Daphne Bruno

PART II: Daphne's Schooldays

CHAPTER VI

Daphne, her governess, and a new trunk marked D.D.T.B., were all in the Windsor train as it moved out of Paddington. A sense of well-being accompanied Miss Carrell too. So often had she seen parents bringing their children to Hemans House, and envied them the position in which they stood to the school and to the mistresses. It was the difference between the paying and the paid, between the clients of a firm and its servants. Not so much those whose children came for notoriously reduced fees; them she had rather pitied. And now here was she, wearing gracefully the clothes of the leisured classes, and bringing to Miss Vidella a best-paying child. Under a manner of graciousness and charm she would talk to the junior mistresses.

She could congratulate herself on the skill with which she had played for Mr. Bruno's decision. She had used Daphne first, hanging before her gaze pictures of life at Hemans House as it lived in her memory—its fun and mischief, its quaint customs, and its tales of friendship between girl and girl or between governess and pupil, till the child's imagination was possessed by Miss Vidella and her establishment, and she would pester her father to be sent to that school and no other. With the father Miss Carrell had kept her recommendation free from over-emphasis, though unmistakably strong. She made capital with the idea that Daphne would probably do best at a school on which she was keen. And Mr. Bruno had agreed.

Daphne was less happy than Miss Carrell. After all her noisy enthusiasm for school, she did not like to admit a present anxiety that was almost a dread. Even from herself she pushed away a wish that she and Owen and Miss Carrell could have gone on for ever in the schoolroom upstairs with the two desks. As the train hurried towards Windsor she gazed out of the window and affected, for her previous attitude demanded nothing less, a great excitement about the journey and its destination.

"You'll soon seen Windsor Castle," said Miss Carrell.

"Shall we? How ripping!" But she felt that the moment of seeing Windsor Castle, where it towered above the distant trees, would be a moment of something like fright; and one could wish that the train would roll on and on, so that the moment never came. The hunched carters whose wagons rumbled on the country roads were people to be envied for their age and freedom; so were the porters on the platforms, who would be doing to-morrow what they were doing this afternoon; and the engine driver, alone in his engine day after day, with no head mistress or big girls to overawe him. Something was wrong with her breathing; she kept wanting to rearrange it with a short, quick inhalation or a downward sigh or yawn. But when Miss Carrell, looking out of the window, began to search the skyline for the Round Tower of Windsor Castle, that she might point it out with an exhibitor's pride, and at last exclaimed: "There it is—there between the trees!" Daphne jumped up and stared out of the door-window in an imitation of effervescing delight. A sickish business, because her heart was not in the effervescence; it was lying somewhere lower than usual and beating too fast.

"Is Hemans House far from the station?" she asked, and though her voice was meant to suggest impatience, the words were really an appeal for delay.

"Yes, it's a mile or more, but we'll take a fly."

Usually taking a fly was a treat, but now, as the train slowed into Windsor station, the cab seemed little better than a Black Maria or a tumbrel. But life bustles you on regardless of your desire to go slow, or even to stop still, and Miss Carrell bustled her on to the platform. There as she waited, trembling in the cold wind, she sank herself deeper in that despairing envy of all the other persons who were getting out of the carriages: the young people whose schooldays were behind them, the middle-aged who must have forgotten all about school, and the old men who were near death.

Miss Carrell pushed her into the fly, and said "Hemans House" to the cabman, who nodded "Yes'm," and flicked at his horse, starting it up the hill.

Daphne watched out of the window. "Now we're almost there!" she exclaimed, to keep up the fiction of excited happiness.

The high garden wall of Hemans House was not likely to diminish her anxiety; nor the depressing tangle of trees on the other side of the wall, the moss-green gravel, and the stucco house. There was more cheer about the white hearthstoned steps and the green hall door. But the clang of the bell in the basement had a ring of irreparability, as if it had snapped off the past; and the waiting for the door to open was unlike any other waiting she had ever known. Fears seemed to have vivified her thinking and heightened her imagination above the normal. White hearthstoned steps, hollowed where the feet trod, were no longer steps and nothing more. Steps? Steps were romantic things. What one-time tenants of this old house had come up these steps and gone down them, and with what emotions! And now they were in their graves. Perhaps some daughter of the house had eloped down these steps with her lover, like Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall. A fraction of those hollows was made by their flying feet. School girls, converging from all parts, had come up these steps, and wondered what years lay before them. And after a time they had taken their farewell journey down them. Stirring, sweet thought, that last walk down them! Long after Miss Vidella had died—one could be selfishly happy if she died this afternoon—other tenants, not yet born perhaps, would come up these steps. A crowd would stand here to watch a wedding pair descend to their carriage on the drive. And the bodies of people would one day be carried in coffins, feet foremost, down the steps. That time they would make no impression on the hollows....

The door was opening, and a maid, who recognised Miss Carrell, was inviting them to come in. They were walking through a rather dark hall to the reception-room. Now they were waiting in the reception-room. This was like an interval between two parts of one's life, an empty, silent pause, like the place where the coupling was, between two coaches of a railway train.

Daphne here began to fill the interval, and thus to contract to commonplace thinking again, by a study of the framed portraits of former pupils. All of them seemed to have written, something like, "To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet," and she was cheered by these proofs of lovableness in her head-mistress. How pleasant, when she should have left school for ever, to send a photograph, signed, "To my dear mistress, from her loving Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno!" She was startled away from the frames by the sound of a high-pitched voice outside; and the door opened, and Miss Vidella made a dignified entry. Daphne had heard from Miss Carrell that her future principal was "short, stout and very quaint," but the words had suggested no such caricature as this. With a moment's homesickness she knew that, had Owen and she in their former freedom seen such a figure in the street, they would have giggled and hurried out of sight.

"So this is little Daphne Bruno!" said Miss Vidella, stretching out a cold hand which Daphne took. The hand seemed to share none of the affection of the high-pitched voice, but to be a sort of perfunctory companion who did what was expected of it without enthusiasm.

"We generally call her Duffy at home," said Miss Carrell.

"Duffy! What a strange name! I don't think we can call her that here. Sounds too much like Duffer—and we have none of them here." Daphne wondered if this were supposed to be funny. "Besides, being her father's daughter, she'll be anything but a dunce. No, we shall only call her Daphne."

Daphne had a sense of seeing Duffy dismissed from the room.

"And how is your dear father?"

"Very-well-thank-you."

"And is he writing another of his splendid books?"

"Yes-I-think-so."

"That's right."

"He's always at work," interjected Miss Carrell.

"Dear me. You must be a proud little girl to be the daughter of so celebrated a parent. Are you?"

Daphne had never thought of it like that—one hardly did about one's father—but she dutifully mumbled "Yes."

"Well, Daphne dear, you must be happy with us. Your father was most careful to choose a school where you would be happy, and you mustn't disappoint him, but tell him how happy you are here." She turned to Miss Carrell. "I am hoping he will consent to act as a reference for us.... And I tell you what would be nice for you, Daphne, and make you feel more at home, if you could persuade some other dear little girl friends to come to school with you here. Will you?"

"Yes."

"And to think that Miss Carrell, whom I know so well, should have been helping you with your studies for the last few years! Have you learnt a lot from her?"

"Yes."

"That's right. Well, you're a little shy now, aren't you? Very natural, I am sure. Perhaps you'd like to go downstairs to the dining-room, and see some of your school-fellows. Would you like to do that?"

"Yes—thank—you."

"That's right." Miss Vidella struck a bell on the table beside her. "You'll stay here, won't you, Miss Carrell? I am expecting some more of the dear children's parents, and we shall have a cup of tea up here." The maid entered in response to the bell, and her mistress said: "Knight" (she achieved added dignity by calling all her maids by their surnames), "please take Miss Daphne Tenter Bruno and show her her dormitory—she's sleeping in the Eliza Cook room—and then show her to where the other young ladies are assembled in the dining-room. Miss Sims is looking after them."

"Yes, madam."

"Thank you.... Now do you go with Knight, dear, who will show you the way.... Ah, yes, yes, Miss Carrell will come and see you before she goes."

Daphne passed out of the door behind the maid, Knight. As the door closed, the thought of Miss Carrell partaking of an exalted tea with the parents made it seem as if she had been assumed into a heaven, leaving Daphne to work out her salvation in loneliness below.

"Come on, your Shyness," the maid surprised her by saying as, not without kindness, she took her by the hand. "You'll soon get used to us. There's worse places than school when all's said and done, and worse schools than this, I daresay. Come and see your bedroom. Up this way.... Just the next floor.... Now in here.... There ... That's where you'll sleep, and I wish I had half as good a room."

Daphne was in a large, bright room, with six beds whose top blankets were scarlet and their linen well laundered. On the floor at the foot of the nearest she recognised her trunk. The five other beds started more nervousness.

Knight helped her to remove her coat and hat, brush her hair and prepare for the dining-room. Then she led her downstairs to a big, bare room in the basement. Here were three long tables laid for tea, a vase of flowers at every four feet giving an air of gaiety suitable to the day when the girls returned. Round the walls were hung Maud Goodman's pictures: "Taller Than You, Mother," "When the Heart is Young," and "They Lived Happily ever Afterwards." In the bay window, whose panes looked out upon a shallow area, sat a young mistress, evidently Miss Sims. She was a short woman with a colourless face, not ill-featured, and dull, fair hair. Her popularity was shown by the girls who were dancing around her, or sitting with dangling legs on a table at her side.

All heads turned as the maid entered with Daphne.

"Here's one of the new girls, Miss Sims. She's Miss Daphne Brunner, or some name like that."

"Oh, yes. We've heard all about her—Daphne Bruno."

Miss Sims, in her relations with her pupils, was the complete sentimentalist. She lived with emotions she would have been ashamed to reveal. And yet, to herself, she liked to call these emotions the noblest thing in her. It was just this, she had to have somebody to love passionately. The six years of her teaching had been a chain of such hungry, largely concealed loves for some fair-featured pupil. And at the moment when Daphne first saw her, though she was laughing gaily with the girls, for all of whom she felt affection, her mind was really full of treasured regrets and self-pity, because an older pupil, Audrey Stanton, who had held her heart and filled her dreams, had left the school the previous term. "Doubtless," Miss Sims had thought during the holidays, "she will write me a few affectionate letters, and then forget all about me." The pathos of this had evoked a few verses, one of which ran:

Upon the threshold of a broader view,
    Where lay revealed what girlhood sees,
I left my little pupil standing, and withdrew
    To fondle memories.

And another, supposed to be written in ten years' time when all the girl-children on whom she had expended her love should be dispersed:

O Time, reverse the glass, and let flow back the sands!
Within a stucco house once more a figure stands,
And smiles on upturned faces, grasping outstretched hands.

Revive the past? Ah no! Nor yet retie the knot,
For time must move, and early-formed attachments rot,
And so the tale is told, a girlhood friend forgot.

The melancholy of her return this term to familiar walls empty of Audrey Stanton had been relieved (though in loyalty she hardly admitted it) by the hope that some new pupil would win her heart. When she had been told about the great Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter, she had wondered whether this interesting child would be able to succeed to Audrey, and to give her all the exquisite delights and sufferings that that gracious girl had had the power to bestow.

And now she saw Daphne. She saw an eleven-year-old child whose brown hair had not yet been tied back with a ribbon. The eyes were brown, large and inquiring; the nose straight and small; the mouth at the moment, unmoving and sad—though the sadness, perhaps, was reflected from a timidity in the eyes. The narrow figure, with its early promise of long, thin limbs, was indistinguishable from a boy's.... The child looked lost.

Miss Sims's heart moved out to her aid, swelling with hope.

Daphne, quite unaware that there was a person in the room who was wondering whether she would be able to love her better than any one else in the world, was introduced to all the girls, none of whom made any impression on her except a certain Gertrude Wayne. This girl, who was perhaps a year older than Daphne, but no taller, had deliberately come and sat beside her, and studied to be pleasant.

(The hidden fact was that Gertrude Wayne had just finished reading a boys' school story, "The Best House at Whitefriars," whose hero, a Godfrey Baldwin, had always been very kind and protecting to new boys, and thereby earned their worship; and her behaviour just now was modelled on Godfrey's. She had even a hope that the bigger girls would be unkind to this new kid, so that she could stand up for her. It must be splendid to have the admiration that Godfrey inspired.)

"What did they say your name was?"

"Daphne Bruno."

"Any other names?"

'Yes; Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno."

"Oh, I think Deirdre is a ripping name. Which are you called by at home?"

"I'm generally called Duffy at home, but Miss Vidella says I'm not to be called by that here."

"She would. Nicknames are the same as slang to her, the old—— But's really she's not so bad." (Gertrude had suddenly remembered that Godfrey never spoke unkindly of any one.) "She did the same with me. I'm always called Trudy at home, but she said, 'My dear, what a strange name! It's too much like Judy,' and she made me be called Gertrude. I shall call you Duffy, if you'll call me Trudy. Will you?"

"Yes."

"Where are you sleeping?"

"In the Eliza Cook room I think it was called."

"Oh, blow! I'm in the Frances Burney room. Never mind. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know. I remember how rotten it was when I was new. I've been here two years now——"

The conversation was stopped by the sound of Miss Vidella's voice outside, and when she entered with some parents, all the girls stood up and kept silence. Some older ones giggled, though their lips were compressed.

"This is the dining-room," sang Miss Vidella, and the parents, male and female, gazed helpfully round. "Such a nice, cheerful room. South aspect, and gets the whole day's sun.... Sit down, dears.... You won't mind them sitting down, will you? Yes, they have all their meals here—not luxuries, I'm afraid, but good, plain, wholesome food." (She pronounced this word to rhyme with "good.") "Where's little Daphne Bruno? Ah, there she is. Getting quite at home already.... Come to me, dear, and let me introduce you. This is the great Mr. Tenter Bruno's only daughter."

"Tenter Bruno was an old Harrovian," said one corpulent father, interested for the first time. "He was at Harrow with me."

"There. Now isn't that interesting? Here's some one who was at school with your father. How small the world is! ... Now do you run away, dear."

She soon took out the parents again, who bowed graciously to Miss Sims before withdrawing. Then tea was brought in, the first day of term being celebrated by such extras as blanc-mange and jelly and bananas. The girls, now increased in numbers, were chatteringly occupied with the meal, under the supervision of Miss Sims and another mistress who had appeared, when all were compelled to stand again with full and giggling mouths by the entrance of Miss Vidella, and a second little shift of parents.

"Ah, they've started, I see.... Miss Sims and Miss Stevens." The parents bowed. "Yes, I don't pretend we give them luxuries, but we study always to have good, plain, nourishing food.... Well, sit down, dears, and get on with your meal. I am sure you will be excused. This is one of my new girls this term." Daphne stood up, blushing because her mouth was full, and she was overborne by this semicircle of parents about her. "She's Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter."

"Really?" exclaimed one lady.

"Yes, he's just sent her..... Sit down, dear.... It's a fine, cheery room, isn't it? Perhaps you'd like to see the dormitories."

They filed out, and the frost-bound chattering violently thawed.

After tea, Daphne was left quite alone and unspoken to, Trudy Wayne having gone away, and Miss Sims been relieved by Miss Stevens. She sat on the edge of a table, and passed the time looking up and round at the Maud Goodman pictures, or watching some big girl whose voice was commanding a moment's attention. Quite half an hour must have gone before Miss Carrell came into the room to kiss her good-bye.

"Good-bye, Duffy, dear. I've got to be off to my train. Try to be very happy."

"I think it's lovely," said Daphne.

CHAPTER VII

On awaking next morning in the Eliza Cook room and looking round upon its iron bedsteads, beneath whose tumbled red blankets the hips and shoulders of five strange girls made miniature mountain ranges, Daphne yielded to a dull resignation. Owen, whose attractions she had too much overlooked, was now seen to be a friend whose absence left a damping blank. How good the holidays would be when once again Hollins would come in, pull up the blinds, and wake them! All these five schoolfellows were still asleep, and she coveted the ease and familiarity which enabled them to hunch up and sleep like that. Herself felt perfectly awake. She would have rather liked to get up, but dared not move till some of the others, by rising and dressing, showed her what to do. There were six basins on a long trestle table, with a clean, white cloth and four new pieces of brown carbolic soap. To look at these squares of soap was to catch their smell. Which of those basins ought she to use, and which piece of soap? And how much of herself ought she to wash? Always at home Hollins had taught her that when she didn't have a bath she must wash, like all ladies and gentlemen, right down to her waist, and never be guilty of the "cat-lick." But she knew, as she lay there, that if the majority of these girls made use of the "cat-lick," she would follow their example. Moral courage, of course, demanded the opposite (like Tom Brown saying his prayers), but she had no desire to show moral courage. All she wanted was to do nothing remarkable.

When at last, one by one, and with unembarrassed talking, the girls got up, after a loud bell had rung downstairs, they soon solved for her the problem of washing. All of them seemed to dress as far as their princess petticoats before approaching the basin, and then gave a hasty polish to their faces and necks with the damp end of a towel. One girl, even, who had lain in bed long after the bell had gone, did not wash at all, but dashed downstairs with her dress undone, plaiting her hair as she went.

Into the stream of girls which, fed by tributary rivulets from other rooms, was cascading downstairs, Daphne slipped, so as to flow along with it and see in what pool it finally settled. It settled in the dining-room, where all the girls were taking up places behind the chairs they had occupied at yesterday's tea. Only whispered talk was passing across the breakfast things, as if even that were contraband. Daphne slipped to the chair that had known her yesterday, and in the absence of Owen, Hollins, and Miss Carrell, the chair seemed a friend. She saw Trudy Wayne, and Trudy saw her, and smiled and looked dreamily ahead. Daphne wondered at the wistful self-sufficiency in her eyes—not knowing that Trudy was posturing for her admiration as Godfrey Baldwin of Whitefriars. The whispers evaporated into empty silence as Miss Vidella walked into the room. When Miss Vidella walked, everything from her head to her waist was as stationary as the bust of a stout lady carried on a tray, but everything from her waist to her skirt-hem moved, and this motion gave her passage across the room the character of a slow, dignified flounce. It also shook and jingled the silver chatelaine, which, now that her school was really in session, she had hung at her belt, much as a mayor hangs his chain about his neck.

She went and stood in the window-bay, and immediately Miss Mitchell, the music mistress, walked to the piano and sat down. Daphne guessed. It was to be Prayers.

They sang, apparently by heart, the hymn:

"New every morning is the love
    Our wakening and uprising prove."

and Miss Vidella in her high voice read a chapter of the Bible. Then all knelt down behind their chairs for the collects and prayers. Some who could not be seen of mistresses sat on their heels. Daphne held on to the upright bars of the back of her chair like a caged monkey, and stared through its tracery at the bare seat and the drooping table-cloth. She tried to say Amen when the others did, but the word would not come quick enough, and was even once in danger of saying itself after the next prayer had started; and this dreadful moment decided her to leave the word alone. The public and common worship over, all knelt in silence, till the head mistress, who had been standing, began to move away, and then all finished their private prayers at the same moment, jumped up, pulled out their chairs, sat on them, and released the first trickles of chatter. The door closed on Miss Vidella, who had retired to a more dignified breakfast in her private room, and the trickles of chatter swelled into a spate.

But throughout the meal Daphne employed only one word, "Thank-you." She used it several times, to maids who brought her food, and to the neighbours who passed the plate of bread and butter. She ate her porridge without sugar, being afraid to ask any one to pass it, and her bread and butter without any marmalade, because the dish was so far away. There was much talk of some one called "Petsy," whom she gradually identified as Miss Vidella, and of some one called "Chutney," who was apparently a man. Once or twice she thought she would start a conversation and feign the ease she did not feel, beginning "Who is Chutney?" but the words never got past her throat. She hardly knew herself. At home she had always been a dominant note, and now she was completely overawed, and in the tightening grip of a horrid desire to cry. The moisture, indeed, was near her eyes, and the nearer it came the nearer her vexation drew it, till at last she was in an agony for the meal to be over, so that she could escape from the crowd. Trudy Wayne had been at too great a distance to speak to her. Only one other person had come out clearly from the noisy background. Shortly after her arrival in the room she had noticed Miss Sims seeking along the faces of the girls for a particular one, and had felt a telepathic certainty it was hers she sought. So she was not surprised when the mistress's eyes encountered hers, and smiled a sympathy. Daphne smiled confusedly back. After that she caught Miss Sims looking at her frequently.

In the half-hour between breakfast and classes the girls went to their various Form Rooms, which they were allowed to use as Common Rooms. Daphne, being as yet placed in no form, wondered where to go, and found herself left in the long hall or corridor that ran behind the form-room doors. Here she delayed, and when people passed, pretended to be doing something definite lest she appeared lost and ridiculous.

Suddenly from a small door at the corridor's end Miss Sims appeared, bearing a load of stiff-covered and glossy exercise books ready for dealing out to the members of the form, and directly she saw Daphne she stopped, and then advanced towards her.

"Are you looking for some one, dear?"

Daphne looked up at her, and seeing the kindness in her eyes, determined to be frank.

"Please where do I go to now?"

"My poor child, have you been out here all alone, wondering where to go? I'll show you. Come with me."

She had intended to lead her to the girls in her own classroom, but changed her direction. Here was the soft-featured child whom last night she had chosen as first favourite for the throne of Audrey Stanton, and it would be rather sweet to have her alone for a few minutes in an empty room, and to talk kindly to her there. Perhaps the child would cry, and she would comfort her, stroking her head, and from that moment the desired adoration would kindle in Daphne.

So Miss Sims walked towards the corner, where the corridor made a right-angled turn and led to a back wing of the house. The first door on her right was a music-room, a cell-like place, containing a piano, two chairs, a table, and a music-rack. With Daphne behind her she entered, and pushed the door so that it closed but did not latch.

"Just come in here a minute where I have one or two things to do."

She pretended to be engaged in sorting some music, but soon stopped. Seating herself on one of the chairs, she said:

"Now come, Daphne dear, I want you to tell me all about yourself."

Daphne came two or three steps nearer.

"Come dear, don't be afraid of me. Don't think of me as a mistress, but just as a friend."

Daphne came up close against her knee, and Miss Sims put her arm about her waist.

"There. You look sad and homesick. I want you to tell me all your troubles. Always, will you? Anything that's on your mind, no matter what it is. If any girl's unkind, or any mistress doesn't understand you. Always tell me, for already I feel so fond of you."

Perceiving that her pupil's head had dropped a little, as though to hide a moisture, she pulled her closer by the waist, and let her pressure speak silently of sympathy and understanding. For quite a while she held her like that, till Daphne, though grateful and beginning to reciprocate the affection, was not without an embarrassment at its rapid progress.

"Promise me you'll let me do all I can for you. I want to do a great deal. Will you promise me?"

"Yes," muttered Daphne.

Miss Sims pulled her close again; and it would have been difficult to see how the conversation was to be continued or closured, had not a high-pitched voice in the passage outside caused Miss Sims to release the child abruptly.

"There," said she. "We must be getting to the class-rooms." A disturbance was in her voice. "You help me to carry these exercise books."

"Miss Sims! Miss Sims!" cried the voice without.

Miss Sims immediately issued from the music room with Daphne following.

"Here I am, Miss Vidella. Little Daphne Bruno is helping me with these exercise books. I thought perhaps I had better give her something to do, lest she should be inclined to mope at all this first morning."

Miss Vidella was apparently angry about something, and eager to vent it.

"What a strange idea, Miss Sims! I think there can be no reason why a child should mope in a school such as mine, where everything is done to contribute to their happiness. I think it's a strange idea to put in a child's head. Very unwise. But that's neither here nor there at the moment. I must ask you to communicate to Miss Mitchell my exceeding displeasure at what I saw just now." She made suitable play with her fat hands. "There was Mr. Pulteney calling to hear if the same pupils were taking the violoncello, as indeed was very proper of him, and there was Miss Mitchell talking to him in the hall. I dislike intensely to come down the stairs, and see in the entrance hall of my school a young man and a young woman talking together like that. I wish you would convey that impression to Miss Mitchell. Supposing some one had called at that moment. If she as music mistress has any communication to make to the visiting music master, she must make it at the proper time and place. I think I left that impression on them, however. I gave them one look, and they went their several ways.... Well, Daphne dear, I hope you are happy.... Do you like very much your new school?"

"Awfully."

"Awfully! What strange terms these dear children do use! Well, dear, I think you had better start in Miss Sim's form, the Fourth. We can examine you, and if you know much more than the others of your age, we can move you up.... Dear, dear, it is already half-past nine o'clock. Why doesn't some one ring the bell for First Hour?"

In spite of Daphne's distinguished father, the verdict, after an examination of her attainments in Miss Sims's class-room, pronounced that she had but little scholarship, and her intelligence was apparently unremarkable. In truth, she had but few goods to display in her window. Her governess, Miss Carrell, had directed her instruction to achieving popularity with her pupil, and not to her future academic success. Daphne's knowledge, therefore, was below the standard of her age, and, more serious consequence, her capacity for concentration on subjects she disliked was enervated and flabby.

Her failure this morning, while drawing from Miss Sims the becoming sounds of disappointment, really relieved and delighted the mistress. Now there was no chance of her favourite being promoted to the form above. And with Miss Sims, though the thought of cruelty could only sit under aliases and disguises in her mind, it was always sweeter to see her favourite in disgrace and hurt than successful and rejoicing. So she did not minimise Daphne's ignorance when Miss Vidella came in to hear the report, and to examine such papers as the new girl had written.

"Strange!" whined the head mistress, as she took off the steel spectacles with which she had scanned the work. "Strange indeed that a father of such eminence should have so backward a child. But it is often the way. Ordinary parents have extraordinary children, and vice versa. Were your grandparents utterly simple, child? Well, perhaps you don't know. Perhaps one day you will have a little daughter who will redress the balance. Meantime we must see what we can make of you, and you must apply yourself studiously. Now do you return to your seat, dear. You will remain in Miss Sims's form."

With that decision Miss Vidella carried out her stationary bust and back on her swinging hips; and Miss Sims tapped Daphne on the shoulder—it was a pleasure to touch the child even thus far—and murmured, "Never mind. Never mind."

Which rather surprised Daphne, since she had not greatly minded, being dimly aware that Miss Vidella was acting up to a part, and that it was a rather pompous and foolish one.

At dinner only French might be spoken. Of French (Daphne was to learn) Miss Vidella made an enormous feature. She took all French classes herself, and gave long lectures on French literature, with special attention to Victor Hugo. They were like perpetual masses, with Miss Vidella as priestess, in honour of Victor Hugo. On the strength of having once when eight years of age (so Daphne was told) sat on Victor Hugo's knee, she considered that her French accent was perfect and every one else's egregious, and her knowledge of French literature vast, and every one else's insular and limited. "I wish to goodness," the elder girls would say before, during, or after a memorial mass, "that she'd never met the man."

In the afternoon there was talk of a walk. It was the Lent term, and a walk was the normal recreation. Hockey was in the very first stages of its adoption by girls' schools, and to hockey Miss Vidella could never be resigned. Tennis she allowed in the summer term, on the stipulation that the girls kept their legs well-disciplined. But in the Christmas and Lent terms, apart from a walk in crocodile formation, the only athletic pastimes were gymnasium and riding; and riding was limited to those whose parents paid for it. Riding she probably allowed because it gave a school such a tone; but she fluttered around it with much care for its propriety. It was not easy to see the riding master, on his chestnut horse, riding away with a score of her girls. Had she been able to sit a horse herself, she would have cantered among them as a chaperon; but she could not, and none of her governesses were ever likely to be familiar with a saddle, even if they could be trusted with a riding master, so she was reduced to being sternly present at the mounting and departure, to instructing the elder girls to look after one another and their younger schoolfellows, and to watching the cavalcade as far as the bend in the road.

With gymnasium it was different; one of her mistresses, or herself on days of condescension, could accompany the girls and sit in the spectators' gallery, and ensure that only the seemlier exercises were performed. Definitely she forbade the "spread-eagle" on the rings, and the "circle" or the "hock-swing-off" on the horizontal bar, and the "short-arm-balance" or "long-arm-balance" on the parallel bars. These circles and balances were only so many gilded somersaults. When Hemans House had first gone to the Royal Gymnasium in the Cambridge Road, and Miss Vidella, at first sight of these exercises, had interdicted them for ever, the instructor had declared:

"The other schools allow them, madam."

And Miss Vidella, from her seat in the gallery, had replied:

"I dare say they do, instructor. In fact, I feel very confident they do. But the aims of my school are probably different from theirs. My aim is to turn out little well-bred ladies rather than acrobats and harlequins."

"Quite so, madam."

And Miss Vidella, conceiving that she had made a good point, dulled it by making it again.

"None of my children, instructor, are likely to earn their living in the circus ring."

"No, madam," admitted the instructor, muttering for the amusement of the nearest girls, "not a dog's chance o' that."

So gymnastics were confined to swinging on the travelling rings or the bridge-ladder, gentle vaulting over the parallel bars and the horse (though in this matter there would be a cry of disapproval if the upward swing of any girl's leg was more unladylike than was inevitable), and to Indian clubs and dumbbells, which Miss Vidella considered most rhythmic and refined.

This first afternoon, since neither gymnasium nor riding had begun, the girls could only go for a crocodile walk, and at the pointed invitation of Trudy Wayne Daphne paired with her.

On this walk Daphne awoke to the idea that men could be important before you were grown up. The conversation of the girls in front danced around the prospects of meeting such and such a man. They spoke of "The Dandy Fifth," who, Trudy explained, was a young coach at an army crammer's, and earned his nickname from the waist-line in his coat, his fawn vest, and his patent-leather boots. And there was Arthur Belsize, the famous young novelist, whose three books, "The Homes of Mogador," "The Purple Orchis," and "Dust on the Scaffold," had made him a local celebrity second only to the lady in the Castle. And there was the Holy Innocent, a curate at Holy Innocents Church, where Hemans House went on Sundays. These gentlemen, Trudy garrulously explained, were often to be passed in the park, the novelist, Arthur Belsize, especially, who had a habit of strolling every afternoon down the Long Walk. "I expect he hopes it'll one day be called the Belsize Walk," suggested Trudy, "like Addison's Walk at Oxford." Here, then, was the explanation why the senior girls whenever possible, led the Hemans House column through the gates into the Great Park.

Daphne was excited about the chance of seeing Arthur Belsize, not because he was a young man, but because he was a famous story-writer. His tale, "The Purple Orchis," since it was based on history, had been read to Owen and herself by Miss Carrell. It did not occur to Daphne that, being the daughter of a writer, she had no reason to be excited about them as a class, because she hardly thought of her father as an author in this true story-telling sense.

Neither the dandy nor the curate appeared, and the twitter and chattering of the girls was passing to other subjects, when one of them discerned the novelist, Arthur Belsize, walking slowly towards them. A tremor ran down the crocodile from its head girls to the smaller ones in the neighbourhood of Trudy and Daphne. Daphne put her head outside the column to see the approaching celebrity, and was very disappointed. He looked exactly the same as any other young man who might be seen in a third-class railway carriage.

A silence dropped on the girls. It appeared they had a custom of readjusting their conversation to the novelist's ear. As soon as he came within hearing distance they would discuss only (and this rather loudly) his novels. He was now alongside the column, and the discussion began.

"I liked 'The Homes of Mogador' best, didn't you?"

"I sent 'The Purple Orchis' to my cousin for her birthday."

"'The Homes of Mogador' wasn't a patch on 'The Purple Orchis.'"

"'The Homes of Mogador' was rot."

"I didn't like 'The Purple Orchis' much, but 'Dust on the Scaffold' was ripping."

"That's Arthur Belsize."

He passed by, affecting to have heard nothing, though Daphne suspected that his lips trembled.

To her, who had played with hardly any girl friends in Deseret Road, this interest in men while your hair was still down your back was an idea entirely new. That a lover might come to her after she was eighteen or twenty had, of course, often been in her mind, especially when she read or listened to the love scenes of a romance. But that men as a genus, apart from the individual lover, were interesting she had not grasped, nor that her earlier love stories might be looked for at once.

When the crocodile had returned from its walk it disintegrated into its classes for afternoon school. In Miss Sims's room, darkening behind its Japanese bead curtains, the subject was Latin, a language of which Daphne knew very little and pronounced that little wrong. Her quantities were false, Miss Carrell having learned the grammar after she left Hemans House, and learned it from a book without help from the spoken word. When Miss Sims arranged her girls in a row that they might "go up" and "take each other down," she told Daphne that as a new girl she should be given a start and might go to the top. Doing even this little for her favourite gave her a mild pleasure.

"Now, we'll see what you know of Latin grammar. 'I shall love.' Let us have the future of Amo, I love."

The question pleased Daphne because she knew the answer.

"Ammer-bo, I shall love, Ammer-bis, Ammer-bit, Ammer-byemus, Ammer-bightus——"

The remaining word was lost in a roar of laughter.

"No, no, no, no," smiled Miss Sims, which amazed Daphne, since she knew she was right; she could see in her mind's eye the whole page of Latin Grammar, and there was the future, "Amabo, amabis, amabit."

"No, no, no. It's Am͎ābo, not Ammer-bo; Am͎ābimus, not Ammer-byemus."

At this word the class laughed again and a sudden unreasonable burst of temper inflamed Daphne. It was the break-through of all her resentment at the failure of school to satisfy her picture of it; she felt ready and anxious for some violent rebellion, as once before she had felt with Miss Durgon. The tears started to her eyes, and this exposure made her angrier and more defiant.

"Say it again now—properly," ordered Miss Sims.

"Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis——"

"Next!" The mistress turned her head to the next girl.

"Am͎ābo."

"Go above her." And Daphne went down one place.

Miss Sims had seen the symptoms in her favourite's eyes, and they produced a curious mixture of pleasure and love. After caressing and fondling, she enjoyed most (though it disturbed her to think so) punishing the thing she loved.

"Say it again, and properly, and don't be sulky."

To be told she was sulky was enough to fix Daphne in her obstinacy.

"Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis——"

"Next!"

Down went Daphne another place, and the class began to enjoy the game.

"Now say it properly at once."

"Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis——"

"Next!"

And a little girl who had been breathlessly rising on her toes said "Am͎ābo" and went up.

There were eleven girls in the class, and Daphne said "Ammer-bo" ten times till she reached the buffers of the bottom place.

"You're a very naughty little girl," denounced Miss Sims. "You're the oldest girl in the class, and you're content to be taken down by those much younger than you. And just to gratify sullenness and rebellion. You will write out fifty times, 'The second a in Amabo is long.' And don't let me see anything of you till that is done."

She had visions of herself being cold and haughty with the child, and of Daphne, whose advances would thus be repelled and bruised, suffering the tortures of a loved mistress's scorn and finally breaking in humility at her feet.

After the classes and tea there was an hour before Preparation. Silent at her desk in Miss Sims's room, now a chattery Common Room, Daphne wrote twenty times, 'The second a in amabo is long,' and decided that she had done enough for to-night. Feeling so lonely she wanted to write to Miss Carrell—even to Owen. She got some of the note-paper that had been given her to take to school, and began her letter.

"DEAR MISS CARRELL,

      "I hope you got back safely....

(The picture of Miss Carrell getting back to her home and entering the old rooms made her lip shake.)

"We have been for a lovely walk this afternoon in the park. It was lovely. We passed Arthur Belsize. I sleep in a room called Eliza Cook. There is another room called the Frances Burney room. This afternoon we did Latin. I am going to have my first riding lesson to-morrow, and I am looking forward to gymnasium. I like school awfully. What fun it will be when the holidays begin in three months' time. I must not write much more as I am going to write to Owen.

"Much love
        "From
                "Ever your loving
                        "DUFFY"

"P.S.—Love to Hollins."

CHAPTER VIII

Daphne soon became used to Hemans House, its population and its practices, and could look back with wonder at the first days of fear. More than that, the life, for a particular reason, had become flushed with colour and richness. The one thing needed to lift her hatred from the school-rooms and the Windsor streets and to throw a glamour over them had happened: she was possessed by a romantic attachment for some one whose background they were. Before half-term had signalised to the girls that the top of the slope had been reached, and they could now go quickly down hill to the holidays, she knew that she adored Miss Sims. It had taken some five weeks of the alternate caresses and punishments, warm intimacy and stern aloofness, to betray their meaning to Daphne; but once it had broken on her that she was the object of a popular mistress's favouritism, she was flattered into reciprocation. The slide from fondness to love was easy and quick. As with her affection for Miss Carrell, so now with her adoration of Miss Sims: she loved to think that she loved. But the later attachment was as much stronger than the earlier, as Daphne was older, warmer, and more conscious of her sex. It was an emotion too strong for reticence—except in words; on walks she fought to be at Miss Sims's side; sometimes she threaded her arm into the mistress's; and once, when they were right behind all the others, she rested her head against her shoulder. At gymnasium every exercise she performed on parallel bars, horizontal bar, or bridge ladder was done with an eye on the gallery in the hope of impressing Miss Sims. She suffered the pains of jealousy when Miss Sims (deliberately) made much of another girl. And her letters home to Miss Carrell were enthusiastically full of her form mistress. There was pleasure in writing about her.

But her pains and pleasures were weak compared with those hidden behind Miss Sims's indulgent smile. As Miss Sims assured herself: "The child is fond of me—very fond—really devoted, I think. But it must inevitably be a small return for what I am giving to her. It is always so with children.... Still, it is happiness to give." She made a resolution that her influence must be a power for good. She must be associated in the memory of Daphne Bruno, when that beloved girl should have grown tall and given herself to a man, with all that was best in her childhood. She must be the person of whom Daphne would say: "I really owe everything to her."

And a salient truth of Daphne's schooldays was this, that Miss Sims—Miss Sims, with her thirty pounds a year and her cubicle with an iron bed and tin wash-stand; Miss Sims with her high-coloured make-believes, of which she was half ashamed; Miss Sims with her thirst for emotion and her squeezing of pupils like sponges for its sating—was the most of what she resolved to be. Every one is an expert in the hobby that fills his dreams, and Miss Sims had seen exactly how her influence could be this "power for good." Her little worshipper would most surely model herself on her idol, and so Miss Sims must appear to embody in her own nature all the noble qualities she would give to Daphne. She created a character in her imagination, and always acted it before the eyes of her pupil. And this was the Character: great gentleness masking concealed strength; a perfect feminine sympathy mingled with a capacity to be stern; remarkable sensibility to beauty wherever it was to be found, and thus a passionate love for all the arts, with a predilection for literature; a taste in dress, and a beautiful serenity in manner.

As a background to the Character, she hinted in her talks with Daphne at a collateral relationship to a very old family; at reasonable private means, her present work being done for the love of it, there being no nobler task; at holidays in romantic places abroad; and, of course, at a love story of which one did not speak.

In her first holidays Daphne returned home, full of the importance of a school girl, and talked incessantly of the customs at Hemans House to Owen, who was not interested, and to her father, who was quite amused—at least, till he took up his book again. It was his daughter's tales and imitations of the head mistress that pleased him—"By Jove! she can see, that child!" Miss Vidella appealed to the dramatist in him, both as a picturesque character and as a type.

"She belongs to a type that is doomed to pass, Duffy mia. There is pathos as well as humour in her posing and her prudery. I always think it's rather sad the way such people imagine they are being applauded, while all the time they are being laughed at by modern minds.... However, you'll understand these things later."

One result of this ridicule was that his daughter saw how much better it was to be on the laughing, rather than the laughable, side of a dividing line, and that she must therefore join the moderns who always did the laughing. She was modern. She saw Miss Vidella from a new angle, and much more clearly, and she determined to carry this interesting viewpoint back to Hemans House. As a viewpoint it had much to recommend it: it meant that when Miss Vidella prohibited this and that—circling over the horizontal bar, or any display of the feminine leg above the lower calf—she was probably out of date, and the best way to express one's advance from such rulings was to glory in their breach.

The only conflict in her mind was how far this healthy insurgence, imitated from her father, clashed with the obedience and serenity imitated from Miss Sims. And when she was again under the roof of Hemans House and the influence of Miss Sims, a settlement of the conflict was found to be very necessary. So on a walk to the tennis fields, when the mistress and her favourite had dropped behind the girls, she sidled up to the subject.

"Father says Miss Vidella is out of date, and so are all her ideas."

"H'm. Your father is doubtless a representative of extremely modern minds."

"So'm I."

Miss Sims laughed, provoking Daphne to defend herself.

"Well, she is rather absurd."

"Hush, dear," said Miss Sims, for the Character was nothing if not loyal. "Miss Vidella's aims are of the highest, and there's a lot to be said for the kind of woman she tries to produce—modest, controlled, and quiet.... But I do think that perhaps she doesn't make sufficient allowance for the heyday in the blood of youth. Probably the animal spirits ought to express themselves sometimes in a little wildness and tomboyishness—so long as these things go with affectionateness—and with high ideals. Later, when one has experienced the disillusions of life, it will be time to acquire a tranquil resignation."

This was an excellent verdict. For sympathy and sense there had been no one before quite like Miss Sims. Everything had now fallen into place. Daphne saw that she could postpone the final serenity till she had grown up and passed through the fire. She was thus at liberty to express the modernity of her intellect, as compared with Miss Vidella's, by flagrant breaches of Miss Vidella's rules.

The first time she displayed it was at the gymnasium. She hung it out, so to speak, on the horizontal bar.

It was a morning when the head mistress herself was in the gallery watching carefully through her spectacles. The girls had been vaulting backwards over the parallel bars, and Daphne, when her turn came, had swung herself with such ardour that the oblique line of her body was rather from her legs down to her head than from her head down to her legs—a position which Miss Vidella stipulated must be guarded against in this dangerous exercise. Her legs had just swung down again on to the mat when she heard the high-pitched voice coming from the gallery top like the voice of a bird from a tree. All eyes had turned towards it.

"Instructor! Instructor!"

The instructor made a grimace, seen only of the girls, and called back: "Yes, madam."

Miss Vidella made her favourite point.

"Instructor, I take it this is a place for teaching young ladies a becoming deportment, and not for training circus clowns."

"Yes, madam," agreed the instructor.

"Well, will you kindly correct them when they forget it? ... Daphne dear, come here." Daphne approached a little way, and Miss Vidella, leaning forward with her hands on the balustrade, like some preacher who must deliver his sermon sitting, explained to her: "You must remember, dear, that it is the glory of human beings that their head is usually above their feet. With cows, and ruminant animals generally, the head is often on the same level as the hoofs. But it is only serpents and apes in the trees, I take it, which have a tendency to progress with their heads in a lower sphere than their other members. Now go back and remember that. All right, dears, you can resume your exercises."

The public rebuke rankled in Daphne; so the minute the lesson was over, and the girls were trooping to the dressing-room to change their rubber shoes, and Miss Vidella was managing with some difficulty the little hidden staircase from the gallery to the ground, she ran to the horizontal bar and circled it four or five times. Having thus liberated her resentment and proclaimed her faith before the other girls, she ran, very red and breathless, to the dressing-room.

It was uncommonly pleasant, this feeling of emancipation and this expressing of it before her schoolfellows. Her riding lesson gave her another opportunity. One day when their horses were gathered outside the gates of Hemans House, and the girls were mounting, she tried for a second to sit astride her horse, that she might see what it felt like and appear daring. But it was surprisingly difficult, with her skirt, to change from the side-saddle position to the astride. As she got her leg over the horse's withers the skirt went right above her knees, and she was in these difficulties when Miss Vidella came out on to the pavement to review the parade.

"Daphne! What are you doing?"

"Mounting, Miss Vidella," stuttered Daphne, who had struggled back to the correct position.

"Do you generally climb over the horse to mount it? Or are you up to some of your monkey tricks again? Riding master, have you observed that Miss Bruno is mountaineering on her horse in the public street? But, of course, I know you cannot have done so, for you are always so careful with your pupils. Please keep Miss Bruno in front of you all the way, or there's no knowing what strange contortions she may not attempt."

The riding master, annoyed, said nothing, but examined the riders, touched his horse and led the cavalcade away. Daphne was just in front of him, and immediately they were out of the head mistress's view she pretended to scream with laughter, thinking this would divert the riding master, who, like all the outside instructors, was inclined to make fun of Miss Vidella. But, to her surprise, he called out:

"Come on, Miss Bruno! Sit properly at once. You've been foolish enough already to-day. I'm not taking out a chain of Margate donkeys; and I shall report you to Miss Vidella. Come here and ride beside me."

Daphne felt foolish at the failure of her jest, and, very flushed, came and rode by the master's side with a beating heart. With all her fancied insurgence she was still a little afraid of Miss Vidella and her black-rimmed spectacles and whining sarcasm. When the horses arrived back at Hemans House gates she watched the movements of the riding master, whether he would go in and see Miss Vidella or wait for her to emerge from the garden wall. But he only turned towards herself, and, as though softened by her long silence, smiled.