The Project Gutenberg eBook ofYoung Peggy McQueenThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Young Peggy McQueenAuthor: Gordon StablesIllustrator: Warwick GobleRelease date: May 21, 2023 [eBook #70826]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: Collins, 1900Credits: Al Haines, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG PEGGY MCQUEEN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Young Peggy McQueenAuthor: Gordon StablesIllustrator: Warwick GobleRelease date: May 21, 2023 [eBook #70826]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: Collins, 1900Credits: Al Haines, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Title: Young Peggy McQueen
Author: Gordon StablesIllustrator: Warwick Goble
Author: Gordon Stables
Illustrator: Warwick Goble
Release date: May 21, 2023 [eBook #70826]
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: Collins, 1900
Credits: Al Haines, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG PEGGY MCQUEEN ***
“She stood on a rock in the sunlight.”Page 55.
“She stood on a rock in the sunlight.”Page 55.
“She stood on a rock in the sunlight.”
Page 55.
BYGORDON STABLES, M.D., R.N.With Original IllustrationsLONDON AND GLASGOWCOLLINS’ CLEAR-TYPE PRESS
PEGGY MCQUEEN was all alone on this beautiful morning in early spring. Only a child in years, for not a month over twelve was Peggy. She stood there, leaning on the half-door of her own little caravan, and gazing dreamily out and away across the sea, the sunshine on her shapely arms—bare to her well-rounded shoulders were they, for she was not yet quite dressed—sunshine on her rosy cheeks and lips, and sunshine trying to hide itself in the floating masses of her auburn hair.
Calm and lovely though the sea was to-day, with its blues and its opals and its patches of silver—silver borrowed from the sun—this little lass was not at this moment thinking ofthe sea at all, much though she loved it at most times.
Peggy was wondering if she might venture.
“What do you think, Ralph?” she said, kneeling down to throw her arms round the neck of a great blood-hound who lay on a goat-skin on the floor, his long, silken ears trailing down at each side of his noble head like some fair lady’s tresses, his eyes turned up to his mistress’s face.
Ralph gave his strong tail an almost imperceptible waggle.
“I think,” he seemed to say, “it is folly to be out of bed for three hours yet. Better go back.”
Peggy glanced at a companionable little clock that ticked on her morsel of a dressing-table, beneath the dimity-bedecked looking-glass. The hands were pointing to half-past four. Very early, surely, for a little maiden to be out of bed!
But Peggy McQueen knew right well what she was about. This was the first day of May, and all around the camp the green grass was bespangled with dew. Is it not a fact, that if a young girl dips her face in the dews of this merry morning,she will be sweet and beautiful all the glad year?
Nobody in his senses would think of denying this.
But Peggy wanted to have pretty arms and pretty feet and legs as well, and this was the reason she was astir so early. She put on her sandals now, and placed a very roguish and bewitching Tam o’ Shanter on the back of her head. It was a tartan-rimmed Tammy, with a crimson feather in it which had been dropped from the tail of her favourite parrot. Then she stepped lightly over Ralph, cautiously opened the back door a few inches, and peeped out.
Not a soul stirring in the camp: the large caravan stood not far off, but the blinds were still drawn. The white tent in which the giant slept was not yet opened. Under the caravan was a bundle of straw, and in a blanket-lined sack thereon was wee Willie Randolph, the dwarf, nothing out but his small white face and one arm, the latter placed affectionately round Dan, the lurcher dog. Dan was a person of some importance to the camp, for many a hare and rabbit, and many a fat hedgehog did he supply for the larder.
Behind, and stretching away and away to the wooded hills on the horizon, was a forest of oak and beech and pine trees, with clumps of larch, now clad in the tender greens of spring, and o’erhung with crimson tassels. Making sure, first, that no one was astir, and that Willie was as sound asleep as everybody else, Peggy closed the door carefully behind her, and tripped lightly and gaily down the back steps. She wanted to sing to herself, but dared not just yet. She would do so, however, as soon as she got well into the shadow of the woods, because every bird therein was singing itsmatinée, and adding its quota to swell the sylvan music of this lovely May morning.
Now and then there would come a strange panic in the wild bird medley, presently to be broken by the melodious fluting of the blackbird or the joy notes of a nightingale, then at once and in all its strength the feathered choir commenced again. So bright was the sunshine, so dark the shadows under the trees, that Peggy could not see a single songster, nor even tell to a certainty the direction from which any particular bird-note rang out. The music was all about and around her, and she was fain now to liftup her happy treble voice and join the chorus.
She went wandering on for a while, unheeding and unheeded. No one had seen the girl leave the camp except the ancient, warty-faced rook who came very early every morning to seek for his breakfast near the tent. He had not flown away when she appeared. He just said “Caw—caw—caw!” in a very hoarse voice, which meant “Good-morning, Peggy, and happy I am to see you!” A dormouse had peeped drowsily out from a hole among the grass when he heard her footsteps, but, seeing who it was, he had merely rubbed his nose and gone on eating his earth-worm.
But presently Peggy came to a green glade or clearing, quite surrounded by spruce trees, with, in the centre, a pool fed by the water of a tiny purling brook, with crimson wildflowers growing here and there on its banks. The water in the pool was not deep, and so clear was it that Peggy could easily see the sandy bottom, where strange, black, glittering beetles played at hide-and-seek, and where the caddis-worm rolled in its jacket of many-coloured gravel.
This was just the secluded glade thatPeggy had come to seek. She seated herself on the bank, and taking off her sandals, plunged her legs up to the knees into the cool water. Then she laved her face, her shoulders, and her arms. These were all of the same colour—a light Italian tan—but the rose-tints shimmered through this tan on her innocent and sweetly pretty face. Taking from her pocket a dainty little towel, she now carefully dried herself.
Then, laughing in her healthful glee, she skipped playfully over to a spot where the grass was long and tender and green, and threw herself boldly among it. The dewy blades brushed cheeks and neck, her arms and legs, and dimpled hands and knees.
She felt as fresh now as the clear-skinned, speckled trout in the streamlet, and as happy as the rose-linnet that sang on a golden furze bush near her. She must not wipe the dew off, though. Oh, no, that would have broken the spell and spoiled the charm. In the sun she stood, therefore, and danced and sang till dry.
Then a spirit of revelry came over her. It would still be a long time till six o’clock. She would have time to rehearse for her night’s performance—a dance and a song.Happy thought! She would introduce an innovation. Back she ran now into the forest and commenced gathering an armful of the tenderest and prettiest fern-fronds and wild crimson silené flowers.
Peggy, like the thoughtful and handy little maid she was, never went anywhere without her ditty-bag. No girl who leads a wandering life should. It was hanging to her waist, and contained as many knick-knacks as you might find in an ordinary small work-box. Here were tape and a pair of scissors too, and these were about all she needed at present.
Standing in the glade close by the pool in which her shapely form was mirrored, she quickly and deftly adorned her hair with the wild-flowers; then she just as speedily made herself a tippet of fern-fronds, which she fastened around her shoulders, encircling her knees with fringes of the same. She glanced once more into the pool. She was satisfied, for she was really beautiful, and would remain so all the year round. Oh, the gladsome thought!
If I were merely romancing, I would say that the birds of the forest ceased to sing, and listened enraptured to the merry Maymaiden’s song, and that they gazed entranced to witness her dance, waving her arms and pirouetting to her own sweet lilt.
But the birds did nothing of the sort. Birds are sometimes a trifle prosaic and selfish, and even the chaffinch will not cease its bickering lilt to listen to the nightingale.
While Peggy was dancing, she was, I fear, thinking of nothing else except the effect she expected to produce that evening on the minds of the rustic lads and lasses who would gather round to see the performance of “The Forest Maiden,” at the camp of the Wandering Minstrels.
The girl’s head was well thrown back as she sang and danced, else surely she would have noticed the stealthy approach of two figures that had emerged from the forest at its darkest side, and were now almost within five yards of her.
They were both of the medium height, and though dressed in the cow-gowns of English rustics, were undoubtedly foreigners. They were handsome men, but very dark, with shaven faces and an unmistakable look of the stage about them.
As soon as Peggy saw them, she screamed in terror, and attempted to fly, but it was too
[Image unavailable\n\n.]“What wouldst thou with me?”Page 45.
“What wouldst thou with me?”Page 45.
“What wouldst thou with me?”
Page 45.
late. One of them had already seized her by the wrist, firmly, yet not cruelly.
“Nay, nay, my little fallow deer,” he said, in tones that were meant to be soothing, “nay, my beautiful ring-dove, you must not be alarmed. There! do not flutter so, pretty bird. We would but speak with you for one short minute. We have seen you dance and heard you sing many evenings when the pretty flower did not observe us. We are charmed with the flower’s performance, and have come to offer her an engagement. The Wandering Minstrels is not a good enough show for your talent. No, you must try to get away for one little minute. We offer you a big, big salary. We will take you to France, and place you before a large and admiring audience in a splendid concert-room. You will have dresses more beautiful than you can now even dream of, besides gold and jewels, and you will become a rich lady, before whom the gayest knights in fair France will bow. It is a splendid offer for one so young as you.”
“Do not fear us,” said the other man, advancing a step nearer to the frightened and shrinking girl. “We do not wish your answer now. Only promise, and we shallmeet you again, and only of your own free will must you come with us.”
He extended his arms beseechingly. But at this moment, with a sudden and painful effort, she wrenched herself free, and fled towards the forest, shrieking for help.
And help was at hand, and came in the very nick of time to save this child, the joy of whose May-day morning had been so suddenly changed to grief and terror.
THOUGH it wanted a good hour of the time at which Ralph, the splendid blood-hound, was in the habit of awaking, stretching himself, and yawning aloud by way of hinting to his little mistress that it was six o’clock, and that all good girls who live in the woods and wilds should be opening their eyes, the honest dog did not go to sleep again. He kept watching the door and wondering.
“Where could Peggy have gone at such an early hour?” he thought to himself.
Had she been intending to stay away a long while, she would have dressed herself and said, “Good-bye, Ralph, and be good till I come back.” She only just put on her Tammy, and went gliding out and away.
A whole half-hour passed, and then Ralph waxed very uneasy indeed.
He got up and stood for some time behind the door, sniffing and listening, his noble head a trifle on one side. There were nosigns of Peggy in that direction. Then he stood at one of the windows for fully five minutes, gazing sideways out at the sea. For his mistress had a little tent she could easily carry, and often went to the beach to bathe. But he could not see her now, and his anxiety increased. It would not have been becoming in so noble a specimen of the race canine to lie down and cry. Leave such conduct for tiny dogs, he thought.
Yet she was staying so long. What could be the matter? He walked up to Kammie’s cage with outstretched neck, as if to ask him the question. Kammie was a good specimen of that strange, weird-looking, and old-world lizard called the chameleon, who stalks flies and little grubs when you place him on the grass in the sunshine, or even in your bedroom; who crawls about with marvellous slowness and deliberation, just one leg at a time; who changes colour to match his surroundings; who has two large, circular eyelids, a bright bead of an eye in the very centre of each, and possesses the power of looking in two different directions at one and the same time.
But Kammie was still exactly in the same position in which he had gone to sleep atsunset on the previous evening. No use expecting an answer from Kammie, so Ralph marched to the back door once again, and examined the fastenings. He even shook them, but all in vain.
With a deep dog-sigh he lay down now; but presently on his listening ear, from out the silent depths of the forest, fell a scream so pitiful and so agonising that Ralph started to his feet, all of a tremble with excitement.
Yes, yes; it was the voice of his dear little mistress! She must be in danger, and he not there to protect her!
Once again it rose and died away in terror, like the half-smothered shriek of one in a nightmare.
The dog hesitated no longer.
With a yelp which was half a bark, and which said plainly enough, “I am coming,” he dashed his fore-paws against a window. The glass was shivered into flinders, and Ralph sprang through, escaping with only a cut or two, which he minded no more than my brave young reader would mind the scratch of a pin or a thorn.
He ran hither and thither for a few seconds, uncertain.
But, see! the noble beast has found thetrail, and with nose to the earth, his long ears touching it, goes speedily onwards in the direction Peggy had taken. On and on, and he is soon swallowed up in the woodland depths. In less than five minutes he is out of the gloom and in the open glade. He meets Peggy, frightened and fleeing. He dashes past her—no time at present for even congratulations.
Now woe is me for the foremost of his mistress’s pursuers! Ralph bounds at him, straight for his chest. Down rolls the Frenchman as if struck by a war-rocket, and the blood-hound already has him by the throat. It is a gurgling scream the man emits—a half-stifled cry for help. Then all is over. No; the fellow is not killed, for brave little Peggy McQueen, knowing well what would happen, has retraced her steps, and seized Ralph by the collar. And this splendid hound lets Peggy haul him off, and the villain slowly and timorously struggles to his feet, his shirt-front stained with blood.
“Merci, merci,” he mutters, meaning “thanks, thanks.” “Merci, my little forest flower. I meant not to harm you.Non, ma petite!”
But little Peggy looked quite the sylvanqueen now, standing there erect on the heath, her hand still on Ralph’s collar, her tippet of fern-green slightly disarranged, the heightened tints upon her cheeks, the sparkle in her eye, with sun-rays playing hide-and-seek amidst the wealth of her wavy auburn hair. She seemed for a moment to fancy herself on the stage acting in the play. One long brown arm was outstretched towards the bush into which the other Frenchman had fled.
“Go at once,” she cried, in the voice of a tragedienne. “Go! The forest around us holds no meaner reptile than thou. Go, and thank Heaven that my faithful hound has not torn you limb from limb.”
She turned as she spoke, and walked slowly back towards the forest, while the Frenchman slunk away to join his more fortunate companion.
As he turned to look back at the retreating figure of poor Peggy, he shook his fist. “Sacré!maiden!” he muttered to himself, “you have now the best of it, but—Jules Furet’s time will come. Jules can afford to wait.”
Just as she was, without pausing to divest herself of a single green fern, but joyful now,and with the beautiful hound bounding on by her side, only stopping now and then to awaken the echoes of the forest with the melody of his baying, Peggy ran homewards through the dark wood, never even pausing to breathe until she reached the camp and stood for a moment to look at the sea.
That dear old sea, how she loved it! The Wandering Minstrels, with their tents and their vans, were in the habit of hugging the shores of Merrie England, only sometimes making a detour of a day or two into the interior to visit some country town, but Peggy McQueen was always happy when the sight of the ocean greeted her again on the horizon, with its ships, its boats, and maybe, away in the offing, a steamer, the gray smoke trailing snake-like far astern of it. And there were times when the sea appeared quite unexpectedly, perhaps while they were jogging quietly across some bare but beautiful heath, with no houses in sight, no life near them except the wild birds, the soaring lark or lonesome yerlin twittering on a bush of golden furze. On such occasions Peggy would clap her tiny hands, and say to whoever might happen to be near her—
“Oh, look, look! The sea, the darling sea!”
And there it would be, sure enough, though only a V-shaped patch of blue between two distant hills.
There was always music to Peggy in either the sight or the sound of the ocean, but when it was far away like this, and she could not hear its voice, nor the solemn sound of its waves breaking on rocks or sand, she always brought out her mandoline, and played to it, singing low the while in childish, yet soft, sweet treble. There really was poetry and romance too in the girl’s soul.
She did not stand long, however, on this bright May morn to look at her sea. She was still in a state of great agitation; besides, it was already six o’clock, and Giant Gourmand had opened his tent, and was standing wonderingly looking at her and Ralph as they approached.
Peggy ran quickly past him, hardly condescending to listen to his astonished exclamation of “Hoity toity, little wench!”
The giant was generally “awfully nice and good,” but on some occasions—and this was one of them—absurdly stupid, and she felt she would have liked to box hisvery large ears, just then, only she had no time.
She hurriedly dressed herself, and soon came down the steps, smiling, for anger had no abiding-place in Peggy’s breast. She sat down on a huge tree-top and beckoned to her audience to step forward. Gourmand threw his great bulk at her feet, and the white-faced, sad-eyed boy, Willie Randolph the dwarf, lay down on the giant’s chest, and crossed his legs like a tiny mite of a tailor.
The bloodhound also lay down, with his beautiful head upon his paws, his eyes turned up towards his mistress’s face, love in them, that deep, undying love that only dogs are capable of.
“Now, all be quiet,” said Peggy. “I have had such a fearful adventure, and I want to tell you all about it. Ralph there knows all about it already, but you don’t, Willie, nor you either, Gourmie, and Johnnie and Daddy aren’t up yet. Well, listen. This is May morning, you know, and I went away to the woods to wash my face in the dew, so that I shall be beautiful all the year through.”
“O hark at the child!” cried the gruff-voiced Giant Gourmand. “Just as if therewere any need for her being more lovely than she is at present.”
“Yes,” piped the dwarf, “hark at her! And look at her at the same time, Gourmie! Look at the flowers in her hair! But what flower in all the forest could be more sweet than she? Fairer is Peggy than the anemone, that waves gently by the treefoot when spring zephyrs are blowing, or floats coyly on the broad bosoms of yonder pond. Prettier is Peggy than dog-rose on the hawthorn hedge asleep; more modest than mountain daisy—the wee, crimson-tipped flower that met the poet in that evil hour; more tender than the blossoms of the blue-eyed pimpernel, more——”
But Peggy stamped her little foot as she bade him be silent, but the glad look in her eye, and her heightened colour showed that young though she was, the maiden could appreciate a compliment as much as e’en a lady of the court of a king.
“Silence, small sir, or I shall hie me at once to my caravan, and you will sigh in vain for the story of my strange adventure in the dewy woods.”
“And yet, Miss Peggy,” the giant insisted, “hardly can I blame my little friendif he waxes both eloquent and enthusiastic in your praise on this lovely May morn.”
“Like Poppies red in the corn’s green is Peggy,” sighed the dwarf.
“Like moonlight on the ocean wave”—from the giant.
“Like music trembling o’er the sea.”
“Or elves that laugh among the ferns.”
“Like Naiads sporting in the fountain’s spray.”
“Or cloudlets sailing in the blue.”
“Like——”
“Really, gentlemen, I must curtail the exuberance of your poetic fancies, for poor Ralph and I are getting plaguey hungry.”
“Go on, sweet maid. We listen to thy voice as to a houri from paradise. Pray proceed.”
“You deserve not, sirs, to hear me speak. But—I was in the woods, and had culled a few fresh wild flowers to—to—well to make a garland for faithful doggie here. I paused for a moment at the forest’s edge to gaze upon the sighing sea, when two villains sprang from their lair and bound me in their iron embrace. Had I been anything save a poor gipsy girl, I should have fainted dead away, and been carried prisoner to someloathsome den, soon to be shipped to distant France. They offered me riches untold if I would but go willingly and join the stage somewhere abroad. My dancing they said would bring down the house, and all the world would lie at my feet.
“But I would not hear of their gold, and jewels, and their gallants gay.—What should I want with gallants gay?”
“While you have me, love,” interrupted the dwarf.
“And me,” sighed Gourmand.
“Had not honest Ralph rushed to my assistance, I should not now be here. But see, my hand is cut, and my wrist is blue and swollen!
“And that is all my little adventure,” she added.
There was silence for long wondering seconds after the child had finished. It was broken at last by Willie. He shook a hard, bony fist, which really did not appear to be much bigger than a mole’s white hand.
“Oh,” he cried, a fire seemed to scintillate in his black, black eyes, “ifIhad only been there, Peggy, I would have——”
It may never be known what Willie would have done, for the giant interrupted hisspeech in a way that was more comical than polite.
He laughed with a gruff “No, no, no!” and a deep-toned “Ha, ha, ha!” that stirred the leaves in the bushes near them, and, as he laughed, he hoisted Willie right up, and on to the sole of one of his monstrous boots, then extended the leg in the air till the dwarf looked a mere midget.
“There you are! Now we can see you. He, he, he! Ho, ho, ho,! Now we can see you, Willie. Stand there and talk down to us what you would have done.”
Nothing could have put wee Willie out of countenance. He smiled down upon Peggy, and his smile was an ineffably sweet one, for dwarf though he might be, his face and form were perfect.
“Peggy, love,” he said, “hand me up your maidenly little mandoline, and I’ll sing you a song before I come down from my perch.”
Peggy ran laughing away, and soon returned with the instrument, and, still standing there on the sole of the giant’s boot, he went through his performance without moving a muscle, and as coolly as if he had been on the platform before an audience of gaping rustics.
Then, laughing merrily, he sprang through the air and alighted on the giant’s great head. But Gourmand’s head was a hard one, and wasn’t hurt one little bit.
* * * * *
Sweet, soft, melodious music was now heard coming from behind the alder clump. A sad and plaintive air from Gounod’s “Faust.”
“Oh,” cried Peggy, “that’s Father’s flute; he wants to play us in to breakfast.”
Ah, breakfast is a magic word to denizens of the woods and wilds; and now the giant, and the dwarf, and Ralph and Peggy, all made a somewhat unromantic rush for the tent, and were soon seated, laughing and talking, at the breakfast-table.
THE tent was really as roomy as a small marquee, though bell-shaped. It was part and parcel of the theatrical properties of these Wandering Minstrels, and came in very handy in many ways during the performance of “The Forest Maiden,” and other short plays, all of which were composed by Reginald Fitzroy, or “Father,” as the proprietor of this show was called.
One of the duties of Giant Gourmand was to pitch the tent, for the fact is that no one else could have raised it. The canvas once hoisted, old Molly Muldoon went inside to stand by the pole and balance it until Gourmie went forth and fixed the outer and inner rows of pegs artistically.
The giant slept in the tent at night, all the year round. Indeed, he preferred to do so, for this reason—he snored louder than a big basketful of bull-frogs. He knew that he did so. He snored so loud at times that he awoke himself, and the marvelis that he didn’t swallow the pole. Snoring isn’t a poetic accomplishment, and nobody need snore if the mouth is kept shut. But then giants are—well, giants are giants, you know, and have a great many queer ways that smaller people like you and me haven’t got.
Gourmand had all one side of the table to himself, and when there was a joint of meat it was his duty to carve it; and, really, with the great knife and fork in his huge fists he put one in mind of the story of “Jack and the Bean-stalk,” the tent pole being the stalk. He sometimes looked fierce enough to frighten a motor car. “Never mind,” Peggy could have told you, “Gourmie is the kindest big lump of a giant ever anybody knew.” He was nearly always smiling. His smile was an expansive one. In fun Willie the dwarf used to jump on Gourmie’s knee sometimes with a tape to measure it. When tired of Willie’s antics the giant would lift him off his knee, as one lifts a troublesome kitten, and place him gently on the ground. But, big as he was, this giant would have stepped aside rather than crush the life out of a beetle.
Fitzroy himself was a strange kind of being, about fifty years old, smart and good-looking,with a face that was easy to make up for any character, old or young, male or female. He came of a very good family, and might have graced either the Church or the Bar, but for his love of music and wandering. Anybody was Reginald’s friend if he could play some instrument well. Reginald Fitzroy’s fad was flute-making. He was always fashioning a new flute, and, having a persuasive tongue, he generally managed to sell these well.
But come, breakfast is waiting, and old Molly has placed a splendid meal before the company to-day. That bacon is done to a turn, the bread and the butter are unexceptionable, the eggs new-laid, the coffee ever so fragrant, and, in addition to all this which the little people may partake of, Gourmand has a goose’s egg, and the half of a cold roast hedgehog to finish off with.
Peggy, after breakfast, had to tell all the story of her adventure in the forest to Father and Johnnie. Reginald Fitzroy himself would not have listened to the best story in creation until he had first satisfied the cravings of nature and worked in a good meal. And Johnnie Fitzroy took after the old man. Besides, the boy—a very handsome lad of fourteen, but tall for his years—had been faraway among the rocks that morning fishing, with nothing worth mentioning on him, except a pair of brown bare legs and a sou’wester hat, from which the fair front locks of his irrepressible hair hung down and wouldn’t be controlled.
He was late for breakfast, of course, but he threw down a great string of flat fish in the corner of the tent by way of apology.
His father smiled fondly on his boy.
“Been up early, lad?”
“Ay, Dad, ’fore four o’clock. Went to bed at seven last night, you know, just on purpose.”
“Did you wash your face in the May dew, Johnnie?”
The boy looked at her, half disdainfully. He was a trifle tired, but he was very fond of sweet Peggy.
“Did I wash my face in the May dew, Johnnie!” he answered. “Just think of a boy doing anything so ridiculously silly. Humph!”
Then, seeing what looked like a tear in Peggy’s eye, he jumped off his seat, and ran round the table and kissed her.
“Never mind me, cousin Peggy. I’m ill-tempered because I’m hungry, andbecause a lobster grabbed my big toe and cut it. Look!”
The toe was still bleeding through the white rag old Molly had bound it up with.
“Poor cousin Johnnie!”
“Never mind, Peg. I brought him home, anyhow, and he is such a monster. He is walking about outside your caravan at this moment. Yes, Daddy, thank you. I love ham and eggs. Gourmie, do I see you well?”
“There’s plenty of me to see, anyhow,” grunted Gourmand, good-naturedly.
“Well, don’t take on about it, there’s a little dear. And I’ll have the half of that cold hoggie.”
“Have the whole of it, lad. And the whole of it is only a half, after all. Our sweet little Molly is going to cook her Gourmie another goose’s egg.”
Molly was old, like a withered dock as to colour, but she tried to smile a girlish smile as she went bustling out of the tent now to do the giant’s bidding.
Peggy’s story set Mr. Fitzroy thinking. After breakfast he threw himself prone upon the tent sofa, with his flute in his hand. This was his favourite attitude. His sofawas a very primitive one—three boxes covered with a goat-skin and with rugs for pillows—but it served the purpose very well indeed.
Fitzroy played a little, then mused a little, and kept this up for a good half-hour. He could think best when lying down, and the flute assisted his cogitations. He did not mean to build any flutes to-day, he told himself; he would take a forenoon off and be ready for afternoon rehearsal. The neighbouring village had been well billed, and the giant had walked twice through it, dressed as a little charity school-boy with a big, treacle-stained bib on, while Willie, the dwarf, walked in front of him, and pretended to be his father. “The Forest Maiden” was emblazoned on every old wall and boarding to be found, so they were sure of a bumper house. Had not this great show been patronised by all the crowned heads of Europe?—so the bills informed one; surely, then, it was good enough for Stickleton-on-the-Moor. Fitzroy, without getting out of the horizontal, played a difficult study from Wagner.
“Nothing like Wagner for clearing the cobwebs out of the brain,” he murmured.
And then he asked himself the question, What had been the meaning of the morning’s outrage upon poor Peggy?
It was a difficult one to answer, and somehow it brought back to him incidents in his past life that he would just as soon have forgotten.
Fitzroy had married for love, or something which appeared to have been cousin-german to that tender passion. He had not married a sweet-faced doll with wooden legs, such as you can pick up for twopence in a toy-shop, but a more expensive and equally useless commodity, namely, a young girl actress of second-class parts, to whom his flute had given him an introduction. Their married life had not been all lavender, for he was shiftless, and she was thriftless. But she died when Johnnie was but a mere child, and, after this, Fitzroy began to feel around him for some work that would not only be a prop and a stay to him, but enable him to forget his sorrow. So, somehow or other, he became gradually possessed of this same show. Then, when Johnnie was only seven years of age, little Peggy came upon the scene—a child of five summers, but wise beyond conception.
Fitzroy was himself a gentleman at heart, although poverty had led him a little way apart from the path of rectitude. I don’t imagine for a single moment that because Fitzroy was one of a troupe of Wandering Minstrels, and was sometimes classed with the gipsies, that he ever robbed a hen-roost, or cleared a clothes-line, or even requisitioned turnips or potatoes from farmers’ fields. But he had for the sake of making money been something of a betting man, and the way that poor little Peggy had come into his possession was not so creditable to his sense of honour as it might have been. He never cared to think about this. But he had come to love the child quite as much as though she were his own daughter—perhaps, considering all he knew of the story of her life, a little more, because pity for Peggy was in some measure mingled with that love.
Peggy washisPeggy now, and no one should ever come between the child and him. He felt at that moment that he could strike down the man who dared—lay him dead at his feet. He was in reality too shrewd a person to do any such thing. Striking people down in this fashion is a game that does notpay. But the thought had excited him, and he was fain to appeal once more to his flute, and that never failed to soothe him. What did these two men who had accosted Peggy want or desire, anyhow? Were they the same who seven long years ago had first—but there! he must dismiss the thought.
“Avaunt!” he cried, starting up and walking away from it, as it were, out and away into the cool summer air, as if he could leave that thought, leave his care on the sofa behind him.
“No, no,” he told himself; “some idiots tried to scare the girl, that is all; some itinerant fern-gatherers wanted to have a bit of fun to themselves. That is all. Nothing more.”
He played that sweet, tender, Irish air, “The Meeting of the Waters,” then picked up his rod, and went off to fish.
There was a little heaviness at his heart all day, nevertheless, which neither sport nor anything else could altogether dislodge.
But Peggy had quite forgotten her adventure, even before the rehearsal was over.
The giant, assisted by Fitzroy, Willie, andMolly herself, was not long in getting the stage up, and the curtain too. The weather was fine. That was good luck; for nothing diminishes a house more speedily than a heavy shower, or a squall of wind and rain.
The Wandering Minstrels had to put up with all that, however, and during splendid weather they made quite a pot of money, as the caravan master, Fitzroy, termed it.
But a show or travelling theatre of this sort, with a company which was far from a powerful one, required a good deal of thought, and some skilful treatment. For the players had not only to play, but to act as the band, the carpenters, and the scene-shifters, and sometimes even take two parts in the same play.
The orchestra was down under the elevated stage, which was tented or covered with tarpaulins. The musicians were hidden from the audience by a screen, and played there before the opening of the piece, and until some of their number were required on the stage, when, laying down their instruments, they entered the tent, whence steps led on to the boards. It was all very simple and nice.
The scenery was simple too, and ferns, pinebranches, and the wild-flowers of the forest were worked in most effectually and artistically.
Perhaps it was this very simplicity that had caused “The Forest Maiden” to catch on so quickly. For the bucolic mind, or, in simple language, the rustic, loves neither ambiguity nor plot. Such as these come to the theatre not to confuse his brains—if he has some—with mystery on the unravelling of a plot. He wants to see and hear what he can understand, and nothing more. This play, “The Forest Maiden,” which they were led to believe had ravished the senses of every crowned head in Europe, was precisely the play for their money. (Front seats sixpence for theélite, or for the lover and his lass; back, threepence; and if anyone kept loafing about far in the rear and tried to get a treat for nothing, Ralph the blood-hound was sent to reason with him, and this method of reasoning was always effectual.)
“The Forest Maiden” was a comedy, combined with a good slice of tragedy, and a good deal of the rough and ranting fun which the gods in the low-class theatres of London so delight in. It was in five acts, not long ones, certainly, but full of go,excitement, and strong situations, with a vein of true love running all through it like the blue thread on Government canvas. Oh, dearie me! as old Molly used to say, my memory is so bad that I cannot even describe the plot to my readers, although I was once present in the New Forest when the play was put on the boards there.
Let me see now if I can possibly recollect some little portion of it. I know, for instance, that it opened with low, sweet music of violin and flute, that came welling up from the orchestra beneath the stage, music so artfully concealed that even I, quick-eared though I be, could not tell whence it proceeded. At one time it seemed high up among the wind-stirred, whispering trees, at another it mingled with the sound of the sea-waves breaking solemnly on the shingle far in the rear, anon I could have felt certain the music was up yonder among the fleecy clouds. Now so interested was I with the simple scene before me when the curtain rose, that I soon forgot the music, and simply was content to know it was everywhere around.
The little Forest Maiden, seated by her cottage door, a rustic porchway overhung with roses yellow and red, the girl herself notless rustic, none the less sweet, Leely she is to name, and she is knitting a stocking while she sings to herself. So breathless was the audience at this moment that you might have heard a pin fall, though it would have fallen on the grass. Leely presently let that stocking drop in her lap, and looked for a minute, or more, rather listless and sad. But presently, “Hist!” she said, with the point of a perfectly shaped and tiny forefinger on her rosy lips.
The great blood-hound, who had been asleep as she sang, raised his noble head.
“That footstep! yes, ’tis he. ’Tis young Adolphus the forester!”
And enter the young forester, clad chiefly in buff leather girdled with green, bow and arrows and huge knife. Scarcely can she hide her joy, her blushes, as Adolphus does an attitude, and throws himself at her feet, one arm placed half-carelessly and half-caressingly across the dog’s massive shoulder.
“Ah! Leely, this is indeed bliss beyond compare!”
“And yet, Adolphus, though thou knewest I was alone, thou camest not near me all day long. Nay, nay, tell me not of thy wildadventures in the forest, how thou chased the deer far into its dark depths till lost, how——”
“Stay, Leely, stay! I have sweeter, better news for thee than all that.”
And Leely leaned forward now, a light in her blue eyes, that one only sees once in a lifetime.
“Leely!”
“Yes, yes. Speak, Adolphus. Why dost thou hesitate?”
“Leely, I met——”
“Oh yes, I know; some charming girl kirtled all in green and garlanded with roses. I hate her. I——”
“Leely, I met a witch, a real hag, in a cottage of turf and heather—a witch with wrinkled skin, and with forest snakes twining round her arms and chest. And Leely, she told me of thee, and bade me bring thee to her hut that she might read our fortunes.”
And so on, and so forth—a pretty scene, and rather pretty the language. Then, with promise to meet in the moonlight to visit the witch, they part just as the thunder (stage) begins to rattle over their heads and the lightning plays around them. Curtain.
There is more appropriate music, and, in due time, the scene changes.
I need not say that Leely is Peggy herself, nor that Adolphus the forester is bold, handsome Johnnie Fitzroy.
The scene changes. It is the witch’s hut we now see, the interior of—but I suppose I must not tell you any more, reader. You say Imust.
Very well, I’ll take my breath and open a new chapter.
THE curtain rises next on the interior of the witch’s hut in the darkest woodland depths. The witch (who is none other than old Molly herself, with a few more wrinkles, put in with kohl, and bushy eyebrows, beneath which fierce, cruel eyes glare like those of the basilisk.N.B.—I have never seen a basilisk, but I am told its eyes do shine fearfully and ferociously!) the witch has snakes around her arms that raise their heads now and then to hiss vengefully. They do so now as the Forest Maiden enters, hand in hand with Adolphus, and followed by the blood-hound. The witch raises her head also—she has been spinning—and smooths back her elfin locks. The young lovers play their parts well, Leely looking timid and sweet, Adolphus bold and handsome.
“What wouldst thou with me, young sir?”
“I would, mother, have my fortune told me, and that of this fair maiden by my side.”
There is a sort of pandemonium scene here—thunder, blue lightning, red fire, a terrible smell of burning brimstone, and, in one corner of the hut, half-hidden by smoke, is a black demon with red ochre eyes, long forked tail, and all the rest of it. I have strong reason to believe that the demon in this scene is none other than the dear little dwarf, Willie Randolph.
But the witch reads the girl’s fortune well enough, apparently. Leely would be captured by a fearful giant who dwelt far off in a mountain recess, and borne away to his castle. This monster lived upon the flesh of human beings, and that alone. The flesh of men and women was his ordinary or daily food, but his special treat was that of a maiden young and fair, whom he first tortured to make her tender, and afterwards slew.
It is just at this part of the witch’s hideous story that a louder clap of thunder than any which had yet been heard rolled forth, a gleam of red light is noticed at the back of the stage, with a great cloud of smoke which presently cleared away to reveal the head and chest of the giant himself, flaming eyes, and teeth as large as tenpenny nails.
In the next two acts, adventure follows adventure thick and fast, boar-hunting,and battles between gipsies and the forest rangers, smuggling raids, everything, indeed, calculated to create a sensation, the whole mingled and mixed with pretty little love scenes at Leely’s cottage door.
The fifth act opens with a view of the giant’s donjon keep, and there, lo, and behold! Leely is to be seen tied up by the hair of the head. There are other maidens there also, but they appear to be dead.
Giant and demon enter and pinch the Forest Maiden’s arms, to see if she is yet tender enough for the table. The other dead figures are probably dummies, but Leely is life-like and natural.
But even now a horn is heard outside the castle walls. Exit the demon, coming back almost immediately to tell the terrible giant that his castle is surrounded, and that he is called upon to surrender.
He seizes a knife, and is apparently about to plunge it into Leely’s breast when the demon interferes. A curtain is dropped and the scene is changed. The stage seems very much enlarged somehow, and well it need be, for here is the whole strength of the company engaged in deadly combat, to say nothing of hired supernumeraries.
The giant lays about him with his club, and a man falls at every blow. The witch herself is here, there, and everywhere, offering incantations; there are thunderings and lightnings, and the excitement of the audience is wound up to the highest pitch. It culminates in a wild burst of applause, when an archer in buff and green fires an arrow which pierces the giant’s heart, and brings him to the ground with a thud which shakes the stage. Meanwhile the fierce blood-hound has seized the demon, and carried him shrieking into the forest. Adolphus steps as lightly as a bantam on to the giant’s chest, and, drawing his sword, cuts off his head. When he advances to the front of the stage with the dripping head in his hand, he receives the greatest ovation of this exciting evening.
Well, the curtain drops at last on the happy meeting of Leely and Adolphus, who rush into each other’s arms; while the witch, with her crutch held over their heads, seems to be blessing both, though what the precise value of a witch’s blessing is I have yet to learn.
The heroes are called before the curtain. The giant is hissed, and smiles a ten-inch smile. The hound is cheered, and so is evenwith the demon, but when Adolphus leads the charming Leely out, the shouting is deafening, and the pretty actress is almost smothered with garlands and bouquets of forest flowers.
So ends the play.
But not the evening, for the giant afterwards goes through some wonderful performance with the dwarf. And Johnnie, the youthful athlete, gives ample evidence of his prowess in swinging dumb-bells and Indian clubs, all to suitable music. He even lifts the giant off the stage with one hand, while Willie stands on his shoulder.