SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD
The orchestra burst into a low hum of sweet sounds. Agnes had heard them
tuning up under the stage for some time; but back in the little hall
where the amateur performers were gathered in readiness for their cues,
she had not realized that the orchestra members had taken their places.
Having watched the rehearsals so closely since they began, she could now
imagine the tall director with his baton, beating time for the opening
bars.
The overture swelled into the grand march, and then went on, giving a
taste of the marches, dances, and singing numbers, finally with a crash
of sound, announcing the moment when the curtain, at the real
performance, would go up.
"Now!" hissed the stage manager, beckoning on the first chorus.
Innocent Delight was in it. Innocent Delight went up the steps and into
the wings with the others, as in a dream. As she had not rehearsed with
the chorus before, she made a little mistake in her position in the
line; and she failed to keep quite good time in the dancing step.
"Oh, dear me!" gasped Carrie Poole. "Now you're going to spoil it all,
Aggie Kenway! You'll be worse than Trix, I suppose!"
Agnes merely smiled at her. Nothing could disturb her poise just then.
_She was going to act!_
They saw the boys across the stage, ready, too, to enter--some of them
grinning and foolish looking; others very serious. Neale smiled at Agnes
and waved his hand encouragingly. Her confident pose delighted him.
Now they were on! It was easy, after all, to keep step with the music.
She knew the words of the opening song perfectly. Agnes had a clear, if
light contralto voice; the alto part was easy for her to sing.
With a vim that seemed not to have been in the chorus before, the number
came to a finish. The girls and boys fell back. Innocent Delight was in
the centre of the stage, ready to welcome the Carnation Countess.
Agnes was slow in speaking; her words seemed to drag a bit. Madam Shaw
was waiting impatiently to come on. But the stage manager whispered
shrilly:
"Quite right, my dear! quite right! The Countess is supposed to come on
in a sedan chair, and you must give her time."
The professionals noted the girl's familiarity with the stage
instructions; always, wherever the manager had explained in the earlier
rehearsals the reason for some stage change, Innocent Delight had the
matter pat. The action of the play was not retarded in any particular
for the new girl. And her ability in handling the character of the
blithe, joyous, light-hearted girl was most natural.
Somehow, this chief amateur part going so well, pulled the others up to
the mark. But there was still much to be wished for in the case of
Cheerful Grigg, the twins, Sunbeam and Moonbeam, and Lily White.
"I'd like to get hold of some of those other girls that Mr. Marks
considers it his duty to punish," growled the professor. "What's all
this foolishness about, anyway? Doesn't he want the play to be a
success?"
He said this to Miss Lederer, the principal's assistant. She shook her
head, sadly.
"I am sorry that you can't have them, Professor," she said. "But of
course, this is only temporary for Agnes."
"What's that?" he demanded angrily.
"Why, she cannot play Innocent Delight for you," the teacher said
firmly. "I am not sure that Mr. Marks will like it as it is."
"He's _got_ to like it!" interrupted the professor. "I've just got to
have the girl--there are no two ways about it. I tell you, without her
the schools might as well give up trying to put on the play. That other
girl, who was wished on me, is not fitted for the part at all."
"But you have given it to her."
"And I can take it away; you watch me!" snapped the director. "And I am
going to have this Agnes, as you call her, Marks or no Marks!"
"Is that a pun?" the teacher asked archly. "For that is why Agnes Kenway
cannot act in the play. Bad marks."
"What's her heinous crime?" demanded the professor.
"Stealing," said the assistant principal, with twinkling eyes.
"Stealing! What did she steal?"
"Strawberries."
"My goodness! I'll pay for them," rejoined the director, quickly.
"I am afraid that will not satisfy Mr. Marks."
"What will satisfy him, then?" demanded the professor. "For I am
determined to have that girl play Innocent Delight for me, or else I
will not put on the play. I would rather shoulder the expense thus far
incurred--all of it--than to go on with a lot of numskulls such as seem
to have been selected for many of these important roles. For pity's sake
let me have at least one girl who shows talent."
Meanwhile Madam Shaw, the prima donna, came to Agnes after it was all
over and put her arms tight around the young girl's shoulders.
"Who are you, my dear?" she asked, looking kindly down upon Agnes'
blushing face.
"Agnes Kenway, ma'am."
"Oh! one of the Corner House girls!" cried the lady. "I have heard of
you sisters. Three of you were in the play from the first. And why not
you, before?"
"Oh!" fluttered Agnes, now waking up from the beautiful dream in which
she had lived from two o'clock till five. "I am not in it--really. I
cannot play the part in the opera house."
"Why not, pray?" demanded Madam Shaw in some surprise.
"Because I have broken some rules and am being punished," admitted
Agnes.
Madam Shaw hid a smile quickly. "Punished at home?" she asked gravely.
"Oh, no! There is nobody to punish us at home."
"No?"
"No. We have no mother or father. There is only Ruth, and we none of us
want to displease Ruth. It wouldn't be fair."
"Who is Ruth?"
"The oldest," said Agnes. "She is in the play. But she hasn't a very
important part. I think she might have been given a better one!"
"But _you_? Who is punishing you? Your teacher?"
"Mr. Marks."
"No? Not really?"
"Yes. The basket ball team and some other girls can only look on--we
can't act. He said so. And--and we deserve it," stammered Agnes.
"Oh, indeed! But does the poor Carnation Countess deserve it?" demanded
Madam Shaw, with asperity. "I wonder what Mr. Marks can be thinking of?"
However, everybody seemed to feel happier and less discouraged about the
play when this rehearsal was over; and Agnes went home in a seventh
heaven of delight.
"I don't care so much now if I never have a chance again," she said,
over and over again. "I've _shown_ them that I can act."
But Ruth began to be anxious. She said to Mrs. MacCall that evening:
"Suppose, when Agnes gets older, she should determine to be a player?
Wouldn't it be _awful_?"
The old Scotch woman bit off her thread reflectively. "Tut, tut!" she
said, at last. "That's borrowing trouble, my dear. And you're a bit
old-fashioned, Ruthie Kenway. Perhaps being an actress isn't so awful a
thing as we used to think. 'Tis at least a way of earning one's living;
and it seems now that all girls must work."
"Didn't they work in your day, Mrs. MacCall?" asked Ruth, slyly.
"Not to be called so," was the prompt reply. "Those that had to go into
mills and factories were looked down upon a wee bit, I am afraid. Others
of us only learned to scrub and cook and sew and stand a man's tantrums
for our living. It was considered more respectable to marry a bad man
than to work for an honest wage."
Saturday Agnes was not called upon at all. She heard that Trix was at
home again; but there were no rehearsals of the speaking parts of _The
Carnation Countess_. Only the dances and ensembles of the choruses were
tried out in the afternoon.
The girls heard nothing further regarding the re-distribution of the
parts--if there were to be such changes made. They only understood that
the play would be given, in spite of the director's recent despairing
words.
And it was known, too, that the following rehearsals would be given on
the stage of the opera house itself. The scenery was ready, and on
Saturday morning of the next week the first costume rehearsal would be
undertaken.
Dot and her little friends were quite over-wrought about their bee
dresses. They had learned to dance and "drone" in unison; now they were
all to be turned into fat brown bees, with yellow heads and stripes on
their papier-mache bodies, and transparent wings.
Tess, as Swiftwing, the chief hummingbird, was a brilliant sight indeed.
Only one thing marred Tess Kenway's complete happiness. It was Miss
Pepperill's illness.
For the unfortunate teacher was very ill at her boarding house. Her head
had been hurt when the automobile knocked her down. And while her broken
bones might mend well, Dr. Forsyth was much troubled regarding the
patient.
The Corner House girls heard that Miss Pepperill was quite out of her
head. She babbled about things that she never would have spoken of in
her right mind. And while she had so vigorously refused to be taken to
the Women's and Children's Hospital when she was hurt, she talked about
Mrs. Eland, the matron, a good deal of the time.
"I'm going to see my Mrs. Eland and tell her that Miss Pepperill asks
for her and if she has found her sister," Tess announced, after a long
conference with the teacher's landlady, who was a kindly, if not very
wise maiden lady.
"I see no harm in your telling Mrs. Eland," Ruth agreed. "Perhaps Mrs.
Eland would go to see her, if it would do the poor thing any good."
"Why do you say 'poor thing' about Miss Pepperill, Ruthie?" demanded
Dot, the inquisitive. "Has she lost all her money?"
"Goodness me! no, child," replied the oldest Corner House girl; nor did
she explain why she had said "poor thing" in referring to the sick
teacher. But everybody was saying the same; they did not expect her to
live.
The substitute teacher who took Miss Pepperill's place in school had
possibly been warned against Sammy Pinkney; for that embryo pirate
found, at the end of the first day of such substitution, that he was no
better off than he had been under Miss Pepperill's regime.
Tess was very serious these days. She was troubled about the teacher who
was ill (for it was the child's nature to love whether she was loved in
return or no), her lessons had to be kept up to the mark, and, in
addition, there was her part as Swiftwing.
She knew her steps and her songs and her speeches, perfectly. But upon
the Saturday morning when the dances were rehearsed, Tess found that
there was more to the part than she had at first supposed.
There was to be a tableau in which--at the back of the stage--Swiftwing
in glistening raiment, was the central figure. A light scaffolding was
built behind a gaudy lace "drop" and to the steps of this scaffolding,
from the wings on either side of the stage, the birds and butterflies
flew in their brilliant costumes to group themselves back of the gauze
of the painted drop.
Tess was a bit terrified when she was first taken into the flies, for
Swiftwing first of all was to come floating down from above to hover
over and finally to rest upon a great carnation.
Of course, Tess saw that she was to stand quite securely upon the very
top step of the scaffolding. A strong wire was attached to her belt at
the back so that she could not possibly fall.
Below, and on either side of Tess, was a smaller girl, each costumed as
a butterfly. These were tossed up to their stations by the strong arms
of stage-hands. They could not be held by wires as Tess was, for their
wings were made to vibrate slowly all through the scene.
On lower steps others of the brilliantly dressed children--all
butterflies and winged insects--were grouped. From the front the picture
thus formed was a very beautiful one indeed; but the children had to go
over and over the scene to learn to do their part skillfully and to
secure the right effect from the front.
"Aren't you scared up there, little girl?" one of the women playing in
the piece asked Tess.
"No-o," said the Corner House girl, slowly. "I'm not scared. But I shall
be glad each time when the tableau is over. You see, these other little
girls have no belt and wire to hold them, as I have."
"But you are so much higher than the others!"
"No, ma'am. It only looks so. It's what the stage man said was an
optical delusion," Tess replied, meaning "illusion." "I can touch those
other girls on either side of me--yes, ma'am."
And she did touch them. Each time that she went through the scene, and
the butterflies' wings vibrated as they bent forward, Tess' hands, which
were out of sight of the audience, clutched at the other girls' sashes.
Tess was a sturdy girl for her age. Her hands at the waists of the two
butterflies steadied them as they posed on this day for the final
rehearsal of the difficult tableau.
"That's it!" called out the manager. "Now! Hold it! Lights!"
The glare of the spotlight shot down upon the grouped children from
above the proscenium arch.
"Steady!" shouted the stage manager again, for the whole group behind
the gauze drop seemed to be wavering.
"Hold that pose!" repeated the man, commandingly.
But it was not the children who moved. There was the creaking sound of
parting timbers. Somebody from the back shouted a warning--but too late.
"Down! All of you down to the stage!"
Those on the lower steps of the scaffolding jumped. The stage hands ran
in to catch the others; but the higher little girls could not leap
without risking both life and limb!
A pandemonium of warning cries and shrieks of alarm followed. The
scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward through the drop which
retarded it at first, but finally tearing the drop from its fastenings
in the flies.
Swiftwing, the hummingbird, did not add her little voice to the general
uproar. She was safely held by the wire cable hooked to her belt at the
back.
But the butterflies were helpless. The men who tried to seize them from
the rear could not do so at first because the scaffolding structure fell
out upon the stage.
The Corner House girl, frightened as she was, miraculously preserved her
presence of mind. As she had already done before during the rehearsals,
she seized the sashes of her two smaller schoolmates at the first alarm.
Their feet slipped from the foothold, but Tess held them.
[Illustration: The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
through the drop. Page 238]
Neale had taught Tess, and even Dot, how to use their strength to better
advantage than most little girls. Tess was sure of her own safety in
this emergency, and she allowed her body to bend forward almost double,
as the two frightened little butterflies slipped from the falling
scaffolding.
For a dreadful moment or two, their entire weight hung from Tess
Kenway's clutching hands. Her shoulders felt as though they were being
dislocated; but she gritted her teeth and held on.
And then two of the men caught the little, fluttering butterflies by
their ankles.
"Let 'em come!" yelled one of the men.
Tess loosed her grasp as the scaffolding crashed to the stage. The last
to be lowered, Swiftwing came down, so frightened she could not think
for a moment where she was.
"Oh, Tess, darling!" gasped Agnes.
"Sister's brave little girl!" murmured Ruth.
"I--I didn't spoil the tableau, did I?" Tess asked.
"Spoil it? My goodness, Tess Kenway," shouted Neale O'Neil, who,
likewise, had run to her, "you made the biggest hit of the whole show!
If you could do that at every performance _The Carnation Countess_ would
certain sure be a big success!"