As Winona entered, she gave one hasty comprehensive glance round the room, taking in a general impression of books, busts and pictures, then focussed her attention on the figure that sat at the desk. It was only at a later date that she grasped any details of Miss Bishop"s personality; at that first meeting she realized nothing but the pair of compelling blue eyes that drew her forward like a magnet.
"Your name?"
"Winona Woodward."
"Age?"
"Fifteen."
"Residence?"
"Highfield, Ashbourne, near Great Marston."
"How long have you lived in the county of Rytonshire?"
"Ever since I was born."
Miss Bishop hastily ticked off these replies on a page of her ledger, and handed Winona a card.
"This will admit you to the examination room. Remember that instead of putting your name at the head of your papers, you are to write the number given you on your card. Any candidate writing her own name will be disqualified. Next girl!"
It was all over in two minutes. Winona seemed hardly to have entered the room before she was out again.
"Move on, please!" said the teacher, marshaling the little crowd round the door. "Will those who have seen Miss Bishop kindly go along the corridor."
Several girls who had been standing in a knot made a sudden bolt, and pushed their fellows forward. Somebody jogged Winona"s elbow. Her card slid from her grasp and fell on to the ground. As she bent in the crush to pick it up, the ruddy-haired girl stooped on a like errand.
"Dropped mine too! Clumsy, isn"t it?" she laughed. "Hope we"ve got our own! What was your number?"
"I hadn"t time to look."
"Well, I"m sure mine was eleven, so that"s all right. I wish you luck!
Won"t we just be glad when it"s over, rather!"
At the further end of the corridor was a door with a notice pinned on to it. "Examination for County Scholarships." A mistress stood there, and scrutinized each girl"s card as she entered, directing her to a seat in the room marked with the corresponding number. Winona walked rather solemnly to the desk labeled 10. The great ordeal was at last about to begin. She wondered what would be the end of it. Little thrills of nervousness seemed running down her back like drops from a shower-bath.
Her hands were trembling. With a great effort she pulled herself together.
"It"s no use funking!" she thought. "I"ll make as good a shot as I can at things, and if I fail--well, I shall have plenty of companions in misfortune, at any rate!"
A pile of foolscap paper with red-ruled margins, a clean sheet of white blotting paper, and a penholder with a new nib lay ready. Each of the other twenty victims was surveying a supply of similar material. On the blackboard was chalked the word "Silence."
In a dead hush the candidates sat and waited. Exactly on the stroke of nine Miss Bishop entered and handed a sheaf of printed questions to the teacher in charge, who distributed them round the room. The subject for the first hour was arithmetic. Winona read over her paper slowly. She felt capable of managing it, all except the last two problem sums, which were outside her experience. She knew it would mainly be a question of accuracy.
"I"ll work them each twice if I"ve only time," she thought, starting at number one.
An hour is after all only made up of sixty minutes, and these seemed to fly with incredible rapidity. The teacher on the platform had sternly reproved a girl guilty of counting aloud in an agitated whisper, threatening instant expulsion for a repet.i.tion of such an offense, but with this solitary exception n.o.body transgressed the rules. All sat quietly absorbed in their work, and an occasional rustle of paper or scratch of a pen were the only sounds audible. At precisely five minutes to ten the deity on the platform sounded a bell, and ordered papers to be put together. She collected them, handed them to another mistress, then without any break proceeded to deal out the questions for the next hour"s examination. This was in geography, and here Winona was not on such sure ground. Granted that you are acquainted with certain rules in arithmetic, it is always possible to work out problems, but it needed more knowledge than she possessed to write answers to the riddles that confronted her. She had never heard of "The Iron Gates," could not place Alcona and Altona, was hazy as to the whereabouts of the Mourne Mountains, and utterly unable to draw an accurate map of the Balkan States. She scored a little on Canada, for she had learnt North America last term at Miss Harmon"s, but with Australia and New Zealand she was imperfectly acquainted. She wrote away, getting hotter and hotter as she realized her deficiencies, winding up five minutes before the time allotted, in a flushed and decidedly inky condition.
At eleven a short interval was allowed, and the candidates thankfully adjourned. Outside in the corridor they compared notes.
"Well, of all detestable papers this geography one is the limit!"
declared an aggrieved voice.
It was the girl who had said that she always mixed Madras and Bombay, and who had studied her text-book up to the last available moment.
Apparently her eleventh hour industry had not sufficed to tide her over her difficulties.
"It was catchy in parts," agreed the owner of the swastika, "but I liked one or two questions. I just happened to know them, so I bowled ahead.
That"s what comes of wearing a mascot!"
"Don"t crow too soon!" laughed the girl with the fair pigtail.
"Remember, there are four other exams. to follow. Your luck may leave you at any moment."
"Don"t mention more exams.! I feel inclined to turn tail and run home!"
declared another.
"There"s the bell! Don"t give us much time, do they? Now for the torture chamber again! Brace your nerves!"
"I wonder if most of them have done better or worse than I have!"
thought Winona, as she took her seat once more at No. 10 desk. "A good many were grumbling, but that sandy-haired girl in the spectacles said nothing. No more did the one with the red hair-ribbon. Of course they might be feeling too agonized for words, but on the other hand they might be secretly congratulating themselves."
It was not the moment, however, for speculation as to her neighbors"
progress. The next set of questions was being distributed, and she took up her copy eagerly. Her heart fell as she read it over. Her knowledge of English history was not very accurate, and the facts demanded were for the most part exactly those which she could not remember. The dread of failure loomed up large. She could only attempt about half of the questions, and even in these she was not ready with dates. Then suddenly Percy"s advice flashed into her mind. "Write from a romantic standpoint, and make your paper sound poetical." It seemed rather a forlorn hope, and she feared it would scarcely satisfy her examiners, but in such a desperate situation anything was worth trying. Winona possessed a certain facility in essay writing. Prose composition had been her favorite lesson at Miss Harmon"s. She collected her wits now, and did the very utmost of which she was capable in the matter of style.
Choosing question No. 4, "Write a life of Lady Jane Grey," she proceeded to treat the subject in as post-impressionist a manner as possible. The pathetic tragedy of the young Queen had always appealed to her imagination, and she could have had no more congenial a theme upon which to write, if she had been given free choice of all the characters in the history book.
""Whom the G.o.ds love die young,"" she began, and paused. It seemed an excellent opening, if she could only continue in the same strain, but what ought to come next? Her thoughts flew to a painting of Lady Jane Grey, which she had once seen at a loan collection of Tudor portraits.
Why should she not describe it? Her pen flew rapidly as she wrote a word-picture of the sweet, pale face, so round and childish in spite of its earnest expression; the smooth yellow hair, the gray eyes bent demurely over the book. Her heroine seemed beginning to live. Now for her surroundings. A year ago Winona had paid a visit to Hampton Court, and her remembrance of its a.s.sociations was still keen and vivid. She described its old-world garden by the side of the Thames, where the little King Edward VI. must often have roamed with his pretty cousin Jane: the two wonderful ill-starred children, playing for a brief hour in happy unconsciousness of the fate that faced them. What did they talk about, she asked, as they stood on the paved terrace and watched the river hurrying by? Plato, perchance, and his philosophy, or the marvelous geography-book with woodcuts of foreign beasts that had been specially printed for the young king"s use. Did they compare notes about their tutors? Jane would certainly hold a brief for her much-loved Mr.
Elmer, who, in sharp contrast to her parents" severity, taught her so gently and patiently that she grudged the time which was not spent in his presence. Edward might bemoan the ill-luck of his whipping-boy, who had to bear the floggings which Court etiquette denied to the royal shoulders, and perhaps would declare that when he was grown up, and could make the laws himself, no children should be beaten for badly said lessons, and Jane would agree with him, and then they would pick the red damask roses that Cardinal Wolsey had planted, and walk back under the shadow of the clipped yew hedge to eat cherries and junket in the room that looked out towards the sunset.
Winona had warmed to her work. Her imagination, always her strongest faculty, completely carried her away. She pictured her heroine"s life, not from the outside, as historians would chronicle it, a mere string of events and dates, but from the inner view of a girl"s standpoint. Did Jane wish to leave her Plato for the bustle of a Court? Did she care for the gay young husband forced upon her by her ambitious parents? Surely for her gentle nature a crown held few allurements. The clouds were gathering thick and fast, and burst in a waterspout of utter ruin.
Jane"s courage was calm and hopeful as that of Socrates in the dialogues she had loved.
"... your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew."
quoted Winona enthusiastically. Browning always stirred her blood, and threw her into poetical channels. She cast about in her mind for any other appropriate verses.
"Ah, broken is the golden bowl, the spirit gone for ever, Let the bell toll--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.
Come, let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung, An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young, A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young."
"So they finished their foul deed, and laid her to rest," wrote Winona, "the earthly part, that is, which perishes, for the true part of her they could not touch. Farewell, sweet innocent soul, of whom the world was not worthy. To you surely may apply Andre de Chenier"s tender lines:
""Au banquet de la vie a peine commence Un instant seulement mes levres out presse La coupe en mes mains encore pleine."
Vale, little Queen! May it be well with thee! Ave atque vale!"
Winona glanced anxiously at the clock as with a hard breath she paused for a moment and laid down her pen. Her theme had taken her so long that she had only ten minutes left for the other questions. There was no romantic side to be expressed in these, so she scribbled away half-heartedly. Her uncertain memory, which had readily supplied quotations from Browning or Edgar Allan Poe, struck altogether when asked for such sordid details as the names of the Cabal ministry, or the history of the Long Parliament. The bell rang, and left her with her paper only half finished. At one o"clock the candidates were given an hour"s rest, and a hot lunch was served to them in the dining-hall. At two they returned to their desks, and the examination continued until half-past four. Winona found the questions tolerable. She did fairly, but not at all brilliantly. Her brains were not accustomed to such long-sustained efforts, and as the afternoon wore on, a neuralgic headache began, and sent sharp throbs of pain across her forehead. It was so irksome to write pages of Latin or French verbs; she had to summon all her courage to make herself do it. The last hour seemed an interminable penance.
At half-past four, twenty-one rather dispirited candidates filed from the room.
"Well, thank goodness it"s over! I never want to write another word in my life. My hand"s stiff with cramp!" exclaimed the girl with the red hair-ribbon to a sympathetic audience in the pa.s.sage.