Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Go Back to School - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 8

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‘Eh, Miss Jen!’ said an old woman in the village one spring day. ‘It be a reet canny sight to see ye flyin’ down t’ ro-oad, in all t’ pretty colours!’

Jen mounted her cycle and rode off laughing. But the words stayed in her mind, and, thinking the matter over seriously, she realised that her vivid jumpers and jerseys must indeed be unusual spots of colour in that gray neighbourhood. The whole village, perched high on a windy ridge with bleak moors all round, was gray and cold; the houses and garden walls were of rough gray stone; there was not a red brick house to be seen. As yet not even crocuses were showing in the gardens; the trees were still bare, and the moors brown and lifeless. She looked at her emerald jumper and cap, her yellow sports’ coat, her pink jersey and her blue one; she loved all colours and, fair, with her hair in two long yellow plaits, she could wear them all; but she admitted that no one else hereabouts wore such vivid things.

‘I must jolly well show up miles away! Even the “Tin Town” girls don’t rise to jumpers like mine! But they’re always looking at mine; I believe they’d like to wear them if they had them. Why shouldn’t they? We made our own at school! I never saw such a gray, chilly set of houses in my life, and it seems to have got into the people somehow! I’ll—I’ll bring some colour into that village, or know the reason why!’ Jen vowed, with solemn resolution, and at her next classes she proposed to the girls that they should knit their own jumpers, in the prettiest colours they could find. The village girls had been apathetic about knitting, but they had, indeed, been eyeing Jen’s greens and blues and pinks and yellows with longing eyes; the Wycombe school, of course, had been knitting like mad for years, and Jen, like the others, had jumpers in every colour she fancied.

Her suggestion was adopted with enthusiasm, and her help demanded on every side. Her mother consented to buy the wool, on the understanding that the girls paid a few pennies a week till they had covered the cost. ‘It wouldn’t be good for them to get it all for nothing,’ Mrs Robins said. ‘If you give them help and advice, and let them pay gradually, that will be far better for them, and they’ll value the garments more.’

So in the intervals of dances, Jen was surrounded by an eager crowd, intent on stitches, borders, and intakes; and she looked forward laughingly but eagerly to the summer, when the lanes would be full of girls in every colour of the rainbow; but, thanks to her guidance, colours that would be beautiful and not crude.

‘We’ll wake up this old village in time, between our dancing and our jumpers!’ her father mocked.

‘We mean to!’ Jen assented. ‘Some day I’m going to give them singing too, but I don’t want to take on too much all at once, and I don’t know just the right kind of songs. I want some that will fit the dances, and I don’t know where to get them. We had rather stupid songs at school; I won’t give those to the girls! The first girl to wear her jumper will burst with pride, you know. I’m making one too, and we’re all having a race.’

‘You! You’ve got a dozen already!’

‘Oh no! Only four. I’m making a lovely amethyst one, with a darker collar; I’ve always wanted one. But I’m going slowly; I wouldn’t like mine to be the first done.’

‘And do you leave the boys out of all the fun? Can’t they join in the dancing too?’

‘I asked them, when the girls had been at it for a fortnight,’ Jen’s face clouded. ‘I thought it would be jolly to have boy partners; and it would have been good for the girls too. Teach ’em not to be too silly I But the boys call it “girls’ stooff,” and won’t have anything to do with us. Of course, what they’d love would be to learn a sword-dance. Every single one of them would come for that! But I can’t teach them, and I don’t know anybody who could. Cook’s men live too far away.’

‘They wouldn’t teach it outside their own village, anyway, I expect,’ her father said thoughtfully.

‘I wonder about morris?’ Jen’s eyes brightened. ‘Perhaps they’d come for that! I was thinking of trying it with the girls, but if I could get hold of the boys through morris, it would be far better if the girls didn’t try it, of course. It was always a man’s dance long ago! I believe I’ll try—with sticks, you know. That “Blue-Eyed Stranger” girl who came with the mummers said I ought to see men dance morris. I say, Daddy! I’m going to have one more try for the boys! If they like it, they may come into the country dancing with the girls later on.’

‘Your girls will want to do morris too,’ her father warned her.

‘Well, they can’t; not at first, anyway. The boys won’t believe it’s a man’s dance if the girls do it too.’

Morris sticks were easily made, and one day Jen’s cycle stood at the gate of the boys’ school when they all came out at mid-day, while she, with her arms full of sticks, invited any who cared to come up to the house that evening and learn how to use them. The boys had one use, at least, about which they never hesitated, and were all prepared to hit one another over the head, or to use the sticks as swords or clubs. But several had seen the dance between Jen and the guiser-girl, with its hopping step, its tapping, and its swift glancing-up-and-down strokes of the flashing white sticks. Several boys turned up for the first lesson, enjoyed it, and went home to tell their friends and to ransack the shops of all the nearer villages for bells to wear below their knees, in imitation of Jen’s. The bells were a great attraction; the girls wore no bells for their dancing! The class doubled in size within a fortnight, and Jen had to refuse to take any more unless they formed a second class and came at a different time. ‘Rigs’ and ‘Bean-Setting’ captured them at once, and Jen foresaw that ‘Shepherd’s Hey’ would soon be necessary, in spite of its more difficult track movements. She introduced them to handkerchief dances, and was surprised herself by the vigour they put into ‘Blue-Eyed Stranger’ and ‘Trunkles.’ ‘Capers’ won their hearts, though they found the side-step difficult; Jen, watching their efforts with some misgivings, remembered often her ‘guiser’s’ criticism, and wondered apprehensively if there might have been some foundation for it, after all.

Then, one great night, the boys asked if they might stay to watch the girls for a time, and were allowed to do so, on promise of very good behaviour. Jen, with deliberate mischief in her eyes, lined the girls up for ‘Brighton Camp,’ and saw envy and eagerness dawn in the watching faces as the procession skipped gaily down the room and up again, the top couple swung down the ‘aisle,’ and all swung round and round in their places.

‘That be jolly fine!’ she heard one say.

‘Soom foon tha-at!’ another agreed. ‘Joost champion, it be!’

‘Would you like to join in?’ she asked innocently, and held out her hands to one. ‘Come in with me; join on at the end! I’ll keep you right!’

The first bold pioneer enjoyed his turn so much that he called to his friends to ‘Coom on in, you chaps!’ and two by two the boys joined the line, the girls laughing but with no time to make remarks.

Jen took her partner from top to bottom in fine style; this left two boys as leaders, and they ‘ramped all over the place,’ as she said afterwards, but enjoyed themselves hugely, while at sight of them going down the middle together the girls were nearly helpless with laughter.

Presently Jen called a halt. ‘I’ll give you something new; something nobody knows. But sit down a minute and get your breath. Now the boys must all dance on one side and the girls on the other; it looks awfully silly to see two boys together. Divide yourselves up; take partners, I mean; but don’t waste time about it. Just take anybody. We’ll do “Galopede”; then you boys can watch while we do some set dances. If you think you’d like to join in any of them, you must come next week and learn the movements in earnest.’

‘Galopede,’ with its running lines, won all their hearts, and by the time the boys had watched ‘Mage’ and ‘Peascods’ they began to think they would like to come regularly. ‘We Won’t Go Home Till Morning’ and ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ taught to the whole crowd, completed their conquest, and Jen, dismissing them at last, went up, weary but laughing and very happy, to tell her father that the morris had proved a successful bait, and that the boys had voted country dancing ‘not half bad, after all.’

‘They’ll be knitting jumpers next,’ her father teased.

The problem of music had long since become acute, of course; Jen’s ambitions could not long be kept within the bounds of a few gramophone records, many of whose dances would be far beyond the powers of her classes for many a day. She regretfully put ‘Newcastle’ and ‘Parson’s Farewell’ aside; and there were others she did not know herself. But music for ‘Brighton Camp’ and ‘Galopede’ became imperative and she set all her girls and boys to the solving of the problem. Various bashful budding violinists were produced among the ‘Tin Town’ tribes, and one after another was invited to try what she could do with the music Jen had sent for from town. But they stumbled, and, to Jen’s consternation, were so conscientious that if they played a wrong note they went back to correct it, and so ruined their rhythm and drove Jen nearly crazy, while the class hopped about on one foot and waited ‘till the tune would let them go on,’ or, worse still and much more frequently, disregarded it entirely and went on their way with no reference to the music.

Jen was in despair, when some one reminded her that old Billy Thwaites, the village policeman, could play the concertina. Jen promptly interviewed him, mindful of the man who had played for the sword-dancers in cook’s village, and found she had stumbled on a treasure. Billy loved ‘tunes’ and quite understood the need to ‘go on, go straight on, whatever happens,’ on which Jen insisted so emphatically. She played the tunes she wanted to him once, Billy at first shy in the unusual surroundings of the big drawing-room and the grand piano, but soon forgetting everything in his delight in the music; he was one of those self-taught natural musicians who could play anything by ear, and, stamping his foot to catch the time, knew instinctively what Jen meant by rhythm. Thereafter Jen was happy, the girls and boys could have any dance they wanted in the big empty kitchen, and Billy spent more jolly evenings and laughed longer and more heartily than he had done for years, and, moreover, was distinctly useful in controlling the boys when their feelings became too much for them at times. It was not every one, as Jen said, who had a tame policeman to play for her classes! He was never satisfied and never tired, and as he was not dancing himself, he was always urging them on, even during the intervals Jen thought necessary for rest and discussion of jumpers.

Her father slipped in to watch one evening, unnoticed for some time by the boys, who were learning the hand-clapping of the ‘Shepherd’s Hey’ jig with great gusto and much laughter at first. Billy, perched on a wide windowsill, jeered at their efforts at the cross-back-step, but Jen knew the difficulty and was more patient. She stood on a chair encouraging and explaining—‘Across! Never mind the “apart” bit; that will happen of itself. Cross your feet closely, and let them go out again, like scissors. Like this!’ and she jumped from her chair to show what she meant.

Her father watched with interest and amusement and some surprise the air of authority with which she controlled the boys, and still more the manner with which she presently greeted and directed the big girls from ‘Tin Town,’ when they arrived, eager for their turn, inclined to be noisy and giggly still, but all instantly yielding to a word from her. They crowded round her to show the progress in their knitting, while the boys played about with the morris sticks, threatening Billy and sparring with one another. Then Jen, mindful of the audience she had discovered and smiled to, mounted her chair again and called for ‘Galopede.’ Billy struck up the tune, the boys caught hands and the girls did the same, the long lines ran up to meet, fell back, crossed over, turned their partners, and the top couple swung to the bottom, while all the rest clapped in time to the music.

‘That’s first rate!’ and Mr Robins came out of his corner. ‘I congratulate you all! You’re doing splendidly. Let me see something else, won’t you?’

Jen, with laughing eyes, called for ‘Brighton Camp,’ but shook her head when he begged her to join in with him. ‘You’d have heart failure, Daddy. It’s hardly worth it. Now I’m going to teach them something new. “Haste to the Wedding,” please, Billy; you know, this one!’ and she hummed the first few bars. From her chair she gave swift clear directions; then came down to be ‘first man’ and show them what she meant. ‘Now try that! Don’t be silly, Violet. There’s nothing to laugh about. Just nod to Jack and turn away quickly; you haven’t time for more. Can’t you feel the music driving you on? Some of you don’t seem to feel the—the push the music gives you; the swing of it. Don’t curtsey, Maud; there’s far too little time; just nod. Now both hands to the man and turn gently, running. Lift the girls’ hands, as I told you, boys! Don’t grab hold of them so roughly. Now try again!’

‘You don’t wear your gym things for dancing, then?’ her father asked, as they went upstairs when the class was over. ‘You did at school, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, always, for practising. I’d have liked to,’ Jen said soberly. ‘I love a tunic; it’s so comfy. But I thought about it a lot, and decided I’d better not, especially with those big girls. You see, I look about eleven! Nobody would believe I’m over sixteen. Some of them are as old as I am, so I couldn’t afford to look an infant. I want to look important, you know! So I decided it was my duty to wear a jumper and a longer skirt.’

‘I’ve no doubt you’re right. Here’s a letter for you,’ and her father paused by the big table in the hall. He took his own letters and went on to describe to his wife the scene in the back kitchen—the dancing laughing boys and girls, the jolly-faced policeman with the accordion on the window-sill, and Jen standing on her chair, in gray skirt and emerald jumper, a long yellow plait hanging over one shoulder, the other flung back, her face watchful as she corrected mistakes, missing nothing, pulled up a rowdy girl, scolded a boy who was always late in his movements, explained points which had been misunderstood, then sprang down to stand in the midst and show how setting or siding ought to be done, or to explain what somebody was doing wrongly. She made fun of the mistakes, caricaturing the awkward movements till even the victim had to laugh and all the rest shouted, though many looked self-conscious and guilty and wondered why she had not fallen upon them instead; but she did it so gently and tactfully that nobody’s feelings were hurt.

‘I wonder they don’t mind when you jeer at them!’ her father had said to her, during an interval.

‘Oh, but I’m careful!’ Jen had answered swiftly. ‘I know which of them I mustn’t laugh at. Most of them don’t care a scrap. But there are one or two I wouldn’t laugh at for pounds! They’d never come again!’

‘I can quite believe it. But how do you know which they are?’

‘I don’t know how. By looking at them, Daddy. I just know! I’d hate to hurt their feelings, and I know which have feelings and which haven’t. I can’t tell you how, but I do know.’

Her father was repeating this remark to his wife, with an appreciative chuckle, when Jen came flying into the room, letter in hand, her face radiant.

‘Mother! Father! The most topping idea! It’s from Cicely! Oh, you must let me go! Just listen!’

And sitting together round the fire, they read the President’s letter.