The Long Vacation

“Only rehearsed. It never came off,” said Gerald.

“The most awful rot,” said Adrian. “I would have nothing to do with it.”

“In consequence it was a failure,” laughed Gerald.

“It was ‘The Tempest’, wasn’t it?” said Anna.

“Not really!” exclaimed Mrs. Grinstead.

“About as like as a wren to an eagle,” said Gerald.

“We had it at the festival last winter. The authors adapted the plot, that was all.”

“The authors being—

“The present company,” said Gerald, “and Uncle Bill, with Uncle Lance supplying or adapting music, for we were not original, I assure you.”

“It was when Uncle Clem was ill,” put in Anna, “and somehow I don’t think we took in the accounts of it.”

“No,” said Gerald, “and nobody did it con amore, though we could not put it off. I should like to see it better done.”

“Such rot!” exclaimed Adrian. “There’s an old man, he was Uncle Lance with the great white beard made out of Kit’s white bear’s skin, and he lived in a desert island, where there was a shipwreck—very jolly if you could see it, only you can’t—and the savages—no, the wreckers all came down.”

“What, in a desert island?”

“It was not exactly desert. Gerald, I say, do let there be savages. It would be such a lark to have them all black, and then I’d act.”

“What an inducement!”

“Then somebody turned out to be somebody’s enemy, and the old chap frightened them all with squibs and crackers and fog-horns, till somebody turned out to be somebody else’s son, and married the daughter.”

“If you trace ‘The Tempest’ through that version you are clever,” said Gerald.

“I told you it was awful rot,” said Adrian.

“There’s Merrifield! Excuse me, Cherie.” And off he went.

“The sentiments of the actors somewhat resembled Adrian’s. It was too new, and needed more learning and more pains, so they beg to revert to ‘Robin Hood’. However, I should like to see it well got up for once, if only by amateurs. Miranda has a capital song by Uncle Bill, made for Francie’s soprano. She cuts you all out, Anna.”

“That she does, in looks and voice, but she could not act here in public. However, we will lay it before the Mouse-trap. Was it printed?”

“Lance had enough for the performers struck off. Francie could send some up.”

“After all,” said Cherie, “the desert island full of savages and wreckers is not more remarkable than the ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes’ getting between Argiers and Sicily.”

“It really was one of the Outer Hebrides,” said Gerald, with the eagerness that belonged to authorship, “so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter—Francie Vanderkist to wit—and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies. Little Fely was a most dainty sprite.”

“I am glad you did not make Ariel an electric telegraph,” said his aunt.

“Tempting, but such profanity in the face of Vale Leston was forbidden, and so was the comic element, as bad for the teetotallers.”

“But who were the wreckers?” asked Anna.

“Buccaneers, my dear, singing songs out of the ‘Pirate’—schoolmaster, organist, and choir generally. They had captured Prospero’s supplanter (he was a Highland chief in league with the Whigs) by the leg, while the exiled fellow was Jacobite, so as to have the songs dear to the feminine mind. They get wrecked on the island, and are terrified by the elves into releasing Alonso, etc. Meantime Ferdinand carries logs, forgathers with Miranda and Prospero—and ends—” He flourished his hands.

“And it wasn’t acted!”

“No, we were getting it up before Christmas,” said Gerald, “and then—”

He looked towards Clement, whose illness had then been at the crisis.

“Very inconsiderate of me,” said Clement, smiling, “as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off at the festival?”

“Now,” said Gerald, “that the boy is gone, I may be allowed a glass of beer. Is that absurdity to last on here?”

“Adrian’s mother would not let him come on any other terms,” said Mrs. Grinstead.

“Did she also stipulate that he was never to see a horse? Quite as fatal to his father.”

“You need not point the unreason, but consider how she has suffered.”

“You go the way to make him indulge on the sly.”

“True, perhaps,” said Clement, “but I mean to take the matter up when I know the poor little fellow better.”

Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.

“Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?”

“Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard’s wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield? Clever man. Always photographing.”

So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries for the sale of work. ‘The Tempest’ was propounded, and received with acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing, and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!

Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could talk so eagerly about “a trumpery raree-show,” especially for an object that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard their report—

“Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him. Socialist one minute, old Tory the next.”

“A dreamer?” asked Dolores.

“If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his life, and never do any good!”

“Perhaps he is waiting.”

“I don’t believe in waiting,” said Jasper, wiping the dust off his photographic glasses. “Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does not know how to use it!”

“Conclusive,” said Gillian.

CHAPTER X. – NOBLESSE OBLIGE