Pilgrims' Inn Chambers
Rather overwhelmed by the honour thrust on her unaccustomed shoulders,
but buoyed up by the importance of it, Lesbia set to work to consider
the question of a book-back worthy of the form scrap album. She received
no inspiration or even particular encouragement from the Pattersons. As
a family they were intellectual but not in the least artistic. Mrs.
Patterson frowned slightly when her young cousin, bubbling over with
elation, mentioned the matter at the dinner-table.
"Well now, Lesbia," she began, in her deep common-sense tone of voice,
"it's all very well to take up these fads, but what about your lessons?
I think Miss Tatham's making a mistake to let so much time be wasted
over these outside things. Girls have to stick close to their books if
they want to pass exams. Now when Kitty was reading for her matric, she
never went out anywhere, even to a concert or a lecture. Did you,
Kitty?"
Kitty, sprinkling sugar over her roasted apples, shook her head
emphatically.
"It was just jolly well grind, grind from breakfast till bedtime," she
admitted, "I think they're slacking off at Kingfield High nowadays."
"Oh, but it's much more interesting than ever it used to be," urged
Lesbia, anxious for the credit of her school, "and of course even Miss
Pratt knows we're trying for the scrap-book prize. Oh, well, yes--of
course she's a little sniffy over it, but she can't say we mustn't."
"As long as Lesbia does her prep all right I don't see why anybody need
scream," put in Joan, taking up the cudgels for her cousin.
"Scream indeed! Really, Joan!" said her mother indignantly. "The slang
you girls talk is simply outrageous. We shall hardly know the English
language soon. As I said before, Lesbia must do her home work properly,
and I don't expect to see any drawing brought out before her preparation
and her practising are both finished, every day. You quite understand,
Lesbia?"
Lesbia, to avoid replying, passed the butter dish and the biscuits with
unnecessary officiousness, and turned the subject neatly on to Joan's
headache. She meant to produce the scrap-book cover at all costs, though
she could not fling down the challenge and proclaim her rebellious
intentions in the midst of the assembled Patterson family.
[Illustration: KINDLY INTEREST _Page 134_]
"I'd better go and ask Miss Joyce about it," she decided.
Miss Joyce still took the Arts and Crafts classes at the High School,
but she was always so busy that she had no time for private
conversations with individual pupils. For several months her remarks to
Lesbia had been confined to professional criticisms. The invitation to
come and see her at her rooms still held open, however, and Lesbia
determined to avail herself of it. She knew Miss Joyce worked in her
studio on Thursdays, and would therefore be at home to a chance visitor.
So on Thursday afternoon, when school was over, she deliberately missed
the Morton Common tram-car, banished the Pattersons temporarily from her
mind, and walked down the town to Pilgrims' Inn Chambers. She was in a
bubble of excitement. The unorthodox little outing seemed a stupendous
treat, and an immense relief from the ordinary routine of her
well-regulated life. The orderly and methodical regime of her cousins'
household was immensely good for her, but often a keen trial to her
Celtic temperament. When she was bursting to impart some piece of
information, and had run home, and begun eagerly to pour it out, Mrs.
Patterson would utterly ignore her news, and interrupt her by reminding
her that she had not changed her boots. Her moments of excited elation
were discouraged, Joan and Kitty, indeed, thought them bad form, and
the family laughed at the violent enthusiasm which she could put into
the merest trifles.
"You're such a child over everything, Lesbia," Joan would remark
patronizingly.
Miss Joyce at any rate did not call her "a child" for any display of
enthusiasm. She "enthused" herself upon art matters, and her mental
atmosphere was sympathetic. Lesbia's footsteps quickened as she turned
down Mill Street and went into the cobbled courtyard of the old
Pilgrims' Inn. With a delighted thrill of anticipation she skipped up
the black oak staircase to the door of Miss Joyce's studio. Here her
enthusiasm was checked, for the little tin board nailed below the
knocker bore the unwelcome notice "Out".
Out--when she had come all that way on purpose. It was too aggravating.
"Yet it's my own silly fault for not asking her on Tuesday whether she'd
be in to-day. I might have known I'd have no luck," groused Lesbia.
"Well, I suppose there's nothing for it but to trot back again. It
really _is_ the limit. Hello! I believe somebody's in there after all.
Unless it's ghosts."
Faint explosions of mirth proceeding from the other side of the thick
door sounded more human than ghostly, despite the haunted character of
the house. Lesbia seized the knocker and gave a loud rap-tap. There was
a grating of chairs, and presently appeared the grinning face of one of
the art-metalwork pupils.
"Miss Joyce has only gone to the post. She won't be more than a few
minutes. Would you like to wait?"
Lesbia accepted the offered chair with alacrity. She sat watching the
two students as they returned to their work. They were quite young
girls, hardly older than herself. How glorious it must be for them, she
thought, to spend their time in this delightful studio, at a little
table under a window, melting their materials in a gas jet and turning
out such pretty things. The creative instinct, always very strongly
developed in Lesbia, rose rebelliously. Life would be far more worth
while spent in making beautiful artistic objects than in learning
certain school lessons that were apparently not much good to herself or
anyone else. She sighed as she watched the twisting of the ornament for
the edge of a brooch, and contrasted it with her morning's struggle over
certain geometrical problems and a piece of stiff Latin translation.
"People may say what they like about brain culture, but let me use my
hands!" she burst out impulsively.
The elder pupil looked at her in astonishment.
"It takes brains too for this kind of work, I can tell you," she
remarked. "You have to have all your wits about you, or you make silly
mistakes and spoil things."
"I only wish I'd the chance to try," said Lesbia.
But at that moment Miss Joyce returned. She came bustling in, with a
little paper bag in her hand, surprised to see Lesbia, but very kind
about it.
"You must stay and have tea," she declared hospitably. "I've just been
out for some buns. Sybil, is the kettle boiling? We always make
ourselves tea about this time."
The kettle on the gas-ring was almost boiling over. The pupils put down
their tools and helped to set out the pale-yellow tea-service. There was
a pot of striped purple crocuses on the tea-table, and a big jar of
sallow "palm" and hazel catkins standing upon the floor. The March
sunshine, flooding through a diamond-paned window, lighted up a blue
vase full of Lent lilies. Lesbia, sinking into a basket-chair--the room
had so many comfortable chairs--enjoyed her tasteful surroundings with
the art-hunger of one whose aesthetic cravings have been systematically
starved.
Miss Joyce was very sympathetic about the scrap album. She rocked gently
to and fro, balancing her tea-cup in her hand.
"I can see your cover," she said, staring so fixedly at the ceiling that
Lesbia instinctively looked there too. "It doesn't want realistic roses
painted on it, but a decorative pattern. Don't put too much of it
either. A design should never be overdone. My advice is, adapt your
lotus pattern to it. It's far and away the best thing you've produced
yet, and you may just as well use it. Put a piece at the top and a
piece at the bottom, then in the middle paint a misty and rather
impressionistic sketch of those old houses at the bottom of Mill
Street--you can copy them from a photo--then bring your lettering right
across your sketch. It ought to be very effective."
"Why, so it would. I can almost see it," agreed Lesbia, with her eye on
the carved boss that ornamented one of the beams of the studio roof.
"I'll make a rough drawing of it to-night, on a piece of paper. May I
bring it to school to show you before I begin to do it on the proper
cardboard?"
"Of course. I'll criticize it with pleasure. Now about this scrap album,
is it entirely confined to antiquarian things? Why don't you put in a
list of wild flowers found in the neighbourhood? And any nature notes
you can?"
"I hadn't thought of that."
"They're always included in local guide-books, so I should imagine they
might very well go in. Mr. Broughten would help you there."
"Who's Mr. Broughten?"
"A very clever botanist who lives in the set of chambers opposite. I'll
take you to see him if you've finished your tea. Have you? Then come
along. I know he's in, because we both came up the stairs together. Oh,
don't look so scared, he won't gobble you up. He's an absolute old
dear."
It was getting late, but Lesbia put the thought of time resolutely away,
for Miss Joyce would not listen to her faint expostulations, and hurried
her, protesting indeed but a very willing victim, along the passage
which led to Mr. Broughten's set of chambers. He was at home, and they
were ushered into his study. Like the rest of the Pilgrims' Inn it was a
quaint old room, with black oak beams and diamond-paned windows. The
whole of the walls were lined with shelves, upon which were stored a
vast collection of pressed flowers and ferns, a work which had occupied
Mr. Broughten for most of his life. He was an old man now, and the hand
that held his pen shook as he wrote. He rose with difficulty to receive
his visitors, peering at them through his spectacles. Lesbia was afraid
he did not seem very pleased at being interrupted, but, their errand
once explained, he suddenly became extremely kind and interested. He
hunted out several reports of the proceedings of a local Natural History
Society, in which were given lists of the flora and fauna of the
neighbourhood, and, after a moment's palpable hesitation, even offered
to lend the pamphlets.
"If you will promise _faithfully_ to bring them back. I lose so many
books because people forget to _return_ them," he said emphatically.
Lesbia gave the required pledge, and Miss Joyce also promised for her
with the earnestness of a godmother registering a baptismal vow.
"You shall have my pot of crocuses as a hostage," she assured him,
laughing. "I'll bring them across and leave them with you until Lesbia
returns the books."
"I never refuse flowers," answered Mr. Broughten brightly. "Crocuses are
special pets of mine too. I hope they're purple ones? Good! Then we're
making a very profitable exchange on both sides. If there's any more
help I can give you another time, come and ask me."
Horribly late, but with her mind an absolute storehouse of new and
artistic ideas, Lesbia hurried home to 28 Park Road. It was nearly seven
when she arrived, and she had not touched her practising or her
preparation. For once Mrs. Patterson was really angry. She took Lesbia
into the drawing-room alone, and began to talk in the strained voice of
one who is putting a curb on her strong indignation.
"You don't seem to realize things," she said, during the course of what
was, after all, a scolding which Lesbia had brought on her own head.
"Here you are nearly sixteen and a half, and as childish as if you were
six. If you won't work and don't pass your exams what's going to happen
to you? I suppose you know you'll have to earn your own living? You
can't be anything of a teacher unless you get some proper
qualifications."
"_Must_ I be a teacher?" asked Lesbia desperately. "Couldn't I take up
Art instead?"
"Art!" (Mrs. Patterson's voice expressed a volume of scorn.) "Art!
That's the last thing in the world to depend upon. It's a most
precarious livelihood nowadays. Why it would probably be years before
you could sell a picture. Now don't be silly, Lesbia. Miss Tatham has
been very kind in helping you, and you owe it to her and to the school
to work your hardest. What's the use of beginning to cry? Do wipe your
eyes and be sensible."
But being sensible was just the last thing possible to Lesbia. She
rushed upstairs to her bedroom and went on crying. She did not go down
when the gong sounded, and Kitty, coming in search of her presently,
found her with one shoe on and one off, and her dress still unchanged.
She answered all her cousin's arguments by torrents of tears, till Kitty
lost patience and went away.
"Leave her to herself," decided Mrs. Patterson, sending up Lesbia's
supper, and her home lesson books, upon a tray; "it's half temper, and
she's better alone."
Joan looked rather sympathetically in the direction of the stairs--she
had a warm corner for Lesbia--but the two sisters were starting for a
concert and could not wait to comfort anybody. They did not take the
matter seriously. To Lesbia it was desperate trouble. From the flutter
of joy of the inspiring afternoon she had dropped into a chaos of
despair. For the first time she began to look ahead, and she seemed to
see her life stretching an endless bleak vista of perpetual teaching.
"I _hate_ teaching," she sobbed, clenching her fists.
She had not known before that she disliked the prospect so much. The
grind of it appalled her. She almost began to wish she had gone to
Canada with Paul and Minnie--Minnie who had been so sweet and forgiving,
and had written her such a nice letter from Belleville to say that
bygones must be bygones, and that at all costs they must keep friends
and correspond with one another. An extra lump rose in Lesbia's throat
when she thought of Minnie and the children. Well, she had cut herself
adrift from them at any rate. She had anchored herself fast to the
Kingfield High School, and, according to Mrs. Patterson, she might
consider herself extremely lucky to have the chance of continuing there
at all. She must make the best of it. That was the only thing to be
done. She washed her face, ate her supper, and, seeing her pile of books
on the tray, made a really creditable effort to prepare some of her
lessons, but her head ached, and the letters danced about on the pages.
Kitty, coming upstairs at 10.45 after the concert, peeped into the
bedroom, and found Lesbia lying asleep, fully dressed, and clasping a
Latin dictionary.
"This won't do at all," muttered Kitty, shaking her head.
She was not a demonstrative girl, and despised what she called
"sentimentality" in Lesbia, but she could be kind in her sensible way.
She woke her cousin, made her undress, and promising to call her early
next morning, turned out the gas, then went to her own room and set her
alarm clock for six o'clock. It was a sacrifice on Kitty's part, for she
detested early rising; she did it, however, without any fuss, just as
part of the day's work. She hauled Lesbia out of bed by gas-light, and
went over the whole of her home lessons with her before breakfast,
sending her off to school better prepared than she had been for many
weeks. After that a family understanding was arranged. Mrs. Patterson
had at first been inclined to veto entirely any work at the Scrap Album
Competition, but Kitty compromised by stipulating it should only be done
in absolutely spare time. Lesbia borrowed the alarm clock and often got
up early and did her preparation in her bedroom, so that she might have
leisure for her drawing after school hours. The cover began to make
substantial progress. Miss Joyce approved the design, and lent her a
book on "illuminating" to help her with the lettering of the title.
When the album was at last complete, VA regarded their joint effort with
satisfaction. It was quite a fat substantial book, written in their best
and clearest script, and illustrated with photographs, sketches, and
prints. They had recorded the city's history, and its various ancient
customs and old legends; there was a chapter of nature notes, mentioning
how an otter had been seen in the lake of the public park, and a hare
had actually been caught running in the High Street. The list of
flowers, taken from Mr. Broughten's reports, was carefully copied.
"We've done our best over it," said Aldora, "and we can't do more. If
the judges don't give it a prize I'll never forgive them. No, not though
one of them is your own uncle, Lizzie Logan. I'll--I'll lie in wait for
him on his way home and _shoot_ him. There!"
"Pull yourself together, Aldora, my child," murmured Calla. "It mayn't
turn out as bad as that."
"Well I do _not_ want the Sixth to score this time."
"I saw their book and they won't," chuckled Kathleen.
"There are other schools going in for the competition though," added
Carrie dolefully.
"But three prizes are offered."
The scrap album was packed up at last in a big parcel, and left at the
house of one of the judges. Three weeks passed by, and VA languished for
news. They began to be afraid that they should not know the result
before the holidays. One day, however, Lizzie Logan came to school with
a look of most unwonted excitement on her usually stolid face. Her
voice, which was generally a scared whisper, was actually audible over
half the cloakroom as she announced:
"My uncle told me last night that we've won the first prize."
Such a chorus of jubilee instantly arose that Lizzie's utterances were
drowned. Those in her immediate vicinity dragged forth details of
information and proclaimed them for the benefit of the others.
"A committee of six, including the Lady Mayoress, sat on the books."
"_Sat_ on them! Oh, horrors!"
"And the Lady Mayoress is so fat!"
"Don't be utter idiots. Committees always sit on things. No! No! _Can't_
you get it into your stupid heads? Not really _sit_. It's just an
expression."
"Hold me up. I thought our champion book was squashed as flat as a
pancake."
"Well, it isn't. It's first-prize winner, and the second and third
prizes have been won by 'Redlands' and 'The College'."
"And where do the Sixth come in?"
"They're out altogether."
"Oh! What a spiffing score for VA."
The prize awarded for the successful scrap album was a pretty little
clock, with an inscription recording the event and the date. It was
placed upon the mantel-piece in the form room, and regarded with great
pride and satisfaction by its owners.
"So nice to have a clock in the room," rejoiced Carrie. "It helps you on
if you can keep looking at it during lessons."
"We might even set it to go a little fast," suggested Ermie hopefully.
"No use, old sport! Miss Pratt wouldn't stop prating till the bell rang,
however fast the clock was."
"I suppose not. However, perhaps she'll see it, and notice the time, and
not think it worth while beginning anything fresh at about five minutes
to."
"Ermie Hall, you're a bright enough girl, but if you think Miss Pratt
will _ever_ remit one jot or tittle of our work you've read her
character wrong, and that's the fact. Nails aren't in it for hardness.
Crow as loud as you like about the clock, but don't congratulate
yourself it's going to help lame dogs over stiles, because it won't. Do
you take that in?"
"Bow-wow! All right, Grannie! I'm drinking at the fount of your wisdom."
"As for Lesbia," put in Calla, "I think she was a regular mascot about
that cover. No one knows how she swatted over it. I'm sure it turned the
scale."
"Oh, don't mench! I enjoyed it."
"Look here!" asked Marion, suddenly and anxiously. "Does the clock
belong to _us_ or to our form? If we go up into the Sixth next year can
we take it with us?"
"Oh, I never thought of that!"
"We'll want a Solomon to settle such a question," said Calla. "Meanwhile
the clock's ours for the whole of next term, and that's quite far enough
ahead to look forward in my opinion. It may have broken its mainspring
before we're in the Sixth, and then we shouldn't want it. Sufficient
unto the day is the tick thereof."
"Right you are, O Queen of Wisdom!"