This is the tale of spontaneous Arabella Who ran off with an extrinsic fellow. It grieved her parents to see their firstborn Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne Without permission, to get ill and find indigence Until she was down to her last sixpence.
Suddenly, she was right there before me, that busy, priggish, conceited little girl, and she was not dead either, for when people tittered appreciatively at “evanesce” my feeble heart—ridiculous vanity!—made a little leap. The boy recited with a thrilling clarity, and a jarring touch of what my generation would call Cockney, though I have no idea these days what the significance is of a glottal t. I knew the words were mine, but I barely remembered them, and it was hard to concentrate, with so many questions, so much feeling, crowding in. Where had they found the copy, and was this unearthly confidence a symptom of a different age? I glanced at my neighbor, Pierrot. He had his handkerchief out and was dabbing at his eyes, and I don’t think it was only great-grandfatherly pride. I also suspected that this was all his idea. The prologue rose to its reasonable climax:
For that fortuitous girl the sweet day dawned To wed her gorgeous prince. But be warned, Because Arabella almost learned too late, That before we love, we must cogitate!
We made a rowdy applause. There was even some vulgar whistling. That dictionary, that Oxford Concise. Where was it now? Northwest Scotland? I wanted it back. The boy made a bow and retreated a couple of yards and was joined by four other children who had come up, unnoticed by me, and were waiting in what would have been the wings. And so The Trials of Arabella began, with a leave-taking from the anxious, saddened parents. I recognized the heroine immediately as Leon’s great-granddaughter, Chloe. What a lovely solemn girl she is, with her rich low voice and her mother’s Spanish blood. I remember being at her first birthday party, and it seemed only months ago. I watched her fall convincingly into poverty and despair, once abandoned by the wicked count—who was the prologue speaker in his black cloak. In less than ten minutes it was over. In memory, distorted by a child’s sense of time, it had always seemed the length of a Shakespeare play. I had completely forgotten that after the wedding ceremony Arabella and the medical prince link arms and, speaking in unison, step forward to address to the audience a final couplet.