_THE BEANTASSEL BENEFIT._
OF the many boys who were curious about Paul Grayson’s antecedents, no
one devoted more attention to the subject than Benny Mallow. Benny was
short, and Paul was tall; Benny was fat, and Paul was thin; Benny’s hair
was light, while Paul’s was black as jet; Benny had light blue eyes,
while those of Paul were of a rich brown; Benny always had something to
say about himself, while Paul never seemed to think his affairs of the
slightest interest to any one but himself: so, taking all things into
account, it is not wonderful that Benny Mallow spent whole half-hours in
contemplating his friend with admiration and wonder.
Still more, as Benny had been accepted by every one as Paul’s particular
friend, he actually was besieged with all sorts of questions, and to
answer these without letting himself down in the estimation of the
school was no easy matter, when he did not know any more about Paul than
any one else did. One question, however, he settled to the entire
satisfaction of every one but Napoleon Nott—Grayson was not an exiled
prince. Benny was sure of this, because he had asked Paul if he had ever
been on the other side of the ocean, and Paul had answered that he had
not. Notty endeavored to make light of this evidence by showing how easy
it would have been to spirit the mysterious person away from his royal
home and to America while he was a baby, and therefore too young to know
anything about it; but Will Palmer told Notty that it was about time to
stop making a fool of himself, and the other boys present said they
thought so too, at which Notty became so angry that he vowed, in the
presence of at least a dozen boys, that when the truth came out, and all
the boys wanted to borrow his copy of “The Exiled Prince: a Tale of
Woe,” he would not lend it to them, even if it were to save them from
death; he would not even let them look at the cover, with its picture of
the prince and the name of the publisher.
Meanwhile Mr. Morton had continued his visits to the prisoners and to
the poor of the town, and out of school hours he had so interested the
boys in some of the suffering families of worthless men or widowed
women, that it was agreed by the whole school that the teasing of any of
the boys of these families about the holes in their trousers, or
provoking fights with or between them, should entirely stop; indeed, as
this suggestion came from Bert Sharp, who was fonder of fighting than
any other boy in the town, the school could not well do otherwise.
The boys went even farther: when one day old Peter Beantassel, whose
family was always on the verge of starvation, spent on drink the
accidental earnings of a week, and then fell into an abandoned well and
was drowned, it was decided by the school to give an exhibition for the
benefit of Mrs. Beantassel and her six children. Mr. Morton was
delighted, and promised to secure a church or hall without expense to
the boys, and to collect enough money from the public to pay for
printing the tickets. The boys at once began work in tremendous earnest;
they were for a fortnight so busy at determining upon a programme, and
studying, rehearsing, selling tickets, and exacting promises from people
who would not purchase in advance, that there was but little playing
before school and during recess, blackberry hedges were neglected, and
the trout in the single brook near the town had not the slightest excuse
for apprehension.
Paul Grayson entered into the spirit of the occasion as thoroughly as
any one else; he volunteered to recite Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” and
when the farce of “Box and Cox” was about to be given up because no boy
was willing to dress up in women’s clothes, and be laughed at by all the
larger girls, for playing the part of Mrs. Bouncer, Paul volunteered for
that unpopular character, and saved the play. But this was not all.
There were to be some tableaux; and as Mr. Morton had been asked to
suggest some scenes, particularly one or two with Indians in them, and
was as fond of pointing a moral as teachers usually are, one of his
tableaux, to be called “Civilization,” was a scene in the interior of an
Indian’s wigwam. The squaw, who had just been killed, was lying dead on
the floor; her husband, with his hands tied, stood bleeding between two
soldiers, while between father and mother stood the half-grown son,
wondering what it all was about. As all of the boys wanted to see this
tragic picture, all of them declined to take part in it; Joe Appleby had
been heard to remark with a sneer that only very small and green boys
cared to look at Indians, so he was asked to take the part of the
wretched son himself; but he said that when any one saw him making a
fool of himself by browning his face and dressing up in rags, he hoped
some one would tell him about it: so Grayson, as the only other tall boy
who had dark hair that was not cut short, was cast for this part also,
and offered no objection. As for the bleeding chieftain, Napoleon Nott
fought hard to pose in that character, and was quieted only by being
allowed to play the dead squaw, which all the boys told him he ought
easily to see was the more romantic part, besides being one in which he
could by no chance make any mistake.
The place selected for the entertainment was the lecture-room of the
Presbyterian church, and the boys had therefore to give up their darling
project of devoting half an hour of the evening to amateur negro
minstrelsy; for one of the deacons said that while he sometimes doubted
that even an organ was a proper musical instrument for use in sacred
buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This
decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been
selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the
revision of the programme Benny was assigned to duty in a tableau as a
little fat goblin, and this so tickled his fancy that he did not suffer
long by the disappointment.
At last the eventful night arrived. Some of the boys did not leave the
lecture-room at all after the last rehearsal, not even to get their
suppers, for fear they should be late, and those who reached the room
barely in time to take their parts had all they could do to squeeze
through the crowd that blocked the doors and filled the aisles. The
spectacle of so crowded a house raised the boys to a high pitch of
excitement, which was increased by various peeps, from the curtains that
served as dressing-rooms, at the Beantassel children, who by some
thoughtful soul had been provided with free seats in the extreme front
bench; there they were, all but the baby; they had been provided with
clothing which, though old, was far more sightly than the rags they
usually wore, and although they did not seem as much at ease as some
others among the spectators, their eyes stood so very open, then and
throughout the evening, that even Joe Appleby, who had reluctantly
consented to pose, in his best clothes, with gloves, cane, and high hat,
as Young America in a tableau of “The Nations,” agreed with himself that
the exhibition was rather a meritorious idea after all, and that even if
the boys did as badly as he knew they would, he was glad it was sure to
pay.
But the boys did not do badly; on the contrary, the general performance
would have been quite creditable to adults. The opening was somewhat
dismal; it was announced to consist of a duet for two flutes by Will
Palmer and Ned Johnston. The boys had practised industriously at several
airs in order to discover which would be best, and at last they supposed
they had fully agreed; but when seated Ned began the _Miserere_ from
“Trovatore,” while Will started “The Old Folks at Home;” and each was
sure the other was wrong, and would correct himself, which the other in
both cases failed to do; the two boys finally retired abruptly, amid
considerable laughter, and fought the matter out in the dressing-room.
Paul Grayson soon restored order, however, by his rendering of the
“Psalm of Life.” He had a fine voice, and he spoke the lines as if he
meant them; so gloriously did his voice ring that even the boys in the
dressing-room kept silence and listened, though they had heard the same
verses a hundred times before.
Most of the performances that followed went very smoothly, although
Benny Mallow, who played the Hatter’s part in “Box and Cox,” caused some
confusion by laughing frequently and unexpectedly, because Paul’s
disguise as Mrs. Bouncer affected him powerfully in spite of the efforts
made by Sam Wardwell, as the Printer, to restrain him. The tableaux
pleased the audience greatly; even that of “Prometheus,” with Ned
Johnston as the sufferer, and Mrs. Battle’s big red rooster as the
vulture, brought down the house.
But the great tableau of the evening was the teacher’s “Civilization.”
When Paul Grayson had understood fully what the scene was to be, he
refused so earnestly to have anything to do with it that the boys were
startled. They did not excuse him from taking the part of the young
Indian, however; they pleaded so steadily that at last Paul consented,
but in worse temper than any one had ever seen him before. No one could
complain of the manner in which he acted on the stage, however. When the
curtain was drawn he was seen standing beside his dead mother, and
shaking a fist at the soldiers; in color, dress, pose, and spirit he
seemed to be a real Indian, if the audience was a competent judge; then,
when the applause justified a recall, as it soon did, the drawn curtain
disclosed Paul clinging to the wounded brave as if nothing should ever
tear him away.
Napoleon Nott saw all this, although, as the Indian boy’s mother, he was
supposed to be dead beyond recall. Suddenly he felt himself to be
inspired, and when the curtain was down he flew into the dressing-room
and exclaimed, “I’ve got it!”
“Be careful not to hurt it,” said Canning Forbes, sarcastically.
“I’ve got it!” declared Notty, without noticing Canning’s cruel speech.
“Grayson is an Indian, a chief’s son. You don’t suppose he could have
made believe so well as all that, do you? That’s it. I knew he was a
great person of some sort. Sh—h! he’s coming.”
Somehow the boys who had been able to peep out at the tableau did not
laugh at Notty this time. Paul, in his Indian dress, had greatly
impressed them all before he left the dressing-room, and certainly his
acting had been unlike anything the boys had seen other boys do. The
subject was talked over in whispers, so that Paul should not hear,
during the remainder of the evening, with the result that that very
night at least six boys told other boys or their own parents, in the
strictest confidence, of course, that there was more truth than
make-believe about Paul Grayson as an Indian. And the parents told the
same story to other parents, the boys told it to other boys, and within
twenty-four hours Paul Grayson was a far more interesting mystery than
before.