A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil (primary phonics txt) 📗
- Author: Angela Brazil
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"We've not had you on the boards before," said Susie Wakefield, one of the Sixth, as the girls filed from the room when the meal was over; "we're all expecting something extra tiptop and thrillsome, so play up!"
"Hope we shan't let you down!" replied Ingred. "Please don't expect too much, or you mayn't get it!"
Dormitory 2 held a hurried conclave before afternoon school.
"It's a great stunt!" rejoiced Nora.
"What are we to act?" fluttered Fil.
"Especially when we've to play up!" twittered Verity.
"What silly idiots we were not to plan it all out beforehand! But I really never dreamt we'd ever get the chance!"
"No more did I," said Ingred, sitting with her head in her hands, considering. "On the whole, it doesn't matter. Sometimes a quite impromptu thing goes off best. It's largely a question of what costumes we can rake up out of nothing.
"The cleverer those are, the more we'll get applauded. I've one or two ideas simmering. Thank goodness it's drawing this afternoon, and I shall have time to think them over."
"We'll all think!" agreed Verity. "Then we'll compare notes at four o'clock, and fix on what we're going to do. Great Minerva! It'll be a hectic evening! I'm shivering in my shoes!"
"And I'm absolutely green with stage-fright! What a life!" proclaimed Fil.
If Miss Godwin, the drawing-mistress, noticed a slacking off in accuracy on the part of four of her pupils, that afternoon, she perhaps set it down to want of artistic feeling. It is difficult to copy with absolute exactness when only your fingers are busy, and your brain is far away. Ingred planned enough entertainments to supply a Pierrot troupe for a month, but abandoned most of them as being quite impossible to act with the very limited resources that were available at the hostel. At a select Foursome Committee after school, however, she presented the pick of the performances, and as nobody else had thought of anything better, or indeed quite so good, her suggestions, with a few amendments and alterations, were carried unanimously.
At eight o'clock that evening, when preparation was finished, the boarders' room was rapidly transformed into an amateur theater. The trestle tables were carried to one end to form the gallery, rows of chairs represented the dress circle, and cushions in front either the pit or the stalls, according to individual taste, or, as Mrs. Best said, the behavior of the occupants.
There was no curtain, but, as the scenery preserved Shakespearian methods of simplicity, that did not matter. Part of the charm of these Thursday night entertainments was their absolutely spontaneous character, and the fact that many details had to be left to the imagination of the spectators only made things more amusing.
When the audience, after a slight struggle for gallery seats, had settled itself, and Mrs. Best and Nurse Warner had taken possession of the arm-chairs specially reserved for them, Dollie Ransome, who had been requisitioned by the performers to act as Greek chorus, placed some stools by the fire-place, and announced importantly:
"King Alfred and the Cakes. A Historical Drama."
The little old woman who entered, carrying some sticks and a basin, was difficult to identify as Fil. Her fair hair had been powdered, wrinkles were painted on her smooth forehead, a handkerchief was knotted on her head for a cap, and she wore an apron borrowed from the cook, and a check table-cover arranged as a shawl. She bestowed the sticks in the fender to represent a fire on the hearth, and taking some biscuits from her basin, placed them amongst the supposed embers, indulging meanwhile in a soliloquy about the hardness of the times for poor folk, and the danger from the Danes.
A violent knocking on the door was followed by the entrance of such a magnificent object that the spectators immediately applauded his advent. Nora, with her large build, short-cut hair, and generally boyish appearance, was the very one to act King Alfred. She had folded a plaid traveling rug into a kilt which reached just to her bare knees, borrowed a velvet coatee and a leather belt from Mrs. Best, and, by the aid of bandages from the ambulance cupboard, had made quite a good imitation of Saxon leg-gear. Armed with a bow and arrows, hastily constructed from twigs cut in the garden, she advanced with a manly stride, begged for hospitality, and was accommodated with a stool by the hearth, where she sat whittling arrows in an abstracted fashion, and heaving gusty sighs.
The audience had hardly recovered from its astonishment when it was thrilled again by the entrance of an ancient and elderly peasant man, so disguised that it was almost impossible to recognize Ingred. A water-proof with a broad leather belt served as coat, and, being padded inside with a pillow, gave the effect of bent and bowed shoulders. Some tow, supplied by Mrs. Best, was fastened as a long straggling beard, and bushy eyebrows of the same material were fixed on with soap. Leaning heavily upon a stick, he came limping in, complaining in a tremulous voice of his rheumatism, started with amazement at the sight of the handsome stranger seated by his hearth, and drew his wife aside for explanations. The old couple, after conversing in audible whispers, decided to go out for more firewood, and as a last charge the dame commended her cakes to the care of their guest. King Alfred, on being left alone by the hearth, whittled away at his arrows with more energy than discrimination, and showed indeed a sad lack of practical skill for so well seasoned a warrior. Perhaps, however, he was not accustomed to have to make them for himself, and missed his chief archer. Throwing them down at last, he sank his head in his hands in an absolute cinema pose of despondency, and sighed to an extent which must have been painful to his lungs. The dame returned to sniff burning cakes and fly to the rescue of her cookery. Fil was quite a good little actress, and produced what she considered her pièce de résistance. She had spent her summer holidays in Somerset, and had there picked up a local ballad which dealt with the legend in dialect. She brought out a verse of it now with great effect:
And cusn't ee zee 'em burrn?
I'se warrant ee eat 'em fast enough,
Zoon as it be ee turn!"
And catching up a biscuit, carefully blackened beforehand by toasting it over the gas, she flaunted it in the face of the embarrassed monarch.
The dramatic situation was slightly spoilt by the delay in the entrance of the courtier, who ought to have come in at that psychological moment, and didn't. The fact was that Verity, finding it dull waiting in the passage, had run upstairs to make some additions to her costume, and had miscalculated the length, or rather shortness, of the act. It is difficult for the most accomplished actor to go on looking embarrassed for any length of time, and as Fil's eloquence in the scolding line suddenly failed her, there was an awful pause while the peasant husband, with wonderful agility considering his rheumatism, hopped to the door and called agitatedly for the missing performer. The courtier flew downstairs like a whirlwind, tripped into the room, and fell upon his red-stockinged knees to do homage to his sovereign, who rose majestically and extended a hand of pardon to the now grovelling peasant.
The audience, particularly that portion seated in the gallery, clapped and cheered to such an extent that one of the trestles, which had been carelessly fixed, collapsed, and sent a whole row of girls sliding on to the floor, whence they were rescued speechless with laughter, but uninjured. They came crowding round the performers to admire the costumes.
"They're topping!"
"How did you think of them?"
"I like King Alfred's legs!"
"Ingred, you look about a hundred!"
"Fil could scold!"
"Verity, what was a courtier doing rambling about a forest in a blue dressing-gown? It would get torn on the bushes!"
"I know. We told her so, but she would wear it!" declared Ingred. "She was just pig-headed over that dressing-gown!"
"Well, go and look at the Saxon pictures for yourself, in the history book!" retorted Verity, sticking to her point. "You'll see the courtiers in long flowing garments very like dressing-gowns. I think it was a capital idea, and the best I could do. There wasn't another rug for the kilt anyhow, and when other people have taken the best parts and the nicest costumes, you've just got to put up with anything you can find that's left."
"You did it so well," Ingred assured her hastily, for Verity had gone very pink, and her voice sounded distinctly offended. "I thought the way you dropped on one knee and cried: 'My liege lord! I am your humble socman!' was most impressive. What made you think of 'socman'?"
"Got it out of the history book," said Verity, slightly mollified. "It means a man who owned land, but wasn't quite as high up as a thane. I meant to bring in some more Saxon words, but I hadn't time."
"You must win the dormitory score again, and give us another performance," urged Mrs. Best. "I'm afraid it's too late for any more to-night, though we're all sorry to stop. Those juniors ought to be in bed. Janie and Doreen, if you'd like a quiet half-hour to finish your prep. you may go into my room. Somebody put the tables back, please, and be sure the trestles are in their right places this time, we don't want another collapse! Phyllis, your cough's worse. Nurse shall rub your chest with camphorated oil, and you mustn't kiss anybody. Betty too? I'll give you a lozenge, but don't suck it lying down in bed, in case you choke."
So saying, Mrs. Best, who generally mothered the hostel, dismissed her large family and bustled away with Nurse to superintend the putting to bed of the juniors and the due care of those who might be regarded as even ever so slightly on the sick list. It was perhaps owing to the excitement of their spirited performance that the members of No. 2 Dormitory could not get to sleep that night. They all lay wide awake in bed, and told each other tales about burglars, in whispers. Verity's stories were blood-curdling in the extreme; she was a great reader, and had got them from magazines. Her three room-mates listened with cold shivers running down their spines. According to Verity's accounts it was a common and every day occurrence for a house-breaker to force an entrance, murder the occupants, and depart, leaving a case to baffle the police until some amateur detective turned up and solved the mystery.
"Has it ever struck you that the hostel would be a very easy place to burgle?" asked Fil. "Those French windows have no shutters, and the glass could be cut with a diamond."
"Or the doors could be opened with a skeleton key!" quavered Nora.
"I suppose they generally wear goloshes, so as to tread softly," ventured Ingred.
"Wouldn't it be dreadful," continued Verity, whose mind still ran on magazine stories, "to marry a fascinating man whom you'd met by chance, and then find out that he was a gentleman-burglar? What would you do?"
"It often happens on the cinema," said Nora. "The girl wavers about in an agony whether to tell or not, and wrings her hands and rolls her eyes, like they always do roll them on the films, and then, just when things are at the very last gasp, the husband tumbles over a precipice, or is wrecked at sea, or smashed in a railway accident, and she marries the other, who's as good as gold, and loved her first."
"Is the man who loves you first always as good as gold?" asked Fil.
"Well, generally on the Pictures. He's loved you as a child, you see. You come on the film hand in hand, in socks, and he gives you his apple."
"But suppose they don't love you from a child?" said Fil plaintively. "I've only known a lot of horrid little boys whom I didn't care for in the least. None of them ever gave me his apple, though I remember one taking mine. Is the first fascinating man I meet the true lover
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