No mention was made of the photograph, but in due time it arrived, so life-like and speaking in its well-known attitude, that the more sentimental of the girls shed tears of joy at beholding it. Closely following it came other contributions to the gallery, which the new-comers examined with keenest interest, feeling more able to understand the enthusiasm of their seniors, now that the well-known names were attached to definite personalities.
About this time, too, arrived a full report of the examination, and, as had been expected, Rhoda was found to have failed in arithmetic. In other subjects she had done well, gaining the longed-for distinction in German and French, so that if only— Oh! that little “If!” How much it meant! That terrible mountainous “If,” which made all the difference between failure and success! If it had been a dark morning and she had slept on! If she had given way to temptation, and dozed off in the middle of her work! If she had listened to Evie’s words of warning!—If but one of those possible Ifs had been accomplished, she would have been among the happy crowd to-day, and not standing miserably apart, the only girl in the house who had failed to pass. The wild grief of the first few days swept back like a wave and threatened to overwhelm her, but she clung to the remembrance of Tom’s words, and told herself passionately that she would not “whine”! She would not pose as a martyr! Even on that great occasion when the certificates were presented in Great Hall, and the school burst into ecstatic repetitions of “See the Conquering Hero Comes!” as each fresh girl walked up to the platform, even through that dread ordeal did Rhoda retain her self-possession, attempting—poor child—to add a trembling note to the chorus.
She never knew, nor guessed, that the girls honoured her more in that moment than if she had won a dozen distinctions. She did not see the kindly glances bent upon her by the teachers, for they were careful to turn aside when she looked in their direction; and if she had seen, she would never have believed it was admiration, and not pity, which those looks expressed. In her estimation the occasion was one of pure, unalloyed humiliation, and when she reached the shelter of her cubicle she seized the hand-glass and examined her ruddy head anxiously beneath the electric globe.
“It isn’t true!” she exclaimed. “The ghost stories tell lies. I don’t believe now that anyone’s head ever turned white in a night. I can’t see a single grey hair.”
Chapter Twenty.
An Accident.
After a storm comes a calm. Compared with the struggle and anxiety of the summer term, the one which followed seemed stagnation itself. The arrival of the report had been an excitement, it is true; but when that was over the days passed by in uneventful fashion, until autumn waned and winter came back, with the attendant discomforts of dark mornings, draughty corridors, and coatings of ice on the water in the ewers; for this was a good, old-fashioned winter, when Jack Frost made his appearance in the beginning of December, and settled down with a solidity which meant that he had come to stay. The hardy girls declared that it was “ripping,” and laughed at the shivery subjects who hobbled about on chilblained feet, and showed faces mottled blue and red, like the imitation marble in lodging-house-parlours; the shivery girls huddled in corners, and wished they could go to bed and hug hot bottles until May came back and it was fit for human creatures to go about again! People who possess brisk circulations can never understand the sufferings of those whom no amount of clothing will keep warm, and who perform their duties for four months in the year feeling as though icy water were streaming down their backs. Human sympathy is an elastic virtue, but it seems powerless to reach so far as that!
Poor Miss Everett belonged to this latter unhappy class, and perhaps the hardest duty which she had to perform at Hurst Manor was the spending of two hours daily in the grounds with her pupils, be the weather warm or cold. To be sure, they always moved about briskly, playing hockey and lacrosse so long as the weather allowed, and then turning to skating and tobogganing, but there were moments of waiting and hanging about, when the wind cut through her like a knife, and made her pretty face look pinched to half its size. Rhoda, brisk and glowing, would look at her with affectionate superiority, call her a “poor, dear, little frog,” and insist upon running races to restore circulation. Evie would declare that she felt warmer after these exertions, but when at the expiration of ten minutes she was found to be shivering and chattering as much as ever, Rhoda would grow anxious, and consequently more flattering in her similes.