In a few days Hester was accustomed to her new life. She fell into its
routine, and in a certain measure won the respect of her fellow-pupils.
She worked hard, and kept her place in class, and her French became a
little more like the French tongue and a little less like the English.
She showed marked ability in many of her other studies, and the
mistresses and masters spoke well of her. After a fortnight spent at
Lavender House, Hester had to acknowledge that the little Misses Bruce
were right, and that school might be a really enjoyable place for some
girls. She would not yet admit that it could be enjoyable for her.
Hester was too shy, too proud, too exacting to be popular with her
school-fellows. She knew nothing of school-girl life--she had never
learned the great secret of success in all life's perplexities, the
power to give and take. It never occurred to Hester to look over a
hasty word, to take no notice of an envious or insolent look. As far as
her lessons were concerned she was doing well; but the hardest lesson of
all, the training of mind and character, which the daily companionship
of her school-fellows alone could give her, in this lesson she was
making no way. Each day she was shutting herself up more and more from
all kindly advances, and the only one in the school whom she sincerely
and cordially liked was gentle Cecil Temple.
Mrs Willis had some ideas with regard to the training of her young
people which were peculiarly her own. She had found them successful,
and, during her thirty years' experience, had never seen reason to alter
them. She was determined to give her girls a great deal more liberty
than was accorded in most of the boarding-schools of her day. She never
made what she called impossible rules; she allowed the girls full
liberty to chatter in their bedrooms; she did not watch them during
play-hours; she never read the letters they received, and only
superintended the specimen home letter which each girl was required to
write once a month. Other head-mistresses wondered at the latitude she
allowed her girls, but she invariably replied--
"I always find it works best to trust them. If a girl is found to be
utterly untrustworthy. I don't expel her, but I request her parents to
remove her to a more strict school."
Mrs Willis also believed much in that quiet half-hour each evening,
when the girls who cared to come could talk to her alone. On these
occasions she always dropped the school-mistress and adopted the _role_
of the mother. With a very refractory pupil she spoke in the tenderest
tones of remonstrance and affection at these times. If her words
failed--if the discipline of the day and the gentle sympathy of these
moments at night did not effect their purpose, she had yet another
expedient--the vicar was asked to see the girl who would not yield to
this motherly influence.
Mr Everard had very seldom taken Mrs Willis's place. As he said to
her, "Your influence must be the mainspring. At supreme moments I will
help you with personal influence, but otherwise, except for my nightly
prayers with your girls, and my weekly class, and the teachings which
they with others hear from my lips Sunday after Sunday, they had better
look to you."
The girls knew this rule well, and the one or two rare instances in the
school history where the vicar had stepped in to interfere, were spoken
of with bated breath and with intense awe.
Mrs Willis had a great idea of bringing as much happiness as possible
into young lives. It was with this idea that she had the quaint little
compartments railed off in the play-room.
"For the elder girls," she would say, "there is no pleasure so great as
having, however small the spot, a little liberty hall of their own. In
her compartment each girl is absolute monarch. No one can enter inside
the little curtained rail without her permission. Here she can show her
individual taste, her individual ideas. Here she can keep her
most-prized possessions. In short, her compartment in the play-room is
a little home to her."
The play-room, large as it was, admitted of only twenty compartments;
these compartments were not easily won. No amount of cleverness
attained them; they were altogether dependent on conduct. No girl could
be the honourable owner of her own little drawing-room until she had
distinguished herself by some special act of kindness and self-denial.
Mrs Willis had no fixed rule on this subject. She alone gave away the
compartments, and she often made choice of girls on whom she conferred
this honour in a way which rather puzzled and surprised their fellows.
When the compartment was won it was not a secure possession. To retain
it depended also on conduct; and here again Mrs Willis was absolute in
her sway. More than once the girls had entered the room in the morning
to find some favourite's furniture removed and her little possessions
taken carefully down from the walls, the girl herself alone knowing the
reason for this sudden change. Annie Forest, who had been at Lavender
House for four years, had once, for a solitary month of her existence,
owned her own special drawing-room. She had obtained it as a reward for
an act of heroism. One of the little pupils had set her pinafore on
fire. There was no teacher present at the moment--the other girls had
screamed and run for help, but Annie, very pale, had caught the little
one in her arms and had crushed out the flames with her own hands. The
child's life was spared, the child was not even hurt, but Annie was in
the hospital for a week. At the end of a week she returned to the
school-room and play-room as the heroine of the hour. Mrs Willis
herself kissed her brow, and presented her in the midst of the approving
smiles of her companions with the prettiest drawing-room of the sets.
Annie retained her honourable post for one month.
Never did the girls of Lavender House forget the delights of that month.
The fantastic arrangements of the little drawing-room filled them with
ecstasies. Annie was truly Japanese in her style--she was also
intensely liberal in all her arrangements. In the tiny space of this
little inclosure wild pranks were perpetrated, ceaseless jokes made up.
From Annie's drawing-room issued peals of exquisite mirth. She gave
afternoon tea from a Japanese set of tea-things. Outside her
drawing-room always collected a crowd of girls, who tried to peep over
the rail or to draw aside the curtains. Inside the sacred spot
certainly reigned chaos, and one day Miss Danesbury had to fly to the
rescue, for in a fit of mad mirth Annie herself had knocked down the
little Japanese tea-table, the tea-pot and tea-things were in fragments
on the floor, and the tea and milk poured in streams outside the
curtains. Mrs Willis sent for Annie that evening, and Miss Forest
retired from her interview with red eyes and a meek expression.
"Girls," she said, in confidence that night, "good-bye to Japan. I gave
her leave to do it--the care of an empire is more than I can manage."
The next day the Japanese drawing-room had been handed over to another
possessor, and Annie reigned as queen over her empire no more.
Mrs Willis, anxious at all times that her girls should be happy, made
special arrangements for their benefit on Sunday. Sunday was by no
means dull at Lavender House--Sunday was totally unlike the six days
which followed it. Even the stupidest girl could scarcely complain of
the severity of Sunday lessons--even the merriest girl could scarcely
speak of the day as dull. Mrs Willis made an invariable rule of
spending all Sunday with her pupils. On this day she really unbent--on
this day she was all during the long hours, what she was during the
short half-hour on each evening in the week. On Sunday she neither
reproved nor corrected. If punishment or correction were necessary, she
deputed Miss Good or Miss Danesbury to take her place. On Sunday she
sat with the little children round her knee, and the older girls
clustering about her. Her gracious and motherly face was like a sun
shining in the midst of these young girls. In short, she was like the
personified form of Goodness in their midst. It was necessary,
therefore, that all those who wished to do right should be happy on
Sunday, and only those few who deliberately preferred evil should shrink
from the brightness of this day.
It is astonishing how much a sympathising and guiding spirit can effect.
The girls at Lavender House thought Sunday the shortest day in the
week. There were no unoccupied or dull moments--school toil was
forgotten--school punishment ceased, to be resumed again if necessary on
Monday morning. The girls in their best dresses could chatter freely in
English--they could read their favourite books--they could wander about
the house as they pleased: for on Sunday the two baize doors were always
wide-open, and Mrs Willis's own private suite of rooms was ready to
receive them. If the day was fine they walked to church, each choosing
her own companion for the pleasant walk; if the day was wet there was
service in the chapel, Mr Everard always conducting either morning or
evening prayers. In the afternoon the girls were allowed to do pretty
much as they pleased, but after tea there always came a delightful hour,
when the elder girls retired with their mistress into her own special
boudoir, and she either told them stories or sang to them as only she
could sing. At sixty years of age Mrs Willis still possessed the most
sympathetic and touching voice those girls had ever listened to. Hester
Thornton broke down completely on her first Sunday at Lavender House
when she heard her school-mistress sing "The Better Land." No one
remarked on her tears, but two people saw them; for her mistress kissed
her tenderly that night, and said a few strong words of help and
encouragement, and Annie Forest, who made no comment, had also seen
them, and wondered vaguely if this new and disagreeable pupil had a
heart after all.
On Sunday night Mrs Willis herself went round to each little bed and
gave a mother-kiss to each of her pupils--a mother-kiss and a murmured
blessing; and in many breasts resolves were then formed which were to
help the girls through the coming week. Some of these resolves, made
not in their own strength, bore fruit in long after-years. There is no
doubt that very few girls who lived long enough at Lavender House ever
in after-days found their Sundays dull.