Australian Lassie Page 11

  CHAPTER XI

  THE ARTIST BY THE WAYSIDE

  Elizabeth Bruce was "detained for inattention."

  No one else out of all the four and thirty scholars of Wygate School waskept in to-day. One after the other, hands folded behind them, they hadmarched to the door. Then delightful sounds--the scuffling of feet,stifled screams, gigglings and low buzzings of talk--had stolen over thepartition that separated the cloak-room from the class-room, andElizabeth, sitting on the high-backed form, with all the other emptyforms in front of her, nibbled her pencil in melancholy loneliness.

  She wondered if Nellie Underwood and Cyril would wait for her. Onlyyesterday she had waited a dreary hour for them and had carried Cyril'sbag home for him to ease his wounded spirit.

  Then she began her task. She seized a slate, arranged two slate-pencilsto work together and expedite her task and wrote: "Elizabeth Brucedetained for inattention."

  When she had written the statement ten times the silence in thecloak-room struck chill upon her. All the rest had found their hats andbonnets then and gone outside.

  She sat on the floor under her desk and tried to see the playgroundthrough the open door. Two small pinkly-clad figures dashed past thedoor, chased by a maiden in blue--all screaming and laughing.

  "Nell Underwood!" ejaculated Betty gladly, and went back to her slatewarmed and cheered.

  She made her pencils work harder than before, kneeling upon the form inan excess of industry.

  Even as she wrote the statement for the fortieth time, voices andlaughter came from the playground--but a cold silence had come by thefiftieth.

  At the sixtieth her little moist hand was cramped, and she had to stayto work her fingers rapidly. At the seventieth the tears were tricklingdown her cheeks, for she was only Elizabeth Bruce "detained forinattention," the schoolroom was only a schoolroom, and the forms wereonly forms--and empty. And that was the master down at the desk there,exercise books and slates around him and a pen behind his ear. For aspace the tears splashed down hard and fast upon her slate and the sightof the big drops aroused her self-pity. The larger the splashes thelarger her self-sorrow.

  A sharp "Go on with your work, Elizabeth Bruce" waked her to thenecessity of drying her eyes and slate and adjusting her pencils foragain writing, "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention."

  But at the eightieth time of writing it, she was no longer ElizabethBruce, the daughter of a moneyless author. Her name was now GeraldineMontgomery, and she was the adopted daughter of a millionaire. Hermother, she had decided, was a gipsy, and was even now hovering near athand to steal back her beautifully dressed child.

  By the time she had written the melancholy statement of ElizabethBruce's detention, her face had all its old smiling serenity again.

  She rose, sighing thankfully, and collecting her slates, walked downsoberly to the busy master at his desk.

  "Let this be a lesson to you, Elizabeth," he said, running his eye downslate after slate. "Ten times each side, twenty times each slate, fiveslates--one hundred. More punishments are meted out to you than to anyother child in the school. I shall find it necessary, if this state ofthings continues, to write to your father. Clean the slates and returnthem to their places--then go."

  Elizabeth found the cloak-room empty. She assured herself that every onehad gone home--of course; but her eyes flashed round the press room, andto that corner between the press and the door, for a blue-frocked littlegirl with red hair. And, of course, as she was now Geraldine Montgomery,the disappointment of finding the corner empty was not so keen as itwould have been merely to Elizabeth Bruce.

  "I think," said this foolish little girl aloud, "I'll wear my leghornhat with the ostrich feathers in it to-day. Papa always likes that." Andshe took her old pink bonnet down from her peg and slipped it upon herhead. Then she stuffed her books into her black school-bag and turned tothe door.

  Elizabeth Bruce fancied Cyril would be away there under the saplingsplaying knucklebones impatiently, and her eyes eagerly scanned thedeserted playground. No kneeling figures, no Nellie Underwood, no Cyril,no knucklebones. For a second the tears trembled in her eyes at thethought that no one had waited for her, but in a minute Elizabeth Bruceslipped away, and Geraldine Montgomery in her leghorn hat was treadingthe homeward way.

  Behind her, she told herself, an old gipsy woman was skulking--she hadseen the ostrich feathers, the "rare lace upon the simple rich dress."

  It was just behind the store that the gipsy and Geraldine bothdisappeared.

  The store turned one blank wall upon Carlyle Road--which was the homeroad--and Elizabeth came round the corner sharply and then stood still.There, kneeling upon the red clayey earth, his face to the wall, was bigJohn Brown.

  Elizabeth made out that he was writing or figuring with blue chalk uponthe wall's blankness, and although her heart feared the big rough boyshe had "fought," she drew nearer.

  "Hulloa!" said John Brown, flushing when he saw the small pinaforedmaiden he had an unpleasant recollection of beating so short a time ago,and whom he had carefully avoided ever since.

  "Hulloa!" said Betty, surprised into speaking to him.

  Brown made a seat of his boot-heels and surveyed her, being much toobashful to open up a conversation.

  But Betty was not bashful.

  "What are you doing?" she asked, and a very inquisitive face stared athim from the depths of the pink sun-bonnet.

  "'Is it a horse?' queried Betty."]

  "H'm!" said John, and made a few more strokes with his pencil.

  "Is it a horse?" queried Betty. "Yes it is--there are no horns, and it'stoo big for a dog or cat. Yes, it's a horse."

  "H'm!" said John again. Then he looked at his handiwork, drawing furtheroff to see it from Betty's point of view.

  "Yes," he said, with badly concealed pride; "it's a horse right enough.It's a race-horse. I drew him from memory."

  "Why didn't you draw him on paper?" asked the small girl.

  "Won't be let. And no sooner do I see a bit of blank wall than I begindrawing something on it," said the reader of _Self-made Men_.

  Betty only heeded the first part of his sentence.

  "Who won't let you?" she asked, standing on one leg as she put thequestion.

  "My people," said John. "They don't want me to be an artist."

  Betty's eyes rounded themselves.

  "_Are_ you going to be an artist?" she asked. She was intenselyinterested. The boys who played in her kingdom had not arrived at thestage of thinking what they were going to be. What they were wasall-sufficient unto them. Cyril had once declared his intention ofkeeping a sweets' shop, but that was quite a year ago now.

  Betty had read many stories about artists, and they were always set inromantic or tragic circumstances. The look she gave to the one beforeher warmed him into becoming confidential on the spot. He did not tellher all at once, not all even that first afternoon, although they tookthe homeward way together.

  But he gave her a rough outline of the lives of several artists who hadsprung from the ranks, and of one in particular who lived in a cellar,and tasted of starvation as a boy; one who, denied paper, could not yetdeny the genius within him, but drew in coloured chalks upon any vacantwall that came in his way. And he always drew animals--and usuallyhorses and dogs.

  The little brown face under the sun-bonnet glowed with delight. Neverin all her life had the imaginative small maiden come across a boy likethis. Big John Brown, indeed! Bully, indeed! Gardener's boy, indeed! Howcould she and Cyril ever have said, ever have thought, such things?

  Presently, for the boy had never had such a listener in his life before,he told her of other men--Stephenson, Newton, Shakespeare--and Bettytook off her bonnet as her earnestness increased, and tucked it underher arm after a way she had when agitated.

  "Oh, I wish I was a boy," she said. "What's the good of a girl? What cana girl do? Don't you know anything about self-made women?"

  John knew very little. In fact he too very much doubte
d the "good of agirl." He told her so quite bluntly, but added that she'd better makethe best of it.

  "There _must_ be some self-made women," insisted Betty. "I'll ask fatherto-night."

  John thought deeply for a few minutes, seeing her distress. He reallyransacked his mind, for besides sorrow for her sorrowing he couldplainly see the admiration with which she regarded him, and he wanted toshow her that he knew something about women too.

  "There's Joan of Arc," he said, "and--there's Grace Darling!"

  But Betty was indignant. "They're in the history book!" she said.

  John thought again, but could only shake his head.

  "All women can do," he said, "is wash up, and cook dinners, and mendclothes!"

  Betty's lips quivered.

  "I won't be a woman," she said, "I _won't_!"

  John owned to sharing her craving to be rich, but he wanted to _make_his wealth himself--which set Betty's imagination galloping down a newroad. _She_ had only thought hitherto of her grandfather's riches, whichhad seemed to her and Cyril to be all the money there was in the world.

  But now John had slid back a door and let her peep into all the gloriesof a new world, and she had seen there wealth and fame to be had for theearning--by men and boys!

  "Try and find out about self-made women," she said, when he left her atthe turn through the bush. "See if there were any women artists, orwomen inventors, or women pirates, or _anything_. Good-bye."