The Head Girl at the Gables (9 page)

Claudia led the way along the quay, crossing the gangway where the little river flowed down, and passing the "Sailors' Rest" where a few blue-jacketed old salts were reading the newspapers, then stopped at a particular flight of wooden steps that were painted pale sea-green. Up these she ran, and tapped at a half-open door.

"Come in!" said a voice, and the girls entered.

To Lorraine it was like a sudden peep into fairyland. The rough wooden walls of the studio had been covered with a soft brown embossed paper, that served as a background for sketches, framed and unframed, which were hung there. Pieces of tapestry and oriental curtains were draped between, and large blue-and-white willow-pattern plates made a frieze above. A rare walnut cabinet, a Japanese screen, a gate-legged table, some Chippendale chairs, and a carved oak cupboard composed the furniture of the room; and there were scattered about a large number of artistic "properties"--bright scarves, shells, beads, pottery, vases, pewter, and standing on the floor a huge brass jar filled with branches of flaming autumn leaves.

From the low arm-chair by the fire-place rose Miss Lindsay, a fitting centre for her beautiful surroundings. She was one of those people who seem neither old nor young, for her intense personality quite overmastered any ravages time might have made in her appearance. The passing years, while they had brought a grey thread or two among the brown of the hair, had mellowed her expression; and the shining hazel eyes seemed as the windows of a soul behind, noble, tender, and full of sympathy. They were merry eyes, too, and they danced as their owner welcomed her guests.

"I've been expecting you, and the kettle's boiling! Sit here, Claudia, and you here, Kilmeny! Lorraine is her name? Never mind, I shall call her what I like. I hope you're fond of potato cake? And shortbread? It's the real kind from Edinburgh. You'd rather begin with plain bread and butter? What well brought-up girls!"

Seated on a round, silk cushion-footstool by the cheery wood fire, drinking tea from a cup covered with little pink roses, with the scent of late carnations wafted from a vase on the table, and her elbow almost touching the delicate blue-green velvet of Miss Lindsay's artistic dress, Lorraine looked round the studio, fascinated. She thought she had never seen such a delightful place. It appealed intensely to her romantic side, and with its bright draperies and cosy corners seemed like the opening scene of a novel. She was glad that the tea gave her some excuse for silence. She was too much interested in gazing about to find words for conversation.

Their hostess, wise in her generation, left her to herself until potato cakes and Scotch shortbread should thaw the ice and loose her tongue, and meantime discussed mutual friends with Claudia.

"We mustn't waste the precious daylight if you really want to see my pictures," she said after a while. "Come to the window and sit here on these chairs, and I'll put the sketches on the easel. They are a series I'm doing for a children's magazine in America. They're to be reproduced in colour."

Miss Lindsay's sketches were charming, and full of a quaint fancy. They were rendered in a medium of her own invention, a combination of pencil, paint, and crayon, which gave the soft effect of a pastel with the permanence of a water-colour. The first depicted a nurse holding by the hand a tiny child, who turned with wondering eyes to look at delicate little fairies which the grown-up person evidently did not see. In another a little boy sat in the forest playing with butterfly-winged elves who danced among the bright scarlet toadstools. A third showed a brownie in a tree-top, nestling by the side of a baby owl, and a fourth the pixies sporting under a starlit sky. There were many others, dainty, imaginative and ethereal, some illustrating poems or books, and some telling their own story, all painted with the same clever touch and light, brilliant colouring.

"These are my favourites, so I've shown them first, while the light lasts," said Miss Lindsay, "but I've heaps of other studies, landscapes mostly, sketches of Scotland I took this summer. I'll go on putting them on the easel, and when you're really bored stiff you must cry mercy, and I'll stop."

"Bored!" said Lorraine, with a sigh of intense satisfaction, "they're too lovely for anything! I'd give the world if I could paint like that!"

So they looked through piles of fascinating sketches till the short daylight had faded, and the logs on the fire began to throw queer shadows round the studio.

"We must go!" said Claudia at last. "I've some shopping to do for Violet on my way back, and she'll be raggy if I don't turn up soon. I rather believe the things are wanted for supper," she added casually.

"Then you must hurry," smiled Miss Lindsay, who was well acquainted with the Bohemian ways of the Castleton family. "Even artists don't like to be kept waiting for their meals, however absorbed they get in their pictures." Then, turning to Lorraine, "I'm going to ask you to do something for me, Kilmeny. Will you come to the common with me one day this week at sunset, in the same brown dress you wore last Saturday, and let me sketch you among the thistles and bracken?"

Lorraine flushed with pleasure. She had never stood as model in her life, and, though the experience might be stale and wearisome to Claudia, to her it had all the charm of novelty.

"Of course I will. Would you like me to come to-morrow?" she murmured delightedly. "And--I hope you don't mind my asking--but I
should
like to know why you call me 'Kilmeny'?"

"Because you
looked
Kilmeny. Don't you know the poem? She was stolen away by the fairies, and brought up in the place that George Macdonald calls
At the Back of the North Wind
. Then:

'When seven long years were gone and fled, When grief was forgotten and hope was dead, And scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name: Late, late in the gloaming Kilmeny home came'.

Well, you see, I'm going to paint you just coming home, in the evening glow with the yellow light behind, and the thistles and brown bracken. The sheaf of golden ragwort will be like a wand, and you'll still have the spell of fairyland in your face. I'm not sure if I shan't put in a few half-transparent fairies escorting you back; they'd blend among the thistledown. I can see it all in my mind's eye, if I can only manage to paint it. You'll be sure to come in the brown dress?"

"Of course I will, though it's a terribly old one I keep for scramble walks."

"That doesn't matter in the least. It's the colour I want. The whole scheme was a harmony in brown."

Lorraine went twice to stand for Miss Lindsay on the common, and several times afterwards to her studio to be sketched with more detail. Her new friend made three or four separate studies for the picture, intending to work from them afterwards in oils.

"I've sent for quite a decent-sized canvas," she said. "And I'm going to try one or two experiments. I'm not often pleased with my own work, but I like these studies, and feel inspired to do a three by two-and-a-half. Kilmeny, I believe you're going to prove my mascot!"

When Lorraine tried to analyse afterwards why she had at once taken such an extreme liking for Miss Lindsay, she decided that the attraction lay in her voice. On some sensitive temperaments the quality of a voice has as much effect as personal beauty. A rasping, sharp, fretful or uncompromising tone may be as disagreeable as a wrong accent, but the harps of our spirits, finely and delicately strung, vibrate and thrill to kindly, cheerfully spoken words. The friendship between the two progressed apace. Mrs. Forrester, finding that Lorraine showed such a suddenly awakened interest in art, arranged for her to take a course of painting lessons from Miss Lindsay, and she trotted off every Saturday morning to the studio by the harbour.

The drawing classes at The Gables had been the only weak spot in an otherwise excellent scheme of education, so Lorraine simply revelled in her new lessons. She had genuine talent, and was quick in catching up ideas. The artistic atmosphere exactly suited her. So far she had lacked inspiration in her life. She had never been able to feel the enthusiasm which Rosemary threw into music, and though she worked steadily at school, the prospect of college, dangled sometimes by Miss Kingsley, rather repelled than tempted her. She had drifted aimlessly along, without any specially strong tastes or ambitions, till this fresh, wonderful, fascinating world of art suddenly rose up and claimed her for its own. It was a delirious sensation, and very stimulating. She could sympathize now with Rosemary's keenness for the College of Music. Perhaps--who knew?--some day she might prevail on Father to let her go away to London and study painting. The bigness of such a prospect took her breath away.

There could not have been a better pilot in these untried waters than Margaret Lindsay. She proved a veritable fairy godmother, not in painting alone, but in other matters as well. Lorraine had reached that stage of girlhood when she badly needed a new impulse and a different mental atmosphere. It is so difficult sometimes for parents to realize that their children are growing up, and require treating from a revised standpoint. Unconsciously, and out of sheer custom, they rule them
de haut en bas
, and then wonder why the little confidences of the budding womanhood are given instead to sisters or friends.

Though she was old enough in some ways, in others Miss Lindsay was that most delightful of persons, "a chronic child". On occasion she could seem as young as, or even younger than, Lorraine, and enjoyed herself like a veritable schoolgirl. The two had royal times together, painting in the studio, making tea by the wood fire, rambling on the cliffs, or wandering through the picturesque fishermen's quarter of the town, a hitherto almost unexplored territory to Lorraine. Under her friend's leadership she began to take up various side branches of art; she dabbled in gesso, relief stamping, leather embossing, stencilling and illuminating. New visions of birthday presents dawned on her horizon, and she intended to astonish the family at Christmas. Her only regret was the very scant time which she had to devote to these delightful occupations. Her position as head girl at The Gables permitted no slacking in the way of lessons, and her mother had made an express proviso that her work at the studio must not be allowed to interfere with her school preparation.

"Lucky you!" wrote Lorraine to Rosemary. "You're able to spend your whole day over the thing you love best. If I'd my choice, I'd never look at maths, or chemistry again, I'd just paint, paint, paint, from morning till night!"

Vivien Makes Terms

Mr. George Forrester and Mr. Barton Forrester were brothers, and partners in the old-established firm of solicitors, Deane and Forrester. The Barton Forresters lived at the opposite side of Porthkeverne, on the road to St. Cyr, in an old-fashioned red brick Queen Anne house named The Firs, with a Greek portico and iron balconies outside the windows. The George Forresters always decided that the house was the exact epitome of Aunt Carrie. It was stately, and stood on its dignity, making you feel that it had a position to keep up, and extended hospitality as in duty bound, but with no special enthusiasm. Houses are largely a reflection of their owners, and five minutes in a drawing-room will often suffice to give you the correct mental atmosphere of a family. If the picturesque general disorder of Windy Howe suggested art run riot, the well-kept but tasteless precision of The Firs expressed a totally opposite temperament. No one could accuse Aunt Carrie of being artistic: her rooms were handsome and spotlessly neat, but they gave you the sense of being furnished, not arranged, and their lack of beauty struck a chill to æsthetic souls.

Aunt Carrie herself was big, and bustling, and overbearing, with well-cut features, a high colour, and a determined voice. She is described first, because she was so decidedly the head of the family. Uncle Barton only came in second. He was a gentle, pleasant little man, with kindly wrinkles round his eyes, and a habit of whistling under his breath when things grew stormy at home. In early days of matrimony he made a struggle for his own way, but abandoned it later in favour of a peace-at-any-price policy. He was a town councillor, and vicar's warden at the parish church, as well as a special constable. In his spare time he lived for golf. Lindon, his only son, was exactly like him, even to the habit of whistling and the propensity for golf. With Lindon, however, shells at the present were doing the whistling, and the trenches took the place of bunkers. His photograph in khaki stood in a silver frame on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

The three girls--Elsie, Betty, and Vivien--were shaded varieties of their mother. When Lorraine counted up her blessings, she always placed Rosemary and Monica as special items. She did not get on with her cousins.

"I like Uncle Barton and Lindon," she decided. "You never hear them say a nasty thing about anybody. It's the girls who pick holes in everyone and everything."

The attitude of the female portion of the family at The Firs was fiercely critical. It might be amusing to themselves, but it was uncomfortable for other people. Lorraine, visiting there in a new dress, literally squirmed when she felt eyes of inspection directed upon it. It was the same with accomplishments. Both she and Rosemary dreaded to play or sing at The Firs. The chilly "Thank you!" at the end of the performance hurt more than brickbats. The Barton Forresters were always urging on the George Forresters. They started on the assumption that, as a family, they were more clever, capable, and up-to-date, and therefore in a position to give good advice. Elsie, recently engaged to a naval officer, considered that she had scored over Rosemary, who was six months older and still unappropriated. Betty rubbed in her indispensable work at the Red Cross Hospital with comments on those slackers who shirked giving their fair share of help. Vivien's sharp tongue was Lorraine's chief thorn in the flesh at The Gables.

The fact that Vivien was her cousin made things extremely difficult for Lorraine. She could have done battle royal with a stranger, and fought things out in the lists at school and have finished with them. But to quarrel with Vivien was another matter. It meant also quarrelling with Aunt Carrie, Elsie, and Betty, who would take affairs to the tribunal of Pendlehurst and raise a domestic sandstorm.