“Oh, you know all about little me,” she laughed, and shook her head as if it were a doleful burden.
IX
“BONG-JOUR”
THE winter was spent for Gorgas pretty much as Blynn had planned. She was entered as a pupil in the Misses Warren Select French and English School for Young Ladies; but the desertion from freedom was not made easily; nor was it ever entirely successful. Gorgas was the vagabond type. In literature Vagabondia has its charming unconventional men, but seldom if ever has the female of this species been put forward without shocking sensitive souls. The unconventional woman is—well, no better than she should be. Somehow the world has worshipped its men when they step forth from its fetters of use and wont, but it looks terribly askance at women of equal daring.
On the morning of the opening of school Gorgas rode solemnly on Gyp, without even the “shining morning face” of Shakespeare’s famous reluctant schoolboy. She was full of forebodings of coming disaster. Professor Blynn, her capitaine, had said, go; that was the sole impelling force. She knew that she could not turn back without distressing him; he it was who had taken the rebellious untamed forces of her little life and had bound them both with and against her will. It was terrible, this bowing to the decisions of another; terrible and unutterably satisfying! She pondered on this contradictory fact as she let Gyp trot forward; upon the convicting desires that found reasonable lodgment in her mind: the desire to turn Gyp’s head right about for a canter toward Bardek and Cresheim Valley, and the greater wish to obey the will of another, to plod straight forward and suffer the pangs of a strange schooldom. Her conscience had a fine glow of satisfaction with each step toward the disagreeable adventure.
Miss Warren saw her from the window.
“Surely that is not one of our new girls?” she exclaimed to the secretary.
Both drew aside the heavy lace curtains, discreetly keeping themselves at a polite distance in the shadows.
“It is Gorgas Levering,” the secretary replied.
“But she is riding astride!” Miss Warren looked helplessly about. “Like a man!” she added. “Mercy! Do go out and tell her—”
But Gorgas cut that command short by dismounting—like a man. She was leading Gyp toward the stables, one arm over the horse’s mane, her head erect, her eyes focused far away. At that moment she was enjoying a childlike delight in successful martyrdom. As she passed around the school—really a fine old Colonial mansion—she came face to face with Miss Warren framed in a massive side door.