Little Bardina

Little Bardina

By Alfred Lambourne

She was the sweetest, the dearest, the most lovable of mortals. Bardina dead! Little Bardina! "Can the gods be so envious?" She was the darlingest of sinners! How fearlessly she could speak the truth; with what an innocent smile she — could look one in the face and lie! In her pranks she could deceive the very elect; she almost deceived herself. But the second talent she used only for good. No, do not ask tne to explain; some other moralist must figure that statement out. Bardina dead! Little Bardina! Close the Green-Room doors, make fast the blinds, then. Let us wear sack-cloth; let us put ashes upon our heads. No, no, no ! We would not wrong her thus. Open the door and the windows; let in the brightness of the sunlight, the songs of birds. Let us look on the beauty of earth, inhale the fragrance of blossoms. That were the more fitting to do when we think of Bardina.

It was Little Bardina who rescued the stoker. It was wrong for her to plead for the man. It was true that the stoker was wearied with his waitings upon an invalid wife, and it was true that he possessed a blind child. But suppose that the Play- House had been consumed? What he did was a negative crime. The pipes, which ran along beneath the wooden parquet floor, were red hot, and the man at his post was sound asleep. Think, had there been a panic in the crowded house, a conflagration? But we shudder to think! It was in the days when the heating apparatus was of the olden kind, and the escape was almost a

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miracle. "In case of fire," was instructed on the theatre pro- gram, "do not be alarmed, do not create a panic. The audi- ence would be able to leave the house at their leisure; re-enter and take their seats, and leave again before there would be danger." Pleasant fable! But the pleading of Bardina pre- vailed with the management and the stoker was re-instated. And Little Bardina laughed in glee. What pleased her so much as to come out victor with an exploit like that? Nothing, indeed! Unless it were to indulge her penchant for playing of practical jokes. Once Bardina played a trick on the Tragedian's dog. That trick caused the big mastiff to fall over the edge of the Scene- Painter's Gallery, and it died on the back stage with plaintive moans. Whereat the repentant trickster almost cried out her eyes. 'J \t~lM if!

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Perhaps it was that practical joke the one which I am about to tell, which caused Little Bardina from so trying her friends —for awhile. It has been already told that the Play-House stood in a land of romance. On one side lay a broad water and on the other were noble mountains. And sometimes the Theatre Com- pany, accompanied, perhaps, with a traveling star, would go to the one or the other of the places, broad waters or mountains, for their annual Dramatic Picnic. Then what sport along rocky shore, or on waves of brine, or among the mountain ways! It was among the mountains where the company went on the oc- casion of Bardina's memorable joke. Let us describe the place, it will make you, dear reader, better to understand the mad prank, which smashed the picnic, caused its ending to be a scene of unrestrained sorrow, and yet which taught us all how dearly, after all, we loved Little Bardina. It was a remarkable place where the picnic was held. The Thespians had well chosen the scene of their "Act." They had left the theatre at an early hour, and a score of vehicles bore them to the selected place. Wild, magnificent, grand! That particular point in the canyon was called "The Stairs," and there its stream foamed over a succession of steep granite ledges. Great cliffs on either hand echoed back the water's roaring; yet there were level green-swards between the masss of shrub- oak, where the members of the company might indulge in danc- ing, or where the cloths for the meals might be spread. There, too, half in jest, half in earnest, the actors declaimed, pitching their voices in rivalry with the noise of the tempestuous waters. Ah, those waters! How fiercely they swirled and plunged in their downward course! The granite ledges were hidden in foam. Woe to the one who by mischance might be there! One

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of the actors had warned Bardina of this. To their death man or woman would go who might fall into the stream; no mercy would be found in those frantic waters. In the highest of mirth the Company had set out for that place, wretched they re- turned. And all through the prank of Little Bardina. Let us describe a para- graph more. At right angles to the main canyon, there is a short and hidden glen. Abruptly it ends with a leaning rocky

wall, and over the wall comes the high yet most slender of waterfalls. 0, Nature has worked through the ages to make lovely that hidden glen! On its floor are clus- ters of wild raspberry bushes, and the thimble-berry, and itsentrance is concealed by thickets of wild rose. In re- lation to the canyon the glen might be compared, for we think of the theatre still, to some dainty dressing room, apart from the great, wide stage. Its lower rocks were cushioned deeply in mosses, t

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fretted with azure gentian, midway up they were draped with delicate ferns, and higher still were brightly colored with the golden and orange lichen. A huge old spruce tree stood by the slender water fall, and if there should come one occupant to that nature dressing-room who cared to make use of a mirror, there was one of nature's own. In an oval basin the collected waters rested, and they reflected without a blemish, the beauty of the glen, and the blue of the summer skies. And into that glen went Bardina. In that nature dressing- room she hid and, through the thicket of wild-rose, peeped out to watch the result of her prank. And as a result of that prank imagine the consternation among the company of actors and actresses! Imagine the tor- ture of hearts! Imagine the hysterical women, and imagine the men, with set faces, as they searched along the edge of the water for some trace for, as they thought, the unfortunate girl! Imag- ine them looking into each darksome pool and swirling eddy of the plunging stream! Imagine these things, and then imagine the tricksome sinner, Bardina, peeping out through the thickets of wild-rose, and with eyes that sparkled with glee! — For her prank was this she had left footmarks to the edge of the water, had pushed down loose rock as if some one had slipped and fallen there. Then she left her red poke bon- net, fastened to a bush as if caught there as she fell. O, they should think that she was drowned! Was it not a most cruel and impish prank And so the Company returned to the Play-House. Alas! without Little Bardina. Not even with her body. They had brought the red poke bonnet, and that was all. 0, it was too terrible to be true!^ t

Now, why did Bardina remain in the glen? Why did she not come out from her concealment, as she had fully intended to do? She had carried her prank too far; it should have ended in mirth at the side of the stream. Why? we ask. Why, we an- swer, because she really did have a slip and a fall. Not on the big stage, the canyon with its ledges and roaring stream, but in the dressing-room glen. At the exact time, at the moment of effect, it was her purpose to rush out from her hiding-place and to fill the wild with derisive laughter. But she was to be pun- ished; it was her turn now. She was to learn how foolish and sometimes dangerous is a practical joke. Just as she was about to make her sensational entry upon the nature-stage, then it was that her foot slipped, upon a wet and polished stone of the glen- stream, and down went Little Bardina. Upon the mimic stage what a laugh it would have caused. Now it was no laughing

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matter, upon that real stage. Bardina, after her fall, lay white and still; there was blood on her forehead, too. When she recovered from her deadly faint, there was but a "darkened house." No light in dressing room, the glen, or on stage, the canyon. The Company was gone; no voice was to be heard but that of the angry stream. Bardina was alone in the wild, and night was coming on.

O, such a woe-begone, such a bedraggled creature she was brought to the Play-House next day. Bardina! Little Bardina! Imagine the rapture of the astonished Company! There was a great blue bump on the girl's forehead, there was a cut on her cheek, her hands were torn with the thorns of the wild-rose. — And yet she was alive. It was indeed lucky for her that a wood-cutter coming down the canyon road with his load of logs had found the half-dazed sinner, and brought the culprit to the theatre side door. — Weep laugh! Scold her, beat her smother her with kisses! O, how fair was the sky, how melo- dious the songs of birds, how sweet the fragrance of blossoms that came in through the Green-Room windows ! The world was beautiful, for there again, to be forgiven and to be loved was Little Bardina!

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