Intruder Bess
Ingred, after a blissful week-end, returned to Grovebury by the early
train on Monday morning, and, wrenching her mind with difficulty from
the interests of Wynch-on-the-Wold, focused it on school affairs
instead. There was certainly need of mental concentration if she meant
to make headway in the College. The standard of work required from
VA. was very stiff, and taxed the powers of even the brightest
girls to the uttermost.
"Miss Strong reminds me of Rehoboam!" wailed Fil, fresh from the study
of the Second Book of Chronicles. "Her little finger's thicker than her
whole body used to be, and, instead of whips, she chastises us with
scorpions. I want to go and bow the knee to Baal."
"Rather mixed up in your Scripture, child, but we understand your
meaning," laughed Verity. "The Bantam's certainly piling it on nowadays
in the way of prep."
"Shows an absolutely brutal lack of consideration," agreed Nora.
"So do all the mistresses," groaned Ingred. "Each of them seems to think
we've nothing to do but her own particular subject. Dr. Linton actually
asked me if I could practise two hours a day. Why, he might as well have
suggested four! I can only get the piano for an hour, even if I wanted
it longer. It's a frightful business at the hostel to cram in all our
practicing, isn't it? I nearly had a free fight with Janie Potter
yesterday. She commandeered the piano, and though I showed her the music
time-table, with my name down for '5 to 6' she wouldn't budge. I had to
tilt her off the stool in the end. It was like a game of musical chairs.
She wouldn't look at me to-day, she's so cross about it. Not that _I_
care in the least!"
Music was a favorite subject with Ingred, and one in which she excelled.
She would willingly have given more time to it, had the school
curriculum allowed. She was a good reader, and had a sympathetic, if
rather spidery touch. This term she had begun lessons with Dr. Linton,
who was considered the best master in Grovebury. He was organist at the
Abbey Church, and was not only a Doctor of Music, but a composer as
well. His anthems and cantatas were widely known, he conducted the local
choral society and trained the operatic society for the annual
performance. His time was generally very full, so he did not profess to
teach juniors; it was only after celebrating her fifteenth birthday that
Ingred had been eligible as one of his pupils. He had the reputation of
being peppery tempered, therefore she walked into the room to take her
first lesson with her heart performing a sort of jazz dance under her
jersey. Dr. Linton, like many musicians, was of an artistic and
excitable temperament, and highly eccentric. Instead of sitting by the
side of his new pupil, he paced the room, pursing his lips in and out,
and drawing his fingers through his long lank dark hair.
"Have you brought a piece with you," he inquired. "Then play to me. Oh,
never mind if you make mistakes! That's not the point. I want to know
how you can talk on the piano. What have you got in that folio?
Beethoven? Rachmaninoff? M'Dowell? We'll try the Beethoven. Now don't be
nervous. Just fire away as if you were practising at home!"
It was all very well, Ingred thought, for Dr. Linton to tell her not to
be nervous, but it was a considerable ordeal to have to perform a test
piece before so keen a critic. In spite of her most valiant efforts her
hands trembled, and wrong chords crept in. She kept bravely at it,
however, and managed to reach the end of the first movement, where she
called a halt.
"It's not talking--it's only stuttering and stammering on the piano,"
she apologized.
Dr. Linton laughed. Her remark had evidently pleased him. He always
liked a pupil who fell in with his humor.
"You've the elements of speech in you, though you're still in the
prattling-baby stage," he conceded. "It's something, at any rate, to
find there's material to work upon. Some people wouldn't make musicians
if they practised for a hundred years. We've got to alter your
touch--your technique's entirely wrong--but if you're content to
concentrate on that, we'll soon show some progress. You'll have to stick
to simple studies this term: no blazing away into M'Dowell and
Rachmaninoff yet awhile."
"I'll do anything you tell me," agreed Ingred humbly.
Dr. Linton's manner might be brusque, but he seemed prepared to take an
interest in her work. He was known to give special pains to those whose
artistic caliber appealed to him. In his opinion pupils fell under two
headings: those who had music in them, and those who had not. The
latter, though he might drill them in technique, would never make really
satisfactory pianists; the former, by dint of scolding or cajoling,
according to his mood at the moment, might derive real benefit from his
tuition, and become a credit to him. It was a by-word in the school that
his favorites had the stormiest lessons.
"I'm thankful I'm not a pet pupil," declared Fil, whose playing was
hardly of a classical order. "I should have forty fits if he stalked
about the room, and tore his hair, and shouted like he does with Janie.
He scared me quite enough sitting by my side and saying: 'Shall we take
this again now?' with a sort of grim politeness, as if he were making an
effort to restrain his temper. I know I'm not what he calls musical, but
I can't help it. I'd rather hear comic opera any day than his wretched
cantatas, and when I'm not practising I shall play what I like. There!"
And Fil, who was sitting at the piano, twirled round on the stool and
strummed "Beautiful K--K--Katie" with a lack of technique that probably
would have brought her teacher's temper up to bubbling-over point had he
been there to listen to her.
It was exactly ten days after the term had begun that Bess Haselford
came to the College. She walked into the Upper Fifth Form room one
Monday morning, looking very shy and lost and strange, and stood
forlornly, not knowing where to sit, till somebody took pity on her, and
pointed to a vacant desk. It happened to be on a line with Ingred's, and
the latter watched her settle herself. She looked her over with the
critical air that is generally bestowed on new girls, and decided that
she was particularly pretty. Bess was the image of one of the Sir Joshua
Reynolds' child angels in the National Gallery. The likeness was so
great that her mother had always cut and curled her golden-brown hair in
exact copy of the picture. She was a slim, rosy, bright-eyed, smiling
specimen of girlhood, and, though on this first morning she was
manifestly afflicted with shyness, she had the appearance of one whose
acquaintance might be worth making. Ingred decided to cultivate it at
the earliest opportunity, and spoke to the new arrival at lunch-time.
Bess replied readily to the usual questions.
"We've only come lately to Grovebury. We used to live at Birkshaw. Yes,
I'm fairly keen on hockey, though I like tennis better. Have you asphalt
courts here, and do you play in the winter? I adore dancing, but I hate
gym. I'm learning the violin, and I'm to start oil-painting this term."
She seemed such a pleasant, winsome kind of girl that Ingred, who was
apt to take sudden fancies, constituted herself her cicerone, and showed
her round the school. By the time they had made the entire tour of the
buildings, Ingred began to wonder whether, without offense, it would be
possible to leave her desk, next to Verity, and sit beside Bess. There
was a great charm of voice and manner about the new-comer, and Ingred's
musical ear was sensitive to gentle voices. She discussed Bess with the
others next morning before school.
"Yes, she's pretty, and that blue dress is simply adorable," conceded
Nora. "I'm going to have an embroidered one myself next time."
"Her hair is so sweet," commented Francie.
"I call her ripping!" said Ingred with enthusiasm.
"Well, you ought to take an interest in her, Ingred, considering that
she lives at Rotherwood," put in Beatrice.
"At Rotherwood!"
"Yes, didn't you know _that_?"
Ingred, under pretence of distributing exercise-books, turned hastily
away. Her heart was in a sudden turmoil. This was indeed a bolt from the
blue. She, of course, knew that Rotherwood was let, but she had not
heard the name of the tenants, and, as the subject was a sore one, had
forborne to ask any questions at home. It was surely the irony of fate
that the house should be taken by people who had a daughter of her own
age, and that this daughter should come to the College, and actually be
placed in the same form as herself. She seemed a rival ready-made.
Biased by jealous prejudice, Ingred's hastily-formed judgment reversed
itself.
"I'm thankful I didn't move away from Verity to sit next to her," she
thought. "I expect she'll be ever so conceited and give herself airs,
and the other girls will truckle to her no end. I know them! I wish to
goodness she hadn't come to the College. Why didn't they send her away
to a boarding school? I'm not going to make a fuss over her, so she
needn't think it."
Poor Bess, quite unaware of being any cause of offence, and grateful for
the kindness shown her the day before, greeted Ingred in most friendly
fashion, and looked amazement itself at the cool reception of her
advances. She stared for a moment as if hardly believing the evidence of
her eyes and ears, then turned away with a hurt look on her pretty,
sensitive face.
Ingred shut her desk with a slam. She was feeling very uncomfortable.
She had liked Bess with a kind of love-at-first-sight, and if the latter
had come to live at any other house in the town than Rotherwood, would
have been prepared to go on liking her. Generosity whispered that her
conduct was unjust, but at this particular stage of Ingred's evolution
she did not always listen to those inner voices that act as our highest
guides. Like most of us, she had a mixed character, capable of many good
things but with certain failings. Rotherwood was what the girls called
"the bee in her bonnet," and the knowledge that Bess was in possession
of the beautiful home she had lost was sufficient to check the incipient
friendship.
It was otherwise with the rest of the form. They frankly welcomed the
new-comer, and if they did not, as Ingred had bitterly prognosticated,
exactly "truckle" to her, they certainly began to treat her as a
favorite. She was asked at once to join the Photographic Society and the
Drawing Club, and her very superior camera, beautiful color-box, and
other up-to-date equipments were immensely admired. Ingred, on the
outside of the enthusiastic circle, preserved a stony silence. Her own
camera was three years old, and she did not possess materials for
oil-painting. She thought it quite unnecessary for Verity to want to
look at Bess's paraphernalia. Verity, who was a kind-hearted little
soul, perhaps divined the cause of her chum's glumness, for she came
presently and took Ingred's arm.
"I've something to tell you, Ingred," she whispered. "We are to have the
election on Friday afternoon, and everybody's saying you'll be chosen
warden for the form."
"Don't suppose I've the remotest chance!" grunted Ingred gloomily.
"Nonsense! Don't be a blue-bottle! Cheery-ho! In my opinion you'll just
have an easy walk over."
With the removal into the new building, Miss Burd had instituted many
innovations and changes. Among the most important of these was the
College Council, which really served as a sort of House of Parliament
for the school. Each form among the seniors and intermediates was to
elect a representative called a warden, and these, with such permanent
officers as the prefects and the games captain, were to meet once a
fortnight to discuss questions of self-government. It was a new
experiment, and the head mistress hoped it would give the girls some
idea of responsibility, and train them to understand civic duties later
on. The girls themselves voted it a "ripping" idea. They took it up most
enthusiastically. It would be fun to have elections, and it seemed
desirable that there should be a warden to look after the interests of
each separate form.
"When I was in the Fourth we never got a chance for the tennis courts,
and it was utterly hopeless to appeal to the prefects," said Ingred. "I
always used to feel there ought to be some way of making one's voice
heard."
"Well, if you're elected, you'll have a chance to make your maiden
speech!" laughed Verity. "By the bye, will there be a 'Strangers'
Gallery, so that we can come and listen to you? I'd be sorry to miss the
fun!"
Friday afternoon had been fixed for the election, and a bright idea
originated in VA., circulated through the school, and finally
crystallized in the Sixth. It was nothing less than that each form
should make a special fête of the affair. Lispeth Scott, the head girl,
went boldly to Miss Burd, and asked permission for those who liked to
bring thermos flasks, cups, and bags of buns and cakes, and hold parties
in the various class-rooms.
"It would make so much more of the whole thing," she urged. "If we
simply stop for ten minutes after school and vote, I'm afraid it may
fall rather flat. But if every form has its festival to elect its own
warden, it will make the council seem a much more important business.
We'd like to be allowed to stay till about half-past five, if we may, so
that there would be time to have some fun over it. We'd promise not to
make a mess with our picnicking."
Miss Burd, looking rather astonished, nevertheless consented. She was a
wise woman, and believed in permitting a certain amount of liberty,
within limits.
"You may try it this once," she conceded. "But it's on the distinct
understanding that you're all on your good behavior. I shall hold you
prefects responsible for controlling the school. If you hear a great
noise, you must go into their form-rooms and stop them. I can't allow
the College to be turned into a bear-garden."
"We won't! I'll put them all on their honor to behave, and I'll leave
the door of our form-room open so that I can hear what's going on. Thank
you so much, Miss Burd!"
And Lispeth departed, fearful lest any other qualifications should be
added to temper the joy of the proceedings.
Six girls, waiting outside the door to hear the result of the
negotiations, waved signals of success to others farther down the
corridor, and, in an almost incredibly short space of time, the happy
news had spread to the remotest corners of the school.
"But how are we hostelites going to manage our share?" asked Ingred
anxiously.
"Don't you worry about that," Jess and Francie assured her. "Ten girls
in our form have promised to bring thermos flasks, and if we pool to tea
there'll be heaps to go round, and the same with buns and cakes. We'll
each bring a little extra to make enough. The hostel will very likely
lend you each a cup if you ask for it. That's all you'll need!"
"Right-o! We'll cast ourselves on the charity of the form!" agreed
Ingred.