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Tom and Some Other Girls: A Public School Story

<h3>Chapter Four.</h3> <h4>Departure.</h4> Mr and Mrs Chester returned from their visit to Hurst Manor with somewhat different accounts of the establishment. The father was delighted with all he had seen, thought the arrangements excellent, and Miss Bruce a charming and lovable woman. The mother did not see how draughts were to be avoided in those long, bare passages, considered the hours of work cruelly long, and was convinced that Miss Bruce could be very stern if she chose. Her husband laughed, and declared that a school of two hundred girls would fare badly indeed if she could not, and the maternal fears were silenced at once by his banter, and by Rhoda’s fearless confidence. It was finally decided that the girl should join at the beginning of the term, and preparations were set on foot without delay. It was almost like buying a trousseau, Rhoda declared; and certainly no bride-elect could have taken a keener interest in her purchases. The big, new box with her initials on the side; the dressing-bag with its dainty fittings; the writing-case and workbox; the miniature medicine chest stocked with domestic remedies, in case she should feel feverish or chilled, have earache, toothache, or headache; be threatened with sore throat or swollen glands—they were all new possessions, and as such afforded acute satisfaction, for though the wardrobe list was disappointingly short, there were at least no restrictions as to quality. When the key was turned in her box Rhoda heaved a sigh of satisfaction in the confidence that not one of the two hundred girls could possess a better equipment than her own. Then she looked round her dismantled room, and felt a pang of depression. It looked so dead—as if its owner had already departed, and left it to its fate. The wardrobe door swung apart and revealed the empty pegs; the drawers were pulled open and showed piles of torn-up letters; the carpet was strewn with pins. All the treasured ornaments had been stored away, and the ugly ones looked uglier than ever, as if infected by the general dejection. In story-books girls were wont to bid a sentimental adieu to their maiden bowers before leaving for a new sphere, but Rhoda did not feel in the least inclined to be sentimental; she took to her heels instead and ran downstairs, only too glad to escape from her dreary surroundings, and presently she and her mother were driving towards the station on the first stage of the eventful journey. The village women stood at the doors of their cottages to put their aprons to their eyes, and murmur, “Ay, poor dear!” as she drove past; little Tommy Banks threw a nosegay of marigolds through the carriage window, and waddled away, scarlet with confusion; and there was quite a gathering of friends on the platform. Ella had brought a box of home-made Fuller’s sweets from herself and a dainty copy of The Christian Year as the Vicar’s farewell offering; Mrs Ross had a stack of magazines for reading on the journey, and little Miss Jones, who owed all the comforts of life to Mrs Chester’s friendship, presented the most elaborate “housewife,” stocked with every necessary which it seemed probable that a girl at school would not require. It was all most touching and gratifying. Even the station-master came up to express his good wishes, and the one-eyed porter blurted out, “Glad to see you back, Miss!” as if it were impossible to suppress his feelings a moment longer. Rhoda felt an insight into the feelings of Royalty as she stood at the window of the carriage, graciously smiling and bowing so long as she remained in sight, and when this excitement was over, another appeared to take its place. Mrs Chester was discovered to be crying in quite uncontrolled fashion, and at the sight of her tears Rhoda put on her severest air. “Mother! What are you doing? You must not cry! Please remember that in half an hour we shall be at Euston, and meet the school. I should never get over it if the girls saw my mother with a red face!” Mrs Chester mopped her eyes obediently, and made a valiant effort to regain her composure. For herself, poor dear, she cared little about appearances, but Rhoda had already exhibited an intense anxiety that she should make a good impression on the minds of her future school-fellows. Each separate article of clothing had been passed in review, while the bonnet had been changed three times over before the critic was satisfied. It would never do to spoil an effect which had been achieved with so much trouble; so the unselfish creature gulped down her tears, and tried to talk cheerfully on impersonal topics, keeping her eyes fixed on the landscape the while, lest the sight of her child might prove too much for her resolution. Rhoda was immaculate in blue serge coat and skirt, and sailor hat with a band of school colours. Nothing could have been simpler; but there are ranks in even the simplest garments, and she was agreeably conscious that her coat was not as other coats, neither was her skirt as other skirts. The hand of the Regent Street tailor was seen in both, and there was a new arrangement of pleats at the back which ought in itself to secure the admiration of the school! She was all complacency until Euston was reached, when the first glimpse at a group of “Hurst” girls smote her to earth. She had sewn the band on her hat upside down, putting the wide stripe next the brim, which should by rights have been the place of the narrow! To the cold, adult mind such a discovery might seem of trifling importance, but to the embryo school-girl it was fraught with agonising humiliation. It looked so ignorant, so stupid; it marked one so hopelessly as a recruit; Rhoda’s cheeks burned crimson; she looked searchingly round to see if by chance any other strangeling had fallen into the same error, but, so far as bands were concerned, she was solitary among the throng. A governess, seeing the two figures standing apart from the rest, came forward and welcomed Rhoda with a few kindly words, but she was too busy to spare time for more than a greeting. Fresh girls kept arriving with every moment—a crowd of brisk, alert, bustling young creatures, skurrying along bags in hand, and bright eyes glancing to right and left. At every step forward there would come a fresh recognition, a nod of the head, a wave of the hand, a quick “Halloa!” more eloquent than elegant. Rhoda felt a spasm of loneliness at the realisation that no greeting waited for herself, and at the strangeness of the many faces. She looked critically around and came to the most unfavourable conclusions. “I don’t like that one—she’s a fright! I hate that one—she’s so affected. Those two look common; I won’t have anything to do with them. The big one with spectacles looks horribly learned. The one with the violin has a most unmusical face. She looks fit for stratagems if you like! The little one in brown is a cunning fox, I can see it in her eyes. Of all the plain, uninteresting, stodgy set of girls—” There was a movement inside the saloon carriage opposite, and a large mamma clad in black, with a profusion of bugles, stepped on to the platform and marched stolidly away. She steered a course clear of the crowd of girls, the ends of her mantle floating behind her, like a brig in full sail before the breeze, while her poor little daughter hung out of the doorway gazing after her, sobbing bitterly, and mouthing in pathetic, helpless misery. Mrs Chester began to cry at once in sympathy, and even Rhoda felt a smarting of the eyes. It was coming! The crucial moment was at hand; the bell was ringing, the girls were crowding into the carriages, the governess stepped forward and spoke a warning word. “You had better come now, dear! Please take your seat.” Rhoda turned and bent her tall young head to her little mother, but neither spoke—the tension was too great. Mrs Chester’s face was tremulous with agitation, the girl’s white and defiant. Then she stepped into the carriage and seated herself among the crowd of strangers. The girls were all silent now, pale of face and red of eye, a few crying openly, the majority fighting against emotion. The mothers came to the edge of the platform, and stared in through the windows. “It is like looking at animals in a cage,” said Rhoda to herself, and then the wheels began to move, she saw her mother’s quivering face—saw it from a distance—saw it no more—and realised for the first time, with a great, bitter pang of anguish, the meaning of farewell! She had not intended to cry, she had never believed it possible that she would cry, but it was hard work to resist it during the next half-hour, when every second bore her further from home, and the strangeness of her surroundings pressed more heavily upon her. Other girls were beginning to cheer up and exchange confidences with their companions, but she had no one with whom to talk. Two girls opposite—the foxey one and the affected one—were chatting quite merrily together. The affected one, whose name appeared to be Hilda, had spent part of her holiday at Boulogne, and was discoursing on the delights of Continental bathing, while Foxey, not to be outdone, would have her know that Scarborough kept pace with all the Continental methods. Another girl made the harrowing discovery that she had left her spectacles at home, and announced the same to a chum, who remarked that it was “a ripping joke!” The violin girl had had a bicycling accident, and exhibited her scars with pride. The shock of parting over, they all seemed very happy together, very friendly, very absorbed; far too much absorbed to notice a new-comer, or trouble themselves on her behalf. The governess stood by Rhoda’s side for a few minutes and made remarks in an aggressively cheerful manner, but her reception was not encouraging, and presently she went away, and did not return. Rhoda looked at the pictures in her magazines, or pretended to look, for her brain was so much occupied with other matters that she could not grasp their meaning, and after five minutes’ inspection would hardly have been able to say whether she had been studying the features of a country landscape or those of a society beauty. Then she turned and cautiously examined her neighbours. The girl to the right was a square, stolid-looking creature, square-faced, square-shouldered, with square toes to her boots, and elbows thrust out on each side in square, aggressive fashion. Her eyes were small and light, and her nose a defiance of classic traditions; the corners of her mouth turned down, and she had at once the solemnest and the most mischievous expression it is possible to imagine. After a critical survey of her charms, Rhoda felt that she was not the person with whom to force a conversation, and turned her attention to the neighbour on her left. A recruit, surely; for, though her hat-band was in order, there was in her mien an absence of that brisk, independent air which seemed to characterise the old Hurst girl. A pretty damsel, too, with curling hair and soft dark eyes, which at the present moment were bent in elaborate scrutiny on the paper before her. Rhoda noticed that it was the advertisement page at which she was looking, and suspected a pre-occupation kindred to her own. She coughed slightly and ventured a gentle question— “Is this your first term at school?” The dark-eyed girl turned a fleeting glance upon her, so fleeting that it seemed as if she had never altered her position, and replied monosyllabically: “Yes.” “You are going up, like me, for the first time?” “Yes.” “And you have never been to school before?” “Yes.” “I mean a boarding school. A big school like this, on all the new lines?” “Yes.” This was disconcerting! What did she mean? It was her first term, she was a new girl, and yet she had been up before! What was the girl thinking about! She might really trouble herself to say more than one single word. “But you said—I understood you to say—” Brown Eyes turned fiercely upon her, and fairly snapped in indignation. “I don’t care what I said, or what you understood. Can’t you see I want to be quiet? Can’t you leave me alone? If I am a new girl, I don’t want to howl before all the others, do I! Very well, then! don’t make me talk! Read your book, and let me read mine.” “I beg your pardon!” said Rhoda, in her most stately manner. She took up her magazine obediently, but now it was more impossible than ever to read it, for she was tingling with mortification. Such a snub from a stranger, and when she was trying to be friendly too! It would be a long time before she troubled Brown Eyes again. Her thoughts went back regretfully to Ella, the loyal, the sympathetic, the faithfully admiring. If Ella were only here now, how different it would be! Why had she not thought of it before, and asked her parents to pay Ella’s fees, so that she might have the solace of her presence? They would have done it gladly, but, alas! Ella could not have been spared from home. She had to help her mother; to be governess as well as pupil, teaching the younger children for part of every day. No! Ella was impossible; but the craving for companionship grew so intense that it even conquered the dread inspired by her other companion, and strengthened her to make yet another effort. The train had just left a station whose name was familiar in her ears, and she realised that they had crossed the boundary between two counties, and were now in Blankshire, in which Hurst Manor itself was situated. To remark on this fact seemed an innocent and natural manner of opening a conversation, so she turned towards Square Face, and said brightly, “Now we are in Blankshire, I see! I have never been here before. The country looks very pretty and undulating.” The girl turned and stared at her with a wooden stolidity of feature. Seen at close quarters she appeared to Rhoda as at once the most extraordinarily ugly and comical-looking creature she had ever beheld. Her little eyes blinked, and the thin lips flapped up and down in an uncanny fashion that refused to be likened to any ordinary thing. There was a moment’s silence, then she repeated in a tone of the utmost solemnity— “The country is very pretty and undulating—you are quite right. Your remark is most apt! May I ask if you would object to my repeating it to my friend over here? She would be so very much interested.” She was so preternaturally grave, that for a moment Rhoda was taken in by the pretence, the next she flushed angrily, and tilted her head in the air, but it was of no avail, for already the next girl was tittering over the quotation, and turning to repeat it in her turn. The simple words must surely contain some hidden joke, for on hearing it each listener was seized with a paroxysm of laughter, and face after face peered forward to stare at the originator, and chuckle with renewed mirth. It was a good ten minutes before it had travelled round the carriage and been digested by each separate traveller, and then, so far from dying out, it acquired fresh life from being adapted to passing circumstances, as when the train having stopped at a junction and moved on again with a jerk, Square Face fell prone into her companion’s arms, and excused herself with a bland— “Excuse me, dear. It’s my little way. I am so pretty and undulating,” and instantly the titters burst out afresh. Rhoda’s face was a study, but even as she sat fuming with passion, a voice spoke in her ear from the side where Brown Eyes still studied her advertisements. “Laugh, can’t you?” said the voice. “Laugh, too, as if you enjoyed the joke. It’s the only way. They will go on all the more if they see you are angry.” “I hate them all!” hissed Rhoda savagely, and the other heaved a sigh. “Ah, so do I, but they shan’t hate me if I know it! I’m sorry I snapped, but I’ll talk now, and for pity’s sake don’t look so dismal. Let us look over this paper together, and make remarks, and smile as if we were enjoying ourselves too.” “I don’t feel as if I should ever enjoy myself again. It’s hateful going to school. If I had known it was as bad as this I would never have come.” “There’s a lake in the grounds. We will drown ourselves together after tea, but in the meantime do please keep up appearances. Don’t give yourself away before all these girls!” Rhoda looked at her curiously, and felt a thrill of comfort at finding a friend in the midst of her desolation. “What is your name?” she queried eagerly, and the dark eyes met hers in a solemn stare. “Marah, for bitterness. That’s how I feel to-day, anyhow. My godmothers and godfather christened me Dorothy, and in festive moments I have even answered to ‘Doll,’ but I’d murder any one who called me that to-day. Now, I’ll show you something interesting... I’ve travelled on this line before, and if you look out of the window you can catch a glimpse of Hurst Manor as we pass the next station. It stands in its own grounds with nothing between it and the line. Over there to the right—you can’t miss it if you keep your eyes open. Now! There! That gaunt, grey building.” Rhoda looked, and there it lay—a gaunt building, indeed, with row upon row of tall, bare windows staring like so many eyes, and out-standing wings flanked like sentinels on either side. The poor recruit’s face lengthened with horror. “It looks,” she said dismally, “like a prison! It looks as if when you once got in, you would never never get out any more!” <hr></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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