“I will give you the key to the preserve closet; it is at the end of the drying-room, and you may make a raid upon it for your provisions. Only please be careful not to waste or destroy any more than you can dispose of. I will have some tables placed in the drying-room, and you may partake of your collation there.”
This was all we needed. The preparations for the Catacomb Party went merrily on.
Trude Middleton dramatized Cardinal Wiseman’s novel, “Fabiola.” We who had remained at school during the Christmas Holidays had read it aloud together, and its thrilling pictures of the persecutions of the martyrs, the games of the arena, and all the life of imperial Rome, had made a deep impression upon us. Trude Middleton had a genius for writing, and Little Breeze distributed the parts, rehearsed the play, took the rôle of the sorceress Afra, and acted as stage manager. The classical costumes were easily arranged. Professor Waite showed us how to drape crinkled cheese cloth and to manage the folds of peplum and toga, to trace a key-pattern border, to fillet our hair, and lace our sandals. The rehearsals were carried on in the most secret manner. Only the actors knew exactly what the play was to be. Expectancy was on the qui vive. Winnie had written some mysteriously attractive admission tickets, and had ornamented each one with a tiny white wire skeleton. These tickets the ten sold to the other members of the school to the number of one hundred and twenty, not a single member of the school declining to patronize us.
The sale of these tickets had been materially aided by a manifesto, printed in red ink, supposed to simulate blood, and left dangling conspicuously from the wrist of old “Bonaparte” (Bonypart), the anatomy class skeleton.
This manifesto read as follows:
The Council of Ten, in secret session assembled, hereby summon you, each and all, severally and individually, to the Torture Chambers of the Inquisition (otherwise known as the studio), on the ringing of the great tocsin (sometimes called the eight o’clock study bell). At that hour let each be prepared to render up her earthly goods to the amount of one ticket, vouching for fifty cents; and having donned a winding sheet, and likewise a winding pillow-case as headgear, submit to the office of the Inquisition, which will transform her, with that happy despatch due to long experience, into a disembodied spirit. At the same time the Arch Witch Winnie will turn back the clock of Time to the first century, and each ghost, being first securely blindfolded, will be led by a spirit guide, experienced in the charge of personally conducting spirits, into the great amphitheatre of the Coliseum, where she will mingle with the most renowned personages of ancient Rome, and will be permitted to live a short and exciting life under the cheerful persecution of the amiable and playful Cæsars.
After the final scene of the gladiatorial combat in the arena each spirit will be led by her guide through the grewsome and labyrinthine Catacombs—faint not! fear not! to the
Feast of the Ghouls!
Thence, conducted by Orpheus with his lute, and Beatrice, the guide of Dante, they will cross the Styx and join in the
Dance of the Dead