A College Girl, Mrs George de Horne Vaizey [good non fiction books to read txt] 📗

“Is your trunk ready, Darsie? Are you ready to come down? Lunch is on the table and we’re all waiting. Have you fitted everything in? Oh dear, oh dear, how bleak and bare the room does look! I shall never have the heart to enter it after you’re gone.”

Clemence Garnett, aged twenty years, gave a pitiful glance round the dismantled room, which a few hours before had been decorated with the many and varied objects which were Darsie’s treasures. She looked at the wooden wardrobe, the doors of which swung wide, showing a row of empty pegs, at the scattering of paper and rejected ends of ribbon and lace which littered the floor, and finally back at the figure of Darsie herself, kneeling before the great black trunk, with her golden hair ruffling round a flushed, eager face.

“Sit on it, Clemence, like a lamb. It’s got to meet, but it’s inches apart still. Sit down with a flop, and be your heaviest, while I fight with the lock.”

“Better take something out. If you make it so full, it may burst half-way. How would you like that?”

“Not much; but better than leaving anything behind. It wouldn’t dare to burst after costing so much money. There! It’s done. You’re a pretty substantial weight, my dear. Now then for lunch and a rest; I’ve had a terrific morning.”

Darsie rose to her feet and stood for a moment before the mirror, putting a tidying touch to hair and dress. She was a tall, slim girl, nearly a head taller than the more substantial Clemence, and the easy grace which characterised her movements was the first thing which attracted an unaccustomed eye. Even Clemence, with perceptions dulled by custom, felt dimly that it was an agreeable thing to watch Darsie brush her hair and shake out her skirts, though in another person such acts would be prosaic and tiresome. The crisp hair needed nothing but a brush and a pat to settle itself into a becoming halo of waves, and the small face on the long white neck had a quaint, kitten-like charm. Clemence looked from the real Darsie to the reflected Darsie in the glass, and felt a sudden knife-like pang.

“Oh, how I hate you going! How dull it will be. Why couldn’t you be content to stay at home instead of taking up this Newnham craze? I shall miss you hideously, Darsie!”

Darsie smiled involuntarily, then nobly tried to look sad.

“I expect you will, but one grown-up at home is as much as we can afford, and there’ll be lovely long vacs. You must think of those, and the letters, and coming up to see me sometimes, and term time will pass in a flash. I’ll be back before you realise that I’m gone.”

Clemence pouted in sulky denial.

“Nothing of the sort. It will seem an age. It’s easy to talk! People who go away have all the fun and excitement and novelty; it’s the poor stay-at-homes who are to be pitied. How would you like to be me, sitting down to-morrow morning to darn the socks?”

“Poor old Clem!” said Darsie lightly. A moment later, with relenting candour, she added: “You’ll like it a lot better than being examined by a Cambridge coach! So don’t grouse, my dear; we’ve both got the work we like best—come down to lunch, and let’s see what mother has provided for my go-away meal!”

Darsie slid a hand through Clemence’s arm as she spoke and the two sisters squeezed down the narrow staircase, glad in their English, undemonstrative fashion of the close contact which an inherent shyness would have forbidden except in this accidental fashion. Across the oil-clothed passage they went, into the red-walled dining-room, where the other members of the family waited their arrival.

Mrs Garnett smiled at the traveller with a tinge of wistfulness on her face; the four young people stared, with a curiosity oddly infused with respect. A girl who was on the eve of starting for college had soared high above the level of ordinary school. Lavender, at “nearly seventeen,” wore her fair locks tied back with a broad black ribbon; her skirts reached to her ankles; she was thin and angular; her head was perpetually thrust forward, and a pair of spectacles were worn perpetually over the bridge of her pointed little nose. The description does not sound attractive, yet in some mysterious manner, and despite all drawbacks, Lavender did manage to be attractive, and had a select band of followers at school who practised stoops and poked-out heads out of sheer admiration of her defects.

Harry’s voice was beginning to croak, which, taken together with a dawning passion for socks, ties, and brilliantine, was an unmistakable sign of growing up; Russell was preternaturally thin and looked all arms and legs; while Tim had forsaken knickers for full-fledged trousers, and resented any attempt at petting as an insufferable offence.

One and all were on their best company manners on the occasion of Darsie’s last lunch, and the most honeyed replies took the place of the usual somewhat stormy skirmish of wits; nevertheless, there was a universal feeling of relief when the meal was over, and a peal at the bell announced the arrival of the cab which was to convey Darsie and a girl companion on the first stage of their journey.

If anything could have added to Darsie’s joy in the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition, it would have been the fact that Hannah Vernon was to be her companion at Newnham, as she had been through the earlier schooldays. All the Vernon family were dears of the first water, and might have been specially created to meet the needs of their neighbours, the Garnetts. It is true that the Vernons possessed the enviable advantage of a big grown-up brother, but when the Garnetts felt particularly tried on this score, they sought comfort from the reflection that a brother so solemn and scholarly, so reserved and unresponsive, hardly counted as a brother at all. Dan was already in the second year of his Cambridge course, and was expected to do great things before he left. So far as such a sober person could be made useful, Darsie Garnett intended to use him towards the furtherance of her own enjoyment of the new life.

For the rest, Vie, the eldest daughter of the Vernon household, was the sworn ally and confidante of Clemence, and John, the younger son, was in himself such a tower of mischievous strength that the Garnett trio sat at his feet. Last, but certainly not least, came Hannah, and Hannah was—Darsie would have found it an almost impossible task to describe “plain Hannah” to an unfortunate who had not the honour of her acquaintance. Hannah was Hannah, a being distinct by herself—absolutely different from any one else. To begin with, she was extraordinarily plain; but, so far from grieving over the fact, Hannah wore it proudly as the foremost feather in her cap.

It was she herself who had originated and sanctioned the continued use of the sobriquet, which had its origin in a juvenile answer given by herself to a stranger who inquired her name.

Now Hannah was the only member of the family who was limited to one cognomen, so she answered unthinkingly, “Hannah; plain Hannah!” and instantly descrying the twinkling appreciation in that stranger’s eyes, she twinkled herself, and henceforth led the adoption of the title. Long use had almost deadened its meaning in the ears of the family, but strangers still suffered at the hearing.

Plain Hannah’s face peered cheerily out of the cab window, her little eyes twinkled merrily, her preposterous eyebrows arched in derision of the melancholy group upon the doorsteps. No one dared shed a tear when she was so evidently on the watch for any sign of weakness, sentimental farewells were checked upon the speaker’s lips, and the whole business of parting assumed a lighter, a more matter-of-fact air.

A second big box was hoisted on to the cab roof, a few kisses shamefacedly exchanged, and then the travellers were off, and nothing remained to the watchers but to trail drearily back into a house from which half the brightness seemed to have departed.

Well might Clemence say that the worst pain of a parting fell on those who were left behind! While the stay-at-homes struggled heavily through a long afternoon, in every moment of which the feeling of loss became even more acute, Darsie and plain Hannah were enjoying one of the most exciting experiences of their lives.

In spite of an almost lifelong interest in Cambridge, neither girl had as yet visited the town itself, so that each incident of the journey was full of interest and excitement. The station was disappointingly like other stations, and they had abundant opportunity of examining it at leisure, since the porters rushed in a body to attend to the male students who had arrived at the same time, and who could be trusted to give larger tips than their female companions. The drive through the streets also fell short of expectations; but, after all, Cambridge meant Newnham, and there could be no disappointment there! Peered at through the cab window, the building appeared unexpectedly large and imposing. It gave one a thrill of importance to realise that for the next three years one would be part and parcel of its life, an inhabitant of its great halls.

The cabman descended from the box and rang a peal at the bell, and it came as something as a shock to see an ordinary-looking maid throw open the door, though what exactly they had imagined the girls would have found it difficult to say. The maid inquired their names, led them forward through a long corridor, and flung open