Love's Will Read Online Free PDF Page A

azure sky with lambs-tails of clouds, a sun so hot William was in his shirtsleeves and Anne had taken off her shoes and stockings and her cap, and had pinned her hair high up on her head.
    Nights so hot Anne slept naked in her bed, and woke from dreams of wantonness. Dreams which, rather too often, featured this charming hazel-eyed boy. Boy. Eighteen was a man’s age, but eighteen against her own twenty-five. It was ludicrous. She should go home, make peace with her stepmother and marry the pig-farmer. When she needed gloves she’d buy them from the Shakspere shop and ask William if he ever remembered the days when he’d wanted to be an actor. Perhaps one of her children would marry one of William’s. He’d have pretty children, because he’d marry a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl with big breasts.
    “Ouch!”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “You kicked me.” He looked at her reproachfully.
    “Cramp. Sorry.”
    Perhaps it was William’s exclamation that woke Anne’s cousin, for the old lady stirred, blinking, and struggled up against her cushions. Glad of the excuse, Anne rose and went over to her.
    “Is there anything you want, cousin? Are you too hot?”
    “No, I like the sun. Oh, lovey, I’ve been asleep, haven’t I.”
    “Just for a little. Would you like a drink?”
    “Some more of that wine. And the rest of the story.” Her faded eyes twinkled at William. She liked his visits, for himself and for his endless fund of stories. She would have stared in puzzlement had she known she was hearing classical works that university men and great ladies knew: Homer, Ovid, Aesop. Chaucer she had heard of, and adored, for she liked a risqué story. When she’d nodded off they’d been in the middle of the Miller’s Tale. She never tired of that one. So Anne poured her another cup of wine and William took up effortlessly from where he’d left off.
    William stayed to supper, and when the old lady had been put to bed, Anne lit a candle and said, “Go on with the play.”
    “You really don’t mind?”
    “Not in the slightest. It interests me. I’ve seen some plays acted, of course, but never one being made.”
    “Mended, not made,” he said glumly.
    “Improved. I’m sure you’ll make one of your own some day.”
    “I will, you know.”
    “I just said so.”
    “You were humouring me. Speaking as you would to a child. ‘What a lovely toy horse, dear. You’ll have a real horsie one day when you’re grown.’”
    “Have it your own way.”
    That broke his sudden mood and made him laugh. For a boy just growing into manhood he was remarkably able to laugh at himself. “Know what I really want to do? To be?”
    “You’ve told me – a theatre player. One who can write plays.”
    “Oh, that,” he said with a quick, dismissive gesture. “That, yes, but I’d like to write things that would be valued by literary men, things that would be remembered. Poetry, in fact. But I don’t suppose I ever shall because only university men, gentlemen, can write that sort of thing and be taken seriously. Even if I ever do get to London and work in a playhouse, I’d be nothing but a country boy, a jobbing actor who could patch up old plays and at best write a few decent passages of new stuff.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do know that.”
    “William, a week in London does not make you an expert.”
    “Nor did I say it does. But I’ve a little more than that. In Lancashire I lived with gentlemen, and I was good enough to be an entertainer, a mummer and musician, but that’s all. I know how people like that think and what they believe. I was on quite friendly terms with Ferdinando Strange, Lord Strange, you know; the Earl of Derby’s son. But when I say ‘on friendly terms’ I mean that he was kind to a grammar school boy who was tutor to his father’s friend’s children and not bad at music or playing a part when the gentry wanted entertainment. If I’d told him I wanted to make poetry or plays he