A Fortunate Term
by Angela Brazil · English · Gutenberg #36080 · 403,654 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Fortunate Term
Author: Angela Brazil
Illustrator: Treyer Evans
Release date: May 10, 2011 [eBook #36080]
Language: English
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A FORTUNATE TERM
* * * * *
By ANGELA BRAZIL
"Angela Brazil has proved her undoubted talent for writing a story of
schoolgirls for other schoolgirls to read."--Bookman.
Loyal to the School.
A Fortunate Term.
A Popular Schoolgirl.
The Princess of the School.
A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl.
The Head Girl at the Gables.
A Patriotic Schoolgirl.
For the School Colours.
The Madcap of the School.
The Luckiest Girl in the School.
The Jolliest Term on Record.
The Girls of St. Cyprian's.
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth.
The New Girl at St. Chad's.
For the Sake of the School.
The School by the Sea.
The Leader of the Lower School.
A Pair of Schoolgirls.
A Fourth Form Friendship.
The Manor House School.
The Nicest Girl in the School.
The Third Class at Miss Kaye's.
The Fortunes of Philippa.
LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, LTD., 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SHE FOUND TOM IN THE GREENHOUSE _Page 44_]
A FORTUNATE TERM
by
ANGELA BRAZIL
Illustrated by Treyer Evans
Blackie and Son Limited
London Glasgow And Bombay
Contents
CHAP. Page
I. MAVIS AND MERLE 9
II. "THE MOORINGS" 22
III. THE SCHOOL FAVOURITE 34
IV. RED DEVON BY THE SEA 48
V. FAIR MAIDS OF FEBRUARY 61
VI. A CHILD OF MISFORTUNE 75
VII. THE INNOVATORS 86
VIII. THE WARREN 103
IX. A QUESTION OF HONOUR 117
X. AMONG THE BOARDERS 127
XI. ROUND THE FIRE 141
XII. PIXIE-LED 152
XIII. BLACKTHORN BOWER 167
XIV. NICKY NAN NIGHT 181
XV. THE SQUATTERS 193
XVI. TROTMAN'S CIRCUS 209
XVII. THE SICK CLOWN 223
XVIII. GREEK MEETS GREEK 240
XIX. AT HALF-MAST 255
XX. A CONFESSION 266
XXI. THE FLORAL FESTIVAL 278
Illustrations
Facing
Page
SHE FOUND TOM IN THE GREENHOUSE _Frontispiece_
BOTH MAVIS AND MERLE LET THEMSELVES GO 88
IT CERTAINLY WAS A MOST ALARMING SPECTACLE 136
"HERE WE ARE AT CROSS NUMBER TWO" 160
"YOU KNOW CHAGMOUTH?" HE WHISPERED 232
SHE REACHED DOWN INTO SOME DARK RECEPTACLE
AND DREW UP A BROWN-PAPER PARCEL 272
A FORTUNATE TERM
CHAPTER I
Mavis and Merle
There had never been a week of worse weather, even for Whinburn, and
that was saying something! Mavis, sitting up in bed with a
dressing-jacket and two shawls round her and three comfortable pillows
tucked at her back, could just see out of the window if she craned her
neck a little. The prospect which greeted her was anything but
pleasing--a wilderness of roofs covered with dirty snow, and a row of
factory chimneys belching forth grimy smoke against a leaden sky. From
the street came the noise of tram-cars and tramping feet; a motor-lorry,
thundering by, shook the house like an earthquake. Mavis, in the blessed
lull between two storms of coughing, turned her eyes resolutely from the
forlorn view of the outside world to the cheery interior of the bedroom,
with its glowing fire, its bookcase full of attractive volumes, and its
walls so covered with framed prints, photos, and picture postcards that
there hardly seemed a vacant inch of space left. Directly facing her,
and in the place of honour, was a water-colour representing a landscape
with a peep of the sea beyond. The trees in the painting were bare, but
the undergrowth was green, and a patch of gorse blazed in the
foreground, a rift of light from the sky gleamed on the waters of a
stream, and the figure of a little girl was stooping to gather ferns.
Mavis gazed at the picture for some time in silent contemplation, then:
"Muvvie, dear," she said suddenly, "I think you must have made a mistake
when you told me you painted that in December."
Mrs. Ramsay, sitting with the mending-basket near the fire, snicked a
piece of wool and put down the scissors.
"It's perfectly true, Madam Doubtful. Your mother doesn't tell fiblets.
I sketched that in Devonshire the year before I was married. It was a
milder winter even than usual, and I remember the gorse was in blossom
at Christmas, and the laurustinus coming out in the gardens. I painted
exactly what I saw, and no more. Can't you believe me?"
"Ye-e-s! But it's wonderful all the same. We don't get winters like that
here in the north. When I look at the snow and the chimneys, and then at
the picture, it's like peeping through another window into a different
world. I only wish----"
But a severe gust of coughing interrupted Mavis's reflections, and when
it was over she lay back, very quiet and white and exhausted, upon her
three pillows.
Mrs. Ramsay, mixing a poultice by the fire, sighed as she stirred
linseed meal into boiling water.
"It's most unlucky you've started with one of your bad attacks of
bronchitis before Christmas. How am I going to get you through the
winter, child, if you've begun to take cold already? I'd like to wrap
you in cotton-wool and pack you away in a box to sleep like a dormouse
till the warm weather woke you up! Whinburn certainly doesn't suit you.
It may be bracing, but people with delicate chests can be too much
'braced' sometimes. Is the poultice too hot? Be a brave girl! Remember,
Father said 'the hotter the better!' Bear it as long as you can. Why,
there's the bell! Is it Merle home already? Surely she's early to-day?"
Mavis, protesting against the poultice, looked up eagerly as stamping
feet resounded on the stairs, and her sister, with coat and hat lightly
powdered with new-fallen snow, burst into the room.
"Hello, Mavis! You've got the best place, in bed! It's detestable out
to-day. The wind's like a knife, and it's beginning to snow again. Oh,
it was cold at school! My fingers were simply frozen. The end of Miss
Donald's nose was quite blue, and her temper was bluer. She snapped my
head off when I asked her a question. We played tig in the gym at
'break', though, and got warm, but Gertie upset the coal-box and made
such a mess, and Miss Greene scolded ever so, and said we were trampling
coal-dust into the floor, and it would have to be washed again before
dancing lesson. It wasn't really Gertie's fault; Joan pushed her. I met
the postman outside, Mumsie. He gave me this parcel. It's for you.
You're always the lucker! I wish it was mine."
"We'll all share it together," said Mrs. Ramsay, taking the package to
Mavis's bed and snipping the string with her scissors. "It has the
Durracombe postmark, and it's Aunt Nellie's writing, and I think I
shan't be very far wrong if I guess flowers."
The contents of the box were soon spread forth on the invalid's
counterpane. They were an amazing display, for it seemed as if the
seasons had overlapped, and late autumn had joined hands with early
spring. There were yellow rosebuds, and passion flowers, and a few
montbretias, and some Michaelmas daisies, a big bunch of purple violets,
some primroses, polyanthuses, a pansy or two, blossoming ivy, little
pink double daisies, and beautiful sprays of the yellow jessamine. Mavis
fingered them delicately as if they were priceless treasures. The colour
had flooded into her cheeks and her eyes shone like stars.
"Muvvie! Surely they come from a greenhouse?" she asked. "They _can't_
be growing out-of-doors _now_."
"Indeed they can! You don't know Durracombe. The flowers go blooming
along all the winter--if you can call it winter down there. I told you
it was a different climate from Whinburn. Oh, how sweet they smell! I
remember just the exact spot in the dear old garden where these violets
grow."
Mavis looked out of the window, where the now fast-whirling snow was
hiding the smoke of the factory chimneys, then looked back to the pure,
clean, delicate blossoms that lay on her lap.
"It's like a fairy tale!" she murmured. "Think of picking them in
December! Muvvie, if I could go and stay at the place where these
flowers grow I should get well."
"I verily believe you would," said Mrs. Ramsay thoughtfully, as she
fetched vases and began to place the drooping violets in warm water.
Mavis, at the time our story begins, was fifteen and a half, and exactly
fourteen months older than Merle. It is necessary to state her age,
because people always forgot it, and set her down as the younger of the
two. Everybody, friends and strangers alike, gave precedence to Merle,
the taller, stronger, more confident, and more dominating individuality.
Mavis was an ethereal little person, who might be described as a spirit
very lightly embodied in flesh. With Merle soul and body were balanced,
with a bias towards the latter--on the whole she was of the earth,
earthy. There was a sufficient likeness between the sisters to suggest
that nature had reproduced an identical type in different mediums. She
had painted the first delicately in water-colours, then had copied the
same model more strongly in oils. Which picture you preferred was a
matter of taste.
Fortunately there was a complete understanding between the girls. Their
particular faults and virtues seemed to dovetail into one another
without friction, and they were excellent chums, a useful factor at
school, where Mavis often needed a defender, and Merle was constantly
requiring the services of someone to help to pull her out of her
numerous scrapes.
Dr. Ramsay lived at the north-country manufacturing town of Whinburn, a
prosperous but bleak corner of the kingdom, where smoke had stunted the
trees and soiled the herbage, where flowers were scarce and bloomed
late, and winter stretched its icy fingers well into autumn and spring.
The house, like most doctors' houses, was on the main high road, and
part of the garden behind had been turned into a garage, so there was
very little room for the bed of bulbs and the perennial border upon
which Mavis concentrated most of her outdoor energies. She toiled hard
to have a floral display in the summer months, but it was disheartening
work, for the frost always killed her wallflowers, and only the hardiest
of plants would consent to make a sulky struggle against the smoky
atmosphere that seemed to blight the very heart of vegetation and turn
the choicest bedding varieties into sickly specimens. Merle, less deeply
wedded to nature, had long given up gardening as a bad job, and had
handed over her patch of unkindly northern soil to her sister. She was
more interested in the car: she liked to watch the chauffeur clean it,
and the high-water mark of her bliss came on the days when, on a quiet
road and with no policeman within sight, her father would allow her for
a brief space to assume command of the driving-wheel.
"I'll be your chauffeur, Dad, when I'm old enough to leave school," she
would assure him airily. "I _do_ think you might get me a driving
licence now! Too young? What nonsense! We've no need to tell the
Government I'm only fourteen. I'd soon drive as well as Greenhalgh if
you'd let me try. I'm not afraid of anything."
"I dare say not, but think of _my_ feelings with a harum-scarum like you
at the helm!" her father would reply. "You'd soon collide with a lorry,
or land us in the ditch. I'll stick to Greenhalgh, thank you. He doesn't
want to run at forty miles an hour."
"I'll take proper motoring lessons when I've left school," Merle would
declare, "then I'll be ready to drive any car in the United
Kingdom--that's to say, if I haven't made up my mind to be a lady
detective."
Mavis, who was in bed when our story begins, weathered her December
attack of bronchitis and came downstairs in time for Christmas Day, but
with such white roses in her cheeks that her father looked at her
anxiously, and called Mother into the consulting-room for a private
confabulation, the result of which was a long private letter addressed
Dr. Tremayne, Durracombe, Devonshire, which was posted without the
girls' knowledge. Several other letters followed, and the brisk
correspondence had just reached a satisfactory conclusion on a certain
January day when Mavis, with a shawl round her shoulders, was peering
out of the window at the flying snowflakes.
"Watching the feathers from Mother Carey's chickens, bairns?" said Mrs.
Ramsay. "I'm afraid it's going to be a wild night. The wind's rising. I
like the snow when it's newly fallen, but it gets dirty directly in
Whinburn."
"And I don't like snow at all, Muvvie," replied Mavis. "We were building
castles in the air just now, and mine was to live in a lovely wood where
it was never really winter."
"My castle was to be a chauffeur or a lady detective!" laughed Merle.
"Perhaps both! It would be great sport to go dashing about the country
in a car, unravelling mysteries and catching jewel thieves. Will you
come with me, Mavis?"
Mavis shook her head.
"I've told you I'm going to live in a house with an enormous garden, and
a wood where I can watch the birds. I'd rather track tomtits than jewel
thieves. You shall come and stay with me when you're tired of chasing
your burglars. It will be fine and warm in my wood, with no slushy snow
_ever_, or yellow fog, only lovely flowers and ferns the whole year
round, and I shall go out without being eternally wrapped up. That's my
castle in the air!"
"Don't you wish you may get it, that's all! It sounds like El Dorado.
Oh, I'll come and stay with you right enough when you find such a
fairyland. Woods like that don't grow near Whinburn. Look at the sky
now! It's actually trying to snow again!"
"It won't snow in my _wood_!"
"And I say such woods don't exist except in your imagination," declared
Merle emphatically.
"Not quite the fairy land Mavis pictures, but there's a very good
approach to them in Devonshire," said Mrs. Ramsay. "I've something I
want to tell you chicks. How would you like to go to Durracombe and stay
with Uncle David and Aunt Nellie? Don't look so incredulous! It's really
true. We've arranged to send you for three months, and I'm to take you
down there next week."
This was news indeed, such news that at first the girls were hardly
able to believe it. They had never been in Devonshire, and had not seen
their mother's uncle, Dr. Tremayne. Their father, Dr. Ramsay, busy with
his own professional work, had little time to spare for visiting, and
when he snatched a holiday the family had generally gone to Scotland, or
to some east-coast seaside resort. He was fond of the north, which has a
charm all its own, but his wife was a Devon woman, who could not forget
the county of her birth. She had told her children stories of its
beauties, its mild air, its early flowers, its legends of pixies, its
smugglers' coves and blue stretches of sea, its moors and dancing
brooks, till they had come to look upon it as a sort of Elfland, a
fairy-tale country that had no more real existence than the kingdom at
the top of Jack's beanstalk. Uncle David and Aunt Nellie, too, though
familiar household names, were entities as unsubstantial as characters
in a book. To go and stay with them at Durracombe seemed as amazing as a
visit to Robinson Crusoe's island or a sojourn with Robert Louis
Stevenson in the South Seas. When their minds were adjusted to the new
idea they demanded details.
"Three months! We shall miss school for a whole term. Oh, Mummie, what
fun! Shall we find cowslips in the fields? And can we go paddling in the
brook? It sounds gorgeous!"
"You certainly won't find cowslips in January. Don't expect
impossibilities. And as for paddling, I forbid anything of the sort
before Easter. Don't congratulate yourselves that you're going to have a
term's holiday. There's a very nice little day school in Durracombe,
kept by the late vicar's daughters, only ten minutes' walk from Uncle
David's house. Don't pull faces! Of course you must go to school, and
you'll probably like it. How long can I stay? About a week. I shall take
you there and see you settled, then I must fly back to Father, for he's
not accustomed to doing without the whole of his family. I wish he could
have come with us, but it's quite impossible for him to leave his
patients at present. If you catch another cold, Mavis, before we go
away, I shall be really cross with you. We hope Devonshire air will work
a cure and stop these perpetual bouts of bronchitis. As for you, Merle,
there's really no reason for sending _you_, except----"
"Except that my little sister couldn't and wouldn't and shouldn't go
without me. We're practically twins, and we're no more use apart than
the two blades of a pair of scissors. Oh yes, Mummie darling, we'll be
patterns of virtue. Don't worry about us. We'll cheer up Aunt Nellie and
amuse Uncle David, and wake the new school up too, I dare say. Don't
look horrified, sweetest, I'm half joking. Mavis is such an angel-girl
she needs me to drag her down a little or she'd just go floating off to
heaven like a balloon, and never find her way back. I act earthly
ballast for her, and keep her anchored to this world. She'd never
remember her tonic if I didn't remind her. I'll keep an eye on her down
in Devon, and see that she doesn't sit in draughts or get her feet damp.
Trust her twin to look after her. Whenever she wants to do silly things
I'll scold till I'm hoarse. You don't know how I can croak when I like!"
"As if I were going to do silly things!" interrupted Mavis indignantly.
"Really, to hear you talk, anybody'd think you were my grannie instead
of fourteen months younger than I am! I hope this new school will be
decent. We shall miss Janie and Edna."
"But think of getting rid of Miss Donald for a whole term, and not
having Miss Hanson to teach us algebra. Oh, what a jubilee! Our desks
will be empty in IVA. Sounds quite pathetic, doesn't it? Sort of twin
tombstone business."
"They grew in beauty side by side;
They filled one school with glee,"
laughed Mavis.
"And now they're going to have some larks
In Devon by the sea!"
finished Merle.
"Durracombe--Durracombe--Durracombe," repeated Mavis. "Yes, I like the
name. It grips me somehow. I feel I can be happy at Durracombe. I
shouldn't want to go to a place called Porkville or Mudbury. There's a
great deal in a name. Mumsie, dear, I wish we were starting to-morrow. I
can't wait. I want to see Durracombe at once."
"You silly child! And I, who have all your clothes to get ready, am
thankful to have at least a week to turn round in. I don't say I'm not
looking forward to seeing Devon again, though. We shall be ever such a
jolly trio when we set off in the train, shan't we?"
"And where do I come in?" asked a mock-lugubrious voice, as Dr. Ramsay
joined the party. "My family appear very anxious to run away from me. It
seems to me I'm to be left out in the cold. Poor Papa! Sitting alone by
his desolate hearth with only the cat for company. My heart bleeds for
him!"
"Daddy! You naughty boy! You ought to come with us," cried the girls,
forcing their father into an elbow chair and seating themselves on the
two arms, so as to be in position to administer smacking kisses on both
his cheeks. "You know very well Devon won't be _quite_ Devon without
you. We hate to leave you behind. Now, promise us something! Oh, it's
perfectly easy and possible, and we know you can do it. Say yes! You'll
be kissed to death by wild daughters if you don't. It's your only chance
of life! Now or never! There! You've promised to come down to Durracombe
at Easter to fetch us home."
"Have I indeed? Oh, I dare say!"
"I'll keep him to his bargain," laughed Mother; "but I expect when the
time comes he'll be fussing to start. We're not a family who can bear to
be divided for long, are we?"
"Rather not!" said Merle, slipping from the arm-chair to pull Mother
into the charmed circle. "You shall come in the car, darlings, and motor
us back, and I'll drive whenever there's a smooth bit of road ahead.
It's a topping idea."
"Only your driving doesn't happen to be included in the bargain, you
young puss! We've some respect for our limbs, and prefer to reach home
with bones unbroken," declared Father, escaping from his tempestuous
daughters to answer the insistent telephone-bell that was ringing loud
peals of agitated warning in the hall.
CHAPTER II
"The Moorings"
The tiny town of Durracombe consisted mainly of one very long and
enormously wide street. Everything that was of any importance was
situated in this High Street--the church, the bank, the public hall, the
reading-room, the free library, the best shops, and the Swan Hotel. Each
Friday it was turned into a species of market, with stalls, and barrows,
and butter-baskets, and shouting men driving frightened cattle, but on
great festivals, such as Empire Day, it became a gay cafe, for tables
and forms were placed on the pavements and the school children were
entertained to tea in the open air, while the town band played patriotic
music. Being such a small and compact place, it had the advantage of
beginning and ending quite suddenly. The river marked the boundary. On
one side of it you were in civilization, with a mayor and police and a
town crier, and the privileges of gas and the telephone, but directly
you crossed the bridge you were in the happy fields that owned no
sovereign but Dame Nature, and in quite a few minutes you seemed to have
left the world behind you.
Dr. Tremayne's house was the very first when you entered Durracombe by
the road from the south. Its green front door with the brass plate stood
in the High Street, but its garden wall overtopped the river, and its
side windows looked out over the fields to the open country. People
coming to fetch the doctor on a black night could see his red surgery
lamp from the top of the hill a whole mile away. It seemed to hold out
promise of help like a kind hand stretched across the darkness of the
river. For the last forty years Durracombe and district had depended
upon Dr. Tremayne. Time had, of course, brought changes, and the
dark-haired man who drove a high gig in the 'eighties was now grey and
elderly, and did his rounds in a two-seater car. Quite apart from
medicines the mere sight of him seemed to do his patients good. His very
atmosphere was electric, and he had that true gift of healing that helps
people to get well of their own accord. Certainly no one within a radius
of thirty miles was a greater favourite than "the dear old doctor", and
his small biscuit-coloured motor was a familiar feature on the country
roads. His three children were married and settled down in various parts
of the globe. None had followed their father's profession; so, though he
might be proud of a son who was a judge in India, a barrister in London,
or a successful civil engineer in Canada, he could claim no help in his
practice from his own family. His wife, grey-haired and elderly too, was
somewhat of an invalid, and most of the housekeeping was done by Jessop,
an invaluable old servant who attended to the surgery, took patients'
messages, sterilized instruments, washed medicine bottles, could give
first aid in an emergency, and was generally almost as great a feature
of the practice as the doctor himself.
It was to this rather old-fashioned household that Mavis and Merle,
sworn to the most exemplary behaviour, were sent for three months in the
hope that in the soft Devonshire air Mavis would catch no more bad
bronchial colds, and would have a chance of setting up her health and
growing the two extra inches which she still needed to set her head on
the same level with Merle's.
To the two girls everything in Durracombe seemed delightful. The
mildness of the climate amazed them. After the nip of Whinburn's
perpetual east wind, lifeless hedgerows, and desolate winter fields, it
felt like a sudden jump into spring to find campion, herb robert, and
dead-nettle blooming by the road-sides, catkins waving on the hazel
bushes, clumps of snowdrops and Christmas roses under the apple trees,
violets beneath the sheltered wall, primroses peeping through last
year's dead leaves, and the missel thrush chanting a triumphant song in
the yew tree that overhung the river.
Mother, as happy as if she were a girl again, took them round to her
favourite haunts: the beacon-top, where you could catch the first view
of the sea, eight miles away; the moor with its rushes and soft, short
green grass; the fields where cowslips would be found later on; the fir
wood that seemed like a wilderness of Christmas trees; the marshy flats
where you could see the wild ducks flying; the little quarry where the
sand-martens had burrowed holes for their nests--all the dear delightful
spots that she had known as a child, and had described to them so often
that they recognized them the moment they saw them.
"It's gorgeous! Muvvie, if only you weren't going away I'd think myself
in Paradise," declared Mavis, with pink cheeks, and standing on tiptoe
as if she were growing already. "Uncle David's a dear, and so's Aunt
Nellie, and as for Jessop, she's just a sport--that's what I call her.
Bridge House is simply A1, and if school anything like comes up to it,
well--I shall say it's the time of my life. It's going to be the nicest
term I've ever had."
"Don't congratulate yourself too soon," croaked Merle. "School's school
all the world over, and there's sure to be something to put up with.
_I'm_ not looking forward to sums and exercises. When do we start?
To-morrow! Ugh! Enter it as a black day in the calendar of Merle Ramsay,
and probably of the school too, for they won't find me soft wax in their
hands. I've got ideas of my own, and when people begin to try to mould
me I'm apt to turn katawampus. Mumsie, darling, don't shoot up your
eyebrows! There! I'll promise and vow to be a perfect seraph. They'll
call me St. Merle before they've done with me. Honest, Mumsie, I will
_really_ try! You know how I flare out, but I'll make a bouncing start
at this new school and think of you every time I get into a pixie mood.
If I don't, the Devonshire pixies had best steal me away and have done
with it. I'd be a good riddance to everybody, I dare say."
Merle spoke half in jest and half in earnest. There was laughter in her
voice, but her eyelashes were suddenly wet. Mrs. Ramsay laid a tender
hand on her younger daughter's shoulder. She was not laughing at all.
"I hope both my girls are going to grow this term," she said quietly,
"in character as well as in inches. There's room for improvement in both
of you. Mavis must stir about instead of always dreaming and reading,
and Merle must curb that little demon that sometimes gets possession of
her. I expect to find two very sweet girls when I come to fetch them at
Easter. We want this term to be in every sense a fortunate term."
"We'll do our level best, Muvvie! Can't you trust us?" whispered Mavis,
linking her arm in her mother's, as they turned from the wood and began
to walk down the hill-side towards the little town where the next
eventful months of their lives were to be spent.
But Merle, who always hid her deepest feelings under a joke, chirruped
out an impromptu ode to the future:
"School! School! School!
They'll probably call me a mule!
And stick me to stand,
With a book in my hand,
And a dunce's cap, on a stool!"
So it ended in the three of them laughing after all.
There was no large college or high school for girls in Durracombe, only
a very small private establishment kept by Miss Mary Pollard and her
sister Fanny, daughters of the late Rev. Horatio Pollard, formerly vicar
of the parish. They educated about twenty-four children, half of them
from the immediate neighbourhood: Opal Earnshaw, the bank-manager's
daughter; Edith and Maude Carey, from the Vicarage; Christabel Oakley,
who rode over on her bicycle from St. Gilda's Rectory; the three little
Andrews, from Fir Tree House; Major Leach's small grand-children; Betty
and Stella Marshall, who lived with their aunt, Miss Johnson, while
their parents were in Buenos Ayres; and twelve resident boarders, most
of whose parents were stationed in India, and who, born under burning
skies, had been sent to Durracombe for the sake of its soft air and mild
winter record, until they should be sufficiently acclimatized to stand
their chance as hardy specimens in bigger schools.
"The Moorings" was a large, pleasant, white house with green shutters
and a veranda, and it stood at the bottom of a short road that led from
the High Street. It was what is commonly known as "a dear little
school", that is to say it was rather old-fashioned and out-of-date but
very comfortable and "homey", and the classes were more like lessons
with a private governess than working with a form. Miss Pollard, whose
hair was as silver as spun moonlight, had dropped behind the more modern
methods of education, and, feeling rather diffident in the schoolroom,
concentrated her attention on the housekeeping, cossetted up the
delicate children, aired the linen, superintended the dormitories, and
acted nurse to anybody who was lucky enough to be kept in bed. The bulk
of the teaching rested in the hands of Miss Fanny, who was thorough, if
old-fashioned, and whose original methods, by a curious coincidence,
actually anticipated those of some of our most advanced educationists,
and so placed her ahead of as well as behind the times.
It was into this small community, more like a big family than a school,
that Mavis and Merle were introduced one January morning, causing
visible thrills to the occupants of other desks as they took their
seats. To plunge suddenly from the work of one school into that of
another is a rather bewildering experience, and by the time the
half-past twelve bell sounded, the Ramsay girls felt as if their
standards had been turned upside down. Mavis, shaky in general over
history, had reeled off the dates of the principal battles in the Civil
War, the only period of which she happened to have any special
knowledge, and Merle, by an equal fluke, worked correctly all her
problems in mathematics, a lesson which she usually abhorred. They were
so astonished at scoring on these subjects that they naturally hoped to
do better still in the French class, for languages had been their one
strong point at Whinburn High School. But alack for their self esteem!
The girls at The Moorings had concentrated on French, and not only
translated easily from a book which was much too stiff for the Ramsays,
but chattered quite fluently with Mademoiselle Chavasse, whose
encouraging remarks and questions were palpably not understood by her
new pupils. It is humiliating not to be able to express yourself in a
foreign tongue when others are talking it all round you. Merle, who
never liked anybody to "go one better" than herself, was particularly
aggravated by a fair-haired girl who sat near her, and who, as she
conversed with the teacher, kept the corner of her eye on the new-comers
as if judging the impression she was making on them.
"I don't like her! I shan't _ever_ like her!" thought Merle irately.
"She's conceited, and those eyes are sneaky. It's nothing so much to
talk French. I suppose they're used to it. She needn't think I'm
admiring her cleverness, for I'm not. I'll pluck up courage myself to
say something next time Mademoiselle looks at me."
But Merle's powers were not equal to her courage, and when Mademoiselle
gave her another chance she turned scarlet and stuttered, and generally
made rather a goose of herself, to her own infinite indignation and
evidently to the amusement of the rest of the class, especially of the
fair-haired girl, who tittered openly till she met the teacher's
outraged gaze, when she suddenly straightened her face and tried to
appear quite unconscious. Mavis, profiting by her sister's example, did
not commit herself to speech. Mademoiselle Chavasse's accent was
unfamiliar and difficult to understand, and most of her remarks might as
easily have been in Greek as French, to judge by the standards of
Whinburn High School. Both the Ramsays were particularly relieved when
the lesson came to an end.
At 12.30 Mavis, who had been sent to the school with a special
recommendation that her health should be looked after, was carried off
by Miss Pollard to be weighed and measured and otherwise inspected,
while Merle, with boots and hat and coat on, and all impatience to be
off, waited for her in the cloak-room. The other day-girls had scurried
away with hardly more than a glance in her direction, and she sat alone,
kicking her heels and not in the sweetest of tempers, till one of the
boarders, passing the door, peeped in, saw her, and entered. The
new-comer was a nice-looking girl, with grey eyes and a plait of very
dark hair. She smiled in quite friendly fashion.
"Hello!" she began. "Sitting here all by your lonesome? Why don't you go
home?"
"Can't. I'm waiting for Mavis."
"Is Mavis the other? She's rather sweet! I like her fluffy hair and that
blue velvet band. Somebody said she was older than you, but she doesn't
look it."
"People often take us for twins," conceded Merle.
Iva Westwood shook her head.
"No one with eyes, surely! You're alike in a way, but not very. Opal
Earnshaw was fearfully angry that you beat her in maths. She's been cock
of the walk till now."
"Which is Opal Earnshaw?"
"That fair girl who sat near you."
Merle's face darkened.
"That was why she tried to take it out of me in the French class, then?"
"Oh, Opal tries to take it out of everybody. She won't be very pleased
you two have come, I expect. You're too old to stand her bossing."
"Why do other people stand it?"
"Well, you see, she's head of the school, and Miss Pollard and Miss
Fanny are her godmothers."
"What difference does that make?"
"A great deal of difference, as you'll soon find out. Everything their
darling god-child does _must_ be right, that's the long and short of it.
They favour her fearfully."
"What a blazing shame."
"Yes, some of us get rather fed up I can tell you. We mutiny every now
and then."
"Count on me, then, next time you have squalls."
"Thanks!"
"Tell me about some of the other girls. Who's that one in the green
jersey who sat by the window and dropped her pencil-box? Is she nice?"
"Edith Carey! Ye-e-s, she's nice enough in a way." (Iva's tone was
unconvincing). "She's the kind of girl who drags on your arm when she's
tired, and insists on kissing you when she's got a bad cold."
"I understand--exactly. I suppose the other green jersey is her sister?"
"Maude? Oh, she's not a bad sort either. Rather a slacker though,
always late for everything. We say she'd be late for her own funeral.
She made us miss the train once when we were going an excursion. What
are the others like? Well, we call Aubrey Simpson the jackdaw, because
she's always talking. Muriel Burnitt makes fun of everybody. You should
hear her take off Mademoiselle! Nesta Pitman may be a little nasty to
you at first, but don't mind her, because it's only her way with new
people. She'll soon come round. She's rather off-hand, but a real
sport!"
"So are you, I should guess!"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm Cornish, and Cornish people are supposed to be
queer. At least Devon people say they are."
"Mother is Devon."
"Then I expect you'll think me queer. Are you living with your uncle,
Dr. Tremayne? _He's_ a sport if you like! He used to come and see me
when I had scarlet fever, and he brought me strawberries long before our
own were ripe. I wish I weren't a boarder. We live fifteen miles away,
at Langoran Rectory. It's too far to come every day, or I'd bike, like
Christabel Oakley. We used to have a governess at home until my brother
went to school and----"
But Iva's reminiscences were broken by the appearance of Mavis, rather
hot and injured after her health examination, and very anxious that they
should not be late for one o'clock lunch. Iva, hearing a bell,
disappeared without further remark, and the Ramsays hurried back through
the town to Bridge House, where Aunt Nellie, who admired punctuality as
a cardinal virtue, was looking out of the window for them. They compared
notes while they washed their hands.
"Are you going to like it?" asked Mavis eagerly.
"Um--I don't know! I certainly shan't like Opal Earnshaw, and she
needn't think because she's head girl and all the rest of it that _I'm_
going to truckle to her. They must be a poor-spirited set to let her
lord it over everybody. Who said she did? Why, Iva Westwood. She was
talking to me in the cloakroom. I could be chums with that girl! There's
something about her I rather take to. She's Cornish, and they say Devon
and Cornish people never can agree, but perhaps we'll hit it in spite of
that. She said you were rather sweet! Don't screw up your mouth! She
meant it as a compliment really. Do you think teachers ought to have
their own godchildren for pupils? No, I've not suddenly gone mad, but
Iva told me Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny are Opal's godmothers, and think
everything she does is absolutely perfect. 'The Queen can do no wrong'
sort of idea! I think it's horrid to have favourites. There goes the
gong. Help! Give me the towel, quick! We mustn't be late for lunch on
our first day without Mother, or Aunt Nellie'll think us horrible
slackers."
CHAPTER III
The School Favourite
Mavis and Merle walked into the dining-room just in the nick of time to
satisfy Mrs. Tremayne's sense of propriety. She was a dear, nervous, old
lady, who had never had any daughters of her own, and had rather a hazy
notion of girls in general, and was indeed a little frightened of
schoolgirls; but she tried to be very kind to her great-nieces, and had
told Jessop to be sure and look after them. Jessop did not need any
telling. It was she who had arranged their bedroom, and had put the
little table in the window, and the two basket-chairs, and the bookcase
full of tales of adventure and bound volumes of _The Boys' Own Paper_.
The iced soda-cake was of her making, and so was the plateful of
delicious treacle toffee.
"It's twenty years since the boys used to come home from boarding-school
for their holidays, but I haven't forgotten what young folks like," she
explained to Mavis and Merle, as she helped them to unpack. "It's more
like a boys' bedroom than a girls' perhaps, but I just collected
anything of Master Richard's and Master Cyril's that I could find about
the house. If you don't care about them we'll take them out."
"But we _love_ boys' things," declared Merle, admiring the pictures of
dogs and horses on the walls, opening the drawers of the cabinet of
birds' eggs, and touching the whip and the cricket bat with friendly
fingers. Mavis was already deep in _Coral Island_, and temporarily deaf
to the outside world, but she had just sufficient sense of manners left
to grunt "It's a gorgeous bookcase!" before she lost herself in the
South Seas among the palm trees.
"Two very nice young ladies, and to have them here is like old times,"
Jessop had confided to Tom, the factotum. "The house has always seemed
dull since Master Cyril went away. Miss Mavis reminds me of him, with
her blue eyes and that gentle little voice of hers. Now, Miss Merle is
like Master Percy. He'd a way with him! I never knew what was going to
happen next when he was at home. 'Jessop' he'd say, 'you're a wonderful
woman!' Then I knew he meant to coax me to let him keep his rabbits in
his bedroom, or do something of that sort. Girls are quieter than boys,
but these two will cheer us up a little, I dare say. We all seem to have
grown old here lately."
And Tom, the factotum, polishing boots by the back door, agreed with
her. Twenty years ago he had been the coachman, and, immaculate in his
grey livery and silver buttons and top hat with the cockade at the side,
had driven the high gig about the country lanes. It had nearly broken
his heart when his master decided to give up the horses and take to
motoring instead. There were tears in his eyes when he groomed Czar and
Ruby for the last time. But, though Dr. Tremayne might march with the
century, and visit his patients more quickly in his new automobile, he
had no intention of parting with his old coachman, and determined to
turn him into a chauffeur instead. So Tom learnt to drive the car,
learnt almost too well, indeed, for, determined not to show the white
feather, he waxed foolhardy, and would career round corners with one
wheel off the ground, or dash down hills at such breakneck speed that
the doctor, not usually a nervous subject, would gasp with relief to
find himself alive at the bottom. Something plainly had to be done, or
Tom would soon have broken the family's bones, and the question was how
to shelve him without giving him offence. The riddle, fortunately,
solved itself by the retirement of Dalton, the factotum-gardener. Dr.
Tremayne decided to retrench and to keep only one man-servant. In future
he drove his own car, and Tom was installed in Dalton's place, to weed
the walks, clip the grass, polish the knives, and carry the coals. He
made friends at once with Mavis and Merle, or rather he merely
transferred to them the friendship he had given to their mother
twenty-five years ago, when she used to spend her holidays at Bridge
House, and rode Cobs, the white pony, whose grave lay at the bottom of
the paddock. To Tom, motoring was the sign of a degenerate age, and he
would descant to the girls about the good old days, when people were not
in such a frantic hurry and could wait for the doctor until he drove up
behind a well-groomed horse, and made such a case for the past times
that Merle, in spite of her ambition to drive a car, began to wish Czar
and Ruby and Cobs were still in the stable, and she herself could be
clad in Mother's old riding-habit and flourish Cousin Percy's discarded
whip as she ambled along the lanes on pony-back.
That, however, was before she had had a run in the little, yellow
Deemster car. After the first trip to Chagmouth she completely changed
her mind.
For a week life went on with the greatest regularity at Durracombe.
Every morning the girls were called by Jessop promptly at half-past
seven. They started for school at twenty minutes to nine, returned home
for lunch, rushed back to The Moorings by 2.30, did their preparation
and practising in the evenings, and went to bed at nine o'clock. Uncle
David was nearly always out, or busy in the surgery, and Aunt Nellie sat
by the fire, knitting or taking little naps. She would ask very kindly
about their lessons, then, hardly giving them time to answer, would
plunge into reminiscences of her boys' schooldays. Life, for her, still
centred round Percy, Richard, and Cyril. When the girls wanted to talk
they went to Jessop. It was to her they poured out their experiences of
their new school, and she listened with the flattering interest of one
who really enjoys hearing. She never read any books, so perhaps the
little adventures described humorously by Mavis or Merle took the place
of chapters in a serial story. She was familiar directly with the names
of all the girls and teachers at The Moorings, and most delightfully
ready to "take sides", and like those whom they liked and agree about
the iniquities of those who offended them.
For this first week had not been all plain sailing. It is often really
easier to get on in a big school than a little one. There is more
elbow-room among two hundred girls than among two dozen. Nobody except
Iva Westwood had seemed particularly pleased to welcome them. Opal
Earnshaw palpably resented their presence.
"Miss Pollard is only supposed to take twenty pupils," she remarked, on
the day after their arrival. "I know she refused two other girls, so I
can't think why she should have broken her rule."
"But those girls would have been boarders," objected Iva.
"Well, where's the difference?"
"A great deal when it means two extra beds in a dormitory."
"It means two extra seats in a room that's already overcrowded,"
declared Opal loftily. "If the school is going to take any more new
girls it had better build an annexe and let them have classes there."
"Sorry to be on the earth!" said Merle sarcastically. "Perhaps you'd
like us to sit inside the cupboard? We shouldn't crowd you out there."
Opal looked her up and down, from her velvet hair-band to the tips of
her shoes, then she gave a kind of snort.
"I suppose you think yourself ever so clever," she retorted. "Girls from
big schools generally give themselves airs."
"Other people can give themselves airs," snapped Merle, warming to the
battle. "Big schools teach manners at any rate!"
"Oh, we don't mean anything against _this_ school," hurriedly put in
Mavis, who generally tried to take the edge off her sister's cutting
speeches. "We think it's going to be quite jolly. I'm sorry if we've
taken the desks where you've had your museum, but where _are_ we to keep
our books and things?"
Opal, who was grudgingly removing the contents of two desks, which for a
whole term had been devoted to a collection of natural history objects,
had the grace to look rather ashamed of herself.
"Oh, it's all right," she temporized, "but what I'm to do with all our
birds' eggs and butterflies goodness only knows! I daren't keep them in
any of the other classrooms or those juniors would be fingering them and
they'd be smashed to bits. I suppose I must pack them in boxes and get
Miss Fanny to stow them away somewhere."
"Can't I help?" said Mavis, coming to the rescue.
Iva had just arrived on the scene bearing some large cardboard boxes,
into which the three girls transferred the little collection. It seemed
quite a pity to have to move it, for it had been so carefully set out.
There were certainly grounds for Opal's ill humour, though even the most
unreasonable of head girls can hardly expect a mistress to reserve desks
for a museum when she can give them to two extra pupils. The fact was
that Opal had been "first favourite" at The Moorings for too long. It
would have done her all the good in the world to be sent to a large
boarding-school and find there were people more important than herself.
Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny, devoted friends of her mother, undoubtedly
spoilt her, lent a ready ear to her complaints, but listened coldly to
anybody who made accusations against her. The knowledge that she will
receive support at all costs from head-quarters is a dangerous weapon
for a girl in a position of authority. During the whole of last term
Opal had done pretty much what she liked, and when others grumbled would
declare: "Well, go and tell Miss Pollard and see which she'll believe,
you or me!" an argument which was so unfortunately well founded that the
luckless objectors preferred to suffer in silence.
It was not in the nature of things that a disposition such as Merle
Ramsay's could be in the same school with Opal Earnshaw without a clash.
Merle loved fair play, and was always ready and willing to stand up for
anybody's rights, including Mavis's and her own. Her first instinct had
been to clear their new desks by tipping the unfortunate museum on to
the floor. That was Merle all over. She preferred forcible methods to
diplomacy. It generally needed all Mavis's tact to smooth over the
difficulties roused by Merle's ardent partisanship and freedom of
speech. Many were the squalls from which she had rescued her sister at
the Whinburn High School, and apparently she would be required to
perform the same office for her at The Moorings.
Opal calmed down and was fairly civil during the morning, but on that
very afternoon arose another unfortunate occasion of dispute. The
Ramsays had finished lunch early, and hurried back to school in order to
have a little fun with the boarders before lessons began at 2.30. They
liked Iva and Nesta, and also some of the younger ones, and meant to
enjoy half an hour with them in the playroom. Merle was by nature a
public entertainer. She could not spend ten minutes in the company of
other girls without wanting to start games or organize a sing-song or in
some way get up amusement. During the Christmas holidays she had been
poring over an article on palmistry which she found in a magazine. As
the result of her studies in that direction she offered to tell the
fortune of anybody who liked to consult her. She was instantly besieged
by an excited crowd, all thrusting forward their hands at once for
inspection and trying to push one another aside.
"Cheerio! This won't do!" decreed Merle. "One at a time, my hearties!
Take your places in an orderly queue and come up in your turns to the
witch, or she'll fly away on her broomstick and tell you nothing! Iva
first, then Nesta, then you others, and no squabbling. Anybody who tries
to push in front will be turned to the end of the queue. That's kismet!"
Merle could always keep order among juniors. The small fry giggled, but
formed into line and kept their places while Iva and Nesta consulted the
oracle. The prophecies were rather startling but sufficiently exciting
to make eight young heads bob up and down with eagerness to secure their
turns before the bell rang for afternoon school. Iva had been sent away
a little dubious between the attractions of "foreign travel" and a
warning of "danger by sea", while Nesta was openly rejoicing over a
prospect of "wealth and honours" in spite of the "accidents" scattered
over her future path. It was now the turn of Mamie Drew, and that
short-skirted damsel was just advancing with rather awed eyes and a
nervous chuckle, when the door opened and Opal Earnshaw strolled into
the room.
"Hello! What are you all doing here?" she exclaimed. "Fortunes! Oh, I
say! I _must_ have mine told. What can you make out of my hand?"
And, thrusting Mamie aside, she spread out her palm for Merle's
inspection.
Now it was partly Merle's love of fair play and partly her antipathy to
Opal, and partly a little bit of "katawampus", but the three feelings
combined made her thrust away the hand in a very peremptory fashion, and
brought an extremely tart note into her voice as she said:
"No pushing in front! Go to the end of the queue and take your turn with
the others. It's Mamie next."
"I don't mind," volunteered Mamie, making way for Opal.
"But _I_ mind!" snapped Merle. "It's I who's telling the fortunes and
I'll do it as I like, and take you in order. If you don't want to come
next, Mamie, get out of the way can't you, and let Joyce have her
innings! Opal must wait like other people."
Opal, however, as head girl, considered herself highly insulted.
"You needn't think I'm going to wait at the end of a queue of kids," she
retorted angrily. "I don't care about your old fortune-telling, thanks!"
and she flounced out of the room.
She was very glum indeed all afternoon, and would not look at either of
the Ramsays, though Mavis, to make amends, offered the loan of a new
penknife, and even tendered a surreptitious chocolate.
"I took her down, didn't I?" smirked Merle, as the sisters walked home
up the High Street, and watched the retreating figure of Opal, who had
scuttled past them with averted eyes, hurrying towards her own front
door.
Mavis sighed. Her naturally kind and peaceful disposition and her
loyalty to Merle were always pulling her in opposite directions.
"I'm afraid Opal just detests us. Perhaps you might have let her take
Mamie's turn as Mamie actually offered."
"Certainly not." (Merle's voice was firm.) "If you begin to let a girl
like that butt in whenever she wants, you never know where you are. I
think she's the limit. She'd no need to look so annoyed when we arrived
at school. What does it matter to her? The Moorings isn't run for her
private convenience!"
"She couldn't forgive us for taking those spare desks and turning out
the museum."
"Bother her museum!"
"It's rather a nice one anyway. It seems a pity it has to be put by in
cardboard boxes."
Mavis was really concerned about the little collection of curiosities
that had been so neatly spread forth in the unoccupied desks. She
cogitated for a long time as to how the difficulty could possibly be
overcome. Finally she sought Tom, with whom she was already on terms of
great friendship. She found him in the greenhouse, repotting some ferns.
"Oh, Tom!" she burst out eagerly. "Do you think there's anything about
the place I might take to make a museum?"
Tom stroked the grey stubble on his chin reflectively.
"A museum?" he repeated. "That's a big order, Miss, isn't it? I went
through the museum in the castle grounds at Taunton once. It must be ten
years ago. Or will it be twelve now?"
"Oh, of course, I don't mean a museum like that," explained Mavis, "only
a kind of box arrangement with some glass over it, to put butterflies
and birds' eggs in, very like--" (her eyes wandered round the
greenhouse) "very like what you grow seeds in."
The nice part about Tom was the alacrity with which he caught up
suggestions. At his age it was really amazing.
"A very good idee, Miss," he agreed. "I know what you want. Master
Cyril used to keep his butterflies in boxes like that. I'll hunt about
and see what I can find for you."
"Smart-looking boxes and some pieces of glass to fit over them?" pleaded
Mavis.
"You leave it to me," was all Tom would promise, but there was a twinkle
in his eye as he stooped over his ferns again.
Every morning Mavis asked him for the boxes, and each time he either
pretended to have forgotten or was ready with some excuse. At the end of
four days, however, he took her into the old harness-room, where he had
a joiner's bench and a variety of tools, for he acted handy man to the
establishment.
"How will these suit you, Miss?" he enquired, in a would-be nonchalant
tone.
Mavis gave an absolute bounce of surprise. There on the bench lay two
most beautiful cases. Tom had planed the boxes and made lids for them,
into which he had fitted the pieces of glass. They were stained brown
and varnished, and were lined neatly with dark-blue cloth. The old man
was evidently bursting with pride at his handiwork, though he affected
an attitude of indifference.
Mavis made haste to congratulate him.
"It's the cleverest thing I've ever seen done in my life," she purred.
"Oh, they're just too lovely for words--absolutely topping! Thanks, a
thousand times over. You must have simply _slaved_ to finish them so
quickly."
"Oh, I just worked at them in odds and ends of my time," said Tom
casually, looking very pleased all the same. "That varnish is a bit
sticky yet, but I dare say it'll be dry by the morning. If you want the
boxes at school I'll carry them round for you to-morrow some time."
"Oh, thanks! Could you bring them at eleven o'clock 'break'? That would
be scrumptious. I must fetch Merle to look at them at once, and Jessop
too. You don't mind?"
Tom delivered the cases next day with admirable punctuality; indeed he
was standing on the school doorstep exactly as Miss Fanny rang the big
bell for break. The girls, pouring into the hall, saw him deliver the
treasures into the safe custody of Bella, the housemaid. Naturally they
crowded round to look.
"Hello! What are these for?" asked Opal. "What stunning cases!"
"They're for Miss Ramsay," proclaimed Bella.
Mavis, with rather a red face, stepped forward.
"If you think they'll do to keep the birds' eggs and butterflies and
things in will you please have them as a museum for the school," she
said quickly. "Tom, my uncle's coachman, made them on purpose."
"Jolly decent of him. They're A1," approved Opal. "Better than the
desks really, because of the glass lids. I say, I'm going to bolt my
lunch in two secs, and get down those boxes and spread out the
collection again. The things will look no end on that dark cloth."
"Spiffing," agreed Iva, who was also inspecting the new acquisitions.
"Hurry up with your lunch then, and help me to arrange them. No, I
can't have a dozen people's fingers interfering! I'm curator of the
museum and I won't have it smashed. Three are quite enough. Iva and
Mavis and I are going to do it, and we don't want anyone else, thank
you! You can come and look at it when it's finished. I'll put the cases
on the window-sill in the big schoolroom. Mavis Ramsay" (this last
communication was whispered) "I don't mind telling you I didn't care for
you before--it was mostly the fault of that sister of yours!--but I
think now you're an absolute sport. You and Merle aren't a scrap alike.
Nobody would ever take you for sisters."
CHAPTER IV
Red Devon by the Sea
Mavis now found herself placed in a somewhat embarrassing situation. The
school favourite had taken rather a fancy to her and extended overtures
of friendship. Had she been at The Moorings by herself she might have
responded, but it was impossible to be chums with a girl who displayed
such open hostility to Merle. The two were "diamond cut diamond". Each
was a strong character, and neither would give way an inch. They
squabbled and heckled one another continually. If Opal had had even a
term's experience of a big school, and if Merle had possessed a little
tact and forbearance, they might have rubbed along together. As it was
they went about like two thunderclouds. Mavis found her best safety lay
in neutrality. She was quite nice to Opal, but not expansive, and
whenever opportunity offered she patched up a truce, though the task of
peacemaker was often a thankless business, for Opal would say: "Oh, of
course, you side with that sister of yours!" and Merle would indignantly
accuse her of not taking her part with sufficient vehemence.
Merle had found an ally in Iva Westwood. Iva was a rather
out-of-the-way girl, proud and reserved. She did not often care to wage
battle with Opal herself, but she keenly enjoyed hearing somebody else
do it, and was ready to act "backer-up" within limits. She appreciated
both the Ramsays, though her particular temperament was more attracted
by Merle. In a certain off-hand, abrupt fashion she might be considered
a chum.
On the second Friday afternoon after their arrival at Durracombe, Mavis
and Merle went to The Moorings as usual. To their immense surprise, when
they arrived there, they found the whole school arrayed in light frocks,
silk stockings, and sandalled slippers.
"Hello! What's the meaning of this? Is there going to be a party?" they
asked quickly.
"Party? No! Don't you know it's dancing afternoon?" replied Nesta,
re-tying her pale-blue hair-ribbon, which was coming off. "Surely Miss
Pollard told you?"
"She never said a word about it."
"Well, she told Opal to tell you at any rate. Just when you'd gone home
this morning I heard her say to Opal: 'Run after those two and remind
them it's dancing afternoon.'"
"Opal never came near us. What a shame!" blazed Merle.
"We didn't have dancing last Friday," objected Mavis.
"No, because Miss Crompton hadn't come back. We shall have it every
Friday now."
"Where? In the playroom?"
Nesta laughed.
"Oh no! We don't have it at school. There's no room big enough. We go to
Miss Crompton's class in the public hall."
"Well, look here! What are we to do?" asked Mavis. "We can't turn up as
we are? Shall we run home and change into 'war paint'?"
"I don't know. You'd better ask Miss Pollard. Oh, here she is! Miss
Pollard, please! Mavis and Merle didn't know it was dancing afternoon."
"How very annoying! I told Opal to remind you," said the mistress,
turning to the aggrieved pair almost as if it were their own fault. "Go
home to change? Oh no! There isn't time now. You must all come along at
once or we shall be late. It's a tiresome mistake but it can't be helped
and you mustn't miss the lesson. You'll know better next week."
"Might we _tear_ home and change, and run on to the public hall?" begged
Mavis desperately.
"No, no! You must all come together. Never mind. I'll explain to Miss
Crompton, and it will be quite all right."
It was all very well for Miss Pollard to say "Never mind" in so easy a
fashion. Mavis and Merle were furious. They possessed dainty dresses,
thin stockings, and dancing slippers in their wardrobe at Bridge House,
and when the whole school was arrayed _en fete_ it was most humiliating
to be marched off in their brown knitted jerseys, ribbed stockings, and
ordinary serviceable shoes. They both looked daggers at Opal, who just
then put in an appearance very prettily got up in a white _crepe de
Chine_ dress and a big, pale-pink hair-ribbon. She started guiltily when
she saw them.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you two about the dancing. It simply went out of
my head," she exclaimed.
"Then your head's as empty as a brass nob," exploded Merle. "It was just
_criminal_ of you to forget. I believe you did it on purpose."
Even Mavis did not attempt to palliate Merle's home truths, for she was
bubbling over with injury, and sharper words still might have followed
had not Miss Fanny arrived and swept her whole flock from the house for
a "crocodile" walk to the public hall. The big room here, engaged by
Miss Crompton, was certainly a very good one for the purpose, with a
polished floor and nice decorations, so that it looked quite festive and
"Christmasy", as the girls, having left their coats and hats and
over-shoes in the cloakroom, marched in and took their places. The class
was not confined to the pupils at The Moorings; girls from various
country houses in the neighbourhood, and a sprinkling of little boys
were also there. The array of light dresses and thin shoes made the
Ramsays more indignant than ever. And there would have been plenty of
time to go home and change. Miss Crompton and her assistants were so
long in getting the children arranged, that Mavis and Merle might easily
have been back from Bridge House, robed in their best, before the first
dance began.
Miss Crompton ascertained that her two new pupils were no novices, then
placed them in the senior class. In revolt against what some parents
termed "stage posturing" she had revived some of the old Victorian
square dances, and was teaching the first figures of the quadrille.
Merle happened to be _vis-a-vis_ with a girl of about her own age, a
tall athletic girl with fair hair, who looked as if she would be more at
home on horseback than in a ballroom, but who, nevertheless, gaped at
the Ramsays' morning costumes with unconcealed scorn, and arranged the
skirt of her own pretty dress rather ostentatiously, as if calling
attention to the difference. When she met Merle in "the ladies' chain",
instead of joining hands as the figure required, she deliberately
refused the outstretched fingers and swept past without touching them.
To Merle it was an open insult. She looked at Miss Crompton to see
whether the teacher had noticed, but Miss Crompton's attention was
concentrated on two special bunglers, and though the incident happened
again as the girls crossed back to their own places, it drew down no
reproof.
"Slack teaching here," thought Merle, fuming with wrath. "Such a thing
would never have been allowed in our class at Whinburn. I don't know who
that girl is, but she's an out-and-out blighter. This is one of the most
grizzly afternoons I've ever had in my life."
The Ramsays were indeed glad when half-past four arrived, and they were
able to go home and pour out their woes to Aunt Nellie and Jessop, both
of whom were most sympathetic and indignant about the whole business.
"I'd have brought your dresses to the town hall for you if I'd only
known," declared Jessop.
"It was a great mistake of Miss Pollard's; she ought to have sent you
home to change, even if you missed part of the lesson." (Gentle Aunt
Nellie sounded quite wrathful). "How could you dance properly without
your thin shoes? Never mind, dears! You'll know better next week, and
we'll take care you go really nice. I wouldn't worry any more about it
if I were you. Do your preparation this evening, and if it's fine
to-morrow perhaps Uncle David will take you with him to Chagmouth. That
will give you something else to think about, won't it?"
The girls cheered up at this suggestion. They were very anxious indeed
to go out with Dr. Tremayne in his little Deemster car. He had a branch
surgery at Chagmouth, a village ten miles away, and every Saturday he
spent most of the day there, seeing patients and visiting a sanatorium
to which he was consulting medical officer. He would have taken the
girls on the previous Saturday, but there had been a strong gale, and he
was afraid of Mavis running any risks just at first.
"When you're acclimatized we shan't fear a puff of wind or a few drops
of rain," he said, "but we'll harden you gradually, like Tom does with
his bedding-out geraniums."
"Devon wind and rain are so soft they don't hurt me," urged Mavis. "The
whole air has a different feel from the north. It's nearly as mild as
our summer. Uncle David, I just want to forget I ever had a sore chest!"
"That's the best way; still we must go slow and sure. I don't want to
have to order you to bed with a bronchitis kettle."
"I hope I've said good-bye to that wretched old kettle for evermore. I
didn't want Mother to pack it, but she put it in. I'll give it away
willingly to the first person who needs it."
Saturday morning fortunately proved fine and mild enough to dispel all
fears on Mavis's behalf, and the girls were ready and anxious to start
long before Dr. Tremayne had finished his work in the surgery. They
fumed round the waiting-room door, casting indignant glances at the
patients seated within, and hoping their cases were not serious, and
would not require much of the doctor's time and attention; then, finding
such hanging about rather dispiriting, they went to the garage and
helped Tom to polish the brasses of the car--a praiseworthy occupation
that kept them busy until the last patient had been dismissed from the
surgery.
"Just a few bottles of medicine to make up, and then we're off," said
Uncle David, giving some instruments to Jessop to sterilize. "Have you
each got a warm scarf, girls? And where's the rug? Tell Tom to put my
bag inside the dicky, there won't be room for it in front to-day. You
two will have to sit close, but we'll squeeze in somehow."
The little yellow car was only a two-seater, but it held three at a
pinch. Mavis, in the middle, sat as far back as possible, so as not to
incommode Uncle David's left arm as he drove, while Merle sat a little
forward, to give extra room. Jessop tucked the rug over their knees, Tom
started the engine, Aunt Nellie waved good-bye out of the open window,
and at last they were off, over the bridge and along the road that led
to the south. It was a lovely sunny morning, with great fleecy clouds on
the horizon, and a blue sky overhead. Small birds were flitting about in
the hedges, and large flocks of rooks and starlings were feeding in the
ploughed fields. The banks were green with masses of beautiful
hart's-tongue ferns, and all nature seemed alive and stirring and
thinking of spring. The car whizzed along at a good pace, and they were
soon scaling the hill and crossing the portion of the moor that lay
between Durracombe and Chagmouth. The glistening drops from yesterday's
showers still shone on the brown heather, sheep were feeding on the
patches of fine grass, and wild little ponies stampeded away at the
approach of the car, as if they were running a race with motor power.
It was so beautiful on the uplands that the girls were quite sorry when
the open, hedgeless road dipped between banks into a valley and turned
into the orthodox deep Devonshire lane. Down and down they went, so
steeply that Uncle David seemed to be hanging on to the brakes, and for
at least two miles there was no occasion to use the engine, then quite
suddenly they whisked round a bend of the road and caught a glimpse of
the village lying below them. Chagmouth came afterwards to mean so much
to Mavis and Merle that they never forgot their first sight of it. It
burst upon them, a compact mass of picturesque houses lying huddled
between two magnificent headlands crowned with gorse and brown bracken.
A rushing stream ran through the valley, flowed under several bridges,
and poured itself into the harbour, where gulls were flapping and
screaming, and the rising tide was rocking the fishing-boats gently to
and fro. Out beyond the jetty white sea-foam was flying round jagged
rocks, and a motor-launch was making its way cautiously among chopping
waves. Though it was only the first of February, the village, owing to
the large number of its half-exotic shrubs, was framed in a setting of
green, among which the little colour-washed houses shone like flowers.
Seen as a bird's-eye view from the road above, Chagmouth indeed looked
like a gigantic flower border with the emerald sea for a lawn. As they
dipped downward into the ravine there rose up towards them certain
scents and sounds intimately connected with the place, and afterwards
indissolubly associated with it in the minds of the two girls--the
murmur of running water, the cries of sea-gulls, the twitter of small
birds, the salt smell of the sea, the pungent smoke of burning
driftwood, and the faint, aromatic odour of moist evergreen shrubs
steaming in the sunshine.
Dr. Tremayne halted at a house at the top of the village, and took his
car round into the stable-yard. The house was a farm, and he rented
rooms there for the purpose of his profession. A brass plate upon the
door set forth his surgery hours. People in Chagmouth, unless they were
seriously ill, kept their aches and pains until Saturdays, for it was a
long way to fetch the doctor from Durracombe to pay a special visit. The
waiting-room at Grimbal's Farm was generally full when he arrived, and
there were enough messages from patients requiring his attendance to
keep him busy for the whole of the day.
When the car had been put safely under cover, Uncle David took Mavis and
Merle beneath the great arch of fuchsias that framed the doorway and
into the wide, old-fashioned hall, where the farmer's wife, who had been
watching for the car, was standing to greet them.
"Well, Mrs. Penruddock, how are you? Anybody waiting for me this
morning?" began Uncle David. "You see I've brought my nieces with me
to-day. They'll take a look round the place while I'm busy. Can you
manage to find any lunch for them, do you think?"
"Of course I can, Doctor," smiled Mrs. Penruddock. "It's a nice day for
them to see Chagmouth. It's really quite warm down by the harbour. There
are ten people in the waiting-room, and I have the messages here. Mrs.
Glyn Williams said there was no hurry, any time would suit her."
"I'll go up in the afternoon then, when I take the Sanatorium. I'll see
the people who are waiting now, and then have lunch, please, before I
begin my round. Have you a watch, Mavis? That's right! Then run down and
look at the sea, you two girls, and be back by one o'clock. Don't forget
the time, because I shall have a long round to-day, and must make an
early start."
Dr. Tremayne disappeared into his surgery, and Mavis and Merle, after a
few directions as to their route from Mrs. Penruddock, turned down the
street that led towards the sea. Chagmouth was nothing more than a
village, though its natives liked to call it a town. To enter it was
like exploring a new world. The road to Chagmouth was happily too steep
and narrow for charabancs, so that, even in summer, trippers, with their
terrible train of sandwich-papers and cigarette-ends, had not yet
discovered it and defiled its beauty. It was the most picturesque jumble
of fishermen's cottages that could possibly be imagined; its narrow
alleys, its archways, its flights of steps, its green half-doorways, its
tiny windows and chimneys set at every quaint angle, its cobble stones
and deep gutters, seemed a survival from old days of wrecking and
smuggling, and transported one's charmed imagination back to the
eighteenth century. Every corner was an artist's subject, the roofs were
yellow with lichen, and many of them were covered with masses of ferns;
fishing-nets hung out to dry over palings, and clumps of valerian and
stocks and snapdragon grew in the crevices of the walls. Sea-gulls were
everywhere, as tame as chickens. They sat in rows on the roof ridges,
they perched on the chimneys, and flapped down into the streets to catch
the bread the children threw for them, they swam with the ducks in the
wide pool where the stream emptied itself into the harbour, and circled
with loud cries round the jetty and the arcade where the fish was
packed. Nobody in Chagmouth ever molested the gulls; they were the
mascots of the village, and, according to all traditions handed down
from time immemorial, to injure one of them would be to court instant
bad luck and risk at sea. Even the naughtiest boys did not throw stones
at them, and they were indeed considered almost as sacred as are the
storks in some countries.
Mavis and Merle, much thrilled with their surroundings, plunged down
the narrow little street and along flights of steps and under a deep
archway, till they found themselves by the harbour, where red-sailed
fishing-boats were at anchor, and blue-jerseyed, bronze-faced men were
sitting on casks or on coils of rope, smoking, and talking about
prospects of future catches. It was such a picturesque sight that Mavis
wanted to linger, but Merle, who could catch a glimpse of the spray
beyond the breakwater, pulled her on towards the sea. So they climbed
one flight of steps, and went down another on the far side of the jetty,
finding themselves on a strip of sand and shingle with high rocks and a
headland behind, and the stretch of green open channel in front.
The midday February sunshine made gleaming, dancing lights on the
water. Each wave as it rolled in showed a transparent window of amber,
then fell in foaming white on the beach, carrying back with it a mass of
grinding pebbles. The south wind was fresh, but not at all cold. Mavis
drank in great gasping breaths of it, as if it were something for which
she had craved and pined. A fortnight of Devon had already brought a
pink tinge to her cheeks, and the sea air to-day was turning them rosy.
The girls walked about on the shore, picking up shells, examining the
great tangled pieces of seaweed, and peeping into the pools among the
rocks. They would have liked to go round the point, but Mavis's
wristwatch warned her that time was galloping, and that if they meant to
climb back up the hill to Grimbal's Farm they must turn at once and
hurry their steps; so, very reluctantly, they said a temporary good-bye
to the beach, promising themselves many further visits there on future
Saturdays, and each taking a cockleshell to carry in her pocket as a
charm to lure her again to the domain of the sea-nymphs.
CHAPTER V
Fair Maids of February
Mavis and Merle had lunch with Uncle David in the parlour at Grimbal's
Farm. It was a quaint, old-fashioned house-place, with a horsehair sofa,
a cabinet full of best china, some enlarged family photographs in gilt
frames, a very ancient piano, and a round table. It had the faint,
musty, shut-up scent that clings to a room which is used only once a
week, but a blazing fire of logs, and a bunch of snowdrops on the table,
helped to give it a more occupied air. To the girls it was all part of
their delightful new experience at Chagmouth. Everything was different
from home, and therefore interesting, and when Mrs. Penruddock brought
in a bowl of Devonshire cream with the roasted apples they felt they
were indeed in a land of plenty. When the meal was over, Dr. Tremayne
retired into his dispensary to make up medicines, telling the girls to
wait about for him and not go too far away, as he would soon be starting
on his round, and would take them in the car.
Of course they did not want to stay in the house, so, accepting Mrs.
Penruddock's invitation "Go just wherever you like", they started to
explore the farm premises. Clumps of snowdrops were growing among the
grass in the orchard under old apple trees, some of whose branches held
boughs of mistletoe. Bulbs were pushing up in the garden, and the daphne
mezereon was out already in the warm corner near the bee-hives. Through
the stackyard flowed the stream which was such a feature of Chagmouth,
and here its glittering, tumbling waters had been harnessed to turn a
waterwheel that worked a churn, a turnip-cutter, and other farm
implements. The wheel at present was still, and the girls could go quite
close and examine it. It was a picturesque affair, yellow with lichen
and moss, and with green ferns growing on the wall against which the
water dripped. It was so utterly different from the unlovely, whirling,
modern machinery to which they were accustomed in Whinburn that they
climbed down the steep, narrow steps to get a nearer view. Birds were
flitting hither and thither like dainty water nixies, great sprays of
periwinkle trailed down the banks, and the stream danced by with a
gurgling murmur as if it were trying to put some story into words.
Mavis, standing on the lowest of the steps, and leaning against a blade
of the waterwheel, threw sticks on to its bosom and watched them as they
bobbed along on their way towards the sea.
"Hello!" called a voice from above. "If you don't want to get knocked
into the water you'd better come up. The wheel will be turning in
another moment. We didn't know you were down there."
The girls made a hurried ascent of the steps, and came scrambling up
into the stackyard. The stream might have its attractions, but they had
no wish to try a February bath in it. At the top, by the door of the
churning-shed, stood a boy of perhaps sixteen, a dark, good-looking boy,
with clear brown eyes that sparkled and twinkled like the dancing water
below. He held out a strong hand and helped them up the last of the
awkward steps.
"Dr. Tremayne sent me to look for you," he volunteered, "and a hunt I've
had. I thought you must have gone down the town. I wouldn't have found
you, only I heard your voices. He's ready to start, and in two minds
whether to set off without you or not."
"Is he waiting? Oh, I'm so sorry! Where's the car? On the road by the
front door? Can we cut across the orchard here? Oh, thanks! We won't be
two seconds," and Mavis, scrambling over a fence, made a bee-line for
the house in hot haste.
"We'd no idea it was so late," added Merle, scurrying after her with
only half a glance at the knight who had come to their rescue.
The boy stood watching their race across the orchard with an amused look
in his dark eyes, then he picked up a piece of rope and went away down
the stackyard to the stables, whistling softly to himself as he walked.
The girls arrived at the front door of the farm at the very eleventh
hour, for Dr. Tremayne had started the engine, and was on the point of
setting forth for his visits. They scrambled into the car, pouring out
breathless apologies.
"You were nearly left behind," he commented. "I've a long round and
couldn't wait, but I thought you'd like to come with me to the
Sanatorium; there's such a glorious view up there. It would have been a
pity to miss it. Yes, put that scarf round your neck, Mavis, certainly!"
as a scrimmage went on between the two girls, Merle trying to force
wraps upon her sister, which the latter fiercely resisted.
"I hate to be eternally coddled," protested Mavis.
"You know what Mother said. You must put on extra things in the car,
especially when you're so hot with running. She told me to make you."
"Right-o! only don't quite smother me, please," agreed Mavis, giving up
the struggle and submitting to the warm scarf. "Anything for a quiet
life. Do keep still, and sit more forward, can't you? Uncle David hasn't
room to drive. Are you going straight to the Sanatorium now, Uncle?"
"I must call at The Warren first to see Mrs. Glyn Williams. That's the
house, the white one among the trees. They've a beautiful sheltered
garden there. I wish I could grow early vegetables like they do. They
seem to escape all the frosts. It's the most forward bit of land in the
countryside."
In another minute they had passed the great gates and were motoring up
the laurel-bordered drive to the house. Dr. Tremayne stopped his car on
the carriage sweep opposite the glass front door, drew off his thick
gauntlet gloves, took his case of instruments, and rang the bell.
"You'd rather stay with the car than come inside?" he asked the girls.
"I shall probably be perhaps twenty minutes--not longer, I hope! Walk
about, Mavis, if you feel chilly. I'm sure Mrs.----" but at that moment
the butler opened the door, and the rest of the doctor's sentence went
unspoken.
For a space of five minutes the Ramsays stayed quietly in the car, then
Merle began to grow restless. She amused herself by inspecting the
various levers.
"I could start as easily as anything," she announced airily.
"Oh, Merle, _don't_! Uncle David will be so angry if you play any of
your pranks with the car. Let us get out and walk about till he comes
back. I'm tired of sitting still."
Anxious to keep her sister away from temptation, Mavis hustled her out
of the car on to the drive, and began to pace up and down the carriage
sweep. But this did not content lively Merle. She wanted to sample the
garden.
"Uncle David was just going to tell us to go when he went indoors," she
contended, and there seemed so much truth in her argument that Mavis
yielded, though slightly against her better judgment.
It was so warm that they took off their coats and left them inside the
car, then they selected an interesting-looking path among the bushes,
and started to explore. Certainly it was a delightful garden; it had
lawns and shrubberies and flower-borders, and a brook with a rustic
bridge over it, and a glade that looked a veritable fairies'
dancing-place. Mavis and Merle were thoroughly enjoying themselves. They
were in no particular hurry, because they thought when Uncle David came
out of the house and missed them he would sound his motor-horn as a
signal for them to return. They walked on, therefore, some considerable
way along the course of the little brook. Quite suddenly they heard
voices, and from a path slightly ahead two girls turned into the glade.
The Ramsays remembered them instantly. They had been present at the
dancing-class yesterday, and it was indeed the elder of them who had
behaved with such extreme rudeness to Merle in the ladies' chain. The
recognition seemed to be mutual. They came forward briskly towards Mavis
and Merle, who stood still, feeling decidedly caught, but determined to
hold their own.
"Hello! What are you doing here in our garden?" began the elder girl
inhospitably.
"Looking at your flowers," answered Merle.
"Well, I must say that's rather cool. Don't you know you're
trespassing?"
"No, I don't!"
"Well, you are at any rate. These are private grounds."
"So I suppose, but we're not doing them any harm by walking round them."
"Oh, Merle, _do_ let us explain properly," put in Mavis, trying to stop
this unseemly fencing. "We came with our uncle, Dr. Tremayne, and we got
tired of sitting in the car waiting for him, so we took a walk. We
didn't think anyone would mind."
"Is Dr. Tremayne your uncle? Why didn't you say so before?"
"You never gave us a chance!" snapped Merle. "Of course he's our uncle.
There goes his hooter. We must scoot back, because he'll be in a hurry
to start."
"I can show you a short cut," volunteered the younger girl, speaking for
the first time, and running in front she led the way, between bushes and
through a vegetable garden, back to the carriage sweep opposite the
front door.
Here Dr. Tremayne was hooting loudly to recall his wandering nieces, and
looked not a little relieved at their appearance.
"I thought I'd lost you again," he said, as they came up. "So you've
been making friends with Babbie? Where's Gwen? Is her wrist better? I
wanted to look at it. Yes, fetch her, please, Babbie! I may as well see
her while I'm here."
Mavis and Merle, with eyes fixed on the distant landscape, sat in the
car while Dr. Tremayne made a hurried examination of Gwen Williams's
wrist. They did not look in her direction as they drove away, though
they nodded a stately good-bye to Babbie.
"Think of meeting _that_ girl here," whispered Merle to Mavis. "Isn't
she odious?"
"I wish we'd never gone into their garden," Mavis whispered back. "If
there's anything in the world I hate it's being caught."
The brief episode had upset them both. They did not care to explain it
to Uncle David, and sat rather silent and glum as he drove up the road
to the Sanatorium. It was not flattering to have been taken for
trespassing trippers, which was evidently what Gwen had supposed them to
be. Her reception had certainly been most impolite, and was calculated
to hurt anybody's feelings. They cheered up a little when they reached
the top of the hill, and began to forget about it, for in front lay such
a view of cliff and sea and sky as to send all cobwebs flying away to
the region where dismal things belong. The Sanatorium had been built in
a glorious situation, and surely no place in Devon had a more beautiful
prospect from its open windows. Dr. Tremayne halted outside the gate for
a few moments, and pointed out to his nieces certain distant features of
interest, such as the lighthouse, and Port Sennen harbour. He was
expatiating upon the clearness of the afternoon, when a voice called him
by name, and, turning round, the girls saw, hurrying along the road
after them, the boy who had helped them up the steps from the waterwheel
at Grimbal's Farm. His dark face looked hot. He had evidently been
running fast.
"I hoped I'd just catch you, Doctor," he exclaimed breathlessly. "You
left this in the surgery, and I was sure you'd want it."
"My stethoscope! Great Scott! I thought it was in my pocket. Thanks,
Bevis! I should have had to go back for it. I suppose you came by the
cliff path?"
"Yes, it saves half a mile at least."
"You're going home that way? I wonder if my nieces would care to go with
you for the sake of the walk. Girls, would you rather wait in the car
outside the Sanatorium or try the path along the cliffs to Chagmouth?
Bevis would act guide."
After their previous experience of waiting for Uncle David, Mavis and
Merle did not hesitate a moment, and accepted their escort with
alacrity. A ramble would be far more fun than sitting still in the car,
or wandering surreptitiously round a strange garden. Dr. Tremayne was in
a hurry, so the moment they had scrambled out he pulled his
starting-lever and set off again.
"We'll meet at the farm. Mrs. Penruddock will give you some tea. I shall
be back by five, so be ready for me then," he called, as he drove away
along the road through the Sanatorium grounds.
Left behind, Mavis and Merle felt their first and most obvious duty was
to make friends with the boy who was to act as their guide back to
Chagmouth. Beyond the fact that his name was Bevis they knew absolutely
nothing about him. They wondered whether he belonged to Grimbal's Farm,
or was merely a visitor there. His dark, alert face and his speech and
general bearing marked him as utterly different from homely Mr. and Mrs.
Penruddock. Merle, calling up a mental vision of the stout, ruddy-haired
woman who had charge of the surgery, and the slow, heavy-featured farmer
whom she had seen in the stackyard, decided hastily, "They can't be his
father and mother!" Whoever he might be he was a handsome boy, with a
look of natural distinction about him, that "stamp of the gods", which
is the hall-mark of a noble mind, quite irrespective of the accident of
birth. His dark hair had a crisp curl in it, and his mouth held
beautiful curves when he smiled. Merle, who had lately taken several
violent prejudices, in this instance decided hotly in his favour. Merle
never liked people by halves. All her world consisted of foes or chums.
Bevis, who had readily accepted the office of guide, seemed doing his
best to make himself agreeable. He led the way along a path across some
fields and on to the headland that skirted the sea. There was a track
here among the gorse and dead bracken, so faint indeed that the girls
would not have found it for themselves, though Bevis walked along
confidently. Below them lay the sea, and great jagged rocks, round which
crowds of gulls were whirling and calling, and here and there flew a
cormorant, like a black sheep among the white flock, diving occasionally
under the waves in quest of fish. There could hardly be a pleasanter
companion than Bevis. He knew the names of all the birds, and could tell
where he had found their nests. He pointed out two distant black specks,
that to the girls might have been anything, but which he assured them
represented a pair of choughs that built every year on the cliffs.
"We tried to get some eggs," he explained, "but the nest was in such an
awkward place, we couldn't reach it even with a rope."
"Do you mean to tell me you'd let yourself dangle over the edge there to
collect eggs?" asked Mavis. "Don't you turn dizzy?"
"Not a bit. As long as I know the rope isn't frayed, I'm all right.
There's something rather jolly about hanging in mid-air. I feel like a
bird myself. I once got a hooded crow's egg from that cliff over there.
I gave it to our school museum."
"Do you go to school near here?" asked Merle, hoping to draw some
information. But Bevis shook his head.
"I've left now," he said briefly, and changed the subject.
As they neared Chagmouth the track they had followed led them down the
side of the cliff to where some allotment gardens lay under the shelter
of the headland. Many of these were neglected and uncultivated, but a
few showed signs of recent digging. Bevis, pausing by a small wooden
gate, pointed downwards.
"That's ours," he explained, "and if you don't mind I want to fetch my
knife. I believe I left it there yesterday when I was working. I won't
be a minute if you can wait."
"Oh, do let us come too, please!" urged the girls.
So they all went down, scrambling along a kind of sheep track till they
reached the level patch of rich soil below. The little plot of land was
mostly devoted to vegetables, but it also held a few fruit-trees and
some flowers. There was a fallen stump in its midst, which made a
capital seat, and here the girls settled themselves to rest while Bevis
looked for his knife. Snowdrops grew in profusion around them, lifting
tall stalks and pure white heads above the herbage through which they
had pushed. The late afternoon sun just touched the roofs of the little
fishing-town below, though the beach lay in shadow. Up among the woods
some glass windows gleamed like gold.
"Is that The Warren, where we went with Uncle David?" asked Merle, as
Bevis came back, pocketing his knife. "Whose place is it? It has lovely
grounds."
"Yes, that's The Warren sure enough. Whose place is it? Why, it belongs
to General Talland. He's the landlord of most of Chagmouth."
"I thought some people named Williams lived there?"
"So they do, but they don't own the village, however much they may think
it. They only _rent_ the house--it's not theirs. We Chagmouth folks
don't want one of your fine society squires thrust down our throats.
We'll manage our own affairs."
Bevis spoke bitterly, with a look towards the house on the wooded hill
that sent no goodwill towards its occupants. Merle, burning to relate
her experiences at The Warren, was about to ask more, but Bevis turned
abruptly away. He was friendly, but so plainly reserved that nobody with
an ounce of tact would have tried to force his confidence. Even Merle,
not usually over-discreet, had the sense to keep back the dozen
questions that rose to her lips. Their companion was bending among the
grass and brambles picking snowdrops. He gathered the finest ones, with
the longest stalks, arranged them into two exactly equal bunches, then
offered them shyly to the girls.
"We call them 'Fair Maids of February' about here," he said. "It's the
first of February to-day, and you're the 'fair maids', so you ought to
have some of your own flowers if you care to take them."
"Oh, thanks!" (Mavis and Merle were flattered by the compliment). "We'll
love to have them. We'll take them home in the car. What beauties they
are! I never saw such big ones before. Did you plant them here?"
"I put a few bulbs down years ago, and they've spread. They will if you
never touch them. Shall we go on now? Mother'll have some tea ready for
you, I expect. The Doctor generally gets his at the Sanatorium. I
promised to make up some medicines for him, so I must hurry back."
The girls followed, considerably mystified. Bevis's connection with
Grimbal's Farm was a puzzle. He left them in the stackyard and plunged
into one of the barns, and later on they caught a glimpse of his dark,
curly head through the door of the dispensary. They did not see him
again before they left. Mrs. Penruddock, kind but too busy for
conversation, brought the tray into the parlour and left them to have
their tea, and they had scarcely finished eating saffron-cake and
hard-bake when Dr. Tremayne arrived, in a violent hurry to get back to
Durracombe. So they scrambled into their coats and wraps, picked up
their bunches of snowdrops, and took their seats in the car, and next
moment they were off up the steep hill that led out of the ravine.
Before they whirled round the corner they turned their heads for one
last peep at Chagmouth. The little town lay huddled in twilight, and the
sea behind was dim as the sky, but the brook purred joyously on its
pebbly course among the gardens, and the faint scent of burning
driftwood was wafted up from below.
"This day's going to be specially marked in my diary," murmured Merle.
"It's been a day of days."
"I feel somehow as if it were the beginning of something else," answered
Mavis. "Uncle David, you'll bring us here again, won't you?"
"Any Saturday that's fine."
"Then I shall simply live for fine Saturdays and Chagmouth. It's the
loveliest place I've ever seen. I don't believe there's anything else
like it in the whole of the wide world, or anywhere else out of
Paradise. That's how I feel about it!"
CHAPTER VI
A Child of Misfortune
Mavis and Merle were brimming over with curiosity about Bevis and about
several other affairs in Chagmouth, but they had to keep their questions
to themselves, for Dr. Tremayne considered that narrow Devon roads in
the gathering darkness required his whole attention, and that
conversation might mean an accident.
"You're requested not to speak to the man at the wheel," he replied, in
answer to Merle's first eager inquiry; "it takes me all my time to
drive."
So the girls subsided into quiet, and did not even speak to one another,
but sat watching the glare of the headlights on the road and the dark
outlines of the high hedges and banks above. They made up for their
silence, though, after supper, for they found Jessop in the pantry, and,
offering to wipe the silver for her as an excuse for their presence,
they began a brisk catechism.
Jessop was a kindly old gossip, a native of Chagmouth, and had all the
affairs of the little town at her fingers' ends. She was nothing loath
to discuss its inhabitants while she washed up the supper things.
"To begin with, who is Bevis?" asked Mavis eagerly. "We can't make him
out at all. He speaks and looks like a gentleman, and yet he talked
about working in the fields. Does he live at Grimbal's Farm? What
relation is he to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock?"
"He called Mrs. Penruddock 'Mother'," added Merle, "but he doesn't look
the least bit like her son. Is he or not?"
"Yes and no," said Jessop, wielding her dish-cloth as she talked. "Mrs.
Penruddock has been a good mother to him for a matter of over fourteen
years now, but his own mother lies in Chagmouth churchyard. She must
have been a handsome woman from all accounts, though I never saw her
myself. It was my cousin, Mary, who was barmaid at the 'King's Arms' at
the time, who told me. It's a long story. There are many in Chagmouth
besides you who've asked themselves if Bevis isn't a gentleman born. But
nobody has ever been able to answer the question."
"Why? Oh, do tell us!"
"We want so immensely to know."
Jessop wrung out her dish-cloth with rather irritating slowness, then
hung it to dry on a nail. She seemed turning matters over in her mind,
and her mental processes were apparently no swifter than her actions.
"I don't see why I shouldn't. There's nothing you oughtn't to hear,"
she replied at last, as if coming to a conclusion. "Everybody in
Chagmouth knows about Bevis, and if I don't tell you somebody else will.
It's nothing to the lad's discredit, I'm sure. I always say I've a soft
corner for Bevis. Such a fine boy he always was, and he'll make a fine
man yet--he's worth two of young Williams at The Warren in my opinion.
But some folks are born with silver spoons in their mouths and others
aren't. Bevis isn't one of the lucky ones, poor lad! Providence always
seems to be taking him up and throwing him down again. What'll be the
end of him goodness only knows!"
The story which Jessop told to the girls, while she polished the silver
in the pantry, was lengthy and interspersed with many comments and
reflections of her own, and many quotations from what other people had
said, but the main facts of the case, as related to Mavis and Merle,
were briefly as follows.
Rather more than fourteen years ago, on a stormy afternoon in late
autumn, such inhabitants of Chagmouth as happened to be standing on
their doorsteps, or looking out of their windows, noticed a closed
conveyance from Kilvan station drive along the main street. The
occurrence was sufficiently unusual to arouse comment. Except in the
summer season tourists rarely came to Chagmouth, and if any stranger
made his appearance during the quiet months of the year the villagers
were naturally inquisitive as to his errand. In a small place every item
of news is of interest, and those who saw the conveyance pass at once
began to speculate whether the Rector's sister had come to pay him a
visit, or whether old Mrs. Greaves's sailor son had returned home on
leave. The bystanders near the market square had the opportunity of
satisfying their curiosity, for the carriage stopped at the King's Arms
Hotel, and from it stepped a lady, young, handsome, and well-dressed,
and carrying a little child in her arms. She interrogated the landlord,
who had come to the door at the sound of wheels, paid and dismissed the
driver, gave one hasty glance round the square, then entered the hotel.
Those inhabitants of Chagmouth who witnessed her arrival agreed
afterwards that she was "a dark-eyed, smart-looking sort of person, with
an air of London fashions about her", but their glimpse was a brief one,
for next moment she and her child and her travelling-bag had disappeared
inside the doorway of the little hotel, and the conveyance was toiling
up the hill on its way back to Kilvan station.
Inside the "King's Arms" the lady gave her name as Mrs. Hunter, and
engaged a private sitting-room and a bedroom, explaining that she had
heard of the mild climate of Chagmouth and wished to try the benefit of
its sea air. With the help of the chambermaid she bathed her little boy
and put him to bed. Later she was served with dinner. At about nine
o'clock she rang the bell violently, and the servant, who came in
response to her summons, found her huddled in an armchair, half fainting
and fighting for breath.
"My heart," she panted. "It's one of my heart attacks. Can you fetch a
doctor? Oh, I am dying!"
The terrified girl ran for the landlord, who hurried in with brandy. In
the midst of the general panic someone was dispatched for the village
nurse, and the ostler mounted a bicycle and rode away to Durracombe to
summon Dr. Tremayne. The people at the "King's Arms" did their ignorant
best. They laid the patient on the sofa, rubbed her hands, bathed her
head, and tried to force brandy between her blue lips; but long before
any medical aid could reach her, she gave one last shuddering gasp, and
passed away beyond reach of human help. Dr. Tremayne had been paying a
night visit to a farm on the moors. It was not possible for him to
arrive at Chagmouth until the following morning. He found the place all
agog about the tragic event that had happened. Mrs. Jarvis, the village
nurse, had performed the last offices. Mr. Tingcomb, the landlord, had
solemnly collected the poor lady's possessions and had locked them up in
his safe, and his wife and the barmaid between them were trying to still
the wails of the little, dark-eyed boy, who did not take readily to
strangers and refused all their well-meant offers of comfort.
Such a case had never been known in the neighbourhood, for not only had
the stranger succumbed within a few hours of her arrival at Chagmouth,
but the news soon leaked out that it was impossible to identify her.
There were no papers of any kind either in her pockets or in her
travelling-bag. Her purse contained six pounds in gold and a little
silver, but no card or address to mark its owner. The police, called in
to investigate matters, could obtain no clue. On hearing all the
evidence they ventured the opinion that the lady had probably given a
false name. London newspapers published an account of the romantic
happening, and for perhaps a week the public wondered over it, then
other and more important matters cropped up and it was forgotten.
Meanwhile, in the absence of any information as to who she was or whence
she had come, the stranger had been laid to rest in the little
churchyard on the hill, and the rector, in charity, presuming her to be
one of his flock, read Christian burial-service over her. Whatever her
errand in Chagmouth her earthly body found its last home there, and most
of the villagers, some in kindly sympathy and some in mere curiosity,
attended the funeral and left flowers upon her grave.
Naturally, amid the whole of the sad and perplexing business, the great
centre of interest was the dark-eyed baby who was toddling about the
passages of the "King's Arms". He had made friends with Mrs. Tingcomb
and the barmaid, but resented being kissed by the dozens of women who
came to see him and gossip over him. He was a bonny, sturdy, little
fellow, possibly about two years old, who could walk, but beyond a few
words had not mastered even the elements of speech. The chambermaid, who
helped at his first bath, remembered that his mother had called him
Bevis. The possession of his Christian name was felt to be something,
though all other information about him was painfully lacking. For
several weeks the police did their best to trace his relations, and Mr.
Tingcomb lived in hourly expectation that somebody would arrive suddenly
in a station conveyance to claim him and take him away. But nobody came.
The excitement died down, and presently even the local newspapers ceased
to refer to the case. People began to shake their heads and say it was
plain the poor lamb wasn't wanted, or his friends would have turned up
from somewhere to find him. Mrs. Tingcomb, very much occupied with her
house and the bar, began to complain to her neighbours of the burden of
her charge. It was nobody's business at the "King's Arms" to look after
a lively boy whose toddling feet led him into every mischief. She even
hinted that she considered the time had arrived when she could
conscientiously hand him over to the Poor Law Guardians at the "Union",
whose obvious duty it was to provide for him.
At this point of the proceedings Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock had stepped
into the breach. Eight years before they had lost their only child, a
boy of three, and they now proposed to adopt little Bevis to fill up the
empty gap in their household. They were kind, homely people, without
much education, but thoroughly respected in the village, and everybody
at once agreed that their offer solved the difficult problem. To save
the child from the stigma of being brought up at the Union was
everything. Even the poorest fisherman's home would have been preferable
to that. So little Bevis, with the approval of the whole of Chagmouth,
was formally adopted and transferred to Grimbal's Farm, where he grew
apace and learnt to call Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock Father and Mother. If
gossiping tongues could only have kept silent he might have continued to
believe they were his parents, but one day, when he was about seven
years old, he came back from school crying as if his heart was broken.
Some of the boys had teased him and told him the story, with several
exaggerations, of how he had been left at the "King's Arms" and never
claimed. Mrs. Penruddock comforted him as best she could, but she
acknowledged to her neighbours that he was never the same child
afterwards. The knowledge had shattered his Paradise. He was a very
proud, sensitive boy, and the taunts of his schoolfellows rankled.
Henceforward he felt a sense of difference between himself and other
children. He was quick to catch any allusions to his position, and a
word or a glance was enough to bring the colour flooding into his
cheeks. He fought many battles at school on this score, for he was hot
tempered as well as proud, and for a year or two he was somewhat of an
Ishmael, shunning his companions and hurrying home to the haven of
Grimbal's Farm directly lessons were over.
Then the fates, who seemed to use the boy as a shuttlecock, brought him
an unexpected turn of good fortune. A lady, who was a summer visitor at
the farm, took an interest in him, and was much touched by the romance
of his story. She was well off, and she offered to pay for his education
at a high-class school. So Bevis went as a boarder to Shelton College,
where nobody knew anything about his antecedents, and he held his own
among other boys, and only came back to Grimbal's Farm for holidays, and
grew up so different from the fisher children of Chagmouth that he was
less inclined than ever to make friends with them, and was a source of
much gratification to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock, who marvelled at his
learning and his manners, and were as proud of him as a pair of robins
who have hatched a young cuckoo.
Mrs. Martin, the lady who had provided for Bevis's education, threw out
hints of Cambridge, and of training him for one of the professions, a
goal which had spurred his ambition and caused him to work his hardest.
He was making most satisfactory progress at Shelton College, and was
already beginning to look forward to choosing a career, when fickle fate
again interfered, and toppled over all his castles in the air. Mrs.
Martin died suddenly and left no will. Her heirs-at-law took over her
estate, and paid any outstanding debts, but they saw no necessity for
continuing her charities. Bevis's schooldays, therefore, came to a brief
end, and he returned to Grimbal's Farm with no prospect of ever
realizing the hopes that tantalizing Fortune had dangled before his
longing eyes.
"I do say it's hard on him," finished Jessop, as she told the tale to
Mavis and Merle in the pantry. "He's been educated a gentleman as much
as young Williams at The Warren--and my cousin, Mary, who saw her,
sticks to it his mother was a lady born!--yet there he is, working on
the farm like any labourer, and it's not his job. A head-piece like his
was meant for book learning and college."
"Can't Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock send him back to school?" asked Mavis.
"No; the farm's not been doing over well lately. They want his help on
the land, too, and, fair play to the lad, he's giving them of his best.
It's a poor look-out for him, though, just to carry on at the farm. The
doctor has been teaching him to dispense, but that's only a step towards
medicine, and won't do much for him in the long run, I'm afraid. Some
say it was foolish kindness of Mrs. Martin, and his schooling will have
done him more harm than good, but you know how folks talk. They're all a
bit jealous of him really, down Chagmouth way, if the truth be told.
He's a fine lad, and he sticks to his foster-parents right loyally, but
you've only to look at him to see he was made for something different
from farm life, and if ever he gets the chance he'll be off and away, or
I'm greatly mistaken. There, I've told you all about Bevis, and a little
too much perhaps, though there's no harm in your knowing, that I can
see."
"Thank you!" said Mavis. "We're so glad to know. It explains so very
much that we thought queer about him. I understand it all now. Poor
Bevis!"
"Yes, poor Bevis, indeed!" echoed Merle. "We'd no idea he had all that
romantic story behind him when we walked down the cliffs with him this
afternoon. What you say is just right--he's different altogether from
other people, and you wonder how it is until you really know the reason
why."
CHAPTER VII
The Innovators
Mavis and Merle had been so tremendously interested in the romantic
story of Bevis, as related by Jessop, that it had almost wiped from
their minds the meeting with Gwen Williams and the rather unpleasant
episode in the garden at The Warren. On the two occasions that they had
encountered her she had made a very unfavourable impression upon them,
so they were more surprised than pleased when on Tuesday morning she
turned up at the French class. She walked into the room as if her
presence were a favour, nodded to Opal Earnshaw, gave a half recognition
to Edith and Maude Carey, but took no notice of anybody else, indeed she
conspicuously turned her back on Aubrey Simpson and Muriel Burnitt.
"What's Miss Conceit doing here?" Merle whispered to Iva. "I hope she's
not going to come every day."
"Gwen? Oh no! She and Babbie only come for French twice a week, and on
dancing afternoons. They have a governess at home, and motor over here
for special lessons. You don't like her? I don't think any of us do
much, except Opal, who toadies to her most fearfully. She's always
fishing for invitations to The Warren."
"It's a matter of taste," replied Merle. "I'm sure I wouldn't want to go
to The Warren if I was asked."
But at that moment Mademoiselle, who had entered the room and taken her
seat, glared at Iva and Merle for silence, and the lesson commenced. The
class lasted from 2.30 to 3.30, after which the Williams's car was
supposed to be in waiting to bear them back to Chagmouth, and the girls
at The Moorings were due at a hockey practice. To-day, however, fate
interfered with both of these events. The chauffeur sent a message to
Gwen and Babbie that the car was undergoing some necessary repairs at
the garage in Durracombe and would not be ready for at least an hour,
and pouring rain put a stop to all plans of hockey.
Boarders and day-girls alike collected disconsolately in the playroom.
Miss Pollard had given orders that nobody was to go home until the heavy
shower was over, so the whole school were temporary prisoners.
Mavis, sitting on one of the lockers, and listening to the general
grousing going on around her, shook herself impatiently.
"What a set of stupids they are," she whispered to Merle. "Always down
in the dumps about everything. Can't we wake them up somehow? I vote we
get up an impromptu stunt. It would be more fun than sitting grumbling.
Why shouldn't we do that scene we had at the Whinburn High last term?
You remember? _Aunt Laetitia_, I mean. You take the aunt, and I'll take
Adelaide, and Iva and Nesta could be Dora and Marjorie. We'd explain
their parts to them directly, there isn't much for them to do except
back up Adelaide."
"Topping!" agreed Merle. "There'll be heaps of time. Here come Iva and
Nesta. I'll take them into the cloakroom and coach them while you
suggest the idea. It ought to catch on surely. I'll leave you to
explain."
Merle secured Iva and Nesta and bore them off to give them a hasty
outline of the sketch which they were to produce. Mavis meantime mounted
a chair, and, clapping her hands to secure attention, made her proposal.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she started humorously. "I always begin 'Ladies
and Gentlemen', even if there aren't any gentlemen present, because it's
the proper thing to say and sounds nice. If you don't mind listening to
me for a moment there's something I want to suggest to you. This rain is
the absolute limit, and it's rather grizzly we can't go out to hockey.
As we're all boxed up here, how would you like a ten minutes' stunt?
Merle and I and two others can give you a short sketch if you care to
listen. Anybody who wants to act audience, please squat on the floor."
[Illustration: BOTH MAVIS AND MERLE LET THEMSELVES GO _Page 89_]
The girls looked considerably astonished, but nevertheless seemed to
welcome Mavis's proposal. They sat down as requested, most of them on
the floor, but a few on chairs or lockers, seemingly prepared to listen
to anything that was provided for them. They had not to wait long.
Mavis and Merle were adepts in arranging lightning changes of costume,
and could assume a character in a moment by the addition of a hat,
a coat, or a handkerchief. Acting came naturally to them, and they
loved nothing better than impromptu performances. They walked in now,
attired, the one as a straight-laced, elderly lady, and the other as her
ultra-fashionable niece, and supported by Iva and Nesta, whose speeches
consisted mostly of "Yes" and "No", commenced a brisk and most amusing
dialogue, in which the aunt deplored the attitude of the modern girl,
and contrasted her with the maiden of mid-Victorian days, while the
niece held a brief for present-day damsels, and gave a lively defence of
their doings.
Both Mavis and Merle thoroughly let themselves go. They threw themselves
entirely into their parts, and by speech, manner, and action reproduced
the characters they represented, quite carrying the audience with them.
When they stopped at the end of their little sketch they were greeted by
a storm of clapping. The girls at The Moorings had never seen acting
like that before and were most enthusiastic over it.
"It was ripping!" approved Opal. "I say, we must have some more of this
sort of thing. I call it A1."
"I don't know however you did it!" exclaimed Babbie Williams. (She had
been standing open-eyed during the performance and was now gazing at
Mavis and Merle as if she considered them geniuses in disguise.) "I'm so
glad our car wasn't ready. I wouldn't have missed this for anything,
would you, Gwen?" (turning impulsively to her sister).
Gwen, who had clapped with the rest, did not answer. She too was staring
at Mavis and Merle, looking at them as if they were some strange new
creatures whom she could not yet comprehend. Apparently they did not fit
in with any of her preconceived standards. Meeting Merle's eyes, she
turned hastily away. A boarder brought a message that their car was at
the door, so, summoning Babbie, she made a hasty exit without bidding
good-bye to anybody, even to Opal.
On the strength of the very favourable reception accorded to their first
venture in the line of drama, Mavis and Merle held a long private
confabulation, and decided to try and start a society to stir up the
school.
"They've nothing," said Mavis, "absolutely nothing! And I see
possibilities of _such_ fun! We ought to get up sing-songs and plays,
and ten dozen other things. I call it an opportunity."
"Yes, if Opal doesn't butt in and turn everything upside down. We shall
have her to reckon with I expect."
"Oh, bother Opal! She's not the only girl in the school."
"No, but she thinks she is."
"Give her a decent part and she'll like it as much as anybody."
"She's not going to be top-dog all along the line, though."
"Well, we can't leave her out of it. I suppose she'll have her turn just
the same as other people, and we'll leave it at that."
Next day, therefore, the Ramsays went to school bristling with ideas,
and, calling a mass meeting in the playroom, made their proposals. The
girls, who were ready for anything in the way of variety, accepted the
innovations with alacrity, and in the course of the quarter of an hour
allotted to lunch they formed a society, the object of which was, as
Mavis expressed it, "to stir things up a little and have acting and
sing-songs and any other fun that comes along". They fixed Wednesday
afternoon from 4 o'clock to 4.30 for their first meeting.
"Miss Pollard won't mind our staying half an hour after school when she
knows what it's for," declared Opal. "We'll have our--what did you call
it?--symposium, then, and I dare say she'll give us other times too if
we want to rehearse for a play. It would be prime to get up something
big for the end of the term, wouldn't it? Who's going to read papers on
Wednesday? Hands up those who'll volunteer?"
"Not much time to write anything before then," grumbled Nesta.
"It needn't be original unless you like," put in Mavis. "For this first
time you may recite some poetry if you want. It's just to get us all
together and make a start."
"Are those kids going to be in it?" objected Muriel, with a baneful eye
on the juniors.
"There's no harm in their coming to listen. It's really more fun if
there's an audience. In a thing like this it's a case of 'the more the
merrier'. I vote the whole school turns up on Wednesday at four."
"Yes, yes! Don't leave us out of it!" squeaked the small fry, in much
terror lest they should be excluded from the delightful ceremony.
"Will you promise to sit as mum as mice and not interrupt?"
"We'll be absolute mascots!"
Mavis and Merle, as originators of the innovations, felt a little
anxious when Wednesday afternoon arrived. It is one thing to carry on
old-established societies, where you can quote the traditions of years
and the opinions of many past head-girls, and quite another to float
them in a school where nothing of the sort has ever been formulated
before. Opal's high-handed ways would probably be the main obstacle, but
Mavis thought that with tact even Opal might be managed. As soon as ever
afternoon classes were over every girl at The Moorings crowded into the
playroom. There was a considerable amount of giggling and chattering,
especially among the younger ones, but Merle, who was accustomed to
public meetings, called out "Sh-sh!" in loud tones, and, mounting a
locker, took advantage of the gap of silence to make an announcement.
"The first business of the meeting is to elect a chairwoman. Will one
of you please nominate somebody and we'll put it to the vote?"
The girls looked at one another, and out of sheer force of habit began
to murmur "Opal", but Iva Westwood stood up, and, turning rather pink,
proclaimed:
"I should like to nominate Mavis for the chair. She knows more about it
than any of the rest of us; and she'll show us what we ought to do, and
put us in the way of running the society properly."
"And I've much pleasure in seconding her," said Nesta eagerly. "Hands up
all in favour of Mavis!"
The vote was unanimous. Even Opal held up her hand quite readily. She
would yield place to Mavis, though she would not have transferred an
ounce of authority to Merle. Mavis was hustled forward into the seat of
honour and took her place amid applause.
She made a winsome little president, with her blue eyes and her
dull-gold hair, and everybody looked at her in expectation.
"As this is our first symposium," she began, "I want to explain that
it's a meeting partly to have fun and enjoy ourselves and partly to give
all members an opportunity of showing what they can do. Did I hear
somebody say 'showing-off?' That's a nasty way of putting it! We want
everybody to do something to entertain the meeting. Of course there
isn't time in one afternoon for you all to have turns, so I shall only
call upon a few, and the rest must wait for another time. I'll now ask
Opal Earnshaw to read us her contribution."
It was tactful of Mavis to give Opal the first innings. She stood up at
once, looking quite pleased. She had spent more than an hour the evening
before writing a story, and was rather proud of her first-born literary
bantling. Her tastes inclined towards melodrama, so she had chosen a
scene allowing full scope for romance. She unrolled her manuscript,
cleared her throat a trifle nervously, and began:
COUNT BERTINO'S BRIDE
It was a glorious moonlight night in the fair Island of Corsica.
Outside in the garden the air was heavy with the scent of
southern flowers, and nightingales warbled in a concert of joy.
The lovely Lady Elvira, only daughter and heiress of the Duke of
Alezzo, leaned over the marble balustrade of the piazza,
pensively gazing at the beauty of the scene before her. A
scarlet camellia adorned her dark tresses, and round her
swan-like neck was wreathed a rope of priceless pearls. She
sighed as she gazed at the calm and peaceful landscape, for red
riot raged within her heart.
"Francesca!" she called to one of her maidens, "has Bernardo not
yet returned? I pray you send a page in search of news. 'Tis
seldom he tarries so late."
"I go, my lady!" and Francesca sped on her errand.
Left alone, Elvira paced the piazza with impatient footsteps. A
dark figure moving among the flowers below was suddenly seen in
the pale moonlight. The lady sprang to the balustrade.
"Bernardo! Bernardo! Is it thou?" she whispered in tones
tremulous with agitation. But her cheeks blanched, as instead of
the longed-for features of her lover appeared the hated visage
of her arch enemy Count Bertino.
"Ha, ha, lovely lady, at last I have found thee alone! Time
allows me not to beat about the bush, and, rough warrior as I
am, my suit must be brief. Too long hast thou trifled with me.
Redeem thy promise and wed me!"
"Never!" moaned Elvira. "My heart is given to another!"
"And that other," triumphed the Count, "is now in my power. He
lies in my darkest dungeon loaded with chains. Wed me, and he
will be restored to liberty. Refuse, and by the tombs of my
ancestors he dies the death!"
"Wretch!" panted Elvira, "you have trapped me! But have a care!
I may yet escape from your toils. Swear, by all you hold sacred,
that at the hour of our nuptials Bernardo will be released and
sent with a safe convoy to Rome."
"I swear! Yet thou shalt not escape!"
Great were the preparations for the wedding of the powerful
Count Bertino and the heiress Elvira, yet of all the gifts
showered upon her the one treasured most by the bride was an
emerald ring sent by Albaro, the Moorish alchemist. As she
turned it upon her finger she murmured, "'Tis my gate to
freedom".
Beautiful in her bridal jewels, but pale as a lily, she
approached the altar, and uttered the fateful words which bound
her to the Count, but as he turned to lift her veil and claim
her as his wife--
"It is enough!" she cried, "I have freed him and I pass onward
to my rest," and, falling backward to the ground, she expired.
Her emerald ring was a poisoned one, and by pressing its points
into her fair white hand she had placed herself for ever beyond
the power of the cruel and revengeful Count Bertino.
Opal sat down, out of breath but covered with glory. Quite a thrill
passed round the room at so romantic a story.
"O-o-h! It ought to be put on the cinema," suggested Maude Carey. "I can
see it all--the balustrade and the moonlight and the count coming, and
then the wedding scene. How _did_ you think of it?"
"Oh, it just came somehow," admitted Opal modestly.
"Well, it's ripping anyway."
"Only very sad," objected Muriel.
"Tales like that nearly always are sad," put in Mavis; "it wouldn't be
so romantic somehow if it turned out happily."
"Couldn't the lovers have run away?"
"Of course not," said Opal sharply. "Bernardo wasn't to be released
until the wedding was over."
"Did he get off after all, or did Bertino break his word?"
"Look here! you mustn't ask so many questions," interrupted Mavis. "If
we don't hurry on we shall never finish our programme. Perhaps we'd
better take a comic turn next. Merle, will you give us 'The Dandy
Musician'?"
There was a piano in the playroom, and Merle moved forwards towards it.
Her contribution was in the nature of a humorous entertainment.
"I'm going to show you," she explained, "how Professor Vladimir
Limpidimpidumpski gave a recital in the Town Hall of Gapeford before an
audience of the most distinguished people in the neighbourhood."
Merle was a capital little actress, and she took off the ways of a
conceited pianist in a most amusing fashion. She twirled the music-stool
energetically, sat down with great pomp, threw back her hair, flung her
hands in the air, touched the keys with much affectation, thumped a
growling bass, and ran a finger up and down the treble, gazing meanwhile
at the ceiling with an air of intense sentiment. Then she hunched up her
shoulders and made a violent and wild onslaught on the instrument,
banging chords furiously with the weight of her whole arms, and rolling
her head as if in frenzy; a sudden pause was followed by a faint tinkle
in the treble, then up went the arms again, her head went down in the
middle, and she finished by a tremendous thump at either end of the
piano, while her nose played the central C.
The tremendous bows which she returned in answer to the applause were
part of the performance, and provoked more clapping. The girls clamoured
for an encore, but at that she shook her head.
"Professor Vladimir Limpidimpidumpski never gives encores," she
declared. "He says it takes it out of him, and he can only do it once."
"Poor, frail flower," laughed Nesta. "Send him to a nursing-home for a
rest cure."
"Right-o! And we'll have your contribution while he goes."
"Oh no!"
"Yes, yes! Don't be bashful! Come along!"
"It's your turn, Nesta, really," urged Mavis, as chairwoman of the
proceedings.
So Nesta, protesting but rather pleased all the same, was pushed forward
and volunteered to give a recitation. It was quite a good one too,
spirited and amusing, and fortunately not too long to hold the engrossed
attention of the listeners. They clapped it warmly, and Nesta bowed,
but, following Merle's example, declined to give an encore.
"We'd better scoot on with the programme or we'll never get through till
next week," she declared.
Maude had brought a piano solo, which the girls received politely but
coldly, evidently considering it was not the sort of contribution they
wanted. Muriel warbled a song in a rather weak, thin voice. Edith was
known to have a manuscript in her pocket, but blushed scarlet and
utterly refused to produce it, giving up her turn to Iva, who tried a
recitation but broke down in the middle. Things were getting a little
slack, and time was running on very fast, so Merle, who knew Mavis had
prepared a literary contribution, called for an item from "The Chair".
"Yes, yes!" squealed everybody. "Go on, Mrs. Chairwoman. It's your turn
now. We're not going home without your piece. Hurry up before Miss Fanny
comes worrying in. She said we might have half an hour, but she should
break up the meeting if we went on any longer than that. Chair, please!"
So Mavis, who had produced a manuscript the evening before, considerably
at the cost of her preparation, and was secretly dying to read it,
though she did not wish to push herself unduly, gave a hasty glance at
her watch, reduced some giggling youngsters to silence, and commenced to
read.
THE SPOOK HUNTERS
A TALE OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY
It had always been the ambition of Tom and Morris to see a good
old-fashioned genuine specimen of a ghost or spectre; but though
they had visited houses bearing a reputation of being haunted,
and had hung about churchyards at midnight, and had even
attended seances, their innocent and perfectly natural wish had
never been gratified. They were beginning to come to the
regretful conclusion that they were not psychic subjects, and
therefore incapable of seeing spirits, when once more their
hopes rose with a bound. They received an invitation to stay at
Cawdor Castle, an ancient building which on really reliable
evidence possessed no less than six resident family ghosts, and
a few extra visiting spectres as well.
After begging for the most haunted of all the haunted rooms,
Tom and Morris retired to bed with very reasonable expectations
of at last obtaining a peep of a real old-world spook. For some
time they tried to keep awake and on the look-out, but in spite
of their efforts their eyes closed, and they slept and snored.
The clock was striking the hour of midnight when Tom suddenly
awoke. The moonlight, in orthodox fashion, was streaming into
the room, and by his bedside stood a queer, half-transparent old
gentleman in a court costume.
"Hello! Who the dickens are you?" exclaimed Tom. "You don't mean
to tell me you're actually one of the family ghosts?"
"The same--at your service!" replied the old gentleman with a
stately bow. "I am Sir Rupert, the second of that name, who
lived in the reign of Queen Anne, of blessed memory!"
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure!" replied Tom heartily. "Can you
introduce me to any more of the family?"
"With pleasure, if you don't object to accompany me into the
picture gallery. We are celebrating an anniversary to-night, and
you would find us all at home."
"Right-o!" agreed Tom, jumping out of bed and following the
ghost.
His spectre friend led him upstairs and into the big gallery of
the castle, where quite an assemblage of spirits of various
periods was collected, some in armour, some in silks and satins,
and some in shrouds. On a dais sat a magnificent individual in a
coat of mail, holding a shield emblazoned with the royal arms.
"King Edward I, the founder of the family!" explained Sir
Rupert, taking Tom to be introduced. "Don't be frightened at his
Plantagenet manners! He means no harm!"
"Thanks for the hint!" returned Tom, bowing politely towards the
dais as he approached.
"What, Sirrah! Hast thou no knee for thy Prince?" exclaimed the
King angrily. "Make thy obeisance instantly, or by the sprig of
broom in my helmet I'll clap thee in prison and torture thee!"
"Come, come, Edward my boy," murmured a fatherly-looking ghost
at his elbow. "How often have I to tell you that these things
really aren't done nowadays! You must adapt yourself and learn
to march with the times. A court bow is really all that can be
required from him, and if you----"
"Oh, please don't worry," interrupted Tom. "I'll adapt my
manners to any period that pleases him if you'll kindly coach me
as to exactly what he wants me to do. I take it he wishes me to
kneel."
And down went Tom on his knees, anxious to oblige, but, to his
great surprise, as he touched the floor he fell completely
through, and found himself back in bed with the sun streaming
through the window, and Morris, whom he had quite forgotten to
introduce to the ghosts, snoring comfortably by his side.
Some of the girls sniggered at Mavis's story, a few timorous ones
shuddered at the bare idea of ghosts, and some of the small fry asked if
it were true; but just as Mavis was comforting them with the assurance
that it was absolute fiction, Miss Fanny opened the door of the playroom
and brought the symposium to an end.
"You day girls must go home at once," she decreed. "I gave you half an
hour, but I can't have you lingering here any longer. Iva, you ought to
be practising. You little ones must go and wash your hands!" and,
separating her flock like sheep and goats, she swept the boarders away
to their various duties or occupations, and sent the rest to their
several homes.
"I don't think Miss Fanny altogether likes our society," ventured Merle,
as the Ramsays walked down the High Street.
"She's afraid of anything new, that's evident," said Mavis. "She's lived
in an out-of-the-way corner of the world and doesn't know what goes on
in other schools. Well, we've made a beginning and had our symposium!"
"And a jolly good one too! The girls said it was topping, and they're
just clamouring to have another."
CHAPTER VIII
The Warren
Mavis and Merle went to Miss Crompton's class on Friday afternoon in
their dainty best dresses, silk stockings, and dancing sandals. Their
appearance was certainly very different from what it had been last week
in their brown jerseys and school shoes. They noticed Gwen Williams look
them up and down, but she did not speak to them or give them any sign of
recognition. Beyond an occasional word with Opal, Iva, or the Careys,
she would not be expansive with any of the girls at The Moorings,
holding aloof in a rather obtrusive fashion, and giving them to
understand that though she might attend their French and dancing classes
she must not be regarded as a member of the school. Babbie, who was of a
much more sociable disposition, would often try to linger to talk with
companions of her own age, but Gwen invariably interfered, and would put
a stop to the incipient friendships, giving her younger sister glances
of very plain reproof.
"Why are those Williams girls so dreadfully conceited?" Merle asked her
partner, as they practised a two-step. "I can't see that they're
different from other people, but Gwen behaves as if she were a princess,
and it was hardly etiquette for the rest of us to speak to her. It's
perfectly absurd!"
"Well, you see, the Glyn Williamses think themselves 'county' and won't
visit with anybody else. They've a beautiful place at Chagmouth, The
Warren."
"I know. I've seen it. But does it really belong to them? I somehow
thought it didn't."
"Well, you're right, and I believe it's rather a sore point. The Glyn
Williams only rent The Warren. They've plenty of money and they'd like
to buy it, but General Talland, to whom it belongs, won't sell it at any
price. It has been in his family for hundreds of years."
"Why doesn't he live at it himself, then?"
"He hasn't been home for years and years. He's governor of a place
called San Benito in the West Indies. He left England after his only son
died, and he has never been back since. I should think Chagmouth people
have almost forgotten him. The Glyn Williams are everything there now,
or think they are at any rate."
"That I can very easily believe," said Merle, with a glance at Gwen,
who, apportioned by Miss Crompton to dance with Aubrey, was circling
round without deigning to bestow a single word upon her unwelcome
partner.
To Mavis and Merle, Chagmouth, where so far they had only spent a
single day, had become the very hub of the universe. They wanted to see
its quaint streets again, and to revisit the beach and to explore the
woods. More than anything they wished to renew their brief acquaintance
with Bevis. His personality had attracted them, and his romantic story
appealed to their imaginations. They ventured to say something about him
to Uncle David.
"Bevis? Oh, he's a fine lad!" replied Dr. Tremayne. "He's rather out of
his element on the farm, but there seems nothing else open to him at
present. I wish I could see him doing something better. He'd make a
splendid doctor. The way he has picked up dispensing is simply
wonderful. I can trust him to make up prescriptions now, and it's the
greatest help. He loves pottering about the surgery. It's far more in
his line than hedging or ploughing. But he doesn't spare himself on the
land; I'll say that for the lad. By the by, are you two coming with me
to Chagmouth to-morrow? I believe the sea air did Mavis good. She's
losing that transparent look, and getting a tinge of colour in her
cheeks."
"I haven't had a cold since I came to Durracombe," boasted Mavis.
"Touch wood or you'll be catching one to-morrow," put in Merle hastily.
"Uncle David, we'd go to Chagmouth every day if you'd take us."
"Oh, I dare say! And what would happen to your lessons, Miss Lazybones?"
twinkled the doctor. "One holiday a week is quite enough for you."
The girls were growing to love Uncle David. He was so kind, and genial,
and pleasant, and had always some little joke or funny story for them.
Half of the pleasure of the day at Chagmouth would be the drive there
and back in his company. There was a broad restfulness about him that
was like a mental tonic. It was as if he had learnt the secret of
outliving all unnecessary cares and worries, and could radiate his
peaceful atmosphere into the auras of others. Perhaps it was this
quality of unconscious healing that gave him such skill and favour as a
physician. Certainly patients would begin to brighten up when he merely
stepped into the sickroom. "The dear old doctor", as he was generally
called, was a figure in the country-side, and a source of moral as well
as physical good in his practice.
It was with absolutely beaming faces that the girls set out with him in
the little yellow Deemster car the following Saturday morning. They
started earlier than the week before, for there were several visits to
be paid at farms or cottages on the way, all of which took considerable
time, but by exceeding the speed limit on level stretches of road the
doctor reached Chagmouth at noon, to find the usual crowd of patients
waiting at his rooms. Judging that he would be boxed up in the surgery
for more than an hour, and that they would therefore have ample leisure
for a stroll before lunch, the Ramsays decided to explore some of the
fields that lay round Grimbal's Farm, and selected a path that seemed to
lead in the direction of the cliffs and the sea. They looked about for
Bevis in the stackyard, but he was nowhere to be seen. Probably he was
working on the land, or possibly he might even be at sea, for Mr.
Penruddock was part owner of a trawler, and as much fisherman as farmer.
They walked across two meadows, went through a little spinney where
hazel catkins were opening fast, and actually a few primroses were
peeping through the carpet of dead leaves; then came to a stile which
led down into a deep lane. Mavis went first, and was in the very act of
stepping cautiously over, when suddenly through a hole in the opposite
hedge dashed a fox terrier and seized her by the skirt. It was just
enough to destroy her balance, and she fell forward on to her hands and
knees. Merle, hurrying after her, attacked the dog with a stick she was
carrying, and for about three moments there was a wild scrimmage, Mavis
shrieking with fright, the fox terrier yapping and yelping, and Merle
laying on blows. They had imagined themselves alone, but the
country-side is more full of ears than we generally know, and at the
same instant two people came running from opposite directions, one from
the lane and the other from the fields. The first, a tall boy carrying a
gun, was evidently the owner of the dog, for he called it angrily away,
and after a final snarl it ran towards him, helped in its progress by a
hearty kick from Bevis, who had jumped over the opposite hedge. Mavis
picked herself up, and the four young people stood together in the deep
lane. It was Merle, of course, who spoke first.
"Look what your brute's done!" she said indignantly, turning to the
dog's owner, and pointing to a rent in Mavis's skirt. "You ought to be
ashamed of yourself to let him attack people like this. Why don't you
muzzle him?"
The boy regarded Mavis and the damage to her apparel rather coolly.
"You must have done something to make him fly at you," he replied. "Of
course he'll go for people if they throw stones at him."
"I didn't throw stones." Mavis's voice quivered with injured annoyance.
"Well, you're not much hurt anyway! If you'd keep to the roads instead
of wandering about people's fields you wouldn't get into trouble."
"She's a perfect right in our fields," broke in Bevis hotly. "If she
wants to go there why shouldn't she? It's no business of yours."
The boy lifted his eyebrows as if amazed at the outburst.
"Oh, certainly not! None at all!" he replied in supercilious tones.
"Have anybody you like in your own fields. It doesn't concern me. What a
fuss about nothing."
And, shouldering his gun, he turned back up the lane with the fox
terrier at his heels.
"You might at least apologize," Merle shouted after him, but he took not
the slightest notice and did not look behind. In another moment the
hedge had hidden him from their view.
"What an absolute bounder!" fumed Merle. "He ought to have said he was
sorry instead of walking off like that. Who is he?"
Bevis was standing staring up the lane with a frown on his dark face.
"It's young Williams from The Warren," he replied. "He thinks himself
cock-of-the-walk in Chagmouth, but he'd better not try on any of his
airs with me. He might own the place by the way he behaves. If I catch
him with that gun rabbitting in any of our fields I'll let him know."
"Does he go into your fields?"
"He goes anywhere he likes about Chagmouth, and I've heard many people
grumble. He may take his own advice and keep to his own property.
They've all the shooting on the moors above, and that ought to be enough
for him! I've no patience with young sparks like he is."
Mavis was not really hurt by her adventure, but she had been frightened,
and was still feeling upset and disinclined to continue their walk. With
Bevis for protection the girls turned back towards the farm, where Mrs.
Penruddock, who was loud in her indignation and sympathy, took out her
thread-basket and hastily caught together the rent in Mavis's skirt.
"That'll keep for this afternoon, and Jessop can darn it properly when
you get home," she declared. "Folks ought to pay for the damage their
dogs do. And clothes at such a price now! It was a mercy you weren't
bitten I'm sure. I'd have had something to say to young Williams if I'd
been there. I wouldn't have let him walk away as if it was nothing!
He'll have to be taught a lesson some day, if I'm not mistaken. And
serve him right too, with all his airs and his impudence."
In the short interval that remained before lunch the girls made a tour
of the stackyard and farm buildings. They wanted to see the waterwheel
again, and it was fun to climb up ladders and peep into lofts, to
explore the dim recesses of barns, or inspect the poultry runs, where
fussy hens, shut up inside coops, were clucking to adventurous little
families of downy chicks or ducklings. But the crowning place of all was
the shed where Bevis kept his carpenter's bench. The boy was very natty
and clever at joinering, wood-carving, and mechanics. He had several
model boats and a toy engine, which he had constructed himself, to show
them, and he volunteered to make them a little grindstone upon which
they could sharpen their penknives.
"How topping! We'll come and watch you while you do it," declared Merle.
"If you don't mind our looking on," added Mavis.
But alack! shortly after lunch a most untoward thing happened. Dr.
Tremayne had brought the car round from the yard into the road opposite
the front door of the farm, preparatory to paying his usual weekly visit
to the Sanatorium. He was pottering about inspecting various valves and
nuts, in the manner of motorists, and Mavis and Merle, who had
constituted themselves assistant chauffeurs, were armed with dusters and
were trying to clean the splashboards, which had been much spattered
with mud on the journey from Durracombe that morning. Uncle David prided
himself upon a spick-and-span car, and liked to turn up at the
Sanatorium with the little Deemster looking its best. Both girls were
working away energetically, when round the corner from the village there
suddenly appeared the whole of the Glyn Williams family, heading
straight up the road towards Grimbal's Farm. Merle spied them first. She
was on the side of the car nearest the house, and, with a presence of
mind that amounted almost to instinct, she bolted inside the door like a
rabbit into its burrow. Mavis, whose back was towards the village, was
quite unaware that anyone was near till she heard Dr. Tremayne's
greeting, and, turning round, found herself face to face with Gwen,
Babbie, their mother, their brother, and the fox terrier. If she could,
with any decency, have fled after Merle she would have done so, but
there was no possibility of escape. She was already in their midst, and
Uncle David--dear, tiresome man--was saying: "You know my niece?"
Mrs. Glyn Williams, a portly, rosy-faced lady, with a kind but rather
patronizing manner, held out a white-gloved hand.
"Of course! You go to school at The Moorings, don't you? How nice for
you to motor over to Chagmouth with your uncle on Saturdays. Are you
going with him to the Sanatorium? What is it, Babbie, dear?" (for her
younger daughter was whispering eagerly in her ear) "Oh yes, my
precious! Doctor, won't you leave your niece on your way, and we'll show
her round The Warren and keep her for tea? You can pick her up as you
drive back."
There are some invitations which it is utterly impossible to refuse.
Mrs. Glyn Williams had, to use a sporting term, "caught her bird
sitting". Mavis glanced at Uncle David with mute appeal in her blue
eyes, but he quite mistook her dismay, and instantly accepted on her
behalf.
"We're going straight home now, through the woods, so come as soon as
you can," urged Babbie, following the family as they turned up the road.
Could anything have been more utterly and entirely aggravating?
"Oh, Uncle David! How _could_ you?" exclaimed Mavis reproachfully. "I'm
not dressed to go to tea at The Warren. I only came in my school skirt
and jersey. We meant to scramble about the farm this afternoon."
Dr. Tremayne focused his eyeglasses on his niece's attire. Such an
aspect of the visit had never occurred to his innocent masculine mind.
"Bless my life! You look very nice, both of you," he decided.
"Both of us? _I'm_ not asked, thank goodness," declared Merle, who had
overheard the interview and emerged from the sanctuary of the doorway
now the coast was clear.
"It wouldn't matter, child. I'm sure Mrs. Glyn Williams would be
pleased to see you. It was stupid of me not to mention you were here
too."
"I'm so _thankful_ you didn't."
"Am _I_ to be the solitary victim?" asked Mavis's plaintive voice in its
most injured tone.
"Go with your sister, Merle," urged Dr. Tremayne, who felt rather in a
quandary.
"No, Uncle David, dear," replied Merle firmly. "If I wasn't invited I
wasn't, and it wouldn't be manners to turn up. I'll go with you to the
Sanatorium if you'll take me," and she added privately to Mavis:
"If one of us had to be asked to tea at The Warren I'm glad it's you.
Gwen can't bear me, and it was I who said the nasty things to that boy
in the lane. What's his name? Tudor! He deserved them, of course, but it
would make me shy to meet him again. You always get on much more
pleasantly with people than I do."
"We shall have to tell Bevis we're off in the car," said Mavis
disconsolately.
They found Bevis already at his bench in the tool-shed and evidently
expecting them. His face fell at their news, and, though they both did
their very best to explain the situation, he remained glum, and seemed
to think they wished to avoid his company.
"Oh, it's quite all right!" he remarked, and that was all they could
get out of him. He took up his mallet, and commenced to hammer so
vigorously that they fled from the noise.
"He says it doesn't matter, but he's fearfully huffy and offended,"
whispered Merle.
"Well, we can't help it. Everything has gone wrong to-day," sighed
Mavis.
There was no time to put things right with Bevis, for Dr. Tremayne was
hooting for them to start at once. He set Mavis down at the great gate
of The Warren, and took Merle on with him to the Sanatorium. Mavis
walked very solemnly up the laurel-bordered drive. She seldom went
anywhere without her sister, and hated paying this stately visit alone.
She rang the bell, feeling shy and frightened, and painfully conscious
of the conspicuously darned rent in her skirt. She wondered if Tudor
would have explained its origin.
The butler admitted her into a lovely conservatory, then through a large
hall into the drawing-room. Certainly it was a beautiful house, and
Mavis might have enjoyed herself if only Merle had been with her. Her
greeting by the young people was far pleasanter than she had
anticipated. Babbie was frankly cordial, Gwen unwontedly courteous, and
Tudor went so far as to accompany his sisters when they took their guest
for a stroll round the grounds. He walked a little behind, and made no
attempt at conversation, but she could see him eyeing the darn in her
skirt. Later on, while Gwen and Babbie were speaking to a gardener, and
for the moment he was alone with Mavis, he mentioned their meeting in
the lane.
"I say, you know," he began, "I'd no idea you were Dr. Tremayne's niece
when I saw you this morning. Did Jim scare you? He's rather a young
dog!"
It was exactly the same excuse that Gwen had urged in defence of the
rude reception she had given them in the garden. Mavis wondered
privately whether the Williamses only kept their good manners for their
friends, and meted out less civil treatment to strangers. But aloud she
answered:
"He did rather frighten me, but I wasn't hurt."
"He bolted out of the hedge before I'd time to stop him. I say, you
know, I'm sorry if he scared you. He's only a young dog and means no
harm."
His tardy apology was evidently mainly due to the fact that she was Dr.
Tremayne's niece, but Mavis had the grace to accept it politely, after
which the atmosphere seemed to thaw, and Tudor exerted himself to
entertain the visitor, offering to take her to the stables and show her
the horses. Gwen expanded at this, being very proud of her own little
cob, Taffy, and delighted to exhibit him to anybody who would appreciate
him.
"Do you hunt?" she asked airily. "I'd live on horseback if I could. Cars
are all very well in their way, and get you over the ground, but
motoring's nothing to riding. Taffy nips over fences like a bird. I'd
ride him to Durracombe when I come for the French class if it weren't
for Babbie. It's too far for her pony, so we have to go in the car."
Gentle Mavis invariably made friends, and before her visit at The
Warren was over she was on quite pleasant terms with Tudor, Gwen, and
Babbie.
"You must come again sometime," said Gwen graciously, accompanying her
to the door, when Dr Tremayne called for her with the car.
Merle, who had been temporarily left at the bottom of the drive, was
waiting for them, and took her place for the homeward journey.
"Well?" she asked eloquently.
"Better than I expected. Babbie's really rather sweet. Gwen showed me
her horse, and Tudor actually apologized. I don't dislike him _quite_ as
much as I did this morning. He goes to Eton, but he's at home this term
because he has been ill. He taught me to play bagatelle after tea, and
was wonderfully decent--but, oh no! of course not _nearly_ so nice as
Bevis."
"And Bevis, to judge from the way he banged with that mallet, is in a
thoroughly bad temper."
"Oh, surely he's got over it by this time?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid he thought us a couple of utter sneaks,"
grunted Merle.
CHAPTER IX
A Question of Honour
For the last five years Mr. Glyn Williams, a prominent London financier,
had rented The Warren from General Talland. He liked the place, and
would gladly have bought the whole property had it not been entailed. He
still lived in hopes that it might ultimately become his own, and
periodically made offers to the owner and heir to effect a settlement.
Meantime, failing absolute possession, he posed to his city friends and
to his neighbours in the county as the squire of Chagmouth. He was a
well-disposed man, according to his lights, and in his own way he had
done a good deal for the place. He had built a reading room and
institute, had helped to renovate the church, had contributed largely to
the war memorial, and headed the list of all local subscriptions. His
wife was on numerous committees, had organized many charities,
entertained the Sunday School children in her garden, got up concerts or
tea-parties, attended mothers' meetings, opened bazaars, and distributed
prizes.
Yet all the same Chagmouth was not as grateful as perhaps it ought to
have been, and the family at The Warren were by no means favourites in
the little town. The root of the trouble was that Mr. and Mrs. Glyn
Williams made the common mistake of thinking that because they rented
the Hall, and dispensed large sums in subscriptions, they had the right
to order the affairs of their less wealthy neighbours, and to have the
first say in everything that was to be done in connection with the
place. Chagmouth people greatly resented being patronized. They were
born of the good old sturdy, self-reliant stock that furnished Drake and
Raleigh and other half-forgotten heroes, and they had been accustomed in
their slow independent fashion to manage their own business to their own
satisfaction. For General Talland, whose family link with the parish
dated from the time of the Armada, they had held a respect based partly
on his birth and partly on personal appreciation, but they saw no reason
to offer any undue deference to his tenant at The Warren. Money alone
cannot purchase favour, and the unfortunate attitude of superiority and
fashionable aloofness adopted by the whole of the Williams family had
created a considerable atmosphere of prejudice against them. To many of
the Chagmouth people they were a sore trial, and the haughty manners of
the young people were voted insufferable in the village.
Dr. Tremayne, however, who had been medical adviser at The Warren for
several years, always met with a happy reception. He was a favourite
with rich and poor alike, for he gave equal attention to all his
patients, whether their incomes were small or great. He held those wide
views of life which estimate people at what they are and not at what
they possess, and he always seemed to have the happy knack of bringing
out the best in those whom he met. Mrs. Glyn Williams had perhaps taught
her daughters many foolish and unworthy lessons, but in the presence of
the unworldly old doctor the little snobberies melted away and the
higher standards prevailed.
It was for the sake of Dr. Tremayne that Gwen, when she next appeared
at The Moorings, bestowed a grudging recognition on Merle and extended a
rather patronizing friendship to Mavis. The latter was not specially
attracted, though she received the advances politely. Most of the girls,
however, seemed to think her only too lucky to be thus noticed. Opal
worshipped openly at Gwen's shrine. She copied her frocks, her manners,
and her style of hairdressing, and offered up much incense before the
altar of fashion. The Ramsays, who were accustomed to the democratic
atmosphere of a big high school, fretted at the narrowness of the
outlook. They disliked the days when the Williamses attended the French
class, for Opal always put on absurd airs and was particularly "high and
mighty" and aggravating. She had not improved as the term went on.
Indeed, a new and most unpleasant aspect of her had lately revealed
itself. She was not altogether fair over her work. On several occasions
Mavis and Merle suspected her of cheating. They could not absolutely
convict her of it, but the circumstances seemed very incriminating. They
mentioned the matter to Iva, who shrugged her shoulders.
"Of course Opal cheats when she gets a chance. We all know that. But how
are you going to stop it? If you told Miss Fanny she wouldn't believe
you."
"I hate sneaking," said Mavis. "But couldn't we do something with Opal
herself?"
"You'd have to catch her first."
"Yes, that's the difficulty."
It is not at all an easy matter to convict a girl who cheats on the sly.
Several times Merle, who sat just behind, thought she saw Opal make
hasty corrections as Mademoiselle revised the French dictation, but when
she taxed her with it afterwards Opal denied flatly, and with huge
indignation.
"As if I should," she fumed.
"Seeing is believing," maintained Merle.
"Do you mean to accuse _me_--the head girl--of cheating! I wish you'd go
and tell Miss Pollard or Miss Fanny. They know me too well to listen to
a word you'd say. Why, I'm their own god-daughter!"
"Unfortunately that doesn't make you immaculate."
"Though it ought to, when they trust you so," added Mavis.
Discussing the matter between themselves, the Ramsays decided that in
this very point lay all the trouble. The Misses Pollard, in their
foolish fondness for Opal, were making a grave mistake. They
deliberately shut their eyes where she was concerned, and were always
biased in her favour.
"It's such an amateur little school," sighed Merle. "I don't mean the
lessons, because those are really rather good, but the discipline is
horribly slack."
"Hardly exists," agreed Mavis. "Miss Fanny says easily, 'Now, get along,
girls!', and a few try to work and the rest don't, and she never _makes_
them. I hate a slack teacher, however clever she is."
"Everything is so casual," groused Merle. "There's no proper order even
in answering questions. Opal raps out the answers if she knows them, and
gets all the credit. It's most unfair. I should like to send Miss Fanny
for a term to Whinburn High, and let her see how things are managed at
other schools. It would be an eye-opener for her."
"And for Opal too, if she could go as well. It would just do her all the
good in the world."
Evidently the only thing to be done was to keep a careful eye upon the
delinquent, and bring her to book at the first opportunity that offered
sufficient private evidence without taking the affair to the teacher's
notice.
Now it happened that one afternoon Gwen Williams left her French
dictionary behind her in the classroom and went home without it. It was
found in due course by Muriel Burnitt, who flung it into the school
"pound", a lost-property basket from which objects could be redeemed by
the payment of a penny into the missionary box. Both Mavis and Merle
witnessed the placing of the book in this receptacle, though they gave
no particular thought to the matter at the time. On the next French day
Gwen came fussing into the classroom asking for her missing dictionary,
and was much put out to find it was not forthcoming.
"I _know_ I left it on the desk," she maintained.
"So you did, and I popped it into the pound," said Muriel. "Pay your
penny and you'll get it out. It's perfectly simple."
But when Gwen walked over to the lost-property basket, and inspected its
contents, she found an assortment of pencils, india-rubbers, and
pen-holders, but certainly no dictionary. She was loud in her wrath, and
the girls immediately round her began to offer comments and advice.
"It was there yesterday."
"I saw it myself."
"Opal redeemed a penknife this morning."
"You'd better ask her if she knows where it has gone."
"Here she comes!"
Yet at that exact moment Mademoiselle entered also, and the girls took
their places. In the course of the lesson she gave her pupils a piece of
unseen translation. It was a difficult passage, and to many of them an
almost impossible one to render into English. Each had her closed
dictionary placed on the desk in front of her, and cast longing looks at
its covers, but to open it was, of course, not permitted. Now Merle was
sitting just behind Opal, and she noticed the latter glancing constantly
down on to her knee. Merle could not see the object of this close
attention, but her suspicions were aroused. She dared not speak, but she
scribbled a little note on a piece of waste paper:
"Keep an eye on Opal's knee, and see if she hasn't got your dictionary."
This she addressed to Gwen and handed it surreptitiously along by Nesta
and Iva.
Gwen read it, and gave a nod of comprehension while Mademoiselle was
looking the other way. The moment the lesson was finished she stood up,
moved along the desks, and made a sudden grab on to Opal's lap.
"Hello! What are you doing with my dictionary?" she asked.
Opal turned white and then scarlet, but she was ready with a plausible
excuse.
"I--I found it," she stuttered. "I was going to give it back to you."
"Indeed!" Gwen's tone was scathing. "I happen to know it was put inside
the pound. Why did you take it out? It's extremely kind of you to have
put a brown paper cover on it. If you intended to give it back to me why
didn't you hand it over before the class began?"
"There--there wasn't time!"
"Oh, good gracious, don't tell me any more fiblets! You meant to stick
to it, and you were cribbing from it on your knee. Nice thing for a head
girl to do, I must say. I've not much opinion of you here at The
Moorings."
Opal protested, but Gwen would not listen to a word she had to say,
and, pulling the paper cover off the dictionary, stalked out of the room
with the air of an offended queen. The girls sniggered openly.
It was so seldom Opal met her match. To have drawn down the wrath and
displeasure of Gwen was a particular humiliation to her.
"Rather priceless, wasn't it?" chuckled Merle to Iva. "Hope it will
teach her not to cheat in future."
"Don't flatter yourself. She will directly she gets the chance. She's
done for herself with Gwen though for the present."
Iva's opinion of Opal was founded on experience. There was an
unfortunate moral kink about the head girl that often involved her in
very shady transactions. It was a deplorable thing for the school, as
instead of upholding the tone she lowered it. Mavis often wondered how
Miss Fanny could be so foolish and weak as not to see for herself that
her favourite evaded rules. Out of sheer bravado Opal would often do
forbidden things, and would boast that she could venture on them with
impunity where others would surely get into trouble. One mean dishonesty
above all others aroused the Ramsays' indignation.
The top form took arithmetic with Miss Fanny. It was a subject which
Opal disliked, but for the last two or three lessons she had worked all
her problems correctly. Miss Fanny, who ought to have known better, left
her Key to the arithmetic on the mantelpiece of the classroom, and one
morning Mavis, coming in early, caught Opal in the very act of copying
the answers to the next set of questions.
"Well!" she exploded. "Of all mean sneaks you're the biggest I've ever
met. No wonder you get all your sums right if you write down the answers
beforehand. How _can_ you?"
Opal tried to laugh the matter off.
"Why don't you do it yourself, my dear?" she answered. "If Miss Fanny
_will_ leave her book about, of course we look at it. That's human
nature!"
"It's not my way," said Mavis gravely. "And if Miss Fanny trusts us so
much that she leaves her Key here, we ought to be worthy of her trust.
It's shameful to deceive her."
"Oh, Jonathan! Go and tell her, then."
"You know I never tell tales."
That day, however, Opal was unexpectedly overtaken by Nemesis. Miss
Fanny was suffering from a severe headache, and Miss Pollard came to
take the arithmetic class in her stead. The girls told her the number of
the exercise they had reached, and she wrote the questions upon the
blackboard. For some reason of her own she reversed their order. When
she called for the answers, Opal, with great assurance, read hers out,
and, of course, as she had copied from the book, No. 6 came instead of
No. 1, and vice versa. Miss Pollard stared at her in much amazement, and
told her to come and work them upon the blackboard, a process of which
she made a conspicuous bungle. Miss Pollard made no special remark, but
possibly her suspicions may have been aroused, for she carried away the
Key, and it was never again left in the classroom. Whether her affection
for Opal prevented her from making a closer inquiry, or whether the
affair was merely a coincidence, and she still preserved her faith in
the integrity of her pet pupil, it was impossible to tell.
"All the same I call it the limit for her to shut her eyes to things in
the way she does," commented Mavis to Merle. "Both Miss Pollard and Miss
Fanny are dears, but a teacher ought to know something of what goes on
in a school, and not leave it just to luck. What are we to do? We can't
go sneaking and telling, and yet I feel we ought to make a stand. It
doesn't seem right to let Opal behave like this and do nothing. She
hasn't the slightest idea of honour."
"That's what most of them need here," snorted straightforward Merle.
"I know. But what can you expect with such a slacker as head girl? If
only Mother were here I'd ask her, but I'm so stupid at explaining
properly in a letter it's no use to write."
"Not a bit. She wouldn't really understand. Seems to me there's nothing
for it but just to worry on as best we can. They're a queer set, but we
can't help it."
CHAPTER X
Among the Boarders
Mavis and Merle, being day girls at The Moorings, have occupied so much
of our attention that we have somewhat neglected the boarders. In their
own estimation, however, they were a very important part of the
community. There were twelve of them altogether, and though, during
classes, they mixed with the rest of the school, they were rather proud
of the fact that, as far as possible, they "kept themselves to
themselves". They had all sorts of little secrets that day girls might
not share, signs and passwords and mysterious references, which gave
them great satisfaction, and were calculated to provoke envy, hatred,
malice, and all uncharitableness in the breasts of those who did not
understand the allusions, and whom they sternly refused to initiate.
Many of the boarders were the children of parents who were out in
India. Some of them had been born there, and could remember burning
skies and temples and native bazaars and elephants, and many other
un-English things. Mamie and Jessie Drew could even speak Hindustani, a
language which all the Indian-born children had talked in their infancy,
though most of them had forgotten it in a very short time after landing
in Britain. With the exception of Iva Westwood, Nesta Pitman, and Aubrey
Simpson, the boarders were all juniors, and an uncommonly lively little
crew, who sometimes led their seniors a dance, and were capable of a
considerable amount of ragging among themselves.
The two who were generally at the bottom of most of the mischief were
Winnie Osborne and Joyce Coleman, nicknamed by Iva "the firebrands".
Under Miss Pollard's gentle rule their escapades sometimes got rather
out of bounds, but they had a wholesome respect for Miss Fanny, who did
not often interfere with the management of the boarders out of school
hours, but who dealt out discipline if she happened to catch anybody
tripping.
Among the silliest of the boarders was Nita Howard, a child who was a
born gossip, and who sometimes made trouble by repeating conversations
or remarks which she had overheard, and which she had very much better
have kept to herself. Nita had no discretion. Miss Pollard often told
her her tongue was too long, and certainly on many occasions it got
herself and her chums into scrapes. One evening, just after it grew
dark, she came running into the recreation-room in a state of much
excitement.
"I've got news for you, girls?" she chirped.
"No! What?" exclaimed Mamie and Alison, her particular friends, looking
up with interest from the scrap-books that they were engaged in making.
"Well, I'll tell you then," said Nita, sitting down by the table and
lowering her voice. "The ghost has been seen again in Poplar Lane!"
"I say, shut up there, Nita," murmured Nesta, who was painting at the
same table. "Do you want those kids in umpteen fits?"
Nita beckoned her chums away from the vicinity of the smaller children
in question, so that she might continue her thrilling story in private.
"It has really!" she assured them in a whisper.
"O-o-h!" came in a horror-stricken chorus. "How do you know?"
"I've just heard Bella telling Cook. It's Bella's evening out, and she
went down the back carriage drive into Poplar Lane to take a short cut
to meet a friend, and just when she got under the shade of the trees she
saw something all in white coming towards her. She shrieked and ran
straight back to the house, and she says she daren't go out again, even
though her own cousin is waiting for her at the other end of the lane."
"Bella's rather a goose," put in Nesta, who had moved to the end of the
table so as to overhear. "I shouldn't believe a word she says."
"It's quite true though. She saw it with her own eyes."
"She certainly couldn't see it with anybody else's," retorted Nesta
scornfully. "It was probably a white cow coming down the lane."
"No, it wasn't. It was really the ghost. Bella felt a most extraordinary
feeling as if the blood was freezing in her veins. She says she never
remembers anything like it since the night a dog howled under her window
and her grandmother died. Her heart stood absolutely still for two whole
minutes."
"Bunkum! Bella hasn't had physiology lessons or she'd know that's
impossible. Why she wouldn't be alive to tell the tale!" snorted Nesta.
"How can you swallow such precious stuff, you little silly?"
"It's not stuff."
"Indeed it is."
"Then don't listen."
"I certainly shan't," and Nesta, moving her painting things along the
table, went back to her original place.
Her curiosity, however, got the better of her. She had sharp ears and
she caught most of what followed, losing a few details, for Nita was
whispering and Nesta was too proud to move nearer. The other two put
their heads very close to Nita's in order to hear the interesting
particulars.
"I didn't know Poplar Lane was haunted," said Mamie.
"Yes, it is, by a woman in white. She appears quite suddenly standing
near our gate. But she hasn't been seen for a long time."
"I thought only old houses had ghosts," ventured Alison. "The Moorings
isn't so very old, is it?"
"It's quite old enough to have a ghost. There's a story about it--an
_awful_ story! Bella told it to me."
"What is it?"
"I don't know whether I ought to tell it to you."
"Oh, go on!"
"Well, a gentleman used to live here once," began Nita, in tones of
delighted importance. "His name was Mr. Morrison. Late one night--it was
exactly at midnight--he happened to look out of the window, and he saw a
white carriage with a pair of white horses drive up to the door, but it
didn't make the least sound of wheels or hoofs. And, do you know, he
died afterwards."
"Of course he died afterwards," was heard from Nesta's end of the table.
"He couldn't very well die before, could he? Perhaps it was twenty years
afterwards."
"I thought you weren't listening. No, it was quite soon afterwards.
Wasn't it horrible?"
"What's the white lady got to do with the carriage?" asked Alison. "Was
she sitting inside?"
"I'm coming to that presently. Mr. Morrison had a son called Meredith,
who did all kinds of wicked things. When his father died this son was
worse than ever, and spent both his mother's money and his own on
gambling. He used to ride away on his horse at night and not come back
till very, very late, and his mother used to go and stand in Poplar Lane
to watch for him. She told him that when she died her spirit would stand
there still. But he didn't care in the least what she said. On the night
after her funeral he rode off on his horse just as usual, and when he
came back, there was her ghost all in white, waiting by the gate for
him. He gave a fearful cry, and fell from his horse--dead!"
"O-o-o-h!" came from Mamie and Alison.
"Rubbish!" grunted Nesta from the other end of the table.
Nita felt she had scored a success. She could seldom get the girls to
pay any attention to her, but they were certainly listening now. The
four smaller ones, who were supposed not to overhear, had, of course,
had their ears wide open as little pitchers always will. Doreen had
turned quite white, Prue was clutching Elsbeth's hand, and Jessie, after
a surreptitious glance at Nesta, had crept nearer and asked under her
breath who had told Bella.
"I don't know," answered Nita, "but somebody who knew all about it. The
house was to let for a long time before Miss Pollard took it. Bella says
she'd never have come here if she'd known there was a ghost. She means
to give notice and get another place as soon as she can."
"Does it ever come indoors?" gasped Elsbeth.
"I don't think so," replied Nita, keenly enjoying herself, "but, of
course, you never can tell. When a place is haunted it's haunted, and
you must be ready for anything."
"I shan't dare to go to bed," wailed Elsbeth.
"No more shall I," moaned Jessie. "I don't believe I shall even dare to
practise in a room by myself. Suppose I saw it standing by the piano?
What _should_ I do?"
"Ask it to sit down and play you a tune," said Nesta, shutting her
paint-box. "Nita, how can you frighten them in this silly way with your
precious ghost tales? You oughtn't to talk to the servants if Bella only
tells you such whoppers. Doreen's eyes are nearly dropping out of her
head. By the by, what's become of Winnie and Joyce?"
"I haven't seen them. I thought they were practising. Do they know?"
asked Mamie.
"Not yet," replied Nita mysteriously, "but, of course, we shall have to
tell them. Oh, here they are now!"
"What's the matter?" cried the pair in question, seating themselves at
the table.
"The ghost has been seen in Poplar Lane!" exploded Jessie, before Nita
had time to get the words out herself.
A look of intelligence passed between Winnie and Joyce.
"Hold me up! When?"
"Where?"
"To-night. Just by the gate. Bella saw it herself."
"If Bella saw it herself it must have been there!" burbled Winnie.
"Or some other thingumbob very like it," piped Joyce, who seemed on the
point of adding more, only Winnie trod on her toe, so she stopped short.
"And it _may_ come inside the house," volunteered Doreen with a shiver.
"What a blossomy prospect! I should think it very probably will," said
Winnie.
"Ghosts generally like houses better than lanes," echoed Joyce.
"Isn't it dreadful, though?" said Nita, who felt that neither was
sufficiently impressed, and was anxious to keep up the full horror of
the situation.
When bedtime arrived the younger children were in a state bordering on
panic. Mademoiselle could not understand why they insisted upon going
upstairs so very close together, why they shot past the dark doorways of
other dormitories, nor why Elsbeth begged her almost in tears not to
turn the light out, and to leave the door open so that they could hear
the elder girls come to bed. Mamie and Alison were in hardly better
case. They had retailed all the ghost stories they had ever heard, and
had worked themselves into a thoroughly nervous condition. At the return
of daylight, however, they were inclined to laugh at their fears and
agree with Nesta that it was silly nonsense.
"I don't think Winnie and Joyce minded in the least," ventured Alison.
"No, I couldn't quite make them out," replied Mamie. "They were so queer
over it and kept looking at each other. Didn't you notice?"
"I never thought about it," said Nita. "They're always having private
jokes. You can hardly say anything without Joyce poking Winnie or Winnie
nudging Joyce. I get sick to death of their precious secrets."
Everybody seemed ready that morning to make fun of the ghost, but when
evening came again, superstitious terrors revived in full force. Jessie
Drew spent a miserable half-hour practising with one eye on the window,
having an uneasy sensation that the spectre would probably be gliding
about the garden. She had not the strength of mind to draw down the
blind, and so shut out the chance of the vision, and in consequence made
such a peculiar rendering of her piece that Miss Fanny came in herself,
scolded her sharply, and sat down by her side to insist upon her playing
it properly.
"I didn't mind the scolding in the least," Jessie told her chums
afterwards. "I was so thankful to see anybody I'd have been glad if
she'd boxed my ears. I was so afraid she'd go away again I played wrong
notes on purpose. She said she'd never known me so stupid."
"Miss Pollard sent me to her bedroom to fetch a book," said Nita. "I
was simply shaking all over. That long passage is so dreadfully dark,
and I saw something white at the end of it. It was only Bella's apron,
though, that she'd hung over the banisters. The moonlight was coming in
through the landing window, and, it looked so like ghosts I daren't go
by, so I went down the back stairs and through the kitchen. I asked
Bella if she'd seen anything more, and she said a big bird had flown
against the window, and that's always a bad omen. Miss Pollard asked me
why I'd been so long fetching the book, but I didn't dare tell her. I
wonder what the bird was an omen of! I forgot to ask Bella."
Evening preparation went on as usual, after which most of the boarders
collected in their own recreation-room to read or paint or otherwise
amuse themselves. Iva and Aubrey were practising, but Nesta was sitting
with the juniors, of whom only Winnie and Joyce were missing. These two
seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. Joyce came back after a short
time, looking rather red and excited, but she made no remark, and taking
a book began to read.
"I can't find my post-card album anywhere," complained Nita, hunting
disconsolately round the room, "and I did so want to put in those extra
cards I got last week. I'm sure I left it on the bookcase."
"I saw it in the cloakroom on the boot-rack," volunteered Joyce.
"However could it get there?"
"I don't know, but I saw it."
"Miau! I daren't go and fetch it. I simply daren't. The cloakroom will
be quite dark. Won't somebody go with me? Alison, be a mascot!"
"No, thanks! You won't stir this child."
"I'll go," proclaimed Joyce, jumping up briskly. "I don't mind at all.
Come along Nita!"
"Oh, you saintly girl!"
The two went out of the room, Nita clutching tightly to Joyce's arm and
volunteering gasping little remarks.
[Illustration: IT CERTAINLY WAS A MOST ALARMING SPECTACLE _Page 137_]
"The others are piggy to-night!--Mother always says I'm so nervous!--I'm
really afraid of the dark, even when there are no ghosts!"
The rest of the boarders went on with their various occupations, but in
a few moments they were interrupted by the sudden opening of the door,
and Nita burst in with a white face.
"Girls! Oh, I say! I've seen the ghost! It's in the cloakroom! Oh, it's
too awful! I'm ready to faint. Don't go, Nesta, don't!"
"Of course I'm going," said Nesta. "We've had enough of this nonsense,
and it's time it was put a stop to. Come along, everybody. We'll take a
look at this ghost."
She valiantly led the way, and the juniors followed more timorously,
Elsbeth and Doreen, in the rear, giving squeals of terror, across the
hall and past the dusky corner where the croquet-box was kept, then down
the steps to the cloakroom door. They peeped in fearfully. At the sight
they saw most of them backed with shrieks. The room was in complete
darkness, but at the far side stood a figure which seemed to be shrouded
in white, its face and uplifted hands shining with a brilliant light
that gave it a most unearthly and uncanny appearance. It certainly was a
most alarming spectacle, and enough to strike horror into any breast.
Alison and Nita were almost in hysterics, and the rest would have run
away if Nesta had not stopped them.
"Don't be a set of sillies," she commanded. "I'll soon show you who it
is."
She dived into the cloakroom, and, after a sharp scuffle, came back
hauling a kicking, struggling, protesting spectre that could evidently
use both arms and legs in a particularly human fashion.
"Winnie!" exclaimed the girls, as, in the light of the hall, Nesta
pulled off the sheet and disclosed the well-known blue-serge dress and
short lank hair of the champion ragger of the school.
Everybody burst out laughing, even Nita and Elsbeth.
"You absolute blighter!"
"How priceless!"
"Win, you're the limit!"
"How did you manage to make your face and hands shine? They looked too
awful."
"I wet them and rubbed them with matches. Look! If I hold up my hand in
the dark it's all steaming and glowing with phosphorus yet."
"What a beastly trick."
"You did give us spasms."
"Come along and tell us about it."
"Where's Joyce?"
Joyce had been close by, enjoying the fun, and now joined with her chum
in relating the story of their rag.
"Of course we were the ghosts all the time," began Winnie. "Last night
Joyce and I went to the side door. It was lovely moonlight, and we dared
each other to run down the back drive. We'd got as far as the gate when
we heard somebody behind us. It was Bella, so we dodged out into the
road and a few yards up Poplar Lane. We thought Bella was going the
other way. She stood still a minute and waited, then she turned and came
straight towards us. I thought if she saw us she'd report us to Miss
Fanny, so I whispered to Joyce, 'Get behind me and I'll act ghost!' and
then I held my dress high above my head with both hands, and began to
bow myself up and down and moan."
"Bella yelled," explained Joyce, taking up the tale. "She ran back up
the drive as fast as she could, and rushed round to the kitchen door. We
were going to tell you about it, but when we got in you were full of
Bella's story of having seen the ghost in Poplar Lane. So we thought we
might as well have some fun out of the thing, and play a rag on you."
"It was ever so difficult, though," continued Winnie. "We couldn't do it
anywhere else except in the cloakroom, and we didn't know how to get you
there. It was Joyce's idea to take Nita's post-card album away. Oh, how
she and Alison screamed! I haven't got over it yet."
Winnie was still hinnying and dabbing her eyes with a rather
phosphorousy pocket handkerchief.
"Look here, now," said Nesta, "we've had enough of this. You mustn't try
any tricks on the maids."
"Oh, just on Bella! It would be such a stunt to stand in the housemaid's
cupboard and let her find me when she goes upstairs."
"No!" decreed Nesta. "It's dangerous to frighten people. Bella may
have a weak heart, and in any case she'd be certain to drop her jug of
drinking-water. I'm a senior and you juniors have got to do what I say.
No, Winnie! It's no use pulling faces and nudging Joyce. I mean it. I'm
no tell-tale, but if I find either of you trying on this rag again I
shall just march straight off and fetch Miss Fanny. So you know what to
expect. There!"
CHAPTER XI
Round the Fire
Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny liked to have an individual knowledge of
each of their pupils, and as they did not yet know the Ramsays very well
they asked them to tea one day. So after school Mavis and Merle stayed
behind and washed their hands, and went with the boarders into the
dining-room, and ate scones and honey and home-baked cake, and felt
rather shy and hardly spoke at all, although they were both sitting
close to Miss Pollard, who made most noble efforts at conversation. When
tea was over, those girls who were due to practise departed to the
several pianos, and began a kind of musical combat of scales and
studies. The others collected round the fire in the recreation-room.
Preparation had been put off on account of the visitors, and Miss
Pollard had announced that she and Miss Fanny were coming in for half an
hour's chat or fun.
"You must decide what you'd like to do," she said. "Ask Mavis and Merle
what are their favourite games. Do they know 'adverbs'? It must be
something you can all play."
Standing in front of the fire everybody proposed something different,
and nobody wanted anybody else's suggestion. Matters seemed likely to go
rather lamely till Mamie had a really sensible idea.
"Let's ask Miss Pollard to tell us a Devonshire story instead of playing
games."
"Does she know any Devonshire stories?" said Merle quickly.
"Heaps and heaps. She says she learnt them from the old people about
Durracombe, when she was a little girl, and her father was vicar. She's
written most of them down. She has them in a manuscript book. We want
her to get it published some day, because they're so topping. They're
all about Devonshire pixies and witches and charms and things."
"I'd love to hear one."
"So would I," added Mavis, "I'd like it far better than playing a game,
if you others don't mind."
"Oh, it's you visitors who are to choose."
So when Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny entered, and inquired what was to be
the particular form of entertainment, Mamie voted for Devonshire
stories, and all hands were held up in favour of her proposal.
"My little folk-tales!" exclaimed Miss Pollard, looking very pleased.
"They're collected from the neighbourhood. The old people used to tell
them years ago, but nowadays I don't think anybody in Durracombe cares
about pixies. Most of them would have been forgotten if I hadn't written
them down. I'll fetch the book. I'd rather read you one than try to
remember it. I never can recollect the best points when I tell stories."
Miss Pollard returned presently with a small manuscript volume, the
result of rather careful work on her part, for she was interested in the
old legends of the district. She settled herself in a wicker arm-chair,
with Doreen on her lap, and Elsbeth squatting on the floor leaning
against her knee, while Miss Fanny, on the opposite side of the hearth,
gave similar petting to Jessie and Prue. It was a "home-y" little
circle, not in the least like school. Mavis could not help thinking how
sweet Miss Pollard looked, with the firelight shining on her silver
hair, and an unwonted pink colour in her cheeks. Miss Fanny, too, was
picturesque in the gloaming, and Prue's red-gold head made a bright spot
of colour against her dull-green dress.
"They're dears, both of them," thought Mavis. "Absolute dears! Anybody
more unlike school-mistresses I never met in my life. They ought to have
been married. They must have been so pretty when they were young. I
suppose they never met anybody in this out-of-the-way place. The school
may be old-fashioned, and behind the age, and all the rest of it, but
they give the boarders a good time at any rate. They're just mothers to
those Indian children. I'm glad to have had a peep at them behind the
scenes and seen this side of them. I believe I'm rather in love with
them both."
But Miss Pollard had opened her manuscript book and, in her pleasant
cultured voice, was beginning to read.
STOLEN BY THE PIXIES
Nancy Gurney sat by the side of the driftwood fire, and her
tears fell fast as she rocked the cradle of her sleeping child.
The afternoon sun shone brightly through the narrow casement
window, and lit up the earthen floor and the brown rafters with
a warm yellow glow. From outside came the fresh smell of the
sea, and the soft grinding of the pebbles, while the waves
lapped gently over the beach, as if they had never lashed
themselves into foaming breakers against the cliffs.
The red poppies which grew on the low-thatched roof raised up
their heads, battered by yesterday's storms, the great flat
fish, hung up to dry in the sun by the doorway, flapped in the
light breeze, and from the shore came the shrill eager voices of
children, who gathered the driftwood cast up by the gale. But
the fishing-boats! The brown-sailed fishing-boats that ought to
have beaten back so safely into the harbour with the turn of the
tide, alas! there was never a sign nor a sail of them to be
seen, and there was many an aching heart in Bulvertor that day.
"Maybe they've got safe off towards the Cornish coast," said
Kitty Trefyre, who sat knitting in the inglenook.
"Nay," said Nancy sadly, "they'd have been round the head by
now. It's only the stoutest of boats that could have weathered
such a gale as blew last night, and _The Dolphin_ was hardly
seaworthy at best. No! They're gone! They're gone! We shall
never see the brown sails again! The sea has taken my Peter as
it has claimed all my dearest and best, and my poor boy is a
fatherless babe."
She dropped her head on her hands, and sobbed till the tears
fell into the cradle over the sleeping child.
"Don't take it so hard!" said Kitty. "We won't give them up
yet! And whisht, girl, whisht! Whatever you do don't weep over
the boy! Have you never heard that if tears fall on a sleeping
child the pixies have power to steal it away?"
Nancy dashed the tears from her eyes, and walked to the doorway
to take one long wistful look over the bay. The old woman laid
aside her knitting and followed her.
"It's ill luck!" she muttered. "Ill luck to shed tears on
sleeping babes, and I doubt me but evil will come of it. I'll
gather some fern seed and drop it in the cradle. It's a
well-known charm for keeping off pixies or witches, and 'tis
better to be wise in time--wise in time!"
She hobbled out across the garden to where the ferns grew under
the hedge, while Nancy turned sadly again to the fireside. She
stooped over the cradle to kiss her sleeping child, but started
back with a piercing, bitter cry. _The cradle was empty!_
The sound of her grief soon brought old Kitty hurrying to the
cottage.
"My boy! My beautiful boy!" sobbed the despairing mother. "The
pixies have stolen him away. Oh, that I had wept myself blind
ere I let the tears fall over his cradle!"
She sat rocking herself to and fro in her sorrow, while the old
woman threw the fern seed, picked, alas! too late, into the
driftwood fire.
"There's one hope left," said Kitty, when the first wild burst
of grief had worn itself away. "I am cunning and wise in the
ways of the pixies, and I know that they dance each night in the
moonlight on the ledge of rock where the sea-pinks bloom on the
face of St. Morna's Cliff. If you hide yourself there, with a
wreath of vervain round your hair, and could catch them
unawares, my heart tells me you might force them to restore what
they have stolen. But, alas! the plan is well-nigh impossible,
for how could you tread safely over the crags where the boldest
of our cliff climbers scarce dare to venture?"
"Yet I will do it!" cried Nancy, as she rose up with a new light
in her eyes. "Quick! weave me the wreath of vervain, and show me
by what spell I may force the fairies to give me back my child."
"Nay, that I cannot tell you," said old Kitty. "Your own
mother-wit must find out the way. Start when the twilight has
fallen, and when seven stars are shining over the sea; tell none
your errand, and cast three sprigs from your vervain wreath if a
hare should cross your path. Turn your wedding ring round on
your finger before you venture to climb down the cliff, and call
on St. Morna to help you. Watch silently all that may happen
till you see your opportunity arise--and may good luck and my
blessing go with you!"
The dusk had fallen over the village, and the stars were
beginning to shine in the darkening sky, when Nancy, with the
wreath of vervain twined through her dark hair, crept softly
past the last of the cottages, and took the little briary path
which led through the low sandhills, and over the wind-swept
hill-side up to St. Morna's Cliff.
Not a sound broke the silence, for the sea-gulls had vanished
with the sunshine, and not even a fieldmouse stirred in the
bracken. With hasty step she hurried along, for she must reach
her post before moonrise. The path grew steeper, the bracken
gave way to heather, and at length she found herself on the
smooth grassy surface of St. Morna's Cliff. Down far below her
she could see the wide rocky ledge where the sea-pinks were
catching the last glow from the western sky. How steep the crag
looked! The few tufts of grass and jutting-out pieces of rock
offered her scarcely a foothold; should she make one false step
she must be dashed to atoms upon the precipice beneath. She
looked down and shivered; but the thought of her child sent a
thrill of courage to her heart. Kneeling down on the short grass
she prayed to St. Morna for help; then, turning her wedding ring
round upon her finger, she swung herself over the edge of the
cliff.
Clutching at a root here, feeling with her feet for the
slightest foothold, grasping the worn splinters of the crag, she
let herself down the face of the rock, till with panting breath
and bleeding fingers she fell among the sea-pinks on the ledge
below. She lay there for a while, half-insensible, till the
first rays of the rising moon began to shimmer over the sea.
Then she rose hastily, and, hiding herself behind a huge
boulder, waited for what should happen.
When the first faint moonbeams fell all silvery white upon the
ledge, the sea-pinks lifted their pretty heads; they grew and
grew till each had changed into a gorgeous tropical flower,
then, leaving their places, they ranged themselves into a wide
circle, and cast forth such a fragrance as might have stolen out
of the open gates of Paradise. Upon each hung a tiny silver
bell, and as they nodded their heads the bells chimed out the
sweetest fairy tunes. Little stars began to glitter among the
leaves, some pink, some blue, some golden, and the short green
grass inside the circle smoothed itself out into the most
beautiful dancing-floor.
Then there was a great rushing sound in the sky, and from far
and near there flew flocks of snow-white sea-gulls. As they
reached the ledge their wings fell from them, and they turned
into lovely little pixies, as light and transparent as gossamer.
Joining hands, they stepped inside the circle of flowers and
danced a graceful, intricate measure, while the fairy bells rang
out their sweetest tunes. On and on they danced, hour after
hour; the moon rose slowly in the sky, but the pixies' feet
seemed never to tire as they beat time to the enchanting music.
Hiding behind the boulder of rock Nancy had been quite
unnoticed, but her eager eyes watched all that had been taking
place. Stretching out her hand very gently she managed to steal
a pair of the sea-birds' wings, and hide them away in her bosom.
The little bells still rang out their chimes, and the pixies
tripped lightly over the grass, till at length the moon began to
wane, and the first glimmer of approaching dawn showed in the
eastern sky.
Then the tiny dancers stopped short in their merry pastime, and,
taking their white wings again, they flew away over the sea like
a cloud of foam flakes. The coloured stars and the silver bells
had disappeared, the tropical flowers broke up their circle and
changed once more into simple little sea-pinks, and the grass,
where the pixies had danced, grew up fresher and greener than
ever.
But one little pixie was left behind. She wandered round
wringing her hands and seeking vainly for the sea-bird's wings
that should have borne her away with the others. Tripping behind
the great boulder of rock she came face to face with Nancy, who
still crouched in its shadow.
"Mortal! cruel mortal!" cried the pixie, "you have stolen my
wings! Give them back, I pray you, before the dawn breaks, for
the first rays of sunshine will wither me up, and I shall turn
into a little faded brown leaf."
"Pixie! cruel pixie!" cried Nancy, "you have stolen my child!
Bring him back to my arms, and then and not till then will I
restore you your wings."
"How can I find you your child?" screamed the pixie. "Oh! give
me my wings--my pretty white wings; let me fly safely away over
the sea ere I turn for ever into a little withered brown leaf!"
and she stamped her tiny foot in her helpless passion.
"You can and shall find me my child," said Nancy, "for I know
that the pixies have stolen him away, and that only a pixie can
bring him back to me. Look! the sky is reddening already, your
time is short. Do my bidding speedily, and the wings are yours."
"The dawn! the dawn!" shrieked the pixie. "Mortal, I will grant
you what you ask! Each of the sea-pinks which bloom on this
green turf holds the soul of a child which we have stolen away
from its cradle. For a moment each pretty flower shall wear its
human face, then choose out your own child swiftly and let me be
gone."
She clapped her hands, and each of the little sea-pinks turned
to a smiling baby face. All the merry eyes and tiny curls were
there that mothers had mourned for all over the country-side,
and at her feet Nancy saw the sweet, laughing face of her stolen
child. With a cry of joy she clasped him in her arms.
"The dawn! the dawn!" cried the pixie. "Mortal, give me my
wings!"
Nancy drew them from her bosom, and gave them into the eager,
entreating fingers. With a great rush of light the sun rose, his
golden beams fell on the wide ledge of rock, lighting up a bed
of simple little sea-pinks, while over the broad blue sea there
flew a solitary sea-gull.
Folding her shawl about her child, Nancy slung him on to her
back, and with slow steps and painful fingers she climbed up the
face of the cliff. The larks were rising out of the heather, the
little blue butterflies were flitting over the yellow gorse, the
dew-drops hung like jewels in the gossamer, and far away on the
distant water she could see the brown sails of the missing
fishing-boats as they beat safely over the bar into Bulvertor
Harbour.
* * * * *
"The story was told me in Devonshire dia
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