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Read books online » Fiction » A College Girl by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (reading in the dark .TXT) 📖

Book online «A College Girl by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (reading in the dark .TXT) 📖». Author Mrs George de Horne Vaizey



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not one in a hundred who will be called upon to teach that erudite horror.”

Darsie looked at Margaret France as she spoke, and saw at once by the expression of her companions that she had touched on a delicate subject. There was a moment’s silence, then—

“I am not going to teach,” said Margaret, smiling.

“Really! Then— What are you going to do?”

“Live at home.”

A future profession seemed so universal a prospect with the Newnham students that Margaret’s reply amazed Darsie as much as it appeared to annoy her other hearers.

Economics sniffed, and muttered beneath her breath; Science stared fixedly at the ceiling through her glittering spectacles; Modern Languages groaned aloud.

“With your brain! With your spirit! After this training! Such wicked waste...”

Margaret laughed lightly.

“Oh, Darsie Garnett, how mean of you, when I feed you with my best Chelsea buns, to land me in this time-honoured discussion! I’m an only child, and my parents have been perfect bricks in giving me my wish and sparing me for three whole years! The least I can do is to go home and do a turn for them. I fail to see where the waste comes in!”

“All you have learned—all you have studied—all you have read—”

“Just so! I hope it will make me a more interesting companion for them. And for myself! I’ve got to live with myself all the days of my life, remember, and I do not wish to be bored!”

“You have such power, such capacity! You might do some work for the world!”

“I intend to. What’s the world made up of, after all, but a number of separate homes? As a matter of ordinary common sense isn’t it best to work in one’s own home, rather than in a strange one?”

Margaret threw out her hands with a pretty appealing gesture, and her companions stared at her in silence, apparently too nonplussed to reply. Before they had time to rally to the attack, however, a startling interruption had occurred.

With a suddenness and violence which made the cocoa-drinkers jump in their seats the door burst open, and the figure of a girl in evening dress precipitated herself into their midst. Her light skirt was thrown over her shoulders, revealing an abbreviated white petticoat; her eyes were fixed with a deadly determination; regardless of the occupants of the room or of the articles of furniture scattered here and there, she flew at lightning speed to the window, closed it with a resounding bang, leaped like a cat at the ventilator overhead, banged that also, and with one bound was out of the room, the door making a third bang in her wake.

Darsie gasped in dismay. She herself had been transfixed with astonishment, but her companions had displayed a marvellous self-possession. Margaret had wrapped her arms round the cocoa-table to protect it from upset, another girl had steadied the screen, a third had obligingly lifted her chair out of the way; but no sign of alarm or curiosity showed upon their faces, which fact did but heighten the mystery of the situation.

“Is she—is she mad?”

The second-year girls laughed in chorus. From afar could be heard a succession of bang, bang, bangs, as if in every study in the house the same performance was being enacted. Margaret nodded at the Fresher with kindly reassurance.

“Only the fire drill! They’ve had an alarm, and she’s told to shut off draughts. Very good going! Not more than five or six seconds all told!”

“There isn’t really—”

“Oh, dear, no. No such luck! Poor fun having a fire brigade, and no chance to show its mettle. But we live in hope. You ought to join. I can imagine you making a magnificent captain.”

So here was another ambition. Darsie made a mental note to inquire into the workings of the fire brigade, and to offer her name as a recruit without delay.

Chapter Nineteen. The Fancy Ball.

It was somewhat of a shock to the Fresher contingency to receive one morning the intimation of a Costume Ball, to be held in Clough Hall on the following night; but their protests met with scant sympathy from the elders. When Darsie plaintively declared that she hadn’t got a fancy dress, and would not have time to send home for it if she had, a third-year girl silenced her by a stern counter-question: “And where, pray, would be the fun if you had, and could? If at the cost of a postcard you could be fitted up as the Lady of the Lake in green draperies and water-lilies, it would no doubt be exceedingly becoming, but it would be no sport. No, young woman, you’ve got to contrive something out of nothing and an hour stolen from the night, and when you’ve done it you’ll be in the mood to appreciate other people’s contrivings into the bargain. Buck up! You’re one of the dressy sort. We’ll expect wonders from you.”

But when Darsie repaired to the seclusion of her study and set herself to the problem of evolving a fancy dress out of an ordinary college outfit, ideas were remarkably slow in coming. She looked questioningly at each piece of drapery in turns, wondered if she could be a ghost in curtains, a statue in sheets, an eastern houri in the cotton quilt, a Portia in the hearthrug, discarded each possibility in turn, and turned her attention to her own wardrobe.

Black serge, grey tweed, violet ninon; two evening frocks, and the one white satin which was the piece de resistance of the whole. A cloth coat, a mackintosh, an art serge cloak for evening wear—how could one manufacture a fancy dress from garments so ordinary as these?

In despair, Darsie betook herself to Margaret France’s room and found that young woman seated before her dressing-table engaged in staring fixedly at her own reflection in the mirror. She betrayed no embarrassment at being discovered in so compromising a position, but smiled a broad smile of welcome out of the mirror, the while she continued to turn and to twist, and hold up a hand-glass to scrutinise more closely unknown aspects of face and head.

“I know what you’ve come for! I’ve had two Freshers already. Bowled over at the thought of inventing a costume—that’s it, isn’t it? Oh, you’ll rise to it yet. The only difficulty is to hit on an idea—the rest’s as easy as pie. That’s what I’m doing now—studying my phiz to see what it suggests. My nose, now! What d’you think of my nose? Seems to me that nose wasn’t given me for nothing. And the width between the eyes! It’s borne in upon me that I must be either a turnip lantern or a Dutch doll. The doll would probably be the most becoming, so I’ll plump for that. Don’t breathe a word, for it must be a secret to the last. As for you—it would be easy to suggest a dozen pretty-pretties.”

Margaret wheeled round in her chair, and sat nursing her knees, regarding Darsie with a twinkling eye. “Big eyes, long neck, neat little feet—you’d make an adorable Alice in Wonderland, with ankle-strap slippers, and a comb, and a dear little pinny over a blue frock! And your friend can be the Mad Hatter. Look well, wouldn’t she, with a hat on one side? There are only the girls to see you, and the more comic you can make yourself the better they’ll be pleased. You are about to be introduced to a new side of Newnham life, and will see how mad the students can be when they let themselves go. You’ll laugh yourself ill before the evening’s over. Well, think it over, and come back to me if you want any properties. My dress will be easy enough—braided hair, short white frock (butter-muslin at a penny the yard), white stockings with sandals, another pair of stockings to cover my arms, chalked face and neck, with peaked eyebrows and neat little spots of red on the cheekbones and tip of the chin. If you feel inclined to be angelic, you might run up with your paint-box at the last minute, and dab on my joints.”

“Joints!”

Darsie gaped in bewilderment, whereupon Margaret cried resentfully—

“Well, I must have joints, mustn’t I? How do you expect me to move? A paint-box is invaluable on these occasions, as you’ll find before you are through. Now, my love, I’ll bid you a fond adieu, for work presses. By the by, one word in your ear! Don’t ask a third-year girl to dance with you if you value your nose!”

“What will happen to it if I do?”

“Snapped off! Never mind I look pretty and meek, and perhaps she’ll ask you. Now be off—be off—I must to work!”

Darsie descended to Hannah’s study and proposed the idea of the Mad Hatter, the which was instantly and scornfully declined. Hannah explained at length that though her head might be plain, it yet contained more brains than other heads she could mention, and that to play the part of idiot for a whole night long was a feat beyond the powers of a mathematical student reading for honours. She then explained with a dignity which seemed somewhat misplaced that she had set her heart upon representing a pillar-box, and was even now on the point of sallying forth to purchase a trio of hat-boxes, which, being of fashionable dimensions, would comfortably encircle her body. Fastened together so as to form a tube, covered with red sateen, and supported by scarlet-stockinged legs, the effect would be pleasingly true to life.

“I’ll have peep-holes for eyes, and the slit will outline my mouth. Between the dances I’ll kneel down in a corner so that the box touches the ground, and I’ll look so real, that I shall expect every one to drop in letters—chocolate letters, observe! You might buy some and set the example!”

For the next twenty-four hours an unusual air of excitement and bustle pervaded the college, and the conversation at mealtime consisted for the most part of fragmentary questions and answers bearing on the important subject of costumes in making.

“Lend me your boot brushes, like a lamb!”

“Got an old pair of brown stockings you can’t wear again?”

“Be an angel and lend me your striped curtains just for the night!”

“Spare just ten minutes to sew up my back?”

So on it went, and in truth it was a pleasant chance to hear the merry, inconsequent chatter; for, like every other class of the community, girl students have their besetting sins, and one of the most obvious of these is an air of assurance, of dogmatism, of final knowledge of life, against which there can be no appeal. Girls of nineteen and twenty will settle a dispute of ages with a casual word; students of economy will advance original schemes warranted to wipe the offence of poverty from the globe; science students with unlowered voices will indulge across the dinner-table in scathing criticisms on historic creeds which their fathers hold in reverence; and on each young face, on each young tongue, can be read the same story of certainty and self-esteem.

This state of mind is either sad, amusing, or exasperating, according to the mood of the hearer; but, whatever be his mood, he yet knows in his heart that it is a transitory phase, and an almost inevitable result of theoretical knowledge. A few years of personal grip with life and its problems will make short work of that over-confidence, and replace it with a gentler, sweeter touch.

But to-night was a night of frolic, and one would have to travel far indeed to find a more amusing spectacle than an impromptu costume dance in Clough Hall. Beauty is a secondary consideration, and the girl who has achieved the oddest and most ludicrous appearance is the heroine of the hour. Darsie Garnett made a fascinating Alice in Wonderland in her short blue frock, white pinny, and little ankle-strap slippers, her hair fastened back by an old-fashioned round comb, and eyebrows painted into an inquiring arch, but she received no attention

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