CHAPTER VIII

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF A BEAST

Barbara was stretched, face downwards, on the floor of the junior playroom. It was Wednesday evening, about ten days after the rescue party had invaded Wootton Beeches; and she was trying, with the aid of much ink and a footstool for a writing-desk, to answer Kit's last two letters, and to send him all the news she had accumulated since that important occasion. Over her head buzzed the desultory conversation of her fifty-five companions, who still gloried in ignoring her; but she heeded them no more than they had come to heed the unconscious little person who lay stretched at their feet. It was really only a habit with them, by this time, to ignore the new girl; for most of them had quite forgotten the fancied grievance they had originally cherished against her for her defiance of their favourite, Jean Murray. Indeed, if it had not been for the fear of Jean's scorn and Jean's tongue, they would undoubtedly have made friends with her days ago. With the best intentions in the world, it was not easy to go on avoiding some one who never seemed to notice that she was being avoided; and most of them wished secretly that Jean Murray would 'come round.' But whatever Jean felt about it, she showed no intention outwardly of coming round. Whenever she found herself alone with a picked audience, she seized the opportunity to inflame them and herself afresh, by recalling the evil behaviour of Barbara over the head girl's boots, pointing out how, by a tissue of deceit, the offender had wormed herself into Margaret's favour, to the exclusion of other worthier members of the junior playroom--notably of Jean Murray herself. 'You've only got to see how little she cares, and _that_ will show you what a wicked mind she's got,' was the kind of sentence that usually wound up one of these inflammatory addresses; and after that, the junior playroom would redouble its coolness towards Barbara Berkeley. But Barbara Berkeley persisted in going her own way cheerfully, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to live with fifty-five companions who never spoke to her; and the situation in the junior playroom threatened to become too absurd to be maintained.

Babs dropped her pen, and picked up one of Kit's letters for reference. She had so much to say to him and so little time to say it in, that she was afraid of leaving some of his questions unanswered. Kit's neat and precisely written epistle was a great contrast to her own blotted and smudged production; and Barbara sighed as she realised how much he managed to say in a few words, while she expended far more time and ink and energy, without expressing half as much as she wanted to tell him.

'Dear Babe,' Kit had written--'This is to tell you that we got home safely from the great Midnight Rescue Party, though of course I caught a chill and had to have that beast Hurst again. I'll tell you presently how Jill ragged him, though; and that was well worth being ill for. But first of all I have to inform you what we all think is for your good in the present crisis of your fortunes. (That means, now you are at school.) Of course we are much afflicted to hear that you are not happy, and of course we are not surprised to hear you do not like girls. (Nobody could, except Egbert, and he doesn't really, only he pretends he does because of that chap's sister last holidays. That's what has done for Egbert, and it's a great pity, but what we must expect at his age, so it's no use vociferating about it.) But to resume--we are all agreed that the best thing you can do is to stop where you are until the period of probation is over (that means till you've done being at school). You see, it is only for three months at a time, and _we_ are here in the holidays. It would be indescribable and unprecedented (which means beastly, and awful, and things like that) if you had to live with girls in the vacation too. But you are spared this, and it is your duty to be thankful for every crumb of comfort that is to be substracted from the situation. (Besides, you are a girl yourself; you can't get over that though you mayn't like the idea, and you've got to go on being a girl till you're a woman. It's something to feel that it can't last for ever, and that in the end you will be able to be a woman, like Nurse and Auntie Anna; and there's nothing the matter with them, is there?) If your temporary indisposition only cures your spelling it will be money well spent, for your spelling, my dear Babe, as father once said, is both original and varied. So cheer up, and remember that Jill is but a girl too, and that she is quite passable for one of that slack and wayward sex. (Even when she is most like a girl I find I can bear with her. For instance, when I lammented the other day that the rescue party had been a frost, she said, "Why, you couldn't have bicycled unless it had been, could you? Listen to the rain, now!") The post is going, so I must infer the description of how Jill ragged the doctor till next time. Meanwhile, cultivate the endurance for which English women have ever been renowned; that is the result of the codgitations of the council we held before the others went back to school.--Your affectionate brother, Christopher Berkeley.

'P.S.--I'm not quite sure about the m's in lammenting; it looks rum somehow, but there isn't a dictionary, so I must leave it. C.'

His other letter was much longer, and had evidently been written straight off without the elaborate care that he had given to the composition of the first one. As Babs read it, she pictured him sitting as he always did, perched on a high chair at the writing-table, with his legs curled under him and his nose very close to the paper; and suddenly, the deadly feeling of home-sickness she had been battling with for days came over her again.

'This is the true account,' she read, through a suspicious mist in her eyes, 'of how Jill ragged the doctor, when he came to dine with us, the day after the boys went back. Of course, Auntie Anna didn't know he was a beast, so she couldn't be blamed for asking him; but Jill and I much regretted the circumstance. Robin grumbled and said he wished he was old enough to sit up to dinner and have courses and courses and courses, but that's his beastly greediness, as I pointed out to him, and he doesn't know what it is to get a white tie under a filthy clean collar and then an Eton coat under that and to wash your teeth extra instead of only in the morning. But Jill came in and tied it, which was something, and she even did it better than Nurse, who used to make you feel sick by grinding her knuckles into your throat all the time. Having prepared ourselves for the awful holocaust we then proceeded downstairs. (Perhaps you won't be able to understand all the words in this letter, but it's too good a joke to be spoilt by making it easy for you, so you must do your best.) Jill had an awfully decent pink sort of thing on, and it had rows of fringe that you could tie into knots without her rotting you for doing it. Well, to come to the real matter of my discourse, we found the doctor in the drawing-room, also the old Rector, who is called Barnaby and is too old to count much, and besides Auntie Anna likes him so we mean to extend to him the charm of our companionship. And the Rector took in Auntie Anna, and the Beast took in Jill, and I followed behind feeling rotten. You don't know how rotten it is, when you are an odd one like that and nobody wants you in their conversation. You see there were two conversations all the time, Auntie's conversation with the old boy about tithes and rent charges and things that are not suited to my intellect, and Jill's conversation with the doctor which wasn't a conversation at all because he wouldn't talk. He sat and glowered at his plate like a cat would, and if he lifted his eyes by accident and caught one of us staring at him, he looked down again as if he'd been shot. His conduct was most unaccountable and reprehensible as I pointed out to Jill afterwards, and she said, "Yes," and grinned. I was greatly incensed with him for giving her so much bother, because she worked hard at him and never got cross once, and she asked him about the village and about the poor people and about abroad, and all those grown-up things, and the Beast said "Yes" and "No" and "Certainly," till I wanted to kick him. I tried to help Jill once or twice by tossing off one of my polite rejoinders, but he only behaved as if I wasn't there and looked more like a poker than ever. That was what put Jill's monkey up. She couldn't stand his indifference and acidity to me, so she began to rag him and that shows that she is in reality a brick though forced to maskerade as a girl. (That's another word you don't know perhaps but it's in the dictionary.) She smiled at him as perky as you please and she said in that soft-cotton-wolly voice of hers, "Is there anything that _does_ interest you, Dr. Hurst?" And when the Beast was so bowled over that he nearly dropped his knife and fork, she just went on and explained how funny it was to sit all the evening with some one who didn't want to talk, and didn't he think so too? I wanted to break out into paeons of triumph in order to express my satisfaction at the turn matters were taking, but I restrained my impetuosity in time and waited for the Beast to speak. He stuttered rather and began chopping up the pear on his plate as if it was for Christmas puddings, and then he said he didn't suppose any young people were interested in what he was interested in (which shows that all the while he lumped Jill and me together as _kids_ and not fit to associate with him). Then Jill asked him what he _was_ interested in, and he said "Bac--" (this is the longest word of all and I'm afraid you won't find it in the dictionary, at any rate not in the way I'm going to spell it) "Bacterioi--" oh hang! here goes again--"Bacteriollodgy." Then Auntie Anna winked at Jill, and we went upstairs and left the Beast with the Rector, which was a punishment he more than deserved, as I told Jill. She said she was afraid we boys were spoiling her manners, and Auntie said, "Of course they are!" as if it was a good thing, which of course _we_ know it is. I had to go to bed then, and Jill said it was awful desolation and despair when I'd gone, because Auntie Anna began her conversation all over again with old Barnaby, and the Beast instead of having the sense to join in it went and sat with Jill all the evening. Which shows his puerrility and blightedness. She sang to him too, and he got up to go the moment she had finished which was beastly rude, I think. If he did think she sang badly he might have played up better. But he's a beast, and you can't get over that. He's very ugly and sulky looking, and he's about fifty I should think, but Jill says not so old. That's her grown-up charitableness which she can't get over. Anyhow----'

The mist in Barbara's eyes threatened to become so serious at this point that she put down Kit's letter hastily and returned to her own. Whatever happened, she was not going to cry before all these girls, who never understood anything she did. She was hard at work again by the time Ruth Oliver pushed aside the curtain and looked in from the next room.

'Barbara Berkeley!' she called. 'Has any one seen Barbara Berkeley?'

One or two of the girls looked round casually at the slim figure on the floor, but nobody roused her. Ruth Oliver was too good-natured a person to inspire much authority in the junior playroom, and the children would sooner risk her displeasure any day than Jean Murray's. If it had been any other girl in the First, half a dozen of them would have hastened to do her bidding at once.

'Angela!' called Ruth, impatiently, coming into the room as she spoke; 'don't you know where the Babe is? She has got to go and see the doctor at once.'

On the other side of the curtain, both Barbara and her nickname met with the popularity that was denied to them in the junior playroom; and the note of familiarity in the elder girl's words sent Angela's impudent chin up in the air.

'We don't know anybody of that name in here,' she said, and went on talking flippantly to the girl beside her.

Ruth Oliver was not born to be a leader, and she was horribly afraid of some of the younger ones, who had been quick enough to detect this long ago, and naturally presumed upon it. But there were limits even to her endurance, and she laid a stern hand on Angela's shoulder.

'If you don't want to be reported to Margaret Hulme, you'd better fetch Barbara to me at once,' she commanded, with a firmness she certainly did not feel.

Angela rose with a very bad grace, and strolled as slowly as she dared to the other end of the room. 'If you'd only said that at first, it would have saved all this fuss!' she muttered, as soon as she was at a safe distance.

Babs still lay face downwards on the floor, with her heels in the air and her whole attention fixed on the paper she was covering with her large round handwriting. If she did not finish her letter before the prayer-bell rang, it would have to wait until next Wednesday. So she did not take any notice when some one came and said something or another in her ear. She was always in somebody's way, and if she moved, she would only be in somebody else's way. So she stayed where she was.

'Don't you hear? You've got to go and see the doctor,' repeated Angela, loudly and with impatience. Thoughtless and empty-headed as she was, even Angela Wilkins had the sense to see how absurd it was that the new girl should turn on her persecutors by ignoring them.

Barbara rolled over on her side and glanced up at her.

'Oh, all right! I know how much of that to believe,' she answered; and she rolled back again into her old position and continued her letter to Kit.

'She says she doesn't want to see the stupid doctor, and nothing will induce her to come, and she doesn't care what you say or anybody else either,' was Angela's version, on her return to Ruth Oliver, of the way in which Barbara had received her message.

The elder girl looked down at her suspiciously. 'Did she really say that?' she inquired.

'Go and ask her, that's all,' cried Angela, full of righteous indignation at having her word doubted. For she was really under the impression that she had correctly described the attitude of the new girl towards the doctor and Ruth Oliver.

'Well, I will,' answered Ruth, and she threaded her way among the girls until she too stood over the prostrate figure of the offender.

'Babs,' she called, bending down.

Barbara flourished her black legs in the air with an impatient movement. 'How you do bother!' she complained, stifling a sigh. 'That's the second in five minutes. Why can't you leave me alone?'

There was a start of surprise in the group that surrounded her. It is probable that few of her listeners saw the ridiculous side of the new girl's request to be left alone, when that was the punishment that had been meted out to her ever since her second day at school; but any one of them could have told her that that was not the way to speak to a girl in the First.

Ruth turned a little red from sheer nervousness; and the girls immediately decided that she was afraid of the youngest child in the school, and began to giggle with one accord. Barbara sighed again at this new interruption; and raising herself on her knees, she sat back on her heels.

'Oh, it's you!' she observed, shaking the hair out of her eyes. 'Why didn't you say so? I thought it was just some one who wanted to bother.'

'You've got to go and see the doctor in Finny's study. Make haste, Babe,' said Ruth, who was smarting under the giggle, and wanted to get back into the other room among her equals. But the Babe showed no signs of making haste.

'Why have I got to see the doctor?' she asked, opening her eyes. 'I'm not ill or anything; and I want to finish my letter home. Don't you think it's a mistake?'

'No, I don't,' said Ruth, forgetting her nervousness all at once, and lifting the child boldly off the floor. 'You've got to be examined to see if you can do gymnastics, that's all. He's in Finny's study, waiting for you.' She carried her playfully under her arm and set her down on the further side of the curtain. Whatever the other tiresome children might think of her, she knew that the Babe never criticised her, and that gave her confidence.

Barbara was still a little dubious about the sense of seeing a doctor when she did not feel ill; but she trotted across the hall obediently and went into Finny's study. She was only half conscious of what she was doing, for she had been taken from her letter too abruptly to have had time to wake up properly; and Babs always required plenty of time to wake up, when she had been absorbed in anything. So the solemn-looking young man, who sat in the low arm-chair, was a little upset when she not only gave him her hand to shake but also put up her face to be kissed as a matter of course.

Dr. Wilson Hurst, in spite of Kit's idea of his age, was only twenty-eight and quite young enough to feel extremely bashful. He jerked back his head suddenly; and Barbara woke up.

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said, smiling. 'I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't want to be kissed; I shouldn't have dreamed of kissing you at home, you know, because the boys feel just like you about kissing. But Ruth kisses me such lots, and everybody seems to kiss everybody else here, so I suppose I've rather got into the way of----'

Here Miss Finlayson said 'Hush!' very softly; and the doctor pulled something so queer and interesting out of his pocket at the same time, that Barbara forgot everything else. 'What are you going to do with that funny thing? Is it a speaking-tube?' she asked curiously.

'I'm going to see whether your heart is in the right place,' answered the doctor, and he was immediately so overcome at his stupendous levity in making a joke over a medical examination, that he did not speak another word till it was completed. As for Babs, she was immensely interested the whole time, and never took her bright little eyes off his face once.

'Is it in the right place?' she asked him, when he put the queer-looking thing back in his pocket again.

'Yes,' said the doctor, briefly.

'Is anybody's in the wrong place?' pursued Babs, leaning against his knee in the most friendly way imaginable.

'Sometimes,' said the doctor. He marvelled at himself for not feeling more irritated by her, when as a rule he found children so worrying.

'Is yours in the right place?' persisted Barbara.

'I--I hope so,' said the doctor, struggling with a grim smile.

'Same place as mine?' continued Barbara, eagerly.

Miss Finlayson put out her hand to stop her; but Babs did not see. The doctor saw, and did not take any notice.

'I imagine it is in the same place,' he said feebly.

'But how do you know, unless some one else finds it for you?' inquired Babs. 'You can't listen to your own heart through that funny thing, can you?'

'N--no, some one else has to find it,' admitted the doctor, and she supposed he had remembered something that made him feel shy, for he coloured furiously and rose to his feet rather hurriedly.

Babs stood gazing up at him attentively, while he exchanged parting words with Miss Finlayson. 'It's an awful pity you didn't go to see Kit when he was ill,' she remarked, directly there was an opportunity. 'Kit's doctor was a beast.'

The long oval face turned slightly red again; and Miss Finlayson said something very quickly about the wet evening.

'Yes,' replied the doctor, stammering a little; 'I am sorry the evening is so late,--so wet, I mean, and that I am so late in calling--positively the first minute I've had to-day,--extremely busy this time of year----'

A hand was stealing inside his, and he had to stop and look down again. 'Do you think you could go and see Kit next time he is ill?' asked Babs, appealingly. 'It isn't nice to have a beast for a doctor, when you're ill, is it?'

The doctor went on looking down at her with an odd sort of smile on his face. 'That reminds me,' he said--though how it reminded him the child could not for the moment imagine--'that your cousin Miss Urquhart charged me with a message for you. She sent you her love and promised to write soon. I hope I have given it correctly.'

'Oh!' cried Barbara, with great excitement. 'Do you know Jill?' The doctor kept hold of her hand and nodded. 'And Auntie Anna? And the boys--_all_ of them? Then you must know Kit!'

'Yes,' said Dr. Hurst, grimly. 'I was the beast.'

Then he stooped and kissed her cheek very stiffly, as if he were not used to kissing people; and then he went away. Like Ruth Oliver, he had found it difficult to feel nervous of the youngest girl in the school.

Barbara climbed on the window-seat, and flattened her nose against the window-pane, and watched the lamps of the doctor's trap receding down the drive. 'I like doctors; don't you, Miss Finlayson?' she inquired, when that lady came back into the study.

Miss Finlayson agreed that she liked doctors very much indeed, and she began to write something in a big book, while Babs knelt on the window-seat and stared out into the rain and the darkness. Suddenly she jumped down from her perch with a cry of dismay.

'What's the matter now?' asked the head-mistress, absently.

'I must have called him a beast!' gasped Barbara.

'I think I heard something like it,' observed Miss Finlayson, still writing.

'But--but I didn't mean that _he_ was a beast,' proceeded Barbara, looking distressed. 'I meant that somebody else was a beast. It wasn't my fault that somebody else was _him_, was it, Miss Finlayson?'

'It would be safer, I think, and perhaps a little more considerate, not to call anybody a beast,' remarked the head-mistress, gravely. 'Then these little mistakes would be avoided.'

'I never will again,' sighed Babs. 'It's such a particular pity, because he isn't a bit like a real beast, is he?'

Miss Finlayson looked up while she dried the page she had just written. 'Have you finished your letters home?' she inquired pleasantly. 'The prayer-bell will ring in about a quarter of an hour.'

The reminder sent Barbara straight out of the room, and she sped swiftly back across the hall, thinking busily. Clearly, the only reparation she could make to the doctor was to transform him from a beast into a fairy prince, and to offer him a place in her fairy kingdom; but he would be rather lonely there without a princess, she feared, and she herself already belonged to Kit. It was always easier to find princes than princesses, and she did wish that Finny would not wear a cap and scrape her hair back so tidily--two things which disqualified her, in spite of her niceness, from being a princess in anybody's kingdom. However, perhaps he would not mind doing without a princess just at first; and in time she might be able to find some one who was neither silly nor unkind, and would be worthy of a crown and the companionship of a disenchanted beast.

At this point in her reflections Barbara reached the door of the senior playroom, and the sight of the elder girls, as they busied themselves with their weekly correspondence, reminded her again of her letter to Kit. For the moment, as far as she was concerned, her new prince would have to whistle for a princess.

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