The Jolliest School of All, Angela Brazil [rm book recommendations TXT] 📗

"Renie! You've grown out of all remembrance! To think of meeting you here of all places. I'm with some friends—the Prestons. We're on a six weeks' tour in Italy. I went to see your mother in Naples yesterday. What a jolly flat you have there! Isn't this absolutely glorious? I'm having the time of my life."

"I should think you are by the look of you," laughed Irene. "Dona wrote and told me you were coming to Italy, but I never expected to find you here to-day. If Miss Morley will let me, may I bring my lunch along and join your party for a little while? There are ten dozen things I want to ask you."[269]

"Of course. Come and share our sandwiches. We've plenty to spare."

Having received the required permission, Irene went away to talk to her cousin, considerably to the admiration of most of her chums, and decidedly to the envy of one. Lorna, who had settled herself by her side on the steps, was not pleased to be deserted. She could never quite forgive Irene for having so many friends. The brooding cloud that had temporarily dispersed settled down again. When the girls got up to explore the temple she marched glumly away by herself. All the beauty and wonder and loveliness of the scene was lost upon her; for the sake of a foolish fit of jealousy she was spoiling her own afternoon.

She was sitting upon a fallen piece of masonry, very wretched, and indulging in a private little weep, when a footstep sounded on the stone pavement, and somebody came and sat down quietly beside her. It was Mrs. Clark, and she had the tact to take no notice as Lorna surreptitiously rubbed her eyes. She knew far more about the girls at the Villa Camellia than any of them suspected, and she had a very shrewd suspicion what lay at the bottom of Lorna's mind. A skillful remark or two turned the conversation on to the topic of the holidays.

"It's nice to go home, isn't it?"

Lorna gave a non-committal grunt.

"Even if you miss your friends!"[270]

"I suppose so."

"And it's pleasant to think they may miss you?"

"I don't flatter myself they'll do that," burst out Lorna. "They're so happy they never think about me. Mrs. Clark, you don't know my home. I've nobody—nobody except my father. The others have brothers and sisters and friends, and all they want—and I have nothing."

"Except your father," added Mrs. Clark. "How about him? Sometimes when two people are left lonely they can make the world blossom again for one another. Isn't it time you began to take your mother's place? Can't you set yourself these holidays to give him such a bright, cheerful daughter that he'll hardly want to part with you when you go back to school? Wouldn't you rather he missed you than your chums? He's closer to you than they are. Ask yourself if you were to lose him is there one of your friends who could mean as much to you? I sometimes think that girls who are brought up at boarding-school are apt to lose the right sense of value of their own relations. Their companions and the games fill their lives, and they go back for the holidays almost like visitors in their own homes. When they leave school they're dissatisfied and restless, because they've never been accustomed to suit themselves to the ways of the household, and have no niche into which they can fit. The old round of 'camaraderie' is over, and they have been trained for nothing but community life. Take my advice[271] and make your niche now while you have the opportunity. Show your father you want him, and that he's your best friend, and he'll begin to realize that he wants you. How old are you? Nearly sixteen! In another year or so you should be able to live with him altogether and be the companion to him that he needs. You say you envy girls with many brothers and sisters, but there's another side to that—if you're the only child you get the whole of the love. Remember you're all your father has, and let him see that you care. It's a greater thing to be a good daughter than to be the favorite of the school. If you keep that object in view you ought to have many years of happiness before you."

"I know. I was forgetting that side of it," said Lorna slowly.

"Think it over then, for its worth considering. A woman may have many brothers and sisters, she can have another husband or another child, but it's only one father or mother she'll get, and the bond is a close one. Is that Irene waving to us? What is she calling? We're to come on with the party! Yes indeed, we ought to be moving along. We shall only just have time to explore the other temples before we must start back in the char-à-banc."[272]

April, the beautiful April of Southern Italy, was half-way spent before the Villa Camellia broke up for the holidays. There were the usual term-end examinations, at which distressed damsels, with agitated minds and ink-stained fingers, sat at desks furnished with piles of foolscap, and cudgeled their brains to supply facts to fill the sheets of blank paper; there was the reading out of results, with congratulations to those who had succeeded, and glum looks from Miss Rodgers to those who had failed; then followed the bringing down of boxes, the joyful flutter of packing, the last breakfast, and the final universal exodus.

"Good-by, dear old thing!"

"Do miss me a little!"

"Hope you'll have a ripping time!"

"Be a sport and write to me, won't you?"

"Hold me down, somebody, I'm ready to fizz over!"

"You won't forget me, dearie? All right! Just so long as we know!"

Lorna, who had anticipated previous vacations as simply a relief from the toil of lessons, went home to Naples with quite altered feelings from those of[273] former occasions. She was determined that, if it possibly lay in her power, she would make her father enjoy the time she spent with him. In spite of injustice and cruel wrong there might surely be some happy hours together, and she would win him to live in the present, instead of continually brooding over the past. The immense, terrible pathos of the situation appealed to the deepest chords in her nature. Her father was still in the prime of his years, a handsome, clever man, who might have done much in the world. Was it yet too late? Lorna sometimes had faint, budding hopes that in some fresh country his wrecked career might be righted, and that he might make a new start and rise triumphant over the ruin of other days. He was glad to see her. There was no doubt about that. The knowledge that she now shared his secret placed her on a different footing. It was a relief to him to have some one in whom he could confide, some one who knew the reason for his hermit mode of living, and above all who believed in his innocence. Insensibly Lorna's presence acted upon him for good. The nervous, hunted look began to fade out of his eyes, and sometimes he actually smiled as she recounted the doings of the Camellia Buds, or other happenings at school.

"Daddy!" she said once, "couldn't we go out to Australia or America, or somewhere where nobody would know us, and make a fresh life for ourselves?"[274]

A gleam of hope flitted for a moment over the sad face.

"I've thought of that, Lorna. Perhaps I've been too morbid. It seemed to me that every Englishman must know of what I had been accused. And I had no credentials to offer. Now, with a five years' reference from the Ferroni Company in Naples I might have a chance of a job in Australia. It's worth considering—for your sake, child, if not for mine."

During the whole of the first week of the holidays Lorna amused herself as best she might in their little lodgings in Naples. While her father was at the office she read or sewed, or played on a wretched old piano, which had little tune in it but was better than nothing. The evenings were her golden times, for then they would go out together, sometimes into the Italian quarters of the city, or sometimes by tram into the suburbs, where there were beautiful promenades with views of the sea. In these walks she grew to be his companion, and instead of shrinking from him as in former days, she met him on a new footing and gave him of her best. Together they planned a home in a fresh hemisphere, and talked hopefully of better things that were perhaps in store for them over the ocean. And so life went on, and father and daughter might have realized their vision, and have emigrated to another continent where no one knew their name or their former history, and have made a fresh start and won comparative suc[275]cess, but Dame Fortune, who sometimes has a use for our past however bitterly she seems to have mismanaged it, interfered again, and with fateful fingers re-flung the dice.

It certainly did not seem a fortunate circumstance, but quite the reverse, when the grandchildren of their landlady, who occupied the étage above their rooms, sickened with measles. Lorna had never had the complaint, and it was, of course, most important that she should not convey germs back to the Villa Camellia, so it was a vital necessity to move her immediately out of the area of infection. Signora Fiorenza, harassed but sympathetic, suggested a visit to Capri, where her sister, Signora Verdi, who owned a little orange farm and had a couple of spare bedrooms, would probably take her in for the remainder of the holidays, which would give the necessary quarantine before returning to the school.

Mr. Carson jumped at the opportunity, and Lorna was told to pack her bag.

"But Daddy, Daddy!" she remonstrated. "I don't want to leave you. Just when we're happy together must I run away? Do measles matter? I'd rather have them and stay here. I would indeed."

"Don't be silly, Lorna. Miss Rodgers wouldn't thank you to start an epidemic. Of course you must go to Capri. It's a splendid opportunity. Signora Verdi has a nice little villa. Cheer up, child. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take you myself to-mor[276]row, stay over Sunday, and come again and spend the next week-end with you. I can get an extra day or two of holiday if I want, and the Casa Verdi is a quiet spot, quite out of the way of tourists. We can have the orange groves to ourselves and see nobody. If I catch the early boat I'm not likely to be troubled with English trippers; that's one good business."

"Daddy! You darling! Oh, that would be glorious! I'd go to the North Pole if you'd come too. Two week-ends with you in Capri! What fun. We'll have the time of our lives!"

To poor Lorna, who so seldom had the opportunity of enjoying family outings, this visit indeed was an event. She packed her bag joyously, and was all excitement to start.

Following his usual custom of avoiding the vicinity of English people, Mr. Carson decided not to go to Capri by the ordinary steamer that conveyed pleasure-seekers, but to secure passages in a cargo vessel which was crossing with supplies. To Lorna the mode of conveyance was immaterial; she would have sailed cheerfully on a raft if necessary. She rather enjoyed the picturesque Neapolitan tramp steamer with its cargo of wine barrels and packing cases, and its crew of bare-footed, red-capped seamen, talking and gesticulating with all the excitability of their Southern temperament. The voyage across the blue bay was longer than that to Fossato, and she sat in a cozy nook among the casks,[277] and watched first the white houses of Naples fading away, then the distant mountains of the coast, then the gay sails of the fishing craft that plied to and fro over the water.

It was sunset when they reached the beautiful island of Capri, a pink ethereal sunset that flooded headland and rock, orange orchard and vineyard, in a faint and luminous opal glow. Their vessel anchored outside the quay of the Marina Grande, and signaled for a boat to take them off. A little skiff put out from the beach, and into this they and their luggage were transferred. The transparent crystal water over which they rowed was clear as an aquarium, and alive with gorgeous medusæ whose pink tentacles seemed to flash with the colors