‘Thank you. I suppose there were some women visitors?’
‘Oh, yes, quite a number. We can scarcely restrict the students in their choice, and some who have no men friends invite sisters or old school-fellows. Each student is allowed one guest, for whom a fee of two shillings is payable to cover the cost of supper, printing of programmes, decoration of the hall, a little extra remuneration to the servants, and so forth.’
‘Do the Staff invite visitors?’
‘Yes, sometimes. Miss Topas invited a famous novelist who was very charming, but who contrived—by what means I do not know —to become somewhat inebriated during the course of the evening, and Miss Harbottle invited her cousin, a Mr Tallboy, who is a professor of chemistry at Wattsdown. A great many of the students’ visitors came from Wattsdown, too. It is the large training college for men which you see from the train as you come through from Moors Cross.’
‘Did any of the. Staff invite women friends?’
‘No one. Miss Fishlock invited her old father. He is nearly eighty, and does so love to come. We give him a seat on the platform, out of harm’s way, and the students take him in to supper. He is the most delightful old man, and always looks forward to “the party” as he calls it.’
‘Miss Murchan, then, had no visitors?’
‘No. Neither year she was here did she invite anyone. In fact, she seemed rather a friendless woman. I can’t think why. She got on very nicely with everybody here.’
‘Was she a timid woman?’ asked Mrs Bradley.
‘Timid?’ The adjective appeared to puzzle the Principal. ’In what way timid?’
‘Not in any particular way. Generally speaking.’
‘Well, she was, perhaps, somewhat deprecating in her attitude.’
‘How often did she receive letters?’
‘Really, I have no idea. Her letters would have been sent direct to Athelstan Hall. I should have no means of knowing anything about them.’
‘Thank you. Who else is new to the College besides myself and Miss Cloud this term?’
‘Nobody. Miss Topas came at the beginning of the summer term, but everybody else has been here for at least four years. We had a good many changes between 1924 and 1931, but everybody has settled down nicely now, except for one or two marriages or appointments to Principalities.’
Mrs Bradley liked the last word immensely, and thought it over for a minute.
‘Miss Topas won’t fit the bill,’ she said at last, as though she were talking to herself. ‘But if ever I am obliged to absent myself from College for a day or two, I wish you would send Miss Topas along to take my place in Athelstan.’
‘It would be more in order to send Miss Harbottle or Miss Murdoch,’ replied the Principal. ‘They are our usual deputies.’
‘Never mind that. I must have Miss Topas. She is intelligent. Besides, she and Deborah get on.’
‘They get on much too well!’ said the Principal, with sudden irritation. 1 don’t approve of these violent friendships on the Staff.’
Mrs Bradley nodded slowly and rhythmically for a long time; but not, the Principal suspected, in agreement with what had been said.
Chapter 6
HIGH JINKS WITH A TIN-OPENER
« ^ »
‘Go on, Alice; shove your name down,’ said Laura. ‘I’m not going to sweat alone, and Kitty’s much too lazy to play games. Besides, Fat Finnigan in your Group told me you were wizard at gym.’
It was true. The pale and diffident Alice, denuded of her shabby coat and skirt, and clad in the half-sleeved shirt and the brown shorts which were regulation wear in the gymnasium, became a different being. She was seen to have muscle and wiry strength, and to have overcome the handicap of being very light by her agility, balance and poise. Whatever was the work, with or without the use of the gymnasium apparatus, she was among the foremost, and at the end of three weeks had been singled out by the lecturers in physical training as being, in the words of Miss Wootton, the junior of the two, ‘one of Cartaret’s Young Ladies’.
‘Means a Dem. for you, my duck, as soon as we start them,’ said Kitty. At these fell words poor Alice turned pale, but her Group noticed, all the same, that she had a crisp word of command and possessed that uncanny sense of being able to have the whole class in her eye which marks the born practitioner. The Group were encouraged, at the beginning of every lecture, to take turns at giving a few commands, and these were criticized, not verbally, but by the reactions of the squad to the voice, manner, personality and choice of words of the embryo instructor. Thus Kitty had contrived to get a whole Group lying on their backs with their legs in the air, bicycling away to the point of incipient apoplexy, and then had been obliged to turn to the lecturer and observe that that seemed to be that and for the life of her she didn’t know how to get them standing on their feet again.
‘I mean, I could tell them to do it, but that wouldn’t be right, would it?’ she had continued earnestly. The lecturer declined to assist her, and the students, after risking heart-failure by carrying on with the exercise as long as they could, one by one restored themselves to an upright position and began to dust themselves down.
‘A well-behaved class. I congratulate you on your discipline, Miss Trevelyan,’ said the lecturer, with her usual irony. The students took the hint, raised pandemonium, dusted each other down instead of themselves, and were ultimately called to order by the lecturer herself, who thereupon addressed the crestfallen and perspiring Kitty in these terms:
‘Now I want you to imagine, Miss Trevelyan, that I am a Board of Education Inspector, and that you are on probation at your first post. What have you to say for yourself? Is there any reason why the Government and the ratepayers should support you?’
‘No, Miss Wootton. I’d better learn up the book of words,’ replied Kitty with her usual amiability.
‘And so you’d better,’ said Laura afterwards. ‘I might tell you that in the general mêlée — which certainly was of a sumptuous kind — I got home a couple of juicy clouts athwart the beam of that toad in Edmund who swiped my hockey stick last week, so we didn’t lose all along the line. But to get a mob of kids round your neck in a P.T. lesson is no joke, young K., and don’t you forget it. You’d better get Alice to put you through your paces beforehand if ever you click a Dem.’
‘I shan’t click a Dem.,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s only the star-turns that get Dems.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Some achieve Dems., but a darned sight more are apt to get Dems, thrust upon them. One of the Second-Years told me that sometimes they pick the names out of a hat’
‘I should go sick,’ said Kitty with simple omniscience.
‘Not in Athelstan you wouldn’t,’ retorted Laura meaningly.
‘Why not?’
‘Mrs Crocodile is a doctor, fully qualified. She’ll give you the once-over and sling you out into the cold and dreary night as soon as look at you. You’ll be Little Orphan Annie in two shakes of a lamb’s tail if you try that game on with her. Minnie Poppleton, that Second-Year golumph on our floor, tried it on last week to get an essay written for the Deb., and out she came like a bullet. The old girl threatened her with a stomach pump. Yes, as sure as I’m standing in front of this notice-board. You know, that bunch keep cocktails in their hat-boxes, and apparently Mrs Croc. is wise to the goings-on.’
‘It isn’t forbidden,’ said Alice, sharply.
‘Only because the Principal hasn’t thought of it as being a possible thing to do. Don’t tell me, my dear d’Artagnan, that we cherish a secret drinker in our bosoms.’
‘No, of course not. Only I don’t see that Mrs Bradley has any right to interfere when there isn’t a rule.’