Greets Claudia
By dint of urging on the part of the new monitresses the school made a
special effort for the social gathering. The idea of an exhibition had
frightened the juniors at first, but when they grew used to it it
appealed to them. They were rather pleased to bring specimens of their
best drawings, photos, plasticine models, or other pieces of handiwork,
and, though their efforts might be somewhat crude, Lorraine on the first
occasion rejected nothing, thinking that comparison with better work was
the surest means of raising the standard for next time. She and her
fellow-monitresses certainly made merry in private over Vera Chambers'
lopsided plasticine duck, Opal Clarke's extraordinary original
illustrations, and the cat-stitches in Jessie Lovell's tea-cloth, but
they kept their mirth to their own circle and allowed no hint of it to
leak into the lower school.
On the eventful day of the "Social" the closing bell rang at 3.35
instead of at four o'clock, and forty-two delighted girls promptly put
away their books, closed their desks, and trooped into the gymnasium.
The monitresses, aided and abetted by Miss Janet, had spent a busy but
successful time in preparation, and the room looked quite festive. Flags
decorated the platforms, and Chinese lanterns were suspended from the
beams of the roof. Round the wooden walls hung a show of sketches,
drawings, maps, illuminations and photographs, fastened up with tacks
and drawing pins, and on the tables was spread forth quite a goodly
display of moths, butterflies, beetles, shells, sea-weeds, pressed wild
flowers, fretwork, pokerwork, and needlework. All specimens were
labelled with their owners' names, so it was excitement to walk round
and compare notes. Lorraine, listening critically, judged the mental
barometer of the school from the juniors' remarks, which, if slangy,
were certainly complimentary.
"Peggie! You paragon! What a perfectly chubby little bag! I couldn't
have made it if I'd tried till Doomsday!"
"I should cock-a-doodle, Jill, if _I'd_ done that illumination!"
"Is this sketch really _yours_, Mabel? Hold me up! I feel weak."
"Wonders will never cease! Here's old Florrie made a collection of
shells."
"I think this show is a stunt!"
"Absolutely topping!"
"Keep out of my way, you blue-bottle! I can't see!"
"All right, old thing! Don't get raggy!"
When the exhibits had been duly admired and notes compared as to their
respective merits, a few of the best musical stars performed on the
piano, then some round games were played, and the proceedings closed by
the whole school forming a wide circle and singing "Auld Lang Syne" in
the orthodox fashion with crossed hands.
The girls went unwillingly, and would have stayed for another half-hour
if Miss Janet had not insisted upon their departure. Lorraine, putting
on her boots in the cloak-room, decided that her first effort had been
an unqualified success. It had certainly seemed to draw the school
together in a bond of union, so far as she could judge. She could not
resist a purr of satisfaction to Dorothy, whose coat hung next to hers.
Dorothy's congratulations were, however, half-hearted.
"I suppose they enjoyed it," she admitted grudgingly, "though I dare say
some of them felt it a bore to be obliged to stay after four o'clock.
Vivien said you'd got the whole thing up to show off your own
specimens."
The hot colour flamed to Lorraine's cheeks.
"Oh, what a shame! I _didn't_! I hardly showed any specimens myself,
only a few ferns and photos, and one drawing. You _know_ it wasn't for
my own glorification!"
Dorothy straightened her collar outside her coat as if its arrangement
were the main object in life.
"Oh, _I'm_ not saying so!" she remarked carelessly. "I'm only telling
you what I heard Vivien say. Effie Swan wondered you never asked _her_
to play when you asked Theresa Dawson."
"I couldn't ask them all--it wasn't a concert."
"She's very offended, though. I don't think she's going to come to the
next social."
"Let her stay at home, then!" snapped Lorraine, thoroughly exasperated.
Dorothy consulted her watch.
"It's frightfully late!" she sighed. "I shan't have time to do my
practising. We're going out to a concert to-night."
She sauntered away, having lodged several very unpleasant shafts, and
leaving them to rankle.
For Lorraine, all the satisfaction of the afternoon had faded. Nothing
hurts so much as the confidences of a so-called friend who tells you the
disagreeable things that other people say about you. It is a
particularly mean form of sincerity, for the remarks were probably never
intended to be repeated. The mischief it often causes is incalculable.
Lorraine walked home, feeling that there was a barrier between herself
and her cousin.
"I knew Vivien would be annoyed at my being head girl, but I didn't
think she'd be so spiteful as that!" she ruminated. "Well, I don't care!
I shall go on with the 'socials' all the same, and with any other
schemes that crop up. But it is horrid of her, because she might have
been such a help to me!"
As the term went on, Lorraine began to see only too clearly that her
two great obstacles in the school were Dorothy and Vivien. They did not
openly thwart her, but there was a continual undercurrent of opposition,
not marked enough for comment, but sufficiently galling. No matter what
she proposed, they had always some objection to offer, and, though in
the end they might hold up their hands with the rest, it was with an air
of concession more than of whole-hearted agreement. They were the
cleverest girls in the form, so it was hard to have to count them as
opponents, rather than as allies, in her work. The other members of the
Sixth, who had passed up the school with her, she knew from experience
would give scant help. Patsie was a good-natured rattle-trap, Audrey an
amiable little goose; Nellie and Claire were very stodgy, ordinary
girls, without an original idea between them, and not much notion of the
responsibilities of monitresses.
"I want somebody to back me up, and act as lieutenant," thought
Lorraine.
It was at this juncture that she discovered the capacities of Claudia.
She had, so far, taken very little notice of the newcomer, except by
vaguely appreciating the fact of her extreme prettiness. Claudia had not
pushed herself, and the intimacy which now sprang up between the two
girls came of a mere chance. Miss Kingsley had asked the school to
collect fruit-stones and nuts, to be sent to headquarters for use in the
manufacture of gas-masks for the army. It was a point of patriotism for
everyone to bring as many as possible.
Lorraine, strolling out one Saturday on this errand, did not find it an
easy matter to fill her basket. The appeal was a universal one in the
town, and the Council School children had been on the common before her,
picking up the beech-mast and acorns. As for hazel-nuts, there seemed
not a solitary one left in the hedges. She was wandering disconsolately
along, foraging with small success, when she happened to meet Claudia.
Lorraine held out her quarter-filled basket for sympathy.
"That's all I've been able to find, and if there are any more to be had,
I'm sure I don't know where they are!"
"There are heaps of horse-chestnuts in the fields above our house,"
replied Claudia. "I'm going home now, and, if you care to come with me,
I'll help you to get some."
Lorraine jumped at the offer, and the girls set off together up the
road, chatting briskly.
The Castletons had only come lately to Porthkeverne. Mr. Castleton was
an artist, and, attracted by the quaint streets, picturesque harbour,
and the glorious cliffs and sea in the neighbourhood, he had taken Windy
Howe, an empty farmhouse on a hill some way above the town, converting a
big barn into a studio, and establishing himself there with easels,
paint-boxes, and a huge pile of immense canvases.
A critic had once described Mr. Castleton as a genius who had just
missed fire, and the simile was an apt one. His large pictures were
good, but not always good enough to hit the public taste. He was
constantly changing his style, and one year would astonish the
exhibitions by misty impressionism, and the next would return to
pre-Raphaelite methods. He had dabbled in sculpture, illustration,
frescoes, and miniature painting, and had published two volumes of minor
poems, which, unfortunately, had never commanded a good sale. He was a
handsome, interesting man, utterly unpractical and irrational,
delightful to talk to, but exasperating in the extreme to those with
whom he had business. The quaint, old-fashioned homestead on the hill,
with its low-ceiled bedrooms, panelled parlours, black-beamed kitchen,
ivied porch, thick hedge of fuchsias, and view over a stretch of heath
and the dancing waters of the bay, satisfied his artistic temperament,
and provided a suitable background for the new ideas which he was
constantly evolving. Moreover--though this was quite a secondary
consideration--it afforded sufficient accommodation for his family.
Lorraine's first impression of the Castletons was that they went in for
both quality and quantity. They numbered nine, and all had the same
nicely-shaped noses, Cupid mouths, irreproachable complexions, neat
teeth, dark-fringed blue eyes, and shining sunlit hair. They were a
veritable gold-mine to artists, and their portraits had been painted
constantly by their father and his friends. Pictures of them in various
costumes and poses had appeared as coloured supplements to annuals or as
frontispieces in magazines; they had figured in the Academy, and had
been bought for permanent collections in local art galleries. The
features of Morland, Claudia, Landry, Beata, Romola, and Madox had for
years been familiar to frequenters of provincial exhibitions, sometimes
singly, sometimes in groups, and sometimes with the lovely mother, whose
profile was considered a near approach to that of the classic statue of
Ceres.
Five years before this story opens, pretty, impetuous, blue-eyed Mrs.
Castleton had suddenly resigned all the sad and glad things that make up
the puzzle we call life, and passed on to sample the ways of a wider
world. For the first six months her husband had mourned for her
distractedly, and had written quite a little volume of poems in her
memory; for the next eight months he was attractively pensive, and
then--all in a few weeks--he fell in love again and married his model, a
girl of barely seventeen, with a beautiful Burne-Jones face and a
Cockney accent. In the following few years three more carnation-cheeked,
golden-haired little Castletons--Constable, Lilith, and Perugia--had
tumbled into this planet to form a second nursery, and were already
learning to sit for their portraits in various attractive studio poses.
Claudia, running into the house to fetch an extra basket for the
horse-chestnuts, introduced Lorraine to a few members of the family who
happened to be straying about, showed her a row of pictures in the
dining-room, and escorted her through the gap at the bottom of the
garden into the fields at the back of the barn.
Sitting on the farther gate, whittling a stick, was a boy of seventeen,
with the unmistakable Castleton features and sunlit hair.
"Hallo, Morland!" cried Claudia. "We're going to get chestnuts. Do come
and help; there's a sport! This is Lorraine Forrester."
Morland would no doubt have performed the orthodox ceremony of lifting
his cap, but, being bareheaded, he grinned and shook hands instead.
"Don't advise you to eat them--they're beastly!" he vouchsafed.
"We're not going to--they're for the soldiers!"
"Then I pity the poor beggars, that's all."
"They're not to be eaten, they're to be made into gas-masks. I told you
all about it, Morland," declared Claudia.
"I've a shocking memory," he demurred. "But whatever they're for I'll
help you get some. Here, give me this to carry," and he took Lorraine's
basket and hung it over his arm.
There were plenty of chestnuts lying on the ground under the trees, and
more hanging on the branches which could be dislodged by a well-aimed
stone. The young people spent a profitable half-hour, and filled their
handkerchiefs as well as their baskets.
"I shall have heaps now!" exulted Lorraine. "You two are trumps to have
helped me!"
"I'd nothing else to do," said Morland.
"Wouldn't Violet let you practise?" asked Claudia quickly.
"No, she said it woke up Perugia!"
Claudia shrugged her shoulders eloquently.
"It's always the way!" she replied.
"Are you fond of music?" asked Lorraine.
"Love it! It's the only thing I _do_ care about. I'd play all day and
night if Violet didn't turn me out. She locks the piano sometimes."
"Is she your sister?"
Morland and Claudia both laughed and looked at each other, and the
latter explained:
"No, she's our stepmother, but she's so young that all of us call her
Violet. She's not such a bad sort on the whole, but we have squalls
sometimes, don't we, Morland?"
"Rather!" nodded the boy.
"Constable and Lilith used to sleep through anything and everything,"
added Claudia, "but Perugia's a fidgety child, and she wakes up and
yells when she hears the piano."
"I play the violin a little," admitted Lorraine modestly. "I wonder if
you two would come down some day and try a few things over with me. I've
nobody to play my accompaniments since Rosemary went away. I know Mother
would be pleased to see you."
"We'd just love it! You bet we'll come!"
Lorraine, pouring out the account of her adventures when she reached
home, sought confirmation from her mother for the invitation she had
given to the young Castletons.
"They're the _most_ fascinating family! I saw them all as Claudia was
taking me back through the garden. I think each one's more perfectly
beautiful than the others. They're absolutely romantic. You _will_ let
me ask Morland and Claudia to tea, won't you, Muvvie?"
"I will in this case, because I know something of Mr. Castleton from the
Lorrimers, but you mustn't go giving broadcast invitations again without
consulting me first."
"I won't! I won't! You're a darling to let me have them. Muvvie, I'm so
thankful you're not our stepmother!"
"So am I," returned Mrs. Forrester humorously. "I find my own family
quite a sufficient handful, and what I should have done with another
woman's in addition, I don't know. It would have been quite too big a
burden."
"We can play the piano here," said Lorraine, "because there isn't any
baby to wake up and cry."
"If there were, you'd have to reckon with me, for I shouldn't let it be
disturbed when I'd successfully hushed it to sleep. I haven't forgotten
my own struggles with you and Richard. You were the naughtiest babies of
the whole tribe."
After this rather unconventional introduction, Lorraine's attraction to
the Castletons ripened fast into intimate friendship. They were such an
unusual family, so clever and interesting, yet with Bohemian ways that
were different from those of any one she had yet known.
In the case of Morland and Claudia their father's artistic talent had
cropped out in the form of music. Claudia cared nothing for painting,
but was just beginning to discover that she had a voice. Morland,
hopeless as far as school work was concerned, had learned to play the
piano almost by instinct. He was a handsome, careless, good-tempered
boy, decidedly weak in character, who drifted aimlessly along without
even an ambition in life. He was seventeen and a half, and for nearly a
year had been lounging about at home, doing nothing in particular.
Spasmodically his father would realize his existence and say: "I must
really do something with Morland." Then he would get absorbed in a fresh
picture, and his good intentions on his son's behalf would fade to
vanishing point. In another six months the lad would be liable for
military service, so until the war should be over it seemed scarcely
worth while to start him in any special career. Doing nothing, however,
is a bad training, and even Mr. Castleton's artistic friends--not prone
as a rule to proffer good advice--tendered the occasional comment that
Morland was "running to seed". Morland himself was perfectly happy if he
was left alone and allowed to sit and improvise at the piano; he never
troubled his head about his future career, and was as unconcerned as the
ravens regarding the sources of food and raiment.
He played Lorraine's accompaniments easily at sight, with a delicacy
of touch and an artistic rendering such as Rosemary had never put into
them. It inspired Lorraine, and yet half humiliated her; she was a
painstaking but not a very clever student of the violin; no touch of
genius ever flowed from her fingers. To listen to Morland was to gain a
glimpse of a new musical world in which he flew on wings and she
stumbled on crutches. She sighed as she threw down her violin, for she
had all the ambition that he unfortunately lacked.