Chapter XII

In the summer of her seventeenth year she read for the first time one of her father's books, and was surprised to find it exceedingly interesting. Here was a book that wasn't even fiction, and yet, with its wit and gaiety and its big, far-sweeping ideas, gave her thrills as pleasant as any story she could remember. She sat on and read devouringly. The grander words danced quadrilles in her head: "Intelligentsia," for example, and "Reactionary." The book was a survey of modern history written from the viewpoint of a doctrinaire rebel, and Daphne's sympathy was always, as the writer intended, for the Revolutionaries and the Intelligentsia, who appeared to be the same. She longed to be accounted one of the Intelligentsia. It was a new ambition, and her heart went wholly to it. She crept into her father's empty study and abstracted another of his books. And then another. Many of their illusions and quoted names she did not understand, but their wit and some of their matter she did--far more than she had dared to hope. But the final result of her reading, thanks to her habit of bolting what she could not masticate, was to increase the confusion of her mind; she retained only phrases and names and a muddled idea that revolutionaries were always right and reactionaries always wrong.

Why it was necessary to abstract the books surreptitiously she could hardly say; probably because she would be utterly ashamed to be caught by Miss Carrell or Owen reading a book by her father. It was Mr. Bruno, however, who surprised her at it. One wet afternoon she was alone in the great play-room at Old Hall House, gathered sideways in a tattered lounge-chair with her legs under her and the book on the chair's arm. Its sparkling survey of a century's literature had her in such thrill that she did not hear his entry. At the moment she was annoyed to have allowed years to pass in idleness instead of in reading all these authors here written of; brain-hot with resolves to read them all immediately, and flattered by her own delight, since it proved that by nature she was one of the Intelligentsia.

Mr. Bruno stood and looked at her. An unconscious grace in her attitude pleased him and stirred as usual the desire to banter her.

"Relaxed and idle creature," he began. "Yes, you may well jump guiltily. Have you no holiday task, or are there no household duties waiting to be done, that you loll there--for all the world like a statue of Indolence--reading some cheap and nasty trash?"

She rolled on to her back, putting the book between her body and the arm of the chair.

"On the contrary, it's quite a decent book, darling."

(She had taken to calling him "darling" ever since on a holiday visit she had heard Winnie Chatterton doing as much by her parent.)

"Decent? My dear, if it were a serious book on logic you would learn that the epithet 'decent' (which is a disgusting misuse of words, by the way) is what is known as a Petitio Principii, or Begging of the Question. It probably _does_ appear decent to one without any literary palate, but that doesn't make it so."

"I don't say it's anything much, but the man who wrote it, I should think, is not without intelligence."

"What's the idle tale called?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I should not only like to know, but in thirty seconds I shall know."

And he thrust out his hand towards the book, while she rolled over to cover the secret with her body.

"No, you shan't! You shan't. Go away."

"Ah, would she?" smiled he. "Would she? Since she forgets she's a full-sized woman and adopts the tactics of a little child, she shall be treated as such." And, putting one arm behind her back and the other under her knees, he lifted her off the chair and laid her on the carpet.

"How dare you, darling? ... Good night! I didn't know you were so strong..."

Leaping up, she threw her arms about his elbows, trying to pin them to his sides and hold him back from the book. "No, daddy, don't be a cad," she begged; but he took a pace forward, wrenched an arm free, stooped down and picked up the book. She released him, saying: "Well, I think it's a dirty shame."

He turned the book so as to see its title on the back, and read "The Decay of Romanticism, by T. Tenter Bruno."

It moved him, and almost unwittingly he placed an arm about her shoulders and pressed her to his side. Then he tossed the book back on to the chair.

"No, Duffy dear. Read your tales, not stuff like that. It's a dull and heavy work, as are all its fellows--stale, flat and unprofitable."

"It isn't," denied Daphne. "It's fine. I'd no idea your books were as decent as that. They're so slick and witty. I've been screaming with laughter. Daddy, how do you write so wittily as that?"

"Rudeness, my dear--that's all--just rudeness. The rudeness is all. All wit, from the highest to the lowest, can be shown to have its bottom in abuse, whether it's the neatest definition of Voltaire or Johnson or just the low comedian saying: 'Your mother must have been fond of children to bring _you_ up.'"

"But it isn't only their humour--they're so--they've got such ideas----"

He brought her in front of him, holding her there with a hand at each shoulder, that he might look at her. Flitting in his mind was the memory of that February evening when she was born and he had wondered into what long girl she would grow. And here she was--in his hands and before his eyes. "_Elle est mon rève._" Strange that one could tell oneself in French, and be pleased with the phrase, what one would condemn in English as sentimental! "_Elle est mon rève._"

"You speak, Duffy, as if you'd been wasting your time skimming some of the others."

"I've read two, and this is my third, and I'm going to read all of them."

"No, no, dear. Let them alone." He moved his hands and picked up the book. "I have read them all, and I am a great critic, and think them small beer. I'll get you something that'll really interest you, and be improving at the same time. 'Sandford and Merton,' have you read that? And 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' ... Or since you were doubtless made for pleasure rather than profit, I'll get you 'The Worst Girl in the Fourth Form.' Only name your choice, so that you don't read unedifying stuff like this."

She snatched back the book.

"My choice is all the other books of T. Tenter Bruno. They're ripping."

"Oh, they seem more to enthusiasm and--yes, to your youthful mixture of generosity and ignorance--than they really are. They will serve their purpose--amuse a few people and be deservedly forgotten."

"You know they won't. You know you think they're splendid. You'd be a fool if you didn't. I don't want to flatter you, but whatever else you are, you're not a fool. I've never read anything like them. I never thought books on subjects like that could be interesting like that. Daddy, I'm awfully proud of you."

Mr. Bruno smiled, and once more pressed her to his side.

"_Pride_? You don't know one-tenth of what the word means. Pride, Duffy. When you have a daughter who not only speaks well of your books but even reads them, you'll begin to probe the depths of the word." He kissed her forehead. "And when you look her up and down and realise that there's a chance of her--well a chance of her--let us say, a chance of her being not without beauty----"

"Oh, no, I'm not," interrupted Daphne. "I can't see it at all."

"You have tried hard?"

"Of course I have. And I think I'm like a filleted hat-pin."

"Oh, no. No, you're not at all like a filleted hatpin. But you stoop a little, dear. However, that'll be overcome as the sap comes up the stalk; the droop will disappear then, and the whole contraption become less--less green. It's funny, but Nature sometimes completes her sculpturing of a woman in seventeen years, and sometimes she dawdles much longer over the work. If she's anything like me, she dawdles over those she wants to make best. We'll wait till you're twenty, Duffy, and see what you're like then."

The mind that she took back to Hemans House was like a shop whose stock has been largely altered. New goods were stored where the religion had been. They were goods of which she knew the labels and the pictured covers better than the contents. The labels were ever pleasant to handle: "More advanced schools of thought," "In advance of the age in which he lived," "A Leader of the Left," "The School of William Morris"; and the pictures and designs showed Cobden and Bright on their platforms hypnotizing great audiences; Ruskin worrying Utilitarianism with the rumble of his thunderous periods; Swinburne singing melodious blasphemies to the dishonour of God and the glory of Man; and Friedrich Nietzsche (succulent mouthful) coming up like a wind from Germany.

She wanted to be a Leader of the Left. And why not? Quite obviously Miss Vidella was the very type of a reactionary, and equally obviously Daphne had always led a more advanced school. The--the school of Daphne Bruno. She was in advance of the system in which she moved.

Take the question of hockey, which she had been playing in holidays with most flattering success. Miss Vidella's absurd prohibition of the game was a piece of tyranny that ought to be resisted. Hemans House awaited a Liberator. A Risorgimento.

Remembering Cobden and Bright on their rostrums, she decided, after a discussion with the elder girls, that they must have a political meeting. Who would speak? Well, anyone who had anything to say; she, if they liked, would mount the platform first. Only the elder girls would be regarded as possessing the full rights of citizens and allowed to attend. It sounded a jolly game, and these elder girls assembled eagerly in an empty class-room at the advertised hour and pushed themselves into desks or along the form that stretched in front of the desks under the mistress's low platform. In the middle of this form sat Daphne with her legs crossed.

"We ought to have a chairman," said she, when nobody seemed to know what was going to happen next.

"Oh, yes, let's have a chairman," said a very lanky girl, Viola Rance, and she instanced her neighbour: "Queenie Dutroit'll be chairman."

"No, I shan't," snapped Queenie, horrified at the suggestion that she should do anything more public than sitting where she was.

"I vote old Viola's chairman herself," called a girl who, being at the back and rather small, was in no danger of being thrust into the position.

"Yes, yes," endorsed several; and Queenie added, "Yes, she's so ready to suggest others, let her do the chairmaning herself."

Daphne, to push matters on, started a clapping of her hands, with the result, as she expected, that every girl did the same; and Viola, not displeased, though very red and inclined to giggle, slid flexuously on to the platform and into the mistress's chair behind the writing-table. The applause stopped, and the chairman looked down at Daphne in the front row and asked:

"But what do I do?"

"You introduce me."

Viola got up, giggled, and sat down in red confusion.

"Don't be an ass, Vi," grumbled Daphne. "If you'd any gumption you'd have entered into the spirit of the thing and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I have much pleasure in introducing our first speaker for this evening, Miss Daphne Bruno.'"

Viola immediately got up and raced through this sentence, though the last words were drowned in the rising tide of the giggle.

Then Daphne stepped on to the platform. No one had the wit or the courage to start the conventional applause; and when she turned and faced the audience she saw only a roomful of girls, some of whom were gaping at her and some sniggering as if they thought she looked rather a fool. She felt disappointed and sad. Why was it that, whether you were creating books or organizing picturesque demonstrations, it was so much easier to see them in dreams than to give them form. The ideas for a speech that had foggily filled her head thinned into nothing. She picked up something off the writing-table, put it back again, and began without heart:

"Well, it's like this. It's--I mean, I think we ought to have hockey. All the other decent schools are."

Not another word could she think of. She saw nothing but a horrid hiatus before her. If only some of those staring girls would say "Hear, hear!" But though it had probably occurred to many of them, all were too nervous of making fools of themselves. And indeed there was nothing more to say. Not being practised in political oratory, Daphne had expressed the origin and the business of the meeting, the reason of her speaking and the views which the audience had brought with them and which they would take away, in twenty words and ten seconds. But it seemed to her a sickly failure, and with a big effort she threw some more words into the awful lacuna.

"It's a topping game. Other schools are playing hockey, and I think we ought to have hockey too."

Some one giggled at the back, and fortunately this stirred temper, and temper stirred speech.

"I don't see anything funny in it. Giggling never did anything yet. It's perfectly piffling to go for a walk when we might be playing hockey. What I vote is that we all go in a sort of deputation and ask Miss Vidella to let us play hockey this term. If she gives in--which isn't likely--she'll probably only treat us to some of her celebrated queenly sarcasm; and if she refuses we shall have to organise a sort of secret intrigue to force her hand--a Liberationist Society, if you like. Like the National Assembly in France. Or the Risorgimento. I've got a plan of action in the event of it coming to that. I think we could all write to our parents asking them to support the general desire for hockey, and simply get her flooded with letters. I've got her absolutely weighed up, and I'm dead certain that she'd never say 'No' to the majority of the parents. It's always the same; these things only want the courage and--and some one to make a start. Just you see. If we have the grit to hold out we shall win."

It was not at all a bad speech, thought Daphne, and for its crown needed only a burst of applause. But nothing followed it except an embarrassed silence, and when that was getting too uncomfortable, an upward glance from the chairman, with the question:

"What do I do now, Dafs?"

"Oh, you can ask if anybody has any comment to make on what they have heard."

Viola stood slightly.

"Has anybody any comment to make on----" But it sounded to her so silly that the rest of the sentence was lost in the giggle with which, blushingly, she resumed her chair.

Nobody had anything to say; most were laughing at Viola.

Daphne stepped off the platform and sat again on the form in front, crossing her legs and grasping her knee.

"Is that all?" inquired the chairman, when she saw the principal speaker disappearing like that.

"Oh, I suppose so."

"Well, what happens now?"

"Oh, you can ask them if they agree to what I have said, to show it by holding up their hands."

Daphne knew that when the question was put all would want to hold up their hands and all would wait for some one else to do it first, so she flung up her own, and looking round, saw a forest of arms, many of which were waving about and trying to be funny.

"Ask if any one disagrees."

"Any one dis-agree?"

Not a soul. No one was likely to make herself so conspicuous.

"Well, what happens now?"

Daphne shrugged. Her imagination was vividly showing her what a good chairman might have made of this triumph. "Oh, tell them the meeting's adjourned."

"The meeting's adjourned," said Viola, and, giggling, she jumped off the platform.

The minute the meeting was adjourned everybody had an undelivered speech to deliver. They stood in a group round Daphne and argued the question. It ended in her plan being adopted and a deputation formed to wait on the head mistress.

Daphne was at once proud and nervous as she led her deputation the next day, just before lunch, into Miss Vidella's room.

Miss Vidella was sitting at a little writing-table. She watched this entry of half a dozen girls with lifted eyebrows.

"What is it you want, dears? I am very busy."

"We want to know--we wanted to ask you," began Daphne, "on behalf of all the girls, if you would let us play hockey this term?"

Miss Vidella stared at the speaker. She removed her spectacles and held them in her fat hand on the table. That she was angry there could be no doubt, and that she was thinking out some sarcasms like a dentist selecting his sharp little tools.

"Have you ever played hockey in the Christmas term?"

Daphne was obliged to answer "No."

"Have you ever played hockey any term?"

"No."

"Then why should you play hockey this term? I am not clear on the point, Daphne dear."

"We thought perhaps if we petitioned you, you would let us."

Miss Vidella replaced her spectacles on her nose as if the point could now be studied more closely. The point, it appeared, was in the middle of Daphne's face.

"Have I ever, on being petitioned, allowed you to do anything unladylike?"

Daphne couldn't very well point out to her that the epithet "unladylike" was a _Petitio Principii_, or Begging of the Question, so she murmured, "No."

"If you were to come to me, one by one, and say: 'Dear Miss Vidella, may I do something which you consider unlady-like?' would not my answer be: 'No, my dear, not at Hemans House'?"

She had acted the "No, my dear," with its inclination of the head, to an imaginary girl at her side, and now turned to Daphne for her reply.

"Yes--I suppose so."

"Well, would not the answer that I give to you severally be the answer that I give to you all together?"

Daphne was confused, and said again: "I suppose so."

"Then I am not at all clear as to what is the idea of your coming in such a funny little group as this. Run away, my dears, and get ready for your dinners. I am very busy, and have no time just now to play with you in your strange little games."

As the deputation moved out, Daphne felt furious. It was the only thing to feel if you were not to feel foolish.

"I told you nothing would come of that," she said hastily, to forestall any criticism of her leadership, "nothing except a performance by Petsy. But I never expected anything to. That was only a flourish. It's the next step that matters. I'm perfectly determined to beat her on this matter. And I should think that you would be after she's tried to make fools of you like that."

The letter to the parents, outlined by Daphne, she thought exceedingly well done. As a politician she saw the skilfulness of the phrase, "give your _support_ to the request of _many other_ parents"; and as an authoress with some idea of emotional effect, she was particularly satisfied with the postscript, "_Please_ do." No kindly parent would resist that.

When Miss Vidella watched the flooding in of requests from fathers and mothers that, if possible, hockey might be taught to their girls, she was more than flustered--she was frightened. To be queenly with a deputation of tongue-tied pupils was one thing, but to resist a concerted movement by parents was quite another. It could not be done. The difficulty was how to yield to the parents without seeming to eat the sarcasms she had offered to the deputation. She squeezed through this awkward pass by saying to the assembled school, one day before lunch:

"I understand now that when some of the elder girls waited on me last week with a request for the institution of hockey, they did so at the suggestion of their parents. If the girls had been wiser they would have made this clear. I think it very right and proper of your parents to trust you to come and tell me all that they consider desirable for your welfare, and to know that I shall always give every attention to their wishes. I may in this case doubt the wisdom of their opinion, but I understand that it must take precedence over mine. The request will therefore be conceded. I understand that Miss Bellamy has a knowledge of the game, and that, according to her, our present field will be large enough. I will therefore order an adequate supply of the necessary implements, and hope you will be able to try your hands at this new recreation in a day or two. I shall, of course, be there to supervise your play at so dangerous a game."

She moved away to a chorus of "Thank you, Miss Vidella."

Daphne knew that every girl had thrown at her a swift glance, and she tried to cover her feelings with a mask of unconcern. The smile that broke through her control, and fought with her lips, was rather one of nervousness at being looked at than of exultation in a triumph. Her glow was mixed with a knowledge not wholly pleasant that she had never so completely despised her head mistress. In such contempt, as in the deeps of a pool, lay possibilities of which she could feel herself afraid.

Miss Bellamy was now dressed in an unexpected importance, and very conscious of it. A stout, bustling woman of thirty-five, she fussed about, equipping the two teams which were to make the first venture into the new game, marking the field with their aid, and explaining on a blackboard the principles of hockey to those who had everything to learn. And the day of the first trial, a golden afternoon in St. Luke's Summer, she led the girls to their field as excitedly as any of them. Miss Vidella followed less easily and happily. And Daphne, who throughout the preparations had been as officious and explanatory as Miss Bellamy, declared that Petsy had come simply and solely to make herself a nuisance. She would probably stand on the touch line and worry the game like a fat puppy who was feeling rather sick.

It was an accurate prophecy. When all the girls were in their places, and Miss Bellamy had done pushing them there, or pointing all over the field with her whistle, Daphne shouted: "Shall I bully off with Viola?"

And Miss Vidella at once raised her voice.

"'Bully off.' I do wish you wouldn't talk slang, Daphne dear. You know I have never tolerated it. 'Bully off' is a phrase that I have never heard, and do not wish to hear again."

"But it's the correct term, Miss Vidella."

"It really is," endorsed Miss Bellamy, who had rushed up to bring an expert's advice to the solution of a difficulty.

"Dear me"--Miss Vidella lifted her shoulders resignedly--"what unpleasant terms these rough games do employ!"

They bullied off, and the game swung into noisy life. Its two most conspicuous performers were Daphne and Miss Bellamy. Daphne was early captured by it, mind and body. She was nearly always in possession of the ball, and the repeated running had damped her forehead and shortened her breathing; she felt the rises of her breast, and a delightful dryness and thirst stabbing her low down in the throat. There was a breeze that would not have been perceptible but for the dampness on her brow, and when it touched that, it strangely heightened her pleasure. It carried fugitive thoughts of long drinks, the spray of the sea, or immersion in bath or lake. Once she had fallen heavily, and the smell of dried earth on her palm toned exactly with the thirst, the quick breathing, the sting of gathering blisters, and the coldness on her temples. Health and optimism had become sensuous things. And how was it that these sensations, though within her, were at one with remembered things without--with firelight on old wood, mellow evenings, birds and squirrels, and sentences in Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she were flying straight into the sun"--with all those things that she must capture and put into books?

Miss Bellamy rushed about, with her whistle at her teeth or in her hand. When she wasn't blowing the whistle, she was shouting: "Keep your places! Pass the ball--oh, for goodness' sake pass it sometimes. Now then, Evelyn! Played! Oh, played indeed!" Probably she wanted to impress the pupils and the principal. And certainly she impressed Miss Vidella--but very unfavourably. There was an abnormal second when she was standing at rest to watch a scramble near Miss Vidella, and Miss Vidella took the opportunity to begin, "I can't think, Miss Bellamy, that it's necessary to shout at the children so"; but just then Miss Bellamy saw a crass error in the play, shot out a pointing forefinger, and blew her whistle imperiously.

"Sticks! Sticks! Sticks!" she cried. "Madeline you mustn't lift your stick above your shoulder."

"Come on--that's a free hit," shouted Daphne. "Chuck us the pill."

It was useless wishing she hadn't said it, for Miss Vidella was already calling.

"Daphne dear. Come here. What was that you said?"

"I said, 'Chuck us the pill'."

Miss Vidella nodded.

"I thought those were the words. Well, I am so ignorant of this game that I do not know if that is the prescribed expression. Is it?"

"Well--no."

"You mean, it was slang?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Precisely. And I cannot allow the elder girls to set such an example to the younger ones. Besides, it is great disrespect to Miss Bellamy to use language like that in a game of which she is in charge. Let me hear you apologise to her."

Daphne's first impulse was to throw down her stick and walk off, but she remembered the delight of the game, and determined not to be robbed of it by any pomposity of Miss Vidella. And she so far obeyed her head mistress as to turn to Miss Bellamy and mutter: "Miss Vidella says I'm to apologise to you." Miss Bellamy smiled an acknowledgment, and a bow from the head mistress indicated that she was satisfied, and the game might proceed.

Daphne had no wish to offend a second time, and for the rest of the game, except for the very last minute, managed to play and shout without being called to order. She had, in fact, forgotten her anger with the head mistress, so exciting was the struggle. The two goals won by her side, in defiant answer to two won by their opponents, had been scored by herself, and the girls were saying: "No wonder you wanted to play hockey so as to show off." Her face and neck were streaming, and her body seemed to have been fitted with a new and different breathing system. Frequently she wiped her forehead with her sleeve, or tossed the wet hair-wisps out of her eyes. If she was not driving the ball herself she was shouting encouragement and praise to the others. "Oh, played! ... I say, well played! ... Look out! ... _Billow_!" Her will and every faculty were set upon securing the third goal before the shrieking and perspiring Miss Bellamy should sound her whistle for the last time. The low slant of the sunlight and the stretching of the shadows told her that time was very short. Any second now might end the game. The matter was desperate; there was a look of evening over the field. Her stick perpetually reached the ball and forced it through a jumble of confused amateurs, while Miss Bellamy shouted: "Keep your places! Keep your places, all of you!" and Miss Vidella could be heard muttering a dislike of the worse scrimmages. At last Daphne won through with the ball, and came down the side-line with irresistible impetus, confident that now on the very sound of the whistle she was going to score her third goal. She had a faint impression of Miss Vidella stepping back from the touch-line so as to be out of danger. So fierce was her rush that the opposing full-back, frenzied with ignorance and dismay, hit her with great force on the shin. In the moment of sharp pain, Daphne flung her stick anywhere, and muttered: "Oh, damn! damn!"

All around her heard, and cast quick glances at the head mistress. All were probably feeling the satisfaction of being present when something really serious had happened. The head mistress, no doubt, was the most satisfied of all, because there are few happinesses so great as the first enjoyment of indignation.

"Miss Bellamy. Miss Bellamy," she shrieked to the referee, who, from her distance, was shouting encouragement to this waning corner of the game. "Miss Bellamy, stop the game."

"Play on, you girls," shouted Miss Bellamy. "Don't stand there as if you were afraid of the ball. Keep the ball moving, for goodness' sake."

"Do nothing of the sort," commanded Miss Vidella. "Don't touch the ball. Miss Bellamy"--Miss Bellamy was running, whistle in mouth, to solve the problem that was hindering the game--"I have instructed the girls to stop. They are very rightly too shocked to continue. I wish them to stop. Please blow that whistle, if that is the way such a game is brought to an end."

Miss Bellamy, bewildered, sounded her whistle and stood near to witness a public censuring.

Daphne, after rubbing her shin, walked to her hockey stick, slightly exaggerating her limp, picked it up and examined its binding.

"Daphne.... I hardly know how to speak to you. For fifteen years I have given my life to the education and guidance of my schoolgirls, but never till this day have I heard one of them--I cannot bring myself to say it--heard one of them use such a word as passed your lips just now. I pray I shall never be asked to live through that moment again. I--and all these dear girls, I believe--are humiliated and ashamed. You, too, I dare believe, are also deeply ashamed."

"Well, I don't see why I should have been hit on the shins for nothing. It'd have been a goal if----"

"Go back to the school. I confess I know not how to deal with you. I confess to being beaten by you. Fortunately there is no precedent in my experience which enables me to deal adequately on the spur of the moment with your offence. You are a girl whom it seems impossible to influence or guide. If all the affection and sympathy and gentle correction of the last few years"--Daphne made an obvious "Pooh!" with her lips--"has been unavailing to soften your nature, I know no other methods. They have always been those of Hemans House. Go back to the school and wait in your bedroom. I shall have to consider how to deal with you. I feel I shall have to write to your dear father----" Daphne was disposed to reply: "I should. It'll amuse him frightfully." "And do not attempt to see any other girls. I cannot have them taught your dockyard oaths.... This evening I will..."

But Daphne had not waited for the rest.