Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [51]
"No, sir," he said. "Mr. Langman pays a shilling for four quarts, but I made a contract with Mr. Langman. On the days I don't work for Mr. Penkethman, I catch whitebait for Mr. Langman." He twitched his trap from the water, swung it deftly within hand's reach, spilled another shower of whitebait into his burlap container; then looked apologetic as he lowered his trap to the water again.
"Penkethman!" I cried. "Penkethman of the Haymarket? The actor-manager?"
The boy gave me a look of approval. "Comedian, sir," he said. "He moved his players here this monthsome from the Haymarket and some from Drury Lane."
I studied him more carefully. There was almost a look of elation about him, such as young girls so often have, but boys almost never. When he stood, he had an air of being about to rise on his toes. In short, he looked happy.
"Don't tell me," I said, "that you're an actor! Not at your age."
"Well, sir," the boy said, "I'm not exactly an actor, but Mr. Penkethman prints my name on the billsNeal Butler.
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I'm only the prompter's call boy for Mr. Penkethman; but my father taught me how to write, so I write parts as well, forty-two lines to a length, and a penny for each one. Whatever I write, I remember, so I'm a quick study."
"How old are you, Neal?" I asked.
"Mr. Penkethman said I wasn't to tell my age," the boy said. "When I play female parts, he says it helps him with the rakes if we leave 'em guessing."
"Rakes?" I said. "Female parts? You play female parts?"
"Oh, yes, sir," the boy said. "There was an accident one night, and Mr. Penkethman let me play the page in Mr. Otway's Orphan." He proudly repeated, ''I'm a quick study," and he had good reason to be proud, as I had learned at Oxford, when I spent long hours struggling to memorize wordy speeches from The Fair Quaker of Deal.
He snatched his fish trap from the water, found only two minnows flopping on it, gave me a look of pretended haughtiness that was vastly amusing; then dropped the trap back into the river. "Once he let me recite Mr. Cibber's epilogue about the Italian singers, and when I'm better at Italian, he'll let me do it again."
Female parts! A quick study! They helped him with the rakes! A penny for a length of forty-two lines! Mr. Otway! Mr. Cibber! Better at Italian! This boy, only a little more than half my age, was a real actor, even though his modesty prevented him from saying so.
"You're learning to speak Italian?" I asked.
"Oh, no, sir, just something that sounds like Italian." He placed his free hand on his breast, regarded me with candid wide eyes, and from his lips there gushed a stream of foreign syllables among which English words were dropped disconcertingly. The whole effect was foreign,
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but falsely foreign: the words seemed to have meaning; yet they meant nothing, and were merely excruciatingly droll, especially when, as if emphasizing his strange flood of nonsense, he hauled up violently on his fish trap to find it brimming with whitebait. As he swung it sideways, to deposit the minnows on his square of burlap, one of the four cords broke: the basket slipped, and all his minnows spilled back into the brown Thames water.
"Stap my vitals" Neal cried, and I knew he was quoting Otway. He dropped his broken trap beside him on the stone steps, and suddenly and surprisingly he held in his hand a long, thin-bladed knife, with which he went at the broken cord, trimming and splicing it as neatly as any bos'n on the river.
"Where'd you get that knife?" I asked. I held out my hand for it, but the boy made a quick movement and the knife vanished.
"It belonged to my father," he said. "My father says even big men'll shy away from a knife."
His reference to big men floored me, but somehow the mention of his father made his possession of that long thin knife seem excusable, if not exactly reasonable; so I forgot the knife