Chapter Ten.
West End School was conducted on lines differing somewhat both from those of the modern public school and the old polite finishing seminary for young ladies. It accommodated in all about fifty pupils, and although games and examinations formed important parts of the curriculum, they were not regarded as being of such absorbing importance as in many modern schools. Miss Bretherton was a woman of lofty aims, who was continually looking beyond her pupils’ schooldays to the time when they should be the women of Britain; the wives and mothers, and sisters and friends of the men who were to carry on the work of our great Empire, and who, humanly speaking, would do that work well or ill according to the manner in which their womankind influenced their lives. Miss Bretherton realised that the chief result of school study was not the mere storing of information, but the training of the brain to grapple with the great problems of life. Lessons were only means to an end. Half of that which was learnt with such pains would be forgotten before a dozen years had passed by; but the deeper lessons of industry, patience, self-restraint, would remain as habits of daily life. Formation of character—that was the one absorbing object which the Head held in view, and which underlay every scheme and arrangement. Miss Bretherton’s manner was so staid, her nature so reserved, that her pupils were apt to credit her with being dull and easily deceived, little guessing that those quiet eyes were as searchlights turned upon their little foibles and vanities. During Dreda’s first week at school her mood was pretty equally divided between enjoyment and misery. She loved the big, full, bustling house, the constant companionship of her kind, the chats over the study fire, the games in the playground; in a lesser degree she enjoyed the lessons also—those, at least, in which she was fairly proficient—and found Miss Drake a most interesting and inspiring teacher. She loved the interest which she excited, the flattering remarks of other girls, the quiet devotion of Susan; but she hated the rules of “early to bed and early to rise”; found it a penance to be obliged to practise scales, with icy fingers, for forty minutes before breakfast; was fretted and humiliated by her ignorance on many important subjects, and at the end of the long day often found herself tired, disappointed, and—hungry!
There is no doubt that a school menu is a distinct trial to the girl fresh from home. The girl accustomed to mix cream in a cup of freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee takes badly to the weak, groundy liquid so often supplied in its place. She grows tired to death of beef, mutton, and resurrection pie, and is inclined to declare that if the only way to become strong is to consume everlasting suet puddings, why, then, as a choice of evils, she prefers to be weak!
“Is it always as bad as this?” Dreda demanded plaintively of her room-mates as they brushed their locks in company before retiring to bed on the evening of her fifth day at West House. “Do you never have anything nice and light, that doesn’t taste of suet and oven? Does it get better as summer comes on?”
“Worse!” pronounced Nancy shortly.
Dreda had devoted five whole days to the study of Nancy’s character, and to this hour could not make up her mind whether she most liked or detested her. She was the oddest of girls: nothing seemed to excite her, nothing to trouble, nothing to please. Occasionally she would show swift, kindly impulses, as when she had offered to become Dreda’s coach; but not a flicker of disappointment did she portray if such impulses were repulsed, not a gleam of pleasure if they were accepted. At other times she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making the worst of a situation and playing the part of Job’s comforter.
“Worse!” she sighed. “Much worse! Because it’s warm weather, and your fancy lightly turns to nicer things. It’s a bit of a cross to see strawberries in the shop windows, and them come home to ‘Brother, where art thou?’”
“What brother?”
“Raisins!” said Nancy, and sighed again. “They lose each other in such steppes of suet.”
Conscientious Susan exclaimed in protest.
“Nancy! Too bad. There is always stewed rhubarb!”
But this was poor comfort, for Dreda disliked stewed rhubarb almost as much as suet itself. She pouted disconsolately for several moments, then smiled with sudden inspiration.
“I’ll get a doctor’s order!”
“What for?”
“Plenty of fresh ripe fruit. Vegetarian diet. Fruit, and cream, and eggs during the summer heat!”
“How will you manage to get it?”
“I’ll have something... I’ll ask Rowena what’s the best complaint: headaches or dizziness, or feeling tired. I’ll tell mother it’s the heavy food, and mother’ll tell him, and he’ll write to Miss Bretherton. I shall eat strawberries, and watch you search for ‘brothers.’”
Nancy stared solemnly with her long, dark eyes.
“There was a girl here who tried that before—Netta Bryce. That very same dodge.”
“Well?”
“She wished she hadn’t.”
“Why?”
“Try, and you’ll find out.”
“Nancy, you are horrid. What happened to her? Where is she now?”
“Dead!” croaked Nancy, and drew the screen around her bed. After that Dreda might question as much as she liked, but she knew well that never a reply would Nancy vouchsafe. It was really most tiresome!
She lay awake for a good ten minutes pondering over what could have happened to Netta Bryce, and if she had died soon, and under what conditions. Nancy was really the most aggravating of creatures!
Besides Miss Drake, commonly called “The Duck,” there were two other resident teachers at West Hill. Mademoiselle—a tiny, pathetic-looking little creature, warranted to fly into a temper in a shorter time, and upon less provocation, than any other woman in the United Kingdom; and Fraulein, a lumpish but amiable creature who gave lessons in German and music. Miss Bretherton herself took the whole school for the morning Bible lesson, and had a disagreeable habit of descending upon the different forms at unexpected moments, and taking the place of the regular teacher. Of course, the surprise visit invariably happened just at the moment when the girls had “slacked,” whereupon fright being added to ignorance, they would make such a poor display that they themselves were covered with confusion and their instructor with mortification. Almost every day at dinner time two or three girls could be observed with crimson cheeks and watery eyes gazing miserably at their plates, when the beholders would nudge each other significantly, and exchange glances of commiserating understanding. “Our turn next!”
Two masters also visited the school. Mr Broun, the professor of music, was a small, shaggy-looking personage, with a bumpy brow and eyes set extraordinarily far apart. He was a born musician, and, as a consequence, found it infinitely irritating to the nerves to be obliged to teach young ladies who had not one note of music in their composition, but whose parents considered an acquaintance with the pianoforte to be a necessity of education. When one of these unfortunates went up for her lesson, shouts and groans of despair could be heard outside the door of the music-room, accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps pacing helplessly to and fro, and at the end of the half-hour the victim would emerge, red and tearful, or red and defiant, as her nature was, to recount gruesome stories of brutality to her companions. “He rapped my ringers with his pencil. I won’t stand it. I’m sixteen. I’ll write home and complain.” Sandwiched in among the poor pupils were one or two who possessed real musical ability—Nancy, for instance, whose supple fingers seemed to draw mysterious sweetness and depths from the keys of the well-worn piano—and in these cases the lesson would extend far beyond its legitimate length and would take upon itself something of the nature of a recital, as Mr Broun himself took possession of the piano stool, to illustrate the effect which he wished produced. Then the girls in adjoining rooms would find their attention wandering from their books, and little groups “changing form” would linger outside the door listening with bated breath. Ah! if one could only play like that!
Mr Minns, the mathematical master, was built on wires, and expected one rapid explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda’s special bête noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond the stage of counting on her fingers beneath the table. If it had not been for Susan’s laboriously patient explanations, nothing could have saved her from the most hopeless humiliation; but Susan had a gift of apt and fitting words, and of inventing illustrations which showed daylight through the thickest mist.
She rose early and worked late in order to have time to spare for her duties as coach, and Dreda was lavish in gratitude.
“You really are a saint! What should I do without you? Expire of pure misery and despair. As it is, I’m dying of overwork. I’ve a buzzy muzzy feeling in my brain which must mean something bad. Softening, I believe. It does come on from overstrain!”
Susan would smile, her quietly humorous smile, at these exaggerated statements, refusing to feel any anxiety about the health of such a blooming invalid.
Apart from arithmetic, however, Dreda made wonderful progress in her studies. Her native quickness of wits stood her in good stead; she learnt easily, and seized nimbly on salient points, so that, though her knowledge was superficial, she was always ready with an answer, and could enlarge so cleverly on what she did know, that the gaps of ignorance remained unsuspected. Susan, the prudent, shook her head over this juggling with fate, and foretold confusion in the coming examinations; but Dreda was content to sun herself in the present atmosphere of approbation and leave the future to take care of itself. Given a free hand by her parents, she had entered her name for every examination on the school list, and hardly a day passed that she did not propose a new scheme or exploit to her companions.
The time for these propositions was generally the cherished half-hour after tea, when the fourth form girls gathered round the fire in the study to chat over the doings and happenings of the day. Then Dreda was in her element, and every day, as it seemed, was filled with a fresh ambition.
“When does your school magazine come out next?”
“Never! Haven’t got one to ‘come out.’”
“Haven’t got one? A school without a magazine! How disgraceful! I should be ashamed to confess it. Why haven’t you?”
“Too much fag!”
Dreda gasped with horror.
“Why, even at home, where we are only six, we have an—an—” She paused, anxiously searching for a word which should be sufficiently vague—“an annual, with stories, and illustrations, and correspondence columns just like real. I was ‘Aunt Nelly’ and answered the questions. Such sport! ... ‘Yes, my dear, at fifteen you are certainly far too young to be secretly engaged. Confide the whole story to your dear mother. A mother is ever a young girl’s wisest confidante.’—(Of course, no one really asked me that. I made it up. You have to make up to fill the page.) ... ‘So sorry your complexion is spotty. Rub it over with lemon juice and oil. Never mind if you are ugly. Be good, and you’ll get a sweet expression, and that is better than any beauty.’ ... Ha, ha!” She tossed her golden mane with a derisive laugh. “Just like a real mag.! Then I put things in for the boys, of course—got them out of cricket reports and encyclopaedias—it looks out well to have learned bits here and there. And you can give lovely hints! It would be awfully useful in a school, because you could say whatever you wanted without being personal ... ‘No! the old adage, “Finding is keeping” does not apply to your companions’ indiarubbers and pencils. It is not considered honourable in good society to pare off initials inscribed thereon for purposes of identification.’” She chuckled happily. “Don’t I do it well? I really have the knack! ... I can’t think why you don’t have one.”
“How should we find the time?” queried Susan earnestly. “First to compose the things—and then write them out neatly would take hours and hours.”
“I would write them out. It looks ever so much better if it’s all in one handwriting.”
The girls exchanged glances. Dreda certainly wrote a very legible hand, but they were already beginning to feel a trifle dubious about her ready promises.
“My dear, it would take years! You would never get through. Only yesterday you were preparing us for softening of the brain from overwork. You really must curb this overflowing energy.” Nancy narrowed her eyes in her most fascinating smile, in which still lurked a spice of derision. “Your welfare is very precious to us; we can’t afford to risk it for the sake of a magazine!”
Dreda flushed, and wriggled impatiently on her seat. She never could tell whether Nancy was in fun or in earnest.
“I am not proposing to take on more work. It would be a distraction!” she declared loftily. “I love making up stories and poetry, and reading what other people have written. I’d get up early, and do it in play hours. It would be a labour of love. Besides, it would cultivate our style. ‘The Duck’ is literary herself. I dare say she’d let it count as composition!”
The girls brightened visibly at this suggestion. It would be distinctly more amusing to write for their own magazine than to cudgel their brains to produce a sheet full of ideas on the abstruse subjects suggested by Miss Drake. They edged a little nearer the fire, straightened their backs, and fell to discussion.
“Perhaps she might.”
“We’ll ask her.”
“She might be editor.”
“She could write a lovely story herself.”
“Bertha could illustrate. She draws the killingest pictures. There was one of the fifth dormitory at 6 a.m. You saw all the girls asleep, and their heads were killing. Amy had a top-knot that had fallen on one side, Phyllis a pigtail about two inches long, and as thin as a string. You know her miserable little wisp of hair. Mary was lying on her back with her mouth wide open. It was the image of her. She’s nearly as good as Hilda Cowham. We might call her ‘Hilda Cowman’ as a nom de plume. Wouldn’t it look professional?”
Dreda was a trifle annoyed that the position of editor had not been offered to herself as the originator of the movement, and she likewise cherished the belief that she was entitled to take a prominent place as illustrator; but she consoled herself with the reflection that when the magazine was really started her previous experience could not fail to be useful.
“We’ll have stories, and essays, and poetry, and competitions, and advertisements at the end. You have to pay for advertisements, and that pays for stationery.”
“What sort of advertisements?”
“Every sort. Exchanging stamps and post cards, selling snapshots—anything you like. I should put: ‘Fifth form pupil will coach junior for ten minutes daily in exchange for fagging: hot water, sewing on buttons, darning, etcetera.’ I’m not used to mending. It’s the limit! What shall we call it?”
“The magazine? The Grey House Monthly—Messenger—Herald—something of that kind. We ought to bring in the name of the school.”
“I don’t see why. I think it would be nicer without. Less amateury. The—Casket. Wouldn’t Casket be good? It implies that it is full of treasures.”
“The Torch! That’s nicer than Casket, and sounds more spirited. We could have a picture of a woman holding up a lamp, with the word ‘Progress’ written across the beams—like they do in the Punch cartoons. I think Torch would be lovely.”
“Why not Comet?” asked Nancy in her brief, quiet tones, narrowing the double line of black eyelashes as she spoke so as to hide the expression of her eyes.
There was a moment’s pause, broken by Dreda’s quick, suspicious question:
“Why Comet?”
“Why not?”
“Do you mean because of the tail?”
“Comets do have tails, don’t they? So do magazines!”
That was all very well, but the silence which followed the explanation showed that suspicion still rankled. Dreda arched her eyebrows at Barbara, who shrugged in reply. Susan wrinkled her brows, and Norah pursed her lips. What was Nancy really thinking inside that sleek, well-shaped little head? Comets appeared suddenly; remained to be a ten days’ talk and wonder, and then—mysteriously disappeared! Instinctively Dreda stiffened her back, and registered an inward vow that she would spare neither time nor pains to make the magazine a permanent and shining light!