The Jolliest School of All

  CHAPTER VII

  Lorna's Enemy

  For the next two weeks Irene and Lorna were strictly "gated," a greatdeprivation, for it would have been their turns to go shopping with MissMorley, and Irene at least was anxious to sample some of the quaintwares spread forth so temptingly in the Fossato stores. With theexception of church-going they did not have a chance to step outside thegrounds of the Villa Camellia. The Sunday expedition came as a welcomerelief to break the monotony. The school liked the little British churchat Fossato. It was so utterly different from anything to which they hadbeen accustomed in England or America. To begin with it was not anecclesiastical building at all, but simply a big room in the basement ofthe Hotel Anglais. The walls had been exquisitely decorated by a Frenchartist with conventionalized designs of iris in purple and gold, andthrough the windows there was a gorgeous peep over the bay. The girlsused to exercise much maneuvering to secure the seats with the bestview, and somehow that bright stretch of the Mediterranean seemed toblend in as part and parcel of all the praise and thanksgiving that wasbeing offered.

  Punctually at twenty minutes to eleven on Sunday mornings the fifty-sixpupils and the seven mistresses would leave the great gate of the VillaCamellia and march into the town, along the esplanade under the grove ofpalm trees, then through the beautiful sheltered garden of the HotelAnglais, where many exotic flowers and shrubs were blooming and thewhite arum lilies were like an Easter festival, to the doorway, underthe jessamine-covered veranda, that led to the _Eglise anglaise etamericaine_. The school practically made half the congregation, butthere were visitors from the various hotels, and a sprinkling of Britishresidents who had houses at Fossato. When the service was over therefollowed a very pleasant quarter of an hour in the piazza of the hotel;the clergyman and his wife would speak personally to many of the girls,and any of the pupils who met friends were allowed to talk to them.Fossato was a popular week-end resort from Naples, so relatives oftenturned up on Sundays and there were many joyous reunions. Kind littleCanon Clark and his small bird-like wife were great favorites at theVilla Camellia. They were always invited to school functions, and eachterm the girls, in relays of about ten at a time, were offeredhospitality at the "Villa Bleue," a tiny dwelling that served asparsonage for the British chaplain. To go to tea at the dear weehouse--color-washed blue, and with pink geraniums in itswindow-boxes--was considered a treat, and Irene and Lorna looked veryglum indeed when Miss Rodgers kept severely to their punishment, andsubstituted Agnes and Elsie for themselves in the next contingent ofguests.

  "You'll go later on," consoled Peachy. "Miss Rodgers is really verydecent in that way. She'll see that you get your turn once in a term atany rate. Last time I went we had hot brown scones and molasses. Oh,they were good! There! I oughtn't to have told you that when your turn'soff. Never mind. It will be something to look forward to. We always playpaper games there, and they're _such_ fun. There I am again! Well, ifyou went to-day it would be over and done with by to-morrow, and it'sstill all to come. That's one way of taking it."

  "Oh, it's all very well to moralize!" grumped Lorna, who was feelingthoroughly cross. "It's easy enough to count up other people'sblessings. I'm a blighted blossom!"

  "Poor little thing! She lived all the winter And died in the spring,"

  quoted Peachy with an extra wide grin. "Cheer up! Don't you realizeit's only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look lesslike a statue of melancholy! Do you know, child, that you're gettingpermanent wrinkles along that forehead of yours, and it makes you morelike fifty than fifteen. You're too sedate. That's what's the matterwith you, Lorna Carson! It's a fault that ought to be overcome. CopyDelia and me. We know how to enjoy ourselves. There--my lecture is overand now let's talk of earthquakes."

  "It's all very well for _you_, you've got everything you want," murmuredLorna bitterly under her breath. "Some people haven't half the luck, andit's hard to be content with a short allowance and pretend you're thesame as every one else. It can't always be done."

  She turned away as she said it, so Peachy only caught the sound of agrumble and did not hear the actual words. Had she done so she mightpossibly have exhibited more sympathy, for she was a very kind-heartedgirl. Neither she nor anybody at the Villa Camellia understood Lorna inthe least. So far their classmate had been somewhat of a chestnut-bur,and nobody in the Transition had ever penetrated her husk of reserve.There is generally a reason for most things in life, if we could onlyknow it, and poor Lorna's morose and hermit attitude at school wasreally the result of matters at home. To get into her innermostconfidence we must follow her to Naples on her half-term holiday and seefor ourselves the peculiar circumstances amid which she had been placed,and the disadvantages that had caused her to differ from other girls.

  Lorna's family was the smallest possible, for it consisted only of herfather. Nobody at the Villa Camellia had ever seen Mr. Carson--not evenMiss Rodgers. He had communicated with her by writing when he wished toplace his daughter at the school, but he had never paid a single visitto Fossato. He pleaded stress of business as the excuse for thisremissness, but Lorna herself knew only too well that he had nointention of coming. Except to the office at which he was employed henever went to any place where he would be likely to meet Englishvisitors. The furnished rooms where he lived were in the strictlyItalian portion of Naples, and not in the vicinity of the big hotels.Secretly Lorna dreaded her holidays. There was nothing for her to dowhile her father was at the office. She was not allowed to go out alone,and unless she could induce fat Signora Fiorenza, their landlady, to bephilanthropic and chaperon her to look at the shops, she was obliged toamuse herself in the house during the day as best she could. In theevening things were certainly better. Her father would take her to dineat an Italian restaurant, and would sometimes treat her to a performanceat a theater or cinema close at hand, or would escort her for alamplight walk along the streets, but these brief expeditions wereevidently made out of a sense of duty, and Mr. Carson was plainlyunhappy until he was once more ensconced in his own sitting-room withhis favorite books and his reading-lamp. He had seen so little of hisdaughter during the five years they had lived at Naples that, though ina sense he was fond of her, she was more of an embarrassment to him thanan asset. Lorna realized this only too keenly. Her sensitive dispositionshrank away from her father. She was shy in his presence, and never knewwhat to say to him. She seemed always aware of some enormous shadow thathung over their lives and darkened the daylight. What this was she hadno means of guessing, but it was emphatically there. She had learned, bybitter experience, never to ask to be taken to the fashionable portionsof the city; she knew that the sound of a voice speaking English at aneighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in ahurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church,and even such cosmopolitan spots as the aquarium or the museum wereequally taboo.

  Long and often did Lorna puzzle over this idiosyncrasy of her father.She retained vague memories of her early childhood, when he had surelybeen utterly different and would come into the nursery to romp with her.It had not been altogether her mother's death; that had happened whenshe was only six years old, and there were bright memories after it ofhappy times together. No--it was when she was ten years old that theunknown catastrophe must have occurred which had ruined her father'slife. She could remember plainly the visit of several gentlemen, and ofloud angry voices talking inside the drawing-room; she was standing onthe stairs as they came out into the hall, and her father had told herroughly to run away. Then had followed a hasty removal, and they hadleft their comfortable home in London and had come to live in Naples.After a dreary time in a second-rate Italian boarding-house she had beensent to the Villa Camellia, and all link with England was lost andbroken. No aunt or cousins ever wrote to her, and the earlier portion ofher life seemed a period that was utterly ended.

  So far Lorna had never had the courage to make any inquiries into thewhy and wherefore of this un
satisfactory state of affairs. If a questionrose to her lips the sight of her father's forbidding face effectuallycurbed her curiosity. That some tragedy had been concealed from her shewas positive. The suspicion, nay the absolute certainty, was sufficientto place a division between herself and other girls. She would hear herschoolfellows discussing their homes, relations, and friends, and whenshe contrasted their gay doings with her own barren holidays she shrankinto her shell, and would make no allusion to her private affairs.

  "Lorna's an absolute oyster, you can get nothing out of her," was theuniversal verdict of her form.

  But if she said little she thought a great deal. She would listenjealously to the accounts of other people's fun, and a bitter feelinghad grown in her heart. Why should her life be so shadowed? She had asmuch right to happiness as the rest of the school. Why should she seemsingled out by a vindictive fate and separated from her companions?

  In justice to the girls at the Villa Camellia it is only fair to saythat any separation was entirely of Lorna's own making. Had she beenmore expansive she would have readily enough found friends. No one knewof the misery of her home life, and she was simply judged as what herschoolfellows thought her--a queer-tempered crank who refused to join inthe general fun of the place, and in consequence was left out of mostthings.

  Irene, pleasant and hail-fellow-well-met with all comers, had at oncenoticed this attitude of the others towards Lorna. At the drawing oflots in the sorority she had somehow realized that everybody wasextremely thankful to have escaped having her unpopular chum as a buddy.Chance remarks and slight allusions, hardly noticed at the time, butremembered later, had confirmed this.

  "They're not exactly unkind, but they're down on that girl," she hadconcluded. "I haven't made up my mind yet whether I altogether like her,but I'm going to be decent to her all the same."

  As the very first who had treated her on a real equality of girlhoodIrene had been placed on a pedestal in Lorna's empty heart. Theseparation between the two added to the loneliness of the latter's briefhalf-term holiday. She had never missed school so much before, or hatedher surroundings so entirely. The long week-end dragged itself slowlyaway. Sunday was wet and they stayed all day in the little sitting-room,Mr. Carson reading as usual, and Lorna trying to amuse herself withItalian magazines and fidgeting as much as she dared. Towards eveningthe rain cleared a little and her father went out, refusing, however, toallow her to accompany him. At the end of an hour he returned and flunghimself heavily into his chair. He was in a state such as she had neverwitnessed before, violently excited, with glaring eyes and twitchinghands.

  "Lorna!" he exclaimed in quick panting accents, "I have met my enemy.The man who ruined me! Yes, the man who deliberately blackened andruined me!"

  Lorna turned to him half frightened.

  "What is it, Father?" she asked. "Have you an enemy? You've never let meknow before. Oh, I wish you'd tell me! I'm fifteen now, and surely oldenough to hear. It's so horrible to feel there's something you're alwayskeeping from me."

  "I suppose you'll find out some time, so I may as well tell you myself,"replied Mr. Carson grimly. "I'm a wronged, ruined man, Lorna, sufferingfor the sin of another who goes scotfree. The world judged me guilty ofembezzlement, but before God I am innocent! I never touched a penny ofthe money. Do you believe me innocent? Surely my own daughter won't turnagainst me?"

  "No, no, Father! Indeed I believe you innocent. Tell me how ithappened. Was it when we left London? I seem to remember the troublethere was then, though you never explained. We had a different namethen, hadn't we?"

  "You were too young at the time to understand, and it wasn't a subject Iwished to revive. Briefly, a big sum, for which I was responsible,disappeared. The head of the firm believed me guilty, but for the sakeof old associations he would not prosecute; he simply told me to go. Iconsulted my lawyer, and, if there had been the slightest chance ofclearing myself, I'd have fought the matter to a finish, but he told memy case hadn't a leg to stand on, and that, if I were foolish enough tobring it into court, I should certainly be convicted of embezzlement,and sent to penal servitude; that it was only the clemency of my chief'sattitude that saved me, and that he advised me to go abroad while Icould. So I left England in a hurry, a disgraced man, disowned by hisfamily and his friends. I changed my name to Carson, and through thekindness of a business acquaintance I was offered a clerkship in anItalian counting-house in Naples, which post I have kept ever since. HowI should otherwise have made a living God only knows! It's always myhaunting fear that some one in Naples will recognize me and tell them atthe office who I am. If that old story leaks out I may once more beruined."

  "But who did it, Father?" asked Lorna. "Had you no clew at all?"

  "Not enough to convict, only a strong suspicion, so strong that it ispractically a certainty. The man who ruined me was once my friend. Nowfor five long years, he has been my bitterest enemy. We were both headsof departments in the firm of Burgess and Co. Probably he's a partnernow, as I ought to have been. I've never heard news of him since I leftLondon, but to-day I saw him in the Corso. I saw him plainly without anypossibility of mistake. What is he doing in Naples? Has he come here toruin me again?"

  "No, no, Dad, surely not! Perhaps he doesn't know you're in Italy.Probably he's only taking a holiday and will go back to England soon,"faltered Lorna, suddenly realizing that in her father's excited nervouscondition she ought to offer consolation and soothe him instead ofadding to his agitation. "It's very unlikely that he would find you out.Dad, don't grieve so, _please_!"

  She went near to her father's chair and laid a timid hand on hisshoulder. An immense gush of pity for him flooded her heart. If she hadknown this story before, she would have understood, and instead ofthinking him unkind and misanthropic she would have tried to be a betterdaughter to him. The new-found knowledge illuminated all the past andseemed to draw them closely together.

  "_Mother_ would have believed in you, Dad," she ventured to say.

  "Thank God she never knew! She was spared that at any rate. I ragedagainst Providence when I lost her, but afterwards I felt she had been'taken away from the evil to come.' Her relations thought me guilty. Iwent to them and explained, but they practically told me I was lying.When I went abroad I never sent them my address. I just wished tovanish. I don't suppose they have ever troubled to inquire for me. Whocares about a ruined and disgraced man?"

  "_I_ care, Dad," said Lorna. "I'm only fifteen and I can't understandeverything, but if you'll let me the least little bit take Mother'splace, may I try? I'm not much, but perhaps I'm better than nobody, andwe two seem all alone in the world."

  For the first time in five years the barrier between them was down, andLorna was hugging her father as in the old happy childish days. To knowall is to forgive all, and her resentment against his treatment of herturned into a deep pitying love. She would never be frightened of himagain. A new impulse seemed to have come to her. If she could in any waycomfort him for what he had suffered, it would be something to live for.

  "He's my father, and I'll stick to him through thick and thin," shesaid to herself fiercely, as she went to bed that night. "I don't knowwho this enemy is, but if ever I meet him I'll hate him and allbelonging to him. I say it, and I don't go back on my word. I'll be myown witness as nobody else is present. Lorna Carson, you've taken up afeud and you've got to carry it through. May all the bad luck in theworld come down upon you if you break your oath."