The Head Girl at the Gables Part 17

The photographer slipped the kodak back into his pocket and smiled his former plausible smile.

"I am an American," he began, "a journalist. I have been sent by my newspaper to England, to write an article upon golf links. I wish to include those of Porthkeverne, with ill.u.s.trations."

"Have you a permit?" persisted his fellow-pa.s.senger. "You'll get yourself into trouble if you haven't. The authorities are uncommonly strict about it."

"It's a queer dodge to photograph the golf links from a railway carriage," commented someone else.

"Not at all! I take hundreds of photos for my magazine in this way,"

explained the self-styled journalist.

"Well, you'll just not take any now," returned the other. "If you do, I shall inform the guard."

Lorraine listened excitedly. She was quite loath to leave the compartment at Ranock. She wondered to what destination the man was travelling, and hoped that the other pa.s.sengers would keep an eye on him. She went that afternoon to see her uncle, Barton Forrester, who was a special constable, and told him about both incidents. He looked thoughtful.

"I'll report the matter to Wakelin," he commented. "One can't be too careful in a place like this. Of course the fellow might have a permit, but it had better be inquired into. Give me as accurate a description of him as you can."

Lorraine shut her eyes, visualized, and gave her impressions of the stranger. Uncle Barton rapidly jotted down a few notes. He communicated the result to the chief constable, who issued an order that the next time anyone answering to that description was sighted his photographic permit was to be demanded and inspected. There is such a thing, however, as shutting the stable door after the steed is stolen; and, in spite of the vigilance of the local police, nothing further was seen or heard of the enterprising photographer. He had evidently betaken himself and his camera to other scenes of adventure.

The school talked about the episode for a while with bated breath, then forgot it in the whirl of other interests. It was getting near Christmas time, and there was ever so much to be done in preparation. The excitement of the moment was the rhythmic dancing display. All the term a teacher had been coming weekly from St. Cyr, and those lucky individuals who were members of the dancing cla.s.s had had the time of their lives. Of course the musical ones, and those with some idea of the poetry of motion, scored the most, but even those who were not naturally graceful enjoyed the movements.

Miss Kingsley had decided that her pupils should give a display of what they had learnt, and invited an audience of parents and friends to the gymnasium on breaking-up day. The performance was to begin at three o'clock, and long before that hour the proud band of selected artistes, arrayed in their costumes, were a.s.sembled ready in the small studio which served as a dressing-room. There were a good many of them, and the s.p.a.ce was limited, so it was a decided cram.

"Everybody seems to take up so much more room than usual to-day,"

declared Patsie, flinging out a long arm with a floral garland, and hitting Effie Swan by accident in the eye.

"Of course they do, when they're as clumsy as you are," retorted that distressed damsel, with her handkerchief to the injured orb. "I call you the absolute limit, Patsie--you're fit for nothing but a barn dance!

Clogs would suit you better than sandals."

"Gently, child, gently! Sorry if I've hurt your eye, but don't let that warp your judgment. The Flower Quadrille's going to be rather choice, though I say it as shouldn't."

"The others' part of it, perhaps, but not yours."

"There, don't get excited! I forgive you!"

"It's for me to forgive, not for you, I think!" grumbled Effie. "A nice object I shall look dancing with my eye all red and inflamed!"

"I wish the gym. were a larger room!" groused Theresa. "The dances would have a much better effect if there were more s.p.a.ce for them, and I should like a parquet floor."

"What else would you like?" snapped Lorraine. "Some people would grumble in Paradise. The old gym.'s not such a bad place for a performance, and the floor has been chalked. I think myself it's a very decent sort of room. Would you like to dance on the lawn?"

"Not in December, thanks!"

"Are you ready, girls?" asked Miss Paget, opening the door. "Miss Leighton has just come, and we're going to begin."

There was no doubt that the dances were extremely pretty. Miss Leighton was an excellent teacher, and her pupils did her credit. The audience was charmed, and clapped with the utmost enthusiasm at the end of each performance. There was a Daisy Dance, in which twelve little girls, dressed to represent daisies, went through a series of very graceful movements; and a Rose Gavotte that was equally pretty and tasteful. A b.u.t.terflies' Ball, in which the dancers waved gorgeous wings of painted muslin, was highly effective; and so was the Russian Mazurka, given by Vivien and Dorothy, attired in fur-trimmed costumes and high scarlet leather boots. The babies looked sweet in a Doll Dance, and little Beatrice Perry made a sensation by her _pas seul_ as "Cupid", dressed in a cla.s.sic toga with the orthodox bow and arrows. She was a beautifully made child of six, and danced barefooted, so she looked the part admirably, and quite carried the audience by storm.

Monica, with floating fair hair, a figured muslin dress and a basket of flowers, capered as a "Spring Wind" and dropped blossoms in the path of "April"; even Patsie, the overgrown, looked quite pretty in her Flower Quadrille. But everybody decided that the star of the afternoon was Claudia. She was beautiful to begin with, and her forget-me-not costume suited her exactly. Perhaps her long experience in posing as a model for her father's pictures made it easier for her to learn the right postures. She had dropped into the rhythmic dancing as into a birthright; her movements seemed the very embodiment of natural grace, and to watch her was like surprising the fairies at dawn, or the dryads and oreads in a cla.s.sic forest. The best of Claudia was that she was quite without self-consciousness. She danced because she enjoyed it, not to command admiration. She received the storm of clapping quite as a matter of course, just as she took the exhibition of her many portraits in the Academy.

"I'd give anything to have your face," said Patsie enviously to her afterwards. "Some folks are luckers! Why wasn't _I_ born pretty? It gives people such a tremendous pull!"

"I don't know," answered Claudia, rather taken aback at the question.

"Look here!" said Lorraine; "we've got to take the faces our mothers gave us. Haven't you heard of a beautiful _plain_ person? I know several who haven't a single decent feature, and yet somehow they're lovely in spite of it all. Some of the most fascinating women in the world have been plain--George Sand hadn't an atom of beauty, and yet she enthralled two such geniuses as Chopin and Alfred de Musset."

"I'll go in for fascination, then," rattled on Patsie. "We can't all be in the same style. Claudia shall do the Venus business, and I'll be a what-do-you-call-it? Siren?"

"Oh, no! Sirens were wretches!"

"Why, I thought they were only a sort of mermaid! Well, I'll be very modern--chic, and _spirituelle_, and witty, and _fin-de-siecle_ and all the rest of it; and I'll have a salon like those French women used to have, and everybody'll want to come to it, and talk about the charming Miss Sullivan, only perhaps I'll be Mrs. Somebody by that time! I hope so, at any rate. I don't mean to be left in the lurch, if I can help it!"

"What shall you do if you are?" laughed Lorraine.

"Go in for a career, my dear!" said Patsie airily. "Farming, or Parliament, or doctoring. Everything's open to us women now!"

"Well, I wouldn't try Rhythmic Dancing, at any rate! You're certainly not cut out for that!" scoffed Effie, whose injured eye was still smarting.

CHAPTER XI

Madame Bertier

"When the bitter north wind blows, Very red is Baba's nose, Very cold are Baba's toes: When the north wind's blowing.

When the north wind's blowing!"

So sang Monica, rather out of tune, as she reached home, in a scratchy mood, on the first afternoon of the January term, and hurried up to the fire.

"I don't like school! I _don't_ like it!" she proclaimed to a sympathetic audience of Rosemary, Cousin Elsie, and Richard (who was home on leave). "I call it cruelty to send me every single day to sit for five whole hours at a horrid little desk, stuffing my head with things I don't want to know, and never _shall_ want to know, if I live to be a hundred. _Why_ must I go?"

"Poor kiddie!" laughed Richard. "You've got it badly! It's a disease I used to suffer from myself. They called it 'schoolophobia' when I was young. They cured it with a medicine called 'spink.u.m-spank.u.m', if I remember rightly--one of those good old-fashioned remedies, don't you know, that our grandmothers always went by."

"You're making fun of me!" chafed Monica. "And I do really mean what I say. It's cold at school, and horrid, and Miss Davis is always down on me, and I hate it. Why must I go?"

"And _why_ must I go back to the trenches?"

"_Don't!_"

"All serene! You and I'll find a desert island together somewhere, and live upon it for the rest of our lives. You see, they'd never have us back again if we deserted. We'd have to stop on our island for evermore!"

"I thought you liked The Gables?" yawned Elsie. "Vivien does. I'm sure it's a very nice school."

"Oh, Vivien! I dare say! It's all very fine for monitresses. But when you're in the Third Form, and your desk's on the cold side of the room, it's the limit. Yes, I dare say I _shall_ get chilblains if I sit close to the fire, _but I don't care_!"

"The first day's always a little grizzly," agreed Lorraine, who had followed Monica to the hearth-rug and joined the circle of fire-worshippers. "One hates getting into harness again after the holidays. I believe Rosemary's the only one of us who really enthuses.

You'll be gone, too, by next week, Quavers! But I suppose you really _enjoy_ singing exercises, and having professors storming at you."