Chapter 11

A Holiday Governess

When Easter drew near, Lesbia began to be very anxious as to where she was to spend her holidays. From various hints thrown out by the Pattersons, she gathered that they wanted to use her bedroom, and were making arrangements for her to go away. She sincerely hoped it would not be to Mrs. Newton's. The remembrance of Christmas was hardly enlivening. Another three weeks in that elderly mid-Victorian atmosphere was certainly not a tempting prospect to a girl of sixteen. At last, only a few days before the vacation began, Mrs. Patterson, putting on her pince-nez and, taking a letter from her bag, announced to Lesbia that she had some news for her.

"You're to go as holiday governess to a little boy," she began; then, noticing her young cousin's look of utter consternation, "now, don't be absurd, Lesbia! It's the very thing for you. Mr. and Mrs. Stockton are friends of ours. They live in the country--quite a pretty place. A change of air will do you good, especially to be out-of-doors the whole day with Terry after stuffing in school all the term. You'll look after him while his own governess has her holiday, but he won't need any lessons except music, so it will be a holiday for you too. As I was saying, it's pretty country, and I dare say Joan would lend you her bicycle to take with you. You'll be interested in Mr. Stockton's pictures. He's really quite a good artist."

An artist! Lesbia pricked up her ears at this piece of information. The desolate prospect suddenly seemed to blossom. Moreover, she was very fond of the country. A change from town would be a great relief.

"Perhaps I'd like a boy better than girls," she ventured, thinking of the juniors, who had been particularly outrageous of late. "It won't be so bad if I haven't to teach him."

"I've no doubt you'll get along very well, so it's quite decided," decreed Mrs. Patterson promptly. "I shall write to Mrs. Stockton to-day and say you'll arrive next Tuesday."

Feeling rather a pawn in the hands of Fate, but somewhat consoled by the loan of Joan's bicycle, Lesbia was duly seen off from the station by Kitty, who popped a packet of chocolates in her pocket as she bid her good-bye and added:

"Take a firm stand with Terry from the first. Don't let him think he's going to have it all his own way or----"

"What do you mean?" asked Lesbia agitatedly, but the porter was already slamming the door and waving back non-passengers from the edge of the platform, and the train started before Kitty could complete her sentence.

Such a disquieting hint did not present her future pupil in a favourable light. Lesbia ate her chocolates to try and banish the uneasy forebodings.

"After all, I don't suppose he _can_ be worse than Allie Pearson and Edie Browne," she thought, as she flung the empty case out of the window. "They're the absolute limit in the way of fidgets."

Mr. Stockton met her at Tunbury Station, and drove her home in a little trap drawn by a fat lazy pony. It was already dark, so she only had glimpses of fleeting hedgerows as they jogged along the muddy country road. The air felt fresh though, with a bracing exhilarating quality that made her think of soda-water. There was a faint scent of flowers, fragrant after rain. A thin crescent moon shone in the sky, close to a bright planet.

"It's going to be a fine Easter, we hope," volunteered Mr. Stockton, grasping at the well-worn topic of the weather to assist him in the difficult task of making conversation with a shy girl of sixteen, evidently unused to small talk.

Terry was in bed when Lesbia arrived, but not asleep. His room led out of hers, and she was taken in by candle-light to be introduced to him. She got an impression of a pair of round blue eyes, that stared at her as if taking her all in, and a crop of short chestnut curls. He could not be induced to speak a single word.

"He'll talk quite enough to-morrow," volunteered his mother, settling him down again on his pillow. "Now, Terry, remember you're _not_ to wake too early. We don't want to hear anything of you till the hot water comes."

Lesbia, tired after her journey and the excitement of her exodus from Kingfield, was too weary to sleep. The bed, though comfortable enough, felt strange, and she tossed about uneasily for hours, with brain racing in a whirl of galloping thoughts. A clock on the landing, chiming the quarters, roused her every time she dozed, and it had struck half-past three before she finally lost consciousness. She slept lightly, with confused dreams. Suddenly--in the midst of a heated argument with Miss Pratt--she woke with a start to find something cold on her face. The dawn was just glinting through the Venetian blinds, and a small red-headed figure was dancing like an imp beside her bed, brandishing a wet sponge.

"Done you!" he triumphed. "Done you brown! I told Miss Gordon I'd give you cold pig. She said I daren't, but I dare! I'm not a bit afraid of you. You're only sixteen! I heard Mummie say so. No, I _won't_ go back! I tell you I _won't_!"

For Lesbia had bounced out of bed, wrenched away the sponge, and was bundling the young man in the direction of his own room. She stopped, turned him to face her, and glared at him solemnly.

"You'll do what you're told, so I warn you at the beginning. If ever you come into my room again without asking you'll get more than you bargain for. I'm not going to stand any disrespect. Now fly! And don't let me hear another sound, or I'll have to go and fetch your mother. Do you understand?"

Apparently Terry did, for his bare legs beat a retreat. Once back in his own quarters, though, he did not keep the rule of silence imposed upon him. He began to sing in a rather ostentatious voice, and to rattle something about that made a noise. Lesbia shut the door between the two rooms and took no further notice; but sleep was banished, for though Terry did not intrude again, he continued at intervals to treat her to selections of whistling, comic songs, and even verses of hymns, all of which were extremely disturbing.

"Little wretch!" she soliloquized. "I'm afraid I'm in for a bad time with him. He's pretty; but he's evidently most outrageously spoilt."

Lesbia's anticipations with regard to Terry were partly fulfilled, but not altogether. He seemed an equal mixture of angel and elf. In his celestial moods he could be really sweet, and most affectionate. She was fond of him when he sat on her knee begging for stories, or when he asked sudden, old-fashioned questions on astounding subjects, but she groaned when she noticed the gleam in his eye which always betokened the quest for mischief. He was a stubborn, unruly little boy, indulged by adoring parents till their patience failed, then his mother would confiscate his chocolates, and his father would operate with a bedroom slipper.

Lesbia's duties were to superintend his toilet, take him for walks, and give him a short daily lesson on the piano.

"You see he's just begun music with Miss Gordon," explained Mrs. Stockton, "and it would be such a pity if he were to forget all he's learnt."

Though Lesbia had instructed the juniors at Kingfield High School in the elements of arithmetic, history, and other subjects, she had never in her life before taught music. She felt decidedly nervous as she led Terry, with newly-washed hands, to the piano.

"He'll tell you what he has to do," volunteered Mrs. Stockton, vanishing gladly from the room.

Terry, whose fingers were still rather damp, opened the instruction book in the middle, and twisted the music-stool round and round with quite unnecessary zeal.

"That's enough. It won't go any higher," commanded Lesbia. "Have you got as far as this duet? All in half a term? I suppose you play the treble part? And Miss Gordon takes the bass?"

Terry nodded. He was staring hard at Lesbia as if evolving an idea. Suddenly he burst out:

"When you talk you keep your nose still, and when Miss Gordon talks hers wobbles about just like my rabbit's when it wants a lettuce."

"'Sh, 'sh! That's nothing to do with music," suppressed Lesbia. "Now we're going to try this duet. I'll play the bass. Are you ready? I shall count a whole bar first. One--two--three--four."

They began, Lesbia playing what was before her, but Terry improvising out of his head. He did it so cleverly that his teacher, a little nervous at reading her own part, did not notice for a bar or two that the thumpings in the treble had nothing to do with the instruction book. She stopped him reproachfully. His blue eyes looked as innocent as a child-cherub's.

"I'm very fond of music," he bragged. "I like to play it my own way."

"I don't believe you've ever got as far as the middle of this book," declared Lesbia. "I shall begin at the beginning and see how much you really know."

Master Terence Stockton either knew nothing of the elements of the piano or he was not going to give away his information. He did not seem yet to have grasped the value of the various notes. Lesbia set to work to try and explain the functions of a minim, a crotchet, and a quaver. It was so long since she had learnt such details in her own childhood that she was a little at a loss how to express adequately in words what had become a matter almost of instinct.

"This big note with a hole in it is a semibreve and it counts four of these black notes, which are called crotchets. Now suppose we're counting four crotchets to a bar, one--two--three--four; how long is this semibreve?"

"How long? An inch! An inch and a half! Two inches!" exclaimed Terry excitedly, as if he were playing a game at guessing. "There's a foot-rule in my new joinering box if you'll let me go and fetch it!"

Lesbia nearly collapsed, for her own explanations were so clearly at fault. She began again, and tried to make them a little more lucid. It was uphill work, however; for though Terry would gaze at her, apparently drinking in everything she said, he would suddenly come out with a remark which showed that his mind was wandering elsewhere. Poor Lesbia at the end of the half-hour felt they had made little progress. She resolved privately to study the instruction book before to-morrow's lesson, and to prepare some very plain and adequate plan of imprinting musical notation on the grey pulp of Terry's unwilling brain.

Despite the fact that her pupil was decidedly a handful, the time at Tunbury was nevertheless a holiday. They went beautiful walks in the fields to pick primroses and dog violets, there was a wood where she played robbers with Terry, and where one day they had a picnic tea and boiled a kettle on a camp fire, there were occasional drives in the pony trap, and a few bicycle rides, with Terry on the luggage-carrier because she could not leave him at home. She felt rather like "Sindbad the Sailor" laden with his "Old Man of the Sea" as she rode along with a pair of small arms clutched tightly round her waist, but she found the treat an excellent bribe for good behaviour and certainly a means of keeping her frisky youth out of mischief. There was one delight in her visit which compensated for many drawbacks. Mr. Stockton was painting a picture of his little son, and every morning Terry had a sitting in the studio. Lesbia came also, and the good-natured artist lent her a canvas, tubes, palette, and brushes, and let her try her 'prentice hand at portraiture in oils. To sit close to Mr. Stockton and watch him paint was a revelation. Lesbia took to the work like a duck to water, and produced something really so very like Terry that her effort won words of warm approval.

"It's wonderfully good," declared Mr. Stockton. "You've evidently got some notion of drawing in you. You ought to go and study at a school of art. How old are you? Only sixteen? What you want is to join a life class. You'd soon get on. It isn't everybody who can catch a likeness. The colour of that background is not at all bad for a beginner. My advice is 'Go ahead!'"

It was kind advice, and made Lesbia blush with pleasure, but, as she thought privately, it was all very well to say "go ahead" when she had absolutely no prospect of joining a life class. She did not possess an oil paint-box, and even had she one there would be no time among her multitudinous lessons for the practice of portraiture. If her future was to consist of studying, passing exams, and afterwards teaching, Art would have little chance to develop.

"It's a pity," sighed Lesbia. "Because people work so much better at things they really and truly like. I hold with the Montessori system in that. If Miss Tatham gave me my choice I'd never look at Latin or Maths again. No! I'd just paint, paint, paint, from morning till night, and be absolutely happy. That's my ideal of life. But I shall never get it--never! So I suppose it's no use grousing. Marion's got an oil paint-box by the by. I wonder if she'd swop it for my camera? That's rather a brain-wave. I'll ask her when I get back. If Joan would sit for me on Saturdays I'd try and paint her. She has a pretty side face and her fluffy hair would look nice against a blue background. Perhaps Mrs. Patterson wouldn't scold if it was Joan's portrait I was doing. Oh dear! How I wish Kingfield High School was a school of art."

Lesbia returned to 28 Park Road at the end of the three weeks with relief and regret about equally balanced. She treasured the remembrance of a quite tearful good-bye hug from Terry, but rejoiced that she had no longer to put him to bed, to comb his curls, or to keep his mischievous fingers from doing damage. She did not covet Miss Gordon's post, and decided that if she had to teach it should be at a day school, where she could be free from the small fry from 4 p.m. till 9 o'clock on the next morning.

"The fact is," she confessed to herself, "I adore children to look at or to romp with. It's that abominable keeping order I hate so. I'm not what Miss Tatham calls 'a good disciplinarian'. The young scamps know it, and they take advantage of me. I suppose I'm a round peg in a square hole, or a square peg in a round hole, whichever it is; I don't seem quite to fit somehow. Well, it can't be helped anyway, and I shall just have to worry along as best I can to the end of the chapter."