Chapter XIX: The Operetta

It was the last rehearsal but one, not the dress rehearsal, but the “half-dressed rehearsal,” as Clarissa called it. At the dress rehearsal a large number of undergraduates, and special friends of the performers were to be admitted, and then was to come the performance from which so much was hoped. But the dress rehearsal would be so much like a real performance that the present occasion was regarded as something very important.

Nearly all the chorus were wearing the short peasant skirt, and strutted about seeming on the whole well pleased with their own appearance. But the prima donnas were in ordinary attire, for their bespangled robes were too elaborate to be dragged about on the dusty stage. Polly and Ruth in bicycle skirts were rushing among the players, now giving directions to this one, then to that.

“You must stand better, and do come nearer to the front; and when Miss Harmon is singing, look toward her. You are supposed to be hanging on every word of hers (which we’re not usually in reality).”

The last words, of course, were _sotto voce_, and the chorus for the time being made a great effort to obey the energetic Ruth. Occasionally some girl, forgetting how much depended on her, would draw her neighbor aside for a tête-à-tête, to the great annoyance of the energetic managers.

Julia, in her chair in the centre of the floor below the stage, held the score, and from time to time contributed her word of criticism. But she was glad enough to have Clarissa and Annabel and Polly and Ruth bear the most responsibility, as it troubled her to have to pay too much attention to details. Clarissa and Annabel were lovers in the play, and to Polly this seemed rather ridiculous, feeling as she did that she had special insight into the dislike of Annabel for Clarissa. Clarissa, however, seemed unaware that Annabel was less than friendly; and although the latter was not always as perfectly amiable as the Princess in a light opera ought to be, the rehearsals had, on the whole, passed off pretty well. Polly herself, as it happened, was almost the centre of interest in the play. This had come about by accident rather than by actual intention on the part of Julia. She was a disguised Queen, disguised as a youth of humble birth, who had escaped from court for a frolic, whose grace and wit carried everything before her. Although she was apparently Clarissa’s rival for a while, everything was explained when at the very end her disguise was revealed. The operetta abounded in pleasing duets, bright dialogues, and witty hits and gibes. But the jokes and hits were never bitter nor purely personal. They were directed against the peculiarities of certain groups of students rather than against the students themselves. Cambridge, too, came in for its share of ridicule, although the jokes on this subject were rather threadbare, as they had all been used in other years by Harvard or Radcliffe undergraduates, in their dramatic performances or college publications.

On the whole, it was a composite production rather than the work of any one individual. Even in the matter of the music, Julia had accepted more than one suggestion made by her friends, and in one or two instances she had composed the words of the lyric, while Polly had composed the music. In the work of composing and arranging the operetta there had been really no friction, and all had been eager to make the affair a success. On this day, when the final performances were so near, there was hardly a girl who did not rejoice that they had come to the end of their weeks of work. Ruth was particularly gratified as they turned away from the hall. She gave a hop, skip, and a jump, undignified, perhaps, for a Sophomore, though expressive of her feeling.

“Hundreds of dollars!” she cried. “My dreams have been filled with them since yesterday, and we have sold nearly all our tickets.”

“But there will be expenses, dear child. You mustn’t forget that,” said Polly, who was one of the group.

“Oh, of course, but there will be enough left. I’m glad, too, that the whole performance will be so creditable, and we ought to be thankful enough that no one has been ill, or for any other reason obliged to give up her part. Anything like that would drive me to distraction, for we have no understudies.”

“Oh,” said Julia, “every one has given every one else so much advice that I am sure that any one who has watched the rehearsals could take the part of some other girl at a moment’s notice.”

“I’m not so sure,” responded Ruth, accepting her friend more seriously than the latter intended. “One or two of the parts might, perhaps, be taken, but not Polly’s. She puts a new touch in at almost every rehearsal, and honestly, I think that she has made the thing the success that it is. Excuse me, Julia, I didn’t mean that we owe more to the performers than to the composer.”

“Why, indeed,” replied Julia, “I understand exactly what you mean, and it is fortunate that Polly’s father was not as ill as she feared a week or two ago, for if she had had to go South it would have made a great difference to us.”

Nor were the girls wrong in their expectations. The dress rehearsal went off with all the sparkle and life that they had hoped. The regular performance they felt to be a more trying occasion than the rehearsal, for the audience included so many persons from Boston, as well as from Cambridge, whose judgment carried great weight. But critical or not, they were thoroughly appreciative of the pretty operetta. More than once were the singers and actors called before the curtain; and had Julia not been too modest, she, too, would have answered the calls that were made for her. Some of those who were not ardent admirers of Annabel were pleased that she did not—apparently could not—eclipse Polly and Clarissa. Sweet though her voice was, it was not powerful, and her self-consciousness often spoiled the effect of her acting. Brenda, of course, was at the play, and a large party of her gay young friends from the City. In the party were Tom and Will and a number of college men, and Julia, sitting among them, felt that she was almost as merry in spirit as they. Yet more than the praises of these young people, Julia appreciated those of her uncle and aunt who sat in the tier of seats just behind; for her aunt was apparently satisfied by the commendation she received for the operetta that her devotion to her work was not going to separate her entirely from young people of her own age.

“But this operetta, my dear, is on the whole so frivolous that I have some hope that college is not going to deprive you entirely of your interest in society.”

At the close of the performance, as the actors stood behind the scenes listening to the commendations of their friends, a telegraph messenger pushed his way among them with a dispatch for Polly.

Polly’s color faded as she heard him ask for her, and she turned to Julia with an appealing “Read it” as she laid the slip of yellow paper in her hand.

Quickly grasping its contents, Julia threw her arms around her friend.

“Come, my carriage is ready.”

But the carriage did not appear for more than five minutes, during which Polly’s sobs were painful to hear.

“It’s her father,” explained Clarissa to a group of girls who had withdrawn some distance from the weeping Polly. “He died this morning, according to the telegram.”

“This morning!” cried one of the girls. “Then it’s a wonder that she wasn’t notified earlier. Why, it takes no time for a telegram to travel from Atlanta to Boston.”

“A telegram!” cried Ruth, who had just come behind the scenes; “why, that reminds me. But what’s the matter with Polly?”

“Why, she’s just had news of her father’s death, and she must feel dreadfully to think that she has been acting this evening, for he died, they say, this morning.”

While Elspeth was speaking Ruth had turned very pale. She put her hand in her little velvet chatelaine and drew out a yellow envelope, apparently another telegram. Without a word to the others she walked up to Polly and Julia.

“This is a telegram that came early in the evening, before we began; you ought to have had it.”

But Polly did not wait for further explanation; she tore open the envelope. Then after reading the telegram, she thrust it inside her dress.

“I cannot forgive you,” she cried. “How could you let me sing? My father died to-day, and what will they think of me when they hear that I sang just the same! I will not forgive you.”

The stern words were followed by violent sobs.

This outburst was so unlike the lively, amiable Polly that her friends were only too glad when Julia’s carriage was announced; and leaning on Clarissa’s arm, she was led away, closely followed by Julia.

The girls who were left behind speculated as to what Polly would do; whether she would start for home immediately; whether her feeling would continue to be bitter toward Ruth for withholding the telegram.

“Yet it doesn’t seem altogether like Ruth,” said Elspeth. “Fond as I am of Polly, I feel that there may be some mistake. I am sure that Ruth could not have known about the telegram; could not possibly have held it from Polly if she knew what was in it.”

But unluckily among those whose thoughts were favorable to Ruth, Julia was not to be counted. Her disapproval of Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel now seemed to have been well founded. She felt sure that unintentionally Ruth had adopted Annabel’s rather easy standards of duty to others. “The greatest good of the greatest number,” Annabel was apt to offer as an excuse for some action which other girls called selfish. For when criticised she would try to prove that while one or perhaps two girls were injured by something that she had said or done, an indefinite number of indefinite people would approve, and therefore might be benefited by it. Annabel had a smattering of philosophy, as she had of other subjects, obtained before studying them; and had she learned more of the philosopher whom she quoted almost unconsciously, she would have known that above all other rules he set the Golden Rule. To do unto others as she would have others do to her was certainly not a guiding star of Annabel’s conduct.

Thus, after all, there had been an element of tragedy in the operetta that had once meant only sunshine to those who were working and planning for it. Polly Porson, speeding Southward, would have felt doubly forlorn had not Clarissa been with her. For the Western girl had insisted on going with her friend, and though her absence from Cambridge at this time meant some loss in the coming examinations, she would not have listened had any one attempted to dissuade her from going. She did her part, too, in softening Polly’s feeling toward Ruth, and she was surprised to find how earnestly she could champion the cause of a girl who had so often seemed anything but friendly toward her. But while she knew that Ruth had taken no pains to conceal a certain dislike for her, she realized that it was a case of mere personal antipathy, unaccountable, perhaps, as such things often are, or to be accounted for by the fact that in every way the two girls had received a very different training.

“But I’m sure that Ruth wouldn’t do a mean thing, and to have kept that telegram from you would have been mean beyond description.”

Polly, absorbed in her sorrow, and thinking more about the meeting with her mother and little sisters, had little to say, although firmly fixed in her mind was the thought that Ruth really had served her own ends by holding the telegram from her.

Clarissa was soon back at Cambridge, and by good luck lost not a single examination through her absence. She would not even admit that her sudden trip, by interfering with her study, had lowered her standing. When the blue-books were all in she was able to announce triumphantly that her average was higher than ever before. “Which proves,” she had said to Elspeth, “that cramming is a luxury and not a necessity.”

Julia did not stay in Cambridge this spring for either the Radcliffe or the Harvard Class Days. She went with her aunt and Brenda to New Haven for the ball game, where Arthur Weston was their host; and although he was as polite as he could be, Julia knew that all his interest was really in Brenda. Arthur, whose brother had married Brenda’s sister, was fond of calling Brenda sister-in-law, and for the same reason he had adopted Julia as a cousin. By a strange coincidence, he, like Philip, had failed to take his degree the preceding June. This was due to ill-health, which had kept him from college part of the year. But unlike Philip, he had been willing to take his place with the next class, and indeed seemed as well pleased as if graduating with his own class. Brenda’s disposition, too, was as volatile as Arthur’s, and she carried a blue parasol, wore blue flowers, and altogether seemed to have forgotten the existence of Harvard and her former love for Harvard red. It was hard for Julia to understand such heartlessness as this,—for so she had to regard it,—as until very lately all Brenda’s college feeling had been for Harvard. Yet Brenda herself would not admit that it was really a strong personal preference for Arthur that had made her forego her Harvard allegiance. She fell back on the excuse of relationship, and on the fact that she had caused the accident which had finally resulted in Arthur’s losing a year at college.

“For although he knows that it was an accident, still it certainly was my bicycle that hurt his foot, and I ought to make up by showing all the interest I can in his college. Between us,” she added confidentially, “I think that Harvard Class Day is really more fun; still, I’m having about the best time of my life here at New Haven, although I do not quite see why it should be.”

But Julia understood, and Mrs. Barlow understood, and they smiled indulgently when they saw the two young people strolling off under the New Haven elms.

When the gaiety of the late spring was over, Julia was glad to be back again at Rockley. She needed rest, and she had the good sense to spend her summer quietly. In the early autumn, with her aunt and uncle, she made a tour of the mountains, and the keen air put her in even better trim for her autumn’s work.