The Head Girl at the Gables Part 12

CHAPTER VIII

Vivien Makes Terms

Mr. George Forrester and Mr. Barton Forrester were brothers, and partners in the old-established firm of solicitors, Deane and Forrester.

The Barton Forresters lived at the opposite side of Porthkeverne, on the road to St. Cyr, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned red brick Queen Anne house named The Firs, with a Greek portico and iron balconies outside the windows.

The George Forresters always decided that the house was the exact epitome of Aunt Carrie. It was stately, and stood on its dignity, making you feel that it had a position to keep up, and extended hospitality as in duty bound, but with no special enthusiasm. Houses are largely a reflection of their owners, and five minutes in a drawing-room will often suffice to give you the correct mental atmosphere of a family. If the picturesque general disorder of Windy Howe suggested art run riot, the well-kept but tasteless precision of The Firs expressed a totally opposite temperament. No one could accuse Aunt Carrie of being artistic: her rooms were handsome and spotlessly neat, but they gave you the sense of being furnished, not arranged, and their lack of beauty struck a chill to aesthetic souls.

Aunt Carrie herself was big, and bustling, and overbearing, with well-cut features, a high colour, and a determined voice. She is described first, because she was so decidedly the head of the family.

Uncle Barton only came in second. He was a gentle, pleasant little man, with kindly wrinkles round his eyes, and a habit of whistling under his breath when things grew stormy at home. In early days of matrimony he made a struggle for his own way, but abandoned it later in favour of a peace-at-any-price policy. He was a town councillor, and vicar's warden at the parish church, as well as a special constable. In his spare time he lived for golf. Lindon, his only son, was exactly like him, even to the habit of whistling and the propensity for golf. With Lindon, however, sh.e.l.ls at the present were doing the whistling, and the trenches took the place of bunkers. His photograph in khaki stood in a silver frame on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

The three girls--Elsie, Betty, and Vivien--were shaded varieties of their mother. When Lorraine counted up her blessings, she always placed Rosemary and Monica as special items. She did not get on with her cousins.

"I like Uncle Barton and Lindon," she decided. "You never hear them say a nasty thing about anybody. It's the girls who pick holes in everyone and everything."

The att.i.tude of the female portion of the family at The Firs was fiercely critical. It might be amusing to themselves, but it was uncomfortable for other people. Lorraine, visiting there in a new dress, literally squirmed when she felt eyes of inspection directed upon it. It was the same with accomplishments. Both she and Rosemary dreaded to play or sing at The Firs. The chilly "Thank you!" at the end of the performance hurt more than brickbats. The Barton Forresters were always urging on the George Forresters. They started on the a.s.sumption that, as a family, they were more clever, capable, and up-to-date, and therefore in a position to give good advice. Elsie, recently engaged to a naval officer, considered that she had scored over Rosemary, who was six months older and still unappropriated. Betty rubbed in her indispensable work at the Red Cross Hospital with comments on those slackers who s.h.i.+rked giving their fair share of help. Vivien's sharp tongue was Lorraine's chief thorn in the flesh at The Gables.

The fact that Vivien was her cousin made things extremely difficult for Lorraine. She could have done battle royal with a stranger, and fought things out in the lists at school and have finished with them. But to quarrel with Vivien was another matter. It meant also quarrelling with Aunt Carrie, Elsie, and Betty, who would take affairs to the tribunal of Pendlehurst and raise a domestic sandstorm.

Long before, when they were quite children, the two girls had quarrelled, and Aunt Carrie had solemnly, and quite unjustifiably, complained to her brother-in-law about Lorraine's conduct. Lorraine had never forgiven her father for not taking her part more firmly on that occasion. The remembrance of the ready ear he had lent to the enemy's side of the question had prevented any future appeal to intervention.

Matters with Vivien went on in a species of guerrilla warfare.

As head girl, Lorraine had, of course, the whip hand at The Gables, but in every fresh scheme she found her cousin a dead weight and an impediment. Vivien always suggested something different. At committee meetings she invariably started an opposition to every resolution.

Nothing could be carried without bickering. In her capacity of monitress Vivien was not a favourite. She was far too high-handed and domineering to win any measure of popularity among the juniors. Surging discontent sometimes broke out into rebellion. It is a delicate task for a general whose aide-de-camp is too officious. Lorraine, with a feeling that she was treading on eggs, brought up the subject of discipline at the next committee meeting.

"We must see that rules are kept, naturally," she conceded, "but I think perhaps lately some of us have just a little exceeded our authority. We don't want to get snubbed by Miss Kingsley, and told to mind our own business!"

"If you mean me," retorted Vivien, "I wish you'd say so straight out and have done with it! I hate innuendoes. I consider that the kids want keeping in order, and I'm there to do it, whether they like it or whether they don't."

"We must, of course, keep order; but if we can do it pleasantly, it makes a far nicer feeling in the school. Some of those babes will do anything for a monitress they like."

"Oh, it's all very well to go about fis.h.i.+ng for popularity, like some people we know!"

"I suppose you mean _me_?" said Patsie quickly.

"If the cap fits, put it on."

Nellie and Claire began to giggle at the prospect of a spar between Patsie and Vivien. Dorothy was fiddling with her pencil and frowning.

"I don't let the kiddies take liberties with me," she vouchsafed; "yet they escort me home in relays every day."

"A monitress ought surely to be _liked_!" said Audrey plaintively.

"What I feel is, that we ought to work more in harmony," explained Lorraine. "It doesn't do for one monitress to allow a thing, and another to forbid it. The juniors don't know where they are."

"Yes, we can't each run the show on our own," agreed Patsie.

"Couldn't we draw up a sort of general list to go upon?"

"A black-list?"

"Well, I mean some general guiding rules."

"It's quite unnecessary," demurred Vivien. "My advice is to keep the kids in their places, and there'll be no more bother with them. It's that sloppy sentimental truckling to them that's at the bottom of all the trouble. I've got to go home now. You may make any rules you like, but I shan't promise to keep them."

Vivien sc.r.a.ped back her chair and clumped noisily from the room, leaving the majority of the committee indignant. They consulted together, and by general consent drew up a short code for the use of monitresses. They handed a copy of it to Vivien next morning. She glanced at it casually, and flung it into the waste-paper basket.

"I'm a monitress as much as the rest of you," she remarked, "and I have my authority from Miss Kingsley. I can't see that I'm answerable to anyone else."

Among the juniors, Vivien's reputation was not pleasant. Naturally, they talked over the monitresses among themselves. Juniors are sharp-eyed little mortals, and they had a very good idea of how matters stood.

"Vivien loves to boss," said Nan Carson. "She's wild because she's not head, and she takes it out of us in exchange."

"I don't see why she should order us about so."

"She's not a mistress!"

"No, only a monitress."

"It's not fair."

"I shall tell her so, some day."

"She's a mean old thing!"

"Why should we obey her?"

So matters jogged along till one day they reached a crisis. Vivien happened to be pa.s.sing the door of Form II at about ten minutes to nine.

It was, of course, before the official school hour, and Miss Poole had not yet entered to take the call-over. Some of the children were getting out books, some were making a last effort to learn lessons, and a few were talking, laughing, and throwing paper pellets at one another. They were not making very much noise, and most monitresses would have just walked past the door and taken no notice. Not so Vivien. She bustled in, and commanded order.

"Marjorie, sit down! Connie, shut your desk! Doris, stop talking! Effie, pick up those pieces of paper at once! You ought all to be quietly in your places."

"It's only ten minutes to nine," grumbled the girls.

"I don't care what time it is. If you're here at half-past eight you'll have to behave yourselves. I shall come in again in a few minutes, and if any girl is talking I shall put her name down."

Vivien stalked away, leaving mutiny behind her.

"No one's ever told us before that we weren't to talk before Miss Poole came into the room."

"It's absurd nonsense!"

"_Everybody_ talks before nine!"

"You bet Vivien does herself!"

"I'm not going to sit still," piped Effie.