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THE HEAD GIRL AT THE GABLES
BY ANGELA BRAZIL
"Angela Brazil has proved her undoubted talent for writing a
story of schoolgirls for other schoolgirls to read."--=Bookman.=
A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl.
The Head Girl at the Gables.
A Patriotic Schoolgirl.
For the School Colours.
The Madcap of the School.
The Luckiest Girl in the School.
The Jolliest Term on Record.
The Girls of St. Cyprian's.
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth.
The New Girl at St. Chad's.
For the Sake of the School.
The School by the Sea.
The Leader of the Lower School.
A Pair of Schoolgirls.
A Fourth Form Friendship.
The Manor House School.
The Nicest Girl in the School.
The Third Class at Miss Kaye's.
The Fortunes of Philippa.
LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, LTD., 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
[Illustration: "OH, DO FIND OUT WHERE 'KILMENY' IS," BEGGED LORRAINE
_Page 208_]
THE HEAD GIRL
AT THE GABLES
BY
ANGELA BRAZIL
Author of "For the School Colours"
"The Madcap of the School"
"A Patriotic Schoolgirl"
&c. &c.
_Illustrated by Balliol Salmon_
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
Contents
CHAP. Page
I. A MOMENTOUS DECISION 9
II. THE FIRST DAY OF TERM 22
III. NEW BROOMS 35
IV. GREETS CLAUDIA 48
V. A QUESTION OF DISCIPLINE 61
VI. THE SEA-NYMPHS' GROTTO 75
VII. KILMENY 89
VIII. VIVIEN MAKES TERMS 101
IX. WHITE ELEPHANTS 114
X. A SINISTER INCIDENT 128
XI. MADAME BERTIER 140
XII. THE SENSATION BUREAU 154
XIII. ROSEMARY'S SECRET 168
XIV. WHAT HAPPENED AT EASTER 181
XV. AN ACADEMY PICTURE 196
XVI. AN OPPORTUNITY 211
XVII. A MID-TERM BEANO 223
XVIII. AN ADVENTURE 235
XIX. MORLAND ON LEAVE 243
XX. SMUGGLERS' COVE 250
XXI. TROUBLE 266
XXII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 280
Illustrations
Page
"OH, DO FIND OUT WHERE 'KILMENY' IS," BEGGED
LORRAINE _Frontispiece_
LORRAINE 72
"EVERYTHING'S GONE WRONG!" DECLARED LORRAINE
TRAGICALLY 144
"CLAUDIA! HOW _COULD_ YOU FORGET?" 192
CLAUDIA FLUNG HER ARMS ROUND ROSEMARY'S NECK
AND HUGGED HER 216
SHE STOOD UP CAUTIOUSLY 240
THE HEAD GIRL AT THE GABLES
CHAPTER I
A Momentous Decision
It was exactly ten days before the opening of the autumn term at The
Gables. The September sunshine, flooding through the window of the
Principal's study, lighted up the bowl of carnations upon the
writing-table, and, flashed back from the Chippendale mirror on the
wall, caught the book-case with the morocco-bound editions of the poets,
showed up the etching of "Dante's Dream" over the mantelpiece, and
glowed on Miss Kingsley's ripply brown hair, turning all the silver
threads in it to gold. Miss Kingsley, rested and refreshed after the
long summer holiday, a touch of pink in her cheeks and a brightness in
her eyes, left as a legacy from the breezes of the Cheviot Hills, was
seated at her desk with a notebook in front of her and a fountain pen in
her hand, making plans for a fresh year's work.
Miss Janet, armed with a stump of pencil and the back of an envelope,
ready to jot down suggestions, swayed to and fro in the rocking-chair
with her lips drawn into a bunch and the particular little pucker
between her eyebrows that always came when she was trying to concentrate
her thoughts.
"It really _is_ a difficulty, Janet!" said Miss Kingsley. "A suitable
head girl makes all the difference to a school, and if we happen to
choose the wrong one it may completely spoil the tone. If only Lottie
Carson or Helen Stanley had stayed on! Or even Enid Jones or Stella
Hardy!"
"It's hard luck to lose all our best senior girls at once!" agreed Miss
Janet, biting her stump of pencil abstractedly. "But if they're gone,
they're gone."
"Of course!" Miss Kingsley's tone savoured slightly of impatience. "And
the urgent matter is to supply their places. It's like making bricks
without straw. Haven't you any suggestions? I _do_ wish you'd stop
rocking, it worries me to hear your chair creak!"
Miss Janet, seasoned by thirty-five years' acquaintance with her
sister's nervous temperament, rose and walked to the window, where she
stood looking out over the sunlit tennis court to the bank of exotic
shrubs that half hid the blue line of the sea. There was a moment's
pause, then she said:
"Suppose you read over the list of 'eligibles', and we'll discuss their
points each in turn."
Miss Kingsley reached for a certain black-backed shiny exercise-book
and opened it. The entries were in her own neat hand.
"There will only be eight girls in the Sixth Form this term," she
volunteered. "Taking them in alphabetical order they are: Nellie
Appleby, Claire Bardsley, Claudia Castleton, Vivien Forrester, Lorraine
Forrester, Audrey Roberts, Dorothy Skipton, and Patricia Sullivan."
Miss Janet smiled.
"First of all you may cross off the last," she suggested.
"Decidedly. Patsie Sullivan as head girl would be about as suitable
as--as----"
Miss Kingsley paused for an appropriate simile.
"As making Charlie Chaplin Archbishop of Canterbury!" finished Miss
Janet with a chuckle.
"It's unthinkable! Most of the others are soon weeded out too. Nellie
Appleby and Claire Bardsley--good stodgy girls, but quite unfit for
leadership--Claudia Castleton, a new girl, so of course not eligible;
Audrey Roberts--could you imagine silly little Audrey in any post of
trust? It really only leaves us the choice between Lorraine Forrester,
Vivien Forrester, and Dorothy Skipton."
"In last term's exams these three were fairly equal," commented Miss
Janet.
"So equal that I shan't take the results of the exams into
consideration. It must be a question of which girl will make the most
efficient head. Each has her points and her drawbacks. Take Vivien, now:
she's smart and capable, and would revel in exercising authority."
"Too much so. I should be sorry for the school with anyone so
domineering as Vivien Forrester at the head of affairs. She's too
forward altogether, and inclined to argue and pit her opinion against
that of the mistresses. If she were singled out for special office, I
believe she'd grow insufferable. Dorothy Skipton, with all her faults,
would be preferable to Vivien."
"And Dorothy _has_ faults--very big ones too!" sighed Miss Kingsley. "I
never can consider Dorothy to be absolutely straight and square. I've
several times caught her cheating or copying, and she's not above
telling a fib if she's in a tight place. She's clever, undoubtedly, and
decidedly popular, and in that lies the greatest danger, for a popular
head girl whose moral attitude is not of the very highest might ruin the
tone of the school in a single term. I'm afraid Dorothy is too risky an
experiment."
"Then that leaves only Lorraine Forrester?"
"Yes--Lorraine."
Both the sisters paused, with the same look of puzzled doubt on their
faces.
"She's a child I never seem to have got to know thoroughly," said Miss
Janet. "I must say I've always found her perfectly square and a plodding
worker. She has given very little trouble in class."
"Not so brilliant, perhaps, as Vivien, but, on the whole, more
satisfactory," commented Miss Kingsley. "I agree with you that we have
never really got to know Lorraine. She's a very reserved girl, and
hasn't pushed herself forward, but there's great strength of character
in her, in my opinion. Those big brown eyes look in earnest over
anything she's doing. She's never made a bid for popularity, like
Dorothy Skipton, but I've seen her coaching the younger ones at hockey
and cricket. She's inclined to go about in a dream, but I believe if she
were placed in a post of authority she'd wake up. I really think we
could depend on Lorraine. The first quality in a head girl is that she
must be conscientious, and she certainly comes out top in that respect."
"If it were put to the general vote----" began Miss Janet, but her
sister snapped her up.
"I don't believe in allowing the girls a choice! The popular idol of the
school isn't always the one with the best influence. I've quite decided,
Janet! Lorraine is far and away the most suitable among the new Sixth. I
shall send for her the day before term opens and have a private talk
with her. Unless I'm very much mistaken in the girl, we shan't be
disappointed."
"I believe you are right!" agreed Miss Janet, sinking into the
easy-chair and resuming her rocking, without further remonstrance from
her now satisfied sister.
Miss Kingsley and Miss Janet had kept school together at The Gables for
the last twelve years. It was not a very large school, but then
Porthkeverne was not a very large place--only a little quaint,
old-fashioned seaside town, built down the sloping cliffs of a Cornish
cove, with its back to the heather-clad moors and its face to the broad
Atlantic. Whether you appreciated Porthkeverne or not was entirely a
matter of temperament. Strangers, whose pleasure in a summer holiday
depended on pier, esplanade, band, and cheap amusements, found it
insufferably dull, and left for the more flaring gaieties of St. Jude's
or Trewenlock Head. Porthkeverne was glad to get rid of them; it did not
cater for such as these. But there were others for whom the little town
had a peculiar fascination; its quaint, irregular houses and grey roofs,
its narrow streets of steep steps, its archways with glimpses of the
sea, its picturesque harbour and red-sailed fishing-boats, its exotic
shrubs and early flowers, its yellow sands and great pinnacled crags,
the softness of the west wind and the perpetual dull roll of the
Atlantic breakers cast a spell over certain natures and compelled them
to remain. Visitors would return to it again and again, and some of
them, who were free to live where they chose, would take houses and
settle down as residents. Over literary and artistic people Porthkeverne
seemed to exercise a special charm. Authors and artists had collected
there, and, partly attracted by the place and partly by each other's
society, had formed an intellectual colony that centred round the Arts
Club in the old Guildhall down by the harbour.
Marine painters, and those who sought to immortalize peasant life on
their canvases, found ample subjects among the crags and coves and
sea-weed-covered rocks where the blue water lapped softly, or the white
waves came foaming and churning up; and the fisher-folk, bronzed,
blue-eyed, and straight of limb, were models to set the heart of a
Millet or a Wilkie on the thrill. To authors the quiet place, with its
miles of moorland lying inland from the cliffs, was a ripe field for
literary work. Novelists worked out their plots undisturbed by the
hooting of motor horns or the whizzing of tram-cars; scientific men, who
had spent years of study over the treasures of the British Museum or
Kew, came there to sort out their materials for books of reference, and
to have leisure for making certain experiments; writers of travels
reviewed their notes, and archaeologists scheduled the antiquities of
the neighbourhood. To this literary and artistic brotherhood
Porthkeverne offered the calm of the country combined with the mental
stimulus of intellectual comradeship, and though, in the inevitable
march of events, its individual members often changed, the colony
remained and flourished, and sent forth work of a character that was of
value to the world of art and letters.
Miss Kingsley and her sister, Miss Janet, themselves women of strong
literary tastes, had come to the town with the rising tide of the Arts
Settlement, and had established their school chiefly to meet the needs
of the new colony. Most of their pupils were the children of painters
and authors, though a few of the gentry and professional men of the
district also took advantage of such a good local opportunity to educate
their daughters. The Gables was a pleasant old-fashioned white house,
standing on a narrow terrace of the cliff, with a high rock behind to
screen it from the wind, and a view of grey roof-tops leading down to a
peep of the harbour. In the sheltered garden grew, according to their
season, white arum lilies and rosy tamarisk, aloes and myrtle and
oleander and other beautiful half-tropical shrubs, while geraniums,
carnations and humbler flowers bloomed in profusion. There was a veranda
covered with a wistaria, and most of the class-room windows were framed
with sweet-smelling creepers. Long afterwards, when the pupils looked
back to their time at The Gables, they would always connect certain
lessons with the strong scent of honeysuckle, or the faint odour of tea
roses, for the flowers seemed just as much a part of the general culture
of the school as were the Botticelli pictures on the library walls, or
the weekly recitals of modern music.
This garden, Miss Kingsley's fetish and the joy of Miss Janet's heart,
was blooming its best on the particular September afternoon when the
autumn term began. Soon after two o'clock its green lawn and shady paths
began to fill up with girls. They came at first in twos and threes, and
then in larger numbers till the place seemed full of them. There were
only about forty altogether, but it was seven weeks since most of them
had met one another, and the babel of tongues that ensued would have
suggested a hundred children at the least. Six long-legged juniors
occupied the garden-seat, with as many more hanging over the back; a
dozen of the smaller fry squatted on the grass, some frivolous
intermediates cackled over jokes in the corner by the bay tree, and a
few enterprising spirits had mounted the wall to watch for new-comers.
"Here's Aileen!"
"And Grace!"
"With her little sister!"
"And Effie after all, though she wasn't sure she'd be back in time!"
"Good old Effie! I'm glad she's come!"
"Where's Marcia, by the by?"
"Gone to the High School at St. Jude's."
"Poor wretch, I'm sorry for her! What a traipse to go by train every
morning! Why, here's Doreen, and she's cut her hair short! Oh, I say!
Doreen, old sport, I hardly knew you! What a kid you look!"
Doreen shook back her shock of crisp brown hair, conscious of the
pleasing fact that it curled at the ends.
"Kid, indeed!" she replied, with an indignant thrill in her voice. "I
was thirteen last week!"
"Shouldn't have thought it," twittered Enid. "I was just going to
suggest a pair of socks and ankle-band shoes. There's a new teacher for
the kindergarten, if that interests you. There, don't get raggy! Perhaps
you'll find yourself in the Sixth after all!"
"No, thank you! I've no yearnings to be in the Oxford Room. I suppose we
shall all be going up a form, though? Who are the monitresses this year?
Have you heard?"
Enid slipped down from her post on the wall, and locking her arm in
Doreen's strolled with her towards the house.
"Not a word," she replied. "Until the Great Panjandrum reads out the
lists we're utterly and entirely in the dark. Of course, most of those
who were in the Fifth last year will have gone up into the Sixth,
except, perhaps, Beryl Woodhouse and Moira Stanning, but I've been
talking it over with Vera and Pansy, and they both agree it's an
absolute toss-up who's to be head girl."
"Why, how extraordinary! I should have said there wasn't any doubt about
it. There's only one girl who's in the least likely."
"Which one?"
"Vivien, of course!"
Enid pulled an eloquent face.
"It's not 'of course'. I, for one, heartily hope she _won't_ get it.
Vivien Forrester, as she is, is quite bad enough, but Vivien Forrester
as head of the school would be the absolute limit."
"She'll be chosen all the same, you'll see. There really isn't anybody
else. When Lily Anderson left last term, she certainly thought Vivien
was going to be her successor. She showed her how to keep all the books
of the Clubs and Guilds, so that she could slide into the work easily.
And Vivien's such a sport at hockey, too!"
"Um! I don't know. She has such a jolly good opinion of her own
cleverness, but the question is whether Miss Kingsley exactly shares it
or not. Hello! Hold me up! Here comes the Duchess herself, as large as
life!"
The girl who advanced briskly from the rhododendron walk would have been
good looking, but she was spoilt by a rather rabbity mouth and large
teeth. Her complexion was clear, her brown eyes were bright, and her
auburn hair was abundant. She held herself with the confidence of one
who has so far found life an unqualified success. In her wake followed a
little train of courtiers: Sybil Snow, Nellie Appleby, Mona Parker,
Phoebe Gibson, and Adelaide Brookfield, all eager sycophants craving
her favour, and doing their utmost to ingratiate themselves.
"I tell you I can't promise anything!" Vivien was saying. "Naturally the
head of the school has the power to appoint any secretaries she likes,
but it'll be time enough to decide these things afterwards. I wish you
wouldn't bother me so! There'll be a proper Committee meeting on Friday
to arrange the Societies, and you must just wait till then."
"But if anybody speaks to you about it in the meantime, you'll remember
it's the Dramatic I'm keenest on?" urged Phoebe plaintively.
"I tell you again, I can't promise--but--well, I'll do my best for you,
at any rate."
"What's this about the Dramatic?" broke in Dorothy Skipton, who, arm in
arm with Patsie Sullivan, had joined the group. "Do you mean to say
you're arranging the Societies beforehand? Really, Vivien Forrester, of
all cool cheek I call this the very limit! Who said _you_ were going to
be head girl, I should like to know?"
Two red spots flared into Vivien's cheeks.
"Nobody said so!" she retorted. "Certainly _I_ didn't, though I dare say
I've as good a chance as anybody else. I don't see why you need catch me
up like this."
"Little bit tall to be promising posts till you're certain you're top
dog!" laughed Patsie. "Old Dorothy may be the lucker instead of you.
_Me?_ Rather not! I can hardly flatter myself after my career last term
that I'd be chosen as pattern pupil and pitchforked into the post of
honour to set a good example to the rest of the school. Do I _look_ the
part, now?"
The others, surveying Patsie's humorous face and twinkling grey eyes,
broke into a universal chuckle.
"Well, it's hardly your line, exactly!" admitted Vivien. "Why, if you
confiscated surreptitious sweets from the kids, you'd probably eat them
before their indignant faces, and give them a tip on how to hide them
more carefully in future. I know you!"
"Joking apart, though," said Dorothy, "I suppose somebody'll be made
head of this school. Hasn't any one got the least inkling or hint?
Lorraine! Lorraine Forrester, come here! We're talking about who's to be
head girl. It's a burning question, isn't it? Do you know anything?"
The schoolmate addressed as Lorraine closed with a slam the book she
was reading, and advanced somewhat unwillingly. She was a slim, pretty
girl of sixteen, with the general effect of an autumn woodland.
Everything about her seemed golden brown; her hazel eyes, her creamy
complexion, the sunny glint in her rich, dark hair were emphasized by
the brown dress she was wearing and the orange carnations pinned in her
belt. At the first glance there was a certain likeness to Vivien, for
the girls were cousins, yet everything about Lorraine seemed of a
slightly superior quality, as if she had been turned out of a finer
mould. She flushed as she evaded Dorothy's question.
"I suppose we shall all know when Miss Kingsley tells us," she answered.
"We'd be duffers if we didn't!" mocked Patsie. "In my opinion Dorothy'll
have an uncommonly good innings, and I'm getting ready to congratulate
her."
"No, no! It'll be Vivien!" declared Mona.
"Yes, Vivien!" agreed Sybil and Phoebe together.
But at that moment the loud clanging of the bell put a stop to the
conversation, and the girls turned in a body, and hurried into the
house.