The Head Girl at the Gables (13 page)

"Everybody seems to take up so much more room than usual to-day," declared Patsie, flinging out a long arm with a floral garland, and hitting Effie Swan by accident in the eye.

"Of course they do, when they're as clumsy as you are," retorted that distressed damsel, with her handkerchief to the injured orb. "I call you the absolute limit, Patsie--you're fit for nothing but a barn dance! Clogs would suit you better than sandals."

"Gently, child, gently! Sorry if I've hurt your eye, but don't let that warp your judgment. The Flower Quadrille's going to be rather choice, though I say it as shouldn't."

"The others' part of it, perhaps, but not yours."

"There, don't get excited! I forgive you!"

"It's for me to forgive, not for you, I think!" grumbled Effie. "A nice object I shall look dancing with my eye all red and inflamed!"

"I wish the gym. were a larger room!" groused Theresa. "The dances would have a much better effect if there were more space for them, and I should like a parquet floor."

"What else would you like?" snapped Lorraine. "Some people would grumble in Paradise. The old gym.'s not such a bad place for a performance, and the floor has been chalked. I think myself it's a very decent sort of room. Would you like to dance on the lawn?"

"Not in December, thanks!"

"Are you ready, girls?" asked Miss Paget, opening the door. "Miss Leighton has just come, and we're going to begin."

There was no doubt that the dances were extremely pretty. Miss Leighton was an excellent teacher, and her pupils did her credit. The audience was charmed, and clapped with the utmost enthusiasm at the end of each performance. There was a Daisy Dance, in which twelve little girls, dressed to represent daisies, went through a series of very graceful movements; and a Rose Gavotte that was equally pretty and tasteful. A Butterflies' Ball, in which the dancers waved gorgeous wings of painted muslin, was highly effective; and so was the Russian Mazurka, given by Vivien and Dorothy, attired in fur-trimmed costumes and high scarlet leather boots. The babies looked sweet in a Doll Dance, and little Beatrice Perry made a sensation by her
pas seul
as "Cupid", dressed in a classic toga with the orthodox bow and arrows. She was a beautifully made child of six, and danced barefooted, so she looked the part admirably, and quite carried the audience by storm.

Monica, with floating fair hair, a figured muslin dress and a basket of flowers, capered as a "Spring Wind" and dropped blossoms in the path of "April"; even Patsie, the overgrown, looked quite pretty in her Flower Quadrille. But everybody decided that the star of the afternoon was Claudia. She was beautiful to begin with, and her forget-me-not costume suited her exactly. Perhaps her long experience in posing as a model for her father's pictures made it easier for her to learn the right postures. She had dropped into the rhythmic dancing as into a birthright; her movements seemed the very embodiment of natural grace, and to watch her was like surprising the fairies at dawn, or the dryads and oreads in a classic forest. The best of Claudia was that she was quite without self-consciousness. She danced because she enjoyed it, not to command admiration. She received the storm of clapping quite as a matter of course, just as she took the exhibition of her many portraits in the Academy.

"I'd give anything to have your face," said Patsie enviously to her afterwards. "Some folks are luckers! Why wasn't
I
born pretty? It gives people such a tremendous pull!"

"I don't know," answered Claudia, rather taken aback at the question.

"Look here!" said Lorraine; "we've got to take the faces our mothers gave us. Haven't you heard of a beautiful
plain
person? I know several who haven't a single decent feature, and yet somehow they're lovely in spite of it all. Some of the most fascinating women in the world have been plain--George Sand hadn't an atom of beauty, and yet she enthralled two such geniuses as Chopin and Alfred de Musset."

"I'll go in for fascination, then," rattled on Patsie. "We can't all be in the same style. Claudia shall do the Venus business, and I'll be a what-do-you-call-it? Siren?"

"Oh, no! Sirens were wretches!"

"Why, I thought they were only a sort of mermaid! Well, I'll be very modern--chic, and
spirituelle
, and witty, and
fin-de-siècle
and all the rest of it; and I'll have a salon like those French women used to have, and everybody'll want to come to it, and talk about the charming Miss Sullivan, only perhaps I'll be Mrs. Somebody by that time! I hope so, at any rate. I don't mean to be left in the lurch, if I can help it!"

"What shall you do if you are?" laughed Lorraine.

"Go in for a career, my dear!" said Patsie airily. "Farming, or Parliament, or doctoring. Everything's open to us women now!"

"Well, I wouldn't try Rhythmic Dancing, at any rate! You're certainly not cut out for that!" scoffed Effie, whose injured eye was still smarting.

Madame Bertier

"When the bitter north wind blows, Very red is Baba's nose, Very cold are Baba's toes: When the north wind's blowing. When the north wind's blowing!"

So sang Monica, rather out of tune, as she reached home, in a scratchy mood, on the first afternoon of the January term, and hurried up to the fire.

"I don't like school! I
don't
like it!" she proclaimed to a sympathetic audience of Rosemary, Cousin Elsie, and Richard (who was home on leave). "I call it cruelty to send me every single day to sit for five whole hours at a horrid little desk, stuffing my head with things I don't want to know, and never
shall
want to know, if I live to be a hundred.
Why
must I go?"

"Poor kiddie!" laughed Richard. "You've got it badly! It's a disease I used to suffer from myself. They called it 'schoolophobia' when I was young. They cured it with a medicine called 'spinkum-spankum', if I remember rightly--one of those good old-fashioned remedies, don't you know, that our grandmothers always went by."

"You're making fun of me!" chafed Monica. "And I do really mean what I say. It's cold at school, and horrid, and Miss Davis is always down on me, and I hate it. Why must I go?"

"And
why
must I go back to the trenches?"

"
Don't!
"

"All serene! You and I'll find a desert island together somewhere, and live upon it for the rest of our lives. You see, they'd never have us back again if we deserted. We'd have to stop on our island for evermore!"

"I thought you liked The Gables?" yawned Elsie. "Vivien does. I'm sure it's a very nice school."

"Oh, Vivien! I dare say! It's all very fine for monitresses. But when you're in the Third Form, and your desk's on the cold side of the room, it's the limit. Yes, I dare say I
shall
get chilblains if I sit close to the fire,
but I don't care
!"

"The first day's always a little grizzly," agreed Lorraine, who had followed Monica to the hearth-rug and joined the circle of fire-worshippers. "One hates getting into harness again after the holidays. I believe Rosemary's the only one of us who really enthuses. You'll be gone, too, by next week, Quavers! But I suppose you really
enjoy
singing exercises, and having professors storming at you."

"Of course I do," said Rosemary, with a rather unconvincing note in her voice.

Lorraine glanced at her quickly, but the little brown head was lowered, and shadows hid the sweet face. Lorraine could not understand Rosemary these holidays. She had returned from her first term at the College of Music seemingly as full of enthusiasm as ever, and yet there was "a something". She gave rapturous accounts of pupils' concerts, of singing classes, of fellow-students, of rising stars in the musical world, of favourite teachers, of fun at the College and at the hostel where she boarded. She had made many new friendships, and was apparently having the time of her life.

"From her accounts you'd think it was all skittles, but I'm sure there's a hitch somewhere!" mused Lorraine.

Rosemary, with her big eyes and bigger aspirations, had always been more or less of a problem. The family had decided emphatically that she was its genius. They looked for great things from her when her course at the College should be finished. They all experienced a sort of second-hand credit in her anticipated achievements. It is so nice to have someone else to do the clever things while we ourselves wear a reflected glory thereby. Mrs. Forrester, mother-proud of her musical chick, could not refrain from a little gentle boasting about her daughter's talents. She told everybody that she liked girls to have careers, and that parents ought to make every effort to let a gifted child have a chance. In Lorraine's estimation Rosemary's future was to be one round of triumph, ending possibly in a peal of wedding bells. Lorraine was fond of making up romances, and had evolved a highly-satisfactory hero for her sister. He was always tall, but his eyes varied in colour, and he sometimes had a moustache and sometimes was clean-shaven. Though his personal appearance varied from day to day, his general qualities persisted, and he invariably possessed a shooting-box in Scotland, where he would be prepared to extend a warm welcome to his bride's younger sister.

Meantime, though Rosemary had been a whole term at the college, her family had no means of judging her progress. She had diligently practised scales, exercises and arpeggios, but had steadfastly refused to sing any songs to them. Vainly they had begged for old favourites; she was obdurate to the point of obstinacy.

"Signor Arezzo doesn't want me to! I'm studying on his special method, and he's most particular about it. He keeps everybody at exercises for the first term. When I go back he says perhaps he'll let me have just
one
song."

"But surely it couldn't spoil your voice to sing 'My Happy Garden'?" demanded her father, much disappointed.

"He forbade it
entirely
!" declared Rosemary emphatically.

This new attitude of Rosemary's of hiding her light under a bushel was trying to Lorraine. She had been looking forward to showing off her clever musical sister to Morland. She had expected the two to become chums at once, but they did nothing of the sort. Rosemary treated Morland with the airy patronage that a girl, who has just begun to mix with older men, sometimes metes out to a boy of seventeen. She was not nearly as much impressed by his playing as Lorraine had anticipated.

"He ought to learn from Signor Rassuli!" she commented. "Nobody who hasn't studied on
his
method can possibly have a touch!"

"But Morland's exquisite touch is his great point!" persisted Lorraine indignantly.

"I can't stand the boy!" yawned Rosemary.

It is always most amazing, when we like a person exceedingly ourselves, to find that somebody else has formed a different opinion. With all his shortcomings, Lorraine appreciated Morland. He often missed his appointments, and was generally late for everything, but when he turned up he played her accompaniments as no one else ever played them. Moreover, he was a very pleasant companion, and full of fun in a mild artistic sort of fashion of his own. He was certainly one of the central figures in the beautiful, shiftless, Bohemian household on the hill. Lorraine had a sense that, when he went, the Castleton family would lose its corner stone. Yet some day he would be bound to go.

"I expect to be called up in March!" he announced one day.

[Illustration: "EVERYTHING'S GONE WRONG!" DECLARED LORRAINE TRAGICALLY]

Lorraine looked at him critically. Morland, with his ripply hair and the features of a Fra Angelico angel, would seem out of place in khaki. His dreamy, unpunctual ways and general lack of concentration would be highly exasperating to his drill-sergeant. She wondered what would happen when, as usual, he turned up late. Artistic temperaments did not fit in well with the stern realities of life. She had a feeling that they ought to be exempted.

Music, this term, was more to the fore than usual in Lorraine's horizon. After Christmas a fresh teacher had come to the school, who gave lessons in French, violin, and piano. Her name was Madame Bertier, and she was a Russian by birth, though her husband was a Belgian at present interned in Germany.

She was a new arrival at Porthkeverne, and had rooms in the artists' quarter of the town. She spent her mornings at The Gables, and filled up her afternoons by taking private pupils. Like most Russians, she had a charming manner, and was brimming over with talent. She was a striking-looking woman, with a clear, pale complexion, flashing hazel eyes, and carefully arranged coiffure. Her delicate hands were exquisitely manicured. She dressed becomingly, and wore handsome rings. Her foreign accent was decidedly pretty.

Most of the school, and the Sixth Form in particular, went crazy over her. They admired her frocks, her hair, her earrings, and the whole charming air of "finish" about her. It became the fashion of the moment to adore her. Those girls who took private music lessons from her were counted lucky. The members of the French class vied with one another in presenting offerings of violets or early snowdrops. She accepted the little bouquets as gracefully as a prima donna.

"She's
the
most absolutely topping person I've ever met!" affirmed Vivien, who was one of her most ardent worshippers.

"Um--well enough!" said Lorraine, whose head was not turned by the new idol. "She's not quite my style, somehow. I always feel she's out for admiration."

"Well, she deserves to be admired."

"Not so consciously, though."

"I think she's too precious for words. It's something even to be in the same room with her!" gushed Audrey. "I've scored over you, Vivien, because she's written two verses in my album, and she only wrote one in yours!"

"Yes, but it was original poetry in mine!"

"How do you know, when it's in Russian?"

"She said so, at any rate."

"Oh! I must ask her to put in an original one for me."

"She's coming to tea with us to-morrow."

"You lucker!"

There seemed no lengths to which the girls would not go. Several of them kept sentimental diaries in which were recorded the doings and sayings of their deity. Audrey's ran as follows:--