The Leader of the Lower School/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
Gipsy makes a Beginning
Briarcroft Hall was a large private school which stood on the outskirts of the town of Greyfield, close to the border of the Lake District in Cumberland. It was a big, rather oldfashioned red-brick house, built in Queen Anne style, with straight rows of windows on either side of the front door, and a substantial porch, surmounted by stone balls. Years ago it had been the seat of a county magnate; but as the town began to stretch out long, growing fingers, and rows of villas sprang up where before had been only green lanes, and an electric tramway was started for the convenience of the new suburb, the owner of Briarcroft had retreated farther afield, glad enough to escape the proximity of unwelcome neighbours, and to let the Hall to a suitable tenant. As Miss Poppleton announced in her prospectuses, the house was eminently fitted for a school: the situation was healthy, yet conveniently near to the town, the rooms were large and airy, the garden contained several tennis courts, and there was a field at the back for hockey. Visiting masters and mistresses augmented the ordinary staff of teachers, and Greyfield was well provided with good swimming baths, Oxford Extension lectures, high-class concerts, art exhibitions, and other educational privileges not always to be met with in a provincial town. On the other hand, the country was within easy reach. Ten minutes' walk led on to comparatively rural roads, and within half an hour you could find yourself beginning to climb the fells, with a long stretch of heather for a prospect, and the pure moorland air filling your lungs.
Miss Poppleton, the Principal of the school, irreverently nicknamed "Poppie" by her pupils, was a double B.A., for she had taken her degree in both classics and mathematics. She was a rather small, determined little lady, with a bright complexion, sharp, short-sighted, greenish-grey eyes, which peered at the world through a pair of round rimless spectacles, but seemed nevertheless to see everything ("too much", the habitual sinners affirmed!), what the girls called "an enquiring nose", grey hair brushed back quite straight from a square, "brainy"-looking forehead, and a mouth that had a habit of pursing and unpursing itself very rapidly when its owner was at all irritated or disturbed in mind. She was a good organizer, a strict disciplinarian, and a clever teacher—everything that is admirable, in fact, in a headmistress, from the scholastic point of view; and her vigorous, intellectual, capable personality always made an excellent impression upon parents and guardians. By the girls themselves she was regarded in a less favourable light: the very qualities which gave her success as a Principal caused her to seem distant and unapproachable. Her pupils held her in wholesome awe, but never expanded in her presence; to them she was the supreme authority, the "she-who-must-be-obeyed", but not a human individual who might be met on any common ground of mutual tastes and sympathies.
Miss Poppleton had a younger sister, whose name did not appear on the prospectuses, and who took a very back seat indeed in the school. Among intimate friends Miss Poppleton was apt to allude to her as "poor Edith", and most people concurred in a low estimation of her capacities. Certainly Miss Edith was not talented, neither would she have shone in any walk of life requiring brains. She was the exact opposite of her sister—tall, with big, round, blue, surprised-looking eyes, a weak chin, and a mouth that was generally set in a rather deprecating smile. She held a poor opinion of herself, and was more than willing to fill a secondary place; indeed, she would have been both alarmed and embarrassed if called upon to take the lead. For her elder sister she had an admiration and devotion that amounted to reverence. She cheerfully performed any tasks set her, and was perfectly content to be a kind of general help and underling, without attempting the least interference with any of the arrangements. Critical friends sometimes hinted that Miss Edith's position at Briarcroft was hardly a fair one, and that Miss Poppleton took advantage of her good nature and affection; but Miss Edith herself never for a single instant entertained such a disloyal notion, and continued to sing her sister's praises almost ad nauseam. Among the girls she was a distinct favourite; her patience was endless, and her good temper unflagging. What she lacked in brains she made up for in warmth of heart, and though she faithfully upheld discipline, she was apt somewhat to tone down the severity of the rules, and indeed sometimes surreptitiously to soften the thorny paths of the transgressor.
Four resident mistresses and a certain number of visiting teachers completed the staff at Briarcroft Hall. The greater proportion of the pupils were day girls, and the boarders, though they gave themselves airs, were decidedly in the minority. Such was the little community into which Gipsy was to be launched, and where for many months to come she would have to make and keep her own position.
Gipsy started with the most excellent intentions of exemplary behaviour, and if her conduct, regulated according to American codes, hardly harmonized with Briarcroft standards, it was more her misfortune than her fault. On the first day after her arrival she betook herself to the Principal's study, and after a light tap at the door, entered confidently with a breezy "Good morning". Miss Poppleton looked up from her papers in considerable surprise. Her private room was sacred to herself alone, and unless armed with a most warrantable errand nobody ever ventured to disturb her.
"Who sent you here, Gipsy?" she enquired rather sharply.
"Nobody," replied Gipsy, quite unaware of having given any occasion for offence. "I only came to ask leave to run out and buy a pan, and some sugar, and a few other things. I reckon there's a store handy, and I wouldn't be gone ten minutes. There's heaps of time before nine."
Miss Poppleton gasped. She had grasped the fact, at the beginning, that Gipsy was likely to prove an unusual pupil, but she had not anticipated such immediate developments.
"What you ask is perfectly impossible," she replied. "The boarders here are never allowed to go out alone to do shopping."
"So some of them told me last night, but I didn't believe them. I thought they were ragging me because I'm new, and I'd best ask at headquarters," returned Gipsy. "I wouldn't lose my way, and I'm accustomed to taking care of myself. I'd engage you'd find you could trust me."
"That's not the question at all, Gipsy. I cannot allow you to break school rules."
"Not just this once?"
"Certainly not. If I made an exception in your case, the others would expect the same privilege."
"Is that so?" said Gipsy slowly. "It seems a funny rule to me, because in Dorcas City we might always go to the store if we reported first."
"You're not in America now: you'll have to learn English ways here, and English speech too. You must make an effort to drop Americanisms, and talk as we do on this side of the Atlantic."
Miss Poppleton's tone was rather tart, and her mouth twitched ominously. Gipsy's eyes twinkled.
"I'll do my best," she answered brightly. "I picked up a few words from the other girls last night that I didn't know before. There was 'ripping' for one, and—what was the other, now, that caught on to me? Oh, I know!—'rotten'. I won't forget it again."
Miss Poppleton's face was a study.
"Of course I don't mean slang words like those. The girls had no business to be using them. You must copy the best, and not the worst."
"I guess it will take me a while to learn the difference."
"You'll have to expunge 'guess' and 'reckon' from your vocabulary."
Gipsy heaved an eloquent sigh.
"I'll make a mental note of what I've got to avoid, but I expect they'll slip out sometimes. But about that pan, please! Might the janitor go out and buy it for me? I can't make any Fudge till I get it, and I reck—that is to say, I mean to teach those girls to make Fudge. They've not tasted it."
Miss Poppleton glared at her irrepressible pupil with a glance that would have quelled Hetty Hancock or Lennie Chapman, but Gipsy did not flinch.
"They've actually never tasted Fudge!" she repeated, with a smile of pity for their ignorance.
But Miss Poppleton's patience was at an end.
"Gipsy Latimer, understand once for all that these things are not allowed at Briarcroft. While you are here you will be expected to keep the rules of the school, or, if you break them, you will be punished. Leave my study at once, and don't report yourself here again until you are sent for."
Gipsy left the room as requested, but she stood for a moment or two on the doormat outside, shaking her head solemnly.
"It's a bad lookout!" she said to herself. "I'm afraid there are breakers ahead. That's not a very difficult matter to foresee. She's got a temper! I've not had any previous experience of English schools, but it rather appears as if this one's run on the lines of a reformatory. If I don't want to get myself into trouble, I shall have to lie low, and mind what I'm doing. Well, I've sampled the teachers, and I've sampled the boarders. Now for the day girls and my new Form!"
Gipsy had already made the acquaintance of the elect twenty who were to be her house companions, but that was a comparatively slight affair compared with the ordeal of her introduction to the school as a whole. In spite of her outward appearance of sangfroid, she felt her heart thumping a little as she marched into the large lecture hall for "call over". It needs a certain courage to face seventy-two critical strangers, and her past experience had taught her that a new girl on her first day is like "goods on approval", and has to run the gauntlet of public opinion. She tried to look airy and unembarrassed, and talked desperately to Lennie Chapman, who had been told off to "personally conduct" her to her Form; but all the same she was conscious that she was the observed of all observers. It was only natural that the little, erect, dark figure, with its bright eyes and big scarlet hair ribbons, should attract attention. Gipsy was about as different from the ordinary run of British schoolgirls as a parakeet is from a flock of pigeons; and the others were quick to note the difference.
"I say, who's that foreign kid?" enquired Madeleine Newsome, a member of the Fifth, pausing in a friendly quarrel with a Form mate to take a quick, comprehensive survey of the stranger's personal appearance.
"Can't say, I'm sure," responded Emily Atkinson, "but we'll soon find out. Hello, you kid, what's your name? And what part of the globe do you spring from?"
"She's Spanish and American and New Zealand and South African and several other things, and she's been shipwrecked dozens of times," began Lennie Chapman, who was prone to exaggerate, and liked to act showman.
"Let her speak for herself," interrupted Madeleine bluntly. "I suppose she understands English, doesn't she? What's your name, kid? Don't stand staring at me with those big black eyes!"
But here Gipsy's momentary bashfulness took flight. Seven schools had taught her to hold her own, and she was soon imparting information about herself with a volubility that left no doubt of her acquaintance with the English tongue. Other girls hurried up to listen, and in less than a minute she was the centre of a crowd, answering a perfect fire of questions with a beaming good humour and a quickness of repartee that rather took the fancy of her hearers.
"She's sharp enough, at any rate," commented Mary Parsons. "Not very easy to take a rise out of her, I should think."
"Awfully pretty, I call her," responded Joyce Adamson. "Those big red bows are immense in more ways than one."
"She's not the sort to play second fiddle evidently," grumbled Maude Helm a trifle enviously. "New girls oughtn't to have such cheek, in my opinion. When I was new"
"Oh, yes! We all remember how you stood looking black thunders, and no one could drag a single word out of you, not even your name! Can't see where the sense came in! I like a girl with plenty to say for herself."
"This one's got enough, at any rate!" snapped Maude. "She talks away like a Cheap-Jack. Now if I were"
"Hold your tongue, can't you? I want to hear what she's saying."
"What Form's she in?"
"I believe Poppie's put her in the Upper Fourth."
"Hush! Here's Poppie herself!"
As the Principal stepped upon the platform and rang the bell, the girls hastily scurried to their seats, deferring further catechism of their new schoolfellow till eleven o'clock. Gipsy's name had been placed on the roll call of the Upper Fourth, so as a member of the Lower School she marched in the long line that filed from the lecture hall to the right-hand wing of the house. The preliminary part of her ordeal might be considered successfully over. Schoolgirls are quick to take likes and dislikes; with them, first impressions are everything, and a few minutes are often sufficient to decide the fate of a newcomer. By the end of the day Gipsy had won golden opinions; her whimsical humour and free Colonial manners, however unfavourably they might impress Miss Poppleton, pleased the popular taste, and except by an envious few she was pronounced "ripping". Even Helen Roper, the head of the school, condescended to notice her.
"Hello, you new girl!" she said patronizingly, "you may join our Needlework Guild if you like. You've got to subscribe a shilling, and promise to make a garment every year. They're sent to the hospitals, you know."
"Thanks," replied Gipsy, not too utterly overwhelmed by the honour. "I'm a bad sewer, but I dare say I'd manage to cobble up something."
"Then I'll put your name down, and you can bring me the shilling to-morrow. Have you got a camera? Then I expect you'll like to belong to the Photographic Guild—the subscription's a shilling for that too. Remind me to give you a card of the rules if I forget."
"You'll do!" whispered Lennie Chapman, who had watched over Gipsy's introduction with anxious interest. "If Helen Roper's spoken to you, you're sure to get on. You'll join the Guilds, of course? There's the Dramatic as well, and the Musical, and the Athletic."
"If they want a shilling for each, it will soon run away with one's pocket-money," laughed Gipsy.
"Why, yes, so it does, but then one has to join. It is the thing to do."
"I don't mind the subscriptions if the Guilds are fun."
"Well—um! I can't say they're very much fun for us. We're only Lower School, you see, and we don't get a look-in."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, of course it's all in the hands of the Sixth. They arrange everything. We mayn't so much as express an opinion."
"No, it's really rather too bad," said Hetty Hancock, joining in the conversation. "We Lower School aren't fairly treated. The Photographic Guild spent all the society's money on a gorgeous developing machine last term, and no one's allowed to use it except the Committee."
"But aren't any of the Lower School on the Committee?" asked Gipsy.
"No, we're not counted 'eligible'. We vote, but we may only elect members of the Sixth. And the Sixth just have it all their own way."
"How monstrously unfair!"
"It's just as bad in the Dramatic," continued Hetty, airing her grievances. "The Sixth arrange all the casts, and of course take the best parts for themselves, and only give us Juniors little, unimportant bits."
"But don't the Lower School act plays by themselves?"
"They haven't, so far; you see, it's always been one big Society. But I can tell you we've grumbled when our subscriptions have all gone to buy wigs and costumes for the Sixth."
"But why do you let them?" protested Gipsy.
Hetty shrugged her shoulders.
"How are we going to prevent it, when we've no voice in the matter? I told you the Committee arrange everything. We're supposed to be allowed to give our views at the General Meeting, but it's the merest farce—the Sixth won't condescend to listen to us."
"I'd make them listen!" said Gipsy indignantly.
"You'd better try, then!" laughed Hetty. "It's the Annual Meeting of all the Guilds on Friday week. We have to elect officers for the year. I should like to see you tackle Helen Roper!"
Gipsy turned away without further comment. Her past experience of schools had taught her that it was unwise to begin by criticizing well-worn institutions too soon. During the next few days, however, she asked many questions, and by diligently putting two and two together managed to arrive at a tolerably accurate estimate of the general state of affairs. The result caused her to shake her head. Though she said little, like the proverbial parrot she thought the more, and her thoughts gradually shaped themselves into a plan of action. At the end of a week she faced the situation.
"Look here, Gipsy Latimer!" she said to herself, "there are abuses in this school that need reforming. Somebody's got to take the matter up, and I guess it's your mission to do it! I don't believe it's ever occurred to those girls to make a stand for their rights. They may support you, or they may call you an interfering busybody for your pains; you'll have to take your chance of that. With your free-born democratic standards, it's impossible for you to sit still and see things go on as they are. This annual meeting's your opportunity, so you'd best pluck up your courage and nerve yourself for the fray."