The Head Girl at the Gables (18 page)

"I don't know her name. She wasn't there more than a few minutes."

"Oh!" said Lorraine thoughtfully. "Thank you, Mrs. Jones!"

Uncle Barton also looked thoughtful, when Lorraine described to him the whole occurrence. He wrote a note at once to the Chief Constable, to tell him where the telephone wires were cut, and sent the office boy to deliver it. Then he asked for any details his niece could supply.

"You're a little brick!" he commented. "There's treachery at work somewhere, undoubtedly, but the question is how to lay our hands on it. Can I trust you and the Castletons just to keep this dark for the present? I'd rather it wasn't noised all about the place. I've my own ideas, and I want to work them out in my own way."

"Shall I say anything about it to Madame Bertier?" asked Lorraine.

"Most decidedly not! Please don't mention the matter to anybody. You can give
me
the key of the museum till Miss Kingsley returns. You don't need to go there again at present?"

"I'd be scared to death!" confessed Lorraine.

In spite of Uncle Barton Forrester's injunctions, the episode of the cut telephone wires became known. The Castletons on their return home had found Madame Bertier in their father's studio, sitting for her portrait, and, being full of the exciting subject, had poured out their story. The pretty Russian was aghast.

"It is too horrible!" she exclaimed; "to have happened while Miss Kingsley is away! Some burglar would be bad--but it is perhaps a spy. I was at The Gables yesterday, just for a moment, to fetch a book. I saw nothing! Had I met anyone I should indeed have been very alarmed! The police will no doubt keep the house under observation now."

"The question is how anybody got into the room when it was locked," said Claudia.

"Perhaps they brought a ladder. You say the window was left open?"

"Yes, but it's shut and fastened now. Whoever came wouldn't be able to get in so easily again."

The Easter holidays were nearly over, and in a few days the Miss Kingsleys would be back to look after their own property, and take what precautions they thought fit against burglars or spies. At the near prospect of term time, Claudia, whose spirits had effervesced lately, suddenly waxed serious. Lorraine could not make out what was the matter with her.

"You look about as cheerful as an undertaker, old sport!" she remonstrated. "Something's got on your nerves!"

"I'm in a beastly hole," admitted Claudia, with a gusty sigh. "I know I'm a slacker."

"What have you been doing?"

"Something awful!"

"Go ahead and confess, then!"

They were sitting in the garden at Windy Howe, resting after planting some rows of peas, and sheltering under a tree from the heavy drops of a sudden April shower. Claudia pulled off her gardening gloves, and rested a delicately-modelled chin upon a prettily-shaped hand. There was desperate trouble in her blue eyes.

"I'm scared to go back to school, and that's the fact! I've done an awful thing! The day we broke up, Miss Janet gave me some papers to be signed and sent in to the Kindergarten College. She said they must be posted before the 6th. I put them in my coat pocket. Well--I've only just remembered them."

Lorraine was aghast.

"Claudia! Your application for the exam! How
could
you forget?"

"I don't know, but I did!" groaned the sinner.

"When did you remember?"

"Only this morning. I hadn't worn my coat during the holidays, it was too hot. I put it on this morning to run to the town to shop for Violet, and stuck my hand in my pocket, and found that wretched envelope."

"But did you never think of it once during the holidays? I should have thought studying would bring it to your mind."

"I haven't done any studying--I was so dead sick of lessons," confessed Claudia. "I've just been playing about with the children all the time."

"Oh!"

Lorraine's tone was eloquent.

"What
will
Miss Janet say?" speculated Claudia gloomily.

What, indeed? Lorraine did not dare to anticipate what would happen at The Gables on the receipt of such news. Only a member of the haphazard Castleton family would have been capable of such a shiftless act. It was exactly what Morland would have done, but Lorraine had expected better things from Claudia.

[Illustration: "CLAUDIA! HOW
COULD
YOU FORGET?"]

"Can't you get it signed now, and send it off?" she suggested.

"Father's away to-day, but I'll ask him to sign it when he comes back, and post it at once. I don't suppose it's much use, though."

"Oh, Claudia, I'm so sorry!"

"Well, it can't be helped now," said her friend, rather impatiently. "The rain's stopped, and I'm going to plant another row of peas."

Lorraine could not quite understand Claudia's attitude of mind, which seemed to hold more dread of Miss Janet's anger than concern for missing the application for the scholarship. There was a curious shade of relief mingled with her contrition. She began to sing quite cheerfully as she planted the peas, and, when Constable came running past, she picked him up and kissed him.

"Violet would miss me dreadfully if I went away. We've been friends the last few days," she remarked later on. "I helped to make Baby a new frock, and he looks so sweet in it. He
is
a darling!"

There was trouble at The Gables when the Misses Kingsley returned and learnt the bad news. They wrote off at once to Miss Halden, explaining the circumstances, but the answer came back that certain rules of the College were very strict, and the governors could not consider any application submitted later than the 6th.

"Also," wrote the Principal. "I feel that a girl, who could forget such an immensely important step in her own career, would be of no use to us, and I could not feel justified in awarding her a scholarship. I am exceedingly sorry, but fear this decision must be final."

So there, as far as the College was concerned, the matter ended. At school, however, Claudia with an obstinate look on her face weathered the storm of Miss Janet's contempt.

"After all the trouble I took in coaching you! It's really too bad! You've ruined your own career, and no one but yourself to thank for it! Why, the scholarship was as good as gained! You'd so easily have passed the exam. It was all arranged with Miss Halden, and you've spoilt the whole thing with your carelessness. You might at least have the grace to say that you're sorry!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss Janet," said Claudia in an apathetic voice.

The mistress glanced at her keenly.

"I doubt if you really are! I can't make you out! I'm disgusted with the whole affair. One gets very little thanks for trying to help people!"

Claudia, in terrible disgrace, retired sobbing. Later on, however, she poured confidences into Lorraine's ear.

"I'm sorry of course to disappoint Miss Janet, but I can't tell you how relieved I am, really! I never wanted to go, and that's the fact. I'd have
hated
to be a kindergarten teacher! I'd rather go on the land if I leave home at all, but--but----"

"Claudia!" began Lorraine, with sudden enlightenment, "were you going to be
home-sick
?"

"I suppose so. I'm fond of the children, you know, though I get fed up with them sometimes. It would take a very strong magnet to draw me away. Perhaps if something really
fascinating
offered, I'd want to go--but not for Kindergarten! No thanks! Some other girl may get the scholarship instead of me, and she's welcome to it. After all, home is a very nice place."

"It certainly is. I don't want to leave mine just at present," agreed Lorraine reflectively.

An Academy Picture

With the beginning of a new term two very important events happened in Lorraine's little world. Mervyn was sent to Redfern College, and Morland went into training. Mervyn's exodus was really somewhat of a relief, for he had been getting rather out of hand lately, and had waxed so obstreperous on occasion that his father had decided to pack him off at once for a taste of the discipline of a public school. Morland, who was now eighteen, went away in high spirits. On the whole he was tired of lounging about at home. He had reached the age when the boy is passing into manhood, and begins to think of making his own way in the world. All kinds of shadowy pictures of the future were floating in his mental vision, day dreams of brave deeds and great achievements, and laurel wreaths to be won by hands that had the luck to pluck them. His eyes were shining as he bade Lorraine good-bye.

"You must have thought me rather a slacker sometimes," he said. "But really there wasn't anything to urge a fellow on at home. Perhaps I'll tumble into my own niche some day. Who knows? Would you be glad, Lorraine, if you saw me doing decently?"

"Glad? Of course I should!"

"I didn't know whether you'd worry your head one way or another about it, or care twopence whether I went to the dogs or not!"

"Don't be silly! You're not going to the dogs."

"I might--if nobody was sufficiently interested in me to mind."

"Heaps of people are interested!"

"One doesn't want people in heaps--I prefer interest singly. By the by, if you've any time to spare, you might write to a fellow now and again. I'll want letters in camp."

"All serene! I'll send you one sometimes."

"Just to remind me of home."

"Morland! I believe you've got home-sickness as badly as Claudia. You'll be back at Porthkeverne before long, unless I'm greatly mistaken!"

"With my first leave, certainly," twinkled Morland.

As the weeks passed by in April, the artistic world of Porthkeverne reached a high pitch of anticipation and excitement. Practically every painter there had submitted something to the Academy, and the burning question was which among them would be lucky enough to have their work accepted. They looked out eagerly for the post, awaiting either a welcome varnishing ticket or a printed notice regretting that for lack of space their contributions could not be included in the exhibition, and requesting them to remove their pictures as speedily as possible.

In the studio down by the harbour expectation ran rife. Margaret Lindsay had finished her painting of "Kilmeny"--if not altogether to her own satisfaction, at any rate to that of most of her friends--and had dispatched it to the Academy.

"I don't believe for a moment that it will get in," she assured Lorraine. "I never seem to have any luck, somehow. I'm not a lucky person."

"Perhaps you will have this time," said Lorraine, who was washing out oil paint brushes for her friend, a messy task which she sometimes undertook. "Let's
will
that you shall be accepted. You
shall
be!"

"All the 'willing' in the world won't do the deed if the judges 'will' the other way, and their will tugs harder than ours!" laughed Margaret. "It depends so much on the taste of the judges. There's a fashion in pictures as in other things, and it's constantly changing."

"Is there? Why?"

"That I can't tell you, except that people tire of one style and like another. First the classical school was the favourite, then pre-Raphaelitism had its innings, then impressionism came up. Each period in painting is generally boomed by some celebrated art critic who deprecates the old-fashioned methods and cracks up the new. The public are rather like sheep. They buy what the critics tell them to admire.
Punch
had a delightful skit on that once. Ruskin had been pitching into the commonplace artist's style of picture rather freely, so
Punch
evolved a dejected brother of the brush giving vent to this despairing wail:

'I takes and paints, Hears no complaints, And sells before I'm dry; Then savage Ruskin He sticks his tusk in, And nobody will buy!'"

"I love
Punch
!" cackled Lorraine, drying the brushes on a clean paint-rag. "Tell me some more artistic titbits."

"Do you know the one about the old lady in the train who overheard the two artists talking? One said to the other:

"'Anything doing in children nowadays?'

"And his friend answered: 'A feller I know knocked off seven little girls' heads--nasty raw things they were too!--and a chap came in and carried them off just as they were--wet on the stretcher--and said he could do with a few more.'

"The poor old lady, who knew nothing of artists' lingo, imagined that she had surprised details of a ghastly murder, instead of a satisfactory sale to an enterprising dealer. But to come back to the Academy, Lorraine; I know I shan't get in! I've sent five times before, and always had the same disappointment, if you can call it a disappointment when you don't expect anything. The last time it happened I was in town, and I went to the Academy myself to fetch away my pictures. As I walked down the court-yard and out into Piccadilly with my parcel under my arm, I felt pretty blue, and I suppose I looked it, for a wretched little street arab stared at me with mock sympathy, and piped out: 'Have they rejected you too, poor darling?' He said it so funnily that I couldn't help laughing in spite of my blues."

"When are you likely to hear your luck?" asked Lorraine.

"Any day now; but it will be bad luck."

"Then I shall call every day on my way home from school to see if you've had a letter."

Lorraine kept her word, and each afternoon took the path by the harbour instead of the direct road up the hill. Day after day passed, and the post-woman had not yet delivered the longed-for official communication.

"No news is good news!" cheered Lorraine. "Mr. Saunders had his rejection last week, so Claudia told me. Mr. Castleton only heard this morning."

"How many has he in?"

"Three--the view of Tangy Point from the beach, Madox wheeling Perugia in the barrow, and the portrait of Madame Bertier. Claudia says they're immensely relieved, because even Mr. Gilbertson is 'out' this year. Here comes the second post! Is there anything for you? I'm going to see!"

Lorraine, in her impatience, tore down the wooden steps of the studio, and waylaid the post-woman. She came back like a triumphant whirlwind, waving a letter.