"The Moorings"
The tiny town of Durracombe consisted mainly of one very long and
enormously wide street. Everything that was of any importance was
situated in this High Street--the church, the bank, the public hall, the
reading-room, the free library, the best shops, and the Swan Hotel. Each
Friday it was turned into a species of market, with stalls, and barrows,
and butter-baskets, and shouting men driving frightened cattle, but on
great festivals, such as Empire Day, it became a gay cafe, for tables
and forms were placed on the pavements and the school children were
entertained to tea in the open air, while the town band played patriotic
music. Being such a small and compact place, it had the advantage of
beginning and ending quite suddenly. The river marked the boundary. On
one side of it you were in civilization, with a mayor and police and a
town crier, and the privileges of gas and the telephone, but directly
you crossed the bridge you were in the happy fields that owned no
sovereign but Dame Nature, and in quite a few minutes you seemed to have
left the world behind you.
Dr. Tremayne's house was the very first when you entered Durracombe by
the road from the south. Its green front door with the brass plate stood
in the High Street, but its garden wall overtopped the river, and its
side windows looked out over the fields to the open country. People
coming to fetch the doctor on a black night could see his red surgery
lamp from the top of the hill a whole mile away. It seemed to hold out
promise of help like a kind hand stretched across the darkness of the
river. For the last forty years Durracombe and district had depended
upon Dr. Tremayne. Time had, of course, brought changes, and the
dark-haired man who drove a high gig in the 'eighties was now grey and
elderly, and did his rounds in a two-seater car. Quite apart from
medicines the mere sight of him seemed to do his patients good. His very
atmosphere was electric, and he had that true gift of healing that helps
people to get well of their own accord. Certainly no one within a radius
of thirty miles was a greater favourite than "the dear old doctor", and
his small biscuit-coloured motor was a familiar feature on the country
roads. His three children were married and settled down in various parts
of the globe. None had followed their father's profession; so, though he
might be proud of a son who was a judge in India, a barrister in London,
or a successful civil engineer in Canada, he could claim no help in his
practice from his own family. His wife, grey-haired and elderly too, was
somewhat of an invalid, and most of the housekeeping was done by Jessop,
an invaluable old servant who attended to the surgery, took patients'
messages, sterilized instruments, washed medicine bottles, could give
first aid in an emergency, and was generally almost as great a feature
of the practice as the doctor himself.
It was to this rather old-fashioned household that Mavis and Merle,
sworn to the most exemplary behaviour, were sent for three months in the
hope that in the soft Devonshire air Mavis would catch no more bad
bronchial colds, and would have a chance of setting up her health and
growing the two extra inches which she still needed to set her head on
the same level with Merle's.
To the two girls everything in Durracombe seemed delightful. The
mildness of the climate amazed them. After the nip of Whinburn's
perpetual east wind, lifeless hedgerows, and desolate winter fields, it
felt like a sudden jump into spring to find campion, herb robert, and
dead-nettle blooming by the road-sides, catkins waving on the hazel
bushes, clumps of snowdrops and Christmas roses under the apple trees,
violets beneath the sheltered wall, primroses peeping through last
year's dead leaves, and the missel thrush chanting a triumphant song in
the yew tree that overhung the river.
Mother, as happy as if she were a girl again, took them round to her
favourite haunts: the beacon-top, where you could catch the first view
of the sea, eight miles away; the moor with its rushes and soft, short
green grass; the fields where cowslips would be found later on; the fir
wood that seemed like a wilderness of Christmas trees; the marshy flats
where you could see the wild ducks flying; the little quarry where the
sand-martens had burrowed holes for their nests--all the dear delightful
spots that she had known as a child, and had described to them so often
that they recognized them the moment they saw them.
"It's gorgeous! Muvvie, if only you weren't going away I'd think myself
in Paradise," declared Mavis, with pink cheeks, and standing on tiptoe
as if she were growing already. "Uncle David's a dear, and so's Aunt
Nellie, and as for Jessop, she's just a sport--that's what I call her.
Bridge House is simply A1, and if school anything like comes up to it,
well--I shall say it's the time of my life. It's going to be the nicest
term I've ever had."
"Don't congratulate yourself too soon," croaked Merle. "School's school
all the world over, and there's sure to be something to put up with.
_I'm_ not looking forward to sums and exercises. When do we start?
To-morrow! Ugh! Enter it as a black day in the calendar of Merle Ramsay,
and probably of the school too, for they won't find me soft wax in their
hands. I've got ideas of my own, and when people begin to try to mould
me I'm apt to turn katawampus. Mumsie, darling, don't shoot up your
eyebrows! There! I'll promise and vow to be a perfect seraph. They'll
call me St. Merle before they've done with me. Honest, Mumsie, I will
_really_ try! You know how I flare out, but I'll make a bouncing start
at this new school and think of you every time I get into a pixie mood.
If I don't, the Devonshire pixies had best steal me away and have done
with it. I'd be a good riddance to everybody, I dare say."
Merle spoke half in jest and half in earnest. There was laughter in her
voice, but her eyelashes were suddenly wet. Mrs. Ramsay laid a tender
hand on her younger daughter's shoulder. She was not laughing at all.
"I hope both my girls are going to grow this term," she said quietly,
"in character as well as in inches. There's room for improvement in both
of you. Mavis must stir about instead of always dreaming and reading,
and Merle must curb that little demon that sometimes gets possession of
her. I expect to find two very sweet girls when I come to fetch them at
Easter. We want this term to be in every sense a fortunate term."
"We'll do our level best, Muvvie! Can't you trust us?" whispered Mavis,
linking her arm in her mother's, as they turned from the wood and began
to walk down the hill-side towards the little town where the next
eventful months of their lives were to be spent.
But Merle, who always hid her deepest feelings under a joke, chirruped
out an impromptu ode to the future:
"School! School! School!
They'll probably call me a mule!
And stick me to stand,
With a book in my hand,
And a dunce's cap, on a stool!"
So it ended in the three of them laughing after all.
There was no large college or high school for girls in Durracombe, only
a very small private establishment kept by Miss Mary Pollard and her
sister Fanny, daughters of the late Rev. Horatio Pollard, formerly vicar
of the parish. They educated about twenty-four children, half of them
from the immediate neighbourhood: Opal Earnshaw, the bank-manager's
daughter; Edith and Maude Carey, from the Vicarage; Christabel Oakley,
who rode over on her bicycle from St. Gilda's Rectory; the three little
Andrews, from Fir Tree House; Major Leach's small grand-children; Betty
and Stella Marshall, who lived with their aunt, Miss Johnson, while
their parents were in Buenos Ayres; and twelve resident boarders, most
of whose parents were stationed in India, and who, born under burning
skies, had been sent to Durracombe for the sake of its soft air and mild
winter record, until they should be sufficiently acclimatized to stand
their chance as hardy specimens in bigger schools.
"The Moorings" was a large, pleasant, white house with green shutters
and a veranda, and it stood at the bottom of a short road that led from
the High Street. It was what is commonly known as "a dear little
school", that is to say it was rather old-fashioned and out-of-date but
very comfortable and "homey", and the classes were more like lessons
with a private governess than working with a form. Miss Pollard, whose
hair was as silver as spun moonlight, had dropped behind the more modern
methods of education, and, feeling rather diffident in the schoolroom,
concentrated her attention on the housekeeping, cossetted up the
delicate children, aired the linen, superintended the dormitories, and
acted nurse to anybody who was lucky enough to be kept in bed. The bulk
of the teaching rested in the hands of Miss Fanny, who was thorough, if
old-fashioned, and whose original methods, by a curious coincidence,
actually anticipated those of some of our most advanced educationists,
and so placed her ahead of as well as behind the times.
It was into this small community, more like a big family than a school,
that Mavis and Merle were introduced one January morning, causing
visible thrills to the occupants of other desks as they took their
seats. To plunge suddenly from the work of one school into that of
another is a rather bewildering experience, and by the time the
half-past twelve bell sounded, the Ramsay girls felt as if their
standards had been turned upside down. Mavis, shaky in general over
history, had reeled off the dates of the principal battles in the Civil
War, the only period of which she happened to have any special
knowledge, and Merle, by an equal fluke, worked correctly all her
problems in mathematics, a lesson which she usually abhorred. They were
so astonished at scoring on these subjects that they naturally hoped to
do better still in the French class, for languages had been their one
strong point at Whinburn High School. But alack for their self esteem!
The girls at The Moorings had concentrated on French, and not only
translated easily from a book which was much too stiff for the Ramsays,
but chattered quite fluently with Mademoiselle Chavasse, whose
encouraging remarks and questions were palpably not understood by her
new pupils. It is humiliating not to be able to express yourself in a
foreign tongue when others are talking it all round you. Merle, who
never liked anybody to "go one better" than herself, was particularly
aggravated by a fair-haired girl who sat near her, and who, as she
conversed with the teacher, kept the corner of her eye on the new-comers
as if judging the impression she was making on them.
"I don't like her! I shan't _ever_ like her!" thought Merle irately.
"She's conceited, and those eyes are sneaky. It's nothing so much to
talk French. I suppose they're used to it. She needn't think I'm
admiring her cleverness, for I'm not. I'll pluck up courage myself to
say something next time Mademoiselle looks at me."
But Merle's powers were not equal to her courage, and when Mademoiselle
gave her another chance she turned scarlet and stuttered, and generally
made rather a goose of herself, to her own infinite indignation and
evidently to the amusement of the rest of the class, especially of the
fair-haired girl, who tittered openly till she met the teacher's
outraged gaze, when she suddenly straightened her face and tried to
appear quite unconscious. Mavis, profiting by her sister's example, did
not commit herself to speech. Mademoiselle Chavasse's accent was
unfamiliar and difficult to understand, and most of her remarks might as
easily have been in Greek as French, to judge by the standards of
Whinburn High School. Both the Ramsays were particularly relieved when
the lesson came to an end.
At 12.30 Mavis, who had been sent to the school with a special
recommendation that her health should be looked after, was carried off
by Miss Pollard to be weighed and measured and otherwise inspected,
while Merle, with boots and hat and coat on, and all impatience to be
off, waited for her in the cloak-room. The other day-girls had scurried
away with hardly more than a glance in her direction, and she sat alone,
kicking her heels and not in the sweetest of tempers, till one of the
boarders, passing the door, peeped in, saw her, and entered. The
new-comer was a nice-looking girl, with grey eyes and a plait of very
dark hair. She smiled in quite friendly fashion.
"Hello!" she began. "Sitting here all by your lonesome? Why don't you go
home?"
"Can't. I'm waiting for Mavis."
"Is Mavis the other? She's rather sweet! I like her fluffy hair and that
blue velvet band. Somebody said she was older than you, but she doesn't
look it."
"People often take us for twins," conceded Merle.
Iva Westwood shook her head.
"No one with eyes, surely! You're alike in a way, but not very. Opal
Earnshaw was fearfully angry that you beat her in maths. She's been cock
of the walk till now."
"Which is Opal Earnshaw?"
"That fair girl who sat near you."
Merle's face darkened.
"That was why she tried to take it out of me in the French class, then?"
"Oh, Opal tries to take it out of everybody. She won't be very pleased
you two have come, I expect. You're too old to stand her bossing."
"Why do other people stand it?"
"Well, you see, she's head of the school, and Miss Pollard and Miss
Fanny are her godmothers."
"What difference does that make?"
"A great deal of difference, as you'll soon find out. Everything their
darling god-child does _must_ be right, that's the long and short of it.
They favour her fearfully."
"What a blazing shame."
"Yes, some of us get rather fed up I can tell you. We mutiny every now
and then."
"Count on me, then, next time you have squalls."
"Thanks!"
"Tell me about some of the other girls. Who's that one in the green
jersey who sat by the window and dropped her pencil-box? Is she nice?"
"Edith Carey! Ye-e-s, she's nice enough in a way." (Iva's tone was
unconvincing). "She's the kind of girl who drags on your arm when she's
tired, and insists on kissing you when she's got a bad cold."
"I understand--exactly. I suppose the other green jersey is her sister?"
"Maude? Oh, she's not a bad sort either. Rather a slacker though,
always late for everything. We say she'd be late for her own funeral.
She made us miss the train once when we were going an excursion. What
are the others like? Well, we call Aubrey Simpson the jackdaw, because
she's always talking. Muriel Burnitt makes fun of everybody. You should
hear her take off Mademoiselle! Nesta Pitman may be a little nasty to
you at first, but don't mind her, because it's only her way with new
people. She'll soon come round. She's rather off-hand, but a real
sport!"
"So are you, I should guess!"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm Cornish, and Cornish people are supposed to be
queer. At least Devon people say they are."
"Mother is Devon."
"Then I expect you'll think me queer. Are you living with your uncle,
Dr. Tremayne? _He's_ a sport if you like! He used to come and see me
when I had scarlet fever, and he brought me strawberries long before our
own were ripe. I wish I weren't a boarder. We live fifteen miles away,
at Langoran Rectory. It's too far to come every day, or I'd bike, like
Christabel Oakley. We used to have a governess at home until my brother
went to school and----"
But Iva's reminiscences were broken by the appearance of Mavis, rather
hot and injured after her health examination, and very anxious that they
should not be late for one o'clock lunch. Iva, hearing a bell,
disappeared without further remark, and the Ramsays hurried back through
the town to Bridge House, where Aunt Nellie, who admired punctuality as
a cardinal virtue, was looking out of the window for them. They compared
notes while they washed their hands.
"Are you going to like it?" asked Mavis eagerly.
"Um--I don't know! I certainly shan't like Opal Earnshaw, and she
needn't think because she's head girl and all the rest of it that _I'm_
going to truckle to her. They must be a poor-spirited set to let her
lord it over everybody. Who said she did? Why, Iva Westwood. She was
talking to me in the cloakroom. I could be chums with that girl! There's
something about her I rather take to. She's Cornish, and they say Devon
and Cornish people never can agree, but perhaps we'll hit it in spite of
that. She said you were rather sweet! Don't screw up your mouth! She
meant it as a compliment really. Do you think teachers ought to have
their own godchildren for pupils? No, I've not suddenly gone mad, but
Iva told me Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny are Opal's godmothers, and think
everything she does is absolutely perfect. 'The Queen can do no wrong'
sort of idea! I think it's horrid to have favourites. There goes the
gong. Help! Give me the towel, quick! We mustn't be late for lunch on
our first day without Mother, or Aunt Nellie'll think us horrible
slackers."