Chapter III: A Forest Play

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 marvel is 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 far away 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, and because 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 sofa was 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 was _his_ Peggy 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 not pay. 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, and Molly 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, pine branches, 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 the _élite_, 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 not less 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 wild adventures 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 I _must_.

Very well, I’ll take my breath and open a new chapter.