Читать книгу Queen of the Dormitory and Other Stories - Angela Brazil - Страница 6

Table of Contents

“Has he refused again?”

“Yes, refused dead. Sent quite a curt note, I hear.”

“The brute!”

“It’s a shame,” grumbled Violet Bennett, gazing out of the schoolroom window at a certain plot of uncultivated land that lay exactly to the back of the houses in Meridew Crescent; “a scandalous, abominable, crying shame. All that lovely piece of ground utterly and absolutely wasted.”

“There’d be room for four tennis courts at least,” declared Sheila Hall, casting a covetous eye over the field in question. “Think of four extra tennis courts, girls! Why, it would be gorgeous! No quarrelling about sets, or hateful waiting for turns.”

“And the end piece would do for croquet and clock golf, and that would give us younger ones a chance,” said Lottie Drew, one of the juniors.

“He doesn’t use it—ever. So what good is it to him, I should like to know?”

“None at all; he’s a perfect old dog in the manger. He doesn’t want it himself, and he won’t let anybody else have it.”

“Stingy! Mean! Disgusting!” burst from the annoyed girls.

“I should like to let him know what we think of him!”

“Much he’d care!”

Miss Walton’s school was the second house in Meridew Crescent, next door to that of Professor Drummond Axleford, the eminent archæologist, who lived at the end of the terrace. To the professor his neighbours were a continual thorn in the flesh. He had been extremely irate when, six years ago, the house had been let for a school; he had protested in vain to the landlord, fumed, fussed, and overflowed with indignation, but as it was impossible, without a removal on his own account, to rid himself of the undesirable proximity of thirty bread-and-butter misses, he had settled down to endure the nuisance with grim ill-humour. Many were the passages of arms between himself and Miss Walton. He had written a stiff letter objecting to the continual practising of scales and five-finger exercises, which he declared so disturbed the current of his thoughts that it seriously interfered with his archæological researches; and though Miss Walton, in compliance with his request, had moved her schoolroom piano to an inner wall, she had retorted by a polite but scathing suggestion that the professor might also change his study. This he had promptly done, but his dining-room was now next to the school, and he ate his meals to an accompaniment of musical gymnastics, irritating, so he considered, to the extent of ruining his digestion.

His housekeeper also had her grievance. She objected to the small heads which perpetually bobbed out of back windows when she shook mats in the yard. She scowled at them sourly, and kept up the feud by refusing to throw back any balls that fell over the wall, turning a deaf ear to the beseeching voices which urged their restoration.

But the chief bone of contention was the plot of land which lay at the rear of the Crescent. Originally it had been a common garden for all the houses in the terrace, but it had somehow fallen into the hands of the owner of No. 1 and was now the sole property of the professor. Every spring Miss Walton sent a politely-worded note, begging to be allowed to rent the patch for tennis courts, and every time her request was met by a firm refusal. It was really too bad, for the plot was quite run wild and uncultivated; in its present condition it was useless to anybody, while it would make a splendid addition to the school premises. It became a veritable Naboth’s vineyard to the girls, who would look wistfully at its weed-covered surface, and count up its attractions with sighs of envy. Every year they had hoped against hope that the professor might relent and relinquish his neglected possession, and when this spring he had again kept up his character of dog in the manger, and sent the accustomed reply, the cup of their wrath was full to overflowing.

“He deserves to be hacked to pieces, and buried in his own field,” wailed Rhoda Phipps.

“Or made to take a spade and dig up all the weeds. Wouldn’t I just like to see him doing it, with a policeman to stand over him and keep him at it.”

“Oh, it’s too sickening. Decima Carson, you ought to be able to do something, he’s your cousin.”

“Not a near one,” urged Decima, anxious to disclaim the relationship. “Only a sort of second cousin once removed. I’ve never even spoken to him, you know.”

“I thought he was your godfather,” said Sheila Hall.

“So he is, worse luck. But he didn’t come to my christening. He sent me a spoon and fork, and then forgot all about me. I don’t suppose he remembers I’m his godchild. It’s too bad. Kitty’s and Dolly’s godfathers are absolute trumps—send them birthday presents, and take them to the theatre. I might as well have none.”

“Why did your father and mother choose him?”

“Well, I’m No. 10, you see, and by the time they came to me they’d pretty well used up all their relations and friends, so father said, ‘There’s nothing for it. We shall have to ask the professor.’ I wish they hadn’t.”

“All the same, Decima Carson, you ought to do something,” repeated Linda Jowett. “You’re the only one in the school who has the slightest claim upon him. To be his godchild as well as his cousin, certainly is a claim, and you ought to press it.”

“What do you want me to do?” groaned Decima.

“Go and see him yourself, and try and cajole him into letting us have the field.”

“Whew! That’s a large order!”

“No, no, it’s a ripping notion,” exclaimed Violet, Sheila, and Rhoda.

The more the girls talked it over the more taken they were with Linda’s idea. They declared it was Decima’s positive duty to make an effort on behalf of the school. If she refused the task thus thrust upon her she would sink forthwith in their estimation. They even uttered dark hints about sending her to Coventry. Thus goaded to exertion, Decima, though an unwilling leader, took up the crusade somewhat in the spirit of Jeanne d’Arc, and began to plan details.

“It’s no good letting Miss Walton know,” she said; “she’d very likely put some objection in the way. Schoolmistresses are so tiresome and silly and unreasonable. Anything I do ’ll have to be on my own.”

“We’ll back you up, of course,” promised the girls.

“Then I’d better go round to the front door of No. 1, and boldly ask for my godfather. I shall have to take my chance of any of the teachers catching me.”

“You’d be forgiven if you secured the field,” chuckled Rhoda.

During the half-hour before tea, therefore, Decima smuggled her hat and coat downstairs, and, seizing a moment when she was unobserved by mistresses, she slipped outside. With a thumping sensation in her chest she pulled the bell of No. 1. It did not ring, so she tried again, this time giving a vigorous peal that must have resounded through the house. The old servant appeared, with a particularly sour expression on her gaunt visage.

“Can I see Professor Axleford, please?” asked Decima in a rather small, subdued voice.

“No, you can’t. He’s not at home,” was the surly reply, and the door was slammed in her face.

There was nothing for it but to beat a discomfited retreat. Fortunately her allies were waiting to let her in at No. 2, and her short absence had not been remarked by those in authority, so she was able to regain the schoolroom in safety.

“I’m sure it was a horrid story,” said Dessie. “I believe he was at home all the time.”

“Of course he was. Didn’t I tell you I saw his head at one of the windows?”

“It was just a piece of spite on the part of the housekeeper. She can’t bear us,” said Rhoda.

“What are we to do next?” inquired Sheila.

“Don’t know. I’ll have to think,” replied Decima slowly. “I’m not going to be ‘done’ by that nasty old woman. It was too cool of her to say ‘Not at home,’ just because I’m only a little girl. I’ll see the professor somehow, if I have to burgle the house to get in.”

“I believe you will, too. When you say a thing, Dessie, you stick to it,” declared Violet admiringly.

“But how?” persisted Sheila.

“I can’t tell you yet. I must wait till I get a chance.”

For days Decima waited her opportunity, but it did not come. It is no easy matter for a schoolgirl to sneak away and pay an unauthorized visit even to her own godfather next door. The lynx eye of Miss Ferrand, the second mistress, was generally over her pupils, with a vigilance that seldom slackened. Even in recreation time they could never be sure that she was not surveying the playground from behind a curtain or a blind. One particularly mild spring afternoon, however, the right occasion arrived at last. Little Lottie Drew excitedly squeaked that the professor was sitting in his back garden, and when Decima ran to verify the information by peeping out of the bathroom window, she could see him lounging in a basket chair, smoking a pipe and reading a paper.

“Miss Ferrand’s out, and Miss Walton’s giving a botany lesson, so there won’t be anyone to stop me. Here goes. I’ll do it,” thought Dessie, returning to the playground. “Just boost me a little, girls,” she said. “I’m going over the wall.”

The said wall was high, so it required much effort on the part of her friends before her plump form was successfully heaved to the top. Once there, she wasted no time, but dropped boldly into the next garden. The professor looked up in great surprise at the sound of the heavy thud. When he saw his self-invited visitor he half rose up, as if contemplating a hasty retreat. But Dessie was too quick for him; she dodged between him and the house, and got out the sentence which she had carefully prepared, all in one gasp.

“Please, I don’t suppose you remember me, and I don’t think you’ve even really seen me before, but I’m your goddaughter Decima Carson. Don’t you remember me now? I’m at the school next door.”

“Dear me! dear me!” ejaculated the professor. “Kenneth Carson’s child, of course—young Kenneth Carson!”

The idea of her greyheaded father being called young Kenneth Carson so tickled Dessie that she nearly exploded. Professor Axleford rubbed his chin with a rather knobby forefinger. Some memory was evidently distressing him.

“It was impossible to come to the christening,” he remarked, “because the Rochester Archæological Meeting was on the same afternoon. I trust they did not wait for me?”

“They did for twenty minutes, then father stood proxy,” said Decima, who had the details of her own baptism by heart, and who fully appreciated the humour of an apology twelve years old. “You sent me a spoon and fork,” she added, willing to let him down gently.

“I did. I remember choosing it in Oxford Street. And now you have come——” he asked, evidently seeking a reason for her sudden descent.

“I’ve come to ask you something,” said Decima bluntly.

The professor put his hand in his pocket.

“True. My godfather always tipped me when I was a boy at school. I had forgotten the custom,” he murmured.

“No, no!” shrieked Dessie, blushing scarlet. “I don’t want tipping. Please, please don’t think I came to ask you for that. It’s something quite different. Oh, Cousin Professor Drummond Axleford, won’t you let our school have your field for a tennis ground?”

The professor frowned as he shook his head.

“Impossible,” he said, rather tartly. “I conveyed my refusal to Miss Walton the other day. I wish I could persuade her to let the matter drop.”

“But we want it so badly,” pleaded Dessie. “If only you knew how inconvenient it is for a whole school only to have one tennis court, I think you’d let us. The balls wouldn’t come over from there, either. We wouldn’t let it annoy you.”

“It’s no use arguing the point. I do not purpose to let the ground. Er—isn’t it time you were going back? I hear a bell.”

So did Decima, and she looked round guiltily.

“My servant will let you through the house,” observed her godfather.

“No, thanks; I’d have to ring our front-door bell, and that would give the show away. I’d rather go back over the wall—that’s to say if I can,” remembering the girls were not there to boost her.

“The step ladder?” suggested the professor.

“The very thing,” agreed Decima.

Professor Axleford behaved as though it were an ordinary and orthodox occurrence for a guest to take her departure across the wall. He called the housekeeper, who brought the steps and held them firmly while Decima mounted. The latter was too agitated to say good-bye. She dropped over into the arms of her friends, and fled into the house just as the second tea bell rang.

“He’s a wretch, and I wouldn’t own him as a godfather,” exclaimed Rhoda, when she heard the account afterwards, whispered in the privacy of the book cupboard.

“I haven’t done with him yet,” said Dessie stubbornly. “Perhaps we’ll get the field after all.”

On the following day a workman appeared, armed with buckets of mortar, and carefully stuck pieces of broken glass all along the wall that separated the two gardens. Dessie watched him with scorn.

“That wouldn’t keep me out if I wanted to go in,” she remarked. “He needn’t be afraid. I don’t play the same game twice. Next time it will be something quite different.”

How to find a “next time” was the question. Decima watched and waited, and waited and watched, but it was a whole month before the fates were propitious. Then a sudden golden opportunity turned up. She was peeping out of the bathroom window when a most unwonted sight met her eyes. Lying on the grass plot in the professor’s garden was a small boy of about eight years old. He had a box of paints by his side, and he was daubing away in a painting-book, his artistic attempts being somewhat marred by a Skye terrier dog which kept making excited bounces and pretending to worry him.

“Hallo!” called Dessie. “Who are you, and what are you doing there?”

The boy jumped up and stared at the friendly face beaming at him from the window. He grinned a reply.

“I’m Cedric Brown, and I’m here for three days on my way to school. He’s my guardian.”

“Who? Not the professor?”

“Yes. Don’t I jolly well wish he wasn’t! He locked Barty up in the cellar. I got him out, though.” And he chuckled.

“Is Barty the dog? I say, where did you get that vase from?”

“Prigged it out of his study. I had to take something to put my paint-water in, and I wasn’t going to ask that old woman. She’s cross.”

“It’ll be smashed in a minute or two, if you let your dog rage around like that.”

“I don’t care,” responded the small boy recklessly.

Decima peered a little farther out of the window. She could not possibly be mistaken. She recognized the vase quite plainly. It was a very rare and beautiful piece of old Dresden, the fellow to which stood in their own drawing-room at home, and was considered an immense treasure. She had been told many times that the pair of vases belonged to her great-grandmother, and had been left, the one to her father, and the other to his cousin, Professor Drummond Axleford.

“And that boy’s using it for paint-water,” she thought. “The professor would have a fit if he knew. Decima Carson, here’s your chance!”

The boy had flung himself down again on the ground, and was rolling over and over with the dog. Several times they missed the vase by only an inch or two. Dessie almost held her breath.

“Look here,” she called beguilingly, “would you like some chocolates? I’d a box sent me this morning, and I’ll give it to you if you’ll do something for me. It’s half full still.”

“Would I like chocolates? Rather! Hand them out!”

“In a sec. I want you to hand up something first. I’m going to let down a basket by a piece of string, and if you’ll put that vase inside for me to draw up you shall have the chocs.”

“What am I going to do for a paint-pot?”

“I’ll throw you an empty cocoa tin I always use myself.”

Surely no delicate piece of rare old china ever stood a greater risk than the Dresden vase in its passage up to the window. The basket bumped repeatedly against the side of the house, and once nearly tipped over, but Dessie caught it skilfully as she drew it up to the top, and rescued the treasure.

“Mind you don’t say one word about this,” she commanded, as she dropped the chocolate-box in return.

“Not likely. I shan’t give myself away,” replied the imp, munching with blissful satisfaction.

“Hard to part with half a box of chocs, but it was worth it,” murmured Decima. “I’ll give my godfather a week to mourn his loss, then—well, I’ll make a bargain with him.”

It was the day but one after that when she saw the boy again. He sauntered into the garden and signalled to her as she peeped from the window.

“I’m just off to school,” he announced. “I say, they’ve been making a jolly row over that rubbishy old vase, I can tell you.”

“You didn’t say where it’s gone?” gasped Dessie.

“Rather not. They think some burglar’s stolen it. Never suspected me, so I just looked innocent and said nothing. Oh, it was fun to hear them telephoning to the police. Here’s my cab, I’ll have to go.”

“Good-bye. Hope you’ll like school. Were the chocolates nice?”

“Scrumptious!” called the boy as he went away.

“Only four days more,” said Decima to herself, “then I verily believe I shall do it.”

Professor Axleford was indeed in sad distress about the theft of his Dresden vase. He was an enthusiast on the subject of old china, and this particular piece was the finest in his collection, besides being an heirloom.

“I’d rather have parted with the Nankin jar or the whole set of Worcester,” he groaned. “Somebody must have taken it who well knew its value. It is strange that the police can find no clue.”

The loss disturbed him, and as he sat at his desk in his study one afternoon, trying to write an archæological report, his ideas refused to flow in their usual channel. He looked disconsolately at the blank sheet of paper, then hearing a sound behind him he turned round. Decima was standing in the middle of the room, hugging a parcel.

“Who let you in?” he asked, not too politely.

“Nobody,” replied his goddaughter. “I found your front door open, so I walked up to your study. I’ve come about some business. Haven’t you got a Dresden vase like ours?”

“I had,” began the professor, “but now——”

“I know,” nodded Dessie. “It’s been stolen. I heard all about that. Yours was a nicer one than ours, too.”

“Kenneth Carson got the piece with the crack and the broken handle, but mine was intact,” said the professor sadly.

“It’s a pity it’s lost. What would you give to get it back?”

“I have offered a reward of five pounds.”

“Oh, my! What a lot of money! But suppose you could have it without paying anything?”

“What do you mean?” asked Professor Axleford sharply.

“I mean this: if I brought you back the vase quite safe, and not the least scrap broken, would you let our school have your ground for tennis courts?”

“You should have a dozen.”

“We don’t want a dozen—only that one particular piece. Please, is it a bargain? If I give you back your vase will you promise faithfully to let us that field, not only this year, but every year?” and Dessie brandished her parcel.

“It’s a bargain,” agreed her godfather.

“And no questions asked? I don’t want Miss Walton to know a word about this, please.”

“All right, you young monkey. I believe you and that boy were at the bottom of it. I might have guessed.”

But Dessie did not stay to listen; she popped the parcel on the desk and fled, judging discretion the better part of valour, and trusting to the professor to keep his word. She did not misjudge him, for that same evening a letter arrived for Miss Walton, stating briefly that he had reconsidered his decision, and was now willing to lease her the plot of land for a period of five years.

“Most extraordinary that he should suddenly have changed his mind,” commented Miss Walton. “I suppose he realized how ungenerous he had been.”

In the back garden Dessie and her chums expressed their triumph with suppressed cheers.

“We’ve got it! We’ve got it at last!” gurgled Rhoda. “Dessie, you’re a witch.”

“He’ll hate us for ever,” laughed Decima, “but who cares?”

“Perhaps, after all, he’s so relieved to get back his vase that he doesn’t much mind,” said Violet sagely.

Three jobbing gardeners were set to work at once to level and returf and roll the plot of ground, and before the summer term was over, the girls had taken complete possession. Miss Walton sent a most graciously-worded note of thanks to her next-door neighbour; but she never knew the real story of how her school won its new tennis courts.