The Young Stagers/Grape-shot
IX.
GRAPE-SHOT.
It was the President's birthday on the morrow, and, naturally, great preparations had to be made for the suitable celebration of so notable an occasion.
Not only was the Club to be particularly Sporting, Dramatic, and Literary, but it was also to be markedly Social and hold high wassail with cakes and ale—at any rate with cakes; or to be meticulously exact, with a Cake, a Birthday Cake of noble proportions and suitable inscription.
A special feature of the day's festivities was a series of "moving" tableau-vivants to be staged for the delectation of the members, honorary members, and guests bidden to the feast whereof the said Cake was the pièce de résistance.
Subjects selected as being suitable to the occasion, to the limited stock of stage "proparties," and to the number of actors, were in course of earnest and strenuous rehearsal.
"It's no good," said the President. "Both Daddy and Buster absolutely refuse to play Goliath. I am afraid we shall have to leave it out. I should look such an ass as David if you were Goliath; everybody would laugh at David being bigger than Goliath. . . . It does spoil the idea a bit, doesn't it?"
"What did Daddy and Buthter say?" asked the Vice.
"When I told Daddy he had been chosen by the Committee—that's you and me—for a part in David and Goliath, he said, 'I'm a proud and happy man this day. I am a bit of a David when I get hold of a catapult. It must be a catapult, though. I am a rotten slinger, partly perhaps because I have never slung. Or if you haven't a catapult, I daresay I am still fairly useful at roll, bowl, or pitch. . . . That's it. . . . Give me a good ripe mango or a custard-apple, say, and I'll get a bull's eye or an inner every time.' But when I told him that he was to be Goliath, he said he felt modest and not equal to the part. He said he'd make a rotten Goliath and the whole subject was a most improper one for tablo-vivong anyway."
"Doesn't he want us to act it, then?" asked the Vice.
"Not with him as Goliath," was the reply.
"Then I asked Buster," she continued, "and he said, 'All I have to do is to stand up and stop a rounded pebble from the brook and from your sling, with my marble brow'."
"We were going to use a marble," murmured the Vice.
"And Buster said, 'No,' it wasn't cricket, and if it was, he wasn't going to bat, nor wicket-keep, nor long-stop."
"I thuppothe he wanted to play David too," mused the Vice cynically.
"Yes," was the reply. "And he offered to ask Colonel Jones to come and play Goliath. Said he would add fresh laurels to David's fame, whatever that means."
"What about uth?" commented the Vice.
"You were to be the Philistine army and I was to be David's family," answered the President.
"When I told him he could be Goliath or nothing, he said, Many thanks, he'd have a shot at Nothing as he felt he could do it rather well."
"Funny-Dog," said the Vice.
"Just what I told him," remarked the President, "and he wanted to pretend that he thought it was good Tosh."
"I suppose people would would if David were bigger than Goliath," she continued.
"I should," said the Vice.
"You would!" grunted the senior official, perturbed in mind by the inexorable drift of circumstance. She did not want to be Goliath.
"I thaid I would," countered the other.
"Look here! I know," shouted the President, clapping her hands. "I've had such a good think. You shall have a pair of stilts and be Goliath! Splendid!"
The soul of the Vice sank within him. He did not object so much to playing a losing rôle nor a dangerous one, but Goliath was a rooter, a swank-pot, a Bad Man and without one redeeming trait of the Good Egg. Nevertheless he faced the difficulty like a man, and howled with derisive laughter.
"Oh yeth," he jeered. "Two handths for the stilts, and carry my spear in my mouth, I thuppothe. . . . A spear as big as a beaver's wame—or is it a weaver's beam. . . ."
"I suppose I shall have to be Goliath then," growled the President, and added, after a moment's bitter reflection—"Don't see why I shouldn't have a sling too".
"Oh, you'll have a jolly great spear," comforted the Vice.
"Fat lot of good that'll be if I've got to be shot sittin'," was the reply, but even as she spoke, the fertile mind of the President conceived two bright ideas. The projectile should be of the most innocuous description, and she would duck unblushingly when it was projected.
"Come on," she said. "Dress up, and we'll rehearse."
Goliath appeared upon the scene garbed much as had been the Standard-Bearer of the Tenth Legion, save that by way of a spear great as a weaver s beam, he bore with obvious effort a ten-foot mahogany curtain-pole, one end of which terminated in a most realistic spearhead. The one drawback to possession of this truly imposing weapon was the fact that it quite precluded the use of a shield.
David, as became a modest shepherd boy, appeared simply and suitably arrayed in a fur stole clasped about his middle and armed with a modern-looking catapult. Dangling from his neck was what looked uncommonly like a sponge-bag.
"Ready?" he asked.
"What have you got in there?" replied the President, eyeing her colleague's make-up with approval, and pointing to the bag.
"Pebbles from the brook," was the ominously simple answer.
"I thought so. I'll choose the pebbles from the brook," and laboriously depositing the mighty spear upon the ground, the President quitted the Club premises, rootled in Daddy's office room, and quickly returned with a small soft woollen ball whose proper use was that of a dummy golf-ball by one practising the art of driving. So light and fluffy was it that the most tremendous drive would only send it a few feet.
"There's nothing in the story about Goliar choosing the pebbles," remarked the Vice, as he dropped the ball into his ammunition bag. He too had had a bright idea on the subject of ammunition—and anyhow the President had said that Goliath was going to duck. . . .
The antagonists faced each other.
"Bung off, Lanky," remarked David. "Hop it. Your face will scare my sheep."
"And who might you be, my lad?" inquired Goliath, adding in sepulchral tones,
"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum,
I smell the blood of
An Is-rael-um."
"My name and address is David, the son of Jesse," was the simple reply.
"Jessie?" queried Goliath derisively. "What a silly name. I had a doll named Jessie, she was an ass. Is your father a woman?"
"My Daddy could do yours any day, ol' Goliar; and you're a Phyllis Tine yourself," countered David, and punned in somewhat bad taste.
"Go, Liar! Go, Liar!" he chanted, pointing.
"Nasty little Sheeny," answered the giant, and dropping his spear he crushed his helmet down over his ears until these latter stood out at right angles to his head, raised his hands palm uppermost, and waggled them beside his shoulders, rolled up his eyes, ejaculated "My! vot a pizness," and with an exaggerated lisp burst into derisive song:—
"Oh, Solomon Levi,
Levi, Tra la la la,
Poor Sheeny Levi,
Tra la la la la la la la la la la;
My name is Solomon Levi,
At my Store in Chatham Street,
That's where you buy your coats and vests
And everything that's neat.
Second-handed ulsterettes
And everything that's . . ."
Smack!! and Goliath's song died upon his lips with the suddenness of a cut-off gramophone.
In the utter shock of the suddenness of the surprise, he sat down suddenly and heavily, and with a bound David was upon him and hewing off his head while the Israelitish army in the person of Venus cheered and wagged its tail, what time the Philistine array made known its presence beneath the form of Goliath.
"Golly! What happened?" asked Goliath, scrambling up that Widdy might breathe again. "That wasn't the woolly golf-ball."
"No, it was a fat grape," admitted David modestly.
"I thought so," said Goliath licking widely. He pondered awhile, and, in the non-committal voice of one who reserves judgment, added: "We will now do Alfred and the Cakes".