CHAPTER ONE
The Prisoner of Chillon
"Whereare you going, Philippa?" Mrs. Jackman asked sharply as Flip turned away from the group of tourists standing about in the cold hall of the Chateau of Chillon.
"I'm going for a walk," Flip said.
Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "I'd rather you stayed with us, Flip."
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with pleading. "Please, father!" she whispered. Then she turned and ran out of the chateau, away from the dark, prisoning stones, and out into the sunlight that was as bright and as sudden as bugles. She ran down a small path that led to Lake Geneva, and because she was blinded by sudden tears and by the sunlight striking on the lake she did not see the boy or the dog sitting on a rock at the lake's edge, and she crashed into them.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped as the boy slid off the rock and one of his legs went knee deep into the water before he was able to regain his balance. She looked at his angry, handsomeface and said quickly, this time in French, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you."
"You should watch where you're going!" the boy cried, and bent down to wring the water out of his trouser leg. The dog, a large and ferocious brindle bull, began leaping up at Flip, threatening to knock her down.
"Oh—" she gasped. "Please—please—"
"Down, Ariel. Down!" the boy commanded, and the bulldog dropped to his feet and then lay down in the path in front of Flip, his stump of a tail wagging with such frenzy that his whole body quivered.
The boy looked at Flip's navy blue coat. "I'm afraid Ariel got your coat dirty. His paws are always muddy."
"That's all right," Flip said. "If I let it dry it will brush off." She looked up at the boy standing very straight and tall, one foot on the rock. Flip was tall for fifteen ("I do hope you won't grow anytaller, Philippa dear," Mrs. Jackman kept saying,) but this boy was even taller than she was and perhaps a year older.
"I'm sorry I knocked you into the lake," Flip said.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll dry off." The boy smiled; Flip had not realized how somber his face was until he smiled. "Is anything the matter?" he asked.
Flip brushed her hand across her eyes and smiled back. "No. I was just—in a rage. I always cry when I'm mad. It's terrible!" She blew her nose furiously.
The boy laughed. "May I ask you a question?" he said. "It's to settle a kind of bet." He reached down and took hold of the bulldog's collar, forcing him to rise to his feet. "Now sit properly, Ariel," he commanded, and the dog dropped obediently to its haunches, its tongue hanging out as it pantedheavily. "And try not to drool, Ariel," the boy said. Then he smiled at Flip again. "Youarestaying at the Montreux Palace, aren't you?"
"Yes." Flip nodded. "We came in from Paris last night."
"Are you Norwegian?"
"No. I'm American."
"She was right, then," the boy said.
"Right? About what? Who?" Flip asked. She sat down on the rock at the edge of the water and Ariel inched over until he could rest his head on her knee.
"My mother. We play a game whenever we're in hotels, my parents and I. We look at all the people in the dining room and decide what nationalities they are. It's lots of fun. My mother thought you were American but my father and I thought maybe you were Norwegian, because of your hair, you know."
Flip reached up and felt her hair. It was the color of very pale corn and she wore it cut quite short, parted on the side with a bang falling over her rather high forehead. Mrs. Jackman had suggested that she have a permanent but for once Flip's father had not agreed. "She has enough wave of her own and it suits her face this way," he said, and Mrs. Jackman subsided.
"Your hair's very pretty," the boy said quickly. "And it made me wonder if you mightn't be Scandinavian. Your father's so very fair, too. But my mother said that your mother couldn't be anything but American. She said that only an American could wear clothes like that. She's very beautiful, your mother."
"She isn't my mother," Flip said. "My mother is dead."
"Oh." The boy dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Mrs. Jackman came from Paris with father and me." Flip's voice was as hard and sharp as the stone she had picked up and was holding between her fingers. "She's always being terribly kind and doing things for me and I hate her."
"Watch out that Ariel doesn't drool on your skirt," the boy said. "One of his worst faults is drooling. What's your name?"
"Philippa Hunter. What's yours?" Her voice still sounded angry.
"Paul Laurens. People—" he hesitated, "people who aren't your own parents can sometimes be—be wonderful."
"Not Mrs. Jackman," Flip said. "She makes me call her Eunice. I feel funny calling her Eunice. And when she calls my father 'darling' I hate her. She's the one I got so mad at just now." She looked up at Paul in surprise. "I've never talked about Eunice before. Not to anyone. I shouldn't have talked like that. I'm sorry."
"That's all right," Paul said. "Ariel's made your coat very dirty. I hope it will brush off. You have on a uniform, don't you?"
"Yes," Flip answered, and her voice was harsh because for the moment tears were threatening her again. "I'm being sent to a boarding school and I don't want to go. Mrs. Jackman arranged it all." She looked out across the brilliant expanse of lake, scowling unhappily, and forced the tears back.
"What do you want to do?" Paul asked.
"I want to be an artist some day, like my father. School won't help me to be an artist." She continued to stare out over the water and her eyes rested on a small lake steamer, very clean and white, passing by. "I should like to get on that boat," she said, "and just ride and ride, forever and ever."
"But the boat comes to shore and everybody has to get off at last," Paul told her.
"Why?" Flip asked. "Why?" She looked longingly after the boat for a moment and then she looked at the mountains that seemed to be climbing up into the sky. They looked like the mountains that she had often made up out of cloud formations during the long slow summers in Connecticut, only she was in Switzerland now; these were real mountains; this was real snow on their shining peaks. "Well—" she stood up, dislodging Ariel. "I'd better go back now. Mrs. Jackman will think I'm off weeping somewhere."
Paul shook her hand. His grip was firm and strong. "Ariel doesn't usually take to people the way he has to you. When Ariel doesn't like people I know I'm never going to like them either. He has very good taste. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime."
He smiled and Flip smiled back, murmuring shyly, "I hope so."
"My father and I are going to spend the winter up the mountain somewhere," Paul said. "My mother's a singer and she has to go off on a tour for all winter. They've been wandering about the chateau. They like it because that's where my father proposed to my mother." He smiled again and then his face changed and became so serious that Flip looked at him in surprise. "Idon'tlike it," he explained, "because I don't like any place that's been a prison." Then he said, trying to speak lightly, "Do you know that poem of the English poet, Byron?The Prisoner of Chillon?It's all about a man who was a prisoner in the chateau."
"Yes," Flip said. "We studied it in English last year. Ididn't like it much but I think I shall pretend that my school is a prison and I am the prisoner and at Christmas my father will rescue me."
"If he doesn't," Paul said, "I will."
"Thank you," Flip said. "Are you—do you go to school?"
The same odd strained look came into Paul's eyes that had darkened them when he mentioned prisons. "No," he said. "I'm not going to school right now."
"Well ... good-bye," Flip said.
"Good-bye." Paul shook hands with her again. She turned clumsily and patted Ariel's head; then she started back up the path towards the chateau of Chillon.
2
About half wayto the chateau she saw her father coming down the path towards her. He was alone, so she ran up to him and caught hold of his hand.
"All right now, Flippet?" Philip Hunter asked.
"Yes, father."
"It's not as though it were forever, funny face."
"I know, father. It's all right. I'm going to pretend that the school is the chateau of Chillon and I'm the prisoner, and then at Christmas you'll come and liberate me."
"I certainly will," Philip Hunter said. "Now let's go find Eunice. She's worried about you."
Eunice Jackman was waiting for them, her hands plunged into the pockets of her white linen suit. Her very black hair was pulled back from her face into a smooth doughnut at the nape of her neck. "Only a very beautiful woman shouldwear her hair like that," Philip Hunter had told Flip. Now he waved at Eunice and shouted, "Hi!"
"Hi!" Eunice called, taking one hand leisurely out of her pocket and waving back. "Feeling better, Philippa?"
"I can't feel better if I haven't been feeling badly," Flip said icily, "I just wanted to go for a walk."
Eunice laughed. She laughed a great deal but her laugh never sounded to Flip as though she thought anything was funny. "So you went for a walk. Didn't you like the chateau, Philippa?" Eunice never called her 'Flip'.
"I don't like to look at things with a lot of other people," Flip said. "I like to look at them by myself. Anyhow I like the lake better. The lake and the mountains."
Mrs. Jackman looked over at Philip Hunter and raised her eyebrows. Then she slipped her hand through his arm. Flip looked at him, too, at the short, straw-colored hair and the intense blue eyes, and her heart ached with longing and love because she was to be sent away from him.
"Wait till you get up to the school," Mrs. Jackman said. "According to my friend Mrs. Downs, there's a beautiful view of the lake from every window. You're going to adore school once you're there, Philippa."
"Necessities are necessary, but it isn't necessary to adore them," Flip said. She hated herself for sounding so surly, but when she was with Mrs. Jackman she always seemed to say the wrong thing. She stared out over the lake to the mountains of France. She wanted to go and press her burning cheeks against the cool whiteness of the snowy tips.
"Well, if you're determined to be unhappy you probably will be," Mrs. Jackman said. "Come on, Phil," and she patted Philip Hunter's arm. "It's time to drive back to the hotel andhave lunch, and then it will be time to take Philippa up to the school. Most girls would consider themselves extremely fortunate to be able to go to school in Switzerland. How on earth did you get so dirty, Philippa? You're all covered with mud. For heaven's sake brush her coat off, Phil. We don't want her arriving at the school looking like a ragamuffin."
Flip said nothing. She reached for her father's hand and they walked back to the tram that would take them along the lake to the Montreux Palace.
While they were washing up for lunch Flip said to her father, "Why did she have to come?"
"Eunice?"
"Yes. Why did she have to come?"
Philip Hunter was sitting on the edge of the bed, his sketch pad on his knee. While Flip was drying her hands he was sketching her. She was used to being sketched at any and all odd moments and paid no attention. "Father," she prodded him.
At last he looked up from the pad. "She didn't have to come. She offered to come since it was she who suggested this school, and it was most kind of her. You're very rude to Eunice, Flippet, and I don't like it."
"I'm sorry," she said, leaning against him and looking down at the dozens of little sketches on the open page of his big pad. She looked at the sketch he had just finished of her, at the quick line drawings of people in the tram, of Eunice in the tram, of sightseers in the chateau, of Eunice in the chateau, of Eunice drinking coffee in the salon of the Montreux Palace, of Eunice on the train from Paris, of Eunice sitting on a suitcase in the Gâre Saint Lazare. She handed the pad back to him and went over to her suitcase filled with all theregulation blouses and underclothes and stockings Eunice had bought for her; it was so very kind of Eunice. "I don't see why I can't stay with you," Flip said.
Philip Hunter got up from the bed and took her hands in his. "Philippa, listen to me. No, don't pull away. Stand still and listen. I should have left you in New York with your grandmother. But I listened to you and we did have a beautiful summer together in Paris, didn't we?"
"Oh, yes!"
"And now I suppose I should really send you back to New York to Gram, but I think you need to be more with young people, and it would mean that we couldn't be together at Christmas, or at Easter. So in sending you to school I'm doing the best I can to keep us together as much as possible. I'm going to be wandering around under all sort of conditions making sketches for Roger's book and you couldn't possibly come with me even if it weren't for missing a year of school. Now be sensible, Flip, please, darling, and don't make it harder for yourself and for me than it already is. Eunice is right. If you set your mind on being unhappy you will be unhappy."
"I haven't set my mind on being unhappy," Flip said. "I don't want to be unhappy."
"Everything's understood, then, Flippet?"
"I guess so."
"Come along down to the dining room, then. Eunice will be wondering what on earth's keeping us."
3
After lunch, which Flip could not eat, they took her to the station. Flip's ticket said:No. 09717 Pensionnat Abelard—Jaman—Chemin de Fer Montreux Oberland Bernois Troisieme Classe, Montreux à Jaman, valable 10 jours. Eunice was very much impressed because there were special tickets for the school.
The train went up the mountain like a snake. The mountain was so steep that the train climbed in a continuous series of hairpin bends, stopping frequently at the small villages that clustered up the mountain side. Flip sat next to the window and stared out with a set face. Sometimes they could see the old grey stones of a village church, or a glimpse of a square with a fountain in the centre. They passed new and ugly stucco villas occasionally, but mostly old brown chalets with flowers in the windows. Sometimes in the fields by the chalets there would be cows, though most of the cows were grazing further up the mountain. The fields and roadsides were full of autumn flowers and everything was still a rich summer green. At one stop there was a family of children, all in blue denim shorts and white shirts, three girls and two boys, waiting for the pleasant looking woman in a tweed suit who stepped off the train. All the children rushed at her, shouting, "Mother! Mother!"
"Americans," Eunice said. "There's quite a considerable English and American colony here, I believe."
Flip stared longingly out the window as the children and their mother went running and laughing up the hill. Shethought perhaps Paul and his mother were happy in the same way. She felt her father's hand on her knee and she said quickly, "Write me lots, father. Lots and lots and lots."
"Lots and lots and lots," he promised as the train started again. "And the time will pass quickly, you'll see. There's an art studio where you can draw and paint. You'll be learning all the time."
Eunice lit a cigarette although there was a sign sayingNO SMOKINGin French, Italian, and German. All the notices were in French, Italian, and German.DO NOT SPIT. DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW. DO NOT PUT BAGS OUT THE WINDOW."The next stop's Jaman," Eunice said.
Something turned over in Flip's stomach. I should be ashamed, she thought. I should be ashamed to be so scared.
But she was scared. She had never been separated, even for a night, from her entire family. During the war when her father had been in Europe, her mother was still alive; and then in the dark days after her mother's death Gram had come to live with them; and afterwards, whenever her father had to go away for a few days without her, at least Gram had been there. Now she would be completely on her own. She remembered her mother shaking her once, and laughing at her, and saying, "Darling, darling, you must learn to be more independent, to stand on your own feet. You mustnotcling so to father and me. Suppose something should happen to us? What would you do?" That thought was so preposterously horrible that Flip could not face it. She had flung her arms about her mother and hidden her head.
Now she could not press her face under her mother's arm and escape from the world. Now she was older, much older, almost an adult, and she had to stand on her own feet andnot be afraid of other girls. She had always been afraid of other girls. In the day school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. During recess she sat in a corner and drank her chocolate milk through a straw and read a book, and whenever they had to choose partners for anything she was always paired off with Betty Buck, the other unpopular girl. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they had gym in the afternoon, whenever they chose teams Flip was always the last one chosen; Betty Buck could run fast so she was always chosen early. Flip couldn't run fast. She had a stiff knee from the bad time when her knee cap had been broken, so it wasn't entirely her fault, but that didn't make it any easier.
However, in New York, Flip didn't mind too much about school. She usually finished her homework in her free period so when she got home the rest of the day was hers. If her father was painting in his studio she would sit and watch him, munching one of the apples he always kept in a big bowl on the table with his jars of brushes. Sometimes she cleaned his brushes for him and put them back carefully in the right jars, the blue ginger jar, the huge green pickle jar, the two brass vases he had brought from China. Flip loved to watch him paint. He painted all sorts of things. He painted a great many children's portraits. He had painted literally dozens of portraits of Flip and one of them was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and people had bought some of the others. It always seemed strange to Flip that people should want a picture of someone else's child in their homes.
Sometimes Philip Hunter did illustrations for children's books and Flip had all of these books in her bookshelves; itseemed that she could never outgrow them. They were in the place of honor and whenever she was sick in bed or unhappy she would take them out and look at them. The book he was doing illustrations for now was one which he said was going to be very beautiful and important, and it was a history of lost children all through the ages. There would be pictures of the lost children in the children's crusade and the lost children in the southern states after the civil war and in Russia after the revolution, and now he was going to travel all around drawing pictures of lost children all over Europe and Asia and he told Flip that he hoped maybe the book would help people to realize that all these children had to be found and taken care of.
When Flip thought about all the lost children she felt a deep shame inside herself for her anger and resentment against Eunice and for the hollow feeling inside her stomach now as the train crawled higher and higher up the mountain. She was not a lost child. She would have a place to eat and sleep and keep warm all winter, and at Christmas time she would be with her father again.
Now the train was slowing down. Eunice stood up and brushed imaginary specks off her immaculate white skirt. Philip Hunter took Flip's suitcase off the rack. "This is it, Flippet," he said.
An old black taxi took them further up the mountain to the school. The school had once been a big resort hotel and it was an imposing building with innumerable red roofed turrets flying small flags; and iron balconies were under every window. The taxi driver took Flip's bag and led them into a huge lounge with a marble floor and stained glass in the windows. There should have been potted palms by the marblepillars, but there weren't. Girls of all ages and sizes were running about, reading notices on the big bulletin board, carrying suitcases, tennis rackets, ice skates, hockey sticks, skis, cricket bats, lacrosse sticks, arms full of books. A wide marble staircase curved down into the centre of the hall. To one side of it was a big cage-like elevator with a sign,FACULTY ONLY, in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. At the other side of the staircase was what had once been the concierge's desk with innumerable cubby holes for mail behind it. A woman with very dark hair and bushy eyebrows sat at it now, and she looked over at Eunice and Flip and Philip Hunter inquiringly. They crossed the hall to the desk.
"This is Philippa Hunter, one of the new girls," Eunice said, pushing Flip forward. "I am Mrs. Jackman and this is Mr. Hunter."
The black haired woman behind the desk nodded and reached for a big notebook. Flip noticed that she had quite a dark moustache on her upper lip. "How do you do? I am Miss Tulip, the matron," she said as she began leafing through the ledger. "Hartung, Havre, Hesse, Hunter. Ah, yes, Phillipa Hunter, number 97, room 33." She looked up from the book and her black eyes searched the girls milling about in the big hall. "Erna Weber," she called.
A girl about Flip's age detached herself from a cluster and came over to the desk. "Yes, Miss Tulip?"
"This is Philippa Hunter," Miss Tulip said. "She is in your dormitory. Take her upstairs with you and show her where to put her things. She is number 97."
"Yes, Miss Tulip." Erna reached down for Flip's suitcase and a lock of fair hair escaped from her barette and fell overone eye. She pushed it back impatiently. "Come on," she told Flip.
Flip looked despairingly at her father but all he did was to grin encouragingly. She followed Erna reluctantly.
At the head of the stairs Erna set down the suitcase and undid her barette, yanking her short hair back tightly from her face. "Sprechen sie deutsch?" she asked Flip.
Flip knew just enough German to answer, "Nein."
"Parlez vous Français?" Erna asked, picking up the suitcase again.
To this Flip was able to answer "Oui."
"Well, that's something at any rate," Erna told her in French, climbing another flight of marble stairs. "After Prayers tonight we aren't supposed to speak anything but French. Some of the girls don't speak any French when they first come and I can tell you they have an awful time. I ought to know because I didn't speak any French when I came last year. What did Tulip say your name was?"
"Philippa Hunter."
"What are you? English?"
"No. American."
Erna turned down a corridor, pushed open a white door marked 33, and set the suitcase inside. Flip looked around a sunny room with flowered wall-paper and four brass beds. Four white bureaus beside the beds and four white chairs at the feet completed the furnishings. Wide French windows opened onto a balcony from which Flip could see the promised view of the lake and the mountains. Each chair had a number painted on it in small blue letters. Erna picked up the suitcase again and dumped it down on the chair marked 97.
"That's you," she said. "You'd better remember your number.We do everything by numbers. That was Miss Tulip at the desk; she's the matron and she lives on this floor. We call her Black and Midnight. She's a regular old devil about giving Order Marks. If one corner of the bed isn't tucked in just so or if you don't straighten it the minute you get off it or if a shirt is even crooked in a drawer old Black and Midnight gives you an Order Mark. So watch out for her. Have you got any skis?"
Flip nodded. "They were sent on with my trunk."
"Oh. They'll be in the Ski Room, then. Rack 97. Your hook in the Cloak Room will be 97, too." Erna pulled open one of the drawers in Flip's bureau. "I see you sent your trunk in time. Black and Midnight's unpacked for you."
"That was nice of her," Flip said.
"Nice? Don't be a child. They unpack for us to make sure there isn't any candy or money or food in the trunks, or books we aren't supposed to read, or lipstick or cigarettes. Have you got anything to eat in your suitcase?"
Flip shook her whirling head.
"Oh, well, you'll learn," Erna said. "Come on. I'll find your cubicle in the bathroom for you and we'll see what your bath nights are. Then I'll take you back down to Miss Tulip. I suppose you want to say good-bye to your mother and father."
Flip started to explain that Eunice wasn't her mother, but Erna was already dragging her down the hall. "Himmel, you're slow," Erna said. "Hurry up."
Flip tried to stumble along faster with her long legs. Her legs were very long and straight and skinny, but sometimes it seemed as though she must be bow-legged, knock-kneed and pigeon-toed all at once, the way she always managed to stumble and trip herself up.
Erna pushed open a heavy door. Down one side of the wall were rows and rows of small cubicles, each marked with a number. Each had a shelf for toothbrush, mug, and soap, and hooks underneath for towels. On the opposite wall were twelve cubicles each with a wash basin, and a curtain to afford a measure of privacy. "The johns are next door," Erna said. "Here's the bath list. Let's see. You're eight forty five Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. That's my time, too. We can bang on the partition. Once Black and Midnight found a girl crawling under the partition and she was expelled."
Erna's French was fluent, with just a trace of German in it. Flip had learned to speak excellent French that summer in Paris so she had no difficulty in following it, though she, herself, had nothing to say. But Erna seemed to be perfectly happy dominating the conversation.
"Come on," Erna said. "I'll take you downstairs, and you can say good-bye to your parents. I want to see if Jackie's come in from Paris yet. She's one of our roommates. This is her third year here."
"Jackie what?" Flip asked, for something to say.
"Jacqueline Bernstein. Her father directs movies. Last year he came over to see Jackie and he brought a movie projector with him and we all had movies in Assembly Hall. It was wonderful."
They had reached the big entry hall now and Flip looked around but could not see either her father or Eunice, and at this point even Eunice would have been a welcome face. Erna led her up to the concierge's desk where Miss Tulip still presided.
"Well, Erna, what is it now?" the matron asked.
"Please, Miss Tulip," Erna said, her hands clasped meeklyin front of her. "You said I was to show this new girl our room and everything, so I did."
Miss Tulip looked at Erna, then at Flip, then at her note book. "Oh, yes. Philippa Hunter, number 97. Please take her to Mlle. Dragonet, Erna. Her father is waiting there for her."
"Come on," Erna told Flip impatiently.
Mlle. Dragonet's rooms were at the end of the long corridor on the second floor and were shut off from the rest of the school by heavy sliding doors. These were open now and Erna pulled Flip into a small hall with two doors on each side. She pointed a solemn finger at the first door on the right. "This is the Dragon's study," she said. "Look out any time you're sent there. It means you're in for it." Then she pointed to the second door. "This one's her living room and that's not so bad. If you're sent to the living room you're not going to get a lecture, anyhow, though the less I see of the Dragon the happier I am."
"Is she?" Flip asked.
"Is she what?"
"A dragon."
"Old Dragonet? Oh, she's all right. Kind of standoffish. Doesn't fraternize much, if you know what I mean. But she's all right. Well, I've got to leave you now, but I'll see you later. You just knock."
And Flip was left standing in the empty corridor in front of the Dragon's door. She gave a final despairing glance at Erna's blue skirt disappearing around the curve of the stairs. Then she lifted her hand to knock because if her father was in there she didn't know how else to get to him. Besides, she didn't know what else to do. Erna had deserted her, and shewould never have the courage to go back to the big crowded lounge or to try to find her room again, all alone. She tapped very gently, so gently that there was no response. She hugged herself in lonely misery.—Oh, please, she thought,—please, God, make me not be such a coward. It's awful to be such a coward. Mother always laughed at me and scolded me because I was such a coward. Please give me some gumption, quick, God, please.
Then she raised her hand and knocked. Mlle. Dragonet's voice called, "Come in."
4
The restof the day had the strange turbulent, uncontrolled quality of a dream. She said good-bye to her father and Eunice in Mlle. Dragonet's office, and then she was swept along in a stream of girls through registration, signing for courses, dinner, prayers, a meeting of the new girls in the common room ... she thought that now she knew what the most unimportant little fish in a school of fishes must feel like caught in the current of a wild river. She sat that night, on her bed, her long legs looking longer than ever in peppermint candy striped pajamas, and watched her roommates. On the bureau beside the bed she had the package her father had left her as a going away present: sketching pads of various sizes, and a box of Eberhard Faber drawing pencils. There was also a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from Eunice which she had pushed aside.
"You'll have to take those downstairs tomorrow morning," Erna told her. "We aren't allowed things like that in ourrooms. You can put it in your locker in the Common Room or on your shelf in the Class Room. They'll be marked with your number."
Flip felt that if she heard anything else about her number she would scream. She was accustomed to being a person, not a number; and she didn't feel like number 97 at all. But she just said, "Oh."
Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she laughed a great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out of her at the slightest excuse like a small fountain. She was a very pretty girl with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held back from her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform; and she had big black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out into far more rounded and mature lines than Flip's. "Remember when old Black and Midnight caught me using cold cream last winter?" she asked Erna. "She'll let you use all kinds of guk like mentholatum on your face to keep from getting chapped, but not cold cream because it's make-up."
Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own sand-colored hair, and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and her body as long and skinny as a string bean.—That's just it, she thought.—I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks like somebody who's going to be a movie star and Erna looks like somebody who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.
She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would grow up to be a beauty; but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted it.
The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate,came in. She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna had somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria's parents were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school with four brand new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of everything, even toothbrushes. "Esmée Bodet says Gloria'snouveau riche," Erna added. "Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in Canada or someplace sent her the clothes because she didn't have the coupons."
"Esmée always finds out everything about everybody," Jackie had said. "I don't know how she does it. She's an awful snoop."
Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started combing out her tangles.
"Use a brush," Erna suggested.
"Oh, I never use a brush, ducky," Gloria said. "It's bad for a permanent."
Jackie laughed. "That's silly."
"Your hair's natural, isn't it?" Gloria asked.
"But yes."
"Have you ever had a permanent?"
"No."
"Then don't say its silly. If you brush a permanent all the wave comes out."
Jackie laughed again and got into bed. "Well, at least you speak French," she said. "At least we won't have to go throughthatstruggle with you."
"Oh, I went to a French school in Vevey before the war." Gloria gave up on her tangles. "This is my fifth boarding school. I started when I was six."
"How are you at hockey?" Erna asked.
Gloria shrugged and said, "Oh, not too bad," in a way that made Flip know she was probably very good indeed.
"How about you, Philippa?" Erna asked.
Flip admitted, "I'm not very good. I fall over my feet."
"How about skiing?"
Gloria pulled a nightgown made of pink satin and ecru lace over her head. "I just dote on skiing. We spent last Christmas hols at St. Moritz."
"I've never skied," Flip said, "but everybody says I'm going to love it."
Erna looked at Gloria's nightgown. "If you think Black and Midnight's going to let you wear that creation you're crazy."
Jackie looked at it longingly. "It's divine. It's absolutely divine."
Gloria giggled. "Oh, I know they won't let me wear it. I just thought I'd wait till they made me take it off. Emile gave it to me for a going away present."
"Who's Emile?" Erna asked.
"My mother's fiancé. He's a Count."
"A Count—pfft!" Jackie laughed.
"He is, too. And he has lots of money, which most Counts don't, nowadays."
"Your mother'swhat?" Erna asked.
"Her fiancé. You know. The man she's going to marry. Emile is a card. And he gives me wonderful presents. And then Daddy gives me presents so I won't like Emile better than I do him. It really works out very well. I'm just crazy about Emile. Daddy likes him, too."
"Yourfather!" Jackie squeaked.
"Oh, yes. Mummy and Daddy are still great friends.Mummy says it's the way civilized people behave. She and Daddy both hate scenes. Me, too."
"But don't you just feel awful about it?" Erna asked.
"Awful? Why? I don't expect it'll make much difference to me. I'll spend the summer hols with Mummy one year and with Daddy the next, and as soon as I'm out of school I expect I'll get married myself unless I decide to have a career. I might get Emile to give me a dress shop in London or Paris. I expect he would and I adore being around pretty frocks and things. Isn't it a bore we have to wear beastly old uniforms here? We didn't have uniforms at my last school but there were vile ones the school before."
A bell rang, blaring so loudly that Flip almost fell off the bed. She didn't think she'd ever be able to hear that bell without jumping. It rang for all the classes, Erna had told her, and in the evenings it rang at half hour intervals, announcing the times at which the different age-groups were to put out their lights. For meals one of the maids got in the elevator with a big gong and rode up and down, up and down, beating the gong. Flip liked the gong; it had a beautiful, resonant tone and long after the maid had stopped beating it and left the elevator, you could hear the waves of rich sound still throbbing through the building, and with closed eyes you could almost pretend it was a jungle instead of a school.
"That's our bell," Erna said. "Black and Midnight comes in to put out the light. That's one trouble with being on this floor. She gets to us so soon."
As she finished speaking the door was opened abruptly and Miss Tulip stood looking in at them. She had changed to her white matron's uniform. "Everybody ready?" she asked.
Erna and Jackie chorussed, "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."
Then Miss Tulip spotted Gloria's nightgown. "Really!" she exclaimed. "Gloria Browne, isn't it?"
Gloria echoed Erna and Jackie. "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."
"That nightgown is most unsuitable," Miss Tulip said disapprovingly. "I trust you have something else more appropriate."
"That depends on what you call appropriate, please, Miss Tulip," Gloria said.
"I will go over your things tomorrow. Report to me after breakfast."
"Yes, Miss Tulip," Gloria said meekly, and winked at Erna.
"Good night, girls. Remember, no talking." And Miss Tulip switched out the light.
Flip lay there in the dark. As her eyes became accustomed to the night she noticed that the lights from the terrace below shone up through the iron railing of the balcony and lay in a delicate pattern on the ceiling. She raised herself on one elbow and she could see out of the window. All down the mountainside to the lake the lights of the villages lay like fallen stars. As she watched, one would flicker out here, another there. Through the open window she could hear the chime of a village church, and then, almost like an echo, the bell from another church and then another. She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears. Now she saw the lights of the train as it crawled up the mountain, looking like a little luminous dragon. And on the lake was a tiny band of lights from one of the lake boats.
—Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! she thought. Then she began to long for her father to show the beauty to. She couldn't contain so much beauty just in herself. It had to be shared, and she couldn't whisper to the girls in her room to come and look. She couldn't cry, "Oh, Erna, Jackie, Gloria, come look!" Erna and Jackie must know how beautiful it was, and somehow Flip thought that Gloria would think looking at views was stupid.—Father, she thought.—Oh, Father. What's the matter with me. What is it?
Then she realized. Of course. She was homesick. Every bone in her ached with homesickness as though she were getting 'flu. Only she wasn't homesick for a place, but for a person, for her father. How many months, how many weeks, how many days, hours, minutes, seconds, till Christmas?
5
She satin the warm tub on her first bath night and longing for her father overflowed her again and she wept. Miss Tulip entered briskly without knocking.
"Homesick, Philippa?" she asked cheerfully. "I expect you are. We all are at first. But you'll get over it. We all do. But you mustn't cry, you know! It doesn't help. Not a bit. Sportsmanship, remember."
Flip nodded and watched the water as it lapped about her thin knees.
"Almost through?"
"Yes."
"Yes, Miss Tulip," the matron corrected her.
"Yes, Miss Tulip," Flip echoed obediently.
"Well, hurry up, then. Its almost time for the next girl. Mustn't get a Tardy Mark by taking more than your fifteen minutes."
"I'll hurry," Flip said.
"Washed behind your ears?"
"Yes." Flip was outraged that Miss Tulip should ask her such a baby's question. But Miss Tulip with another brisk nod bounced out as cheerfully as she had entered. Flip stepped out of the tub and started to dry herself.
6
They weresupposed to start hockey but it rained and Flip's class had relay races in the big gym at the other end of the playing fields from the school. The gym had once been the hotel garage but now it was full of bars and rings and leather horses and an indoor basket ball court where the class above Flip's was playing. Erna and a Norwegian girl, Solvei Krogstad, were captains. Erna chose Jackie, then dutifully chose Gloria and Flip. It was to be a simple relay race. The girls were to run with a small stick to the foot of the gym and back, putting the stick into the hand of the next girl. Flip was fifth in line, following Gloria.
Gloria ran like a streak of lightning. Sally Buckman, the girl behind Flip, was jumping up and down, shrieking, "Keep it up, Glory! Oh, Glory, swell!" She looked like a very excited pug dog.
Gloria snapped the stick smartly into Flip's fingers but Flip fumbled and dropped it. Sally groaned. Flip picked up the stick and started to run. She ran as fast as she could. But herknee seemed stiffer than it ever had before and her legs were so long that she had no control of them and her feet kept getting in their own way. She heard the girls screaming, "Run, Philippa,run, can't you!" Now she had reached the end of the gym and she turned around and started the long way back to Sally Buckman. The girls were jumping up and down in agony and their shouts were angry and despairing. "Oh, Philippa! Oh, Philippa,run!"
Panting, her throat dry and aching, she thrust the stick into Sally's hand, and limped to the back of the line.
After gym she locked herself in the bathroom and read again the letter from her father which had come in the morning's mail. It was a gay, funny letter, full of little sketches. She answered it during study hall, hoping that the teacher in charge would not notice. She drew him a funny picture of Miss Tulip, and little sketches of her roommates and some of the other girls. She told him that the food wasn't very good. Too many boiled potatoes. And the bread was doughy and you could almost use it for modelling clay. But maybe it would help her get fat. She did not tell him that she was homesick and miserable. She could not make him unhappy by letting him know what a terrible coward she was. She looked around at the other girls in the study hall, Sally chewing her pencil, Esmée twisting a strand of hair around and around her finger, Gloria muttering Latin verbs under her breath.
Gloria had whispered to her that the teacher taking Study Hall was the Art teacher. Her name was Madame Perceval, and she was Mlle. Dragonet's niece. The girls called her Percy, and although she had a reputation for being strict, she was very popular. Flip stared at her surreptitiously, hopingthat she wouldn't be as dull and unsympathetic as the art teacher in her school in New York. She had finished her lessons early and now that she had written her letter to her father she did not know what to do. She thought that Madame Perceval looked younger and somehow more alive than the other teachers. "I wonder where her husband is?" Gloria had whispered. "Jackie says nobody knows, not even Esmée. She says everybody thinks there's some sort of mystery about Percy. I say, isn't it glamorous! I can't wait for the first Art lesson."
Madame Perceval had thick brown hair, the color of well-polished mahogany. It was curly and quite short and brushed back carelessly from her face. Her skin was burnished, as though she spent a great deal of time out of doors, and her eyes were grey with golden specks. Flip noticed that Study Hall tonight was much quieter than it had been the other nights with other teachers in charge.
She reached for a pencil to make a sketch of Madame Perceval to put in the letter to her father, and knocked her history book off the corner of her desk. It fell with a bang and she felt everybody's eyes on her. She bent down to pick it up. When she put it back on her desk she looked at Madame Perceval, but the teacher was writing quietly in a note book. Flip sighed and looked around. There was no clock in Study Hall and she wondered how much longer before the bell. Erna, sitting next to her at the desk by the window was evidently wondering the same thing, because Flip felt a nudge: she looked over, then quickly took the rolled up note Erna was handing to her. She read it. "How many more dreary minutes?"
Flip reached across the aisle and nudged Solvei Krogstad,who had a watch. Solvei took the note, looked at her watch, scribbled "ten" on the note, and was about to pass it back to Flip when Madame Perceval's voice came clear and commanding.
"Bring that note to me, please, Solvei." Flip was very thankful that she wasn't the one who had been caught.
Solvei rose and walked up the aisle to the platform on which the teachers desk stood. She handed the note to Madame Perceval and waited. Madame Perceval looked at the note, then at her own watch.
"Your watch is fast, Solvei," she said with a twinkle. "There are fifteen more dreary minutes, not ten."
Very seriously Solvei set her watch while everybody in the room laughed.
After Study Hall while they were all gathered in the Common Room during the short period of free time before the bell that sent them up to bed, Gloria said to Flip, "I say, that was decent of Percy, wasn't it?"
Flip nodded.
"Imagine Percy being the Dragon's niece!" Then Gloria yawned. "I say, Philippa, have you any brothers or sisters?"
Flip shook her head.
"Neither have I. Mummy and Daddy didn't really want me, but I popped up. Accidents will happen, you know. They said they were really glad, and I'm not much trouble after all, always off at school and things. In a way I'm rather glad they didn't want me, because it relieves me of responsibility, doesn't it? I always have enough responsibility at school without getting involved in it at home."
Erna and Jackie wandered over. "Hallo, what are you two talking about?"
"Oh—you," Gloria said.
Erna grinned. "What were you saying?"
"Oh—just how lucky we were to get you two as roommates."
Erna and Jackie looked pleased, while Flip stared at Gloria in amazement.
"Are you ever called Phil, Philippa?" Erna asked suddenly.
Flip shook her head. "At home I'm called Flip."
Jackie laughed and Erna said, "Flip, huh? I never heard of anyone being called a name like Flip before."
Gloria began to giggle. "I know what! We can call her Pill!"
Jackie and Erna shouted with laughter. "Pill! Pill!" they cried with joy.
Flip did not say anything. She knew that the thing to do was to laugh, too, but instead she was afraid she might burst into tears.
"Let's play Ping Pong before the bell rings," Jackie suggested.
"Coming, Pill?" Gloria cried.
Flip shook her head. "No, thank you."
She wandered over to one of the long windows and stepped out onto the balcony. The wind was cool and comforting to her hot cheeks. The sky was full of stars and she looked up at them and tried to feel their cold clear light on her upturned face. Across the lake the mountains of France loomed darkly, suddenly breaking into brightness as the starlight fell on their snowy tips. Flip tried to imagine what it would be like when the entire mountains and all the valley were covered with snow.
From the room behind her she could hear all the various evening noises, the sound of the victrola playing popular records, the click, click, click of the Ping Pong ball Erna, Jackie, and Gloria were sending over the net, and the excited buzz of general conversation. Although the girls were supposed to speak French at all times, this final period of freedom was not supervised, and Flip heard snatches of various languages, and of the truly international language the girls had developed, a pot-pourri of all their tongues.
"Ach," she heard someone saying, "I left mein ceinture dans le shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin!"
She sat down on the cold stone floor of the balcony and leaned her face against the black iron rail. The rail felt cold and rough to her cheek. She looked down to the path below where Miss Tulip in her white uniform was walking briskly between the plane trees. Flip sat very still, fearful lest the matron look up and see her.
The bell rang. Out here on the balcony it did not sound so loud. She heard the girls in her class putting books, records, note paper, into their lockers and slamming the doors, and she knew that she would have to come in and follow them upstairs. But not yet. Not quite yet. It would take them a little while to get everything put away. She heard someone else walking along the path below and looked down and recognized Madame Perceval. Madame Perceval stopped just below Flip's balcony and leaned against one of the plane trees. She stood there very quietly, looking down over the lake.
She thinks it's beautiful, too, Flip thought, and suddenly felt happier. She scrambled to her feet and went back intothe Common Room just as Gloria and a group of girls were leaving. They saw her.
"Oh, here comes Pill!" Gloria shouted.
"Hello, Pill!" they all cried.
The brief happiness faded from Flip's eyes.
7
Almost themost difficult thing, Flip found, was never being alone. From the moment she woke up in the morning until she fell asleep at night, she was surrounded by girls. She was constantly with them but she never felt that she was of them. She tried to talk and laugh, to be like them, to join in their endless conversations about boys and holidays, and clothes and boys, and growing up and again boys, but always it seemed that she grew clumsier than ever and the wrong words tumbled out of her mouth. She felt like the ugly sister in the fairy tale she had loved when she was younger, the sister whose words turned into hideous toads; and all the other girls were like the beautiful sister whose words became pieces of gold. And she would stand on the hockey field when they chose teams, looking down at her toe scrounging into the grass and pretend that she didn't care when the team which had the bad luck to get her let out a groan, or the gym teacher, Fräulein Hauser, snapped. "Philippa Hunter! How can you be so clumsy!" And Miss Tulip glossed over Jackie's untidy drawers and chided Flip because her comb and brush were out of line. And Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, cried. "Really, Philippa, can't you enter the classroom without knocking over a chair?" And when she fell and skinnedher knees Miss Tulip was angry with her for tearing her stockings and even seemed to grudge the iodine which she put on Flip's gory wounds.
—If only I knew a lot of boys and could talk about them, she thought,—or if I was good at sports.
But she had never really known any boys and sports were a nightmare to her.
So in the Common Room she stood awkwardly about and tried to pretend she liked the loud jazz records Esmée played constantly on the phonograph. Usually she ended out on the balcony where she could at least see the mountains and the lake, but soon it became too cold out on the balcony in the dark windy night air and she was forced to look for another refuge. If she went to the empty classroom someone always came in to get something from a desk or the cupboard. They were not allowed to be in their rooms except at bed time or when they were changing for dinner or during the Sunday afternoon quiet period. She was lonely, but never alone, and she felt that in order to preserve any sense of her own identity, to continue to believe in the importance of Philippa Hunter, human being, she must find, for at least a few minutes a day, the peace of solitude. At last, when she knew ultimately and forever how the caged animals constantly stared at in the zoo must feel, she discovered the chapel.
The chapel was in the basement of the school, with the ski room, the coat rooms and the trunk rooms. It was a bare place with rough white walls and rows of folding chairs, a harmonium, and a small altar on a raised platform at one end. Every evening after dinner the girls marched from the dining room down the stairs to the basement and into the chapel where one of the teachers read the evening service. UsuallyFlip simply sat with the others, not listening, not hearing anything but the subdued rustlings and whisperings about her. But one evening Madame Perceval took the service, reading in her sensitive contralto voice, and Flip found herself for the first time listening to the beauty of the words: "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with the harp, and the voice of a psalm ... let the hills be joyful together." And Flip could feel all about her in the night the mountains reaching gladly towards the sky; and the sound of the wind on the white peaks must be their song of praise. The others, too, as always when Madame Perceval was in charge, were quieter, not more subdued but suddenly more real; when Flip looked at them they seemed more like fellow creatures and less like alien beings to fear and hate.
After chapel that evening, when they were back in the Common Room, Flip pretended that she had left her handkerchief and slipped downstairs again to the cold basement. She was afraid of the dark but she walked slowly down the cold corridor, lit only by a dim bulb at the far end, blundering into the trunk room, filled with the huge and terrifying shapes of trunks and suitcases, before she opened the door to the chapel.
Down one wall of the chapel were windows, and through these moonlight fell, somehow changing and distorting the rows of chairs, the altar, the reading stand. Flip drew in her breath in alarm as she looked at the organ and saw someone seated at it, crouched over the keys. But it was neither a murderer lying in wait for her nor a ghost, but a shadow cast by the moon. She slipped in and sat down on one of the chairs and she was trembling, but after a while her heartbegan beating normally and the room looked familiar again.
She remembered when she was a small girl, before her mother died, she had had an Irish nurse who often took her into the church just around the corner from their apartment. It was a small church, full of reds and blues and golds and the smell of incense. Once her nurse had taken her to a service and Flip had been wildly elated by it, by the singing of the choir boys, the chanting of the priest, the ringing of the bells; all had conspired to give her a sense of soaring happiness. It was the same kind of happiness that she felt when she saw the moonlight on the mountain peaks, or the whole Rhône valley below her covered with clouds and she could lean out over the balcony and be surrounded by cloud, lost in cloud, with only a branch of elm appearing with shy abruptness as the mist was torn apart.
Here in the non-denominational chapel at school she felt no sense of joy; there was no overwhelming beauty here between these stark walls; but gradually she began to relax. There was no sound but the wind in the trees; she could almost forget the life of the school going on above her. She did not try to pray but she let the quiet sink into her, and when at last she rose she felt more complete; she felt that she could go upstairs and remain Philippa Hunter who was going to be an artist; and she would not be ashamed to be Philippa Hunter, no matter what the girls in her class thought of her.
At last she rose and started out of the chapel, bumping into a row of chairs with a tremendous clatter. The noise shattered her peace and she stopped stock still, her heart beating violently; but when nothing else happened, when no one came running to see who had desecrated the chapel, she walked swiftly out on tiptoe. She opened the door and cameface to face in the corridor with Miss Tulip in her stiff white matron's uniform.
"Well! Philippa Hunter!"
Flip felt as though she had been caught in some hideous crime. She looked wildly around.
"Where have you been?" Miss Tulip asked.
"In the chapel—" she whispered.
"Why?" Miss Tulip snapped on her pince nez and looked at Flip as though she were some strange animal.
Flip could not raise her voice from a stifled whisper. "I wanted to—to be alone."
Miss Tulip looked at Flip more curiously than ever. "That's very nice, I'm sure, Philippa dear, but you must remember that there is a time and place for everything. You are not allowed in the chapel except during services."
"I'm sorry," Flip whispered. "I didn't know." She looked away from Miss Tulip's frizzy dark hair and down at her feet. It seemed that she had seen more of feet since she had been at school than the rest of her life put together.
"We won't say anything about it this time." Miss Tulip looked at Flip's bowed head. "Your part's not quite straight, Philippa. It slants. See that you get it right tomorrow."
"Yes, Miss Tulip."
"Now run along and join the other girls. It's nearly time for lights out."
"Yes, Miss Tulip." Flip fled from the matron and the musty dampness of the corridor.
But she knew that she would go back to the chapel.
8
The followingday Art was the last class of the morning. Madame Perceval had said to the new girls, "I want you to paint me a picture. Just anything you feel like. Then I will know more what each one of you can do."
Flip was painting a picture of the way she thought it must look up on the very top of the snow-tipped mountains, all blues and lavenders and strange misshapen shadows. And there was a group of ice-children in her picture, cold and wild and beautiful. During the first Art Class they had just drawn with pencil. Now they were using water color.
Madame Perceval came over and looked at Flip's picture. She stood behind Flip, one strong hand resting lightly on her shoulder, and looked. She looked for much longer than she had looked at anyone else's picture. Flip waited, dipping her brush slowly in and out of her cup of water. Finally Madame said, "Go on and let's see what you're going to do with it." She didn't offer suggestions or corrections as she had with most of the others, and as she moved on to the next girl she pressed Flip's shoulder in a friendly fashion.
The Art Studio was on the top floor of the building. It was a long, white room with a skylight. There were several white plaster Greek heads, a white plaster hand, a foot, and a skull, and in one corner a complete skeleton which was used only by the senior girls in Advanced Art. The room smelled something like Flip's father's studio and the minute Flip stepped into it she loved it and she knew that Madame Perceval was a teacher from whom she could learn. Shechewed the end of her brush and thought fiercely about her painting and her ice-children and then twirled her brush carefully over the cake of purple paint. Now she had completely forgotten the school and being laughed at and her incompetence on the playing fields and being screamed at and left out and pushed away. She was living with her ice-children in the cold and beautiful snow on top of the mountain, as silver and distant as the mountains of the moon.
She did not hear the bell and it was a shock when Madame Perceval laughed and said, "All right, Philippa. That's enough for this time," and she saw that the others had put their paints away and were hurrying towards the door.
There was almost fifteen minutes before lunch and Flip knew that she could not go to the Class Room or the Common Room without losing the happiness that the art lesson had given her and she wanted to go some place quiet where she could read again the letter from her father that had come that morning. She thought of the chapel and she thought of Miss Tulip. It's Miss Tulip or God, she said to herself, and went to the chapel.
In the daylight there were no moving shadows; everything was as white and clean as the snow on the mountain peaks. Flip sat down and read her letter, warmed by its warmth. She was once again Philippa Hunter, a person of some importance if only because she was important to her father and he had taught her to believe that every human being was a person of importance. After she had finished the letter for the third time she put it back in her blazer pocket and sat there quietly, thinking about the picture she had been painting that morning, planning new pictures, until the bell rang. Then she hurried up the stairs and got in line with the others.
Because she was the tallest girl in the class she was last in line, but Gloria twisted around from the middle of the row calling, "I say, Pill, where did you rush off to after Art?"
"Oh—nowhere," Flip said vaguely.
"Nowhere! You must have been somewhere!" Gloria cried. "Come on, Pill, where were you?"
Flip knew that Gloria would persist until she had found out; so she answered in a low voice, "in the chapel."
"The chapel!" Gloria screeched. "What were you doing in the chapel!"
"You mean you went there when you didn'thaveto go?" Erna asked. Flip nodded.
"What for?"
"Pill, are you nuts?"
They were all looking at her as though she were crazy and laughing at her.
—Oh,please! she thought, I can't even go to chapel to be quiet without its being something wrong.
Kaatje van Leyden one of the senior prefects responsible for keeping order, called out, "Quiet!" and the girls subsided.
But she knew that that would not be the end of it.
Gloria said one morning as they were making their beds and Erna and Jackie had not yet come up from breakfast, "I say, Philippa, you don't mind my saying something, do you, ducky?"
"What?" Flip asked starkly.
"I mean because of us both being new girls and everything, I thought I ought to tell you."
"What?" Flip asked again.
"Well, Pill, if I were you I wouldn't keep running off to chapel, that's all."
Flip smoothed out her bottom sheet and tucked it in. "Why not?"
"The kids think it's sort of funny."
"I know they do." Flip pulled up her blankets and straightened them out.
"How do you know?" Gloria asked.
Flip's voice was tight. "I'm not deaf. Anyhow I heard you laughing in the Common Room with them about it."
"I never did."
"I heard you."
"You eavesdropped."
"I didn't. I walked into the Common Room and I couldn't help hearing. Anyhow, I don't go running off to the chapel. I just go there once in a while. There's nothing wrong with that."
"You know, Pill," Gloria said, cocking her head and looking at Flip curiously, "somehow I never thought of you as being particularly pious."
Flip looked startled. "I don't think I am. I mean, I never thought about it."
"Then what do you go running off to the chapel for? Don't you go there to pray or something?"
"No," Flip said. "At least I usually do say a prayer or something because if I go there I think it's only courteous to God. But I really go there to be alone."
"To be alone?"
"Yes. There isn't any other place to go."
"What do you want to be alone for?" Gloria asked.
"I just do," Flip said. "If you don't know why I can't explain it to you, Gloria."
"You're a funny kid, Pill," Gloria said. "You'd be all right if you just gave yourself a chance."
Jackie and Erna came in then and Gloria turned back to making her bed.
9
Jackie pulledFlip aside one evening after chapel. They waited until everyone had gone into the Common Room; then Jackie pulled Flip into the dining room. The maids had finished clearing away and the tables were already set for breakfast the next morning. Jackie seemed embarrassed and unhappy.
"Philippa, I want to say something to you." They stood under the long box of napkin racks, each little cubby hole marked with the inevitable number. Flip stared at Jackie and waited. Jackie looked away, looked up, over Flip's head, over the napkin racks, up to the ceiling. "I want to apologise to you."
"What for?" Flip asked.
"My mother said I should apologise to you," Jackie said rapidly, still looking up at the ceiling, her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her blue blazer, "about our laughing about your going to the chapel. I always write my mother everything and I wrote her about our thinking it was funny and laughing and she wrote back and said who am I of all people to laugh. She said if you got down on the floor in the middle of the Common Room and bowed towards Mecca I should honor and respect your form of worship."
"Oh," Flip said. She felt that she ought to try to explain to Jackie that it really wasn't a burning question of religion that led her to brave Miss Tulip's annoyance and go to the chapel but she was afraid that Jackie would not understand and might even be angry.
Jackie had finished her uncomfortable quoting from her mother's letter and she looked down at her feet. "So I do apologise," she said. "I'm very sorry, Pill."