Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

Many of the girls copied Dorothy Hardinge, the eldest of Charlie Hardinge’s three kiddies, because she was very good at games and had won the High Jumping Competition two years running at the school sports. The Third Form girls parted their hair in the boyish way affected by Dorothy, and used the same slang that she did; and were “keen” on the mathematical mistress, because Dorothy was “keen” on her.

  Schoolgirl friendships were not the fashion at Bridgecrap, and were cried down as “sloppy” by the girls themselves.

  But it was de rigeur to have an infatuation for one or other of the teachers, with the exception of Mademoiselle who, being a “beastly foreigner,” naturally “didn’t count.”

  The majority of these enthusiasms might almost be described as being artificially manufactured to meet the requirements of that great law that enforced conformation to type. The mildest demonstrations only were indulged in.

  “Isn’t she swe-eet — isn’t she ducky?”

  Such was the prescribed formula when Lily was at Bridgecrap, and once it had been ecstatically uttered, the speaker was recognized as being “keen” on Miss So- and-So, and there the matter remained stationary.

  There were one or two exceptions to this comparatively healthy state of affairs, as is inevitable in any community living under similar conditions of unnatural segregation. Lily, without knowing why, hated the headlong adorations that occasionally overtook a girl for one of the mistresses, and that almost always resulted in some unspecified crisis, when the adorer was sent for by Miss Melody, and severely, though quite inexplicitly, cautioned against “foolishness.”

  Sometimes, Lily thought, the mistress was cautioned too, for very often her manner to her devotee would change abruptly, and become very cold and self-conscious.

  The affair almost always ended in a violent reaction, when the discarded adorer would hate vehemently where she had erstwhile loved. Such affairs always made Lily feel glad that she herself was not particularly attracted to anyone at Bridgecrap. The whole thing seemed to her to be so oddly undignified, and besides, it was always the least likeable girls who were overtaken by such infatuations.

  Lily knew, unaccountably, that there was a subtly unwholesome element in the school, sometimes a very minor element indeed — but always there.

  She guessed, vaguely, at the subjects of certain whispered conversations and giggling references, but although she was quite aware of unenlightened curiosities and perplexities of her own, the thought of sharing them would literally have revolted her. Nor did the whisperers and gigglers ever approach her, instinctively able to discern, as they were, exactly whom they might or might not hope to admit to their foolish, underbred companionship.

  The youngest of Charlie Hardinge’s daughters was the child in the school whom Lily liked best, although she knew that she had been expected to make friends with her contemporaries, Dorothy and Janet. But Dorothy who, as her father had said, stood five-feet five in her stockings at thirteen years old, and had a back like a ramrod — Dorothy, at fifteen, had attained to a degree of athletic prowess that admitted her to the comradeship of the most highly placed girls in the school.

  She naturally took not the slightest notice of Lily, who was universally recognized at “a perfect duffer at games.”

  Of Janet Hardinge, Lily was frightened, although Janet was her junior. Janet was clever, according to the Bridgecrap standards, and she was amongst the few girls in the school who expressed a contempt that was not, in the main, wholly good-natured, for Lily’s physical inefficiency. She had a spiteful tongue, that turned itself readily to personalities of a coarse and wounding nature, and Lily’s sensitiveness was sufficiently obvious to render her a favourite target. Janet was not popular, and Lily was perhaps the only one of her school-fellows who realized that hers was simply the obtuse cruelty of the absolutely unimaginative. Her sister Sylvia was four years younger than Lily, and so entirely absorbed by hockey that only the chance of school theatricals revealed to either that they had anything in common.

  A play was acted every year at Midsummer. At first, Lily had been convinced that she could act. She knew that the girls to whom the important parts were given frequently spoke their lines with perfectly meaningless intonation, and with emphasis very often laid in the wrong place.

  She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first part given to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that her voice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear and distinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged with self-consciousness.

  Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.

  “Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!” said an unnecessarily surprised junior mistress. “I wish you principals would put as much intelligence into some of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge.”

  Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, and it was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be a very unimportant one.

  Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious in her demeanour.

  “Lily!” commanded the mistress sharply. “You can read that long speech of Dorothy’s, and see what you make of it.”

  Ever since her arrival at Bridgecrap Lily had been convicted of her inferiority to everyone there.

  Now, in a glorious flash, she saw her chance of at last achieving a success.

  She read the speech without hesitation, and felt that she had read it very well.

  “Excellent! I wish I’d given you a bigger part. We’ll see…”

  Lily was disproportionately excited.

  The next day, she was told to give Dorothy’s speech again, this time with the necessary action, which included a slow entrance and a dramatic exit prefacing the fall of the curtain.

  “Oh, my dear child! Hold yourself properly — you can’t walk like that. And your hands — no, no — that won’t do. Can’t you move properly?”

  It was just what Lily could not do. Her instinct for the correct manipulation of words and ideas did not extend to the disposition of her own muscles.

  Enforced drill, gymnastics and detested games, begun too late and without any attempt at individual tuition, had failed to impart to Lily the natural poise and erect bearing that made Dorothy Hardinge’s movements harmonious. Her body was as self-conscious as her mind was supple and alert.

  “No use at all. We can’t have her standing about the stage like that. What would Miss Melody say?”

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” said the junior mistress kindly. “It’s a great pity you can’t learn to hold yourself properly. Otherwise, you might act very well.”

  Lily’s brief triumph was over, at the expense of this humiliation.

  It was then that Sylvia Hardinge surprised her by saying quietly: “It’s a shame! You said all that stuff perfectly splendidly — as though it really meant something. They ought to let you have a really good part — you act better than any of us.”

  Lily secretly agreed with her, whilst believing herself conceited for doing so, but she was none the less astonished and gratified at Sylvia’s appreciation.

  “I’m glad you think I can act. Did I really hold myself so very badly?”

  “Yes,” said Sylvia simply. “Frightfully.”

  It was like a douche of cold water.

  Lily’s friendship with Sylvia was destined to run a course that was neatly foreshadowed thus in their first encounter.

  Sylvia admired Lily, thought her clever and very’ pretty, and was a sympathetic and affectionate companion.

  Lily felt passionately grateful for her affection, and sometimes told herself joyfully that she had found a friend at last.

  And then from time to time she was suddenly brought up short against the sharply defined limits of Sylvia’s comprehension, and the jarring candour of Sylvia’s ruthlessly unalterable condemnations.

  Grown-up people always told one that in this world there was no such thing as a perfect friendship. Lil
y obediently generalized thus, and strove for philosophy in defiance of a hidden, quite unsupported certainty, in the depths of her own mind, that the generalization was a false one.

  It was not until her final half year at Bridgecrap that lily came under the direct personal influence of the headmistress.

  Miss Melody was fifty-seven, she had given up her life to the work of education, and she still brought to it the enthusiasm of a pioneer. Her solitary weakness was the not altogether uncommon one of an unshakable belief in her own infallibility.

  “You may have a difficult time in front of you, childie,” she said to Lily very kindly. “A motherless girl is very often at a great disadvantage. I was motherless myself before I was twenty.”

  She had a rounded mellow voice and always articulated her words with great deliberation and distinctness. “And the dear little brother! Is that a big responsibility, Lily?”

  “Kenneth will be going to school almost at once.” said Lily evasively.

  She would like to have replied, as Miss Melody obviously expected her to do, with an admission of her own perplexities as regarded her relations to Kenneth, but she knew very well that no responsibility would really be hers. Nothing vital bound her to Kenneth as she had been bound to Vonnie, and the immense gulf of her ten years’ seniority’ had inspired in her no maternal solicitude towards her independent little brother.

  “He will be nearly eight when I leave here, and I know my father means him to go to school when he’s eight,” said Lily.

  “Child, you’re not going to be a shirker, are you? Lily, Lily, isn’t that the weak place? Ah, I thought so. I thought so. Afraid of responsibility, aren’t you?”

  Miss Melody’s eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixed it upon her pupil.

  “Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fight against it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don’t forget what prayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, you know....”

  Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely that Miss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved a preconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality.

  “I don’t know whether it is exactly that I’m afraid of responsibility,” Lily began, feeling that the help Miss Melody was so willing to impart must rest upon a basis of fact, if it was to be of value to her.

  The schoolmistress laughed softly.

  “Lily, Lily, haven’t you learnt not to make excuses for yourself yet? I hoped all my girls were taught that in the lowest form in the school!”

  Lily looked as thoroughly disconcerted as she felt. Was it making excuses for herself to try and explain what she felt to be the truth, even though it happened to run contrary to Miss Melody’s judgment?

  “No, no, child,” Miss Melody was grave again now. “Never be ashamed to own up to your weaknesses. I want you to think about backbone, dearie. It’s what you need. I know, childie — perhaps more than you think. All sorts of girls have passed through my care, and I’m very, very proud to think that I’ve known something about each one of them — perhaps been able to give each one a little help. And there are no two alike, Lily, and each one has to be studied individually.”

  “And do you — have you really — ?” Lily wanted to ask whether Miss Melody had really penetrated to the true self of every one of her pupils. It seemed so incredible, that girls like Dorothy Hardinge, for instance, should really have an inward life, even as Lily herself, and that Miss Melody should enter therein, and understand it all.

  “Do I really study each one individually? Indeed I do, Lily, although it may seem to you girls that you see very- little of the headmistress except in school, and on state occasions. Oh, I know,” and Miss Melody laughed again.

  Then she dropped her deep, soft voice impressively.

  “I’ve studied you, childie dear, and thought about you very often. There’s weakness, Lily — there’s weakness. You’ll have to be very much on your guard. I should like to have seen you much keener about games, much more in earnest for the honour of the school at our hockey and cricket matches. You may think that those things are of no very great importance in themselves, but there’s a fine spirit behind it all, you know — a thoroughly English spirit. It’s that keenness that you seem to me to lack.”

  Miss Melody paused, and looked with her characteristic air of profound scrutiny at Lily.

  “Well?” she said encouragingly.

  Lily felt that she was letting slip an opportunity for just such a clarification of issues as she had long sought after, but the habits of obscure and muddled thinking into which she had all her life been led stood in her way.

  She made a consciously inadequate effort, belatedly.

  “I think I could be more — keen — about things, if I only felt they were more worth it,” she said confusedly. “I know I’m no good at games, but it isn’t only that — it doesn’t seem to me to matter frightfully whether one’s good at them or not — and it’s the same about other things, even lessons. I do enjoy them — some of them at least — but all the time I’ve got a sort of feeling — what’s it all for?”

  She paused, confused and frightened.

  “Go on—” said Miss Melody. Her voice was slightly melancholy, but she was slowly nodding her head, as though in comprehension.

  “I think if I could find something that seemed to me thoroughly worth while I could — could really let myself go and give my whole self to it. Something like a — a person one loved very much, or a sort of life one felt was right for oneself — not just right in itself” Lily stopped, in utter disarray.

  She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by those halting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was not apparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.

  “I’m very, very glad you should have spoken, childie... perhaps we can get this straightened out between us. That’s a terrible idea of yours, you know, that things aren’t worth while. Why, at your age, anything ought to be worth while — over and over again, Lily. The games and the lessons, and the little brother at home — it’s all worth while, dearie. While you’re thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call to devote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunities are slipping by you — you’re squandering all your energies on fancies that mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into what you’re doing, Lily — into the living present. Why, it’s all worth while! As I told you just now, it isn’t the number of runs you make in the cricket match that matters, it’s the spirit that holds the whole eleven together, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match. That’s what matters!”

  Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel no real response within herself to these rousing truths?

  At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alien standards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish the latter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody’s inspiring banner.

  “The games in themselves are only games. True,” said Miss Melody. “But there’s something else, Lily. I wonder if you’ve ever thought of it? Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honour and glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul has written about that — didn’t we have it, not so very long ago, at our reading? And don’t you think, if you want a motive, that you have an adequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won’t ask again ‘what’s it all for’ or whether it’s worth while, will you?”

  Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate, inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?— “The Apostle Paul spoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until I have evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from that lack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you, and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all.”

  Nothing is more certain than that no such
arrogant lucidity sprang either to her mind or to her lips.

  “I’ll try. Miss Melody” she said, earnestly and meekly.

  “I know you will, I’m quite sure of it. There’s a big effort to be made, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but it can be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel that you can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answer you. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years ago still write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school by now.

  “Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own future is to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the little brother, or do you want a home of your very own — marriage, Lily?”

  The mere knowledge that she had never before heard the word mentioned in such a connection by Miss Melody, made Lily blush foolishly.

  The headmistress smiled — an omniscient smile. “I thought so — I thought so. Well, Lily, although I haven’t married myself, I always advocate marriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in the beaten track, and I don’t think you’re one of those that are called upon to stand alone. Oh, there’s nothing derogatory in that. Marriage is a very high calling, child, and there’s a great deal to it — a great deal of responsibility, Lily.”

  Miss Melody’s arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become a catchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily’s weakness.

  Lily smiled back again, faintly protesting.

  “Ah, you don’t like that! It’s the old bugbear, isn’t it? Well, well, childie...” Miss Melody appeared to lose herself in reflectiveness.

  The fiction of Lily’s dread of responsibility was now firmly established between them.

  “If I can give you any advice, or help you in any way, just let me know, dear child. We’ve had a nice, long talk, and I think it’s been helpful to you.”

  Miss Melody paused so significantly that Lily almost involuntarily said: “Yes, Miss Melody.”

  “I’m very thankful for that, Lily — very proud and thankful. You must come to me again before the breaking up. Bless you, childie dear.”