Death at the Opera

chapter ii: rehearsal

« ^ »

i

The autumn term took its usual course until the dress-rehearsal of The Mikado, or, more exactly, until the day upon which the dress-rehearsal was to take place. On that day Miss Ferris began badly by being late for school. She could not remember ever having been late before, but there was a certain amount of excuse which a more self-indulgent person might have made for herself.

On the previous evening her landlady had given her fish for supper. It was not fresh, and Miss Ferris had been kept awake the better part of the night by severe abdominal pains. She took some aspirin tablets—two, in point of fact —and towards morning she fell asleep. She was a person who liked between seven and eight hours’ sleep at night, and although, presumably, her alarum clock ran down at the usual time, it did not wake her, so it was past eight o’clock when her landlady knocked at the door to inform her that breakfast had been on the table upwards of ten minutes.

The consequences of all this was that Miss Ferris was hurrying into school at five minutes past nine, knowing that she was due for a severe attack of indigestion because she had bolted a breakfast consisting chiefly of sausages, and knowing also that she would consider it her duty to seek out the Headmaster and apologize for her unpunctuality. Mr. Cliffordson was urbane and sympathetic, but that did not comfort Miss Ferris, who was almost morbidly conscientious in all matters concerning school and her work there. She went to her first class feeling thoroughly out of tune with the day. Unfortunately, her first class was the Upper Third Commercial.

It often happens in a school that different children react upon different teachers in very different ways. On the whole, Miss Ferris escaped being ragged. She was sensible, kindly, had a strong parental instinct, and was sufficiently interested herself in her special subject to make it interesting and intelligible to the children. She was fortunate in that her subject happened to be Lower School arithmetic, for, in spite of assertions to the contrary by various eminent educationists, the fact remains that the majority of children under fourteen like arithmetic even when they are not particularly good at it.

But in the Upper Third Commercial, which was a form of thirteen-year-olds, there was a girl whom Miss Ferris disliked. She was an unpleasantly ferret-faced damsel, Cartnell by name, with stringy fair hair, impertinent grey eyes, a keen mind for which, so far, school work had provided little stimulus, and a flair for gymnastics. Miss Ferris, who occasionally coached the younger girls in the game, would have been prepared to take an interest in the girl because of her almost uncanny proficiency at netball, but her behaviour in form was such that, beyond recommending her to the notice of the Gymnasium Mistress (who immediately gave her a place in the school second team and declared that she was really good enough to play in the first), Miss Ferris ignored her when it was possible, reprimanded her when it was not, and, on this fateful Tuesday, the day of the dress-rehearsal of The Mikado, kept her in.

On any other day two things would have been certain. One was that Miss Ferris would not have kept her in, because any kind of punishment was against the tradition of the school; and, under Mr. Cliffordson’s rule—he happened to be a genius in managing adolescent girls and boys —it is only fair to state that punishment was seldom necessary. The other thing was that it would not have mattered quite so much if she had kept her in, but this particular Tuesday was the day of the semi-final of the Schools Netball League, and the first team attacking centre was absent with a broken arm, consequently the girl Cartnell had been chosen by Miss Camden to fill the vacant position.

“And, between you and me,” Miss Camden had told the Headmaster, “we shall do better with Cartnell than with Poultney, for she’s a far better player, although I don’t agree with putting youngsters in the first team, really.”

The Headmaster, lacking interest in the subject, agreed absently.

To do Miss Ferris justice, she was not aware that the girl had been chosen to play in the match that day, but, having announced her decision, she declined to depart from it in spite of the victim’s tearful reproaches. The rest of the lesson passed off in silence, Miss Ferris gloomily aware that she had put herself in a very delicate position but determined that she would not give way, the form— even the boys—oppressed by the atmosphere of misery, and the girl Cartnell moodily drawing on the outside cover of her pencil-work book and praying for Miss Ferris to be smitten by God. At the end of the lesson the child went straight to Miss Camden and informed that belligerent lady that she could not play in the match that afternoon.

“Why not?” demanded Miss Camden.

“Please, Miss Camden, I’m staying in for Miss Ferris until five o’clock.”

“Rubbish,” said Miss Camden, unwisely. “I’ll speak to Miss Ferris. Go along now. I shall expect to see you at the school gate at three-thirty.”

The girl Cartnell went back to her class, which was prepared to take a geography lesson from Miss Freely, and managed to get a note passed round the form which ran thus:

“Fuzzy Ferris is going to get it in the neck from Cammy for trying to keep me in. What do you bet I play after all?”

She did not play after all. Miss Ferris, with a forcefulness which surprised herself, defended her position even when the case was taken before the Headmaster. The Headmaster, who thought the Gymnastic Mistress far too much interested in games to allow full scope to the ideals of the school, which might be summed up: “The individual first, the ‘team spirit’ afterwards,” took the side of Miss Ferris, sent for the girl Cartnell, admonished her, sent for her arithmetic book, admonished her again when he had seen it, and kept her in his room from two o’clock until five doing arithmetic.

Miss Camden took the netball team to play their match. They lost by twelve goals to seven, and so had no chance to play in the final and gain the handsome trophy which was offered to the winning school. Miss Camden was furious in a way and to an extent which can only be understood and sympathized with by persons who habitually put all their eggs into one basket and then drop the lot. She was a hard, narrow-minded, egotistical young woman who lived entirely for success with the school games, and had dreams of breaking down the Headmaster’s slightly antagonistic attitude towards her subject and making the girls of the school foremost in England in gymnastic competitions and in games.

Poor Miss Ferris, worn out with argument, nervous strain, indigestion and loss of sleep, went home to tea at five and came back at half-past six for the dress-rehearsal of The Mikado. She was the most complete, but not the only, failure that night. Hurstwood, who was nervous, sang his first song half a tone flat and his second entirely out of tune. Moira Malley was exceedingly nervous and gauche, and, owing to their united fumbling, the First Act was a fiasco. Alceste Boyle was furious, young Mr. Browning, the prompter, was in despair, Frederick Hampstead, the conductor, was laughing. Poor Miss Ferris was almost and Moira Malley was quite in tears. Miss Cliffordson was cold to poor Hurstwood during the interval and colder at the end of the performance, and he was in the depths of despair. The Headmaster was soothing. Every-thing, he was sure, would be splendid on the night. Nobody believed him. It was a most disastrous evening. It was nine-thirty by the time they had finished, but Alceste Boyle was determined to do the First Act again.

“And, look here, Miss Ferris,” she said, suddenly getting back her temper, and smiling kindly at the wilting “Katisha,” hideous with the make-up which little Mrs. Berotti, the professional, had so liberally plastered on her ordinarily plain but not unpleasing countenance, “when ‘Katisha’ says the bit beginning: ‘None whatever. On the contrary, I was going to marry him—yet he fled!’—you remember? —I think perhaps it wants a little more—”

“Do it, Alceste,” said Mr. Smith, the “Mikado” himself, grinning.

“Yes, go on, do!” said a number of other voices. Miss Ferris, humility itself before the great Alceste, added timidly but with evident sincerity. “It would be so good of you.”

“Start at the beginning of Act Two,” suggested the Headmaster, “and we’ll all play up to you. Pitch it high. It will pull us out.”

The little ex-actress, Mrs. Berotti, came from behind the scenes to watch.

“But it is magnificent,” she replied, in response to a whispered question from Frederick Hampstead. There was a spontaneous burst of applause at the conclusion of the “Tit-Willow” song, but it was less for Mr. Poole, good though he was, than for Alceste. She laughed, her good humour completely restored, and then commanded that the First Act should be commenced before it was too late to get through it.

Calma Ferris’s first entrance did not come until almost the end of the First Act, and, still very much upset by her own mishandling of the part, but valiantly determined to copy Alceste’s wonderful rendering to the life, she wandered into the nearest class-room, which happened to be the Art Room, and, knowing that at least an hour must pass before she would be wanted, she switched on the lights and began looking at the pictures. On a stand about four feet high, opposite the door, was an object covered with a cloth.

Miss Ferris, wondering what was the nature of the work of art thus chastely hidden from view, walked over to it. It was intended, apparently, to be covered completely by the cloth, but the covering had been done so carelessly that a darkish-coloured lump was visible. Miss Ferris was not an abnormally inquisitive woman. Had none of the object been visible the probability is that she would not have dreamed of uncovering it; but the sight of part of what was obviously a piece of modelling in clay, and therefore something upon which she felt herself to be an authority, for she had trained for primary school teaching, proved to be too stimulating to her curiosity to be ingored. She began to withdraw the rest of the covering. To her horror, the whole model fell to the ground, and in trying to save it she damaged it badly.

She could have wept with remorse. She was ordinarily so careful of other people’s property and so meticulously scrupulous about minding her own business that it was a piece of very bad luck that such a misfortune should have occurred. She realized too late, when she tried to assess the extent of the damage she had done, that this was not the work of a boy or girl in the school. It could be nothing other than the Art Master’s own model upon which he had been working for weeks past, ready to make a plaster cast from it, so that it was not, in one sense, finished work. Nevertheless, it was, even to her untutored sense, a particularly fine model; and it was something which she could do nothing to replace. Distressed beyond measure, she switched off the lights, and, wandering out again, found a chair at the side of the stage but below the stage level, and there she sat, waiting for her cue, a somewhat curious sight with her neat eyeglasses adorning the fearful countenance of “Katisha.”

The particular place she had chosen was in a rather dark corner. She sat there for a long time listening to the rehearsal, which seemed to be going rather better, she thought, and she was almost forgetting her worries in absorbing herself in the now familiar lines and songs, when her attention was distracted by the sound of voices close at hand. The first was Miss Cliffordson’s voice. The second she could not place for a moment, and then she realized that it could belong only to Hurstwood, the youthful “Nanki-Poo.”

“My dear boy,” Miss Cliffordson was saying in tones low enough not to disturb what was being done on the stage, “I’m old enough to be—well, your aunt, anyway! Do be sensible.”

“I can’t, any more,” responded the boy.

“Well, for goodness’ sake, come in here, then, and talk,” said Miss Cliffordson, half annoyed and half tenderly.

There was the sound of a class-room door being opened, and they went into the Art Room from which Miss Ferris had lately emerged. She rose abruptly, and walked in after them. They had not closed the door, and the embroidered Japanese slippers she was wearing happened to be soundless as she walked. Her purpose, subconscious, not expressed even to herself, was to prevent anybody seeing the damage she had done to Mr. Smith’s model. As she got to the door, however, she paused, for Miss Cliffordson’s voice, low and urgent, was saying:

“Harry, you idiot, you can’t!”

There was a scuffling noise, and Hurstwood’s voice, muffled and with a note of agony, said, almost on a sob:

“I must! I must! I can’t stick it any longer!”

“No!” said Miss Cliffordson, breathlessly this time. “You’re not to be…”

The sentence trailed off. There was the sound of kisses and heavy breathing, and then Miss Cliffordson said in a frightened tone: “My dear, you can’t go on like this! It isn’t—it isn’t right!”

Then the boy’s voice, full of pain, replied: “It is! It is! Don’t you—can’t you understand———”

At this point, and not entirely of her own volition, for her finger had been on the switch for some moments and the pressure she suddenly exerted was nervous rather than wilful, Miss Ferris turned on the light. There was an exclamation. A heap of brilliant colouring in the middle of the space in front of the teacher’s desk sorted itself into a youth and a girl, both in Japanese costume. Miss Cliffordson said with nervous hilarity:

“What ho! Here’s your ‘Katisha’ come for you, my lad!”

Miss Ferris managed to say:

“I thought I had left my fan in here just now. Were you rehearsing your bit?”

Hurstwood, with the usual defencelessness of youth, stood tongue-tied. Miss Cliffordson laughed, and then the two of them followed Miss Ferris into the wings, and no more was said. Hurstwood determinedly escorted Miss Cliffordson to her home when the rehearsal was over. He was so silent and gloomy that she rallied him, trying to appear more at ease with him than she actually was.

She was a shallow but not a cruel or heartless girl, and, so far as it was in her nature to be sorry for anyone, she was sorry for this boy. She told herself that it was calflove, that he would get over it, that he would soon be leaving and would find new friends, new interests, and that the evening’s episode, together with everything which it stood for and illuminated, would soon be forgotten by the boy; but in spite of these assurances she was conscious of having behaved very badly. She had known for nearly two years what this poor lad had been thinking and feeling, and at first she had encouraged him. Then, when, during the previous term, the thing looked like getting out of hand and becoming uncomfortable instead of pretty, she had tried to ignore him. This did not prove to be a solution. It merely put him off his work instead of causing him to work better (the first effect she had had on him), and it did nothing to quench his love.

She was in an exceedingly difficult and uncomfortable position, and was well aware of the fact. It was lucky, she reflected, that it was only the good-natured, obtuse and self-contained Miss Ferris who had found them. She went hot and cold by turns as she thought of all the other members of the staff, both male and female, who might just as easily have walked into the Art Room that evening.

Hurstwood said suddenly, as they walked down the deserted street towards Miss Cliffordson’s home:

“Do you think she’ll split?”

Startled, she replied:

“Whom do you mean?”

“Ferris.”

“Of course not.”

“She split to the old man to-day about a kid in the Upper Third.”

“Oh, but that was a staff row.”

“Well, wouldn’t you be a staff row?”

Miss Cliffordson laughed, but not very convincingly. Her uncle, she knew, was not a narrow-minded man, but she felt uncertain as to his reaction if he were informed by another member of the staff that one of the Sixth Form boys had kissed her. “The boy,” she imagined her uncle saying, “must have received some sort of encouragement, my dear Gretta, must he not?”

She could not construct any reply which would at once fit the facts as reported by Miss Ferris, who, she reminded herself, was unfashionably conscientious and suffered from an over-developed sense of duty, exonerate Hurstwood— she had genuinely sporting qualities, and hated the idea of getting the boy into trouble—and cover herself. It was all very difficult and embarrassing.

Arrived at the gate of her home, she took her attaché-case from Hurstwood with a hasty word of thanks, bade him good night, and almost ran up the garden path to the front door. Hurstwood stood there, school cap in hand, for about three minutes; then he turned, put on his cap and walked slowly homewards. It remained to get through supper and the family conversation, go up to bed as soon as possible, and recreate, with additional details, the crazy but wonderful evening. ii

Miss Ferris found herself again unable to sleep. She could think of nothing but Mr. Smith’s model, which she was certain she had ruined. If, by any chance, her mind did leave this wretchedly perturbing subject, it persisted in reminding her of the unpleasant time she would have for the rest of the term with Miss Camden, who would neither forgive nor forget the netball incident.

True, there was no proof that the school team would have won with the assistance of the girl Cartnell, but the fact that it had lost without her would be sufficient justification, in Miss Camden’s opinion, to be as unfriendly as possible. Poor Miss Ferris, who was well-disposed towards everybody, and a lover of peace and concord if ever there was one, dreaded the thought that she had provoked the ill will of a young woman whom she knew to be narrow-mindedly unscrupulous. There was no petty annoyance which Miss Camden would not inflict upon her in order to be revenged for what she chose to consider a personal injury and affront.

At the back of Miss Ferris’s mind there was also a third consideration. It nagged like an aching tooth. This was the remembrance of the—to her—extraordinary and shocking scene which she had been instrumental in interrupting and terminating. It seemed to her that she ought to inform the Headmaster. Miss Cliffordson obviously had no control over the boy and his emotions, and it appeared to Miss Ferris that she, as an older woman, ought to lay the facts of the case before Mr. Cliffordson, whom she knew to be a man of great kindness of heart and very wide experience, and leave him to deal with them as he saw fit. On the other hand, she wondered whether, in fairness to Miss Cliffordson, she ought not to have a word with her first. Hurstwood, she felt, had better be left alone. In any case, she seriously doubted her own fitness to talk to a boy about his first love affair.

One after the other, this triumvirate of morbid, melancholy thoughts chased one another through her mind. She fell asleep at last, dreamed horribly, and woke unrefreshed, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted. One thing, and one thing only, she had settled to her satisfaction. She had made up her mind to go to Mr. Smith before school began, explain what she had done to his model, and accept humbly whatever blistering words of reproach he might choose to hurl at her. She only hoped he would not swear. She really did hope he would not swear at her.

She arrived at the school gate at twenty-five minutes past eight, and went straight to the Art Room. Mr. Smith was not there, but a couple of boys were re-arranging the desks, so she sent one of them up to the masters’ common-room to find out whether Mr. Smith had arrived at school. In less than three minutes the boy returned with Mr. Smith.

The Senior Art Master was a tall, dark-faced, melancholy-looking man whose whole expression altered when he smiled. It was easy enough, thought Calma Ferris, to imagine that most women would be greatly attracted by him. He looked inquiringly at Calma before ordering the boys out of the room, and then invited her to sit down. She was far too agitated to accept the offer. She said, plunging headlong into the subject and speaking much too fast and rather breathlessly:

“Mr. Smith, I don’t know what you’ll say, and, really, I deserve anything for my clumsiness, but I came in here last night, and I knocked your clay modelling—the covered one there—off the stand, and I’ve damaged it. I really am most terribly sorry. I can’t think how I came to be so clumsy.” She thought wildly: “He’s so dreadfully immoral! I do hope he won’t actually swear at me.”

Mr. Smith walked slowly over to the tall stand upon which his model was placed, pulled off the cloth and looked at the damaged figure. It was ruined irretrievably.

“H’m!” he said. “That’s done for, I’m afraid.” He began to whistle.

Miss Ferris began again to apologize, but he stopped her.

“Please,” he said. “It really can’t be helped. I’d rather you didn’t distress yourself.”

Then he suddenly threw the little model on the ground, and solemnly stamped it flat and shapeless. Even when the figure was quite unrecognizable, he went on methodically stamping and stamping and stamping, getting clay on his shoes and clay all over that part of the floor.

Miss Ferris stood aghast. She was stricken with grief and horror. Reproaches she could have borne. Even if he had turned and struck her in the face she would have taken the blow as a just reprisal for her carelessness and ungoverned curiosity. Even if he had sworn at her, she believed she would have borne it. But this steady stamping sound, without a word being said, and as though the artist himself had become oblivious of what he was doing, was too terrible to be contemplated.

She turned and ran blindly to the mistresses’ common-room and clutched Alceste Boyle. She had immense faith in the Senior English Mistress, and thought her the best person to deal with the situation. Smith, she knew, was hopelessly in love with Alceste, who mothered him with humorous strictness.

“Oh, come with me! Come quickly!” she said.

Amazed, Alceste followed her.

“In there!” Miss Ferris cried, turning when they got to the Art Room door. “It’s dreadful! I can’t bear it! I had no idea…”

They went in. Mr. Smith had finished his work. He was scraping bits of clay off his shoes with a palette-knife. His fine hands were quite steady. He rose when they came in, dusted the knees of his trousers, smiled at them and said:

“That’s that.”

Alceste Boyle gave an exclamation of horror.

“Oh, Donald! Not your Psyche, surely?” She turned to Calma Ferris. Calma was white.

“I spoilt it. I knocked it down,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have done it at school, you know, Donald,”said Alceste to Mr. Smith. Then she said to Calma Ferris: “I know you couldn’t help it. I know he’s careless. I don’t suppose for one single instant that you intended to ruin his work, but go away, now, before I do anything I shall be sorry for!”

Later in the day she said to Calma:

“I’m sorry I spoke to you like that. He shouldn’t have used school time. I told him no good would come of it Don’t worry yourself, Miss Ferris. Accidents will happen.” She smiled kindly and sincerely at Calma Ferris.

Calma answered:

“I never ought to have touched the model. It is unforgivable to have ruined it.”

To this Alceste Boyle made no reply, and after a pause Miss Ferris suddenly said:

“I can’t understand all this. I thought it was Mr. Hampstead you were… you… I mean, I understood that you and Mr. Hampstead… I mean, it is Mr. Hampstead, and not Mr. Smith, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Boyle gave a little moan, and then said: “How do you know that?”

Her voice was quiet, but it frightened Miss Ferris. She mumbled something and walked away. iii

The world of a school is so narrow that any disturbance, however unimportant, or any trouble, however transitory, assumes an air of portent out of all proportion to its true significance. The day upon which the dress-rehearsal had taken place was a Tuesday, and the following day was that on which Miss Ferris had the disturbing experience of watching Mr. Smith stamping on his ruined work. On the following day, the Thursday, the day before the performance of The Mikado, a last rehearsal was held.

Miss Ferris found herself dreading this rehearsal. She dreaded coming into contact with Mr. Smith again; she dreaded having to encounter the hostile looks of Alceste Boyle, and she felt certain that Alceste would have told Mr. Hampstead that the secret of their attachment for one another was a secret no longer, so she dreaded meeting him too. The actual rehearsal would not have been so bad, but it had been arranged that the whole cast was to have tea in the Headmaster’s room, at his invitation, so there would be the terror of having to meet socially the people whom she felt she had wronged.

Also, every time she set eyes either on the boy Hurstwood or the Headmaster’s niece, her conscience began to plague her again. Ought she to tell, or ought she to let events take their course? Surely she ought to allow Miss Cliffordson the right to manage her own affairs? And yet, if she was managing them so badly that she could not prevent one of the big boys mauling her about and kissing her—the whole expression was Miss Ferris’s own—ought not some older person to make it her business to interfere and get the situation under control? Surely it could not be good for the school tone—Miss Ferris and the Headmaster probably had different ideas as to what was likely to jeopardize the school tone—that boys should fall in love with the junior mistresses? Miss Cliffordson was notably feckless and irresponsible.

Miss Ferris, who had never been either, was conscious— for she was a woman with a very nice and exact sense of justice—of a feeling of slight jealousy. Fecklessness and irresponsibility were, in her mind, to be classed among life’s luxuries, and were not to be indulged in by persons who had their living to earn. The Headmaster’s niece might be able to afford them, but Miss Ferris, with not even a degree to lend weight to her teaching certificate, could not, and felt the poorer because she could not.

The tea and the rehearsal both went off better than she could have hoped. Hurstwood sat as far from Miss Cliffordson as he could manage, and to Miss Ferris, unversed in the idiosyncrasies and shyness of love-lorn adolescence, this was a sign of grace. If Hurstwood was beginning to see the error of his ways, perhaps it would be unnecessary for her to inform the Headmaster of what she had seen. The last thing she wanted was to get anybody into trouble, especially Hurstwood, who was attractively tall and fair and slight, with a sensitive mouth, a classically-modelled nose, grey eyes and a rather charming smile. She had heard, too, that he was a very clever boy, and that his father was proud of him and had great ambitions for his future. It would be a thousand pities to interfere with a career so promising.

Miss Cliffordson was talking animatedly to the Junior English Master, teasing him, and being saucy and provocative. She looked very pretty, Miss Ferris thought, and absurdly young. Perhaps—she glanced again at Hurstwood, who was eating cake in a furtive, reticent manner— perhaps, after all, it would not be necessary to say anything to Mr. Cliffordson. She must think about it again before deciding.

Mr. Smith spoke to nobody. He was never very sociable at staff gatherings—he was an atheist with a slightly Epicurean bent and a keen appetite for good food; but Miss Ferris did not remember this. She felt certain that he was brooding over his ruined Psyche. She scarcely dared to look at him for fear that she should catch his eye and be compelled to meet the reproach in it.

Alceste Boyle was pouring out the tea. She spoke when she had to, but otherwise preserved a motherly silence which was quite companionable. One of her gifts was to be with a crowd of people, not to say anything, and yet to appear sociable and friendly. Frederick Hampstead laughed and joked, chiefly with Moira Malley, who was nervous but amused, and with Miss Freely, who was just a jolly girl, not long enough out of college to have acquired the hall-marks of her profession; perhaps too simple-hearted and human ever to acquire them. She seemed to be the only person present—except for Mr. Poole, who ate an enormous tea, and recited, between-whiles, the most atrocious limericks—who was wholeheartedly enjoying the party.

Even the Headmaster seemed distrait, and Mr. Kemball, the History Master, was downright morose, ate scarcely anything, refused a second cup of tea, and lighted his pipe, without asking permission and before anybody had finished eating. It was revealed later that his wife was expecting her third child. It was a joke among the men’s staff that Kemball regarded his children as visitations of the wrath of God, refused to accept any personal responsibility for their appearance in the world, grumbled continuously at the provision he had to make for them, but spoke of children in general with self-conscious sentimentality, chiefly to curry favour with the Head.

The rehearsal, which was to be carried out in ordinary dress, and without make-up, began at half-past five. The Second Act was taken first, and, whether from nervous excitement or some other cause, Calma Ferris did exceptionally well. Her songs were good, and she spoke her lines better than she had ever done. Moira Malley, too, was successful that night, and when the Act was finished and Alceste Boyle suggested that the whole opera should be run through just once, if they all felt that there was time to do it, the company unanimously resolved to stay until eleven o’clock, if necessary. The whole thing went through without a hitch. Alceste Boyle affected to the Headmaster to be superstitiously inclined.

“Too good by half,” she said, laughing, as the players collected properties and cleared the stage. “Something is sure to go wrong to-morrow night! Or so Madame Berotti would say! Have you ever seen her act? She’s old, of course, but what an artist!”

Calma Ferris, so delighted with her own successful performance that she forgot, for the time, her little nagging difficulties of the past day or two, had not the slightest premonition of disaster. She sat down before she went to bed, late though it was when she reached her lodgings, and recorded in her diary her pious hope that she would do as well on the morrow in her part as she had done that evening. Having blotted the entry carefully, she went to bed, and rose early in the morning to commence her last day on earth.

As a matter of historical accuracy, when dawned the Friday morning, the day of the performance, there were at least six people in school more perturbed than Calma Ferris. Hurstwood thought: “I wonder if she’ll split today? She keeps looking at me. I wonder whether she’s made up her mind yet? I wonder whether the Old Man will split to the governor if she splits to him? I wonder whether Gretta would care much if I got turfed out? Suppose the Old Man won’t let me sit for the Schol.? Wish I had the guts to tackle Ferris and see what she means to do! I won’t stick this much longer. Every time I look at Gretta now, or speak to her, I shall imagine that fool of a woman is sticking round, listening and snooping.”

Miss Cliffordson thought: “Uncle will never stand it. Out I shall go, and I couldn’t stick teaching in any school but this. It’s only just bearable here, and I do it frightfully badly, anyway. I don’t believe any woman would have me on the staff for more than a fortnight. I wonder whether I’d better marry Tommy Browning and put myself out of pain? Besides, there’s poor little Harry? Oh, hell and blast! What did she want to come poking round for, anyway? I suppose she’s on the Vigilance Committee somewhere—or something!”

Mr. Smith thought: “Six months’ work! Commissioned, too! How the devil am I going to pay Atkinson now? Serves me right for pinching school time, I suppose. If I’d done the stuff at home this couldn’t have happened. Blast the woman, all the same! I couldn’t have done it at home, anyway. The girl wouldn’t have come.”

Miss Camden thought: “Just wait until I get the chance to pay you out, Ferris, my love! That’s all! And I’ve slaved over the school netball. Slaved over it.”

Frederick Hampstead thought: “I suppose the Head will give me a testimonial before he sacks me. Or won’t he? Better ask for it now, before that condemned female blows the gaff, I think. I’ll see him during first lesson, when I haven’t a class. He can’t refuse if she hasn’t said anything yet. Perhaps she’ll keep her mouth shut, but I don’t think I can stay. It’ll be so difficult now.”

Alceste Boyle thought: “Why worry? She doesn’t know anything, and, anyway, I think she’s a good sort. It will damage Fred, not me, in any case. Thank God for widowhood! But I wish she didn’t know. It makes it in a way less wonderful, now someone knows.”