CHAPTER II
"The Moorings"
The tiny town of Durracombe consisted mainly of one very long andenormously wide street. Everything that was of any importance wassituated in this High Street--the church, the bank, the public hall, thereading-room, the free library, the best shops, and the Swan Hotel. EachFriday it was turned into a species of market, with stalls, and barrows,and butter-baskets, and shouting men driving frightened cattle, but ongreat festivals, such as Empire Day, it became a gay cafe, for tablesand forms were placed on the pavements and the school children wereentertained to tea in the open air, while the town band played patrioticmusic. Being such a small and compact place, it had the advantage ofbeginning and ending quite suddenly. The river marked the boundary. Onone side of it you were in civilization, with a mayor and police and atown crier, and the privileges of gas and the telephone, but directlyyou crossed the bridge you were in the happy fields that owned nosovereign but Dame Nature, and in quite a few minutes you seemed to haveleft the world behind you.
Dr. Tremayne's house was the very first when you entered Durracombe bythe road from the south. Its green front door with the brass plate stoodin the High Street, but its garden wall overtopped the river, and itsside windows looked out over the fields to the open country. Peoplecoming to fetch the doctor on a black night could see his red surgerylamp from the top of the hill a whole mile away. It seemed to hold outpromise of help like a kind hand stretched across the darkness of theriver. For the last forty years Durracombe and district had dependedupon Dr. Tremayne. Time had, of course, brought changes, and thedark-haired man who drove a high gig in the 'eighties was now grey andelderly, and did his rounds in a two-seater car. Quite apart frommedicines the mere sight of him seemed to do his patients good. His veryatmosphere was electric, and he had that true gift of healing that helpspeople to get well of their own accord. Certainly no one within a radiusof thirty miles was a greater favourite than "the dear old doctor", andhis small biscuit-coloured motor was a familiar feature on the countryroads. His three children were married and settled down in various partsof the globe. None had followed their father's profession; so, though hemight be proud of a son who was a judge in India, a barrister in London,or a successful civil engineer in Canada, he could claim no help in hispractice from his own family. His wife, grey-haired and elderly too, wassomewhat of an invalid, and most of the housekeeping was done by Jessop,an invaluable old servant who attended to the surgery, took patients'messages, sterilized instruments, washed medicine bottles, could givefirst aid in an emergency, and was generally almost as great a featureof the practice as the doctor himself.
It was to this rather old-fashioned household that Mavis and Merle,sworn to the most exemplary behaviour, were sent for three months in thehope that in the soft Devonshire air Mavis would catch no more badbronchial colds, and would have a chance of setting up her health andgrowing the two extra inches which she still needed to set her head onthe same level with Merle's.
To the two girls everything in Durracombe seemed delightful. Themildness of the climate amazed them. After the nip of Whinburn'sperpetual east wind, lifeless hedgerows, and desolate winter fields, itfelt like a sudden jump into spring to find campion, herb robert, anddead-nettle blooming by the road-sides, catkins waving on the hazelbushes, clumps of snowdrops and Christmas roses under the apple trees,violets beneath the sheltered wall, primroses peeping through lastyear's dead leaves, and the missel thrush chanting a triumphant song inthe yew tree that overhung the river.
Mother, as happy as if she were a girl again, took them round to herfavourite haunts: the beacon-top, where you could catch the first viewof the sea, eight miles away; the moor with its rushes and soft, shortgreen grass; the fields where cowslips would be found later on; the firwood that seemed like a wilderness of Christmas trees; the marshy flatswhere you could see the wild ducks flying; the little quarry where thesand-martens had burrowed holes for their nests--all the dear delightfulspots that she had known as a child, and had described to them so oftenthat they recognized them the moment they saw them.
"It's gorgeous! Muvvie, if only you weren't going away I'd think myselfin Paradise," declared Mavis, with pink cheeks, and standing on tiptoeas if she were growing already. "Uncle David's a dear, and so's AuntNellie, and as for Jessop, she's just a sport--that's what I call her.Bridge House is simply A1, and if school anything like comes up to it,well--I shall say it's the time of my life. It's going to be the nicestterm I've ever had."
"Don't congratulate yourself too soon," croaked Merle. "School's schoolall the world over, and there's sure to be something to put up with._I'm_ not looking forward to sums and exercises. When do we start?To-morrow! Ugh! Enter it as a black day in the calendar of Merle Ramsay,and probably of the school too, for they won't find me soft wax in theirhands. I've got ideas of my own, and when people begin to try to mouldme I'm apt to turn katawampus. Mumsie, darling, don't shoot up youreyebrows! There! I'll promise and vow to be a perfect seraph. They'llcall me St. Merle before they've done with me. Honest, Mumsie, I will_really_ try! You know how I flare out, but I'll make a bouncing startat this new school and think of you every time I get into a pixie mood.If I don't, the Devonshire pixies had best steal me away and have donewith it. I'd be a good riddance to everybody, I dare say."
Merle spoke half in jest and half in earnest. There was laughter in hervoice, but her eyelashes were suddenly wet. Mrs. Ramsay laid a tenderhand on her younger daughter's shoulder. She was not laughing at all.
"I hope both my girls are going to grow this term," she said quietly,"in character as well as in inches. There's room for improvement in bothof you. Mavis must stir about instead of always dreaming and reading,and Merle must curb that little demon that sometimes gets possession ofher. I expect to find two very sweet girls when I come to fetch them atEaster. We want this term to be in every sense a fortunate term."
"We'll do our level best, Muvvie! Can't you trust us?" whispered Mavis,linking her arm in her mother's, as they turned from the wood and beganto walk down the hill-side towards the little town where the nexteventful months of their lives were to be spent.
But Merle, who always hid her deepest feelings under a joke, chirrupedout an impromptu ode to the future:
"School! School! School! They'll probably call me a mule! And stick me to stand, With a book in my hand, And a dunce's cap, on a stool!"
So it ended in the three of them laughing after all.
There was no large college or high school for girls in Durracombe, onlya very small private establishment kept by Miss Mary Pollard and hersister Fanny, daughters of the late Rev. Horatio Pollard, formerly vicarof the parish. They educated about twenty-four children, half of themfrom the immediate neighbourhood: Opal Earnshaw, the bank-manager'sdaughter; Edith and Maude Carey, from the Vicarage; Christabel Oakley,who rode over on her bicycle from St. Gilda's Rectory; the three littleAndrews, from Fir Tree House; Major Leach's small grand-children; Bettyand Stella Marshall, who lived with their aunt, Miss Johnson, whiletheir parents were in Buenos Ayres; and twelve resident boarders, mostof whose parents were stationed in India, and who, born under burningskies, had been sent to Durracombe for the sake of its soft air and mildwinter record, until they should be sufficiently acclimatized to standtheir chance as hardy specimens in bigger schools.
"The Moorings" was a large, pleasant, white house with green shuttersand a veranda, and it stood at the bottom of a short road that led fromthe High Street. It was what is commonly known as "a dear littleschool", that is to say it was rather old-fashioned and out-of-date butvery comfortable and "homey", and the classes were more like lessonswith a private governess than working with a form. Miss Pollard, whosehair was as silver as spun moonlight, had dropped behind the more modernmethods of education, and, feeling rather diffident in the schoolroom,concentrated her attention on the housekeeping, cossetted up thedelicate children, aired the linen, superintended the dormitories, andacted nurse to anybody who was lucky enough to
be kept in bed. The bulkof the teaching rested in the hands of Miss Fanny, who was thorough, ifold-fashioned, and whose original methods, by a curious coincidence,actually anticipated those of some of our most advanced educationists,and so placed her ahead of as well as behind the times.
It was into this small community, more like a big family than a school,that Mavis and Merle were introduced one January morning, causingvisible thrills to the occupants of other desks as they took theirseats. To plunge suddenly from the work of one school into that ofanother is a rather bewildering experience, and by the time thehalf-past twelve bell sounded, the Ramsay girls felt as if theirstandards had been turned upside down. Mavis, shaky in general overhistory, had reeled off the dates of the principal battles in the CivilWar, the only period of which she happened to have any specialknowledge, and Merle, by an equal fluke, worked correctly all herproblems in mathematics, a lesson which she usually abhorred. They wereso astonished at scoring on these subjects that they naturally hoped todo better still in the French class, for languages had been their onestrong point at Whinburn High School. But alack for their self esteem!The girls at The Moorings had concentrated on French, and not onlytranslated easily from a book which was much too stiff for the Ramsays,but chattered quite fluently with Mademoiselle Chavasse, whoseencouraging remarks and questions were palpably not understood by hernew pupils. It is humiliating not to be able to express yourself in aforeign tongue when others are talking it all round you. Merle, whonever liked anybody to "go one better" than herself, was particularlyaggravated by a fair-haired girl who sat near her, and who, as sheconversed with the teacher, kept the corner of her eye on the new-comersas if judging the impression she was making on them.
"I don't like her! I shan't _ever_ like her!" thought Merle irately."She's conceited, and those eyes are sneaky. It's nothing so much totalk French. I suppose they're used to it. She needn't think I'madmiring her cleverness, for I'm not. I'll pluck up courage myself tosay something next time Mademoiselle looks at me."
But Merle's powers were not equal to her courage, and when Mademoisellegave her another chance she turned scarlet and stuttered, and generallymade rather a goose of herself, to her own infinite indignation andevidently to the amusement of the rest of the class, especially of thefair-haired girl, who tittered openly till she met the teacher'soutraged gaze, when she suddenly straightened her face and tried toappear quite unconscious. Mavis, profiting by her sister's example, didnot commit herself to speech. Mademoiselle Chavasse's accent wasunfamiliar and difficult to understand, and most of her remarks might aseasily have been in Greek as French, to judge by the standards ofWhinburn High School. Both the Ramsays were particularly relieved whenthe lesson came to an end.
At 12.30 Mavis, who had been sent to the school with a specialrecommendation that her health should be looked after, was carried offby Miss Pollard to be weighed and measured and otherwise inspected,while Merle, with boots and hat and coat on, and all impatience to beoff, waited for her in the cloak-room. The other day-girls had scurriedaway with hardly more than a glance in her direction, and she sat alone,kicking her heels and not in the sweetest of tempers, till one of theboarders, passing the door, peeped in, saw her, and entered. Thenew-comer was a nice-looking girl, with grey eyes and a plait of verydark hair. She smiled in quite friendly fashion.
"Hello!" she began. "Sitting here all by your lonesome? Why don't you gohome?"
"Can't. I'm waiting for Mavis."
"Is Mavis the other? She's rather sweet! I like her fluffy hair and thatblue velvet band. Somebody said she was older than you, but she doesn'tlook it."
"People often take us for twins," conceded Merle.
Iva Westwood shook her head.
"No one with eyes, surely! You're alike in a way, but not very. OpalEarnshaw was fearfully angry that you beat her in maths. She's been cockof the walk till now."
"Which is Opal Earnshaw?"
"That fair girl who sat near you."
Merle's face darkened.
"That was why she tried to take it out of me in the French class, then?"
"Oh, Opal tries to take it out of everybody. She won't be very pleasedyou two have come, I expect. You're too old to stand her bossing."
"Why do other people stand it?"
"Well, you see, she's head of the school, and Miss Pollard and MissFanny are her godmothers."
"What difference does that make?"
"A great deal of difference, as you'll soon find out. Everything theirdarling god-child does _must_ be right, that's the long and short of it.They favour her fearfully."
"What a blazing shame."
"Yes, some of us get rather fed up I can tell you. We mutiny every nowand then."
"Count on me, then, next time you have squalls."
"Thanks!"
"Tell me about some of the other girls. Who's that one in the greenjersey who sat by the window and dropped her pencil-box? Is she nice?"
"Edith Carey! Ye-e-s, she's nice enough in a way." (Iva's tone wasunconvincing). "She's the kind of girl who drags on your arm when she'stired, and insists on kissing you when she's got a bad cold."
"I understand--exactly. I suppose the other green jersey is her sister?"
"Maude? Oh, she's not a bad sort either. Rather a slacker though,always late for everything. We say she'd be late for her own funeral.She made us miss the train once when we were going an excursion. Whatare the others like? Well, we call Aubrey Simpson the jackdaw, becauseshe's always talking. Muriel Burnitt makes fun of everybody. You shouldhear her take off Mademoiselle! Nesta Pitman may be a little nasty toyou at first, but don't mind her, because it's only her way with newpeople. She'll soon come round. She's rather off-hand, but a realsport!"
"So are you, I should guess!"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm Cornish, and Cornish people are supposed to bequeer. At least Devon people say they are."
"Mother is Devon."
"Then I expect you'll think me queer. Are you living with your uncle,Dr. Tremayne? _He's_ a sport if you like! He used to come and see mewhen I had scarlet fever, and he brought me strawberries long before ourown were ripe. I wish I weren't a boarder. We live fifteen miles away,at Langoran Rectory. It's too far to come every day, or I'd bike, likeChristabel Oakley. We used to have a governess at home until my brotherwent to school and----"
But Iva's reminiscences were broken by the appearance of Mavis, ratherhot and injured after her health examination, and very anxious that theyshould not be late for one o'clock lunch. Iva, hearing a bell,disappeared without further remark, and the Ramsays hurried back throughthe town to Bridge House, where Aunt Nellie, who admired punctuality asa cardinal virtue, was looking out of the window for them. They comparednotes while they washed their hands.
"Are you going to like it?" asked Mavis eagerly.
"Um--I don't know! I certainly shan't like Opal Earnshaw, and sheneedn't think because she's head girl and all the rest of it that _I'm_going to truckle to her. They must be a poor-spirited set to let herlord it over everybody. Who said she did? Why, Iva Westwood. She wastalking to me in the cloakroom. I could be chums with that girl! There'ssomething about her I rather take to. She's Cornish, and they say Devonand Cornish people never can agree, but perhaps we'll hit it in spite ofthat. She said you were rather sweet! Don't screw up your mouth! Shemeant it as a compliment really. Do you think teachers ought to havetheir own godchildren for pupils? No, I've not suddenly gone mad, butIva told me Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny are Opal's godmothers, and thinkeverything she does is absolutely perfect. 'The Queen can do no wrong'sort of idea! I think it's horrid to have favourites. There goes thegong. Help! Give me the towel, quick! We mustn't be late for lunch onour first day without Mother, or Aunt Nellie'll think us horribleslackers."