Five minutes went by, and there was no sign of Calma Ferris. The child came back and reported that she was still missing. Alceste had a sudden vision of her having been taken ill. She hastened down the corridor and pushed open the doors of the various rooms as she came to them. All were in darkness. At each door she called softly but distinctly:
“Are you in here, Miss Ferris?”
There was no answer. She switched on the lights of each room on her return journey, and glanced anxiously round each one. Teacher’s desk on the rostrum, winter twigs in jam-jars on the window ledges, children’s locker desks in orderly rows, wall blackboards, stock-cupboards, all the paraphernalia of class-room activities were there, but there was no sign of Miss Ferris. Puzzled, Alceste switched off the lights.
The only other player who had not yet been on the stage, and who, as a matter of fact, was not due to make his first entrance until Act Two, was the “Mikado” himself, the Senior Art Master, Mr. Smith. It occurred to Alceste Boyle that the two might be conversing, and that Calma might even now be on the opposite side of the stage, ready to make her entrance. A short transverse corridor made it possible to get to the other side of the school without crossing in front of the stage or going out of doors, so she slipped along this, and presently came upon Mr. Smith, who was enjoying a cigarette in the corridor and was talking to the electrician. She admonished him with a smile and in a whisper, for they were very near the stage, told him he would cough when he began to sing, and then asked him whether he had seen Miss Ferris anywhere.
He had not, and so, feeling irritated and worried, Alceste found a couple of chorus-people and sent them to assist in the search, while she herself hastily made her way into the darkened hall, found Miss Camden, who should have had the part of “Katisha” had not Calma Ferris financed the production of the opera, took her into the women principals’ dressing-room and asked her to take the part.
Miss Camden declared she could not possibly go on like that at a moment’s notice, and begged to be excused. Alceste let her return to the auditorium, collared the biggest girl in the chorus, borrowed her costume, got Madame Berotti to make her up very quickly for the part of “Katisha,” and, Calma Ferris having failed to materialize, went on at the end of the First Act, and, being by that time in a state of high nervous tension, justified her Irish blood by rising magnificently to the occasion and taking the part as poor Calma Ferris might have taken it in dreams but could never have managed to take it in reality.
The curtain fell to tremendous applause. Alceste had herself made up a little more carefully during the interval, and to all Miss Cliffordson’s questioning she would only reply:
“Whatever has happened, she can’t go on now. I shall have to finish.”
“But what on earth can have happened to the woman?” Miss Cliffordson persisted. Alceste, sacrificing her own good looks with every touch of grease-paint, in order to create successfully the illusion of “Katisha’s” hideous Japanese countenance, shrugged one shapely shoulder, stood motionless while the last smears were added, and then went out to round up the chorus.
It was not only behind the scenes that Calma Ferris’s absence was causing comment. Her landlady, and Frederick Hampstead, the conductor, together with those members of the staff who were on duty as stewards, and those members of the school who were seated in a solid and appreciative phalanx at the back of the hall, wondered audibly, during the interval, why Miss Ferris was out of the cast. Various conjectures were rife, from the landlady’s “Taken bad with the excitement, poor thing,” to the school’s almost unanimous “Old Boiler blew up because the Ferret was so rotten at rehearsal, so Ferret’s gone off in a bate and left Boiler stranded,” which went to prove, if proof were needed, that children are not the infallible judges of character which sentimental persons would have us believe they are.
The Second Act was a great success. Hurstwood, who bad begun very badly in Act One, had gradually regained his self-confidence, and towards the end of the Act was singing and acting almost hysterically, as though carried along by over-mastering excitement. During the Second Act he controlled this excitement sufficiently to give a very good performance. Alceste Boyle was magnificent, and Mr. Smith, as the “Mikado,” assisted her in bringing the house down. In fact, in spite of the comparatively lifeless show put up by Moira Malley, and the fact that she was in tears at the fall of the curtain, the production of The Mikado was the most outstandingly successful production the school Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society had ever staged.
“Thank heaven that’s over!” observed Miss Freely, wiping off make-up in the women-principals’ dressing-room. “Nothing will ever induce me to take part in a school performance again.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Cliffordson, ravishingly pretty in a pale pink négligé, as she sat on a school chair and put on her stockings. “You were very good, you know.”
It was so palpably a baited hook that Miss Freely perversely decided not to rise to it. She was good-nature itself, but Miss Cliffordson was rather too certain that Miss Cliffordson was the prettiest, the best-dressed, the most interesting, the most temperamental and the most talented member of the staff.
“Donald Smith was better than usual, don’t you think?” she said.
“Oh, I always think Smith rises to the occasion,” replied Miss Cliffordson. “He’s lazy, like all real artists, and he won’t rehearse, but on the night he always comes up to scratch.”
At this point Madame Berotti, who had been gently removing the more outrageous portions of Alceste’s hideous make-up, patted her victim on the shoulder and said good night.
“She’s pleased, anyway,” remarked Miss Freely, looking after the slender, upright figure of the old ex-actress who carried her eighty years so gallantly. “She thought you were marvellous, Mrs. Boyle. And so you were,” she added. “Absolutely great! I don’t know how you do it.”
Alceste, who was tired, said ungraciously: “I wish I knew why Miss Ferris did it! I can’t imagine what’s the matter with her. It isn’t like her to have left us all in the lurch like that.”
“Must have been taken ill,” said Miss Cliffordson. “I expect she looked for you and couldn’t find you. But I think it was too mean of Miss Camden not to take the part when she was asked. Knows every word of it, too, because she did it for the Hillmaston Players last season.”
“Well, she was awfully sore, you know, when Mr. Cliffordson handed it straight to Miss Ferris like that, without a suggestion that anyone else might do it better,” said Miss Freely. “And, after all, she would have done it better—tons better. Although not a patch, even then, on Mrs. Boyle’s rendering,” she went on, glancing sidelong at Alceste’s beautiful bare shoulders, whence the strap of her petticoat had slipped as she bent to pick up her shoe. Alceste, flushed and laughing now, said happily: