A Popular Schoolgirl, Angela Brazil [most romantic novels .txt] 📗
- Author: Angela Brazil
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It must be owned that when tea was finished they were very unwilling pilgrims, and would gladly have spent the night at The Pelican and have slept in the funny, musty, low-ceiled little bedrooms upstairs.
"Couldn't we possibly stop here?" implored Verity.
But Miss Strong, having booked rooms in Dropwick, was adamant.
"Besides which I wouldn't trust the beds here," she remarked. "So early in the year they're almost bound to be damp, and we don't want any of you laid up with rheumatic fever as the result of our trip. I prefer to give a wayside inn a week's notice if I mean to sleep there in April. Nobody has had enough coal during the winter to keep fires going in spare bedrooms. That front room was as chilly as a country church! You won't feel so tired, Verity, when you're on your feet again, and it's all downhill to Dropwick."
The Temperance Hotel, where the girls finally stayed their weary feet, was quite modern and unromantic, though well aired and fairly comfortable. Ingred, whom the fates had placed to sleep with Nora, had a trying night, for her obstreperous bedfellow had a habit of flinging out her arms, and of appropriating the larger half of the clothes, leaving poor Ingred to wake shivering. Also, the bed sloped towards the middle, so that both girls had to poise themselves on a kind of hillside, and were constantly rolling down and colliding. These troubles, however, were only incidental in the Pilgrimage, and certainly might have been worse.
On comparing notes at breakfast nearly everybody had had similar experiences. Miss Strong confessed to a patent mattress with a broken spring jutting up in the center, round which she had been obliged to lie in a curve. Linda and Francie had slept near the water-cistern, which alarmed them with weird noises, and Bess and Kitty, trying to open their window wider, had found it lacked sash-cords, and descended like a guillotine, sending the prop that had upheld it, flying into the street. Though they groused at the time, the girls laughed as they discussed these details over the eggs and bacon. The sun was shining and they felt rested, and quite ready once more to shoulder their kit and set out on the march.
There was nothing of very great interest to see in Dropwick itself, though it was a quaint enough old-fashioned market-town, with a fifteenth-century church tower, and a few black and white houses. Miss Strong decided not to waste any time there, but to push on as fast as possible across the hills to Sudbury, where there was a fine Romano-British villa that was well worth a visit. So the foss-way took them up, and up, and up, through fir-woods where the new cones were showing like candles on Christmas trees, and alongside a quarry where they pounced upon some quite interesting fossils in the heaps of stones by the road, and over a craggy weather-worn peak, where, again, they caught the magnificent view of the valley and the river and hills beyond. Then down again, through more fir-woods, where the timber was being felled, and great tree-trunks lay piled in rows one above another, and past banks that were a dream, with starry blackthorn blossom and primroses growing beneath, to where the cross-roads met and the signpost pointed an arm to Sudbury.
The Romans might take their roads straight as an arrow across moor and hill, but they chose out the beauty spots of the land on which to build their villas, and were careful to fix upon a southern aspect and shelter from the prevailing winds. The remains of the old settlement lay behind a farm, and had been carefully excavated by a local antiquarian society. Visitors applied at the farmhouse, entered their names in a book, paid their admission money, and were escorted round by a guide.
Time, and successive conquests, had demolished the greater part of the villa, but its foundations and some of the old brick walls could be plainly traced. The great bath, that indispensable feature of a Roman establishment, could still be seen, with its beautiful tesselated pavement, inlaid with mosaics of doves, cupids, and designs of fruit and flowers. The heating system also, with the leaden pipes and remains of furnaces, was a testimony to the civilization of the period, and the amount of comfort that the legions brought with them into their foreign exile. A large shed had been fitted up as a museum, and held a number of objects that had been dug up during the excavations. The girls, poring over the glass cases, looked with interest at a Roman lady's silver hand-mirror, toilet pots, and tiny shears that must have been the early substitute for scissors. More fascinating still were the toys from a little child's grave, small glass bottles, roughly-made animals of clay, and a carved object that no doubt had been at one time a treasured doll, though now it was crumbling into dust.
Among the pile of broken statues or fragments of ornamental stonework in the corner was a monumental tablet, cracked across in two places, but pieced together for preservation with iron rivets. The inscription ran:
"D.M. Simpliciæ Florentinæ Animæ Innocentissimæ quæ vixit menses decem. Felicius Simplex Pater fecit. Leg. vi, V."
(To the Divine Shades. To Simplicia Florentina, a most innocent soul, who lived ten months. Felicius Simplex of the Sixth Legion, the Victorious, the father, erected this.)
Some of the girls glanced at the tablet, and the English translation of the inscription which lay near, and turned away without much notice. But Ingred stood gazing at them with a catch in her throat. They brought a whole pathetic human story to life again. She could picture the noble Roman father, leader of the victorious legion, sent over from Italy and making his home here in a conquered foreign land, as our officers do in India, and bringing with him his lady with her Roman customs and her slaves. Those few brief words—"a most innocent soul who lived ten months"—told the tragedy of the cherished little daughter whose frail life faded in the fogs of the British climate about eighteen hundred years ago. Hearts are the same all the world over, and the pretty dark-eyed Roman baby must have been laid to its rest with as much grief and sadness as the fair-haired darlings whom British mothers sometimes bury in Indian soil.
"It's a sweet name, too—Simplicia Florentina!" mused Ingred. "I wonder what she would have grown up like. And what her history would have been! I'd give worlds to know more about her!"
"Aren't you coming, Ingred?" called Verity from the doorway. "Miss Strong says we ought to be getting on now."
Ingred brought her thoughts back with an effort to the twentieth century, and joined the waiting party outside. Miss Strong was talking to their guide, who was describing a short cut across the fields that would save them several miles on their way to Pursborough.
Verity, after calling to her friend in the museum, had run out. Ingred followed her, to find her with her arm locked closely through Bess's. There was no reason why she should not display such a mark of affection, but to Ingred it seemed little short of an insult to herself. Verity, her particular chum, to have openly gone over to the enemy! She stared at her in surprise. Verity did not appear to notice the stare, however, and walked on quite calmly.
Miss Strong had decided that they should find a quiet place along the lane where they could eat their lunch before beginning the second part of their march. She fixed on a lovely spot with a high wooded bank at the back and in front fields that sloped to the river. There were specks of yellow in these fields, and Kitty who finished her sandwiches first, ran to inspect nearer and reported cowslips. Instantly most of the girls went scrambling over the stile.
Miss Strong, who had bought picture-postcards of the Roman villa, and was addressing them with a stylo-pen, did not follow the exodus. She called to Ingred, however, who was last.
"Warn the girls," she said, "not on any account to go into that meadow where there is a horse with a young foal. The guide at the farm said it is a savage beast and will attack people. Be sure to tell them all!"
"I'll run after them now," answered Ingred, calling "Cuckoo!" to attract their attention.
She told Belle and Linda and Verity, who were near to the stile, and Linda passed the news on to Francie and Kitty. Bess was quite a long distance down the field, gathering blackthorn from the hedge.
"I'm not going to tear all that way after her!" thought Ingred crossly. "Verity will be sure to tell her. They seem inseparable to-day. Besides which nobody's particularly likely to go into that other meadow. There are plenty of cowslips here."
It took Miss Strong a much longer time to write her postcards than she had originally intended, and while she was thus employed her girls spread themselves out in quest of flowers. It is always amazing when you start rambling in company with others how quickly you can find yourself alone. By the time Ingred had gathered a fragrant, sweet-smelling bunch and looked round for somebody to admire it, her schoolmates were gone. She hunted about for them, and noticed Verity's green jersey and Kitty's brown tam-o'-shanter in the wood above. Surely they must all be up there together.
She was just going to follow, when a qualm of conscience seized her. She had not delivered Miss Strong's message to Bess, and it would perhaps be as well to ascertain that the latter had not strayed unwarned into the danger zone.
"It's not at all likely," Ingred kept repeating to herself, as she walked briskly along the meadow to the fence. "I'm really only going on a wild goose chase."
Likely or unlikely, it was the very thing which had happened. The cowslips on the other side of the railings were larger and finer, and Bess, having no fear of horses, had climbed over and wandered some way down the field. Only about twenty yards from her the lanky foal was gambolling round its mother, a big draught mare, cropping the grass innocently enough at present, and apparently not perceiving trespassers.
If Bess could retreat quietly and unnoticed from the field all might be well. Ingred did not dare to call for fear of attracting the mare's attention. If Bess would only turn round she might wave to her. But Bess kept her back to the fence and had no idea of danger. There was only one course open to Ingred. She slipped over the railings and went along the meadow to warn her schoolfellow. In a few quiet words she explained the situation.
"Don't run," she whispered. "Let us walk back and perhaps it will take no notice of us."
The girls went as softly as possible, looking over their shoulders every now and then to see that all was safe. Of bulls they had a wholesome terror, but they had had no previous experience of a savage horse.
They were about fifteen yards from the railings, when the mare, which hitherto had been feeding quietly, raised her head and lumbered round. She saw strangers in her territory; her primeval instinct was to protect her foal, and she came tearing across the field with wild eyes and lip turned back from gleaming teeth. The girls fled for their lives. It was a question of which could reach the railings first, they or the dangerous brute whose huge hoofs thundered behind them. Ingred, who was the taller and the stronger of the two, seized Bess by the hand and literally dragged her along. Together they tumbled over the fence somehow and rolled down the bank into the safe shelter of some gorse bushes. For a moment they were afraid the mare would leap after them, but the height of the rails balked her; apparently she was satisfied with routing the enemy and returned across the field to her foal. The girls, with shaking knees, got up and hurried towards the lane where they had left Miss Strong.
"You've saved my life, Ingred!" gasped Bess, as they went along.
"No, I haven't!" choked Ingred. "At least, it was my fault you ever went into the field at all. Miss Strong told me to tell you the horse was savage, and you were such a long way off picking cowslips
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