The Youngest Girl in the Fifth (12 page)

"Don't ask me anything! Oh, I just want to go to bed; I'm done!" wailed Gwen, subsiding on to the nearest chair.

Beatrice took the hint, and refrained from any reproaches till she had tucked up the prodigal in warmed blankets, with a hot bottle at her feet, and seen her consume a basin full of steaming bread and milk. Then she observed:

"I suppose you know Father and half the village are out hunting for you with lanterns? They raised the Boy Scouts and broke up the Band of Hope meeting. They telephoned to the Police Station at North Ditton too. I expect you're rather proud of yourself!"

And Gwen turned her face to the wall and sobbed and coughed till she nearly choked.

Next afternoon a very miserable-looking object, with watering eyes and a swollen cheek sat wrapped in a shawl by the fire in Father's study. Gwen had made her peace with Beatrice and had been forgiven, but she was still "eating the husks" of her escapade in the shape of a thoroughly bad cold and a touch of toothache. She refused to stay in bed, yet the noise of the family sitting-room made her head throb, so finally Father had taken pity upon her, and allowed her to bring her troubles into his sanctum. He had said very little about the events of the day before, but Gwen knew exactly what he must be thinking. She mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, and tried to believe it was her toothache that was making her cry. After a long time she said huskily, à propos of nothing in particular:

"Things always go so hardly with me, somehow, Dad! I don't know how it is. I generally seem unlucky, both at school and at home. I suppose it's partly me, but if things were easier, I'd be better. I should, really."

[Illustration: "THINGS GO SO HARDLY WITH ME SOMEHOW, DAD."]

Father did not reply: he was busy addressing the motto-cards that he was sending to his parishioners for the New Year. He handed one to her silently.

And Gwen read:

"O do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the Grace of God."

--
Phillips Brooks.

Gwen sat staring hard into the fire.

"I'll hang this up in my bedroom, Dad," she said presently.

"Do; you'll find it worth thinking about," replied Father, as he blotted the thirty-fourth envelope.

A Prize Essay

Gwen went back to school feeling rather tamed and sober. The bad cold and face-ache, subsequent on her adventure in the snow, had seriously interfered with her plans for the holidays, and she had not accomplished half she intended to do in the time. Dick Chambers had been laid up in bed with an attack of rheumatism, so she had scarcely seen anything of him, and altogether the much-longed-for month had held its disappointments. She returned to her desk in the Fifth almost glad to begin a fresh term, though she knew many difficulties awaited her. First and foremost was the horrible fact that she owed a whole sovereign to Netta Goodwin, and had absolutely no prospect of paying it. She tried to avoid any private conversation with her chum, but the ruse was not successful for long. Netta was a girl who was accustomed to get her own way, and she followed Gwen round the school until she caught her alone.

"I say, you old slacker, what about that sov.?" she began. "I suppose you got your Christmas presents all right?"

"Oh, yes, I got my presents!" said Gwen, trying to pass things off airily. "Not quite what I expected, though."

"But you can pay me back?"

"I'm afraid I can't just yet."

Netta's rather pretty face changed its expression considerably.

"When can you, then?" she asked sharply. "I want to know."

"Could you wait a fortnight?"

"It's inconvenient, but I might."

Netta was still scowling. "Will you promise faithfully to bring it by the 1st of February?"

"I'll do my best," agreed Gwen, escaping from what was to both a very unpleasant interview.

She had mentioned a fortnight simply on the spur of the moment to put Netta off, but she knew that the 1st of February would bring no way out of her entanglement. It was something, however, to have even a respite of two weeks; it gave her time to think and to lay plans. She wondered what Netta would do if, as seemed most likely, the debt still remained owing. She did not suppose Netta would turn informer to Miss Roscoe, but she might very possibly mention the matter to Winnie, who would tell Beatrice, who would promptly tell Father.

"Only a fortnight!" groaned Gwen, feeling like a criminal in a condemned cell. "Unless 'something turns up', as Mr. Micawber says in
David Copperfield
. If I were the heroine of a novel, a forgotten uncle in America would suddenly die, and leave me a million just at the opportune moment. But I'm only a very unromantic, every-day kind of person, not the forget-me-not-eyed, spun-gold-haired, wild-rose-petal-complexioned, pearly-toothed sort of girl who gets fortunes; I'm solid fact, not fiction. Most things are nowadays, I suppose."

Certainly the Fifth Form did not offer scope for romance or sentiment. Its daily doings were most prosaic, a round in which Latin, mathematics, and chemistry were chiefly to the fore, and the only appeal to the imagination was the weekly lecture on English literature from the Principal. Gwen liked these; Miss Roscoe had the knack of making historical dry bones live, and encouraged the girls to read for themselves. All her lessons were interesting, but in this she was inspiring. She was accustomed to give themes for fortnightly exercises, and at the first lecture of this new term she announced as a special subject: "An Essay on any one of the Great Writers of the Victorian Era", promising a volume of Browning's poems as a prize.

"I had intended to offer it for Christmas," she said, "but I thought you were too busy preparing for examinations to be able to give time to such an essay. I hope you'll do justice to the subject now."

It was a large order, thought Gwen, when already their homework had about reached its outside limit. Miss Roscoe was quite unconscionable in her demands on their time and brains. She fixed the standard of the Form so high that only the very bright girls could possibly keep up to it. Many slacked off entirely, but Gwen could not, dared not slack. She knew Miss Roscoe was watching her work, and that very much depended upon her reports for the next year or two. Father had thrown out a few hints that had stirred her ambition and raised wild hopes for the future. She was aware that there were several good scholarships from Rodenhurst, and visions of College began to dawn on her horizon.

"'Gwen Gascoyne, B.A.', sounds no end. It would be worth the grind. I mayn't be the beauty of the family, but I believe I've got the best share of the brains. Beatrice would be proud of me if I took my degree. I must make something of this essay if I 'burn the midnight'. Miss Roscoe will expect me to turn up trumps. I'll toil like a navvy!"

So Gwen decided, and stuck to her resolution. She had an undoubted capacity for work, a power of application and of steady plodding that were of immense service, as well as more brilliant gifts. She attacked the question at once. The Victorian writers offered a fairly wide choice of subject. She hesitated at first between George Eliot and Dickens, and finally selected Thomas Carlyle. Something about the rugged old prophet attracted her, and she thought he would be a congenial theme for her pen. She spent every spare moment in reading his biographies or his works, till she felt she had him at her fingers' ends. Then, with a mass of notes as a foundation, she began her essay.

Most young writers undergo the same first agonies of composition: the vainly sought simile, the sentence that will not turn nicely, the tiresome word that crops up too often, yet for which there seems no adequate substitute; the sudden lack of ideas, or the non-ability to clothe those one has in suitable language.

Gwen wrote and burnt, and wrote and burnt again, till at last she managed something, not at all up to the ideal of her imagination, but the best her limited literary experience could produce. She refused to show it to anybody at home, and bore it off to school to read over and correct during the dinner hour. She was sitting at her desk, busy altering sentences and erasing words, when Netta came into the room.

"Hello, you old solitary hermit!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here, with your nose buried in an exercise book? There's no getting at you nowadays. You'll grow old before your time, Gwen, my child! Come out this instant, and play basket-ball."

"Can't, so that's flat," responded Gwen. "Netta, if you love me, if you've any humanity in you, leave me alone. Basket-ball's off till I've finished this."

"Well, you've got to tell me what you're doing, at any rate. Let me look! No, Miss Modesty, you're not going to hide your light under a bushel. I insist! Oho! What have we got here now?"

Netta dragged the book from Gwen's reluctant hands, and sitting on a neighbouring desk, began hastily to skim through the essay, giving grunts of approval as she read.

"First rate! I say, this is immense! Gwen, my hearty, I didn't think you'd got it in you!"

"Will it do?" demanded Gwen anxiously. She had sat on metaphorical pins to hear Netta's verdict.

"Do? I should rather think it would! If Lemonade doesn't mark it A1, First Prize, I shall say she doesn't know her business, that's all! You're pretty safe for that book of Browning, in my opinion."

"Wish it were cash instead! But I shan't get it in any case," sighed Gwen. "If I did, I'd trade it for anything I could."

"You mercenary wretch!"

"I'm so hard up. I'm no nearer paying what I owe you, Netta. I literally haven't a penny in my pocket I wish you'd take it in kind instead of money."

Netta sat silent, drumming with her fingers on the desk.

"I've a rather decent locket, if you'd care for that--" continued Gwen.

"Hush! Be quiet! You've given me an idea, Gwen Gascoyne."

"Or I've a really jolly writing case--almost new--"

"I don't want your lockets or your writing cases; I've heaps of my own. I know one thing I do want, though, and if you like to trade, you can."

"Done! Only name it, and it's yours with my blessing."

"Well, I want this essay--"

"My essay! What do you mean?"

Gwen snatched back her exercise book as a mother clutches her first-born.

"I mean what I say. If you like to hand over 'Thomas Carlyle' to me, I'll take it instead of the sov., and call us quits. It would be a new experience to win a prize. How amazed everyone would be!"

"You surely wouldn't pass it off as your own?"

"Why not?"

"Why, Netta! That would be rather strong, even for you!"

"I told you long ago I was no saint. Besides, what's the harm? It's a business arrangement. You offered to pay me in kind, and this happens to be the 'pound of flesh', I fancy. It's perfectly fair."

"Um! Don't quite see the fairness myself."

"But it is!" protested Netta rather huffily. "I believe lots of popular authors don't do all their own writing themselves. They engage secretaries to help them. I've even heard of clergymen buying their sermons."

"Oh, oh! Father doesn't!" Gwen's tone was warm.

"Well, I didn't say he did, but I believe it's done all the same. And if a vicar can read somebody else's sermon in the pulpit as if it were his own, I may hand in somebody else's essay.
Quod est demonstrandum
, my child."

"Can't see it!" grunted Gwen.

"Look here, Gwen Gascoyne, you've got to see it! I've been uncommonly patient with you, but I don't quite appreciate the joke of being done out of that sov. I must either have it or its equivalent. You can please yourself which."

Netta's eyes were flashing, and her mouth was twitching ominously. She was a jolly enough fair-weather comrade, but she could be uncommonly nasty if things went wrong.

"I suppose you don't consider it unfair to keep me waiting all this time?" she added scathingly.

Gwen kicked the desk and groaned.

"Well, it just amounts to this: if you don't choose to come to terms, I'll tell Lemonade. Yes, I will! I don't care a scrap if I went into her room as well as you. You broke the china, and you'd get into the worst row. It wouldn't be pleasant for you. I think you'd better hand over Mr. Thomas Carlyle to me, my dear."

"And what am I to do, I should like to know?"

"Write another on a different author."

"There isn't time."

"Yes there is, heaps! I don't want it to be as good as this, naturally. Well, are you going to trade, or are you not? I can't wait here all day!"

For answer, Gwen held out the exercise book. She was in a desperately tight corner; everything seemed to have conspired against her. She knew Netta and her mad, reckless moods quite well enough to appreciate the fact that her threat to tell Miss Roscoe was no idle one. When her temper was roused, Netta was capable of anything.

"It's her fault more than mine if it's not fair. I really can't help it," thought Gwen, trying to find excuses for herself.

"Oh! Glad you've come to your senses at last!" sneered Netta, as she clutched the precious manuscript and stalked away, slamming the door behind her. There was no one else in the room, so Gwen laid her head down on the desk, and indulged in an altogether early Victorian exhibition of feeling. Her essay--her cherished essay, over which she had taken such superhuman pains, to be torn away from her like this! It was to have brought her such credit from Miss Roscoe, for even if it did not win the prize, it would surely be highly commended. And she had made herself a party to a fraud, for however much she might try to whitewash her act, she knew she had no right to allow Netta to use her work.

"Dad would despise me! Oh, what an abominable mix and muddle it all is! And I was going to start the New Year so straight!" wailed Gwen.

Netta in the meantime had put the essay away in her locker with the utmost satisfaction. She felt she had decidedly scored. Neither brilliant nor a hard worker, she had no opportunity of distinguishing herself in the Form under ordinary circumstances: here chance had flung into her hand the very thing she wanted. It would not take long to copy the sixteen pages of rather sprawling writing, then "Thomas Carlyle" would be her own.