‘What about them?’ said Deborah, shortly. The snakes were still an uncomfortable subject for her.
‘Don’t you see? The Dem-room being next door to the Staff Common Room…?’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Deborah sharply. ‘The snakes were just a silly rag, and came out in the wrong lesson.’
‘That will do, then, Miss Trevelyan, very nicely,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You will, of course, apologize to Miss Giggs for any annoyance or inconvenience you may have caused her. And you might return her shoes. And now,’ she said to Deborah, when Kitty had gone, ‘what makes you so certain that there is no connexion between the snakes and the activities in the boxroom, child?’
‘Well, I can see the point of snakes in a Demonstration lesson, and, dimly, that some idiots might think the — the First-Night rag screamingly funny. I mean, there is a school of thought — but the coat-slashing and the disinfectant seem quite different, somehow. Of course, I’m not a psychologist,’ she added.
‘Oh, yes, you are,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘There are two sets of rags being carried on. You are perfectly right’
Chapter 7
REVENGE UPON GOLDILOCKS
« ^ »
‘And how does it go?’ asked Miss Topas. ‘I hear you had a Common Room meeting of an unusual kind this afternoon.’
‘Yes. Some students were out, but it seemed unfair to expect the poor things to lose their Sunday pleasures for the doubtful privilege of hearing me address the whole of Athelstan for the first time.’
‘About the disinfectant?’
‘Yes. We made it clear — I think, Deborah, don’t you? — that we suspected nobody in Hall of having performed such a childish trick as stabbing cans of disinfectant so that the stuff ran out and made a mess…’
‘And Laura Menzies was sharp enough to ask us whom we did suspect, then,’ said Deborah.
‘And what did you say to that?’
‘We told her — and all the rest — that their lectures in psychology ought to supply the answer, whereupon Miss Menzies took it upon herself to observe “Tut, tut, Warden,” ’ said Mrs Bradley, cackling. ‘I like that child. She is intelligent.’
The next Athelstan incident took place at the beginning of the half-term break. This lasted from a Thursday evening until the following Tuesday evening. Most of the students left College during this time, and only one of the five Halls was kept open to accommodate those who remained.
Kitty saw the notice-board first.
‘I say, it’s Athelstan’s turn to be Half-Term Hall,’ she said.
‘Nothing to me. I’m going to see my relations in Scotland,’ said Laura.
‘Well, I shan’t be here, either. Wish I could, in a way, but the family would expire if I didn’t go home and tell them how I’m getting on, and let them see what a big girl I’ve grown in six weeks,’ replied Kitty. ‘You going home to London, Alice, my duck?’
‘No; to my aunt in Lincolnshire,’ Alice replied.
Further inquiry proved that all the Athelstan students, except Miss Giggs, Miss Mathers and a First-Year South African student named Firth, would be out of Hall during the long week-end. Miss Giggs made her usual excuse of wanting to work when the Warden inquired, gazing like a benevolent snake at the assembled students on the Saturday evening preceding the half-term weekend, how many of them proposed to remain in Hall, but in her case, as in the case of Miss Mathers, it was a question of a heavy railway fare. Poor Miss Firth had nowhere to go. During the vacations she would inhabit a dreary little room in London and go to all the shows, visit the museums and picture-galleries and generally acquaint herself with the various resources of the capital city, but the half-term break was too short, she informed Mrs Bradley, for so long a journey. Deborah had once attempted to obtain some light on the colour problem in South Africa, but Miss Firth’s reply was so uncompromising that she had abandoned the attempt and had changed the subject of conversation.
‘Colour problem?’ Miss Firth had said. ‘There is no colour problem in the part I come from. If the blacks and ourselves don’t find the pavement wide enough, well, they just walk in the road.’
Asked by Mrs Bradley how she proposed to spend the weekend, she revealed that she had purchased an Ordnance map of the district, had arranged to hire a car, and was going to explore ‘a few counties’ and embody her findings in an article for a South African paper.
Contemplation of this enterprise left the Warden speechless with admiration. Miss Mathers, it appeared, was going to be ‘called for’ at College each day by one or another of the students who lived near enough, and would be taken out for the day. She was, in a quiet way, very popular. Mrs Bradley was glad that her senior student was going to have a good time.
‘That poor wretch Giggs!’ said Deborah, on Thursday night, when ‘the tumult and the shouting having died,’ as Laura Menzies expressed it, and those students who were not going to leave until the morning having been persuaded to go to bed, she and Mrs Bradley were enjoying a midnight peace in Mrs Bradley’s sitting-room. ‘I hate to think of her stewing here all alone.’
‘She won’t be all alone,’ retorted Mrs Bradley. ‘We are to expect five students from Bede, three from Edmund, two from Beowulf, and no fewer than eight from Columba.’
‘I say!’ said Deborah, dismayed. ‘Not much of a picnic for us! That makes twenty-one counting our own three!’
‘It will be a very great treat for me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You, my love, are going away for the week-end. The car will be here for you at half-past ten tomorrow morning.’
‘But — ’
‘My nephew, Carey Lestrange, is coming from Stanton St John, in Oxfordshire, to take you to his pig-farm. He has thousands of pigs, a son aged three, a daughter of twenty months, a nice, quiet, friendly, well-disposed, tractable, quite pretty wife, the best servants in England, and a heart of gold. Now don’t be rude about it. Besides, it’s not an invitation. It’s an order.’
‘But — ’
‘And Miss Topas is going as well. She can’t possibly go home for such a short time, and she says she has no money or she would go to Penzance. Now don’t argue, there’s a good child. I am not equal to quarrelling. And why Penzance I don’t know, so don’t ask. And Carey’s servants are called Ditch.’
‘Now look here,’ said Deborah. I’m not going to be packed off for a rest and change, as though I were an invalid or — or a baby or something. If you’ve got to stay, as this is our bad-luck term, I’m going to stay, too. You can’t turn me out. I won’t go.’
‘Well, you must please yourself, of course, child,’ said Mrs Bradley, solemnly wagging her head. ‘It is extremely awkward, because my nephew’s wife has invited two men, and I really don’t see that Miss Topas can be expected to take both of them off her hands. Besides, she told me she wouldn’t go if you didn’t, and I really think that young woman needs some sort of a break. She works extremely hard, and she has been looking forward to your company for the week-end. Still, of course, you must do exactly as you like. I am sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, but I had my reasons.’
‘I bet you had,’ said Deborah, setting her jaw.
‘There, there! Go to bed,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I thought you might do me a favour, and go down with Miss Topas, whose young man, an archaeologist, is going to be there. She told me all about him last week. I don’t wonder she didn’t confide in you. You’re an unsympathetic hussy.’
Next morning Carey came, and Mrs Bradley, to her great relief, was able to wave Deborah good-bye and go back into Athelstan grinning.
The drive from the College to Carey’s place in Oxfordshire was a long one, and they stayed not for brake and stopped not for stone, as Laura Menzies would have observed, except for a brief halt at Leicester for lunch. They reached Stanton St John at six, and were welcomed by Jenny, Mrs Ditch and an enormous supper. Jenny was Carey’s wife.