Wentworth, the Principal's wife; I've seen her about you and she has
kindly promised to mother you as much as possible till Miss Foster comes
back."
Lallie's face fell.
"Oh, Tony," she exclaimed, "can't I have lunch with you and all the boys
this first day? Can't I stop here just for to-day?"
"You'll have lunch here hundreds of times, and I've made the engagement
for you to-day. Hurry, my child, for I haven't a minute."
Lallie didn't take long to get her hat--a big white one. She also wore
a pair of long white gloves, and still carried the green silk bag, the
only touch of colour about her. Tony looked at her with kind, approving
eyes. How well the child carried herself; how girlish and fresh she
was; and in her own quaint way, how full of the distinction she thought
she lacked. But he felt some misgivings all the same--was she so
unnoticeable? that was the question.
"How did you manage to find Cripps?" he asked, as they hurried up the
wide tree-bordered road leading from B. House to the College, now full
of boys hurrying to and fro from their various houses.
"I saw him from the window, and he was nearly asleep, so I called to him
and he looked up; he's such a nice kind boy--we're great friends
already."
"Oh, are you?" Tony said, rather drily. "Where was Matron?"
"I haven't seen the dear matron this morning; you see, I went straight
out whenever I was dressed. Oh, I did enjoy my lazy lie this morning,
Tony, but I'll be up with the lark to-morrow."
"Don't you think you'd be better to breakfast in bed until you have got
thoroughly rested?" Tony said nervously. "There's no need for you to
get up, and it makes such a long morning. Hadn't you better breakfast in
bed till----"
"Miss Foster comes back, I suppose," snapped Lallie. "Why would you be
hiding me out of sight all the time, Tony? Are you ashamed of me?"
She stood still in the middle of the road, flushed and angry.
"My dear child, ashamed!" the worried Tony repeated. "What an
extraordinary idea! don't stand there, Lallie, the boys are staring at
you. Doesn't it prove how anxious I am to show you off to my friends
that I haven't lost a minute in introducing you to the chief lady of our
community?"
"I'm sorry I was cross, Tony, but somehow, ever since I came, I've felt
that you felt I oughtn't to be here; that--well, that I'm in a kind of
way in quarantine, like poor Cripps, and that only Miss Foster's return
will remove the infection."
"Lallie, you're too sharp altogether; you're not so far out though this
time, and I begin to sympathise with your father's introduction of Aunt
Emileen. But I promise you you'll be happy this afternoon; and this
evening I'll bring my work into the drawing-room beside you. I must do
it, but you won't feel lonely if I'm there, will you? No, Lallie, you
must not try to embrace me in the street! the boys are looking at you!"
"Who's trying to embrace you, you conceited man? I was only taking your
arm, and that you might have offered me. I promised Matron I wouldn't
try to kiss you any more here."
"Promised Matron! What the dickens has Matron got to do with it?" It
was Tony who stopped this time, and his voice was the reverse of
pleased.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear! you're like the animals in 'Alice,' Tony, there's
no pleasing you at all, at all. May I point out that at the present
moment several boys are looking at you!"
"But, Lallie, you must explain what you mean; you say such extraordinary
things----"
"Not at all, it's all the other way; but I'll try and remember to be
stiff and prim; only one minute you're so nasty and the next you're so
nice that action of some sort seems imperative--oh, dear, we're there!
What a big house! Is she terrible, Tony? Will _she_ think I'm all mumpy
too? You won't leave me; you'll see me safe in----"
*CHAPTER IV*
In Hamchester College the headmaster, Dr. Wentworth, like other
headmasters, is a much criticised man. He has his partisans, he has
also his detractors. Were an angel from heaven to descend and become
headmaster of a large public school he would find plenty of adverse
critics, and these were by no means lacking to Dr. Wentworth. But about
his wife, there were no two opinions. Six hundred boys and all the
masters agreed in thinking her perfectly delightful. So kind was she,
so friendly, so simple and believing in the good intentions of others,
that quite curmudgeony people melted into amiability in the sunshine of
her presence. Perhaps one of the boys best summed up her mysterious
charm when he said, "She doesn't try to be nice to a chap, she just _is_
nice; and there's such a difference."
Therefore when Tony, having sat in her drawing-room for five minutes,
prepared to depart--not without misgivings as to how Lallie would take
it--that damsel nodded at him coolly, without so much as a supplicating
glance after his retreating form, and when he had gone she turned to her
hostess with a little laugh that ended in a sigh.
"Poor man," she said, "I'm afraid I'm a regular white elephant to him
just now; but I can't make myself invisible, can I?"
"I think we'd all be very sorry if you were invisible. Come now, and
see my chicks," and kind Mrs. Wentworth led Lallie upstairs and down a
long passage to a big sunny room where two little girls sat painting at
the table.
"This is Pris and this is Prue, and that over there is Punch!" Mrs.
Wentworth said, indicating her offsprings.
Pris and Prue lifted small flushed faces from their artistic efforts,
and surveyed Lallie with large solemn eyes, and each held out a small
hand liberally besmeared with Prussian blue.
"How do you do?" said Pris politely. "I'm seven; how old are you?"
"I'm six," added Prue.
Punch, a rolly-polly person who was apparently engaged in dismembering a
woolly lamb, remarked loudly and distinctly, "I'm a boy."
"May I paint?" asked Lallie.
"Oh, do, you can have my seat for a bit. You might do some legs; they
run over so, somehow, with me."
Lallie sat down in front of Prue's picture, which was an elaborate
_Graphic_ illustration of the "Relief of Ladysmith."
"I'm sure Sir George White's tunic was not pink," Lallie objected.
"They wore khaki, you know."
"I don't like khaki; it's the colour of mustard, an' I hate mustard; my
new sash is pink, an' I like pink. _My_ soldiers wear pink; you may
paint their legs khaki if you like."
"It looks very stormy overhead," Lallie remarked. "Was there a
thunderstorm at the Relief of Ladysmith?"
"My uncle was there," said Pris, as though that accounted for it.
"I'll leave you for a few minutes while I write a note," said Mrs.
Wentworth. "Take care of this young lady; be very kind to her. She has
come to stay with Mr. Bevan, and she'll come and see you often if you
are good."
The moment the door closed behind their mother, regardless of the
protests of their nurse, who was sewing at the window, the children
crowded round Lallie, and all three tried to sit upon her at once.
"Are you _quite_ a grown-up lady?" asked Pris doubtfully.
"No," said Lallie, "I'm a little girl----"
"You're a bit bigger than me," Prue granted somewhat grudgingly, "but I
thought you weren't quite grown-up. Punch is only four."
"I'm a very old four," Punch maintained.
"Do you think," asked Prue, "that you could tell us a story?"
"Do I not?" Lallie answered, and in another minute she had the children
absorbed in the legend of that "quiet, decent man, Andrew Coffy"; so
that when her hostess came back to fetch her to lunch Lallie appeared,
as it were, buried beneath the family of Wentworth.
Dr. Wentworth seemed sufficiently awe-inspiring to the outside world,
but his family took a different view of him, and Pris at luncheon
generally addressed her father as "Poor dear," or spoke of him as "That
child."
Mrs. Wentworth was wont to declare to her intimates that no schoolmaster
could possibly be endurable who was not well sat upon in the bosom of
his family.
"Personally," she said, "I have the greatest admiration for my husband,
and consider him quite an excellent sort of ordinary man; but being a
headmaster, if I didn't make him positively skip off his pedestal his
sense of proportion would die of inanition."
Certainly neither Miss Prudence nor Miss Patience Wentworth manifested
the smallest awe of their parent; and Lallie was moved to take his side
in several arguments that ensued during luncheon.
Prue was rosy and brown-eyed, with thick short hair that framed her
round face deliciously. Pris was fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a face
like a monthly rose. Punch's countenance resembled a full moon, and all
three children were plump and healthy and absolutely good-tempered. In
fact, the whole Wentworth family were rather roundabout, which perhaps
accounted for their amiability. Lallie endeared herself immediately to
Mrs. Wentworth by her extreme popularity with the children. Even the
imperturbable Punch unbent so far as to say: "I like you. You may come
and have dinner with us every day. You speak in such a funny voice."
*CHAPTER V*
Tony Bevan did not meet Lallie again that day until nearly dinner time.
It is true that during the afternoon he beheld her afar off across the
College field, sitting on a seat beside the Principal's wife and
watching the pick-up. He noted moreover that behind her stood a little
group of the younger masters, and that they appeared deeply interested
in her remarks; while her attention to the game was close and
enthusiastic. She was in good hands, and Tony was quite happy about
her. He had a great many things to do and to see to, so he left the
field with a contented mind.
Mrs. Wentworth had promised to keep her to tea, and after tea he had to
give a private lesson to two of the University scholarship people, so
that it was almost seven o'clock when he entered his own hall to be met
by a sound of music, and stood still to listen.
It was unusual music: vibrating, pulsating, mysterious; rising and
falling in waves of sound that billowed hither and thither like the mist
on the heath, the strain now soft and seductive, now loud and menacing;
again humming with the slumbrous, slow drone of honey-gathering bees on
a sunny afternoon in high summer. It was music that above all suggested
thyme-scented, wind-swept spaces, rock and river, and shady, solemn
woods. It was the sound of Lallie's harp.
He remembered to have noticed the big case in the hall as he went out to
College that morning. Who had taken it out and carried it into the
drawing-room for her? he wondered. She certainly couldn't have done it
herself, for it was very heavy.
He opened the drawing-room door and went in, closing it softly behind
him. The window at the end of the room was wide open, but a small fire
burned cheerfully upon the hearth, and save for its uncertain light the
room was shadowy and almost dark. Tony's first thought was of how
shocked Miss Foster would be at the extravagance of a fire on such a
warm night; but this reflection was speedily superseded by astonishment
at the sight of his "driver," Mr. Johns, and young Nick seated side by
side upon a sofa near the fire, while Lallie sat at her big harp right
in the middle of the room, and discoursed weird music to her evidently
appreciative audience.
She had already changed for dinner, and her gown--high-waisted, long and
clinging--fell in straight folds to her feet. Neck and arms were bare,
and beautiful old lace was draped about her white shoulders. In colour
her dress was of the soft yet brilliant green of July grass in a
grass-country where there is much rain. A green ribbon threaded through
her dusky hair was her only ornament save a wide gold band that clasped
her bare arm just above the elbow and caught the flickering firelight in
ruddy gleams as her slender, purposeful hands flashed to and fro over
the enormous strings, with long, swooping movements, assured and
definite in design and result as the swift stoop of a hawk.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes large and bright, and as the fire
suddenly leapt into clearer flame every farthest corner of the room was
revealed sharp and distinct, and her girlish figure seemed a sudden
incarnation of the Celtic muse.
Tony stood where he was just inside the door. Lallie faced him, but she
took no notice of his entrance till the last long arpeggio had shivered
into silence; then, in the most matter-of-fact tone, she remarked:
"On Monday, Tony, we must hire a piano."
Tony felt the sudden shock of disillusionment that comes with the fall
of the curtain after a play that has thrilled the senses with its large
romance--the blank sensation that life is really rather a prosaic
business after all. He did not answer immediately, and in the meantime
Paunch and young Nick had arisen in some haste from their sofa, the
latter exclaiming confusedly:
"I had no idea it was so late. I met Miss Clonmell at the Principal's,
and walked home with her, to show her the way."
"And as he'd never heard a harp properly played," Lallie added, "I told
him that if he liked to wait, I'd change and come down and play till you
came in; and on the stairs I met Mr. Johns, and he'd never heard a harp
either, so he came too."
"How did you get it out of the wooden case?" asked Tony.
"Oh, they unpacked it and carried it in for me while I dressed; and
they've put the case in the box-room and all--ever so tidy we've been.
Come here, Mr. Johns, and put it in the corner for me--no, not that one,
that's an outer wall. This one, by the writing-table. Thank you; that
will do nicely. Good-night, Mr. Nick. I beg your pardon, it's Paddy's
fault; I always stumble into the wrong names that I've no business to
know. Next time you come I'll sing for you, but I've never any voice
after a voyage."
Dinner that night was an unusually cheerful meal, and by the time Tony
carried in his work to the drawing-room that he might correct it beside
Lallie, it was nearly nine o'clock.
Everything was arranged for his comfort when he did appear. A table at
his elbow to hold his papers, his chair at the exact angle where he
would get the best light, and Lallie standing on the hearth-rug with a
box of matches in her hand ready to light his pipe.
"Oh, I say, Lallie!" said Tony, yielding weakly to temptation. "D'you
think I may? No one has ever smoked in this room. I don't know what
Miss Foster would say."
"A pipe, Tony! Surely a little pipe will do no harm? Why, the window's
wide open and there's a fire; and there are very few hangings and
precious little furniture. Never did I see such a bare, stiff room. I
had to have a little bit of fire to help furnish it. There's one good
thing, it will be a capital room for sound, and a grand piano will fill
it up a bit. Now sit down, and I won't speak another word till you
speak to me."
Lallie pushed him down in his chair and fetched a stool on which she
seated herself, leaning her back against Tony's knees, on her own she
laid an open book, and in her hands was a piece of knitting.
For a few minutes there was absolute silence. Tony Bevan tried to absorb
himself in the Latin prose of Lower VIth classical, but he was acutely
conscious of the soft weight that leant against him, and he found his
eyes wandering from the sheets he held to the top of Lallie's head just
underneath, and thence to her ever busy hands, which held a pale blue
silk tie--a tie that was growing in length with the utmost rapidity, for
Lallie knitted at express speed, only pausing every now and then to turn
a page of her book.
Tony felt the strongest desire to talk, and was quite unreasonably
irritated at his guest's complete absorption, which gave him neither
lead nor excuse.
The wood fire crackled cheerfully--Lallie had begged some logs from
Ford--and Lallie's harp in the corner caught the ruddy gleams on strings
and gilded frame.
Tony looked round the large, handsome room with a new interest.
Hitherto he had not considered it as any concern of his. It was Miss
Foster's domain, to be entered by him only on such occasions as she gave
tea to visiting parents. To be sure he had bought all the furniture for
it, and each piece, in itself, was good and possessed of qualities that
redeemed it from the commonplace. There was one really beautiful
Hepplewhite cabinet, a genuine Sheraton desk and bookcase, and some fine
old china; but Lallie was right, the room was stiff, bare, wholly
lacking in charm. Not to-night; it seemed neither bare nor stiff
to-night. It was full of an atmosphere subtler and sweeter even than
that produced by the comfortable clouds of tobacco smoke that floated
between Tony Bevan and the girl leaning against his knees. To-night the
room radiated a delicious atmosphere of home, and all because a slip of
a girl had disarranged the furniture and sat there at his feet looking
the very spirit of the domestic hearth.
In grumpy moments, Tony was apt to declare that in all his big house no
corner seemed really to belong to him except the writing-table in his
study. Among the many admirable qualities of Miss Foster, she did not
possess the power of making a man feel comfortable and at his ease in
her society. As a rule he was ready enough to admit that this was,
perhaps, an additional reason why she filled her post so efficiently.
The greatest gossip in Hamchester could not conjecture any matrimonial
complication with Miss Foster, and Tony rejoiced in the serene security
engendered by this knowledge. Nevertheless, to-night he was conscious of
very distinct enjoyment of, and interest in, his own drawing-room.
How still it was!
No sound save the little click of Lallie's needles as she changed them
at the end of a row, and the soft sizzle of the wood fire. Why was
she--gregarious, garrulous Lallie--so silent? If only she had insisted
on talking he could have laid aside those tiresome proses with a sigh as
to the impossibility of work with such a chatterbox in the room. But
she was quiet as any mouse, and Tony wanted to talk himself.
"Can you see all right?" he asked at last.
"Perfectly, thank you," and she never turned her head.
Silence again, while Tony smoked and made no attempt to correct papers.
Instead, he found himself admiring the straightness of Lallie's parting,
and marvelling at the slenderness of her little neck that showed never a
bone.
Presently he reflected that it was hardly hospitable to condemn a young
and lively girl to complete silence during her first evening hi his
house.
Hospitable! It was positively churlish.
Tony pushed the papers on the table a little farther away from him. It
was his plain duty to talk to Lallie.
"What's that you're knitting?" he asked sociably.
"A tie for Mr. Cripps. Isn't it a pretty colour? Have you finished?
How quick you've been! I thought you'd be hours and hours."
"A tie for Cripps!" Tony repeated in tones that betrayed disapproval.
"Why in the world should you make a tie for Cripps? You never saw him
till this morning."
"Ah, but we made great friends in a very little time," Lallie explained
eagerly; "and the old string he was wearing was a terrible show. He can
knit ties himself, you know, the clever boy, but he always gives away
the ones he knits; and the poor chap's awfully badly off for ties just
now. He told me so. And I said I'd make him one for Sundays and high
days. I shall probably finish it to-morrow, and he can have it by Monday
morning."
"Cripps is a humbug. I'm perfectly sure he has plenty of ties. Don't
you be imposed upon, Lallie; don't you give him anything of the kind."
She turned right round and clasped her bare arms round Tony's knees to
balance herself.
"Ah, Tony, now," she expostulated, "I must give the boy his little tie
that I promised, and him so dull in quarantine and all. Sure a nice
pale blue tie will cheer him up and make him think more of himself. A
tie to a boy is like a new hat to a girl. There's nothing cheers me up
like a new hat when I'm down in the dumps. Now what article of attire
most cheers you, Tony?"
"I rather like ties," Tony answered, with cold detachment.
"Then I'll make dozens for you while I'm here," and Lallie set her chin
on her clasped hands and looked up at Tony with eyes whose expression
reminded him of Val's. "I'll make ties for you and every dear boy in
this house, and for Paunch too. By the way, it's a shame to call that
man Paunch. He's not fat or bow-windowy. However did he come by such a
name?"
"He's not fat now," Tony said judicially, "but he'll be fat long before
he's my age unless he takes enormous quantities of exercise; and no one
notices a tendency more quickly than boys."
"Is that why you're called Bruiser?" Lallie asked innocently. "Have you
a tendency to get mixed up in street rows and to join generally in
disorderly conduct?"
"I fancy," answered Tony, "that I got my name rather from my appearance
than from any specially rowdy conduct on my part. I was Bruiser Bevan
as a boy here, the name followed me up to Oxford, and was waiting for me
when I came back here as a master. I was only a fair boxer--too slow
and not heavy enough for a heavy weight. Besides I really never cared
much about it."
"I think I shall like Paunch," Lallie remarked; "he's earnest and
serious, and thinks no end of himself, but he can unbend on occasion."
"Don't you go making him unbend till he refuses to coil up again into
his proper shape," Tony said anxiously. "You must be serious, too, down
here, and be always thinking what Aunt Emileen would say."
"Aunt Emileen would approve of Paunch; he is earnestly concerned for the
morals of B. House, and I'll help him to raise the tone, till we're so
superior no other house can touch us. As for you, Tony, I've discovered
already you're a slack old thing, and don't take nearly a keen enough
interest in these high matters."
"Of course every one knows that P--that Mr. Johns and Miss Foster really
run this house," Tony said dryly; "I'm merely the figure head. Lallie,"
with a complete change of tone, "why do you wear a bracelet above the
elbow? I never saw any other lady wear one there."
"Have you forgotten?" the girl exclaimed. "Look there!" and unclasping
the wide gold band she displayed a long discoloured, jagged scar on her
white arm. "That's where the mare 'Loree' bit me when I was ten. Don't
you remember 'Loree'? Perhaps you weren't with us that autumn. We
called her after the poem, 'Loraine, Loraine, Loree,' because she had
such a fiendish temper. But she was a great beauty, and a wonderful
jumper, and Dad thought he would hunt her that winter, in spite of her
temper, though he was a bit too heavy for her; but they were all afraid
of her at the stables, and declared she'd be the death of somebody.
Funnily enough she never showed temper to me, and I used to take her
sugar and apples and go in and out of the stable, and she never showed a
sign of ill-temper while I was there, but Dad would never let me mount
her. Then one day she'd just come in from exercising, and I went out to
the yard with her apple for her. Rooney called to me: 'Don't you come
near her, Miss Lallie! It's the very devil himself is in her to-day;'
but I laughed, like the silly little girl I was, and said, 'It's you,
Rooney, who can't manage her; I wish they'd let me take her out to
exercise, it's a light hand she wants.' I went up to her to give her
the apple, and she swung round and caught hold of my arm with her long
teeth, and broke it there and then--and Dad shot her that afternoon.
Oh, you _must_ remember, Tony!"
"I think I do remember something about it, but you know you were always
being bitten by something, or thrown by something else----"
"I never was _thrown_ but once," Lallie exclaimed indignantly. "If your
horse rolls in a ditch it's not fair for any one to say you're thrown;
but you, Tony, I suppose, keep count of the times you stick on, not the
times you come off."
"Well, you were always in the wars, anyhow, so that perhaps the
accidents, being so numerous, impressed me less than they ought to have
done. But that was a horrid thing. Still, you know, I think the scar is
less noticeable than the bracelet."
"Oh, the bracelet's Dad's affair. He can't bear to see anything ugly;
and when I had my first proper evening frock he gave me this, and bade
me wear it always when I had short sleeves; and it makes a topic of
conversation with my partners at dances, and they're always very shocked
and sorry, and feel kindly to me at once."
Lallie snapped the bracelet on her arm again, and smiled up confidingly
at Tony, who continued to smoke in silence.