I flattened myself on the platform, listening intently. A stiff breeze from the Sound flung the voices clearly to my hiding-place, and I became aware that Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth were holding a colloquy in what seemed to be the vein of their whimsical make-believe. That they should be doing this in the depth of the woodland merely for their own amusement did not surprise me—nothing they could have done would have astonished me—but the tone of their talk changed abruptly.
"Try it from that boulder there, Alice," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "It's an ideal place, created for the very purpose."
I could see them moving about and hear the swish of shrubbery and the scraping of their feet on the rough slope.
"How will that do?" asked Alice.
"Beautifully," replied Mrs. Farnsworth. "Now go ahead from the beginning of the scene."
Cautiously drawing back the branches, I espied Alice striking a pose on a mammoth rock. She bent forward, clasping her knees, and with an occasional glance at what appeared to be an open book beside her, she began:
"You ask me who I am, my lord? It matters not at all who or what I am; let it suffice that berries are my food and the brook that sings behind me gives me drink. To be one thing or another is a weariness. Would you ask yonder oak for a name, or trouble the wind with like foolish questions? No; it is enough that a tree is strong and fine to look upon and that a wind has healing in its wings."
With her head to one side and an arresting gesture, and throwing into her voice all its charm and a new compelling innocence and sweetness, she continued:
"But you would have a name? Then, O foolish one, so much I will tell you: Yesterday I was Helen, who launched a thousand ships and shook the topless towers of Ilium. To-day I am Rosalind in the forest of Arden, and to-morrow I may be Antigone, or Ariel or Viola, or what you will. I am what I make myself or choose to be. I pray you, let that suffice."
My face was wet with perspiration, and my heart thumped wildly. For either I was stark, staring mad, or these were lines from Searles's "Lady Larkspur," the manuscript of which was carefully locked in my trunk.