Daphne Bruno

CHAPTER XI

Daphne's sixteenth and seventeenth years might have been called the years of the giggle. In the main they poured over shallows. No successor to Roger Muirhead came troubling her with a like emotion; and except for one short period she had no religion to make depths in the stream-bed. There was but one clear motive in her life that waxed stronger with the months, and brought a pattern to the welter; and this was her ambition to write. Of the rest of her nature the lawless high spirits took possession.

She grew like a blade of newly-sown grass. As her father said, you could almost see her growing; nay more, on a still night, if you listened very carefully, you could hear her growing. Her features lost some of their roundness and softness, and her body became a thought too narrow for its height. It worried her rather, so that she began to take very seriously her physical culture—her gymnasium, riding and tennis.

She laboured at this time on the manufacture of a distinguished signature, "Daphne D. T. Bruno," giving it a tail like an unwinding lasso, till her father, seeing the flourish, expressed acute distress and shame: "Duffy, this is awful—awful. You must have the soul of a tea-shop girl."

The ambition to write increased with every novel she read, and every discussion she heard on other people's novels. In a small part its driving force was the true compulsion of the artist; but the most of it was a mixture of crude ambition and sheer imitation. She wanted no less than a thundering fame, and she wanted to imitate the style and methods of the authors she read. After reading Dickens, she wanted to be a great humanitarian and a master of comic caricature; after Thackeray, an urbane and tolerant satirist; after George Eliot, William Black, or Bulwer Lytton—well, she remodelled her style on whichever of them was the last read. She had no idea of working hard to equip herself for greatness; her reading was lazy, and limited to such fiction as pleased her; it could only be compassed lolling in a comfortable chair, and any hard parts she read through without troubling to know if she understood them.

Since she had no sincere religion or stable code of morals, nothing but an antiseptic, compounded of humour, innocence and the herding instinct, saved her from the grosser evils. This, and the two steadying influences of Hollins and Miss Sims. There had to be a show of religion at Hemans House, of course, but except in panicky moments when she sent up ejaculatory S.O.S.'s to God, it made no settlement in her secret life. Already the sceptic in the corner of her mind issued hints that she was probably the only girl in the school who knew that she didn't believe anything. This struck her as rather original, and she would sometimes give it an airing before Hollins. She did it with intent to shock, till one day the old servant, now very grey, discomfited her by interrupting:

"I'm very sorry, Miss Duffy, but I must ask you once and f'r'all, not to do your laughing at these things with me. I don't like it, I tell you I don't. It makes me think you'll be struck leprous, or the like of that. And though you're only a child, it—it sort of upsets my faith. And then I don't know where I am.... It's for your pa to say, of course, but to my idea it's a dreadful thing for children to be brought up without any religion. No good'll come of it, I dare swear."

She had a similar experience with Miss Sims.

Miss Sims had kept her favourite's affection, if not the earlier adoration. And on Sundays, when the crocodile went tail-first to church, Daphne would inflate the governess's heart by coming to chatter at her side, and in church by pushing to sit next to her.

It was when walking to church one Sunday that Daphne deliberately shocked Miss Sims by a frank statement of her atheism, with this corollary; that she didn't think she would marry because it would interfere with her writing, but she saw no reason, believing in love as she did, why she shouldn't have intermittent love affairs like other famous women. Here was opportunity for Miss Sims to play the saviour, and she filled the part at once. She hurt her favourite with a swift lash, refusing to be amused and suggesting that Daphne walked elsewhere; and when the girl, who had been silent for the rest of the walk, was sitting beside her in church, Miss Sims acted her own devotion and faith. It distinctly impressed Daphne, who glimpsed a beauty and peace in holiness.

But it was Winnie Chatterton who really led her on a short excursion into holiness. Winnie Chatterton was the only notable successor to Trudy Wayne. The friendship with Trudy had wilted. They had not quarrelled, but just drifted apart. They were friendly, but not friends. After a chain of minor intimacies Daphne discovered Winnie Chatterton, and Winnie Chatterton discovered Daphne Bruno. Both wondered how they could have been three and four years at the school without an earlier gravitation each to the other. In figure and colouring they were much the same, which was delightful, and there was the most wonderful community of taste. And now on walks through Windsor Park these two tall girls went hand in hand. Their place was near the head of the crocodile, and of the many treble voices that made up that peripatetic parliament, one, as likely as not, was Daphne's as she told to Winnie the whole story of the last novel that had affected her. "Vanity Fair" she serialized, telling it in three instalments on three successive walks. And Winnie, whose art was music, talked enthusiastically about that, or about the High Churchmanship that had lately won her. In the end Daphne tried both the music and the religion.

Old though she was, she insisted on taking up the 'cello with Mr. Pulteney, the music master (the "Chutney" of the girls). And after her first lesson, which was disastrous, she rushed to Winnie to give humorous report of it.

She had walked towards the music-room, explained Daphne hurriedly, and seen Petsy (Miss Vidella) waiting for her outside. Together they had entered the room where Chutney was tuning her shining new instrument. Petsy had seated herself on a chair to act as chaperon, for music lessons and the music master, as all literature showed, were the points at which foolishness and sin were most likely to break through. So Petsy had sat in a chair to strengthen the defences. Daphne, on taking the huge instrument, had most unfortunately felt a sudden desire to giggle. It was awful, and when Chutney placed the music-stand before her and asked: "Where's your music, Miss Bruno?" she had only been able to reply, with the giggle trembling through her words: "I've forgotten it. It's up in my bedroom." At that Petsy had rustled in her chair, probably rendered ill at ease by this mention of bedroom to a music master. "Really, my dear child," she had whined, "you are slatternly in many things. Can she not, Mr. Pulteney, use some of the music of the other dear children?" Chutney had said he was afraid not, because she needed the most elementary book, and he had no other girl beginning at the beginning. So Petsy had creaked out of her chair into a standing position, and said: "Well, we must go and get it, dear. It's really very thoughtless of you. Come. Trip ahead of me."

"Why we were both obliged to go out Heaven only knows," commented Daphne. "I suppose because if Petsy had gone for the music, I should have been left alone with a music master, and if I had gone, she'd have been left alone with a music master. And Chutney couldn't go, of course, because of the intimate nature of the room where the music was. So we tripped out together."

When they were in the hall Daphne had run upstairs, two and three steps at a time, while Petsy waited at the bottom in all the safety of that public place. She must needs call after Daphne: "Don't go up the stairs like that, dear child. Supposing anyone had been passing and seen you. So impetuous you dear children are!" Daphne had got her music and come down again decorously. She had then re-entered the music-room behind her principal, and sat in the pupil's chair while Chutney placed the 'cello in the correct position, and Petsy watched carefully through her spectacles to make sure that in touching the 'cello he didn't also touch the 'cellist.

Then the 'cellist had commenced. Her first notes had been as horrible as an amateur's first notes on a bugle, and the desire to giggle had got much worse, with the result that her hands trembled, and the next notes were too awful for words. Unfortunately, Chutney, who was a perfect dear, had caught the infection of her giggle. Presumably he had never before had so old a pupil at the clumsy stage of 'celling. At last, after a dreadful prolonged note on the lowest string, her giggle had burst out, and Chutney had only saved himself from disgrace by swinging round, so that his back was turned to Miss Vidella. Miss Vidella had asked: "Has something humorous happened?" and Daphne had apologized, saying: "I'm sorry, Miss Vidella. I can't help it." Then Petsy had begun to rustle a lot, thinking no doubt that this conjunction of a music master, music, and a giggle promised the worst results. She had shut her eyes behind her spectacles for a second, and asked: "Can you approach anything, Daphne dear, without unsuitable levity? If you are not disposed to bring seriousness to these music lessons, which your dear father has secured for you at considerable cost"—Chutney had grimaced at that—"and from the best instructors"—that had set him grinning sheepishly out of the window—"I shall have to recommend him to discontinue them. Now please proceed."

Then there had been a lot of trouble with her fingering. Time and again Chutney had moved to adjust her fingers with his own, only stopping when he saw that Petsy's spectacles ruled out so indecorous a thing. Absurd, because Chutney was really such a pure little man. He had been obliged to demonstrate the correct method by holding another instrument before her, and asking her to copy exactly the movement of his fingers; which she had done, but her sounds had been quite different from his, and induced Petsy to poke in with some advice: "Try to do what Mr. Pulteney says, dear." Not a helpful remark; and Daphne, getting annoyed, had pulled her bow rather savagely along the string, producing the most painful sound of the morning. This had changed her temper into humour, and for some torturing seconds she had been much more occupied in controlling her laughter than in catching what Chutney was saying. Her wrist work and her holding of the bow had been just as troublesome, and Chutney had kept coming towards her with the obvious desire of putting her hand and wrist into the correct position, but had tripped, as you might say, over the protective ray from Petsy's eyes. And Petsy had most stupidly tried to bridge the difficulty by some more advice: "Do try and remember, dear, that it is a bow that you are holding and not a clothes brush"; which had made Daphne want to mutter: "Oh, you shut up, for the Lord's sake!"

"From somewhere about this time," explained she to Winnie, "the row began to begin. I can hardly remember how it started—I never can—and I had a beastly feeling when it was all over that I had made a fool of myself, but you know what Petsy is—she's such an old fool, posing so pompously and thinking it's funny."

"Oh, what happened, what happened?" asked Winnie.

"Well, I think Chutney said, as a sort of excuse for me, that the exact position was a little difficult to get right at first. And Petsy was sarcastic and said: 'Not, I take it, to intelligence.' And I lost my temper and said: 'But I'm not intelligent.' Chutney stared, and Petsy was rather taken aback, but when she had recovered herself, she opened fire, I can tell you. She said: 'Precisely, my dear. And the less intelligent girls have to make up for their deficiencies by a becoming willingness and humility. They do not boast of their stupidity.' And I snapped back: 'I wasn't boasting. I was deploring the fact.' Then Petsy stood up. I think she was simply beaten by such cold-blooded impudence, and could not for the life of her decide how to deal with it. But she had to do something in front of Chutney, so she began: 'My dear Daphne, I do not like that tone at all. I do not like it at all. I really have not been insulted in a music lesson before. I think you will go to your classroom, where you will wait to hear from me.' Then she apologised at great length to Chutney for taking up his valuable time with a perverse and ill-mannered child, and Chutney was perfectly sweet, saying I was only confused and awkward at first, and would be all right next time. And Petsy interrupted: 'I really do not know whether there will be a next time. I am not at all sure that I shall allow her to continue her lessons.' And of course I said: 'I've no particular desire to,' and went haughtily out of the room. She's said nothing so far, but I suppose I'm in for an interview, and a heart-to-heart talk."

Her conversion to High Churchmanship was a mixture of sincerity and posturing, as the sceptic in the corner would hint through his gags. It was sincere in this: that she secretly disliked much of her character and wanted to improve it; she had depressed moments when she thought herself vain, lazy, much too selfish, and without a decent control of her temper; and while she couldn't believe that her own strength would ever pull out these tough-rooting faults, she was quite sure that a stern religion would do it. And her lack of any stable morality could trouble her sometimes; she remembered how it had enabled her to suggest in flippancy things that earned disgust from people like Miss Sims. At such times, aided by the placid demeanour of Miss Sims and her occasional homilies, and by the graver, brow-furrowing chats of Winnie, and the tales of the saints that she had read, her imagination would show her the religious life as one of self-respect, happiness in worship, and peace in believing.

The element of posture lay in her eagerness to perform the picturesque rites of High Churchmanship; in her instant response to its spirit of gay rebellion; and in her desire to do something that would startle her family.

In the beginning sincerity occupied most of the ground. Her first weeks, after her acceptance of the faith and her prayer in which she surrendered to God and asked forgiveness for her long neglect, were very happy; and she was perfectly conscious of a softening and ennobling of her character. She went ahead of Winnie, and silently wondered how her friend could keep certain things in her life as fellow-tenants with her religion. These were perhaps the sweetest days of Daphne's childhood. But it could not last. The soil was too unbroken, and there were too many older roots in the tilth; the little sceptic spread his gangrene: "Do you really believe all this? You know you don't really? Not if you once thought it out"; and a series of little shocks, as she realised some of the things that the religion implied, helped to wither the sincerity and bring in the element of posture. That every good Catholic was morally obliged to go to Confession she had not foreseen, and she knew she could never go; other duties such as fasting, hearing Mass, being confirmed, and preparing long and earnestly for her communions she was prepared to accept, but not this—not confession to any living creature of some of the things that hurt her conscience: And that every really Catholic priest ought to be a celibate—good heavens, did Anglo-Catholics say that?

Winnie, who considered that she had to be as extreme as possible now she was instructing a neophyte, declared that such of course was the truth. In fact, she made much of this question of celibacy, deploring its widespread disregard. Her first vicar had been married, she said, but had had the decency not to have children. His successor, however, was not only married, but had a boy at Cambridge. "I don't think he ought to have married at all," expounded Winnie, "but if he did, he shouldn't have borne a son."

When Daphne went home for the holidays, the posturing was so far in possession that she was chiefly eager to offend everybody by insisting that she must go into Brighton on Sundays to hear Mass at a respectable church. And her first Sunday she found herself in St. Paul's, West Street, which had the reputation of being as high as was possible. It certainly seemed very high indeed; and disappointment took her when she knew herself shocked, bewildered, and traitorously sure that she could have worshipped more easily in the service to which she was accustomed. But it was only a matter of getting used to it, she supposed, and therewith struggled up to certain points of spiritual exaltation. All the holidays she talked Catholicity to the household, and when her father ridiculed her, saying: "Yes, run and worship in your strange groves, Daphne," she was not displeased at this prick of persecution. Hollin's acceptance of the news was rather disturbing, for, after Daphne had been chattering some time about the joys of religion, the old servant suddenly dropped her sewing, blew her nose, and carried the handkerchief to her eyes before returning it to her lap. "Well, there, miss," she said, pretending to believe that Daphne had not observed anything, "I am glad. It's kind of done me a lot of good, and strengthened my faith that prayers, if you stick to 'em, are often answered."

By the time she went back to school, the sceptic had nearly worked himself free of his gags, and she knew that she was only longing to shock the other girls with her advanced Catholicity, and to see what would happen when she exhibited it on the first Sunday of the term to Miss Vidella.

The movements of Daphne and Winnie that first Sunday were the creations of Daphne's brain. She justified them on the ground that it was a duty to reveal to old-fashioned and prejudiced minds the strength of Catholic thought. Winnie and she, as elder girls, walked to the church, one on each side of Miss Vidella; and when they reached the Lady Chapel, in which were the seats allotted to Hemans House, they still managed to keep her between them. This was designed to surround Miss Vidella with Catholicity. Kneeling down, they made augmented signs of the cross, prayed for a suitable time, and made second signs of the cross; and then resumed their chairs and read advanced manuals. The vestry opened on to the side chapel, and when the vicar and the curate passed them at the tail of the choir, the two girls bowed in reverence for the priestly office. The vicar noticed it and looked surprised.

They made the sign of the cross at the Absolution and at the close of the creed. They bowed at every Gloria. And in the Ante-Communion Service, at the Incarnatus clause, they genuflected. The genuflexion left Miss Vidella standing as a sort of indignant Protestant lighthouse in these undulating waters of Catholicity. Some girls in front turned round to see what had happened.

All the way home Miss Vidella was menacingly reserved; and they were soon summoned to her room. This prospect of imperial persecution was excellent. They had done nothing, absolutely nothing (Daphne assured her partner as they walked to judgment) but what they were perfectly entitled to do—what indeed it was their duty to do. Petsy wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Miss Vidella began mildly.

"I could not but notice, Daphne dear and dear Winifred, that in church this morning you indulged in practices which are usually associated with Roman Catholicism. You are not, I believe, Catholics."

"Yes, we are," said Winnie.

"Yes, Catholics," Daphne explained, "but not Roman Catholics."

"Oh, you are, are you?" The imperial power was clearly annoyed by their bearing. "But not Roman Catholics. And may I inquire how you can be Catholics without being Roman Catholics?"

To explain to the uninstructed the answer to this question has always been a long and laborious business; so Winnie turned to Daphne as spokesman.

"All Church of England people are Catholics if they only knew it," said Daphne.

"Oh, I see. Then am I a Catholic?"

This made Daphne want to giggle; and at first she thought she had better leave the query without a reply; but, deciding not to go back upon her church, she said awkwardly:

"Yes, I—I'm afraid so."

It seemed rather a press-gang method of getting Miss Vidella on board the Ark, and it was not surprising that her annoyance was increased.

"I see. But I fear I am not so good a Catholic as to tolerate in my school such ridiculous practices as those with which you embarrassed the greater part of the congregation this morning. You will kindly behave as others do and keep your gymnastic exercises for Tuesdays and Fridays, when I think you go to the Royal Gymnasium for Instruction. Have you anything more to say?"

Daphne knew that what she ought to say now was a modern paraphrase of "Oh King, live for ever. Be it known unto thee that we will not worship as you wish, nor do anything that you suggest"; but on being asked so abruptly she couldn't shape a single sentence.

"Then that will do, my dears, you may go."

They decided in a mysterious council of war that, having done this much they could henceforth, with the early Christians for a precedent, veil their gestures and reverences.

At the end of that term Winnie left to be "finished" in a French convent, and Daphne, who had been ashamed to backslide before her friend, tried her religion on a charge of personation, and convicted it.

Now she received occasional news of Roger Muirhead. Owen was at Sillborough and would mention him in his letters or on his holidays. Not often though, for Daphne never asked for information, and Owen apparently detested his senior. It looked as if Owen also had a secret desire to be an author, for he affected a very personal and precious style. "At this Academy," wrote he in his first letter from Sillborough, "we have one R. Muirhead, with whose name you will not be wholly unfamiliar. He is, I think, the most conceited ass I have ever known. He's a prefect, and fancies himself hugely as a disciplinarian. 'My word is law and changeth not' sort of business—as our inimitable Herbert Hollins would say. 'Woe to anyone who crosses my path or thwarts me! I am severe but just. Oh, yes, I am not easily angered, but if some groundling does raise my ire, he must expect no quarter. Oh, no.' Funny that these pompous blokes never credit any one with the brains to see through them. Of course the boys suck up to him, because he's hot stuff at games, which he certainly is, though not as good as he thinks. No one ever was as good as that. And this sucking up makes him ten times worse. I can tell you R. Muirhead is no small panjandrum. Dammy, no."

CHAPTER XII

In the summer of her seventeenth year she read for the first time one of her father's books, and was surprised to find it exceedingly interesting. Here was a book that wasn't even fiction, and yet, with its wit and gaiety and its big, far-sweeping ideas, gave her thrills as pleasant as any story she could remember. She sat on and read devouringly. The grander words danced quadrilles in her head: "Intelligentsia," for example, and "Reactionary." The book was a survey of modern history written from the viewpoint of a doctrinaire rebel, and Daphne's sympathy was always, as the writer intended, for the Revolutionaries and the Intelligentsia, who appeared to be the same. She longed to be accounted one of the Intelligentsia. It was a new ambition, and her heart went wholly to it. She crept into her father's empty study and abstracted another of his books. And then another. Many of their illusions and quoted names she did not understand, but their wit and some of their matter she did—far more than she had dared to hope. But the final result of her reading, thanks to her habit of bolting what she could not masticate, was to increase the confusion of her mind; she retained only phrases and names and a muddled idea that revolutionaries were always right and reactionaries always wrong.

Why it was necessary to abstract the books surreptitiously she could hardly say; probably because she would be utterly ashamed to be caught by Miss Carrell or Owen reading a book by her father. It was Mr. Bruno, however, who surprised her at it. One wet afternoon she was alone in the great play-room at Old Hall House, gathered sideways in a tattered lounge-chair with her legs under her and the book on the chair's arm. Its sparkling survey of a century's literature had her in such thrill that she did not hear his entry. At the moment she was annoyed to have allowed years to pass in idleness instead of in reading all these authors here written of; brain-hot with resolves to read them all immediately, and flattered by her own delight, since it proved that by nature she was one of the Intelligentsia.

Mr. Bruno stood and looked at her. An unconscious grace in her attitude pleased him and stirred as usual the desire to banter her.

"Relaxed and idle creature," he began. "Yes, you may well jump guiltily. Have you no holiday task, or are there no household duties waiting to be done, that you loll there—for all the world like a statue of Indolence—reading some cheap and nasty trash?"

She rolled on to her back, putting the book between her body and the arm of the chair.

"On the contrary, it's quite a decent book, darling."

(She had taken to calling him "darling" ever since on a holiday visit she had heard Winnie Chatterton doing as much by her parent.)

"Decent? My dear, if it were a serious book on logic you would learn that the epithet 'decent' (which is a disgusting misuse of words, by the way) is what is known as a Petitio Principii, or Begging of the Question. It probably does appear decent to one without any literary palate, but that doesn't make it so."

"I don't say it's anything much, but the man who wrote it, I should think, is not without intelligence."

"What's the idle tale called?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I should not only like to know, but in thirty seconds I shall know."

And he thrust out his hand towards the book, while she rolled over to cover the secret with her body.

"No, you shan't! You shan't. Go away."

"Ah, would she?" smiled he. "Would she? Since she forgets she's a full-sized woman and adopts the tactics of a little child, she shall be treated as such." And, putting one arm behind her back and the other under her knees, he lifted her off the chair and laid her on the carpet.

"How dare you, darling? ... Good night! I didn't know you were so strong..."

Leaping up, she threw her arms about his elbows, trying to pin them to his sides and hold him back from the book. "No, daddy, don't be a cad," she begged; but he took a pace forward, wrenched an arm free, stooped down and picked up the book. She released him, saying: "Well, I think it's a dirty shame."

He turned the book so as to see its title on the back, and read "The Decay of Romanticism, by T. Tenter Bruno."

It moved him, and almost unwittingly he placed an arm about her shoulders and pressed her to his side. Then he tossed the book back on to the chair.

"No, Duffy dear. Read your tales, not stuff like that. It's a dull and heavy work, as are all its fellows—stale, flat and unprofitable."

"It isn't," denied Daphne. "It's fine. I'd no idea your books were as decent as that. They're so slick and witty. I've been screaming with laughter. Daddy, how do you write so wittily as that?"

"Rudeness, my dear—that's all—just rudeness. The rudeness is all. All wit, from the highest to the lowest, can be shown to have its bottom in abuse, whether it's the neatest definition of Voltaire or Johnson or just the low comedian saying: 'Your mother must have been fond of children to bring you up.'"

"But it isn't only their humour—they're so—they've got such ideas——"

He brought her in front of him, holding her there with a hand at each shoulder, that he might look at her. Flitting in his mind was the memory of that February evening when she was born and he had wondered into what long girl she would grow. And here she was—in his hands and before his eyes. "Elle est mon rève." Strange that one could tell oneself in French, and be pleased with the phrase, what one would condemn in English as sentimental! "Elle est mon rève."

"You speak, Duffy, as if you'd been wasting your time skimming some of the others."

"I've read two, and this is my third, and I'm going to read all of them."

"No, no, dear. Let them alone." He moved his hands and picked up the book. "I have read them all, and I am a great critic, and think them small beer. I'll get you something that'll really interest you, and be improving at the same time. 'Sandford and Merton,' have you read that? And 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' ... Or since you were doubtless made for pleasure rather than profit, I'll get you 'The Worst Girl in the Fourth Form.' Only name your choice, so that you don't read unedifying stuff like this."

She snatched back the book.

"My choice is all the other books of T. Tenter Bruno. They're ripping."

"Oh, they seem more to enthusiasm and—yes, to your youthful mixture of generosity and ignorance—than they really are. They will serve their purpose—amuse a few people and be deservedly forgotten."

"You know they won't. You know you think they're splendid. You'd be a fool if you didn't. I don't want to flatter you, but whatever else you are, you're not a fool. I've never read anything like them. I never thought books on subjects like that could be interesting like that. Daddy, I'm awfully proud of you."

Mr. Bruno smiled, and once more pressed her to his side.

"Pride? You don't know one-tenth of what the word means. Pride, Duffy. When you have a daughter who not only speaks well of your books but even reads them, you'll begin to probe the depths of the word." He kissed her forehead. "And when you look her up and down and realise that there's a chance of her—well a chance of her—let us say, a chance of her being not without beauty——"

"Oh, no, I'm not," interrupted Daphne. "I can't see it at all."

"You have tried hard?"

"Of course I have. And I think I'm like a filleted hat-pin."

"Oh, no. No, you're not at all like a filleted hatpin. But you stoop a little, dear. However, that'll be overcome as the sap comes up the stalk; the droop will disappear then, and the whole contraption become less—less green. It's funny, but Nature sometimes completes her sculpturing of a woman in seventeen years, and sometimes she dawdles much longer over the work. If she's anything like me, she dawdles over those she wants to make best. We'll wait till you're twenty, Duffy, and see what you're like then."

The mind that she took back to Hemans House was like a shop whose stock has been largely altered. New goods were stored where the religion had been. They were goods of which she knew the labels and the pictured covers better than the contents. The labels were ever pleasant to handle: "More advanced schools of thought," "In advance of the age in which he lived," "A Leader of the Left," "The School of William Morris"; and the pictures and designs showed Cobden and Bright on their platforms hypnotizing great audiences; Ruskin worrying Utilitarianism with the rumble of his thunderous periods; Swinburne singing melodious blasphemies to the dishonour of God and the glory of Man; and Friedrich Nietzsche (succulent mouthful) coming up like a wind from Germany.

She wanted to be a Leader of the Left. And why not? Quite obviously Miss Vidella was the very type of a reactionary, and equally obviously Daphne had always led a more advanced school. The—the school of Daphne Bruno. She was in advance of the system in which she moved.

Take the question of hockey, which she had been playing in holidays with most flattering success. Miss Vidella's absurd prohibition of the game was a piece of tyranny that ought to be resisted. Hemans House awaited a Liberator. A Risorgimento.

Remembering Cobden and Bright on their rostrums, she decided, after a discussion with the elder girls, that they must have a political meeting. Who would speak? Well, anyone who had anything to say; she, if they liked, would mount the platform first. Only the elder girls would be regarded as possessing the full rights of citizens and allowed to attend. It sounded a jolly game, and these elder girls assembled eagerly in an empty class-room at the advertised hour and pushed themselves into desks or along the form that stretched in front of the desks under the mistress's low platform. In the middle of this form sat Daphne with her legs crossed.

"We ought to have a chairman," said she, when nobody seemed to know what was going to happen next.

"Oh, yes, let's have a chairman," said a very lanky girl, Viola Rance, and she instanced her neighbour: "Queenie Dutroit'll be chairman."

"No, I shan't," snapped Queenie, horrified at the suggestion that she should do anything more public than sitting where she was.

"I vote old Viola's chairman herself," called a girl who, being at the back and rather small, was in no danger of being thrust into the position.

"Yes, yes," endorsed several; and Queenie added, "Yes, she's so ready to suggest others, let her do the chairmaning herself."

Daphne, to push matters on, started a clapping of her hands, with the result, as she expected, that every girl did the same; and Viola, not displeased, though very red and inclined to giggle, slid flexuously on to the platform and into the mistress's chair behind the writing-table. The applause stopped, and the chairman looked down at Daphne in the front row and asked:

"But what do I do?"

"You introduce me."

Viola got up, giggled, and sat down in red confusion.

"Don't be an ass, Vi," grumbled Daphne. "If you'd any gumption you'd have entered into the spirit of the thing and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I have much pleasure in introducing our first speaker for this evening, Miss Daphne Bruno.'"

Viola immediately got up and raced through this sentence, though the last words were drowned in the rising tide of the giggle.

Then Daphne stepped on to the platform. No one had the wit or the courage to start the conventional applause; and when she turned and faced the audience she saw only a roomful of girls, some of whom were gaping at her and some sniggering as if they thought she looked rather a fool. She felt disappointed and sad. Why was it that, whether you were creating books or organizing picturesque demonstrations, it was so much easier to see them in dreams than to give them form. The ideas for a speech that had foggily filled her head thinned into nothing. She picked up something off the writing-table, put it back again, and began without heart:

"Well, it's like this. It's—I mean, I think we ought to have hockey. All the other decent schools are."

Not another word could she think of. She saw nothing but a horrid hiatus before her. If only some of those staring girls would say "Hear, hear!" But though it had probably occurred to many of them, all were too nervous of making fools of themselves. And indeed there was nothing more to say. Not being practised in political oratory, Daphne had expressed the origin and the business of the meeting, the reason of her speaking and the views which the audience had brought with them and which they would take away, in twenty words and ten seconds. But it seemed to her a sickly failure, and with a big effort she threw some more words into the awful lacuna.

"It's a topping game. Other schools are playing hockey, and I think we ought to have hockey too."

Some one giggled at the back, and fortunately this stirred temper, and temper stirred speech.

"I don't see anything funny in it. Giggling never did anything yet. It's perfectly piffling to go for a walk when we might be playing hockey. What I vote is that we all go in a sort of deputation and ask Miss Vidella to let us play hockey this term. If she gives in—which isn't likely—she'll probably only treat us to some of her celebrated queenly sarcasm; and if she refuses we shall have to organise a sort of secret intrigue to force her hand—a Liberationist Society, if you like. Like the National Assembly in France. Or the Risorgimento. I've got a plan of action in the event of it coming to that. I think we could all write to our parents asking them to support the general desire for hockey, and simply get her flooded with letters. I've got her absolutely weighed up, and I'm dead certain that she'd never say 'No' to the majority of the parents. It's always the same; these things only want the courage and—and some one to make a start. Just you see. If we have the grit to hold out we shall win."

It was not at all a bad speech, thought Daphne, and for its crown needed only a burst of applause. But nothing followed it except an embarrassed silence, and when that was getting too uncomfortable, an upward glance from the chairman, with the question:

"What do I do now, Dafs?"

"Oh, you can ask if anybody has any comment to make on what they have heard."

Viola stood slightly.

"Has anybody any comment to make on——" But it sounded to her so silly that the rest of the sentence was lost in the giggle with which, blushingly, she resumed her chair.

Nobody had anything to say; most were laughing at Viola.

Daphne stepped off the platform and sat again on the form in front, crossing her legs and grasping her knee.

"Is that all?" inquired the chairman, when she saw the principal speaker disappearing like that.

"Oh, I suppose so."

"Well, what happens now?"

"Oh, you can ask them if they agree to what I have said, to show it by holding up their hands."

Daphne knew that when the question was put all would want to hold up their hands and all would wait for some one else to do it first, so she flung up her own, and looking round, saw a forest of arms, many of which were waving about and trying to be funny.

"Ask if any one disagrees."

"Any one dis-agree?"

Not a soul. No one was likely to make herself so conspicuous.

"Well, what happens now?"

Daphne shrugged. Her imagination was vividly showing her what a good chairman might have made of this triumph. "Oh, tell them the meeting's adjourned."

"The meeting's adjourned," said Viola, and, giggling, she jumped off the platform.

The minute the meeting was adjourned everybody had an undelivered speech to deliver. They stood in a group round Daphne and argued the question. It ended in her plan being adopted and a deputation formed to wait on the head mistress.

Daphne was at once proud and nervous as she led her deputation the next day, just before lunch, into Miss Vidella's room.

Miss Vidella was sitting at a little writing-table. She watched this entry of half a dozen girls with lifted eyebrows.

"What is it you want, dears? I am very busy."

"We want to know—we wanted to ask you," began Daphne, "on behalf of all the girls, if you would let us play hockey this term?"

Miss Vidella stared at the speaker. She removed her spectacles and held them in her fat hand on the table. That she was angry there could be no doubt, and that she was thinking out some sarcasms like a dentist selecting his sharp little tools.

"Have you ever played hockey in the Christmas term?"

Daphne was obliged to answer "No."

"Have you ever played hockey any term?"

"No."

"Then why should you play hockey this term? I am not clear on the point, Daphne dear."

"We thought perhaps if we petitioned you, you would let us."

Miss Vidella replaced her spectacles on her nose as if the point could now be studied more closely. The point, it appeared, was in the middle of Daphne's face.

"Have I ever, on being petitioned, allowed you to do anything unladylike?"

Daphne couldn't very well point out to her that the epithet "unladylike" was a Petitio Principii, or Begging of the Question, so she murmured, "No."

"If you were to come to me, one by one, and say: 'Dear Miss Vidella, may I do something which you consider unlady-like?' would not my answer be: 'No, my dear, not at Hemans House'?"

She had acted the "No, my dear," with its inclination of the head, to an imaginary girl at her side, and now turned to Daphne for her reply.

"Yes—I suppose so."

"Well, would not the answer that I give to you severally be the answer that I give to you all together?"

Daphne was confused, and said again: "I suppose so."

"Then I am not at all clear as to what is the idea of your coming in such a funny little group as this. Run away, my dears, and get ready for your dinners. I am very busy, and have no time just now to play with you in your strange little games."

As the deputation moved out, Daphne felt furious. It was the only thing to feel if you were not to feel foolish.

"I told you nothing would come of that," she said hastily, to forestall any criticism of her leadership, "nothing except a performance by Petsy. But I never expected anything to. That was only a flourish. It's the next step that matters. I'm perfectly determined to beat her on this matter. And I should think that you would be after she's tried to make fools of you like that."

The letter to the parents, outlined by Daphne, she thought exceedingly well done. As a politician she saw the skilfulness of the phrase, "give your support to the request of many other parents"; and as an authoress with some idea of emotional effect, she was particularly satisfied with the postscript, "Please do." No kindly parent would resist that.

When Miss Vidella watched the flooding in of requests from fathers and mothers that, if possible, hockey might be taught to their girls, she was more than flustered—she was frightened. To be queenly with a deputation of tongue-tied pupils was one thing, but to resist a concerted movement by parents was quite another. It could not be done. The difficulty was how to yield to the parents without seeming to eat the sarcasms she had offered to the deputation. She squeezed through this awkward pass by saying to the assembled school, one day before lunch:

"I understand now that when some of the elder girls waited on me last week with a request for the institution of hockey, they did so at the suggestion of their parents. If the girls had been wiser they would have made this clear. I think it very right and proper of your parents to trust you to come and tell me all that they consider desirable for your welfare, and to know that I shall always give every attention to their wishes. I may in this case doubt the wisdom of their opinion, but I understand that it must take precedence over mine. The request will therefore be conceded. I understand that Miss Bellamy has a knowledge of the game, and that, according to her, our present field will be large enough. I will therefore order an adequate supply of the necessary implements, and hope you will be able to try your hands at this new recreation in a day or two. I shall, of course, be there to supervise your play at so dangerous a game."

She moved away to a chorus of "Thank you, Miss Vidella."

Daphne knew that every girl had thrown at her a swift glance, and she tried to cover her feelings with a mask of unconcern. The smile that broke through her control, and fought with her lips, was rather one of nervousness at being looked at than of exultation in a triumph. Her glow was mixed with a knowledge not wholly pleasant that she had never so completely despised her head mistress. In such contempt, as in the deeps of a pool, lay possibilities of which she could feel herself afraid.

Miss Bellamy was now dressed in an unexpected importance, and very conscious of it. A stout, bustling woman of thirty-five, she fussed about, equipping the two teams which were to make the first venture into the new game, marking the field with their aid, and explaining on a blackboard the principles of hockey to those who had everything to learn. And the day of the first trial, a golden afternoon in St. Luke's Summer, she led the girls to their field as excitedly as any of them. Miss Vidella followed less easily and happily. And Daphne, who throughout the preparations had been as officious and explanatory as Miss Bellamy, declared that Petsy had come simply and solely to make herself a nuisance. She would probably stand on the touch line and worry the game like a fat puppy who was feeling rather sick.

It was an accurate prophecy. When all the girls were in their places, and Miss Bellamy had done pushing them there, or pointing all over the field with her whistle, Daphne shouted: "Shall I bully off with Viola?"

And Miss Vidella at once raised her voice.

"'Bully off.' I do wish you wouldn't talk slang, Daphne dear. You know I have never tolerated it. 'Bully off' is a phrase that I have never heard, and do not wish to hear again."

"But it's the correct term, Miss Vidella."

"It really is," endorsed Miss Bellamy, who had rushed up to bring an expert's advice to the solution of a difficulty.

"Dear me"—Miss Vidella lifted her shoulders resignedly—"what unpleasant terms these rough games do employ!"

They bullied off, and the game swung into noisy life. Its two most conspicuous performers were Daphne and Miss Bellamy. Daphne was early captured by it, mind and body. She was nearly always in possession of the ball, and the repeated running had damped her forehead and shortened her breathing; she felt the rises of her breast, and a delightful dryness and thirst stabbing her low down in the throat. There was a breeze that would not have been perceptible but for the dampness on her brow, and when it touched that, it strangely heightened her pleasure. It carried fugitive thoughts of long drinks, the spray of the sea, or immersion in bath or lake. Once she had fallen heavily, and the smell of dried earth on her palm toned exactly with the thirst, the quick breathing, the sting of gathering blisters, and the coldness on her temples. Health and optimism had become sensuous things. And how was it that these sensations, though within her, were at one with remembered things without—with firelight on old wood, mellow evenings, birds and squirrels, and sentences in Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she were flying straight into the sun"—with all those things that she must capture and put into books?

Miss Bellamy rushed about, with her whistle at her teeth or in her hand. When she wasn't blowing the whistle, she was shouting: "Keep your places! Pass the ball—oh, for goodness' sake pass it sometimes. Now then, Evelyn! Played! Oh, played indeed!" Probably she wanted to impress the pupils and the principal. And certainly she impressed Miss Vidella—but very unfavourably. There was an abnormal second when she was standing at rest to watch a scramble near Miss Vidella, and Miss Vidella took the opportunity to begin, "I can't think, Miss Bellamy, that it's necessary to shout at the children so"; but just then Miss Bellamy saw a crass error in the play, shot out a pointing forefinger, and blew her whistle imperiously.

"Sticks! Sticks! Sticks!" she cried. "Madeline you mustn't lift your stick above your shoulder."

"Come on—that's a free hit," shouted Daphne. "Chuck us the pill."

It was useless wishing she hadn't said it, for Miss Vidella was already calling.

"Daphne dear. Come here. What was that you said?"

"I said, 'Chuck us the pill'."

Miss Vidella nodded.

"I thought those were the words. Well, I am so ignorant of this game that I do not know if that is the prescribed expression. Is it?"

"Well—no."

"You mean, it was slang?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Precisely. And I cannot allow the elder girls to set such an example to the younger ones. Besides, it is great disrespect to Miss Bellamy to use language like that in a game of which she is in charge. Let me hear you apologise to her."

Daphne's first impulse was to throw down her stick and walk off, but she remembered the delight of the game, and determined not to be robbed of it by any pomposity of Miss Vidella. And she so far obeyed her head mistress as to turn to Miss Bellamy and mutter: "Miss Vidella says I'm to apologise to you." Miss Bellamy smiled an acknowledgment, and a bow from the head mistress indicated that she was satisfied, and the game might proceed.

Daphne had no wish to offend a second time, and for the rest of the game, except for the very last minute, managed to play and shout without being called to order. She had, in fact, forgotten her anger with the head mistress, so exciting was the struggle. The two goals won by her side, in defiant answer to two won by their opponents, had been scored by herself, and the girls were saying: "No wonder you wanted to play hockey so as to show off." Her face and neck were streaming, and her body seemed to have been fitted with a new and different breathing system. Frequently she wiped her forehead with her sleeve, or tossed the wet hair-wisps out of her eyes. If she was not driving the ball herself she was shouting encouragement and praise to the others. "Oh, played! ... I say, well played! ... Look out! ... Billow!" Her will and every faculty were set upon securing the third goal before the shrieking and perspiring Miss Bellamy should sound her whistle for the last time. The low slant of the sunlight and the stretching of the shadows told her that time was very short. Any second now might end the game. The matter was desperate; there was a look of evening over the field. Her stick perpetually reached the ball and forced it through a jumble of confused amateurs, while Miss Bellamy shouted: "Keep your places! Keep your places, all of you!" and Miss Vidella could be heard muttering a dislike of the worse scrimmages. At last Daphne won through with the ball, and came down the side-line with irresistible impetus, confident that now on the very sound of the whistle she was going to score her third goal. She had a faint impression of Miss Vidella stepping back from the touch-line so as to be out of danger. So fierce was her rush that the opposing full-back, frenzied with ignorance and dismay, hit her with great force on the shin. In the moment of sharp pain, Daphne flung her stick anywhere, and muttered: "Oh, damn! damn!"

All around her heard, and cast quick glances at the head mistress. All were probably feeling the satisfaction of being present when something really serious had happened. The head mistress, no doubt, was the most satisfied of all, because there are few happinesses so great as the first enjoyment of indignation.

"Miss Bellamy. Miss Bellamy," she shrieked to the referee, who, from her distance, was shouting encouragement to this waning corner of the game. "Miss Bellamy, stop the game."

"Play on, you girls," shouted Miss Bellamy. "Don't stand there as if you were afraid of the ball. Keep the ball moving, for goodness' sake."

"Do nothing of the sort," commanded Miss Vidella. "Don't touch the ball. Miss Bellamy"—Miss Bellamy was running, whistle in mouth, to solve the problem that was hindering the game—"I have instructed the girls to stop. They are very rightly too shocked to continue. I wish them to stop. Please blow that whistle, if that is the way such a game is brought to an end."

Miss Bellamy, bewildered, sounded her whistle and stood near to witness a public censuring.

Daphne, after rubbing her shin, walked to her hockey stick, slightly exaggerating her limp, picked it up and examined its binding.

"Daphne.... I hardly know how to speak to you. For fifteen years I have given my life to the education and guidance of my schoolgirls, but never till this day have I heard one of them—I cannot bring myself to say it—heard one of them use such a word as passed your lips just now. I pray I shall never be asked to live through that moment again. I—and all these dear girls, I believe—are humiliated and ashamed. You, too, I dare believe, are also deeply ashamed."

"Well, I don't see why I should have been hit on the shins for nothing. It'd have been a goal if——"

"Go back to the school. I confess I know not how to deal with you. I confess to being beaten by you. Fortunately there is no precedent in my experience which enables me to deal adequately on the spur of the moment with your offence. You are a girl whom it seems impossible to influence or guide. If all the affection and sympathy and gentle correction of the last few years"—Daphne made an obvious "Pooh!" with her lips—"has been unavailing to soften your nature, I know no other methods. They have always been those of Hemans House. Go back to the school and wait in your bedroom. I shall have to consider how to deal with you. I feel I shall have to write to your dear father——" Daphne was disposed to reply: "I should. It'll amuse him frightfully." "And do not attempt to see any other girls. I cannot have them taught your dockyard oaths.... This evening I will..."

But Daphne had not waited for the rest.

CHAPTER XIII

Miss Vidella frightened herself more than her pupil when she announced that she would write to Mr. Tenter Bruno. The whole school had heard her say she would do a thing which she particularly did not want to do. The Bruno girl had still, presumably, another year to spend at her school and to bring in good fees, and it would be unwise to give her father the impression that she was getting too big and obstreperous for the place. There must be no quarrel with Mr. Bruno, for she wanted his name as a reference. Besides, she was thoroughly afraid of his brilliant modern mind. And somewhere behind her indignation peeped the thought that the offence was not really as bad as her posing required her to treat it. After a tea-time spent in deliberation she decided that discretion must masquerade as mercy. She climbed the stair to the little single bedroom which Daphne, as one of the elder girls, now enjoyed. She was primed with words of austere forgiveness, but when she saw that the criminal was lolling on the bed and reading a book, anger made her command:

"Get off that bed at once."

Daphne got off slowly.

"Now put it straight."

Daphne did so.

"You are, indeed, Daphne, a difficult child. I came upstairs disposed to limit my chastisement of you to words of kindness and advice, and I find you apparently insensible to the gravity of your offence. I intended to say that I would not hurt your dear father by a report of your behaviour, but——"

"I don't mind if you write to him or not."

This was dreadful. The girl was pushing her into the stream of events she desired to escape.

"You don't care? Have you no affection for him?"

"Yes, heaps; but I don't think he'll die of anything you can tell him."

"Are you being impudent, Daphne?"

"I don't know."

"I do."

"Then why do you ask?"

Miss Vidella stared at her, flounced to the door, and said: "I shall most certainly write to your father. I shall do it this moment," and thus made her exit. Yes, she would write that letter at once. Its phrasing shaped in her mind. Like all weak people she was easily made apprehensive lest some one was questioning her strength. A strong gesture was pleasing. Now that her hand had been forced she was proud that she was going to write to Mr. Bruno. The school should know that she had written to Mr. Bruno, and realise that when she said she'd do a thing she did it.

One person was thrilled by the news of Daphne Bruno's disgrace and confinement. Miss Sims, always curiously exultant when her favourite was punished, saw herself coming to her in prison with sympathy and undiminished faith. Her heart beat quickly as she approached the bedroom where Daphne was isolated. Opening the door with a "May I come in?" she saw the girl sitting on the bed with one heel beneath her, writing something. This was disappointing. Miss Sims had encouraged the idea that she would be crying. "She's been made hard and callous," thought Miss Sims. "She will be better softened. Gentleness will soften her."

"Hallo," said Daphne, looking up. She folded over the letter she had been writing.

"Duffy dear. What has been happening? I could not bear to think of you up here."

"Oh, Miss Vidella has been doing a little acting. She thinks she's being very fine and strong. I'm enjoying myself immensely."

A pity she adopted this defiant attitude. Miss Sims liked to minister to soft and broken things. And the Character never listened to disloyalty.

"Hush, dear. You know I never listen to rebellious muttering." ... She sat down beside the girl. "Why did you utter such a word? After all, you are a girl who will always exercise a great influence over those younger than yourself, and you have them to consider."

Daphne looked away, and Miss Sims knew that this veiled flattery was the way to conquer her. She spent a very happy few minutes, giving counsel to the girl, with her heart going out to her as she did so; she pointed out how much it behoved one who was plainly a nature of strong passions to learn control in small things, and she saw that Daphne liked being called a nature of strong passions, and was thinking of Miss Sims as the one person who understood her.

"I know, Miss Sims. But why couldn't Miss Vidella talk to me properly—like you do—instead of making an Aunt Sally of me before half the school. She said I was difficult to influence. I am not, am I? You know."

It was a sweet moment for Miss Sims.

"I have never found you so, dear."

"Of course not, because you're always so understanding. But she always tries to humiliate me before the whole school, and now she declares she's going to write a lot of lies to father."

"Hush, dear. I think she may be unduly severe, but I can see her point of view."

"She hasn't got a point of view, except the one that goes with her part. I'm writing to father too.... Oh, Miss Sims, would you—would you post it for me?"

Miss Sims smiled tolerantly, but really the request gave her much pleasure. It was picturesque, this taking of a missive from an offender in prison.

"I will certainly, dear. There can be no harm in your father hearing what you have to say."

"Oh, that's topping of you."

Daphne added something to her letter, and folded it up and give it to Miss Sims.

"Thank you, dear," said the governess. "And if there is anything else you need, or I can do for you—bring you books or anything——" Her guilty ear detected a step on the landing outside, and she rose. It was not done hastily, for her desire to impress Daphne with her serenity and fearlessness was stronger than her fear of being caught by Miss Vidella. But her heart, which fortunately could not be seen, was beating faster.

"I will take it for you now. Good-bye for the time being, dear."

She stooped and kissed her favourite.

The next morning over his breakfast Mr. Bruno read of Miss Vidella's pain at being obliged to report that she had had occasion to deal severely with his daughter, and of her desire that he also would write a word of reproof. Daphne had employed on the hockey field language which could not be set on paper, and Miss Vidella wrote in the sure knowledge that her father's rebuke would carry very great weight with dear Daphne, and that, since this outbreak suggested that she had met with unsuitable companions in her vacations, he would doubtless wish to be informed of the matter.

"Gracious goodness!" smiled Mr. Bruno, at the ponderous and lumbering phrases. "What on earth can the depraved child have said?"

And all the contraband language that he could think of seemed beautifully funny as passing from one of her pupils to Miss Vidella.

Then he picked up an envelope written in the schoolgirl hand of his daughter.

"Ah, now perhaps we shall know. Duffy will doubtless strengthen herself to write the obscene word."

His butter-knife sliced the flap, and he read:

"DARLING FATHER,—Miss Vidella says she is going to write to you about the crimes of your daughter. I don't know if the old pig really meant it, but in case she does I thought I'd get in first. Her only accusation is that I have used slang and one swear word. I don't think the slang business will upset you much because you say in 'The Decay of Romanticism' that slang is often the natural, urgent poetry of a vital people." ("Good heavens!" thought Mr. Bruno, "she must have copied the sentence straight out of the book.") "And you give examples that you say are Shakespearean in their aptness, energy and high compression, and you say further on that those who use slang brilliantly are often more vivacious and dynamic minds than those who stagnate in a mould of stilted phraseology like Miss Vidella. I quite agree with you, as I do with most of what you have written. And I am not saying this just because I want you to side with me, but because I really do. Old Petsy could no more think of that about slang than she could fly. That is really rather witty about her flying, as you would understand if you could see her. But the swear word will probably not please you so well. What happened was this. I felt that Miss Vidella was reactionary in her ban on hockey, and that it was time Hemans House advanced a little, so as to be abreast of modern ideas, and I accordingly led a successful agitation for reform in the matter. That, of course, stuck in her gizzard, and I'm sure she came on to the hockey field determined to spoil the game. What I blame myself for is not swearing so much"—(Mr. Bruno read this sentence again before murmuring: "Duffy, Duffy, you're getting dangerously ambiguous")—"as giving the old cat an opening. Annie Hurst, silly little ass, caught me an awful whack on the shin, and before I knew what had happened, I said 'O damn!' which you often say when the soup-plate is hot. That was all, and it's really painful, a whack on the shin-bone with a hockey stick, and I've got a huge bruise and what looks like a little dent in the bone. That side of it doesn't seem to have struck Miss Vidella.

"Daddy, I have got a suggestion. If you think it wise to come down and rebuke me, couldn't we do it at a tea-shop and have a jolly afternoon together?

"Daddy, I'm reading 'Park and Pavement,' and I like it awfully. It's your best book, I think, in my humble opinion. But then I think that of each one as I read it. I'm in disgrace in my bedroom, and enjoying myself awfully. It's been fun writing to you.—Yours awfully,

"DUFFY."

"P.S.—I have been wondering how I was going to post this, but an awfully decent mistress is going to post it for me.—D. D. T. B."

The effect of Daphne's letter on her father was similar to that which she unconsciously used to work when she burst uninvited into his gaze. There was an immediate quickening of his love, a flavour of self-reproach that he passed so much time away from her, and, as he pictured her sitting on her bed and writing to him, a stirring of the heart that was almost painful.

"Oh, damn! That prehistoric old fool shan't persecute her. She shall swear if she likes. That is to say, she shall do nothing of the sort, for it would spoil her charm. But she's my daughter, and beginning to stand, I fancy, in much the same relation to that slow-going vehicle, her school, as I do to society to-day. I like to think it. With all her ignorance and immaturity she's too dynamic for her surroundings. I must write, I suppose. No, damn it, I'll go and see her, and the absurd place as well. If it's as I imagine, we must do something better for her."

It was impossible for him to be other than courteous, and he wrote to Miss Vidella thanking her for her thoughtfulness, telling her that he would like to come and see her the next afternoon and requesting her to be so good as to inform Daphne of his intentions. His kindest regards concluded the letter.

Miss Vidella was delighted. Her strong action was justified. Evidently Mr. Tenter Bruno, since he was coming in person, shared her distress and approved her discretion. She began to phrase the high commendation he would give when sought as a reference for Hemans House. "I shall ever be grateful for Miss Vidella's watchful care of my own daughter." And after prayers that mornings she announced to the assembled school:

"I have just received a letter from Mr. Tenter Bruno, who will visit the school this afternoon." She left that to sink in. The children would instantly guess why he was coming, and be impressed with the seriousness of a recent incident and the strong hand of their principal. "And, girls, I hope he will come and see you at your work. Mr. Tenter Bruno, as you all know, is a writer with an international reputation, and you will like to remember that he visited you at your school. It will also interest your parents."

Mr. Bruno arrived about three o'clock; and after an interview in the reception room which was chiefly used by Miss Vidella to explain how fond she was of dear Daphne and hoped to make a great success of her, and by Mr. Bruno in mental generalizations suggested by such a type as this head mistress, he was left alone in a saddle-bag chair to await his daughter. She burst in, most obviously dressed to receive him. And because she was tall, and he unused to such an interview, he rose like an embarrassed guest to greet her. After the fat, black, pompous figure of the head mistress, she came with something like a shock of contrast; he saw the roundness of her head under its brown hair newly brushed, the freshness of her eyes and cheeks, the smallness of her neck, and the fast-refining outline of her body and her limbs. The critic in him, as well as the father, approved it all. Wonderful how she could move him sometimes! In the chamber of his anti-sentimental brain, moving without guilt among the censors there, was the thought: "You are mine ... you came from me ... Daphne."

"Hallo, Daddy!"

She rose on her toes to kiss him, and he gave her waist a hug.

"So you've been using the language of the tap-room to that strange old woman."

"I haven't," denied Daphne, "I told you exactly what I said."

"Good heavens, miss! And wasn't that outrageous in a slender girl?"

"No, not considering the hefty blow I got on my leg. I often say 'Oh, damn!' to myself, as I'm sure everybody does, and that time it came out aloud. And with good reason, too. Just look here." And she made as if to remove her stocking.

"No, no, no. Don't show me anything unpleasant. Besides, you've got it all wrong, Duffy. The idea of the strange old lady isn't so much that you should show me some trifling bruise on your shin, as that I should talk to you about the really serious bruise on my heart. That a daughter of mine should say—such words! You mustn't, Duffy; for you're in danger of becoming a—a beautiful creature, and it's out of harmony for one of that pattern to use squalid words. The whole product is not homogeneous. It's bad art."

"Well," said his daughter. "That's the most sensible way I've ever heard it put."

"Yes, and——However.... How old are you, Duffy?"

"Seventeen for all practical purposes."

"Well, I have a practical purpose. Let us sit down and talk it over. Are you allowed to sit in this room?"