The Madcap of the School Part 16

The gipsy boy went forward, and Raymonde, with her heart again thumping wildly, followed at a little distance. This was indeed an adventure. She wondered where Aveline was, and if she were equally frightened. She wished she had not left her friend alone.

The gipsies, well versed in wood-craft, walked as silently as hunters stalking a buck. She would not have known they were within a mile of her, had she not been told. Her boy guide had vanished temporarily among the bushes. She stood still for a few minutes, uncertain what to do.

Then there was a shout, and a sound of running footsteps cras.h.i.+ng through the bushes, excited voices called, and presently between the trees came five or six of the gipsies hauling a man whose arms they had already bound with a rope. The Romany woman, herself as strong as any man, was helping with apparent gusto. When she saw Raymonde she ran to her.

"We've got him right enough, lady!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

"They're going to take him to the farm, and borrow a trap to take him to the jail at Ledcombe. We nabbed him by the brook as neat as anything. The other young lady's over there."

"Aveline! Aveline!" called Raymonde, rus.h.i.+ng in pursuit of her friend.

The two girls clung to each other eagerly. They were both thoroughly frightened.

"Let's go back to the camp," gasped Aveline. "I daren't stay here any longer. Oh! I was terrified when you left me!"

"What's become of Mrs. Vernon?" asked Raymonde.

Aveline did not know. In the hullabaloo of the pursuit the woman had been allowed to escape. She had the wisdom not to return to the camp, and was indeed never seen again in the neighbourhood. Great was the excitement at the farm when the gipsies brought in the German. Mr.

Rivers himself undertook to drive them and their prisoner to the jail.

Raymonde and Aveline had a thrilling story to tell in the marquee that night, where everybody collected to hear the wonderful experience, those who had already gone to their tents donning dressing-gowns and coming to join the interested audience. Miss Gibbs seemed divided between a sense of her duty as a schoolmistress to scold her pupils for undertaking such an extremely wild proceeding, and a glow of pride that her girls had actually succeeded in effecting the capture of an escaped enemy. On the whole, pride and patriotism prevailed, and the pair were let off with only a caution against madcap adventures.

Raymonde found herself the idol of the gipsies at the strawberry gardens next day.

"We're to have a big reward, lady, for copping that German!" said the Romany woman. "It'll buy us a new horse for our caravan. Will you please accept this basket from us? We wish we'd anything better to offer you. I'll teach you three words of Romany--let me whisper! Don't you forget them, and if you're ever in trouble, and want help from the gipsies, you've only to say those words to them, and they'll give their last drop of blood for you. But don't tell anybody else, lady; the words are only for you."

"What was she saying to you?" asked Morvyth curiously.

"I can't tell you," replied Raymonde. "It's a secret!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "RAYMONDE DREW A LONG BREATH OF INTENSE RELIEF, AND PEEPED OUT"]

CHAPTER XIII

Camp Hospitality

The brief visit at the camp was vanis.h.i.+ng with almost incredible rapidity; the week would finish on Sat.u.r.day, but Miss Gibbs had decided to stay till Monday morning, so as to put in the full period of work on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Sunday was of course a holiday, and the pickers enjoyed a well-earned rest. Those who liked went to the little church in s.h.i.+pley village, the clergyman of which also held an outdoor service in the stackyard at the farm for all whom he could persuade to come.

In the afternoon the members of the camp gave themselves up to hospitality. They had small and select private tea-parties, and invited each other, the hostesses generally being "at home" in some cosy spot beneath a tree, or under the shelter of a hedge, where the alfresco repast was spread forth, each guest bringing her own mug and plate. Raymonde, Morvyth, Katherine, and Aveline were the recipients of a very special invitation, and Miss Gibbs a.s.senting, they accepted it with glee. Miss Lowe, the artist with whom they had struck up a friends.h.i.+p, had removed on Friday from the camp to lodgings at an old farm near the village, and she had asked her four school-girl acquaintances to come for early dinner and tea, so that they might spend the afternoon with her.

Miss Lowe was an interesting personality. She sketched beautifully, and had shown the girls a few charming specimens of her work. She had been painting in the neighbourhood for some weeks before the strawberry picking began, and had many quaint accounts to give of her experiences. Her quarters in the village had been decidedly uncomfortable, and it seemed very uncertain whether the rooms she had engaged at the farm would turn out to be any improvement.

"You'll have to take pot-luck if you come to dinner with me," she announced to her guests. "I don't believe my landlady has even the most elementary notions of cooking. The meal will probably be a surprise."

"We shan't mind that!" the girls a.s.sured her.

Miss Lowe had chosen her lodgings more for the sake of the picturesque than for creature comforts. The farm-house was an extremely ancient building, and its very dilapidation rendered it a more suitable subject for her brush. It consisted of a front later-date portion, and a much older part at the back, the two being really separate blocks, connected by a large central hall. This hall, which measured about twenty feet square and thirty feet in height, must at one time have belonged to a family of some pretensions. The walls to a height of fifteen feet were covered with splendid oak panelling, grey with neglect, and above that were ornamented with plaster designs in bas-relief--lions, unicorns, wild boars, stags, and other heraldic devices, a form of decoration which was also continued over the ceiling. The back part of the house was evidently the older; the same beautiful plaster-work was to be seen, both in the bedrooms and kitchen, together with fine black oak beams. There was a winding stair to the upper story, with narrow windows that suggested a castle, and that dull, dim, soft yellow-brown light about everything which only seems reflected from ancient walls. The front portion consisted of two great sitting-rooms, one of which was empty, while the other had been arranged for the accommodation of visitors. Neither walls nor window-sills had been touched with paint for half a century, and they were sadly in need of attention. The house was the property of an old miser, who refused to spend a penny on repairs, and every year things went on from bad to worse. The woodwork of the wide old staircase was rotting away, most of the doors were off their hinges, and the rain came through several spots in the roof. Like many another fine mansion, it had descended from hall to farm-house, and showed now but faded relics of its former grandeur.

The farmer and his family lived entirely in the back premises, and the whole of the front was given up to their lodgers.

"I shouldn't like to sleep here alone," said Morvyth, as Miss Lowe acted cicerone and showed them through the house. "These long, gloomy, eerie corridors give me the s.h.i.+vers!"

"I felt the same," admitted their friend, "so I persuaded Miss Barton to join me. She's as mad on the antique as I am, and together we enjoy ourselves immensely, though we should each feel spooky alone. Our first business last night was to turn five bats out of our bedroom.

There's an open trap-door in the ceiling of the landing, and a whole colony of them seem to be established up there; they flit up and down the stairs at dusk! One has to sacrifice comfort to the picturesque. I think I begin to have just a glimmer of an understanding why some people prefer new houses to old!"

Both Miss Lowe and Miss Barton certainly found their romantic proclivities came into collision with their preconceived ideas of the fitness of things. Mrs. Marsden, their landlady, was a kind soul who did her best; but she had all her farm work and a large family of children to cope with, so it was small wonder that cobwebs hung in the pa.s.sages and the dust lay thick and untouched. It is sometimes wiser not to see behind the scenes in country rooms. Miss Barton had set up her easel in the great hall, and absolutely revelled in painting the grey oak and plaster-work, nevertheless she had a tale of woe to unfold.

"They use the place as a dairy," she explained, "and they keep the milk in large, uncovered earthenware pots. First I found the cat was lapping away at it, and I jumped up and scared it off; and then the dog strayed in and began to help itself, and I had to rush again and chase it away. Then the unwashed baby, still in its dirty little night-gown, brought a mug and kept dipping it into the pot to get drinks. We're going to take a jug into the field at milking-time this afternoon, and ensure our particular portion straight from the cow."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Morvyth, looking considerably relieved.

"Perhaps it's as well we don't see most foodstuffs in the making,"

moralized Aveline.

"Decidedly! Isn't there a story of a barrel of treacle, and a little n.i.g.g.e.r baby being found at the bottom?"

"And an attendant who fell by mistake into the sausage machine," added Miss Lowe, laughing. "I suppose one ought to be judiciously blind if one is to preserve one's peace of mind."

"One may shut one's eyes, but one can't do away with one's nose!"

persisted Miss Barton. "There was the most horrible and peculiar and objectionable odour in the hall yesterday morning, all the time I was painting. I came to the conclusion that a rat must have died recently behind the panelling. Then Mrs. Marsden came in with some milk-cans, and she raised a lid from a big pot close to where I was sitting. What do you think was inside? Twelve pounds of beef that she had put down to pickle! I hinted that it was rather high, but she didn't seem to perceive it in the least. She can't have the slightest vestige of a nose!"

"Perhaps, like some tribes of Africans, she prefers her meat gamey.

Don't look so alarmed, you poor girls, it's not going to appear on our table for dinner! I ordered a fowl."

"Which was alive only a couple of hours ago, for I saw the children a.s.sisting to chase it wildly round the yard and catch it!" put in Miss Barton. "We warned you, when we invited you, not to expect too much!"

Mrs. Marsden's training in the domestic arts had evidently been defective, and her cooking was decidedly eccentric. The fowl turned up at table plucked, certainly, but looking very pale and anaemic with its long untrussed legs sticking helplessly out before it. It was such an absurd object that as soon as the landlady had departed from the room the company exploded.

"How am I to carve the wretched thing?" shrieked Miss Lowe. "I hardly know where its wings are! I've never before seen a chicken served absolutely _au naturel_!"

"I expect it to rise up and walk!" hinnied Miss Barton. "It seems hardly decent to have left its claws on! Look at the sauce! It's simply bread and milk! Oh, for the fleshpots of Egypt!"

A ground-rice pudding which followed proved equally astonis.h.i.+ng. Miss Lowe had suggested that an egg would be an improvement in its composition, and behold! when it made its appearance there was an egg neatly poached in the middle. The giggling guests rather enjoyed the episode than otherwise. They had come to be entertained, and they certainly found plenty to amuse them, especially in the humorous att.i.tude with which their hostesses viewed all the little inconveniences.

"Perhaps we shall do better at tea-time," said Miss Barton hopefully.

"Mrs. Marsden surely can't go very wrong there. We're going to walk to the woods this afternoon. I've bespoken Jenny, the fourth child, as a guide. She's the most quaintly fascinating person. I hope she won't be long; we're waiting for her now."

The girls were all impatience to start for the woods, so, as their little guide was already late, Miss Barton went to the kitchen in search of her, and found her concluding a somewhat lengthy toilet with the a.s.sistance of her family. The choicest possessions of several members, in a.s.sorted sizes, seemed to have been commandeered, and she was finally turned out in a red serge dress, a black jacket much too large, a feather boa, and a pair of woollen gloves, which, considering that it was quite a hot day, was rank cruelty, though--true daughter of Eve as she was--she seemed so pleased with her appearance that nothing would induce her to pull off her suffocating grandeur. She was not at all shy, and very old-fas.h.i.+oned for her seven years. The girls found her conversation most entertaining as they walked along.

"She is absolutely refres.h.i.+ng!" giggled Raymonde. "The way she shakes out her skirts and manoeuvres the sleeves of the big jacket is perfectly lovely. She ought to be a mannikin when she grows up, and try on coats and mantles in shops. Wouldn't she just enjoy it?"

To Jenny an expedition with six ladies was apparently the opportunity of a lifetime, and she was determined to make the most of it. She volunteered to recite, and wound out a long poem in such a rapid, breathless monotone that it was hardly possible to distinguish a word.

The party politely expressed grat.i.tude, whereupon she announced: "I'll say it for you again!" and plunged at once into an encore.

"For pity's sake stop her! I'm getting hysterical!" gurgled Morvyth.

"She's like a gramophone record that's rather blurred and has been set too fast. Thank goodness, here's the wood! She can't recite while she's climbing that stile."