The Leader of the Lower School/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
Gipsy Arrives
One dank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of the day girls disappear through the side gate. It had been drizzling since dinner-time, and the prospect outside was not a remarkably exhilarating one. The yellow leaves of the oak tree dripped slow tears on to the flagged walk, as if weeping beforehand for their own speedy demise; the little classical statue on the fountain looked a decidedly watery goddess, the sodden flowers had trailed their heads in the soil, and a small rivulet was running down the steps of the summer house. As the last two umbrellas, after a brief and exciting struggle for precedence, passed through the portal and the gate was shut with a slam, Lennie Chapman turned to her companions and heaved a tragic sigh.
"Isn't it withering?" she remarked. "And just on the very afternoon when we'd made up our minds to decide the tennis championship, and secured all the courts for the Lower School. I do call it the most wretched luck! I'm a blighted blossom!"
"We'll never persuade the Seniors to give us all the courts again!" wailed Fiona Campbell. "They said so emphatically that it was only to be for this once."
"I believe they knew it was going to be wet!" growled Dilys Fenton.
"You don't think if it cleared a little we might manage just a set before tea?" suggested Norah Bell half hopefully.
"My good girl, please to look at the lawn! Do you think anyone in her senses would try to play on a swamp like that?"
"It's getting too late in the year for tennis," yawned Hetty Hancock. "Don't believe we shall get another game at all. We'd better resign ourselves."
"Resign ourselves to what?" asked Daisy Scatcherd.
"Why, to leaving the championship till next summer, and to not going out to-day, and to sitting stuffing here and moaning our bad luck, and feeling as cross as a bear with a toothache—at least, that's how I feel: I don't know what the rest of you do!"
"I should like to have gone home with the day girls," sighed Dilys Fenton.
"No, you wouldn't!" snapped Norah Bell. "You know it's jollier to be a boarder; we do have some jolly times, even if it does rain. You can't expect it always to keep fine, and as for"
"Oh, Norah, don't preach! We must have our growls—it lets off steam. I think it's the wretchedest, miserablest, detestablest, most altogether sickening afternoon that ever was—there!"
"If only something would happen, just to cheer us up a little!" said Lennie Chapman, opening the window rather wider and putting her head out into the rain.
"What do you want to happen?"
"Why, something exciting, of course—something interesting and jolly, and out of the common, to wake us up and make things more lively."
"You'll fall out of the window if you lean over like that, and that would be lively, in all conscience, if you were picked up in fragments. Come in; you're getting your hair wet."
"Let me alone! I shan't! I say, what's that? There's a cab turning in at the gate; it's coming up the drive!"
Five extra heads immediately poked themselves out of the window regardless of the rain, for the Juniors' sitting-room commanded an excellent view both of the carriage drive and of the front steps.
"It is a cab!" murmured Dilys excitedly.
It certainly was a cab, just an ordinary station four-wheeler, with a box on the top of it, bearing the initials G. L. painted in large white letters. As the vehicle came nearer they could see a girl's face inside, and—yes, she apparently caught sight of the row of heads peering out of the window, for she smiled and turned to somebody else who sat beside her. There was a grinding of wheels on the gravel, the cab drew up at the steps, the door opened, and out hopped a dark-haired damsel in a long blue coat. She gave one hurried glance at the window, smiled again and waved her hand, then vanished inside the porch, where she was instantly followed by her companion, a middle-aged gentleman, who carried a bag. The cabman began to take down the box, and the sound of the front door bell could be heard plainly—a loud and vigorous peal, forsooth—enough almost to break the wire! The six Juniors subsided into their sitting-room. Here, at least, was something happening.
"Who is she?"
"Where's she come from?"
"Is she a new girl?"
"Haven't heard of anybody new coming. Have you?"
"She looks jolly."
"I hope she's going to stay."
"I say, let's go downstairs and ask if anyone knows anything about her," said Hetty Hancock, suiting her action to her words, and hurrying out of the room with her five schoolmates following close at her heels. But nobody knew; not even the Seniors could give the least information. Indeed, the six who had seen the newcomer from the window had the advantage, for none of the others had witnessed the arrival. The girls were consumed with curiosity. A scout, who ventured ten steps into the forbidden territory of the front hall, came back and reported that talking could be heard in the drawing-room.
"A big, deep voice, like a man's, and Poppie's saying 'Yes'. I daren't stop more than a second; but somebody's there, you may be sure of that. And the box is standing in the vestibule too."
"I believe she's come to stay!" said Dilys.
"The cab's waiting at the door still, though," objected Norah Bell. "She may be going back in it."
At tea-time Miss Poppleton's accustomed place was empty, and speculation ran high among her pupils. All kinds of wild rumours circulated round the table, but there was no means of verifying any of them, and the girls were obliged to go to preparation with their curiosity still unsatisfied. At seven o'clock, however, when the Juniors had finished their work and trooped back to their own sitting-room, they found the mystery solved. In front of the fire, warming her hands between the bars of the high fender, and looking as comfortably at home as if she owned the place, stood the stranger who had skipped so quickly out of the cab that afternoon. She was a girl who, wherever she was seen, would have attracted notice—slim and erect and trim in figure, and a decided brunette, a real "nut-brown maid", with a pale olive complexion, the brightest of soft, dark, southern eyes, and a quantity of fluffy, silky, dusky curls, tied—American fashion—with two big bows of very wide scarlet ribbon, one on the top of her head and one at the nape of her neck. She smiled as the others entered, showing an even little set of white teeth, and four roguish dimples made their appearance at the corners of her mouth. She seemed to have assumed proprietorship of the room so entirely that the Juniors stopped short in amazement, too dumbfounded for the moment to do anything but stare. The stranger stepped forward with almost an air of welcome and, dropping a mock curtsy, announced herself.
"Glad to make your acquaintance!" she began. "Miss Poppleton said she'd introduce me to the school, but I guessed I'd rather introduce myself—thought I'd do the thing better than she would, somehow. I don't like stiff introductions—I'm not at all a starchy sort of person, as I dare say you can see for yourselves; and I prefer to make friends after my own fashion. My name's Gipsy Latimer, and I'm American and British and Colonial and Spanish all mixed up, and I've travelled half round the world, and been in seven different schools, and I was fourteen last birthday, and I arrived here this afternoon, and I'm going to stop on a while, and I just adore cricket, and I detest arithmetic in any shape, and I'm always ready for any fun that's on the go. There! I've told you all about myself," and she curtsied again.
The girls laughed. There was something decidedly attractive and breezy about the newcomer. Her dark eyes danced and twinkled as she spoke, and there was an unconventional jollity in the very high-pitched tone of her voice, and an infectious merriment in her dimples.
"What did you say your name was?" asked Hetty Hancock, by way of making the first advances.
"That's right — fire off your questions! I've been at seven schools before this, and everybody starts with the same catechism. I'm ready to answer anything within reason, but perhaps I'd best take a seat while you're at it. No, thanks! I prefer the table—always like the highest place, you see! I've sat on the mantel-piece before now. Yes, I said my name was Gipsy — G—I—P—S—Y."
"But it's not your real name, surely?"
"You weren't christened that?"
"Only wish I had been! No, my godfather and godmothers didn't know their business, and they went and gave me the most outlandish, sentimental, ridiculous, inappropriate name you could imagine. You might try a dozen guesses, and you'd never hit on it. Don't you want to guess? Well, I'll tell you, then — it's Azalea."
"Azalea — why, I think that's rather pretty," ventured Lennie Chapman.
"Pretty enough in itself, perhaps, but it doesn't suit me. Do I look like an 'Azalea' with my dark hair and eyes? They should have had more sense when they christened me. Why, an Azalea ought to be a little, pretty, silly thing, with blue eyes and pink cheeks and golden hair — all beauty, you know, and no brains, like this girl! What's your name? You're more an Azalea than I am."
"I'm Barbara Kendrick!" gasped that flaxen-headed member of the Upper Third, not quite knowing whether to be flattered or offended.
"There you are — not a bit like a Barbara! Nothing in the least barbarous about you. I think there ought to be a law against naming a girl till she's old enough to choose for herself. Well, as I told you, I was christened Azalea, but everybody saw from the first it didn't fit. 'She's a regular little gipsy!' Dad said; so they called me Gipsy, and Gipsy I mean to be. I made Dad tell Miss Poppleton so, and enter me Gipsy on the school books. I wasn't going to start in a new place as Azalea."
"So you've been to school before?" said Dilys Fenton.
"Rather! I told you I've been to seven schools—three in America, two in New Zealand, one in Australia, and one in South Africa. This is the first English school I've tried."
"Seven—and you're only fourteen! Why, you must have been to a fresh one every year!"
Gipsy nodded.
"You're just about right there. Never stayed more than two terms at any of them. No—they didn't expel me! I tell you, I'm an absolute miracle of good behaviour when I like. It was simply because Dad and I were always moving on, and whenever he went to a fresh place I had to go to a fresh school. You don't think I'd let him leave me in America when he was going to Australia, do you?"
"Haven't you got a mother?" asked Barbara Kendrick.
"Shut up, you stupid!" murmured Dilys Fenton, giving Barbara a nudge.
Gipsy rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball, and unrolled it again before she replied.
"I've nobody in the world but Dad," she answered, and there was just a suspicion of huskiness in her voice. "He's never gone far away from me before, but he's starting to-morrow for South Africa, and I'm to stop here till he comes back. He says it won't seem long. I hope I'm going to like it. I've only been three days in England, and you're the first English girls I've spoken to. Dad said England ought to feel like home, but it's a queer kind of home when one's all alone. Tell me what this school is like. Is Miss Poppleton nice? She gushed over me before Dad in the drawing-room, but she looks as if she could be a Tartar, all the same. I've had a little experience with schoolmistresses. I can generally take their measure in five minutes. She's got a sister, hasn't she—a Miss Edith, who showed me my bedroom? I expect I shall like her. Have I hit the mark?"
The girls looked at one another and laughed.
"Just about," said Fiona Campbell. "Poppie's temper varies like the barometer. One day she's at 'set fair', and calls everybody 'dear', or 'my child'; and the next she's at 'stormy', and woe betide you if you so much as drop your serviette at dinner, or happen to sneeze in the elocution class! Miss Edie's ripping! She doesn't teach much—only one or two classes. She does the housekeeping, and sees we keep our clothes tidy, and change our wet stockings, and all that sort of thing."
"And how many are there of you? Remember, I've been dumped down here at a day's notice, and I know absolutely nothing at all about the school yet. Is it a big one?"
"Twenty boarders and seventy-two day girls—that's ninety-two, and you'll make the ninety-third. There are eight Senior boarders, and they've got a sitting-room of their own, with a carpet on the floor. We, the common herd, are only provided with linoleum, as you see."
"Eight from twenty leaves twelve! You're not all here."
"No; two of us are practising, and the kids have half an hour with Miss Edith before they go to bed."
"Shouldn't mind half an hour with Miss Edith myself. By the by, are you keen on Fudge here?"
The girls stared.
"I don't know what you mean," returned Hetty Hancock rather stiffly. "What is Fudge?"
Gipsy threw out her arms in mock horror.
"Shades of Yankee Doodle!" she exclaimed. "These benighted Britishers have actually never heard of the magic name Fudge! Why, in the States it's a word to conjure with! I've known some girls who absolutely lived for it."
"You haven't told us what it is yet. Is it a game?"
Gipsy laughed till she nearly collapsed off the table.
"A game? No; Fudge is candy—the most delicious adorable stuff you ever tasted. Get me a pan, and some sugar, and some milk, and some butter, and I'll make some for you this instant. How you'll bless me!"
"Don't I wish you could!" sighed Norah Bell. "But we're not allowed to make toffee except on the 5th of November. They let us have a pan then, and we boil it over this fire."
"We'll have a pan of our own here," said Gipsy cheerily. "I'll go out and buy one to-morrow. I can't exist without Fudge."
"But we aren't allowed to go out and buy things," exclaimed the girls in chorus.
"Do you mean to tell me we mayn't go on the least scrap of an errand if we ask leave?"
"Not if you ask ever so!"
"Why, that's dreadful! I can't be boxed up like that. I'd as soon be in prison. I'm afraid you'll find me walking out on my own sometimes."
"You'll get into an uncommonly big scrape if you do!"
"Dad warned me I'd have to be very prim and proper in England," said Gipsy, looking serious, "but I didn't know things were as bad as that. I'll begin to wish I hadn't come here. Oh dear! we were going right through to Chicago if we hadn't been shipwrecked, and I love America."
"Shipwrecked!" shrieked the girls. "Do you mean to tell us you've been in a real wreck?"
"Only just come from it," replied Gipsy calmly. "A very wet, cold, unpleasant affair it was, too! Especially in only one's nightdress! Every rag of clothing I possessed went to the bottom. Dad had to rig me out again at Liverpool. That's why I've come to this school in such a hurry. Dad lost his papers, and had to go back to South Africa, and he wouldn't take me with him this time. So you see I've been sprung upon you suddenly—an unexpected blessing, you might call me."
"Oh, do tell us about the wreck!" implored Hetty Hancock. "I've never in all my life met anybody who'd really and truly been shipwrecked."
"All right! Come and squat by the fire. I'm tired of the table, and prefer the floor for a change. Please don't expect anything extra blood-curdling, for you won't get it, unless you'd like me to romance a little. Where do you want me to begin? All my adventures in all the places I've lived at? That's rather a big order. You'll have to be contented with a piece. Here goes!"
But as Gipsy's descriptions, though graphic, were not of a remarkably lucid character, it will perhaps be well to omit her version of the story, and, for a better understanding of her independent, whimsical little self, give a brief account of her previous career in a separate chapter.