Pamela never mention him? Jean realised the truth of the old saying, "Speak weel o' ma love, speak ill o' ma love, but aye speak o' him."
She looked into the boys' room when she was ready and found them only half dressed and engaged in a game of cock-fighting. Having admonished them she went down alone. She went very slowly down the last flight of stairs (she was shy of going into the dining-room)—a slip of a girl crowned with green leaves. Suddenly she stopped. There, in the hall watching her, alone but for the "boots" with the wrinkled, humorous face and eyes of amused tolerance, was Richard Plantagenet.
Behind her where she stood hung a print of Lear—the hovel on the heath, the storm-bent trees, the figure of the old man, the shivering Fool with his "Poor Tom's a-cold." Beside her, fastened to the wall, was a letter-box with a glass front full of letters and picture-cards waiting to be taken to the evening post. Tragedy and the commonplace things of life—but Jean, for the moment, was lifted far from either. She was seeing a new heaven and a new earth. Words were not needed. She looked into Richard Plantagenet's eyes and knew that he wanted her, and she put her hands out to him like a trusting child.
When Jock and Mhor reached the dining-room and found Richard Plantagenet seated beside Jean they were rapturous in their greetings, pouring questions on him, demanding to know how long he meant to stay.
"As long as you stay," he told them.
"Oh, good," Jock said. "Are you fearfully keen on Shakespeare? Jean's something awful. It gives me a sort of hate at him to hear her."
"Oh, Jock," Jean protested, "surely not. I'm not nearly as bad as some of the people here. I don't haver quite so much…. I was in the drawing-room this morning and heard two women talking, an English woman and an American. The English woman remarked casually that Shakespeare wasn't a Christian, and the American protested, 'Oh, don't say. He had a great White Soul.'"
"Gosh, Maggie!" said Jock. "What a beastly thing to say about anybody! If Shakespeare could see Stratford now I expect he'd laugh—all the shops full of little heads, and pictures of his house, and models of his birthplace … it's enough to put anybody off being a genius."
"I was dreadfully snubbed in a shop to-day," said Jean, smiling at her lover. "It was a very nice mixed-up shop with cakes and crucifixes and little stucco figures, presided over by a dignified lady with black lace on her head. I remembered Mrs. Jowett's passion for stucco saints in her bedroom, and picked one up, remarking that it would be a nice remembrance of Stratford. 'Oh, surely not, madam,' said the shocked voice of the shop-lady, 'surely a nobler memory'—and I found it was a figure of Christ."
"Jean simply rushed out of the shop," said Jock, "and she hadn't paid, and I had to go in again with the money."
"See what I've got," Mhor said, producing a parcel from his pocket. He unwrapped it, revealing a small bust of Shakespeare.
"It's a wee Shakespeare to send to Mrs. M'Cosh—and I've got a card for Bella Bathgate—a funny one, a pig. Read it."
He handed the card to Lord Bidborough, who read aloud the words issuing from the mouth of the pig:
"You may push me,
You may shove,
But I never will be druv
From Stratford-on-Avon."
"Excellent sentiment, Mhor—Miss Bathgate will be pleased."
"Yes," said Mhor complacently. "I thought she'd like a pig better than a Shakespeare one. She said she wondered Jean would go and make a fuss about the place a play-actor was born in. She says she wouldn't read a word he wrote, and she didn't seem to like the bits I said to her…. This isn't the first time, Richard Plantagenet, I've sat up for dinner."
"Isn't it?"
"No. I did it at Penrith and Shrewsbury and last night here."
"By Jove, you're a man of the world now, Mhor."
"It mustn't go on," said Jean, "but once in a while…."
"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 snatches 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 sunshine, 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 noble 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 principal 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, assures his master, "My age is as a lusty 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 passions and discontents and strivings. Probably those
