Читать книгу Judith Shakespeare: Her love affairs and other adventures - Black William - Страница 6

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There was much ado in the house all that day, in view of the home-coming on the morrow, and it was not till pretty late in the evening that Judith was free to steal out for a gossip with her friend and chief companion, Prudence Shawe. She had not far to go—but a couple of doors off, in fact; and her coming was observed by Prudence herself, who happened to be sitting at the casemented window for the better prosecution of her needle-work, there being still a clear glow of twilight in the sky. A minute or so thereafter the two friends were in Prudence's own chamber, which was on the first floor, and looking out to the back over barns and orchards; and they had gone to the window, to the bench there, to have their secrets together. This Prudence Shawe was some two years Judith's junior—though she really played the part of elder sister to her; she was of a pale complexion, with light straw-colored hair; not very pretty, perhaps, but she had a restful kind of face that invited friendliness and sympathy, of which she had a large abundance to give in return. Her custom was of a Puritanical plainness and primness, both in the fashion of it and in its severe avoidance of color; and that was not the only point on which she formed a marked contrast to this dear cousin and wilful gossip of hers, who had a way of pleasing herself (more especially if she thought she might thereby catch her father's eye) in apparel as in most other things. And on this occasion—at the outset at all events—Judith would not have a word said about the assignation of the morning. The wizard was dismissed from her mind altogether. It was about the home-coming of the next day that she was all eagerness and excitement; and her chief prayer and entreaty was that her friend Prudence should go with her to welcome the travellers home.

"Nay, but you must and shall, dear Prue; sweet mouse, I beg it of you!" she was urging. "Every one at New Place is so busy that they have fixed upon Signior Crab-apple to ride with me; and you know I cannot suffer him; and I shall not have a word of my father all the way back, not a word; there will be nothing but a discourse about fools, and idle jests, and wiseman Matthew the hero of the day—"

"Dear Judith, I cannot understand how you dislike the old man so," her companion said, in that smooth voice of hers. "I see no garden that is better tended than yours."

"I would I could let slip the mastiff at his unmannerly throat!" was the quick reply—and indeed for a second she looked as if she would fain have seen that wish fulfilled. "The vanity of him!—the puffed-up pride of him.—he thinks there be none in Warwickshire but himself wise enough to talk to my father; and the way he dogs his steps if he be walking in the garden—no one else may have a word with him!—sure my father is sufficiently driven forth by the preachers and the psalm-singing within-doors that out-of-doors, in his own garden, he might have some freedom of speech with his own daughter—"

"Judith, Judith," her friend said, and she put her hand on her arm, "you have such wilful thoughts, and wild words too. I am sure your father is free of speech with every one—gentle and simple, old and young, it matters not who it is that approaches him."

"This Signior Crab-apple truly!" the other exclaimed, in the impetuosity of her scorn. "If his heart be as big as a crab-apple, I greatly doubt; but that it is of like quality I'll be sworn. And the bitterness of his railing tongue! All women are fools—vools he calls them, rather—first and foremost; and most men are fools; but of all fools there be none like the fools of Warwickshire—that is because my worshipful goodman gardener comes all the way from Bewdley. 'Tis meat and drink to him, he says, to discover a fool, though how he should have any difficulty in the discovering, seeing that we are all of us fools, passes my understanding. Nay, but I know what set him after that quarry; 'twas one day in the garden, and my father was just come home from London, and he was talking to my uncle Gilbert, and was laughing at what his friend Benjamin Jonson had said, or had written, I know not which. 'Of all beasts in the world,' says he, 'I love most the serious ass.' Then up steps goodman Matthew. 'There be plenty of 'em about 'ere, zur,' says he, with a grin on his face like that on a cat when a dog has her by the tail. And my father, who will talk to any one, as you say truly, and about anything, and always with the same attention, must needs begin to challenge goodman Crab-apple to declare the greatest fools that ever he had met with; and from that day to this the ancient sour-face hath been on the watch—and it suits well with his opinion of other people and his opinion of himself as the only wise man in the world—I say ever since he hath been on the watch for fools; and the greater the fool the greater his wisdom, I reckon, that can find him out. A purveyor of fools!—a goodly trade! I doubt not but that it likes him better than the tending of apricots when he has the free range of the ale-houses to work on. He will bring a couple of them into the garden when my father is in the summer-house. ''Ere, zur, please you come out and look 'ere, zur; 'ere be a brace of rare vools.' And the poor clowns are proud of it; they stand and look at each other and laugh. 'We be, zur—we be.' And then my father will say no, and will talk with them, and cheer them with assurance of their wisdom; then must they have spiced bread and ale ere they depart; and this is a triumph for Master Matthew—the withered, shrivelled, dried-up, cankered nutshell that he is!"

"Dear Judith, pray have patience—indeed you are merely jealous."

"Jealous!" she exclaimed, as if her scorn of this ill-conditioned old man put that well out of the question.

"You think he has too much of your father's company, and you like it not; but consider of it, Judith, he being in the garden, and your father in the summer-house, and when your father is tired for the moment of his occupation, whatever that may be, then can he step out and speak to this goodman Matthew, that amuses him with his biting tongue, and with the self-sufficiency of his wisdom—nay, I suspect your father holds him to be a greater fool than any that he makes sport of, and that he loves to lead him on."

"And why should my father have to be in the summer-house but that in-doors the wool-spinning is hardly more constant than the lecturing and the singing of psalms and hymns?"

"Judith! Judith!" said her gentle friend, with real trouble on her face, "you grieve me when you talk like that—indeed you do, sweetheart! There is not a morning nor a night passes that I do not pray the Lord that your heart may be softened and led to our ways—nay, far from that, but to the Lord's own ways—and the answer will come; I have faith; I know it; and God send it speedily, for you are like an own sister to me, and my heart yearns over you!"

The other sat silent for a second. She could not fail to be touched by the obvious sincerity, the longing kindness of her friend, but she would not confess as much in words.

"As yet, sweet Prue," said she, lightly, "I suppose I am of the unregenerate, and if it is wicked to cherish evil thoughts of your neighbor, then am I not of the elect, for I heartily wish that Tom Quiney and some of the youths would give Matthew gardener a sound ducking in a horse-pond, to tame his arrogance withal. But no matter. What say you, dear Prue? Will you go with me to-morrow, so that we may have the lad Tookey in charge of us, and Signior Crab-apple be left to his weeding and grafting and railing at human kind? Do, sweet mouse—"

"The maids are busy now, Judith," said she, doubtfully.

"But a single day, dear mouse!" she urged. "And if we go early we may get as far as Shipston, and await them there. Have you no desire to meet your brother, Prudence—to be the first of all to welcome him home? Nay, that is because you can have him in your company as often as you wish; there is no goodman-wiseman-fool to come between you."

"Dear heart," said Prudence Shawe, with a smile, "I know not what is the witchery of you, but there is none I wot of that can say you nay."

"You will, then?" said the other, joyfully. "Ah, look, now, the long ride home we shall have with my father, and all the news I shall have to tell him! And all good news, Prue; scarcely a whit or bit that is not good news: the roan that he bought at Evesham is well of her lameness—good; and the King's mulberry is thriving bravely (I wonder that wiseman Matthew has not done it a mischief in the night-time, for the King, being above him in station, must needs have nothing from him but sour and envious words); and then the twenty acres that my father so set his heart upon he is to have—I hear that the Combes have said as much—and my father will be right well pleased; and the vicar is talking no longer of building the new piggery over against the garden—at least for the present there is nothing to be done: all good news; but there is better still, as you know; for what will he say when he discovers that I have taught Bess Hall to ride the mastiff?"

"Pray you have a care, dear Judith," said her friend, with some apprehension on her face. "'Tis a dangerous-looking beast."

"A lamb, a very lamb!" was the confident answer. "Well, now, and as we are riding home he will tell me of all the things he has brought from London; and you know he has always something pretty for you, sweet Puritan, though you regard such adornment as snares and pitfalls. And this time I hope it will be a silver brooch for you, dear mouse, that so you must needs wear it and show it, or he will mark its absence; and for the others let us guess; let us see. There may be some more of that strange-fashioned Murano glass for Susan, for as difficult as it is to carry; and some silk hangings or the like for my mother, or store of napery, perchance, which she prizeth more; and be sure there is the newest book of sermons from Paul's Churchyard for the Doctor; a greyhound, should he hear of a famous one on the way, for Thomas Combe; toys for the little Harts, that is certain; for my aunt Joan—what?—a silver-topped jug, or some perfumes of musk and civet?—and what else—and for whom else—well—"

"But what for yourself, dear Judith?" her friend said, with a smile. "Will he forget you? Has Matthew gardener driven you out even from his recollection? Will he not have for you a pretty pair of rose shoe-strings, or one of the new tasselled French hoods they are speaking of, or something of the kind, that will turn the heads of all the lads in Stratford twice further round? You are a temptress surely, sweetheart; I half forget that such vanities should displease me when I see the way you wear them; and that I think you must take from your father, Judith; for no matter how plain his apparel is—and it is plain indeed for one that owns the New Place—he wears it with such an ease, and with such a grace and simplicity, that you would say a prince should wear it even so."

"You put me off, Prue," her friend said with a sort of good-natured impatience. "Why, I was showing you what nicelings and delicates my father was bringing, and what I had thought to say was this: that he may have this for one, and that for the other, and many a one proud to be remembered (as I shall be if he thinks of me), but this that I know he is bringing for little Bess Hall is something worth all of these, for it is nothing less than the whole love of his heart. Nay, but I swear it; there is not a human creature in the world to compare with her in his eyes; she is the pearl that he wears in his heart of hearts. If it were London town she wanted, and he could give it to her, that is what he would bring for her."

"What! are you jealous of her too?" said Prudence, with her placid smile.

"By yea and nay, sweet Puritan, if that will content you, I declare it is not so," was the quick answer. "Why, Bess is my ally! We are in league, I tell you; we will have a tussle with the enemy ere long; and, by my life, I think I know that that will put goodman-wiseman's nose awry!"

At this moment the secret confabulation of these two friends was suddenly and unexpectedly broken in upon by a message from without. Something white came fluttering through the open casement, and fell, not quite into Judith's lap, which was probably its intended destination, but down toward her feet. She stooped and picked it up; it was a letter, addressed to her, and tied round with a bit of rose-red silk ribbon that was neatly formed into a true-lover's knot.