THE PRINCESS AND THE LILY MAID
As the children arrived they were shown at once into the great
dining-room, where at one end a stage had been erected and a curtain
hung, from behind which came the sounds of hammering and subdued
directions, given in Launcelot's voice.
"Amelia Morrison and Nannie May are in it," explained Tommy who had
yearned for an important part, but Judy had declared against him.
"You shouldn't have been asked at all," she said, witheringly, "if it
hadn't been that Anne begged that you might. You acted dreadfully the
other day. Anne wouldn't have been punished if you had spoken right
out, Tommy, and had said that it was your fault."
"Aw--yes, she would, too," stammered Tommy.
"I never could stand a coward," was Judy's fling, and at that Tommy
subsided.
Behind the scenes Anne, in an entrancing trailing gown of pale blue
with pearls wound in her long fair braids was trying to get Jimmie
Jones to shut his eyes without opening his mouth.
"But I always sleep with my mouth open," persisted Jimmie, who, in
spite of his yellow curls and his page's costume of green satire was at
heart just plain boy.
"Well, you shouldn't," scolded Anne, as she tripped over her train.
"You will simply spoil the picture. Just see how nice Judy and Amelia
and Nannie look."
On the couch lay Judy all in soft, shining, satiny white, her dark hair
spreading over the pillow, and one hand under her cheek; and at each
end, Nannie and Amelia, in rose color and in violet, blissfully happy,
and, though their eyes were closed, wide awake to the charms of the
situation.
"Now--ready," whispered Anne, as Dr. Grennell's fine voice rolled out
the last lines of the "Prologue." "Now--" and the curtain went up on
"The Sleeping Princess."
Jimmie's mouth flew open and Amelia smiled, but little cared the gaping
audience for such trifles. Breathless they stared as one scene
followed another. Launcelot was a Prince that set all the little
girls' hearts a-flutter, as he knelt beside the couch, with a great
bunch of dewy roses in his arms, which, in the next picture, lay all
scattered over Judy, when she waked and gazed at him dreamily. Jimmie
came out strongly at this point, with a prodigious yawn that almost
broke him in two, and was so expressive of great weariness that little
Bobbie Green, his bosom friend, was carried away by the realism of it,
and asked in awe, "Did he really sleep a hundred years?" and was not
quite brought back to earth by Tommy Tolliver's exclamation, "Why you
saw him awake this morning, Bobbie, didn't you?"
The Prince and the Princess went away together at last; she with a long
velvet cloak covering the whiteness of her gown, and a hat with white
plumes, and he with a sword at his side, that made Tommy Tolliver turn
green with envy.
Jimmie Jones came down and sat by Bobbie Green during the intermission,
in which lemonade was passed and the pictures discussed.
Bobbie gazed upon him as one who has come from a strange country.
"Say, say," he whispered eagerly, "how could you sleep when we was
makin' all that noise, Jimmie--clappin'?"
Jimmie took a long blissful gulp of lemonade, and then fished out the
strawberry from the bottom of the glass. "Ho," he said, "that wasn't
nothin'. It wasn't really me that was asleep, it was just my eyes,"
and Bobbie, though still hazy, accepted the explanation and fished for
his strawberry in imitation of his distinguished friend and actor,
Jimmie Jones!
Most of the children had read parts of "Elaine" at school, and they
"Oh-ed" and "Ah-ed" as the fair-haired heroine appeared.
Anne was very sweet, very appealing, as she went through the sad little
scenes, and when at last she sat at the window. Dr. Grennell did not
read Elaine's song, but Anne sang it, to Judy's accompaniment, played
softly behind the scenes.
"Sweet is true love, tho' given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I."
And all the little girls wept into their handkerchiefs, while the boys
sniffed audibly.
"Bless their hearts," said Mrs. Batcheller to Miss Mary, "it's too bad
to have them cry."
But the Judge, who was a keen observer of human nature, shook his head.
"A little sadness now and then won't hurt them," he said. "It is the
shadows that make us appreciate the sunshine, you know."
There was a long wait before the curtain was raised on the last picture
in the poem: "The dead steer'd by the dumb."
The barge had been a problem, until Judy solved it by placing an
ironing-board across two chairs, and draping the whole into the
semblance of a boat-like bier.
Perkins, under protest, was pressed into service as the dumb boatman,
and with a long beard of white cotton, and a cloak and hood of funereal
black, he was a picturesque and pessimistic figure.
"It's so wobbly," said Anne, powdered with corn-starch to an
interesting paleness and draped all in white. "It's so wobbly, Judy,"
and she shrieked softly, as she laid herself flat on the ironing-board.
"Steady," advised Launcelot, as he shifted her carefully to the center,
"now for the lily and the letter, Judy," and he threw over the
prostrate Anne a yellow silk shawl of Judy's which was to serve as
cloth of gold.
"Now, Perkins," and Perkins climbed to the high stool, which had been
set in an armchair and formed the bow of the boat.
"If I falls, I falls," said Perkins, classically, "and my blood be on
your head, sir," and while Judy writhed in agonies of laughter,
Launcelot turned off the lights and adjusted the great lantern, which
was to throw on the barge the effect of moonlight, while all else was
to be in shadow.
The illusion from the front was perfect. Even the green piano cover
with its dots of white cotton foamed up around the barge like real
waves.
"How lovely she is," whispered all the children, as Anne lay there so
still and quiet, with her fair hair streaming over the blackness of the
bier.
"I don't like it. I don't like it," whimpered Bobbie Green, whose
imagination was a thing to be reckoned with. "I don't like it. Anne,
oh, Anne--"
And Anne's tender heart could not withstand that cry of fear.
"I'm all right, darling," she said, right out, and then the tension was
broken, and all the children laughed, with relief, as Elaine sat up
smiling and waving her hand to them.
"Bobbie Shafto" came next and was a dig at Tommy.
Judy's great marine picture made the background, and on the shore
little Mary Morrison bade little Jimmie Jones "Good-bye" with
heartrending sobs. But this Bobbie Shafto never went to sea. As
picture followed picture, he was shown pulling at a rowing machine,
sailing toy ships in a tub, fishing in a pail, and digging for treasure
in a tiny sand pile--and after each funny scene, the curtain would
drop, and tiny Mary Morrison would come to the front and wail:
"_Tommy_ Shafto's gone to sea,
Silver buckles on his knee,
He'll come back and marry me,
Pretty _Tommy_ Shafto!"
It brought down the house, but Tommy got very red and murmured in
Bobbie's ear that "They might think it was funny, but _he_ didn't,"
which Bobbie Green did not understand in the least.
"That's all," and Launcelot gave a sigh of relief, as Mary and Jimmie
made their bows amid uproarious applause. He had been stage manager as
well as actor, and he was tired.
"No, no," whispered Judy, as she came on the stage dressed as a
fishermaid, and dragging a great net behind her. "No, no. Dr.
Grennell is going to read 'Break, break, break.' I sha'n't need any
change of scene. Just leave the big picture, and put this net and the
shells around, and smooth out that sand to look like the beach."
She was making a rock out of two boxes covered with a gray mackintosh
as she spoke. "Now, if you could just whistle like the wind," she
said. "Do you think you could, Launcelot?"
"I'll try," and he did whistle, so effectively, that he did not get his
breath for five minutes.
Judy had read the poem one day when she was helping Anne to plan the
pictures, and it had, like all songs of the sea, sung itself into her
heart.
Again the big picture with its stretch of sea made the background, and
Judy sat on the rock looking at it. The plaid lining of her mackintosh
showed, and the wind sounded wheezy, but the pathos in Judy's face, the
tragedy in her eyes as the third verse was read:
"And the stately ships go on,
To the haven under the hill,
But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"
made the Judge wipe his eyes, and Mrs. Batcheller say hurriedly, "She
should not have done it. She should not."
And behind the dropped curtain Judy was saying to Dr. Grennell, "I want
to go back to the sea. I hate the country. I want to go back to the
wind and waves. I can't stand it here."
But the doctor put his hand on her shoulder and looked down into her
troubled face with grave eyes.
"Not now," he said, quietly, "not while your grandfather needs you,
Judy."
Judy drew a long breath, then she put out her hand as if to make him a
promise.
"No, not while grandfather needs me," she said, "not while he needs me,
Doctor."