Chapter 12

The Blessed Damozel

It was not until after Easter that Regina Webster came to school. She appeared in VA on the first morning of the new term, and because the form was really "full up" she had to be accommodated with a chair and a small table at which to write. Miss Pratt, having settled the new-comer with a seat, suggested that somebody should afford hospitality to her books, which certainly could not be left lying about the room. For a minute there was dead silence. Everybody's desk seemed already overflowing, and nobody felt at all anxious to share its limited space with a stranger.

"Won't _anyone_ offer?" asked Miss Pratt with a tinge of surprised tartness in her voice.

Regina was staring out of the window trying to look utterly disinterested.

Then Lesbia's conscience gave her a hard tweak and whispered: "Don't be mean". She often ignored her inner monitor, but this time she listened.

"_I_ will, Miss Pratt," she said, turning a little red, as the gaze of the form instantly focused upon her.

"Thank you, Lesbia!"

So that was how it began. Fate, at their first meeting, seemed to fling Regina into her very lap. You cannot share a desk with anybody without contracting a certain amount of intimacy, the mere fact of bending your heads together to store your books and pencils in the same receptacle promotes confidence. By the end of the third day Lesbia knew the number of Regina's brothers and sisters and what colour her new costume was going to be, and Regina had heard the whole story of how Lesbia nearly went to Canada and didn't. There was not very much reserve about Lesbia. If she took a fancy to anybody her heart blossomed like a mango in an Indian conjurer's trick, and she was ready to impart any number of secrets. To certain impulsive temperaments a new friendship is a great opportunity. It means a totally fresh start with somebody who will not be influenced by old impressions, but will take you at your present valuation, someone to whom you can pour out your own version of your biography unbiased by other people's opinions, somebody to whom all your old stories and jokes will be new, and to whom even your last year's hat will appear quite fresh and worthy of admiration.

Regina was no ordinary girl. That was apparent the moment she had walked into VA. Her face was too strongly cut for mere prettiness, but her great grey eyes seemed to hold whole past lifetimes of thought in them. In manner she was very abrupt. She snapped out her remarks in short jerks, as if she were firing them from a gun. She moved with the self-consciousness often noticed in girls of sixteen. The whole of her atmosphere was intensely "mental". Astrologers would have placed Mercury and Jupiter for her birth signs. Her brains were so big that she almost seemed intellectual against her will. She did not want to pose as clever, and curiously enough seemed to covet most all the specially feminine characteristics which she rather conspicuously lacked. She admired Lesbia, much as a boy would, for her pretty hair, her dainty movements, and the general Celtic glamour that hung about her; she behaved, indeed, more like a youth in love than an ordinary schoolgirl chum. Her large soulful eyes would gaze at her idol during classes as if she were composing sonnets, and she haunted her round the school till the girls christened her "Lesbia's shadow".

"She's queer, of course, but in a way she's rather a sport," declared Kathleen, discussing the new-comer in the cloakroom.

"Yes, she's certainly queer. She never does anything in the least like anybody else," agreed Ermie Hall. "She makes me quite nervous when she stares at me with those big eyes. I feel as if she were trying to hypnotize me? Do you believe in hypnotism? It's rather creepy."

"If she'd mesmerize me to know my prep I'd be grateful to her. Don't be an idiot, Ermie."

"She makes _me_ think of 'The Blessed Damozel'," piped Carrie obtrusively.

"The Blessed _who_?"

"Oh, you evidently don't know your Dante Gabriel Rossetti!"

"I don't know my Dante anybody. Who was she, or he, whichever it is?"

"It's a piece of poetry, of course."

"There's no 'of course' about it."

"Well it is at any rate."

"Go on, Carrie, and spout. You're dying to give it to us, I can see," urged Marjorie.

Carrie, who was in the elocution class and loved reciting, did not wait to be asked twice. Secure of an even moderately willing audience she began:

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL

The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.

"Now it _is_ like her, isn't it?" she inquired at the end of the second stanza. "Shall I say you any more?"

"No, thanks" (some of the girls were moving hastily away). "That's quite enough. Yes, perhaps it is like Regina, if you look quite at the romantic side of her. Her hair is 'yellow like ripe corn', and her eyes, of course, are the main part about her. All the same, she's too substantial somehow for me to imagine her leaning out over any gold bar of Heaven. I'd be afraid she'd break it. She must weigh more than I do, and I'm eight stone--nearly! I was weighed at the station yesterday on the automatic machine."

"Well, if you're going to reckon attraction by lack of weight, I suppose you'd admire a living skeleton."

"Not at all, but I can't quite reconcile gold bars of Heaven with twenty-six inches round the waist."

"Some people haven't the soul to appreciate poetry properly."

"That's true," chirped Ermie unabashed. "I dare say the Miss Miltons voted 'that poem of Dad's' awful slow. It was certainly 'Paradise Lost' to them to have to sit and write at his dictation when they probably wanted to be out picking blackberries or feeding the hens. I've always felt sorry for those three girls. I hope they all found decent husbands, poor dears! The literature book doesn't tell us any more about them, and they're far more interesting to me than their stern old father. When I write a literature book, I shall put things in their proper focus. 'Celebrities from a Girl's Point of View' I mean to call it. Yes, I'm in earnest! Don't snigger, all of you! I'll publish it some day and then you'll just see. Oh yes, glorify Regina into 'the Blessed Damozel' if you like. I don't mind what names you call her. 'Blessed Damson' would do for me. Ta-ta!"

Though the girls joked about Regina, and even teased her, there was a certain amount of liking mixed with their chaff. They all agreed that she was 'rather a sport'. Her amazing cleverness absolutely took their breath away. They would almost have resented it if Regina herself had set any store by it. She would finish her mathematical problems in a few minutes, while her schoolmates were still staring at them, and would sit with arms folded and answers ready when the rest of the form were helplessly beating their brains. She saw at once that it gave offence, and apologized in her abrupt manner.

"I can't help it. I just see the answers somehow and write them down."

"Couldn't you fiddle about with your pencil and look as if you were still working?" urged Calla's injured voice. "It makes Miss Pratt on the warpath to see you sitting up so soon. She said, 'Aren't you finished _yet_, girls?' this morning, very acidly. I think you might try to spin things out for _our_ sakes."

In the matter of memorizing, also, Regina's nimble brains utterly outdistanced those of her companions. She took home the history book and read up all the portions which VA had taken during the two previous terms, proving a far better acquaintance with it at revision classes than the rest of the form, and bringing out dates with enviable accuracy.

"I can't help it," was still her protest. "It's as easy to remember a right date as a wrong one. They stick in my head somehow. If I see them once I know them."

"You're a genius, I suppose," sighed Kathleen. "There ought to be a special form for geniuses. It's not right to wedge them in amongst ordinary girls."

Yet all the time it was the ordinary girls whom Regina admired. Her own movements were awkward and jerky, but she would watch fascinated while dainty Alice Orton, the dunce, even of VB, performed a scarf dance, and she came to school one day in such a palpable though indifferently made copy of Agnes Clifford's fashionable dress of Saxe blue gabardine, that some of the girls openly giggled in the cloakroom, an offence for which she never really forgave them. After three weeks of worshipping at Lesbia's shrine Regina one morning blurted out an invitation. In her characteristic fashion she gave it without any preamble. She simply said abruptly:

"Can you come to tea on Saturday?"

And Lesbia, suppressing a gasp of surprise, replied:

"Oh, thanks very much! I shall have to ask my cousin, Mrs. Patterson, first."

Lesbia was very keen upon tennis at present. To go with Kitty and Joan to play at their club was her weekly treat. She did not know whether she wanted to waste a whole precious Saturday afternoon upon Regina, whom she saw every day at school. I am afraid tennis would have overbalanced friendship in the scales had she not remembered that on Saturday next was a tournament, and she would certainly have no opportunity of playing.

"It's just possible that the Websters may have a court," she ruminated. "I'll chance it, anyway."

She therefore asked and obtained permission for the outing from Mrs. Patterson, who was quite gracious and pleasant about it. She had been far more genial with Lesbia lately. The storm over her visit to Pilgrims' Inn Chambers seemed to have cleared the air.

"So you're going to tea with the Blessed Damozel," giggled Ermie, for the news leaked out somehow in VA. "Well, I suppose you'll have a sort of royal reception--flags put up in your honour, family band playing, an illuminated address presented, and all the rest of it. The younger brothers--if there _are_ any younger brothers and sisters--will be practising court curtsies and hand kissing. Hope you'll rise to the occasion and receive it with proper dignity. Give us a specimen of your best regal manners, O Queen! Just to show us how it's done."

"Don't mock. I believe you're jealous."

"Oh yes, of course we're all jealous, aren't we, Marjorie? We want to be worshipped too, and have somebody 'Less than the Dust' grovelling at our feet. We'd get up a turn or two among ourselves, only we can't decide who's to grovel. Everyone wants to be the goddess and not the devotee. That's where we don't hit it. Is it Saturday afternoon that the royal reception is to take place? How touching! Some press representatives ought to be there for the sake of the school magazine."

"Oh, go on! Rag me as much as you like. I don't care a scrap, so there!"

After eleven years at Kingfield High School, Lesbia was thoroughly well accustomed to teasing. She let the girls say what they liked about her new friendship with Regina. She certainly did not mean to be chaffed out of it. On Saturday afternoon she donned her white tennis costume, put on a new shady white hat, and went on the top of the tram-car to Heathersedge, the suburb where the Websters lived. The guard put her down at the right corner, and after a few minutes walking she found herself at her destination, a square house covered with early June roses, and with ornamental vases filled with geraniums on each side of the porch. Though her reception was not quite on the lines which Ermie had picturesquely prophesied, it was nevertheless apparent that Regina had very much rubbed in glorified accounts of her personality. The family, who all owned the same soulful eyes, gazed at her with a fascinated intensity which made Lesbia devoutly hope she was not disappointing them.

"So _you_ are Regina's idol! She talks about nobody else," said Mrs Webster, in the abrupt manner of her daughter, shaking hands very warmly and kindly, however, with her young guest.

Regina blushed and looked uncomfortable, as girls generally do when parents are guilty of indiscreet remarks. She made a conspicuous effort to hustle her friend away, but was balked by the rest of the family, whose attitude plainly demanded introductions. She catalogued them briefly, and would have dismissed them, but they declined to be so easily disposed of, and accompanied the visitor in a body to the garden. Lesbia, who was not very keen on spending a whole afternoon _tête-à-tête_ with Regina, gave them palpable encouragement. She decidedly liked them. First there was Derrick, known in his private circle as "the stripling", a very tall boy of fourteen, who evidently enjoyed female society and was immensely pleased if he were treated as grown up. His manners were more suave than Regina's, and he had reached the stage when he delighted to open doors, pick up handkerchiefs, or perform any other small services for attractive members of the fair sex, preferably older than himself. He attached himself at once to Lesbia, ignoring indignant glances from his sister that seemed to say "Hands off! This is _my_ special property."

Magsie and Una, two little girls with cropped flaxen hair and short-cut skirts, hovered about putting in any remarks that anybody would listen to. They each had an eye to taking Lesbia's disengaged left arm, but Regina, who had appropriated the other, frowned them fiercely away. Piers and Winston, the four-year-old twins, were exhibited proudly, somewhat in the fashion of domestic pets, and, when they had performed what Derrick called "their parlour tricks", were dismissed to play in a separate portion of the garden, and bribed with chocolates not to return.

There was a tennis lawn, a very nice one too, full-sized, and level, and thoroughly well rolled and free from daisies or dandelion roots. Lesbia looked at it so longingly that Regina, still anxious for an afternoon of private confidences, had perforce to offer a game, though her face grew a little glum when her guest promptly accepted.

"You'd better fetch John Curzon," she nodded to Derrick.

Derrick, without a word, and somewhat to Lesbia's amazement, departed over the wall, but he returned shortly accompanied by a boy friend who bore a tennis-racket.

There was a brief scrimmage about sides, Regina wanting Lesbia for a partner, and Derrick indignantly protesting against two girls playing together. He carried his point, and conducted the visitor to what he considered the more advantageous quarter of the court, leaving John and his sister to have the sun in their eyes. Magsie and Una constituted themselves umpires, and called out the score with keen satisfaction. The Websters were fairly good players, and Lesbia enjoyed herself, especially as she and Derrick were winning all along the line. In the middle of the second game she began to be aware of spectators. There was a paling between the side of the garden and a lane, and over the top of these wooden boards faces that seemed somehow familiar would peep for a moment and then vanish. It was only after several of these sudden bobbing appearances that her eyes recognized the well-known features of Ermie, Cissie, and Aldora. At the first convenient opportunity she pointed them out to her hostess.

"Hello, you girls! Show yourselves properly," yodelled Regina, running to the palings.

Audible giggles came from the lane, then sounds of hoisting, finally three smiling faces peered across the fence.

"You'd better come over and have tea. It's almost ready," invited Regina hospitably.

"No, thanks," (Ermie was spokeswoman). "We're going to tea at Cissie's. We only looked in to see how you were getting on. We thought you'd be turtle-doving."

"We're playing tennis."

"So I see. We don't want to butt in. Just came to find the flags flying that's all." (With a grimace at Lesbia.) "We _do_ apologize. Sorry to be on the earth. Or rather on the palings. Can't hold up any longer. Ta-ta!"

Ermie disappeared with a sudden drop, followed by Cissie and Aldora. To judge from the sound of footsteps they ran hurriedly away down the lane. Lesbia looked relieved. She did not want Regina to realize what fun the girls made of her infatuation. She was so deadly in earnest about everything that it seemed a shame to tease her.

"Besides which she might think I had been cackling to them and put them up to coming," thought Lesbia, turning hot at the notion. "I'll spifflicate those three on Monday, when I catch them. It was beastly cheek to track me here just to try and rag. They ought to know better manners, and I shall tell them so. Won't I pitch into them just! I'll make them absolutely shrivel!"

But aloud she simply said very calmly:

"It's your serve, Regina. We were thirty--forty. _Do_ let us try and finish this set before tea if we can."