A Sweet Girl Graduate

“Thank you,” said Prissie, simply. Some tears stole down her cheeks. She did not know she was crying; she did not attempt to wipe them away.

Chapter Twenty One

“I Detest It.”

Shortly after the girls got home that evening, they received letters in their rooms to inform them that Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston had come to the resolution not to report the affair of the auction to the college authorities. They would trust to the honour of the students at St. Benet’s not to allow such a proceeding to occur again, and would say nothing further on the matter.

Prissie’s eyes filled again with tears as she read the carefully worded note. Holding it open in her hand she rushed to Maggie’s room and knocked. To her surprise, instead of the usual cheerful “Come in,” with which Miss Oliphant always assured her young friend of a welcome, Maggie said from the other side of the locked door —

“I am very busy just now – I cannot see anyone.”

Priscilla felt a curious sense of being chilled; her whole afternoon had been one of elation, and Maggie’s words came as a kind of cold douche. She went back to her room, tried not to mind, and occupied herself looking over her beloved Greek until the dinner-gong sounded.

After dinner Priscilla again looked with anxious, loving eyes at Maggie. Maggie did not stop, as was her custom, to say a kind word or two as she passed. She was talking to another girl, and laughing gaily. Her dress was as picturesque as her face and figure were beautiful. But was Priscilla mistaken, or was her anxious observation too close? She felt sure as Miss Oliphant brushed past her that her eyelids were slightly reddened, as if she had been weeping.

Prissie put out a timid hand and touched Maggie on the arm. She turned abruptly.

“I forgot,” she said to her companion. “Please wait for me outside, Hester; I’ll join you in a moment, I have just a word to say to Miss Peel. What is it, Prissie?” said Maggie, then, when the other girl had walked out of hearing. “Why did you touch me?”

“Oh, for nothing much,” replied Prissie, half frightened at her manner, which was sweet enough, but had an intangible hardness about it, which Priscilla felt, but could not fathom. “I thought you’d be so glad about the decision Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston have come to.”

“No, I am not particularly glad. I can’t stay now to talk it over, however; Hester Stuart wants, me to practise a duet with her.”

“May I come to your room later on, Maggie?”

“Not to-night, I think; I shall be very busy.” Miss Oliphant nodded brightly, and disappeared out of the dining-hall.

Two girls were standing not far off. They had watched this little scene, and they now observed that Prissie clasped her hands, and that a woe-begone expression crossed her face.

“The spell is beginning to work,” whispered one to the other. “When the knight proves unfaithful the most gracious lady must suffer resentment.”

Priscilla did not hear these words. She went slowly upstairs and back to her own room, where she wrote letters home, and made copious notes from her last lectures, and tried not to think of the little cloud which seemed to have come between her and Maggie.

Late, on that same evening, Polly Singleton, who had just been entertaining a chosen bevy of friends in her own room, after the last had bidden her an affectionate “Good-night,” was startled at hearing a low knock at her door. She opened it at once. Miss Oliphant stood without.

“May I come in?” she asked.

“Why, of course. I’m delighted to see you. How kind of you to come. Where will you sit? I’m afraid you won’t find things very comfortable, for most of my furniture is gone. But there’s the bed; do you mind sitting on the bed?”

“If I want to sit at all the bed is as snug a place as any,” replied Maggie. “But I’m not going to stay a moment, for it is very late. See, I have brought you this back.”

Polly looked, and for the first time observed that her own sealskin jacket hung on Maggie’s arm.

“What do you mean?” she said. “My sealskin jacket! Oh, my beauty! But it isn’t mine, it’s yours now. Why do you worry me – showing it to me again?”

“I don’t want to worry you, Miss Singleton. I mean what I say. I have brought your jacket back.”

“But it is yours – you bought it.”

“I gave a nominal price for it, but that doesn’t make it mine. Anyhow, I have no use for it. Please take it back again.”

Poor Polly blushed very red all over her face.

“I wish I could,” she said. “If there has been anything I regretted in the auction, besides getting all you girls into a mess, it has been my sealskin jacket. Dad is almost certain to ask me about it, for he never made me such a handsome present before. Poor dad! he was so proud the night he brought it home. He said, ‘Look here, Poll, I paid a whole sheaf of fivers for this, and although it cost me a good round eighty guineas, I’m told it’s cheap at the price. Put it on, and let me see how you look in it,’ he said. And when I had it on he twisted me round, and chucked me under the chin, and said I was ‘a bouncer.’ Poor old dad! He was as proud as Punch of me in that jacket I never saw anything like it.”

“Well, he can be as proud as Punch of you again. Here is the jacket for your very own once more. Good-night.”

She walked to the door, but Miss Singleton ran after her.

“I can’t take it back,” she said. “I’m not as mean as all that comes to. It’s yours now; you got it as fair as possible.”

“Listen, Miss Singleton,” said Maggie. “If I keep that jacket I shall never wear it. I detest sealskin jackets. It won’t be the least scrap of use to me.”

“You detest sealskin jackets? How can you? Oh, the lovely things they are. Let me stroke the beauty down.”

“Stroke your beauty, and pet it as much as you like, only let me say ‘Good-night,’ now.”

“But, please, Miss Oliphant, please, I’d do anything in the world to get the jacket back, of course. But I’ve ten guineas of yours, and honestly, I can’t pay them back.”

“Allow me to lend them to you until next term. You can return me the money then, can you not?” Polly’s face became on the instant a show of shining eyes, gleaming white teeth, and glowing cheeks.

“Of course I could pay you back, you —darling,” she said with enthusiasm. “Oh, what a relief this is to me; I’d have done anything in all the world to have my jacket back again.”

“It’s a bargain, then. Good-night, Miss Singleton.”

Maggie tossed the jacket on Polly’s bed, touched her hand lightly with one of her own, and left the room. She went quickly back to her own pretty sitting-room, locked her door, threw herself on her knees by her bureau, and sobbed long and passionately.

During the few days which now remained before the end of the term no one quite knew what was wrong with Miss Oliphant. She worked hard in preparation for her lectures, and when seen in public was always very merry. But there was a certain hardness about her mirth which her best friends detected, and which caused Nancy Banister a good deal of puzzled pain.

Priscilla was treated very kindly by Maggie; she still helped her willingly with her Greek, and even invited her into her room once or twice. But all the little half-beginnings of confidence which, now and then, used to burst from Maggie’s lips, the allusions to old times, the sentences which revealed deep thoughts and high aspirations, all these, which made the essence of true friendship, vanished out of her conversation.

Priscilla said to herself over and over that there was really no difference – that Miss Oliphant was still as kind to her, as valued a friend as ever – but in her heart she knew that this was not the case.

Maggie startled all her friends by making one request. Might they postpone the acting of The Princess until the middle of the following term?

“I cannot do it justice now,” she said. “I cannot throw my heart and soul into my part. If you act the play now you must allow me to withdraw.”

The other girls, Constance Field in particular, were astonished. They even felt resentful. All arrangements had been made for this especial play. Maggie was to be the Princess herself; no one could possibly take her place. It was most unreasonable of her to withdraw now.

But it was one of the facts well-known at St. Benet’s that, fascinating as Miss Oliphant was, she was also unreasonable. On certain occasions she could even be disobliging. In short, when Maggie “took the bit between her teeth,” to employ an old metaphor, she could neither be led nor driven. After a great deal of heated discussion and indignant words, she had her will. The play was deferred till the following term, and one or two slight comedies, which had been acted before, were revived in a hurry to take its place.

Chapter Twenty Two

A Black Satin Jacket

Very active preparations were being made in a certain rather humble little cottage in the country for the heroine’s return. Three small girls were making themselves busy with holly and ivy, with badly-cut paper flowers, with enormous texts coarsely illustrated, to render the home gay and festive in its greeting. A little worn old woman lay on a sofa, and superintended these active measures.

“How soon will she be here now?” said Hattie the vigorous.

“Do stay still, Hattie, and don’t fidget. Don’t you see how tired Aunt Raby looks?” exclaimed Rose. “Prissie can’t be here yet, and you are such a worry when you jump up and down like that, Hattie.”

Rose’s words were quite severe, and Hattie planted herself on the edge of a chair, folded her plump hands, managed to get a demure look into her laughing eyes and dimpled mouth, and sat motionless for about half a minute. At the end of that time she tumbled on the floor with a loud crash, and Aunt Raby sprang to her feet with some alarm.

“Good gracious, child! are you hurt? What’s the matter?”

Hattie was sitting on the floor in convulsions of mirth.

“I’m not hurt,” she exclaimed. “I slipped off the chair. I didn’t mean to; I couldn’t help it, really. I’m sorry I woke you, Aunt Raby.”

“I wasn’t asleep, child.” Miss Peel walked across the room, and vanished into the kitchen, from which very savoury smells issued.

Hattie and Rose began to quarrel and argue, and Katie, who was more or less of a little peacemaker, suggested that they should draw up the blind, and all three get into the window to watch for Prissie.

“I wonder how she will look?” said Rose, when they were all comfortably established.

“I hope she won’t talk in Latin,” exclaimed Hattie.

“Oh, it is nice to think of seeing Prissie so soon,” murmured Katie in an ecstasy.

“I wonder,” began Rose in her practical voice, “how soon Prissie will begin to earn money. We want money even more than when she went away. Aunt Raby isn’t as well as she was then, and since the cows were sold – ”

“Hush!” said Hattie. “You know we promised we wouldn’t tell Prissie about the cows.”

Just then a distant sound of wheels was heard. The little girls began to jump and shout; a moment later and Priscilla stood in the midst of her family. A great excitement followed her arrival. There were kisses and hugs, and wild, rapturous words from the affectionate little sisters. Aunt Raby put her arms round Priscilla, and gave her a solemn sort of kiss, and then the whole party adjourned into the supper-room.

The feast which was spread was so dainty and abundant that Katie asked in a puzzled sort of way if Aunt Raby considered Prissie like the Prodigal Son.

“What fancies you have, child!” said Aunt Raby. “The Prodigal Son, indeed! Thank Heaven, I’ve never had to do with that sort! As to Priscilla here, she’s as steady as Old Time. Well, child, and are you getting up your learning very fast?”

“Pretty well, Aunt Raby.”

“And you like your grand college, and all those fine young-lady friends of yours?”

“I haven’t any fine young-lady friends.”

“H’m! I daresay they are like other girls; a little bit of learning, and a great deal of dress, eh?” Priscilla coloured.

“There are all sorts of girls at St. Benet’s,” she said after a pause. “Some are real students, earnest, devoted to their work.”

“Have you earned any money yet, Prissie?” exclaimed Hattie. “For if you have, I do want – look – ” She thrust a small foot, encased in a broken shoe, prominently into view.

“Hattie, go to bed this minute!” exclaimed Aunt Raby. “Go up to your room all three of you little girls. No more words – off at once, all of you. Prissie, you and I will go into the drawing-room, and I’ll lie on the sofa, while you tell me a little bit about your college life.”

“Aunt Raby always lies oh the sofa in the evenings now,” burst from Hattie the irrepressible.

Miss Peel rushed after the plump little girl, and pushed her out of the room.

“To bed, all of you!” she exclaimed. “To bed, and to sleep! Now, Prissie, you are not to mind a word that child says. Come into the drawing-room, and let us have a few words quietly. Oh, yes, I’ll lie on the sofa, my dear, if you wish it. But Hattie is wrong; I don’t do it every night. I suffer no pain either, Prissie. Many a woman of my age is racked with rheumatics.”

The last words were said with a little gasp. The elder woman lay back on the sofa, with a sigh of relief. She turned her face so that the light from the lamp should not reveal the deathly tired lines round it.

Aunt Raby was dressed in a rough homespun garment. Her feet were clad in unbleached cotton stockings, also made at home; her little, iron-grey curls lay flat at each side of her hollow cheeks. She wore list slippers, very coarse and common in texture. Her whole appearance was the essence of the homely, the old-fashioned, even the ungainly.

Priscilla had seen elegance and beauty since she went away; she had entered into the life of the cultivated, the intellectually great. In spite of her deep affection for Aunt Raby, she came back to the ugliness and the sordid surroundings of home with a pang which she hated herself for feeling. She forgot Aunt Raby’s sufferings for a moment in her uncouthness. She longed to shower riches, refinement, beauty upon her.

“How has your dress worn, Prissie?” said the elder woman, after a pause. “My sakes, child, you have got your best brown cashmere on! A beautiful fine bit of cashmere it was, too. I bought it out of the money I got for the lambs’ wool.”

Aunt Raby stretched out her hand, and, taking up a fold of the cashmere, she rubbed it softly between her finger and thumb.

“It’s as fine as velvet,” she said, “and I put strong work into it, too. It isn’t a bit worn, is it, Prissie?”

“No, Aunt Raby, except just round the tail. I got it very wet one day, and the colour went a trifle; but nothing to signify.”

A vivid picture rose up before Priscilla’s eyes as she spoke of Mrs Elliot-Smith’s drawing-room, and the dainty, disdainful ladies in their gay attire, and her own poor, little, forlorn figure in her muddy cashmere dress – the same dress Aunt Raby considered soft and beautiful as velvet.

“Oh, Aunt Raby,” she said with sudden impulse, “a great many things have happened to me since I went away. On the whole I have had a very good time.”

Aunt Raby opened her mouth to emit a prodigious yawn.

“I don’t know how it is,” she said, “but I’m a bit drowsy to-night. I suppose it’s the weather. The day was quite a muggy one. I’ll hear your news another time, Priscilla; but don’t you be turned with the vanities of the world, Priscilla. Life’s but a passing day: you mind that when you’re young, and it won’t come on you as a shock when you are old. I’m glad the cashmere has worn well – ay, that I am, Prissie. But don’t put it on in the morning, my love, for it’s a sin to wear through beautiful fine stuff like that. And, even if the colour is gone a bit round the hem, the stuff itself isn’t worn, and looks don’t signify. You’ll have to make up your mind to wear the cashmere for best again next term, Prissie, for, though I’m not pinched in any way, I’m not overflush either, my love.”

Priscilla, who had been sitting in a low chair near her aunt, now rose to her feet.

“Ought we not to come to bed?” she said. “If you don’t feel tired, you look it, Aunt Raby. Come upstairs, do, and let me help you to take your things off, and put you into bed. Come, Aunt Raby, it will be like old times to help you, you know.”

The girl knelt by the old woman, took one of her withered hands, raised it suddenly to her lips, and kissed it. Aunt Raby’s face was still turned from the light.

“Don’t you keep kneeling on your cashmere,” she said. “You’ll crease it awfully, and I don’t see my way to another best dress this term.”

“You needn’t, Aunt Raby,” said Priscilla, in a steady voice. “The cashmere is quite neat still. I can manage well with it.”

Aunt Raby rose slowly and feebly from the sofa.

“You may help me to get into bed if you like,” she said. “The muggy day has made me wonderfully drowsy, and I’ll be glad to lie down. It’s only that: I’ll be as pert as a cricket in the morning.”

The old woman leant on the girl’s strong, young arm, and stumbled a bit as she went up the narrow stairs.

When they entered the tiny bedroom Aunt Raby spoke again —

“Your dress will do, but I have been fretting about your winter jacket, Prissie. There’s my best one, though – you know, the quilted satin which my mother left me; its loose and full, and you shall have it.”

“But you want it to go to church in yourself, Aunt Raby.”

“I don’t often go to church lately, child. I take a power of comfort lying on the sofa, reading my Bible, and Mr Hayes doesn’t see anything contrary to Scripture in it, for I asked him. Yes, you shall have my quilted satin jacket to take back to college with you, Prissie, and then you’ll be set up fine.”

Priscilla bent forward and kissed Aunt Raby. She made no other response, but that night before she went to sleep she saw distinctly a vision of herself. Prissie was as little vain as a girl could be, but the vision of her own figure in Aunt Raby’s black satin quilted jacket was not a particularly inspiriting one. That jacket, full in the skirts, long in the shoulders, wide in the sleeves, and enormous round the neck, would scarcely bear comparison with the neat, tight-fitting garments which the other girl graduates of St. Benet’s were wont to patronise. Prissie felt glad she was not attired in it that unfortunate day when she sat in Mrs Elliot-Smith’s drawing-room; and yet – and yet – she knew that the poor, quaint, old-world jacket meant love and self-renunciation.

“Dear Aunt Raby!” whispered the girl.

Tears lay heavily on her eyelashes as she dropped asleep, with one arm thrown protectingly round her little sister Katie.

Chapter Twenty Three

The Fashion of the Day

A thick mist lay over everything. Christmas had come and gone, and Priscilla’s trunk was packed once more – Aunt Raby’s old-world jacket between folds of tissue-paper, lying on the top of other homely garments.

The little sisters were in bed and asleep, and Aunt Raby lay on the sofa. Prissie was accustomed to her face now, so she did not turn it away from the light. The white lips, the chalky grey tint under the eyes, the deep furrows round the sunken temples, were all familiar to the younger “Miss Peel.” She had fitted once more into the old sordid life. She saw Hattie in her slipshod feet, and Katie and Rose in their thin winter jackets, which did not half keep out the cold. She saw and partook of the scanty meals, and tried to keep warm by the wretched fires. Once more she was part and parcel of the household. The children were so accustomed to her that they forgot she was going away again.

To-night, however, the fact was brought back to her. Katie cried when she saw the packed trunk, Hattie pouted, and flopped herself about and became unmanageable. Rose put on her most discontented manner and voice, and finding that Prissie had earned no money during the past term, gave utterance to sceptical thoughts.

“Prissie just went away to have a good time, and she never meant to earn money, and she forgot all about them,” grumbled the naughty little girl.

Hattie came up and pummelled Rose for her bad words. Katie cried afresh, and altogether the scene was most dismal.

Now, however, it was over. The children were in the land of happy dreams. They were eating their Christmas dinner over again, and looking with ecstasy at their tiny, tiny Christmas gifts, and listening once more to Prissie, who had a low, sweet voice, and who was singing to them the old and beloved words —

“Peace and goodwill to men.”

The children were happy in their dreams, and Prissie was standing by Aunt Raby’s side.

“Why don’t you sit down, child? You have done nothing but fidget, fidget, for the last half-hour.”

“I want to go out, Aunt Raby.”

“To go out? Sakes! what for? And on such a night, too!”

“I want to see Mr Hayes.”

“Prissie, I think you have got a bee in your bonnet. You’ll be lost in this mist.”

“No, I won’t. I missed Mr Hayes to-day when he called, and I must see him before I go back to St. Benet’s. I have a question or two to ask him, and I know every step of the way. Let me go, auntie, please, do!”

“You always were a wilful girl, Priscilla, and I think that college has made you more obstinate than ever. I suppose the half-mannish ways of all those girls tell upon you. There, if you must go – do. I’m in no mood for arguing. I’ll have a bit of a sleep while you are out: the muggy weather always makes me so drowsy.”

Aunt Raby uttered a very weary yawn, and turned her face from the light. Priscilla stepped into the hall, put on her waterproof and oldest hat, and went out. She knew her way well to the little vicarage, built of grey stone, and lying something like a small, daring fly against the brow of the hill. The little house looked as if any storm must detach it from its resting-place; but to-night there was no wind, only clinging mist, and damp and thick fog.

Priscilla mounted the rough road which led to the vicarage, opened the white gate, walked up the gravel path, and entered the little porch. Her knock was answered by the vicar himself. He drew her into the house with an affectionate word of welcome, and soon she was sitting by his study fire, with hat and jacket removed.

In the vicar’s eyes Priscilla was not at all a plain girl. He liked the rugged power which her face displayed; he admired the sensible lines of her mouth, and he prophesied great things from that brow, so calm, so broad, so full. Mr Hayes had but a small respect for the roses and lilies of mere beauty. Mind was always more to him than matter. Some of the girls at St. Benet’s, who thought very little of poor Priscilla, would have felt no small surprise had they known the high regard and even admiration this good man felt for her.

“I am glad you have called, Prissie,” he said. “I was disappointed in not seeing you to-day. Well, my dear, do as well in the coming term as you did in the past. You have my best wishes.”

“Thank you,” said Prissie.

“You are happy in your new life, are you not, my dear child?”

“I am interested,” said Priscilla, in a low voice. Her eyes rested on her shabby dress as she spoke. She laid one hand over the other. She seemed to be weighing her words. “I am interested; sometimes I am absorbed. My new life fills my heart; it crowds into all my thoughts. I have no room for Aunt Raby – no room for my little sisters. Everything is new to me – everything fresh and broad. There are some trials, of course, and some unpleasantness; but, oh, the difference between here and there! Here it is so narrow; there, one cannot help getting enlightenment, daily and hourly.”

“Yes,” said Mr Hayes, when Priscilla paused, “I expected you to say something of this kind. I knew you could not but feel the immense, the immeasurable change. But why do you speak in that complaining voice, Priscilla?”

Prissie’s eyes were raised to his.

“Because Aunt Raby is ill, and it is wicked of me to forget her. It is mean and cowardly. I hate myself for it!”

Mr Hayes looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared.

“My dear Prissie,” he said, “I always knew there were depths of morbidness in you, but I did not suppose that you would sound them so quickly. If you are to grow up to be a wise and useful and helpful woman by-and-by, you must check this intense self-examination. Your feelings are the natural feelings of a girl who has entered upon a very charming life. You are meant to lead that life for the present; you are meant to do your duty in it. Don’t worry, my dear. Go back to St. Benet’s, and study well, and learn much, and gather plenty of experience for the future. If you fret about what cannot be helped, you will weaken your intellect and tire your heart. After all, Prissie, though you give much thought to St. Benet’s, and though its ways are delightful to you, your love is still with the old friends, is it not?”