The Shakespeare Story-Book. Уильям Шекспир

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      While Proteus was indulging in this rhapsody, Speed, the clownish servant of Valentine, came hurrying up.

      “Sir Proteus, save you!” he cried, in the greeting of those days. “Saw you my master?”

      “He has just this minute gone to embark for Milan,” replied Proteus. “Did you give my letter to the Lady Julia?”

      “Ay, sir, and she gave me nothing for my labour,” said Speed, who was out of temper at not having received the handsome fee he was hoping for.

      “But what did she say?” asked Proteus eagerly.

      “Oh – she nodded!”

      “Come, come, what did she say?”

      “If you will open your purse, sir…”

      “Well, there is something for your trouble. Now, what did she say?”

      “Truly, sir, I think you will hardly win her,” said Speed with a sly look, pocketing the piece of money Proteus threw to him.

      “Why? Could you perceive so much from her manner?”

      “Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her – no, not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter. And as she was so hard to me who was your messenger, I fear she will prove equally hard to you. Give her no present but a stone, for she is as hard as steel.”

      “What did she say? Nothing?” repeated poor Proteus.

      “No, not so much as ‘Take that for your pains,’” said Speed, still harping on his own grievance. “I thank you for your bounty, sir. Henceforth carry your letters yourself. And so I will go seek my master.”

      “Go, go, to save your ship from wreck!” cried Proteus, incensed at the fellow’s impertinence. “It cannot perish when you are aboard, for you are certainly destined for a drier death on shore! – I must find some better messenger to send,” he added to himself, when the saucy serving-man had taken himself off. “I am afraid my Julia would not deign to accept my lines, receiving them from such a worthless envoy.”

      But, as it happened, the letter had so far not reached the hands of the lady for whom it was intended, for it was only her waiting-maid Lucetta whom Speed had seen, and to whom he had given the letter in mistake for Julia.

      Lucetta went in search of her mistress, and found her in the garden, musing over many things, for by this time Julia really loved Proteus, although she would not acknowledge it even to herself. When Lucetta handed her the letter, saying she thought it had been sent by Proteus, Julia pretended to be angry, and scolded her maid for daring to receive it.

      “There, take the paper again,” she said, “and see that it is returned, or never again come into my presence.”

      “To plead for love deserves a better reward than to be scolded,” muttered Lucetta.

      From being so much with her young mistress, the maid was treated more as a companion than as a servant, and was accustomed to speak out her mind frankly on every occasion.

      “Go!” said Julia severely; but no sooner had Lucetta disappeared than she was seized with remorse.

      “How churlishly I sent her away, when all the time I wanted her here!” she thought. “How angrily I tried to frown, when really my heart was smiling with secret joy! To punish myself I must call Lucetta back, and ask her pardon for my folly… What ho, Lucetta!”

      “What does you ladyship want?” asked Lucetta, reappearing.

      But at the sight of her maid Julia suddenly became shy again.

      “Is it near dinner-time?” she asked, with an air of pretended indifference.

      “I would it were, madam, so that you might spend your anger on your meat, and not on your maid,” replied Lucetta rather flippantly; and at that moment she let the letter fall, and picked it up ostentatiously.

      “What is it you took up so gingerly?” inquired Julia.

      “Nothing.”

      “Why did you stoop, then?”

      “To pick up a paper I let fall.”

      “And is that paper nothing?”

      “Nothing that concerns me.”

      “Then let it lie there for whom it does concern.”

      But Lucetta had no intention that the letter should lie unheeded on the ground, for her only purpose in dropping it was to bring it again to Julia’s notice. She little knew how her mistress longed at that moment to have it in her own possession, but was too proud to acknowledge it. Lucetta could not refrain from some pert speeches, and her jesting words irritated Julia, especially when Lucetta declared she was taking the part of Proteus.

      “I will have no more chatter about this,” said Julia; and she tore the letter and threw the pieces on the ground. “Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie!”

      “She pretends not to like it, but she would be very well pleased to be so angered with another letter,” said the shrewd maid, half aloud, as she walked away.

      “Nay, would I were so angered with the same!” cried Julia, eagerly seizing some of the fragments. “O hateful hands to tear such loving words! I’ll kiss each little piece of paper to make amends. Look! here is written ‘Kind Julia!’ Unkind Julia! Be calm, good wind; do not blow any of the words away until I have found every letter.”

      And with a loving touch she began carefully to collect the torn scraps of paper.

      “Madam,” said Lucetta, coming back, “dinner is ready, and your father waits.”

      “Well, let us go,” said Julia.

      “Are these papers to lie here like tell-tales, madam?”

      “If you care about them, you had better pick them up.”

      “They shall not stay here, for fear of catching cold,” said Lucetta, with a mischievous little smile to herself.

      “I see you are very anxious to have them,” said Julia.

      “Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see,” said the maid, quite unabashed. “I see things, too, although you judge my eyes are shut.”

      “Come, come, let us go,” said Julia.

      Proteus had refused to accompany his friend Valentine, but he soon found that he was not to be allowed to remain at Verona. In those days it was considered that no young man was well brought up unless he had had the advantage of foreign travel, and an uncle of his spoke very strongly on the subject.

      “I wonder that his father lets him spend his youth at home,” he said, “while other men of much less repute send out their sons to seek preferment – some to the wars, to try their fortune there; some to discover islands far away; some to study at the universities. For any or for all of these Proteus is fit. It will be a great disadvantage to him in after-years to have known no travel in his youth.”

      To this Proteus’s father, Antonio, answered that he had already been thinking over the matter.

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