For the School Colours Part 27

"Three men were sitting there, cooking their supper, and one of them called out: 'Hallo! What's up with you, young 'un?'

"When I said there was a puma inside our house they all whistled. Then the one who had spoken reached for his gun, and said: 'We'll come with you, la.s.sie!'

"The others didn't say anything, but they got up and found their guns too. One of them took me on his back and carried me across the bridge when he saw how I funked it. He went over without minding it in the least. I don't know how he could!

"It was fearfully dark going home through the wood, and I could only just manage to find the trail. We got to our shanty at last, and I shouted, and Mother looked out of the window and said: 'Thank G.o.d you're back safe!'

"The three men talked over the best way of killing the puma. One of them prised open the shutters and the other two stood ready with their guns.

The creature had been quiet (so Mother told us afterwards) for a long while, but when the shutters fell back it went wild, and came tearing across the room to the window, knocking over the table and upsetting the lamp. It was shot directly, and fell dead inside the room. But the lamp had broken and set up a blaze. The men rushed to our shed for spades and threw earth on the burning paraffin, managing to put the fire out before any real damage had been done. Then they fixed the ladder again, and Mother came down from the loft.

"When Daddy came home next day she said she daren't be left alone in the woods again, so he took us to the settlement, and we lived there the rest of the summer."

"Did you keep the puma's skin?" asked Anthony, who had followed the story with breathless interest.

"No, I'd have liked to, but the lumbermen had dragged the thing outside, and the coyotes got hold of it in the night, so there wasn't much skin left by morning."

"I think you were immensely plucky!" exclaimed Avelyn warmly.

"Plucky! What else could I have done? I tell you, I felt the biggest coward out!"

CHAPTER XVII

The Lavender Lady

It was Easter time when the Lavender Lady first rose upon the horizon of Lyngates. She came with the dog violets and the ground ivy and the meadow orchises, and several other lovely purple things, at least that was how her advent was always a.s.sociated in Avelyn's mind. She took the furnished bungalow near the church, lately vacated by the curate, and it was rumoured in the village that she composed music and had published poetry, and that she had come down into the country for a rest.

When Avelyn first saw her she was sitting in the flowery little garden raised above the road. She wore a soft lavender dress and an old lace fichu, and she had dark eyes and eyebrows, and cheeks as pink as the China roses, and fluffy grey-white hair that gleamed like a dove's wing as the sun shone on it. She looked such a picture as she sat there, all unconscious of spectators, against a background of golden wallflowers and violet aubrietias, that Avelyn was obliged just to stand still and gaze. In that thirty seconds she fell in love with the Lavender Lady.

It was not a mere mild liking, but a sudden, romantic, absolute, headlong falling in love. It had come all in a minute and overwhelmed her. She crept away softly to dream dreams about the vision she had seen in the garden. At home there were some beautiful ill.u.s.trated editions of William Morris's _Earthly Paradise_ and of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poems. She took them out and pored over them. The gorgeous pre-Raphaelite pictures had always appealed to her innate artistic sense, and set her nerves athrill with a something she could not a.n.a.lyse. There was not one of them so beautiful as her Lavender Lady among the flowers.

"She's a little like 'The Blessed Damozel', who leaned out 'from the gold bar of heaven'," mused Avelyn. "And then again she's like Gainsborough's picture of 'The d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re'. I wonder what her name is, and if I shall ever know her? I don't believe I'd dare to speak to her. I'd be too shy."

For a whole week Avelyn, terribly in love, lived in a mystic world in which the Lavender Lady, robed in the glory of the purple night and stars, was as the central sun, and she herself revolved like a planet round her orbit. The family could not understand why she insisted upon choosing heliotrope for her new dress.

"It won't suit you, dear," demurred Mrs. Watson, bewildered by the firmness of her daughter's sudden att.i.tude.

They were sitting round the table, with three boxes of patterns from west-end London firms spread out temptingly before them.

"You of all people in helio, Ave!" objected Daphne. "It's the one colour you ought never to wear--you're far too much of a brunette for any violet shades. You'd look nice in this biscuit, or this saxe blue. I always liked you in that blue dress you had a couple of years ago."

"There's a perfectly charming stripe here," recommended Mrs. Watson.

"I want the helio, please," said Avelyn doggedly.

"But _why_ should you want helio when you know it doesn't suit you?"

stormed Daphne. "It's really only pig-headedness, because you've happened to say so. You can't see yourself in your own dress. If you could you'd choose another colour."

"You know nothing about it," retorted Avelyn; and matters nearly grew warm between the two girls.

"There's no need to send the patterns back to-day," interrupted Mrs.

Watson, sweeping the whole consignment back into their boxes. "We'll bring them out to-morrow and talk about them."

As a matter of fact she sent for the biscuit shade without consulting Avelyn again, much to the disgust of that damsel, who consoled herself by taking energetically to gardening, and replanting the round border in the middle with wallflowers and purple aubrietias. It was the Easter holidays, so she had time to dream. She made up at least six romances about the Lavender Lady's past; some of them ended happily and some unhappily. She could not decide which was really the more artistic. She walked past the cottage every evening. Once she threw a bunch of violets over the wall just to the place where the lady had been sitting. Then she ran away frightened at her own daring. Another evening as she pa.s.sed she heard the strains of a piano and the sound of a rich, sweet contralto voice. She stood and listened spellbound. It was a song she had never heard before--a lovely, crooning song, like a cradle lullaby.

She would have liked to stay and listen to more, but the Vicar's wife and daughters were coming down the road, and she fled. Somehow she did not want to be talked to just at that moment.

On Sunday she chivied the family off to church at least ten minutes too soon, and they sat in their pew in stately dignity while the rest of the congregation trickled in. Avelyn, from a post of vantage near the pillar, eyed everyone that entered with increasing disappointment. Then her heart gave a great thump. Her Lady was coming up the aisle--not in lavender this time, but in black and white, with a bunch of violets and a big picture-hat trimmed with silver ribbon, and a white ostrich boa and dainty white kid gloves. The verger was showing her to a seat in front, actually the next pew but one, and Avelyn felt thrills running down her spine. She was so glad the verger had selected a pew in front.

If it had been behind, she would have been absolutely obliged to disgrace herself by turning round. After the service she managed to drop her book, and to fumble for it long enough to delay her family for a few moments and prevent them from leaving before the Lavender Lady. They pa.s.sed her in the churchyard. She was actually speaking to the Vicar's eldest daughter. Avelyn decided that Barbara Holt had more than her share of luck. At dinner-time, over the joint of roast beef, Mrs. Watson remarked:

"That seems a sweet lady staying at the bungalow. Miss Carrington, I hear, her name is. She comes from London, and Mrs. Holt says she's very musical. I think I shall have to call."

Avelyn went on eating beef and potatoes with a jumping heart but outward composure. It had not struck her that it was possible to pay social calls on Dante Gabriel Rossetti heroines. What if she were to meet the Lavender Lady at close quarters? Even speak to her? The idea seemed to need preparation.

Mrs. Watson had quite made up her mind.

"Daphne and I will go on Tuesday," she said.

It was of course appropriate that Daphne, being the eldest, should go, but Avelyn envied her all the same.

When the momentous afternoon arrived she enquired anxiously what her sister was going to wear. It seemed vitally important that the family should make a good impression.

"You'll put on your grey coat and skirt, won't you?" she said beseechingly.

"I don't think I will. I really don't want to go at all," yawned Daphne.

Not want to go! Avelyn could hardly believe it. She stared at Daphne incredulously.

"Don't you feel well?" she asked.

"Oh yes! it isn't that, but I hate paying calls, and I promised the boys to walk to Fulverton. Captain Harper said he'd meet us and show us a squirrel's nest he's found. Suppose you go and call with Mother instead of me?"

Avelyn gasped. Such unselfishness took away her breath.

"Do you really mean you'll let me go instead of you?"

"With all the pleasure in life, child, if you want to." Daphne's manner was airy and elder-sisterly. "Of course it's nothing to me whether we meet Captain Harper or not, only he made rather a point about it, and perhaps it would seem--well, rude, if I let the boys go without me. He's been very kind to David and Tony, and one doesn't like to hurt his feelings."

Two things swept across Avelyn's bewildered consciousness: first, that Daphne was growing up--growing up most suddenly and unmistakably; and secondly, that she had resigned her privilege, as elder daughter, to call on the Lavender Lady. The first would have to be considered at leisure, in all its bearings and side issues; the second was for the moment uppermost.

"Go and ask Mother what you're to put on," said Daphne, as if the whole question of the exchange were settled.

It was an outwardly calm and self-possessed, but inwardly much-agitated Avelyn who entered, in her mother's wake, into the little drawing-room at the bungalow. One comprehensive glance took in the fact that the room was utterly different from what it had been during the curate's occupation. There were books and flowers, and other pretty things about.

The general tone had changed from commonplace to artistic. On the window-sill lay a half-finished sketch of the village. There was music on the open piano. But these details faded into secondary consideration, for the Lavender Lady was entering, in the soft heliotrope gown, with a sprig of wallflower pinned into the lace fichu.

Occasionally in our lives we meet with people whose whole electric atmosphere seems to merge and blend with our own. We feel we are not so much making a new acquaintance as picking up the lost threads of some former soul-friends.h.i.+p. Avelyn experienced thrills as she shook hands.

She was far too shy to say much, but she sat and listened rapturously while her mother and Miss Carrington did the talking. For the present it was enough to be in the vicinity of her G.o.ddess. The maid brought in tea. There were a dainty, open-hem-st.i.tched Teneriffe cloth, Queen Anne silver teapot and Apostle teaspoons, and scones and honey. A bowl of primroses and forget-me-nots was on the table.