A City Schoolgirl and Her Friends

No one made any remark upon her conduct, and at dinner they tried to cheer her up by being very cheerful themselves; but the effort proved a vain one. After a rather depressing meal, Eva got up and went to bed, as she said; at all events, she retired to her room. Vava went off to do her lessons with Doreen, and Amy and Stella were left together.

'Stella, what are we to do? We can't let her go on like this!' cried Amy.

'I don't see what we are to do. Of course it is easy to see that something is upsetting her, and I suppose it is the payment for that furniture; but I do not think she is in the mood to be spoken to about it. We must just wait until she says something herself, and be as nice to her as we can meanwhile,' was Stella's advice.

'I am so afraid she will get into more and more trouble; this friend, whoever she is, with whom she lunched to-day has not a good influence upon her. I always notice that she propounds some of her reckless ideas after she has been with her, and I have no doubt it was she who persuaded her to buy that wretched furniture, which is far too large for her room,' said Amy.

'She must buy her own experience, as nursie says; and, by the way, she told me the other day not to worry about Eva, as she would come all right, for her heart was in the right place,' said Stella.

'One consolation is that she is going to her old home for Easter, and I am hoping that seeing her old friends will bring her back to what she was when she came up to town. I am going there too. I know most of her friends, and I am sure they will do her good,' said Amy.

The object of all this solicitude had gone to bed, and was lying there reading a book she did not wish them to see downstairs, which engrossed her so much that she fell asleep over it and left her gas burning all night!

CHAPTER XXII.

DANTE'S IDYLL

'We shall just have a quiet Easter here with nursie, Vava; you won't mind not having sea-breezes now that you have her, will you?' Stella inquired of her sister a week before the Easter holidays began.

They were sitting in the Enterprise Club waiting for Amy, who now had frequently to go home alone, as Eva was often very late, and had told her friend not to wait for her. So, as it only meant getting home half-an-hour later, the sisters had promised to wait for Amy to-day.

All round them were girls talking of their Easter holidays, and every one was going away somewhere, either to the sea or to the country, or to their respective homes, wherever they were.

Stella knew very few of them, and those only to say good-morning to; but they all turned to ask her where she was spending her holidays and how long she had; and when she had told them she had ten days, and meant to spend them at home, they were loud in their expression of surprise.

And Vava too seemed to be depressed at hearing of all these plans for pleasure; though when they asked her if she did not want to go away she immediately answered by saying of course she did not.

One of the girls, with less tact than the others, guessing that it was a matter of expense, remarked, 'I should go away if I were you if only for the day, if you can't afford more. But it really wouldn't cost much; there are lots of places where they take in business girls for as little as ten shillings a week, and it will cost you nearly that at home. I can give you some addresses if you like.'

'No, thank you,' said Stella with stiff politeness, and she was glad that Amy appeared just then, so that she could get out of the club-room, which had never been so distasteful to her before.

'All the same, Stella,' observed Vava, when the three of them were in the train, and although Stella had made no remark upon the subject, 'I should like to go away for the day on Easter Monday. They say Bank Holiday is a horrid day in London, and you can get very cheap tickets to the sea on that day.'

'Go in an excursion train!' cried Stella in accents of dismay.

'You would not like it at all, Vava; it would be ten times worse than stopping in town. Besides, Blackstead is not town, and you will not see many holiday-makers down Heather Road; it will be quieter than an excursion train, with twenty people crowded into one carriage, and then spending the day at a crowded seaside resort,' said Amy.

'Oh well, I think it was only to say I had been somewhere; all the girls at school are going away, even Doreen will be away; but I don't really mind,' said Vava.

And so it was arranged, and the next week was spent in rehearsing a play for Founder's Day.

'Fancy, Stella, I am to be Beatrice in our play; only it is not called Beatrice, but "Beatreechee,"' explained Vava, pronouncing it, as she hoped, in correct Italian fashion.

'What play are you acting – Shakespeare's?' inquired Stella.

'No, Dante's, and the proper Beatrice has got ill, and they have chosen me, partly because I am the same height, and so her clothes will fit me, and partly because they say my face suits, though I don't think I am a bit Italian-looking. Do you think so, Stella?' Vava demanded.

Stella looked at her sister, and then remarked with a smile, 'No, I don't think you are; at least, not the type we call Italian.' But she privately thought the stage-manager had made a very good choice, for Vava had improved in looks since her arrival in London, and would make a handsome Beatrice.

'Miss Briggs says it does not matter, as none of us are Italian, nor look it; but that, as I have a good memory and can learn quickly, I shall be able to learn up her part. It's a lovely part, Stella, though Miss Briggs says it's not historical at all, and that Dante never said anything about talking to Beatrice, and she doesn't believe he ever spoke to her; but that's nonsense. How could any man write pages and pages of poetry about a person he had never spoken to?' demanded Vava.

'Quite well. Imagination goes a long way with poets, and I was just wondering how you were going to act Beatrice. She does not say much in the poem, and then only as a spirit; so you don't want clothes to fit.'

'Ah, but it is all her life before she dies; the play begins at the party where Dante first meets Beatrice,' said Vava, who had the book of words in her hand and was studying it.

'But you, or rather Beatrice, are only nine years old at that party. How are you going to manage that?' demanded Stella, for Vava was a tall girl, and had grown taller and slimmer since she had been in London.

'We can't take any notice of that; you have no imagination, Stella. How can I make myself into a little child in the first act, and then be grown-up in the second?' she asked impatiently.

'Then I think I should not attempt such a play; it is making a parody of Dante's glorious poem,' protested Stella, who had studied Dante with her father, and thought this play presumptuous.

'It's not a parody, and my opinion is that it's better than Dante's,' declared Vava.

Stella laughed outright at this assertion.

But Vava was not crushed. 'You wait and see; it's got some lovely scenes in it, and the stage scenery is beautifully painted by ourselves – at least, in the school by the painting-mistress and the girls. There's the Bridge of the Trinità at Florence, where Dante meets me and makes a beautiful speech, and I have quite a lot to say to him there,' said Vava.

'You ought not to have,' interposed Stella, meaning from a historical point of view.

But Vava – who was 'rehearsing her play' to Stella more for her own benefit than to entertain her sister – was not at all pleased at this criticism, and replied irately, 'If you want to see your old Dante you'd better not come, for we are not going by it at all.'

'So it appears,' observed Stella dryly.

'How could we – horrid, gruesome stuff? Pray, how would you expect us to put on the stage a lake of boiling pitch, with a lot of people in it heads downwards and their legs struggling in the air? And who would come to see it if we did? I wouldn't take part in such a horrid piece! Why, even the reading of it made me feel quite ill,' argued Vava.

'You need not pick out that particular scene; there are beautiful passages in Dante; but I do not think it is suitable for staging, and I can't understand why it has been chosen,' remarked her sister.

'It is called Dante: an Idyll; and, as I said before, you wait and see whether it is not splendid. I must go and rehearse this with Doreen now,' replied Vava.

'Is Doreen to be in the play too?' asked Stella.

'Yes, she's a Florentine painter named Giotto. It's very funny, but her features are just like his in his picture; and there's a Jewish girl in the school with a long face who makes up very well as Dante. Oh you will be astonished when you see our play; we do things in style at our school, I can tell you!'

'Don't boast, Vava; it's very vulgar,' said Stella.

Vava did not answer back as she used to do, but went off to Doreen, whom she found studying her part diligently. 'I'm so glad you've come; it's no use saying this play to one's self. I know the words all right, but it's the coming in at the right place and the pronunciation. I wish, if you didn't mind, you would just say these speeches over first, and let me say them after you, and see if I can pronounce them like you. I would like to speak well, but I can't twist my mouth into shape as you do!' she exclaimed.

'But we don't twist our mouths; that is just what you do that you should not. See, talk like this, Doreen,' explained Vava; and for more than an hour she sat patiently repeating the words and correcting Doreen, who had a quick ear and copied her way of speaking fairly well, until at last Vava said, with a sigh of satisfaction, 'That's all right now, Doreen; you pronounce those words quite nicely, and you say your speeches ever so much better than the other girls; one would think you were a painter yourself, you speak with such feeling of the beautiful pictures you are supposed to be painting.'

'I don't know much about painting, though I like looking at pictures; but I do feel what I am saying, and I think it must have been splendid to have been Dante's friend as Giotto was, and have been inspired by him. No wonder he painted beautiful pictures, and one day I will go and see them all,' announced Doreen.

'I never thought of all that; then I ought to feel more still, because it is I that inspired Dante; but the worst of it is, Doreen, that I don't feel Beatrice at all,' Vava confided to her.

'How do you mean?' demanded Doreen.

'I don't feel as if I could possibly inspire a person like Dante; and, what's more, I don't want to,' she announced in a burst of confidence.

'You wouldn't like to have inspired the most beautiful poem that was ever written?' cried Doreen incredulously.