CHAPTER VIII.
AT THE BEECHES
The invitation came by telephone while the family was at breakfast nextmorning. Would the house-party at The Locusts join the house-party atThe Beeches in giving a series of tableaux at their lawn fete thatnight? If so, would the house-party at The Locusts proceed immediatelyto The Beeches to spend the morning in the rehearsing of tableaux, theselection of costumes, the manufacture of paper roses, and the pleasureof each other's honorable company in the partaking of a picnic-lunchunder the trees?
There was an enthusiastic acceptance from all except Eugenia, who, tiredfrom her long journey and with many important things to attend to,begged to be left behind for a quiet day with her cousin Elizabeth.Mary, tormented by a fear that maybe she was not included in theinvitation, since she was a child, and all the guests at The Beecheswere grown, could scarcely finish her breakfast in her excitement. Butlong before the girls were ready to start, her fears were set at rest bythe arrival of Elise Walton in her pony-cart. She wanted Mary to driveto one of the neighbors with her, to borrow a bonnet and shawl overfifty years old, which were to figure in one of the tableaux.
Elise had not been attracted by Mary's appearance the day she met her inthe restaurant and was not sure that she would care for her. It was onlyher hospitable desire to be nice to a guest in the Valley that made hercomply so willingly to her mother's request to show her some especialattention. Mary, spoiled by the companionship of the older girls for thesociety of those her own age, was afraid that Elise would be arepetition of Girlie Dinsmore; but before they had gone half a miletogether they were finding each other so vastly entertaining that by thetime they reached The Beeches they felt like old friends.
It was Mary's first sight of the place, except the glimpse she hadcaught through the trees the morning they passed on their way toRollington. As the pony-cart rattled up the wide carriage drive whichswept around in front of the house, she felt as if she were ridingstraight into a beautiful old Southern story of ante-bellum days. Backinto the times when people had leisure to make hospitality their chiefbusiness in life, and could afford for every day to be a holiday. Whenthere were always guests under the spreading rooftree of the greathouse, and laughter and plenty in the servants' quarters. The sound of abanjo and a negro melody somewhere in the background heightened theeffect of that illusion.
The wide front porch seemed full of people. Allison and Kitty looked upwith a word of greeting as the two girls came up, one carrying thebonnet and the other the shawl, but nobody seemed to think it necessaryto introduce Elise's little friend to the other guests. It would havebeen an embarrassing ordeal for her, for there were so many strangers.Mary recognized the two young lieutenants.
With the help of a pretty brunette in white, whom Elise whispered wasMiss Bonham from Lexington, they were rigging up some kind of a coat ofmail for Lieutenant Logan to wear in one of the tableaux. Ranald, with ahuge sheet of cardboard and the library shears, was manufacturing a pairof giant scissors, half as long as himself, which a blonde in blue waswaiting to cover with tin foil. She was singing coon songs while shewaited, to the accompaniment of a mandolin, and in such a gay,rollicking way, that every one was keeping time either with hand orfoot.
"That is Miss Bernice Howe," answered Elise, in response to Mary'swhispered question. "She lives here in the Valley. And that's MalcolmMacIntyre, my cousin, who is sitting beside her. That's his brotherKeith helping Aunt Allison with the programme cards."
Mary stared at the two young men, vaguely disappointed. They were thetwo little knights of Kentucky, but they were grown up, like all theother heroes and heroines she had looked forward to meeting. She toldherself that she might have expected it, for she knew that Malcolm wasJoyce's age; but she had associated them so long with the handsomelittle fellows in the photograph Lloyd had, clad in the knightlycostumes of King Arthur's time, that it was hard to recognize them now,in these up-to-date, American college boys, who had long ago discardedtheir knightly disguises.
"And that," said Elise, as another young man came out of the house witha sheet of music in his hand for Miss Howe, "is Mister Alex Shelby. Helives in Louisville, but he comes out to the Valley all the time to seeBernice. I'll tell you about them while we drive over to Mrs. Bisbee's.
"It's this way," she began a few moments later, as they rattled down theroad; "Bernice asked Allison if Mister Shelby couldn't be in one of thetableaux. Allison said yes, that they had intended to ask him before shespoke of it; that they had decided to ask him to be the boatman in thetableau of 'Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat.' But when Bernice foundthat Lloyd had already been asked to be Elaine, she was furious. Shesaid she was just as good as engaged to him, or something of the sort, Idon't know exactly what. And she knew, if Lloyd had a chance tomonopolize him in that beautiful tableau, what it would lead to. Itwouldn't be the first time that Lloyd had quietly stepped in and takenpossession of her particular friends. She made such a fuss about it,that Allison finally said she'd change, and make Malcolm take the partof boatman, and give Alex the part they had intended for Malcolm, evenif they didn't fit as well."
"The hateful thing!" sputtered Mary, indignantly. "I don't see how shecan insinuate such mean things about any one as sweet and beautiful asLloyd is."
"I don't either," agreed Elise, "but Allison says it is true thateverybody who has ever started out as a special friend of Bernice, men Imean, have ended by thinking the most of Lloyd. But everybody knows thatit is simply because she is more attractive than Bernice. As Ranald saysLloyd isn't a girl to fish for attention, and that Bernice would havemore if she didn't show the fellows that she was after them with a hook.Don't you tell Lloyd I told you all this," warned Elise.
"Oh, I wouldn't think of doing such a thing!" cried Mary. "It would hurther dreadfully to know that anybody talked so mean about her. I wouldn'tbe the one to repeat it, for worlds!"
Left to hold the pony while Elise went in at Mrs. Bisbee's, Mary satthinking of the snake she had discovered in her Eden. It was a rudeshock to find that every one did not admire and love the "Queen ofHearts," who to her was without fault or flaw. All the rest of that dayand evening, she could not look in Bernice Howe's direction, without asavage desire to scratch her. Once, when she heard her address Lloyd as"dearie," she could hardly keep from crying out, "Oh, you sly, two-facedcreature!"
Lloyd and her guests arrived on the scene while Mary was away in thepony-cart on another borrowing expedition. All of the tableaux, excepttwo, were simple in setting, requiring only the costumes that could befurnished by the chests of the neighborhood attics. But those two kepteverybody busy all morning long. One was the reproduction of a famouspainting called June, in which seven garlanded maidens in Greek costumesposed in a bewitching rose bower. Quantities of roses were needed forthe background, great masses of them that would not fade and droop; andsince previous experience had proved that artificial flowers may be usedwith fine stage effect in the glare of red foot-lights the whole placewas bursting into tissue-paper bloom. The girls cut and folded themyriad petals needed, the boys wired them, and a couple of littlepickaninnies sent out to gather foliage, piled armfuls of youngoak-leaves on the porch to twine into long conventional garlands, likethe ones in the painting.
Agnes Waring had come over to help with the Greek costumes, and sincethe long folds of cheesecloth could be held in place by girdles, bastingthreads, and pins, the gowns were rapidly finished.
Down by the tea-house the colored coachman sawed and pounded and planedunder Malcolm's occasional direction. He was building a barge like theone described in Tennyson's poem of the Lily Maid of Astolat. From timeto time, Lloyd, who was to personate Elaine, was called to stretchherself out on the black bier in the centre, to see if it was longenough or high enough or wide enough, before the final nails were driveninto place.
Malcolm, with a pole in his hand, posed as the old dumb servitor who wasto row her up the river. It all looked unpromising enough in the broaddaylight; the boat with its high stif
f prow made of dry goods boxes andcovered with black calico, and Lloyd stretched out on the bier in amodern shirtwaist suit with side-combs in her hair. She giggled as shemeekly crossed her hands on her breast, with a piece of newspaper foldedin one to represent the letter, and a bunch of lilac leaves in theother, which later was to clasp the lily. From under the long eyelasheslying on her cheeks, she smiled mischievously at Malcolm, who was vainlytrying to put a decrepit bend into his athletic young back, as he bentover the pole in the attitude of an old, old man.
"Yes, it does look silly now," admitted Miss Allison in answer to hisprotest that he felt like a fool. "But wait till you get on the longwhite beard and wig I have for you, and the black robe. You'll looklike Methuselah. And Lloyd will be covered with a cloth of gold, and herhair will be rippling down all over her shoulders like gold, too. Andwe've a real lily for the occasion, a long stalk of them. Oh, thistableau is to be the gem of the collection."
"But half the people here won't understand it," said Malcolm.
"Yes, they will, for we're to have readings behind the scenes inexplanation of each one. We've engaged an amateur elocutionist for theoccasion. I'll show you just the part she'll read for this scene, soyou'll know how long you have to pose to-night. It begins with thoselines, 'And the dead, oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood. Inher right hand the lily, in her left the letter.' Where did I put thatvolume of Tennyson?"
"Here it is," answered Mary Ware, unexpectedly, springing up from herseat on the grass to hand her the volume. She had been watching therehearsal with wide-eyed interest. Deep down in her romance-lovinglittle soul had long been the desire to see Sir Feal the Faithful faceto face, and hear him address the Princess. The play of the "Rescue ofthe Princess Winsome" had become a real thing to her, that she felt thatit must have happened; that Malcolm really was Lloyd's true knight, andthat when they were alone together they talked like the people in books.She was disappointed when the rehearsal was over because theconversation she had imagined did not take place.
The coachman's carpenter-work was not of the steadiest, and Lloyd laylaughing on the shaky bier because she could not rise without fear ofupsetting it.
"Help me up, you ancient mariner," she ordered, and when Malcolm,instead of springing forward in courtly fashion to her assistance as SirFeal should have done, playfully held out his pole for her to pullherself up by, Mary felt that something was wrong. A playful manner wasnot seemly on the part of a Sir Feal. It would have been natural enoughfor Phil or Rob to do teasing things, but she resented it when thereseemed a lack of deference on Malcolm's part toward the Princess.
After they had gone back to the porch, Mary sat on the grass a longtime, reading the part of the poem relating to the tableau. She andHolland had committed to memory several pages of the "Idylls of theKing," and had often run races repeating them, to see which could finishfirst. Now Mary found that she still remembered the entire page thatMiss 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 twowhite-capped maids came out and began spreading small tables under thebeech-tree where she sat. She opened the book and began reading, becauseshe did not know what else to do. While she had been watching Lloyd inthe boat, Elise had been summoned to the house to try on the dress shewas to wear in the tableau of the gipsy fortune-teller. The people onthe porch had divided into little groups which she did not feel free tojoin. She was afraid they would think she was intruding. Even her ownsister seemed out of her reach, for she and Lieutenant Logan had takentheir share of paper roses over to a rustic seat near the croquetgrounds and were talking more busily than they were fashioning tissueflowers.
Mary was unselfishly glad that Joyce was having attention like the othergirls and that she had been chosen for one of the Greek maidens in thetableau of June. And she wasn't really jealous of Elise because she wasto be tambourine girl in the gipsy scene, but she did wish, with alittle fluttering sigh, that she could have had some small part in itall. It was hard to be the only plain one in the midst of so many prettygirls; so plain that nobody even thought of suggesting her for one ofthe characters.
"I know very well," she said to herself, "that a Lily Maid of Astolatwith freckles would be ridiculous, and I'm not slim and graceful enoughto be a tambourine girl, but it would be so nice to have some part init. It would be such a comfortable feeling to know that you're prettyenough always to be counted in."
Her musings were interrupted by the descent of the party upon the picnictables, and she looked up to see Elise beckoning her to a seat. To herdelight it was at the table opposite the one where Lloyd and Phil, AnnaMoore and Keith were seated. Malcolm was just across from them, withMiss Bonham on one side and Betty and Lieutenant Stanley on the other.Mary looked around inquiringly for her sister. She was with Rob now, andLieutenant Logan was placing chairs for Allison and himself on the otherside of the tree. Mr. Shelby and the hateful Miss Bernice Howe were overthere, too, Mary noted, glad that they were at a distance.
Malcolm was still in a teasing mood, it seemed, for as Lloyd helpedherself in picnic fashion from a plate of fried chicken, he said,laughing, "Look at Elaine now. Tennyson wouldn't know his Lily Maid ifhe saw her in this way." He struck an attitude, 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 thegrass, and helping herself to a beaten biscuit. "I always did think thatElaine was a dreadful goose to go floating down the rivah to a man whodidn't care two straws about her. She'd much bettah have held on to awish-bone and an olive and stayed up in her high towah with her fathahand brothahs who appreciated her. She would have had a bettah time andhe would have had lots moah respect for her."
"Oh, I don't think so," cooed Miss Bonham, with a coquettish sideglance at Phil. "That always seemed such a beautifully romanticsituation 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, inpleasing day-dream, herself as Elaine, floating down a stream in thatpoetic fashion.
"Well, no, Miss Bonham," said Phil, laughingly. "I'm free to confessthat if I had been Sir Lancelot, I'd have liked her a great deal betterif she had been a cheerful sort of body, and had stayed alive. Then ifshe had come rowing up in a nice trig little craft, instead of thatspooky 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 dolefulletter. I'd have joined her picnic in a jiffy, and probably had such ajolly time that the poem would have ended with wedding bells in the hightower instead of a funeral dirge in the palace.
"She wasn't game," he continued, smiling across at Mary, who waslistening with absorbing attention. "Now if she had only lived up to theVicar of Wakefield's motto--instead of mooning over Lancelot's oldshield, and embroidering things for it, and acting as if it weresomething too precious for ordinary mortals to touch--if she'd batted itinto the corner, or made mud pies on it, to show that she wasinflexible, fortune _would_ have changed in her favor. Sir Lancelotwould have had some respect for her common sense."
Mary, who felt that the remark was addressed to her, crimsonedpainfully. Rob took up the question, and his opinion was the same asPhil's and Malcolm's. Long after the conversation passed to othertopics, Mary puzzled over the
fact that the three knightliest-lookingmen she knew, the three who, she supposed, would make ideal lovers, hadlaughed at one of the most romantic situations in all poesy, and hadagreed that Elaine was silly and sentimental. Maybe, she thought withburning cheeks, maybe they would think she was just as bad if they knewhow she had admired Elaine and imagined herself in her place, andactually cried over the poor maiden who loved so fondly and so trulythat she could die of a broken heart.
When she reflected that Lloyd, too, had agreed with them, she began tothink that her own ideals might need reconstructing. She was glad thatPhil's smile had seemed to say that he took it for granted that shewould have been inflexible to the extent of making mud pies onLancelot's shield. Unconsciously her reconstruction began then andthere, for although the seeds sown by the laughing discussion at thepicnic table lay dormant in her memory many years, they blossomed into asaving common sense at last, that enabled her to see the humorous sideof the most sentimental situation, and gave her wisdom to meet it as itdeserved.
The outdoor tableaux that night proved to be one of the most successfulentertainments ever given in the Valley. A heavy wire, stretched fromone beech-tree to another, held the curtains that hid the impromptustage. The vine-covered tea-house and a dense clump of shrubbery formedthe background. Rows of Japanese lanterns strung from the gate to thehouse, and from pillar to pillar of the wide porches, gave a festiveappearance to the place, but they were not really needed. The full moonflooded the lawn with a silvery radiance, and as the curtains partedeach time, a flash of red lights illuminated the tableaux.
It was like a glimpse of fairy-land to Mary, and she had the doubleenjoyment 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 Ranald gave the signal to burn the red lights.
There was the usual confusion in the dressing-room, the tea-house havingbeen taken for that purpose. There was more than usual in someinstances, for while the fete had been planned for some time, thetableaux 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 inthe audience to enjoy the remainder of the performance. At last onlythree people were left in the tea-house, and Miss Allison sent Keith,Rob, Phil, and Lieutenant Logan before the curtain, with instructions tosing one of the longest songs they knew and two encores, while Gibbsrepaired the prow of the funeral barge. Some one had used it for astep-ladder, and had broken it.
Mary, waiting in the audience till the quartette had finished its firstsong, did not appear on the scene behind the curtain until Malcolm wasdressed in his black robe and long white beard and wig, and Lloyd waslaid out on the black bier.
"Stay just as you are," whispered Miss Allison. "It's perfect. I'mgoing out into the audience to enjoy the effect as the curtain rises."
As she passed Miss Casey, the elocutionist, she felt some one catch hersleeve. "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 promptlystarted off. Mary, standing back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush,clasped her hands in silent admiration of the picture. It was wonderfulhow the moonlight transformed everything. Here was the living, breathingpoem itself before her. She forgot it was Lloyd and Malcolm posing inmakeshift costumes on a calico-covered dry goods box. It seemed thebarge itself, draped all in blackest samite, going upward with theflood, that day that there was dole in Astolat. While she gazed like onein 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 foolishin my whole life."
"And never looked more beautiful," Malcolm answered, trying to getanother glimpse of her without changing his pose.
"Sh," she whispered back, saucily. "You forget that you are dumb. Youmustn't say a word."
"I will," he answered, in a loud whisper. "For even if I were reallydumb I think I should find my voice to tell you that with your hairrippling 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 theseventh heaven to be here with you in this boat."
"And with you in that white hair and beard I feel as if it were FathahTime paying me compliments," said Lloyd, her cheeks dimpling withamusement. "Hush! It's time for me to look dead," she warned, as theapplause 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 tofollow her to their seats in the audience, saw Miss Casey tragicallythrow up her hands, with a horrified exclamation. It was not the copy ofTennyson Elise had brought her. In her haste she had snatched up avolume of essays bound in the same blue and gold.
"Go on!" whispered Malcolm, sternly. "Say something. At least go out andexplain the tableau in your own words. There are lots of people whowon't know what we are aiming at."
Miss Casey only wrung her hands. "Oh, I can't! I can't!" she answered,hoarsely. "I couldn't think of a word before all those people!" As thecurtain drew slowly apart, she covered her face with her hands and sankback 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 thelast applause. Neither knew of the dilemma.
A long-drawn "O-o-oh" greeted the beautiful tableau, and then there wasa silence that made Miss Allison rise half-way in her seat, to see whathad 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."
"A LONG-DRAWN 'O-O-OH' GREETED THE BEAUTIFUL TABLEAU"]
She did not know who had sprung to the rescue, but Joyce, who recognizedMary's voice, felt a thrill of pride that she was doing it so well. Itwas better than Miss Casey's rendering, for it was without anyprofessional frills and affectations; just the simple story told in thesimplest way by one who felt to the fullest the beauty of the pictureand the music of the poem.
The red lights flared up, and again the exclamation of pleasure sweptthrough the audience, for Lloyd, lying on the black bier with her hairrippling down and the lily in her hand, might indeed have been the deadElaine, so ethereal and fair she seemed in that soft glow. Three timesthe curtains were parted, and even then the enthusiastic guests keptapplauding.
There was a rush from the seats, and half a dozen admiring friendspushed between the curtains to offer congratulations. But before theyreached her, Lloyd had rolled off her bier to catch Mary in an impulsivehug, 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 theladies who were with them, to explain how Mary had had the presence ofmind and the ability to throw herself into Miss Casey's place on thespur of the moment, and turn a failure into a brilliant success. Thecongratulations and compliments which she heard on every side were verysweet to Mary's ears, and when Phil came up a little later to tell herthat she was a brick and the heroine of the evening, she laughedhappily.
"Where is the fair Elaine?" he asked next. "I see her boat is empty. Canyou tell me where she has drifted?"
"No," answered Mary, so eager to be of service that she was ready totell all she knew. "She was here with Sir Feal till just a moment ago."
"Sir Feal!" echoed Phil, in amazement.
"Oh, I forgot that you don't know the Princess play. I meant MisterMalcolm. While so many people were in here congratulating us and shakinghands, I heard him say something to her in an undertone, and then hesang sort of under his breath, you know, so that nobody else but meheard him, that verse from the play
:
"'Go bid the Princess in the tower Forget all thought of sorrow. Her true love will return to her With joy on some glad morrow.'
"Then he bent over her and said still lower, 'By _my_ calendar it's theglad morrow _now_, Princess.'
"He went on just like he was in the play, you know. I suppose they haverehearsed it so much that it is sort of second nature for them to talkin that old-time way, like kings and queens used to do."
"Maybe," answered Phil. "Then what did _she_ say?" he demanded,frowning.
"I don't know. She walked off toward the house with him, and that's thelast I saw of them. Why, what's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing!" he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Nothing's thematter, little Vicar. _Let us keep inflexible, and fortune will at lastchange in our favor._"
"Now whatever did he mean by that!" exclaimed Mary, as she watched himwalk away. It puzzled her all the rest of the evening that he shouldhave met her question with the family motto.