The silver tarn

Front matter

THE

NRY POLISSACK COLLECTION

By Katharine Adams Author oj “mehitable”

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I “There is the Moor!” . i

II Jose Blanc. 9

CHAPTER I “there is the moor!”

“Mehitable Webster, I've called and called you. Why on earth don’t you answer?”

A door slammed behind Una O’Hara as she stood regarding her roommate. Two photographs fell off the mantel and the wild wind from the Yorkshire moor caught a muslin curtain at an open window, twisting it into the semblance of a thin white ghost. It was twilight in the room and the figure kneeling by the window was only dimly outlined in the gloom.

Mehitable did not turn toward her roommate as she answered. She still looked off across the moor and she spoke dreamily: “I wasn’t sure that you were call¬ ing me. I heard a voice, but it sounded way off.”

“Do wake up, Mehitable. Don’t moon there by the window. This place is bad enough at all times, but to-day it’s fiendish. It’s the most desolate, beastly hole in England, and I think we are fools to let ourselves be cooped up here.” As she spoke, Una threw her tennis racket across the room. It fell with a clash on to the hardwood floor.

Mehitable stood up a little stiffly, for she had been kneeling a long time by the window. She came across to the study table in the center of the room and, sitting down on the edge of it, clasped her hands about her knees and looked anxiously at her friend, Mehitable’s brown hair was her worst enemy, as she always said. It simply would not stay put, and as she had been prop¬ ping her head up with her two hands, while gazing out of the window, it looked more fly-away than usual. She looked so like the Mehitable of the year before that her friend smiled in spite of herself, frowning the next instant,

“You make it all seem so dreary here, Una, I m sorry for you but I can’t feel that way. To me it’s— n Mehitable paused for the right word, looking off out of the window at the far, dim stretch of moorland —“it is enchanting!" She said the last word softly, Una broke in with a quick flood of passionate words, “I’m ashamed of you, Mehitable Webster. You’re perfectly satisfied to sit here and dream by a window and let other people fight and nurse and work and starve and die. It’s time that you woke up!"

Mehitable looked at her friend in astonishment, realizing that she had never seen her quite like this before. It was one of the things most attractive about Una, her unexpectedness. She had been gayety itself at lunch time, relating a hunting story of her father’s to an interested group. Now she was in a mood that had about it something of despair,

“I tell you, Mehitable, I won’t endure it! There’s something in me that won’t bear this stodginess!" Una choked on the last words,

Mehitable’s next remark was an odd one “Your

"There is the Moor! n eyes are just like cat’s eyes, Una/’ she said. The dusk had deepened in the room, and all the light there was seemed focused in Una’s angry eyes* She did not in the least mind Mehitable’s saying that her eyes resem¬ bled cat’s eyes, for she knew that cats were very dear to her friend, and that the remark was intended more or less as a compliment. She came and sat down on the table beside Mehitable, and as she looked out at the purple blackness of the ever deepening night, she went on speaking rapidly:

“English schools are bad enough, Heaven knows, but a French school way up here on these moors is a perfectly mad idea. It was bad enough in Paris, but then we did have Paris, It was there, even though we didn’t see it often, Madame has brought all of her absurd ideas along with her, up here, Mehitable, when I think of all that’s happening, when I think that Patrick and Miles are fighting and that Hugh is in training, that father’s gone to command a regiment in India and that mother and Molly are V, A, D.’s-— and that Pm here stodging away In this silly school, I could scream and tear my hair!”

“It wouldn’t do you a pennyworth of good!”

The voice coming suddenly from the open doorway made them both jump. Mehitable laughed, “Good¬ ness, Nan, how you scared us I” she exclaimed.

The newcomer sat down on the edge of one of the three beds of the large, wind-swept room. She folded some knitting neatly, wrapping it in a large handker¬ chief which she drew out of her jacket pocket. Then she looked across at the other two,

“You’re daft, Mehitable, spending all of rec hour up here by the window. 1 looked in twice to tell you there was a good fire in the hall, but you seemed so pleased with your own company, I went out again." Nancy spoke severely.

Una jumped down off the table and ran out of the room.

“Una’s wild to-night. She’s miserable,” Mehitable said slowly and perplexedly.

“There’s no more cause for her being put about, than for the rest of us,” Nancy Graeme answered calmly, going over to her chest and putting her knitting away in the top drawer.

“Yes, there is, Nanny. Think of it! Two of her brothers are fighting and her father’s gone to India. Her mother and sister are training to be V. A. D.’s in London. I know how she feels just staying here and being a schoolgirl. Poor Una!”

“What about yourself, Mehitable Webster! You’d like to be with Young Madame in France—” Nancy said, turning toward her friend.

“Don’t, Nan!” There was a choke in Mehitable’s voice.

“Yes, you’d rather be there than anywhere, but you’d like anyway to be doing something like driving with Philippe in his car in London while he does messages. You’re worried about your Aunt Comfort, home in Cherryville, Vermont. There’s a whole ocean between you and your old friends and it’s wartime, but you don’t fash yourself and every one else.”

The loud peal of a gong interrupted Nancy’s last words, and the two friends ran out of the room, u There is the MoorP* 5

Mehitable squeezing Nancy's arm affectionately* “You're so understanding, Nan,” she said.

Fires were blazing in the wide fireplaces at each end of the large hall, or living room, of the school, but the long dining room with its rows of tables had an air of bleakness, and the hot tea was very welcome to the thirty girls who sat about the tables. Mehitable sat next Una, with Nancy on her other side. Una at once began to argue about a hockey match of the week before with a girl who sat opposite her. Apparently she had forgotten her tantrum, as Nancy would have called it, but Mehitable, who knew her so well, was sure that it was only a lull between storms.

^Treacle's a miserable thing. It’s simply atrocious without butter,” announced Theodora Manders, taking generous bites of bread and treacle. She was known as Tip, and she had been one of the girls at the Chateau school in Paris before the war and was now one of the victims, as Una called them, in the lonely house on the moors, in the wilds of Yorkshire. Madame Cateau, the head mistress of the school, had transferred her establishment to the very north of England. She was without a sense of humor and in her thorough way was trying to carry on her school on the same lines as in Paris. Madame’s son was fighting, and her daughter-in-law was nursing, and when Madame was worried she was stricter and more unbending than at any other time. She did not under¬ stand the moorland country, and she found that it was not so easy to maintain her old Chateau ways of doing things. The English girls were on their own ground, so to speak, and in spite of herself, Madame had

The Stiver Tarn had a piece of ground near the vegetable garden leveled off for a tennis court. A regular hockey team had been organized. Madame did not approve of any kind of violent exercise and sighed for the old Paris days when a decorous walk in the Bois was all that was thought necessary, but she was wise enough to sense that it would be a difficult school year. There was restlessness in the air. She had, therefore, reluctantly consented to the innovations.

Talk ranged high at tea, and in spite of no butter, a great many slices of bread and treacle were consumed.

“Tea’s better than in Paris. That’s one blessing,” commented Jean Macy, a pale, pretty American girl, who had been one of the Chateau pupils. Her great friend, Clythie Grey, had gone back to the States, and Jean felt lost without her.

“I tell you, this school isn’t worth a fig this year. It’s neither one thing nor another. It isn’t Paris, and it certainly isn’t a proper English school. Madame’s fogy old notions won’t go. She’ll find that out!” Una’s hands clenched as she spoke.

“Don’t be hysterical, Una, and it seems to me you're not talking as a loyal Chateau girl should talk.” Tip Manders glared at Una, and Una glared back at her.

“Well, Theodora I Dear me! Allow me to present to you, girls, our dear Theodora Manders. Pattern after her well, girls, for she is our shining light. I might say, girls, that she is our star, or more pro¬ saically, our example. She has never been known— and mark me well, she has been for many years a part, a valued part, of this establishment—she has never been known—’’Una’s voice sank to a whisper as she u There is the MoorP* 1

delivered the last— “she has never been known to break a ruled’

The laughter at this speech of Una's was so loud that a governess came in from the room beyond. “Please remember that you are young ladies/’ she remarked, as she sat down at a table in the center of the room and poured herself a cup of tea.

Tip joined in the laughter at Una’s speech and took her up at once, saying in a mock-serious tone, “Yes, girls, I’ve done my little best to be, as it were, a star or pattern, but oh! I have failed. The task has been beyond me.” She winked at Mehitable and grinned at a new girl who sat watching her. Mehitable smiled back at Tip and suddenly a lump came into her throat. Tip was so much a part of the fascinating and far-away Chateau days. She was glad that Tip had spoken as she did to Una. They all knew that the Chateau had really been the only home that madcap Tip had known for years, and that, however she might rail against it herself, she would not let any one else do so.

“Of course no one wants it to be a proper English school. I, personally, am through with the whole school idea. I don’t intend to stay/’ announced Una, spreading treacle on a crust of bread.

“We must all have good times together. There are all sorts of things we could do. We could organize a fraternity as they do in schools at home,” suggested Jean Macy.

“What a bore. Sorry, Jdati, hjijtt that really sounds too deadly,” returned Una.

“We might have a secret society,” put in Tip.

“There’s nothing secret or mysterious about Outliers,” Una objected*

u Una!” Mehitable turned and gave her friend a reproachful glance, and Tip grinned at them both.

“I thought we’d get a rise out of Mehitable pretty soon. Don’t tell her there’s nothing mysterious about Outliers!” she exclaimed*

Noel Pope, a pale, brown-eyed English girl who sat at the head of the table and poured the tea, looked at Mehitable and Una with interest* She was a new girl, but it had somehow fallen to her lot to pour the tea, and no one objected* She w r as the oldest girl of a family of twelve, and pouring tea of an afternoon was second nature to her* The little group there at the table by the window had taken her into their circle from the first* She had never been away to school before, and she was not as yet quite used to the ways of these girls who had suddenly become her friends* Mehitable leaned forward suddenly, speaking intensely, her face pale with earnestness. “Girls, don’t you feel it—the wonderful, mysterious thing that is here all around us—the freedom? Don’t you want to know 7 it and love it? You must know what I mean. Why, 1 mean—the moor 1”

Chapter II

Mehttable knocked at Madame' s sitting room door, and as she did so, she thought of the heavy velvet curtain in front of the cabinet de travaille at the Chateau. Madame’s crisp voice said “entrez” and Mehitable opened the door and went inside. Madame sat at her desk, and her small dog, his tiny head jerked inquiringly to one side, sat on the rug in front of a small coal fire. The windows were tightly closed. Madame did not like moor air. The room was small and serviceable, but Mehitable read homesickness for the cabinet de travaille in Madame’s worried, sallow face.

"What is it then, enfant?” Madame eyed Mehitable rapidly, “Your hair is still untidy. Why is it that you can never learn to arrange it properly?* 1

Mehitable put up her hand guiltily and pushed a strand of hair under the black velvet ribbon that she wore across her forehead. Then she drew her thick braid across her shoulder and looked at it ruefully. “It does look rough. I meant to brush it one hundred

times last night, but-”

“You were moon gazing instead. I know it. You are old enough, Mehitable, to think of these things which are important. What Is it that you desire? 11

Madame changed the subject quickly, fastening her bright eyes on Mehitable.

Mehitable was silent. When Madame fastened her penetrating gaze upon her, she always found it diffi¬ cult to express herself,

“Tiensf” Madame went on sharply. “What is it you would say?”

“It's-—Oh, Madame.” Mehitable clasped her hands in the impulsive way she had. “It’s—the moor I”

“The moor—what of the moor? Ah! It is of a desolation I” Madame raised her thin, delicate hands with a quick shrug of dislike. Then she waited for Mehitable to go on speaking, regarding her with a puzzled expression, which had in it the suspicion of a smile.

Mehitable hesitated, for she knew that she could never make Madame understand how she felt about the moor. “If only you weren't afraid of the moor, Madame. It is so wonderful. I should be so happy if I could be free to go out on to the moor!” Mehitable looked at Madame entreatingly.

“Surely you do go there for your walks, when it is fine?”

Mehitable knew that she could never make Madame know how she felt about the moor. She tried to think of the right words and could only stand in confusion, her hands still clasped tightly together. She said, “I want to be free to know it for myself. There is a tarn—Oh, Madame ! We walked there once with Miss Dcrk. You can't think how lovely it is. It’s a straight walk, too, and it's not so very far. There is no way of getting lost as far as the tarn. No harm could come to us. Madame, won’t you let us go out alone on the moor at recreation? Please say yes. Let us feel the freedom of the moor, not just go for a short walk with a governess* It—isn’t the same.” Mehitable stopped speaking abruptly* She had been so engrossed in what she was saying that for the moment she had quite forgotten her awe of Madame who sat listening to her, frowning and thoughtful.

Madame had been thinking rapidly ivhile Mehitable talked. They were not contented, these pupils of herV Things were not so satisfactory as In the blessed Paris days, but that was more than one could expect. She had taken this old house called Cluthers (the very name made one shudder) because It was the only thing accessible at the moment, but she disliked it and its surroundings heartily. The Chateau girls were not making things any easier for her* They showed their discontent to the new pupils, and that was bad I

“There is, I suppose, as you say, no danger* Yes, you may go as far as the tarn, but no farther. How far is it, again ?”

“It is two miles,” Mehitable answered joyously.

“Two miles! But that is an everlasting walk. I do not think you will find many comrades to go w'ith you.” Madame regarded Mehitable a little curiously. How pale she was! She looked hardly older than when she had arrived the year before, a timid girl in an ugly brown dress and cloak. She was taller now, and the way she wore her hair became her* There was some¬ thing, too, in her face that had not been there before. Yes, after all, she did look older. Madame thought back, in her rapid way, of old girls, head girls, lovely, accomplished, occasionally brilliant girls. Mehitable was not one of them, and yet, because she was the friend of Madame’s grandson, Philippe de Villiers, be¬ cause, indeed, she was precious to her English daugh¬ ter-in-law, or Young Madame, as the girls called her, Madame knew that there must be something a little different about Mehitable.

“Yes,” Madame repeated. “You may all of you go out on the moor unattended by a mistress. You may go as far as the tarn on your holiday afternoon.”

“Thank you, Madame,” Mehitable smiled her thanks as she turned away. Then she paused a mo¬ ment, her hand on the knob of the door. “There is no fresh news, I suppose, Madame?” she asked.

“No news—but wait. Yes, there is a message for you. I had forgotten.” Madame unlocked a small drawer in her desk, and taking out a letter, opened it and read, “My love, of course, always, for Mehitable. There is little or no time for writing, but the next letter will be for her.”

Mehitable said only, “Thank you, Madame,” but there was a happy wave of color in her cheeks as she closed the study door. “The next letter will be for her 1” How magical it sounded I

“Look out, Mehitable. Your shoe lace is untied, and I wouldn’t choose these stairs to fall down. I fell half way myself last week and I know what it’s like 1” Tip called softly over the bannister and leaping down three steps at a time, descended the remainder of the tall flight with her arm about Mehitable’s waist.

"Madame says we may go out alone on the moor, Tip. Isn’t it dandy?” Mehitable took her jacket and white tam from a hook under the stairs, and Tip, who was ready for a run in the garden, answered warmly:

“I should say so. You know, Mehitable," she went on as they walked down a long, bare passage toward the garden door, “this hockey business is a bit of a bore to me. It’s a little too thick. Una's being roped into the games more and more. She’s awfully keen. You know that, don't you? 1 '

Mehitable nodded, and as they went out into the faint, bleak sunlight of a November day, she thought over Tip's words. They crossed a long sweep of leafcovered ground, and as they came within sight of a group under a great oak tree, they waved their hands. Mehitable was conscious of a feeling of which she was ashamed. She was jealous of a game the very name of which she detested. She scolded herself vigorously as she and Tip crossed the lawn, “Don't be a stupid goose, Mehitable Webster. Be glad that there's some¬ thing to keep Una interested, and forget yourself I Be thankful there's something to keep her out of those wild, restless moods!"

They came up to the group of girls who hailed them loudly. Two or three sat on a low stone wall which ran along one side of the garden, separating it from the vegetable garden, beyond. The others sat under the oak. Una was fanning herself with her tam, for in spite of the dampness, the air was mild just then, at noon, and she had been running. It was several days since her outburst to Mehitable and she seemed to have more or less settled down again into the Cluthers routine. She made a place for Mehitable beside her on the w'all.

“Pve seen Madame and it’s all fixed about our going out on the moor without a governess at rec time, and we can go to the tarn on holiday afternoonsM eh St¬ able announced to the assembled group, and a general murmur of approval greeted the statement,

“That’s decent of Madame,” Una admitted, grudg¬ ingly. Then turning to Mehitable, she went on with, “How splendid of you, Hit, to beard the lioness in her den and ask the favor. You’re an odd child. You’re really petrified of Madame, and yet you’re the one that does dare to ask things,” She gave Mehitable an approving pat on the shoulder.

“For my part, I don’t see why any one wants to roam off on this moor. It’s endless, and so dreary. You can count me out on your excursions, Mehitable,” ex¬ claimed Jean Macy, smiling at Mehitable, hut giving a very genuine little shudder. The moor frightens me, I think,” she added,

“That’s because you don’t know the moor, Jean, I’ll make you love it.” Noel Pope spoke suddenly. She was sitting at Una’s feet, her wide, faded, blue felt hat on her lap, “It’s wild, wilder than you know, any of you. There are wild ponies, way off on the outer moors, yes, and wild people, too. We’re York' shire people, you know. I’ve heard stories always. Moors are strange places.”

“How fascinating! You make me keener than ever, Noel. I love your saying that. It sounded so mys¬ terious 1” Mehitable put in earnestly, and they all laughed.

“Mehitable’s stark mad about the moor. Don’t make her worse, Noel,” laughed one of the Warthwall twins* new girls from Devonshire, both popular and both very happy, in their happy-go-lucky way* at Cluthers.

“Jean will never love the moor- She’d rather sit close to the fire and write to Ciythie any day. Gee! Imagine Ciythie Grey here at Cluthers! How she’d loathe it!” said Tip.

Some one came flying across the garden, tripped on a jagged stone, caught herself and sank breathlessly down beside Noel on the ground. It was Peg O’Hara, Una’s youngest sister, her hair flying, her face alight with smiles. U A plum cake’s come from Winchy. I’ve hidden it, never mind where. We’ll have a feast. It’s a big one. Old Backbow brought it with the letters just now. Good old Winchy I She was our governess,” she explained to Noel and the Warthwall girls. The Chateau girls all knew about the O’Hara’s governess,

“She ought not to send a cake in war time,” Una said, trying to put disapproval into her voice, and fail¬ ing utterly.

“It’s made with brown sugar. You needn’t eat it if you don’t want to, Miss Prunes and Prisms,” re¬ torted Peg, Then she called across to Mehitable, “I’ve millions of things to tell you, Mehitable. You and I will have the cake all to ourselves I”

“Well, you’ll just do nothing of the kind, Greedy,” put in Tip, and as the lunch gong sounded she jumped off the wall* the others following her example.

“No hope of letters until after lunch. How did you manage to get the cake* Peg?” asked Mehitable as they crossed the garden, Peg hanging on her arm.

“I saw old Backbow coming up the drive and jumped on the back of his cart. The cake was done up in a brown, paper-covered box, and it sat on top of the post bag with some other parcels. It was addressed to me, so I just grabbed it. Wouldn’t Madame be hot I Wasn’t it luck l” Peg chuckled as she spoke.

“Peg, how naughty of you !” began Una, who walked at the other side of Mehitable, but with a jeering laugh, Peg darted ahead, turning to wave her hand as she dis¬ appeared inside the house.

“Peg is being absolutely spoiled here. She was bad enough at home. All the older girls here make a fuss about her. She docs exactly as she likes, and the way she joins in the conversation all the time is simply im¬ possible 1” exclaimed Una as she and Mehitable came into the entry.

“Peg’s a dear darling. I wouldn’t have her differ¬ ent,” Mehitable answered with a laugh.

There was no chance of going out on the moor that afternoon. During lunch the rain started to pelt against the windows and toward evening the wind be¬ gan to wail and sough up and down the corridors.

“That ends any outdoor fun to-day,” sighed Meta Warthwall after lunch, as they stood about in the hall waiting for the gong for classes.

“There’s nothing to do but eat cake. We might have an impromptu feast with the cake as the chief attraction,” suggested Una. She was sitting on the broad library table in the center of the room, cleaning a hockey stick with a grimy rag.

“The cake happens to be Peg’s. She may have something to say about what we do with it,” put in Mehitable.

“Oh, she can bring in her pal, that cheeky little Marcia Watts,” Una responded airily, having quite forgotten her objection to the cake. “We might as well eat cake. There’s nothing else to do,” she re' peated.

“Knitting!” suggested Noel Pope, adding with a laugh, “your helmet is really too awful, Una. I’ve tried to put it in some kind of shape, but it looks exactly like a rabbit.”

Tip, who had just come up to the group about the table, laughed jeeringly. “Rabbit! Let us say a hip¬ popotamus. I know of a way to make some money for war charities. Let’s exhibit some of the works of art in the knitting line that Una has started since the term began. We could easily charge a bab for ad¬ mission!"

“Start something else to-night, Una, one of the scarfs. They’re the easiest. I'll help you,” Noel mut¬ tered a little abstractedly as she turned the heel of the stocking she was knitting.

Una groaned. “Thanks, old girl. You mean well, but it’s not in my line. I’m hopeless at all that sort of thing.”

“Well, you’d better learn if you want to be a Red Cross nurse. They have to be clever with their hands," put in Nancy Graeme, offering Mehitable the side of a russet apple to bite.

Una shrugged her shoulders. She was used to Nancy’s tart remarks and as a rule did not mind them. “Join us after lights are out," she whispered, turning to the Warthwalls and Fanny Trent. “You, too, Noel,”

she called softly as Noel turned toward the schoolroom at the sound of the gong.

Mehitable stopped beside Jean Maey who stood looking out of the window near the schoolroom door* They watched the fast falling rain for a moment.

“Mehitable, do you realize that Thanksgiving will be here in less than two weeks ? Do you remember last year? Doesn’t the Chateau seem awfully far away to you?” Jean asked.

Mehitable nodded and there was a quiver in her voice as she answered, “It seems like a dream, all of it.”

“The play that you wrote all by yourself, Philippe’s birthday, and the midnight feast in the music room— and Young Madame! Oh, Mehitable, I know she is wonderful and you are the one she loves the best of all!”

During the next hour while she was trying to trans¬ late the first act of a Le Cid/ f Jean’s words kept run¬ ning through her head, “You are the one she loves the best of all.”

At recreation hour it was so dark that the maids went around with tapers, lighting the gas* The big bronze lamp on the hall table was lighted early, and the warm glow through its red shade gave an air of comfort and cheer, as did also the blazing fires in the fireplaces at each end of the b’g room*

“The wind is wuthering. That’s what the Yorkshire people call it. Isn’t that a good word, wuthering I” Mehitable made room for Meta Warthwall on the rug beside her*

“There’s a book called ‘Wuthering Heights/ You know it, don’t you? One of the Brontes wrote it, not

Charlotte. It was Emily I think. It’s dreary, if you like,” said Noel, and turned laughing to Fanny Trent. “Come, Fanny, you must snuggle close to the fire. It’s pathetic to see how cold you American girls are. Tip’s the only one of you who isn't blue with frost all the time.” Noel was used to a big, noisy family and to cosy times about wood fires. There was nothing alien or unusual about Yorkshire to her. She was glad that the American girls liked her and had taken her into their midst. They were different from any girls she had known, and they were always saying and doing un¬ expected things. She liked Mehitable, Una and Nancy, and the Warthwalls, and in spite of her anxiety about her brother who was fighting, she was happy at Cluthers.