Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

“ Poor Susan! The freckles disappeared in a crimson blush which mounted to her temples, and tinged her very neck beneath the stiff brown band. She twisted her fingers together, and stammered incoherent nothings.
“Go on! You promised. The truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Dreda, dear—”
“Go on! I’m prepared. I’ve suffered so much humiliation already that a little more or less doesn’t matter. Well?”
“I thought—I was afraid—I didn’t want you to get into trouble, dear. You are so clever, and original, and sparkling, it is natural that you should get tired. I am just a dull, plodding old machine.” ”

“ She herself had dreamed of such fairy tales, had expatiated on their probability to sceptical friends; but now that Mr Rawdon had prophesied the same thing she was none the less surprised and tremulous. He who has experienced what the world calls triumph knows well that at those moments the inmost feeling of the heart has been humility rather than pride. He alone knows his own limitations, his own weakness; he trembles lest he may prove unworthy of the praise he has won. As the first delirious moments passed by, Dreda was amazed to feel a sense of depression chilling her blood. ”

“ Norah looked up sharply; but no, there was no sneer on Dreda’s lips. The big, sad eyes stared into hers with childlike candour and simplicity. Norah bit her lip, and swallowed nervously.
“I—I’m not satisfied!”
“Oh, but why? You have gained all you wanted. It seems a pity that no one should be pleased. Susan wasn’t a bit; she was miserable because I was miserable, and all the girls were sorry for me, and were nicer than ever before. There’s only you to be glad, Norah. It was your plan, and you succeeded. You needn’t mind me. I’ve tasted the dregs. Nothing can ever be so bitter to me again.” ”

“ My dear Dreda, there is nothing in the world you understand as little as your own character. I never met a girl who was so blind to her own defects. Not ambitious! How can you say such a thing in the same breath as that in which you express your longing for admiration? One may be ambitious for unworthy aims as well as for worthy ones; and your desires are all for poor, worldly things which pass away, leaving no one better or wiser. It is false modesty to say you are not clever ”

“ The face on the pillow was all blank surprise and bewilderment. “What Guy?”
“Guy Seton—my Guy! It’s an engagement ring. Oh, Dreda, I have been longing to tell you. I’m so—happy!”
“You—are—engaged—to Guy Seton?” repeated Dreda blankly. Instead of the radiant smile which Rowena expected, her face hardened with displeasure, and she drew her brows together in a frown. “When? How? Why? I never dreamt of such a thing. It seems too extraordinary to be true.”
“Oh, Dreda, why? We think it so natural. We were made for each other. It seems as if we must always have been engaged. ”

“ Her cheeks rivalled Susan’s in their flame of indignation. Susan to play her false, to endeavour to wrest a coveted place from a friend! Susan an enemy, a rival! Dreda felt a vehement, overwhelming disgust for the whole universe and its inhabitants, a shattering of faith in every cherished ideal! Never, no never again, could she bring herself to believe in a human creature!
The two girls sat silent, awaiting the mistress’s decree, and Miss Drake looked slowly from one flushed face to the other, her usually smooth forehead showing two deep horizontal lines. ”

“ It’s impossible to think that any of those girls will get the better of you! It’s hateful, of course; but perhaps it may not be quite so hateful as we think—”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I’m resigned! One can only be as miserable as one can. Perhaps I’ll have an accident some day, riding over those rough roads, and then it will all be finished. I don’t mind how soon my life is over!” declared Dreda, harpooning her hat viciously with a pin of murderous length, ornamented at the head by a life-size imitation of a tomato. “But while I do live, I tell you one thing, Rowena, I’ll—I’ll hold my own!” ”

“ Susan is so good that it hurts her when people do wrong. I couldn’t bear Susan to think badly of me, and neither would you Susan shall never know.”
Then for the first time the tears started to Norah’s eyes.
“Oh, Dreda, you are generous,” she sighed; “you know how to forgive.” Then, with a sudden flash of intuition, “Susan will write books. She will be great; but you, Dreda, you will live! You will be better than famous—you will be loved!” ”

“ To be old, and ugly, and poor, and to have no home or any people that count—there can’t possibly be any personal interest in life! Her only hope would be to live for others, and of that, poor dear, she is incapable!”
Rowena folded her hands on her lap, turned her well-cut profile to the window, and sighed in an elderly, forbearing fashion, at which the two boys grinned broadly, while impetuous Dreda burst once more into speech.
“Rowena, I hate you when you talk like that! Don’t be so self-righteous and horrid! It’s not for you to criticise other people. ”

“ Maud suffered from an insatiable desire to be observed, and—so to speak—live in the public eye. If she could be observed with admiration, so much the better, but given a choice between being disgraced or ignored, she would not have hesitated for the fraction of a moment. Better a hundred times to be scolded and denounced than to be passed by in silence as if one were a stick or a stone. So it happened that when Rowena treated her with stately indifference, Maud found it impossible to keep silent. ”

“ Led by the huntsmen and hounds, the horsemen went streaming across country in a long, irregular line, leaping lightly across intervening barriers, while the less fortunate riders on wheels were obliged to follow the détours of the road.
Dreda felt an almost unbearable impatience as she watched Rowena’s graceful figure swaying lightly in her saddle beside Guy Seton in his picturesque pink coat. Hateful to come to a meet if you couldn’t come properly! Hateful of Guy Seton to have forgotten his promise! Hateful to follow a mile behind and be out of all the fun. ”

“ To secure a carriage in which they could travel alone and be able to talk as they pleased was the ambition of the four elders, and while Miss Bruce was busily looking after the luggage, they took possession of a corridor coupé, slammed the door, and blocked the window with determined faces, though deep in each heart lurked the conviction that Miss Bruce’s morbidly acute conscience would feel it her duty to interfere.
“Nix for the Spider!” hissed Gurth, prising a hockey-stick against the handle of the door the while he gazed with elaborate calm at a poster on the station wall. ”

“ People always are charmed to go on talking,” declared Dreda smiling back with the utmost frankness into the face of this bright, friendly stranger.
So this was the English governess of whose cleverness and accomplishments she had heard so much! She looked quite young—ridiculously young; not many years older than Rowena herself. Dreda had expected to see an elderly, spectacled dame, thin and spare, with scant locks dragged tightly back from her face. In the dark depression of her spirits she had thought it possible that she might even wear knitted mittens, and have cotton wool in her ears. ”

“ The girl who had written this essay possessed the great gifts of wit, pathos, and charm; she could not only feel, but she could clothe her thoughts in apt, telling words. She had faults to overcome, and her apprenticeship to art might be long and hard; but he had confidence in making a prophecy to-day, a prophecy which he called upon his hearers to remember and recall in after years, a prophecy that the writer of this schoolgirl essay would live to make an honoured name for herself in the English-speaking world. ”

“ Miss Bretherton was a woman of lofty aims, who was continually looking beyond her pupils’ schooldays to the time when they should be the women of Britain; the wives and mothers, and sisters and friends of the men who were to carry on the work of our great Empire, and who, humanly speaking, would do that work well or ill according to the manner in which their womankind influenced their lives. Miss Bretherton realised that the chief result of school study was not the mere storing of information, but the training of the brain to grapple with the great problems of life. ”

“ It’s the only way in which I can help Dreda. The more difficult it is the better I shall be pleased.”
Rowena looked at her in silence. Little, plain, insignificant Susan Webster, whom an hour ago she had pitied with all her heart. She had no Guy to love her. Considering her unattractive exterior, and the inherent love of men for beauty and charm, it was exceedingly doubtful whether she ever would have a Guy. But she understood. She had risen already to a higher conception of love than the bride whose predominating joy was still in being loved—in receiving rather than giving! ”

“ His lips twitched humorously as he described himself as having been quite overwhelmed by the flights of eloquence of one of these budding authoresses, but although four essays had stood out conspicuously from the rest, he had not had a moment’s hesitation in deciding on the prize-winner. The essay of this young writer bore the inevitable marks of youth and inexperience, but it bore something else too—something which it was a joy to discover—something which had given himself as a writer a deep pleasure and satisfaction—it bore the marks of a strong literary gift. ”

“ You might realise by this time that Dreda’s sentiments have not the smallest influence on her actions! The Spider was evidently suffering from a spasm of repentance. Quite time, too! She has made herself most objectionable the last few days, sighing and groaning about the house, and looking as if her heart were broken. If we can stand breaking our engagements and giving up all the fun of the holidays, I don’t see why she need grumble. But she is always like that—unsympathetic and absorbed in herself. ”

“ When she herself had first heard the news she had been stunned into silence; she hardly expected words, but her mother’s heart yearned for a glance of sympathy and love. The boys, as is the habit of boys, were rendered awkward and uncomfortable by the atmosphere of emotion, and stared stolidly at their plates. Rowena sat like a frozen statue of misery, Maud gaped blankly from one face to another; only Dreda was ready and waiting with her sunny smile and her easy flow of sympathy.
“Darling! Of course we’ll be brave! Don’t worry about us. Everyone says money doesn’t matter a bit. ”

“ The crisp, sharp question cut like a lash across Mrs Saxon’s soft-toned explanation, and she started, and faced her young daughter with a shrinking almost of dismay. Perhaps in her heart of hearts she, too, doubted the justice of the masculine mandate that girls should invariably be sacrificed for boys, but she was too loyal to admit any dissension when her husband had laid down his commands.
“Why, Dreda?” she repeated, gently. “Because the boys have their way to make in the world ... If we have not much money to leave them, we must at least give them every chance of success. ”

“ Miss Drake, our English governess, is especially clever at developing the powers of memory. And holiday tasks are so useful, too; don’t you find them so? It is impossible to forget, if one has to study for an elaborate thesis.”
“The—what?” questioned Dreda blankly. “But whoever does study in the holidays? I don’t! If you did, they wouldn’t be holidays. So stupid! Holidays are for rest and fun. Bad enough to have lessons for two-thirds of the year. One’s brain must have some rest!”
She ended on quite an indignant note, and her companions stared at her with a mingling of admiration and dismay. ”

“ It was after hours of anxious deliberation, during which ordinary lessons went completely to the wall, that the brilliant idea of an earthquake flashed upon Dreda’s mind. An earthquake story might be as complicated as one pleased, for all the superfluous people could be killed off at the crucial moment, while legal papers and wills could disappear, so that one could not even be expected to unravel the mystery! ”

“ We will leave them to have their talk alone,” whispered the elders to each other, as they left the room; but the two girls were mutually suffering from a sense of embarrassment which made conversation difficult to begin.
“How thin she is! Her nose is sharper than ever. Poor dear, she is plain!” reflected Dreda, candid and clear-sighted.
“How thin she is! All her colour has gone, but she looks pretty still. She always does look pretty,” reflected Norah in her turn. ”

“ Do think, Nancy! Cudgel your brains.”
“I am cudgelling them—I’m cudgelling hard.” Nancy nipped her chin between her finger and thumb, and knitted her brows till her eyebrows appeared to meet. “I saw it this morning. It was lying on a shelf, near a window. I can see it before me now.” She waved her hand in the air. “Like a picture. Distinctly!”
“Yes—yes—yes! But where? Think! In the big classroom?”
“No–o; I think not. No; certainly not the big classroom?”
“Miss Drake’s room, then? The study? Number 5? Our bedroom? If you can see it distinctly, you must know.” ”

“ Susan said. “Your sister is pretty too, very pretty, but she does not look so gay. And your brothers—they are such big, handsome boys. You are all handsome, and big, and strong, and have such romantic names. You seemed far more like a family in a book than real, live people. The ‘Story-Book Saxons’—that was always our name for you when we spoke of you between ourselves. Do you think it is nice?”
“Very nice, indeed. ‘Story-Book Saxons!’ I must tell Rowena that.” Dreda preened her head complacently. This simple admiration was most refreshing after the humiliations of the morning. ”

“ To the delight of Dreda, and the more subdued satisfaction of the other pupils, a magazine received the sanction of the headmistress and Miss Drake, provided that it did not aim at more than a quarterly appearance.
“It will waken you up!” said the latter, smiling whimsically at her pupils. “You are all rather apt to go to sleep at times, especially when a little originality is desired; but remember that the magazine receives official sanction as a means of education, not as a receptacle for any rubbish you may choose to scribble. ”