Chapter THE FIRST: Sally at Home

The hall-door bell rang violently. Sally Brendan, seated on the schoolroom hearthrug with a volume of Shakespeare on her knees, gave an expressive whistle and, dropping the book, ran to the window and leaned out as far as she could without losing her balance. In this way it was just possible to catch a glimpse of the front-door steps.

"Mrs. Musgrave! I guessed as much," she said, her head reappearing at last. "I can tell you one thing, St. Martin, she is in a thundering temper."

Her governess sighed. "You have no reason to say that, Sally: and at any rate this is lesson-time, and Mrs. Musgrave's call is intended for your mother. It has nothing to do with you."

"Hasn't it, though? Bet you a bob it has; and, as to her temper, vicars' wives are worse than most people because they have to keep them under so much. You should have seen her umbrella almost jumping in her hand with rage, and then the bell! You heard it yourself, and you can't deny it was like the noise telegraph boys make; and..."

"Sally, I must insist that you sit down and don't talk any more."

With a grunt Sally flopped on to the hearthrug, where she placed her ear to the floor, scout fashion, before re-opening her Shakespeare.

"Only wish I could hear through a carpet," she muttered discontentedly. "Bet your life she has come to tick me off to Mother. She looked mad, just like a cow that sees red."

Sally was quite right about Mrs. Musgrave's temper. The vicar's wife was very angry indeed. With a curt "No," she waved aside a cup of tea and declined a chair, striding the length of the drawing-room and back before she came to a halt beside Mrs. Brendan.

"Tell me whose writing this is! Be honest, Eva!" she demanded, tapping a square of white cardboard that she placed in the other's hands. On the cardboard was scrawled in pencil, between inverted commas,

"Two are Company."

"It ... it looks like Sally's writing," said Mrs. Brendan unhappily. "What do you say, Cecilia?"

A tall fair girl who had been standing by the tea-tray came over, picked up the card, and throwing it down impatiently answered, "It is Sally's writing, of course. What has she been doing now, Mrs. Musgrave?"

The vicar's wife almost choked as she said, "Insulting my husband, making him the laughing-stock of the parish. She is a wicked, unnatural girl."

"No, no; not unnatural or wicked," murmured Mrs. Brendan deprecatingly. "High-spirited, too high-spirited now and then, I admit, but she is so clever."

"I am glad no one ever called my daughters clever then." Mrs. Musgrave's voice rose almost to a shriek. "Cleverness of that sort is criminal and will only lead to prison."

"Of what sort?" asked Cecilia. "Do tell us, Mrs. Musgrave."

The vicar's wife glared at them both almost as if she did not see them, then sank down on the sofa.

"You know our weekly lectures under the Diocesan Mental Improvement Scheme?" she said. "I mean my husband's lectures in the Parish Room on Fridays. They are not well attended, but so few people care to improve their minds nowadays."

"Cecilia has a singing class in Clinton," interposed Mrs. Brendan hastily; "it is the only day Signor Corsi can run down from town, and I have been so tired lately, the doctor said 'Rest in the afternoons.' He did, didn't he, Cecilia?"

"Everyone has some reasons for not going, of course," said Mrs. Musgrave sourly. "I did not come to criticise yours. I have no doubt that if you and Cecilia are busy, for others Herbert's learning is too profound, too out of date in this respect, to please a superficial younger generation. Last Friday, at any rate, it was raining; raining quite heavily."

Mrs. Brendan's face brightened. "That was it, Alice. I remember I had my boots on intending to go out and then it rained and Cecilia said 'Don't go.' No, I forgot, Cecilia was in Clinton, so it must have been Amy, the housemaid. She takes such care of me."

"Indeed!" Mrs. Musgrave thrust out a hand for silence. "Your going or not is beside the point, Eva, and I must beg you to let me speak without interrupting me. As a matter of fact I had a cold and did not attend myself. When Herbert reached the room there was no one there at all except ... except..."

"Except...?" said Mrs. Brendan agitatedly. Surely Sally, unless dragged by force, would not have gone to a lecture on the Cuneiform Writings of Ancient Babylon?

"Except a goat," said Mrs. Musgrave slowly and impressively; "an evil-smelling goat of Farmer Reed's, tied to the front row of chairs."

"And ... and you mean it had this round its neck?" asked Cecilia pointing to the card, with its mocking "Two are Company."

In spite of heroic efforts her voice trembled with laughter, and Mrs. Musgrave bounced up from the sofa, pointing her finger at her.

"Laugh!" she said. "Laugh if you can, thoughtless girl, but your sister, by her rudeness, her cleverness if you will, has undone years of Herbert's patient work in the parish. Some of the choir boys were peering through the window, giggling, and as he returned home they dared to call out 'Giddy Goat' after him down the street. 'Giddy Goat!' Think of it! To Herbert." At this point she collapsed on the sofa and began to weep.

"I ... I didn't mean to laugh. It was horrible of Sally," said Cecilia, conscience-stricken, while Mrs. Brendan went over and laid her hand on Mrs. Musgrave's shoulder.

"We have been friends for years, Alice," she said. "Don't let this come between us. I am ashamed of Sally."

"You have cause to be. You will have more cause," said the vicar's wife bitterly between her sobs. "She is a dreadful child, without heart or conscience."

"She is my daughter, Alice, so I can hardly agree with you," interrupted Mrs. Brendan, in what, considering her mild temperament, was almost the heat of anger. "Sally has plenty of heart, but she is thoughtless."

"She is thoroughly spoilt, Mother," broke in Cecilia; "first while you were in India, by Uncle Frank and Aunt Antoinette, and now at home. I am sure we owe it to Mrs. Musgrave to acknowledge this. Sally is just a spoilt little beast."

"Thoroughly spoilt and selfish," agreed their visitor, drying her eyes and beginning to pull on her gloves. "All I can say is, Eva, that if Sally remains in Hartcombe Vale and is allowed to break away from her governess and play tricks like a street urchin, I shall consider it a direct insult to Herbert."

"I will speak to her, of course," murmured Mrs. Brendan, and Mrs. Musgrave, now standing by the door, laughed scornfully.

"You mean, my dear Eva, that Sally will speak to you, and will prove in a few brief words how right and correct--clever and high-spirited, I should say--her conduct has been. No, Cecilia, do not interrupt me. I owe it to Herbert and the parish to enter my protest at least."

At this moment violent sounds were heard overhead, the crash of something heavy on the floor, a scream, more things falling, and then a girl's clear, ringing laugh.

"The schoolroom, I believe?" said Mrs. Musgrave, "and another exhibition of Sally's high-spirited cleverness, I suppose?"

As she opened the door she sniffed and shrugged her shoulders. "Let me see you off," returned Cecilia coldly. She was very angry at the way their visitor had spoken to her mother, the more that she felt the underlying reproach was true. Sally was an odious child. There was no use blinking the fact.

In the hall Mrs. Musgrave bade her come no further. "I am quite capable of seeing myself off; besides, I might be tempted to say more than I should wish in my last words." After which she added, "It seems you are needed to restore order in the schoolroom."

To judge from the continuous noise upstairs, loud laughter mingled with the barking of an excited dog, this was likely to be true.

"Oh, St. Martin!" rang out a girl's voice. "What rotten bad luck! but I can't stop laughing; you do look so funny."

At this point Mrs. Musgrave closed the front door, and Cecilia, rage in her heart, ran up the stairs two at a time.

In the schoolroom she found even greater chaos than she had expected--a bare table, an inkpot emptying itself amongst a heap of books in the grate, and on the floor someone struggling wildly to free herself from the table-cloth, while a fox terrier plunged at her protruding feet.

"Oh, mighty Cæsar! Dost thou lie so low?" chanted a small, thin girl with a mass of red hair framing her freckled face; as, seeing her sister, she drew herself up into a theatrical attitude and pointed to the recumbent figure.

Cecilia told her sharply to be quiet, and having turned the fox terrier out of the room, knelt down and extricated the governess; but when she tried to help her to her feet Miss Martin refused to do more than struggle into a sitting posture.

"Will you kindly ask Sally to bring me scissors?" she said, her voice trembling, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. "She has sewn my skirt to the carpet."

"Sally!"

Cecilia's eyes blazed, but Sally only laughed. "She had been reading to me, yards and yards of Shakespeare, and I was fed up, so I said I would only listen if I might sit on the rug, so St. Martin said, 'Right oh.'"

"I never said 'Right oh'," exclaimed the scandalised Miss Martin. "I said you might remain there if you were quiet."

"Well, I was quiet, once I found the darning wool, and St. Martin has such a long skirt that I button-holed her down by it, and then when Mary came to say tea was ready in the dining-room I truly and honest Injun forgot I had done so and..."

"And I rose from my chair," said Miss Martin, "and I put my foot into my skirt and..."

"It was a mistake to clutch at the tablecloth as you fell, all the same," interposed Sally gravely. "I simply shouted, 'Don't clutch,' and you clutched, and there you are."

"Sally, go to your bedroom," said Cecilia sharply, as she cut the darning wool and pulled the governess on to her feet. "Miss Martin, I am so sorry; it was abominable of her."

"It was unpardonable," said Miss Martin, pulling the frayed ends of wool out of her skirt with trembling fingers. "I am afraid I must ask to see your mother at once, Miss Brendan."

"You mean you won't come back again?"

Sally was still standing in the doorway.

"I do mean that. It is impossible to teach you anything."

"Sally, did you hear me say go to your bedroom?" broke in Cecilia impatiently, but the girl still lingered.

"Let me speak to St. Martin alone," she said.

Miss Martin shook her head. "I have no wish to do that, Sally. It is too late if you think an apology can cover all your rudeness; and now, Miss Brendan, may I see your mother?"

As they went downstairs together Sally watched them from the landing, a derisive smile at the corner of her lips, that marked, however, a certain regret. It was a pity that St. Martin insisted on going. Of course, she wept too easily, but all the same she was a bit of a sport, and had forgiven and forgotten many little scenes scarcely to her pupil's credit. In addition, she had always admitted that Sally was clever, and Sally liked people who were ready to do this.

"Clever people aren't like other people; they have got to have outlets for their energy and originality," was her argument for silencing various twinges of conscience; and she at once put it forward when Mrs. Brendan sent for her to the drawing-room as soon as Miss Martin had gone home.

Cecilia was there to strengthen her mother, and said angrily, "If only you didn't think yourself so clever."

"Know--not think," said Sally sweetly. It was no use losing your temper with a sugar-plum like Cecilia.

"I am so clever you know, frightfully clever," she continued, "and Miss Martin was such an ass, quite a nice ass, of course, not a goat like the vicar and his double."

This diverted the conversation from the schoolroom to the lecture, and as Sally recorded afterwards in her diary, "The floodgates opened," but even Cecilia admitted that the ensuing deluge fell like water off a duck's back where the culprit was concerned.

"I really truly am sorry if I made Mrs. Musgrave horrid to you," was the nearest confession to which the sinner could be won; and when she had been sent to bed, and carried off a choice of library books for company, Mrs. Brendan admitted that this was not enough.

"She will have to apologise to Mrs. Musgrave and Miss Martin, Cecilia. I must talk to her alone to-morrow."

"She will have to be sent away," returned the elder sister. "I was at school at thirteen, and why not Sally, who is nearly fourteen?"

"She is the youngest," said Mrs. Brendan weakly, "and you know she has been away from me so much."

"I admit Aunt Antoinette did her no good, except to teach her French, and as to Uncle Frank, why you ever left her with them like that for months and months on end I can't imagine."

"You see, your Uncle Frank was so devoted to her as a small child, while your father and I were still in India, and then when your father died and I came back he wanted to keep her, and as I had you and the two boys, and he had been so good to Sally, I didn't like to refuse. I fear I did wrong, however, very wrong; I am sorry now."

Mrs. Brendan usually repented of the few decisions she was prevailed upon to make, and now she shook her head sadly.

Cecilia laughed somewhat maliciously. "Uncle Frank was sorry too. He had enough of her after a bit, and packed her off home."

"My dear, that is ungenerous. It was not till his boy was born, remember, and then there would have been the difficulty of maintaining a nursery and a schoolroom at the same time, as Sally was nearly eleven. He always said she was clever and offered to pay for her education."

"He said, 'Send her to school,' didn't he?"

Mrs. Brendan was silent. This was perfectly true. She could remember her brother-in-law's face quite well when he gave this advice.

"School will do her a world of good, teach her to find her own level, you know," he had said, and when Mrs. Brendan had asked anxiously, "You think her clever?" he had answered:

"Abominably, the makings of a first-class prig, and may I be forgiven for training her."

Undoubtedly Uncle Frank was right. Sally was clever beyond the average girl of her age both in games and work, fearless and quick, with a boundless ambition that made her strain every nerve to excel in whatever she undertook.

"Let me; I can do it," had been her earliest watchword, and a proud uncle had delighted in the pluck and endurance that had backed this assertion.

"All right, kiddie, I will show you," he would say good-naturedly, whether it was a case of arithmetic or cricket, and so put Sally through a strenuous and valuable apprenticeship.

"That child will get somewhere," he would say delightedly, while Aunt Antoinette, who was earlier disillusioned as to her spoilt niece's charms, shrugged, and murmured:

"It may be ... yes ... but I ask you ... where?"

By the time Sally was thirteen her elder sister had no doubts at all as to her future destination.

"It will be a reformatory, Mother. Either we must take steps to discipline her, or the magistrates will, and we shall all be disgraced. There's nothing but school. You won't get another governess who will be an angel like Miss Martin."

"She never knew how to manage Sally."

"You can't manage a wild cat except by shutting it up, and Sally is about as easy to control."

"She is so like her father." Mrs. Brendan sighed, then added hastily, in an attempt to appease Cecilia's angry silence, "I mean she always knows her own mind. He did, you know. It has been such a responsibility without him."

Still there was silence, and the elder woman, feeling its weight and intensity, yielded at last.

"Oh, very well, my dear. I expect you are right. She shall go to school."

"Seascape House, next term, the summer one, and you must tell her she will jolly well have to stop."

"Of course!" said Mrs. Brendan, "of course," but she looked troubled.