Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely again.
"I mean," she replied, "that I didn"t know whether _you_ were going to dismiss _me_ or not. You see, you may not want my--kind of student.
I"d rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added.
Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed--but she hated Louie thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile had a twitch in it.
"I don"t think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she said. "All the same, I"m afraid the Rules are necessary."
"I dare say," said Louie.
"And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always the danger of fire. In fact, I"m not at all sure that a fire drill ought not to be inst.i.tuted. May I add that I quite appreciated the chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night?
Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton."
"Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out.
As she crossed the Restoration hall, ""Kind of student"--good gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett Minor! "Kind of student!"--I wonder it doesn"t occur to her that somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener four years ago!--"Kind of student," indeed!"
Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards, up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea.
Leave Chesson"s, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts!
She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior, but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else--Mrs.
Lovenant-Smith or anybody--to show as much as a flicker of consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!--Oh no, that amus.e.m.e.nt was going to be Louie"s own private preserve.
For it had been her cynical amus.e.m.e.nt. Approximately, the mood took her once in five or six months, with or without occasion. Her mother knew its times and seasons, and its pa.s.sings into abeyance, not into extinction. She did not call her sensitiveness morbid; quite on the contrary, she saw to it that it took the form of a pose of gaiety; she could be pitilessly gay with herself. Meek, harmless Cynthia Scarisbrick, for example, could have told tales about her gaiety when, not knowing whether she herself was eligible for presentation or not (but gathering from the tense silence on the subject that had reigned at Trant that she was not, or at any rate that her mother did not wish it), she had practised the ceremonial curtsy with her cousin. It had been Cynthia, not Louie, who had shed the tears.
But to be agreed with by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that her origin was open to question (for the Lady-in-Charge had all but said that)--oh no, that was really too much!----
Mrs. Lovenant-Smith, who took a seedsman"s salary!
She might have known that Mrs. Lovenant-Smith would know all, all about her----
Then, as she sat, she began to wonder where she had heard the name of Lovenant-Smith before. She had wondered it when first she had received her prospectus at Trant. Of course her stepfather knew these other Lovenant-Smiths, the adjutant"s lot, and had probably spoken of them, but she did not think it was that. For a minute or two she sought in her memory....
She was ceasing to think when the recollection came of itself. It was only a trifling one after all. One of the boys with whom she had romped at Mallard Bois--Roy she had called him then--had been, she now remembered, a Lovenant-Smith. He would be a connection of the adjutant"s. Of course, she had heard the name at Mallard Bois....
Then Louie bit her lip. If there had been any doubt at all that Mrs.
Lovenant-Smith knew the story of Buck there was none now. The a.s.sociation with Mallard Bois was quite enough....
Louie was glad she had looked insolently at those stumpy hands....
Beast!
The trees below her tossed restlessly, and far out the grey sea was whitecapped as if it had been rasped with a file. No boat had put out for the pollock-fishing or to lift a spiller that morning; only a pilot, a couple of miles out in the Channel, slowly lifted her nose for a moment and then hid it again. Louie felt a little cold, and rose. She made an attractive picture as she did so. Her brown hair was tossed by the wind, and her long grey skirt cracked behind her and clipped her limbs almost as if she had worn the garments of a man.
"Beast!" she muttered again.
Then she thought of another beast--this father of hers whose name she had not needed to take but had taken out of rancour against her mother and despite against herself. (But not for Mrs. Lovenant-Smith to turn up her nose at!) He now (she had this from Chaff) kept a public-house somewhere up the Thames--Lord Moone"s cast-off brother-in-law in a public-house!--and any fitful romantic light that might ever have shone about him was now extinguished. Of course the Captain had uttered his usual wistful formula: "Not a bad fellow at all, I should have said"; but that was rather a criticism on the Captain than on Buck. Yes. Buck was simply another beast. But though he were a potman, Mrs. Lovenant-Smith should give him every bit as much deference as if he had been a brewing peer....
"And I don"t care--if it _is_ the pride of the cobbler"s dog, I"m going to keep his name," Louie muttered.
Suddenly she turned and climbed the stile that led back to Chesson"s land. As she did so she realised that she had been out of bounds. She laughed curtly. Rule 3! Much she cared for their Rules! What about the Rule: "Miss Hastings does not elope with What"s-his-Name the gardener"?--but that would keep. In the meantime she would change into her gardening clothes before lunch. She had shown Mrs. Lovenant-Smith that she had garments of freedom. The next time Louie threatened to leave she might be able to add to the force of the threat that she would take half-a-dozen girls with her.
Well, lunch was in half-an-hour; she had just time to change.
But as she descended through the orchards again she came upon Richenda Earle. The copper-haired girl was washing an espaliered plum-tree, and as she turned her head Louie saw that she had been crying. She asked Louie if she was going.
"Leaving here, do you mean? No. What"s the matter?"
The girl turned her eyes away.
"Thanks awfully for last night," she grunted. "It was ripping of you.
But you see it hasn"t made much difference."
"How, not made much difference?"
Richenda glanced at the tree, and from the tree to the syringe in her hand and the pail of disinfectant at her feet. "This," she said.
"Anybody can do this job, and I"ve been sorting out pots over there all the morning," she indicated the yard behind the trees where the flower-pots and debris were kept. "And _I_ can"t threaten to leave."
"Your scholarship, of course?"
"Yes. And I"m supposed to be working for the medal."
Chesson"s wanted a Horticultural Society"s medal badly. They had never had one, nor were likely to get one unless Richenda Earle got it for them. Louie, who was quickly fathoming the real economy of the place, looked again at Richenda"s red eyes.
"Well, they won"t send you away till you"ve failed," she said.
But Earle made an impatient gesture, and her eyes began to stream again.
"Oh, what"s a girl like you know about it!" she broke out. "Yes, I know they"ll keep me till then, but you don"t know anything at all about it! You would if you"d had my upbringing! You don"t know what the struggle is. You think digging and carrying pots is hard work; you wouldn"t if you"d seen what I"ve seen! When you go to London it"s just shopping and theatres and suppers and things; but just you try to keep a small bookseller"s accounts for him, when they"re hardly worth keeping, I mean, and collecting his debts when all his money"s tied up in stock and your father"s nearly bankrupt--not that he"s ever solvent--you"d know what I meant then!"
Then the unexpected outbreak stopped suddenly.
Louie stood silently staring. She disliked seeing anybody cry.
Richenda"s words had little meaning for her; she supposed they contained a hidden meaning somewhere. Then the copper-haired girl went on, more quietly but no less bitterly:
"I should get a hundred pounds a year on the staff here," she said, "that is, if they won"t waste me half-days just out of spite, like they"re doing this morning. That"s nothing to you. You others are here just for pocket-money, but we live on your pocket-money. I suppose I oughtn"t to have come here at all. Not among all you. But I begged father to let me. Father once apologised to me--that was when there was a distraint out against him, if you know what that is--because he wasn"t rich. Fathers ought all to be rich, he said. There are seven of us girls at home, and only one married. Oh, I tell you, you don"t know!"
Louie wondered why she preferred Richenda Earle loud and striving for the popularity she never got to Richenda Earle unburdening herself thus. She herself went brightly masked, and disliked to see another"s mind naked. Richenda"s mind was stripped now. It was distasteful.
Somehow or other Richenda contrived to miss both the balm of popularity and the solace of private sympathy.
"I"m--I"m awfully sorry," Louie said awkwardly and a little stiffly.
At the tone Richenda drew in instantly.
"It doesn"t matter," she said, compressing her lips and beginning to straighten her hair. "I shall just have to buck up, that"s all. But girls of your cla.s.s don"t know anything about it, so you needn"t think you do. There"s the first gong. Come on."
As they pa.s.sed the dairies a rabble of students raced past the end of the house on their way to the boot-lockers. Louie and Richenda entered by the side door. Richenda plunged at once into the scramble for house-slippers, but Louie, not having put on her garden boots that day, did not need to change. It was too late now to put on another dress. She waited by the inner door.