Suddenly she was spied by Burnett Minor. The child rushed towards her, a book in her hand.
"Are you going, Causton?" she shouted.
There was a loud "Ssssh!" They could be heard from the dining-room.
The girls flocked round Louie, and hoa.r.s.e, excited whispers broke out:
"Are you going?"
"She"s dressed!"
"Are you going?"
"Did you see her?"
"Does Causton say she"s going?"
"Ssssh--not all at once!----"
"No, I"m not going," said Louie.
Mouths gaped their very widest to make up for the inaudibility of the cheers.
"Hooray!"
"Is she going?"
"No, she"s not going--hooray!"
Burnett Minor threw her book joyfully into the book-locker. Ordinarily her reading varied between an adoration of Tennyson and mocking and dramatic declamations either from the "Pansy Library," or from its brother-cla.s.sics, of which the typical burlesque is "The Blood-stained Putty-knife, or The Plumber"s Revenge." But this book was her alb.u.m.
"I saw you come down dressed, and I did want you to put something in it if you were going," she whispered gleefully; "but you"re not going!
Hoo----"
Her voiceless mouth gaped wider than them all.
That midday Louie walked demurely up to Mrs. Lovenant-Smith at the head of the table and apologised for not yet having changed. From her tone Mrs. Lovenant-Smith may or may not have inferred that she had spent the hours since their interview in contrite meditation. She inclined her head graciously. But Louie, taking her place for grace between Burnett Minor and Richenda Earle, was murmuring to herself once more:
""Cla.s.s of student," indeed!... Good gracious me!..."
IV
Louie quickly became the most popular girl in the college.
Her studies she pursued very much as who should say: "I am Louie Causton--take it or leave it." Neither Miss Harriet nor the gardeners could ever tell when she was interested in a lesson; if she learned, she concealed her processes. Before April was out--(the intervening time may be slipped over; the daily work in the gardens and houses went on as usual, the usual number of crates and parcels was despatched from Rainham Magna station, and already the girls were looking forward to June, which was always a slack month)--before April was out she could "slip" and "bud" as deftly as any when she chose; but few made more mistakes than she, and none accepted correction with her remarkable nonchalance. Afternoon "theory" she had begun to cut almost entirely. A slate hung in the hall, on which students were supposed to write down where they might be found when they left the immediate precincts of the college. One day towards the end of April there appeared on this slate: "Gone to Rainham; L. Causton." Then she awaited events with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
There were no events.
She sent to Trant for a bicycle.
Truth to tell, as the spring advanced she needed the air. The gla.s.s-houses, with their smell of musk and mould and heated pipes and cherry-pie all mingled, oppressed her; the long forcing-house, where for the time being most of the work for the markets went on, completely took the starch out of her. She felt as if she was being forced herself. She hated the sight of the twelve houses; they merely meant so much ventilation, so much shutting-down for the evenings, so much watering, so much la.s.situde for the girls, so much money in Chesson"s pocket. She was glad she had sent for the bicycle. Somebody else might read thermometers and close down and sprinkle floors and ply the hissing hoses. Louie wanted air.
Yet even the outer air was not sharp enough. It is not an invigorating air in which the lemon-verbena grows in trees up the cottage walls and scented geranium flourishes out-of-doors like a common hedge plant. In the sunken lanes through which she idled on her bicycle the primroses, twice as big as she had ever seen them, and the cowslips, great sub-tropical cl.u.s.ters, were already past; and she expected to see the roses out presently, big as sunflowers. There was something almost rank in the sweet bursting out of the land. She thanked goodness that a daisy was a daisy still, modest and unmagnified. She was not used to hedges of fuchsia. Nature might have been a little more sparing of her myrtle too. Louie always dropped from her bicycle when, coming out of one of the ca.n.a.ls of still and scented air, she saw, across a burnt heath-patch or a clump of hardy gorse, a glimpse of the sea. For the sake of a look at the sea she often walked up the hill behind Chesson"s and sat on the stile she had crossed on the morning after her interview with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith.
Except by her example, however, she incited n.o.body else to break the Rules.
It was curious that she should know herself to be popular, and yet at the same time should also be secretly aware that she was a little out of things. All went well enough for the present, but only for the present. She knew quite well what would happen did she, a year or two hence, chance to meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not, then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she was now.
They would meet; there would be eager recollections of the old days at Chesson"s; oh, for that matter she could make it all up now!... "Come where we can have a really good talk! Where"s Burnett Major now, and her sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I wonder what"s become of that red-haired girl--what was her name--Earle--yes, Earle?
And of course you know Macfarlane"s going to be married.... Now tell me all about what you"re doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make all this up--the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then the falsely bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson"s again. For she and her fellow-students would not be doing the same things. They would have taken recognised places, and Louie was not sure that she herself had a place to take. Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she went one inch out of her way to be so. She was just as ready to go out of her way to be disliked if she must go out of it at all.
In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson"s, to all intents and purposes her own mistress, and made so much of that she had Mrs.
Lovenant-Smith largely at her mercy--for, had she been requested to leave, the two Burnetts, Elwell and others would now have left with her. So, doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong in supposing that restlessness and discontent were bred in the very bones of her.
She was at the very top of her popularity about the time Burnett Major gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle. (That is to say, Burnett Major gave the nucleus of the "cocoa"; the rest of the party happened by a natural process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith"s permission; it had been acceded readily.
"Lovey"s not such a bad old sort when you get used to her," B. Major said. It was in mid-May, on a hot evening, and, though Burnett"s window was flung wide open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath stirred, and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits and candied fruits and an enormous box of "a.s.sorted" chocolates; and Burnett"s bed was like to break down with the weight of girls upon it.
Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind when she had painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting with her fellow-students a year or two hence. The two sisters were the daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and Louie could forgive B.
Major for being a little dazzled by her approaching presentation.
There was nothing unfamiliar to Louie, either, in the rest of the things she felt herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and "out of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts" home, was not very different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett Major"s position a few years hence was a forgone conclusion; she filled it already in antic.i.p.ation; and the noisy talk that was in progress as Louie joined the party threw bright lights on it.
They were discussing the coming vacations. These were Chesson"s yearly dread. They interrupted his supply of free labour, and there were always fewest girls when he most wanted them. As the vacation arrangements rested after all chiefly with the parents, he could do little except express his preference that as many of the girls as possible should take their holidays in the empty month of June, and his hope that those who did not do so would defer them until as late as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no better off than his trade compet.i.tors.
"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie entered the crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when Causton is. It"s all right for Major--oh, you needn"t think we don"t know, Major--if you aren"t actually engaged he"s always about the place when you"re at home--and I"m going to stalk you both with a camera and then what-d"you-call-it--blackmail him----"
"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major ordered.
"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his name through the keyhole. It"s----" She moved her lips, threatening to p.r.o.nounce the name there and then.
"Sneak!" said her sister.
B. Minor bridled.
"I _will_ tell them if you call me that again! Causton, have you a young man? (That means, Avez-voo un jeune homme, Pig?)"
"Not for you to shout his name through keyholes," Louie replied, smiling.
"No, but do tell us--have you?"
"At my age?" said Louie mockingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed and reaching for candied fruits.
"Go on--you"re trying to wriggle out of it--_have_ you?"
"Hush, little girl--open your mouth----" She popped a fruit into the mouth that itself resembled an untouched fruit.
Pigou, from the lower deck of the washstand, interposed loudly:
"Elle a vingt-quatr"ans--elle est perdue!"