Chapter Nine.
At twelve o’clock work was laid aside and Miss Drake accompanied the girls for an hour’s constitutional. She claimed Dreda for her companion for the first part of the walk, for she had noticed the girl’s humiliation, and was anxious to have a few words with her in private.
“I am sorry that you should have had such a disagreeable cross-questioning this morning, Dreda,” she began brightly, “but I am sure you will realise that it was necessary. I was obliged to find out what you had been doing before I could make plans for the future. Now that is over, and we can move ahead. You will enjoy working with Susan. She is appreciative and thoughtful—a little slow in taking things in, perhaps, but for the present that will be a good thing, as it will make it all the easier for a quick girl like yourself to catch up to her in class work.” Dreda glanced up sharply.
“I! Quick! How do you know?”
Miss Drake smiled mischievously.
“Oh, very easily—very easily, indeed! I am accustomed to work among girls, and when I get a new pupil I know at once under which category she will fall. When I saw you I said to myself—‘Quick, ambitious, versatile!’ I have no fear that you will fail to do anything to which you persistently give your mind.”
“Ah!” groaned Dreda tragically, “but that’s just what I can never do. For a little time—yes! I’m a wonder to work when I first get a craze. But—it passes! I get—bored! I’ve never stuck persistently to one thing in my life. The boys call me ‘Etheldreda the Ready,’ because I’m always bubbling over with enthusiasm at the beginning, and willing to promise any mortal thing you like—and then,”—she snapped her fingers in illustration—“Snap! the balloon bursts, and I collapse into nothing. It will be the same thing with lessons!”
Miss Drake held up her hand imperatively.
“Stop!” she cried clearly. “Stop! Never say that again, never allow yourself to say it. You know your failing in your own heart, and that is enough! Every time that you put it into words, and talk about it to others, gives it added strength and power and makes it more difficult to fight. My dear girl, you are not a child—how feeble to take for granted that you are going to continue in your old baby failings! Take for granted instead that you are going to live them down, and trample them beneath your feet. You’ll have to fight for it, and to fight hard, but it will do you more good than any lessons I can teach. That’s the best education, isn’t it, to achieve the mastery over ourselves?”
Now, if meek Miss Bruce had delivered herself of similar sentiments, Dreda would have tilted her chin and wriggled contemptuously in her chair, muttering concerning “preaching,” and wishing to goodness that the tiresome old thing would stop talking and get on with her work, but Miss Drake wore such a young and gallant air, as she strode along the country lane with her head thrown back, and her uplifted hand waving aloft, that the girl’s ardent nature took flame; she tilted her own head, waved her own arm, and felt a tingling of martial zeal. Yes, she would work! Yes, she would fight! She would tread her enemies under foot and emerge from the conflict victorious, untrammelled, a paragon of virtues. She turned a dazzling smile upon her companion and heaved an ardent sigh.
“How beautifully you talk! Our old governess was so different! She did not understand my nature. I have wonderful ambitions, but I am so sensitive that I can’t work against difficulties. I need constant encouragement and appreciation. A sensitive plant—”
“Oh, Dreda, please spare me that worn-out simile! Not work against difficulties, indeed! What nonsense you talk! It is not work at all when everything is easy and smooth. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear—you are going to find plenty of difficulties, and to find them quickly, too. This very afternoon they will begin, when you tackle the new subjects and realise your own ignorance. You won’t enjoy being behind your companions.”
Dreda threw out her arms with a gesture of despair, but she made no further protest. Difficulties arising in the dim future she felt herself able to face resolutely enough, but the thought that they might begin that very afternoon dispelled her ardour. She listened to Miss Drake’s further utterances with so quelled and dispirited an air that that quick-sighted lady felt that enough
had been said for the moment, and calling her elder pupils to her side, set the two younger girls free to walk together.
It was the moment for which both had been longing, but a mutual shyness held them tongue-tied for the first hundred yards. Naturally it was Dreda who broke the silence.
“It was ripping of you to offer to coach me. I don’t believe in learning all those things, but if I must, I must, and it would have been difficult all alone. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I want to,” said Susan simply. “I’ve always wanted to do something for you, since the first time we met. It was at a Christmas party at the Rectory and you wore a black frock. I never thought then that you would come to school with us, but I wished you could be my friend. When I’ve made castles in the air they have always been about you, and something we could do together. I sat beside you at supper. Do you remember?”
No! Dreda had no recollection of the kind. She and her brothers and sisters had always cherished a secret contempt for the Webster sisters and had sedulously avoided them on every occasion. If Susan had been seated on one side at supper, it followed as a matter of course that Dreda herself had devoted her attention exclusively to whoever sat at the other side. She felt a faint pricking of conscience, and answered tentatively: “It is so long ago. I have a wretched memory. I remember we had lovely crackers at supper—but that’s all. How did you come to notice me?”
“Because you were so pretty,” Susan said. “Your sister is pretty too, very pretty, but she does not look so gay. And your brothers—they are such big, handsome boys. You are all handsome, and big, and strong, and have such romantic names. You seemed far more like a family in a book than real, live people. The ‘Story-Book Saxons’—that was always our name for you when we spoke of you between ourselves. Do you think it is nice?”
“Very nice, indeed. ‘Story-Book Saxons!’ I must tell Rowena that.” Dreda preened her head complacently. This simple admiration was most refreshing after the humiliations of the morning. “Perhaps we are rather unusual,” she allowed. “Rowena is beautiful when she is in a good temper, and the boys are always bringing home prizes, and being captains in their sports. Maud is stupid, but she has lovely hair, and I, I’m not advanced in lessons—your sort of lessons—but Miss Bruce says I have a very original mind. When I’m grown up I don’t intend to stodge along in the dull, humdrum fashion most women do. I mean to Do something. To Be something. To live for an Aim!”
Susan regarded her with serious eyes.
“What sort of aim?”
“Oh–h”—Dreda waved her arms with a sweeping movement—“I’ve not decided. There’s plenty of time. But I mean to have a Career, and make my name known in the world.”
“Don’t you think,” Susan asked tentatively, “that it is best to have a definite aim and to prepare for it beforehand?”
“You talk as if you had an ambition yourself!”
“I have!” said Susan quietly.
“You mean to be celebrated like me?”
“I am going to be an author. I hope I shall be celebrated. I shall try my best, but only time can show how I shall succeed.”
“An author!” Dreda repeated disapprovingly. “You! How very odd! I have thought of being an author myself, and we are so different. I believe I could make up a very good story if I’d time. The only difficult part would be writing it out. Fancy perhaps fifty chapters! You’d get sick of them before you were half through, and have writers’ cramp, and all sorts of horriblenesses. We might collaborate, Susan!”
Susan smiled, but showed no sign of weakening.
“I don’t think that would do. We should never agree about what we wanted to say, but it would be delightful to read our stories aloud to each other, and discuss them together. The first heroine I make shall be exactly like you!”
“That’s sweet of you. Begin at once—do! and read each chapter as it’s done.”
Susan’s smile was somewhat wistful. She looked in Dreda’s face with anxious eyes, as though waiting for a promise which must surely come, but Dreda remained blankly unresponsive. It never occurred to her for a moment that it could be possible to make a heroine out of Susan Webster!