The Head Girl at the Gables (8 page)

"Looks like the entrance to a cave over there!" said Morland. "Bet you six cigarettes to six chocolates I'm right!"

"You oughtn't to bet, you naughty boy!" returned Claudia. "Besides, we can't get any chocolates nowadays. We'll go and see, though, if it really is a cave. I love exploring."

To reach the place Morland had pointed out, they were obliged to struggle through jungles of brown sea-weed, and to slip down little precipices slimy with green sea-grass, and to scramble over rough projecting points of rock, honey-combed into queer shapes by the action of the tide. A jump across a crevice and a climb up a few feet of sheer precipice landed them at the entrance of the cave. Morland scrambled in front, and gave a hand to the others.

They found themselves in a large, rounded grotto, the walls of which shelved gently in a series of natural ledges; the floor was dry, and covered with fine silvery sand, and at the far end lay a pile of timber, washed in perhaps from some wreck by an abnormally high tide. The afternoon sun shone through the entrance and gleamed on little bits of mica and spar in the walls, making them glitter like diamonds.

"What an adorable place!" exclaimed Claudia with enthusiasm.

"Topping!" agreed Morland.

"A regular sea-nymphs' grotto!" exulted Lorraine, and Landry, who was not given to words, smiled, and pulling out a piece of timber sat down upon it.

"A good idea!" said Lorraine, following suit. "Look here, I've just had a brain wave. Let's appropriate the cave, and call it ours. Except just in the August holidays, I don't suppose anybody ever comes here, so we should have it quite to ourselves. It shall be a real sea-nymphs' grotto. We'll get shells from the shore, and make lovely patterns with them all along those ledges, and hang sea-weeds about, and make some seats with those pieces of wood, and we'll come out here on Saturdays sometimes, and bring our lunch. What votes?"

"A1! I'm your man, or rather your merman!" grinned Morland. "Any good recipe for growing a fish's tail, please? A diet of whelks and winkles not welcome, for my digestion's delicate."

"It's a chubby idea!" beamed Claudia. "I'd love it, only I
do
bargain we keep it to ourselves. I don't want the whole tribe trailing after us every time we come. The little ones mustn't know anything about it."

"
I
shan't tell them, you bet!" declared Morland.

"It isn't a suitable place to bring children," agreed Lorraine. "I won't say anything to Monica, or even to Mervyn, because he'd be sure to blurt it out to her. It shall be just our own secret."

"I expect it has been a sort of secret place," said Morland. "Those ledges look literally made for smugglers. No doubt they kept kegs of brandy there, and chests of tea, and bales of silk and lace in the good old days."

"Why shouldn't we keep a few things here?" suggested Claudia. "A kettle, and a tin of cocoa and milk, and some matches, and a box of biscuits. Then we could light a fire and have a little feast any time when we came."

"A ripping notion. I'll make a sort of cupboard with some of that wood to keep the things in. We'll bring cups and saucers as well as a kettle."

"And a frying pan in case we catch flukes down in the pools," put in Lorraine eagerly.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Morland, quite roused to enthusiasm. "I'll come over on Monday and bring a saw with me, and a hammer and nails, and see what I can knock together in the shape of a cupboard and seats. Then next Saturday we'll tramp over and have our picnic."

"Splendiferous!"

"We'll have to come in the morning, because of the tide."

"Right you are! I guess we'd better be getting back now. I haven't grown my merman's tail enough yet to swim with, and I've no wish to stop here all night."

Morland kept his word, and went on Monday to the cave, armed with various useful tools. He could work well enough at anything that took his fancy, and, though he never knocked in a nail at home, he toiled here in a way that would have amazed his family if they could have seen him. Landry went also, and helped in a fashion. He could not do much, but he held pieces of wood steady while his brother hammered, and he collected whole pocketfuls of shells from the beach.

Morland whistled cheerily as he worked. He wanted to give the girls a surprise, and, as they were busy at school all the week, he had the field to himself until Saturday. His artistic temperament found scope in the decoration of the cavern; fresh ideas kept occurring to him, and he enjoyed carrying them out. He felt like a kind of combination of Robinson Crusoe and the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with a spice of poetry running through it all.

Next Saturday Lorraine, having obtained permission from her mother to go to a picnic with the Castletons, started off, basket in hand, resisting the agonized entreaties of Monica, who implored to be allowed to accompany her.

"Sorry I can't take you to-day, Cuckoo! But you see they didn't ask you--only me. Beata and Romola aren't going either."

"But why shouldn't we
all
go, and Madox too?" wailed Monica the spoilt.

"It's too far. Look here, I'll ask Mother to let you have some of the Castleton children to tea one day. Would that content you?"

"Ye--es!" conceded Monica doubtfully. "But it doesn't make up for this morning. I think you're
ever
so mean, Lorraine!"

"Poor old Cuckoo! But you know you couldn't really have come in any case, for you're to be at the dentist's by eleven."

"Strafe the old dentist! I wish he were at the bottom of the sea!" declared the youngest of the Forrester family, with temper.

Lorraine ran away at last, and pelted up the hill to the Castletons' house, meeting Morland, Claudia, and Landry in the lane, whither they had fled to avoid a contingent of younger ones. They were laden with a cargo of miscellaneous articles--a kettle, a pan, some plates, and various tins.

"It's like a young removal," said Claudia.

"Or emigrating to the wilds of Canada," laughed Lorraine. "I've brought an enamelled mug, because it doesn't break like a teacup, and a little old Britannia metal teapot that I prigged from the attic. It was only going to be sent to a rummage sale, so we may just as well have it."

"Do mermaids drink tea, please?"

"No doubt they do when they can get it. Perhaps the smugglers taught them how."

Morland had intended to give the girls a surprise, and when they entered the grotto their amazement quite came up to his expectations. The cave seemed truly transformed into a sea-nymphs' palace. Landry had worked untiringly all the week picking up shells, and these were arranged in patterns, with long pieces of sea-weed draped artistically here and there. Fragments of wreckage had been neatly sawn and nailed together to form a cupboard, a table, and some seats, and just inside the entrance, in white pebbles, was the word "Welcome".

Landry, in his own way as pleased as his brother, stood beaming. Morland, though inwardly proud, affected nonchalance.

"Couldn't make it look much, of course," he apologized.

"Much? Why, it's topping!"

"It's like a fairy-tale! However did you find time to do all this?"

"Oh! I just worked a bit," murmured Morland modestly.

The first picnic in the grotto was a huge success. To be sure the table was unsteady, and had a decided lop to one end, and the benches felt slightly insecure, but the girls said that added an element of adventure, for you never knew when you might be suddenly precipitated on to the floor. They put the cocoa, biscuits, and matches in tins, and stowed them away inside the new cupboard which Morland had placed in an angle of the rocky shelf, then, fearing that the rising tide would cover the shore below and cut off their retreat, they bade a regretful farewell to all their arrangements, promising themselves the pleasure of coming often again.

It seemed too early to go straight home, so they spent the afternoon rambling about the cliffs, watching the sea-birds or the waves that were dashing below. Time flew apace, and when they came down the hill again from Tangy Point the sky was golden with sunset. The warm evening light flooded the common, where brown bracken grew like a forest, and goldfinches flitted about among a grove of thistles. Lorraine, who had an eye for colour, picked a large wand-like sheaf of yellow ragwort, and, holding it over her shoulder, trudged through the thistles, sending showers of down to float in the breeze, and dispersing the goldfinches from their feast. With her eyes on the horizon instead of on the ground in front, she nearly walked into an easel that was stationed among the bracken. Its owner sprang up to save it, and Lorraine, stopping just in time, paused with her russet dress and flying brown hair a dark mass against the gold of the sky and the thistle-down background. There was a second of silence as a pair of clear hazel eyes grasped the picturesque impression and registered it; then a mellow voice murmured: "Kilmeny!"

Kilmeny

"I'm dreadfully sorry!" apologized Lorraine.

"It doesn't matter at all. You did no damage."

"But I nearly knocked over your picture!"

"A miss is as good as a mile!"

"Why, it's Miss Lindsay!" exclaimed Claudia, coming up. "I thought you were still in Scotland."

"I've been back a week and am quite settled down again at Porthkeverne, and hope to stay here all the winter. Tell your father I'm coming up to see his pictures one day. I hear he's painting in pastel now. I've been going in for tempera. How are the babies? And Madox? He's a special friend of mine. I've brought them a box of real shortbread from Edinburgh. Yes, I'm making a sketch of this piece of the common. It appeals to me in the sunset."

"What a charming lady!
Who
is she?" whispered Lorraine as their party passed on.

"She's an artist--Miss Lindsay. We knew her in London, and it was she who advised Father to come and live at Porthkeverne. I'm glad she did, for we all like it just heaps better than Kensington."

"Does she live here?"

"She has rooms in the town and a studio down by the harbour, but she goes about to a great many places sketching. You'd love her pictures."

"I wish I could see them."

"Perhaps she'd let me take you some day to her studio."

"Oh! do you think she really would? Do you know I've never been inside a studio!"

Claudia laughed.

"You wouldn't want to if you'd had to sit as a model as often as I have! Would she, Morland?"

"Rather not. As a family I reckon we're fed up with studios," returned Morland. "Thank goodness I'm beyond the 'Bubbles' stage of beauty. It's Madox's turn for that!"

"Don't congratulate yourself too soon. I heard Father say the other day that you'd make an absolutely perfect study for 'Sir Galahad', and that Violet must tell Lizzie to clean that suit of armour, for he meant to begin it as soon as he'd finished 'Endymion'."

"Oh, strafe Sir Galahad!" groaned Morland. "The armour's the most beastly uncomfortable hot stuff to wear you can imagine. I wish I had a turned-up nose and freckles."

Lorraine, living in a modern unromantic house in the residents' suburbs of Porthkeverne, had hitherto had little or no acquaintance with the artist population of the town. They mostly lived in the old quarter, and had studios close to the harbour, their colony being centred round the Arts Club in the Guildhall. She had often watched them painting at their easels in the narrow picturesque streets, and had longed for a more intimate acquaintance. Their delightful Bohemian way of life had a fascination for her. She sometimes wished her father were an artist instead of a lawyer. It was so much more romantic to paint pictures than to make people's wills or transfer their property.

"Dad's utterly practical," she confided to Claudia. "He's busy all day at the office, and he prides himself on not being sentimental. He's about as artistic as that cow!"

"I'd swop dads with you," said Claudia. "I wish mine went to an office every day instead of to his studio."

"You won't forget about Miss Lindsay?"

"No, I'll try to take you, if you're really so keen about going."

Claudia was as good as her word, and one day came to school armed with a special invitation for herself and Lorraine. The latter, much excited, begged permission at home to accept.

"I think she's lovely, Mummie! Miss Lindsay, I mean. And I've never seen a studio, and Claudia says I'll
adore
her pictures, so you
will
let me go, won't you?"

"If it won't interfere with your home lessons and practising. It's extremely kind of her to ask you, I'm sure."

"I'll just
swat
at my lessons when I get back, to make up, and I'll do my practising before breakfast."

"Very well, but don't stay later than half-past five. The evenings are beginning to get dark so soon now."

"Oh, thanks most immensely!"

To Lorraine, brought up in a little world consisting mostly of her own family and a circle of cousins, it was really quite an event to pay this visit into the
terra incognita
of the Art Colony. She came to school in her best dress that afternoon, with the chain of amber beads that Donald had sent her from Italy. They were at present the only artistic things she possessed, and therefore the most suitable for the occasion.

She and Claudia hurried away as speedily as possible after four o'clock, and were soon tramping down the hill from The Gables and treading the narrow, quaint streets that led towards the sea. The harbour at Porthkeverne was a picturesque place that had figured over and over again on the walls of the Academy. Its green waters this afternoon sheltered a fleet of red-sailed fishing-boats, whose owners were busy making ready to put out into the bay. Over the beach and round about the breakwater flew hundreds of sea-birds, flapping in and out of the water, and pecking among the sea-weed on the rocks. Some venturesome urchins, scrambling after crabs, screamed almost as lustily as the gulls.

Along the quay, behind the barrels and upturned boats and baskets and old timber, was a row of irregular buildings that had once served as sailmakers' warehouses or boat builders' workshops. The artistic colony had joyfully seized upon these, and had turned them from their original use into a set of studios. Large glass windows fronted the bay, and twisting flights of steps and painted railings led up to the doors on which were brass plates with names well known both in London and provincial exhibitions.