III
It is a far cry from the family of a British Ambassador—collectively distinguished, if individually dull—and the blue wonders of Italy, to an English Girls’ School and the grey horrors of an east coast town.
The post that I filled temporarily at Lundeen School was not one that I should have considered, but for personal and family reasons of convenience. They are long since past, and matter nothing to the story.
But it was at Lundeen School that I saw Laura di san Marzano for the third and last time.
It was the most inappropriate setting imaginable.
She was left there by mama, in mid-term, because a continental doctor had declared that she needed bracing air and companionship of her own age, and also—this I learnt later, quite incidentally, from Laura herself—because mama and a cher ami had suddenly planned a visit to Monte Carlo for the express purpose of visiting the Casino, to which Laura, being under twenty-one, could not have been admitted.
Laura, as the hotel child, had been pathetic, but her dignity had been safeguarded, if not actually enhanced, by the kaleidescopic background of her surroundings.
At school, she was pitiful—and out of place. The girls, without ill nature, despised her from the first.
She arrived amongst them in the short, fanciful, ultra-picturesque silk frocks and infantile bows of hair ribbon that I had seen her wear abroad. Those unimaginative, untravelled English schoolgirls had seen no one like her before, and what they did not know, by experience or by tradition, they distrusted and disliked.
Lundeen School made demands upon the pupils’ physiques, upon their powers of conformity, and upon each one’s capacity for assimilating wholesale a universally applied system.
Laura di san Marzano had no chance at all.
The child who “never forgot people” could not remember her multiplication table, and although she spoke perfectly at least three languages besides English, she had never learnt syntax, nor read a line of any history. She had seen the Guitrys play in Paris—(and from her crisp appreciations and criticisms I deduced that no finest nuance of their art had been lost upon her)—but she had memorized no standard selections from the poets. And she did not know how to learn.
No one, not even the head mistress, was very much disturbed by Laura’s educational deficiencies, because it was so evident from the first that her stay amongst us would only be a very temporary affair.
Mama would certainly swoop down again, probably without warning, and resume Laura as suddenly as she had discarded her.
That was how mama always did things, one felt sure.
Laura herself, although evidently aware of her shortcomings, accepted them with a grave, but unexaggerated, regret. She seemed, quite without arrogance, to know that, even educationally, there were other standards than those of Lundeen, and that her connection with these latter was after all merely transitory.
What really distressed her, and shocked her too, I think, was the attitude of the other girls.
Compared with the hotel child, there was only one word that adequately described these daughters of so many excellent English homes—and that word was uncivilised.
They played unbeautiful games violently, they spoke in hideous slang, they were rudest when they intended to be most friendly.
Towards Laura di san Marzano, indeed, they did not wish nor attempt to display friendliness. They were simply contemptuous.
And I saw that the hotel child minded that, both from pride and from ultra-developed social instinct.
My work was entirely amongst the elder girls, and I saw very little of Laura during her brief stay, but towards the end of it, something happened. The rumour arose and spread like wild-fire, even to reaching the Common Room of the teaching staff, that Laura di san Marzano was in disgrace with her fellows for cheating over an examination paper.
The tradition of Lundeen was that of the public-school code. Cribbing was permissible: ‘copying’ or peeping at the questions set for an examination, was impossible.
They were already prejudiced against her; the accusation was accepted on the instant by her contemporaries.
The Prefectorial system was in full force at Lundeen, and in any case, I could not have made the affair my business. But it so happened that I was present when Laura uttered what I believe to have been her one and only specific denial of the charge against her. I came unexpectedly into the room, and saw the semi-circle of self-righteous inexpressive, young faces that confronted Laura, who stood, rather pale and with her head held proudly high, and spoke very softly and clearly.
“I didn’t cheat. Those who thought they saw me, made a mistake. You are being very unjust and cruel, all of you.”
She was looking the head of her class straight in the eyes as she spoke, and the girl, giving her back look for look, made a sound that unmistakably expressed contemptuous incredulity.
“What is all this?” said I sharply.
They were taken aback, all of them. There was an instant of confused silence, and it was, after all, only the hotel child who possessed enough of savoir faire to reply to me.
“Miss Arbell,” she said courteously, “it was a—a necessary conversation. It is over now.”
She crossed the length of the room, very composedly, and went out quietly.
Her ostracism, after that, was complete. It lasted for a week, and then, just as one had always surmised would happen, mama, in sables and violets, drove up in a blue Lanchester car, and said that she and Laura (who looked so much stronger and better for the change) would at once go straight to Paris, give themselves enough time to find some clothes, and sail for New York the following week.
The hotel child, her face radiant, came to find me and say good-bye to me. She was incapable, for all mama’s imperious haste, of forgetting or omitting the courtesy.
“Do you actually leave this evening?” I asked her.
Mama had been even more impetuous than I had anticipated.
“Yes. I need never see any of them again.”
“It has been an experience, at least,” I reminded her.
“Yes—but——” she shrugged her shoulders.
“Expensively bought?” I suggested. And, since she was leaving, I thought that I might add: “At least, my dear, you have kept your colours flying. These last days have been very trying, I am afraid, but you come out of them better than our friends of the Fourth Form, to my thinking.”
“Thank you,” said Laura. She looked at me with her grave, straightforward eyes.
“It would have been much easier, though, if only I really hadn’t cheated.”
There is a postscript to the story of the hotel child. A very few years later I heard of her marriage to the Prince d’Armaillh’ac-Ambry, the representative of the noblest, and one of the wealthiest, of French families. I believe that they live almost entirely on his estates in Brittany, and that the Princess interests herself personally in the numerous peasantry around them.
Her two children, a boy and a girl, are brought up in great simplicity, and to the strictest and most orthodox Catholicism.
IMPASSE