Читать книгу Norah of Billabong - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 5

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It was early afternoon—too early for guests to be seriously thinking of arriving. A couple of motors were drawn up in the shade of a big Moreton Bay fig; but they belonged to parents who lived at a distance, and had come earlier in the day, to talk solemnly to the head mistress, and then to whisk emancipated daughters away to an hotel for lunch—which necessitated a speedy whisking back, so that the daughters might be apparelled in white, in readiness for the afternoon’s ceremonials. In the garden, little groups of girls might be seen already clad in festive raiment and walking with a seemliness that in itself showed that this day was different from all other days. They turned interested glances upon the newcomer, who, resenting the gaze deeply, stalked on up the path, his straw hat tilted over his brown face. Girls in general had not come much in his way. It was distinctly embarrassing to run the gauntlet of so many frankly curious eyes.

“There’s some, one’s brother,” said a red-haired damsel, surveying the stranger across a bush of New Zealand flax. “Yours, Laura?”

“Mine?” said Laura, regretfully. “Not much—mine is fat. He’s a dear, of course, but his figure’s something awful! I’d be frightfully proud if he looked like that!”

“I wonder who he belongs to,” said the red-haired girl, with a cheerful lack of grammar. “Doesn’t he look miserable—he knows we’re talking about him!” She giggled with wicked enjoyment. The giggle turned to a whistle. “Gracious! Just look at young Norah Linton!”

Two younger girls, with arms linked and heads close together, had come into view in a distant corner of the garden, walking decorously, as befitted their white dresses. It was the taller of the two, a brown-faced girl of fifteen, with dark curls and extremely long slim legs, who had caught sight of the boy walking towards the house, and had promptly acted as though electrified. She relinquished her companion’s arms, uttered an incoherent exclamation, and dashed wildly across the lawn, taking the flower bed that bordered it with a flying leap. The sound of the racing feet made the boy swing round quickly. Then a smile broadened on his face, and his eyes twinkled. They pumped each other’s hands enthusiastically.

“Oh, Wally!” said Norah, breathlessly. “Oh, you old brick!”

Wally Meadows laughed outright.

“You don’t know what a blue funk I’ve been in,” he said. “This is a horribly scary place to come to alone—and I’ve been picturing you made as prim and proper as all these girls seem to be. But you’re not!”

“Indeed, I’m not,” Norah answered. “And no more are they!”

“Aren’t they, really?” asked Wally, much interested. “Well, they look it; there’s a girl over there with red hair who looks nearly too good to be true”—wherein Mr. Meadows showed as much penetration as is usually given to man. “You don’t mean to say that they’re all accustomed to getting across a flower bed in your fashion, Norah?”

“Oh, I’ll get into a dreadful row if Miss Winter happened to see me, I expect!” Norah said. “It’s against the rules, of course—but I had to run or to yell, or I’d have missed you—and it’s riskier to yell. Oh, Wally, I am glad to see you!”

“So am I,” said Wally, heartily—“to see you, I mean. You’ve grown immense, too, Norah.”

“Yes, haven’t I? All my frocks are too short, and I know Dad will say I’ve put my feet too far through them. Oh, Wally, have you seen Dad—and Jim?”

“Saw them yesterday. They ought to be here pretty soon—but my brother motored me down, so I didn’t come with them. Norah—there’s a girl looking at me, and if you don’t take her away I shall scream!”

“Why, that’s Jean Yorke,” said Norah, wheeling. “She’s my chum, and you’ve got to be extra nice to her, ’cause she is coming home with me for the holidays.”

“Then she deserves any one’s kind sympathy,” said Wally, solemnly. He advanced upon Jean with outstretched hand and a smile that went far to put that somewhat shy individual at her ease, while Norah murmured a haphazard introduction.

Jean was a short and rather thickset person, with blue eyes and a freckled nose, and a square, honest face. Neither chum could have been regarded as pretty. They were wholesome-looking girls—alike in the trim neatness that is characteristic of the Australian schoolgirl; and alike also in the quality of sturdy honesty that looked straight at the world from blue eyes and grey. Jean was fair, her thick masses of hair gathered in more tightly than Norah’s curly brown mop ever permitted—whereat Norah was frankly envious. She was also wont to be apologetic, because, although a year the younger, she towered over Jean by half a head. The unfulfilled ambition of Jean’s dreams was to be tall and slender, and Norah bore a lasting grudge against Fate for denying so moderate a longing on her friend’s part. She watched her anxiously for signs of growth, and at frequent intervals measured her height, while tactfully ignoring what she herself would have called her girth.

Across the introduction came a cold voice.

“Your brother, I presume, Norah?”

Both girls jumped.

“No—only it’s all the same, Miss Winter,” Norah explained, lucidly. “It’s Wally Meadows—my brother’s chum.” At which Wally removed his hat and said: “How do you do?” with such fervour that it seemed that his peace of mind hung upon Miss Winter’s answer. That severe person’s coldness was a trifle modified as she answered, but it was Arctic again when she turned back to Norah.

“I saw you crossing the grass—and the flower bed!” she remarked. “Such conduct is inexcusable, Norah—I am amazed at you. The garden is not the hockey field, nor is the arrival of any friend to be the signal for such conduct!”

Norah was scarlet.

“I’m awfully—I mean I am very—sorry, truly, Miss Winter!” she said. “I forgot all about everything when I saw Wally. You see, he’s nearly the same as Jim, and I hadn’t seen him for ten months! I won’t do it again. And Jean never did it at all!”

“I could see that for myself,” said Miss Winter, drily—whereat Jean became even more scarlet than Norah. “However, it is too late in the term for impositions—which is fortunate for you!” There came into the culprit’s eye an irrepressible twinkle, and the teacher relaxed a little. “Ah, well—it’s nearly holiday time,” she said, smiling. “But, Norah, dear—do remember that you are over fifteen!”

“I will, Miss Winter—I truly will,” said the criminal. “I’ll behave beautifully—see if I don’t!——”

The iron gate clanged, and she glanced round with the quick instinctiveness that never leaves the bush-bred. A tall man and a lad almost as tall came into view, and at sight of them Norah’s “behaviour” suddenly fell away from her, and with a little cry that was half a sob, she fled to meet them. The gravel scattered under her trim-shod feet; her long legs twinkled with amazing swiftness. Then the big man put out his arms to her, and she flung herself into them.

“Oh, Daddy—Daddy!” said Norah. “Oh, Jim! Oh-h!” Words failed her.

“My girl!” said David Linton. Over her head he looked at the teacher, and found that she was human. He smiled at her in friendly fashion.

“We try to teach Norah deportment,” she said, greeting him, and laughing, while big Jim hugged his sister frankly, totally unabashed by the amused glances from various parts of the garden. “But I am afraid the effect isn’t very evident on breaking up day!”

“I’m quite certain we’re demoralizing influences,” he told her. “But what can you expect, from the Back of Beyond? We’ll try to make her remember the deportment when we get her back to the station, Miss Winter. At present, you must make allowances.”

Miss Winter thawed amazingly under the influence of the quiet voice, deep and courteous, and the Linton smile, which was a wonderfully pleasant one. It was very frequent upon the face of her pupil, and had at all times a tendency to upset discipline; and now the same smile appeared, if more rarely, on the bronzed giants, father and son, who confronted her upon the path. They were very alike—over six feet—Mr. Linton had yet a couple of inches to the good, but Jim was overhauling him fast—lean and broad-shouldered, with the same well-cut features and keen eyes. Norah said that they had absorbed the good looks of the family, leaving her none; which was partly true, although the remark would have moved her father and brother to wrath. In their grey suits and Panama hats, they were excellent specimens of long-limbed Australia, and Norah gazed at them as though she could not take away the eyes that had been hungry for so many long months.

It was evident that neither Jim nor his father found it easy to talk polite nothings to Miss Winter. Their eyes kept straying to the slim figure that was the main thing in their world—Norah, who jigged irrepressibly on one foot and broke into sudden smiles, and forgot altogether the discipline and deportment that had been instilled into her during three terms at Beresford House. To put her there at all had been a proceeding much like caging a bush bird, for, until she was fourteen, Norah had known only home and its teachings. And home was Billabong Station, where, apart from lessons that had been a little patchy, she had lived her father’s life—a life of open-air, of horses and cattle, and all the station interests. Jim had been sent to the Grammar School in Melbourne comparatively early, and Norah’s city relatives, particularly a number of assorted aunts, were wont to deplore that the little girl had not had the same opportunity of polish. But the bond between David Linton and his motherless child had been too strong to break, and the silent man had snatched at every pretext for delaying the pang of parting.

After all, as he told himself, half in excuse, Norah was no discredit to home teaching. In books she might be below the average; but of the unvoiced learning that lies beyond the world of books she had, perhaps, rather more than falls to the ordinary schoolgirl. A big station is a little world in itself, and the Bush teaching makes for self-control and self-reliance, and a simple, straight outlook on the world that is not a bad foundation of character. Lessons in deportment and manners are not part of its curriculum: but there are a good many ideas in thought and practice that it cultivates half unconsciously. Norah had an almost superstitious regard for doing what Jim termed “the decent thing.”

Moreover, her father had given her an ideal to follow. The mother who had gone away from them so soon had never been far from his thoughts or his slow speech: and “Brownie,” the old woman who had taken the little dark-haired baby from her weak arms, had helped to make the picture of “Mother” that was so real that Norah had always known and loved it. Vaguely she knew that there was a lack in her father’s life which she must try to fill. It had tended to make her gentle—to bring out something that was almost protective in her nature. There is a trace of motherliness in every girl-heart; Norah always felt that, while Dad and Jim were very large and strong and dependable, yet it rested with her to “look after them.” Had she put her thoughts into words it is quite likely that the objects of her care might have felt a shade of amusement; but as she did not, they appreciated her attentions mightily. To them, the heart of Billabong had dropped out when Norah went away to school.

And school had been something of a trial. Norah’s bringing-up had been along lines where rules of conduct are understood rather than expressed; although she was a well-behaved damsel, in her own setting, it had not been easy to find herself suddenly hedged in to such an extent that she lived and breathed and ate and slept by regulation and timetable. She realized that it was necessary to conform; but practice was a harder matter, and the time at school had seen many “scrapes” and many impositions. Common sense and good temper helped her through, and the appearance of Jean Yorke upon a somewhat lonely horizon had helped in a different way. But only Norah herself knew just how bad had been the homesickness and the silent longing for her own old life. She knew that Dad and Jim would be hurt by knowing, therefore she kept these matters to herself, and diligently cultivated Jim’s prescription of “a stiff upper lip.”

Now it was over. There would be other years; but no year could ever be quite like the first, especially since there was now Jean to help—Jean being a comprehending person, whose heart had gone out to Norah since the day of her arrival at Beresford House, three months ago. Jean came from New Zealand, and she, too, was lonely, with the desperate loneliness born of the fact that she would not see home or the home people for two years. When Norah contemplated Jean’s woeful plight she was ashamed to admit that she had been homesick on her own account. So they “twin-souled” immediately, and made life very much easier for each other.

How this last week had crawled! Each night Norah had crossed out the finished day upon her calendar with thick, red strokes that were some relief to her pent-up feelings; always doing it just at the last moment before turning out the light and jumping into bed, so that she might have the friendly darkness to cover her as she buried her face in the pillow, wriggling, with sheer physical inability to keep still as she realized how near were home and Dad and Jim. Near—but how slow the days! Examinations and matches were over, and the work of the school slackening. She flung herself headlong into games and “break up” preparations to make the slow hours pass, dividing each day into hours and half hours—she even reduced them to minutes, but the sum total looked too enormous! Her school work was characteristic of her turmoil of mind. Once she rattled over the provisions of Magna Charta for the Latin master with a fluency that paralyzed the unfortunate man, who had merely asked her to decline an inoffensive noun; while Miss Winter gave her up as hopeless on being informed that Thomas a’Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, lost his life by drowning in a butt of malmsey! Norah saw nothing incongruous in the prelate’s alleged death, and spent much of the hour’s detention that followed in drawing a spirited picture of it—representing a large barrel, from the yawning mouth of which protruded two corpulent legs, clad in gaiters, and immaculately shod. The charm of the picture was in the portion of it that was not visible. It was unfortunate that it fell into the hands of Miss Winter, who was handicapped by a literal mind. Altogether, the last week had been more or less exciting and painful, and it was quite as well that it was over.

The great bell of the school rang out sharply, and a kind of white flicker came over the garden as the girls moved quickly in answer. It was the signal to assemble in hall. Norah exchanged looks of longing with Jim and Wally. Then she and Jean moved off towards the house, endeavouring to calm spasmodic footsteps.

A little later saw the three visitors making a gallant attempt to dispose their long legs among the crowded rows of chairs reserved for parents and “belongings,” while the boys sent rapid telegraphic signals to Norah, by this time a mere speck amid the white-clad girls massed upon the platform. The big hall was packed with visitors—proud parents, each supremely confident that “our girl” was something quite beyond the average; big sisters, anxious to create the impression of being far removed from matters so juvenile as school; brothers, wearing the colours of different schools, and assuming great boredom. Then came Miss Winter, followed by church dignitaries and other notable people, including two members of Parliament, who behaved as though engrossed with affairs of State; whereat the infant classes arose and sang a roundelay with much gusto, and the business of the day began.

The Billabong contingent was not happy. It was uncomfortably crowded; its view was obstructed by immense erections of millinery on the heads of ladies immediately in front; frequently it was tickled on the back of the neck by similar erections belonging to ladies who leaned forward, from the rear, manœuvring for a better vision of the proceedings. It was much embarrassed by the French play, acted by the senior class—the embarrassment being chiefly due to fear of laughing in the wrong place. Nor did lengthy recitations from Shakespeare appeal to it greatly, or a song by the red-haired girl, the said song being of the type known as an “aria,” and ungallantly condemned by Jim as “screamy enough to scare cockatoos with!” It brightened at a physical culture display, and applauded vigorously when a curly-haired mite essayed a recitation, broke down in the middle, and finished, not knowing whether or not to cry, until much cheered by the friendly clapping. The moment of the programme—for Billabong—came when Norah, very pale and unhappy, played a Chopin nocturne. Wally joined wildly in the succeeding applause, but Jim and his father sat up straight, endeavouring to appear unconcerned, but radiating pride. Norah did not dare to look at them until she was safely back in her place. Then she shot a glance at the two tall heads; and what she saw in their faces suddenly sent the blood leaping to her own.

Afterwards came the distribution of prizes—a matter which did not greatly concern Norah, whose scholastic achievements could scarcely be classed as other than ordinary. However, she had carried off the music prize in her class—music being born within her, and, even in lessons, only a joy. She was still flushed with excitement when the long ceremony was at an end, and she was able to slip from the platform and find her way to the waiting trio—standing tall and stiff against the wall, while the crowd seethed in the body of the hall, and other book-laden daughters were reunited to parents as proud as David Linton.

“I’ll look after that,” Jim said, with a masterful little gesture, possessing himself of Norah’s prize. “Well done, old chap!” He patted her head with brotherly emphasis.

“Proud to know you, ma’am,” said Wally, humbly. “Norah, I was nearly asleep until you came on to play!”

“And quite asleep afterwards,” grinned Jim. “Snored, Norah—I give you my word!”

“That’s one I owe you!” said the maligned Mr. Meadows, vengefully. “I clapped until my horny hands were sore, Norah. Made a hideous noise!”

“Then there were two of us,” said Norah, laughing. “I never knew old Chopin sound so funny—catch me playing before a lot of people again! I was scared to look at old Herr Wendt. Probably he pulled out most of his remaining locks—I know I made at least three mistakes.”

“It sounded all right,” said her father, and smiled at her. “Now, young woman, this is very nice, but one can have enough of it.” A wheat-trimmed hat brushed across his face, and he emerged in some confusion. “How soon will you two girls be ready?”

“Must we change?”

“I sincerely trust not,” said Mr. Linton, appalled at the thought of awaiting two feminine toilettes of a greater magnificence than was familiar to him with his daughter. “Not if you have big coats—I’ve a motor outside. Your heavy luggage has gone, I believe.”

“Yes, it went by carrier,” said Norah, happily. “All right, Daddy, we’ll be back in five minutes. Come on, Jean!” They disappeared, to re-emerge presently, muffled in heavy blue coats and wearing sailor hats. Farewells hurtled through the air.

“Good-bye, Miss Winter. Merry Christmas!”

“Good-bye, Carrots, dear!” This to the red-haired singer, who accepted the greeting and the appellation cheerfully.

“Good-bye, young Norah. Behave yourself, if you can. But you can’t!”

“Good-bye, Jean!”

“Good-bye, every one. Mind you all come back!”

“Good-bye!”

“Merry Christmas!”

“Good-bye, school!” The note of utter thankfulness in Norah’s voice brought a twinkle to Jim’s eyes.

The motor chug-chugged on the path. Norah did not like motors—horses were infinitely better, in her opinion. But this one seemed a chariot of joy. They bundled in, pell-mell.

“Are you all right?” queried Mr. Linton.

“I never was so all right in my life!” said Norah, fervently. The car slid away into the dusty haze of the white road.