IV

Philip did not want to send Lily to school. He and his wife had been

at one upon this point. He regretted even the three months that she

had spent at the convent, although he remarked at intervals for long

afterwards that a girls' school and a convent were not at all the same

thing.

"Besides, my little pet, you were only there for a month or two,

and you were not at all well when you came away. It wasn't at all a

success."

"But that was years ago," Lily protested. "I should like it very much,

now, or best of all if only you would send me to a proper school,

Father."

For nearly four years, ever since her mother's death, she had asked at

intervals to be sent to school.

At first, Philip had answered her with a sort of mournful playfulness.

"What! Doesn't my little girl get enough lessons at home? We must talk

to Miss Cleeve, and see if she can't manage an extra hour or two on

Saturday afternoons--shall we, Lily?"

The Lily of ten and eleven years old had dutifully pretended amusement,

and thought herself naughty for the inward pang that she experienced at

being treated like a baby.

A year later, she was far more openly rebellious.

"It's so very dull doing lessons all alone, Father."

"If God had spared us our poor little Yvonne, you would not have to do

them alone," said Philip, the allusion, in some mysterious way, having

exactly the effect of a merited rebuke.

Lily immediately, and quite irrationally, felt that she had been

heartless.

"Besides," continued her father, pressing the advantage that he

perceived himself to have gained, although without quite knowing how,

"you don't want to break up our poor little home-party any further, my

child, do you? You and I and poor little Kenneth are all that are left

now, you know."

Lily was silenced, although, dimly, she knew that she had been unfairly

defeated. What he said was true--she cried herself to sleep at the

thought of it sometimes--but her powers of clear thinking had been too

thoroughly obscured for her to analyze the illogical attitude taken

up by her father, who from time to time said, with the most obvious

sincerity:

"Poor little children! How can I do anything for them? _She_ made home,

and now that she and little Yvonne are gone, there is nothing left but

sadness and emptiness. I have no wish whatever to live, but it must be

as God Almighty wills."

"It couldn't make any difference to him if I went to school," Lily

reflected resentfully, after Philip had thus once more put in words the

utter despondency that hung always over him.

By the time that Lily was fourteen, there was scarcely anything left

of the pride and the species of doting affection that her father had

displayed during her early childhood. His ideal of a happy home

had been rudely shattered by Eleanor's death, and he attributed the

signs of Lily's inevitable development to a lack of veneration for

her mother's memory. He was honestly incapable of perceiving that, if

Eleanor had lived, conflict of the most irreconcilable kind must have

arisen between her and Lily.

He dumbly and piteously resented Lily's incoherent attempts at

self-expression, her struggling efforts to evolve her own personality

in the midst of a stultifying atmosphere, with much the same blind

sentimentality that he regretted the lost, blue-eyed prettiness of her

baby days and the unescapable certainty that she was grown too tall to

sit upon his knee.

Her continual requests to be sent to school distressed him profoundly.

At one and the same time, he saw Lily convicted of disloyalty in

wishing to alter the routine of life instituted for her by her mother,

and as heartlessly desirous of abandoning her lonely father and little

brother in their changed and saddened home.

At last he said to her:

"I can stand this no longer. Go, Lily, but remember that God Himself

will condemn those who blaspheme against the sacred love of father and

mother. You can go. I will keep no child at home against its will."

His face was drawn and grey with suffering, as he looked at the child

who seemed to him to be growing up devoid of heart. Only the extremity

of pain and disappointment would have made him speak so and Lily

realized it.

She broke into terrified sobs, and saw herself with his eyes.

Both were shaken by the sense of an immense issue involved. The

question had acquired a monstrous and devastating magnitude. Only the

shamed and stifled, but still living, sense of proportion in Lily's

soul, that warned her how bitterly she would, later, regret the folly

of yielding to a sentimental impulse, prevented her from exclaiming

that she never, never wanted to leave home as long as she lived.

An almost intolerable period of tension followed. The gloom of Philip

Stellenthorpe became abysmal. Only little four-year-old Kenneth

appeared to be cheerfully insensible to it.

Undaunted by his father's weighty tenderness, that was in itself an

advertisement of melancholy, Kenneth continued to play with his toys,

to shout for bread-and-jam with his tea, and to wriggle unconcernedly

away when his father would have lifted him to Lily's old post of honour

on the parental knee.

Kenneth was far from being the motherless baby boy of fiction. He

evinced no special affection for anyone, and was quite unaffectedly

impenitent when sins, that had once been the cause of heart-searching

remorse to Lily and Yvonne, were pointed out to him with sorrowful

gravity. Although only ten years separated them, Kenneth was in fact

the modern child that Lily had never been allowed to become.

She watched him with more awe than affection, sometimes. He seemed to

be a hard little boy.

The next phase of Lily Stellenthorpe's education was inaugurated by

the astonishing announcement of Miss Cleeve, that she was going to be

married and must go away.

"The old order changeth," said Philip, in tones of bewildered pain.

He gave Miss Cleeve a munificent wedding present, and reflected that

yet another link with the past was breaking.

To look for another governess for Lily seemed to him an appalling task.

His conscience would not have allowed him to depute it to his sister

Clothilde, for ever since the fulfilment of her pronouncement that

Vonnie would not live to grow up, Philip had steadily assured himself

that poor Clo's judgments were not to be trusted.

Such is the curious effect produced by a prophet whose word has been

too well verified in his own country.

Philip, like all sentimentalists, preferred asking advice to taking it.

He decided to consult Eleanor's cousin and nearest surviving relative,

unconsciously reserving to himself the right of finding that, after

all, poor Charlie Hardinge was not a very sympathetic fellow, and

held very little sacred, and that his counsels could not be worthy of

serious consideration.

Besides the fact of his relationship--of potent weight with

Philip--Charlie Hardinge was further qualified as adviser, in being

the father of three little girls. The little girls, however, and

Ethel their mother, had only been seen by the Stellenthorpes at rare

intervals.

Charlie himself was in the habit of staying with them for two nights

on his way to and from the north of England, in the course of every

year. He always brought the children presents, and Philip always said

in advance, nervously: "You must thank Cousin Charlie very nicely if he

is kind enough to bring you a little present of chocolates, but you'll

keep them downstairs in the drawing-room, like good children, won't

you?"

He had never been able to forget altogether that Charlie Hardinge

had once expressed injudicious surprise at the decorous restraint

that prevailed over the distribution of sweets presented to the

Stellenthorpe children.

Unconsciously, he liked Charlie much better _in esse_ than _in

posse_, and found even his exuberant habit of repeating everything he

said three or four times over merely an ebullition of warm-hearted

earnestness.

"Now, now, now, now," said Charlie. "You want some suggestion about

this kiddie of yours--your Lily. I understand perfectly. What are you

to do with her--fourteen, isn't she? Fourteen--yes--fourteen. Now,

our Dorothy isn't fourteen yet, and Janet and Sylvia, of course, are

younger still. Sylvia is just ten, in fact. You know they've just gone

to school at Bridgecrap?"

"No," said Philip, startled. "I had no idea of it. I always supposed

that you and Ethel meant to educate them at home."

His terrible fear of any unpleasantness made him hesitate, and feel

unable to say, as he had meant to say, that he disapproved of girls'

schools altogether.

"Well, it was a sacrifice," Hardinge admitted with a sigh. "A

sacrifice. But we felt that it was for the kiddies' own good. No

brother, you see. They wanted to be taught how to take chaff, and

ragging, and teasing--that's what they wanted--they wanted to get

thoroughly well teased. Now your Lily, my dear fellow--very pretty

kiddie-widdie, mind you, beautifully mannered, and I'm only saying this

because I'm fond of her--your kiddie doesn't know how to take a joke. I

noticed it this evening, when I was chaffing her a little about holding

herself so badly. That's another thing she wants--drilling. Drilling,

drilling!"

Charlie hit himself a resounding blow on the chest.

"She wants drilling!"

"She is tall for her age," said Philip, who considered personal remarks

ill-bred, unless complimentary.

"So's my Dorothy," Hardinge inexorably returned. "Now, how tall is your

kiddie? How tall exactly?"

"I really don't know, but she is certainly taller than most children of

fourteen. In fact the governess, before she left, told me that Lily was

outgrowing her strength."

"Our Dorothy is thirteen and a half and stands five-foot five in her

stockings. Five-foot five, and a back like a ramrod. Now, Lily isn't

five-foot five, I'm positive of that. We'll measure her to-morrow, and

you'll find she's not five-foot five. Nowhere near it."

Philip made a politely acquiescent sound.

"Drilling is what she wants, drilling and games. It's done everything

in the world for my kiddie-widdies. Little Sylvia, now, didn't hold

herself as well as the other two--was rather inclined to poke. And

after one term at Bridgecrap she's holding her head up, and her

shoulders back, and talks of nothing but hockey."

Philip suppressed a shudder at a consummation which appeared to him so

utterly undesirable.

"You must send Lily to Bridgecrap," said Charlie Hardinge positively.

"No place like it. Splendid air--right up above the sea, outdoor games

all the year round--swimming and gym--everything you can think of."

"Who is the lady in charge?"

"A splendid woman--splendid woman. Miss Melody--Monica Melody. You've

heard of her, of course--took a university degree, and has written

some very sound stuff about education. Mind you, I sounded her very

carefully before I sent the kiddies. Ethel and I had really had no

idea of sending them to school at all--but they were keen to go. It was

their own idea--Dorothy started it."

Philip almost groaned.

"I can hardly understand the idea of young children who actually _want_

to leave home," he said, considerably understating his case.

"Your kiddie-widdie wants to go to school too, eh?" said Charlie

acutely. "I thought so. I thought so now, I thought so. You take it all

too seriously, my dear fellow, far too seriously. It's very natural,

you know. My little girliekins had one another, after all, but Lily

hasn't a soul--not a soul of her own age."

"This is a lonely place, as you know," said Philip stiffly. "There are

no girls of her own age within a reasonable distance."

"Well, are there any boys then, any boys?"

"Boys?"

"Boys--boys of her own age. Boys, boys, boys. If there are no girls for

the poor kiddie to play with, I suppose she must play with boys."

Philip rose from his chair and made elaborate examination of a slightly

smoking lamp.

By the time that he had meticulously adjusted it, he was able to turn

round and speak with calm.

"I shouldn't like my little Lily to become a tomboy. She is quite happy

in her own little nursery."

"Now, what's the good of talking as though she were still a baby? She's

not a baby--you really must make up your mind to it, my dear chap, that

the kiddie isn't a baby any longer."

Philip was quite incapable of making up his mind to anything of the

sort, but by sheer force of iteration Charlie Hardinge succeeded in

accustoming his mind to the possibility of sending Lily to Bridgecrap.

To Lily's dismay, almost as much as to Philip's own, Charlie asked her

in her father's presence:

"Wouldn't you like to go to school, little woman, where my

kiddie-widdies are? You've often heard of my Dorothy, now, haven't you?

and she's always asking about you. They're all three of them at school

at Bridgecrap now, as happy as the day is long. You'd like to go to

school, wouldn't you?"

Lily cast a hasty glance at her father. His eyes did not meet hers, but

she knew the profoundly dejected droop of his head, and was acutely

sensitive to the meaning of his silence.

The atmosphere in which she and her father lived--of perpetually

wounded susceptibilities, of suppressed verities, of only half-sincere

demonstrations, continued long after they had ceased to be

spontaneous--had made of Lily a super-sensitive, unbalanced creature,

distrustful of her own instincts, and almost incapable of clear

thinking. She had become the victim of muddle, the commonest and the

most disastrous foundation upon which to build up a life.

It now seemed to her that it would be impossible to speak the truth in

the face of the obvious pain that it would give her father, while at

the same time she was aware of the utter uselessness of telling a lie.

To tell a lie, incidentally, was a sin, but then so was it a sin to

be heartless and undutiful, and the latter was fraught with the more

painful consequences of the two.

Good-natured Charlie Hardinge saw, without understanding it, the

conflict reflected on her small, pale face.

"Come, come, come, come! You look as though school would do you all the

good in the world. My kiddies have got cheeks like roses, and Dorothy

holds herself like a grenadier--head up, shoulders back! They think

Bridgecrap the jolliest place in the world."

"Is it a large school?" asked Lily, evading the point at issue with

absolute relief.

"Thirty girls. Miss Melody has some very nice kiddies there

indeed--girls you're likely to see something of, later on. Very nice

girls--girls that Ethel and I thoroughly liked the look of. Walk well,

hold themselves well, keen on all sorts of games----"

It might be said that Philip eventually sent Lily to Bridgecrap in

spite of Charlie Hardinge's recommendations, rather than because of

them.

The thing that really moved him most, although he was quite unaware

that it was the determining factor in his decision, was Charlie's

positive assurance that Lily was losing her prettiness.

"The kiddie's pale," said Charlie accusingly. "She used to have

a pretty colour when she was a little thing, and now she looks

anæmic--and there are lines under her eyes. She's moping, Philip,

that's what it is. Moping. No wonder she holds herself so badly!"

Philip did not like hearing strictures, that he could not feel to be

altogether without foundation, upon the appearance of his daughter.

It cost him real and severe pain to let her go, although her presence

at home gave him no happiness, and he did not attempt to conceal the

extent of his sacrifice from Lily.

"Good-bye, my poor little girl. You shall have your own way, and go

right away from home for a time. I hope it may answer, my poor child,

and send you back some day to those who love you best in the world. God

bless you."

This was Philip's valediction, sending Lily to her new surroundings

with a leaden weight of guilt at her heart, and a reproachful picture

of a sorrowful and deserted father returning to an empty house.

Having more or less lost hold upon her own convictions, she felt that,

had it been possible, she would gladly have renounced Bridgecrap for

ever, and returned to her father.

In this frame of mind, and with spirit encompassed by the accumulation

of false values that had steadily been put before her in one form

or another by the two small worlds that she had known--her home and

the convent--it may readily be assumed that Lily began her career at

Bridgecrap school under a severe handicap.

The standards there were altogether different from any that she had

known yet.

"Honour" seemed to be the watchword of the place. The girls who

excelled in games, or in examinations, did so "for the honour of

the school." Their own personal honour was appealed to, freely and

frequently. The convent system of _surveillance_ would have been

unthinkable, at Bridgecrap.

"I want you girls to have just the Public School code of honour that

your brothers have----" Miss Melody herself often rousingly remarked.

But although the Bridgecrap girls were to play games like boys, to

hold the traditional boys' views about honour, and, theoretically, to

receive an education that should as nearly as possible conform to the

pattern of that bestowed upon their brothers, they were never for a

moment allowed to view the masculine sex as the superior sex. On the

contrary, there was nothing, they were told, that a man could do which

a woman could not do better. The old idea that women were not fitted

for the professions that had hitherto been closed to them was being

disproved every day. Miss Melody hoped to see many of her girls take

their degrees, strike out careers for themselves....

Many of the girls responded enthusiastically, although the majority of

them belonged to a class of society in which careers, other than that

of matrimony, are scarcely yet tolerated for its daughters; and seldom

contemplated by them, schooldays once over. They were enthusiastic,

although they did not realize it, largely because of the excellent

physical conditions under which they lived.

Games were played all the year round, at Bridgecrap. There was

an elaborate gymnasium, and once a week the girls went to the

swimming-baths. Lily was good-naturedly despised by them all for her

absolute lack of athletic training or proficiency and total absence of

muscle.

Just as at ten years old she had heard the opinion of her

contemporaries at the convent, and been humiliated by it, so at

Bridgecrap she met with an equal candour, clothed in the slang that was

tolerated, if not actually permitted, from the pupils.

"Look here, Lily Thingamy, or whatever your name is, you'll have to

stir your stumps a bit. Can't hold a whole hockey practice up for

_you_, you know."

"Just look at this kid! Why, she hasn't any more muscle than a kitten.

If she weren't so thin, she'd be disgustingly _flabby_!"

"You want backbone, that's what you want. It makes one sick to see

anybody of your age who's never been taught what ragging means."

"My dear kid, it's no use saying you don't know the rules of the game.

You've bally well _got_ to know them. What on earth _do_ you know, if

you don't know anything about cricket?"

There were things that Lily did know, although she speedily became

aware that the knowledge of them would not bring her to honour or

triumph amongst the girls, and scarcely even amongst the mistresses.

It was not accounted as particularly creditable to her, for instance,

that she took a high place in the school, and retained it easily. More

might have been made of it, but for the fact that all Miss Cleeve's

conscientious teaching had never embraced the form of cramming known as

taking examinations, and at Bridgecrap the taking of examinations was

made the test of knowledge.

Consequently, however excellent her half year's work, Lily seldom

succeeded in passing a test, to the form of which she was unaccustomed,

and the lists were regularly headed by the captain of the hockey team,

who had been at Bridgecrap nearly six years, possessed a capacity for

hard work, a well-trained, mechanical memory, and no intellect whatever.

The mistresses were almost all primarily selected for their proficiency

in games, except the French teacher, a Swiss lady who gave all her

lessons in broken English.

The Scripture classes were taken by Miss Melody herself, in each of

the three divisions of the school. History was imparted in the usual

patchwork of dates, anecdotes, and names famous in Great Britain

between the reign of King Alfred the Great and that of Queen Anne,

geography was not taught beyond the Upper Third, botany was an extra,

natural history ignored, and plain needlework not taught. Mathematics,

except in the cases of one or two peculiarly constituted beings,

presented itself to the girls, as to the majority of feminine minds,

as a compound of meaningless "sums" that, if juggled with by a series

of unrelated processes, might "come out right" at the end. Those of

the pupils, Lily Stellenthorpe amongst them, who had least liking or

aptitude for figures, received, by way of inculcating these, an hour's

private and extra tuition in arithmetic once a week. Almost each one of

them still surreptitiously counted upon her fingers, as little children

do, believing it to be a form of cheating, but entirely unfamiliar with

any more legitimate method of achieving the same result.

Literature, kept within the realms of English achievement, generally

embraced one Shakespearean play thoroughly prepared, out of a school

edition, for a coming examination. Shakespearean plays not judged

suitable for this purpose, many of the girls did not even know by

name. A few had "read Scott, because my young brother had to swot up

'Woodstock' last hols." Scarcely one could connect the name of any

classic with that of its author, and all, without exception, would have

felt heartily ashamed of being found, under no form of compulsion, to

be reading poetry.

Few, it may be added, ran any such risk.

The religious principles of the school were Church of England, but

religion, to Lily's relief, did not imply the insistent advertisement

of outward and minor pieties that had prevailed at the convent.

A short daily service was held in the school chapel, and there were

prayers morning and evening. Miss Melody held "Sunday talks" for

the elder girls, of which the prevalent notes were brightness and

broad-mindedness. Free discussions of Bible and Catechism readings were

encouraged, with implicit avoidance of certain of the Commandments

which apparently were not fit subjects for explanation.

Indeed, the nuns themselves could have displayed no more silent and

resolute modesty than prevailed at Bridgecrap upon subjects that,

sooner or later, must become of vital moment to every one of the

feminine creatures there being educated.

V

Lily formed and retained a very acute impression of the Bridgecrap

atmosphere, during the three years that she spent there, but hardly

a single personality in the place made any lasting effect upon her

memory. Yet it was during those three years that a secret and shamed

conviction slowly crystallized within her; they were all what she

inwardly called Real Live People, and she herself was only a sham.

However much she might try to be like everyone else, sooner or later

they would find her out.

She could not have explained wherein lay the difference, but connected

it vaguely with a mysterious undercurrent of romance that ran through

her daily life, and of which no one must ever, ever know.

She thought that no one but herself ever invented long, dramatic

stories, that went on from day to day, in which one traversed strange

and eventful scenes, always a heroine, always becomingly dressed, and

always in full view of a selected audience.

Lily also supposed herself, with more reason, to be unique in another

respect.

At fifteen, even at sixteen years of age, she still liked playing with

toys. Not even such respectable toys as jig-saw puzzles, or ingenious

mechanical contrivances--although even such tastes as these must have

roused the extreme of scorn in the players of hockey--but terribly,

shamefully babyish things--wooden farmyards and tea sets and dolls.

Above all, dolls.

Officially, Lily had outgrown dolls at twelve years old. Miss Cleeve

had expected it, had taken it for granted. She might, or might not,

have known that there was a little wax baby-doll, in long clothes,

hidden in Lily's bedroom.

But certainly neither she, nor anybody else, knew that the doll Sophy

had accompanied Lily to school.

Worse--Lily played with Sophy in secret and took her into bed with her

every night. She had a small bedroom to herself, as had most of the

elder girls, and as soon as the governess in charge had paid her brief

nightly visit of inspection, and extinguished the light, Lily crept

out of bed, felt her way to the chest of drawers, unlocked the bottom

drawer and took out the baby-doll from underneath a pile of garments

folded at the very back of the drawer.

She pretended that Sophy had to be hidden away in a cave all day from

danger of kidnapping, and that she might only visit her at night. She

cuddled her, and talked to her in a whisper, and went to sleep with her

in her arms.

With part of herself, Lily really believed that Sophy could understand

what she said to her, and appreciate the caresses lavished upon her.

There was never any question of her forgetting to conceal the little

doll again in the mornings. She was far too genuinely terrified of

being found out.

It appalled her, occasionally, to think of the effect that discovery

might have upon all those Real Live People. Not only the girls, but

everyone she had ever known--governesses and servants, and relations

like Aunt Clo and Cousin Charlie, or her father. Lily did not really

feel that even her mother would have understood, although, like most

motherless children, she idealized the memory of the dead woman. The

only person with whom she knew that her secret could quite well have

been shared, would have been Vonnie.

They had always played "pretence games" together, and Vonnie would have

outgrown them no more than Lily.

It was partly this consciousness of a guilty secret, of which Lily was

unutterably ashamed, that kept her from any intimate friendships at

school.

Like many naturally reserved people, she held an ideal of friendship

that included the most complete unreserve, and how could such a thing

ever be possible to a person who would have to begin by saying:

"I am not like other people. I am not a nearly grown-up girl like you

are--I still play pretence games with myself, although I am sixteen.

All the pencils in my pencil-box have names, and ages and characters. I

like quite baby toys, and I would much rather play by myself with a box

of tin soldiers, than go for a school-picnic, or to see a Shakespearean

play. _I have got a baby-doll and I talk to her and take her to bed

every night, and I always mean to go on, as long as I live._"

Whenever Lily reached this climax, in her imaginary confession,

she always saw the recipient of it, not necessarily as derisive or

scornful, but simply, blankly amazed and completely uncomprehending.

There _could_ be nobody who would understand in the whole world.

The whole world, if bounded by the gates of Bridgecrap, certainly

justified Lily's instinct in that respect.

She liked most of the girls, although she knew in her heart that there

was no real link between herself and any one of them. This she put down

to that indefinable eccentricity of hers which differentiated her from

the rest of the world. She knew that the girls were conscious of it

too, although it would not have occurred to them to put it into words.

The discussion of an abstract question amongst themselves they would

have considered to be an affectation, and bad form, although the

youthful Briton's trick of freely making crude personal remarks

flourished unchallenged.

"I _say_, what a scarlet nose you've got!"

This was entirely permissible and called for neither comment nor reply,

other than a casual "Have I--what's it matter?"

But Lily always remembered the outcry that followed upon a remark once

made by one of the younger pupils:

"I wonder why one gets that funny feeling sometimes of having done

things before? Sort of like that Indian thing Mam'oiselle was reading

about the other day--reincarnation or something----"

"Here! Chuck it, please. That was in a _lesson_!"

"Little girls shouldn't use long words they don't understand," said a

senior severely.

"Snub for you, Elizabeth Fulham, showing off like that! Trying to be

original, I s'pose! Did you ever hear of such affectation in a Fourth

Form kid!"

Apparently no one ever had and no one ever did again, Elizabeth Fulham

subsiding, with a very red face, into silence and subsequent orthodoxy.

Certainly no one else at Bridgecrap could fairly be accused of trying

to be original. It would have been the unforgivable sin.

Everyone seemed to copy everyone else.

Many of the girls copied Dorothy Hardinge, the eldest of Charlie

Hardinge's three kiddies, because she was very good at games and had

won the High Jumping Competition two years running at the school

sports. The Third Form girls parted their hair in the boyish way

affected by Dorothy, and used the same slang that she did; and were

"keen" on the mathematical mistress, because Dorothy was "keen" on her.

Schoolgirl friendships were not the fashion at Bridgecrap, and were

cried down as "sloppy" by the girls themselves.

But it was _de rigeur_ to have an infatuation for one or other of the

teachers, with the exception of Mademoiselle who, being a "beastly

foreigner," naturally "didn't count."

The majority of these enthusiasms might almost be described as being

artificially manufactured to meet the requirements of that great law

that enforced conformation to type. The mildest demonstrations only

were indulged in.

"Isn't she _swe-eet_--isn't she _ducky_?"

Such was the prescribed formula when Lily was at Bridgecrap, and once

it had been ecstatically uttered, the speaker was recognized as being

"keen" on Miss So-and-So, and there the matter remained stationary.

There were one or two exceptions to this comparatively healthy state

of affairs, as is inevitable in any community living under similar

conditions of unnatural segregation. Lily, without knowing why, hated

the headlong adorations that occasionally overtook a girl for one of

the mistresses, and that almost always resulted in some unspecified

crisis, when the adorer was sent for by Miss Melody, and severely,

though quite inexplicitly, cautioned against "foolishness."

Sometimes, Lily thought, the mistress was cautioned too, for very often

her manner to her devotee would change abruptly, and become very cold

and self-conscious.

The affair almost always ended in a violent reaction, when the

discarded adorer would hate vehemently where she had erstwhile loved.

Such affairs always made Lily feel glad that she herself was not

particularly attracted to anyone at Bridgecrap. The whole thing seemed

to her to be so oddly undignified, and besides, it was always the least

likeable girls who were overtaken by such infatuations.

Lily knew, unaccountably, that there was a subtly unwholesome element

in the school, sometimes a very minor element indeed--but always there.

She guessed, vaguely, at the subjects of certain whispered

conversations and giggling references, but although she was quite

aware of unenlightened curiosities and perplexities of her own, the

thought of sharing them would literally have revolted her. Nor did

the whisperers and gigglers ever approach her, instinctively able to

discern, as they were, exactly whom they might or might not hope to

admit to their foolish, underbred companionship.

The youngest of Charlie Hardinge's daughters was the child in the

school whom Lily liked best, although she knew that she had been

expected to make friends with her contemporaries, Dorothy and

Janet. But Dorothy who, as her father had said, stood five-feet

five in her stockings at thirteen years old, and had a back like a

ramrod--Dorothy, at fifteen, had attained to a degree of athletic

prowess that admitted her to the comradeship of the most highly placed

girls in the school.

She naturally took not the slightest notice of Lily, who was

universally recognized at "a perfect duffer at games."

Of Janet Hardinge, Lily was frightened, although Janet was her junior.

Janet was clever, according to the Bridgecrap standards, and she

was amongst the few girls in the school who expressed a contempt

that was not, in the main, wholly good-natured, for Lily's physical

inefficiency. She had a spiteful tongue, that turned itself readily to

personalities of a coarse and wounding nature, and Lily's sensitiveness

was sufficiently obvious to render her a favourite target. Janet was

not popular, and Lily was perhaps the only one of her school-fellows

who realized that hers was simply the obtuse cruelty of the absolutely

unimaginative. Her sister Sylvia was four years younger than Lily,

and so entirely absorbed by hockey that only the chance of school

theatricals revealed to either that they had anything in common.

A play was acted every year at Midsummer. At first, Lily had been

convinced that she could act. She knew that the girls to whom the

important parts were given frequently spoke their lines with perfectly

meaningless intonation, and with emphasis very often laid in the wrong

place.

She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first part

given to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that her

voice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear and

distinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged with

self-consciousness.

Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.

"Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!" said an unnecessarily surprised junior

mistress. "I wish you principals would put as much intelligence into

some of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge."

Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, and

it was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be a

very unimportant one.

Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious in

her demeanour.

"Lily!" commanded the mistress sharply. "You can read that long speech

of Dorothy's, and see what you make of it."

Ever since her arrival at Bridgecrap Lily had been convicted of her

inferiority to everyone there.

Now, in a glorious flash, she saw her chance of at last achieving a

success.

She read the speech without hesitation, and felt that she had read it

very well.

"Excellent! I wish I'd given you a bigger part. We'll see...."

Lily was disproportionately excited.

The next day, she was told to give Dorothy's speech again, this time

with the necessary action, which included a slow entrance and a

dramatic exit prefacing the fall of the curtain.

"Oh, my dear child! Hold yourself properly--you can't walk like that.

And your hands--no, no--that won't do. Can't you _move_ properly?"

It was just what Lily could not do. Her instinct for the correct

manipulation of words and ideas did not extend to the disposition of

her own muscles.

Enforced drill, gymnastics and detested games, begun too late and

without any attempt at individual tuition, had failed to impart to

Lily the natural poise and erect bearing that made Dorothy Hardinge's

movements harmonious. Her body was as self-conscious as her mind was

supple and alert.

"No use at all. We can't have her standing about the stage like that.

What would Miss Melody say?"

"I'm sorry, Lily," said the junior mistress kindly. "It's a great pity

you can't learn to hold yourself properly. Otherwise, you might act

very well."

Lily's brief triumph was over, at the expense of this humiliation.

It was then that Sylvia Hardinge surprised her by saying quietly:

"It's a shame! You said all that stuff perfectly splendidly--as though

it really meant something. They ought to let you have a really good

part--you act better than any of us."

Lily secretly agreed with her, whilst believing herself conceited

for doing so, but she was none the less astonished and gratified at

Sylvia's appreciation.

"I'm glad you think I can act. Did I really hold myself so very badly?"

"Yes," said Sylvia simply. "Frightfully."

It was like a douche of cold water.

Lily's friendship with Sylvia was destined to run a course that was

neatly foreshadowed thus in their first encounter.

Sylvia admired Lily, thought her clever and very pretty, and was a

sympathetic and affectionate companion.

Lily felt passionately grateful for her affection, and sometimes told

herself joyfully that she had found a friend at last.

And then from time to time she was suddenly brought up short against

the sharply defined limits of Sylvia's comprehension, and the jarring

candour of Sylvia's ruthlessly unalterable condemnations.

Grown-up people always told one that in this world there was no such

thing as a perfect friendship. Lily obediently generalized thus, and

strove for philosophy in defiance of a hidden, quite unsupported

certainty, in the depths of her own mind, that the generalization was a

false one.

It was not until her final half year at Bridgecrap that Lily came under

the direct personal influence of the headmistress.

Miss Melody was fifty-seven, she had given up her life to the work of

education, and she still brought to it the enthusiasm of a pioneer. Her

solitary weakness was the not altogether uncommon one of an unshakable

belief in her own infallibility.

"You may have a difficult time in front of you, childie," she said

to Lily very kindly. "A motherless girl is very often at a great

disadvantage. I was motherless myself before I was twenty."

She had a rounded mellow voice and always articulated her words with

great deliberation and distinctness. "And the dear little brother! Is

that a big responsibility, Lily?"

"Kenneth will be going to school almost at once," said Lily evasively.

She would like to have replied, as Miss Melody obviously expected her

to do, with an admission of her own perplexities as regarded her

relations to Kenneth, but she knew very well that no responsibility

would really be hers. Nothing vital bound her to Kenneth as she had

been bound to Vonnie, and the immense gulf of her ten years' seniority

had inspired in her no maternal solicitude towards her independent

little brother.

"He will be nearly eight when I leave here, and I know my father means

him to go to school when he's eight," said Lily.

"Child, you're not going to be a shirker, are you? Lily, Lily, isn't

that the weak place? Ah, I thought so. I thought so. Afraid of

responsibility, aren't you?"

Miss Melody's eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixed

it upon her pupil.

"Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fight

against it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don't forget what

prayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, you

know...."

Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely that

Miss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved a

preconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality.

"I don't know whether it is exactly that I'm afraid of responsibility,"

Lily began, feeling that the help Miss Melody was so willing to impart

must rest upon a basis of fact, if it was to be of value to her.

The schoolmistress laughed softly.

"Lily, Lily, haven't you learnt not to make excuses for yourself yet? I

hoped all my girls were taught that in the lowest form in the school!"

Lily looked as thoroughly disconcerted as she felt. Was it making

excuses for herself to try and explain what she felt to be the truth,

even though it happened to run contrary to Miss Melody's judgment?

"No, no, child," Miss Melody was grave again now. "Never be ashamed to

own up to your weaknesses. I want you to think about backbone, dearie.

It's what you need. _I_ know, childie--perhaps more than you think. All

sorts of girls have passed through my care, and I'm very, very proud to

think that I've known something about each one of them--perhaps been

able to give each one a little help. And there are no two alike, Lily,

and each one has to be studied individually."

"And do you--have you really----?" Lily wanted to ask whether Miss

Melody had really penetrated to the true self of every one of her

pupils. It seemed so incredible, that girls like Dorothy Hardinge, for

instance, should really have an inward life, even as Lily herself, and

that Miss Melody should enter therein, and understand it all.

"Do I really study each one individually? Indeed I do, Lily, although

it may seem to you girls that you see very little of the headmistress

except in school, and on state occasions. Oh, _I_ know," and Miss

Melody laughed again.

Then she dropped her deep, soft voice impressively.

"I've studied you, childie dear, and thought about you very often.

There's weakness, Lily--there's weakness. You'll have to be very much

on your guard. I should like to have seen you much keener about games,

much more in earnest for the honour of the school at our hockey and

cricket matches. You may think that those things are of no very great

importance in themselves, but there's a fine spirit behind it all, you

know--a thoroughly _English_ spirit. It's that keenness that you seem

to me to lack."

Miss Melody paused, and looked with her characteristic air of profound

scrutiny at Lily.

"Well?" she said encouragingly.

Lily felt that she was letting slip an opportunity for just such a

clarification of issues as she had long sought after, but the habits of

obscure and muddled thinking into which she had all her life been led

stood in her way.

She made a consciously inadequate effort, belatedly.

"I think I could be more--keen--about things, if I only felt they were

more worth it," she said confusedly. "I know I'm no good at games, but

it isn't only that--it doesn't seem to me to matter frightfully whether

one's good at them or not--and it's the same about other things, even

lessons. I _do_ enjoy them--some of them at least--but all the time

I've got a sort of feeling--what's it all for?"

She paused, confused and frightened.

"Go on----" said Miss Melody. Her voice was slightly melancholy, but

she was slowly nodding her head, as though in comprehension.

"I think if I could find something that seemed to me thoroughly worth

while I could--could really let myself go and give my whole self to

it. Something like a--a person one loved very much, or a sort of life

one felt was right for _oneself_--not just right in itself----" Lily

stopped, in utter disarray.

She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by those

halting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was not

apparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.

"I'm very, very glad you should have spoken, childie ... perhaps we can

get this straightened out between us. That's a terrible idea of yours,

you know, that things aren't worth while. Why, at your age, anything

ought to be worth while--over and over again, Lily. The games and the

lessons, and the little brother at home--it's all worth while, dearie.

While you're thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call to

devote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunities

are slipping by you--you're squandering all your energies on fancies

that mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into what

you're doing, Lily--into the living present. Why, it's all worth while!

As I told you just now, it isn't the number of runs you make in the

cricket match that matters, it's the spirit that holds the whole eleven

together, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match.

_That's_ what matters!"

Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel no

real response within herself to these rousing truths?

At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alien

standards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish the

latter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody's inspiring

banner.

"The games in themselves are only games. True," said Miss Melody. "But

there's something else, Lily. I wonder if you've ever thought of it?

Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honour

and glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul has

written about that--didn't we have it, not so very long ago, at our

reading? And don't you think, if you want a motive, that you have an

adequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won't ask again

'what's it all for' or whether it's worth while, will you?"

Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate,

inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?--"The Apostle Paul

spoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until I

have evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from that

lack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you,

and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all."

Nothing is more certain than that no such arrogant lucidity sprang

either to her mind or to her lips.

"I'll try, Miss Melody----" she said, earnestly and meekly.

"I know you will, I'm quite sure of it. There's a big effort to be

made, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but it

can be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel that

you can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answer

you. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years ago

still write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school by

now.

"Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own future

is to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the little

brother, or do you want a home of your very own--marriage, Lily?"

The mere knowledge that she had never before heard the word mentioned

in such a connection by Miss Melody, made Lily blush foolishly.

The headmistress smiled--an omniscient smile. "I thought so--I thought

so. Well, Lily, although I haven't married myself, I always advocate

marriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in the

beaten track, and I don't think you're one of those that are called

upon to stand alone. Oh, there's nothing derogatory in that. Marriage

is a very high calling, child, and there's a great deal to it--a great

deal of _responsibility_, Lily."

Miss Melody's arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become a

catchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily's weakness.

Lily smiled back again, faintly protesting.

"Ah, you don't like that! It's the old bugbear, isn't it? Well, well,

childie...." Miss Melody appeared to lose herself in reflectiveness.

The fiction of Lily's dread of responsibility was now firmly

established between them.

"If I can give you any advice, or help you in any way, just let me

know, dear child. We've had a nice, long talk, and I think it's been

helpful to you."

Miss Melody paused so significantly that Lily almost involuntarily

said: "Yes, Miss Melody."

"I'm very thankful for that, Lily--very proud and thankful. You must

come to me again before the breaking up. Bless you, childie dear."

Lily understood that the interview was at an end.

Acutely sensitive as she was to Miss Melody's kind and serious interest

in her welfare, it was almost inevitable that she should come to

the sorrowful conclusion that Miss Melody, in her vast and tolerant

experience, must be correct in her estimate of Lily's self. The thought

depressed her.

She lacked backbone, and she was a shirker, squandering all her

energies upon fancies that meant nothing.

In a vague and general way, Lily resolved to abjure those fancies and

to readjust her scale of relative values so that it should include all

that Miss Melody had meant by such words as "keenness"--"a thoroughly

English spirit" and "doing everything to the greater honour and glory

of God."