I had tried at first to model my style on Spenser, with very indifferent success; I fared no better with the heroic couplets of Dryden or Pope; so, abandoning these ambitious efforts, I finally contented myself with a humble imitation of the cavalier poets, a period which we had just been studying in our literature cla.s.s. I copied it out clearly, and with many qualms I dropped my contribution into Mrs. Marshall's letter-box.

It was to be a point of honour not to let anyone read the poems beforehand, so even Cathy did not see my ma.n.u.script, nor did she show me hers, though I divined from her abstracted manner that she, too, had been engaged in all the agonies of composition.

The much-longed-for day arrived at last. At six o'clock we all a.s.sembled in the large school-room, Mrs. Marshall and the teachers taking their places on the platform. First came the examination lists. To my delight I was head of my cla.s.s in French; Cathy carried all before her in both ancient and modern history; while Blanche and Janet divided the honours in geography and mathematics. It was now the turn of the poems, and I felt little cold shivers of nervousness running down my back as Mrs.

Marshall rose to read out the result of the compet.i.tion. Would she think mine very bad, I wondered, and perhaps even cite it as an example of faulty composition? For one wild moment I devoutly wished I had consigned it to the flames with the rest of my efforts.

"On the whole," began Mrs. Marshall, "I have had some extremely satisfactory results from our literary contest, a very fair number of poems having been received. I regret that some of the contributors do not seem to have mastered even the elementary rules of metre, and their verses cannot be made to scan, but the average standard is higher than I had expected; and I have two here which I think are certainly deserving of praise, and of such equal merit that I have decided to divide the prize between them. They are 'The Ballad of Fair Fiona', by Catherine Winstanley, and 'When Celia Pa.s.ses', by Philippa Seaton. As I am sure you will all wish to hear them, I shall read them aloud:

"THE BALLAD OF FAIR FIONA

"When the daylight gilds the sky, Fair Fiona sits and weeps; When the evening star is high, Lonely still her vigil keeps.

"'Rise, Fiona sweet, arise!

Don your robe of brightest hue.

Tears are but for aged eyes, Love and pleasure wait for you!'

"'Love for me has long been dead, Pleasure followed in his train; Bring the willow wreath instead, Leave me to my tears again.'

"Knight and squire and dame are there Priests beside the altar wait, Frets and fumes the bridegroom fair.

Wherefore is the bride so late?

"Sought they far and sought they wide Where the river seeks the west; Floating on its flowing tide, Fair Fiona is at rest."

"WHEN CELIA Pa.s.sES

"When Celia pa.s.ses through the grove And down the verdant alleys, The lily droops her envious head, The rose for jealous anger's red As in the shade she dallies.

And when her dainty footsteps rove Over the meadow gra.s.ses, The flowers all weep in sheer despair To think they are not half so fair When Celia pa.s.ses.

"When Celia pa.s.ses through the grove, Under the bay and laurel, The nightingale forgets to sing, And silent sits with quivering wing To hear her artless carol.

When cherry blooms their treasure-trove Rain down in fragrant ma.s.ses, My heart leaps high to think perchance I yet may catch one kindly glance When Celia pa.s.ses."

Cathy gripped my hand, and I gripped hers. We had each secretly hoped that the other would win the prize, so to share it between us was a satisfaction to us both. The girls clapped vigorously, and Janet started a cheer.

"That will do!" said Mrs. Marshall. "Catherine and Philippa have done well, but we must not turn their heads by overpraising them. They are not Mrs. Brownings yet, by any means! It is encouraging, however, to find that the literature cla.s.ses have been of some help in teaching you the rules of poetical composition, and you will appreciate real poetry all the more after your attempts to frame verses for yourselves. I have much pleasure in presenting Catherine Winstanley with a copy of _Moore's Irish Melodies_, and Philippa Seaton with a volume of _Extracts from Byron_."

We went up together to receive our prizes, which Mrs. Marshall handed to us with a kind word of approval and encouragement, and then the girls were allowed to disperse, as the platform was required next by the dramatic society, and the actors withdrew to dress themselves as rapidly as possible for their parts.

I was sitting among the audience, waiting for the play to begin, when Doris, who was stage-manager, entered quietly, and drew me aside, with a troubled face.

"I wish you would come upstairs to Cathy's bedroom," she said. "She seems quite ill and is asking for you. We can't think what is the matter with her."

I flew upstairs in a panic. Cathy was lying on her bed, covered with a down quilt, and a group of anxious girls, half-dressed in various costumes, hovered around her with bottles of eau de Cologne and smelling-salts.

She raised her head languidly when I entered.

"I feel so queer, Phil," she whispered. "I don't believe I can act in the play, after all."

"Let me fetch Mrs. Marshall," I gasped.

"No! No! Not on any account! I shall be all right. I only need quiet.

Phil, I want you to take Portia! You know the part as well as I do myself, and the dress fits you. Will you do it to please me?"

"But I cannot leave you if you are ill, Cathy! I can't indeed!"

"You must, you must! I don't want anyone here. I would rather be left quite alone. Millicent has promised to dress you. Oh, go all of you, please! It's getting so late, and the audience will be waiting."

"Someone must take Portia," said Doris. "We certainly can't leave her out. Philippa, you will have to try."

"I don't believe she can do it," said Ernestine, who was to act the part of Lorenzo. "It's a shame to spoil the play. Put it off for half an hour, and perhaps Cathy will be better. I declare I won't act with anyone who has not rehea.r.s.ed with us beforehand."

"Don't be nasty, Ernestine! Of course you'll be obliged to act with her.

How can we put it off? They've been waiting twenty minutes or more already. Come along, girls, we're terribly late! I'm so sorry, Cathy!

We'll turn the light low, and you must try to go to sleep;" and Doris drove us from the room into the studio where we were to dress, and hurriedly helped the others to arrange their finishing touches.

Millicent hustled me into the pink costume, and twisted the gold ornaments into my hair with nervous fingers.

"Do you know the cues?" she asked anxiously. "Oh, I hope you'll be able to remember the part! The prompter is to stand behind the right wing, so back that way if you feel in any danger of forgetting."

The girls were waxing impatient, to judge from the clapping, which we could hear as we hurried down to the school-room.

"Is she ready?" said Doris. "Then draw up the curtain, and begin."

My head was in a whirl. It had all happened so quickly, that I had scarcely time to realize what I was doing. One little thought came to me as I walked on to the stage: "Perhaps Portia herself was equally anxious and nervous as she watched her lover making the choice upon which all her happiness depended", and I began "I pray you tarry, pause a day or two", with an eagerness that fitted in well with the part. I needed no prompting, the words seemed to come without any effort of memory. My delight at Ba.s.sanio's success, my grief at Antonio's letter, and my anxiety that they should go at once to his relief, were at the time only the expression of my natural feelings. I was living in the part, and the heroine's joys and sorrows were my own.

We were called before the curtain at the end of the performance, and the audience broke into ringing cheers for Portia. I stood upon the platform like one in a dream; my success and the shouting girls were nothing to me, I saw only one face in the room, for there, by the doorway, clapping and cheering louder than anyone else, her dear cheeks flushed and her dark eyes shining with generous triumph was--Cathy!

"You did it on purpose!" I declared afterwards. "Cathy, I don't believe you were ill at all!"

"Of course I wasn't!" she replied, laughing. "I wanted to give you a chance to show them what you could do, and it seemed the only way possible. I thought of it from the first, and that was why I went over my part so often with you, and made you rehea.r.s.e it with me. It was splendid, Philippa, simply splendid! I couldn't have done it half so well myself. Now the whole school knows that you can act, and even Ernestine Salt can't deny you the right to become a member of the Dramatic Society."

CHAPTER IX

A HARD TIME

"I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have."

Time seemed to pa.s.s very rapidly away, and I could scarcely realize it when I found I had been more than a year at The Hollies. I was now a tall girl of thirteen, with a considerable idea of the dignity of my age, and much resented anyone alluding to me as "a child". My aunt thought me greatly improved, and spoke in warm praise of Mrs. Marshall's system of education; while as for me, my life at San Carlos seemed such a past tale that it was difficult to believe I had ever been the forlorn little stranger who had landed in England with so many doubts and fears only three years ago. You must not think, however, that I had entirely forgotten my home and the dear old friends of my childhood. I still sent warm messages to Juanita and Ta.s.so and the other members of our household, though I could no longer speak their language; and I liked to hear accounts of them in my father's letters, while I believe on their part they all looked forward to seeing their little signorina one day in their midst again. It was perhaps only natural after all that my new life should in some measure erase the old one from my mind; it was what my father had desired, and if I were beginning to think that England was far more to me than the country I had left, he would be the first to rejoice over my altered views. So far from feeling any danger of my affection for him being weakened, he knew that my change of opinions only tightened the bond between us, since the older and wiser I grew, so much the more would I be able to appreciate him and enjoy his companionship when we should meet again.

I was now in the third form at school, as I had been moved up with Blanche, Janet, and Cathy, and found myself the youngest in a cla.s.s which had a reputation both for quick wits and hard work. Miss Percy was our teacher, and, though in many respects an excellent one, she was a woman of narrow sympathies and strict discipline; very different from kindly Miss Buller, who had always tried to make the rough paths of learning as smooth as possible for our stumbling feet. Another disagreeable point of my promotion was that I had Ernestine Salt for a cla.s.s-mate, and however much I might dislike her I must perforce be thrown continually into her society. As you may imagine, she did not welcome my advent, giving me to understand that she considered me an intruder among girls who were all older than myself, and that my advancement was only due to Mrs. Marshall's partiality. Lucy had remained behind in the upper fourth. Never a very clever girl, she had little ambition, and was quite content if she could sc.r.a.pe along without incurring any specially severe reproof from her teachers. Though I loved her as my cousin, I felt she occupied quite a different place in my heart from my darling Cathy. It is perhaps only possible to have one very dearest friend, and while Cathy seemed to win all my love and admiration, and to appeal to everything that was highest and best in me, Lucy's tastes were based so much on the lines of Aunt Agatha that I found we had little in common. I saw less of her now than ever, for, Mary having come to The Hollies this term, Mrs. Marshall had arranged for the sisters to sleep together, while to my great delight I was allowed to share a vacant bedroom with Cathy. We moved our household goods into our new quarters with much noise and chattering. My case of South American b.u.t.terflies was accorded the place of honour over the chimney-piece, together with the portrait of my father; the brush which Cathy had won at the Everton Meet hung proudly over her wash-stand; my views of San Carlos were distributed about the walls; while photos of Marshlands and the Winstanley family in every conceivable position adorned our chests-of-drawers and dressing-table.

"I feel as if we were relations now you have come to share my room,"

said Cathy. "I've always longed for a younger sister, so I'm going to adopt you, Philippa dear, and try to believe that you're really and truly mine. You haven't any mother of your own, so I shall put _my_ mother's photo in the middle of the dressing-table that she may belong to us both. She has always called you her second little daughter."

I found the work in my new cla.s.s taxed my exertions to the uttermost.

Mrs. Marshall had a very high standard as to what should be required from girls of our age, and it was only with the greatest difficulty I was able to keep up to it. Without Cathy's help I must most certainly have failed. She was a true friend in need. She would patiently go over my preparation with me, explaining difficult rules, repeating dates and vocabularies again and again to fix them in my memory, or showing me so clearly and concisely the reasons for the various problems in mathematics, that I felt I could learn more easily from her than from our teachers. My one haunting fear was that Mrs. Marshall should consider me below the level of the cla.s.s and should send me down again into the fourth, for to be thus banished from Cathy seemed the worst that fate could hold in store for me. Never very robust I worked far beyond my strength, and the continual strain began at last to tell upon my health. I grew thin and pale, I was troubled with a perpetual headache, and I sometimes indulged in unreasonable fits of crying, which incurred the severe reproof of Miss Percy, who had no sympathy with "nerves".