Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/39

 The performance is over. Mrs. Hardy has asked you to meet the players upstairs. Upstairs you go.

It is the large council-room. A broad, flat oak table runs down the center. Tonight it is covered with plates of sandwiches and with tea dishes. On the walls are brass plates engraved with the names of Mayors for hundreds of years back. You find yourself looking vainly for Henchard's among them. But they are all unfamiliar, until you strike T. H. Tilley's.

Tilley himself, still wearing Merlin's cloak, has come up the stairs, followed by nearly all the other players. The place is soon teeming with munching mummers, a jolly, hungry company. Tilley tells you of the past achievements of the Hardy Players. He is their General Manager. Every year they present dialect scenes out of the Wessex novels. Last year it was Desperate Remedies.

"My word!" gasps Tilley, "we were flattered when the old man gave us a real play of his—even though it wasn't quite in our line. . . . Yes, he'd drop in occasionally at our rehearsals. We'd never see him come in, though. We'd just suddenly notice him sitting 'way back somewhere in the shadows, slumped into a chair. When we'd go over to him to find out if he had any suggestions to make, why, he'd wave us off before we got near him. ‘No—no—no,' he'd say. ‘Just leave me alone. And don't let me disturb you. No—no— Please go right ahead. No—no, I just want to watch.'

And then he'd slip out as quietly as he'd come in. Oh, he's a fine old fellow.

"There were great doings when the Prince of Wales