A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl (15 page)

"Encores!" gasped Mrs. Fleming feebly.

"Why, of course there'll be encores! Schubert's 'Hedge Roses' for one, and that nocturne of your own for the other. It'll just about take the house!"

So Mrs. Fleming, with an extraordinary feeling that she had somehow been whisked back to her school-days, sat practising in the drawing-room, with Diana, curled up in the corner of the sofa for audience. It was a dream-world for them both. Diana had been reading
Stories of the Great Composers
, and now she knew the hearts of the musicians she could enter more fully into the meaning of their music. She had fallen, utterly and entirely, under the magic spell of Chopin; the lovely, liquid melodies thrilled her like the echo of something beyond her earthly experience, and seemed to go soaring away into regions she had not yet explored, regions of breathless beauty, though only entered by the gates of sorrow. She would read Alfred Noyes's poem on Chopin as she sat listening to the haunting, bewitching rhythm of the "Ballade in A", and the ring of the poetry merged itself into the glamour of the music, so that ever afterwards she connected the two.

"'Do roses in the moonlight glow Like this and this?' I could not see His eyes, and yet--they were quite wet, Blinded, I think! What should I be If in that hour I did not know My own diviner debt?"

or

"Wrapped in incense gloom, In drifting clouds and golden light; Once I was shod with fire, and trod Beethoven's path through storm and night: It is too late now to resume My monologue with God."

"I don't wonder Chopin had his piano carried out into the fields!" she commented. "I don't believe he could have composed in the house. You hear the wind blowing through his pieces, and see the tassels of the laburnum-tree he was sitting under swaying about in it."

The concert was an annual gaiety which most of the people in the neighbourhood attended, and was generally much above the average of village performances. North-country folk are musical, and this district of the Pennines had produced many voices that passed on to cathedral choirs. Instrumental music, also, was appreciated and understood, and before the war there had been quite a good little orchestra in the parish. When Mr. Fleming drew up his programme, he knew the audience for whom he was catering, and did not fill it entirely with coon songs and ragtimes. Diana, to whom the affair loomed as the main event of the holidays, discussed at the Vicarage the eternally feminine question of dress.

"No one ever comes very smart," Mrs. Fleming assured her.

"But one likes to see the performers in something pretty," pleaded Diana. "It makes it so much more festive, doesn't it?"

"Mother, you intend to go in evening-dress, don't you?" said Meg.

Mrs. Fleming had intended nothing of the sort, but urged on by the girls, she took a review of her wardrobe. She shook her head over the result.

"I haven't anything at all except that grey silk, and it's as old as the hills. Why, I got it for my sister's wedding, when Roger was a baby!"

"But fashions come round again," said Diana, who, with Meg and Elsie, had been allowed to watch what came out of the big ottoman in the spare bedroom. "Why, this dress is the very image of the picture of one in that magazine Mother sent me from Paris! It only wants the sleeves shortened and some lace put in, and the neck turned down to make it lower, and then a fichu put round. Here's the very thing! I'd fix it for you if you'd let me. I'd adore to do it."

No one knew exactly how Diana managed to work matters, but for this occasion she took over Mrs. Fleming's toilet, and that astonished lady resigned herself into her hands. She was a natty little person, with exquisite taste, and by the aid of some really good lace, which the ottoman yielded, she managed to transform the grey silk dress into a very creditable imitation of the Parisian fashion-plate. She even dared to venture a step further without offending.

"I often help Mother fix her hair when she's going out, and she calls me her little
coiffeuse
. I'm crazy to try yours, if I may."

"'In for a penny, in for a pound,' I suppose, you young witch!" acquiesced Mrs. Fleming, letting her enthusiastic guest have her way.

So on the evening of the concert Diana shut herself up in her hostess's bedroom with a pair of crimping-irons and some curling-tongs. She covered up the result with a light gauze veil.

"Don't let them see you till you get to the concert," she implored, helping her friend to put on her cloak. "I want them to get a real surprise. I guess it will make them sit up!"

The parish hall was quite full that evening, and the platform was prettily and appropriately decorated with flags and plants in pots. There was a sprinkling of local gentry on the front benches, and Miss Todd, who had returned after the holidays, and was entertaining some visitors at the Abbey, brought her whole house-party. The villagers had turned up in full force, thoroughly prepared to enjoy themselves. The Fleming family sat at the end of the second row, and watched as the audience filed in.

"Where's Mother?" asked Elsie.

"She's in the performers' room, talking to Miss Watson," vouchsafed Diana, chuckling softly to herself.

Then the concert began. There was a madrigal by the choir, and a glee for four male voices, and a duet for soprano and mezzo, and then came the item for which Diana was waiting:

The Moonlight Sonata, .......
Beethoven
.

MRS. CARISBROOK FLEMING.

The curtain at the back of the platform was drawn aside, and a lady entered--a lady who was palpably nervous, but oh, so pretty! Her brown eyes shone like two stars, and her cheeks were the colour of the knot of carnation ribbon that fastened the lace fichu of her dress. Her lovely bronze hair was parted on one side, and rippled lightly over her forehead; it looked the very perfection of glossy fluffiness. She wore a moonstone pendant set in dull silver that matched the shimmering grey of her dress. The piano had been drawn to the front of the platform, and she took her place. Then the magic music began. Diana knew her friend could play well, but she had never heard her reach this pitch before. The audience listened as if spell-bound, and, when the last note died away, broke into a storm of applause. There was no question about their enthusiasm, and an encore was inevitable. They stamped heartily, indeed, for a second encore, but Mrs. Fleming refused to return to the platform, and sent on the next performer instead. The "Ballade in A flat", in the second part of the programme, was an almost greater success, and produced shouts of "Brava!" from the back of the hall. Pendlemere people could appreciate good music, and showed their approval with north-country heartiness.

The Fleming family sat during the performance gazing as if they could scarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Diana had calculated upon giving them a surprise, and she had certainly done so. Apparently it was a very pleasant one, to judge from the expression on their faces.

As the crowd filed out from the benches at the close of the concert, Diana found herself walking behind Meg, who was speaking to a friend.

"That 'Moonlight Sonata' was beautiful!" Ada Davis was saying. "And Mrs. Fleming looked so charming to-night! How nice to have such a pretty, clever mother!"

"I'm
awfully
proud of her!" agreed Meg, with unction.

"Humph! High time you were!" sniffed Diana behind.

At the door the Vicar was helping his wife into her cloak. He put it round her with quite a gallant little air, and offered her his arm as they stepped out into the starlight together.

"I hardly know you to-night, Sylvia. You excelled yourself!" he remarked.

"'Sylvia'!" Diana triumphed inwardly. "That's the first time I've ever heard him call her anything except 'Mother'. If
I
get married, I'll want my husband to call me 'Diana', even if I've a dozen children to be 'Mother' to! I guess Mrs. Fleming has hopped off the shelf to-day, and I just hope to goodness she'll never go back."

Diana Breaks Out

Diana went back to school in the wildest and most rampageous of spirits. She felt that she just had to let off steam somehow. She seized Wendy's hand, tore with her to the very top of the house and down again, then careered along the corridor in such a mad, not to say noisy stampede, that Miss Todd issued from her study like a lion from its lair, and fixed the culprits with the full concentrated power of what the girls called her "scholastic eye".

"Winifred and Diana," she remarked in calm, measured tones, "if I have to remind you again about walking quietly in the passages, it will mean forty lines for you both, and I should be sorry to have to give punishments on the first day of term."

The tempestuous pair, very much sobered down, tip-toed away, and went to unpack their possessions in their separate dormitories. Diana found Loveday in the ivy room, and burst in upon her with as much of the bubbling-over spirits as she dared to exhibit, hugging her till she nearly choked her.

"I've missed you loads, Loviekins!" she assured her. "It felt queer to be in bed, and not have you on the other side of a curtain. I used to wake up in the night and begin to speak to you out of sheer force of habit. I wanted my 'little elder sissie' awful bad sometimes! Did you miss me the least tiny atom? Do you care that much for your 'pixie girl'?"

"Of course I missed you, darling! I'm just delighted to see you again! It's nice to be back. I haven't enjoyed the holidays
very
much. I never do----"

"I know," said Diana sympathetically, as Loveday hesitated. "I could read that between the lines, in your letters. You wrote me absolutely ripping letters! I loved them! You were a dear to write so often. It must have taken heaps of time."

"I'd nothing very much else to do," sighed Loveday, disengaging herself gently from Diana's arms. "Let me go, child! I haven't half finished my unpacking, and you haven't even begun yours yet."

"
Bust
the unpacking!" said Diana naughtily. "I don't feel inclined to be tidy; I shall just shovel armfuls of things out, and pitch them anyhow into the drawers. Yes, Loveday Seton, I feel like that! I'm 'fey' to-day, as the Scotch say, and must 'dree my weird'. Don't quite know exactly what that means; but I guess I've got a little pixie imp dancing around inside me, and he's going to make me do something crazy. There's no help for it! It's kismet!"

"And Miss Hampson is also kismet!" said Loveday, leaving her own box and coming to the rescue of Diana's garments, which were being literally pitched into the drawers with no regard at all for their condition. "Look how you're crushing your blouses! Go and sit on the bed, and let me do it. There! What a baby thing you are! You're more like four than fourteen!"

"It pays," said Diana serenely, squatting cross-legged on her bed, while Loveday's neat hands arranged her possessions. "If I were a sedate, goody-goody, 'old-beyond-her-years', staid sort of a person, you'd never spoil me as you do. I'll try to practise it if you like, though. Anything to please you! How would this do?"

Diana's mobile face suddenly underwent a quick change. The corners of her mouth were drawn down, her eyelids drooped, while her eyes were cast upward in a sort of sanctimonious squint.

"Don't!" implored Loveday, almost hysterically. "Oh, suppose your face were to stick like that! You'd look the most abominable little Pharisee. I'd hate you!"

"You like your pixie-girl best? Then, that settles it! Now, if you ever scold me again about anything, I'll put on the Pharisee face; so I warn you. You've got to choose between them. Yes, I know I'm a handful--I always have been--but, perhaps, it's good for you, Loveday mine: develops your character, and makes you more patient and persevering, and--and----"

"You're the cheekiest little imp on the face of the earth!" interrupted Loveday. "Get up, this minute, and come and finish your own work. I've something else to do besides unpack for you. If Miss Hampson comes and finds my box still half full----"

"She'll say how slow you've been, and what a nice, tidy child Diana is! Don't try to look 'proper', Loveday! It doesn't suit your style of beauty. Yes, put my collars away, too, or I shall only crush them. There! Very well done! First prize for order! I think you're absolutely topping, if you ask me!"

All that evening, and all the next morning, Diana's spirits continued to fizz. She might possibly have worked them off out-of-doors, but the British climate was against her; once more the fells were swathed in their familiar garments of mist, and the rain came pitter-pattering down on the roof of Pendlemere Abbey, and falling from the eaves in a monotonous drip, drip, drip. It was drawing afternoon, and promptly at half-past two intermediates and juniors would be due in the studio to go on with the various copies and models on which they were engaged. It was now shortly after two o'clock, and the school was amusing itself for the half-hour between meal-time and lessons. During that brief interval Diana, so to speak, "popped her cork".

"Hallo, America! You're looking rather weedy, standing on one leg like a marabou stork!" quizzed Sadie. "What's the matter with you?"

"Your beastly, abominable British climate!" retorted Diana. "It goes on rain, rain, raining till I'm fed up. I want to get away somewhere, and see something different from just school. I wasn't born for a convent!"

"I should think not!" chuckled Vi.

"But I'm in one, and I'm tired of it! I'm tired of you all! Yes, I mean what I say!"

"Draw it mild, Stars and Stripes!" warned Sadie.

"I don't care! School's dull, and I'm bored stiff. I'll wake things up somehow; see if I don't!"

"What'll you do, old sport?"

"Ah!
Just wait and see!
" nodded Diana, putting down the foot that had been twisted round her leg, and stamping to get rid of the pins and needles that followed her cramped position. "It's just possible I may turn philanthropist, and give you all a dinky little surprise," she added casually, as she strolled towards the door.

The studio was a large room on the upper story, with the orthodox north windows and top-light, in the shape of a skylight. It was fitted with desks and easels, and round its walls was a row of casts on pedestals. The girls liked drawing afternoon well enough, but they were not in any particular hurry to go upstairs and take out boards and pencils. It was not until twenty-five minutes past two that Wendy, Vi, Sadie, and Peggy came leisurely along the top landing. They opened the door of the studio in quite an every-day manner, and walked in. Then they all four stared and ejaculated: