Chapter Eleven.
To the delight of Dreda, and the more subdued satisfaction of the other pupils, a magazine received the sanction of the headmistress and Miss Drake, provided that it did not aim at more than a quarterly appearance.
“It will waken you up!” said the latter, smiling whimsically at her pupils. “You are all rather apt to go to sleep at times, especially when a little originality is desired; but remember that the magazine receives official sanction as a means of education, not as a receptacle for any rubbish you may choose to scribble. We’ll have stories, of course; but I have suffered under stories in other amateur magazines, and am determined to raise ours above the usual level. Every girl who wishes to write a story must draw out a synopsis of the plot and submit it to me before she embarks on the task of writing it out. I will then refuse or accept it, and in the latter case will talk it over with the author, giving her some hints as to arrangement, treatment of points, which will, I hope, be of value to the story. In fact, I should like to have the entire synopsis of the magazine drawn up and brought to me a month before publication. So what a Tartar of an editor I am going to be! I have quite decided that if I am to get through the work at all, I must have an understudy, a sub-editor, so to speak, who can keep the contributors up to time, collect their suggestions, and submit them for my criticism. It will involve a good deal of steady, methodical work. I wonder—”
“I’ll do it, Miss Drake. Let me. I offered to be editor before.”
The words leaped from Etheldreda’s lips before Miss Drake’s eyes had wandered halfway round the class. Mary’s face wore its usual blank stare, Barbara sniggled with obvious contempt, Nancy veiled her eyes with her thick, dark lashes, Susan flushed suddenly a brilliant red.
Both Miss Drake and Dreda herself were arrested by the sight of those flaming cheeks, for Susan was, as a rule, so calm and self-restrained that any exhibition of excitement on her part was bound to attract attention. What was the matter? Why did she look so anxious and eager? What were the words which seemed trembling on her lips? Dreda felt complacently convinced that as her own friend and ally Susan was longing to champion her cause. Miss Drake smiled and asked encouragingly:
“Well, Susan, what is it? What were you going to say?”
The red mounted higher and higher until it reached the roots of the tightly brushed hair. Susan’s very ears seemed aflame, and her voice had the husky note of repressed excitement.
“I—I was going to offer—I thought I could do the work for you, Miss Drake.”
Etheldreda’s gasp of dismay was heard throughout the room. Her cheeks rivalled Susan’s in their flame of indignation. Susan to play her false, to endeavour to wrest a coveted place from a friend! Susan an enemy, a rival! Dreda felt a vehement, overwhelming disgust for the whole universe and its inhabitants, a shattering of faith in every cherished ideal! Never, no never again, could she bring herself to believe in a human creature!
The two girls sat silent, awaiting the mistress’s decree, and Miss Drake looked slowly from one flushed face to the other, her usually smooth forehead showing two deep horizontal lines. It was her “thinking look”—the look which she wore when she was trying to explain an unusually difficult point in the day’s lessons. The girls watched her anxiously, saw the lines clear away, and the light of decision drawn in her eyes; wondered if it were in imagination only that at the same time they caught the sound of a faint sigh of regret.
“Thank you, girls,” she said slowly. “It is sweet of you both to be so ready to help. I am ever so much obliged to you, Susan—but Dreda spoke first. I think I will decide to give the post to her.”
Nobody heard any more than this, though Miss Drake continued talking for several moments. Dreda was thrilling from head to foot with triumphant joy. Susan’s flush had deepened from crimson to an absolute magenta. The other girls were torn between sympathy and amazement! For once in their lives they were unanimous in condemnation of the beloved Duck’s judgment, and could not imagine what she had been dreaming about to choose Dreda Saxon for a post of responsibility, when that most reliable of Susans could have been had for the asking. No one made any remark, however, and Dreda, glancing expectantly around, failed to meet any of the congratulatory smiles which were surely her right on so auspicious an occasion. The girls were sitting stiff and straight in their seats, staring at their desks in their most prim and wooden manner. Susan was the only one who ventured a struggling smile, and from her Dreda contemptuously turned aside. Hypocrisy was a failing for which she had no tolerance!
It was with a visible effort that Miss Drake continued the discussion in her usual bright, cheery manner.
“The term is already a month old. I should like to have the synopsis of the contents of the magazine by to-day fortnight—say the tenth of next month. We can then allow three weeks for composition and a week for typing, and still have the magazine ready a week before the holidays. I have quite decided that everything must be typed: the effect, as a whole, will be far better. Faults in style and composition stand out before us in print as they never do in our own familiar handwriting. Moreover, I have other schemes working in my head.” She paused, smiling mysteriously. “I won’t explain now, but later on, perhaps ... Do your best, girls! Some of you have real talent. Who knows, this little venture may be the beginning of some great career. How proud I should be in time to come if I could say of a celebrated author: ‘She was my pupil. She wrote her first story or essay or poem for our school magazine!’”
She paused, looking round the class. Once more her gaze lingered on Susan’s downcast face, but there was no response in its immovable lines. The other girls vouchsafed strained, uneasy smiles. Only from Dreda’s ecstatic eyes there flashed back a joyful comprehension. How beautiful the girl looked! Her vivid colouring, all pink, and white, and gold, made an almost startling contrast to the duller tints of the other girls.
It was impossible to resist the fascination of so fair a sight, yet there was a touch of wistfulness in the teacher’s smile.
The class dismissed, it was time to go upstairs to dress for supper, and Dreda found herself alone in the bedroom with her two companions. Nancy peeled off her blouse, threw it upon the bed, and brushed out her heavy locks in determined silence. Susan approached Dreda with a tremulous smile.
“Oh, Dreda—I’m glad! I hope the magazine will be a success. If I can help you in any way do let me try.”
But Dreda glared at her with sparkling eyes.
“You are not glad! You tried your very best to be editor yourself, though you knew how disappointed I should be. I thought you were my friend. You are not. You are an enemy, and not even an honest enemy at that! You need not trouble yourself about me any more, for lessons or anything else. I can get on quite well alone!”
Susan shrank, as if from a blow.
“Dreda, you are angry. You don’t understand. It’s no trouble. I love to help you.”
“Much obliged. I don’t care for such help. Please don’t talk to me any more. I am angry. I have a right to be angry!”
Dreda pulled her screen with a jerk, cutting herself off from the corner where Susan performed her toilet. Seated on her bed, Nancy brushed at her long, sleek hair, keeping it spread as a veil before her face. Dreda waited in vain for a glance of sympathy, or understanding, but it never came, even when Susan had crept softly from the room and the constraint of her presence was removed. Nancy finished brushing her hair, and rose to her feet in the lightest, most unperturbed of fashions:
“Got any pins you can spare?”
Nancy was celebrated for the number of pins which she used in her toilet. Things wouldn’t fasten without them, she declared. She was fairly bristling with pins, so that her most ardent adorers moderated their embraces, mindful of the scratches which had been their reward in days of inexperience. Dreda eagerly selected half a dozen of her most cherished fancy-headed pins, and handed them across the bed.
“Of course. As many as you like. I say, Nance, I’m sorry to have made a scene. I could not help it!”
“Oh, don’t apologise. I like a good row now and then. Not for myself—it’s too much trouble—but it’s amusing to listen to other people when they get excited. They give themselves away so delightfully.”
Dreda flushed, and knitted her brows.
“I wasn’t at all excited in this case. I was angry—righteously angry! It’s one’s duty to protest against mean, underhand actions.”
“Such as wanting the best positions for ourselves?”
“Certainly not. That is only natural ambition—laudable ambition. The mean thing is to try to oust someone else—your own best friend, when you know she could do it better than you!”
“Yes!” mused Nancy thoughtfully. “That does sound mean ... This sub-editor post is going to be so difficult that it ought certainly to go to the right person. A careful, methodical, machine-like sort of creature, who will never forget or let others forget. The girls are slack enough about regular work, and will be a hundred times worse about an extra, and The Duck is a tartar about punctuality. It’s going to be a problem to please them and ‘keep the peace.’ But you have had a magazine at home, so you know all about it. Susan has had no experience.”
Nancy had seated herself on her bed once more, her hands clasped round her knees, her lips slightly apart, showing a glimpse of the golden bar round the front teeth; her long, Eastern-looking eyes met Dreda’s without a blink, yet for some mysterious reason Dreda felt her cheeks flush and a jarring doubt awoke in her mind. “A machine”—“never forgetting—never late!” Not even her youthful complaisance could apply that description to herself. The ghosts of past enterprises seemed to rear reproachful heads, reminding her of their existence. To each of the number had been sworn eternal fidelity, yet how short had been their lives! The factory girl, for instance, who had received three long, enthusiastic letters, and after the lapse of a year was still awaiting the receipt of the fourth. Poor Emma Larkins had been so appreciative and grateful. Dreda had been able to talk of nothing else for the first week of the correspondence. She had planned a lifelong friendship, and in imagination had seen herself, aged and wealthy, acting the gracious benefactress to a second generation. How had she happened to forget? She had been busy, her father had taken her for a trip abroad, she had joined a society for the study of French classics. The time had flown by until she had been ashamed to begin writing again. No doubt another correspondent had taken her place ... “Susan has no experience.” True! Yet if one wished to describe Susan’s character, could one do it more aptly than by using Nancy’s own words? “Careful, methodical, machine-like as to accuracy!” What did Nancy mean? Was she really and truly in earnest, or did some hidden meaning lurk behind the seemingly innocent words? Dreda drew a long breath, and set her teeth in the determination to set an example of diligence and punctuality to all sub-editors beneath the sun, and by so doing to demonstrate in the most practical of fashions her suitability for the post.