Alwynne settled down with an ease that surprised herself. Much as she
loved the country, a country life would have bored her to death, Clare
had often assured her, as a permanent state; but for a few weeks it was
certainly delightful. She enjoyed pottering about the garden with Jean,
and jogging into the village on her own account behind the obstinate
pony, who, approving her taste in apples, allowed her to believe that
she more or less regulated his direction and pace. She enjoyed the
complicated smells of the village store, half post office, half
emporium, and the taste of its gargantuan bulls'-eyes. She sent, in the
first enthusiasm of discovery, a tinful heaped about with early
primroses to Clare; but Clare was not impressed.
Clare disapproved strongly of Alwynne's holiday, needed her too much to
allow it necessary. Her first letters were a curious mixture--half
fretfulness over Alwynne's absence, half assurance of how perfectly well
she, Clare, got on without her. Alwynne would have been exquisitely
amazed could she have known how eagerly Clare awaited her bi-weekly
budget. Alwynne was afraid her letters were dull enough. She apologised
constantly--
_Of course, Clare, this will seem very small beer to you--but
little things are important down here. It's all so quiet, you see.
I've been perfectly happy this morning because I found a patch of
white violets in a clearing, and Jean and Alicia were just as
excited when I told them at lunch: and we went off with a
tea-basket afterwards, and dug violet roots for an hour, or more,
and then spread our mackintoshes over a felled trunk and made tea.
The ground was sopping, but it was fun. You'd love my cousins.
They're as old as Elsbeth but full of beans, and they've travelled
and are interesting--only they will talk incessantly about this
nephew they've got. It's "Roger" this and "Roger" that--he seems to
rule them with a rod of iron--can't do wrong! He comes back next
week. I rather wonder what he'll be like. The Dears make him out a
paragon; but I'm expecting a prig, myself! There are photographs of
him all over the place. He's quite good-looking._
But before Alwynne could tire of the lanes and village, of gardening
with Jean, and hints of how Roger stubbed up roots and handled bulbs,
Alicia had provided her with a new interest. She remembered her promise
one morning and took her up to Dene Compton.
Alicia gave Italian lessons twice a week, and from her Alwynne had
gleaned many quaint details of the school and its workings. What she
heard interested her, though she was prepared to be merely, if
indulgently, amused. She looked forward to the visit if only to get copy
for a letter to Clare. Clare, too, liked to be amused.
The gong was clanging for the mid-morning break when Alicia, Alwynne in
her wake, led the way into the main building, and waving her airily
towards a mound of biscuits, bade her help herself and look about her
for a while, because she, Alicia, had got to speak to--She dived into
the crowd.
Alwynne, thus deserted, stood shyly enough in a roofed corner of the
great brick quadrangle, munching a fair imitation of a dog-biscuit, and
watching the boys and girls who swarmed past her as undisturbed by her
presence as if she were invisible. At the boys she smiled indulgently as
she would have smiled at a string of lively terriers, but of the girls
she was sharply critical. They wore curious, and as she thought hideous,
serge tunics: she jibbed at their utilitarian plaits: but she conceded a
good carriage to most of them and was impressed by a certain pleasant
fearlessness of manner. A couple of men, Alicia, and a bright, emphatic
woman in a nurse's uniform, wandered through the crowd, which made way
courteously enough, but seemed otherwise in no degree embarrassed by
their propinquity. Alwynne had a sudden memory of Clare's triumphal
processions; compared them uneasily with the fashion of these quiet
people.
She watched a small girl dash panting to the loggia at the opposite side
of the quadrangle, where a slight man in disreputable tennis-shoes,
leaned against a shaft and observed the pleasant tumult. There was a
moment's earnest consultation, and the small girl darted away again and
disappeared down a corridor. The man resumed his former pose--head on
one side, smiling a little.
Alwynne ventured out of her corner and caught at Alicia as she passed.
"Cousin Alice! I like all this. I'm glad you brought me. Who's that?"
She nodded towards the man in tennis-shoes.
"The Head."
"The head-master?"
"Why not?"
"But--but--when Miss Marsham comes in--you can hear a pin drop----Is he
nice?"
Alicia laughed.
"I'll introduce you."
She did.
"Well," said Alicia with a twinkle as they walked home together later,
"what did you think of him?"
Alwynne flushed, but she laughed too.
"Cousin Alice--it was too bad of you. He just said 'How do you do?' and
smiled politely. Then he said nothing at all for five minutes, and then
he clutched at one of the girls and handed me over to her with another
smile--an immensely relieved one--and drifted away. I've never been so
snubbed in my life."
"You're not the first one. So you didn't like him?"
"Oh--I liked him," conceded Alwynne grudgingly.
They walked on in silence for a while.
"What's that?" Alwynne pointed to a large grey building half way down
the avenue.
"The girls' house, Hill Dene. They sleep there; and have the needlework
classes, and housewifery, I believe."
"Do they have everything else with the boys?"
"Practically."
"Does it answer?"
"Why not? Girls with brothers and boys with sisters have an advantage
over the solitary specimens, everybody knows. This is only extending the
principle."
Alwynne giggled suddenly.
"You know that girl he dumped me on to--she was showing me round, and we
ran into some boys in the gym. I couldn't make out why, but she jolly
well sent them flying."
"Out of hours, I expect."
"But the coolness of it, Cousin Alice! She was a bit of a thing--the
boys were half as high again!"
"But not prefects."
"Oh, I see." Alwynne meditated. "Oh, Cousin Alicia, that girl asked
me to go with them next Saturday for a tramp. Over Witch Hill.
She and another girl and some boys. Imagine! they're going by
themselves--without a master or a mistress or anything!"
"Why not?"
"We don't. We crocodile. Two and two, and two and two, and two and two.
And I trot along at the side and see that they don't take arms. But of
course, you can't control the day-girls. One of them asked two of the
boarders out for the day one Sunday, at least her mother did, and we met
them after church on the promenade, arm in arm--all three! I tell you,
there was a row. They were locked up in their bedrooms for three days,
and nobody might speak to them for the rest of the term. Miss Marsham
said it was defiance and that they might remember they were ladies."
"I don't think they want 'ladies' here," said Alicia. "They're quite
content if they produce gentlewomen. Your school must be peculiar."
"Oh, no," said Alwynne, opening her eyes. "There are dozens of schools
like Utterbridge. I was at two myself when I was young. It's this place
that's peculiar. It's like nothing I've heard of. I want to explore. He
said I could. Yes, I forgot--he did say that--that I was to come up
whenever I liked."
And for the next week Alwynne spent a good half of her days at Dene
Compton. She clung to Alicia's skirts at the first, afraid of appearing
to intrude. But she soon found that she might go where she would without
arousing curiosity or even notice, though boys and girls alike were
friendly enough when she spoke to them. Accustomed to her mistress-ship,
she was half-piqued, half-amused to find herself so entirely
unimportant.
But the great school fascinated her. It was scarce a third larger than
her own in point of numbers, but the perfection of its proportions made
it impressive. The arrangements for the children's physical well-being
reflected the methods employed for their spiritual development. There
was an insistence on sunlight and fresh air and space--above all, space.
There was no calculation of the legal minimum of cubic feet: body and
mind alike were given room in which to turn, to stretch themselves, to
grow.
Gradually she realised that she had been living for years in a rabbit
warren.
With her discoveries she filled many sheets of notepaper. But Clare's
letters were nicely calculated to divert enthusiasm. Their tone was
changing; they allowed Alwynne to guess herself missed. There was in
them a hint of appeal: a suggestion of lonely evenings----Never a word
of Alwynne's doings. Yet, by implication, description of her new friends
and their outlook was dismissed as unnecessary. Clare, Alwynne was to
realise, would smile pleasantly as she read, and think it all rather
silly.
Elsbeth--_so pleased that they are so kind to you at Alicia's
school_--was more genuinely uninterested. Dene Compton had been the home
of a certain John Lumsden for Elsbeth. She did not care for descriptions
of its metamorphosis. She wanted to hear about Dene, and her cousins,
and how Alwynne was eating and sleeping, and if Roger Lumsden had come
back yet. She asked twice if Roger Lumsden had come back yet. But
Alwynne had an annoying habit of leaving her questions unanswered
through eight closely written sheets. It was not only Clare who was very
tired of co-education and Dene Compton.
But Elsbeth got her news at last, and was satisfied with it as
Macchiavellis usually are, whose plots are being developed by
unconscious and self-willed instruments. Alwynne, who in her spare time
had discovered what spring in the country could mean, tucked in the news
at the end of an epistle that was purely botanical----
_... and cuckoo-pint and primroses and violets! Have you ever seen
larches in bud? Oh, Elsbeth, why can't we live in the country?
Every collection of buildings bigger than Dene Village ought to be
razed by Act of Parliament. I expect the earth hates cities as I
hated warts on my hands when I was little. Well, I must stop.
Oh--the Lumsden man turned up a day or two ago. The Dears were in
ecstasies, and he let himself be fussed over in the calmest way, as
if he had a perfect right to it. I think he's conceited. I don't
think you'd like him. He's back for good, apparently, but he won't
worry me much. I'm only in at meals. The Dears are always busy and
let me do as I like, and I either go up to Compton, or prowl, or
take a rug and book into the garden. It's quite hot, although it's
barely April--so you needn't worry. The garden is jolly, big and
half wild: only "Roger" is beginning to trim it--the vandal! He's
by way of being a gardener, you know. Great on bulbs and roses, I
believe._
_By the way_ is _he a relation? Even The Dears are only very
distant cousins, aren't they? Because he will call me "Alwynne" as
if he were. I call it cheek. I was very stiff, but he's got a hide
like a rhinoceros. When I said "Mr. Lumsden," he just grinned. So
now I say "Roger" very markedly whenever he says "Alwynne." I can't
see what Jean and Alicia see in him; but of course I have to be
polite. They are dears, if you like--are giving me a lovely time._
_I hope you're not very dull, Elsbeth dear. You must try and get
out this lovely weather. Why not have Clare to tea one day? You'd
both enjoy it. I heard from her yesterday--such a jolly letter!_
_Heaps of love from Jean and Alicia--and you know what a lot from
me._
ALWYNNE.
_P.S.--I found these violets to-day on a bank behind the church.
They'll be squashed when you get 'em, but they'll smell still._
_P.S.--The Lumsden man saw me writing, and said, would I send you
his love, and do you remember him? I told him I'd scarcely heard
you mention his name, so it wasn't probable--but he just smiled his
superior smile. He reminds me of Mr. Darcy in P. and P. I can't say
I like him._