The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor Part 9

"Yes, they will, for we're to have readings behind the scenes in explanation of each one. We've engaged an amateur elocutionist for the occasion. I'll show you just the part she'll read for this scene, so you'll know how long you have to pose to-night. It begins with those lines, 'And the dead, oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood. In her right hand the lily, in her left the letter.' Where did I put that volume of Tennyson?"

"Here it is," answered Mary Ware, unexpectedly, springing up from her seat on the gra.s.s to hand her the volume. She had been watching the rehearsal with wide-eyed interest. Deep down in her romance-loving little soul had long been the desire to see Sir Feal the Faithful face to face, and hear him address the Princess. The play of the "Rescue of the Princess Winsome" had become a real thing to her, that she felt that it must have happened; that Malcolm really was Lloyd's true knight, and that when they were alone together they talked like the people in books.

She was disappointed when the rehearsal was over because the conversation she had imagined did not take place.

The coachman's carpenter-work was not of the steadiest, and Lloyd lay laughing on the shaky bier because she could not rise without fear of upsetting it.

"Help me up, you ancient mariner," she ordered, and when Malcolm, instead of springing forward in courtly fashion to her a.s.sistance as Sir Feal should have done, playfully held out his pole for her to pull herself up by, Mary felt that something was wrong. A playful manner was not seemly on the part of a Sir Feal. It would have been natural enough for Phil or Rob to do teasing things, but she resented it when there seemed a lack of deference on Malcolm's part toward the Princess.

After they had gone back to the porch, Mary sat on the gra.s.s a long time, reading the part of the poem relating to the tableau. She and Holland had committed to memory several pages of the "Idylls of the King," and had often run races repeating them, to see which could finish first. Now Mary found that she still remembered the entire page that Miss Allison had read. She closed the book, and repeated it to herself.

"So that day there was dole in Astolat.

Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood-- In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter--all her bright hair streaming down-- And all the coverlid was cloth of gold-- Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white.

All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."

That was as far as Mary got with her whispered declamation, for two white-capped maids came out and began spreading small tables under the beech-tree where she sat. She opened the book and began reading, because she did not know what else to do. While she had been watching Lloyd in the boat, Elise had been summoned to the house to try on the dress she was to wear in the tableau of the gipsy fortune-teller. The people on the porch had divided into little groups which she did not feel free to join. She was afraid they would think she was intruding. Even her own sister seemed out of her reach, for she and Lieutenant Logan had taken their share of paper roses over to a rustic seat near the croquet grounds and were talking more busily than they were fashioning tissue flowers.

Mary was unselfishly glad that Joyce was having attention like the other girls and that she had been chosen for one of the Greek maidens in the tableau of June. And she wasn't really jealous of Elise because she was to be tambourine girl in the gipsy scene, but she did wish, with a little fluttering sigh, that she could have had some small part in it all. It was hard to be the only plain one in the midst of so many pretty girls; so plain that n.o.body even thought of suggesting her for one of the characters.

"I know very well," she said to herself, "that a Lily Maid of Astolat with freckles would be ridiculous, and I'm not slim and graceful enough to be a tambourine girl, but it would be so nice to have some part in it. It would be such a comfortable feeling to know that you're pretty enough always to be counted in."

Her musings were interrupted by the descent of the party upon the picnic tables, and she looked up to see Elise beckoning her to a seat. To her delight it was at the table opposite the one where Lloyd and Phil, Anna Moore and Keith were seated. Malcolm was just across from them, with Miss Bonham on one side and Betty and Lieutenant Stanley on the other.

Mary looked around inquiringly for her sister. She was with Rob now, and Lieutenant Logan was placing chairs for Allison and himself on the other side of the tree. Mr. Shelby and the hateful Miss Bernice Howe were over there, too, Mary noted, glad that they were at a distance.

Malcolm was still in a teasing mood, it seemed, for as Lloyd helped herself in picnic fashion from a plate of fried chicken, he said, laughing, "Look at Elaine now. Tennyson wouldn't know his Lily Maid if he saw her in this way." He struck an att.i.tude, declaiming dramatically, "In her right hand the wish-bone, in her left the olive."

"That's all right," answered Lloyd, tossing the olive stone out on the gra.s.s, and helping herself to a beaten biscuit. "I always did think that Elaine was a dreadful goose to go floating down the rivah to a man who didn't care two straws about her. She'd much bettah have held on to a wish-bone and an olive and stayed up in her high towah with her fathah and brothahs who appreciated her. She would have had a bettah time and he would have had lots moah respect for her."

"Oh, I don't think so," cooed Miss Bonham, with a coquettish side glance at Phil. "That always seemed such a beautifully romantic situation to me. Doesn't it appeal to you, Mr. Tremont?"

Mary listened for Phil's answer with grave attention, for she, too, considered it a touching situation, and more than once had pictured, in pleasing day-dream, herself as Elaine, floating down a stream in that poetic fashion.

"Well, no, Miss Bonham," said Phil, laughingly. "I'm free to confess that if I had been Sir Lancelot, I'd have liked her a great deal better if she had been a cheerful sort of body, and had stayed alive. Then if she had come rowing up in a nice trig little craft, instead of that spooky old funeral barge, and had offered me a wish-bone and an olive, I'd have thought them twice as fetching as a lily and that doleful letter. I'd have joined her picnic in a jiffy, and probably had such a jolly time that the poem would have ended with wedding bells in the high tower instead of a funeral dirge in the palace.

"She wasn't game," he continued, smiling across at Mary, who was listening with absorbing attention. "Now if she had only lived up to the Vicar of Wakefield's motto--instead of mooning over Lancelot's old shield, and embroidering things for it, and acting as if it were something too precious for ordinary mortals to touch--if she'd batted it into the corner, or made mud pies on it, to show that she was inflexible, fortune _would_ have changed in her favor. Sir Lancelot would have had some respect for her common sense."

Mary, who felt that the remark was addressed to her, crimsoned painfully. Rob took up the question, and his opinion was the same as Phil's and Malcolm's. Long after the conversation pa.s.sed to other topics, Mary puzzled over the fact that the three knightliest-looking men she knew, the three who, she supposed, would make ideal lovers, had laughed at one of the most romantic situations in all poesy, and had agreed that Elaine was silly and sentimental. Maybe, she thought with burning cheeks, maybe they would think she was just as bad if they knew how she had admired Elaine and imagined herself in her place, and actually cried over the poor maiden who loved so fondly and so truly that she could die of a broken heart.

When she reflected that Lloyd, too, had agreed with them, she began to think that her own ideals might need reconstructing. She was glad that Phil's smile had seemed to say that he took it for granted that she would have been inflexible to the extent of making mud pies on Lancelot's shield. Unconsciously her reconstruction began then and there, for although the seeds sown by the laughing discussion at the picnic table lay dormant in her memory many years, they blossomed into a saving common sense at last, that enabled her to see the humorous side of the most sentimental situation, and gave her wisdom to meet it as it deserved.

The outdoor tableaux that night proved to be one of the most successful entertainments ever given in the Valley. A heavy wire, stretched from one beech-tree to another, held the curtains that hid the impromptu stage. The vine-covered tea-house and a dense clump of shrubbery formed the background. Rows of j.a.panese lanterns strung from the gate to the house, and from pillar to pillar of the wide porches, gave a festive appearance to the place, but they were not really needed. The full moon flooded the lawn with a silvery radiance, and as the curtains parted each time, a flash of red lights illuminated the tableaux.

It was like a glimpse of fairy-land to Mary, and she had the double enjoyment of watching the arrangement of each group behind the scenes, and then hurrying back with Elise to their chairs in the front row, just as Ra.n.a.ld gave the signal to burn the red lights.

There was the usual confusion in the dressing-room, the tea-house having been taken for that purpose. There was more than usual in some instances, for while the fete had been planned for some time, the tableaux were an afterthought, and many details had been overlooked.

Still, with slight delays, they moved along toward a successful finish.

Group by group posed for its particular picture and returned to seats in the audience to enjoy the remainder of the performance. At last only three people were left in the tea-house, and Miss Allison sent Keith, Rob, Phil, and Lieutenant Logan before the curtain, with instructions to sing one of the longest songs they knew and two encores, while Gibbs repaired the prow of the funeral barge. Some one had used it for a step-ladder, and had broken it.

Mary, waiting in the audience till the quartette had finished its first song, did not appear on the scene behind the curtain until Malcolm was dressed in his black robe and long white beard and wig, and Lloyd was laid out on the black bier.

"Stay just as you are," whispered Miss Allison. "It's perfect. I'm going out into the audience to enjoy the effect as the curtain rises."

As she pa.s.sed Miss Casey, the elocutionist, she felt some one catch her sleeve. "I've left that copy of Tennyson at the house," she gasped.

"What shall I do?"

"I'll run and get it," volunteered Elise in a whisper, and promptly started off. Mary, standing back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush, clasped her hands in silent admiration of the picture. It was wonderful how the moonlight transformed everything. Here was the living, breathing poem itself before her. She forgot it was Lloyd and Malcolm posing in makeshift costumes on a calico-covered dry goods box. It seemed the barge itself, draped all in blackest samite, going upward with the flood, that day that there was dole in Astolat. While she gazed like one in a dream, Lloyd half-opened her eyes, to peep at the old boatman.

"I wish they'd hurry," she said, in a low tone. "I never felt so foolish in my whole life."

"And never looked more beautiful," Malcolm answered, trying to get another glimpse of her without changing his pose.

"Sh," she whispered back, saucily. "You forget that you are dumb. You mustn't say a word."

"I will," he answered, in a loud whisper. "For even if I were really dumb I think I should find my voice to tell you that with your hair rippling down on that cloth of gold in the moonlight, and all in white, with that lily in your hand, you look like an angel, and I'm in the seventh heaven to be here with you in this boat."

"And with you in that white hair and beard I feel as if it were Fathah Time paying me compliments," said Lloyd, her cheeks dimpling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Hush! It's time for me to look dead," she warned, as the applause followed the last encore. "Don't say anything to make me laugh.

I'm trying to look as if I had died of a broken heart."

Elise darted back just as the prompter's bell rang, and Mary, turning to follow her to their seats in the audience, saw Miss Casey tragically throw up her hands, with a horrified exclamation. It was not the copy of Tennyson Elise had brought her. In her haste she had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a volume of essays bound in the same blue and gold.

"Go on!" whispered Malcolm, sternly. "Say something. At least go out and explain the tableau in your own words. There are lots of people who won't know what we are aiming at."

Miss Casey only wrung her hands. "Oh, I can't! I can't!" she answered, hoa.r.s.ely. "I couldn't think of a word before all those people!" As the curtain drew slowly apart, she covered her face with her hands and sank back out of sight in the shrubbery.

The curtain-shifter had answered the signal of the prompter's bell, which at Miss Allison's direction was to be rung immediately after the last applause. Neither knew of the dilemma.

A long-drawn "O-o-oh" greeted the beautiful tableau, and then there was a silence that made Miss Allison rise half-way in her seat, to see what had become of the interpreter. Then she sank back again, for a clear, strong voice, not Miss Casey's, took up the story.

"And that day there was dole in Astolat.

Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A LONG-DRAWN 'O-O-OH' GREETED THE BEAUTIFUL TABLEAU"]

She did not know who had sprung to the rescue, but Joyce, who recognized Mary's voice, felt a thrill of pride that she was doing it so well. It was better than Miss Casey's rendering, for it was without any professional frills and affectations; just the simple story told in the simplest way by one who felt to the fullest the beauty of the picture and the music of the poem.

The red lights flared up, and again the exclamation of pleasure swept through the audience, for Lloyd, lying on the black bier with her hair rippling down and the lily in her hand, might indeed have been the dead Elaine, so ethereal and fair she seemed in that soft glow. Three times the curtains were parted, and even then the enthusiastic guests kept applauding.

There was a rush from the seats, and half a dozen admiring friends pushed between the curtains to offer congratulations. But before they reached her, Lloyd had rolled off her bier to catch Mary in an impulsive hug, crying, "You were a perfect darling to save the day that way!

Wasn't she, Malcolm? It was wondahful that you happened to know it!"

The next moment she had turned to Judge Moore and Alex Shelby and the ladies who were with them, to explain how Mary had had the presence of mind and the ability to throw herself into Miss Casey's place on the spur of the moment, and turn a failure into a brilliant success. The congratulations and compliments which she heard on every side were very sweet to Mary's ears, and when Phil came up a little later to tell her that she was a brick and the heroine of the evening, she laughed happily.

"Where is the fair Elaine?" he asked next. "I see her boat is empty. Can you tell me where she has drifted?"

"No," answered Mary, so eager to be of service that she was ready to tell all she knew. "She was here with Sir Feal till just a moment ago."