To the schoolgirls the dress rehearsal was, if possible, more of an ordeal than the performances themselves. The head mistress attended in state with the entire staff and such of the girls as were not themselves acting. Stray relatives, unable to be present at the play proper, dotted the more distant benches, or were bestowed in the overhanging galleries, while the servants, from portly matron to jobbing gardener, cl.u.s.tered at the back of the hall.

The platform at the upper end had been built out to form a stage, and when, late in the afternoon, the final signal had been given and the improvised curtains drew audibly apart, Clare had fair reason to plume herself on her stage-management.

The long blinds of the windows had been let down and shut out the sceptical sunshine; and the candle footlights, flickering unprofessionally, mellowed the paintwork and patterned the home-made scenery with re-echoing lights, pools of unaccountable shadow, and shaftlike, wavering, prismatic gleams, flinging over the crude stage-setting a veil of fantastic charm.

The play opened, however, dully enough. The scenes chosen had had inevitably to be compressed, run together, mangled, and Clare had not found it easy work. Faulconbridge, bowdlerised out of all existence, could not tickle his hearers, and King John, not yet broken in to crown and mantle, gave him feeble support. But with the entrance of Constance, Arthur and the French court, actors and audience alike bestirred themselves.

Agatha, her dark eyes flashing, her lank figure softened and rounded by the generous sweep of her geranium-coloured robes, looked an authentic stage queen. Her exuberant movements and theatrical intonation had been skilfully utilised by Clare, who, playing on her eager vanity, had alternately checked and goaded her into a plausible rendering of the part. She was the reverse of nervous; her voice rolled her opening speech without a tremor; her impatient, impetuous delivery (she hardly let her fellow-actors finish their lines) fitted the character and was effective enough.

Yet to Clare, note-book in hand, prepared to pounce, cat-like, on deficiencies, neither she nor her foil dominated the stage, nor the row of schoolgirl princes. Her critical appreciation was for the little figure, wavering uncertainly between the shrieking queens, with scared anxious eyes, that swept the listening circle in faint appeal, quivering like a sensitive plant at each verbal a.s.sault, shrinking beneath the hail of blandishments and reproaches. The one speech of the scene, the reproof of Constance, was spoken with un-childlike, weary dignity--

"Good my mother, peace!

I would that I were low laid in my grave; I am not worth this coil that's made for me."

Yet it was not Arthur that spoke, nor Louise--no frightened boy or overwrought, precocious girl. It was the voice of childhood itself, s.e.xless, aloof; childhood the eternal pilgrim, wandering pa.s.sive and perplexed, an elf among the giants: childhood, jostled by the uncaring crowd, swayed by gross energies and seared by alien pa.s.sions.

"She's got it," muttered Clare to Alwynne, reporting progress in the interval; "oh, how she's got it!" She laughed shortly. "So that's her reading. Impudent monkey! But she's got her atmosphere. Uncanny, isn't it? It reminds me--do you remember that performance of hers last autumn with _Childe Roland_? I told you about it. Well, this brings it back, rather. Clever imp. I wonder how much of my coaching in this act she'll condescend to leave in?"

"You gave her a free hand, you know," deprecated Alwynne.

"I did. But it's impudence----"

"Inspiration----"

"Impudence all the same. When the rehearsal is over I must have a little conversation with Miss Denny." She showed her white teeth in a smile.

Alwynne caught her up uneasily--

"Clare--you're not going to scold? It wouldn't be fair. You know you're as pleased as Punch, really."

Clare shot a look at her, but Alwynne's face was innocent and anxious.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Am I? I suppose I am. I don't know. On my word, Alwynne, I don't know!

But run along, my deputy. There's an agitated orb rolling in your direction from the join of the curtains."

Alwynne fled.

The opening scene of the second division of the play--as Clare had planned it--showed Arthur a prisoner to John and the old queen. The child's face was changed, his manner strained; his startled eyes darted restlessly from Hubert to the king and back again to Hubert; the pair seemed to fascinate him. Yet he shrank from their touch and from Elinor's embrace, only to check the instinctive movement with pitiful, propitiatory haste, and to submit, his small fists clenched, to their caresses. His eyes never left their faces; you saw the tide of fear rising in his soul. Not till the interview with Hubert, however, was the morbid drift of the conception fully apparent. He hung upon the man, smiling with white lips; he fawned; he babbled; he cajoled; marshalled his poor defences of tears and smiles, frail defiance and wooing surrender, with an awful, childish cunning. He watched the man as a frightened bird watches a cat; turned as he turned, confronting him with every muscle tense. His high whisper premised a voice too weak with terror to shriek. Yet at the entrance of the attendants there came a cry that made Clare shiver where she sat. It was fear incarnate.

Clare fidgeted. It was too bad of Louise.... And what had Alwynne been thinking of? A free hand, indeed! Too much of a free hand altogether!

The fact that she was listening to a piece of acting, that, in a theatre, would have overwhelmed her with admiration, added to her annoyance. A school performance was not the place for brilliant improprieties. Certainly impropriety--this laborious exposure of a naked emotion was, in such a milieu, essentially improper--Louise must be crazy! And in what unholy school had she learned it all--this baby of thirteen? And what on earth would staff and school say?

She stole a look at her colleagues. Some were interested, she could see, but obviously puzzled. A couple were whispering together. A third had chosen the moment to yawn.

Her contradictory mind instantly despised them for fools that could not appreciate what manner of work they were privileged to watch. She saw her path clear--her att.i.tude outlined for her. She would glorify a glorious effort (it was pleasant that for once justice might walk with expediency) and her sure, instant tribute would, she knew, suffice to quiet the carpers. But, for all that, the performances themselves should be, she promised herself, on less dangerous lines than the dress-rehearsal. She would have a word with Louise: the imp needed a cold douche.... But what an actress it would make later on! Clare sighed enviously.

The scene was nearly over. With the glad cry--"Ah! now you look like Hubert," the enchantment of terror broke. A few more sentences and Arthur was left alone on the stage.

As the door clanged (Alwynne was juggling with hardware in the wings) the child's strained att.i.tude relaxed and the audience unconsciously relaxed with it. He swayed a moment, then collapsed brokenly into a chair. The long pause was an exquisite relief.

But before long the small face puckered into frowns; a back-wash of subsiding fear swept across it. The hands twitched and drummed. You felt that a plan was maturing.

At last, after furtive glances at the door, he rose with an air of decision, and crossed quickly to the alcove of the window. For an instant the curtains hid him, and the audience stared expectantly at an empty stage. When he turned to them again, holding the great draperies apart with little, resolute fists, his face was alight with hope, and, for the first time, wholly youthful. In the soft voice ringing out the last courageous sentences, detailing the plan of the escape, there was a little quiver of excitement, of childish delight in an adventure. He ended; stood a moment smiling; then the heavy folds hid him again as they swept into position.

There was a tense pause.

Suddenly as from a great distance, came a faint wailing cry. Thereon, silence.

The curtains wheezed and rattled into place.

Alwynne, hurrying on to the stage to shift scenery for the following act, nearly tripped, as she dismantled the alcove, over a huddle of clothes crouched between backing and wall. She stooped and shook it. A small arm flung up in instant guard.

"Louise? Get up! The act's over. Run out of the way. Stop--help me with this, as you're here."

Obediently the child scrambled to her feet. She gripped an armful of curtain, and trailed across the stage in Alwynne's wake. Till the curtains rose on the final act, she trotted after her meekly, helping where she could.

With King John embarked on his opening speech, Alwynne drew breath again. She ran her eye over the actors, palpitant at their several entrances, saw the prompter still established with book and lantern, and decided that all could go on without her for a moment. She put her hand on Louise's shoulder and drew her into the pa.s.sage.

"What is it, Louise?"

"Nothing."

"What were you doing just now? Were you scared? Was it stage fright?"

"Oh no." Louise smiled faintly.

"Then what were you doing?"

Louise considered.

"I was dead. I had jumped, you know. I was finding out how it would feel."

"Louise! You gruesome child!"

"I liked it--it was so quiet. I'd forgotten about shifting the scenery.

I'm sorry. Does it--did it hurt him, do you think, the falling?"

Alwynne put both her hands on the thin shoulders and shook her gently.

"Louise! Wake up! You're not Prince Arthur now! Gracious me, child--it's only a play. You mustn't take it so seriously."

Louise made no answer; she did not seem to understand.

Alwynne was struck by a new idea. She took the child's face in her hand and turned it to the gaslight.

"Did I see you at lunch, Louise? I don't believe I did. Do you know you're a very naughty child to take advantage of the confusion?"