Judith Shakespeare: Her love affairs and other adventures. William Black
breathing. And once or twice she looked up, and glanced toward the little gate as if expecting some one.
It was Judith, of course, that she was expecting; and at this moment Judith was coming along to the church-yard to seek her out. What a contrast there was between these two – this one pale and gentle and sad-eyed, stooping over the mute graves in the shadow of the elms; that other coming along through the warm evening light with all her usual audacity of gait, the peach-bloom of health on her cheek, carelessness and content in her clear-shining eyes, and the tune of "Green Sleeves" ringing through a perfectly idle brain. Indeed, what part of her brain may not have been perfectly idle was bent solely on mischief. Prudence had been away for two or three days, staying with an ailing sister. All that story of the adventure with the unfortunate young gentleman had still to be related to her. And again and again Judith had pictured to herself Prudence's alarm and the look of her timid eyes when she should hear of such doings, and had resolved that the tale would lose nothing in the telling. Here, indeed, was something for two country maidens to talk about. The even current of their lives was broken but by few surprises, but here was something more than surprise – something with suggestions of mystery and even danger behind it. This was no mere going out to meet a wizard. Any farm wench might have an experience of that kind; any ploughboy, deluded by the hope of digging up silver in one of his master's fields. But a gentleman in hiding – one that had been at court – one that had seen the King sitting in his chair of state, while Ben Jonson's masque was opened out before the great and noble assemblage – this was one to speak about, truly, one whose fortunes and circumstances were like to prove a matter of endless speculation and curiosity.
But when Judith drew near to the little gate of the church-yard, and saw how Prudence was occupied, her heart smote her.
Green sleeves was all my joy,
Green sleeves was my delight,
went clear out of her head. There was a kind of shame on her face; and when she went along to her friend she could not help exclaiming, "How good you are, Prue!"
"I!" said the other, with some touch of wonder in the upturned face. "I fear that cannot be said of any of us, Judith."
"I would I were like you, sweetheart," was the answer, with a bit of a sigh.
"Like me, Judith?" said Prudence, returning to her task (which was nearly ended now, for she had but few more flowers left). "Nay, what makes you think that? I wish I were far other than I am."
"Look, now," Judith said, "how you are occupied at this moment. Is there another in Stratford that has such a general kindness? How many would think of employing their time so? How many would come away from their own affairs – "
"It may be I have more idle time than many," said Prudence, with a slight flush. "But I commend not myself for this work; in truth, no; 'tis but a pastime; 'tis for my own pleasure."
"Indeed, then, good Prue, you are mistaken, and that I know well," said the other, peremptorily. "Your own pleasure? Is it no pleasure, then, think you, for them that come from time to time, and are right glad to see that some one has been tending the graves of their friends or kinsmen? And do you think, now, it is no pleasure to the poor people themselves – I mean them that are gone – to look at you as you are engaged so, and to think that they are not quite forgotten? Surely it must be a pleasure to them. Surely they cannot have lost all their interest in what happens here – in Stratford – where they lived; and surely they must be grateful to you for thinking of them, and doing them this kindness? I say it were ill done of them else. I say they ought to be thankful to you. And no doubt they are, could we but learn."
"Judith! Judith! you have such a bold way of regarding what is all a mystery to us," said her gentle-eyed friend. "Sometimes you frighten me."
"I would I knew, now," said the other, looking absently across the river to the boys that were playing there, "whether my little brother Hamnet – had you known him you would have loved him as I did, Prudence – I say I wish I knew whether he is quite happy and content where he is, or whether he would not rather be over there now with the other boys. If he looks down and sees them, may it not make him sad sometimes – to be so far away from us? I always think of him as being alone there, and he was never alone here. I suppose he thinks of us sometimes. Whenever I hear the boys shouting like that at their play I think of him; but indeed he was never noisy and unruly. My father used to call him the girl-boy, but he was fonder of him than of all us others; he once came all the way from London when he heard that Hamnet was lying sick of a fever."
She turned to see how Prudence was getting on with her work; but she was in no hurry; and Prudence was patient and scrupulously careful; and the dead, had they been able to speak, would not have bade her cease and go away, for a gentler hand never touched a grave.
"I suppose it is Grandmother Hathaway who will go next," Judith continued, in the same absent kind of way; "but indeed she says she is right well content either to go or to stay; for now, as she says, she has about as many kinsfolk there as here, and she will not be going among strangers. And well I know she will make for Hamnet as soon as she is there, for like my father's love for Bess Hall was her love for the boy while he was with us. Tell me, Prudence, has he grown up to be of my age? You know we were twins. Is he a man now, so that we should see him as some one different? Or is he still our little Hamnet, just as we used to know him?"
"How can I tell you, Judith?" the other said, almost in pain. "You ask such bold questions; and all these things are hidden from us and behind a veil."
"But these are what one would like to know," said Judith, with a sigh. "Nay, if you could but tell me of such things, then you might persuade me to have a greater regard for the preachers; but when you come and ask about such real things, they say it is all a mystery; they cannot tell; and would have you be anxious about schemes of doctrine, which are but strings of words. My father, too: when I go to him – nay, but it is many a day since I tried – he would look at me and say, 'What is in your brain now? To your needle, wench, to your needle!'"
"But naturally, Judith! Such things are mercifully hidden from us now, but they will be revealed when it is fitting for us to know them. How could our ordinary life be possible if we knew what was going on in the other world? We should have no interest in the things around us, the greater interest would be so great."
"Well, well, well," said Judith, coming with more practical eyes to the present moment, "are you finished, sweet mouse, and will you come away? What, not satisfied yet? I wonder if they know the care you take. I wonder if one will say to the other: 'Come and see. She is there again. We are not quite forgotten.' And will you do that for me, too, sweet Prue? Will you put some pansies on my grave, too? – and I know you will say out of your charity, 'Well, she was not good and pious, as I would have had her to be; she had plenty of faults; but at least she often wished to be better than she was.' Nay, I forgot," she added, glancing carelessly over to the church; "they say we shall lie among the great people, since my father bought the tithes – that we have the right to be buried in the chancel; but indeed I know I would a hundred times liefer have my grave in the open here, among the grass and the trees."
"You are too young to have such thoughts as these, Judith," said her companion, as she rose and shut down the lid of the now empty basket. "Come; shall we go?"
"Let us cross the foot-bridge, sweet Prue," Judith said, "and go through the meadows and round by Clopton's bridge, and so home; for I have that to tell you will take some time; pray Heaven it startle you not out of your senses withal!"
It was not, however, until they had got away from the church-yard, and were out in the clear golden light of the open, that she began to tell her story. She had linked her arm within that of her friend. Her manner was grave; and if there was any mischief in her eyes, it was of a demure kind, not easily detected. She confessed that it was out of mere wanton folly that she had gone to the spot indicated by the wizard, and without any very definite hope or belief. But as chance would have it, she did encounter a stranger – one, indeed, that was coming to her father's house. Then followed a complete and minute narrative of what the young man had said – the glimpses he had given her of his present condition, both on the occasion of that meeting and on the subsequent one, and how she had obtained his permission to state these things to this gentle gossip