CHAPTER XIV.
SCHOOL THEATRICALS.
It seemed very lonely the next day, when Edith and Hilda had gone. The spare room was shorn of its two cots, and was restored to its usual dainty order. Will and Archie left also, as their school began the next Monday, and they went to board, in the neighbourhood of their house, till Edna was sufficiently recovered for them to be at home. She had had a very light attack of scarlet fever, fortunately, and was already improving. As soon as the boys left, Eunice and Cricket returned to their own domains. College opened and Don was off. On Tuesday, the girls’ school, St. Agatha’s, was in session again, so now they all settled down to the busy time that lies between Christmas and Easter.
At the close of the half-year at St. Agatha’s, early in February, came the great excitement of the year. This was an exhibition, consisting of a play, given in French by some of the older girls, and a short play in English by some of the children in the junior department. As only the girls whose scholarship was high, and deportment uniformly good, were allowed to take part in the plays, of course it was one of the chief honours of the year to be selected. The announcement of the favoured girls was eagerly awaited.
The French play was learned as class work during the fall term by all the senior girls in the French classes. The list of those chosen to give the plays was read on the first day of school after the Christmas holidays.
Much rehearsing and genuine hard work on the part of the actors, as well as of the teachers, went into this yearly exhibition, but the honour paid for all the extra hours, and the names of the girls who took the parts were preserved in the school year-book.
As Marjorie had been in the French play the year before, she could not be in it again, this year, although her marks were well up. Since Eunice and Cricket had only entered St. Agatha’s this year, they never thought of the possibility of either of them being in the play. Therefore you can imagine Eunice’s blank amazement when her name was read among the others:
“Miss Eunice Ward is assigned the part of Sallie, the maid.”
“Eunice?” said Cricket, right out loud, her eyes shining like two stars. “Oh, do you think she can?”
Apparently Eunice’s teachers thought she could, for they had given her the very good part of a little housemaid. The “cast” were requested to wait after school, to be given their books and be instructed in their parts.
Cricket was on tiptoe with excitement when Eunice came home, trying to look unconcerned and every-day-ish. Cricket flew at her with a little shriek of delight, and squeezed her eagerly.
“Eunice! Eunice! think of your being given a part in a real play! What will you wear? Will it be hard to learn? When do you have to know it? Do they begin rehearsing soon? Could I go to the rehearsals, do you think?”
“I don’t know everything yet, Cricket. I don’t know what I’m to wear. We must know our parts perfectly in one week, and next Tuesday will be our first rehearsal. I don’t know about their letting you in, but I’m afraid they won’t. I don’t think they let anybody be there but Miss Raymond and Miss Emmet, and us actors,” with supreme importance.
“How horrid! I’ll just go somewhere and peek, then. I must see you.”
“I’ll ask Miss Emmet if you can’t come, though. She knows we are always together. But, you see, if they let in one outside girl, any number may want to come in,” said Eunice, wisely.
“That’s so,” said Cricket, with a sigh. “You tell them I’ll make myself very small and not get in anybody’s way. Where’s your book?”
“Here it is. Sallie is my part, you know.”
Cricket took the book and dropped down on the window-seat.
“Isn’t this delicious? ‘Curtain rising, discloses Sallie dusting.’ Oh, what cunning little short sentences you have to say!” After a moment’s silence: “Eunice, this won’t be anything to learn. I just about know the first page already,” and Cricket rattled it off.
For a week the family had to lunch and dine on the famous play. A stranger could not have told which was to take part, Eunice or Cricket, for the two knew it equally well. Indeed, in a week’s time, Cricket knew the whole play by heart, from reading the other characters, when she was hearing Eunice. The play was short, of course, only being about twenty-five minutes in length. The children declaimed it on the stairs; they spouted it in the parlour after dinner, and they interlarded their conversation with quotations from it. They talked professionally of entrances and exits, of wings and flies and scenery and cues, till their long-suffering family protested in a body.
Eunice had a private interview with Miss Emmet, the principal, regarding Cricket’s presence at the rehearsals. At first Miss Emmet said positively, as Eunice had feared she would, that it was against the rules for any one to be present save herself and the teacher who drilled the girls. But Eunice’s pleading face, as she urged that she and Cricket were always together in everything, and she could do it so much better if Cricket were there, because she could rehearse it with her at home, finally made Miss Emmet say, smiling:
“Well, my dear, on second thoughts, we’ll admit Jean. Only please do not tell the girls that you asked for her to be present.”
Eunice promised, radiantly, and flew off to Cricket with the coveted permission.
The rehearsals went on swimmingly for a time. Then, after the novelty was over, the little actors began to realise that the extra time required of them interfered, now and then, with their own plans for amusement. There began to be absences from rehearsals. The rehearsals themselves began to be a bore, for any one who has ever trained children for any exhibition knows the tiresome repetition of scenes and sentences that is necessary to ensure success in the simplest performance.
Eunice and Cricket felt it, with the others. They wanted to go skating, to go down-town with mamma, or made plans with their schoolmates, only to remember, at the last minute, that there was a rehearsal that afternoon.
Eunice was very faithful, however, for her mother would not permit anything to interfere with these rehearsals. Cricket, of course, was free, but, as her father said, she would “never desert Mr. Micawber.”
“No; you agreed to take a part in the play, dear,” said mamma firmly, when the children begged to “cut just once, for the other girls did sometimes,” since something unusual had come up; “what you agreed to do, you must do, at any cost of inconvenience or disappointment to yourself. No amusements, of any kind, must prevent your being punctual at every rehearsal.”
“Just sometimes, mamma,” begged Eunice.
“Not even once. Your teachers are taking all this trouble for your benefit, and the least you can do is to be depended upon for your punctual presence. You know how provoking you say it is when any one is absent, and how badly the rehearsal goes on then.”
“That’s so: like a chicken on one leg,” said Cricket, thoughtfully. “Everything hitches. But I do wish I were in the play. I know all Isabel Fleming’s part much better than she does. Miss Raymond scolds her all the time.”
“How did she get in if she is stupid?” asked Marjorie.
“She isn’t stupid. I believe she’s lazy. She just stumbles along, and it makes me so mad when she gets all mixed up in her best speeches. There’s one part, with Eunice, that she spoils entirely, every time. That about the bonnet, Eunice, when you come in and find her trying it on. She’s all alone before the glass first, and she has some awfully funny things to say, and she just forgets half of them, every time.”
“You do it lots better, Cricket,” said Eunice. “She really does, mamma. She’s practised it with me, you know, up-stairs. Let’s do it now, Cricket.”
And Cricket, nothing loath, jumped up, and the children went through the scene. Cricket was always such an enthusiastic little soul about everything she did, that she made herself literally the character she was acting.
“Oh, I’m just pining away to be in the play,” she said, sinking down on a couch and fanning herself, amid the applause of the family.
“You look pretty healthy for one who is in that state,” said Doctor Ward.
They were all in the parlour for the jolly half-hour after dinner.
“I don’t show it much, I suppose,” said Cricket thoughtfully, “but, really, it just pines inside all the time.”
“Do you remember, mamma,” put in Marjorie, “how Eunice, when she was a little thing, used to like to sit up at the piano and sing, and pretend to play her accompaniments? There was one particular song she always tried. It had a chorus, ‘Maggie, dear Maggie, I’m pinning for thee!’ as Eunice used to say it. Cricket might sing now, ‘Oh, Nancy, dear Nancy, I’m pining for thee!’”
“By the way, what is that ghostly song you are so fond of singing about the house, Marjorie?” asked Doctor Ward, looking up from his evening paper. “I only can make out the chorus, ‘Repack, repack, repack my body to me,—to me.’”
There was a shout of laughter that nearly drowned Marjorie’s astonished protest that she never sang anything so sepulchral.
“You certainly do, often,” insisted Doctor Ward. “This very afternoon, not long before dinner, I heard you and two or three of your friends, in the music-room, singing, and one of the things you sang was that very song, only you sang it this way: ‘Repack my body to me,—same old body.’”
There was another shout.
“Oh, papa, you funny!” cried Marjorie. “It isn’t body at all. It’s ‘Bring back my Bonny to me.’ It’s a girl’s name. The first line is, ‘My Bonny lies over the ocean!’”
“That’s it,” said the doctor. “When you sang, ‘My body lies over the ocean,’ I thought it was a strange thing to mislay.”
Whereupon Marjorie went to the piano and insisted on playing the whole thing through, and having Eunice join her in singing it.
The next rehearsal day, Eunice and Cricket were promptly on hand. Presently all the girls were there but Isabel Fleming. Miss Raymond, the elocution teacher, came in, herself, at the last moment.
“I was unexpectedly detained. All here? Isabel Fleming isn’t missing again to-day, is she? What a provoking child! This is the third time she has been absent, and she really needs more drill than any one of you, for she is so careless.” Miss Raymond’s black eyes snapped impatiently, and the girls were glad they were not the delinquent Isabel. “Wouldn’t she catch it the next day?” the girls’ silent exchange of glances said.
“Here I leave pressing work to come here and drill you, for your own benefit and advantage, outside of school hours,” went on Miss Raymond, indignantly; “I often give up engagements that I wish to make, for ungrateful girls who are not even responsible for what they undertake. You ought to be as ashamed to break an engagement as you would be to tell a lie.”
“That is very true,” said Miss Emmet quietly. “However, we won’t scold the girls who are here, on account of those who are not. I will see Isabel to-morrow.”
“They all need a talking-to, though,” cried irate Miss Raymond. “They all happen to be here to-day; but I believe every one of them has missed rehearsals, with the exception of Eunice Ward.”
“Mamma won’t let me,” said Eunice honestly.
“Your mother’s a sensible woman, then,” said Miss Raymond. “Now, Miss Emmet, what are we to do? It spoils the play so, to have me read Isabel’s part. I can’t drill them properly, and they don’t do justice to their own parts.”
“If you like, Miss Emmet, I will take Isabel’s part,” said Cricket, in her bright, unconscious way, after a telegraphic despatch to Eunice, with her eyebrows.
“But you don’t know it, child, and it’s the reading it at all that I object to. Not acting it, puts the others out,” said Miss Raymond, pulling off her gloves.
“I mean, I can say it,” explained Cricket. “I can’t act it very well, of course, but perhaps it would do. I know all the part.”
“Do you? Well, then, you can try it. It won’t be worse, at any rate, than my reading it, and keeping my eye on the girls at the same time. Stand here, and be ready for your cue.”
The speech was ungracious, for Miss Raymond was always sharp-tongued, but she patted Cricket’s cheek, approvingly.
The rehearsal began. Cricket was excited, but she had her wits about her, for this work was what she loved.
“You are doing very well, child,” said Miss Raymond, when she went off the stage. Cricket was so eager to fill in just right, that she never thought of herself. The little play was rehearsed twice through, and the second time Cricket did still better. Of course not as well as the girls who had been drilling for two weeks already, for she did not always get the right position on the stage, sometimes turned her back to the imaginary audience, did not leave at the right moment, every time, and never spoke loud enough.
Nevertheless, on the whole, the rehearsal was very satisfactory.
Miss Raymond said a few words to Miss Emmet while the children were resting. Miss Emmet nodded assent. When the girls were leaving, Miss Emmet detained Eunice and Cricket a moment.
“Miss Raymond and I spoke of replacing Isabel Fleming two or three days ago,” she said. “I told her, the last time she was absent, that I should fill her place if she failed again. Now, Jean, I wish you would ask your mother if she has any objection to your taking the part of Nancy. You know the part already, and we can soon train you in the acting.”
Cricket’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. To act a part in that wonderful play!
“Will your mother permit her, do you think?” Miss Emmet asked Eunice. “Jean is rather younger than the girls are when they first take part, usually, but I think she will do.”
“Yes, indeed, I think mamma will be willing,” beamed Eunice.
“I come to all the rehearsals now,” said Cricket, eagerly, “and I know the part perfectly, and I am sure mamma will let me.”
The girls almost danced down the street.
“I’d rehearse every day in the week, and all night too,” said Cricket, fervently, to mamma, when the latter warned her again that she must not let anything interfere with rehearsing. “We will not ask to shirk it once, no matter what we want to do.”
“That’s the only condition you can undertake it on,” said mamma. “If you do it at all, you must do it thoroughly, you know.”
The condition seemed a very small one to the children, as only a week remained before the eventful Friday night. The rehearsals were never more than an hour long, and generally not more than three-quarters of an hour at a time, but they came every other day.
It was Monday afternoon,—the Monday before the play. A rehearsal was appointed for three o’clock. As the girls came out into the street from school, one of their friends joined them, begging them to come and see her in the afternoon. Her mother, she said, had just come home from New York, and brought her many pretty things, as well as a great box of Huyler’s candy. She wanted Eunice and Cricket to see the things and help eat the candy. Eunice, remembering the rehearsal, said no very firmly, though her resolution was somewhat shaken when she learned that most of the candy was chocolate.
“It’s so far over there that we wouldn’t have time to come before rehearsal, but we might go over at four, couldn’t we, Eunice?” asked Cricket, hopefully.
“Oh, how provoking! You see, I have a music lesson at four, and Mr. Schwarz is so cross if I’m a minute late; and I know there won’t be anything left of that candy to offer you, after the children get hold of it. Can’t you skip rehearsal, just once?”
“No, we’ve engaged not to,” said Eunice. “It would be nice, but we mustn’t, Elsie. Good-bye. Cricket, we’ll be late to luncheon if we don’t hurry.”
It chanced that mamma had an engagement at the dentist’s, and had to hurry away from the luncheon table.
“And I shan’t be home till late in the afternoon, girls,” she added, “for, after I leave the dentist, I have several people to see on Guild business. Be prompt with Miss Raymond, my little maids, and do well.”
She was hardly out of sight when a group of little school friends trooped up the steps. Eunice and Cricket, standing in the window, saw them coming, and flew down to the hall to meet them.
“Get your things on right away,” they cried, in a chorus. “They say there is splendid skating on the lake, and we’re all going out there. It will probably be gone by to-morrow, they say. Do hurry, girls!”
“Oh, jolly!” cried Cricket, flying away. Then she stopped short, and looked at Eunice.
“We can’t go, girls,” said Eunice, soberly. “We have rehearsal at three.”
“Oh, cut for once! All the girls have cut sometime, you know. You can’t be there always.”
“It’s such a nuisance when everybody isn’t there, though. But I’m just dying for a skate,” said Cricket, wistfully. “How I wish we could go!”
“Come, do cut,” some one urged. “Let Miss Raymond scold. Ask your mother. She’ll let you.” Eunice wavered. Wouldn’t mamma let her if she only knew about this? Such a very special occasion! They had been so very punctual and regular,—not a single time had they missed rehearsal, and they knew their parts perfectly. Indeed, this was an extra rehearsal, appointed for the special benefit of some girl who had been absent twice. Could not they let it go for once? Eunice and Cricket looked at each other wistfully.
“I believe—” began Eunice, slowly.
“Oh, goody! fly up-stairs fast, and get your things on. It’s getting awfully late, now, to get off.”
Eunice still hesitated; then she suddenly braced herself.
“No,” she said, backing off, with her hands behind her back, as though there were something she was forbidden to touch. Then she spoke very fast, lest her determination should waver again.
“We can’t possibly go. We’ve promised mamma we wouldn’t shirk once, no matter what came up, and we can’t. We’re awfully sorry, but we can’t. You go on, girls. It’s getting late.”
It certainly required much resolution to say this, in the face of those glittering skates and beseeching eyes, but Eunice’s tone was so firm that the girls wasted no further coaxing, and went off with many an expression of regret.
Eunice and Cricket each drew a long breath, and looked at each other resignedly.
“Now let’s get ready to go straight off before anything else happens,” said Eunice, with assumed briskness.
“I don’t feel as if the self-denying part of me could do that again. It’s most worn out,” said Cricket, mournfully, as they went up-stairs. “Think! the skating will surely be gone to-morrow! It never lasts but two or three days.”
As they finally shut the front door behind them and went down the steps, Mrs. Drayton’s carriage drew up before the house, and Emily’s eager head popped itself forward.
“Girls! girls! where are you going? I’m so glad I’m in time to catch you. I want you to go for a drive.”
“Oh, Emily!” cried Eunice, despairingly. “Don’t say one word about anything. I’m just about crazy! Everything nice is happening this afternoon, when we’ve just got to go to rehearsal.”
“Must you go?” said Emily, disappointedly. “I’d made up my mind to have a nice, long drive. I’ve had such a cold that I have not been out for a week, but to-day is so clear and bright that mamma said I might come out and get you both, and I want you so much!”
“I’m just as much disappointed as you, Emily,” sighed Eunice. “I’m tired to death of rehearsals, but we must go, because we promised mamma we wouldn’t shirk.”
“You can get some one else to go with you, Emily,” said Cricket, who had waited, younger-sister fashion, for Eunice to decide the matter.
“Of course I can get plenty of people,” said Emily, petulantly; “but I want you. Oh, do come! We’ll stop at the school and say I wouldn’t let you get out.”
Emily was very used to having her own way. Eunice opened her eyes wide.
“Oh, we couldn’t tell Miss Raymond that!” she exclaimed, in great surprise. “Please don’t coax, Emily. It makes it so hard.”
“There’s three o’clock now,” put in Cricket, as the hour struck from a neighbouring tower. “Rehearsal is at three, and we’ve never been late before.”
Emily looked ready to cry.
“It’s too bad of you. You might come if you wanted to. You’d rather go to a mean old rehearsal than come with me. I know you would.”
“Emily, how silly!” cried Cricket, in despair. “As if we wouldn’t rather go with you a billion times,—yes, a virgintillion. Don’t you see? We’ve promised.”
“Please don’t be cross about it,” begged Eunice. “You can get somebody and have a lovely drive, and we have to miss everything and be scolded for being late, besides. We must go, Cricket, or we’ll have our heads taken off.” And Eunice, as she spoke, sprang up on the carriage steps and kissed her little friend, coaxingly.
Emily sighed.
“Can you drive to-morrow then? I’ll come early.”
“If we don’t have rehearsal. We’ll ride with you now as far as the school, if you’ll take us.”
“All this trial and temptation,” sighed Cricket, soberly, as they went up the school steps, “and probably being scolded for being late into the bargain.”
Fortunately, however, when they reached the room, Miss Raymond herself was late, having been detained by some lesson. All the girls were already there, and soon they were at work.
“This has been a thoroughly satisfactory rehearsal,” said Miss Raymond, with unusual cordiality. “Everybody is on hand, and you’ve all done well. I thought last Saturday you would have to rehearse every day this week, but now we will do no more till the dress-rehearsal on Thursday. You’ve done splendidly.”
Praise from Miss Raymond was so rare that the girls beamed.
“Isn’t it fortunate that we didn’t cut?” said Eunice, as they went homewards. “Now we can go to-morrow with a clear conscience, and this afternoon we would have felt guilty all the time.”
“Yes, and had to rehearse to-morrow, too, if we’d cut this afternoon.”
The eventful Friday evening arrived in due course of time, and an enthusiastic and expectant audience crowded the schoolroom at St. Agatha’s. The juniors’ play was first on the programme. Eunice, in her part of maid, was very taking in her becoming costume, with its little mob-cap and jaunty apron. Cricket, as saucy Nancy, who was always listening behind doors, and getting into trouble, made a decided hit. The other girls were all so good in their parts that it was hard to say, after all, which was best. Everything went smoothly, as it should with a well-trained, well-disciplined set of girls. The French play was beautifully given by the seniors.
The programme closed with some pretty drills and marches, for which they had been trained by their teacher of physical culture, as part of their school work. For this they had had no other preparation than their regular daily half-hour in the gymnasium.
“All this means much work on your part, Miss Emmet,” Mrs. Ward said, appreciatively, to the head of the school, as people were congratulating her on her beautifully trained girls.
“And much on the girls’ part, as well,” answered Miss Emmet, cordially. “They learn many valuable lessons, during the time we take to prepare all this, besides their school work.”
“Certainly lessons in self-denial and persistency and promptness,” said Mrs. Ward, smiling. “My little girls have certainly learned the necessity of keeping engagements, no matter what more interesting things come up.” And she told Miss Emmet of the Monday before, and its accumulation of disappointments.
Miss Emmet laughed, but she looked sympathising, also.
“That’s exactly what I mean. It all goes into character-building.”