Chapter 4 Betty Vivian by L. T. Meade
RECEPTION AT HADDO COURT
Having made up her mind to receive the Vivian girls, Mrs. Haddo arranged matters quite calmly and to her entire satisfaction. There was no fuss or commotion of any kind; and when Sir John appeared on the following morning, with the six deal boxes and the three girls dressed in their coarse Highland garments, they were all received immediately in Mrs. Haddo's private sitting-room.
"I have brought the girls, Mrs. Haddo," said Sir John. "This is Betty. Come forward, my dear, and shake hands with your new mistress."
"How old are you?" asked Mrs. Haddo.
"I was sixteen my last birthday, and that was six months ago, and one fortnight and three days," replied Betty in a very distinct voice, holding herself bolt upright, and looking with those strange eyes full into Mrs. Haddo's face. She spoke with extreme defiance. But she suddenly met a rebuff--a kind of rebuff that she did not expect; for Mrs. Haddo's eyes looked back at her with such a world of love, sympathy, and understanding that the girl felt that choking in her throat and that bursting sensation in her heart which she dreaded more than anything else. She instantly lowered her brilliant eyes and stood back, waiting for her sisters to speak.
Sylvia came up a little pertly. "Hetty and I are twins," she said, "and we'll be fifteen our next birthday; but that's not for a long time yet."
"Well, my dears, I am glad to welcome you all three, and I hope you will have a happy time in my school. I will not trouble you with rules or anything irksome of that sort to-day. You will like to see your cousin, Fanny Crawford. She is busy at lessons now; so I would first of all suggest that you go to your room, and change your dress, and get tidy after your journey. You have come here nice and early; and in honor of your arrival I will give, what is my invariable custom, a half-holiday to the upper school, so that you may get to know your companions."
"Ask Miss Symes to be good enough to come here," said Betty, but Betty would not raise her eyes. She was standing very still, her hands locked tightly together. Mrs. Haddo walked to the bell and rang it. A servant appeared.
"Ask Miss Symes to be good enough to come here," said Mrs. Haddo.
The English governess with the charming, noble face presently appeared.
"Miss Symes," said Mrs. Haddo, "may I introduce you to Sir John Crawford?"
Sir John bowed, and the governess bent her head gracefully.
"And these are your new pupils, the Vivians. This is Betty, and this little girl is Sylvia. Am I not right, dear?"
"No; I am Hester," said the girl addressed as Sylvia.
"This is Hetty, then; and this is Sylvia. Will you take them to their room and do what you can for their comfort? If they like to stay there for a little they can do so. I will speak to you presently, if you will come to me here."
The girls and Miss Symes left the presence of the head mistress. The moment they had done so Mrs. Haddo gave a quick sigh. "My dear Sir John," she said, "what remarkable, and interesting, and difficult, and almost impossible girls you have intrusted to my care!"
"I own they are not like others," said Sir John; "but you have admitted they are interesting."
"Yes," said Mrs. Haddo, speaking slowly. "I shall manage them yet. The eldest girl, Betty, is wonderful. What a heart! what a soul! but, oh, very hard to get at!"
"I thought, perhaps," said Sir John, fidgeting slightly, "that you would object to the rough way they are clothed. I really don't like it myself; at least, I don't think it's quite the fashion."
"Their clothes do not matter at all, Sir John."
"But the less remarkable they look the better they will get on in the school," persisted Sir John; "so, of course, you will get what is necessary."
"Naturally, Miss Symes and I will see to that."
"They led a very rough life in the country," continued Sir John, "and yet it was a pure and healthy life--out all day long on those great moors, and with no one to keep them company except a faithful old servant of Miss Vivian's and his wife. They made pets of dogs and horses, and were happy after their fashion. You will do what you can for them, will you not, Mrs. Haddo?"
"Having accepted them into my school, I will do my utmost. I do not mind simple manners, for the noblest natures are to be found among such people; nor do I mind rough, ungainly clothing, for that, indeed, only belongs to the outward girl and can quickly be remedied. I will keep these girls, and do all that woman can for them, provided I see no deceit in any of them; but that, you will clearly understand, Sir John, is in my opinion an unpardonable sin."
"Do they look like girls who would deceive any one?" was Sir John's rejoinder.
"I grant you they do not. Now, you must be very busy, so you must cast the girls from your mind. You would like to see Fanny. I know she is dying to have a talk with you."
Meanwhile Miss Symes had conducted the girls upstairs. The room they entered was much grander than any room they had ever seen before. It was large--one of the largest bedrooms in the great house. It had three noble windows which reached from floor to ceiling, and were of French style, so that they could be opened wide in summer weather to admit the soft, warm air. There was a great balcony outside the windows, where the girls could sit when they chose. The room itself was called the blue room; the reason of this was that the color on the walls was pale blue, whereas the paint was white. The three little beds stood in a row, side by side. There was a very large wardrobe exactly facing the beds, also a chest of large drawers for each girl, while the carpet was blue to match the walls. A bright fire was burning in the cheerful, new-fashioned grate. Altogether, it would have been difficult to find a more charming apartment than the blue room at Haddo Court.
"Are we to sleep here?" asked Betty.
"Yes, my dear child. These are your little beds; and Anderson, the schoolroom maid, will unpack your trunks presently. I see they have been brought up."
Miss Symes slightly started, for the six wooden trunks, fastened by their coarse ropes, were standing side by side in another part of the room.
"Why do you look at our trunks like that?" asked Sylvia, who was not specially shy, and was quick to express her feelings.
But Betty came to the rescue. "Never mind how she looks," remarked Betty; "she can look as she likes. What does it matter to us?"
This speech was so very different from the ordinary speech of the ordinary girl who came to Haddo Court that Miss Symes was nonplussed for a moment. She quickly, however, recovered her equanimity.
"Now, my dears, you must make yourselves quite at home. You must not be shy, or lonely, or unhappy. You must enter--which I hope you will do very quick--into the life of this most delightful house. We are all willing and anxious to make you happy. As to your trunks, they will be unpacked and put away in one of the attics."
"I wish we could sleep in an attic," said Betty then in a fierce voice. "I hate company-rooms."
"There is no attic available, my dear; and this, you must admit, is a nice room."
"I admit nothing," said Betty.
"I think it's a nice room," said Hester; "only, of course, we are not accustomed to it, and that great fire is so chokingly hot. May we open all the windows?"
"Certainly, dears, provided you don't catch cold."
"Catch cold!" said Sylvia in a voice of scorn. "If you had ever lived on a Scotch moor you wouldn't talk of catching cold in a stuffy little hole of a place like this."
Miss Symes had an excellent temper, but she found it a trifle difficult to keep it under control at that moment. "I must ask you for the keys of your trunks," she said; "for while we are at dinner, which will be in about an hour's time, Anderson will unpack them."
"Thanks," said Betty, "but we'd much rather unpack our own trunks."
Miss Symes was silent for a minute. "In this house, dear, it is not the custom," she said then. She spoke very gently. She was puzzled at the general appearance, speech, and get-up of the new girls.
"And we can, of course, keep our own keys," continued Betty, speaking rapidly, her very pale face glowing with a faint tinge of color; "because Mrs.----What is the name of the mistress?"
"Mrs. Haddo," said Miss Symes in a tone of great respect.
"Well, whatever her name is, she said we were to be restricted by no rules to-day. She said so, didn't she, Sylvia? Didn't she, Hetty?"
"She certainly did," replied the twins.
"Then, if it's a rule for the trunks to be unpacked by some one else, it doesn't apply to us to-day," said Betty. "If you will be so very kind, Miss----"
"Symes is my name."
"So very kind, Miss Symes, as to go away and leave us, we'll begin to unpack our own trunks and put everything away by dinner-time."
"Very well," said Miss Symes quite meekly. "Is there anything else I can do for your comfort?"
"Yes," remarked Sylvia in a pert tone; "you can go away."
Miss Symes left the room. When she did so the two younger girls looked at their elder sister. Betty's face was very white, and her chest was working ominously.
Sylvia went up to her and gave her a sudden, violent slap between the shoulders. "Now, don't begin!" she said. "If you do, they'll all come round us. It isn't as if we could rush away to the middle of the moors, and you could go on with it as long as you liked. Here, if you howl, you'll catch it; for they'll stand over you, and perhaps fling water on your head."
"Leave me alone, then, for a minute," said Betty. She flung herself flat on the ground, face downwards, her hair falling about her shoulders. She lay as still as though she were carved in stone. The twin girls watched her for a minute. Then very softly and carefully Sylvia approached the prone figure, pushed her hand into Betty's pocket (a very coarse, ordinary pocket it was, put in at the side of her dress by Jean's own fingers), and took out a bunch of keys.
Sylvia held up the keys with a glad smile. "Now let's begin," she said. "It's an odious, grandified room, and Betty'll go mad here; but we can't help it--at least, for a bit. And there's always the packet."
At these words, to the great relief of her younger sisters, Betty stood upright. "There's always the packet," she said. "Now let's begin to unpack."
Notwithstanding the fact that there were six deal trunks--six trunks of the plainest make, corded with the coarsest rope--there was very little inside them, at least as far as an ordinary girl's wardrobe is concerned; for Miss Frances Vivian had been very poor, and during the last year of her life had lived at Craigie Muir in the strictest economy. She was, moreover, too ill to be greatly troubled about the girls' clothing; and by and by, as her illness progressed, she left the matter altogether to Jean. Jean was to supply what garments the young ladies required, and Jean set about the work with a right good will. So the coarsest petticoats, the most clumsy stockings, the ugliest jackets and blouses and skirts imaginable, presently appeared out of the little wooden trunks.
The girls sorted them eagerly, putting them pell-mell into the drawers without the slightest attempt at any sort of order. But if there were very few clothes in the trunks, there were all sorts of other things. There were boxes full of caterpillars in different stages of chrysalis form. There was also a glass box which contained an enormous spider. This was Sylvia's special property. She called the spider Dickie, and adored it. She would not give it flies, which she considered cruel, but used to keep it alive on morsels of raw meat. Every day, for a quarter of an hour, Dickie was allowed to take exercise on a flat stone on the edge of the moor. It was quite against even Jean Macfarlane's advice that Dickie was brought to the neighborhood of London. But he was here. He had borne his journey apparently well, and Sylvia looked at him now with worshiping eyes.
In addition to the live stock, which was extensive and varied, there were also all kinds of strange fossils, and long, trailing pieces of heather--mementos of the life which the girls lived on the moor, and which they had left with such pain and sorrow. They were all busy worshiping Dickie, and envying Sylvia's bravery in bringing the huge spider to Haddo Court, when there came a gentle tap at the door.
Betty said crossly, "Who's there?"
A very refined voice answered, "It's I;" and the next minute Fanny Crawford entered the room. "How are you all?" she said. Her eyes were red, for she had just said good-bye to her father, and she thoroughly hated the idea of the girls coming to the school.
"How are you, Fan?" replied Betty, speaking in a careless tone, just nodding her head, and looking again into the glass box. "He is very hungry," she continued. "By the way, Fan, will you run down to the kitchen and get a little bit of raw meat?"
"Will I do what?" asked Fanny.
"Well, I suppose there is a kitchen in the house, and you can get a bit of raw meat. It's for Dickie."
"Oh," said Fanny, coming forward on tiptoe and peeping into the box, "you can't keep that terror here--you simply won't be allowed to have it! Have you _no_ idea what school-life is like?"
"No," said Betty; "and what is more, I don't want you to tell me. Dickie darling, I'd let you pinch my finger if it would do you any good. Sylvia, what use are you if you can't feed your own spider? If Fan won't oblige her cousins when she knows the ways of the house, I presume you have a pair of legs and can use them? Go to the kitchen at once and get a piece of raw meat."
"I don't know where it is," said Sylvia, looking slightly frightened.
"Well, you can ask. Go on; ask until you find. Now, be off with you!"
"You had better not," said Fanny. "Why, you will meet all the girls coming out of the different classrooms!"
"What do girls matter," said Betty in a withering voice, "when Dickie is hungry?"
Sylvia gathered up her courage and departed. Betty laid the glass box which contained the spider on the dressing-table.
If Fanny had not been slightly afraid of these bold northern cousins of hers, she would have dashed the box out on the balcony and released poor Dickie, giving him back to his natural mode of life. "What queer dresses you are wearing!" she said. "Do, please, change them before lunch. You were not dressed like this when I saw you last. You were never fashionable, but this stuff----"
"You'd best not begin, Fan, or I'll howl," said Betty.
"Hush! do hush, Fanny!" exclaimed Hester. "Don't forget that we are in mourning for darling auntie."
"But have you really no other dresses?"
"There's nothing wrong with these," said Hester; "they're quite comfortable."
Just at that moment there came peals of laughter proceeding from several girls' throats. The room-door was burst open, and Sylvia entered first, her face very red, her eyes bright and defiant, and a tiny piece of raw meat on a plate in her hand. The girls who followed her did not belong to the Specialities, but they were all girls of the upper school. Fanny thanked her stars that they were not particular friends of hers. They were choking with laughter, and evidently thought they had never seen so good a sight in their lives.
"Oh, this is too delicious!" said Sibyl Ray, a girl who had just been admitted into the upper school. "We met this--this young lady, and she said she wanted to go to the kitchen to get some raw meat; and when I told her I didn't know the way she just took my hand and drew me along with her, and said, 'If you possessed a Dickie, and he was dying of hunger, you wouldn't hesitate to find the kitchen.'"
"Well, I'm not going to interfere," said Fanny; "but I think you know the rules of the house, Sibyl, and that no girl is allowed in the kitchen."
"I didn't go in," said Sibyl; "catch me! But I went to the beginning of the corridor which leads to the kitchen. _She_ went in, though, boldly enough, and she got it. Now, we do want to see who Dickie is. Is he a dog, or a monkey, or what?"
"He's a spider--_goose_!" said Sylvia. "And now, please, get out of the way. He won't eat if you watch him. I've got a good bit of meat, Betty," she continued. "It'll keep Dickie going for several days, and he likes it all the better when it begins to turn. Don't you Dickie?"
"If you don't all leave the room, girls," said Fanny, "I shall have to report to Miss Symes."
The girls who had entered were rather afraid of Fanny Crawford, and thought it best to obey her instructions. But the news with regard to the newcomers spread wildly all over the house; so much so that when, in course of time, neat-looking Fanny came down to dinner accompanied by her three cousins, the whole school remained breathless, watching the Vivians as they entered. But what magical force is there about certain girls which raises them above the mere accessories of dress? Could there be anything uglier than the attire of these so-called Scotch lassies? And was there ever a prouder carriage than that of Betty Vivian, or a more scornful expression in the eye, or a firmer set of the little lips?
Mrs. Haddo, who always presided at this meal, called the strangers to come and sit near her; and though the school had great difficulty in not bursting into a giggle, there was not a sound of any sort whatever as the three obeyed. Fanny sat down near her friend, Susie Rushworth. Her eyes spoke volumes. But Susie was gazing at Betty's face.
At dinner, the girls were expected to talk French on certain days of the week, and German on others. This was French day, and Susie murmured something to Fanny in that tongue with regard to Betty's remarkable little face. But Fanny was in no mood to be courteous or kind about her relatives. Susie was quick to perceive this, and therefore left her alone.
When dinner came to an end, Mrs. Haddo called the three Vivians into her private sitting-room. This room was even more elegant than the beautiful bedroom which they had just vacated. "Now, my dears," she said, "I want to have a talk with you all."
Sylvia and Hester looked impatient, and shuffled from one ungainly clad foot to the other; but Mrs. Haddo fixed her eyes on Betty's face, and again there thrilled through Betty's heart the marvelous sensation that she had come across a kindred soul. She was incapable, poor child, of putting the thought into such words; but she felt it, and it thawed her rebellious spirit.
Mrs. Haddo sat down. "Now," she said, "you call this school, and, having never been at school before, you doubtless think you are going to be very miserable?"
"If there's much discipline we shall be," said Hester, "and Betty will howl."
"_Don't_ talk like that!" said Betty; and there was a tone in her voice which silenced Hetty, to the little girl's own amazement.
"There will certainly be discipline at school," said Mrs. Haddo, "just as there is discipline in life. What miserable people we should be without discipline! Why, we couldn't get on at all. I am not going to lecture you to-day. As a matter of fact, I never lecture; and I never expect any young girl to do in my school what I would not endeavor to do myself. Above all things, I wish to impress one thing upon you. If you have any sort of trouble--and, of course, dears, you will have plenty--you must come straight to me and tell me about it. This is a privilege I permit to very few girls, but I grant it to you. I give you that full privilege for the first month of your stay at Haddo Court. You are to come to me as you would to a mother, had you, my poor children, a mother living."
"Don't! It makes the lump so bad!" said Betty, clasping her rough little hand against her white throat.
"I think I have said enough on that subject for the present. I am very curious to hear all about your life on the moors--how you spent your time, and how you managed your horses and dogs and your numerous pets."
"Do you really want to hear?" said Betty.
"Certainly; I have said so."
"Do you know," said Hetty, "that Sylvia _would_ bring Dickie here. Betty and I were somewhat against it, although he is a darling. He is the most precious pet in the world, and Sylvia would not part with him. We sent her to the kitchen before dinner to get a bit of raw meat for him. Would you like to see him?"
Mrs. Haddo was silent for a minute. Then she said gently, "Yes, very much. He is a sort of pet, I suppose?"
"He is a spider," said Betty--"a great, enormous spider. We captured him when he was small, and we fed him--oh, not on little flies--that would be cruel--but on morsels of raw meat. Now he is very big, and he has wicked eyes. I would rather call him Demon than Dickie; but Sylvia named him Dickie when he was but a baby thing, so the name has stuck to him. We love him dearly."
"I will come up to your room presently, and you shall show him to me. Have you brought other pets from the country?"
"Oh, stones and shells and bits of the moor."
"Bits of the moor, my dear children!"
"Yes; we dug pieces up the day before yesterday and wrapped them in paper, and we want to plant them somewhere here. We thought they would comfort us. We'd like it awfully if you would let one of the dogs come, too. He is a great sheep-dog, and such a darling! His name is Andrew. I think Donald Macfarlane would part with him if you said we might have him."
"I am afraid I can't just at present, dear; but if you are really good girls, and try your very best to please me, you shall go back to Donald Macfarlane in the holidays, and perhaps I will go with you, and you will show me all your favorite haunts."
"Oh, will you?" said Betty. Her eyes grew softer than ever.
"You are quite a dear for a head mistress," said Sylvia. "We've always read in books that they are such horrors. It is nice for you to say you will come."
"Well, now, I want to say something else, and then we'll go up to your room and see Dickie. I am going to take you three girls up to town to-morrow to buy you the sort of dresses we wear in this part of the world. You can put away these most sensible frocks for your next visit to Craigie Muir. Not a word, dears. You have said I am a very nice head mistress, and I hope you will continue to think so. Now, let us come up to your room."