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[Illustration: "I'VE COME TO SAY GOOD-BY TO YOU, SIS"]
THE PRINCESS OF THE SCHOOL
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By ANGELA BRAZIL
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AUTHOR OF
"The Luckiest Girl in the School,"
"The Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl,"
"A Popular Schoolgirl,"
"The Head Girl at the Gables."
Illustrated by Frank Wiles.
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A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company
Printed in U. S. A.
Copyright, 1920,
by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
All rights reserved
First published in the United States
of America, 1921
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE INGLETON FAMILY 1
II A STOLEN JOY-RIDE 15
III A VALENTINE PARTY 33
IV DISINHERITED 50
V THE NEW OWNER 61
VI PRINCESS CARMEL 73
VII AN OLD GREEK IDYLL 88
VIII WOOD NYMPHS 100
IX THE OPEN ROAD 114
X A MEETING 129
XI A SECRET SOCIETY 145
XII WHITE MAGIC 157
XIII THE MONEY-MAKERS 171
XIV ALL IN A MIST 190
XV ON THE HIGH SEAS 201
XVI THE CASA BIANCA 215
XVII SICILIAN COUSINS 229
XVIII A NIGHT OF ADVENTURE 242
XIX AT PALERMO 261
XX OLD ENGLAND 271
XXI CARMEL'S KINGDOM 283
THE PRINCESS OF THE SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
The Ingleton Family
On a certain morning, just a week before Christmas, the little world of
school at Chilcombe Hall was awake and stirring at an unusually early
hour. Long before the slightest hint of dawn showed in the sky the lamps
were lighted in the corridors, maids were scuttling about, bringing in
breakfast, and Jones, the gardener, assisted by his eldest boy, a sturdy
grinning urchin of twelve, was beginning the process of carrying down
piles of hand-bags and hold-alls, and stacking them on a cart which was
waiting in the drive outside.
Miss Walters, dreading the Christmas rush on the railway, had determined
to take time by the forelock, and meant to pack off her pupils by the
first available trains, trusting they would most of them reach their
destinations before the overcrowding became a serious problem in the
traffic. The pupils themselves offered no objections to this early
start. The sooner they reached home and began the holidays, so much the
better from their point of view. It was fun to get up by lamp-light,
when the stars were still shining in the sky; fun to find that rules
were relaxed, and for once they might chatter and talk as they pleased;
fun to run unreproved along the passages, sing on the stairs, and twirl
one another round in an impromptu dance in the hall.
The particular occupants of the Blue Bedroom had been astir even before
the big bell clanged for rising, so they stole a march over rival
dormitories, performed their toilets, packed their hand-bags, strapped
their wraps, and proceeded downstairs to the dining-hall, where cups and
plates were just being laid upon the breakfast-table. It was quite
superfluous energy on the part of Lilias, Dulcie, Gowan, and Bertha, for
as a matter of fact not one of them was on the list of earliest
departures, but the excitement of the general exodus had awakened them
as absolutely as the advent of Santa Claus on Christmas mornings. They
stood round the newly-lighted fire, warming their hands, chatting, and
hailing fresh arrivals who hurried into the hall.
"You going by the 6.30, Edith? You lucker! My train doesn't start till
ten! I begged and implored Miss Walters to let me leave by the early
one, and wait at the junction, but she would not hear of it, so I've got
to stop here kicking my heels, and watch you others whisked away. Isn't
it a grisly shame?"
Gowan's round rosy face was drawn into a decided pout, and her blue eyes
were full of self-pity. She had to be sorry for her own grievance,
because nobody else had either time or much inclination to sympathize;
they were all far too much excited about their own concerns.
"Well, you'll get off sometime, I suppose," returned Edith airily.
"There are twelve of us, all going together as far as Colminster. We
mean to cram into one carriage if we can. Don't suppose the train will
be full, as it's so early. I thought you were coming with us, Bertha,
but Miss Hardy says you're not!"
"Dad changed his mind at the last minute, and promised to send the car
to fetch me. It's only forty miles by road, you know, though it takes
hours by the train. He seemed to think I should lose either myself or my
luggage at Sheasby Junction, and it is a horrid place to change. You
never can get hold of a porter, and you don't know which platform you'll
start from."
"How are you going home, Lilias?" asked Noreen, who with several other
girls had joined the group at the fire.
Lilias, squatting on the fender, stretching two cold hands towards the
blazing sticks, looked up brightly.
"We're riding! Astley and Elton are to fetch Rajah and Peri over for us.
Grandfather said they needed exercise. I don't suppose he'd have thought
of it, only Dulcie wrote to Cousin Clare and begged her to ask him.
Won't it be just splendiferous? We haven't had a ride the whole term,
and I'm pining to see Rajah!"
"Grandfather had promised to let us ride to school in September," put in
Dulcie, "but Everard and a friend of his commandeered the horses and
went to Rasebury, so we couldn't have them, and we were so disappointed.
I do hope nothing will happen to stop them this time! Everard was to
arrive home yesterday, so he'll be before us. I shan't ever be friends
with him again if he plays us such a mean trick!"
"It's 'coach--carriage--wheelbarrow--truck,' it seems to me, the way
we're all trotting home!" laughed Edith. "If I could have my choice, I'd
sprint on a scooter!"
"Next term we'll travel by private aeroplane, specially chartered!"
scoffed Noreen.
"I don't mind how I go, so long as I get off somehow!" chirped Truie.
"Thank goodness, here come the urns at last! I began to think breakfast
would never be ready. We want to have time to eat something before we
start."
Miss Walters' excellent arrangements had left ample time for the healthy
young appetites to be satisfied before the taxis arrived at the door to
convey the first contingent of pupils to the station. Sixteen girls,
under the escort of a mistress, took their departure in the highest of
spirits, packed as tightly as sardines, but managing to wave good-bys.
Their boxes had been dispatched the previous day, their hand-bags had
gone on by cart before breakfast and would be waiting for them at the
station, where Jones, that most useful factotum, would, by special
arrangement with the station-master, be taking their tickets before the
ordinary opening of the booking-office.
Though the departure of sixteen girls made somewhat of a clearance at
Chilcombe Hall, Miss Walters' labors were not yet over. There was a
train at eight and a train at ten, and the young people who had to wait
for these found it difficult to know how to employ the interval until it
was their turn to enter the taxis. By nine o'clock Lilias and Dulcie,
ready in their riding habits, were looking eagerly out of the
dining-hall window along the drive which led to the gate.
"I know Elton would be early," said Dulcie. "It's always Astley who
stops and fusses. It was the same when Everard went cub-hunting. You
don't think there's a hitch, do you?" (uneasily). "Shall we get a
horrid yellow envelope and a message to say 'Come by train'? It would be
_too_ bad, and yet, it's as likely as not!"
Dulcie's fears, which in the course of twenty minutes' waiting and
watching had almost conjured up the telegraph boy with his scarlet
bicycle and brown leather wallet, were suddenly dispelled, however, by a
brisk sound of trotting, and a moment later appeared the welcome sight
of her grandfather's two grooms riding up to the house, each leading a
spare horse by the rein. Those schoolfellows who had not yet departed to
the station came to the door to witness the interesting start. A sleek,
well-groomed horse is always a beautiful object, and the girls decided
unanimously that Lilias and Dulcie were lucky to be carried home in so
delightful a fashion. They watched them admiringly as they mounted.
Edith stroked Rajah's smooth neck as she said good-by to her friends.
"Riding beats motoring in my opinion," she vouchsafed, "though of course
you can go farther in a car. Perhaps I shall pass you on the road."
"No, you won't, for we're taking a short cut across country. We always
choose by-lanes if we can. Write and tell me if you get a motor-scooter.
They sound fearfully thrillsome. Good-by, see you again in January!"
"Good-by! and a merry Christmas to everybody!" added Dulcie, turning on
her saddle to wave a parting salute to those who were left behind on the
doorstep.
The two girls walked their horses down the drive, but once out on the
level road they trotted on briskly, with the grooms riding behind. They
formed quite a little cavalcade as they turned from the hard motor track
down the grassy lane where a dilapidated sign-post pointed to Ringfield
and Cheverley. It was a distance of seven good country miles from
Chilcombe Hall to Cheverley Chase, and, as the events of this story
center largely round Lilias and Dulcie, there will be ample time to
describe them while they are wending their way through the damp of the
misty December morning, up from the low-lying river level to the hill
country that stretched beyond.
Lilias was just sixteen, and very pretty, with gray eyes, fair hair, a
straight nose, and two bewitching dimples when she smiled. These dimples
were rather misleading, for they gave strangers the impression that
Lilias was humorous, which was entirely a mistake: it was Dulcie who was
the humorist in reality, Dulcie whose long lashes dropped over her shy
eyes, and who never could say a word for herself in public, though in
the society of intimate friends she could be amusing enough. Dulcie, at
fourteen, seemed years younger than Lilias; she did not wish to grow up
too soon, and thankfully tipped all responsibilities on to her elder
sister. Cousin Clare always said there were undiscovered depths in
Dulcie's character, but they were slow in development, and at present
she was a childish little person with a pink baby face, an affection for
fairy tales, and even a sneaking weakness for her discarded dolls. Life,
that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to
Dulcie; she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and
throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If
innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it
steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage of worldly
wisdom.
Ever since Father and Mother, in the great disaster of the wreck of the
_Titanic_, had gone down together into the gray waters of the Atlantic,
the Ingleton children had lived with their grandfather, Mr. Leslie
Ingleton, at Cheverley Chase. There were six of them, Everard, Lilias,
Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, and Clifford, and as time passed on, and the
memory of that tragedy in mid-ocean grew faint, the Chase seemed as
entirely their home as if they had been born there. In Everard's
opinion, at any rate, it belonged to them, as it had always belonged to
the prospective heirs of the Ingleton family. And that family could
trace back through many centuries to days of civil wars and service for
king and country, to crusades and deeds of chivalry, and even to
far-away ancestors who gave counsel at Saxon Witenagemots. Norman keep
had succeeded wooden manor, and that in its turn had given place to a
Tudor dwelling, and both had finally merged into a long Georgian
mansion, with straight rows of windows and a classic porch, not so
picturesque as the older buildings, but very convenient and comfortable
from a modern point of view. The lovely gardens, with their clipped yew
hedges, were one of the sights of the neighborhood, and it was a family
satisfaction that the view from the terrace over park, wood, and stream
showed not a single acre of land that was not their own.
Mr. Leslie Ingleton, a fine type of the old-fashioned, kindly, but
autocratic English squire, belonged to a bygone generation, and found it
difficult to move with the march of the times. Because he had spent his
seventy-four years of life on the soil of Cheverley, the people
tolerated in "the ould squire" many things that they would not have
passed over in a younger man or a stranger. They shrugged their
shoulders and gave way to his well-meant tyranny, for man and boy,
everybody on the estate had experienced his kindness and realized his
good intentions towards his tenants.
"If he does fly off at a tangent, ten to one Miss Clare'll be down the
next day and set all straight again," was the general verdict on his
frequent outbursts.
Cheverley Chase would have been quite incomplete without Cousin Clare.
She was a second cousin of the Ingletons, who had come to tend
Grandmother in her last illness, and after her death had remained to
take charge of the household and the newly-arrived family of
grandchildren. She was one of those calm, quiet, big-souled women who in
the early centuries would have been a saint, and in mediæval times the
abbess of a nunnery, but happening to be born in the nineteenth century,
her mental outlook had a modern bias, and both her philanthropy and her
religious instincts had developed along the latest lines of thought. She
had schemes of her own for work in the world, but at present she was
doing the task that was nearest in helping to bring up the motherless
children who had been placed temporarily in her care. To manage this
rather turbulent crew, soothe the irascible old Squire, and keep the
general household in unity was a task that required unusual powers of
tact, and a capacity for administration and organization that was worthy
of a wider sphere. She might be described as the axle of the family
wheel, for she was the unobtrusive center around which everything
unconsciously revolved.
But by this time Lilias and Dulcie will have ridden up hill and down
dale, and will be turning Rajah and Peri in at the great wrought-iron
gates of Cheverley Chase, and trotting through the park, and up the
laurel-bordered carriage drive to the house. There was quite a big
welcome for them when they arrived. Everard had returned the day before
from Harrow, Roland was back from his preparatory school, and the two
little ones, Bevis and Clifford, had just said good-by for three weeks
to their nursery governess, and in consequence were in the wildest of
holiday spirits. There was a general family pilgrimage round the
premises to look at all the most cherished treasures, the horses, the
pigeons, the pet rabbits, the new puppies, the garden, and the woods
beyond the park; there were talks with the grooms and the keepers, and
plans for cutting evergreens and decorating both the house and the
village church in orthodox Christmas fashion.
"It's lovely to be at home again," sighed Lilias with satisfaction, as
the three elder ones sauntered back through the winding paths of the
terraced vegetable garden.
"And such a home, too!" exulted Dulcie.
"Rather!" agreed Everard. "That was exactly what was in my mind. The
first thing I thought when I looked out of the window this morning was:
'What a ripping place it is, and some day it will be all mine.'"
"Yours, Everard?"
"Why, of course. Who's else should it be? The Chase has always gone
strictly in the male line, and I'm the oldest grandson, so naturally I'm
the heir. It goes without saying!"
Dulcie's pink face was looking puzzled.
"Do you mean to say if Grandfather were to die, that everything would be
yours?" she asked. "Would you be the Squire?"
"I believe I'm called 'the young squire' already," replied Everard
airily.
"But what about the rest of us?" objected Dulcie.
"Oh, I'd look after you, of course! The heir always does something for
the younger ones. You needn't be afraid on that score!"
Everard's tone was magnanimous and patronizing in the extreme. He was
gazing at the house with an air of evident proprietorship. Dulcie, who
had never considered the question before, revolved it carefully in her
youthful brain for a moment or two; then she ventured a comment.
"Wouldn't it be fairer to divide it?"
"Nonsense, Dulcie!" put in Lilias. "You don't understand. Properties
like this are never divided. They always go, just as they are, to the
eldest son. You couldn't chop them up into pieces, or there'd be no
estate left."
"Couldn't one have the house and the other the wood, and another the
park?"
"Much good the house would do anybody without the estate to keep it up!"
grunted Everard. "Dulcie, you're an utter baby. I don't believe you ever
see farther than the end of your silly little nose. You may be glad
you've got a brother to take care of you."
"But haven't I as much right here as you?" persisted Dulcie obstinately.
"No, you haven't; the heir always has the best right to everything.
Cheer up! When the place is mine, I mean to have a ripping time here!
I'll make things hum, I can tell you--ask my friends down, and you girls
shall help to entertain. I've planned it all out. I suppose I shall have
to go to Cambridge first, but I'll enjoy myself there too--you bet! On
the whole I think I was born under a lucky star! Hallo! there goes
Astley; I want to speak to him."
Everard whistled to the groom, and ran down the garden, leaving his
sisters to return to the house. At seventeen he was a fair, handsome,
dashing sort of boy, of a type more common thirty years ago than at
present. He held closely to the old-fashioned ideas of privileges of
birth, and, according to modern notions, had contracted some false
ideals of life. He had lounged through school without attempting to
work, and was depending for all his future upon what should be left him
by the industry of others. All the same, in spite of his attitude of
"top dog" in the family, he was attractive, and inclined to be generous.
Like most boys of seventeen, he had reached the "swollen head" stage,
and imagined himself of vastly greater importance than he really was.
The sobriquet of "the young squire" pleased his fancy, and he meant to
live up to what he considered were the traditions of so distinguished a
title.