Chapter 8

Before the Curtain

When Lesbia looked back upon the events of the last few months, and compared the beginning of the September term with the present January one, she decided that she felt quite a hundred years older. Whether such a swift and sudden growing-up was unalloyed bliss was a matter for debate, but at any rate it gave her a certain feeling of self-reliance that was rather gratifying. In the Patterson household she was in a different world from that of the Hiltons. Paul and Minnie had been very, very kind, but they treated her entirely as a child, and had never even discussed her future in her presence. Paul, chivalrous towards women, but old-fashioned in his ideas of their sphere, liked girls to be brought up in cotton-wool, and thought the home provided quite a wide enough field for their energies. He considered "careers" unfeminine, and admired the mid-Victorian days, when the daughters of the house dusted the drawing-room and arranged the flowers, paid calls, played tennis, and helped at bazaars, but left college life and the professions to their brothers.

Mrs. Patterson took just the opposite view of things. She was intensely modern, and considered that every girl ought to be trained for some special career as much as every boy. Her own daughters were studying hard, Kitty for medicine, and Joan for secretarial work. She looked forward to their future prospects with as much interest as to those of her sons, Derrick, Stuart, and Godfrey. Having accepted Lesbia as an inmate of the household, she tried to train her in her own particular school of ideas. She was kind in her way, but not at all tender. Even to her own children she would only bestow the merest peck of a kiss. She was quite uncompromising with her young cousin, kept her remorselessly to home preparation or piano practice, and demanded high standards in respect of punctuality, exactitude of expression, and general alertness.

Though it kept her brains continually on the stretch, Lesbia found the mental atmosphere bracing. She began to enjoy the intellectual conversation round the breakfast- or supper-table. At first she was quite at sea regarding the topics discussed, but after a while she grew to understand and even sometimes to offer an opinion of her own. She had never in her life before imagined that so many societies and committees existed as those to which Mr. and Mrs. Patterson devoted a large part of their energies.

This difference in the brain-stimulating activity of her new home could not fail to express itself in Lesbia's school work. She was not clever in the sense of having a retentive memory, but she now showed more brightness in answering questions and her essays were more original. Miss Pratt, ruthless towards "slackers" or "dullards", slowly relaxed a tithe of her irony.

"I really believe, Lesbia Ferrars, you're beginning at last to realize that a human head holds something called a brain," she remarked pointedly one day. "Many girls seem to think learning is like receiving a phonographic impression. They reel it off again at exams, with as little intelligence as a gramophone. We don't want the barrel-piano style of work in this form. We want cultivated brains that can reason as well as state facts, not bunglers who haven't the sense to think."

Her pince-nez, which for a wonder had fallen quite approvingly on Lesbia, glared in the direction of Lizzie Logan.

Poor Lizzie was the champion blunderer of the form, and only the previous day, in the ambulance lesson, when asked how she would apply artificial respiration to a part-drowned patient who had broken both his arms, gasped in utter consternation, and had nervously fluttered forth: "I should work his legs about," an answer which drew forth an absolute deluge of scorn from her indignant teacher.

It was Miss Pratt, always anxious to work in the direction of intellectual uplift, who suggested to Miss Tatham that the school might get up some private theatricals for the end of the term. She constituted herself stage-manager, and was licensed to pick her stars from any form she pleased.

"I don't mind whether I choose seniors or juniors," she announced. "I want girls who can _act_, not wooden dummies. I shall have test rehearsals, and reject all those who haven't the proper dramatic fire about them. Any candidate will have to play up or leave the boards."

The honour of a place in Miss Pratt's "Company" was sufficiently great to attract many would-be performers, but her standards were strict, and the elimination process a severe one. Lesbia, mindful of the many squashings she had received in class, and seeing even Marion Morwood turned down for incompetence, did not dare to present herself for the ordeal.

"Miss Pratt would probably only laugh at me and say, 'You! Well really, who next?'" she confided to Marion.

And Marion, who was suffering from the disappointment of rejection, agreed with her.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and there ought to have been a hockey practice, but the rain had commenced in such dead earnest that it was hopeless to set out to the playing-field. As hockey was off, the girls might do what they pleased with the afternoon. Some went home immediately, others retired to VA to do their preparation, and others hung disconsolately about the gymnasium.

"Let's have a little fun on our own," suggested Marion, looking at the platform from which, alack! she was to be exiled. "Miss Pratt's out of the way, and nobody very carping and criticizing is about, so I vote we make up a play, just anything that comes into our heads, and act it."

"Right-o!" agreed Lesbia. "It would be rather sporting. Who'll help? Cissie, are you game? And Aldora?"

"Four are quite enough!" interrupted Marion hastily, as eager girls began to crowd round clamouring to be included in the cast. "No I _can't_ have everybody in it--I wouldn't have _you_, Betty Wroe, at any price, so don't bother! You can act audience if you want. We shall be ten minutes or so getting ready. Have a concert among yourselves if you want to kill time. I see Ermie has a book of songs."

"It's all very fine for you four to monopolize the stage and keep us out of it!" grumbled several disappointed voices.

"Well, _we_ thought of it first. It was _our_ idea entirely."

"It's not nearly as much fun to watch as to act!"

"Go home then, if you don't want to stay. Or go and do prep!"

"No, thanks!"

Leaving their audience to settle itself or not as it wished, the four self-elected performers hurriedly retired into the green-room behind the stage to plan out their entertainment.

"What _shall_ we act?" asked Marion, rather blank when brought face to face with the emergency of instantaneous dramatic composition.

"Give me a few minutes to think," replied Lesbia, sitting down with her head in her hands.

Lesbia's imagination was the brightest part of her mental equipment. She could often invent things in a flash. Indeed all her best work was a species of inspiration. The idea either came to her instantly, like a slave of the lamp, or stopped away altogether. This afternoon the Ariel who supplied her happiest successes was apparently close at hand. After clutching her forehead for a short, but to judge from her expression an agonizing, period, she suddenly jumped up.

"I've got it!" she triumphed. "And quite a jinky one too--name and all!"

Three cogitating girls left off fidgeting and drumming on the table and faced her expectantly.

"Well!"

"'Dr. Pillbox's Patient.' That's the title. Squat here and I'll tell you the rugged outline. We must fill in details as we go along."

Lesbia's plot was quite sufficient to content her comrades; they hurriedly arranged their parts, and flew to the cloakroom for anything they could commandeer in the way of costumes. They shamelessly purloined a felt hat of Nina Wakefield's, Pauline Kingston's waterproof, and Ada Wood's thick coat, which, together with the duster from the gymnasium blackboard, a piece of charcoal from Grace Stirling's pencil-box, Mabel Andrews' water-colour paint-box, that was lying about on the mantelpiece, and a few chairs which were already on the platform, made the extent of their hastily-scrambled-together wardrobe and scenery.

"It's 'your theatre while you wait'!" giggled Aldora.

"We've not made them wait long. I flatter ourselves we'd do for lightning actresses," grunted Lesbia, helping Cissie with her hasty toilet.

"Do I look the least scrap like a real medical man?" demanded Marion tragically.

"Put on a professional air and you'll do," advised Lesbia. "You want a piece of paper for a white collar. That's fine! Oh, you do look grand!"

Furious sounds of stamping and clapping and shouts of "Get a move on there!" from the gymnasium showed signs of impatience among the expectant girls below, so the performers, fearful that their audience might desert them altogether and go away, if they were not quick, made a few final titivations, and told Betty Wroe, who had volunteered as "odd job woman", to raise the curtain.

The scene disclosed Lesbia, as Miss Lovelace, lounging upon a sofa, improvised from four chairs with Ada Wood's coat thrown over them. After much yawning, interspersed with heavy sighs, she revealed, in the short soliloquy usual among stage heroines, the utter boredom of her life as a mistress at the Muddlehead High School. She debated how it was possible to obtain a brief respite from the eternal round of teaching, and confided to the audience that a holiday would be particularly acceptable, as George, her fiancé, was coming to spend to-morrow with his aunt, and would take her a trip upon the river if she could get the day off.

"We teachers have hearts as well as other people," proclaimed Lesbia eloquently, "and often we long to fling Minerva to the winds and worship only Cupid! What are chemistry and mathematics compared to whispered words and tender glances? No! The thraldom of education shall never stay the course of true love!"

Miss Lovelace's heroics, though they mightily impressed the audience, apparently did not solve the problem of how she was to take her holiday without losing her post at school. Her fertile brain, however, supplied the key to the situation.

"I must get an attack of measles," she declared. "Then I shall be infectious and quite unable to teach my form."

Springing from the sofa, she seized Mabel Andrews' paint-box, and with the aid of a glass of water and a sable brush dabbed spots of crimson over her face, neck, and chest. Then, falling back on to the sofa in a semi-prostrate attitude, she called loudly for Mrs. Jones.

Cissie, as the landlady, with a school towel pinned on for an apron, came bustling in, and held up hands of horror at the sight of the violent eruption on the face of her lodger. She rapidly catalogued the various complaints, from smallpox to scarlatina, which included a rash among their symptoms, and readily agreed to hurry forth and fetch the doctor.

Apparently she found him just round the corner, for he was ushered in immediately. Marion, with the scanty materials at her command, had made a very gallant attempt at masculine attire. She wore Pauline Kingston's waterproof, and a white collar made from a sheet of exercise paper. On her head was Nina Wakefield's soft black felt hat (the audience waived the point of a physician wearing his hat in his patient's parlour), and a black moustache was charcoaled on her upper lip. He examined Miss Lovelace in orthodox medical fashion, felt her pulse, examined her tongue, took her temperature (with a stilo-pen for thermometer), and asked numerous questions, to which, lying on the sofa with half-closed eyes, she groaned the answers in apparent agony. He shook his head over the case and declared he must at once send a hospital nurse to her assistance.

Miss Lovelace protested vigorously at this suggestion, but Dr. Pillbox was adamant, and departed saying that Nurse Harding would arrive directly with full instructions as to the treatment of the complaint. Aldora had had a little more time than the others to complete her costume and she was proud of it. She had borrowed Betty Wroe's pocket handkerchief, and with that and the blackboard duster constructed an apron with a bib. Her own handkerchief formed a Red Cross cap, and pieces of exercise paper made the collar and cuffs of her uniform. She took the patient in hand with the air of one who is going to stand no nonsense, and proclaimed her immediate intention of washing her.

Miss Lovelace, who had been languishing and half fainting upon the couch, repudiated the necessity of such extreme measures, declaring that water would only irritate the rash. Nurse insisted that such were the doctor's orders and she must obey them. A violent struggle ensued between herself and her patient, with the result that she completely wiped off the eruption and revealed the shameless fraud practised by the artful governess. At this interesting crisis Dr. Pillbox (evidently a most attentive practitioner) arrived to pay a second visit. Miss Lovelace, bursting into tears, begged the favour of an interview with him alone. Nurse Harding reluctantly retired, and the youthful teacher, falling on one knee in a picturesque cinema attitude of supplication, threw herself on the doctor's mercy and revealed not only her ingenious deception but the reason why she wanted a holiday. Dr. Pillbox was kindness itself. He assured her he had at once detected the imposture but promised to condone it. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and wrote a medical certificate to the effect that she was incapable through illness of performing her duties as teacher upon the following day, and recommended a trip upon the river as the quickest cure for re-establishing her health. It was received by his patient with an exuberance of gratitude.

Then Nurse Harding and Mrs. Jones, who were hovering in the background anxious to butt in, were called upon the platform, and all four performers stood in a line and made bows of more or less graceful quality.

As Lesbia, whose acknowledgement to the applause had been low and sweeping, rose to her usual level her eyes encountered the amused and interested gaze of no less a person than Miss Pratt. She started and conveyed her unwelcome discovery to her fellow actresses. They retired hastily in much embarrassment.

"I'd no idea _she_ was there!" fluttered Marion.

"When did she come?" asked Aldora.

"Why, she's been there the whole time," volunteered Betty Wroe, who was helping as wardrobe woman; "didn't you see her sitting at the back?"

"I never dared to look at the audience," gasped Lesbia. "Oh! To think of all the _awful_ things I said about teachers and Cupid, and all the rest of it, with Miss Pratt actually sitting and listening. It gives me spasms. And I went on so about 'dear George'."

"And there was I with my corked moustache acting a regular old bean of a doctor."

"And I dropped all my h's as Mrs. Jones!"

"If we'd only known!"

"It's a good thing you didn't," remarked Betty with a delighted chuckle. "You played up no end, and of course with Miss Pratt in the room the girls were absolutely in fits. Calla's hysterical still. They thought you were doing it on purpose."

"Oh, we wouldn't have _dared_! I expect Miss Pratt thinks it the most fearful cheek. I wonder if she'll be down on us for it?"

"Oh, Jemima! We're always getting into hot water somehow."

Nell Dawson arrived at that moment with a message that if the performers had changed their costumes Miss Pratt would like a word with them.

"You see!" said Lesbia dolefully, bracing her nerves for the rebuke which, as chief offender, would probably descend most heavily upon her own head.

They were quite mistaken, however, about Miss Pratt's attitude. She highly commended the little performance.

"As an impromptu business it was really very good," she conceded. "It's shown me what you're capable of, and I'm certainly going to put all four of you in my 'Company'."

"We--we didn't know you were listening," faltered Lesbia apologetically.

"So I supposed" (a flicker of a smile crossed her face); "it's always best to live your part and forget your audience. Come to me to-morrow before nine and I'll give you your books. I hadn't fixed up the cast of _The Duchess's Dilemma_."

Four delighted girls scuttled off to the cloakroom, almost overwhelmed by the suddenness of their good fortune.

"She should!" exclaimed Aldora.

"It's too topping for words," yodelled Cissie.

"Shouldn't have thought Miss Pratt capable of being so sporting," rejoiced Marion.

"She's a griffin sometimes but she's a mascot to-day, bless her," murmured Lesbia. "I wonder, if after all, she rather _liked_ the idea of school mistresses having hearts? If she ever stays away from school with a bad cold or any other excuse I shall think she's taken the tip."