ADELINA AND THE DRAMA
THE Youngest Teacher looked across the room at the new girl and tried to
goad her conscience into action. New girls were her specialty. She was
an expert in homesickness, a professional drier of tears and promoter of
cheerfulness. When she really brought her batteries into action the most
forlorn of new pupils wiped her eyes and decided that boarding-school
life might have its sunny side.
Gradually the Misses Ryder and Belinda's fellow-teachers had recognised
the masterly effectiveness of her system and her personality, and had
shifted the responsibility of "settling" the new girls to the Youngest
Teacher's shoulders. As a rule, Belinda cheerfully bowed her very fine
shoulders to the burden. She knew that as an accomplished diplomat she
was of surpassing value, and that her heart-to-heart relations with the
pupils were of more service than her guidance in the paths of English.
She comforted the homesick, set the shy at ease, drew confidences from
the reserved, restrained the extravagances of the gushing.
But on this January evening she felt a colossal indifference concerning
the welfare of girls in general and of new girls in particular--a strong
disinclination to assume any responsibility in regard to the girl who
sat alone upon the highly ornamental Louis Quinze sofa.
The newcomer was good looking, in an overgrown, florid, spectacular
fashion. Belinda took note of her thick yellow hair, her big blue eyes,
her statuesque proportions. She noted, too, that the yellow hair was
dressed picturesquely but untidily, that the big eyes rolled from side
to side self-consciously, that the statuesque figure was incased in a
too tightly laced corset.
Miss Adelina Wilson did not look promising, but her family was--so Miss
Ryder had been credibly informed--an ornament to Cayuga County, and Mr.
Wilson, père, who had called to make arrangements for his daughter's
schooling, had seemed a gentlemanly, mild, slightly harassed man, of a
type essentially American--a shrewd, successful business man,
embarrassed by the responsibility of a family he could support but could
not understand.
"She's my only daughter, and her mother is gone," he explained to Miss
Ryder, leaving her to vague speculation concerning the manner of Mrs.
Wilson's departure.
"The boys are all right. I can fix them, but Addie's different, and I
guess she needs a good school and some sensible women to look after her.
She's a good girl, but she has some silly notions."
Looking at Addie, Belinda accepted the theory of the silly notions, but
wondered just what those notions might be. She would have to find out,
sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner; so she rose, set her
diplomatic lance at rest, and charged the young woman.
"I'm afraid you'll feel a trifle lonely at first," she said with her
most friendly smile.
The new girl made room for the Youngest Teacher upon the sofa beside
her, and executed a smile of her own--a mechanical, studied, carefully
radiant smile that left Belinda gasping.
"Oh, no; I'm never lonely. I'm used to being apart," said Adelina in
resigned and impressive tones.
Belinda met the shock with admirable calm.
"Yes, you have no sisters," she said; "brothers are nice, but they're
different."
Adelina sighed.
"It isn't my being an only daughter that makes the difference," she
explained. "It's my genius, my ambition. Nobody understands and can
really sympathise with me, so I've worked on alone."
The "alone" was tolled sadly and accompanied by a slow, sweet, die-away
smile that worked automatically.
Belinda's brain fumbled for a clew to the girl's words and affectation,
and she looked closely for any earmarks of genius that might clear up
the situation.
Suddenly Adelina clasped her hands around her crossed knees, struck a
photographic pose, and languishingly turned her great eyes full upon
Belinda.
"Do you think I look like Langtry?" she asked. "Lots of people have
noticed the resemblance. Of course, I don't know, but I can't help
believing what people tell me. There's a young gentleman who crossed on
the same steamer with Langtry, and he says I'm the very image of
her--only more spiritual."
The Youngest Teacher had found her clew. She was sitting beside an
embryonic tragedy queen, a histrionic genius in the rough.
"Well, you're near Langtry's size," she admitted, "and the shape of your
face is something like hers."
Adelina relaxed her pose.
"Yes, I guess it's so. At first I wasn't very well suited, I'd hoped I'd
be more like Bernhardt. I just adore the thin, mysterious, snaky kind,
don't you? I think those serpentine, willowy, tigerish, squirmy
actresses are perfectly splendid. They're so fascinating, and they can
wear such lovely, queer clothes. I wouldn't have minded being like Mrs.
Pat Campbell, either. There's something awfully taking about that
hollow-chested, loppy sort of woman. But you just can't choose what
you'll look like. I got long enough for anything, but then I just began
to spread out and get fat, and there wasn't any stopping it, so I had
to give up any idea of being the willowy kind. I was awfully
disappointed for a while, and I hardly ate anything for months, trying
to stay thin, but it didn't make a bit of difference. I kept right on
getting fat just the same. After all, it isn't shape that counts so much
if you've got genius. Mary Anderson's pictures look awfully healthy, and
I know lots of folks think Langtry's finer than Bernhardt. Which do you
like best?"
Belinda diplomatically evaded the question. "You hope to go on the
stage?" she asked.
Adelina lapsed into tragedy. "I'd die if I couldn't. I was just born for
the stage. Papa and the boys don't seem to understand. They think I'm
silly, stage-struck, like girls who go on in the chorus and are Amazons
and things. I can't make them see that I'm going to be a star, and that
being a great actress is an entirely different thing from being an
Amazon. Folks up home are all so dreadfully narrow. A genius hardly ever
gets sympathy in her own home, though. I've read lots of lives that
showed that--but you can't keep real genius down."
The retiring bell rang.
Belinda rose with alacrity.
In her own room, with the door closed behind her, she gave way to
unseemly mirth. Then she sallied forth to tell Miss Barnes of the young
Rachel within their gates; but there was a troubled look from between
her twinkling eyes.
"She's silly enough to do something foolish," she thought. "I hope she's
_too_ silly to do it."
The stage-struck Adelina's hopes and ambitions were known throughout the
length and breadth of the school within twenty-four hours. Some of the
girls thought her ridiculous. Some of the romantic set sympathised with
her aims. All found her a source of considerable entertainment and
treated her with good-natured tolerance.
Miss Ryder and the teachers shook their heads disapprovingly, but had no
real cause for complaint.
The Stage-struck One didn't shine in her classes, but the same criticism
might have been made concerning a large assortment of girls who made no
pretensions to dramatic talent.
Adelina obeyed the rules, attended recitations, was respectful to her
teachers and amiable toward her schoolmates. If she spent her recreation
hours in memorising poetry and drama, or spouting scenes from her
favourite plays, the proceedings could hardly be labelled misdemeanors.
To be sure, she broke considerable bedroom crockery in the course of
strenuous scenes, and in one of her famous death falls she dislodged
plaster on the ceiling of the room below, but she cheerfully provided
new crockery and paid for ceiling repairs, so Miss Ryder's censure,
though earnest and emphatic, was not over-severe.
Belinda's English literature class became popular to an unusual degree,
and its sessions were diverting rather than academic. In this class only
did Adelina take a fervid interest. The midwinter semester was being
devoted to consideration of Elizabethan drama, and in the Shakespearian
readings, recitations and discussions which were a feature of the study
the Cayuga County genius played a star rôle. The other girls might
search out and memorise the shortest possible quotations--Adelina
absorbed whole scenes, entire acts, and ranted through them with fine
frenzy, until stopped in full career by the teacher's stern command.
With folded arms and frowning brow she rendered Hamlet's soliloquy. She
gave a version of Ophelia that proved beyond question that luckless
heroine's fitness for a padded cell. She frisked through Rosalind's
coquetries like a gamesome calf, and kept Lady Macbeth's vigils with
groans and sighs and shuddering horrors.
Only by constantly snuffing her out could the Youngest Teacher maintain
anything like order in the class; and, as it was, the enjoyment of
Adelina's classmates often verged upon hysteria. As for the Gifted One's
own honest pride and satisfaction in her prowess, words cannot do
justice to it, and it would have been pathetic had it not been so
amusing.
But it was in her own room that Adelina was at her best. There she
rendered with wild intensity scenes from a score of plays, and there
the girls resorted during their leisure hours, in full certainty of
prodigal entertainment.
In one of the trunks brought from home Langtry's counterpart had a
choice assortment of costumes, constructed chiefly from cheesecloth and
cotton flannel, but reënforced by tinsel paper, beads, swan's-down and
other essentials for regal rôles. There were artificial flowers, too,
among the supplies, and a make-up box--jealously guarded from the notice
of a faculty prone to narrow prejudices--was used by the tragédienne
with wonderful and fearful results.
Adelina did not--intentionally--lean toward comedy. Tragedy was her
sphere. She loved to shiver, and shudder, and groan, and shriek, and
swoon, and die violent deaths; and although she admitted, as all true
artists must, the claims of Shakespeare, she, in her secret soul,
considered Sardou the immortal William's superior.
An indiscriminate course of theatre-going during visits to New York with
an indulgent and unobservant father had introduced her to a class of
modern dramas that are, to put it mildly, not meant for babes--though
the parents of New York babes seem blandly indifferent to the
unfitness--and the chances are that had the teachers been thoroughly
posted as to her repertoire it would have been suddenly and forcibly
abridged; but she reserved Shakespearian rôles for the edification of
the faculty.
Miss Emmeline passing through the hall one day was much perturbed by
hearing from behind a closed door emphatic iteration of "Out, damned
spot," and even Miss Lucilla's firm assurance that the lines were
Shakespeare's could not wholly reconcile the younger principal to such
language.
Heavy sobbing, maniacal laughter, and cries of "My child, my child!" or
"Spare him! I will tell all," ceased to attract the slightest attention
upon the third floor.
Beyond restricting performances to recreation hours, insisting that they
should not interfere with regular study, and supervising strictly the
choice of real plays which Adelina and her fellow-pupils were allowed to
attend, the powers that be did not take the dramatic mania seriously nor
attempt to suppress it. So many fads come and go during a
boarding-school year, perishing usually of their own momentum.
"The girls will soon tire of it," said Miss Ryder, very sensibly, "and
Adelina will be through with the nonsense the more quickly for being
allowed to work it off."
Incidentally she wrote to Mr. Wilson, père, asking for his opinion. He
replied in a typewritten, businesslike note that he, too, believed the
stage fever would soon run its course; and there, so far as official
action was concerned, the matter dropped.
Gradually the girls ceased to find sport in the dramatic exhibitions
and fell away, but Adelina pursued her course valiantly and
unflaggingly.
Occasionally Belinda labored with her honestly, trying to insert into
her brain some rational and practical ideas concerning stage life,
dramatic art and vaulting ambition; but her efforts were of no avail,
and she, too, fell into an attitude of tolerant amusement, quite free
from alarm.
It was during the last week of March that the unexpected happened. One
Tuesday morning Adelina failed to appear at chapel. The teacher sent to
investigate reported her room in order but without occupant. A maid was
sent to look through the house for the recreant, but came back without
her.
Then Belinda, with a flash of intuition, ran up to the vacant room.
The bed had not been slept in. The trunks were there, but the girl's
dress-suit case, coat, hat, furs and best street frock were missing.
Pinned to the pincushion Belinda found a note, written in Adelina's
spidery hand. It ran:
"I am going away to carve out a career for myself. It will
be useless to try to find me. I have some money, and, if
necessary, I will pawn my jewels; but I will soon be making
plenty of money, and as soon as I am famous I will come
back to see you all.
"Tell my father not to worry. I will be all right and he
won't miss me, and I can't let him keep me from my Art any
longer. If he is willing to let me study for the stage he
can advertise in the papers."
Even in the midst of her annoyance and her apprehension the Youngest
Teacher could not smother a chuckle over the melodramatic tone of the
letter, the reference to the jewels--consisting of three rings, a
breastpin and a watch--the serene egotism and confidence in imminent
fame and fortune.
But there was a serious side to the complication. There was no telling
into what hands the stage-struck girl had fallen, nor where she might
have been persuaded to take refuge. It would probably be an easy matter
to find her with the aid of detectives, even if she had confided her
plans to no one in the school; but meanwhile she might have an
unpleasant experience.
So Belinda's face was grave as she ran down to Miss Ryder's study with
the letter, and it was still grave as she went out, a little later, to
send a telegram to Mr. Wilson, and visit the office of a well-known
detective agency. In the interval everyone in the house had been
questioned and professed complete ignorance.
The detective was smilingly optimistic--even scornful. The thing was too
easy. But when Mr. Wilson, torn 'twixt distress and vexation, arrived
that evening the self-confident sleuth had made no progress. Adelina had
apparently vanished off the face of the earth. The very simplicity of
her disappearance was baffling.
That she would, sooner or later, apply to some theatrical manager or
agency, or interview some teacher of dramatic art, was a foregone
conclusion, and on the second day after her departure it was found that
she had tried to obtain interviews with several managers, and had had a
talk with one, who good-naturedly told what had taken place at the
interview.
"Handsome young idiot," he said to the detective. "That's why they let
her in; but she hasn't a gleam of intelligence concealed about her, and
it would take her a lifetime to get rid of her crazy ideas and
mannerisms, even if there were any hope of her amounting to anything
after she did get rid of them. Her idea of stage life is a regular pipe
dream, and she'd never be willing to begin at the bottom. She wouldn't
stand the hard work twenty-four hours. She had sort of an idea that she
was a howling beauty with a genius that didn't need any training, and
that if she could only get to see me I'd throw a fit over her and start
her out on the road at five hundred dollars a week to star in 'Camille,'
or something of that kind. She made me tired. I've seen thousands of the
same kind, but I talked to her like a Dutch uncle; told her she wasn't
so much as a beauty, and that she had a voice like a hurdy-gurdy, and
that all her ideas about acting were crazy. Kind of rough, of course,
but wholesome, that sort of straight talk is. I told her genius in the
stage line was twins with slaving night and day; that they looked so
much alike you couldn't tell them apart, and that the kind of genius she
was ranting about was all hot air. I said if she could take some lessons
and learn to sing and dance a little she might go on in the chorus, but
that I'd advise charwork ahead of that, and that I didn't see the
faintest illusive twinkle of a star about her. She cried and looked
sick, but she seemed to be discouraged and open to conviction. So then I
told her the best thing she could do was to go home to her folks and
marry some decent fellow and look at the stage across the
footlights--not too much of that, either. Yet the Gerry Society doesn't
think much of us managers, and nobody'd suspect me of heading rescue
brigades. I've got a daughter of my own, and she isn't on the stage--not
by a blamed sight."
All this was interesting, but the clew began and ended at the manager's
office door, and no further trace of Adelina was found during the day.
About nine o'clock that evening Maria, the parlour maid at the school,
knocked at Belinda's door in a fine state of excitement.
"If you please, Miss Carewe, Miss Wilson's come back. I let her in and
she's gone up to her room, and Miss Ryder ain't here, and she looks fit
to drop, and her face is that swollen from crying, and----"
Belinda cut the monologue short and hurried down to the front room on
the third floor.
It was dark, but by the gleam from the street lamps the teacher made out
a bulky form on the bed, and the sound of stifled sobbing came to her
ears.
She went over and knelt by the bed.
"I'm glad you've come back, dear," she said in a cheerful,
matter-of-fact voice. "Your father will be so relieved, and it isn't
quite right for a girl to be alone in a big city, you know."
The figure on the bed gave a convulsive flop and the sobbing redoubled.
"Don't cry any more. It will make you ill. Nothing very bad has
happened, has it?"
Belinda was still prosaically cheerful.
"Oh, it was horrid," wailed the youthful tragédienne with more
spontaneous feeling than she had ever put into Ophelia's ravings or
Juliet's anguish. "They wouldn't take me in at boarding-houses, and when
I did find a place it was so smelly, and they had corned beef for
dinner, and I loathe corned beef, and the people were so queer, and the
sheets weren't clean, and the bed had lumps; and I thought when Mr.
Frohman saw me and heard me give the sleep-walking scene he'd be glad to
educate me for the stage like they do in books, but he wouldn't even see
me. Hardly anybody would see me, and when one manager did he told me I
hadn't any talent, and that I wasn't even fit for an Amazon unless I
could learn to dance, and that I'd better do charwork, and he said such
dreadful things about the stage and the work; and then I went back to
the boarding-house, and it smelled worse than ever, and one of the men
spoke to me in the hall, and--Oh, dear. Oh, d-e-a-r!"
She ran out of breath for anything save wailing, and Belinda patted her
on the back encouragingly without speaking.
"And then I felt so sick, and I was afraid to stay alone all night, and
I just left my bag and slipped out--and I really do feel dreadfully
sick, Miss Carewe. I guess it's a judgment. It'd be a good thing if I'd
die. I'm not any good and I can't be a star, and papa and the boys'll
never forgive me."
"Nonsense," laughed Belinda. "It wasn't nice of you, but fathers are not
so unforgiving as all that, and if you'll just give up raving about the
stage----"
"I never want to hear of acting again."
"Well, I don't think your father will be very angry if he hears that."
"But suppose I die?"
Belinda lighted the gas. In the light the girl's cheeks showed scarlet,
and when the Youngest Teacher felt Adelina's hands and face she found
them burning with fever.
"Small danger of your dying within fifty years, child, but you are
tired and nervous. I'll have the doctor come in and see you."
She put the returned wanderer to bed and telephoned for the doctor, but
while she waited for him there was a ring at the bell and she heard Mr.
Wilson's voice in the hall.
He was standing in the doorway, uncertainly twirling his hat in nervous
hands, and looking even more harassed than usual, when Belinda went down
to him.
"I don't suppose----" he began.
"She's here," interrupted Belinda.
The father's face flushed swiftly.
"And she's all right, only I'm afraid she's going to be ill from the
excitement. She's very much ashamed and very much disillusioned, Mr.
Wilson. I think she's had her lesson, and I don't think I'd scold much
if----"
There was an odd moisture on the glasses which Mr. Wilson removed from
his nose and wiped with scrupulous care; and he cleared his voice
several times before he spoke.
"I won't scold, Miss Carewe. I guess I'm a good deal to blame. She
didn't have any mother, and I was pretty busy, and nobody paid much
attention to what she was doing and reading and thinking. I just gave
her money and thought I'd done all that was necessary; but I expect the
carpet business could have got along without me occasionally, and I
could have known my girl a little better."
They climbed the stairs together, but Belinda left him at his daughter's
door.
When she went up, later, with the doctor Mr. Wilson looked more at ease
in the world than usual, and Adelina's face was cheerful, though
grotesquely swollen from much crying.
"Papa and I are going to Europe for the summer, Miss Carewe," she called
out excitedly. Then, as she saw the doctor, her dramatic habit
reasserted itself, and she fell into one of her most cherished
death-scene poses, looking as limp and forlorn as circumstances and a
lack of rehearsal would permit.
With melancholy languor she held out her hand to the doctor. He took it,
felt her pulse, looked her over quickly and keenly.
"Measles," he said crisply. "You'd better look out for the other girls,
Miss Carewe."
Adelina sank back in her pillows with a sigh of profound despair.
"I might have known I wouldn't have anything romantic," she said with
gloomy resignation.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Some of the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs and so they correspond to the text, thus the page number of
the illustration might no longer matches the page number in the List of
Illustrations.
Repeated chapter titles have been deleted.
The first letter of each chapter had a drop cap, which is not
reproduced here.
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_)
On page 20, "Belinda's enthusiasm are" was replaced with "Belinda's
enthusiasm is".
On page 21, the quotation mark after "what shall I do?" was deleted.
On page 20, a quotation mark was added after "her next engagement." and
another quotation mark was added before "There's the evening study
bell".
On page 33, a quotation mark was added after "is simply elegant,".
On page 33, the comma after "earls are English" was replaced with a
period.
On page 34, a quotation mark was added after "she's positively mushy."
On page 37, the double quotation mark after "Mr. Satterly" was replaced
with a single quotation mark.
On page 50, a quotation mark was added after "beast of a Frenchman.".
On page 56, a quotation mark was added after "if----if I----".
On page 63, "preparatoy" was replaced with "preparatory".
On page 76, "smpathy" was replaced with "sympathy".
On page 89, a quotation mark was added before "Yes; it's a long time".
On page 111, "your poor child" was replaced with "you poor child", and
the quotation mark was deleted before "With a little sob".
On page 122, "some one" was replaced with "someone".
On page 164, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
End of Project Gutenberg's Concerning Belinda, by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd