his hands at the news and mildly exclaimed,
"Well!" Then, after a pause, "Well, well!" And still again, after
another pause, "Well, well, well!"
This was thought to be shifty and evasive--certainly not so outspoken as
the town had a right to expect.
Solon Denney, though in his heart true to Shakspere, affected to be
gleeful. A paragraph, mysterious to many, including Miss Caroline,
appeared in the ensuing _Argus_:--
"An encounter long supposed by scientists to be a mere metaphysical
abstraction of almost playful import has at last occurred in sober
physics. The irresistible force has met up with the immovable body. We
look for results next week."
I knew that Solon considered Miss Caroline to be an irresistible force.
I was uncertain whether Shakspere or Mrs. Potts was meant by the
immovable body. I knew that he held them in equal awe, and I knew that
Mrs. Potts felt, in a way, responsible for Shakspere this far west of
Boston, regarding any attack upon him as a personal affront to herself.
On the day of the next meeting the ladies of the Club gathered in the
dingy and inelegant drawing-room of Miss Caroline. No vividly flowered
carpet decked the floor; only a time-toned rug that left the outer edge
of the floor untidily exposing its dull stain; no gilt and onyx table
bore its sculptured fantasy by the busy Rogers. The mantel and shelves
were bare of those fixed ornaments that should decorate the waste places
of all true homes; there were no flint arrow-heads, no "specimens," no
varnished pine cones, no "Rock of Ages," no waxen lilies, not even a
china cup goldenly emblazoned with "Love the Giver," in German script.
And there were no beautiful chairs with delicate gilded spindles--not an
elegant and impracticable chair in the whole big room--not one chair
which could not be occupied as comfortably as any common kitchen rocker.
It was indeed a poor place; obviously the woman's best room, yet showing
careless traces of almost daily use. To ladies who never opened their
best rooms save to dust and air them on days when company was expected,
and who would as soon have lounged in them informally as they would have
desecrated a church, this laxity was heinous.
And ordinarily, in the best rooms of one another, the ladies became
spontaneously, rigidly formal as they assembled, speaking in tones
suitably stiff of the day's paper, or viewing with hushed esteem those
art treasures that surrounded them.
But so difficult was it to attain this formality amid the homely
surroundings of Miss Caroline that to-day they not only lounged with
negligent ease in the big chairs and on the poor, broad sofas, but they
talked familiarly of their household concerns quite as if they had been
in one of their own second-best rooms on any common day.
On a table in one cool corner was a huge bowl of thin silver, whence
issued a baffling fragrance. Discreet observation, as the throng
gathered, revealed this to contain a large block of ice and a colored
liquid in which floated cherries with slices of lemon and orange. A
ladle of generous lines reposed in the bowl, and circling it on the
table were many small cups.
There was a feeling of relief when these details had been ascertained.
Fear had been felt that Miss Caroline might forget herself and offer
them a glass of wine, or something worse, from a large black bottle; for
Little Arcady believed, in its innocent remoteness, that the devil's
stuff came in no other way than large black bottles. Miss Eubanks had
made sure that the ladies wore their white ribbons. Marcella's own satin
bow was larger than common, so that no one might mistake the principles
of the heart beating beneath it.
But the cool big bowl with its harmless fruit restored confidence at
once, and when Miss Caroline urged them to try Clem's punch they
refrained not. The walk to the north end of town on a sultry afternoon
had qualified them to receive its consolations, and they gathered
gratefully about.
Marcella Eubanks quaffed the first beaker, a trifle timorously, it is
true, for the word "punch" had stirred within her a vague memory of
sinister associations. Sometime she had read a tale in which one Howard
Melville had gone to the great city and wrecked a career of much promise
by accepting a glass of something from the hands of a beautiful but
thoughtless girl, pampered child of the banker with whom he had secured
a position. For a dread moment Marcella seemed to recall that the fatal
draught was named "punch." But after a tentative sip of the compound at
hand, she decided that it must have been something else--doubtless "a
glass of sparkling wine." For this punch before her was palpably of a
babe's innocence. Indeed it tasted rather like an inferior lemonade. But
it was cold, and Marcella tossed off a second cup of it. She could make
better lemonade herself, and she murmured slightingly of the stuff to
Aunt Delia McCormick.
"It wants more lemons and more sugar," said Marcella, firmly. Aunt Delia
pressed back the white satin bow on her bosom in order to manage her
second glass with entire safety.
"I don't know, Marcella," she said in a dreamy undertone, after draining
the cup to its cherry. "I don't know--it does seem to take hold, for all
it tastes so trifling."
As each lady arrived she was led to the punch-bowl. When the last one
had been taught the way to that cool nook, there was a pleasant hum of
voices in the room. There was still an undercurrent of difference as to
the punch's merit--other than mere coolness; though Miss Eubanks now
agreed with Aunt Delia that it possessed virtues not to be discerned in
the first careless draught. The conversation continued to be general, to
the immense delight of the hostess, for she had dreaded the ordeal of
that formal opening, with its minutes of the last meeting; and she had
dared even to hope that the day's paper might, by tactful management, be
averted.
She waxed more daringly hopeful when Clem came to refill the punch-bowl.
She felt that she owed much to the heat of the day, which was insuring
the thirst of the arrivals. The punch and general conversation seemed to
suffice them even after their first thirst had been allayed. She began
to wonder if the ladies were not a more unbending and genial lot than
she had once suspected.
A considerable group of them now chatted vivaciously about the
replenished bowl, including Madam the President, who had arrived very
thirsty indeed, and who was now, between sips, accounting for the
singular favor which the Adams family had always found in the sight of
God and the people of Massachusetts. She seemed to be prevailed over,
not without difficulty, by Aunt Delia, who related her failure to learn
from Clem the ingredients of his acceptable punch. This was not
surprising, for Clem was either never able or never willing to tell how
he made anything whatever. Of this punch Aunt Delia had been able to
wheedle from him only that it contained "some little fixin's." Insistent
questioning did develop, further, that "cold tea" was one of these; but
cold tea did not make plain its recondite potencies--did not explain why
a beverage so unassuming to the taste should inspire one with a wish to
partake of it continuously.
"We might get him to make a barrel of it for the Sunday-school picnic,"
said Marcella, brightly, over her fourth cup. "If it contains only a
little tea, perhaps the effect upon the children would not be
deleterious."
"We'll try it," said Aunt Delia, reaching for the ladle at sight of
empty cups in the hands of Mrs. Judge Robinson and Mrs. Westley Keyts.
"_I'll_ furnish the cherries and the sugar and the tea."
How it came about was never quite understood by the ladies, but the true
and formal note of a Ladies' Home Study Club was never once struck that
afternoon. Madam the President did not call the meeting to order, the
minutes of the last meeting are unread to this day, and a motion to
adjourn never became necessary.
It had been thought wisest to keep entirely away from poetry at this
meeting, and the paper for the day, to have been read by Marcella
Eubanks, was "The Pathos of Charles Dickens." Marcella had taken unusual
pains in its preparation, bringing with her two volumes of the author
from which to read at the right moment the deaths of Little Nell and
Paul Dombey. She had practised these until she could make her voice
quaver effectively, and she had looked forward to a genuine ovation when
she sat down.
[Illustration: "WE MIGHT GET HIM TO MAKE A BARREL OF IT FOR THE
SUNDAY-SCHOOL PICNIC."]
If it is clearly understood, then, that no one thought of calling for
the paper, that even its proud author felt the hours gliding by without
any poignant regret, it should be seen that the occasion had strangely
come to be one of pure and joyous relaxation, with never an instructive
or cultured or studious moment.
There was talk of domestic concerns, sprightly town gossip, mirth, wit,
and anecdotes. Aunt Delia McCormick told her parrot story, which was
_risqué_, even when no gentlemen were present, for the parrot said "damn
it!" in the course of his surprisingly human repartee under
difficulties.
Mrs. Westley Keyts, the bars being down, thereupon began another parrot
story. But Miss Eubanks, who had observed that all parrot stories have
"damn" in them, suddenly conceived that matters had gone far enough in
_that_ direction. Affecting not to have heard Mrs. Keyts's opening of "A
returned missionary made a gift of a parrot to two elderly maiden
ladies--" Marcella led the would-be anecdotist to the punch-bowl, and,
under the cover of operations there, spoke to her in an undertone. Mrs.
Keyts said that the thing had been printed right out on the funny page
of "Hearth and Home," but over the cup of punch that Marcella pressed
upon her, she consented to forego it on account of the minister's wife
being present.
There were other anecdotes, however; not of a parrot character, but
chiefly of funny sayings of the little ones at home. Mrs. Judge
Robinson, with the artistic mendacity of your true _raconteur_,
accredited to her own four-year-old a speech about the stars being holes
in the floor of heaven, although it was said of this gem in "Harper's
Drawer," where she had read it, that "the following good one comes to us
from a lady subscriber in the well-known city of X----."
It could not be recalled afterwards how, from this harmless exchange,
they had come to be listening to passages from the adventurous life of
Childe Harold, read crisply by their hostess. Still less could the
ladies later comprehend how some of their number had been guilty of
innuendos--or worse--against the well-known Bard of Avon. Yet, so it
was.
Miss Caroline herself had refrained from abusing him--had seemed to have
forgotten him, indeed; but, as she read Byron to them, their hearts
opened to her--rushed out, indeed, with a friendly wholeness that
demanded something more than mere cordial applause of her favorite poet.
Some intimation of a sympathy with her view of the other poet came to
seem not ungraceful. During one of the reader's pauses to impress upon
them the splendors of the Byronic imagery, and eke its human
heart-warmth, good Aunt Delia, with defiant looks about the circle,
broke in with:--
"I shouldn't wonder if Shakspere _has_ been made too much over."
Mrs. Keyts stepped loyally into the breach thus effected.
"Westley thinks Shakspere isn't such an _awful_ good book," she said,
feeling her way, "though it seems to me it has some very interesting and
excellent pieces in it."
"Shakspere is _ver-ry_ uneven," remarked Mrs. Judge Robinson, in a tone
of dignified concession.
"There is always a word to be said on either side of these
matters--there is undeniably room for controversy." Thus Mrs. Potts, in
her best manner of authority, from the punch-bowl.
"Let the dead rest!" gently murmured Miss Eubanks, from her dreamy
corner of the biggest sofa. Her inflection was archly significant. One
had to suspect that Shakspere, alive and a fair target for dispraise,
might have learned something to his advantage if not to his delight.
Miss Caroline was both surprised and gratified. At the previous meeting
she had detected no sign of this concurring sentiment. She plunged again
into Byron with renewed enthusiasm.
The afternoon came to a glorious end, and the ladies departed with many
expressions of rejoicing. They had found Miss Caroline so charming that
several of them were torn with fresh pity and brought to the verge of
tears when they thought of her furniture.
Marcella Eubanks did cry on the way home and had to put down her green
barege veil. But that was for thinking of poor little Paul Dombey. She
was mourning him as a personal loss. Also must she have adored the
genius of a master who could thus move her from a calm that was
constitutional with every known Eubanks.