Nicky Nan Night
Immediately after the lesson, on the next French day, Gwen Williams
sauntered in the direction of the Ramsays.
"Do you go out for walks with that Penruddock boy from Grimbal's Farm?"
she asked rather insolently.
"Do you mean Bevis Hunter?" Mavis's voice was iced politeness.
"Yes. I told Mother, and she _was_ surprised! Does your uncle know?"
Merle was on the point of bursting out, "It's not your business!" but
her more discreet sister gave her a hasty poke.
"It was Uncle David who sent us out with Bevis," answered Mavis with
stately dignity. "He thinks very highly of him, and so do we. I've never
met anybody who knows so much about natural history, or who can tell us
more about excavations and prehistoric mounds and things. He was curator
of the school museum when he was at Shelton College."
Gwen gazed at Mavis as if she were speaking an unknown language.
"It's a matter of taste of course," she replied. "_I_ shouldn't care to
go about with the boy from the Penruddocks' Farm."
She walked away, leaving sad heart-burnings behind her. The Ramsays had
been very simply brought up at home, and were accustomed to judge people
merely by whether they liked them or not, and knew little of worldly
standards. Bevis, with his jolly, merry ways, and his intense love of
nature, seemed a far pleasanter companion than Gwen or her brother
Tudor. Intellectually he was more than the equal of those who despised
him, and his romantic story suggested many possibilities.
"Bevis might be _anybody_," ventured Mavis.
"I don't care who he is, he's our friend," fumed Merle stoutly.
"Rather, and we'll stick to him in spite of all the Glyn Williamses in
the world. It really doesn't matter to us what Gwen thinks."
Fortunately for the Ramsays, Gwen only came to school twice a week, but
to their sorrow Opal was there every day. Lately she had been growing
more and more out of hand. She had begun to adopt a patronizing attitude
towards Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny, called them "poor old dears",
quizzed their clothes, their manners, and their methods of teaching, and
voted them hopelessly slow and out of date. There is a certain phase in
girls who are growing up at which they are fiercely critical of their
elders. As a child Opal had immensely admired her two godmothers, and
had been proud of their many accomplishments. Now, because she too had
acquired a certain skill in music and painting, she rather looked down
upon their talents. She thought her own superior, forgetting that though
a well-taught girl may seem clever at sixteen, there is no guarantee
that she will go on developing in the same ratio, and will therefore be
a genius at the age of thirty-seven.
The fact was that Opal ought long ago to have been sent away to a
boarding-school, where she would have found her level among other girls
of her own age, and have been thoroughly sat upon by elder ones. Her
position of prime favourite at The Moorings was bad both for herself and
for everybody else. The juniors, encouraged by her example, began to
evade rules, and to do many things they had never dreamt of before. Miss
Fanny, finding them unusually troublesome, puzzled over the reason. She
decided there must be bad influence somewhere, but it never struck her
to fix the blame upon Opal. She was always ready with an excuse where
her god-daughter was concerned.
Among other subjects which Miss Fanny taught at The Moorings was the
piano. She was a very good and correct musician, and had studied under
an eminent master of her day. Perhaps her fault as a teacher was that
she concentrated too much on the technique to the exclusion of the
artistic element. She would stop a pupil every few bars to correct
errors in touch or the position of the hands, and was such a martinet
over these details that the spirit of the piece was often entirely lost.
Merle, who liked to dash away and get a general impression of a
composition, oblivious of a few wrong notes, chafed terribly under this
severe regime.
"It knocks all the poetry out of the music," she complained. "I
hardly know what tune I'm playing when Miss Fanny is watching my
hands like a cat watching a mouse, and that abominable metronome is
tick-tack-tick-tacking on the top of the piano! How I hate the beastly
thing. I'd as soon recite Shakespeare to a metronome as play Chaminade.
It would be just as sensible. Music, to my mind, is like reciting, you
want to hurry up some phrases and to linger on others, not go pounding
on like a pianola or a piece of clockwork! Tick-tack-tick-tack--Ugh! I
hate it!"
Opal, who also suffered from the metronome, chimed in with her side of
the grievance.
"My cousin learns from Mr. Jardine, the best teacher in Burchester, and
she never uses one!"
"I don't see why we need. I wish somebody would break the wretched old
thing, or lose it, or otherwise dispose of it. They'd have my blessing
I'm sure."
The juniors, who had gathered round to listen, giggled at Merle's
heroics. It was rather nice to hear elder girls grumbling.
"Why don't you do it yourself," piped Betty Marshall.
Merle, just for fun, seized the object of her invective from the top of
the piano, and opening the window placed it outside upon the sill.
"It may stay there and tick-tack to the birds if it likes," she
declared. "If I had my way it would never come back again. Yes, I mean
it."
The juniors laughed again as they ran from the room, and Merle, also
laughing, lifted the unfortunate metronome inside and placed it back on
the piano. She and Opal chased the smaller ones along the passage, and
caught them, squealing with delight, in the cloakroom.
"You little pussies, I'll tickle you!" cried Merle, swinging Posie
Andrews off her feet and tucking her under one arm, while she made a
grab at Florrie Leach.
The children, wild with fun, danced about like so many imps.
"It's Nicky Nan Night to-night," twittered Betty as she jumped and
pranced. "We're all Nicky Nans. Look at us!"
"Hooray! It's Nicky Nan Night," shouted the others.
"Heavens, so it is. I'd completely forgotten!" said Opal.
She stood for a moment as if thinking, then she suddenly ran back to the
schoolroom. She was only gone a moment or two, but she returned to the
cloakroom with a curious look of amusement on her face.
"What have you been up to?" asked Merle, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Ah! Wouldn't you just like to know?"
"You've been doing something!"
"Indeed! How clever we are all of a sudden. Are you clairvoyante may
I ask?"
"Not at all, but I know Opal Earnshaw. You're pluming yourself no end."
Opal broke into a fit of delighted giggling, but refused all
explanations, and slamming on her hat rushed away home, leaving the
juniors still dancing about the cloakroom like pixies and loudly
proclaiming: "It's Nicky Nan Night. We're all Nicky Nans!"
"What on earth is Nicky Nan Night?" asked Merle rather crossly, but
nobody troubled to answer, so she struggled into her coat and joined
Mavis, who was waiting at the door, and forgot all about the matter
directly.
Later on in the evening, however, she began to understand. Durracombe
was a little old-world place, and had preserved many quaint and curious
customs from ancient times. One of the most extraordinary of these was a
kind of carnival held by the boys of the town at the beginning of the
season of Lent. As soon as it was dusk they commenced to prowl about the
streets wearing black paper masks and carrying turnip lanterns. They
were supposed to represent imps of darkness, or perhaps will o' the
wisps, and their chief sport was to ring door bells, or rat-tap with
knockers, and then run away. Mavis and Merle, hearing repeated peals
from the surgery bell, were amazed that Jessop did not answer it, till
she explained it was merely a ruse of the Nicky Nans, and that nobody in
Durracombe who knew their tricks would respond to such a summons. She
offered however to take the girls out for ten minutes to look at the
fun; so they donned coats and scarves and issued into the dim High
Street. It was a moonless night, which made things all the better for
such a saturnalia. In the distance a cluster of lights began to dance
about, and presently up ran half a dozen little urchins, disguised in
masks and waving turnip lanterns pierced with holes for eyes and mouths,
so that the candles shining through them gave them the appearance of
gruesome goblins. The children had indeed vied with one another as to
which could produce the most horrible looking turnip head, and part of
the sport was to hide in dark alleys and suddenly to exhibit the
lanterns to unwary passers-by, to try to raise a scream. The small imps
careered round and round, prancing and giving an occasional yell of
"Nicky Nan". The girls laughed in much amusement, and Jessop, who had
witnessed the custom from her youth up, felt in her pocket for some
pennies, and threw them into the road to be scrambled for.
Presently came the noise of a tin-kettle band, and down the High Street
marched a procession carrying "Jack o' Lent", a grotesque figure on the
lines of a Guy Fawkes, stuffed with straw and wearing a mask and an old
top hat. The Nicky Nans flew to join their fellows, showing their
lanterns like the wise virgins in the parable, and the Guy was escorted
by quite a crowd of leaping dancing will-o'-the-wisps, who added squeals
and whistling to the din made on the old tea-trays and pans. They
crossed the bridge to a field on the farther side of the river, where a
bonfire had been built. Upon this Jack o' Lent was carefully hoisted,
and a match was put to the straw. The Ramsays, hurried indoors by Jessop
lest Mavis should catch cold, watched the scene from Aunt Nellie's
bedroom window, and had a fine view of the flames blazing up, and the
Nicky Nans prancing round in a circle, waving their weird turnip lights.
On this one night in the year the town's children were veritable
Devonshire pixies. By immemorial custom they were licensed to carry away
brooms, pails, or any objects which people were so foolish as to leave
unguarded outside their houses. These they pounced upon and bore off as
booty, exhibiting them the next morning in the pound, whence they might
be redeemed by their owners for a fee varying from a penny to sixpence,
according to their value. As the proceeds went to their football club,
the Nicky Nans were naturally anxious to pick up every trifle which they
could possibly find lying about, and every house and garden in the town
was visited for that purpose. The matron, who missed her scrubbing-brush
or her bucket, knew what Pucks and Robin Goodfellows had been flitting
round in the darkness, and made a visit to the pound to recover her lost
property, paying the price with a good-natured remembrance of the fun of
her own young days.
Mavis and Merle, on their way to school on the morning following the
saturnalia, peeped into the pound, a walled enclosure intended for the
detention of lost cows or strayed sheep, and saw half a dozen of the
boys, still wearing masks, guarding quite a collection of treasures and
chaffing some of the owners over the gate. Evidently they had had a most
successful evening, and the funds of their football club would be
replenished.
"Little wretches. They're as light-fingered as elves," remarked Merle.
"They've even taken the pots of geraniums off people's window-sills."
"I shall never forget them dancing in a mad circle round the bonfire,"
laughed Mavis, as the pair passed on.
When the pupils at The Moorings assembled that morning for call-over,
Miss Fanny entered with a look upon her face which everybody at once
mentally registered at stormy. Her "Good morning, girls!" was cold. She
never noticed the vase full of flowers which the boarders had arranged
upon her desk, and she took the names, as if she were reading a list of
criminals, in a deep sad voice without an atom of her usual geniality.
When this first preliminary was finished she turned to what was
evidently the pressing business on her mind.
"Girls!" she began. "A very unpleasant thing has happened in the school.
The metronome is missing from the piano. None of the boarders has
interfered with it. Can any of you day girls tell what has become of
it?"
A look of much astonishment passed round the assembled faces. On
several it was even mingled with relief. To get rid of the metronome did
not seem an unmixed evil. Perhaps Miss Fanny noted the expression. She
paused for a whole solemn minute, then spoke again in a yet sterner
voice.
"I put every girl in this room on her honour to tell what she knows."
There was a stir among some of the younger children, a bending together
of heads, and a faint whispering like the buzzing of bees, then Betty
Marshall held up her hand.
"Please, Miss Fanny, there's a metronome just like ours in the pound.
Posie and Florrie and I saw it as we came to school."
"In the pound!" Miss Fanny's voice quivered with amazed indignation.
"Yes, the Nicky Nans had taken it."
"But surely no boy would dare to venture into our schoolroom. It's
outrageous! I shall have to complain to the schoolmaster if they go
beyond bounds like this. To take it off the piano!"
Posie and Betty glanced doubtfully at one another as if uncertain
whether to explain further. Then Posie held up a chubby hand.
"Please, Miss Fanny, it wasn't on the piano; it was outside on the
window-sill."
"On the window-sill! Who put it there?" The teacher's voice had reached
crescendo.
Posie wriggled and looked uncomfortably at Betty and then at Florrie,
finally in a rather tremulous whisper she murmured:
"Merle Ramsay."
Merle stood up at once with flaming cheeks.
"I put the metronome outside the window for a minute, Miss Fanny, but I
didn't leave it there. I put it back upon the piano."
Miss Fanny glared hard, first at Merle, and then with a kind of
comprehensive sweeping glance over the whole school.
"Can any other girl volunteer any information?"
There was dead silence. Opal was rather ostentatiously sharpening the
point of her pencil. The teacher's gaze came back to a focus on Merle.
"You had no business to interfere with the metronome at all. I certainly
consider it your fault that it has been taken. In future I can't have
you day girls staying in the schoolroom after four o'clock. You must
leave directly you've put your books away. Go to your forms now, girls!
We've wasted too much time already."
Merle stumped off, feeling extremely cross. She was absolutely certain
that Opal, who had run back last thing into the schoolroom, must have
put the metronome outside on the window-sill, knowing that the Nicky
Nans would be sure to carry it off. At 'break' she taxed her with it.
But Opal simply laughed, and went on eating biscuits.
"Don't set all the work of the Nicky Nans down to me," she declared.
"It's a pity they didn't keep the metronome. Miss Fanny will trot down
to the pound and pay her sixpence and get it back, and it will be
tick-tacking again on the piano as gaily as ever, unless some of those
priceless kids have chanced to break it."
"But you put it outside for them?" persisted Merle.
"I? I never do naughty things!"
"Don't you? It strikes me you tell the biggest fibs of any girl I've
ever yet come across. I call you the absolute limit," said indignant
Merle as she flounced away.