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

to be novel. What can we do to make the hall look pretty and cheerful?”

“Rebuild it!” was Darsie’s instant and daring reply, whereat the farmers’ daughters laughed en masse, and the Percivals looked haughtily displeased.

“Father built it!”

“Awfully good of him! And wicked of his architect. I shan’t employ him to build my house!”

“I think,” said Noreen loftily, “that we had better confine ourselves to discovering the scheme of decoration. It is too late to interfere with the structure of the hall. We generally make wreaths and fasten them to the gas brackets, and drape the platform with flags.”

“Then we may take it as settled that we won’t do that to-day. What happens to the pegs?”

“They hang their things on them, of course—hats, and coats, and mufflers—”

“That must be decorative! How would it be to make them leave their wrappings at the entrance to-night, or put them under their own chairs, and to arrange a broad band of holly round the room so as to hide the pegs from view? It would be so easy to tie on the branches, and it would have quite a fine frieze effect.”

“‘Mrs Dick, you are invaluable!’” quoted Ralph gaily. “It’s a ripping idea. Let’s set to at once, and try the effect.”

No sooner said than done; the little band of workers spread themselves over the room, and began the task of trying prickly holly branches to the line of pegs in such fashion as to form a band about two feet deep, entirely round the room. Berries being unusually plentiful that year, the effect was all the more cheery, and with the disappearance of the utilitarian pegs the hall at once assumed an improved aspect. A second committee meeting hit on the happy idea of transforming the platform into a miniature bower, by means of green baize and miniature fir-trees, plentifully sprinkled with glittering white powder. The flags were relegated to the entrance-hall. The Japanese lanterns, instead of hanging on strings, were so grouped as to form a wonderfully lifelike pagoda in a corner of the hall, where—if mischievously disposed—they might burn at their ease without endangering life or property. The ironwork of the gas-brackets was tightly swathed with red paper, and the bare jets fitted with paper shades to match. From an artistic point of view Darsie strongly opposed the hanging of the timeworn mottoes, “A Hearty Welcome to All,” “A Happy New Year,” and the like, but the Squire’s daughters insisted that they liked to see them, and the farmers’ daughters confirming this theory, up they went, above the evergreen frieze, the white cotton letters standing out conspicuously from their turkey-red background.

It was one o’clock before the work was finished, and a tired and distinctly grubby quartette started out on their three-mile return walk across the fields. Certainly country-bred folk were regardless of fatigue! “If I owned a motor I should use it!” Darsie said to herself with a distinct air of grievance as she climbed to her own room after lunch, and laid herself wearily on her couch, the while the Percival trio trotted gaily forth for “just a round” over their private golf-links.

The evening programme was to begin with a concert, alternate items of which were to be given by the villagers and members of the surrounding “families.”

At ten o’clock refreshments were to be served, in adjoining classrooms, and during the progress of the informal supper chairs and forms were to be lifted away, and the room cleared for an informal dance, to be concluded by a general joining of hands and singing of “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock struck twelve.

The Percival ladies and their guests from the surrounding houses made elaborate toilettes for the occasion. The villagers were resplendent in Sunday blacks, “best frocks” and bead chains, the small girls and boys appearing respectively in white muslins and velveteen Lord Fauntleroy suits; the Squire opened proceedings with expressions of good wishes, interspersed with nervous coughs, and Noreen and Ida led off the musical proceedings with a lengthy classical duet, to which the audience listened with politely concealed boredom.

To Darsie’s mind, the entire programme as supplied by “the families” was dull to extinction, but to one possessing even her own slight knowledge of the village, the contributions of its worthies were brimful of interest and surprise.

The red-faced butcher, who, on ordinary occasions, appeared to have no mind above chops and steaks, was discovered to possess a tenor voice infinitely superior in tone to that of his patron, the Hon. Ivor Bruce, while his wife achieved a tricky accompaniment with a minimum of mistakes; the sandy-haired assistant at the grocer’s shop supplied a flute obbligato, and the fishmonger and the young lady from the stationer’s repository assured each other ardently that their true loves owned their hearts; two school-children with corkscrew curls held a heated argument—in rhyme—on the benefits of temperance; and, most surprising and thrilling of all, Mr Jevons, the butler from The Manor, so far descended from his pedestal as to volunteer “a comic item” in the shape of a recitation, bearing chiefly, it would appear, on the execution of a pig. The last remnant of stiffness vanished before this inspiring theme, and the audience roared applause as one man, whereupon Mr Jevons bashfully hid his face, and skipped—literally skipped—from the platform.

“Who’d have thought it! Butlers are human beings, after all!” gasped Darsie, wiping tears of merriment from her eyes. “Ralph, do you suppose Jevons will dance with me to-night? I should be proud!”

“Certainly not. He has one square dance with the mater, and that finishes it. You must dance with me instead. It’s ages since we’ve had a hop together—or a talk. I’m longing to have a talk, but I don’t want the others to see us at it, or they’d think I was priming you in my own defence, and the mater wants to have the first innings herself. We’ll manage it somehow in the interval between the dances, and I know you’ll turn out trumps, as usual, Darsie, and take my part.”

Ralph spoke with cheerful confidence, and Darsie listened with a sinking heart. The merry interlude of supper was robbed of its zest, as she cudgelled her brains to imagine what she was about to hear. Ralph was evidently in trouble of some sort, and his parents for once inclined to take a serious stand. Yet anything more gay and debonair than the manner with which the culprit handed round refreshments and waited on his father’s guests it would be impossible to imagine. Darsie watched him across the room, and noted that wherever he passed faces brightened. As he cracked jokes with the apple-cheeked farmers, waited assiduously on their buxom wives, and made pretty speeches to the girls, no onlooker could fail to be conscious of the fact that, in the estimation of the tenants, “Master Ralph” was as a young prince who could do no wrong.

For reasons of his own, Ralph was tonight bent on ingratiating himself to the full. For the first half-hour of the dance he led out one village belle after another, and it was not until waltz number five had appeared on the board that he returned to Darsie’s side.

“At last I’ve a moment to myself! My last partner weighed a ton, at least, and I’m fagged out. Got a scarf you can put round you if we go and sit out?”

Darsie nodded, showing a wisp of gauze, and, laying her hand on Ralph’s arm, passed with him out of the main room into the flag-decked entrance. For the moment it was empty, the dancers having made en masse in the direction of the refreshment-tables. Ralph looked quickly from side to side, and, finding himself unobserved, took a key from his pocket and opened a small door leading into the patch of garden at the back of the hall. The moonlight showed a wooden bench fitted into a recess in the wall. Ralph flicked a handkerchief over its surface, and motioned Darsie towards a seat.

“It’s clean enough. I gave it a rub this morning. You won’t be cold?”

“Oh, no; not a bit.” Darsie wrapped the wisp of gauze round her shoulders, and prepared to risk pneumonia with as little thought as ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would do in a similar case. The hour had come when she was to be told the nature of Ralph’s trouble; she would not dream of losing the opportunity for so slight a consideration as a chill!

Ralph seated himself by her side, rested an elbow on his knees, the thumb and first finger of the uplifted hand supporting his chin. His eyes searched Darsie’s face with anxious scrutiny.

“You didn’t hear anything about me before you left Newnham?”

“Hear what? No! What was there to hear?”

Ralph averted his eyes, and looked across the patch of garden. The moonlight shining on his face gave it an appearance of pallor and strain.

“Dan Vernon said nothing?”

“No!” Darsie recalled Dan’s keen glance of scrutiny, the silence which had greeted her own remarks, and realised the reason which lay behind. “Dan is not the sort to repeat disagreeable gossip.”

“It’s not gossip this time; worse luck, it’s solid, abominable fact. You’ll be disappointed, Darsie. I’m sorry! I have tried. Beastly bad luck being caught just at the end. I was sent down, Darsie! It was just at the end of the term, so they sent me down for the last week. A week is neither here nor there, but the parents took it hard. I’m afraid you, too—”

Yes! Darsie “took it hard.” One look at her face proved as much, and among many contending feelings, disappointment was predominant—bitter, intense, most humiliating disappointment.

“Oh, Ralph! What for? I hoped, I thought—you promised me to be careful!”

“And so I was, Darsie! Give you my word, I was. For the first half of the term I never got anything worse than three penny fines. It isn’t a deadly thing to stay out after ten. And I was so jolly careful—never was so careful in my life. But just the night when it was most important I must needs be caught. You can’t expect a fellow to get away from a big evening before twelve. But that’s what it ended in—a big jaw, throwing up all my past misdeeds, and being sent down. Now you can slang away.”

But Darsie made no attempt to “slang.” With every word that had been uttered her feelings of helplessness had increased. Ralph had apparently made little difference in his ways; he had only been more careful not to be found out! At the very moment when she had been congratulating herself, and boasting of the good results of her friendship, this crowning disgrace had fallen upon him. No wonder Dan had been silent; no wonder that he had looked upon her with that long, questioning gaze! The thought of Dan was singularly comforting at this moment—strong, silent, loyal Dan, going forth valiantly to the battle of life. Darsie’s little face took on a pinched look; she shivered, and drew the thin scarf more tightly round her. Her silence, the suffering written on her face, hit Ralph more hardly than any anger; for the first time something deeper than embarrassment showed itself in face and voice.

“For pity’s sake, Darsie, speak! Say something! Don’t sit there and look at me like that.”

“But, Ralph, what is there to say?” Darsie threw out her arms with a gesture of hopelessness. “I’ve talked so often, been so eloquent, believed so much! If this is the outcome, what more can be said?”

“I have tried! I did want to please you!”

“By not being found out! It’s not much comfort, Ralph, to feel that I’ve encouraged you in deception. And all those nights when you stayed out late, were you betting as usual—getting into debt?”

Ralph frowned.

“I’ve been beastly unlucky, never knew such a persistent run. That’s the dickens of it, Darsie. I haven’t dared to tell the Governor yet, but I positively must get hold of the money