Читать книгу Star of India - Alice Perrin - Страница 6

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Maud Verrall threw down her tennis racket; she said she was tired—a polite excuse for the termination of a game that afforded her no excitement. Stella Carrington was not a stimulating opponent; if she did not miss the ball, she sent it sky-high or out of court.

Stella saw through and sympathised with the excuse. "You see," she said regretfully, "I have had so little chance of practice. Even if we had a tennis court at The Chestnuts, there is no one for me to play with."

"Let's go into the Lovers' Walk and talk till tea-time," Maud Verrall suggested; if Stella could not play tennis she might at least prove a satisfactory recipient of confidences, and Maud had much to impart that would surely astonish the unsophisticated girl from The Chestnuts.

Arm in arm they strolled up and down the shady retreat arched over with lilac, laburnum, syringa, while Maud discoursed on the charms of the latest comic opera that had taken London by storm, and sang snatches of the songs to her envious companion; from that she went on to tell of boy-and-girl dances, and bicycling parties, and this led to disclosures concerning "desperate" adorers who were "perfectly mad" about Miss Verrall. There was one in particular—his name was Fred Glossop.

"Poor dear, he is awfully gone. I feel sorry for him. Would you like to see his photograph?" She drew a folding leather case from her pocket and displayed to the other's interested gaze the portrait of a handsome youth with curly hair and a distinct shade on his upper lip.

"Are you going to marry him?" inquired Stella.

"Oh! I shan't marry just yet," explained Maud. "I have told him so frankly. Perhaps in a couple of years, if I meet no one I like better, he might do. He is quite good looking, and he's going into the Army. I let him write to me—mother never bothers about my letters; but while I was still at school he had to write as if he was my dearest girl-friend—signed himself 'Lily'—because all our correspondence that was not in the handwriting of parents was opened. I'm to "come out" when we go back to London. I shall make my people give a fancy dress ball. What do you think of a Greek dress—white, with a key pattern in gold, and a big peacock feather fan?"

Stella was ruefully silent. She felt small and humble; there were no balls, no young men, no "coming out" on her dull horizon.

"And what about you?" asked Maud with kindly, if belated, interest; "you must have a deadly time in this hole all the year round. I'm tired of it already. How can you stand it?"

"I have to stand it!" said Stella, grimly resigned. "But I'm going to school—to a school at Torquay."

"How awful—a horrible place. I went there once after I had measles; and school, too, at your age! Hasn't the term begun?"

"I suppose so, but it does not seem to matter. Anyway, it will be a change."

"It won't be so bad if they take you to concerts and lectures, and you go out riding. Our riding master was a picture; lots of the girls were mad about him; but he liked me best because I didn't take too much notice of him. Believe me, my dear, men think all the more of you if you don't run after them. There was a creature always at the lectures we went to who gazed at me the whole time and used to follow us when we went out, trying to get near enough to speak to me. The other girls were frantic with jealousy. Once or twice I gave him the chance of slipping a note into my hand; it's quite easy—you put your hand behind your back, like this, and gaze in another direction, and if a governess happens to be too close, you just speak to her and distract her attention. I only once got into a row—it was coming away from church." …

This line of conversation was pursued whenever Stella was invited to The Court as company for Maud, and when Maud visited her friend at The Chestnuts. What, oh! what would have been the feelings of grandmamma and the aunts could they have overheard such vulgar, pernicious talk? To women of their type and upbringing this dawning of the most powerful of all instincts would have seemed a matter for the severest censure—not a natural symptom to be guided into safe and open channels, but a danger to be dealt with as sinful, corrupt. Intuitively Stella felt that Maud's enthralling confidences would be condemned with horror by her relations; and when Aunt Augusta, vaguely suspicious, inquired one day what the two young people found to talk about, self-preservation prompted a careless and misleading reply: "Oh, I don't know; Maud's school, and all that sort of thing."

Reassured, Aunt Augusta considered this perfectly satisfactory and natural, seeing that Stella was soon to begin school-life herself.

Maud Verrall's egoistical communications, innocent enough in themselves (though scarcely to be commended), led, indirectly, after the manner of trivial happenings, to far-reaching results. One of the immediate consequences of Stella's newly awakened interest in the opposite sex was her expulsion from Miss Ogle's high-principled establishment before her first term was over.

From the moment of her arrival at Greystones Stella was in constant hot water. According to the school standards she was backward, and her capabilities were hopelessly unequal; she wasted hours that should have resulted in progress over work she disliked, whereas in the subjects that attracted her she outstripped her class. Her talent for music was undeniable, but she shirked the drudgery of practice, and her fatal facility for playing by ear was ever in the way. She was not popular, for she made no concealment of her contempt for sickly adorations and fashionable fawnings on governesses and senior girls. The life irked her, and her disappointment was keen to find that at Greystones there was no question of concerts and lectures; that no finishing extras figured on Miss Ogle's programme such as might have afforded the sort of excitement described by Maud Verrall as an antidote to the monotony of school existence. She hated the daily crocodile walk; true, there was a tennis court, but the game was a monopoly of the first class, while the rest of the school marched two and two along dusty roads and uninteresting byways. Stella moped.

Then, one fatal afternoon, the daily procession passed through the town, a treat permitted once in the term, and as they all tramped the pavement of the principal thoroughfare, past fascinating shops that held the attention of governesses and girls, a flashy looking youth, loitering on the kerb, caught Stella's eye. She remembered Maud Verrall and that daring young person's adventures; what a triumph if she could tell Maud, in the summer holidays, that she had attracted the admiration of a real live young man! Maud had advocated a swift side-glance, especially if one had long eyelashes. Stella tried the experiment in passing the youth, who wore a loud waistcoat and had an immature moustache. She felt rather alarmed at her success. The young man responded with alacrity, and proceeded to follow the school at a discreet distance; followed when the "crocodile" turned to climb the hill; and was still in attendance when it reached the gate of the short drive.

Stella throbbed with excitement. She wondered what he would do now; would he linger outside; would he return to-morrow and be there when they emerged for the walk, just to obtain a glimpse of her as they passed? She thought his appearance rather dreadful; but at any rate, he was a young man, an admirer; all that she regretted was that she could not write now and tell Maud Verrall how he had followed the school on a blazing hot day up a steep hill, all on her, Stella's, account!

A game of tennis was in progress as the girls filed up the sloping drive and scattered on the edge of the lawn, and at this moment, as it happened, a ball was sent over the privet hedge into the road below. Stella saw her chance.

"All right!" she shouted to the players. "I'll run and get it." And she raced back down the drive and through the open gate. There was the admirer lurking on the sidepath! He darted forward, an eager expression on his countenance that, even in her agitation, Stella remarked was sallow and spotty; also, as he grinned, she saw that his teeth were bad. What a pity! But it flashed through her mind that such drawbacks need not, when the time came, be cited to Maud. She would tell Maud, when they met, that he was "a picture!"

Affecting not to see him, and with a fluttering heart, Stella pounced on the tennis ball that lay in the middle of the road; and "the picture," murmuring something she could not catch, pounced also, and thrust a piece of paper into her hand. Just at that moment, by all the laws of ill-luck, Miss Ogle herself came in sight, advancing along the road, with floating veil and fringed parasol, returning from a private constitutional.

The letter that brought the appalling news to The Chestnuts of Stella's disgrace was addressed to Miss Augusta Carrington. Even the customary ignoring of unpleasant facts was not proof against such a staggering blow. Stella! the granddaughter, the niece, the child they had cherished and guarded and reared with such care—to think that she should have been detected in a vulgar intrigue, and could no longer be harboured at Greystones lest she should contaminate her schoolfellows! It was almost too terrible to contemplate, and for once the three ladies permitted themselves the freedom of natural behaviour. Augusta very nearly stormed; Ellen wept bitterly; grandmamma said: "Like mother, like daughter," in an awful voice, and "What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh." The household was steeped in gloom. They all regretted that there was no male head of the family to whom they could turn for advice in this distressing difficulty; and it was Augusta who at last suggested that Stella's godfather, Colonel Crayfield, should be consulted. Was he not an old friend of "poor Charles"? And only a few days ago there had come a letter from him saying that he was at home on short leave from India, asking for news of his little goddaughter.

Augusta had answered the letter; how humiliating now, in the light of this subsequent catastrophe, to recall the hopeful description she had given of poor Charles's child! The confession of Stella's downfall, should they decide to consult Colonel Crayfield, would be a painful undertaking; but he was such a worthy, dependable character, and who could be more fitted, as they all agreed, to give counsel in such a terrible predicament than the child's own sponsor—the trusted friend of the dead father, since there was no male member of the Carrington family to whom they could appeal?

Last time Colonel Crayfield came home, ten years ago, he had spent a couple of days at The Chestnuts—rather a trial for hostesses who were unaccustomed to the entertaining of gentlemen, but on the whole the visit was felt to have been a success. Mamma and Augusta had even suspected that he was attracted by Ellen, though, according to Carrington custom, neither had voiced the idea. Ellen, however, could have given him no encouragement, for nothing came of it, suitable as such an alliance would have seemed on both sides. Colonel Crayfield was that amphibious production of the Indian services—a military man in civil employ, holding responsible, well-paid office; on the occasion of his brief visit to The Chestnuts he had not disagreed with Miss Augusta when she expressed her admiration of missionary efforts in the East; he had only just tasted the wine that was offered him; he had not smoked in the house, though the pantry was at his disposal for the purpose. All these good points were recalled during the discussion that ensued as to whether he should be approached for advice concerning his goddaughter's future, and such recollections went far towards shaping the final decision of grandmamma and Augusta, tearfully supported by Ellen. The whole dreadful truth should be written to Colonel Crayfield, with an urgent invitation to visit The Chestnuts once more.

Meantime Stella was on her way home, shamefaced, unhappy. The fuss at Greystones had been frightful, the whole affair bewildering—the condemnation, the feeling of hopeless inability to defend herself; then the hasty packing, the self-righteous, disparaging attitude of the girls, and the stares of the servants; the humiliating departure, sentinelled to the last moment by Miss Ogle herself, wrathful and stern, who put her into a compartment for ladies only, in the care of the guard.

The time that elapsed between her return to The Chestnuts and the day of Colonel Crayfield's arrival was to Stella a species of purgatory. Grandmamma and the aunts hardly spoke to her, she was forbidden to go beyond the garden, no explanation of her conduct was invited, though, indeed, what explanation could she have given, since it was perfectly true that Miss Ogle had caught her receiving a note from a strange young man; and with it all she had not even had a chance to read the note—she would have given worlds to know what the young man had written!

The culprit was sent to the station in the village wagonette to meet her godfather, and she welcomed the distraction, awkward though it would be to face Colonel Crayfield in the uncomfortable circumstances. The situation struck her as almost grotesque; here she was, driving through the familiar lanes in the late July sunshine, as an outcast and a sinner, to meet an old gentleman who had been summoned to sit in judgment upon her! And, after all, she had done nothing worse, nothing half so bad, as Maud Verrall; and Maud had not been expelled from school as a sort of leper. She wished Maud was at The Court; but that happy young creature was disporting herself in London, and Stella had not the spirit left to write to her.

Arrived at the little countryside station, a six-mile drive from The Chestnuts, she seated herself on a bench to await the train from London, and gazed vacantly at the white palings, at the dazzling herbaceous border, butterflies floating above it. She felt sorely oppressed, but more from a sense of misfortune than from shame or repentance. How unlucky she was! The future held nothing enjoyable; she saw herself living on at The Chestnuts indefinitely. Grandmamma might die some day, but she and the aunts would grow older and older, and they would all continue to sing in church that they dared not choose their lot, and would not if they might. Stella remembered the case of Miss Spurt, the only daughter of a clergyman in a neighbouring parish, who, two or three years back, had run away with her father's groom-gardener. The scandal had petrified the county; whispers of it had reached Stella's sharp ears, though the subject was never mentioned in her presence at The Chestnuts. Now she wondered what had become of Miss Spurt, and she even began to sympathise with the poor girl's mad action.

Supposing she herself were driven to do the same sort of thing; to elope, for example, with the solitary porter who stood leaning against the waiting-room wall, should he suggest such a desperate step! She regarded him with idle attention, feeling stupefied with the prevailing somnolence of the station, the heat of the shadeless, empty platform; he was a fresh-looking boy, with a cap on the back of his head and a curl of glistening hair plastered to his forehead. Suddenly he stood erect, stretched his arms, gave a loud yawn, and seized a handbell that he rang with deafening clamour. So here was the train at last, thank goodness!

One or two people hurried, perspiring, breathless, on to the platform; a few more ran over the rails from the opposite side, there being no footbridge; the station-master emerged from his office and took up a commanding position. The train rumbled in.

During the long, hot journey from London, Colonel Crayfield had been repenting his good-natured acquiescence to what seemed to him a rather exacting, inconsiderate request. At first his fancy had been tickled by the notion that he, an elderly bachelor, should present himself in this semi-parental rôle; also he was anxious to see the little girl, his godchild, who apparently threatened to follow in her mother's footsteps, though from what he remembered of Charles Carrington, she was more likely to have inherited unstable tendencies from her father! Charles had always been foolish and weak where affairs of the heart were concerned; but in his final "affair," with the young wife of a singularly unsuitable husband, he was certainly more to be pitied than blamed. That time he had really been done for, and he had behaved well in the circumstances; he, Colonel Crayfield, had stood by the guilty pair, and helped Charles to change his regiment, had consented to be sponsor to the unwelcome child. But, with the usual result of good-natured actions, it seemed that his responsibilities were never to end; and partly for the sake of Charles Carrington's memory, partly to satisfy a newly aroused interest, here he was on his way to give counsel to three old prudes in the matter of a naughty girl who had got into a scrape at school! What form this counsel was to take he had not the remotest idea; he knew nothing about schoolgirls; probably it was all a storm in a teacup. What on earth had persuaded him to waste his time in such useless fashion!

As he stepped out of the train in company with a few women bearing market baskets and a sprinkling of farmers wearing breeches and gaiters, he wished again that he had not yielded to sentiment and curiosity; visits bored him; he had been bored on the last occasion, ten years ago, when he had gone on duty to The Chestnuts. He remembered the ordeal well: Charles's formal, austere old mother, his uninteresting sisters, the undrinkable wine, Charles's child of six or seven years old, who had sniffed and fidgeted and refused to make friends, and was no different from other children of her age; he even remembered that the village was a long distance from the station, and he hoped that neither of the Carrington spinsters had come to the station to meet him.

Stella, standing expectant on the platform, saw a powerful-looking man, clean shaven, blunt-featured, inclined to stoutness, who moved ponderously—rather like a big Chinaman, a mandarin. As she stepped forward he stared at her, and the stare gave her an odd feeling of shyness. She would have to introduce herself; he did not know that she was to meet him at the station. He was not at all what she had expected; she had pictured a fussy old person with a protruding stomach, a beard, and spectacles!

Colonel Crayfield was equally taken aback. His experienced glance had been instantly arrested by the vision of a remarkably good-looking girl, tall and slim, who, though her skirt only reached to her ankles, whose hair was tied back with a large ribbon bow, was clearly no child; and he had gazed at the vision as he would hardly have permitted himself to gaze had he realised that the girl was his goddaughter! All the same, the situation entertained him; he no longer wished he had refused to respond to Miss Carrington's appeal.

Colonel Crayfield raised his hat. "Then you are Stella—my godchild? How d'ye do, Stella?"

The radiant brown eyes met his own. What an unnecessarily pretty creature; no wonder there had been trouble connected with boys!

"Yes, they sent me to meet you," and she flushed with the consciousness that he knew of her misbehaviour.

"Very kind of them to send you; very kind of you to come!" He looked around. "Now for my bag," he added briskly, "and then we can be off."

Stella sighed with mingled doubt and relief; instinctively she felt that to Colonel Crayfield she was no criminal. Yet the remembrance of his glance when he first set eyes upon her, not knowing who she was, still disturbed her strangely. She abandoned all attempt to understand the doubt, and allowed her relief full play. Her spirits rose. During the drive to The Chestnuts she chattered freely, pointing out landmarks, telling stories of the people and the past; and never once did her godfather allude to the reason of his coming, for which consideration she was deeply grateful.

On arrival at The Chestnuts even the solemn faces of grandmamma and the aunts could not depress her; she sprang from the wagonette and ran into the house with a gaiety most unbecoming in one who had been expelled from school on a charge that was truly shocking.

After tea she escaped, went down to the stream at the bottom of the garden and watched grandmamma pacing the terrace in front of the house on Colonel Crayfield's arm. Grandmamma wore her brown bonnet and her cashmere shawl, and carried her ebony walking-stick. Stella ached to know what they were saying; of course, it was to do with herself, and how she should be punished. If only that nice old fellow would devise some means of escape for her from her deadly imprisonment!

Mrs. Carrington was saying: "Stella is very irresponsible, and does not seem to realise how badly she has behaved. I fear she has inherited her mother's light nature, and what we are to do with her is a problem. It is not as if we could hope for a suitable marriage in the future, situated as we are."

"It is a difficult question," said Colonel Crayfield evasively. His eyes turned to the slim figure that flitted beside the stream. He knew by the weighty silence that followed that he was expected to make some useful suggestion.

At last he said desperately: "If I were not a bachelor and could offer her a chance in India——" then he paused.

Grandmamma glanced at him furtively. Was he thinking of Ellen? What an admirable solution of the difficulty were he to marry Ellen, and thereby not only secure a most suitable wife for himself, but provide an equally suitable haven for Stella till the child could be settled in life. And just at that moment, as if in response to the old lady's thoughts, Ellen herself came out of the house. Really, Mrs. Carrington reflected, Ellen did not look anything like her age, and she was dressed so becomingly—not too much in the present fashion, which all three ladies considered so ugly. Grandmamma suddenly discovered that she was fatigued; that she had taken sufficient exercise for to-day, and would step into the drawing-room for a rest before dinner. Oh, dear no!—Ellen and Colonel Crayfield must not trouble about her; no need for them to come indoors just yet on such a pleasant evening; she would prefer to be quiet, and perhaps a short nap. …

So Ellen and Colonel Crayfield took a little stroll in the garden, and the gentleman also took the opportunity to make a request connected with his own comfort.

"I hope I shall not be giving too much trouble, dear Miss Ellen," he said with diffidence, "but might a tray be put in my bedroom overnight? I am afraid I am a victim to old Indian habits, and one of them is that I wake very early and long for a cup of tea. I have my own kettle and spirit stand—I never move without them in England—so that if a teapot and some tea, and a little milk——"

Ellen eagerly assented. Of course; it would be no trouble at all. She was so glad he should have mentioned it. "And I do hope you will ask for exactly what you want. I will tell Betty, and see that she arranges the tray properly."

"If it might be a fairly big teapot and a breakfast cup … " pursued Colonel Crayfield. (What he had suffered in English households from "dainty little morning tea-sets"!—a teapot the size of an apple, a cup to match, tea so thick and strong that it might have been jam.)

Ellen wondered nervously if there would be enough milk left overnight for the visitor's tray. Betty was always so careful not to take more than was actually required for the household. "I think I will just run indoors," she said apologetically, "and tell Betty what to do, so that she will be sure not to forget anything."

"You are more than kind!" exclaimed Colonel Crayfield with fervour; but he did not add that he hoped she would speedily return and continue their stroll. And when Ellen reappeared, smiling and triumphant, he was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Stella in sight; and Ellen finally discovered the pair in the kitchen garden.

Stella had crawled beneath a net that protected the gooseberries from the birds. Colonel Crayfield was standing stolid and large on the path, and Stella was handing him berries through the meshes of the net. He was not eating the fruit, and Ellen felt that this was compatible with his dignity and his years. She could not imagine Colonel Crayfield sucking gooseberries and throwing the skins about! It seemed he was collecting them for Stella, who, bent double, was robbing the bushes—such an ungainly attitude for a young lady.

"Stella!" called Aunt Ellen in reproof, "you are tearing your frock!"

The child looked a disgraceful object as she emerged from the nets; a long rent in one of her sleeves disclosed a round white arm with a red scratch in the flesh, her face was crimson, her hair in disorder, she was covered with twigs and bits, and her mouth was sticky with gooseberry juice. Laughing, she held out her skirt, like an apron, for the fruit that filled Colonel Crayfield's large mahogany-coloured hands.

Ellen felt truly ashamed of her niece. What would Colonel Crayfield be thinking of his goddaughter, and of the way in which she had been brought up! Had Ellen observed the look in Colonel Crayfield's eyes at the moment, she would probably have mistaken it for astonished disapproval; as it was, she only observed that he gazed at Stella in silence, at the shining hair that fell over her forehead, at the wide-open brown eyes, thickly lashed and full of mischief, at the flushed cheeks and parted lips, that showed a row of faultless little teeth, and at the red scratch on the white forearm.

Stella, unabashed, proffered her skirt, full of fruit, to her aunt. "Do have some, Aunt Ellen," she cried joyously. "They're ripping, especially the big, hairy fellows."

"You will spoil your dinner," said Aunt Ellen severely, "as you have already spoilt your frock."

"Like little Miss Jane," and Stella chanted: