AT SCHOOL.
Meg was going through the ordeal that her friend had set for her, and
she strung herself to endurance. She felt she was tabooed by these
fashionable young ladies, and she fiercely anticipated their neglect.
She avoided them; she rejected Ursula's advances with impatience.
For awhile some of the girls felt a temptation to bait this little
badger, but at last either the freshness or the excitement of the sport
died away. Perhaps, too, a certain amount of fear restrained them. The
slap administered to Laura Harris had made an impression, and it was
considered advisable not to goad the "savage" beyond bounds. Meg after
awhile was very much left alone.
She was an outcast, and she felt homesick for the London cage from which
she had flitted, and which the presence of a friend had cheered. For the
first time, also, she realized her ignorance, and with resolute heroism
she set herself to learn. She worked with astonishing zeal. At her
books and lessons Meg did not feel so lonely. At church and in her walks
through the pleasant country lanes the sense of her absolute isolation
was lifted. In recreation hours she sat apart from her schoolfellows.
There was a yew tree on the outskirts of the playground into which she
climbed to read Goldsmith's "Animated Nature." She began its perusal for
the sake of the donor; then, gradually, this book of wonder fascinated
her. The description it gave of strange, beautiful creatures, of birds
especially, enthralled her. She gathered from the pages hints of
far-away countries that called to her like a voice. This little
town-bred heart was seized with a passionate love of nature and a
foolish love of wild flowers. As she formed one of the regiment of girls
who tramped, two and two, through the country lanes, the beauty of
nature seemed to comfort Meg as if the touch of a reassuring hand were
laid upon her heart. She would almost forget, then, that she was an
object of mockery or patronage to her fellows. In the beautiful old
church she felt nearly happy. "I am out of school," she would say to
herself. The voice of the organ took her immensely. It seemed to be a
voice talking to God. She liked the clergyman also. He was an old
gentleman who appeared to her to be endowed with great benevolence. She
thought his sermons marvels of eloquence. When, in answer to her long
stare, his eye sometimes rested upon her, she felt immensely
distinguished and honored.
The teachers of Moorhouse were as much puzzled concerning Meg as were
the girls. She knew so much of some subjects and so little of others.
Miss Reeves, after a careful examination of the new pupil's
acquirements, declared that Meg might beat the girls of the upper class
in knowledge of some parts of history, and in familiarity with some of
Shakespeare's plays; while the lower classes might overmaster her in the
elements of arithmetic, geography, and other subjects.
Mr. Foster, the arithmetic master, a lank man with a large nose and a
long neck, who looked like an innocent vulture, and who had never been
known to give a bad mark, contenting himself with feebly rubbing out the
mistakes on the slates presented to him, was bewildered by Meg's
absolute ignorance of the rules of arithmetic, and by her dependence
upon her fingers for counters.
"Miss Beecham is a _table-rase_, as was the great philosopher Descartes
before he began to observe for the sake of his method," said the
professor to Miss Reeves, with forefinger uplifted, for Mr. Foster was
proud of making little pedantic jokes.
Madame Vallaria, the middle-aged lady who superintended the music of the
establishment, teaching piano and singing from morning till night, was
divided between admiration for Meg's correct ear and determination to
learn, and despair over the stiffness of her fingers and her ignorance
of the first elements of music. The signora was hot-tempered; her nerves
were jarred by listening to incessant practice.
"No, no, it is impossible! I will not teach you--I will refuse--I will
say to Miss Reeves that I cannot!" She sometimes exclaimed, addressing
Meg: "Your fingers are like the chop sticks the Chinese do use for
eating. You thump--thump--thump! I hear it in my sleep. It ever gives me
the nightmare." Sometimes Mme. Vallaria relented and with voluble
heartiness would exclaim: "Oh, Povera! your leetle heart is set to
learn; you are so courageous; and your ear it is exact, like a machine
made to catch the sounds. Yes, I will teach you--you shall learn it
yet--the piano--never fear!"
Mr. Eyre, the shy and eminent professor who came down twice a week from
London to take classes of history and English literature of younger and
elder pupils, would alternately pass from delight to annoyance at Meg's
answers. Her indifference to dates appeared to him a sort of moral
deficiency--it amounted to contempt. Her power of realizing historical
facts and characters in which she took an interest was vivid, as if she
had been a spectator of the events described, and had a personal
acquaintance with the actors therein. He vowed she spoke of Julius Caesar
as if she knew him, and of his murder as if it had happened yesterday
and was the subject of a leader in this morning's _Times_. He was
appalled and puzzled, he exhorted, he raged; but his eye rested
expectantly upon Meg when her companions floundered behind, and the
dullness of the class was relieved for him by the audacity of her
answers.
"You ought to go up to London to see the coronation," he said to her one
day when the theme of the lesson was Queen Elizabeth's reign, and Meg
surpassed herself in the brilliancy of her descriptive replies and the
astounding incorrectness of her dates.
"What coronation?" asked Meg.
"That of Queen Elizabeth."
"But she is dead and buried in Westminster Abbey," Meg rejoined blankly,
being dismally dense in apprehending a joke.
"Is she?" replied Mr. Eyre with feigned astonishment, and as was his
wont when he bantered his pupils, he set about biting what remained of
his nails and scribbled the lessons to be learned in the following week.
"Let her go on! She will go forever and ever backward till she is
stopped by the pyramid of Ghizeh!" he remarked another day as Meg placed
the date of Cromwell a century too early, and was sending it back
another hundred years when she found she was wrong.
Miss Grantley, the English and geography teacher to the younger class,
was antagonistically chilly in her treatment of Meg. The child felt she
was disliked, and with that precise and unsympathetic teacher her
deficiencies came out flagrantly. Signora Vallaria's voluble wailings,
Dr. Grey's jokes, did not dispirit Meg as did Miss Grantley's frosty
censoriousness.
Meg was solitary, and in her solitude she grew defiant and repellent.
Her heart suffered from the atmosphere of repression. As far as outward
appearances went she resembled her comrades; she was dressed like her
fellow-pupils, her wardrobe having been replenished under Miss Reeves'
direction; but inwardly she was not of them. She sat among them like an
owl among sparrows.
She observed them. As she had watched the hubbub of the lodging-house,
so she now watched the routine of the school. The girls of the first
class, tall, elegantly dressed, appeared to her like young goddesses.
Some of those nodded to her kindly as they passed, and she returned the
salute awkwardly without a smile.
Among the girls who had tormented her on her first night, a group,
headed by Miss Rosamond Pinkett, the cold-eyed, straight-backed,
Roman-nosed young lady, kept up an aggressive attitude. It still
appeared to Miss Pinkett that a degradation had been inflicted on the
school by the introduction of the "savage," and she ignored Meg with
contemptuous coldness. This young lady's bosom friend, Gwendoline
Lister, the beauty of the school, had a nature addicted to romance. Her
mind was like a story-book in which every page contained a thrilling
incident of which she was usually the heroine.
The sudden appearance of Meg, in a costume that suggested the dress of a
poor tradesman's child, her fierce refusal to betray anything concerning
her antecedents except the reiteration that her mother was a lady, fired
the beauty's fancy. Meg, she imagined, was the scion of a noble family,
stolen by gypsies, found at last, and sent here to be educated.
"Daughter of a ballet-dancer, my dear, you mean," Miss Pinkett said with
an icy sniff. "That ridiculous drawing speaks volumes."
The drawing to which Miss Pinkett alluded, and from which the Beauty had
evolved her romance, was an attempt made by Meg to repeat from memory
that dear fashion plate, which she had given away.
She had rudely drawn a small-mouthed, large-eyed face, the head wreathed
with roses, the dress covered with roses. Underneath she had written in
Roman characters, "My mother." This drawing had been found in
Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," taken out by prying fingers, and had been
passed from hand to hand. Where others had found food for mockery, Miss
Lister had found food for her imagination.
Meg had come on the scene as Miss Pinkett was in the act of examining
the sketch. With a cry she had snatched it out of the enemy's grasp,
and, tearing it to bits, she had flung herself from the presence of the
girls.
Ursula continued the defense of the stranger, and made advances to Meg,
which the child persistently refused.
"Why won't you take my sweets?" Ursula asked once in a piqued tone.
"I don't want them," said Meg with jerky abruptness.
"Why? Is it because you have none to give in return?" demanded Ursula
bluntly.
"I don't want them--that is all!" answered Meg.
"It is pride--nothing but pride!" said Ursula, turning away with a
displeased gleam of her spectacles.
A few days later an incident happened which showed that Meg was not all
indifferent to kindness. The spring had come and decked with lavish
waste of blossoms disgraced corners as well as more favored places. It
had rimmed with a fringe of velvet wallflower the top of the arid garden
wall. The orange and brown blooms spread in the sunlight, swayed in the
breeze, attracted the murmuring bees, and sang the praise of spring in
delicate wafts of perfume.
"How delicious those wallflowers smell," said Ursula, sniffing the air
with head thrown back. "It is a shame they should be unpluckable. I wish
I had a handful."
Meg heard the wish as she sat perched on the yew tree. When Ursula
turned away she abandoned her leafy throne, and swung herself from one
of the branches on to the trellis that covered the wall. It was a high
wall, but she climbed it with the precision of a woodland animal, here
grasping the trellis, there planting her foot on some bit of projecting
masonry. "You'll fall!" cried a chorus of voices. "To climb that wall is
absolutely forbidden, Miss Beecham," called out Miss Pinkett's voice. "I
will go and tell Miss Grantley," cried Laura Harris, setting off at a
run. Meg, undismayed by warnings and threats, pursued her quest.
A moment later Ursula felt a gentle touch on the elbow, and a fragrant
bunch of brown blossoms was thrust into her hand.
"Meg, you did not!" she cried with amazed spectacles, gazing at the
child, who bore marks of her recent encounter with the perils of the
wall.
Meg nodded.
Ursula buried her nose into the flowers with a hesitating expression as
Miss Grantley came up, followed by girls.
"Miss Beecham, go indoors at once! You shall stay in this afternoon for
this unlady-like and disobedient conduct. Ursula, those flowers must be
given up!"
[Illustration: MEG PULLS THE FORBIDDEN FLOWERS.--Page 94.]
Meg went indoors without a murmur, and zealously devoted herself to the
task set her as expiation of her offense. She took pleasure in its
difficulty. She was glad the day was so beautiful, that the room was
full of sunshine, and the wandering puffs of wind brought in messages
from the odorous sweetness of the day. She was proud of being punished
for Ursula's sake. It seemed to put her on a more equal footing, as if
repaying her for past kindness.
Another incident that followed shortly after the wall-climbing episode
proved that Meg's sense of loyalty survived amid the withering influence
of loveless criticisms around her.
Miss Gwendoline Lister, because of her beauty, was a personality in the
school. She suffered the penalties of celebrity. Stories were current
concerning her. One averred that she had been found dissolved in tears
on the discovery of a freckle upon her nose. Another rumor was current
that the Beauty spent the afternoon of wet half-holidays locked up in
the room she and Miss Pinkett shared in common arranging and dressing
her hair in various fashions, enhancing her charms with rouge and
powder, and trying on her ball dress.
Perhaps this report arose from the fact of a rouge pot having been found
in the school. Some averred it was the property of Miss Lister, others
declared its contents had been used by the young ladies who had taken
part in a theatrical entertainment given on the occasion of breaking up
for the holidays.
Meg, in her isolation, took no interest in the "rouge pot controversy."
One afternoon, to her surprise, she was beckoned by Miss Pinkett into
the room shared by her and Gwendoline.
The Beauty was standing near the dressing-table, a radiant vision
clothed in white, with hair unbound, wreathed with roses, and with roses
in the bodice of her dress.
For a moment Meg remained struck dumb with admiration, then came a
sudden revolution. In her wide experience of life in the boarding-house
she had known an obscure member of the theatrical profession. This
little slip of the foot lights, who spent her life in alternate squalor
and fairy-like splendor, had on one or two occasions dressed herself up
for Meg's benefit. The child had grown to know cheeks bedabbled with
paint and eyes outlined with bismuth. The face of Miss Lister brought
back this acquaintance of bygone times.
"Well, what do I look like?" said Gwendoline, with her head cocked on
one side and her finger-tips caressing the roses in her bodice. "You
know, little monkey, you are not to tell."
Miss Pinkett watched the effect on Meg with cold curiosity.
"You look much prettier as you are every day," said Meg.
"Do I look like your mother?"
"My mother!" repeated the child, and she began to tremble.
"I copied the portrait you drew, roses and all," said the Beauty.
"My mother never painted her cheeks; she never put black under her eyes.
You are like a Christy minstrel painted pink and white--that's what you
are like!" said Meg, with the concentration of fury in her voice. She
turned, unlocked the door, and slammed it behind her.
As she emerged out of the room the dressing bell for tea rang, and she
encountered a group of girls waiting outside. They cried breathlessly:
"What are they doing inside?"
"Is not Gwendoline dressing up? Does she rouge her cheeks?"
"I saw a bit of a white dress."
"I did--I did! Tell us, Meg--Meg!"
But Meg did not answer. She tore along the passage and up the stairs
till she came to a solitary attic. She flung herself down on the floor
and hammered the insensate boards with her fists. In her untamed heart
she would have wished to wipe the insult from her mother's memory by
thus maltreating the painted cheeks of Miss Lister.
When the tea bell rang Meg went downstairs.
"Where are Miss Pinkett and Miss Lister?" asked Miss Reeves, after she
had said grace, glancing down the table.
"They have not come down yet from their room, madam," said the attending
parlor-maid.
"Miss Lister is dressing up. Miss Beecham was there--she knows," said
Laura Harris, who might be relied upon for giving information on the
doings of the other girls.
"Miss Beecham knows!" repeated some other voices.
"Miss Lister puts paint on her cheeks," resumed Laura, growing more
explicit.
"I hope not!" said Miss Reeves, with an anxious brow, and her eye rested
upon Meg.
"I heard it said before by Miss Reeves' young laidees," put in Signora
Vallaria, rolling her dark eyes. "Tell, my leetle Meg, what they were
doing, the silly young laidees, when they call you in?"
At this moment Miss Pinkett and Gwendoline entered. The Beauty's face
was shining with soap.
"What were you doing in your room, young ladies?" asked Miss Reeves
gravely.
"I suppose, madam, Miss Beecham has been telling," replied Miss Pinkett.
"No, we are waiting for her answer to the question I have just put to
you."
Meg was conscious of every eye being turned upon her--Miss Reeves
sternly questioning, Miss Pinkett coldly supercilious, Gwendoline, with
pursed lips, imploring. She stood up, her little red lips closed
tightly, her heart fiercely divided between a desire for vengeance and a
sense of loyalty. After a pause she said:
"They called me into the room to make fun of a portrait of my mother
which I had drawn."
A murmur of comical disappointment from the girls round the table, an
expression of relief on the faces of the two culprits, greeted this
answer.
"It was such an absurd portrait, madam," said Miss Pinkett in an
explanatory tone; "a lady suffering from the mumps wearing a wreath of
roses."
A titter went round the table.
"Hush!" said Miss Reeves seriously. "It is unkind to laugh at the child.
Sit down, young ladies."
"It was awfully good of you, Meg, not to tell about me," said Gwendoline
that evening, when she got Meg alone. "I am awfully obliged. I am sorry
I offended you. Will you forgive me?"
"No!" said Meg emphatically, turning her back upon the Beauty and
walking stiffly away.