A Sweet Girl Graduate by L. T. Meade (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

The great event of the term was to take place that evening. The Princess was to be acted by the girls of St. Benet’s, and, by the kind permission of Miss Vincent, the principal of the entire college, several visitors were invited to witness the entertainment. The members of the Dramatic Society had taken immense pains; the rehearsals had been many, the dresses all carefully chosen, the scenery appropriate— in short, no pains had been spared to render this lovely poem of Tennyson’s a dramatic success. The absence of Rosalind Merton had, for a short time, caused a little dismay among the actors. She had been cast for the part of Melissa:

“A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
That clad her like an April daffodilly.”

But now it must be taken my some one else.

Little Ada Hardy, who was about Rosalind’s height, and had the real innocence which, alas! poor Rosalind lacked, was sent for in a hurry, and, carefully drilled by Constance Field and Maggie Oliphant, by the time the night arrived she was sufficiently prepared to act the character, slight in itself, which was assigned to her. The other actors were, of course, fully prepared to take their several parts, and a number of girls were invested in the

                       “Academic silks, in hue
 The lilac, with a silken hood to each,
 And zoned with gold.”

Nothing could have been more picturesque, and there was a buzz of hearty applause from the many spectators who crowded the galleries and front seats of the little theater when the curtain rose on the well-known garden scene, where the Prince, Florian and Cyril saw the maidens of that first college for women— that poet’s vision, so amply fulfilled in the happy life at St. Benet’s.

                                                     There
One walk’d, reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that:
Some to a low song oar’d a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadow’d from the heat: some hid and sought
In the orange thickets: others tost a ball
Above the fountain jets, and back again
With laughter: others lay about the lawns,
Of the older sort, and murmur’d that their May
Was passing: what was learning unto them?
They wish’d to marry: they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women. . . .”

The girls walked slowly about among the orange groves and by the fountain jets. In the distance the chapel bells tolled faint and sweet. More maidens appeared, and Tennyson’s lovely lines were again represented with such skill, the effect of multitude was so skilfully managed that the

“Six hundred maidens, clad in purest white,”

appeared really to fill the gardens,

“While the great organ almost burst his pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling thro’ the court
A long melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies.”

The curtain fell, to rise in a few moments amid a burst of applause. The Princess herself now appeared for the first time on the little stage. Nothing could have been more admirable than the grouping of this tableau. All the pride of mien, of race, of indomitable purpose was visible on the face of the young girl who acted the part of the Princess Ida.

                                               “She stood
Among her maidens, higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar.”

It was impossible, of course, to represent the tame leopards, but the maidens who gathered round the Princess prevented this want being apparent, and Maggie Oliphant’s attitude and the expression which filled her bright eyes left nothing to be desired.

“Perfect!” exclaimed the spectators: the interest of every one present was more than aroused; each individual in the little theater felt, though no one could exactly tell why, that Maggie was not merely acting her part, she was living it.

Suddenly she raised her head and looked steadily at the visitors in the gallery: a wave of rosy red swept over the whitness of her face. It was evident that she had encountered a glance which disturbed her composure.

The play proceeded brilliantly, and now the power and originality of Priscilla’s acting divided the attention of the house. Surely there never was a more impassioned Prince.

Priscilla could sing; her voice was not powerful, but it was low and rather deeply set. The well-known and familiar song with which the Prince tried to woo Ida lost little at her hands.

“O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

“O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.

“Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

“O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

“O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine,
And tell her, tell her that I follow thee.”

The wooing which followed made a curious impression; this impression was not only produced upon the house, but upon both Prince and Princess.

Priscilla, too, had encountered Hammond’s earnest gaze. That gaze fired her heart, and she became once again not herself but he; poor, awkward and gauche little Prissie sank out of sight; she was Hammond pleading his own cause, she was wooing Maggie for him in the words of Tennyson’s Prince. This fact was the secret of Priscilla’s power; she had felt it more or less whenever she acted the part of the Prince; but, on this occasion, she communicated the sensations which animated her own breast to Maggie. Maggie, too, felt that Hammond was speaking to her through Priscilla’s voice.

“I cannot cease to follow you, as they say
The seal does music; who desire you more
Than growing boys their manhood; dying lips,
With many thousand matters left to do,
The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth,
Than sick men health— yours, yours, not mine— but half
Without you; with you, whole; and of those halves
You worthiest, and howe’er you block and bar
Your heart with system out from mine, I hold
That it becomes no man to nurse despair,
But in the teeth of clench’d antagonisms
To follow up the worthiest till he die.”

In the impassioned reply which followed this address it was noticed for the first time