Part 6

She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first part given to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that her voice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear and distinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged with self-consciousness.

Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.

"Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!" said an unnecessarily surprised junior mistress. "I wish you principals would put as much intelligence into some of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge."

Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, and it was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be a very unimportant one.

Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious in her demeanour.

"Lily!" commanded the mistress sharply. "You can read that long speech of Dorothy's, and see what you make of it."

Ever since her arrival at Bridgecrap Lily had been convicted of her inferiority to everyone there.

Now, in a glorious flash, she saw her chance of at last achieving a success.

She read the speech without hesitation, and felt that she had read it very well.

"Excellent! I wish I'd given you a bigger part. We'll see...."

Lily was disproportionately excited.

The next day, she was told to give Dorothy's speech again, this time with the necessary action, which included a slow entrance and a dramatic exit prefacing the fall of the curtain.

"Oh, my dear child! Hold yourself properly--you can't walk like that. And your hands--no, no--that won't do. Can't you _move_ properly?"

It was just what Lily could not do. Her instinct for the correct manipulation of words and ideas did not extend to the disposition of her own muscles.

Enforced drill, gymnastics and detested games, begun too late and without any attempt at individual tuition, had failed to impart to Lily the natural poise and erect bearing that made Dorothy Hardinge's movements harmonious. Her body was as self-conscious as her mind was supple and alert.

"No use at all. We can't have her standing about the stage like that. What would Miss Melody say?"

"I'm sorry, Lily," said the junior mistress kindly. "It's a great pity you can't learn to hold yourself properly. Otherwise, you might act very well."

Lily's brief triumph was over, at the expense of this humiliation.

It was then that Sylvia Hardinge surprised her by saying quietly: "It's a shame! You said all that stuff perfectly splendidly--as though it really meant something. They ought to let you have a really good part--you act better than any of us."

Lily secretly agreed with her, whilst believing herself conceited for doing so, but she was none the less astonished and gratified at Sylvia's appreciation.

"I'm glad you think I can act. Did I really hold myself so very badly?"

"Yes," said Sylvia simply. "Frightfully."

It was like a douche of cold water.

Lily's friendship with Sylvia was destined to run a course that was neatly foreshadowed thus in their first encounter.

Sylvia admired Lily, thought her clever and very pretty, and was a sympathetic and affectionate companion.

Lily felt passionately grateful for her affection, and sometimes told herself joyfully that she had found a friend at last.

And then from time to time she was suddenly brought up short against the sharply defined limits of Sylvia's comprehension, and the jarring candour of Sylvia's ruthlessly unalterable condemnations.

Grown-up people always told one that in this world there was no such thing as a perfect friendship. Lily obediently generalized thus, and strove for philosophy in defiance of a hidden, quite unsupported certainty, in the depths of her own mind, that the generalization was a false one.

It was not until her final half year at Bridgecrap that Lily came under the direct personal influence of the headmistress.

Miss Melody was fifty-seven, she had given up her life to the work of education, and she still brought to it the enthusiasm of a pioneer. Her solitary weakness was the not altogether uncommon one of an unshakable belief in her own infallibility.

"You may have a difficult time in front of you, childie," she said to Lily very kindly. "A motherless girl is very often at a great disadvantage. I was motherless myself before I was twenty."

She had a rounded mellow voice and always articulated her words with great deliberation and distinctness. "And the dear little brother! Is that a big responsibility, Lily?"

"Kenneth will be going to school almost at once," said Lily evasively.

She would like to have replied, as Miss Melody obviously expected her to do, with an admission of her own perplexities as regarded her relations to Kenneth, but she knew very well that no responsibility would really be hers. Nothing vital bound her to Kenneth as she had been bound to Vonnie, and the immense gulf of her ten years' seniority had inspired in her no maternal solicitude towards her independent little brother.

"He will be nearly eight when I leave here, and I know my father means him to go to school when he's eight," said Lily.

"Child, you're not going to be a shirker, are you? Lily, Lily, isn't that the weak place? Ah, I thought so. I thought so. Afraid of responsibility, aren't you?"

Miss Melody's eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixed it upon her pupil.

"Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fight against it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don't forget what prayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, you know...."

Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely that Miss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved a preconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality.

"I don't know whether it is exactly that I'm afraid of responsibility," Lily began, feeling that the help Miss Melody was so willing to impart must rest upon a basis of fact, if it was to be of value to her.

The schoolmistress laughed softly.

"Lily, Lily, haven't you learnt not to make excuses for yourself yet? I hoped all my girls were taught that in the lowest form in the school!"

Lily looked as thoroughly disconcerted as she felt. Was it making excuses for herself to try and explain what she felt to be the truth, even though it happened to run contrary to Miss Melody's judgment?

"No, no, child," Miss Melody was grave again now. "Never be ashamed to own up to your weaknesses. I want you to think about backbone, dearie. It's what you need. _I_ know, childie--perhaps more than you think. All sorts of girls have passed through my care, and I'm very, very proud to think that I've known something about each one of them--perhaps been able to give each one a little help. And there are no two alike, Lily, and each one has to be studied individually."

"And do you--have you really----?" Lily wanted to ask whether Miss Melody had really penetrated to the true self of every one of her pupils. It seemed so incredible, that girls like Dorothy Hardinge, for instance, should really have an inward life, even as Lily herself, and that Miss Melody should enter therein, and understand it all.

"Do I really study each one individually? Indeed I do, Lily, although it may seem to you girls that you see very little of the headmistress except in school, and on state occasions. Oh, _I_ know," and Miss Melody laughed again.

Then she dropped her deep, soft voice impressively.

"I've studied you, childie dear, and thought about you very often. There's weakness, Lily--there's weakness. You'll have to be very much on your guard. I should like to have seen you much keener about games, much more in earnest for the honour of the school at our hockey and cricket matches. You may think that those things are of no very great importance in themselves, but there's a fine spirit behind it all, you know--a thoroughly _English_ spirit. It's that keenness that you seem to me to lack."

Miss Melody paused, and looked with her characteristic air of profound scrutiny at Lily.

"Well?" she said encouragingly.

Lily felt that she was letting slip an opportunity for just such a clarification of issues as she had long sought after, but the habits of obscure and muddled thinking into which she had all her life been led stood in her way.

She made a consciously inadequate effort, belatedly.

"I think I could be more--keen--about things, if I only felt they were more worth it," she said confusedly. "I know I'm no good at games, but it isn't only that--it doesn't seem to me to matter frightfully whether one's good at them or not--and it's the same about other things, even lessons. I _do_ enjoy them--some of them at least--but all the time I've got a sort of feeling--what's it all for?"

She paused, confused and frightened.

"Go on----" said Miss Melody. Her voice was slightly melancholy, but she was slowly nodding her head, as though in comprehension.

"I think if I could find something that seemed to me thoroughly worth while I could--could really let myself go and give my whole self to it. Something like a--a person one loved very much, or a sort of life one felt was right for _oneself_--not just right in itself----" Lily stopped, in utter disarray.

She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by those halting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was not apparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.

"I'm very, very glad you should have spoken, childie ... perhaps we can get this straightened out between us. That's a terrible idea of yours, you know, that things aren't worth while. Why, at your age, anything ought to be worth while--over and over again, Lily. The games and the lessons, and the little brother at home--it's all worth while, dearie. While you're thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call to devote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunities are slipping by you--you're squandering all your energies on fancies that mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into what you're doing, Lily--into the living present. Why, it's all worth while! As I told you just now, it isn't the number of runs you make in the cricket match that matters, it's the spirit that holds the whole eleven together, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match. _That's_ what matters!"

Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel no real response within herself to these rousing truths?

At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alien standards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish the latter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody's inspiring banner.

"The games in themselves are only games. True," said Miss Melody. "But there's something else, Lily. I wonder if you've ever thought of it? Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honour and glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul has written about that--didn't we have it, not so very long ago, at our reading? And don't you think, if you want a motive, that you have an adequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won't ask again 'what's it all for' or whether it's worth while, will you?"

Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate, inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?--"The Apostle Paul spoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until I have evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from that lack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you, and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all."

Nothing is more certain than that no such arrogant lucidity sprang either to her mind or to her lips.

"I'll try, Miss Melody----" she said, earnestly and meekly.

"I know you will, I'm quite sure of it. There's a big effort to be made, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but it can be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel that you can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answer you. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years ago still write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school by now.

"Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own future is to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the little brother, or do you want a home of your very own--marriage, Lily?"

The mere knowledge that she had never before heard the word mentioned in such a connection by Miss Melody, made Lily blush foolishly.

The headmistress smiled--an omniscient smile. "I thought so--I thought so. Well, Lily, although I haven't married myself, I always advocate marriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in the beaten track, and I don't think you're one of those that are called upon to stand alone. Oh, there's nothing derogatory in that. Marriage is a very high calling, child, and there's a great deal to it--a great deal of _responsibility_, Lily."

Miss Melody's arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become a catchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily's weakness.

Lily smiled back again, faintly protesting.

"Ah, you don't like that! It's the old bugbear, isn't it? Well, well, childie...." Miss Melody appeared to lose herself in reflectiveness.

The fiction of Lily's dread of responsibility was now firmly established between them.

"If I can give you any advice, or help you in any way, just let me know, dear child. We've had a nice, long talk, and I think it's been helpful to you."

Miss Melody paused so significantly that Lily almost involuntarily said: "Yes, Miss Melody."

"I'm very thankful for that, Lily--very proud and thankful. You must come to me again before the breaking up. Bless you, childie dear."

Lily understood that the interview was at an end.

Acutely sensitive as she was to Miss Melody's kind and serious interest in her welfare, it was almost inevitable that she should come to the sorrowful conclusion that Miss Melody, in her vast and tolerant experience, must be correct in her estimate of Lily's self. The thought depressed her.

She lacked backbone, and she was a shirker, squandering all her energies upon fancies that meant nothing.

In a vague and general way, Lily resolved to abjure those fancies and to readjust her scale of relative values so that it should include all that Miss Melody had meant by such words as "keenness"--"a thoroughly English spirit" and "doing everything to the greater honour and glory of God."

VI

The least highly spirited amongst us, however easily cowed by outside influence, seldom finds it easy or desirable to practise meekness when dealing with a near relative at home.

This law, which is a practically invariable one, deserves a candid recognition which it seldom receives.

Certainly it was never openly admitted to exist by Philip Stellenthorpe, whose house furnished a striking example of its workings after Lily had finally returned from Bridgecrap.

At school, she had been the victim of a diffidence engendered in the consciousness of failure.

At home, the consciousness of failure merely roused her to covert and irritable defiance of criticism.

She was no longer the sensitive and over-intuitive child steadily denying her own instincts wherever she foresaw that they must run counter to her father's unalterably sentimental ideals. But neither had she the moral courage nor the training in honesty of thought that would have enabled her boldly to analyze the causes of her own discontent.

She was resentful of Philip's arbitrary conventions, for which he never gave any other reason than that "Father says it will be best that way," and at the same time she believed her resentment to be wrong and undutiful.

She thought, and was shocked and unhappy to think, that there were times when she hated her father, whereas her hatred was in reality wholly for certain manifestations of his solicitude and affection for herself.

"A child that is impatient of its parent's love," Philip once called her, in bewildered pain and disappointment.

Lily felt herself to be unutterably heartless, cried herself sick with remorse and despair, and then had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from protesting aloud in exasperation the very next time that Philip called her his little pet.

A perpetually tête-à-tête existence might well have brought the state of tension between them to an unforgettable climax, but that the situation was saved by the Hardinges.

The Hardinges came to live within a mile of Philip Stellenthorpe.

The shock to him was less severe than if they had been people of whom he knew nothing, and the sacred tradition of Eleanor's day, that "the children were happiest in their own little nursery," was allowed to lapse when Lily was between eighteen and nineteen years old, and Kenneth in his first term at school. Subtle and intangible conflict and the presence of the cheerful, commonplace Hardinges were. unthinkable together in the same atmosphere.

Dorothy Hardinge, no longer able to play hockey with any regularity, philosophically turned her attention to other forms of amusement, and was quite ready to make a companion of Lily Stellenthorpe. Having reluctantly put up her hair and lengthened her skirts, she made the best of privileges that she had never coveted, took her clothes quite seriously, and discovered frankly, for the first time, that Lily had at least one undeniable advantage over other girls that had never been recognized at school, in that she was extremely and unusually pretty.

Janet was less simple-minded, or less generous than Dorothy, and always made Lily conscious of her faint contempt.

Sylvia was still called Lily's friend, although they had much less in common than had Lily and Dorothy, now that Lily was accounted grown up, while Sylvia had three more years of school before her.

Charlie and Ethel Hardinge gave tennis parties and small dances, and picnic parties, and talked as proudly and volubly of "the girls" as they had once talked of "the kiddie-widdies."

They included Lily and Kenneth in everything.

"We've got two boys coming to stay with us next week. It ought to be rather fun," Dorothy Hardinge proclaimed. "There are never enough men to go round, here."

"There are so few families with sons, and anyway the boys always seem to be years younger than the girls--like Kenneth," said Janet discontentedly.

It had been the fashion at Bridgecrap to deride as early Victorian any assumption of the desirability of masculine society under any conditions, but Dorothy Hardinge at least had candidly readjusted her point of view amongst her new surroundings.

"We shall try and give a dance, while they're here. One of them is father's ward, Colin Eastwood--he's eighteen and awfully nice. Sort of quiet, you know, but nice. And he's bringing a friend, someone we don't know. Father said he might. He's at some University or other, and he's about twenty-two, or something like that. He'll probably think himself as old as anything, compared to us," said Dorothy with a little laugh that betrayed excitement.

Lily felt excited, too. She had met very few boys indeed that were beyond the age of sailor suits, but she had indulged in as many romantic fancies of possible future conquests for herself, as were allowed her by the ineradicable memory of the convent theory that masculinity was _ipso facto_ something to be, as far as possible, ignored by the modest feminine.

Much reading and an uncontrollable imagination had merely eradicated the recollection of conventual shibboleths, but Lily was still sufficiently bound by them to feel very much ashamed when she found herself wondering whether Colin Eastwood and his friend would think that she was pretty. Dorothy said that she was.

From time to time, when she had on a new hat or put on a summer frock for the first time, her father looked at her with an air of rather melancholy gratification, and then made some small, detached observation at the very end of the day, when it might be assumed to have no special significance to the immediate occasion:

"My little Lily is getting quite a grown-up girl, now. It's quite a duty for little people to take care of their complexions, you know, we're given these small advantages to be a pleasure to those who care about our looks."

Lily had thereby deduced that Philip was afraid of her becoming vain, and that therefore he, also, thought her pretty.

She sometimes took long and furtive observations of herself in the glass. Her eyes, dark-lashed and rather deeply set, were not nearly as blue as Dorothy Hardinge's, but her nose at least was straight where Dorothy's turned up, and her soft skin had no freckles, and was sun-burned olive instead of red. She thought that her lips were too full, but at all events they were firmly closed, since she had always breathed through her nose, which not one of the three Hardinges could do for any length of time. And her hair was lovely.

Lily would never have applied to it, even in her own mind, such an adjective--redolent of vanity, according to the code--but nevertheless, that was what she really thought of it, when she brushed out the long, silky brown waves.

She counted vanity as being amongst her besetting sins, and strove to persuade herself that, against the evidence of her own senses, she really ought to believe herself plain and unattractive.

It was a mark of her own unregeneracy, that this should prove to be so extraordinarily difficult.

It became more difficult than ever, when Colin Eastwood and Lily began to meet one another every day at the parties and excursions arranged by the Hardinges in honour of their two guests.

Colin, as Dorothy had said, was nice, and very quiet. The indications of his admiration for Lily were so shyly offered that she only became aware of it by subtle and gradual degrees.

So restrained and delicate was that impalpable idyll of their extreme youth, that it never became the object of jarring and facetious comment, as was Dorothy's loud flirtation with Colin's cheerful and amusing friend, embarked upon within an hour of their first acquaintance.

Lily, at first, had indeed been inwardly mortified at the promptness of Dorothy's conquest. The undergraduate was a Real Live Person--so was Dorothy. So were all the others. Lily, just as at school, felt herself to be but an indifferent masquerader, through the badly sustained pretensions of whom they could all see plainly.

She found herself paired with Colin, in all the expeditions, and thought that it was because he had such nice manners that he always stayed beside her. But in a very little while she knew that, actually, Colin manœuvred for the place next her, and that his gaze always sought hers to share in the frequent jokes and allusions that had so soon come into being amongst them all.

He liked her better than Dorothy, or Janet or any of them.

It was just such a first romance as is only possible to certain diffident and highly sensitized temperaments, as yet unawakened to any thought of the cruder and more obvious manifestations of mutual attractions. Colin Eastwood was very nearly as ingenuous as Lily, and quite as shy.

He sat next her at picnics, and looked pitiful if the privilege was accidentally usurped by others. He once, daringly, and with shaking fingers, fastened her glove for her.

He asked her to call him Colin, and when she shyly acquiesced he was transported, but looked at her with a gaze that implored a yet further privilege.

Lily blushed at first, and then said timidly:

"And will you call me Lily?"

He said breathlessly: "Oh, I should love to." The audacity of the words made both their hearts beat quicker, so that they could say no more.