A College Girl Read online

  CHAPTER TWO.

  THE TELEGRAPH STATION.

  The Garnetts' house stood at the corner of Sandon Terrace, and possessedat once the advantages and drawbacks of its position. The advantageswere represented by three bay windows, belonging severally to thedrawing-room, mother's bedroom, and the play-room on the third floor.The bay windows at either end of the Terrace bestowed an architecturalfinish to its flattened length, and from within allowed of extendedviews up and down the street. The drawback lay in the position of thefront door, which stood round the corner in a side street, on whichabutted the gardens of the houses of its more aristocratic neighbour,Napier Terrace. Once, in a moment of unbridled temper, Vie Vernon hadalluded to the Garnett residence as being located "at our back door,"and though she had speedily repented, and apologised, even with tears,the sting remained.

  Apart from the point of inferiority, however, the position had itscharm. From the eerie of the top landing window one could get a bird's-eye view of the Napier Terrace gardens with their miniature grass plots,their smutty flower-beds, and the dividing walls with their clothing ofblackened ivy. Some people were ambitious, and lavished unrequitedaffection on struggling rose-trees in a centre bed, others contentedthemselves with a blaze of homely nasturtiums; others, again, abandonedthe effort after beauty, hoisted wooden poles, and on Monday morningsfloated the week's washing unashamed. In Number Two the tenant keptpigeons; Number Four owned a real Persian cat, who basked majestic onthe top of the wall, scorning his tortoiseshell neighbours.

  When the lamps were lit, it was possible also to obtain glimpses intothe dining-rooms of the two end houses, if the maids were not in toogreat a hurry to draw down the blinds. A newly married couple hadrecently come to live in the corner house--a couple who wore eveningclothes every night, and dined in incredible splendour at half-pastseven. It was thrilling to behold them seated at opposite sides of thegay little table, all a-sparkle with glass and silver, to watch courseafter course being handed round, the final dallying over dessert.

  On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, suddenly and without theslightest warning, bride and bridegroom had leaped from their seats andbegun chasing each other wildly round the table. She flew, he flew; hedodged, she screamed (one could _see_ her scream!) dodged again, andflew wildly in an opposite direction. The chase continued for severalbreathless moments, then, to the desolation of the beholders, swept outof sight into the fastnesses of the front hall.

  Never--no, never--could the bitterness of that disappointment beoutlived. To have been shut out from beholding the _denouement_--it was_too_ piteous! In vain Darsie expended herself on flights ofimagination, in vain rendered in detail the conversation which had ledup to the thrilling chase--the provocation, the threat, the defiance--nothing but the reality could have satisfied the thirst of curiosity ofthe beholders. Would he kiss her? Would he beat her? Would shetriumph? Would she cry? Was it a frolic, or a fight? Would the morrowfind them smiling and happy as of yore, or driving off in separate cabsto take refuge in the bosoms of their separate families? Darsie opinedthat all would _seem_ the same on the surface, but darkly hinted at thelittle rift within the lute, and somehow after that night the glamourseemed to have departed from this honeymoon pair, and the fair seemingwas regarded with suspicion.

  As regards the matter of distance, it took an easy two minutes to coverthe space between the front doors of the two houses, and there seemed anendless number of reasons why the members of the different familiesshould fly round to consult each other a dozen times a day. Darsie andLavender, Vie and plain Hannah attended the same High School; theGarnett boys and John Vernon the same Royal Institute, but the fact thatthey walked to and from school together, and spent the intervening hoursin the same class-rooms, by no means mitigated the necessity of meetingagain during luncheon and tea hours. In holiday times the necessitynaturally increased, and bells pealed incessantly in response to tugsfrom youthful hands.

  Then came the time of the great servants' strike. That bell was aperfect nuisance; ring, ring, ring the whole day long. Something elseto do than run about to open the door for a pack of children!

  The two mistresses, thus coerced, issued a fiat. Once a day, and nooftener! All arrangements for the afternoon to be made in the morning_seance_, the rendezvous to be _outside_, not _inside_ the house.

  After this came on the age of signals; whistlings outside the windows,rattling of the railings, comes through letter-boxes and ventilationgrids, even--on occasions of special deafness--pebbles thrown againstthe panes! A broken window, and a succession of whoops making the airhideous during the progress of an extra special tea party, evoked thedispleasure of the mistresses in turns, and a second verdict went forthagainst signals in all forms, whereupon the Garnetts and Vernons inconclave deplored the hard-heartedness of grown-ups, and set their witsto work to evolve a fresh means of communication.

  "S'pose," said Russell, snoring thoughtfully, "s'pose we had atelegraph!"

  "S'pose we had an airship! One's just as easy as the other. Don't be ajuggins."

  But Russell snored on unperturbed.

  "I don't mean a _real_ telegraph, only a sort--of _pretend_! There'sour side window, and your back windows. If we could run a line across."

  "A line of _what_?"

  "String. Wire. Anything we like."

  "S'pose we _did_ fix it, what then?"

  "Send messages!"

  "How?"

  Russell pondered deeply. He was the member of the family who had anatural aptitude for mechanism; the one who mended toys, and on occasionwas even consulted about mother's sewing-machine and escapes of gas,therefore he filled the place of engineer-royal and was expected to takeall structural difficulties upon his own shoulders. He pondered,blinking his pale blue eyes.

  "Can't send messages in the usual way--too difficult. If the cord weredouble, we might have a bag and switch it across."

  Ha! the audience pricked its ears and sat alert, seeing in imaginationthe tiny cord swung high in space above the dividing ground, stretchingfrom window to window, fastened securely on the sills, "somehow,"according to the girls, the boys critically debating the question ofways and means, strong iron hoops, for choice, clamped into theframework of the windows.

  "How would the messages be sent?"

  "In a bag, of course. Put the letter in the bag; then we'd pull andpull, and it would work round and round, till it arrived at the oppositeend."

  A stealthy exchange of glances testified to the general realisation ofthe fact that it would take a _long_ time to pull, a much longer time,for instance, than to run round by the road, and deposit the missive inthe letter-box, a still unforbidden means of communication. Every onerealised the fact, but every one scorned to put it into words. What wasa mere matter of time, compared with the glory and _eclat_ of owning areal live telegraph of one's own?

  The first stage of the proceedings was to obtain the parental consent,and this was secured with an ease and celerity which was positivelydisconcerting. When mothers said, "Oh, yes, dears, certainly--certainlyyou may try!" with a smile in their eyes, a twist on their lips, and abarely concealed incredulity oozing out of every pore, it put theyoungsters on their mettle to succeed, or perish in the attempt. Themothers obviously congratulated themselves on a project which wouldprovide innocent amusement for holiday afternoons, while they inwardlyderided the idea of permanent success.

  "We'll show 'em!" cried Harry darkly. "We'll let 'em see!"

  The next point was to decide on the window in each house which shouldact as telegraph station. In the case of the Vernons there wasobviously no alternative, for the third-floor landing window possessedqualifications far in excess of any other, but with the Garnetts tworival factions fought a wordy combat in favour of the boys' room and thelittle eerie inhabited by Lavender, each of which occupied equally goodsites.

  "Stick to it! Stick to it!" were Harry's instructions to his youngerbrother. "They can't put the thing up without us,
so they're bound tocome round in the end, and if we've got the telegraph station, it willgive us the whip hand over them for ever. It's our room, and they'vejolly well got to behave if they want to come in. If they turn rusty,we'll lock the door, and they'll have to be civil, or do without thetelegraph. Let 'em talk till they're tired, and then they'll give in,and we'll go out and buy the cord."

  And in the end the girls succumbed as predicted. Lavender's pride inowning the site of the great enterprise weakened before the tragicpicture drawn for her warning, in which she saw herself roused fromslumber at unearthly hours of the night, leaning out of an opened windowto draw a frozen cord through bleeding hands. She decided that on thewhole it would be more agreeable to lie snugly in bed and receive themessages from the boys over a warm and leisurely breakfast.

  These two great points arranged, nothing now remained but the erectionof the line itself, and two strong iron hoops having been fixed into theouter sills of the respective windows a fine Saturday afternoonwitnessed the first struggle with the cord.

  Vie Vernon and plain Hannah unrolled one heavy skein, threaded itthrough their own hoop, and lowered the two ends into the garden, whereJohn stood at attention ready to throw them over the wall. Darsie andLavender dropped their ends straight into the street, and then chasedmadly downstairs to join the boys and witness the junction of the lines.Each line being long enough in itself to accomplish the double journey,the plan was to pull the connected string into the Garnett station, cutoff the superfluous length, and tie the ends taut and firm. Nothingcould have seemed easier in theory, but in practice unexpecteddifficulties presented themselves. The side street was as a rulesingularly free from traffic, but with the usual perversity of fate,every tradesman's cart in the neighbourhood seemed bent on exercisingits horse up and down its length this Saturday afternoon. No soonerwere lines knotted together in the middle of the road than thegreengrocer came prancing round the corner, and they must needs behastily untied; secured a second time, the milkman appeared onincredibly early rounds, reined his steed on its haunches, and scowledfiercely around; before there was time to rally from his attack aprocession of coal-carts came trundling heavily past. By this time alsothe frantic efforts of the two families had attracted the attention oftheir enemies, a body of boys, scathingly designated "the Cads," whoinhabited the smaller streets around and waged an incessant war against"the Softs," as they in return nicknamed their more luxuriousneighbours.

  The Cads rushed to the scene with hoots and howls of derision; white-capped heads peered over bedroom blinds; even the tortoiseshell catsstalked over the dividing walls to discover the cause of the unusualexcitement. Clemence, with the sensitiveness of seventeen years,hurried round the corner, and walked hastily in an opposite direction,striving to look as if she had no connection with the scrimmage in theside street. Darsie read the Cads a lecture on nobility of conduct,which they received with further hoots and sneers. Plain Hannah plankedherself squarely before the scene of action with intent to act as abulwark from the attack of the enemy. The three boys worked withfeverish energy, dreading the appearance of their parents and an edictto cease operations forthwith.

  The first lull in the traffic was seized upon to secure the knots, whenpresto! the line began to move, as Russell the nimble-minded hauledvigorously from the upstairs station, whence he had been dispatched afew moments before. The Cads yelled and booed as the first glimmeringknowledge of what was on foot penetrated their brains; they groupedtogether and consulted as to means of frustration; but with every momentthat passed yards of line were disappearing from view, and the skeins inthe streets were rapidly diminishing in size. Presently there was not asingle coil left, and a cheer of delight burst from the onlookers asthey watched the cord rise slowly off the ground. Now with good luckand the absence of vehicles for another two minutes the deed would bedone, and the Garnett-Vernon telegraph an accomplished fact; but alas!at this all-important moment one line of string caught in an ivy stem atthe top of a garden wall, and refused to be dislodged by tuggings andpullings from below. The Cads raised a derisive cheer, and to add tothe annoyances of the moment a cab rounded the corner, the driver ofwhich pulled up in scandalised amaze on finding the road barricaded bytwo stout lines of string.

  His strictures were strong and to the point, and though he finallyconsented to drive over the hastily lowered line, he departed shakinghis whip in an ominous manner, and murmuring darkly concerning police.

  "On to the wall, John. Quick! Climb up and ease it over. If we don'tget it up in a jiffy we shall have the bobbies after us!" cried Harryfrantically, whereupon John doubled back into his own garden, and byperilous graspings of ivy trunks and projecting bricks scaled to the topand eased the line from its grip.

  "Right-ho!" he cried, lifting his face to the opposite window. "Pull,Russell! _pull_ for your life!"

  Russell pulled; a second time the double thread rose in the air. Darsiejumped with excitement; Lavender clasped her hands, all white and tensewith suspense, plain Hannah ran to and fro, emitting short, staccatocroaks of delight; Harry stood in manly calm, arms akimbo, a beam ofsatisfaction broadening his face. That smile, alas! gave the last touchof exasperation to the watching Cads. To stand still and behold theline vanishing into space had been in itself an ordeal, but Harry'slordly air, his strut, his smile--these were beyond their endurance!With a rallying shout of battle they plunged forward, grabbed at theascending cord, hung for a dizzy moment suspended on its length, thenwith a final cheer felt it snap in twain and drag limply along theground.

  Alas for Harry and for John--what could they do, two men alone, againsta dozen? The girls screamed, declaimed, vowed shrill revenge, but inthe matter of practical force were worse than useless. Even withRussell's aid the forces were hopelessly uneven. Harry stood looking ongloomily while the Cads, chortling with triumph, galloped down the road,trailing behind them the long lengths of cord; then, like a trueEnglishman, being half-beaten, he set his teeth and vowed to conquer, orto die.

  "They think we're sold, but they'll find their mistake! We'll get up atfive on Monday morning and have the thing in working trig before theyhave opened their silly eyes."

  This programme being duly enacted, the telegraph stations remained foryears as an outward and visible sign of the only piece of work whichHarry Garnett was ever known to accomplish before the hour of hisbelated breakfast.