PART I

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THE STORY

OF LOUIE

BY

OLIVER ONIONS

Author of "In Accordance With the Evidence,"

"The Debit Account," etc.

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

NEW YORK

_Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_

TO

GWLADYS

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROLOGUE 9

PART ONE

RAINHAM PARVA 25

PART TWO

SUTHERLAND PLACE 109

PART THREE

MORTLAKE ROAD 175

PART FOUR

PILLAR TO POST 213

PART FIVE

THE CONSOLIDATION 259

ENVOI 356

PROLOGUE

I

In an old number of _Punch_, under the heading "Society's New Pet: The

Artist's Model," is to be found a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the

descriptive text runs:

"And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear Miss

Dragon?"

"Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him in a

cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone called as wished

to see him most particular; so he said: 'Don't move, Miss Dragon,

or you'll disturb the cestus.' 'Very good, sir,' I said, and off

he went; and when he come back in an hour and a 'alf or so he

said: 'You've moved, Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You

'_ave_!' he said. 'I 'AVEN'T!' I said--and no more I 'adn't, your

Grace. And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him

good-morning, an' I never been near him since!"

Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the newness of this

craze of "Society's." If he was right, the Honourable Emily

Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer. Let there be set down, here in

the beginning, the plain facts of how, a good ten years before the

indignant Miss Dragon "offed with" Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable

Emily found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia and

Mayfair.

Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the

report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to

"Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master," had only a short currency. It was

probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften

the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom

she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he

appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the

years 1862-1867; and as "Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity

when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in

the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending

with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.

For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr. Sopley who, seeing

the magnificent Buck in the ring, first put it into the ex-trooper's

head to become an artists' model. However it was, an artists' model he

did become, and, as such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he,

would gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a

sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest lungs

cannot be hid when Academy time comes round. Sopley's measure was

known. If Sopley painted an heroic picture it was certain he had had a

hero as model. The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's

find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the artist who moved

so in the world that in him the tradition of the monarch who picked up

the painter's brush for him might almost have been said to live again,

saw Buck, marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole

possession of Buck.

The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession of Sir

Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir Frederick Henson to

teach her the stippling of birds' eggs and the copying of castles for

the albums of her friends, nor was the great Academician accustomed to

stooping to the office of salaried drawing-master; but--the Honourable

Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.

In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck Causton.

To say that she fell in love with him would demand a definition of the

term. Certainly she fell in something with him. Perhaps that something

was the something that at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises

aside as hindrances to a design even larger than that in which they

play so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large designs

here. Call it what you will: something proper enough to legend, but of

little enough propriety in a modern lady's life; a feeble echo of

Romance, perhaps, but never itself to become Romance unless, of it or

present scandal, it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a

very different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for

Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's nominee

for her hand.

It was a word dropped by the gallant Captain, himself a follower of

the fancy, that led her to the discovery that the hero of some feat or

other of extraordinary skill and endurance, and the young Ajax, all

chest and grey eyes and brown curls, who did odd jobs about the studio

in the intervals of posing for Henson's demigodlike canvases, were one

and the same person. Her already throbbing pulse bounded. She herself

was twenty-eight, a small, dark, febrile woman, given over to

discontents based on nothing save on an irremediably spoiled

childhood, and perhaps hankering after an indiscretion in the

conviction that indiscretions were of two kinds--indiscretions, and

the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Naturally she became conscious

of a quickened interest in her art.

The first indication that this interest passed beyond birds eggs and

castles was that she began "Lessons in Drapery." If here for a few

moments her story becomes a little technical, it may be none the less

interesting on that account.

The study of Drapery _as_ Drapery has not much interest for anybody

unless perhaps for a student of mechanics. For all that, it is, or

then was, regarded by drawing-masters as a self-contained subject, to

be tackled, ticked off, and thenceforward possessed. To the study of

Drapery in this unrelated sense the Honourable Emily apparently

inclined. Seeing her therefore, in this fundamental error, Sir

Frederick, a master of Drapery, took from her the "copies" which had

already supplanted the "copies" of castles in her portfolio, and

good-humouredly began to tell her what she really wanted. What she

really wanted, he said, was to rid her mind of the idea that folds

existed for their own sake, and to endeavour to realise that their

real significance lay in the thing enfolded. Miss Scarisbrick thanked

him.

So, at first from the lay figure, and then from Henson's model, she

began to draw Drapery with special reference to the thing draped.

About this time she gave Captain Chaffinger for an answer a "No" which

he refused to take. His devotion, he said, forbade him. If by his

devotion he meant his devotion to his creditors, his constancy

remained at their service. In the meantime he was still able to pay

his old debts by contracting new ones.

The Honourable Emily's studies became diligent.

There is little to be said about these things except that they do

happen. A word now about Buck's attitude.

Had the Honourable Emily's maid thrown herself at his head he would

have known what to do. His sense of the holiness of social degrees

would have received no shock. But the Honourable Emily, who could

command her maid, could not command what in all probability her maid

would not have had to ask twice for. The most she got (when after much

that is omitted here, it did at last dawn on the bashful Buck that she

had any will in the matter at all) was a blush so sudden and violent

that it compelled an embarrassed reddening of her own cheeks also.

Buck was not personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was

outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and, stammeringly

but reverentially, put her back into it.

Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love with you is to

provoke impatience, anger and tears. On the other hand, to see a woman

in tears because you will not permit her to humiliate herself is to

have the other half of an impossible situation. It was one

luncheon-time (the Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the

studio) that the tears came.

"Oh, you don't care for me--you don't care for me!" she sobbed.

Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care for her; but

there she was before him, in tears.

"If it were that Dragon girl, now----"

Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could only make

imploring movements for the Honourable Emily to calm herself.

Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently to change her tone to one

of irony.

"Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.

"Yes, miss," said Buck--"that is--I mean----"

The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly doubted

whether the Honourable Emily would know a Racing Calendar by the name

she had just used.

"Do you mean _The_ Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.

She snapped: "Yes--the one with the story of Joseph in it----"

She burst into tears anew.

"Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself--I

hate you!"

Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the scene. At the

last repetition that need trouble us here her tears conquered. The

helpless Buck comforted her after the only fashion he knew anything

about--the fashion he would have used towards her maid--on his knee.

He still, however, called her "Miss."

They were privately married in the June of 1869.

* * * * *

"_Don't_ call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one day in the

middle of the honeymoon. "And you are _not_ to have your meals with

the servants! I shall lunch in my room to-day, and you are to be ready

to take me out at three o'clock."

"Yes, m'm," said Buck.

* * * * *

Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed with the

separation that took place in the September of the same year. We may

assume that a much more potent factor was the Honourable Mrs.

Causton's remembrance of her own words, "That I should have to beg a

man to marry me! I hate myself--I hate you!" She did very soon hate

both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the whole subversive

anomaly.

He accepted the proposal that they should separate with perfect

docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed the only thing he

had not accepted with docility had been his introduction to Lord

Moone, on the only occasion on which the two men ever met, as "Mr.

Buckley, the drawing-master." Buck hadn't liked that much. He had made

himself Buck Causton in nine hours of terrific combat, and as Buck

Causton he preferred to be known. But all else he suffered with

touching obedience, and at the proposal that they should go their

several ways his finger flew to his forehead.

"Yes, miss," he said; and his heart, if not his lips, murmured the

prayer that begins: "God bless the Squire and his relations----"

They parted.

They only met once more. This was in the January of the following

year, in the great antlered hall at Mallard Bois, that was as

regularly used on all occasions as if there had not been salons and

galleries and drawing-rooms in a dozen other parts of the great place.

The Honourable Mrs. Causton lay on a couch drawn up to the fire-dogs;

her husband looked submissively down on her, dwarfing the suit of

armour of Big Hugo by which he stood.

She made a new proposal. It was that he should put it into her hands

to set herself free once for all.

"Yes, miss," said Buck.

* * * * *

"Then," said the Honourable Mrs. Causton a quarter of an hour later,

"there's the question of cruelty."

Buck's thoughts wandered slowly back to the Piker.

"Yes, miss," he said.

"I need hardly tell you that as far as--er--procedure--can be

stretched it will be stretched."

"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."

Then wistfully Buck's eyes wandered from Big Hugo's suit of armour to

his wife's face again.

"Beg your pardon, about that cruelty, miss," he said unhappily.

"Couldn't I go down--just for once, Miss--as Mr. Buckley?"

"No; but I can assure you that _I_ don't want this talked about more

than must be either. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I shall probably

marry again."

Buck's finger went to his forehead again, this time in a duty to his

successor. Then his eyes grew grave. His wife had made a slight

movement.

"If I might make so bold, miss--there's another thing----"

She knew what he meant.

"You've nothing to do with that," she said quickly.

Buck would have thought that he had, but if a lady said he hadn't,

well, he hadn't, that was all.

"Yes, miss.... And asking your pardon again--about that cruelty?"

"Oh, that's over," said Mrs. Causton, closing her eyes. "Six months

ago."

"I--I don't remember," said Buck; but once more, if a lady said it was

so, so it was. Again the grave look came into his eyes, and again she

understood.

"I can have it looked after better than you can," she said.

"And--please--you will?" he dared to supplicate.

She nodded.

Still he hesitated.

"If it's a little boy, miss--I might be opening a Sparring

Academy--strictly for the gentry--I wouldn't charge him nothing----"

And after a little further discussion the shameful piece of collusion

came to an end.

They were divorced in the March of 1870. On the 15th of April the

child was born--a girl. Fifteen months later the Honourable Emily

married Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars.

II

The child never got on well with her mother. Mrs. Chaffinger never

forgave her her paternity. The gallant Captain, on the other hand,

treated her as he would have treated his own child--that is to say, he

bought her extravagant toys if the proximity of a toyshop put it into

his head to do so, pinched her arms and cheeks and neck jocularly

whenever he found her head at the level of his waistcoat, and then

departed, as likely as not to pinch maturer arms and necks, not Mrs.

Chaffinger's, elsewhere. He took his wife's former _mesalliance_ with

perfect serenity. She had paid his debts and enabled him to spend a

day or two in his father's house when he cared to do so, and the

Captain, who was a gentleman and not very much else to boast of, held

faithfully to his part of the bargain. He even dropped in once or

twice at Buck Causton's new _Salle d'Armes_ in Bruton Street. The

child was called by his name--Louise Chaffinger; he called her Mops,

because of her quantities of thick brown hair. The Honourable Emily

became querulous and an invalid; took to falling into dozes no matter

who was present, and waking up again with alarming cries; and she

busied herself with charitable works performed in an uncharitable

temper.

Louie was not pretty; but the jocular Captain pinched no prettier neck

than hers, and he declared, as the child grew, that her "points" would

be best displayed could she go about in the largest and shadiest hat

and the most closely fitting tights possible. His house (which, by the

way, he had begun to encumber again) was Trant, in Buckinghamshire;

but the child was packed off occasionally, to be rid of her, to

Mallard Bois, Lord Moone's seat, there to romp with her cousin, Eric

Scarisbrick, already preparing for Eton, and such small fry as climbed

trees and cheeked the gardeners with him. Here she revelled in the

liberty that was denied her at home; and perhaps she already realised

instinctively that her mother's relief at having her out of the way

was tempered only by the invalid's resentment that the child could be

happy out of her own not very cheerful company. Be that as it may, the

girl was told, at twelve years of age, that she was getting too big to

kick these limbs her stepfather so admired about among growing boys.

She was given half-long skirts and French and English governesses: the

French one, though she did not yet know it, as a preparation for

sending her to a Paris convent.

At fourteen years of age she had not heard of the man whose grey eyes

and perfect shapeliness of body she inherited. The Scarisbricks, be

sure, had allowed that episode to be hushed up. But the day was bound

to come when she should hear of the Honourable Mrs. Causton and

identify that lady with her mother. The day did come, no matter how;

and, inwardly trembling but outwardly resolved, she sought her mother.

Mrs. Chaffinger had just come with a cry out of a doze. Her daughter

demanded to be told who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was. She was told

that there was no such person.

"Then who was she?" the girl demanded. There were few of her questions

to her mother that were not demands.

"Who's been telling you about her?"

That did not seem to Louie to matter. She repeated the question.

"She was a very great fool," Mrs. Chaffinger snapped. "Why aren't you

with Mademoiselle?"

"Who was she besides being a very great fool?" the child persisted.

It had to come out.

"Then papa _isn't_ my father?" Louie said, pale. All through her life

she was pale in her moments of stress.

"I'm your mother, and I tell you to go to your French lesson at once."

But Louie did not move.

"Then who was my father?" she asked.

"Who do you suppose he is, when I was Mrs. Causton?"

"Is?... Then he isn't dead?"

Mrs. Chaffinger compressed her lips.

"I was going to tell you all about Mr. Causton all in good time" (her

daughter looked coldly unbelieving), "but since you are here I'll tell

you now. Sit down on that chair and stop fidgeting----"

And she told the girl the facts, not to be denied, of the divorcing of

Buck.

The end of the matter was that Louie now hated, not only her mother,

but her father also.

Her stepfather she thenceforward addressed as "Chaff." He liked it.

Three months later she was sent to Paris.

Eight months later still she turned up again, not at Trant, but at the

Captain's club in London. She announced that she had run away from the

convent and did not intend to return to it. Her arrival, though not

unwelcome, was inopportune, for the Captain had a little party that

evening and seemed disconcerted. The toyshops, he reflected, were

closed, and then he looked at his stepdaughter again.... It could not,

after all, have been one of the more characteristic of the Captain's

parties, for he took Louie to it, pigtail and all, and for a whole

evening pinched nobody. Then he took her to his chambers, winked at

his man in token of something extraordinary, hesitated, and then, with

an "Oh, be hanged to it!" expression, gave Louie the key of his own

sleeping apartment. Louie examined his prints a little wonderingly,

but approved of his ribboned haircurlers and large frilled pincushion,

and then went to sleep. The next day the Captain took her down to

Trant and left her there.

The next few years were a constant succession of wrangles with her

mother. She had flatly refused to return to the convent, and if the

Honourable Emily was petulant, her daughter was merciless. She had

been put off with the drawing-master version of her mother's marriage,

but that was enough; she held it over her mother's head, and Buck, if

he had desired revenge, had it. She knew herself to be hybrid, and

treated the Scarisbricks and their drawing-masters with equal scorn.

Worse, she treated them equally with a contemptuous tolerance. She

harped with pride on the baser strain. In a word, there was no doing

anything with her.

She reached the age of twenty-one.

At twenty-two she expressed a wish to go on the stage. The Captain,

who was genuinely fond of her, stopped that. At twenty-three she

declared plainly that "a girl in her position" ought to have a means

of earning her own living--not necessarily drawing. The Captain being

averse from this also, she took the matter into her own hands by

writing to the secretary of a Horticultural College in Somersetshire,

paying her fees, and enrolling herself as a student without saying a

word to anybody. She packed her boxes, and in the second week of

January 1894 presented herself before her mother, dressed for

travelling, and announced that she had very little time in which to

catch her train.

"Oh, by the way," she said, turning at the door, "if you write, you

might address letters to me in my own name--Causton."

Then she left.

* * * * *

"_Was die Mutter traeumt, das vollbringt die Tochter._" Here, with its

repetitions of and its departures from that of the Honourable Emily,

follows her story.

PART I

RAINHAM PARVA

I

The Horticultural College at Rainham Parva, now defunct, was hardly a

college in the modern sense at all. Its technical books were

antiquated; it had only one or two old microscopes; and it totally

lacked the newer trimmings of specialisation. Its founder, a Bristol

seedsman called Chesson, had bought the place cheaply, house and all,

a dozen years before, and having five hardy daughters eating their

heads off at home, had, as the saying is, economically emancipated

them. That meant then (whatever it may mean now) that, realising that

the wages of two men and a boy might be saved, he had had them down to

Rainham Parva and had set them to work.

The second Miss Chesson, Miss Harriet, had shown a real aptitude for

the work. She had won, after three years, a Diploma, and this Diploma,

together with the presence in the house as paying boarder of a niece

of Chesson's, had put an idea into the seedsman's head--the premium

idea. With the Diploma properly advertised, its grantee made

Principal, a premium or so forgone (called a Scholarship) and the

proper person installed over all as Lady-in-Charge, Chesson had

foreseen a good deal of his work being done by young women who would

pay for the privilege of being allowed to do it. There is no need to

describe the development of the idea. The enterprise had prospered,

and when Louie Causton had put her name down on the books and paid her

fees the complement of thirty girls was full.

She did not, after all, travel down alone. Her stepfather, hinting

that it was not necessary to say anything about this to her mother,

made the journey with her. The pair of them shortened the hours by

guessing which of the young women in the same train were to be Louie's

fellow-students; and when they alighted at Rainham Magna station the

Captain put Louie and her traps into one of the nondescript vehicles

that only saw the light when the Rainham girls arrived or departed,

and drove off with her to the college. There he shook hands with the

Lady-in-Charge, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, and asked her whether she was

related to Lovenant-Smith of the 24th. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's reply did

not actually affirm her regret that she was so related, but the

Captain's affability dried up suddenly. He was returning to town by

the four-o'clock train; before doing so he took a turn round the place

with Louie.

"Well," he said, as Louie took her leave of him at the gates, "it's a

good growing country, I should say; rum idea of yours though....

You've heard me speak of Lovenant-Smith, haven't you? Adjutant eight

or nine years ago; not a bad chap at all, _I_ should have said. She'll

be one of the Shropshire lot, I expect. I knew he had people down

there.... Well, mind you don't run away with a gardener. 'Bye,

Mops----"

And he was off, tugging at his moustache and inwardly commenting that

the whole escapade was "just like Louie."

It was a good growing country. Chesson said that the mildness of the

winters was due to the Gulf Stream; Miss Harriet Chesson attributed it

to ozone--ozone having been a word to conjure with at the time when

she had taken her Diploma. Ozone or Gulf Stream, it provided wild

violets in December, lemon-verbena that grew in trees up the sides of

the cottages and had to be cut away from the upper windows, and filled

the deep lanes with the hart's-tongue fern. It also brought forth rich

produce. The dairy business and poultry farm flourished; crates and

parcels and returned empties kept the goods clerk at Rainham Magna

station busy; and, when the heather bloomed on the hill that rose

between Chesson's and the sea, the "Rainham Heather Honey," green as

bronze and thick as glue, was at a premium. At the crest of the hill

the seedsman's estate ended. Beyond that, dropping abruptly to the

west, lay deep wooded coombes, green to the very rocks of the shore.

Louie's age put her at once out of the class of the "new girl" who, in

the school tales, sits pathetically on her box and waits for somebody

to speak to her. She was twenty-four, and probably only one other

student, the copper-haired girl with the long thin neck and the

"salt-cellars" showing through her white flannel blouse, who asked her

her number and offered to show her the way to her cubicle, was more

than twenty-two. Her large black feathered hat (see the first part of

the Captain's advice as to how she would make the most of herself),

and her expensively simple navy blue coat and skirt down to her toes,

further distinguished her among the tweed jackets and ankle-length

skirts of the younger girls. No doubt she had her perfect management

of these and her numerous other garments from her mother's former

interest in the study of Drapery. If the Captain did not think her

face pretty, it must be remembered that the Captain had standards of

prettiness of his own. Pretty in the professional-beauty sense her

irregular mouth and long chin perhaps were not. Her large, clear,

pebble-grey eyes at any rate were arresting.

The copper-haired girl, having shown Louie her cubicle, offered to

show her the rest of the house also. They began upstairs on the first

floor, where the girls slept. The place was an old mansion in the form

of a hollow square, and as they came to each latticed embrasure Louie

stopped to look at the famous Rainham yew that almost filled the

grassgrown inner courtyard. The corridors were dark, and sudden steps

where no steps were to have been expected made of the uneven floors a

series of booby-traps for those not familiar with them. Memories of

the Monmouth Rebellion seemed to linger round the corners and to be

shut up in the cupboards of the place. They passed downstairs. Through

the doorway of the handsome Restoration facade they saw the yew again,

dark beyond the shining flags of the hall. Louie had already been in

the reception-room and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's private apartments on the

right of the doorway; on the left, she was told, were the quarters of

Miss Harriet (who alone of Chesson's daughters remained there) and the

staff. The domestics slept at the top of the house; the four male

gardeners (all married) occupied the farm a furlong away at the back.

"But wouldn't you like some tea?" said the copper-haired girl. "It's

in the dining-room."

"I was told to report myself to Miss Chesson at five," said Louie,

looking at her watch.

"Well, you've just time, if you're quick----"

They sought the room where the housekeeper ran cups of tea from the

tap of a large and funereal bronze urn.

It was ten minutes to five when Louie entered the dining-room. Before

the clock had struck five she had taken a certain position in the

college.

She herself hardly knew how it happened. The room was full of noise

and chatter, and near Louie, talking louder and making more noise than

anybody else, was a lanky child of sixteen, to be a tall blonde beauty

in another three or four years' time, but so far only a mass of

unadjusted proportions and movements that lacked co-ordination. She

had several distinct voices, and in one of these she was now engaged

in unabashed mimicry. Louie, who had got her cup of tea, heard a

bell-like "_Os_-trich feathers!" and she was about to put a question

to the copper-haired girl when, with a mock reverence and an explosive

"Your _Ma_-jesty!" the child swept backwards into her. She barely

saved her cup of tea. The girl gave a quick turn; her "Clum----" was

changed to a "Sorry!" as she saw a new face, and Louie smiled.

"Your feet were all wrong," Louie said.

The blonde child turned eagerly again.

"Can you do it?" she asked.

The next moment, before Louie could get out "A drawing-room curtsy?

Yes," the child had cried: "Girls! Girls! Here's somebody who knows

how to do it! Do come and show us!"

"Really?" said Louie, smiling, and handing her cup of tea to the

copper-haired girl.

"Yes--come here, Rhoda, and watch (that's my sister--she's to be

presented, you know)."

Louie laughed. "Quickly then--I have to see Miss Chesson----"

And, pushed unceremoniously forward, and still in her feathered hat

and navy blue costume, Louie made her first bow to her fellow-students

at Chesson's in the deep and swanlike genuflexion she had practised

with her cousin, Cynthia Scarisbrick, a couple of years before. Then

she ran out, smiling.

"_How_ ripping!" she heard somebody say as she did so. "I expect she's

been presented."

Louie sought Miss Harriet.

The Principal, a businesslike, damson-complexioned woman of

forty-five, with a deerstalker hat on her close-cropped curly hair,

asked her what course of study she proposed to take. Louie replied (in

other words) that all courses were the same to her. Miss Harriet had

had that kind of student before. She asked a few further questions,

and then put Louie down for the elementary course. She dismissed her

with a marked syllabus and a copy of the Rules.

Louie read the Rules, nodded, as much as to say, "I thought so!" and

then laughed. There was no need to ask who had drawn them up; she

remembered the frigid way in which Chaff had been put into his place

that afternoon. There was a serenity about them that transcended the

ordinary imperative mood. "_Students do not absent themselves from

Morning Prayers or Divine Service without Permission._" "_Students do

not give Orders to the Gardeners or Domestics._" "_Students do not

pass beyond the Bounds of the College (Map appended)._" If on occasion

students did all of these things, that did not detract from the

_largior ether_ in which the Rules were conceived.

Nor did mere evidence to the contrary ever in the least degree abate

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's persuasion that the young ladies of Chesson's,

being the daughters of gentlefolk, were by that very fact almost to be

trusted to do without Rules at all.

On the following morning Louie, with leggings of doe-skin buttoned to

her knees (see the second of the Captain's recommendations for the

attire that suited her best), and wearing a wide-pocketed jacket not

unlike a man's, began the practical study of Horticulture.

II

She was attached to the "posse" of six girls of which the

copper-haired student, whose name was Richenda Earle, was the head.

This girl, as the holder of the scholarship mentioned a page or two

back, was the single non-fee-paying student in the place. Her father

was a bookseller in Westbourne Grove, and she had kept his books for

him before coming to Chesson's. She had picked up her knowledge of

book-keeping at an obscure and ill-appointed Business School in

Holborn, but, her health being anything but robust, she had taken up

gardening under the impression that it was an out-of-doors pursuit. It

was only this at Chesson's to a strictly limited extent. Whatever

students did or did not learn, the output for the market had to be

maintained, and this necessitated, for days and days together, work in

the twelve long glass-houses, from the humid heat of which the girls

came out limp and listless and relaxed. Richenda Earle suffered from

these depressions more than most of them, and now only remained at the

college because Miss Harriet had held out hopes for her of a place on

the staff. She was easily head of all the classes of which she was a

member, but was hopelessly incapable of making her personality felt.

Add to all this that she was avid of popularity, and that her

self-consciousness took the form of making her more assertive

(without being a bit more effective) than any girl in the college, and

you will see why Louie felt a little sorry for her without taking to

her very much. She for her part had fastened herself on Louie from the

start, and had been the first to put the question that Louie had had

to answer a dozen times before she had been at Chesson's two hours.

"No, I haven't been presented," Louie had said, finding herself

waylaid almost at the door of Miss Harriet's room as she had come out

again. "My cousin has; that's where I learned it. We practised it

together."

"I've seen them go in," Richenda had murmured, a little wistfully, a

little dully; "the carriages and things, you know. I live in London."

Thereupon she had volunteered some of the information stated above, as

if inviting a confidence in return. "I'm glad you're in my posse," she

had concluded, as Louie had turned away without giving any information

whatever about herself.

The remaining members of "Earle's posse" were the two Burnett sisters

("B Major," the girl who was to be presented, and "B Minor," the

sixteen-year-old beauty-to-be), a Scotch girl called Macfarlane, and

one other girl, half French, Beatrice Pigou. There were four other

posses at the college, and each was told off each day to put itself

under the direction of one or other of the four gardeners, to pot,

"prick out," water or whatever the task might be. The gardener at

present in charge of Louie's posse was a sullen young Apollo called

Priddy, whose face and neck and forearms ozone or the Gulf Stream had

turned to the hue of some deep and old and mellow violin; and Burnett

Minor and the younger girls, talking in terms of the life to which

their eyes were yet sealed, discussed Priddy with a freedom perfectly

innocent and entirely appalling.

Louie had not been at Rainham Parva two days before she was wondering

whether after all she wanted to stay. She didn't know really why she

had come. Not one of the three commonest reasons for girls being

there--a stepmother, to be able to earn a little pocket-money, or to

get over a youthful love-affair--quite fitted her case. And then there

were those ridiculous Rules. She supposed that if she stayed she would

be on the same footing as the juniors, and she hardly thought she

could submit to that. Not that the Rules did not seem to justify

themselves; on the contrary, they did. Merely because Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith affirmed that students did not do this or that,

students as a matter of fact either did not do these things, or else

consented to class themselves as transgressors when they did.

But Louie's own attitude in the face of a prohibited thing, inherited

from her mother and now made inveterate by her upbringing, was

invariably that of a wonder what would happen were the prohibition to

be disregarded.

It was just a wonder, nothing more.

Then, on the night of her third day at Chesson's, she made up her mind

to forfeit her fees and leave in the morning. The reason for her

decision was this:

During the vacation certain digging had been allowed by the gardeners

to fall into arrears; and Earle's posse, together with another set of

six girls, had been set to do it. Now digging was the hardest work the

girls were ever called upon to do, and at the beginning of the term at

any rate they were spared it as much as possible. But education or

output required that this digging should be done, and accordingly the

twelve girls had digged for the whole morning, and in the afternoon

had varied the labour by carrying heavy pots from House No. 6 to House

No. 10--a distance of perhaps sixty yards. The next morning twelve

girls (or rather eleven, for Burnett Minor's unset muscles had

suffered but little) were half incapacitated by stiffness, and that

night there was an outcry for hot baths and arnica. Louie, clad in

dressing-gown and slippers and carrying her soap and sponge and towel,

hobbled to the bathrooms, and came, in the box-room, upon an

indignation-meeting.

This box-room was the common meeting-ground for students who awaited

their turns at the baths. It lay over the back courtyard arch, and the

four bathrooms adjoined it, two on either side. It was piled almost to

the ceiling with trunks and boxes and dress-baskets, the white

initials of which glimmered in the shadows cast by a couple of candles

on the floor; but there were isolated boxes enough to make seats for

the seven or eight girls already assembled there. They had slippers on

their naked feet and single garments on their aching bodies; and on

one of Louie's own boxes Burnett Major was peering at the little blue

flame of a spirit-kettle and mixing in a row of cups the paste for

that beverage of revolt--cocoa. Burnett Minor had traitorously turned

the general righteous anger to private account, had "bagged" the

hottest bath, and was now carolling at the top of her lungs in the

right-hand bathroom.

"----then if Earle won't do it I vote we draw lots!" Macfarlane was

exclaiming shrilly as Louie opened the door. "Those lazy louts of

gardeners are supposed to have all the digging done before we come

up----"

They were not--not if Chesson knew it; but "Of course they are!" cried

five voices at once.

"Well, I'm just not going to stand it--there----"

"And I'm not----"

"Nor me----"

"And for two pins I'd tell Priddy so!"

There was a moment's silence, but only because, all having spoken at

once, all had to take breath at once.

"It's abominable----"

"Disgusting----"

"Cela m'embete----"

"Here's Causton--what do _you_ vote, Causton?" they cried, turning to

her.

"What about?" Louie asked.

"Why, everything, of course--this beastly place--and setting us to dig

the first week--and Priddy's beastly cheek----"

Then every tongue was unloosed.

"_And_ a row every time we want an extra blouse washed----"

"_And_ washing two guineas a term extra----"

"_And_ only the vuggles for dinner that aren't good enough for the

market----" ("Vuggles" were vegetables.)

Another pause for breath.

"Let's what-d'-you-call-it--strike----"

Louie laughed as she sat stiffly down by Burnett Major.

"Oh, I'll vote for anything you like; I don't care," she said.

Then they began anew.

"Earle's head of the posse--_she_ ought to do it----"

Richenda Earle's voice broke in in loud complaint.

"How _can_ I? You know I would like a shot if it wasn't for my

scholarship. But I should just be told that if I didn't like it I

could go. Elwell's head of your lot. Elwell ought to go."

"I don't care who goes, but I will _not_ be told to do things by

Priddy."

"Priddy!----"

(Louie smiled again as there came from the bathroom the joyful voice:

"_Early one mo-o-orning--as the su-un was a-rising!_----")

"And those pots hadn't got to be moved--he was only making work----"

"--gros tyran!----"

"--like they kept us three weeks grading and packing tomatoes last

autumn, and called it 'study'----"

"--and the bruised ones for us----"

"--not even fit for ketchup----"

"--Dothegirls Hall _this_ establishment ought to be called!----"

Another momentary pause: then:

"--let's all sign a petition----"

"--no, a what-d'you-call-it--an ultimatum----"

"--just telling them straight----"

"Your bath, Earle----"

From the bathroom had come the gurgle of escaping water. Boiled pink,

turbaned with her towel, smelling of somebody else's scented soap and

radiating unrepentance that Earle's bath must be a tepid one, Burnett

Minor bounced in.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, do lend me a dry towel, just to finish

with. Oh, Causton, the curtsy, now that I've something loose on!

Crocks! My cocoa, Major, and who said Priddy just now? 'Students do

not fall in love with Priddy.' (I sha'n't hush.) Sugar, Mac, and,

Causton, I wish you'd do my hair your way, just to see how it

looks----"

And, twirling twice in the midst of a corolla of pink cashmere

dressing-gown, she sank to the floor and began to nurse a chilblain on

her heel.

Louie, her hands behind her head, leaned back and watched the scene

with the greatest amusement. A master-rebel herself, she knew that

here was no rebellion. The meeting, like other meetings, was merely

letting off steam, and the girls who "wouldn't stand it" would be

standing it exactly the same on the morrow. Well, on the morrow she

herself would be off. Her boxes were only half unpacked; half-an-hour

would put the other things back again. Already she saw that this

Chesson's was an imposition. In the meantime, the indignation meeting

was very amusing. She felt almost motherly towards these tractable

revolutionaries. Her indulgence became still greater as they spoke out

again.

"Another thing," a girl of Elwell's posse demanded; "why couldn't I go

to Rainham yesterday to have my photograph taken?"

("Break the camera," Burnett Minor murmured to the chilblain.)

"And just because somebody'd bagged my boots and I was five minutes

late the other day----"

"Je m'en fiche pas mal----" Pigou began.

("Parly Angly, voo affectay feele," from Burnett Minor.)

"I should like to see one of the gardeners at home looking at us the

way Priddy does----"

"Or Miss Harriet either for that matter--she's only a sort of

forewoman----"

"--applewoman----"

"--tomatoes----"

"--that's all she is really----"

"--nothing else----"

Louie laughed outright. Another gurgle had come from the bathroom, and

Earle reappeared. Her announcement that the water was now cold added

to the general sense of wrong.

"Not even enough hot water!"

"Scarcely a drop, ever!----"

"Odious!"

"Then will somebody come into my cubicle and rub me--not you, B

Minor."

("Just give a squint out of the window, Elwell.")

("It's all right. Her lights are out. Lovey's too.")

"Well, I _won't_ have a cold bath, to please Lovey or anybody else!"

Nor did Louie want one. She had risen. She moved to the window that

looked out over the courtyard yew--the window from which watch was

kept to see when Miss Harriet and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith retired--and

yawned. In the middle of her yawn she suddenly laughed again.

"Good gracious!" she thought. It was too amusing.

Suddenly Richenda Earle, who also was standing by the window, spoke to

her. Evidently Richenda did not think she had been fairly treated by

the meeting.

"Do _you_ think they ought to ask me to?" she complained.

Louie turned.

"To ask you to what?"

"To complain to Miss Harriet--me, the only Scholarship girl."

Louie shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "Oh, they won't complain to

Miss Harriet!"

"No--but one doesn't like to refuse things----" Earle said in injured

tones.

Before Louie would have had time to reply to this, had she thought of

replying to it, a diversion occurred. Nobody had heard steps

approaching, but all at once the door opened, and Authority, in the

person, not of Miss Harriet, but of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith herself, stood

looking in. The hubbub ceased as the boiling of a kettle ceases when

cold water is poured in. Several of the conspirators rose to their

feet; Burnett Minor, making no bones about it, bolted behind a box.

Great is even the look of Authority; it was almost a superfluity when

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked in measured tones from the doorway: "What is

the meaning of this?"

Already the tails of two dressing-gowns had vanished out of the other

door.

"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked again.

Then she looked round to see on whom to fasten her displeasure.

Louie saw her look, and instantly fathomed its purpose. She and

Richenda Earle stood by the window, as it were the dramatic centre of

some Rembrandtesque composition to which all else was merely

contributory. The Scholarship girl was going to get into a row. She,

Louie, had lived for years among rows; and was leaving anyway on the

morrow.

Before the "Miss Earle" had passed Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's lips Louie

had stepped forward.

"We've been waiting for our baths," she said.

Perhaps already Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would have preferred Richenda

Earle to Louie; there is expediency even in Authority; but the

challenge, if it was that, was a public one. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith

turned to Louie.

"Do you know what time it is?" she asked freezingly.

It pleased Louie to take Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's question _au pied de la

lettre_.

"I'm afraid my watch is in my cubicle. I could tell you in a moment,"

she said.

This the Lady-in-Charge saw fit to ignore. She drew her own watch from

her belt.

"It is ten minutes past eleven," she said. "Students are not out of

bed at ten minutes past eleven. Neither are candles burning. Miss

Earle----"

But again Louie interposed. After all, it was rough on the Scholarship

girl.

"Miss Earle came in only a moment ago to send us to bed," she

affirmed, without a tremor.

"Then," said Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, turning to Louie, and perhaps

feeling herself once more headed off, "you, Miss Causton, as a new

student, are perhaps not yet familiar with the Rules. Be so good as to

come to me at ten o'clock to-morrow morning and I will explain them to

you."

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith did not make the discomfited rebels file out past

her. She herself retired with dignity. Students do not linger in the

box-room when it is made known that they are expected to go to bed at

once.

But no sooner had the door closed on Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's back than

the pent-up general breath escaped again in a fluttering exhalation.

In it were awe, delight, homage.

"Oh, Causton!" somebody breathed. "You _are_ a brick!"

"_Isn't_ she?"

"Wasn't it stunning of her?"

"You'd have caught it, Earle!"

"I saw it in her eye!"

"But I say, Causton, you'll get a wigging!"

"She didn't speak to you, you know!"

"You cut in----"

Louie felt quite confused, so much did they make of so little.

"Good gracious," she said, "what are you all talking about? That's

nothing, especially as I was thinking of leaving in any case

to-morrow."

There was consternation in the box-room. Had Rebellion found its

leader only to lose her again immediately?

"Leaving!"

"Oh, I sha'n't leave till after ten o'clock now, you may be sure,"

Louie laughed.

"But--oh, I _say_!"

The dismayed voices dropped. There was a blank silence. It was only

after half-a-minute that Burnett Minor, who had issued from cover

again, begged: "Don't leave, Causton."

"Oh, I shouldn't leave because of anything like this," said Louie,

enormously amused at the thought. "The place is a fraud--that's why I

should leave."

"Oh, don't leave," another girl begged.

"Well, we'll see what she says to-morrow."

"She can't be _too_ down on you----"

"Not the first time----"

Something that can only be described as a pleasant hardening came into

Louie's grey eyes. Her laugh dropped a note. She looked at the adoring

faces.

"That's just what I mean," she said. "If she _is_----"

"What?----"

"I'll stay."

And that also her stepfather would have described as "just like

Louie."

III

Punctually at ten o'clock on the morrow Louie knocked at the door of

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's office or drawing-room--it was both--and

entered. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith was writing at an escritoire that was not

big enough to accommodate her elbows, and so supported her braceleted

wrists only. There was something contradictory about her attitude. Its

rectitude as she sat at the inconvenient little desk suggested that

she expected Louie, her turn, pause and inquiring "Well?" that she did

not. Louie's observant eyes had already noticed a curious

inconsistency about the Lady-in-Charge. A great number of things

seemed to lie on the tip of her tongue, ready, apparently against her

own better judgment, to be detached from it by a perfectly-timed

fillip of opposition.

And Louie had only to remember the word or two with which she had

dashed Chaff's affability to be fairly sure that though cocoa and

candles in the box-room at eleven o'clock at night might seem a good

enough reason for the present interview, as like as not another lay

behind it. She stood just within the door.

"Well, Miss Causton?"

"I think you told me to come here at ten o'clock."

"Ah, yes. Please to wait a moment."

Louie listened to the squeaking of her quill and the faint jingling at

her wrists as she continued to write.

When Mrs. Lovenant-Smith turned again it was almost as if she had

thought better of something or other--say of an encounter with this

long-chinned, grey-eyed girl who stood, not dressed for gardening, but

in a long grey morning frock, looking at her from the door.

"I merely wished to impress on you, Miss Causton, that the Rules must

be observed," she said. "I believe there is a copy of them on the

smaller bureau by your right hand there. Take it and be so good as to

study it. That is all I wished to say."

Louie did not believe the last sentence, but no disbelief showed in

her eyes. She inclined her head, but watched Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,

waiting for more. She thought that if she waited more would come. It

did. Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, having just dismissed Louie, rescinded the

decision by speaking again.

"You are older than the others," she said, "and it ought not to be too

much to expect of you that you will set a good example."

Louie, perhaps gratuitously, read a meaning into the words. Perhaps

you guess what it was. Many of the older people of her world still

remembered her mother's first marriage, and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith,

though Louie did not like the look of her, was still undeniably of her

world. With Louie herself the drawing-master theory of her paternity

had long since gone by the board; the girl had not rested until she

had discovered that her father was Buck Causton, pugilist and artists'

model, none other; and if Mrs. Lovenant-Smith had ever chanced to

hear of her as Louise Chaffinger, and identified that person under the

name which (whether from pride, spleen, sensitiveness or what not) she

had since reassumed, there would probably be something very near the

tip of her tongue indeed. And just as Buck had always been a pale

fighter, so Louie's own mixed blood, though it might surge at her

heart, left her cheeks untinged in moments of stress. She still stood,

making no motion to go.

"I don't think I quite follow you," she said slowly. "Why do you say

that something 'ought not to be too much to expect'?"

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith stiffened and drew in again.

"It is not necessary to follow me," she said. "You will find all that

is necessary in the Rules. You may keep that copy; Rule 6 is the one I

wish especially to call your attention to. Would you be so good as to

pass me that bell as you go out--the small brass one on the cabinet

there?"

She half turned to her writing again.

("Good gracious, what next!" thought Louie.)

The bell was a small Dutch figure in a metal farthingale, and Louie

passed it. As she did so she glanced at the hand that took it. Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith's face was wrinkled like a dried apple, and the hand,

though beautifully kept, was wrinkled too, and had, moreover, rather

stumpy nails. Louie's own hands were exquisite. The bell passed from

hand to hand.

Whether or not it was the glance at the hands, suddenly the word too

much dropped from the tip of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's tongue. She put the

bell down with a little clap.

"The Rules of the college are not called into question," she said. "So

far they have proved quite sufficient for the kind of student the

college was founded for. By the way, why are you not dressed for the

gardens?"

("'Kind of student'--good--gracious!" Louie cried in astonishment to

herself. "Very well, madam----")

She spoke calmly, looking modestly down at her long cashmere skirt,

but taking in her lovely hands (which toyed with the copy of the

Rules) on the way.

"My dress?" she said. "Oh, I wasn't sure whether I should be staying

or not."

Louie knew perfectly well that her leaving would make, at any rate

until her cubicle should be filled again, a difference of something

like sixty pounds a year, with extras, to Chesson's. That is rather a

lot of money to hang upon a mere breach of Rule 6. Perhaps Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith betrayed herself in the quickness with which she took

her up.

"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she asked.

Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely

again.

"I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether _you_ were going to

dismiss _me_ or not. You see, you may not want my--kind of student.

I'd rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added.

Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that

she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there

probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a

Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of

horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and

Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed--but she hated Louie

thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile

had a twitch in it.

"I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she

said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules are necessary."

"I dare say," said Louie.

"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard

to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always

the danger of fire. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a fire drill

ought not to be instituted. May I add that I quite appreciated the

chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night?

Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that

is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."

"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.

As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'--good

gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett

Minor! 'Kind of student!'--I wonder it doesn't occur to her that

somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener

four years ago!--'Kind of student,' indeed!"

Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards,

up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea.

Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts!

She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior,

but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She

herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed

birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else--Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith or anybody--to show as much as a flicker of

consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!--Oh no, that amusement was

going to be Louie's own private preserve.

For it had been her cynical amusement. Approximately, the mood took

her once in five or six months, with or without occasion. Her mother

knew its times and seasons, and its passings into abeyance, not into

extinction. She did not call her sensitiveness morbid; quite on the

contrary, she saw to it that it took the form of a pose of gaiety; she

could be pitilessly gay with herself. Meek, harmless Cynthia

Scarisbrick, for example, could have told tales about her gaiety when,

not knowing whether she herself was eligible for presentation or not

(but gathering from the tense silence on the subject that had reigned

at Trant that she was not, or at any rate that her mother did not wish

it), she had practised the ceremonial curtsy with her cousin. It had

been Cynthia, not Louie, who had shed the tears.

But to be agreed with by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that her origin was open

to question (for the Lady-in-Charge had all but said that)--oh no,

that was really too much!----

Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, who took a seedsman's salary!

She might have known that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would know all, all

about her----

Then, as she sat, she began to wonder where she had heard the name of

Lovenant-Smith before. She had wondered it when first she had received

her prospectus at Trant. Of course her stepfather knew these other

Lovenant-Smiths, the adjutant's lot, and had probably spoken of them,

but she did not think it was that. For a minute or two she sought in

her memory....

She was ceasing to think when the recollection came of itself. It was

only a trifling one after all. One of the boys with whom she had

romped at Mallard Bois--Roy she had called him then--had been, she now

remembered, a Lovenant-Smith. He would be a connection of the

adjutant's. Of course, she had heard the name at Mallard Bois....

Then Louie bit her lip. If there had been any doubt at all that Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith knew the story of Buck there was none now. The

association with Mallard Bois was quite enough....

Louie was glad she had looked insolently at those stumpy hands....

Beast!

The trees below her tossed restlessly, and far out the grey sea was

whitecapped as if it had been rasped with a file. No boat had put out

for the pollock-fishing or to lift a spiller that morning; only a

pilot, a couple of miles out in the Channel, slowly lifted her nose

for a moment and then hid it again. Louie felt a little cold, and

rose. She made an attractive picture as she did so. Her brown hair was

tossed by the wind, and her long grey skirt cracked behind her and

clipped her limbs almost as if she had worn the garments of a man.

"Beast!" she muttered again.

Then she thought of another beast--this father of hers whose name she

had not needed to take but had taken out of rancour against her mother

and despite against herself. (But not for Mrs. Lovenant-Smith to turn

up her nose at!) He now (she had this from Chaff) kept a public-house

somewhere up the Thames--Lord Moone's cast-off brother-in-law in a

public-house!--and any fitful romantic light that might ever have

shone about him was now extinguished. Of course the Captain had

uttered his usual wistful formula: "Not a bad fellow at all, I should

have said"; but that was rather a criticism on the Captain than on

Buck. Yes. Buck was simply another beast. But though he were a

potman, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith should give him every bit as much

deference as if he had been a brewing peer....

"And I don't care--if it _is_ the pride of the cobbler's dog, I'm

going to keep his name," Louie muttered.

Suddenly she turned and climbed the stile that led back to Chesson's

land. As she did so she realised that she had been out of bounds. She

laughed curtly. Rule 3! Much she cared for their Rules! What about the

Rule: "Miss Hastings does not elope with What's-his-Name the

gardener"?--but that would keep. In the meantime she would change into

her gardening clothes before lunch. She had shown Mrs. Lovenant-Smith

that she had garments of freedom. The next time Louie threatened to

leave she might be able to add to the force of the threat that she

would take half-a-dozen girls with her.

Well, lunch was in half-an-hour; she had just time to change.

But as she descended through the orchards again she came upon Richenda

Earle. The copper-haired girl was washing an espaliered plum-tree, and

as she turned her head Louie saw that she had been crying. She asked

Louie if she was going.

"Leaving here, do you mean? No. What's the matter?"

The girl turned her eyes away.

"Thanks awfully for last night," she grunted. "It was ripping of you.

But you see it hasn't made much difference."

"How, not made much difference?"

Richenda glanced at the tree, and from the tree to the syringe in her

hand and the pail of disinfectant at her feet. "This," she said.

"Anybody can do this job, and I've been sorting out pots over there

all the morning," she indicated the yard behind the trees where the

flower-pots and debris were kept. "And _I_ can't threaten to leave."

"Your scholarship, of course?"

"Yes. And I'm supposed to be working for the medal."

Chesson's wanted a Horticultural Society's medal badly. They had never

had one, nor were likely to get one unless Richenda Earle got it for

them. Louie, who was quickly fathoming the real economy of the place,

looked again at Richenda's red eyes.

"Well, they won't send you away till you've failed," she said.

But Earle made an impatient gesture, and her eyes began to stream

again.

"Oh, what's a girl like you know about it!" she broke out. "Yes, I

know they'll keep me till then, but you don't know anything at all

about it! You would if you'd had my upbringing! You don't know what

the struggle is. You think digging and carrying pots is hard work; you

wouldn't if you'd seen what I've seen! When you go to London it's just

shopping and theatres and suppers and things; but just you try to keep

a small bookseller's accounts for him, when they're hardly worth

keeping, I mean, and collecting his debts when all his money's tied up

in stock and your father's nearly bankrupt--not that he's ever

solvent--you'd know what I meant then!"

Then the unexpected outbreak stopped suddenly.

Louie stood silently staring. She disliked seeing anybody cry.

Richenda's words had little meaning for her; she supposed they

contained a hidden meaning somewhere. Then the copper-haired girl

went on, more quietly but no less bitterly:

"I should get a hundred pounds a year on the staff here," she said,

"that is, if they won't waste me half-days just out of spite, like

they're doing this morning. That's nothing to you. You others are here

just for pocket-money, but we live on your pocket-money. I suppose I

oughtn't to have come here at all. Not among all you. But I begged

father to let me. Father once apologised to me--that was when there

was a distraint out against him, if you know what that is--because he

wasn't rich. Fathers ought all to be rich, he said. There are seven of

us girls at home, and only one married. Oh, I tell you, you don't

know!"

Louie wondered why she preferred Richenda Earle loud and striving for

the popularity she never got to Richenda Earle unburdening herself

thus. She herself went brightly masked, and disliked to see another's

mind naked. Richenda's mind was stripped now. It was distasteful.

Somehow or other Richenda contrived to miss both the balm of

popularity and the solace of private sympathy.

"I'm--I'm awfully sorry," Louie said awkwardly and a little stiffly.

At the tone Richenda drew in instantly.

"It doesn't matter," she said, compressing her lips and beginning to

straighten her hair. "I shall just have to buck up, that's all. But

girls of your class don't know anything about it, so you needn't think

you do. There's the first gong. Come on."

As they passed the dairies a rabble of students raced past the end of

the house on their way to the boot-lockers. Louie and Richenda entered

by the side door. Richenda plunged at once into the scramble for

house-slippers, but Louie, not having put on her garden boots that

day, did not need to change. It was too late now to put on another

dress. She waited by the inner door.

Suddenly she was spied by Burnett Minor. The child rushed towards her,

a book in her hand.

"Are you going, Causton?" she shouted.

There was a loud "Ssssh!" They could be heard from the dining-room.

The girls flocked round Louie, and hoarse, excited whispers broke out:

"Are you going?"

"She's dressed!"

"Are you going?"

"Did you see her?"

"Does Causton say she's going?"

"Ssssh--not all at once!----"

"No, I'm not going," said Louie.

Mouths gaped their very widest to make up for the inaudibility of the

cheers.

"Hooray!"

"Is she going?"

"No, she's not going--hooray!"

Burnett Minor threw her book joyfully into the book-locker. Ordinarily

her reading varied between an adoration of Tennyson and mocking and

dramatic declamations either from the "Pansy Library," or from its

brother-classics, of which the typical burlesque is "The Blood-stained

Putty-knife, or The Plumber's Revenge." But this book was her album.

"I saw you come down dressed, and I did want you to put something in

it if you were going," she whispered gleefully; "but you're not going!

Hoo----"

Her voiceless mouth gaped wider than them all.

That midday Louie walked demurely up to Mrs. Lovenant-Smith at the

head of the table and apologised for not yet having changed. From her

tone Mrs. Lovenant-Smith may or may not have inferred that she had

spent the hours since their interview in contrite meditation. She

inclined her head graciously. But Louie, taking her place for grace

between Burnett Minor and Richenda Earle, was murmuring to herself

once more:

"'Class of student,' indeed!... Good gracious me!..."

IV

Louie quickly became the most popular girl in the college.

* * * * *

Her studies she pursued very much as who should say: "I am Louie

Causton--take it or leave it." Neither Miss Harriet nor the gardeners

could ever tell when she was interested in a lesson; if she learned,

she concealed her processes. Before April was out--(the intervening

time may be slipped over; the daily work in the gardens and houses

went on as usual, the usual number of crates and parcels was

despatched from Rainham Magna station, and already the girls were

looking forward to June, which was always a slack month)--before April

was out she could "slip" and "bud" as deftly as any when she chose;

but few made more mistakes than she, and none accepted correction with

her remarkable nonchalance. Afternoon "theory" she had begun to cut

almost entirely. A slate hung in the hall, on which students were

supposed to write down where they might be found when they left the

immediate precincts of the college. One day towards the end of April

there appeared on this slate: "Gone to Rainham; L. Causton." Then she

awaited events with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.

There were no events.

She sent to Trant for a bicycle.

Truth to tell, as the spring advanced she needed the air. The

glass-houses, with their smell of musk and mould and heated pipes and

cherry-pie all mingled, oppressed her; the long forcing-house, where

for the time being most of the work for the markets went on,

completely took the starch out of her. She felt as if she was being

forced herself. She hated the sight of the twelve houses; they merely

meant so much ventilation, so much shutting-down for the evenings, so

much watering, so much lassitude for the girls, so much money in

Chesson's pocket. She was glad she had sent for the bicycle. Somebody

else might read thermometers and close down and sprinkle floors and

ply the hissing hoses. Louie wanted air.

Yet even the outer air was not sharp enough. It is not an invigorating

air in which the lemon-verbena grows in trees up the cottage walls and

scented geranium flourishes out-of-doors like a common hedge plant. In

the sunken lanes through which she idled on her bicycle the primroses,

twice as big as she had ever seen them, and the cowslips, great

sub-tropical clusters, were already past; and she expected to see the

roses out presently, big as sunflowers. There was something almost

rank in the sweet bursting out of the land. She thanked goodness that

a daisy was a daisy still, modest and unmagnified. She was not used to

hedges of fuchsia. Nature might have been a little more sparing of her

myrtle too. Louie always dropped from her bicycle when, coming out of

one of the canals of still and scented air, she saw, across a burnt

heath-patch or a clump of hardy gorse, a glimpse of the sea. For the

sake of a look at the sea she often walked up the hill behind

Chesson's and sat on the stile she had crossed on the morning after

her interview with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.

Except by her example, however, she incited nobody else to break the

Rules.

It was curious that she should know herself to be popular, and yet at

the same time should also be secretly aware that she was a little out

of things. All went well enough for the present, but only for the

present. She knew quite well what would happen did she, a year or two

hence, chance to meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not,

then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she was now.

They would meet; there would be eager recollections of the old days at

Chesson's; oh, for that matter she could make it all up now!... "Come

where we can have a really good talk! Where's Burnett Major now, and

her sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I wonder what's

become of that red-haired girl--what was her name--Earle--yes, Earle?

And of course you know Macfarlane's going to be married.... Now tell

me all about what you're doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make all this

up--the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then the falsely

bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson's again. For she and her

fellow-students would not be doing the same things. They would have

taken recognised places, and Louie was not sure that she herself had a

place to take. Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a

spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she went one inch

out of her way to be so. She was just as ready to go out of her way to

be disliked if she must go out of it at all.

In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson's, to all intents

and purposes her own mistress, and made so much of that she had Mrs.

Lovenant-Smith largely at her mercy--for, had she been requested to

leave, the two Burnetts, Elwell and others would now have left with

her. So, doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie

even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong in supposing

that restlessness and discontent were bred in the very bones of her.

She was at the very top of her popularity about the time Burnett Major

gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle. (That is to say, Burnett

Major gave the nucleus of the "cocoa"; the rest of the party happened

by a natural process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held

by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission; it had been acceded readily.

"Lovey's not such a bad old sort when you get used to her," B. Major

said. It was in mid-May, on a hot evening, and, though Burnett's

window was flung wide open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath

stirred, and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the

air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits and candied

fruits and an enormous box of "assorted" chocolates; and Burnett's bed

was like to break down with the weight of girls upon it.

Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind when she had

painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting with her

fellow-students a year or two hence. The two sisters were the

daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and Louie could forgive B.

Major for being a little dazzled by her approaching presentation.

There was nothing unfamiliar to Louie, either, in the rest of the

things she felt herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and

"out of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts' home, was not very

different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett Major's position a

few years hence was a forgone conclusion; she filled it already in

anticipation; and the noisy talk that was in progress as Louie joined

the party threw bright lights on it.

They were discussing the coming vacations. These were Chesson's yearly

dread. They interrupted his supply of free labour, and there were

always fewest girls when he most wanted them. As the vacation

arrangements rested after all chiefly with the parents, he could do

little except express his preference that as many of the girls as

possible should take their holidays in the empty month of June, and

his hope that those who did not do so would defer them until as late

as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no better off than

his trade competitors.

"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie entered the

crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when Causton is. It's all

right for Major--oh, you needn't think we don't know, Major--if you

aren't actually engaged he's always about the place when you're at

home--and I'm going to stalk you both with a camera and then

what-d'you-call-it--blackmail him----"

"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major ordered.

"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his name through the

keyhole. It's----" She moved her lips, threatening to pronounce the

name there and then.

"Sneak!" said her sister.

B. Minor bridled.

"I _will_ tell them if you call me that again! Causton, have you a

young man? (That means, Avez-voo un jeune homme, Pig?)"

"Not for you to shout his name through keyholes," Louie replied,

smiling.

"No, but do tell us--have you?"

"At my age?" said Louie mockingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed

and reaching for candied fruits.

"Go on--you're trying to wriggle out of it--_have_ you?"

"Hush, little girl--open your mouth----" She popped a fruit into the

mouth that itself resembled an untouched fruit.

Pigou, from the lower deck of the washstand, interposed loudly:

"Elle a vingt-quatr'ans--elle est perdue!"

"Uppe petite chose, avec voter Francay," commented Burnett Minor.

"Cau-ston coiffe deja Sainte Catherine," said the ruthless Pigou: "a

vingt-quatr'ans on est deja--pff!"

"Non elle isn't pff--rude chose! But she'll tell me when we sleep out,

because I'm going to have my mattress next to hers, sha'n't I,

Causton?"

"Mais elle vient d'promettre----"

"--and we shall talk about all those things you always say 'Hush' when

I come in--sha'n't we, Causton?"

"Prrridd-ee!" taunted the French child: and B. Major spoke.

"But I say, Causton, when do you take your vac.--June or September?"

"And where shall you go?" somebody else demanded.

"I'm going to Ireland--father's taken a house," cried a third.

"Nobody cares where you're going! Causton, will you come home with

us?"

"No; come to Ireland with us!"

"Well, can I come home with you? I loved that man who brought you

here!" (Burnett Minor was the young woman who had loved Chaff.)

"It wasn't Lord Moone, was it?" Macfarlane asked.

"Or was it your father?"

"Your cocoa, Causton," said B. Major.

Louie had never been so run after before. She curled up among the

slippered feet at the foot of the bed (there were four girls stretched

upon it), and alternately stroked the hair and tweaked the ears of

Burnett Minor, who had defeated Pigou in the scramble to put her head

into Louie's lap. "I _can_ have the pitch next to yours, can't I?" the

child demanded, her eyes turned up and her face (to Louie) upside

down. "There, you see, Pig, she says I can--so voo juste pouvez

sechey-up, la."

This sleeping out was a summer custom at Chesson's. It began with the

warm weather, sometimes in June, sometimes in July. On account of the

morning and evening carrying of bedding and mattresses, the "pitches"

nearest the house were deemed the most desirable, and weeks ahead

there was bickering about the "bagging" of them. They bickered now,

and then turned to the vacations again.

Louie listened, saying little. For her, vacations in this sense hardly

existed. Vacations lose their value when you study as slackly as Louie

did. It might be amusing to go home with one or other of the girls for

a week or two, but on the other hand she hardly thought she would.

These were the things she was both "in at" and "out of." B. Major was

talking about them now. Soon she would be taking her presentation

lessons; she was coming out; she had an unofficial admirer; yes, Louie

saw quite plainly what B. Major's future would be. What was her own

going to be? She had not the least idea.... No, she did not really

want a vacation. More or fewer, there would be girls at Chesson's

throughout the summer. Chesson's still amused her; she could leave

once for all when it ceased to amuse her. She was learning nothing.

She neither wished to start a lavender farm, as Elwell, the daughter

of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, did, nor to grow peaches, as did

Macfarlane, nor to add to her pocket-money by selling pot-pourri at

extravagant prices to her friends, which was Burnett Major's

idea--until she should marry. She could hardly sell pot-pourri to her

prize-fighting father. She might (she smiled) sell him hops--she

seemed to remember that beer was made of hops....

And she certainly did not intend to mug at theory for the sake of a

medal, as Earle was doing at this very moment....

The party was still discussing this life which was hers and yet not

hers when Miss Harriet, going her rounds, tapped at the door and

entered.

"Bedtime, young ladies, please," she said. "Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's

compliments, and she hopes you have enjoyed yourselves."

Her tone was that of one who might say: "You see, young ladies, what

liberty you have _within_ the Rules; isn't it much pleasanter all

round?"

The party broke up.

The weeks passed. In June a number of the girls went home, Earle among

them. Permission to sleep out was given, a little earlier than usual

on account of the heavy mildness of the nights; and Louie lay in the

orchard, between Burnett Minor and little Pigou. The convolvulus came

out, great white trumpets in the hedges; the sea over the hill became

of a milky blue; and there floated out to it dense tracts of odours,

lilies, and syringa, jasmine and roses and hay. You wearied of the

smell of meadow-sweet; in the houses you could hardly take breath. The

sun was reflected piercingly from their glass roofs, and the girls

spent the afternoons in deck-chairs under the shadow of the courtyard

yew.

* * * * *

The thing that (Louie sometimes told herself afterwards) made all the

difference and yet (as she also sometimes told herself) made no

difference at all, began very trivially. It was just such another

accident as that which, nine or ten years before, had sent her to her

mother with a demand to be told "who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was."

Ordinarily, the girls at Chesson's were a little careless about the

dressing of their hair. You cannot move constantly among banks of

plants, and pick fruit, and net cherry-trees, and be for ever stooping

over beds and frames, and keep your hair fit to be seen. Therefore,

once a month or so, the girls might, if they wished, go in parties of

four or five to a hairdresser's at Rainham, there to be

professionally--whatever the word may be. These parties were made up

more with a view to the enjoyment of the half-holiday than to the

business strictly in hand; and Louie, had she cared, might have been a

member of each detachment that went. On this particular day Louie had

had much ado to free herself from Burnett Minor's affectionate clutch.

"Oh, do come with our lot, Causton!" B. Minor had begged. "Oh, you

are rotten! You know you went with Elwell before, and with Major

before that, and I do want mine properly done like yours, not just

punched up the way we do it!"

"What, like Saint Catherine?" Louie laughed.

"Do come."

But Louie had shaken her off.

"He'll remember how mine's done; I was there a week ago. No, I won't

come. I'm going to do some theory this afternoon."

"Oh, what a fib! You never do theory!"

"Well, I ought to. No, I won't come."

"Then will you lend me your bicycle?"

"Yes, if you like; but the others are walking, aren't they?"

"Well, I'll wobble with them."

And Louie had watched the party set out, Burnett Minor on the bicycle,

"wobbling" and leaving behind her a complicated track in the dust of

the drive.

She did not know why she had said she would do theory that afternoon.

She supposed it was because she felt slack and bored. Nor did she do

very much theory. She went into the classroom, languidly turned over

the pages of an old "Balfour," wondered what it mattered to anybody at

Chesson's (except perhaps to Earle) that "movements had been observed

in the pollen-grains of Cereus Speciosissimus," or that "changes took

place in the stamens by suppression and degenerations of various

kinds." Then she glanced at a preparation on the stage of the

microscope opposite Richenda Earle's empty chair, and yawned. She

looked out into the courtyard. Three or four girls dozed in

deck-chairs under the dark yew. There was an empty chair--but no; a

clatter of washing up was going on in the kitchen under the box-room;

she would go up to her cubicle.

She did so, and, pushing off her slippers, lay down on her bed.

Her window was open as far as it would go, but the yew seemed to shut

out even what little air there was. All that entered was the faint

acrid smell of consuming rubbish; they were slow-burning somewhere at

the back. The sounds of the washing up were fainter now; a pigeon

alighted on her sill. She had been an idiot, she told herself, to fag

herself that morning listening to Hall's demonstration in the

forcing-house. She wished there was a pond about the place, with a

boat or a punt. She would have bagged the boat to sleep in. It would

be jolly to be rocked to sleep in a boat or a punt.

She closed her eyes. The last thing she saw before she did so was the

little black-framed miniature of the fourth Lord Moone, the last but

three, in his tied wig and ensign's uniform. Louie had tacked it up by

her mirror merely because it had been in her room at Trant as long as

she could remember and, if one might judge from the youthful face, he

was less of an opinionated fool than the other Moones--much less so

than Uncle Augustus....

She turned over. Then she slept.

Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It weighed on the

girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie could hardly drag herself out

of it. She fumbled at her loosened belt and pulled out her watch.

Five! The tea-gong must have gone.

Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.

She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose, touched her

hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily downstairs.

As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took tea in their own

or one another's rooms--which, for that matter, the students also were

permitted to do if they chose--the meal was a noisier one than either

lunch or supper. Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as

she pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the opening and

sprang up.

"Here she is--give it to me--I'm going to read it myself----" she

cried.

Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself--"it" usually being one

of the sublimer passages from the current number of the "Pansy

Library" or an especially choice one from an office-boys' periodical.

Louie smiled languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from

Elwell's hand and gave tongue.

"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has some solution and

we'll mend it after tea--and I'm always to do my hair like this,

Harris says--do look at it, isn't it stunning?--and now--aha!"

(somebody had made a grab for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't

you, Elwell? Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and

that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack Sheppard' back

that I lent you----"

Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.

"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's all done,

for I'm not going to do any. What's the child got now? If it's 'Maria

Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,' I think I know them by heart."

The child herself answered her question. She jumped on a chair and

extended an arm for silence.

"Ready?" she cried. "Now!"

"'THE LIFE AND BATTLES OF BUCK CAUSTON,'"

she declaimed in her most ringing voice,

"'_Being the Full Story and Only Authorised Life of this Famous

Pugilist_'--

("Causton's uncle, don't forget, girls)--

"'_Revised by Himself and now Published for the First

Time--including his Historic Encounter with the Great Piker

Betteridge_'--

("Piker Betteridge--'Piker'--isn't it lovely?)

"'_Entered at Stationers' Hall and All Rights Reserved_

"'PRICE ONE PENNY'"

B. Minor drew out every syllable of the linked sweetness, and

concluded;

"And lo and behold--on the cover--Buck himself--Uncle Buck,

Causton--you needn't say he isn't--as large as life and twice as

beautiful--there!"

She held up the booklet in triumph.

But she drew it back again, bubbling with enjoyment. "Wait till I find

_the_ gem--the one about Piker," she cried.

Her fingers fluttered rapidly through the precious pennyworth in

search of the "gem."

Louie's cup of tea had been at her lips, but not a drop spilt as she

put it down again. If her colour changed at all it was only as that

other pale fighter's had done whose story, Price One Penny, the

unconscious Burnett Minor was rapturously searching.

"Here it is!" cried B. Minor, peremptorily extending her hand again.

"Listen, everybody!--

"'_But the redoubtable Buck refused to allow the wiper to be

skied. He recked nothing of his bunged optic and the claret that

flowed from his beezer. Game as a buck-ant he advanced for the

twenty-eighth round. The Piker, whose bellows were touched_----'"

But Louie had risen and walked to the child. She held out her hand.

"Let me look," she said.

B. Minor gave her a suspicious look, as if she feared she might be

reft of her treasure. "You will give it me back?"

"Oh yes."

Louie took the book.

She supposed she was awake now, but somehow a curious air of unreality

enveiled whatever it was that was happening. She looked at the cover

of the "Life" in her hand. The most execrable of woodcuts could hardly

disguise what she saw. Traditionally posed, nude above the waist, and

clad below only in tights and fighting-shoes--formidably watchful,

lightly poised for the blow--in appearance at any rate he was a man

and superb. But really he had been cruel, faithless, divorced.

As if she had passed merely from one state of half-wakefulness to

another, she did not think of the bomb she was about to drop among the

girls. She only wanted to look, and to look, and to look again at this

man, who was her father.

"Isn't it just Causton's mouth and chin?" she barely heard Burnett

Minor bubbling. "But I can't say she has Uncle Buck's beezer----"

Slowly Louie handed the "Life and Battles" back. At any rate she had

now seen him, if only in a wretched woodcut. She looked quietly about

her.

"That's my father," she said, perhaps a shade distinctly and loudly.

Then she looked about her again.

Burnett Minor jumped down from her chair. Her eyes shone flattery on

Louie. The very audacity of such a lie compelled her admiration.