In 1885, the year of its construction, Hall's Opera House was considered one of the handsomest and most modern edifices in the state of Iowa. So far as opera houses were concerned (and these "opera house," never harboured any opera companies except that headed by Emma Abbott, or extravaganzas of which Eddie Foy or Frank Daniels was the star, or some unpretentious troupe which offered The Mikado, The Mascot, The Chimes of Normandy, Olivette, The Queen's Lace Handkerchief, Fatinitza, and The Black Hussars at prices scaling from ten to thirty cents, according to location) this boast still remained true as none handsomer or more modern had been erected in the state since that date. Theatres built in the eighties, however, followed a still earlier fashion in playhouse construction. The balconies in Hall's Opera House curved like a horseshoe from the centre of the house to the boxes, ranged in three tiers; one above the other, close to the proscenium arch on either side. On the main floor, the parquet sloped back gradually to the slightly elevated dress-circle, which also ran horseshoe fashion to the boxes, and, with the stage apron, completely enclosed the parquet. The seats on the main floor were upholstered skimpingly in green plush; the seats in the balcony and nigger heaven were not upholstered at all. These seats made a great deal of noise when they were opened by the ushers.
The walls of this playhouse were hung with green baize, which, in the course of a decade, had faded considerably. The boxes were guarded by gilded plaster Cupids and the faces of the boxes and the railings of the balcony and gallery were adorned with ornate, gilt scroll-work. The ceiling, from which depended a heavy, brass chandelier, tricked out with upright green globes, enclosing gas-burners, and inverted white globes for electrical lighting, was a wild allegorical triumph, depicting angels blowing trumpets to the four points of the compass, floating in a sky of intense blue, spattered with woolly, pink clouds. The foreshortening of these figures was a masterpiece of eccentricity. The painting over the proscenium arch represented the artist's paraphrase of Sacred and Profane Love. Originally, it had been merely a bad copy of Titian's canvas, but after several leading citizens of Maple Valley had witnessed its unveiling, they had unanimously agreed that it was too Latin in spirit to satisfy the refined taste of the inhabitants of the fair state of Iowa, and the artist had been requested to add clothing to the figure of Profanity. Her position in the composition and the advanced stage to which work on the picture had proceeded, together with the artist's lack of skill, made this compromise a little difficult. The result was, indubitably, chaste, but there were those who might have queried, Was it art? Both the ceiling and the proscenium arch decorations were the labour of an Italian from Chicago, whose lifework up to that time had been the embellishment of saloons. He had been lured to Maple Valley by George S. Collins, who had amassed a vast fortune of over $75,000 through his incontestable talent for selling grain and hogs, and whose wife desired to transform her residence into a royal villa, or at least into something as near to a royal villa as could be managed in that locality at that period.
The drop curtain, painted in Chicago (the owner of the opera house did not seem willing to risk the chance of the Italian ruining a hundred dollars worth of canvas), wore a more professional air. The space in the centre, tastefully overhung by painted, draped, blue curtains, caught back by painted, gold ropes, was occupied by a representation of a picturesque Italian scene, not entirely identifiable, in which were to be discerned, in the background, a smoking volcano, a lake, cypress-trees, and, in the foreground, surmounted by a broken column, a flight of steps, on which a young shepherd lingered, playing his pipes, while a contadina, returning from the fountain bearing a water jar on her head, stopped to listen. This picture was framed on three sides by squares and oblongs containing advertisements of the leading merchants of Maple Valley. The Silverdale Drug Store contributed a drawing of a slightly magnified (in relation to the scale of the objects shown in the Italian tableau) hot-water bottle, with the assurance that this store carried a full line of rubber goods and drugs. The Isham Candy Company required an oblong in which to hint that Isham candies were just the thing for your mother and sweetheart. Newly killed beef only is on sale at the Main Street Market, read another inscription, while the Maple Valley Jewelry Company advertised a fine stock of clocks, watches, brooches, wedding rings, and precious gems of every description.
In this period in American history, few travelling companies visiting one-night stands carried their own scenery, depending, rather, on the theatres to supply their needs. Most of the smaller playhouses made meagre providence in this regard, considering one exterior, a wood or a garden, and two interiors, a palace and a hovel, quite ample to fit the exigencies of any known drama. The stock sets at Hall's Opera House were more numerous. There were two exteriors, both a wood and a garden, and three interiors, besides two sets of sliding flats which joined with dirty seams down the centre directly behind the act-drop: one of which represented a street in a city, with a drinking fountain, over which doves statically hovered, a church with a sky-scraping spire, and two rows of brown-stone houses, painted in perspective and extending to a dim point in the distance; the other of which exhibited a royal apartment, which resembled a white-tiled Childs restaurant without the tables, hung with red velvet curtains and ornamented with palms growing from blue and gold jardinieres. The back scenes were not built as is the custom today. They consisted of succeeding rows of sliding flats working in grooves, the last pair meeting in the centre at the rear of the stage. Borders, representing ceilings or leaves of trees, masked the tops of these flats. The footlights and all the other lighting backstage had been, until within the past few years, gas, but electricity had supplanted this earlier and dimmer illumination.
On Wednesday evening, July 7, 1897, Hall's Opera House had been especially decorated for the gala entertainment in honour of the Countess Ella Nattatorrini. The American and the Italian flags mingled their bunting over the proscenium arch, and smaller banners hid the faces of the boxes. Across the front of the apron, below the footlights, a hage streamer had been stretched, bearing the inscription, emblazoned in red letters:
WELCOME TO OUR COUNTESS
The Ladies' Home Study Club, the Board of Trade, the Young Girls' Kensington Society, the Idle Hour Cinch Club, and the Elks had all contributed towards paying the expenses of the evening, which, with the rent of the hall, the orchestra, and the decorations, amounted to $163.26. Admission was by invitation only and, although almost everybody of any importance in Maple Valley had been asked, there were many heart-burnings in regard to preferred locations.
The doors were open at 7.30, but long before that hour a group of tough boys, wearing caps and puffing Sweet Caporals stood at one side of the entrance, waiting to get a view of the arrivals, to stare at the stunners, to make audible comments about the overdressed swells. On the other side of the doorway, a little later, John Townsend, Ray Cameron, Chet Porter, and Bill Munger collected. Their conversation ran something like this:
Betcher Corbett could lick Fitzsimmons if they'd fight again.
Betcher he couldn't.
Betcher he could.
What about Tom Sharkey?
He's all right, but he's a light weight. Bill Munger began to whistle Crappy Dan.
One of the earliest arrivals was Miss Darrell, caparisoned in her black satin trimmed with passementerie, which had served as her party dress, summer and winter, for the past three years. Entering, she encountered Miss Jelliffe, who was wearing a rather frayed lace dress she had purchased in Chicago when she attended the World's Fair in 1893. Miss Jelliffe had rubbed an inordinate amount of powder, several shades lighter than her blotched skin, into her face, and her hands and arms were covered with long, ivory-hued mitts, with holes here and there beyond those provided by the art of the lace-maker. She carried a pad of paper and a pencil.
O, Miss Jelliffe! gurgled Miss Darrell, smoothing out her crumpled skirt. This is to be quite an occasion.
I don't believe Maple Valley has ever seen anything like it, returned the society reporter. Look! There are the Atkinson twins. As Gladys and Doris stopped to giggle and chat with John Townsend and his friends, Miss Jelliffe scribbled rapidly on her pad: G. and D. Pink and blue challis.
The crowd pressed in fast now, arriving for the most part on foot, some descending from horse-cars which stopped at an adjacent crossing, a few driving up in landaus and surreys, a scattering approaching in old-fashioned buggies. There was even one steam-propelled locomobile, driven by George S. Collins.
The majority of the women's costumes ran to light summer hues of organdie, duck, lawn, linen, challis, dimity, percale, suisse, batiste, China silk, muslin, and pongee. Some of the ladies wore little capes in three layers, terminating just above the elbow. Others protected their throats with feather boas, white, pink, yellow, and black. Many necks were enclasped in bands of black velvet, on which musk-melon seeds had been sewn in conventional designs. The manufacture of these collars was almost, for the season, a local amateur industry. Few of the men wore evening clothes. The greater number were dressed in business suits, but a frock coat or two was to be seen. Chatting gaily, acknowledging acquaintances, and speculating as to the quality of the prospective entertainment, the crowd surged into the theatre. The tough boys on the left of the portal enlivened these entrances and hastened them with such remarks as: Where did you get that hat? Ain't she out o' sight? Ain't she cute? She gets there just the same! There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight! Gee! what a dicer! Get a move on yuh!
Mrs. Porter, a regal personage in her magnificent gown of tan silk, trimmed with ruffles and flounces of old lace, stopped to gather her son in, as she entered. At the same moment Mrs. Cameron, looking a great deal like the popular conception of Ophelia, with marigolds in her loose hair, her great grey eyes fixedly staring, appeared, apparently from nowhere. Ribbons, as usual, were the essential note of her costume. The bow at her belt alone required yards.
Once inside the crowd found the curtain up, and recognized the garden set, so often seen during previous winters in the course of society dramas, but it had been reinforced by the full suite of palace furniture, carved, gilded, and upholstered in red plush. There were four chairs besides the rocking-chair and the sofa. To these had been added a table, elegantly draped with a scarf, Lou Poore's grand piano, and two spreading palms, set in brown and gilt jardinières, which had been loaned by Mrs. Townsend, who had also sent one of her Axminster rugs, which was large for the largest room in her house, but which was almost lost in the centre of the vast stage.
At eight o'clock the house was full to the last seat. The orchestra, consisting of a piano, two violins, a double-bass, a cornet, and a drummer, filed into the orchestra pit and began to tune up discordantly. Presently, one of the ushers, all young Maple Valley society girls who had volunteered for the occasion, walked down the centre aisle and whispered to the pianist. The pianist tapped for attention, the violinists tucked their instruments under their chins and raised their bows, and the band struck up a ragged rendering of the Garibaldi Hymn. This had been an afterthought on the part of Effie Chase. Only the day before she had telegraphed to Chicago, and the music had arrived on the afternoon of the performance, too late to permit a rehearsal. Every eye in the parquet was now directed towards the back of the house. Headed by Mr. and Mrs. Townsend, the procession, consisting of Lou Poore and the Countess, Effie Chase and her husband, and Mr. and Mrs. Wiltbank, all the gentlemen in correct dress suits, paraded down a side aisle to the right lower box amidst vociferous applause. The Countess entered the box a little before the others and remained standing, while the entire audience rose and cheered until the orchestra had concluded the anthem. Then everybody sat down.
Look at her! Gareth Johns, sitting beside his mother, whispered. Look at her!
The Countess wore a robe of magenta tulle, a creation of Monsieur Worth. In her canary-yellow waist-band, she had inserted a few sprigs of forgetme-nots, and she carried a canary-yellow fan. The corsage was cut square in front and very low; the sleeves protected the arms to the elbow, ending in ruffed frills. The tattooed emblem on the left forearm, from a distance, bore the appearance of a bruise. The Countess's waved red hair was parted in the centre and was encircled by an amethyst tiara. She wore these semi-precious stones in her ears too, and her breast was ablaze with multi-coloured jewelled insects and flowers. Directly over her heart she had pinned a superb diamond sunburst.
A buzz of excited comment swept through the theatre.
It's very low cut, that dress, Mrs. Sinclair murmured, a trifle apologetically (she was always apologetic in her manner when addressing her husband).
I wish you Maple Valley women wouldn't be so narrow, was the doctor's impatient reply. This was a tacit reference to the physician's frequent trips to Chicago, "in the interests of science," and his wife recognized it as such.
Quite recherché, quite (the Countess had noted some time back how much more a monoglot population employs foreign words than people who speak several languages with ease), was Miss Darrell's comment to her neighbour, but, you know, if I do say so myself, I make dresses that are just as fin de seekle as that, but not quite so extreme, right here in Maple Valley. I don't believe in the extremes of the mode. I get the Paris plates but I choose my models conservatively. She panted from the exertion of so much explanation on this extremely warm evening, and the passementerie spasmodically rose and fell on her satin bosom.
Miss Jelliffe could be observed, like a white lace wraith, rushing down the side aisles to positions of vantage from which she could scan the house. Untiringly, she scribbled names on her pad, following them with reports, in a shorthand she had herself invented and which would have been illegible to another eye, of the gowns worn by each. In the Star the next morning two columns were filled with descriptions of the costumes worn by the ladies. This is a sample: Mrs. Townsend wore a dress of sky-blue and pink taffeta. The skirt was plain and simple, tight in front and at the sides, with gathers and four godets. The corsage was a bolero over a blouse, the latter of cream lace over pink satin. The bolero was of turquoise velvet, made short, trimmed with three rows of velvet piping and with a half chevron of Venetian guipure over pink on each side. The sleeves were slightly draped in the upper part. The collarette, which stood high under the chin, was of lace. Her sister, Mrs. Wiltbank, wore a dress of wheat-coloured veiling over mauve taffeta. The underskirt was visible at the bottom beneath the indentations of the veiling, and was ornamented with two flounces embroidered with white insertion and edged with a gathering of Valenciennes lace. The taffeta skirt was rounded at the bottom, flat in front, and over the hips above, and had godets behind. The corsage was blouseshaped and accordion-pleated, and had a yoke of mauve satin, spangled with jet, in the shape of a stole reaching to the waist-band, and was edged with spangled English-point. The neck trimming was fastened behind with the same lace mixed with bows of mauve satin. The waist-band was of mauve satin, cut on the bias and fastened behind with a bow of the same. The sleeves were tight all down and were trimmed with nine rows of Valenciennes insertion over mauve satin in circles, like the trimming of the skirt. The cuffs were trimmed with a lace flounce. The upper part was trimmed with a jockey composed of coques of mauve satin. Miss Jelliffe was very expert at this sort of thing.
The orchestra was scraping and blowing through Sousa's King Cotton March but this did not halt the conversation. The Atkinson twins, Gladys and Doris, were in a giggling mood. Sitting directly behind Gareth, they found it amusing to nudge him in the back occasionally, the better to give him the benefit of some extra clever sally.
She certainly looks out of sight, commented Gladys.
O, I don't know, Doris corrected her, adding that if people dressed that way in Paris she was glad she lived in Maple Valley. It might at least be all one colour, she went on. That fan certainly clashes with the colour of the dress.
What'd ma say if we wore dresses as low as that? Gladys demanded.
It don't cut no ice what she'd say because we don't want to wear 'em, responded Doris.
O, look at Mrs. Cameron! Those marigolds! Cheap garden flowers!
She ain't the only pebble on the beach! Look at Alfreda Mitchell!
My trilbys hurt; I wish they'd begin.
Lennie Colman, sitting with her mother far in the rear, was silent. She gazed alternately at Gareth and at the Countess. After a full day spent in preserving fruit, Mrs. Colman was so tired that she had almost fallen asleep. Her eyelids drooped and her jaw began to unhinge. Periodically, she would wake up with a start and her features would freeze into a fixed smile. Then she would begin to nod again.
The orchestra having concluded its rendering of the King Cotton March, the entertainment began. The only man music teacher in Maple Valley, Professor Hendricks, who gave both piano and vocal lessons, announced to open the program, bowed his acknowledgment to the polite applause that greeted his appearance. He was extremely stout and his evening clothes, made some years before, were too small for him. A line of socks showed between his trousers and his boots and a streak of white waistcoat was visible beneath his coat in front. Professor Hendricks had a ferocious mass of curly, black hair which he never made any effort to comb or train, and fierce black mustachios which would have given him the appearance of a Nick Carter villain had he been more slender. The program announced that he would perform a piano solo, selected. What Professor Hendricks actually did play was The Butterfly, by Calixa Lavallée. Bulging before his instrument, resembling nothing else quite so much as a pinguid bull-frog, the professor began to startle the flights of triplets representing the fluttering of the pretty insect, rather uncertainly at first, but with more assurance and warmth as he proceeded, concluding the number with a scintillating shower of false notes.
A murmur of yet politer applause, but rather less than that which had greeted his entrance, rippled over the house, but Professor Hendricks was not recalled.
Such technique! exclaimed Mrs. Sinclair, who admired the professor's mustachios.
In reply, Dr. Sinclair permitted himself a grunt.
The next number was a skirt dance by Miss Pinkie Dawson, a pupil of Alfreda Mitchell, a fact which would have been apparent to a messenger from Mars had he observed Miss Mitchell's deportment during its performance. Every lift of the voluminous, green cheese-cloth skirt, every elevation of the pointed toe, every bend of the flexible body was reflected in the movements of Miss Mitchell's arm from her distant seat in the parquet.
Miss Pinkie Dawson disposed of, a very much frightened young man bore a casket gingerly to the centre of the stage and deposited it on the table. Among the spectators at this juncture there was a frantic consultation of programs. Miss Clara Barnes, it was discovered, was announced to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, by Mons. Gounod. The second prelude to the appearance of the prodigy was the rushing of Mrs. Barnes from the stage-door behind the boxes on the left side, up the aisle, to the rear of the house, where she stood, palpitating and proud, leaning against the brass rail which enclosed the dress-circle. There was a long pause before the diva made her way forward amidst cheers and the beating of palms. Clara was attired in a short yellow dress of some soft, summer material. It was not cut very much after the fashion of medieval Nuremberg, but a black leather handbag, suspended from her belt, a cap on her head, and the fact that her hair was plaited in two long braids made it apparent that she intended the effect to be one of costume. The short skirt exposed her legs which, from knee to ankle, did not seem to vary appreciably in circumference.
The diva made a false entrance, but Professor Hendricks cleverly jumped two bars and caught up with her. It was obvious that she was not singing in English, but for a time, the Countess, perhaps the only person present who could have understood the air in its original tongue, was puzzled to discover what language the girl was emitting. When, at last, the truth dawned on her that Clara was pronouncing French according to English phonetics (Marguerite, ce n'est plus toi, for example, came from Clara's lips as Margareeta, see nest plus toy) she became so interested in trying to follow her that she did not derive the full measure of enjoyment she might otherwise have profited by in watching the gestures and listening to the vocal efforts of this young girl who was so soon to go to Chicago to finish her musical education.
A spectator rather than an auditor might have noted that Clara acted the number with spirit and gusto, if in a quite unique manner. She decked herself with chains of brightly coloured beads ravished from the casket on the table. She fastened her mother's (once her grandmother's) diamond earrings in her ears. She flitted about, from time to time regarding herself with delight in a little oval mirror with a green celluloid back. At one juncture she almost tripped over the edge of the Axminster rug, and it was a pleasure to observe with what skill she saved herself, averting a ridiculous accident. In the spirited coda, she fairly surpassed even her own record for vitality, dashing about like a hornet, tossing beads and baubles into the air and catching them as they fell, expelling notes, sweet and sour alike, by main force into the auditorium. Maple Valley was justly proud of its juvenile prima donna and, as she concluded Gounod's air, the audience burst into volcanoes and earthquakes of plaudits.
Now! Now! Mrs. Barnes anxiously adjured the ushers at the back of the house.
Giggling and embarrassed, the girls bore stalks of gladioli, bunches of feverfew, candytuft, and purple asters, tied with maiden-hair ferns, and laid them at Clara's feet. Curtseying low, she smiled, and, grasping the hand of Professor Hendricks, led him to the footlights with her. She even condescended to sing an encore in English, I don't want to play in your yard, of which she gave a rendering that was pronounced coy and cute on all sides.
Mrs. Townsend turned to the Countess. Ella, she demanded, what do you think of that girl?
The Countess was guarded in her reply. She never was certain what she was expected to say, and, as she didn't care very much, she tried to please. Very interesting, was all she could think of this time.
She ought to be spanked and put to washing dishes, was Mayme Townsend's rejoinder.
Following Clara's triumph a sanctimonious bass sang Asleep in the deep, and two contraltos chanted Abide with me in nasal thirds. Now came the great event of the evening, the Honourable Judge Porter's address of welcome.
Judge Porter was a pompous personage with a florid face and a bald head. He had a good, strong chin and honest green eyes. His nose was a fine, manly nose. He was considered one of the leading citizens of Maple Valley and once had been nominated for election to the state legislature. He had not been elected, but that fact had no effect on his standing in the community. As a public speaker he was locally regarded as without a peer.
Judge Porter walked to the very edge of the footlights and stood silent, making a long pause before he began his remarks. When at last he spoke, his voice was poised and low; he was saving his power and his wind for later flights of superb oratory. His speech, reported in full in the Maple Valley Star on Thursday morning, July 8, 1897, follows:
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens and citizenesses, and our noble visitor (he made a low obeisance towards the royal box), we have with us tonight a former Maple Valley belle who, it may be said, has gone from the pavements of this inconspicuous . . . shouts of No! No! . . . inconspicuous, the judge repeated sternly, but worthy town of Iowa to the courts of Europe. Many of you here have dandled her as a child on your knees and now she is the favourite of kings and princes. . . . At this point a tremor of emotion, not unlike that produced by pulling out the stop labelled vox humana in a pipe-organ, made itself felt in the speaker's voice.
Friends, the Judge continued, there is a lesson in this, a lesson which the Countess, our noble guest (again he bowed towards the royal box), has come back to teach us. No . . . he held up his hand . . . not with her own lips. She is too modest for that, too sweet, too NOBLE. It is I who am delegated to tell you. I do not mean to say that she has asked me to tell you, but I know what is in her heart, and I feel that it is only just to her to bring this secret out and expose it.
The speaker paused again, a little longer this time, but there was a perfect silence in the auditorium, the silence of expectancy and curiosity presently to be satisfied. The Countess nervously plucked at the feathers in her fan.
There are many young people in this audience, Judge Porter continued, and many of these young people are at present in attendance at the Maple Valley High School. Many of us not so young any longer once attended this institution of learning, but I do not think the High School was built when the Countess, then little Ella Poore, was with us. That was a long time ago, a long, long time ago. I do not think that Ella Poore, if she will permit me to revert for the moment to the name by which we all knew her then, had the privilege of attending this splendid school. So much the more honour to her for reaching the thrones of kings without this aid; so much the more to her credit. But for you young men and women who have this inestimable prerogative there is no excuse if you do not amount to something in this world. It is not necessary that you should aim to reach the thrones of kings. I am very democratic. I think that a man who does his work in an honest way right here in Maple Valley is just as good as any king that ever lived (wild cheers). Better (wilder cheers).
After another short pause the speaker went on: The Square in front of your institution of learning seems to include all the factors necessary to interest the student in the great world, more keen-eyed, more willing, and more wishing, to drink in the knowledge and experience that may come his way (and I may say right here that this glorieus land we live in offers all the opportunity any of us should demand in this respect) than he: would be otherwise. We read a good deal about the influence of environment, but always in the small sense of the word, the environment of the home, the environment of good or bad companions. These factors certainly influence our lives for better or for worse, but just how great an influence the environment of the Maple Valley High School has had and is still having has probably never been estimated. I doubt, Judge Porter continued, looking directly at Mrs. Sinclair, who was sitting on the edge of her chair, bending forward, with her right hand behind her ear so that she might not miss a word, I doubt if any one has even ever thought about it before.
First there are the trees growing in the square, the massive oaks, the great elms, the saplings, which suggest nature and natural things to our boys and girls. A love of the beauty of nature is inculcated in their souls, almost imperceptibly, almost without their knowing it.
Could anything be more fortuitous . . . the speaker lingered over this word and repeated it lovingly . . . fortuitous than the location of the railroad depot (and there'll be a new one soon) en one side of the square, with its tracks, which lead eventually, if you follow them far enough, to the four ends of the earth? They suggest to our young men and women that the world is small and that travel is easy. The fountain in the centre of the park might well be construed as the symbol for an ecean voyage. Many a time, strolling through the park on my way to court, I have been struck by the sight of a boy sailing his toy sloop in the basin of the fountain. Doubtless, in just the same way, Noah Webster as a child played with his letter-blocks.
But these are all symbols of an intellectual or a business life. How good it is then to turn to the three spires of three churches of as many sects of the Christian creed which rise on the side of the square opposite the depot to bring to mind thought of the soul, of its present tendency and its future welfare.
Above all, let us recall the great open spaces of green grass in the square, the lawn, my friends, the LAWN. No pavement to bring to mind a picture of the treading Magdalene, no gin-shop with its sinister significance, no symbol whatever, indeed, that may be construed as unhealthy.
Since these ideas occurred to me some years ago, it has been my interest at various times in various climes to recall them for purposes of comparison. I may truthfully say that it is my pride and gratification to be able to state that no other square which it has been my privilege to visit combines so many fortunate advantages or has been so propitiously arranged for the inspiration and edification of youth. Copley Square in Boston has its library, its art gallery, and its Trinity Church, all excellent in themselves, but without the depot they give the sense of self-sufficiency, of provincialism, I may even say of smugness. And where is the High School? Madison Square in New York, even within the shadow of Dr. Parkhurst's Temple of God, is too worldly. And where is the High School? Leicester Square in London is of the earth earthy, a bawdy place dominated by vaudeville shows and night restaurants. And where is the High School? You may thank your Maker, children, and the wise members of your board of education that your High School is not situated in Leicester Square. The Place de la Concorde in Paris can only suggest to a sensitive boy or girl the spilt blood of a mighty empire, can only remind us of those horrible pictures Thackeray has painted so vividly in A Tale of Two Cities. No, one would not wish any institution of learning to stand in the presence of the obelisk in the centre of that Place.
So, friends and noble visitor, I offer you your High School and its environment as Maple Valley's most beneficent influence, and I call upon the Principal of that school to rise, so that we may say to her in the words of the great poet:
The best is yet to be.
The applause after this address was prolonged and hearty. There were cheers for Miss Amidon, the elderly Principal of the Maple Valley High School, as she rose from her seat in the centre of the house. The Countess, although almost hysterical, beat her palms together, but Mayme Townsend frowned and remarked. The Judge is trying to get on the school-board, the old fool!
Following Judge Porter's address an intermission was announced and Gareth took advantage of this moment to leave his seat to join Lennie Colman.
Miss Colman, he adjured her, you promised . . .
Gazing at the handsome lad bending over her, Lennie assented with a sigh. As they walked down the side aisle to the royal box all eyes were focused on them. Strolling between acts at the opera house in Maple Valley was not customary. When Lennie parted the curtains at the back of the box and the Countess, turning, recognized her, extending a cordial hand, excitement ran high.
Why haven't you been to see me? the Countess demanded.
Miss Colman blushed, as she stammered, I wasn't sure . . . I don't know . . . I've been occupied.
The Countess shook her finger at the school-teacher.
O, yes, you know. You were sure that I wanted to see you. . . . Well, come now; it isn't too late.
Lennie pushed the business in hand ahead of her confusion. I've brought some one tonight, one of my pupils who wanted to meet you, she said. May I . . . ?
Certainly. Bring him in. The Countess's use of the masculine pronoun was instinctive or clairvoyant.
Miss Colman again parted the curtains and, as Gareth appeared, she introduced him. There was a second's pause: the Countess weighed him, realized his charm, his attractive youth. Then Gareth spoke:
I want so much, he said, to hear you talk about your life in Europe. . . .
It was the turn of the Countess to flush. In pure astonishment her mouth opened and closed several times before she could form words. She blinked her eyes. She even considered pinching herself to see if she were truly awake. For the first time since she had arrived in Maple Valley some one had shown an interest in her.