Lorraine returned to The Gables next morning to find the school in a whirl of excitement over the disappearance of Madame Bertier. She had been missing from her lodgings since the very morning when the U-boat took in its cargo of oil from Smugglers' Cove. She had departed no one knew whither, without even a portmanteau or a handbag, and had left absolutely no trace of her destination. The police came and examined her belongings, but they found nothing treasonable, though a heap of white ashes in the fire-grate showed that papers must have been burnt. The fascinating Russian adventuress vanished from the world of Porthkeverne as suddenly and mysteriously as she had appeared there. Her exit made a nine-days' wonder in the artistic and literary circles where her clever personality had won her so much favour. Wiseacres shook their heads and remembered suspicious circumstances which had not struck them at the time as incriminating.
At The Gables, Miss Kingsley hastily reorganized her teaching staff, handing the French classes over to Miss Paget and the music to Miss Turner until the end of the term. She felt the blow to be a double one, for not only did it seriously upset the arrangements of the school, but it wounded her in a tender spot. She had been very kind to Madame Bertier, and had thought that, in befriending and giving her employment, she was aiding a distressed ally to gain an honourable living. To her upright and patriotic temperament the disillusionment was painful.
There was little of the term left now; in a few weeks the holidays would be here, and the group of girls who were working together in the Sixth Form would be dispersed. Lorraine could hardly realize that her school days were so nearly ended. She had been happy at The Gables, and she was sorry to leave. Yet life stretched before her very bright and fair, with such pleasant prospects that she thrilled when she thought of the future. Her father had decided that her artistic talent was quite sufficient to justify him in sending her to London to study art, and had consulted Margaret Lindsay as to the best master under whom to place her. Lorraine, in her Saturday mornings' lessons, had dabbled in a variety of arts and crafts, and had tried her 'prentice hand at water colours, oil painting, illustrating, gesso, metal work, wood engraving, and enamelling. Each, she knew, was a separate career in itself that would take many years in which to gain even a mediocre proficiency. On the whole her inclination led her to take up sculpture. She had been most successful with clay modelling, and several Porthkeverne artists who had seen some of her work had praised it and advised her to go on. Down at the dear studio by the harbour, where her first artistic inspirations had been received, she talked the matter over with her friend. Margaret was packing to go away, and the room was strewn with canvases, water-colour boards, paints, and other impedimenta. Lorraine, sitting on the table, flourishing a mahl-stick, aired her views.
"It's so glorious to take up something that you feel perhaps some day you may—if you work hard—be able to make something of. Carina, if I ever get anything into an exhibition, I shall just want to turn head over heels with joy. Art suits me far better than music. If you go in for playing or singing, you have to perform before an audience, and the feeling that anybody is listening to me simply withers me! You don't know what agonies I go through when I'm asked to play my violin before visitors—I'm so nervous that my fingers absolutely dither. Now, painting or sculpture you can do when you're quite alone, and when it's finished people can look at it, and you needn't even be there to show it off. Don't you sympathise?"
"Indeed I do. For anybody afflicted with shyness, a studio is certainly preferable to a platform; and works of art, if they are worth anything, live on. You ought to do well, Lorraine, if you work. You've the sculptor's thumb—broad and thin and turned back. I'm glad you're to study under Mr. Davidson; he's an inspiring teacher and very thorough."
"I shall leave the music to Monica," decided Lorraine. "She's a monkey sometimes, but she's a clever little mortal—much cleverer than I am. I sometimes think she'll be the success of the family."
All of the Sixth Form at The Gables were going their several ways. Patsie contemplated work on the land, Vivien meant to devote herself to the Red Cross, Dorothy was destined for college, Nellie to study kindergarten training. For Claudia the future was still nebulous. Under Rosemary's instruction she had practised her singing with an immense enthusiasm. Her voice was developing wonderfully. Rosemary listened to it with somewhat the feeling of an artist who has created a most beautiful thing. She had taught Claudia to accomplish what she could never compass herself. Her own talent, passed on to another, had gained ten talents more. At the end of July, before the College of Music closed its summer session, Rosemary wrote to Signor Arezzo concerning her pupil, and received a reply making an appointment for her to bring Claudia to have her voice tested. This was tremendous news. She went up to Windy Howe with the letter. Mr. Castleton, absorbed in a classic painting of Beata and Romola as wood nymphs, detached his mind with difficulty from Greek draperies and focused it upon his eldest daughter.
"I did not know Claudia could sing!" he remarked with surprise.
"Why, my dear, she's always singing about the house, and has a very good voice too. It would be splendid if she could make something of it," put in his wife, who in this case proved her step-daughter's firm ally. "Be generous now, and let the girl run up to town with Miss Forrester. Who knows what may come of it?"
Mr. Castleton was mixing a subtle shade of grey for the folds beneath Romola's girdle. At the moment he would have consented to anything to get rid of visitors and go on with his painting.