He turned, with a comical squint, on Eugene:
“Hal,” said he, “you’re a hell of a looking prince.”
“You’re no beauty, Jack,” said Eugene.
Behind him, Julius Arthur (Macbeth), drew his sword with a flourish.
“I challenge you, Hal,” said he.
In the young shimmering light their tin swords clashed rapidly.
Twittered with young bird-laughter, on bank and saddle sprawled, all of the Bard’s person?.
Julius Arthur thrust swiftly, was warded, then, with loose grin, buried his brand suddenly in
“Doc” Hines’ receiving paunch.
The company of the immortal shrieked happily.
Miss Ida Nelson, the assistant director, rushed angrily among them.
“Sh!” she hissed loudly.
“Sh-h!”
She was very angry.
She had spent the afternoon hissing loudly.
Swinging gently in her side-saddle, Rosalind, on horseback, a ripe little beauty from the convent, smiled warmly at him.
Looking, he forgot.
Below them, on the road, the crowded press loosened slowly, broke off in minute fragments, and disappeared into the hidden gulch of Dr. George Rockham’s receiving voice.
With fat hammy sonority he welcomed them.
But he had not come to Shakespeare.
The pageant had opened with the Voices of Past and Present — voices a trifle out of harmony with the tenor of event — but necessary to the commercial success of the enterprise.
These voices now moved voicelessly past — four frightened sales-ladies from Schwartzberg’s, clad decently in cheese-cloth and sandals, who came by bearing the banner of their concern.
Or, as the doctor’s more eloquent iambics had it:
“Fair Commerce, sister of the arts, thou, too,
Shalt take thy lawful place upon our stage.”
They came and passed: Ginsberg’s —“the glass of fashion and the mould of form”; Bradley the Grocer —“when first Pomona held her fruity horn”; The Buick Agency —“the chariots of Oxus and of Ind.”
Came, passed — like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
Behind them, serried ranks of cherubim, the marshalled legions of Altamont’s Sunday schools, each in white arrayed and clutching grimly in tiny hands two thousand tiny flags of freedom, God’s small angels, and surely there for God knows what far-off event, began to move into the hollow.
Their teachers nursed them gently into action, with tapping feet and palms.
“One, two, THREE, four.
One, two, THREE, four.
Quickly, children!”
A hidden orchestra, musical in the trees, greeted them, as they approached, with holy strains: the Baptists, with the simple doctrine of
“It’s the Old-time Religion”; the Methodists, with
“I’ll Be Waiting at the River”; the Presbyterians, with
“Rock of Ages,” the Episcopalians, with
“Jesus, Lover of My Soul”; and rising to lyrical climactic passion, the little Jews, with the nobly marching music of
“Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
They passed without laughter.
There was a pause.
“Well, thank God for that!” said Ralph Rolls coarsely in a solemn quiet.
The Bard’s strewn host laughed, rustled noisily into line.
“Sh-h!
Sh-h!” hissed Miss Ida Nelson.
“What the hell does she think she is?” said Julius Arthur, “a steam valve?”
Eugene looked attentively at the shapely legs of the page, Viola.
“Wow!” said Ralph Rolls, with his accustomed audibility.
“Look who’s here!”
She looked on them all with a pert impartial smile.
But she never told her love.