It is a far cry from the family of a British Ambassador--collectively
distinguished, if individually dull--and the blue wonders of Italy, to
an English Girls’ School and the grey horrors of an east coast town.
The post that I filled temporarily at Lundeen School was not one that
I should have considered, but for personal and family reasons of
convenience. They are long since past, and matter nothing to the story.
But it was at Lundeen School that I saw Laura di san Marzano for the
third and last time.
It was the most inappropriate setting imaginable.
She was left there by mama, in mid-term, because a continental doctor
had declared that she needed bracing air and companionship of her own
age, and also--this I learnt later, quite incidentally, from Laura
herself--because mama and a _cher ami_ had suddenly planned a visit to
Monte Carlo for the express purpose of visiting the Casino, to which
Laura, being under twenty-one, could not have been admitted.
Laura, as the hotel child, had been pathetic, but her dignity had been
safeguarded, if not actually enhanced, by the kaleidescopic background
of her surroundings.
At school, she was pitiful--and out of place. The girls, without ill
nature, despised her from the first.
She arrived amongst them in the short, fanciful, ultra-picturesque
silk frocks and infantile bows of hair ribbon that I had seen her wear
abroad. Those unimaginative, untravelled English schoolgirls had seen
no one like her before, and what they did not know, by experience or
by tradition, they distrusted and disliked.
Lundeen School made demands upon the pupils’ _physiques_, upon their
powers of conformity, and upon each one’s capacity for assimilating
wholesale a universally applied system.
Laura di san Marzano had no chance at all.
The child who “never forgot people” could not remember her
multiplication table, and although she spoke perfectly at least three
languages besides English, she had never learnt syntax, nor read a line
of any history. She had seen the Guitrys play in Paris--(and from her
crisp appreciations and criticisms I deduced that no finest _nuance_ of
their art had been lost upon her)--but she had memorized no standard
selections from the poets. And she did not know how to learn.
No one, not even the head mistress, was very much disturbed by Laura’s
educational deficiencies, because it was so evident from the first that
her stay amongst us would only be a very temporary affair.
Mama would certainly swoop down again, probably without warning, and
resume Laura as suddenly as she had discarded her.
That was how mama always did things, one felt sure.
Laura herself, although evidently aware of her shortcomings, accepted
them with a grave, but unexaggerated, regret. She seemed, quite without
arrogance, to know that, even educationally, there were other standards
than those of Lundeen, and that her connection with these latter was
after all merely transitory.
What really distressed her, and shocked her too, I think, was the
attitude of the other girls.
Compared with the hotel child, there was only one word that adequately
described these daughters of so many excellent English homes--and that
word was _uncivilised_.
They played unbeautiful games violently, they spoke in hideous slang,
they were rudest when they intended to be most friendly.
Towards Laura di san Marzano, indeed, they did not wish nor attempt to
display friendliness. They were simply contemptuous.
And I saw that the hotel child minded that, both from pride and from
ultra-developed social instinct.
My work was entirely amongst the elder girls, and I saw very little
of Laura during her brief stay, but towards the end of it, something
happened. The rumour arose and spread like wild-fire, even to reaching
the Common Room of the teaching staff, that Laura di san Marzano was in
disgrace with her fellows for cheating over an examination paper.
The tradition of Lundeen was that of the public-school code. Cribbing
was permissible: ‘copying’ or peeping at the questions set for an
examination, was impossible.
They were already prejudiced against her; the accusation was accepted
on the instant by her contemporaries.
The Prefectorial system was in full force at Lundeen, and in any case,
I could not have made the affair my business. But it so happened that
I was present when Laura uttered what I believe to have been her one
and only specific denial of the charge against her. I came unexpectedly
into the room, and saw the semi-circle of self-righteous inexpressive,
young faces that confronted Laura, who stood, rather pale and with her
head held proudly high, and spoke very softly and clearly.
“I didn’t cheat. Those who thought they saw me, made a mistake. You are
being very unjust and cruel, all of you.”
She was looking the head of her class straight in the eyes as she
spoke, and the girl, giving her back look for look, made a sound that
unmistakably expressed contemptuous incredulity.
“What is all this?” said I sharply.
They were taken aback, all of them. There was an instant of confused
silence, and it was, after all, only the hotel child who possessed
enough of _savoir faire_ to reply to me.
“Miss Arbell,” she said courteously, “it was a--a necessary
conversation. It is over now.”
She crossed the length of the room, very composedly, and went out
quietly.
Her ostracism, after that, was complete. It lasted for a week, and
then, just as one had always surmised would happen, mama, in sables and
violets, drove up in a blue Lanchester car, and said that she and Laura
(who looked so much stronger and better for the change) would at once
go straight to Paris, give themselves enough time to find some clothes,
and sail for New York the following week.
The hotel child, her face radiant, came to find me and say good-bye to
me. She was incapable, for all mama’s imperious haste, of forgetting or
omitting the courtesy.
“Do you actually leave this evening?” I asked her.
Mama had been even more impetuous than I had anticipated.
“Yes. I need never see any of _them_ again.”
“It has been an experience, at least,” I reminded her.
“Yes--but----” she shrugged her shoulders.
“Expensively bought?” I suggested. And, since she was leaving, I
thought that I might add: “At least, my dear, you have kept your
colours flying. These last days have been very trying, I am afraid, but
you come out of them better than our friends of the Fourth Form, to my
thinking.”
“Thank you,” said Laura. She looked at me with her grave,
straightforward eyes.
“It would have been much easier, though, if only I really _hadn’t_
cheated.”
* * * * *
There is a postscript to the story of the hotel child. A very few years
later I heard of her marriage to the Prince d’Armaillh’ac-Ambry, the
representative of the noblest, and one of the wealthiest, of French
families. I believe that they live almost entirely on his estates in
Brittany, and that the Princess interests herself personally in the
numerous peasantry around them.
Her two children, a boy and a girl, are brought up in great simplicity,
and to the strictest and most orthodox Catholicism.