it," said Rob.
"It never fails," said Aunt Azraella with generous oblivion to facts.
"If it makes what seem like mistakes sometimes it is owing to local
currents, which cannot be foretold. Is your mother up-stairs? I want to
see her and Charlotte."
"They are together, in Cousin Charlotte's room. You look serious, Aunt
Azraella," said Rob.
"I feel serious, and I want to consult them about something serious,"
returned her aunt. "After this excitement is over you will know what it
is about; I shall be guided by their advice."
"The best advice we ever got was from those two ladies, Aunt Azraella,"
said Rob. "I am sure you will not look serious after you get it."
"You don't know what you are talking about," returned Mrs. Winslow
moving majestically away.
Aunt Azraella's victoria brought up Hester, her cousin and Basil; Bruce
and Bartlemy arrived on foot, and all the performers, except little
Polly Flinders, went up to the Silsbys for their final dress rehearsal
that night. They came back to the little grey house so excited by its
result that there was no checking the flood of chatter till past one
o'clock.
"This was Eleventh Night," as Prue suggested, and Twelfth Night, _the_
night, followed as quickly as it could, coming into weather that fully
justified Aunt Azraella's almanac-maker. Crisp, cold, clear, January
sunshine--there could not be better weather for a revel.
The day sped in a whirl of excitement, a delightful day to all but
Lydia's orderly soul. She could hardly be expected to approve it,
since it included no meal at a normal time, and this disturbance was,
besides, the prelude to a dance, which Lydia regarded with horror.
After a supper at half past five which none of the gavotteers, as Rob
called them, wanted in the least, Aunt Azraella's carriage came to take
them up to Mrs. Silsby's.
Frances flew out to meet them, and the flushed faces of the other three
girl performers beamed on them as they descended.
Mrs. Grey superintended the dressing-room with four maids to assist
her. It was a trying office, with eight girls chattering like
magpies, and eighty things to be done at once, admitting of no delay.
The concert that was to precede the gavotte was to be costumed
fantastically, and when the girls were ready one could hardly have said
whether the picture they presented, huddled, laughing together, was
prettier or funnier.
Wythie was a dear little Puritan maiden, in her grey dress and folded
kerchief; Rob a brilliant fantasy in her ante-bellum gown with its
hoops and sloping shoulders, and her lovely, rebellious hair ringletted
from a tremendous back comb. Prue would not consent to being fantastic,
so she looked beautiful in a pale green muslin of the empire style,
with her golden hair filetted with gold and a great feather fan waving
from her long-gloved hand. But the cream of them all was solemn little
Polly.
The child was not pretty, but something gathered through her few sad
years in the lonely home whence all the other children had departed,
her frail health and active imagination, had written itself on her
sensitive, pale little face. Now her dilated eyes shone like stars;
grey eyes they were, under black lashes, the sort that have a trick of
looking black, but whose colour is hard to determine.
They had dressed her in a long gown, belonging to some Puritan child in
the days when costumes not merely denied, but annihilated childhood.
Polly's gown had a stiff long stomacher, its front was cut square,
like a court lady's, and the heavy silk stood out around her figure,
disdaining a hint of a droop. A round cap surmounted the pale brown
hair which had been brushed smoothly back from the blue-veined brow,
and yellow lace fell around the childish throat and tiny thin hands.
There was something in the child herself, poor as her home had been,
that exactly suited her quaint fineness of habiliment, and she stood,
a quick breathing little poem, a picture of perfect harmony and of a
quality that made every artist-eye that rested upon her flash with the
perception of its values.
When the door of the dressing-room opened and its occupants came forth
it was to encounter in the hall a long line of queer and pretty figures
of other Fayre girls who were to compose the chorus, and big lads in
the collars and coats of their ancestors, delightful foils to the
girls' brilliant colours. First and last Fayre, an old colonial town,
possessed a goodly store of relics of the past, and there was no lack
of material for costuming the concert.
While they were dressing the singers had been hearing carriage after
carriage roll up the Silsby driveway, and depart, and when they peeped
through a life-saving hole in the curtain, but for which they would
have perished of curiosity, they saw the ample accommodations which
Mrs. Silsby had provided for an audience already filled, and people
beginning to station themselves standing at the sides of the long
rooms, in the best positions now obtainable.
A small orchestra of harps and violins, 'cellos and bass viols, had
been Mrs. Silsby's welcome contribution to the affair, and the concert
began with an overture by it while the curtain slowly parted and
rolled away, disclosing the thirty-five singers seated on the stage,
the double quartette which, later was to dance the gavotte, in the
front row, and little Polly, the soloist of the occasion, seated alone
before them all. She did not seem at all frightened; the hand that Rob
contrived to slip between the rounds of her chair for a little pressure
on her shoulder, was not necessary.
Polly sat quite still, very pale, but not frightened, with an uplifted
look on the pathetic little face, with the big eyes staring upward,
unseeing of the considerable audience. Miss Charlotte and Rob had told
Polly that she was to sing for suffering children, without homes,
friends, or childhood, and Polly's whole soul was bent on singing for
them so well that all these blessings should be theirs at the close of
the concert.
Choruses, quartettes, trios, double quartettes, followed each other
on the programme, old-time songs and classics, bright, lively,
sad, and patriotic. The audience applauded wildly, which was to be
expected at an amateur entertainment. In this case the applause took
on enthusiastic fervour from the real enjoyment which the music
was giving; it was good in itself, and not "considering." It was a
delightful surprise to hear the quality, the precision, the expression
of these choruses and quartettes, for, when it comes to amateur music,
given for charities, few of us can echo the sentiments of the gentleman
in Punch, who replied to his hostess' inquiry as to whether he was fond
of music: "Madam, I am not afraid of it."
At last came Polly's turn, and she arose at a signal from Rob and
walked quietly down to the front of the stage. No one applauded
for fear of frightening the child, but the effect the little figure
produced could be felt in the sudden stillness, together with a tension
of interest.
A single violin played "Annie Laurie" and Polly began to sing. Not a
tremble in the clear voice, not a false note in the sweet tones, as
they soared up, thrilled with feeling and died away in pathos that the
singer was far too young to feel. For an instant the room was still and
then the applause rang out. Polly stood very quiet, looking up at the
ceiling, forgetful of the bow in which she had been carefully drilled.
It did not matter. The violin began again, and the child sang on and
on, as the audience clamoured for more at the end of each song. She did
not seem to tire, but a red spot glowed in each cheek, and the tiny
figure trembled.
"Sit down, Polly," said Rob at last, fearing the effect on Polly of
such repressed excitement.
Polly obediently turned and seated herself amid the plaudits of her
audience. Then she remembered her duty, arose, went forward, took her
stiff skirt in her hands on each side, and dropped the ceremonious
courtesy of the period which she represented. The applause broke out
anew, but Polly was to sing no more. A rousing chorus covered the
clapping, and the audience settled down to listen to the remainder of
the programme.
A young artist from the city who had been trolled to Fayre by Mr.
Baldwin, generously offered to amuse the audience while the gavotte was
being costumed, and gave a Chinese three part play, in which he was the
maiden, her lover, and the stern parent by turns, with a Chinese song
chanted wonderfully as a last touch. It was really very funny, and Mrs.
Silsby gratefully heard the audience laughing as she hastily surveyed
the supper room which was to be her surprise to the performers, after
the gavotte.
In the meantime, Mrs. Grey and the maids were getting eight excited
girls into their beautiful gowns for the dance. It really did not take
long but it was a time into which so much disturbance of mind, so many
thrills were compressed that it seemed a little eternity.
When they were ready the eight filed forth, and met their eight
cavaliers in the hall.
Wythie in her white silk, brocaded with violets, and with the romance
of Oswyth Grey in her heart, under the gown that she had once worn,
joined Basil in his purple velvet court costume, and led the way down
the stairs.
Eleanor Dinsmore in the blush pink, brocaded with rosebuds, came next.
Her partner was a youth in black velvet.
Then came Frances in her pale blue; with her was to dance Lester
Baldwin, in dark blue velvet.
Hester in glorious crimson, with silver headdress, petticoat and
trimmings, joined her partner in white satin, with gold lace.
Edith Hooper in overshot white and silver danced with Jack Dinsmore in
red velvet.
Helen Lacey, a clear, dark brunette, wore a bronze brocade that
revealed its blue lining with every motion; her partner in golden brown
velvet made them into an autumn harmony.
Rob's brocade was dark green, overstrewn with a pale green conventional
design. A silver petticoat revealed her silver slippers with the big
paste buckles, and splendid silver lace fell over her pointed bodice
and bare arms. Bruce, her partner, wore black velvet with green satin
waistcoat, and flashing knee-buckles on the green ribbons that bound
his knees.
Prue came last, regal in her golden raiment, so beautiful that Mrs.
Grey's heart leaped and then contracted with fear as she fell back to
look at her, for beauty is a difficult crown to carry steadily, thought
this simple, loving woman.
Bartlemy wore hunting green--it did not matter what he wore, he said,
while he danced beside the golden girl.
The curtain went up on the empty stage, and the orchestra played the
air of the gavotte. The dancers entered, hands joined and held high,
and marched in minuet step around and up and down the stage, crossing
and recrossing, bowing, forming brief figures, instantly dissolved into
the march. Then they took their places for the gavotte, and in the
pause between the end of the march and its beginning the audience went
quite wild with delight over the really beautiful picture.
The orchestra sounded a few bars, and suddenly the sixteen dancers
began to sing to the old French gavotte the words which Rob had
written, beginning the dance at the same time. In breathless silence
the audience watched and listened. The colours blended and contrasted,
the girls flushed and dimpled, carrying their heads regally under their
powdered hair, while the young men, not less gorgeous in their degree,
led them forth with courtly bendings of their powdered heads, managing
their swords and the laced hats which they carried with creditable
grace and dignity.
There could not have been a more beautiful picture. Faint,
irrepressible applause broke out at intervals, quickly silenced that
the audience might not lose one note, one lovely, gracious motion.
But when it was ended the room was stormed with plaudits, unescapable
demands for a repetition, which the dancers were not in the least
reluctant to accord, when they were satisfied that the demand was
sincere.
There were many in the audience who were strangers to all the
performers; several from New York whom only Hester knew slightly, but
the majority were friends or familiar acquaintances of the dancers, and
after the curtain had gone down they came forth in all their ancient
splendour to mingle with the audience and to be congratulated.
Rob went to Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin as straight as circumstances allowed
her to go.
Mr. Baldwin took her hands with the fatherly affection that he always
showed her, almost equal to that which he gave to his own girl.
"It was fine, Rob; really fine, a gavotte in colouring and execution
worthy the old days of Daly's Theatre, and the dances he used to give
us in 'Much Ado' and 'Twelfth Night.' You look like a dryad in your
green, my Robin. And how really magnificent Prue is going to be! Hers
is wonderful beauty for a girl of sixteen. I have a ward of mine here
who says he never dreamed of such a girl. He wants to speak to Prue.
Shall I take him over there?"
"He is a nice boy, Mr. Baldwin?" asked Rob.
"What a dragon of an elder sister--and only two years the elder!"
laughed Mr. Baldwin. "Trust me, Rob, not to introduce any but nice
boys to my Grey girls! This is not precisely a boy, though. He is
twenty-four, and that is a great age compared to sixteen. He is still
my ward, because I was to take charge of his property, by his father's
will, until he was thirty. I'll go take him to Prue. Mr. Armstrong is
here, and wants to see you."
"Mr. Armstrong who bought Patergrey's patent?" cried Rob.
"The very same. He has never forgotten your describing it to him in his
office, so frightened, yet so brave," said Mr. Baldwin. "He heard of
this entertainment, and came out for your sake."
"What a lovely world this is!" laughed Rob. "I'll go find him." And
she moved off in search of her elderly acquaintance, looking back to
see Mr. Baldwin taking up to radiant Prue a young man whose face was
turned from her, but whose "back looked well-bred" Rob thought.
Her progress towards Mr. Armstrong was impeded by congratulations, but
at last Rob reached him.
"I am glad to see that you have not forgotten me," said the old
gentleman, grasping the hand she extended.
"I am not likely ever to forget you," returned Rob simply.
"No, it is not likely; our acquaintance was brief, but impressive to
us both," said Mr. Armstrong. "You will be glad to learn that your
father's invention has proved valuable to us, Miss Grey. Are you Miss
Grey?"
"Not yet," said Rob with her whimsical twist of the lips as she smiled
up into the kindly face. "It is delightful to know that my dear
father's work was all he believed it to be."
"Fully," assented the old gentleman. "But Miss Roberta, what about the
child that sang here to-night? They tell me she is a protégé of yours.
She is a prodigy. I want to know about her. I am not going back to town
to-night; I have no fancy for these late, crawling trains back from
suburban pleasures. I am staying over night at your Fayre hotel--why
do you have a town with a name so provocative of puns? May I call on
you to-morrow? Not only to tell you what real pleasure you young people
gave me to-night, but to hear about this child?"
"We should all be glad, indeed, to see you, Mr. Armstrong, with no
errand whatever," said Rob. "I'll tell you all there is to learn of
Polly. I suppose I shouldn't stop now; there are so many people to whom
I ought to speak."
"Run along, run along, lovely little green great-grandmother," said
Mr. Armstrong, with an appreciative downward glance at Rob's beautiful
costume.
The rooms were rapidly thinning out as she turned away from the old
gentleman; Frances was beckoning her.
Rob crossed over to her. "Mother has a spread for us, the thirty-five
performers, in the dining-room--she is the dearest thing! We are going
to have a glorious time, so hurry up and do the pretty-behaved to those
who bought your tickets, and then come to the banquet."
Rob needed no further hint. The eight heroines of the gavotte sipped
the sweets of adulation for a short time, completely overshadowing
their less brilliant but equally meritorious partners, till the last of
their audience had departed.
"Come ghosts of departed years; come ancestral descendants; come and
see if modern viands have a pleasant flavour," cried Mrs. Silsby from
the doorway, and the picture-figures, seizing their proper partners'
arms, burst into the song of the gavotte and to it marched to supper.
CHAPTER TEN
ITS AFTERMATH
The day after great festivities is a trying time. Everybody feels
mentally out-at-elbows; it is a day like those fifteen minutes between
the ebb and flow of the tide when the waters seem to lie motionless.
No one feels like ordinary duties, and there is a general impression
that they may be neglected, though it is not avowed. It takes a day for
energies to wake up and get into harness.
The boys had set out early in their workaday tweeds for college and
business. Velvets, queues, laced hats and swords discarded for the
commonplace, the girls' partners in the gavotte had been forced back
to the actual world with the wintry dawn, but the girls revelled in
reminiscent laziness and the joys of "talking it over."
Hester had stayed till an afternoon train, and she lay across the foot
of Wythie and Rob's bed, her mind vibrating like a pendulum between the
events of the preceding night and their results, between recalling
some little point which had not been mentioned, and wondering how many
cripple children they would now be able to afford. Wythie lolled in the
rocking-chair in a relaxed attitude unlike her usual compact little
self. Rob reclined on her elbow beside Hester, with her unruly hair
tumbled into the many ringed disorder in which it was always prettiest,
and most comfortable. Prue, who was staying home from school that day
in charitable allowance of time in which to descend from her pedestal
and readjust her mind to study, sat on the edge of the bed at its head
with the pillow whose place she occupied "laid as tenderly across her
knees as if it were one of the cripples," Rob said.
"One might think there wasn't a chair in the room," remarked Wythie
languidly, as she glanced at the unused ones standing about. "I wonder
why all girls love to pile on a bed together?"
"They like to be on a bed because it suits 'a rosebud garden of
girls,'" suggested Rob. "That seems to lack the suggestion of a garden
bed that I was aiming for--as a pun it is a failure. Confidences and
caramels are best enjoyed on a bed, among pillows. Please pass me
another caramel, Hester, and let me see your Christmas ring again. I
like emeralds!"
"Speaking of rings," said Hester as she complied, "I wonder if I am
betraying confidence in telling you what Lester said?"
"You might try it and see," said Rob. "We'll tell you frankly after you
have repeated it whether or not it is a betrayal of confidence."
Hester laughed. "I'll risk it," she said. "Lester has taken a great
fancy to Frances Silsby, and he says he is seriously going to try to
make her care for him. He is in business with his father, representing
the Japanese end of the firm, as his older brother represents it in
London, so he would be able to think of marrying as far as being
established in the world goes."
"Marrying!" cried Prue, dropping both hands into the pillow with a
thump as she sat erect in her surprise. "Do you mean to say he is going
to marry Francie right off?"
"I don't know that he can ever marry her; I don't know that she will
ever see the charm in him that I see--he's the dearest boy and the best
cousin in the world! But I think it's safe to say that he won't marry
her right off, Prudy; certainly not before Easter," laughed Hester.
"There are other reasons for not doing so besides canonical ones."
"Yes; comical ones," amended Rob. "But only think of France, my
playmate, with a wooer in serious earnest! I think it is fearful the
way we are getting on in life."
"Mrs. Silsby wouldn't think of letting Frances marry for ever so long,"
said Wythie, her colour mounting. "She is such a good, sensible mother!
But I wish when the time does come Lester would have his way. He is
right to choose Frances; she is as true and trusty and good as a girl
can be. Wouldn't you like it, Hester?"
"Yes; I like Frances, but I could find it in my heart to wish it were
a Grey girl," said Hester. "Only there aren't enough to go around, and
Lester stayed too long in Japan."
"Fiddle-dedee!" remarked Rob. "Grey girls aren't going around--do you
take us for tops, Hester?"
"Yes; tip-tops," said Hester, scoring that time.
Rob gave her a withering look of pretended reproach, and Prue said:
"Who was that interesting young man whom your father introduced to me?
That Mr. Stanhope?"
"Is he interesting, Prudy? He has lots of interest, if that's what you
mean," said Hester. "You have just said nearly all I know about him.
He is Mr. Arthur Stanhope. I know a little more. He had a cautious
and conservative father, who had a million to leave this boy, so he
appointed my father his guardian, and left the money so that the son
could use only the interest until he was thirty. Then he comes into his
million, and in the meantime is not starving on its interest. Father
says he is a good youth, not spoiled by his prospects, and I know that
if he is it is largely owing to my father, who has been a faithful
guardian, and has influenced this boy's tastes and aims. I don't know
him particularly well myself, though he has been to the house a great
deal; we never seemed to get on together.'"
"I thought he was as nice as he could be," remarked Prue with her
grown-up air, which made it trying to have Rob suggest quickly that
none of us could be more than that, and to have the older girls laugh.
"Oh, Rob, here comes Mr. Armstrong!" cried Wythie from her post at the
window.
"So early!" exclaimed Rob. "Yet we might have known that he wouldn't
linger in Fayre for luncheon. And we were having such a heavenly,
halcyon time! Prue, do get out my brown dress while I smooth this
demented hair of mine!"
Rob pulled out her pins and brushed her unruly locks into her hand,
head downward, and with the brush, like the Red Queen's, in "Alice,"
in danger of getting lost, in the bright and beautiful rings of which
Hester telegraphed to Wythie an admiration which Rob would have
resented had it been audible.
Wythie always seemed to be ready for any one's arrival, from the king
to the ashman. She placidly smoothed her soft hair, of which not a lock
was misplaced, pulled down her shirt-waist, made sure her belt covered
the line of her skirt--which it invariably did--and was ready to go
down to help her mother receive their caller, leaving Rob to Hester and
Prue's mercies to be helped into her street gown.
"Because I've got to go up to Aunt Azraella's when I take you to the
station, and I can't go through the agony of dressing three times a
day," she explained frantically struggling with a hook that refused to
find its affinity in a loop half buried in the shoulder seam.
"Not faded by late hours, Miss Roberta?" said Mr. Armstrong, rising to
greet Rob as she entered looking radiant from her hurried toilette.
"Only my glories of last night are faded, sir," said Rob, giving her
hand to the old gentleman whose kindly voice and manner she found even
more likable than her memory of them.
"Now, my dear Grey young ladies, all of you, for my daughter must be
older than these lassies' mother, I have not many minutes to spare if
I want to lunch in town, as I mean to do," began Mr. Armstrong. "I
want to hear the history of the child whose singing last night was so
remarkable."
"It is easily told, Mr. Armstrong," said Mrs. Grey. And she briefly
related Polly's story, and that of the Flinders family.
Mr. Armstrong listened attentively. "Now, for my reasons for asking,"
he said. "I have a sum of money entrusted to me, the principal well
invested, and the interest left for the education of young girls whose
talents and industry make them worth helping. Your little Polly is
certainly wonderfully gifted, and there is a gap now in the application
of the money; we can take another girl at once. I propose to make your
Polly Flinders--what an extraordinary name!--our next experiment. What
do you say to it?"