173CHAPTER XVOn the River
Miss Gibbs was fast arriving at the disappointing conclusion that patriotism costs dearly: in other words, that if you take away eighteen girls to do strawberry picking, you cannot expect them, immediately on their return, to settle down again into ordinary routine and everyday habits. An atmosphere of camp life seemed to pervade the place, a free-and-easy, rollicking spirit that was not at all in accordance with Miss Beasley’s ideas of propriety. The Principal, who had never altogether approved of the week on the land, considered that the school was demoralized, and made a firm effort to restore discipline. The monitresses, several of whom had been guilty of whistling in the passages, were summoned separately for private interviews in the study, whence they issued somewhat subdued and abashed; and the rank and file, by means of punishment lessons and fines, were made to feel a wholesome respect for the iron hand of the law.
Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs agreed that the Fifth Form gave the largest amount of trouble. It was here that most of the mischief fermented and fizzed out on unexpected occasions. At present the Mystic Seven, who beforetime had offered a united174front to the world, were suffering from a series of internal quarrels. The four who had been to camp assumed an air of superiority over the three who had not, which led to unpleasantness. Naturally it was annoying to Ardiune, Valentine, and Fauvette to hear constant allusions to people they had not met, and to thrilling experiences in which they had not participated. They sulked or flew out as the occasion might be.
“I believe you’re just making up half the things to stuff us!” sneered Ardiune.
“Indeed we’re not!” flared Morvyth. “Every word we’ve told you is gospel truth, as you’d have found out if you’d come and done your bit for your country!”
“D’you mean to call me a slacker?”
“Certainly not, but it’s no use ostriching about things. You either went and picked strawberries, or you didn’t”
“You know I wasn’t allowed to go! You mean wretch!”
“I know nothing at all about it.”
“Well, I’ve told you a dozen times.”
“I really can’t listen, child, to all the things you tell me!”
“Then I shan’t take the trouble to speak to you again!”
With Ardiune and Morvyth on terms of distant iciness, Valentine and Katherine constantly sparring over trifles, Fauvette preserving an attitude of martyred dignity, and Aveline, out of sheer perversity, striking up a friendship with Maudie Heywood, matters were not very brisk in the Fifth.
“I’m getting just about fed up with you all!”175said Raymonde irritably. “I never saw such a set! How can we have any fun, when everybody’s grousing with everyone else? For goodness’ sake, buck up! I’ve a blossomy idea in my head! Yes, I have, honest!”
Signs of interest manifested themselves on the faces of her companions. Raymonde’s ideas were always worth listening to. Aveline stopped yawning, Morvyth desisted from kicking her geography book round the floor, and Fauvette snapped the clasp of her bracelet, and sat bolt upright.
“We’re hanging upon your words, if you’ll condescend to explain, O Queen!” she vouchsafed.
Raymonde bowed, with heels together and hands back, like the star of a pierrot troupe.
“Don’t mensh! Glad to do my bit!” she replied. “Well, my notion’s this. It’s the Bumble’s birthday on Friday!”
“As if every girl in the school didn’t know that!” chafed Ardiune impatiently. “Haven’t we all given our shillings towards her present ages ago? Really, Ray, what more chestnuts are you going to bring forth?”
“Don’t be in such a hurry, my good child! I haven’t finished yet. I should have thought you could have trusted your grannie by this time. My remark, though no doubt stale, was only one of those preliminary announcements with which a chairman always has to begin—like ‘Glad to see so many bright young faces collected here’, or ‘Gratified to be allowed the pleasure of saying a few words to you’. But don’t look so scared, I’m not going to prose on like a real chairman at a176prize-giving; I’m going to get to the point quick. Being the Bumble’s birthday—if you grin, Ardiune Coleman-Smith, I’ll pinch you!—Being, as I have observed, the Bumble’s birthday, it seems only right and fit and proper that the other bees in the hive should buzz in sympathy, and take a holiday, and go and sip nectar. Let us copy Nature’s methods!”
“Copy Nature, by all means,” sneered Ardiune, “only don’t suggest that bumble-bees live in hives, or you’ll be a little out of it!”
“Oh, you’re so literal! It’s only for the sake of the metaphor. Mayn’t I talk about ‘the busy bee’ and ‘the shining hour’?”
“For pity’s sake, don’t get flowery!” snapped Morvyth.
“‘How doth the little busy beeDelight to bark and bite;She gathers honey all the day,And eats it up at night!’”
misquoted Aveline with a giggle.
“Stop frivolling, and let me get to my point!” commanded Raymonde. “For the third time, let me remind you that it is the Bumble’s birthday on Friday, and that it’s only decent and seemly and becoming that the school should do something to celebrate so joyous an occasion.”
“Stop a minute!” interrupted Katherine. “Are we rejoicing that she came into this world to gladden us, or are we counting one more year off towards the time when we’ll have done with her? I’m not quite clear which.”
“‘GRACIOUS, GIRL! TURN OFF THE WATERWORKS!’”
“‘GRACIOUS, GIRL! TURN OFF THE WATERWORKS!’”
177
“Whichever you like, so long as you look congratulatory and happy-in-our-school-days and love-our-teachers, and all the rest of it. What you want is to spread the butter on thick, then, when there’s an atmosphere of smiles, ask for a holiday and suggest the river. Yes, my children, I said the river. You didn’t misunderstand me; I speak quite clearly.”
“Whew! She’ll never let us! Might as well ask for the moon. Why, our river expedition was knocked off after that little business of the Zepp scare!”
“All the more reason why we should have it now.”
“Ray, you’re the limit!”
“Hope I am, if it means getting what we want. I propose a deputation to the Bumble, to state that the gratitude and devotion of the hive can only work itself off on water. Yes, Ardiune Coleman-Smith, I did say ‘the hive’, my sense of poetry being more highly developed than my love of exact science. You needn’t lift your eyebrows, it’s not a pretty habit.”
“Who’s going to make the deputation?” asked Fauvette.
“You, for one. You’re our strongest point. You look naturally affectionate and clinging and docile, and ready-to-be-taught-if-taken-the-right-way, and easily led, and all the rest of it. You’ll burble forth something pretty about wanting to have an expedition with our Principal in our midst, and mention what a wet day it was last year, and how disappointed we all were.”
“Look here, I’m not going to do all the talking, so don’t think!”
“Oh, we’ll support you! But I’m just giving you a few leading lines to work upon. We’ll take178Maudie Heywood with us; she got ninety-five marks out of a hundred last week, which ought to go for something!”
“Then Magsie and Muriel had better come too. It won’t do to let the Bumble think the whole idea has originated with us.”
“Right you are! The more pattern pupils we can scrape together, the better.”
At five o’clock the deputation presented itself at the door of the study, and was received graciously by the Principal, though she declined to commit herself to an immediate answer, promising to think the matter over and to let them know later on.
“Which means she daren’t say ‘yes’ till she’s asked leave from Gibbie!” declared Raymonde, when the delegates were out of ear-shot of the sanctum. “Fauvette, child, you did splendidly! I’d give five thousand pounds to have your big, pathetic, innocent blue eyes! They always bowl everybody over. I envy you at your first grown-up dance. You’ll have your programme full in five minutes, like the heroine of a novel.”
Raymonde’s supposition was not altogether mistaken, for that evening, after the school had gone to bed, Miss Beasley, Miss Gibbs, and Mademoiselle sat up talking over the proposed expedition. Miss Gibbs vetoed the idea entirely.
“The girls have not been behaving well enough to justify any such indulgence,” she maintained impressively. “Their conduct on the stairs yesterday was disgraceful. Better make them stick to their lessons.”
Mademoiselle, whose mental scales always tipped naturally towards the side of pleasure, thought it179was a beautiful idea of the dear girls to want to give their headmistress a fête on her anniversary. So sweet to go upon the water, and while the weather was so pleasant! It would be an event to be remembered for ever in their young lives, when sterner lessons might be forgotten; at which remark Miss Gibbs sniffed, but restrained herself. Miss Beasley vibrated for some minutes between the practical and the ideal aspects thus presented to her, but finally decided in favour of the latter.
“It seems ungracious to refuse when they wish it to be my birthday treat,” she said rather apologetically. “The poor children would be so disappointed. We might make a clear mark-book a necessary condition.”
“Yes,” Miss Gibbs grudgingly conceded. “They’ll miss their Latin preparation that evening,” she added.
“And their French,” sighed Mademoiselle. “But what will you?” with a little shrug. “It is not every day that our Principal makes a birthday! As for me, I am glad I bought my new sunshade.”
The announcement of the forthcoming water excursion was received with great rejoicings. Ever since the beginning of the term the school had thirsted to go upon the river. They had been taken for an occasional walk along its banks, and had greatly envied the young men and maidens who might be seen punting up its willowy reaches.
“That’s what I’m going to do directly I’m grown up!” Fauvette had confided to her chums. “I’ll buy a white boating costume, exactly like that girl’s with the auburn hair, and lean against blue cushions whileHerows. He’ll have to have brown eyes,180but I’ve not quite decided yet whether he shall have a moustache or not. On the whole I think I’ll have him clean shaven.”
“And tall,” prompted Raymonde, to whom Fauvette’s prospective romances were a source of perennial interest.
“Yes, tall, of course, with several military crosses. He’s the one I’m going to like the best, though there’ll be others. They’ll all want me to go and row with them—but I shan’t. I don’t mean to flirt.”
“N—no!” conceded Raymonde a little dubiously. “Don’t you think, though, it might be rather good for him not to let him see you were too keen? Of course I don’t want you to break his heart, but––”
Fauvette shook her yellow curls.
“It’s not right to trifle with people’s hearts,” she decided, with all the authority of an experienced reader of magazine stories. “If you pretend you don’t care for them, they drive their aeroplanes recklessly and smash up, or expose themselves to the enemy’s fire, or get submarined, before you’ve had time to tell them you didn’t really mean to be cold. I’m not going in for misunderstandings.”
Raymonde glanced at her admiringly. With those blue eyes and fluffy curls it all seemed so possible. She felt that she should look forward to her chum’s inevitable engagement almost as much as Fauvette herself. It would be as good as a Shakespeare play, or one of the best pieces on the kinema. But these rosy prospects were still in the dim and distant future; the present was entirely prosaic and unromantic. Whatever punting excursions Fauvette might enjoy in years to come, this particular water party would be quite unsentimental,181conducted under the watchful eyes of Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs, with boatmen well over military age to do the rowing. For the first time for four years the Principal’s birthday morning was gloriously fine. The pupils placed the usual bouquet of flowers opposite her seat at the breakfast table, together with a handsomely bound volume of Ruskin’sStones of Venice. She thanked them with her customary surprise and gratitude, and assured them, as she did annually, what a pleasure it was to her to receive so kind a token of their esteem.
This preliminary business being over, breakfast and classes proceeded as usual, a more than ordinary atmosphere of decorum pervading the establishment, for Miss Gibbs had announced that the afternoon’s excursion depended upon the mark-book, and the girls knew that she would keep her word. The veriest slackers paid attention to lessons that morning, and even Raymonde for once did not receive an order mark.
Lunch was served early, and directly the meal was finished all the girls flew upstairs to change their attire. During hot weather the school was not kept strictly to the brown serge uniform, and the girls blossomed out into linen costumes, or white drill skirts and muslin blouses. For the credit of the Grange they made careful toilettes that afternoon; Fauvette in particular looked ravishingly pretty in a pale-blue sailor suit with a white collar and silk tie. She made quite a sensation as she came down the stairs.
The mistresses had also turned out suitably dressed for the occasion: Miss Beasley was dignified and matronly in blue voile with a motor veil; Miss182Gibbs, who intended to row, was in practical blouse and short skirt; while Mademoiselle was a dream of white muslin, chiffon ruffles, and pink parasol.
It was about half an hour’s walk to the river, down shady lanes and across lately cleared hayfields. There was a little landing-place close to the weir, with a boat-house, a refreshment room, and rows of benches and tables under the trees, where visitors could sit and drink tea or lemonade. Miss Beasley had engaged boats beforehand, and these were drawn up ready, with their boatmen, a rheumatic and elderly set, waiting about smoking surreptitious pipes among the willows. There was a great deal of arranging before everybody was settled, and many injunctions to sit still, and not to change places, or to grab at water-lilies, or lean too far over the side, or play any other foolish or dangerous prank likely to upset the equilibrium of the boat and endanger the lives of its occupants. At last, however, the whole party was stowed safely away, and the little procession set off up the river.
All agreed that it was quite delightful. The banks were covered with trees, and tall reeds, and masses of purple willow herb, and agrimony, and yellow ragwort, which were reflected in the dark waters of quiet pools. In the centre the sunshine made little gleaming, glinting ripples like leaping bars of gold, and here and there patches of water-lilies spread their white chalices open to the sky. There was a delicious breeze, most grateful after the hot walk across the hayfields, and the smooth gliding motion was ideal. The girls trailed their hands in the river, and dabbed their faces, and said it was topping, and began to sing boat songs which183they had learnt at school, and which sounded very pretty and appropriate to an accompaniment of oars and lapping water.
The great event of the afternoon was to be a picnic tea. Hampers of provisions had been brought, and Miss Beasley proposed that they should land at one of the numerous little islands, light a fire, and boil their big kettles. The selection of the particular island was, of course, in her discretion, and she had a conference with her old boatman on the subject.
“Island? I knows of the very one to suit you. I’ve taken parties there before, and there’s a good spot to land, and a place to tie the boats to, which there isn’t on every one of them islands. It’s just an hour’s row up from the weir, and less time to go back because of the current.”
After gliding onward for what seemed to the girls all too short a space of time, but no doubt appeared considerably longer to their rheumatic rowers, the island in question was at last reached. It looked most attractive with the willows and bulrushes and tangly interior. A tree-stump made quite a good landing-place, and everyone managed to scramble out successfully without planting a foot in the water. The first business was to explore, and to hunt up sufficient wood for a camp fire. Luckily the weather had been dry, so that all available sticks would be suitable for fuel. The girls dispersed in various directions, on the understanding that they were to reassemble when Miss Beasley blew her whistle as a signal.
“I call this a great stunt!” observed Morvyth, as the Mystic Seven moved off in company.184
“Even Gibbie’s in spirits, bless her!” murmured Aveline fatuously.
“So she is. But all the same, I’d rather wander off alone than be tied to her apron-strings; so come along, quick! Remember you’re to earn your living by picking up sticks, so don’t slack!”
“Cheero, old sport! Don’t get raggy!”
Pioneers were penetrating the virgin forest on all sides. From right and left came squeals, giggles, or chuckles, as the girls investigated the capacities of the island. Some kept to the banks and cut dry reeds to make the bonfire burn quickly, while others were in quest of more solid fuel.
“If we’d only had a hatchet or a saw,” sighed Raymonde, “we might have cut off some quite nice logs. There really isn’t much to pick up on the ground.”
“Wish we could take that rotten tree along with us,” murmured Morvyth, pointing to a decayed old stump that stood upright with two withered boughs like scraggy arms outstretched on either side of it.
“Too big a job, my child; but we might break off one of those branches,” opined Raymonde. “No, I know we can’t reach it from below, that’s self-evident. Your humble servant’s going to climb. Here, Ave, you bluebottle, give me a leg up!”
“Oh! Suppose it topples over with you! Don’t, Ray!”
“Bunkum! It won’t! I’m not scared, thanks!”
“FAUVETTE IN PARTICULAR LOOKED RAVISHINGLY PRETTY”
“FAUVETTE IN PARTICULAR LOOKED RAVISHINGLY PRETTY”
185
As a matter of fact, Raymonde knew perfectly well that she was going to perform rather a risky feat. She did it because she was in a don’t-care frame of mind, also because she had quarrelled with Morvyth earlier in the afternoon, and wished to astonish her. Morvyth was standing now, elevating her eyebrows, and looking as if she did not believe that Raymonde would really carry out her boast, which was all the more reason for the latter to put speech into action.
Aveline obediently rendered the required assistance, and with a swing and a clutch Raymonde managed to scramble up the trunk to the place where the boughs forked. One of these was in a particularly crumbling and decrepit condition, and she thought that with a strong effort she might succeed in breaking it off. It was not an easy matter to balance herself on the fork and stretch out to pull at the branch.
“You’ll be over in a sec.!” called Morvyth.
“Bow-wow!” responded Raymonde airily.
She leaned a little farther along, seized the branch with both hands, and gave a mighty tug. The result was more than she anticipated. The poor old tree had reached a stage of such interior decay that it was really only kept together by the bark. The violence of the wrench upset it to its foundations; it tottered, swayed, and suddenly descended. The girls picked up Raymonde out of a cloud of dust and a mass of touchwood. By all strict rules of retribution she ought to have been hurt, but as a matter of fact she was only a little bruised, considerably choked with pulverized wood, and very much astonished. When she recovered her presence of mind, she set to work to break off pieces from the boughs, which were just exactly what was wanted for the bonfire fuel.186
“Don’t tell Gibbie!” she besought the others.
“Right-o! Mum’s the word!” her chums assured her. “Bless its little heart, we wouldn’t get it into a scrape! Don’t think it of us!”
Miss Beasley’s signal sounded at this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not divulge the source of their supply. Most of the girls were too much interested in proclaiming their own adventures to care to listen to anybody else’s, and the mistresses were busy watching the kettles. It seemed like camp life over again to be sitting in a circle, drinking tea out of enamelled mugs, and eating thick pieces of bread and butter. Miss Beasley had provided a large home-made plum birthday cake, with a sixpence baked in it, the acquisition of which was naturally a matter of keen interest to each several girl, until the lucky slice fell to the lot of Cynthia Greene, who fondled the coveted coin tenderly.
“I’ll have a hole bored through it, and wear it on my chain always, in memory of you, dear Miss Beasley!” she declared in emphatic tones.
“Little sycophant!” sneered Morvyth enviously.
“She ought to give it to the soldiers!” snapped Raymonde.
But Miss Gibbs was rattling a row of mugs together as a delicate hint that the feast was finished, and the Principal was consulting her watch, and calling to the boatmen to make ready. The monitresses187swept all remaining comestibles into the baskets, stamped out the fire, emptied the kettles, and proclaimed the camping-ground left in due order. One by one the boats started on their way down the river, drifting easily now with the current, and leaving long trails of ripples behind them. The sun was sinking low in the west, and there was a lovely golden light on the water, the shadows on the willowy shore were deep and mysterious, a kingfisher flashed along the bank like a living jewel. The spirits of the school, already risen to fermenting point, effervesced into stunt songs composed on the emergency of the moment, and passed on from boat to boat.
“For we’ve had such a jolly good day-ay-ay,As we only get once in a way-ay-ay!I can tell you it was prime,Oh! we’ve had a topping time,And we wish a little longer we could stay-ay-ay!With a rum-tum-tumAnd a rum-tiddley-um,We will make the river hum;So come, come, come,Don’t be glum, glum, glum!But pass the stunt along and just be gay-ay-ay!”
188CHAPTER XVIMarooned
Amongst other cardinal virtues the practice of philanthropy was zealously cultivated at Marlowe Grange. The girls made garments for the local hospital, contributed towards a crèche for soldiers’ children, and on Sunday mornings put pennies into a missionary box. Charity is apt to wax a trifle cold, however, when you never see the object of your doles; and though ample statistics were provided about the crèche babies, and literature was sent describing the Chinese orphans and little Hindoo widows, these pieces of paper information did not quite supply the place of a real live protégé. It was felt to be a decided asset to the school when old Wilkinson loomed upon their horizon. The girls discovered him accidentally, engaged in the meritorious occupation of carrying his own water from the well. He had opened a gate for them, and had touched his forelock with the grace and fervour of a mediæval retainer. His pink cheeks, watery blue eyes, snow-white hair, and generally picturesque personality made the more enthusiastic members of the art class anxious to paint his portrait. It was ascertained that he subsisted upon an old-age pension of five shillings a week, and189resided in a romantic-looking, creeper-covered cottage just between the Grange and the village. To visit old Wilkinson, and present him with potatoes from their own little war-gardens, became an immediate institution among the girls. There was no doubt about his gratitude. All was fish that came to his net, and he accepted anything and everything, from tea and tobacco to books which he could not read, with the same toothless smile and showers of blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs suggested, his cottage would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a Christmas number of a magazine.
It was a tremendous blow to the school when the news was circulated that old Wilkinson had received notice to quit his cottage. The girls were filled with indignation against his landlord. The fact that that long-suffering farmer had received no rent for the last six months, and badly required the cottage as a billet for lady workers on the land, went for nothing in the estimation of the Grange inmates. Wilkinson, so they considered, was a persecuted old man, about to be evicted from his home, and a very proper object for sympathy and consideration.
“Something’s got to be done for him—that’s flat!” declared Raymonde. “You don’t suppose we can allow him to be taken to the workhouse? It’s unthinkable! He’d break his poor old heart.190And we’d miss him so, too. Won’t the landlord change his mind and let him stay?”
“Miss Gibbs went to see him about it,” vouchsafed Aveline agitatedly, “and she came back and shook her head, and said she couldn’t but feel that the man was only doing his duty, and women were wanted on the land, and must have a place to live in, and someone had to be sacrificed.”
“He’s a victim of the war!” sighed Morvyth. “One of those outside victims who don’t get Victoria Crosses and military funerals.”
“He hasn’t come to a funeral yet!” bristled Raymonde. “The old boy looks good for another ten years or so. Don’t you go ordering tombstones and wreaths!”
“I wasn’t going to. How you snap me up! All the same, I heard Miss Beasley tell Miss Gibbs that if he has to go to the workhouse it will be enough to kill him.”
“Then we’ve absolutely got to keep him alive! Won’t anybody in the village take him in?”
“No, they’re all full up, and say they can’t do with him, and he hasn’t any relations of his own except a drunken granddaughter in a town slum.”
Raymonde sighed dramatically.
“I’m going to think, and think, and think, and think, until I find some way of helping him,” she announced. “It’ll be hard work, because I hate thinking, but I’ll do it, you’ll see!”
Raymonde was abstracted that evening, both at preparation and at supper. In the dormitory she put aside all conversation with a firm: “Don’t talk to me, I’m thinking!” She borrowed Fauvette’s bottle of eau-de-Cologne, and went to bed191with a bandage tied round her head to assist her cogitations.
“Of course I shan’t go to sleep,” she assured the others. “I must just lie awake until the idea comes to me. Old Wilkinson’s on my mind.”
“Glad he’s not on mine,” gurgled Aveline, settling herself comfortably on her pillow. “Couldn’t you leave him until to-morrow?”
“Certainly not! I shall wake you up and tell you when my idea arrives.”
“Help!” murmured her schoolmate, half-asleep.
That night, when the whole household at the Grange was soundly wrapped in slumber, Aveline was suddenly brought back from a jumbled dream of punts, cows, and Latin exercises by feeling somebody shaking her persistently and urgently.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting up in bed. “Is it Zepps?”
“Sh—sh! Don’t wake the whole dormitory, you goose!” came Raymonde’s voice in a whisper. “Remember Gibbie’s door’s wide open, can’t you? I’ve just got my idea.”
Aveline promptly lay down again and closed her eyes.
“Won’t it keep till to-morrow?” she murmured.
“Certainly not! You’ve got to hear it now. Move further on—I’m coming into bed with you. That’s better!”
“But I’m so sleepy,”—rather crossly.
“Don’t be horrid! You might wake up for once, and listen!”
“I am listening.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, then. I said to myself when192I began to think: ‘What’s wanted is a home for old Wilkinson!’ and just now it suddenly flashed into my head: ‘We’ll make him one for ourselves!’”
“Where?”
“That’s the point. The Bumble says she can’t have him at the Grange—Hermie suggested that—and every place one knows of seems to belong to somebody who wants it—all except the island!”
“What island? The one on the river?”
“No, no! Not so far as that. The island on our moat, I mean. We’ll build a little house for him, and he can have it all for his very own.”
“Wouldn’t it—wouldn’t it be rather difficult to build?” gasped Aveline, dazed at the magnitude of her chum’s idea.
“Oh, not impossible! There are heaps and heaps of railway sleepers down in the wood heap, and we could pile them up into a hut. It’s only what people do out in Canada. Gibbie’s always telling us tales of women who emigrate to the backwoods, and build colonies of log-cabins. Ave, you’re not going to sleep again, are you?”
“N—no!” came a rather languid voice; “but how’ll we ever get to the island?”
“We’ll make a raft. We’ll do it to-morrow, you and I. Don’t tell any of the others yet. Morvyth’s been so nasty lately, I’m fed up with her, and Ardiune would only laugh. When we’ve got the thing really started, we’ll take them over and let them help, but not till then. Will you promise to keep it an absolute secret?”
“I’ll promise anything you like”—wearily—“if you’ll only go back to your own bed.”193
“All right, I’m off now—but just remember you’re not to mention it to a single soul.”
Raymonde, next day, was tremendously full of her new scheme. It savoured of romance. Old Wilkinson would be a combination of a mediæval hermit and Robinson Crusoe, and in imagination she already saw him installed in a picturesque log-cabin, with his Manx cat and his tame jackdaw for company. Naturally the first step was to take possession of the island. It lay in the middle of the moat, a reedy little domain covered with willows and bushes. It had never yet been explored by the school, for the simple reason that there had been no means of gaining access to it. The water was too deep for wading, and Miss Beasley had utterly vetoed the suggestion of procuring a punt. Raymonde had cast longing eyes at it many times before, but not until now had she made any real effort to reach it. She thought out her plans carefully during the day—considerably to the detriment of her lessons—and when afternoon recreation time came round she linked Aveline’s arm firmly in hers, and led her to the lumber yard. Here, piled up behind the barn, was a large stack of wood stored for fuel—old railway sleepers, bits of broken fencing, packing-cases, tumbled-down trees, and brushwood.
“What we want to make first,” she announced, “is a raft. I wonder it never struck me to make it before!”
Now rafts sound quite simple and easy when you read about them in books of adventure. Shipwrecked mariners on coral islands in the Pacific always lash a few logs together with incredible194speed, and perform wonderful journeys through boiling surf to rescue kegs of provisions and other useful commodities which they observe floating about on the waves. The waters of the moat, being tranquil, and overgrown with duckweed, would surely prove more hospitable than the surging ocean, and ought to support a raft, of however amateur a description. Nevertheless, when they began to look round, it was more difficult than they had expected to find just the right material. The railway sleepers were too large and heavy, and the fence poles were of unequal lengths. Moreover, there was nothing with which to lash them together, for when Raymonde visited the orchard, intending to purloin a clothes-line, she found the housemaid there, hanging up a row of pantry towels, and was obliged to beat a hurried retreat. After much hunting about, the girls at last discovered in a corner exactly what they wanted. It was the door of a demolished shed, made of stout planking, strongly nailed and braced, and in fairly sound condition. Nothing could have been better for their purpose. After first doing a little scouting, to make sure that the rest of the school were safely at the other side of the garden, they dragged it down to the edge of the moat, returning to fetch two small saplings to act as punt-poles.
“For goodness’ sake, let’s be quick and get off before anybody comes round and catches us!” panted Raymonde.
“Are you absolutely certain it’s safe?” quavered Aveline dubiously.
Raymonde looked at her scornfully.
“Aveline Kerby, if you don’t feel yourself up to195this business, please back out of it at once, and I’ll go and fetch Morvyth instead. She may be a blighter in some things, but she doesn’t funk!”
“No more do I,” declared Aveline, suddenly assuming an air of dignified abandon, reminiscent of the heroes of coral-island stories. “I’m ready to brave anything, especially for the sake of old Wilkinson. Don’t tip the thing so hard at your end! You’ve made me trap my fingers!”
They launched their craft from the water-garden, treading ruthlessly on Linda’s irises and Hermie’s cherished forget-me-nots. It seemed to float all right, so they crawled on, and squatted on the cross-beams on either side of it to preserve its balance. A good push with their poles sent them well out on to the moat. It was really a delightful sensation sailing amongst the duckweed and arrow-head leaves, although their shoes and skirts got wet from the water which oozed up between the planks. The raft behaved splendidly, and, propelled by the poles, made quite a steady passage. They had soon crossed the piece of water, and scrambled out upon the island. It was a rather overgrown, brambly little domain, and to penetrate its fastnesses proved a scratchy performance, resulting in a long rent down the front of Raymonde’s skirt, and several tears in Aveline’s muslin blouse, to say nothing of wounds on wrists and ankles. There was quite a clearing in the middle, with soft, mossy grass and clumps of hemp agrimony, and actually a small apple-tree with nine apples upon it. They were green and very sour, but the girls each sampled one, with a kind of feeling that by so doing they were taking formal possession of the196territory, though, with Paradise for an analogy, it should have been just the reverse.
“We’ll have the log-cabin exactly here,” said Raymonde, munching abstractedly. “It’ll face the sunset, and he can sit and watch the glowing west, and hear the evening bells, and—and––”
“Smoke his pipe,” suggested Aveline unromantically. “He generally seems most grateful of all when one gives him tobacco.”
“We shall be able to see him sitting there,” continued Raymonde, in her most meditative mood. “There’ll be a rose-tree planted beside the door, and nasturtiums and other thingumbobs for the bees. It’ll make a beautiful end to his declining years.”
“Yes,” agreed Aveline, suppressing a yawn. She was not so enthusiastic over the scheme as her chum, and her apple had been much too sour to be really enjoyed. Raymonde sat twining pieces of grass round her finger; her eyes were dreamy, and she hummed “Those Evening Bells,” which the singing class had learnt only the week before.
At that identical moment the clang of a very different bell disturbed the echoes. The girls sprang to their feet.
“Prep.!” they gasped in consternation.
They had absolutely no idea it was so late. Time had simply flown. They must get back immediately, and even then might expect to lose order marks. Regardless of scratches, they scurried through the brambles to the place where they had left their raft. To their horror it was gone! They had forgotten to anchor it, and it had floated out into the middle of the moat.197
This was indeed a predicament! They looked at each other aghast.
“We’re marooned, that’s what it is!” stammered Aveline. “Raymonde, you’re the silliest idiot I’ve ever met in the course of my life!”
“Well, I like that!”
“Can’t help it—it’s the truth! Whatever did you bring me out here for, on such a wild-goose chase?”
“Why, you wanted to come!”
“I didn’t! You’ve landed me in a horrible scrape. I’ve been late for prep. twice already this week, and Gibbie gave me enough jaw-wag last time, so what she’ll say this time, goodness knows! How are we ever going to get back?”
Raymonde shook her head and whistled. She might have attempted to defend herself, but Aveline by this time had begun to sob hysterically, and she knew that arguments were useless. The prospects of immediate rescue certainly appeared doubtful. Everyone would be indoors for preparation. No doubt they would be missed, and probably a monitress might be sent in quest of them, but the house would be searched first, and then the barns and garden; and it was quite problematical whether it would enter into anybody’s head to walk to the edge of the moat, and look across towards the island.
“I suppose you can’t swim?” asked Aveline, choking back her sobs, and dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.
“No; only a little bit when somebody holds me up. Whoever would have thought of that wretched raft floating off in that fashion? It’s too sickening!”198
“Don’t you think we’d better give a good shout?”
The girls put their united lung power into the loudest halloo of which they were capable, but it only scared a blackbird in the orchard, and provoked no human response. They sat down in a place where they could be best seen from the mainland, and waited. There were too many brambles for comfort, and the midges were biting badly. Raymonde began to wonder whether, after all, the island were as ideal a situation for a residence as she had supposed. Some lines from a parody on one of Rogers’s poems flashed into her mind:
“So damp my cot beside the rill,The beehive fails to soothe my ear”;
and
“Around my ivy-covered porchEarwigs and snails are ever crawling.”
“It mightn’t be just the best place in the world for rheumatism,” she decided, “and probably there’d be just heaps of snails and slugs.”
“Shall we shout again?” suggested Aveline forlornly.
The chums called, whistled, halloed, and cooeed until they were hoarse, but not a soul took the slightest notice. Time, which had sped so rapidly during their first twenty minutes on the island, now crawled on laggard wings. After what appeared to them an absolutely interminable period, but which was in reality about an hour and a half, the familiar figure of Hermie Graveson suddenly appeared on the mainland close to the water-garden. Raymonde and Aveline started up, and emitted yells that would have done credit to a pair199of Zulu warriors on the war-path. Hermie waved frantically, shouted something they could not hear, and ran back towards the house. In a few minutes she returned with Miss Gibbs. That worthy lady picked up her skirts and advanced gingerly to the extreme limit of the stones that bordered the water-garden. She put her hands to her mouth to form a speaking-trumpet, and bawled a communication of which the marooned ones could only catch such fragments as “How ... get ... doing ...”
On the presumption that it was an enquiry into their means of locomotion, they pointed sadly to the floating raft. Miss Beasley now came hurrying up, surveyed the situation, and also attempted to converse, but with no better success. After an agitated colloquy with Miss Gibbs she retired.
“D’you think they’ll have to leave us here for the night?” fluttered Aveline anxiously.
“Don’t know. It looks like it, unless anyone can swim!” returned Raymonde, with what stoicism she could muster.
“Perhaps they’ll hire a cart to the river, and fetch up a punt?”
“It’ll take hours to do that!”
The prospect of supper and bed seemed to be retreating further and further into the dim and faraway distance. Aveline remembered that it was the evening for stewed pears and custard, and tears dripped down her cheeks on to her torn blouse.
“Oh! brace up, can’t you?” snapped Raymonde. “It gives me spasms to hear you sniff!”
Aveline was bursting into an indignant retort, when her companion nudged her and pointed to the mainland.200
Mackenzie, the old gardener, was coming across the orchard carrying on his shoulder a very large wash-tub. The cook followed him, bearing a clothes-prop.
“They’ve the best brains in the house! He’s going to rescue us!” exclaimed Raymonde ecstatically.
The prisoners on the island watched with deep interest while Mackenzie launched his shallop, clambered in, and seizing the clothes-prop from Cook, pushed off cautiously. His craft was very low in the water and looked particularly wobbly, and they were terribly afraid it would upset. In spite of their anxiety they could not help seeing the humorous side of the episode, and they choked with laughter as the tub gyrated and bobbed about, and the old man clutched frantically at his pole. He made first of all for the floating raft, secured it with a piece of rope, and dragged it to the island. The girls straightened their faces and welcomed him with polite expressions of gratitude.
He received their thanks ungraciously—perhaps he had seen them laughing—pushed the raft to a spot where they could board it, and remarked tartly:
“Ye deserve to stop where ye are the night, in my opeenion. Get on with ye now, and paddle yerselves back. Giving a body all this trouble—and me with my leg bad, too!”
It was possibly a satisfaction to Mackenzie that Miss Beasley shared his views as to the culpability of the delinquents and the necessity of giving them their deserts. They were summoned to the study after prayers.201
“What did she say?” whispered Ardiune, Morvyth, and Katherine, as they escorted the crestfallen pair upstairs to the dormitory.
“All recreation stopped for three days, and learn the whole of Gray’s Elegy!” choked the sinners.
“Gray’s Elegy! You’ll never do it! Oh, you poor chickens! The Bumble can be a perfect beast sometimes! I say, what was it like on the island?”
“Top-hole!” responded Raymonde, as she mopped her eyes.
The very next day came the news that the farmer had decided to run up a number of corrugated-iron hutments in one of his own fields to accommodate his lady workers, and that the Squire had promised to pay the rent of old Wilkinson’s cottage so long as he was left there undisturbed. Everybody felt it was a happy solution of the difficulty.
“After all, the island might have been rather an awkward place for him,” admitted Raymonde. “I don’t know how he’d have got backwards and forwards without a drawbridge.”
“Unless he’d used a wash-tub,” giggled Aveline. “I shan’t forget Mackenzie in a hurry! It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Talk of people looking sour! He might have been eating sloes. Cook’s taken it personally, I’m afraid. I asked her for some whitening this morning to clean my regimental button, and she scowled and wouldn’t let me have any—nasty, stingy old thing!”
“It’s a weary world!” sighed Raymonde. “Especially when you’ve got to learn the whole of Gray’s Elegy by heart!”