“Penelope’s head aches, I know it does,” said Agnes, turning to her small companion as she spoke. “What is the matter, Penelope dear?”
“I am quite all right,” replied Penelope; “but I can’t talk to you just now, Juliet, for I’ve something important to say to your sister Mary, and also to say to Cara Burt.”
“But I thought you hated the older girls,” said Juliet, puckering her pretty brows in distress. “You have always belonged to us, and that was one reason why we loved you so much. You were always gay and bright and jolly with us. Why can’t you play with us now?”
“Yes – why can’t you?” asked Agnes. “It won’t be a bit too hot to play hide-and-seek in the wood, and we have an hour and a half before we need go back to horrid lessons.”
“Yes – aren’t the lessons detestable?” said Penelope. One of her greatest powers amongst the younger girls was the manner in which she could force them to dislike their lessons, judging that there would be no surer way of making them her friends than by pretending to dislike the work they had got to do. She thus bred a spirit of mischief in the school, which no one in the least suspected, not even the girls over whom she reigned supreme.
She said a few words now to Juliet L’Estrange, and then walked on to the entrance of the wood, where she felt certain she would find Mary and Cara waiting for her. She was right: they were there, and so also, to her surprise, were the other girls who were to take part in “A Dream of Fair Women.”
It was arranged, after all, that only Helen of Troy, Iphigenia, Jephtha’s daughter, Cleopatra, and Fair Rosamond were to act. Queen Eleanor was not essential, she might come in or not, as the mistress decided later on. But five principal actors there must be, and there stood four of them looking anxiously, full into Penelope Carlton’s face. Annie Leicester was to take the part of Fair Rosamond. She was a thoroughly unremarkable looking girl, but had a certain willowy grace about her, and could put herself into graceful poses. The girl who was to take the part of Cleopatra was dark – almost swarthy. Her name was Susanna Salmi; and it needed but a glance to detect her Jewish origin. Her brow was very low; she had masses of thick, black hair, a large mouth, and a somewhat prominent chin. Her face, on the whole, was strong, and there were possibilities about her of future beauty, but that would greatly depend on whether she grew tall enough, and whether her buxom figure toned down to lines of beauty.
The four girls, such as they were, looked indeed in no way remarkable or suited to their parts. But what will not judicious make-up and limelight and due attention to artistic effect achieve? Mrs Hazlitt would not have despaired of the four, if only she had secured the coveted fifth. If the girl she wished to be Helen of Troy could only stand forth in her exquisite beauty in the midst of this group, the tableaux would be a marked success.
The girls now surrounded Penelope, each of them looking at her with fresh eyes. Hitherto, she had been quite unnoticed in the school. She was a nobody – a very plain, uninteresting, badly dressed creature. But now she was to be – in a measure – their deliverer; for they felt certain that under Mrs Hazlitt’s clever manipulations she could be transformed into a Helen of Troy. They all surrounded her eagerly.
“So glad you’ve come!” said Annie Leicester. “Thought you would; of course, you’re going to help us. Oh dear – how much fairer you look than any of the rest of us – you will make a great contrast to the rest of Tennyson’s ‘Fair Women’; won’t she, Mary?”
Mary smiled.
“Penelope will do quite well,” she said. “As Honora has been such a fool as to refuse to play, we must take the second-best. You have thought it all over, haven’t you, Penelope, and you are going to yield?”
“Well,” – said Penelope – “I have thought it over, and I am – ”
“Oh, yes – dear creature!” said Cara. “You will yield, won’t you? Say yes, at once – say that you will do what we wish. We can then find Mrs Hazlitt and tell her that her heroines will be forthcoming, and she can go forward with her arrangements. The date is not so very far off now, and of course there will be a great many rehearsals.”
“Five pounds apiece,” murmured Penelope to herself. She looked eagerly from one face to another. She had not been six months at the school without finding out that most of her companions were rich. They could each afford to gratify their special whim, even to the tune of a five-pound note; and even if they did not, why – it didn’t matter: she would not play; the thing would fall to the ground. Of course, they would never repeat what she was going to say – that was the first point she must assure herself of.
“You are going to – yes – why don’t you speak?” enquired Mary.
“Because I have something to say to you,” replied Penelope. “You all want very much to take the different parts of these heroines, don’t you?”
“Why, of course – ”
“And I shall be a most lovely Cleopatra,” said Susanna, in a gleeful tone. “I see myself in the dress, and mother will be delighted!”
She laughed: and her jet-black eyes twinkled merrily.
“Then you want to be Cleopatra?” said Penelope.
“Of course I do.”
“And you, Mary, you want to be Jephtha’s daughter?”
“Yes – of course.”
“And you,” she continued, turning to Cara, “you are equally desirous to be Iphigenia?”
“Of course – of course,” replied Cara.
To each girl Penelope put the same question in turn. She saw eagerness in their eyes and strong desire in their whole manner. They wished to show themselves off. They wanted to appear in the wonderful dresses – to attract the attention of the crowd of spectators, to be petted and made much of afterwards by their fathers and mothers and relations generally. In short, that moment of their lives would be a golden one. Penelope remarked these feelings, which shone out of each pair of eyes, with intense satisfaction.
“But you could,” she said, after a pause, “take the parts in some other tableaux. There are heaps of tableaux in English history and in the plays of Shakespeare. There’s the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ too. You could be one of his daughters – Olivia, for instance, and the other girl – I am sure I forget her name.”
“No, no – no!” said Mary. “I will be nothing, if I am not Jephtha’s daughter.”
“Very well. That is all I want to know. This, I take it, is the position.” She moved a little further into the shade of the wood as she spoke. “One might almost think one was back again in that wood where Tennyson himself seemed to wander when he had his dream,” she said, and her light blue eyes gave a curious glance – a flicker of feeling which did not often animate them.
She was quite still for a minute. Then she said, gravely:
“But the whole thing falls through, unless I am Helen of Troy?”
“Yes – but you will be – of course you will be; dear, dear Penelope!” said Mary L’Estrange.
“You never called me dear Penelope before,” remarked Penelope, turning round at that moment and addressing Mary.
Mary had the grace to blush.
“I never especially knew you until now,” she said, after an awkward pause.
“And you know me now,” continued Penelope, who felt bitterness at that moment, “because you want to know me – because I can help you to fulfil a desire which, is very strong within you. Now, I wish to say quite plainly that I am in no way anxious to be Helen of Troy. Except by the mere accident of having a fair skin and light hair, I am as little like that beauty of ancient times as any one woman can be like another. I am in no sense an ideal Helen of Troy. Nevertheless, I know quite well that there is the rouge pot,