THE PARTY
From Aunt Nan’s pearls Mary kept out a brooch for her mother and two
bar-pins for herself and Katy Summers, just alike. The rest of the
“Gems from Shakespeare” she entrusted to Mr. Wilde, the family lawyer,
who undertook to sell them for her in the city.
It was an exciting day for Mary when he told her the result of his
mission.
“My dear,” said he, with a twinkle in his wise old eyes, “those
Shakespeare ‘Gems’ of yours made the eyes of the jewelers pop out of
their heads. You won’t have any trouble in going to college when the
time comes; if you still wish to do so, and if you haven’t already
learned all there is to be known from that famous library of yours. I
hold forty thousand dollars in trust for you. Are you disappointed?”
“Forty thousand dollars!” Mary could only gasp. And the rest of the
family had to pinch themselves to be sure they were not dreaming. But
it was, indeed, a fact. There need be no more anxiety or overwork
for any of them. With care and economy they were provided for until
Mary and John should have finished college and be ready to earn their
living. Dr. Corliss could go on writing his book in peace, without
worrying about bills. Mrs. Corliss could have a little maid to help her
in the housework.
And Mary could have a party!
“Mother,” said Mary, when they had recovered from the first excitement
of the news which Mr. Wilde had brought them, and when they had seen
that proud and delighted old gentleman off once more for the city where
he lived,--“Mother, I want to have a party, and give the other children
a good time. I want to celebrate not only our good luck, but the way we
got it. I want to have a Shakespeare party.”
“Oh, yes! Let’s have a party!” crowed John. “A dress-up party, Mary?”
“Yes, a dress-up party. Everybody must be a Shakespeare character.”
“I think that is a very nice idea,” said Mrs. Corliss. “Next month
comes Shakespeare’s birthday, the twenty-third of April, which is also
Saint George’s day. I think it would be lovely to have a party and show
our Crowfield friends that Aunt Nan’s house is going to be hospitable
and jolly from this time on.”
They invited all the children in Mary’s class of the High School and
in John’s class of the Grammar School. Everybody was told that he
or she must come in a Shakespeare costume; and this set them all to
looking up quotations and reading plays more than had ever before been
done in Crowfield.
For days before the party Mary’s library was crowded every afternoon
with eager children who came to ask questions and get suggestions about
their costumes. Mary and Katy Summers helped them as best they could,
and Mrs. Corliss pinned and draped and made sketches to show how things
ought to look.
During these busy days Caliban retreated to the attic and sulked most
of the time, because Mary paid him so little attention. But then, Mary
said his costume was already nearly perfect. So why bother about him?
They held the party in the library, the biggest room in the Corliss
house. And Aunt Nan’s portrait looked down on a strange gathering
of folk out of her favorite books. It seemed as if the old lady
must be pleased if she knew how many persons had become interested
in Shakespeare through the things which had happened and were still
happening in her library.
The door was opened by John dressed as Puck, in brown jacket and
tights, with little wings sprouting out of his shoulder-blades.
In the library the guests were received by Mary in long, glittering,
green draperies to represent Ariel, with a wand and a crown of stars.
She kept Caliban close at her side, beautiful in a green ribbon collar
which bored him greatly.
Katy Summers stood beside Mary, and looked sweet as Titania, in a fairy
dress of white tarlatan, with a crown of flowers. Dr. Corliss had been
made to represent Prospero, with a long white beard and gray robes. And
Mrs. Corliss was one of the witches from “Macbeth.” She wore a dress of
smoky gray veiling, with a veil over her long hair, which concealed her
face. Some of the children were afraid of her at first, for they did
not know who she really was; she looked very bent and witch-like, and
acted her part weirdly.
Ralph and James Perry, two members of John’s “Big Four,” came as
the two Dromios, the clowns in “A Comedy of Errors.” Their faces
were whitened, and they acted like real clowns in a circus, turning
somersaults and making grimaces. Whatever one did the other imitated
him immediately, and it kept the other children in gales of laughter.
Billy Barton, the fourth member of the “Big Four,” made a hit as Nick
Bottom, wearing the Ass’s head, and braying with comical effect; though
as Billy had never heard the strange noise which a donkey really makes
when it brays, he actually sounded more like a sick rooster. His
long-eared head-piece soon grew so hot to wear that Billy took it off
and hung it over his arm, which rather spoiled the illusion, but was
much more comfortable.
Then there was Charlie Connors, a very fat boy, who dressed as
Falstaff, with a fierce mustache and impressive rubber boots, a plumed
hat, belt full of pistols, and a sword. There was Lady Macbeth, in a
white nightgown with her hair hanging loose, a dangerous dagger in one
hand and a lighted candle in the other. But when she nearly set fire to
the draperies of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, Mrs. Corliss made the
Lady extinguish her sleep-walking candle.
Hamlet himself was there, too, in melancholy long black stockings, with
a waterproof cape flung tragically over one shoulder. He carried one of
Aunt Nan’s ostrich eggs in his hand to represent a skull. Indeed, the
attic and the “Collections” had helped supply many necessary parts of
this Shakespeare masquerade.
There was Cleopatra, in a wonderful red sateen robe hauled out of one
of the old chests; and Shylock, with a long beard hanging over a purple
dressing-gown of the Early-Victorian period. There was Julius Cæsar in
a Roman toga made from some of Aunt Nan’s discarded window-curtains,
and Rosalind looking lovely in a blue bathing-suit and tam o’ shanter.
There were also a number of little Grammar-School fairies in
mosquito-netting robes, and many other citizens of places earthly and
unearthly, who seemed to have wandered out of the books in Mary’s
library. Ariel recognized them all, and named them to the company as
they came in. They squatted about on the chairs and on the floor till
everybody had arrived.
And then they gave the play.
Ever since reading “Midsummer Night’s Dream” Mary had wanted to try the
delicious foolery of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” It required no scenery, no
other costumes than a shawl or two, to cover up what the actors were
already wearing to represent other characters. It was all a huge joke,
as the audience soon saw; and throughout the scene the children laughed
and squealed with delight, as Mary had thought they would. For the
actors must have given the play as ridiculously as Shakespeare himself
intended; which was saying a great deal.
Billy Barton, covering himself with a mackintosh, acted Prologue, and
introduced Mary, draped as Pyramus, and Katy as Thisbe; John, parted
for a time from his wings, and tied up in a gray shawl, with a fringed
rope fastened on for a tail, was the horribly roaring Lion. Ralph and
Jimmie represented Wall and Moonshine.
It was a very funny thing to see Wall hold up his fingers to make a
chink through which Pyramus and Thisbe might kiss each other. And when
Lion begged the audience not to be frightened by his roar, the children
shrieked with laughter.
But funniest of all was when Jimmy Perry as Moonshine came in with the
old tin lantern to represent the Moon, and tried to make Caliban in his
green ribbon act the part of the Moon Man’s dog. Caliban didn’t like
theatricals. He would not act the part, but lay down in the middle of
the floor, with his feet in the air, and his ears laid flat, ready to
scratch the Moon Man if he persisted. The Prologue had to rush in again
and drag him off.
When the Lion had roared and made Pyramus think he had eaten poor
Thisbe, so that the hasty fellow stabbed himself in grief; and when
Thisbe had died, too, after sobbing about her lover’s “lily lips” and
“cherry nose,” the little play was over, and everybody in a good humor.
And the children said, “I didn’t know Shakespeare was so funny, did
you?”
Then Ariel and Titania, Prospero, and the Witch made a magic--they
were a mighty quartet, you see. John suggested that they were really
the “Biggest Four.” They waved their wands and lifted their hands, and
Caliban helped with a mighty “Wow!” Then in came Puck and the other
fairies bearing a huge iron kettle, with a ladle sticking out of the
top. From the kettle rose a cloud of smoke and a sweet smell that made
Caliban sneeze. The fairies put the kettle in the middle of the room,
and the four magicians waved their wands over it, and moved slowly
about it singing,--
“Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire, burn, and cauldron, bubble!”
When the spell was finished, the smoke died away, and the Witch stooped
over and ladled something out, which she threw into the fireplace.
“Now, come, everybody!” she cried in a cracked voice, “and dip pot-luck
out of the magic kettle.”
One by one the guests came and helped themselves to a ladleful of
pot-luck. The “luck” turned out to be a tissue-paper package tied
with red ribbon. In each package was a little present. Sometimes the
children did not get an appropriate gift; but then they could “swap.”
Shylock, who was one of the biggest boys, drew a Japanese doll, which
he exchanged for a jack-knife that had fallen to the lot of a little
girl-fairy. Cleopatra drew a conductor’s whistle, and Hamlet had a
beautiful bow of pink hair-ribbon; so they made a trade. The Ghost
was made happy with a jews-harp, and the Ass secured a fan; while fat
Falstaff made every one roar with laughter by unrolling from the great
bundle of tissue paper, which he had carefully picked out, a tiny
thimble.
After this they danced and played games, and made the roof of Aunt
Nan’s old house echo with such sounds as it had not heard for many
years. Shakespeare characters flitted from room to room, up the stairs
to the attic and down to the cellar, in a joyous game of hide-and-seek.
And nobody said “Don’t!” or “Careful!” or “Sh!” This was a night when
Dream-People had their way undisturbed.
Then they all went out into the dining-room and had supper--sandwiches
and chocolate and cake and ice-cream. And they all voted that they
liked Shakespeare very much, and that they ought to celebrate his
birthday every year.
Nobody wanted to go home, of course. But in time, mere ordinary fathers
and mothers and big sisters and big brothers, in ugly, common clothes,
came and dragged away the Shakespeare people, one by one. When they
had all, as Prospero said, “melted into air, into thin air,” when even
Titania had waved her wand and disappeared with a kiss on Ariel’s
cheek, this happy Spirit and Prospero and the Witch, Puck and Caliban,
were left alone in front of the library fireplace.
“Wasn’t it a lovely party!” cried Puck.
“I am sure Aunt Nan would have been pleased,” said the Witch, looking
up at the portrait over the mantel.
“Just think what a happy time she has given us; dear Aunt Nan!” said
Ariel.
“Yes; it was a very nice party, indeed,” acknowledged Prospero,
stroking his long beard gravely. “I confess I never expected to get
so much pleasure out of poetry. But now, to quote myself, ‘I’ll to my
book.’ Good-night.” And he retired to his study.
“I’m so sleepy!” said John. “Isn’t it too bad that poor Shakespeare
died before they invented ice-cream?”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I wish he were still alive. I should like to see
him. But when I look about the library now I feel as if all the books
were alive--just full of live people!”
“They are alive so long as we read them,” said Mrs. Corliss.
“I’m going to keep them alive!” cried Mary.
“Miaou!” protested Caliban, scratching wearily at his ribbon. He at
least was tired of wearing his costume.
“Poor Caliban!” said Mary, untying the ribbon. “Now you can go to sleep
comfortably. To-morrow I shan’t be Ariel any more. But you will still
be Caliban, for you are the realest of us all!”
Caliban switched his tail, yawned, and jumped up into the armchair,
where he curled himself to sleep.
Mary had a strange dream that night. Perhaps she had eaten too much
ice-cream. She thought that as soon as the house was quiet, Caliban
rose on tiptoe and put on little wings like those of Puck, and flew
right out of the open window, away to the land of fairies and shadows
and book-folk. She dreamed that though she hunted and hunted, she
never could find him again. The dream made her cry, and she woke up
very early in the morning, still sobbing.
The dream was still too real! She jumped out of bed, flung on her
little blue wrapper, thrust her feet into her blue slippers, and
hurried downstairs into the library. There in the middle of the
mantelpiece, under Aunt Nan’s portrait and close beside the bust
of Shakespeare, sat Caliban. He blinked in grave surprise at her
unexpected entrance.
“Oh, Caliban, dear Caliban!” cried Mary, running up to him and hugging
him tight. “I was afraid you had ‘vanished into thin air,’ too. I
couldn’t have borne that, Caliban. I don’t know what I should ever do
without you, pussy dear!”
“Miaou!” said Caliban, fondly kissing her cheek.
And Aunt Nan’s portrait smiled down upon the pair.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.