CHAPTER XIX—THE SENIOR PAGEANT
Commencement came with hurrying feet, showing little regard for Seniors, who daily visited the old haunts, grown so dear to them, and hourly hated worse the thought of leaving St. Helen’s. Every spot seemed dearer than ever before—the cottages, which had been their homes, the Retreat, filled with the memories of chapel and vespers, every path in the woods, every spot where certain flowers grew. It would be hard to leave them all; but far harder to say good-by to one another, and to the teachers and girls who were to return; for, as Anne said on every possible occasion, “There’s no use talking! It never will seem the same again!” So in all the festivities of the closing days there was a sadness—a strange hollow feeling in one’s body, a lump which often came unexpectedly into one’s throat.
To Virginia, this season of her first Commencement was one of conflicting emotions. She was torn between a joy in the perfect June days, and a sorrow that they must soon come to an end; between the happy anticipation of seeing her father, who, with her grandmother and Aunt Nan, was to be at St. Helen’s for the closing week, and the sad realization that St. Helen’s would never seem the same without the Seniors, and that The Hermitage would be a sadly different place without Mary and Anne.
She found studying during those last few weeks the most difficult thing in the world; and had it not been for the cup competition between Hathaway and The Hermitage, which was daily growing more close, she, like many of the others, would have been sorely tempted to take a vacation. It would be so much more “vital,” she said to herself, and ten times more appropriate, to close her geometry and walk through the woods with Priscilla, or sit in Mary’s room, and plan for the wonderful days to come; for Mrs. Williams had “found a way,” and Jack and Mary were actually to spend the month of August in Wyoming with Virginia and Donald. The trip was to be their Commencement gift, for Jack was likewise graduating that year from the Stanford School. “It’s too good to be true,” Virginia kept saying to herself, “it’s too good to be true,” and deep in her heart she hoped and hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop might consent to Priscilla’s going also. They had said they would “think about it,” and that, so Priscilla said, was a hopeful sign.
As she bent over her geometry, preparing for the final examination, there would come before her eyes in place of circles and triangles and parallelograms, visions of sunny August days riding over the foothills, and starlit August nights about a camp-fire in the canyon. It would be such fun for her and Don to show Mary and Jack all the loveliest places in their country. And she would teach Mary to shoot—Mary, who had never in her life held a rifle! Oh, if only the other Vigilantes might come! But she knew that Dorothy was to be in California with her father; and as to Vivian, Virginia could somehow easily picture the horror on timid Mrs. Winter’s face at the thought of Vivian shooting and camping in a canyon! But this was not mastering geometry, and there was the cup! The Hermitage must win it from Hathaway, and the winning or the losing depended upon the success or failure of each one. So, banishing dreams, she went to work again.
There were but ten days more. Already it was examination week; already many of the traditional ceremonies and closing occasions had taken place. The Juniors had “picnicked” the Seniors, and the Seniors the Juniors; the cottage tennis finals had been played off, Overlook winning the doubles, and Bess Shepard being proclaimed the champion in the ensuing singles; the Senior ivy had been planted against the wall of the Retreat, and the old trowel presented with fitting remarks to the Junior president. By the cottages the Senior occupants had each planted her own slip of ivy, her name placed in a securely corked bottle, and buried beneath the roots of her plant. Thus in our own minds do we become immortal!
But the occasion upon which all thoughts were centered, and toward which all energies were bent, was the Senior Pageant, to be held on Tuesday afternoon of the closing week. On preceding Commencements, an out-of-door play had been the choice of the graduating class; but this year the Seniors, who had been throughout their four years unusually interested in History, had determined to give in place of the play a Historical Pageant. Each was to represent some character of History, legendary or ancient, mediaeval or modern, design and make her own costume, and dramatize the certain scene or scenes which she had chosen to portray. The Juniors and members of the lower classes, though not of importance as prominent characters, were yet of indispensable value as retainers, henchmen, pages, and the like.
“In fact,” said the Blackmore twins, who were the blindfolded headsmen, leading the procession of the doomed Mary Stuart to the block; “in fact, we may not seem very important, but we’re the setting and they couldn’t do without us!”
For weeks, even for months, they had been making preparations and holding rehearsals. The place chosen for the pageant was the level strip of meadow south of the campus. Directly back of it lay the Retreat woods, which were very convenient for the disappearance of the characters when their parts were finished, and especially so for Martin Luther, who had to nail his ninety-five theses on the door of the Retreat. On the left the road led to St. Helen’s; on the right stretched more woodland; while immediately in front of the ground chosen for the performance, a gently sloping hillside formed a splendid amphitheater from which the audience was to view the pageant. Nature had surely done her best to provide an ideal situation; and the girls were going to try to do as well.
Virginia had found her services in great demand, and she was glad and proud to give them. Anne had determined to be her beloved Joan of Arc, and had planned to appear in three scenes—in the forest of Domremy, where she listened to the voices; in the company of the old village priest, with whom she talked of her visions; and finally on the journey toward the Dauphin, whom she was to recognize among his courtiers. In the last scene a horse was necessary, for Joan, clad in armor, rode, accompanied by the old priest and two knights. Also, the Black Prince clamored for a war-horse; Augustus said he never could be august without one; and Roland refused to die in the Pass of Roncesvalles, unless he could first fall from his panting steed! Matters early in the spring having come to a halt over the horse problem, Miss King was consulted, and upon Virginia’s assurance, ably seconded by that of Mr. Hanly, that Napoleon would be a perfectly safe addition to the troupe, his services were engaged for rehearsals and final performance alike, and he was installed in St. Helen’s stable, so as to be on hand whenever desired.
Joan, never having been on a horse before, though born and bred in the South, needed considerable instruction, as did the other equestrian actresses; and Virginia found herself installed as riding-mistress for a good many hours each week. Napoleon did not seem averse to his part in the pageant, though sometimes he shook his head disdainfully when the Black Prince strapped some armor over it, and objected slightly to the trappings which Augustus felt necessary for his successful entry into Rome. Virginia’s saddle, bedecked for the occasion, was found adequate for all the riders; and after many, many attempts, followed by very frank criticisms from the riding-mistress, most of the performers could mount and dismount with something resembling ease. Virginia, knowing well Napoleon’s variety of gaits, did not hope for equestrianism on the part of the riders. If they could only get on safely, sit fairly straight, and get off without catching their feet or clothing, she would rest content; and though Roland and the Black Prince were determined to use their spurs and come out from the forest on the gallop, Virginia, having raised them from the ground after two of these disastrous attempts, urged them with all her might to allow Napoleon to walk, which he was very glad to do.
But Joan, it must be admitted, found her last act a trying one. Though she mounted in the recesses of the forest, and could have all the assistance she needed, to ride before the audience, holding her spear aloft in one hand, and driving with the other was well-nigh impossible, especially when she longed to grasp the saddle-horn; and lastly, to dismount safely, without catching on some part of that fearful saddle and irretrievably loosening her armor, was an act she feared and dreaded day and night.
“Oh, why did I choose to be Joan!” she cried, as Virginia, at a private rehearsal, raised her from the ground after at least the twentieth attempt to dismount. “I just can’t do it!”
“Yes, you can,” encouraged her instructor, who, when occasion demanded, coached the dramatic appearance as well as the equestrian. “You’re beautiful when you hear the voices in the forest, and when you talk with the old priest, you’re thrilling! Only, I do wish Lucile would be more priestly. Of course, she speaks French wonderfully, but she isn’t one bit like a priest. It’s too bad, when you’re so wonderful in that scene.”
“Well, you see, she didn’t want to be the priest, anyway. She wanted to be the Black Prince’s sweetheart.”
“He didn’t have a sweetheart, did he?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem as though he would at seventeen. But she wanted him to, anyway, and say farewell to her in England.”
“She does make me sick! Now, Anne, I’ve just one criticism. You’re going to learn to dismount all right; but if you’d only look less scared when you ride toward the Dauphin! You know you ought to look soulful, as though you were seeing a distant vision, but you don’t. You look frightened to death.”
“Then I look just the way I feel, Virginia. I’d rather ride an elephant than that Napoleon. I am scared of him, and I may as well admit it. He’s the most terrorizing animal I’ve ever known!” And nothing that Napoleon’s trainer could say as to his harmlessness and even amicability of disposition, could convince the trembling Joan, who, in perseverance and fear, still continued to make herself dismount.
But when the last Saturday came, all difficulties seemed overcome. Joan had actually dismounted successfully half a dozen times; the Black Prince had, after all, decided that he was more impressive when his charger walked; and Queen Elizabeth had ridden three times in her carriage, borne by eight staggering retainers, without its once breaking down. No more rehearsals were to be held until the final one on Tuesday morning; and costumes were packed away, while Napoleon gratefully munched his oats in St. Helen’s stable, and wondered at the unaccustomed respite he was enjoying.
On that Saturday came Virginia’s father with her Grandmother Webster and Aunt Nan. She had never been so happy in her life, she thought, as she walked excitedly up and down the platform, and waited for the train. Would her father find her much changed, she wondered, and would he look the same? Never before in their lives had they been separated, and nine months seemed a very long time. His letter of yesterday had been written from Vermont where he had visited a week, and where, he told her, he had been very happy. And her grandmother had also written, saying how much they were enjoying him. She was so glad, she said to herself, as the train whistled in the distance—so thankful that at last Grandmother Webster was beginning to appreciate her father. If it were really true, she simply couldn’t be any happier.
It was really true! Of that she was assured. For after her father had jumped from the train to hold his little daughter close in his arms for a moment, he had turned to help her grandmother, who was just alighting, and whom, to Virginia’s great joy, he called “Mother.” Then her grandmother kissed her, and said to her father, “John, hasn’t she grown?”; and jolly Aunt Nan, who came up in the rear, hugged her hard, and said in the most understanding kind of way, “Now this whole family is together at last!” Finally, as if to add the finishing touch and make everything complete, Grandmother Webster, after she and Aunt Nan had greeted Miss King, who stood on the platform, said, “And I think, years ago, you met my son, Virginia’s father.”
The next three days were like the perfect realization of a dream. “The whole family” roamed together about the campus; listened to the farewell sermon, which the white-haired bishop gave on Sunday morning in the chapel, and the last vesper service, at which every one cried; heard the Senior essays on Monday afternoon; and attended Miss King’s reception on Monday evening. It seemed like a great family reunion with all the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters; and it took no time at all for everybody to become acquainted with everybody else. Virginia proudly introduced her father to all the girls; and it was not long before the four Vigilantes and their adviser were listening to tales of the real Vigilante days.
“And I hope you’ll every one come to Wyoming for August,” he said genially, “You’ll be well-chaperoned, for Virginia’s Aunt Nan is coming, and there’s room and a welcome for all.”
That night Priscilla, before they went to sleep, confided her hopes to Virginia.
“I saw mother and dad talking with your father and Aunt Nan to-night, when we were helping serve,” she whispered, “and I know they were talking about it! Oh, Virginia, do you really suppose I’ll be there?”
“I’m thinking on it every minute I have,” came back the whispered answer. “Aunt Nan’s going will make a big difference; and some way I just know you’re coming, Priscilla!”
Tuesday dawned beautifully, setting at rest many anxious hearts, which had bade their owners rise from bed at intervals during the night to study the heavens. At ten o’clock a strictly private dress rehearsal was held on the meadow. Virginia, who was one of Queen Elizabeth’s pages, ran about in doublet and hose, and directed those who rode Napoleon. Everything went along with perfect smoothness. Martin Luther, who was Mary, nailed his theses with resounding strokes upon the church door, and then in a fiery and original Latin oration denounced the sale of “Indulgences ”; and Mary, Queen of Scots, was led to execution, without the headsmen giggling, as they had invariably done on every other occasion. Miss Allan, the History teacher, declared herself delighted.
“It’s perfect!” she said enthusiastically. “Now you may go where you like, except those in the last Joan of Arc scene. I want you to try that dismounting again, Anne, and don’t let your voice tremble when you address the Dauphin.”
“My voice will tremble until I say good-by to Napoleon forever,” thought Anne to herself as she mounted in the woods, and rode out on the meadow, preceded by her priest, and followed by two retainers, who kept at a very respectful distance from Napoleon’s heels. She drew near the Dauphin and his assembled court, halted her steed, and prepared to dismount. But, in some way, she lost her balance, and fell to the ground, her left foot caught in the stirrup. Had Napoleon moved it might have been a serious happening; but he stood calmly looking on, even before Virginia had grasped his bridle. Then Miss Allan released Anne’s foot, while the Dauphin and his court sympathized.
Anne had wrenched her ankle, and could not mount Napoleon again. That was certain. It was possible for her to perform her first and second acts, for in the first she did not walk about at all, and the scene with the priest required but a few steps. But the last was, under the circumstances, utterly impossible, and, unless a substitute could be found, must be omitted.
Poor Joan sat on the ground and tried to smile, while Miss Allan rubbed her aching ankle.
“I think it’s really providential,” she said, “because I’d have been sure to fall this afternoon. Virginia can do my last part splendidly. My costume will fit her all right, and I’m quite content with hearing the voices and talking with the priest. You’ll do it, won’t you, Virginia?”
“Why, of course, I will, if Miss Allan thinks best. My French isn’t like yours, Anne. Oh, I’m so sorry it happened!”
“Well, it’s fortunate we have you, Virginia,” said Miss Allan. “You know the part perfectly, and your pronunciation will have to do. Besides, you ride well enough to make up for it.”
Joan was lifted on Napoleon, where, having no spear to carry and both hands free to clutch the saddle, she felt quite fearless, especially since Virginia led her steed; and, followed by a train of sympathetic courtiers, was carried to The Hermitage, where her ankle, which was not badly hurt, was carefully bandaged. Meanwhile, Virginia, raised all at once to the dignity of a Senior, rehearsed her lines, and tried with the help of Lucile to pronounce the impossible French syllables.
By three o’clock that afternoon the hillside amphitheater was crowded with guests, the number of relatives and friends being increased by many Hillcrest residents, who never failed to enjoy the Commencement “doings.” Prominent among those who awaited appearance of the pageant, was a tall, soldierly-looking gentleman, who sat beside Virginia’s father, and seemed to enjoy talking of a certain little girl, with whom he had journeyed East nine months before. Every now and then he bestowed proud glances upon his grandson, who had accompanied him, and who had already found in Jack Williams a pleasant companion.
“I couldn’t resist bringing my grandson to meet Miss Virginia,” the old gentleman explained, “and I’m doubly glad I did come, for I’m delighted to meet her father.”
Virginia’s father evidently enjoyed Colonel Standish, for they found many subjects of conversation, and talked until a herald, clad in crimson and white, the Senior colors, appeared from the forest, and blowing a trumpet, announced in quaint language that the pageant was about to begin:
“Lords and ladies, passing fair,
I would now to you declare
That before your very eyes
Those from out the past arise.”
The first to arise from out the shadowy past were Hector and Andromache, clad in Trojan costumes. In Homer’s tongue they bade each other farewell, while Andromache lifted her infant son (the janitor’s baby, borrowed for the occasion) to kiss his fierce father, armed with helmet, shield, and spear, before he should go out to fight the great Achilles. True to the Homeric legend, the baby cried in fright, and was hurriedly returned to the janitor’s wife, who waited in the shadow of the trees. Demosthenes hurled in good Greek a “philippic” against the Macedonian King, and Cicero cursed Cataline in fiery Latin. Then followed the great Augustus, who sat upon the much-bedecked Napoleon and gloried in his triumph; Roland, who fell gallantly from his steed in the Pass of Roncesvalles, blowing his horn with his last breath to warn the soldiers of Charlemagne of his disaster; and the Black Prince, who, on his way to Crecy, paused to give an oration on the valor of the English.
Now it was time for Joan of Arc, who, her peasant robes covering her bandaged ankle, sat in the forests of Domremy, and with sweet, up-turned face listened to the voices of angels. Convinced that she had a mission to perform, she sought the old priest as he walked one day in the forest, and told him of her visions; but he, in perfect though rather halfhearted French, discouraged her, and sent her home to help her mother in the kitchen. A year passed, and Joan having at last convinced the priest and the governor of Domremy, was allowed to proceed to the Dauphin, and declare her message from God.
In the last scene, a new Joan, clad in a shining helmet, a suit of armor, and bearing a shield and spear, rode from the wood into the meadow. She sat her horse like a knight of old, holding her reins in her left hand, on which arm she bore her shield, and in her right hand bearing her spear aloft. In her gray eyes was the memory of the Domremy visions; on her face the determination to save her country. Before her walked the little priest, who could not resist glancing back every now and then to be sure Napoleon was not too near his heels. Behind her on either side came two armed retainers.
As the Maid of Orleans neared the audience, she was greeted by applause, which pleased her even less than it pleased a certain little group in the center of the gathering. She rode on toward the end of the meadow, where next the woods stood the disguised Dauphin and his courtiers. As she reached the first of the Dauphin’s men-at-arms, she halted her steed, swung her armor-clad body lightly to the ground, and advanced with intent gaze toward him, whom she knew to be Charles, the future king.
“She sat her horse like a knight of old.”
Meanwhile, Napoleon, weary of this pomp and pageantry, and feeling his back free at last from knights and emperors, moved slowly to a near-by birch tree, and began to nibble at its fresh new leaves. Joan’s retainers had followed her, and as there was no one to forbid him to take refreshment, he ate on undisturbed. Suddenly at his very nose sounded a blare of trumpets. They proclaimed the Domremy peasant girl to be what she had declared herself—the deliverer of her country. But Napoleon knew nothing of proclamations or deliverers. All he knew was that he had been rudely disturbed and needlessly startled—he, who had uncomplainingly worn trappings of every description and borne Augustus and Roland, the Black Prince and Joan!
The trumpets sounded again in his ears. This time he answered with a terrifying snort, kicked up his heels and started down the meadow, his tasseled blanket, for with this new Joan he wore no saddle, dragging on the ground. Joan, in the act of receiving the homage of the Dauphin and his court, saw him go. She sprang to her feet, mediaeval manners forgotten, threw aside her spear and shield, and started in pursuit. She forgot that she was to save France; but she knew she was to save the Earl of Leicester embarrassment from having no steed to ride, when he should advance in the next act to greet Queen Elizabeth.
The progress of Napoleon was somewhat lessened by his robes in which he became often entangled, and by his desire for more fresh birch leaves. Within five minutes Joan was near him, her helmet long since gone, her armor more or less depleted, her hair streaming in the wind. She was no longer the gentle maid of Domremy; she was a Wyoming girl who was catching her horse.
“Oh, John!” cried Grandmother Webster, who with frightened eyes watched her granddaughter in this somewhat strange proceeding. “Oh, John, how can you laugh! She’ll be hurt!”
“No, she won’t, mother,” her father answered. “She’s used to that sort of thing. Don’t worry.”
“She’s the pluckiest girl I ever saw in my life!” cried the Colonel, slapping his knee. “Joan of Arc wasn’t in it!” And his grandson, who had risen to his feet and was cheering as though he were at a foot-ball game, kept shouting between his cheers:
“Say, but she’s a corker!”
Now she was running beside Napoleon. Suddenly she grasped his reins, and stopped him just as he was nearing the road, and thinking without doubt that he would escape to his Hillcrest stable where pageantry was unknown. She straightened his bedraggled robes as well as she could, then with one hand on his neck, sprang to his back with as much ease as though he had been a Shetland pony, and, amid the cheers of the audience, rode back to receive the homage, not only of the Dauphin, but of the gathering at large.
The pageant proceeded. Queen Elizabeth, borne by her eight retainers, was received by a somewhat trembling Earl of Leicester, who did not seem at all sure of his steed; Mary Stuart was dignity and courage itself as she marched to the scaffold, led by two perfectly serious headsmen; and Martin Luther eclipsed even his rehearsal of the morning. But none like the second Joan was prompted by necessity to forget the bonds of History, and establish a new tradition to add to the hundreds already clustering about St. Helen’s.
“For,” said the white-haired bishop, shaking hands with her, as she stood in her page’s costume of doublet and hose, surrounded by an admiring group, “St. Helen’s girls will never forget this Joan, though their memory may be hazy as to her of Domremy; just as they’ll always remember St. Helen’s champion chimney-sweep, and probably forget all about Charles Kingsley’s. Isn’t that so, my dear?” And he turned with a quizzical smile toward the Blackmore twin, who had dropped into the grate before his astonished eyes the year before.
“Well,” said Carver Standish III, as bearing Joan’s spear and shield, he accompanied her across the campus, “well, all I’ve got to say is, Miss Hunter, you surely are a winner! And I’m some glad grandfather brought me over to meet you!”
“I’m glad, too,” answered the happy Joan, “but I’m not Miss Hunter, I’m just Virginia. You see I’m especially anxious not to be a young lady when I get back home.”