Lalage’s departure from our midst took place early in September and
happened on a Wednesday, the day of the Drumbo Petty Sessions. Our list
of malefactors that week was a particularly short one and I was able
to leave the court house in good time to see Lalage off at the railway
station. I was in fact, in very good time and arrived half an hour
before the train was advertised to leave. Canon Beresford and Lalage
were there before me. The Canon, when I came upon them, was pressing
Lalage to help herself to chocolate creams from a large box which he
held open in his hand. He greeted me with an apologetic quotation:
“Nunc vino peilite curas
Cras ingens iterabimus sequor.”
“When you come home for the Christmas holidays, Lalage,” I said, “you’ll
be able to translate that. In the meanwhile I may as well tell you that
it means----”
“You needn’t,” said Lalage. “Father has told me four times already. He
has been saying it over and over ever since breakfast. It means that I
may as well eat as much as I can now because I shall be sick to-morrow
any way. But that’s all humbug, of course. I shouldn’t be sick if I
ate the whole box. Last Christmas I ate three boxes as well as plum
pudding.”
I felt snubbed. So, I think, did the Canon. Lalage smiled at us, but
more in pity than in balm.
“I call this rather a scoop for me,” said Lalage.
“I’m glad of that,” I said, “for I’ve brought a bottle of French plums
from my mother and a box of Turkish Delight which I bought out of my own
money.”
“Thanks,” said Lalage. “But it wasn’t the chocolates I was thinking
of. The scoop I mean is going to school. It’s a jolly sight better than
rotting about here with a beastly governess.”
“You can’t expect any governess to enjoy being robbed of her glycerine
and cucumber,” I said. “You wouldn’t like it yourself.”
“That wasn’t the real reason,” said Lalage. “Even Cattersby had more
sense than that.”
“She means,” said the Canon, “that it didn’t begin there.”
“No,” I said, “it began with the character of Mary.”
“It didn’t,” said Lalage. “She’d forgotten all about that and so had I.
What really began it was my birthday. For three weeks I had suggested a
holiday for that day from the tyrant. Her answer had ever been: ‘A half
will do you nicely.’ If pressed: ‘You are very ungrateful. I may not
give you even that.’ So I acted boldly. It was breakfast time and we
were eating fish----”
“Trout,” said the Canon. “I remember the morning perfectly. Tom
Kitterick caught them the day before. I took him out with me. The
Archdeacon had been over to see me.”
“Laying down my fork,” Lalage went on, “I said to no one in
particular----”
“Excuse me, Lalage,” I said, “but is this a quotation from the last
number of the _Anti-Cat?_”
“It is. I had an article about it. How did you guess?”
“There was something in the style of the narrative, a certain quite
appreciable literary flavour which suggested the _Anti-Cat_; but please
go on and keep to the words of the article as far as possible. You had
just got to where you spoke to no one in particular.”
“Laying down my fork, I said to no one in particular: ‘Of course I get
a holiday for my birthday.’ ‘I think a half----’ began she. ‘Of course,’
said father loudly, ‘a holiday on such a great occasion.’ Her face fell.
Her scowl deepened. To hide her rage she blew her nose. There was a
revengeful glitter in her eye.”
Lalage paused.
“I need scarcely tell you,” said the Canon, “that I had no idea when I
spoke that there had been any previous discussion of the subject.”
“The article ends there, I suppose,” I said.
“Yes,” said Lalage. “She had it in for me after that worse than ever,
knowing that I had jolly well scored off her.”
“And in the end she broke out over your effort to improve Tom
Kitterick’s complexion?”
“She sneaked,” said Lalage; “sneaked to father. I wrote an article about
that. It’s in my box if you’d like to see it.”
The Canon’s eyes met mine. Then we both looked at our watches. We had
still ten minutes before the train started.
“It’s about halfway down,” said Lalage, “on the left-hand side.”
“I think we might----” I said.
“Yes,” said the Canon. “In fact we must.”
We moved together across the platform toward the porter’s barrow, on
which Lalage’s trunk lay.
“I should like to see the article,” I said, fumbling with the strap.
“It isn’t so much that,” said the Canon. “Somebody is sure to unpack her
box for her to-night, and if Miss Pettigrew came on the thing and read
it----”
“She would be prejudiced against Lalage.”
“I’d like the poor child to start fair, anyhow,” said the Canon,
“whatever happens later on.”
We unpacked a good many of Lalage’s clothes and came on the second
number of the _Anti-Cat_. Lalage took possession of it and turned over
the pages, while the Canon and I refolded a blue serge dress and wedged
it into its place with boots.
“Here you are,” said Lalage, when I had finished tugging at the straps.
“‘Sneaking, Second Example. The Latest Move of Cattersby. Such a move! A
disgrace to any properly run society, a further disgrace to the already
disgraceful tactics of the Cat! How even that base enemy could do such a
thing is more than we honourable citizens can understand.’”
“The other honourable citizen,” I said, “is Tom Kitterick, I suppose.”
“No,” said Lalage. “There was only me, but that’s the way editors
always talk. Father told me so once.--‘Yet she did it. She sneaked. Yes,
sneaked to the grown-up society, complained, as the now extinct Tommy
used to do.”
“The allusion,” I said, “escapes me. Who was the now extinct Tommy?”
“The one before the Cat,” said Lalage.
“Her name,” said the Canon feebly, “was Miss Thomas. She did complain a
good deal about Lalage during the six weeks she was with us.”
“Is that the whole of the article?” I asked. “It’s very short.”
“There was nothing more to say,” said Lalage; “so what was the good of
going on?”
“I thought,” I said, “and hoped that there might have been something in
it about the effect the stuff had on Tom Kitterick. I have never been
able to find out anything about that.”
“It didn’t do much to Tom Kitterick,” said Lalage. “He was just as
turkey eggy afterward as he was before. It didn’t even smart, though I
rubbed it in for nearly half an hour, and Tom Kitterick said I’d have
the skin off his face, which just shows the silly sort of stuff it was.
Not that I’d expect the Cat to have anything else except silly stuff.
That’s the kind she is. Anybody would know it by simply looking at her.
Father, I don’t believe you’ve got my ticket. Hadn’t you better go and
see about it?”
The Canon went in search of the station master and found him at last
digging potatoes in a plot of ground beyond the signal box. It took some
time to persuade him to part with anything so valuable as a ticket to
Dublin.
“Lalage,” I said, while the Canon was arguing with the station master,
“I want you to write to me from school and tell me how you are getting
on.”
“I have a lot of letters to write,” she said. “I’m not sure I can write
to you.”
“Try. I particularly want to know what Miss Pettigrew thinks of your
English composition. I should mark you high for it myself.”
“I have to write to father every week, and I’ve promised to answer Tom
Kitterick when he lets me know how the new pigs are getting on.”
“Still you might manage a line to me in between. If you do I’ll send you
a long answer or a picture postcard, whichever you like.”
“I can’t read your writing,” said Lalage, “so I’d rather have the
postcard.”
The Canon returned just as the train steamed in. We put Lalage into a
second-class compartment. Then I slipped away and gave the guard half
a crown, charging him to look after Lalage and to see that no mischief
happened to her on the way to Dublin. To my surprise he was unwilling
to receive the tip. He told me that the Canon had already given him
two shillings and he seemed to think that he was being overpaid for a
simple, not very onerous, duty. I pressed my half crown into his hand
and assured him that before he got to Dublin he would, if he really
looked after Lalage, have earned more than four and sixpence.
“In fact,” I said, “four and sixpence won’t be nearly enough to
compensate you for the amount of worry and anxiety you will go through.
You must allow me to add another half crown and make seven shillings of
it.’”
The man was a good deal surprised and seemed inclined to protest.
“You needn’t hesitate,” I said. “I wouldn’t take on the job myself for
double the money.”
“It could be,” said the guard pocketing my second half crown, “that the
young lady might be for getting out at the wrong station. There’s some
of them does.”
“Nothing so simple as that,” I said. “Any ordinary young lady would get
out at a wrong station, and a couple of shillings would be plenty to
offer you for chasing her in again. This one----”
I hesitated, for I really did not know what Lalage was likely to do.
“I’ll lock the door on her, anyway,” said the guard.
“You may, but don’t flatter yourself that you’ll have her safe then.
The only thing you can calculate on in the case of this particular
young lady is that whatever she does will be something that you couldn’t
possibly guess beforehand. Not that there’s any real harm in her. She’s
simply possessed of an adventurous spirit and striking originality.
Good-bye.”
I had just time to shake hands with Lalage before the train started. She
waved her pocket handkerchief cheerily to us as we stood together on
the platform. I caught a glimpse of the guard’s face while his van swept
past us. It wore a set expression, like that of a man determined in
the cause of duty to go steadily forward into the unknown facing dread
things bravely. I was satisfied that I had made a deep impression on
him and I felt sorry that I had not made up his tip to an even half
sovereign.
The Canon was depressed as we drove home together. I felt it my duty to
cheer him up as much as I could.
“After all,” I said, “you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with.
Miss Battersby has got another situation. She’ll be far happier at
Thormanby’s than she ever could have been with you. His girls are
thoroughly well brought up.”
“She was very fond of Lalage,” said the Canon.
“Still, they didn’t suit each other. Miss Battersby will get over any
feeling of regret she may have at first. She’ll be far more at home with
quiet, well-tamed girls like Thormanby’s.”
The Canon was not listening to me. I judged from this that it was not
anxiety about Miss Battersby’s future that was preying on his mind. I
tried again.
“If it’s the thought of that bottle of glycerine and cucumber which is
worrying you,” I said, “don’t let it. Send her another. Send her two.
Make Tom Kitterick carry them over to Thormanby Park and present them on
bended knee, clad only in his shirt and with a halter round his neck.”
The Canon’s gloom merely deepened.
“I don’t think,” I said, “that you need fret about Miss Pettigrew. After
all, it’s her job. She must meet plenty of high-spirited girls.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her,” said the Canon.
Then he began to murmur to himself and I was barely able, by leaning
over toward him, to catch the quotation.
“Miserarum est neque amori dare ludem. . . .”
He saw that I was listening and lapsed into English. “There’s a
translation of that ode,” he said, “into something quite like the
original metre”:
“‘How unhappy is the maiden who with Cupid may not play,
And who may not touch the wine cup, but must listen all the day
To an uncle and the scourging of his tongue’”
“Come now, Canon,” I said, “Lalage is a precocious child, I know. But
she won’t feel those particular deprivations yet awhile. She didn’t try
to flirt with Tom Kitterick, did she?”
“It’s all the same thing really,” said the Canon. “The confinement and
discipline will be just as severe on her as they were on that girl of
Horace’s, though, of course, they will take a different form. She’s
been accustomed to a good deal of freedom and independence.”
“According to the Archdeacon,” I said, “to more than was good for her.”
“I couldn’t help that.”
“No, you couldn’t. Nobody could. My mother thinks Miss Pettigrew may,
but I don’t believe it myself. Lalage will break out all right as soon
as she gets a chance.”
For the first time since we left the station the Canon smiled and seemed
a little more cheerful.
“If I thought that----” he said.
“You may be perfectly sure of it, but I don’t think you ought actually
to hope it. The Archdeacon is a very wise man and I’m sure that, if he
contemplates the possibility at all, he fears it.”
“I suppose so,” said the Canon, sighing again. “It will all be a great
change for Lalage, whatever happens.”