Penny Plain Part 42

"And d'you know where I'm going to-night?" Mhor went on. "To a theatre to see a play. Yes. And I shan't be in bed till at least eleven o'clock.

It's the first time in my life I've ever been outside after ten o'clock, and I've always wanted to see what it was like then."

"No different from any other time," Jock told him. But Mhor shook his head. He knew better. After-ten-o'clock Land _must_ be different....

"This is a great night for us all," Jean said. "Our first play. You have seen it often, I expect. Are you going?"

"Of course I'm going. I wouldn't miss Jock's face at a play for anything.... Or yours," he added, leaning towards her. "No, Mhor.

There's no hurry. It doesn't begin for another half-hour ... we'll have coffee in the other room."

Mhor was in a fever of impatience, and quite ten minutes before the hour they were in their seats in the front row of the balcony. Oddly enough, Lord Bidborough's seat happened to be adjoining the seats taken by the Jardines, and Jean and he sat together.

It was a crowded house, for the play was being played by a new company for the first time that night. Jean sat silent, much too content to talk, watching the people round her, and listening idly to s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation. Two women, evidently inhabitants of the town, were talking behind her.

"Yes," one woman was saying; "I said to my sister only to-day, 'What would we do if there was a sudden alarm in the night?' If we needed a doctor or a policeman? You know, my dear, the servants are all as old as we are. I don't really believe there is anyone in our road that can _run_."

The other laughed comfortably and agreed, but Jean felt chilled a little, as if a cloud had obscured for a second the sun of her happiness. In this gloriously young world of unfolding leaves and budding hawthorns and lambs and singing birds and lovers, there were people old and done who could only walk slowly in the suns.h.i.+ne, in whom the spring could no longer put a spirit of youth, who could not run without being weary. How ugly age was! Grim, menacing: Age, I do abhor thee....

The curtain went up.

The youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, the young Orlando, "a youth unschooled and yet learned, full of n.o.ble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved," talked to old Adam, and then to his own most unnatural brother. The scene changed to the lawn before the Duke's palace. Lord Bidborough bade Jean observe the scenery and dresses. "You see how simple it is, and vivid, rather like Noah's Ark scenery? And the dresses are a revolt against the stuffy tradition that made Rosalind a sort of princ.i.p.al boy.... Those dresses are all copied from old missals.... I rather like it. Do you approve?"

Jean was not in a position to judge, but said she certainly approved.

Rosalind and Celia were saying the words she knew so well. Touchstone had come in--that witty knave; Monsieur le Beau, with his mouth full of news; and again, the young Orlando o'er-throwing more than his enemies.

And now Rosalind and Celia are planning their flight.... It is the Forest of Arden. Again Orlando and Adam speak together, and Adam, with all his years brave upon him, a.s.sures his master, "My age is as a l.u.s.ty winter, frosty but kindly."

The words came to Jean with a new significance. How Shakespeare _knew_ ... why should she mourn because Age must come? Age was beautiful and calm, for the seas are quiet when the winds give o'er. Age is done with pa.s.sions and discontents and strivings. Probably those women behind her who had sighed comfortably because n.o.body in their road could run, whom she pitied, wouldn't change with her to-night. They had had their life.

It wasn't sad to be old, Jean told herself, for as the physical sight dims, the soul sees more clearly, and the light from the world to come illumines the last dark bit of the way....

They went out between the acts and walked by the river in the moonlight and talked of the play.

Jock and Mhor were loud in their approval, only regretting that Touchstone couldn't be all the time on the stage. Lord Bidborough asked Jean if it came up to her expectations.

"I don't know what I expected.... I never imagined any play could be so vivid and gay and alive.... I've always loved Rosalind, and I didn't think any actress could be quite my idea of her, but this girl is. I thought at first she wasn't nearly pretty enough, but she has the kind of face that becomes more charming the more you look at it, and she is so graceful and witty and impertinent."

"And Rabelaisian," added her companion. "It really is a very good show.

There is a sort of youthful freshness about the acting that is very engaging. And every part is so competently filled. Jaques is astonis.h.i.+ngly good, don't you think? I never heard the 'seven ages'

speech so well said."

"It sounded," Jean said, "as if he were saying the words for the first time, thinking them as he went along."

"I know what you mean. When the great lines come on it's a temptation to the actor to draw himself together and clear his throat, and rather address them to the audience. This fellow leaned against a tree and, as you say, seemed to be thinking them as he went along. He's an uncommonly good actor ... I don't know when I enjoyed a show so much."

The play wore on to its merry conclusion; all too short the Jardines found it. Jock's wrath at the love-sick shepherd knew no bounds, but he highly approved of Rosalind because, he said, she had such an impudent face.

"Who did you like best, Richard Plantagenet?" Mhor asked as they came down the steps.

"Well, I think, perhaps the most worthy character was 'the old religious man' who converted so opportunely the Duke Frederick."

"Yes," Jean laughed. "I like that way of getting rid of an objectionable character and enriching a deserving one. But Jaques went off to throw in his lot with the converted Duke. I rather grudged that."

"To-morrow," said Mhor, who was skipping along, very wide awake and happy in After-ten-o'clock Land--"to-morrow I'm going to take Peter to the river and let him snowk after water-rats. I think he's feeling lonely--a Scots dog among so many English people."

"Stark's lonely too," said Jock. "He says the other chauffeurs have an awful queer accent and it's all he can do to understand them."

"Oh, poor Stark!" said Jean. "I don't suppose he would care much to see the plays."

"He told me," Jock went on, "that one of the other chauffeurs had asked him to go with him to a concert called _Macbeth_. When I told him what it was he said he'd had an escape. He says he sees enough of Shakespeare in this place without going to hear him. He's at the Pictures to-night, and there's a circus coming--"

"And oh, Jean," cried Mhor, "it's the _very one_ that came to Priorsford!"

"Take a start, Mhor," said Jock, "and I'll race you back."

Lord Bidborough and Jean walked on in silence.

At the garden where once had stood New Place--that "pretty house in brick and timber"--the shadow of the Norman church lay black on the white street and beyond it was the velvet darkness of the old trees.

"This," Jean said softly, "must be almost exactly as it was in Shakespeare's time. He must have seen the shadow of the tower falling like that, and the trees, and his garden. Perhaps it was on an April night like this that he wrote:

On such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks and waft her lover To come again to Carthage."

They had both stopped, and Jean, after a glance at her companion's face, edged away. He caught her hands and held her there in the shadow.

"The last time we were together, Jean, it was December, dripping rain and mud, and you would have none of me. To-night--in such a night, Jean, I come again to you. I love you. Will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Jean--"for I am yours."

For a moment they stood caught up to the seventh heaven, knowing nothing except that they were together, hearing nothing but the beating of their own hearts.

Jean was the first to come to herself.

"Everyone's gone home. The boys'll think we are lost.... Oh, Biddy, have I done right? Are you sure you want me? Can I make you happy?"

"_Can you make me happy_? My blessed child, what a question! Don't you know that you seem to me almost too dear for my possessing? You are far too good for me, but I won't give you up now. No, not though all the King's horses and all the King's men come in array against me. My Jean ... my little Jean."

Jock's comment on hearing of his sister's engagement was that he did think Richard Plantagenet was above that sort of thing. Later on, when he had got more used to the idea, he said that, seeing he had to marry somebody, it was better to be Jean than anybody else.

Mhor, like Gallio, cared for none of these things.

He merely said, "Oh, and will you be married and have a bridescake? What fun!... You might go with Peter and me to the station and see the London trains pa.s.s. Jock went yesterday and he says he won't go again for three days. Will you, Jean? Oh, _please_--"

David, at Oxford, sent his sister a letter which she put away among her chiefest treasures. Safely in his room, with a pen in his hand, he would write what he was too shy and awkward to say: he could call down blessings on his sister in a letter, when face to face with her he would have been dumb.

Pamela, on hearing the news, rushed down from London to congratulate Jean and her Biddy in person. She was looking what Jean called "fearfully London," and seemed in high spirits.

"Of course I'm in high spirits," she told Jean. "The very nicest thing in the world has come to pa.s.s. I didn't think there was a girl living that I could give Biddy to without a grudge till I saw you, and then it seemed much too good to be true that you should fall in love with each other."

"But," said Jean, "how could you want him to marry me, an ordinary girl in a little provincial town?--he could have married _anybody_."