SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES
“I declare, I never saw such a spectacle as I am in my life,” Gerry
Ferrows protested, turning half way around to get a back view of herself
in her bedroom mirror. “You look perfectly lovely, Winifred, and I would
not be a bit surprised if you get the Shakespeare prize after all, even
though Olive has the best class record for the year and I the highest
mark for my essay. We are so close together in this contest that the
least thing may change the balance. It is my private opinion that
whoever gives the best Shakespeare recitation to-day will receive the
prize.” And Gerry sighed and then laughed, as she stooped to adjust her
doublet and hose. “Dear me, Winifred, why couldn’t I have been born a
stately blonde beauty like you so that I might have appeared as lovely
Ophelia instead of having to represent Rosalind on account of my short
hair?”
Winifred also laughed, just the least bit complacently, happening at
that moment to catch sight of her own fair reflection. She was dressed
in a long clinging robe of some soft white material and her pale blonde
hair, bound with a fillet of silver, hung loose about her neck. In her
hand she held a sheet of paper with her speech written upon it, which
she glanced at a little nervously every now and then.
“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.”
“Dear me, Gerry, don’t talk of my winning the prize by my recitation,”
Winifred groaned. “I have the most dreadful case of stage fright
already, and to think that I have to make the first speech!” She glanced
up at the clock on their mantel. “It is only a half hour now before we
must go downstairs and I believe that there have never been so many
guests at one of our commencements before. I suppose it is because the
day is so beautiful that we can have our whole entertainment outdoors. I
wish we had a front window, for I am sure I have heard at least a
hundred automobiles drive up to the house. If we go to the ranch girls’
room we can see out into the yard and I can have a look at Olive. I am
simply dying to find out what she looks like!”
Gerry shook her head positively. “Jean says that no one is to come near
Olive; she even means to go downstairs with her herself and to slip
around to the entrance to the stage in the pavilion, so that no one
shall dare speak to her. So I suppose if the truth be known, Winifred,
Olive is just about as badly scared as you are and a good deal more so,
considering how dreadfully shy she is. But don’t fear that she will not
look pretty. I heard Jessica Hunt say the other night that she never saw
any one so exquisite in her life as Olive in her Shakespeare costume.
And I feel rather proud because Olive chose Perdita in ‘The Winter’s
Tale’ for her character because I asked her to. She had once made me
think of a description of Perdita.”
Winifred flushed angrily and then began walking up and down the room.
“See here, Gerry Ferrows, I do think it is just too hateful for you to
have kept on encouraging Olive to try for this prize. It will look
awfully queer to people if she accepts a prize from her own grandmother
anyhow, and I do need it most dreadfully.” In her nervousness and temper
Winifred was almost in tears, though not for worlds would she
consciously have marred her lovely appearance.
A low whistle came from between Gerry’s red lips. “Please don’t leave me
out of the race altogether, sweet Winifred,” she begged. “I may not have
so great beauty as you and Olive to commend me, but remember:
“‘From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.’”
Then Gerry, marching over with an exaggerated, swashbuckling stride
toward Winifred, smote her on the shoulder with more friendliness than
she had shown her in many weeks. “Come, Winifred, what is the use of our
worrying now? I believe I need this prize money quite as much as you do,
since my father has just made some unfortunate investments and may not
be able to let me come back to old Primrose Hall to graduate next year.
And of course we know this prize would mean our tuition. But we must
take what comes with a good grace, for you and Olive and I have an
equally fair chance with our speeches to-day. So if Olive wins we ought
not to fuss, for I can perfectly well understand how she wants the glory
of winning and not the prize itself. She told me that she had been
working for this prize ever since she first came to Primrose Hall in
order to show her beloved Jack Ralston how much she had appreciated the
opportunities she had given her.”
In reply Winifred merely shrugged her shoulders scornfully, but at the
same instant, a bell sounding out on the lawn and a great clapping of
hands, she again fell to studying the paper in her hand. “Good gracious,
there is someone’s speech just ending!” she exclaimed, “so our turns
will come soon.”
And Gerry, even though she was sure of being letter perfect in
Rosalind’s saucy reply to Orlando: “No, no, Orlando, men are April when
they woo, December when they wed,” opened her “As You Like It” and began
once more to read over her part.
So five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and then Jessica Hunt’s voice was
heard outside in the hall: “Where are my Shakespeare heroines?” she
demanded. “Gerry, Winifred, please put your long coats around you and
come on downstairs now. The coast is clear and it is almost time for
your speeches. I will tell Olive.”
Winifred had indeed been right: no commencement day at Primrose Hall had
ever been so beautiful as this one and never before had one called forth
so many guests.
Built as like as possible to an old Greek outdoor theatre, a stage had
been erected at the edge of a grove of trees not many yards from the
great house and a kind of covered arbor temporarily arranged so that the
girls who took part in the commencement exercises might pass from the
house to the stage without being seen by the audience. The stage had no
curtain and only the sky for a canopy, a rarely blue sky with the white
clouds that melt before the deeper warmth of June. On either side were
piled great branches of trees freshly brought in from the woods,
delicately green with the early leaves of spring, and the floor of the
stage was strewn with wild-flowers, buttercups, violets and daisies.
In the yard facing the pretty impromptu theatre the audience was seated,
perhaps two hundred persons, so that any girl making her first public
appearance before it might reasonably be frightened. Perhaps it was the
beauty of the day, perhaps the novelty of Miss Winthrop’s stage
arrangements, for surely no audience had ever appeared more enthusiastic
than hers, and as each girl had stepped forth on the stage, apparently
entering from the heart of a woods on to a carpet of flowers, the
applause and interest had increased.
The Shakespeare heroines were to be the closing feature of the
programme. Therefore, in the front row facing the stage were half a
dozen men and women whom Miss Winthrop had invited to act as judges, and
a few feet from them in a chair next Miss Winthrop’s sat old Madame Van
Mater, the owner of “The Towers” and the donor of the Shakespeare prize.
Her appearance at the commencement had been a surprise to everybody, but
whether she came because of her interest in her newly-found
granddaughter or whether because of her affection for Miss Winthrop, no
one had been told.
When Winifred Graham first came out upon the stage such a murmur of
admiration ran through the audience that its echo reached to her, giving
her just the confidence she had needed for the making of her speech. And
truly her beauty justified the admiration, for she was wearing the
costume that best suited her and was most effective against the natural
background of evergreens and flowers. The sunshine falling between the
leaves of the trees overhead touched her pale blonde hair to a deeper
gold, making fairy shadow patterns on the pure white of her dress.
Without a trace of the nervousness that had haunted her upstairs, nor a
moment’s faltering over her lines, Winifred recited Ophelia’s famous
description of Hamlet, ending with the words, “O, woe is me, To have
seen what I have seen, see what I see.” Then for just a moment she
paused with a pretty, pathetic gesture and her gaze swept the faces of
her judges before she vanished from the stage amid much clapping of
hands. Three times Winifred was recalled by the audience and at each
call Gerry’s heart sank lower and lower in her pretty high-top boots.
“There is no use my trying now,” she grumbled, “because Winifred has
already won.” When a friend standing near whispered something in her ear
she laughed in her usual good-humored fashion. “Oh, yes, I suppose I can
recite better than Winifred, but what avails it me when I can’t look
like the goddess of spring as she does at this moment there on the stage
with her arms full of flowers.”
Gerry and two of her closest friends were under the enclosed arbor in
the spot nearest the entrance to the stage, as her recitation came next,
and a few feet away Olive, closely guarded by Jean, was also waiting.
Hurriedly Jessica Hunt rushed in, whispering something to Jean. Then she
darted across to Gerry. “Winifred is coming off now for the last time;
are you ready? Winifred looked perfectly lovely, but she did not speak
distinctly enough. Remember it is difficult to hear out of doors.”
Then came Gerry’s cue. A little nearsighted without her glasses, she
tripped over some branches, making a headlong rush on to the stage in
her entrance, as though Rosalind, really trying to find her way through
an unknown woods, had stumbled in the underbrush.
No one had ever been able to call Gerry Ferrows handsome, and yet in the
character and costume of Rosalind she was certainly at her best. Perhaps
the description that the heroine gives of herself in masquerade will
best describe Gerry’s present appearance.
“More than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand and—in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will—
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside.”
And truly if Gerry did feel any womanish fear during her recitation she
did not in any way betray it, for at once the gayety of Rosalind, her
wit and gallant courage, seemed to have fallen like a mantle upon Gerry.
Twice her audience laughed aloud in the course of her recitation and
once two of the judges nodded at each other, which had not happened
during Winifred’s speech. Nevertheless, though Gerry came twice on to
the stage again to receive her flowers and applause, she was certain
that unless Olive made a much better showing than she had, Winifred
would be the winner of their contest.
For some unexplainable reason there was a slight wait before the third
girl, who was to close the competition, made her appearance. And this
was unfortunate for Olive. In the first place, the large audience was
growing a little bit tired and hungry, and in the second place, it gave
them the opportunity to begin talking of Olive’s curious history,
retailing to one another as much or as little as each one of them knew.
Olive’s costume was a gift from Ruth and Jack, sent from New York and
shown to no one before the entertainment save Jessica Hunt and Miss
Winthrop. No one will ever know how much pleasure the planning of it had
given to Jack Ralston in the tiresome days at the hospital. Not that she
and Ruth were Shakespeare scholars, only it had happened that years
before Ruth had seen a famous actress, who soon afterwards retired from
the stage, in this very character of Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale” and
had never forgotten the details of her dress.
Quietly, when but few persons were looking, Olive at last skipped on to
the stage. She was wearing a pale pink crepe dress that came down to her
ankles, covered with an overdress of flowered tulle. Her long and
curiously black hair was braided in the two familiar loose braids with a
single pink flower at one side, and on her arm she carried a basket of
spring flowers.
Had all her friends and acquaintances not been convinced from the first
that Olive would be frightened to death before so many people? It was
odd, therefore, that as she first came down toward the edge of the
platform she smiled assurance at Miss Winthrop, who was trying her best
not to appear too anxious or too interested in her favorite pupil.
Then, Olive, before beginning Perdita’s speech, started slowly to dance
an old English folk dance such as the country people must have danced in
rustic England long before even Shakespeare’s time. Dancing was an art
with Olive, so that before she commenced her speech her audience was
won.
Still not showing the least trace of fright or nervousness, when her
dance was concluded, Olive stepped forward again to the center of the
open-air stage:
“I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours—”
She looked from one face to the other in the rows of people watching her
as though addressing Perdita’s pretty speech to them.
Then Miss Winthrop lost her color and old Madame Van Mater stiffened and
her eyes flashed. “Foolish girl, she has forgotten her part and is going
to make a spectacle of herself and me!” she whispered in her friend’s
ear. “I wish I had never come.”
And apparently Olive had forgotten her lines or else grown suddenly ill,
for she continued standing perfectly still and speechless for a period
of one, two minutes, though surely it seemed like ten, while waves of
color swept over her face, turning it crimson and then leaving it pale.
“Oh, I cannot believe it,” she whispered softly to herself, never taking
her eyes from a central place in the audience, as though on this
exquisite May morning she had suddenly seen a ghost.
What secret message traveled across the heads of the audience to the
girl on the stage, no one knows, but Olive must have caught it, for she
smiled again and dipping her hand in her basket of wild-flowers appeared
to present them to various characters, who in Shakespeare’s play stand
grouped around the figure of Perdita as she makes this speech:
“Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried—”
As Olive spoke slowly she drew her flowers from her basket, dropping
them to the ground and moving gradually backwards toward the entrance to
the stage. Then, when she had recited the last line of her speech, she
made a quick bow and before her audience realized that her speech was
actually over, had disappeared.
Whether the applause that followed after her equalled Winifred’s and
Gerry’s she did not know and at the moment did not care. For Jean was
waiting only a few yards away and Olive rushed to her at once.
“Oh, Jean dear,” she said half laughing and half crying, “I didn’t see?
It can’t be true! Oh, why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because we did not want you to be too excited,” Jean answered, trying
to speak calmly, “but oh, Olive, please hurry, for Jack wishes you to
come to her at once.”