The Rainbow League
Though Lispeth, in her agitation, had not said half the nice things she
had intended to say, her little speech had good effect. It reminded the
girls of some of the high ideals with which they had started the term,
and which, like many high and beautiful things, were in danger of
getting crowded out of the way by commoner interests. Everybody suddenly
remembered the exhibition and sale which was to come off before
Christmas, and made a spurt to send some adequate contribution. The
juniors, flattered at having a special branch of their own of the
Rainbow League, and time allotted in school to its work, dabbed away
blissfully at scrap-book making, with gummy overalls and seccotiny
fingers, but complacent faces. The prefects, with intent, dropped in
when possible to admire the efforts.
"I believe," said Lispeth to her special confidante Althea, "that
perhaps we were making rather a mistake. You can't have any influence
with those kids unless you keep well in touch with them. I was so busy,
I just let them slide before, and I suppose that was partly why they got
out of hand, though the little monkeys had no business to get up that
impudent strike! They're as different as possible now, and some of them
are quite decent kiddies. Dorrie Barnes brought me a rose this morning.
I suppose it was meant as a sort of peace-offering."
It was arranged to hold what was called "The Rainbow Fête" on
breaking-up afternoon, and parents and friends were invited to the
ceremony. There was to be both a sale and an exhibition. The best of the
toys and little fancy articles were to be at a special stall, and would
be sold for the benefit of the "War Orphans' Fund," and those that were
not quite up to standard would nevertheless be on view, and would be
sent away afterwards to help to deck Christmas trees in the slums. _THE_
stall, as the girls called it, was of course the center of attraction.
It was draped with colored muslins in the rainbow tints, and though real
irises were unobtainable, some vases of artificial ones formed a very
good substitute. The home-made toys were really most creditable to the
handicraft-workers, and had been ingeniously contrived with bobbins,
small boxes, and slight additions of wood, cardboard, and paper, aided
by the color-box. Windmills, whirligigs, carts, engines, trains, dolls'
house furniture, jigsaw puzzles, cardboard animals with movable limbs,
black velveteen cats with bead eyes, beautifully dressed rag dolls, wool
balls and rattles for babies, and dear little books of extracts, were
some of the things set out in a tempting display. Fil, whose slim
fingers excelled in dainty work, had contributed three charming booklets
of poetry and nice bits cut from magazines and newspapers, the back
being of colored linen embroidered with devices in silk. They were so
pretty that they were all snapped up beforehand, and could have been
sold three times over.
"You promised one to me--you know you did!" urged Linda Slater, much
aggrieved at the non-performance of an order.
"Well, I thought I'd have time to do four, and could only manage three,"
apologized Fil. "You see, they really take such ages, and Miss Strong
was getting raggy about my prep."
"You _might_ make me one for my birthday!" begged Evie.
"Certainly not! Those that ask shan't have!"
"Well, couldn't you do some during the Christmas holidays?"
"No, I can't and shan't!" snapped Fil. "I'm sick to death of making
booklets, and I'm not going to touch one of them during the holidays.
You seem to think I've nothing else to do except cut bits out of
magazines for your benefit!"
"There! There! Poor old sport! Don't get baity!"
"You shouldn't do them so jolly well, and then you wouldn't get asked!"
_The_ stall occupied a position of importance at the end of the lecture
hall, and the rest of the exhibits were put round on trestle tables.
They were what Ingred described as "a mixed lot." Some of the animals
were bulgy in their proportions, or shaky in their cardboard limbs, the
wheels of the carts did not quite correspond, the windmills were apt to
stick, or the puzzles would not quite fit. In spite of their
imperfections, however, they looked attractive, and would, no doubt,
give great pleasure to the little people who were to receive them, and
who were hardly likely to be very critical of their workmanship.
To make the afternoon more festive, there was to be a tea stall, to
which the girls brought contributions of cakes, and music was to be
given from the platform, so that the scene might resemble a café
chantant. Ingred had been chosen as one of the artistes, and arrayed in
her best brown velveteen dress, with a new pale-yellow hair ribbon, she
waited about in her usual agonies of stage fright. Learning from Dr.
Linton, however improving it might be to her touch, was hardly conducive
to self-complacency, and, after having suffered much vituperation for
her imperfect rendering of a piece, it was decidedly appalling to have
to play it in public, especially with the horrible possibility that at
any moment her master might happen to pop in to view the exhibition and
arrive in time for her performance.
"I shall have forty fits if I see him in the room, I know I shall!" she
confided to Fil. "You've no idea how he scares me. I have my lessons on
the study piano generally, and if only he would sit still I shouldn't
mind, but he _will_ get up and prowl about the room, and swing out his
arms when he's explaining things; he only _just_ missed knocking over
that pretty statuette of Venus the other day. I'm sure if Miss Burd knew
how he flourishes about, she wouldn't let him loose among her cherished
ornaments!"
"Perhaps he won't turn up to-day!"
"Oh yes! He said he should make a point of buying a toy for his little
boy. If I break down suddenly in the midst of my piece, you'll know the
reason. I'm shaking now."
"Poor old sport! Don't take it so hard!"
By three o'clock the lecture hall was filled with what Lilias Ashby (who
had undertaken to write a report for the school magazine) described as
"a distinguished crowd." Fathers indeed were as few and far between as
currants in a war pudding, but mothers, aunts, and sisters had responded
nobly to the invitations, and were being conducted round by the girls to
see their special exhibits.
Mrs. Saxon had been unable to come that afternoon, but Quenrede had
turned up, looking very pretty in a plum-colored hat, and giving herself
slight airs as of one who is now a finished young lady, and no longer a
mere schoolgirl. She chatted, in rather mincing tones, to Miss Burd
herself, while Ingred stood by in awe and amazement, and when she bought
a cup of tea from Doreen Hayward at the refreshment stall, she murmured:
"Oh, thanks _so_ much!" with the manner of a patroness, though only six
months ago she and Doreen had sat side by side in the Science Lectures.
It was a new phase of Quenrede, which, though accepted to some extent at
home, had never shown itself before with quite such aggravated symptoms.
Ingred, walking as it were in her shadow, was not sure whether to admire
or laugh. It was, of course, something to have such a pretty and
decidedly stylish sister; she appreciated the angle at which the
plum-colored hat was set, and the self-restraint that made the tiny iced
bun last such an enormous time, when a schoolgirl would have finished it
in three bites, and have taken another. A grand manner was certainly
rather an asset to the family, and Queenie was palpably impressing some
of the intermediates, who poked each other to look at her.
"It's my turn to play soon, and I'm just shivering!" whispered Ingred.
"Nonsense, child! Don't be such a little goose!" declared her sister
airily. "It's only a school party--there's really nothing to make a fuss
about!"
"_Only_ a school party!" That seemed to Ingred the absolute limit.
Quenrede last term had, in her turn, shivered and trembled when she had
been obliged to mount the platform! Could a few short months have indeed
effected so magnificent a change of front?
"All the same, it's I who've got to play, not she! It's easy enough to
tell somebody else not to mind," thought Ingred, as, in answer to Miss
Clough's beckoning finger, she made her way towards the piano to undergo
her ordeal.
One point in favor of the recital was that the audience moved about the
room and went on buying toys or cups of tea and cakes, and even talking,
instead of sitting on rows of seats doing nothing but watching and
listening. It was rather comforting to think that the concert was really
only like the performance of a band, a soothing accompaniment to
conversation. Ingred opened her music with an almost "don't care"
feeling. For one delirious moment she felt at her ease, then, alack! her
mood suddenly changed. In a last lightning glance towards the audience
she noticed among the crowd near the tea-stall the tall thin figure,
cadaverous face, and long lank hair of Dr. Linton. The sight instantly
wrecked her world of composure. If it had not been for the fact that
Miss Clough was standing near, and nodding to her to begin, she would
have run away from the platform.
"Oh, the ill luck of it!" she thought. "If I had only played last time,
instead of Gertie, I'd have had it over before he came into the room! I
know he'll be just listening to every note, and criticizing!"
With a horrid feeling, as if her breath would not come properly, and her
head was slightly spinning, and her hands dithering, Ingred began her
"Nocturne," trying with a sort of "drowning" effort to keep her mind on
the music in front of her, instead of on the music-master at the other
end of the room. For sixteen bars she succeeded, then came the hitch.
She had rejected the offered services of Doris Grainger, and had elected
to turn over her own pages. She now made a hasty dash at the leaf, her
trembling hand was not sufficiently agile, the sheet slipped, she
grabbed in vain, and the music fluttered on to the floor. The
performance came to a dead halt. Doris and Miss Clough rushed to the
rescue, but they were put politely aside by a tall figure who stepped on
to the platform, and Dr. Linton himself picked up the scattered sheets
of the unfortunate "Nocturne." He arranged them together in order,
placed them upon the stand, and, addressing his dismayed pupil, said:
"Now, then, begin again, and _I_ shall turn over for you. Bring out that
_forte_ passage properly! Remember there's a pedal on the piano!"
It was like having a lesson in public. Ingred felt too scared to begin,
and yet she was too much afraid of her master to refuse, so the bigger
fright prevailed, and--as a cat will swim to escape an enemy--she dashed
at the "Nocturne." Once restarted, it went magnificently: afterwards,
she always declared that Dr. Linton must have hypnotized her, she was
sure her unaided efforts could never have rendered it in such style. He
behaved as if he were conducting an orchestra, soothing the _piano_
passages and spurring her on to _fortissimo_ efforts, even humming the
melody in his eccentric fashion, quite unmindful of the audience. The
enthusiastic applause at the end was so evidently for both master and
pupil that he bowed instinctively in response.
Ingred, remembering, now the ordeal was over, that she was nervous,
melted from the platform, and left him to receive the laurels. He did a
characteristic but very kind act, looked round for his pupil, and then,
perceiving that she had beaten a retreat, sat down to the piano himself,
and, unasked, gave an encore for her. A solo from Dr. Linton was an
unexpected treat, especially as he was in the mood for music, and played
with a sort of rapture that carried his listeners into an ethereal world
of delicate sounds. Ingred, hidden behind a protecting barrier of
schoolfellows, could see all the sylphs dancing and the fairy pipers
piping as the crisp notes came tripping from his practised fingers. At
the end she came back as from a dream, to realize that she was not in
elf-land, but in the College Lecture Hall, and that she was sitting on a
form next to Miss Strong, who held on her knee a little red-coated,
brown-haired boy with Dr. Linton's unmistakable dark eyes.
In that instant, as the music ceased, Ingred received quite a sudden and
new impression of Miss Strong; there was a tender look on the mistress's
face, as she held her arm around the child, and she whispered something
to him that made the dark eyes dance. He slipped from her lap, and hand
in hand they went together towards the toy-stall. It was quite a pretty
little scene, one of those tiny glimpses into other people's lives that
we catch occasionally when the veil of their reserve is for a moment
held aside. Ingred looked after them meditatively.
"Shouldn't have thought the Snark capable of it," she ruminated.
"Perhaps she likes boys better than girls. Some people do."
The toy stall, though half depleted of its contents, was still the
center of attraction. Lispeth and Althea were displaying what were left
of its windmills and whirligigs to friends who bought with an eye to
Christmas presents. Miss Strong, reckless in the matter of expense,
purchased the _chef-d'euvre_ of the whole collection--a wonderful
contrivance consisting of two cardboard towers and a courtyard, across
which, by means of a tape wound round bobbins, and turned by a handle,
walked a miniature procession of wooden soldiers. Little Kenneth Linton
received it with open arms.
"Better let me wrap it up in paper," urged Lispeth. "Somebody said just
now that it's beginning to snow, and you don't want to have it spoilt
before you get it home, do you?"
"N-no," said Kenneth, relinquishing it doubtfully.
"You're a lucky boy," continued Lispeth, as she made up the parcel.
"Isn't that a Teddy Bear in your pocket? And a ball too? There, I
believe I've used up all the string! What a nuisance! Can anybody get me
any from anywhere?"
"I'll find you some in half a jiff," said Dorrie Barnes, whisking off
immediately.
Since the formation of the Junior Rainbow League, Dorrie had taken a
liking to Lispeth which amounted to absolute infatuation. She followed
her like a pink-faced shadow, and was always at her elbow, sometimes at
convenient and sometimes at embarrassing moments. She fled now, like a
messenger from Olympus, with the fixed determination of procuring string
for her goddess from somewhere. It was not an easy task, for string was
a scarce commodity; what there was of it had mostly been already used,
and what was left was jealously guarded by its proprietresses, who
refused to part with it, even on the plea that it was for the head
prefect. Dorrie, however, was a young person of spirit and resource, and
she did not mean to be done. One of the trestles that supported the
secondary exhibits of toys had rather come to grief, and had been
patched up temporarily with stout twine. Her sharp eyes had noted this
fact, so, going down on her hands and knees, she managed to creep
unobserved under the table, cut the twine with her penknife, and unwound
it. She was just congratulating herself upon the success of her
achievement when the unexpected happened, or, rather, what might have
been expected by any one with an ounce of forethought. The damaged
trestle, no longer held together, promptly gave way, and the table
collapsed, burying a squealing Dorrie amid a shower of toys. She was
pulled out, agitated but uninjured, and the scattered exhibits were
carried to another table. In the confusion of their transit she managed
to secrete the piece of twine, the loss of which had been the cause of
the whole upset, and presented it quite innocently to Lispeth, who, not
knowing that she was receiving stolen goods, thanked her and tied the
parcel. Ingred, who had watched the whole comedy, laughed, but did not
give away the secret.
"That child's an imp!" she said to Quenrede. "But she's a very
accomplished imp. I'll tell you the joke afterwards, not now! Lispeth
little knows where her string comes from, and she's wrapping up that
parcel so placidly! Isn't the Snark looking quite pretty this afternoon?
Never saw her with such a color! Well, if you're ready, Queenie, we'll
go over to the hostel and get my things. We can just catch the four
o'clock train, if we're quick. Wait half a sec, though! There goes Dr.
Linton with Kenneth. I don't want to walk out under his wing!"
The tall dark figure of the music master was striding through the
doorway, carrying his small son, who hugged his toy with one arm, and
waved a friendly good-by with the other.
"What possessed you to drop all your music, child?" said Quenrede,
rather patronizingly to Ingred. She was still trying to live up to the
plum-colored hat. "You played ever so decently afterwards, though--you
did, really! Don't tell me again that you're nervous, for it's all
rubbish. You looked as if you enjoyed it."
"Enjoyed it!" echoed Ingred. "If you'd gone through the palpitations
that I felt this afternoon you'd want to go to a specialist, and consult
him for heart trouble! I've lived through it this once, but if I'm ever
asked to play again in public, you'd better go to the cemetery
beforehand, and choose a picturesque corner for my grave, and buy a
weeping willow ready to plant upon it. Yes, and order a headstone too,
with the simple words: 'Died of fright.' I mean it! 'Enjoyed it!'
indeed! Why, I've never in the whole of my life been in such an
absolutely blue funk!"