A College Girl by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (my miracle luna book free read txt) 📕
As regards the matter of distance, it took an easy two minutes to cover the space between the front doors of the two houses, and there seemed an endless number of reasons why the members of the different families should fly round to consult each other a dozen times a day. Darsie and Lavender, Vi and plain Hannah attended the same High School; the Garnett boys and John Vernon the same Royal Institute, but the fact that they walked to and from school together, and spent the intervening hours in the same class-rooms, by no means mitigated the necessity of meeting again during luncheon and tea hours. In holiday times the necessity naturally increased, and bells pealed incessantly in response to tugs from youthful hands.
Then came the time of the great servants' strike. That bell was a perfect nuisance; rin
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The next articles offered for sale were framed pictures of various sizes which had evidently not been considered worth the trouble of removing. Water-colour sketches by ’prentice hands, faded photographs, or pretty-pretty prints evidently torn from the pages of magazines. The auctioneer exerted all the blandishments to induce the Freshers to purchase these masterpieces, and deplored their scant response with pathetic reproaches.
“No bids for this tasty little picture? Ladies, ladies, this is a great mistake! In the midst of your arduous brain toil, what could be more soothing and refreshing than to gaze upon this charming pastoral scene? This azure earth, this verdant sky, this lovely maid who combined in her person all the simpering charms of youth, and never, for one misguided moment, troubled her ochre head over the acquirement of that higher knowledge which, as we all know, is the proud prerogative of man! What price shall I say for ‘The Maiden’s Dream’? No bids! Put it down if you please, Joshua. We have no art collectors with us to-night. Let me have the Botticelli for a change.”
The clerk in blue silk handed up another picture in a rickety Oxford frame, at which the auctioneer gazed rapturously for several moments before turning it towards her audience.
“Number Six on the catalogue. Genuine photograph of a Botticelli from the collection of Miss Eva Dalgleish. Attention, Freshers, if you please! This is an item of serious importance. The presence of a Botticelli bestows at once the air of culture and refinement without which no study is worthy of the name. A genuine photograph of a Botticelli, purchased by the owner in the Italian city of Florence, and borne home by her own fair hands, as the crack across the corner will give proof. In an Oxford frame—a compliment to our sister University—glazed and complete, with hanging loops and fragment of wire. What offers for the Botticelli? Any Fresher who wishes to prove herself endowed with refined and artistic—One shilling? Thank you, madam. And sixpence! One and nine. One and nine for this genuine Botticelli. Ladies, ladies, this is a sad day for Newnham. And nine—and nine. Going. Going—gone!”
It was Hannah who had testified to her own artistic qualities by purchasing this photograph. She tucked it proudly under her arm, and turned an envious eye on a brass flower-pot which was now engaging the auctioneer’s attention. A simultaneous movement of the audience showed that this was an article on which many hopes had been set, and bidding promised to be brisk.
“Now, ladies, we come to one of the principal events of the evening, the bidding for this very rich and magnificent brass, hand-beaten, richly-chased, Oriental, ornamental flower-pot. We have several flower-pots in our catalogue, but none to be compared for one moment to the very superior article which you now see before you. It is safe to say that no student, even in her third year, can boast of a flower-pot to equal this lot in either quality or design. The possession of it will in itself ensure fame for its fortunate owner. Let me have a handsome bid, if you please, ladies, to start this valuable article. Half a crown!!! A lady, whose ignorance we can only deplore, offers me half a crown for a genuine antique brass! I am thankful that in such a large and enlightened audience such an error is not likely to be repeated. Three shillings. Thank you, madam. And six. Four shillings—four shillings. Freshers who neglect to take advantage of this opportunity will be compelled to content themselves with one of these common china articles to my left. A flowerpot is a necessary article of furniture without which no room is complete. What is home without an aspidistra? You laugh, ladies, but you can find no answer to that question. And six! Five shillings! The raw material for this masterpiece must have cost many times this sum. Five—five—no advance on five. The lady in green, Joshua. Take the lady’s address!”
The auctioneer put up her hand to her head and patted the rose-coloured ribbon into place. Inspired by the laughing appreciation of her sallies, her cheeks had flushed to the same bright shade, and with her sparkling eyes and alert, graceful movements she made a delightful and attractive figure, at which the Freshers stared in undisguised delight.
“I adore her!” whispered Darsie in her friend’s ear.
“Decent sort!” croaked Hannah the undemonstrative, and then by a common impulse their glance passed on to rest on Helen Ross’s set, supercilious face.
“I loathe her,” came the second whisper.
“Mean thing—jealousy!” croaked Hannah once more, and turned her attention to the business in hand.
After the china flower-pots had been disposed of, a trio of basket-chairs gave an impetus to the bidding, as the truth of the auctioneer’s words went home to every heart.
“‘Three luxurious basket-chairs, cushioned complete in handsome cretonne, stuffed pure wool. Condition—as new.’ Ladies, in these basket-chairs you see not only elegant articles of furniture, but a solution of the dilemma which dogs every owner of a one-comfortable-chair study. One question haunts her waking and sleeping hours; one problem embitters the most social occasions—‘Shall I be comfortable or polite?’ To this question, in this college of Newnham, there can, ladies, be but one reply—and the wretched hostess sits on the coal-box and gives her visitor the chair. After long hours of mental toil, after the physical strain of the hockey-field, a quiet hour is vouchsafed beside her own fireside, with the companionship of a beloved friend to soothe and cheer, and that hour, ladies—that precious hour—I say it with emotion almost too strong for words—that stolen hour of peace and rest must needs be passed—on the coal-box! Ladies, I need say no more. The remedy is in your own hands.”
So on, and so on. After the chairs came curtains; after the curtains, bookcases, ornaments, and books. The auction flowed on, punctuated by explosions of laughter, until the last item on the “catalogue” was reached, and the auctioneer was crimson with exhaustion.
Darsie and Hannah had amassed between them quite a stock of furnishings. A screen apiece, chairs, Oriental window-curtains in stripes of contrasting colours warm and comfortable to look upon, flower-pots, and odd pictures and ornaments. One felt a proprietor, indeed, as one looked over the spoils, and the inroads into capital had been agreeably small. Darsie was folding up her damaged “spread” when a voice spoke in her ear, and with a little jump of the heart she looked up to find Margaret France standing by her side.
“How do you do? I must thank you for your patronage. You chipped in nobly. Hope you’ll like ’em, when you’ve got ’em. Just up, aren’t you? What’s your shop?”
For a moment Darsie stared blankly, then a flash of intuition revealed the meaning of the word.
“Modern languages.”
“Good! So’m I. And your friend?”
“Mathematics.”
“Humph! Well, good luck! I’m off to bed. We shall meet on the Rialto!”
She smiled, nodded, and was gone. With a sudden realisation of their own fatigue the Freshers turned to follow her example. Helen Ross joined them on their way along the corridors, and Darsie could not resist expressing her appreciation of the auctioneer’s wit.
“She was delicious. I have enjoyed it. She is amusing and clever.”
“Think so?” said Helen coolly. “Really? Glad you were pleased. It’s usually far better than that!”
With a curt good-night she turned into her own room, and the two friends made haste to follow her example.
The banked-up fires burned warm and red; the scattered oddments had been hidden from sight in the “coffin’s” rapacious maw; photographs and knick-knacks gave a homy look to the rooms which had looked so bare and bleak twenty-four hours before. The Freshers tumbled into bed and fell happily asleep.
During the first month at Newnham Darsie and Hannah fell gradually and happily into the routine of college life. They grew to recognise their companions by name, and to place them according to their several “shops”; they entertained cocoa parties in their rooms; picked up slang terms, and talked condescendingly of “townees”; they paid up subscriptions to “Hall,” “Games,” “Flowers,” and “Fic”; slept, played, and laughed and talked, and, above all, worked, with heart and mind, and with every day that passed were more convinced that to be a student at Cambridge was the most glorious fate that any girl could desire.
A week after the beginning of term Helen Ross, the fortunate possessor of a double room, gave a tea-party, with one of the younger Dons as chaperon, to which Dan Vernon and a companion were invited. Ostensibly the party was given in Hannah’s honour, but to her astonishment and dismay Hannah’s friend was not favoured with an invitation, and felt her first real twinge of loneliness in the knowledge that two old friends were making merry together but a few yards away, while she sat solitary and alone. What she had done to incur Helen Ross’s dislike Darsie could not imagine, and, fortunately for herself, she was too large-hearted to suspect that it arose simply from an unattractive girl’s jealousy of one whom all had combined to love and admire. Be that as it may, Darsie was left out of the tea-party, and her subsequent cross-questionings of Hannah were far from comforting.
“Had a good time?”
“Top hole.”
“Nice people there?”
“Topping.”
“Good cakes?”
“Scrum!”
“Dan ask for me?”
“No.”
“Then he ought to have done!” Darsie told herself indignantly, and her thoughts flew off to Ralph Percival, wondering when she would see him next, and recalling with pleasure his promise to “see her through.”
The approach of the Freshers’ hockey match banished less important topics, for Hannah was on edge with anxiety to be at her best, and disport herself sufficiently well to be included in after-team practices, while Darsie was scarcely less eager on her behalf.
When the afternoon arrived and the match began, the second and third year girls crowded to look on, while the Captain stood apart surrounded by a few satellites from the Committee, as truly the monarch of all she surveyed as any king who ever graced a throne. The thoughts of each Fresher turned with an anguish of appeal towards this figure; a smile on her face raised them to the seventh heaven; a frown laid them in the dust! Extraordinary to think that two short years ago this oracle had been a Fresher like themselves! Inconceivable to imagine that in two years to come they themselves might occupy that same magnificent altitude!
The eyes of the Oracle fell upon Hannah and approved what she saw, and henceforth Hannah took part in team practices, and lorded it over Darsie, who in her turn affected a growing antagonism to the game.
“You can have too much of a good thing—even of games—and I seem to have eaten hockey every meal since I arrived!” she announced impatiently; and in truth, since an unwritten law forbade the discussion of “shop” at table, the conversation was largely limited to dissertations on this the most popular of games.
On Sundays the two girls went together to King’s College Chapel and gazed with admiration at the vaulted stone roof, with its marvellous fan tracery; at its towering stained-glass windows, and the screen bearing the monogram of Anne Boleyn; at the delicate carving of the stalls. It was so wonderfully different from the dreary town edifice in which they had been accustomed to worship, with its painted walls, heavy gallery, and wheezy organ played by an indifferent musician—so wonderfully, gloriously different that Darsie felt a pricking at the back of her eyes as though she were ready to cry for sheer pleasure and admiration. The music and the sermon seemed alike perfect, and Darsie ardently followed each stage of the service.
Some people are inclined to grow frivolous and forgetful when the world goes well with them and the desire of their hearts is accomplished; others are filled with a passion of gratitude and thanksgiving, and Darsie Garnett belonged to the latter
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