The Girls of Chequertrees

by Marion St. John Webb

The upper half of the hall, including the raised platform at the end, was reserved for the dancers, the baby-grand piano being well concealed by bamboo fern-stands and pots of flowering shrubs, so that the music arose, apparently, from a bank of greenery and flowers. Prettily shaded lights were suspended at intervals from the ceiling.

Pamela and Beryl gathered from the conversation going on around them that they had missed Madame's opening speech and the first dance, and now the second dance was just about to start. A tall, thin lady in a black evening dress, with lace frills at her elbows, and wearing pince-nez and a rather bored expression, appeared from the door at the back of the platform, and descending behind the ferns and bamboo stands, began to play a lively barn-dance on the piano. It was a good piano, all except one note in the bass which was out of tune, and made a curious burring noise whenever it was played on; and this particular note seemed to recur again and again in the barn-dance, so that Beryl always associated the music of that evening with this particular bass note, and could hear it, in her head, whenever Madame's name was mentioned.

Twelve girls all dressed in white, and twelve youths in regulation evening-dress, took part in the barn-dance, which was enthusiastically applauded by the audience. This was followed by a graceful, old-fashioned minuet and several solo dances, each of which Martha said was nicer than the one before. But of all the dances, there were just three that the onlookers from Chequertrees remembered best. The first was Isobel's dance, the second a flower-dance in which Caroline took part, and the third a weird dance done by Madame Clarence herself.

Isobel's dance was a great success, as Madame had prophesied. Almost up to the moment when she first appeared on the platform Isobel had been feeling out of humour and disappointed on account of her white silk dress; but directly she started to dance she forgot all her troubles, and, smiling happily, she floated lightly across the platform, swaying, turning, tapping with her small white shoes, and daintily holding the skirt of Pamela's white muslin frock. It was sheer pleasure to watch Isobel's graceful movements, and she seemed to be enjoying the dance so thoroughly, that every one else felt they were enjoying it too. Could old Silas have seen her smiling light-heartedly as she danced across the hall he would never have recognized her as the same girl who had stood before him a few hours previously, savagely angry. Pamela and Beryl were astonished at the change in Isobel; they had not expected her to be able to throw her annoyance off so completely.

At the end of the dance a storm of applause broke out, and Isobel was encored again and again. Back she came, blushing and smiling and bowing—a transformed Isobel, her eyes bright with excitement. The success of the evening! That's what she had hoped to be—and that was what she was. As she bowed her acknowledgments after her encore dance, her smiling gaze, wandering round the faces of the audience, lighted on the faces of two girls, whom she recognized as Lady Prior's daughters; they were applauding her enthusiastically, Isobel saw to her delight.

On the other side of the platform door Caroline waited, listening to the applause that was greeting Isobel, and she couldn't help thinking that it was rather a shame that no applause like this was ever given to the most choice piece of needlework imaginable. She tried to conjure up visions of rapturously applauding audiences encoring an embroidered tea-cosy, but it was impossible to picture it, and she sighed heavily. "And yet the tea-cosy is much more useful than a dance," she thought. Isobel might have argued that a dance, in giving a hundred people a few minutes' genuine pleasure and happiness was of more use than a tea-cosy, but Caroline would never have agreed with her. Thinking of the many hours she had sat over her needlework, and the delicate stitchery she had done, for which she had received nothing more than an occasional word of praise, Caroline felt all at once aggrieved, realizing the unfairness of things in general. She couldn't remember feeling like this before, and marvelled at herself. Why had she got this sudden desire for praise? Perhaps it was the knowledge that the dance in which she was to appear came next on the programme, and she knew that she was no good at dancing. She wondered why Madame had insisted on her taking part in this dance; Madame liked every one of her pupils to appear on the occasions when she gave a reception, providing, of course, that they were passable dancers. She thought Caroline a passable dancer, and so she was until she forgot her steps. And Caroline felt convinced she was going to forget them on this occasion; she wished she had, on the present occasion, that sense of capability she would have felt if she had been going on the platform with a needle and thread in her hand.

Caroline felt so sure she would forget a certain part of the flower-dance that, of course, she did forget it. With twenty other girls, each carrying a trail of artificial roses, she danced on to the platform and down the upper part of the hall. All went well for a time. Every time she danced past the place where Martha was sitting she was conscious that Martha nodded and beamed encouragingly at her, and felt somewhat cheered by this attention on Martha's part. And then, when the critical part of the dance arrived—whether it was that Caroline was giddy with whirling round and round, or whether it was because she had thought to herself, "Now, this is where I shall go wrong," will never be known—but after a brief but vivid impression that she was dancing up the side of the wall, and that the audience were spinning round and round her like a gigantic top, Caroline found herself alone in the middle of the hall, with her feet tangled in a trail of artificial roses and her hair tumbling about her face.

The audience was clapping and laughing. Caroline was overcome with confusion and, flushing painfully, tried to disentangle herself from the roses. The other girls were grouped together in a final tableau at the other end of the hall, beside the platform. They were all tittering with laughter too. Caroline made a desperate effort, and, disentangling herself, dashed across to them and tried to obscure herself among the twenty. And in another minute the dance was over and they were all 'behind the scenes' again.

Madame received her with honeyed words, but the tone of her voice was acid. She had thought that Caroline's dancing would pass at least unnoticed, and now it had been noticed in a very unenviable way.

Poor Caroline! She felt both ashamed and sorry for herself. "I knew I should never remember that part," was all she could say—and thereafter remained quiet and sulky, brooding over the 'ridiculous sketch' she must have looked before all that laughing audience. "I never did like dancing," she said to herself later, "and now I hate it."