The Princess of the School by Angela Brazil (first color ebook reader .txt) 📕

what fear is. He once found some newly-hatched wild ducks, and they were perfectly unafraid, but when he passed the place half an hour later, the mother duck gave a call, and the little ones wouldn't let him come anywhere near them. They'd had their lesson, and learnt fear."

"I once brought up a starling that had tumbled out of a nest," said Prissie, "and it was always perfectly tame, and would let me stroke it, and would perch on my hand. I had it for years. Do you think we could have kept the whitethroats?"

"No, no!" said Carmel quickly. "I'd as soon think of caging fairies! It would be a shame to take them out of this lovely wood; it's their fairy-land. I'm so glad Sir Ranald doesn't allow boys to come in here! I thought at first it was rather selfish of him, but I begin to understand. There must be some quiet places left where the birds can be undisturbed. I'm glad to have seen these!"

Miss Walter's whistle, sounding loudly in the[84] distance, recalled them to the path. They found the school very excited over a heronry which they could see on an island in the lake. Some large untidy nests were in the trees, and every now and then a heron, with long legs outstretched behind it, would sail majestically through the air from the mainland.

"It would be a very fishy place if we could get near," remarked Miss Hardy. "All the ground underneath the nests would be strewn with bones and remains. The herons fly a tremendous long way in search of food, sometimes a radius of as much as forty miles. Look! there's one fishing in the lake over there."

"I like the whitethroats best," said Dulcie. "I shouldn't care to hold a young heron in my hand and cuddle it!"

At the lower end of the lake was a hill-side, and down the slopes Sir Ranald had caused to be planted a little forest of rhododendrons. They were in their prime, and stretched a beautiful mass of every shade from crimson to pink and lavender. On the top of the hill was a summer-house, a temple-like building with pillars and steps, and here, by arrangement, they expected the lodge-keeper's wife to supply them with boiling water for their tea. It looked an ideal place for a picnic, and they started at once to climb the steep path that led among the rhododendrons to the[85] summit. Up and up under the screen of delicate blossom, they felt as if they were treading in some tropical garden, and when they reached the summit, and the view burst upon them of crimson-clad slope, gleaming lake, and flecked blue sky, they stood gazing with much satisfaction. "The Temple," as the girls called the summer-house, was a classic building with a terrace in front, and here the school elected to sit, instead of in the rather cramped room. There was a kitchen at the back, and Mrs. Bates, the lodge-keeper's wife, had lighted a fire and boiled kettles in readiness for them.

"Sir Ranald and his friends come for lunch here sometimes in the shooting season," she explained, "so I'm used to getting tea and coffee made. Take some chairs outside if you like. You'd rather sit on the steps! Well, there's no accounting for tastes! Give me your teapots, and I'll warm them before you put the tea into them."

Sitting in a row on the steps that led from the "temple" to the terrace, the girls had a glorious view, Carmel in especial seemed particularly to enjoy herself.

"It's more like home than anything I've seen yet!" she declared enthusiastically. "I could almost fancy that this little piazza is on the slope of Etna! The goatherds ought to be playing the[86] 'Pastorale' down there! I can nearly hear them!"

"What's the 'Pastorale'?" asked Dulcie.

"It's the Sicilian National Dance. Every body dances it—sometimes by sunlight and sometimes by moonlight. Oh! it's a thing that gets into your blood! Once you hear it played on the pipes you have to jump up and dance—you simply can't help it. There's magic in it!"

"Dance it for us now on the terrace!" suggested Dulcie.

"I've no music!"

"Can't you hum it? Miss Walters, may Carmel show us a Sicilian dance?"

"By all means, if she will!" acquiesced the head-mistress.

"Go on Carmel!" commanded the girls. "Show us how it goes!"

Thus urged, Carmel rose from her seat, and went on to the terrace at the foot of the steps. She looked for a moment or two at the crimson slope of flowers and the shining lake, as if to put herself into the right mental atmosphere, then, humming a lively but haunting tune, she began her old-world southern dance.

It was wonderful dancing, every action of her alert young body was so beautifully graceful that you forgot her modern costume and could imagine her a nymph in classic draperies. Her arms kept[87] motion with her tripping feet, and both were in time with the tune that she was trilling. It seemed a spontaneous expression of gaiety as natural as the flight of a dragon-fly or the sporting of a kitten. Her dark hair flew out behind her, her eyes shone and sparkled, and her cheeks flushed with unwonted color. For the moment she looked the very incarnation of joy, and might have been Artemis surprised in a Sicilian grove. It was such a fresh aspect of Carmel that the girls stared at her in amazement. From Princess she had changed to Oread, and they did not know her in this new mood. They gave her performance a hearty clap, however, as she stopped and sank panting on to the steps.

"You'll have to turn dancing-mistress, Carmel, and give the others a lesson in your Pastorale," said Miss Walters. "It's a pretty step, and we shall ask you to do it again when we give our garden fête in aid of the 'Waifs and Strays.' Don't you think our English scenery can compare favorably even with your beloved Sicily?"

"It's very beautiful," admitted Carmel, "but I miss Etna in the distance."

"Then you won't yield us the palm?" laughed Miss Walters.

"I love it all, I do indeed, but Sicily will always be the most beautiful place in the world to me, because it's home!"

chapter vii An Old Greek Idyll

After the picnic at Bradstone, Carmel, possibly[88] from something she heard the girls say about her, seemed to make a supreme effort to overcome her homesickness, and to settle down as an ordinary and rational member of the school. She was undoubtedly a favorite. Even Lilias admitted her charm, though she had not fallen under her spell so completely as Dulcie. At the bottom of her heart, Lilias could not quite forgive Carmel for supplanting her brother at the Chase. From the night he had said good-by and motored to Balderton, not a word had been heard of Everard. He had not returned to school, neither had he visited any relations or friends, and indeed since he stepped out of the car at the railway station all trace of him seemed to have vanished. Mr. Bowden did not take the matter too seriously. He considered Everard was more of a man now than a schoolboy, and that, if he had fulfilled his threat of running away to sea, the brief experience of a voyage before the mast would do him no harm, and that when the vessel[89] returned to port he would probably be only too glad to come back and claim his share of the inheritance.

This easy view annoyed Lilias. She had a share of the Ingleton pride, and she would have liked his absence treated with more concern. She thought Mr. Bowden ought to advertise in the Agony Column of The Times, beseeching Everard to return home, but their guardian only laughed when she suggested such a course, and assured her that her brother would turn up in time when he was tired of managing for himself.

"I've been in the law for thirty years, my dear, and I know human nature better than you do," he declared indulgently.

"But you don't know Everard as I do!" protested Lilias.

She could not take Mr. Bowden's view of the case. Everard had left the Chase in such deep anger and resentment that the chances of a speedy change in his outlook seemed remote. Lilias longed to write to him, but knew of no address to which it was possible to post a letter. She worried often over his mysterious absence, and was quite angry with Dulcie for not taking the matter more keenly to heart.

"But Mr. Bowden and Cousin Clare think he's all right!" protested that easy going young damsel.

[90]"How do they know? I think you might show a little more interest in your own brother, who, after all, has been treated extremely badly. It seems to me hardly decent to circle round Carmel as you do!"

Dulcie opened her blue eyes wide.

"Do I circle round Carmel? Well, really, and why shouldn't I like her? She's my cousin, and a jolly good sort too! I believe she'll give us all a far better time at the Chase than Everard would have done. He always wanted everything just his own way. None of us ever had an innings when he was at home. I never could see why the eldest of a family should lord it so over the others."

"You never had any proper sense of propriety!" retorted Lilias indignantly. "I believe in keeping up the traditions of the Ingletons, and the estate has always descended strictly in the male line. It's only right it should have been left to Everard instead of to a girl, and I'll always say so. There!"

Dulcie shrugged her shoulders.

"Say what you like, Sister o' Mine! The twentieth century is different from the Middle Ages, and people don't bother so much nowadays as they did about descent and all that. The owner of an estate hasn't to fight for it. Oh yes, of course I'm glad I'm an Ingleton, but Carmel's[91] an Ingleton too, as much as we are, and if the Chase is hers we can't help it, and we may just as well make the best of it!"

With which piece of philosophy, Dulcie turned away, leaving Lilias to shake her head over the decay of family feeling, and the degeneracy of younger sisters.

It was perhaps Carmel's rendering of the Pastorale dance that suggested to Miss Walters a scheme of entertainment for the garden fête which the girls were to give in aid of the "Homes for Waifs and Strays." She decided that the garden of Chilcombe Hall would make an excellent background for some classic representations, and that nothing could be prettier than old Greek costumes. By a stroke of great good luck she managed to engage Miss Adams, a former pupil who had been studying classic dancing in Paris, to come for a few weeks and train the performers. Miss Adams was a tremendous enthusiast, and arrived full of ideas which she was burning to teach to the school. The girls were delighted with her methods. It was quite a new phase of dancing to trip barefooted on the lawn, holding up garlands of flowers. They liked the exercises which she gave them for the cultivation of grace, and practised classic attitudes on all occasions, with more or less success.

"You go about the school so exactly like Minerva!"[92] complained Noreen to Phillida, rather dismayed by the sudden change in her lively friend from bounding spirits to a statuesque pose. "Need you always walk as if you were thinking of the shape of your ankles?"

Phillida shook her head carefully, so as not to disarrange the Greek fillet she was wearing.

"It's been too hot lately to tear round and play tennis. I think, too, that what Miss Adams says is quite right. English girls are lacking in grace and dignity. Just look at the way Ida and Joyce are flopping about now. An artist would have fits to see them!"

"Well, of course they're not sitting for their portraits. Oh yes! I love dancing, but I don't want to worry about being graceful all day long!"

"That's just the point, though," persisted Phillida, who was a zealous convert. "The dances are to make you graceful always. You so get into the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop again!"

"Is it? Oh, Kafoozalum!" burbled Noreen, exploding into a series of chuckles. "'She never flopped again!' We ought to make a parody on that from the poem of 'The White Ship.'

"Miss Adams to the school came down,
The classic wave rolled on:
And what was cricket's latest score
To those who danced alone?
[93]
"From dawn they practised attitudes
Until the sun did wane;
And fast confirmed in Grecian pose,
They never flopped again!"

"You may mock as much as you please!" retorted Phillida, "but it's sheer envy because you know you won't be chosen as a wood nymph. Play cricket and tennis if you wish, by all means! But I think when we're having a