William the Good Read Online Free Page B

Elizabethan? It’s about the Civil War, anyway, and
it’s really awfully sweet.’
    ‘What’s the plot of it?’ said the Literary Society with interest.
    ‘Well,’ said Miss Gwladwyn, ‘the heroine’ (a certain modest bashfulness in Miss Gwladwyn’s mien at this moment showed clearly that she expected to be the heroine),
‘the heroine is engaged to a Roundhead, but she isn’t really in love with him. At least she thinks she is, but she isn’t. And a wounded Cavalier comes to her house to take refuge
in a terrible storm, and she takes him in meaning to hand him over to her fiancé, you know. Her father’s a Roundhead, of course, you see. And then she falls in love with him, with the
Cavalier, I mean, and hides him, and then the fiancé finds him and she tells him that she doesn’t love him, but she loves the other. That’s an awfully sweet scene. There’s
a snow-storm. I’ve forgotten exactly how the snow-storm comes in, but I know that there is one, and it’s awfully effective. You do it with tiny bits of paper dropped from above. It
makes an awfully sweet scene. There are heaps of characters too,’ she went on eagerly, ‘we could all have quite good parts. There’s a comic aunt and a comic uncle and
awfully sweet parts for my – I mean her parents and quite a lot of servants with really good parts. There’d be parts and to spare for everyone. Some of us could even take
two. It’s an awfully sweet thing altogether.’
    Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce looked doubtful.
    ‘Is it literary enough, do you think,’ she said uncertainly.
    ‘Oh yes ,’ said Miss Gwladwyn earnestly. ‘It must be. If it’s historical it must be literary, mustn’t it? I mean, it follows ,
doesn’t it?’
    Apparently the majority of the Literary Society thought it did.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Miss Gwladwyn brightly, ‘I’ll get the book and we’ll have a reading and then vote on it. All I can say is that I’ve seen it and
I’ve seen a good many of Shakespeare’s plays too, and I consider this a much sweeter thing than any of Shakespeare’s, and if that doesn’t prove that it’s Literary I
don’t know what does.’
    Again the Society seemed to find the logic unassailable and the meeting broke up (after tea and iced cake, a verbatim account of what Mrs Jones said to Mrs Robinson when they’d quarrelled
last week, and a detailed description of the doctor’s wife’s new hat), arranging to meet the next week and read Miss Gwladwyn’s play.
    ‘I know that you’ll like it,’ was Miss Gwladwyn’s final assurance as she took her leave. ‘It’s such an awfully sweet little thing.’
    The meeting took place early the next week. Miss Gwladwyn opened it by artlessly suggesting that as she’d seen the play before she should read the heroine’s part.
It was generally felt that as she had introduced the play to them, this was only her due.
    The first scene was read fairly briskly. It abounded, however, in such stage directions as ‘When door opens howling of wind is heard outside.’ ‘Crash of thunder without’,
and such remarks as: ‘Hark how the storm does rage tonight’, and: ‘Hear the beating of the rain upon the windowpanes.’ ‘Listen! Do you not hear the sound of
horses’ hoofs?’
    At the end of the scene Miss Georgine Hemmerseley (who was a notorious pessimist) remarked:
    ‘It will be very difficult to get those noises made.’
    ‘Those who aren’t on the stage must make them,’ said Miss Gwladwyn.
    ‘But we’re all on the stage in this scene,’ objected Miss Georgine Hemmersley.
    ‘Then we must have a special person to make them,’ said Miss Gwladwyn.
    Miss Georgine Hemmersley threw her eye over the stage directions.
    ‘They’ll be very difficult to make,’ she said, ‘especially the wind. How does one make the sound of wind?’
    ‘A sort of whistle, I suppose,’ said Miss Gwladwyn doubtfully.
    ‘Y-yes,’ said Miss Georgine Hemmersley, ‘but how? I mean, I couldn’t do it,