CHAPTER XI. AMATEUR CHARITY.
As soon as the ladies were in the drawing-room, Mrs. Graham-Shute returned to her point. As her daughters, used to mamma’s ways of “getting up” entertainments, were unsympathetic, and as Mrs. Abercarne was on her dignity, she was forced to pour out her proposals into the ear of Chris. Anxious to secure at least this one ally, she became very gracious to the girl.
“I’m sure you would be glad of some gaiety to vary the monotony of your life here,” she said, with condescension. “Now, what do you say to tableaux vivants? I’m sure we might get some up by Thursday. This is only Monday, so we have three clear days.”
“There would be a great deal to do in such a short time,” said Chris. “And where would you have them?”
“Oh! in this room of course. It is beautifully adapted for the purpose. There’s the opening for the curtains between the two rooms, and a door to each, one for the audience, the other for the performers.”
She was so enthusiastic that Chris felt quite sorry that she must destroy this charming arrangement by pointing out that the room was wanted for the ball on Friday night, and that there would be no time to put up a stage on Thursday and to take it down and re-arrange the room for the night after.
“Well, there must be some other room in a big place like this,” said Mrs. Graham-Shute, still buoyantly. “Come, you set your wits to work to help me, like a dear girl, and I’m sure we shall manage something between us.”
Chris began to see that she had better indulge her, as she would want something to keep her occupied during the next few days.
“There’s a great place that was built for a barn, that was used for a school treat in the summer, I believe. It’s down by the new stables, a quarter of a mile away. I don’t know whether that would do. There are some tables and trestles piled up in one corner; perhaps they could be made into a stage.”
“The very thing!” cried Mrs. Graham-Shute, enthusiastically. “I knew we should manage it somehow.”
But Chris saw difficulties where her companion saw none.
“But you will want a lot of people, performers and spectators too,” she objected. “And then, have you considered that there will be dresses to be made, and scenes to be rehearsed? There’s a lot of work to be done to get tableaux up properly.”
But to get a thing up properly was what Mrs. Graham-Shute never troubled to do. To get it up somehow was always the extreme limit of her ambition. She was already perfectly satisfied, and she proceeded at once to settle other details as summarily as the first.
“We will do fairy tales, I think,” she said. “The dresses will be cheap and easily made. We can have the ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ with Lilith as Beauty, and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Red Riding Hood,’ and—and any of those things, don’t you know? With all my cousin’s curiosities and things we can make a lovely palace for the ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”
Mrs. Abercarne had raised her double eye-glass, and was looking horror-struck at this suggested desecration.
Chris, with a frightened glance at her mother, hastened to say:
“But, then, the performers? Who would you have for the tableaux?”
“Oh, well, there must be some family in the neighbourhood quite used to such things. There always is, you know. I must ask my cousin John about that. I suppose you wouldn’t know of anybody?”
“Well, there are the Brownes. Mr. Browne is a brewer, the head of the firm of Browne & Browne. It’s a large family, and they can act, I believe.”
“Then they will do beautifully,” said Mrs. Graham-Shute, complacently. “We will have them just to fill up. They can play the pages and court ladies, and one of them can be the Wolf in ‘Red Hiding Hood;’ and another can black himself for Man Friday. Of course, Lilith, and Rose, and Donald will take the principal parts, for they want a little acting, you know. People think it’s only just to stand still, but really you have to be quite clever to do it really well. And now there’s nothing left to decide but what’s it to be for. Of course, it must be in aid of something. I must go and see the vicar’s wife—if he has a wife—to-morrow, and settle that.”
“You don’t mean to charge to see them, do you?” exclaimed Chris, in astonishment. “Done in such a hurry, would they be worth it?”
“Oh, people don’t mind when it’s for a charity,” answered the lady, breezily. “Besides, I’m sure they’ll be very good. You will spare no pains in getting the dresses ready, and all the little etceteras, will you? I don’t mind organizing these things a bit, but I must have a willing lieutenant to carry out the petty details,” she ended, with a smile.
Chris thought that upon the whole the “petty details” would be quite equal in value to the “organisation,” but all she said was:
“Of course, I will do all I can. But I’m afraid you will have to give up the idea of making a charge for admission. Mr. Bradfield would never allow it, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Graham-Shute, losing her good humour in a moment, looked at her with fishy eyes. Who was this girl that she should profess to know more than she did about her “cousin John?”
“Oh, that would take all the sense out of the thing altogether,” she said, coldly. “If any little thing should go wrong, the lights all go out, as happened once, I remember; or the people be obliged to go on in their ordinary dress, as we had to do once for the murder of Rizzio, people can grumble or make fun of you if it’s not for a charity. Young people don’t consider these things. I’m sure, if Mr. Bradfield doesn’t like it much, he’ll give way if I coax him.”
Chris said nothing; and as the gentlemen came in at that moment, Mrs. Graham-Shute proceeded straightway to use her blandishments on her cousin.
“We’re going to give tableaux vivants in the barn by the stables, John,” she said, attacking him at once. “Miss Abercarne says we can make a lovely stage there with some trestles and things that are there already for us. And she says that the Brownes will play the smaller parts beautifully, and I’m going to see them about it to-morrow. And we’re going to do the ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”
“I’ve no objection. But if you must have a ‘Beauty’ picture, have ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Of course Miss Abercarne will play Beauty, and I’ll play the other chap.”
Mrs. Graham-Shute’s face fell.
“We had thought of making Lilith play Beauty; you see it wants some aptitude, and a little experience in these things to play an important part like Beauty. But, of course, if Miss Abercarne thinks she can do it better——”
“She can look it better, that’s the point,” interrupted Mr. Bradfield, with conviction. “The prettiest girl must play Beauty, and you can’t deny that Miss Abercarne is the prettiest. Ask William.”
Mr. Graham-Shute agreed enthusiastically; and the girls, who were all three gathered round the piano, wondered what was amusing the gentlemen so much, and making mamma so angry. But it was at the suggestion of making a charge for admission that John Bradfield put his foot down the most cruelly on his cousin’s little plans. He would not hear of it. He was quite ready to pay them to come in, he said, if that should be necessary; but he could not think of allowing people who would be his guests on the following night, to pay for what was not worth paying for.
And Mrs. Graham-Shute had to swallow her mortification as best she could.
“Perhaps,” she said, when she had mastered her vexation sufficiently to speak, “we had better give up the idea of having the tableaux, and think of something else. The time is very short, and if we are to have a lot of incompetent people in the principal parts, it will not, as you say, cousin John, be worth paying to see, or even seeing at all.”
“But,” said John Bradfield, who saw through the poor lady’s little manœuvres, and loved to tease her. “I won’t have them given up. They will amuse you at any rate, and I want to see Miss Christina with her hair down. She’ll have to wear it down as Beauty, won’t she?”
Each word was making the poor lady more angry. She saw her husband laughing at her, and at last she could bear it no longer.
“Oh, if the affair is going to be spoilt in this way, I wash my hands of it. I thought it was to be kept in the family.”
“What family? The Brownes?” cried John Bradfield, as he crossed the room and broke up the knot of girls. “Miss Christina, there’s a difficulty about the part of Beauty. I’m sure you won’t mind playing it, if I play the Beast, will you?”
Poor Chris grew crimson, and Lilith looked surprised. It was her mother’s fault that she had been taught to consider herself, not an ordinarily pretty girl, but a peerless beauty, with whom all other good-looking girls were out of the running.
“Mrs. Shute doesn’t think you are clever enough to stand and be looked at, Miss Christina,” he went on mischievously. “But I want you to vindicate your claims to intellect.”
“On the contrary,” interrupted his cousin in a shrill, offended tone, “I thought Miss Abercarne’s talents would be wasted in such a trifling part. I thought she would like better to play the music. We must have a musical accompaniment.”
“Yes, yes; I should like that much better,” said poor Chris, who saw that she had been made the instrument for worrying the stout lady to the verge of apoplexy. “Make me of use in any way you like, as long as you don’t want me to go on the stage.”
And so the incident ended in a discussion of the dresses, and in choosing the subjects to be illustrated.