Part 7 (1/2)
”Oh! dear!”
The plaintive e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n fell on the drowsy noonday air, and the speaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfelt sympathy by her companion.
”Buck up, old thing!” said the latter. ”These very same old exam rods were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.
The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it, and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and conditionals? As long as it's French and you don't split your infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what it means.”
Seaview House is an establishment for the finis.h.i.+ng of young ladies, which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means of dancing and physical culture, and the polis.h.i.+ng of the facets of their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc. These latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which they must perforce a.s.sist.
And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repousse work on the outside of the platter.
The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw, or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails s.h.i.+ne like old cut gla.s.s, just enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.
They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in the absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment is quite old-fas.h.i.+oned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other school in Eastbourne.
Which is all as it should be!
”Yes! but,” continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear in the book again so that it really does not matter about her nomenclature. ”I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the French papers.”
”Oh! but,” sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason that we christened Annie Smith, ”_she_ has a brain!”
Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.
”Yes! of course she has! And _isn't_ she beautiful!”
Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a plate.
”Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different to all of us.”
”I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary,” rather importantly added Susan Brown, ”_bizarre_----”
”Whatever does it mean?” inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her neutral life.
”Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like _us_!”
”I see!” contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith. ”But I _do_ love her; she's such a dear. So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and so _splendid_ at sports. What tremendous friends she and Jessica have become, haven't they, since the night of the scare? I often wonder what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since.”
”Indigestion, I've always thought. Cookie was away on her holidays, if you remember, and her _loc.u.m tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry like cement; I always thought, too, that Princ.i.p.al gave her that lovely little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the sleep-walking, I mean. I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night. It must be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every three months. _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and to have had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_ wors.h.i.+ps her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, and to have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?”
Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of a perfectly contented mind. ”She deserves all the luck she gets, and what luck for _us_ having her as head next term. What a favourite she is with everyone, even old Signer Valenti! Oh, dear, I wish to-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange when I think of that nocturne.”
”Never say die, Ann! _Have_ you heard Leonie play the Moonlight?”
”No! What's it like?”
”Simply _awful_, just like Mam'zel when she thumps downstairs in her felt slippers.”
There fell a s.p.a.ce of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the gra.s.s incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful dissociation from anything more perplexing than the pa.s.sing of the actual hour.