The Head Girl at the Gables (14 page)

Jan. 15th.
--A new sun rose in the sky, and the world of school has changed for me. I could do nothing but gaze.

Jan. 16th.
--Her name is Madame Bertier.

Jan. 17th.
--Her Christian name is Olga Petrovna.

Jan. 18th.
--She looked directly at me, and I blushed.

Jan. 19th.
--To-day she smiled upon me.

Jan. 22nd.
--To-day she accepted my flowers.

Jan. 23rd.
--A black day. Vivien has engrossed her entirely.

Jan. 24th.
--I have asked Mother to call upon her.

Jan. 25th.
--The world dark. Mother too busy to call.

Jan. 30th.
--Mother called to-day. Hooray!

Feb. 1st.
--She is coming to tea. I feel I am treading on air.

Feb. 2nd.
--She has been to our house. It was the happiest day of my life.

Though she came as a stranger to Porthkeverne, Madame Bertier very soon found friends. Her attractive personality and her musical talent gained her the entrée into the artistic and literary circles of the town. Two principal figure-painters asked her to sit for her portrait, and her violin was much in demand for concerts at the Arts Club. Like most of the Bohemian residents of the place, she found her way to the studio at Windy Howe, and a pastel drawing of her profile soon stood on Mr. Castleton's easel. She did not win universal favour, however, at the house on the hill. Claudia, walking from school one day with Lorraine, exploded upon the subject.

"I can't bear the woman! I don't know what Vivien and the others see in her. I call it very flashy to wear all that jewellery at school. She's always up at our house, and Morland's fearfully taken with her. They play duets by the hour together. Father's going to paint her as 'The Angel of Victory' in that huge cartoon he's designing for the Chagstead Town Hall. I don't think she's a scrap like an angel! She pats Lilith and Constable on the head, just for show, but she looks terrified if they come near her smart frocks. Violet detests her. It's the one thing Violet and I agree about. We've been squabbling over everything else lately. It's a weary world!"

"Madame's fascinating enough on the surface," agreed Lorraine thoughtfully, "but she's not the kind of woman I admire. Somehow I don't quite trust her. Do you believe in first impressions? So do I. Well, my first feeling about her was distinctly non-attractive. We ran away from each other mentally, like two pieces of magnetized steel. She's very sweet to me at my music lessons; but I'm sure it's all put on, and she doesn't care an atom. It's an entirely different thing from my Saturday lessons."

One great reason why Lorraine had not, with the rest of the school, fallen under the spell of the fascinating Russian lady, was the intense affection she had formed for her art teacher. She could not worship at both shrines, and she felt strongly that Margaret Lindsay was infinitely more worthy of admiration. The studio down by the harbour was still her artistic Mecca. She had a carte blanche invitation to go whenever she liked. She turned in there one Friday afternoon on her way from school.

"Carina," she said, flopping into a basket-chair by the fireside, "I'm just fed up to-day!"

The friendship, which had begun conventionally with the orthodox "Miss Lindsay", now expressed itself by "Margaret", "Peggy", or such pet terms as "Carina" and "Love-Angel".

"What's the matter?" asked her friend, squeezing a little extra flake-white on to her palette, and putting the cap on the tube again. "It isn't often
you're
fed up with life!"

"Everything's gone wrong!" declared Lorraine tragically. "My head aches, and I didn't know my literature, and Miss Janet glared at me, and maths. were a failure this morning too, and I felt scratchy and squabbled with everybody. I'm afraid I was rather hard on some of those kids, though they were the limit! Carina, when
you
were at school, did you sometimes have a fling out all round, or were you always good?"

"I confess," said Carina humorously, "that, when I trod the slippery paths of youth, I often flopped flat, and made an exhibition of myself. I don't think I was a nice child at all!"

"I call you a saint now! I wonder what most saints were like when they were young."

"Many of them began as sinners. I expect even St. Francis of Assisi howled when he was a baby, and smacked his nurse. We all feel more or less scratchy sometimes. What you want, child, is a good blow on the hills. If it should be as fine and mild to-morrow as it was this morning, we'll have our painting lesson out of doors. Bring your thick coat and a wrap and we'll go right up towards Tangy Point, take our lunch and our sketch-books with us, find a sheltered place in the sun, and paint some pretty little bit on the cliffs. You'll go back to school on Monday feeling at peace with all mankind, or rather girlkind. Do you like my prescription?"

"Rather! You're the best doctor out! It'll be glorious to get away from everybody for a day. I have too much of Monica on Saturdays as a rule. I've an instinct it's going to be fine to-morrow!"

Porthkeverne had its share of sea-fog in winter, but it also had its quota of sunshine, and this particular February day turned out a foretaste of spring. Birds were singing everywhere as teacher and pupil, with lunch and sketching materials in their satchels, set off on their tramp over the moors. They crossed the common, where Lorraine had stood among the thistles for "Kilmeny", and came to "the little grey church on the windy hill", which Mr. Castleton had chosen as the scene for his illustrations to "The Forsaken Merman". The sound of the organ came through the open door, and, peeping in, Lorraine could see Morland's golden hair gleaming like a saint's halo in the chancel, and caught a glimpse of Landry's perfect profile as he sat listening in the dusty gallery.

"Shall we go and speak to them?" asked Margaret Lindsay.

"No," said Lorraine emphatically. "I'm not friends with Morland to-day. He promised to practise an accompaniment with me last night, and he never turned up. I shall just leave him to himself. He's a bad boy!"

"He has his limitations!" agreed Margaret.

The breath of early spring was in the air as they walked through the cluster of houses termed by courtesy "the village", and, climbing a stile, took the path along the cliffs. On such days the sap seems to rise in human beings as well as in the vegetable world. Lorraine literally danced along. Margaret Lindsay's artist eyes were busy registering impressions of sunlight on pearly stretches of sea, or effects of green sward and grey rock in shadow.

"The Cornish coast in February is perfect," she decided, "and it's so delightfully quiet. Heaven defend me from the 'fashionable resort', which is some people's idea of the seaside. I read the most delicious poem once. It began--

She was a lady of high degree, A poor and unknown artist he. 'Paint me,' she said, 'a view of the sea.' So he painted the sea as it looked the day When Aphrodite arose from its spray, And as she gazed on its face the while, It broke in its countless dimpled smile. 'What a poky, stupid picture!' said she. 'It isn't anything like the sea!'

The wretched artist, in several more verses of poetry which I forget, paints the sea in every possible effect of storm and calm, all to the scorn of the lady, who decides--

'I don't believe he
can
paint the sea!'

But in desperation he makes a final dash for her patronage, probably, poor man, being hard up.

So he painted a stretch of hot brown sand, With a big hotel on either hand, And a handsome pavilion for the band. Not a trace of the water to be seen, Except one faint little streak of green. 'What a perfectly
exquisite
picture!' said she, 'The very
image
of the sea!'"

Lorraine laughed.

"No one can accuse Tangy Point of pavilions and big hotels! We seem quite alone in the world, up on these cliffs. I haven't seen a solitary person since we left the village."

"Which remark has instantly conjured up somebody. Look on the shore below us--no, to the left, down there. I see the flutter of a feminine skirt--yes, and masculine trousers too! He's getting out of a boat, and going to speak to her. Actually a kiss! How touching! They don't know that there are spectators on the cliffs. We must be hundreds of feet above them. They look like specks!"

"I brought the field-glasses," said Lorraine, opening her satchel. "It brings that couple as close and clear as possible. Why, I know that grey costume and that crimson toque. It's Madame Bertier, as large as life! Look for yourself. Carina!"

Margaret Lindsay readjusted the glasses to her sight and focused them on the figures below.

"There's not a doubt about it!" she pronounced. "I can almost hear her broken English! Who's the man?"

Lorraine stood frowning with concentrated thought.

"That's what is puzzling me! His face is so absolutely familiar. I
know
I've seen him before, somewhere, and yet, for the life of me, I can't remember where. It's one of those aggravating half-memories that haunt one. I'd like to try throwing down a stone to attract their attention."

"I shouldn't on any account. Let's leave them to it, and go and find a place to take our sketch. We shall lose this effect of sunshine, if we're not quick. Madame Bertier doesn't interest me enough to make me waste valuable time in watching her flirtations."

"But I wish I could remember who the man is!" ruminated Lorraine, with knitted brows.

"He's certainly not worth bothering your head about! Come along and sketch!"

The Sensation Bureau

"Look here!" said Vivien one day in recreation time, "I think this school's a very second-rate sort of show. We're a set of blighters!"

She was sitting on a form in the gymnasium, in a decidedly pessimistic frame of mind, eating a piece of hard oatcake.

"It's as dry as chumping chaff!" she confided dismally. "I don't like my lunch!"

"In these days of rations there's never even a scrap of margarine to spare, let alone butter!" groused Audrey, who was also in a mood to mop up sympathy. "I bring biscuits every morning, but they're not what biscuits used to be."

"Nothing is."

"What's wrong with the school, though?" asked Lorraine, with somewhat of the irritation of a nurse when her pet fledgeling is unduly criticized. "It seems to be jogging along all right, as far as I can see."

"There you've hit the nail on the head exactly. It's jogging, and I hate things to jog. I like them to go with a swing. The Lent term's always as dull as ditch water."

"We have our societies----" began Lorraine, but Vivien interrupted her impatiently.

"Oh, yes! Those precious societies! I know! Every one was keen at first, and then they slacked. They always do! Don't talk to me! I'm blue!"

"Are we down-hearted? No!" jodelled Patsie, throwing up her last bit of biscuit, and trying to catch it in her mouth like a terrier. "I say, Vivien, you silly cockchafer, why don't you buck up? If the school's dull, then for goodness' sake do something to make it more lively, instead of sitting and looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. What the Muses do you want?"

"Something to happen."

"What? An elopement? A fire? A burglary? Tell me the sort of sensation you're craving for, and we'll try to accommodate you. I'm going to start a Sensation Bureau. Excitements guaranteed. Terms cash, or monthly instalments. You pay your money, and you take your choice. Address: Miss Sullivan, The Gables. Cheques and postal orders must be crossed."

The girls sniggered, for Patsie was at what they were wont to call her "Patsiest". At school she supplied the place of public entertainer. Her favourite rôle was that of the jester, with cap and bells.

"I really
have
got a brain-wave, though," she rattled on. "I agree with Viv. Things at present are just about as dull and unromantic as they could possibly be. Girls don't have any fun as they had in the Middle Ages, or even in Jane Austen's times. My great-grandmother ran away from school to Gretna Green, but it's never done now. Well, the next best thing to real adventures is making them up. That's where my Sensation Bureau comes in. Here's Vivien pining for romance. Well, I'm prepared to give it to her hot and strong. I'm going to write her a letter every day from 'Jack', and post it inside the hollow tree in the garden. She can get and post hers there too, if she likes. Will you trade letters, Viv.? It'll be a stunt!"

"If you'll write the first," agreed Vivien, brightening up.

"Of course your 'Jack' will write first to his little 'Forget-me-not'!" laughed Patsie.

Patsie was gifted with a most lively imagination, and some talent for writing. Her tastes ran on the lines of cheap novelettes. She evolved a supposititious hero for Vivien, and began a series of epistles couched in exceedingly ardent terms. All the most extravagant nonsense that she could invent was scribbled in the letters, which, addressed simply to "Forget-me-not", were posted inside the hollow of an old ash-tree at the bottom of the school garden. Vivien shared the effusions with her friends, and they had tremendous fun over them in a corner of the cloak-room. They helped her to concoct replies. The imaginary romance afforded them extreme entertainment. It was as exciting as writing a novel. They worked it through all sorts of interesting stages--hope, despair, and lovers' quarrels--till it culminated in a suggested elopement. Patsie really outdid herself sometimes in the brilliancy of her composition. "Jack" had developed a floweriness of style and a knack of describing his bold adventures that raised him to the rank of a cinema hero. The girls used to wait for his letters with as keen an anticipation as for the next number of a serial. Vivien, the fortunate recipient of them, was envied. Several other enthusiasts suggested opening a correspondence, but Patsie was adamant.

"The Sensation Bureau's got enough in this line on its hands. I'll provide something else for you, if you like--a shipwreck, or an air-raid, or a railway accident--but until those two are safely 'eloped', I can't take on any more love affairs. Oh, yes! you can put down your names if you like. I've a nice little matter in my mind for Audrey, later in the term--no, I shan't tell it you now, not if you beg all day!"