XXVII
Inthe schoolroom at The Laurels that evening, Miss Cass was condemned to a lonely and unappetizing meal. Banished in disgrace from the dinner table, debarred the drawing room and its social joys, “sent to Coventry” because of her own wickedness, she had only hard thoughts and the meager fare of war upon which to subsist.
To-night meat had given out at The Laurels, as it so often did in the present time of famine, and Miss Cass had to be content with overboiled codfish and an insipid sauce, followed by tapioca pudding. Elfreda’s general dislike of her surroundings had not been made less when she had found tapioca pudding to be a standing dish in The Laurels nursery, just as under the régime of Pikey at Castle Carabbas it had enjoyed similar preëminence. Moreover, it was of the true consistency, thick, slabby and odious, in every way a worthy rival of that which Elfreda and her sisters had fondly believed to be without a peer in any human household.
Poetic justice, of course. It served her right. She was paid out finely. Anyhow, a plateful of this delicacy gave one a sense of having eaten it, which was more than could be said for the inadequate portion of codfish;and this was something, for Elfreda’s appetite being extremely healthy, a week of the daily schoolroom ration had sharpened it to the keenness of a razor’s edge.
Fortitude was certainly needed for such a situation, but Elfreda was fully determined “to stick it out.” Just what was involved in that process would have been difficult to say. She had no definite scheme in her mind, but apart from sheer physical discomfort and boredom, which were by no means to be lightly faced, she was still enjoying the comedy she had so audaciously created. Her mood remained highly rebellious. A second letter from her mother, redirected by Pikey from Clavering Park, was so full of calm assumptions, that it merely added fuel to the flame. But when all was said, it was the position in which she found herself now that really made the thing worth while. The fighting blood of her turbulent forbears had been aroused. She was determined to avenge the covert insults of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson and of her niece, Miss Dolores Parbury.
This evening, all the same, low diet and a sense of loneliness caused her resolution to weaken a bit. The thing was growing horribly dull. Banishment had clipped her wings. Isolation had taken a good deal of spice out of the entertainment. And, to add to a growing depression, she lacked resources within herself. She cared little for reading, and even had she had a taste for it, the books on the schoolroom shelfwere not enticing. Nor was she expert with her needle. Nay, she was frankly bored by the use of it, which was a pity, since Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson had been at pains to inform Miss Cass that governesses at The Laurels were expected to help with the children’s mending.
Elfreda was doing her best to meet these requirements, but up till now the result had been disaster. No, she had no claims to be considered a needlewoman, and as the schoolroom clock struck nine, with a sigh of irritation she resigned her needle to the work-basket of the real Miss Cass and sought other fields of conquest. At the bottom of Miss Cass’s trunk she had found a new novel in which the future Charlotte Brontë had rather recklessly invested quite a number of her shillings. Into this work Elfreda had already made several spasmodic dips, but by the time a quarter past nine had chimed from the chimneypiece she had at last reached the definite and final conclusion that she preferred “The Swiss Family Robinson.”
Alas, even that classic work, which divided the honors of the shelf in the angle next the extremely chilly fireplace with Mrs. Turner’s “Cautionary Tales” and “Eric, or Little by Little,” failed to excite Elfreda’s enthusiasm. She fixed a look of ferocious disgust on the work-basket, that equally unexciting alternative. What a life the Miss Casses of the world were condemned to live! She suppressed a shiver and controlleda yawn. As soon as the horrid hand of that horrid clock touched the half hour she would go to bed.
Man disposes! And no doubt the saying applies with equal truth to woman. For at twenty-seven minutes past nine there came a discreet knock on the schoolroom door.
“Come in,” said Miss Cass, coldly.
The invitation was accepted by General Norris, who came in rather furtively. He was at pains to close the door behind him softly and then he said with an odd hesitation which made Elfreda smile, “I say, Miss Cass, excuse me, but can you lend me a book?”
Elfreda promptly offered the new novel which had been ravished from the tin trunk.
“Thanks so much,” said the young man. As a proof of his gratitude, he seated himself on the schoolroom table. He produced a cigarette case tentatively. “I suppose there’ll be an awful row if I smoke here,” he said.
“Yes, there will be,” said Elfreda. And then she added slowly, with thesang froidthat was so fascinating to this young man, “but what does it matter if there is?”
No, this was not an ordinary girl. George Norris couldn’t help being thrilled by her. “But, I say, it might be rather uncomfortable for you—mightn’t it?”
“More uncomfortable than this?” Elfreda’s smile embraced the fire in the miserable grate, the schoolroomlinoleum, the red tablecloth stained freely with ink.
“But it’s your living, you know.” This was a very practical young fellow. In the next instant, however, he was blushing for his indiscretion. “I beg your pardon. Impertinent to say that. One oughtn’t to have said it. But what I meant was it’s seldom wise to quarrel with one’s bread and butter.”
“I am quarreling violently with mine,” said Elfreda.
“In real earnest?” George Norris was thrilled again. “Do you mean that? Not giving up governessing, are you—if it’s a fair question?”
“Yes, I hope I am,” said Elfreda, with a heartfelt sigh.
“Hooray. That’s capital.” His satisfaction seemed extraordinarily sincere.
The curiosity of Elfreda was piqued by it. A gleam from those perilous eyes of hers called upon General Norris for an explanation.
“You’re so much too good for this sort of thing.” Involuntarily he took a cigarette from its case, placed it in his mouth and struck a match on the sole of his shoe.
“But I am not in the least clever.” She saw the necessity of putting up some sort of a defense.
“No, you are something much better than clever. You know the world. You know the things that are things. And that’s why”—one of his pleasant hesitations came upon him—“Mrs. T.-S.—she’s my hostess,but I can’t help saying it—and Miss P. have such a down on you. Rotten, I call it. But I don’t pretend to understand women.”
He looked at her and she looked at him. Suddenly he grew embarrassed by a sense of his own imprudence, but she was not in the least embarrassed. To hide a too palpable confusion he opened the book she had given him and his eye caught the name “Ethel H. Cass” on the fly leaf.
“Your name’s Ethel,” he said irrelevantly. But he felt bound to say something. “One of my favorite names.” Trivial, perhaps—but he was really afraid of silence just now.
“I am always called Girlie at home.” She spoke with a spice of deliberate enjoyment. After all, this was quite a promising little scene in the comedy.
He was not sure that he liked Girlie so much. She seemed perhaps a shade disappointed that he didn’t, but those deep and dancing eyes with wonderful flecks of light in them somehow told him to look out.
“Where is your home—if I may ask?” He flew off rather nervously at a tangent.
“I live at Laxton.” The sparkle of her eyes was almost wicked.
“Laxton,” he said. For an instant he was let down a bit. Laxton wasverysuburban London. “Always lived there?” It was by no means a bad imitation of serene indifference.
“Always. My father was a solicitor. He died some years ago.”
“A solicitor.” One of the learned professions—still George Norris would have put him down as something else. Suddenly he laughed, perhaps a shade queerly. “You’d never guess whatmyfather was.”
“I’m quite sure I couldn’t.” Not the eyes alone in the unconscious insolence of their candor, but also the coolly deliberate words held the very genius of provocation. He half understood why those unsportsmanlike women downstairs disliked this Miss Cass so profoundly.
“I expect you’ve had no end of an education,” he said with a little sigh.
“Why do you think that?”
“I know you have.”
She didn’t think well to undeceive him.
“You know everything.” A very naïf young man. “Seen no end of the world. I daresay you’ve been abroad teaching English to the children of foreign royalties.”
She smiled enigmatically. But even if his shot was a good one it didn’t explain her. This girl was a mystery. And no doubt she was “pulling his leg,” just as she had pulled the leg of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson the other day at luncheon when she solemnly assured her that her father was a butler and her mother a lady’s maid. As he remembered that piece of impertinence he had a sudden desire to box her adorable ears.
Although, he did not let his mind dwell very long on any such form of emotional luxury. “I wish I knew the ropes as you do.” A cloud came upon a singularly frank and manly countenance. “You see, I want to go on with my job, but I’m afraid”—he sighed heavily—“I’m hardly up to it in peace time.”
She asked why, having done so well in the war, he was not going to be equal to the peace?
“Now the fighting’s over you need other things. Influence and education and so on.”
“Don’t you know anybody who could pull strings?” A chord of real sympathy fused a voice that had a knack at such odd, unexpected moments as these of sounding quite delightful.
“No—frankly, I don’t. You see, in August, ’14, I was a clerk in the office of an auctioneer. If my mother could have had her way I should have been given the education I stand so much in need of now. But my father thought it wouldn’t answer. And in the circumstances and from his own point of view he was right.”
“Surely”—her slow, deep voice seemed to grow more delightful than ever—“when one is the soldier you are, that sort of thing doesn’t matter.”
“I’m afraid it does.” He dissented sadly. “If one is not to be sidetracked by peace requirements one must have every card in the game. You see, there won’t be enough billets to go round and men of my sort will be the first to feel the pinch. I may not be quite up to my job, but somehow”—he drew long andwhimsically at his cigarette—“I hardly see myself going back to a stool in an auctioneer’s office.”
She didn’t either, but she didn’t tell him so. There was really no need. He had done so much, and at the back of the curious diffidence which she did not altogether like and which was his involuntary tribute to her strong personality, was the power of will that gets what its possessor wants. And he interested her enormously. At the moment she had seen him first she had felt his attraction. Day by day it had grown. And now as he sat on the schoolroom table talking with the intimacy of a schoolboy she began to feel a little overpowered. He was very simple, very wholesome, very good to look at, and he had proved himself a particularly fine soldier.
It must have been her silence which told him more than she desired he should learn. Certainly her inscrutable eyes gave no information. For quite abruptly, apropos of nothing at all, he said, “I wonder if I might call you Girlie!”
Her odd, sudden laugh sounded a little wild to her own fastidious ear. The sense of the theater, her private curse, was really just a little too much for her just then. Delicious, perfectly delicious situation!
“Mind you”—his frankness was always skirting the indelicate—“it’s not at all the right name for you. In fact, it’s just about the last name you ought to have had. I daresay you got it as a baby, but why it should have stuck to you the dear Lord knows.”
He suddenly moved towards her. But the look of her, the droop of the eyelids, the curved thrust of a strong chin informed him that this was not the time for a wise man to risk too much.
With a sigh he took refuge in his cigarette. More than ever was she an enigma, a mystery. This cool perfection of manner, this almost uncanny power of taking care of oneself seemed to give the lie almost as plainly to the Laxton solicitor’s daughter as it did to the butler and the lady’s maid. What was a girl of this sort doing in this galley? He was not altogether a fool, even if she treated him like one. Her arrogance was boundless, it simply asked for punishment, but at this tantalizing moment he realized ruefully that it called for heavier metal than George Norris to administer it.
His curiosity was horribly piqued. Confound the little vixen!—he began to swing his slippered feet—what wouldn’t he give to bring her down from her pedestal! No girl, at any rate of the wage-earning class, was entitled to bear herself with this sort of devilment.
Suddenly he determined to give her a kiss. Never mind the consequences. He would risk the proving that he was not a gentleman. As far as that went, had he not sufficiently attested the fact already? Yes, that was just the secret of the whole affair. And this impudent “solicitor’s daughter” stunt was her way of letting him know it. He began to understand the deadly resentmentof Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson and dear Dolores.
If ever a girl did deserve to be taken down a peg! Still at the very last moment, he learned that it was not so easy for George Norris to play the cad. He had a desire to press the very life out of this splendid little beast. The mere look of her was a challenge and a defiance, but he was bound to remember that she was a dependent in the house, very much the underdog, without a means of defending herself. No, whatever her deserts, it could hardly be called cricket....
With a start he grew aware that those curious eyes were fixed steadily upon his own; they might even be said to look right through them. He had just time to catch the faintly perceptible curl of a scornful lip, when without warning the door behind him opened. Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson came magnificently in, a figure of avenging fate in black satin and jet embroidery.
George Norris was still seated on the table and Miss Cass in a low chair of decrepit wicker work, was looking up at him with a smile of challenge in her eyes.
“So here you are, George.” The overtones of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson’s voice had more resonance than beauty. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. We are going to have a little music.”
“So sorry.” George was not impenitent. “But I just came out you know to smoke a cigarette.”
“Yes, you said so.” It was evidently not the remark Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson wanted to make, yeta gathering frown declared that becoming words refused to occur to her at the moment. As an alternative, she turned frigidly to the governess.
“Have you darned the children’s socks, Miss Cass?” The answer was a cheerful affirmative.
“Then, as coal and electric lights are rationed, perhaps you will not mind going to bed.”
Miss Cass said, with a smile whose candor seemed to add to its intensity, that she would not mind at all.
Still as George Norris got off the table he was decidedly glad that at the last moment he had been able to curb a natural inclination. Never had he felt so sorry for any one as he felt at that moment for Miss Cass. Nor had he ever been so much attracted by any one. A young man of practical rather than ardent temperament, he hoped he was not going to make a fool of himself or to lose his head.