The spacious lawn below the terraced flower-garden was a delightful picture; the soft, velvety grass and the cool shade under the trees that bordered it making a pleasing background for the dainty kimonoed figures that tripped to and fro among the bamboo stalls with their white umbrella-shaped awnings. As the general public began to make its appearance, the colours in the summer dresses that moved across the lawn became as variegated as the flower-garden itself.
Lady Prior stood on the terrace and looked down with a pleased smile at the animated scene beneath her.
"The village looks forward so eagerly to this each year," she remarked to a friend. "You see, there is absolutely nowhere for them to go as a rule, poor creatures. This is quite an event for them." And she raised her eyebrows and gave a little rippling laugh.
Meanwhile the poor creatures were spending their money as they were able, and the local reporter, who was wandering among the stalls, was mentally calculating how big a sum of money he would be able to announce in next week's Observer as the result of Lady Prior's Annual Bazaar. Most of the village seemed out to enjoy itself at all costs; but now and again one would come across a gloomy individual who looked like an unwilling victim of this annual institution. In some cases, as one little old woman grumbled to Caroline, people came because they had been badgered and worried into promising to attend by one of the industrious members of the committee.
"And there's so much questioning, and reproachful looks, an' cold stares afterward—if you don't come," she grumbled, fingering the various articles on Caroline's stall, "that you come for peace sake.... Though I'd much rather be sittin' at 'ome an' 'aving a cup of tea in peace and quietness and restin' my old bones—it's all very well for young folk to come gallivantin' and spendin' their savings—but when you're old—! ... 'Ow much is this? What is it? Eh? An egg-cosy! ... Oh, give me one of them six-penny 'air-tidies—it'll do for my daughter in London. I ain't got no 'air to speak of myself. But my daughter—her 'air comes out in 'andfulls—you ought to see it! ... You've got nothing else for six-pence, I suppose? No? ... I won't 'ave anything else then."
And the little old woman took the hair-tidy and made her way straight to the gates, apparently making a bee-line for home, having fulfilled her duty.
Caroline was not critical—she took things very much as a matter of course, and did not feel ashamed for the handsomely dressed lady from a neighbouring village who inquired in a loud voice for the stall where the 'pore clothes' were for sale. Caroline did not quite understand at first, until another stall-holder explained that Mrs Lester always purchased a number of garments to distribute among the deserving poor of her parish. The garments Mrs Lester bought looked a bit clumsy, and were made all alike, of rather coarse material, but "she's awfully good to the poor, you know," Caroline was told; and there the matter ended, until she recounted the incident to the others when she got home, and provoked a stormy protest from Pamela against the way in which rich people were 'good to the poor.'
"Why can't they be more tactful," asked Pamela. "Of course I know lots of them are—but I mean people like this Mrs Lester."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Pamela," said Isobel, laughing. "What do poor people want with tact? Give them a good meal or a bundle of clothes and they'll pretend to be grateful and satisfied and all that, and directly your back is turned they'll grumble because you haven't given them more. They always want more—they don't want tact!"
Pamela stared for a moment at Isobel, who was reclining gracefully on the sofa, amusement in every line of her face at Pamela's ideas.
"Good gracious, Isobel! I can see a perfectly horrible future in store for you," Pamela said quietly. "You are going to be another Mrs Lester."
"What of it?" laughed Isobel. "As long as I am as rich as she is, there are no horrors for me."
"Anyway, I'm sorry for you," said Pamela earnestly.
"What on earth for?" asked Isobel, slightly nettled.
"Because you'll miss some of the best things in life," replied Pamela.
"Not if I'm rich, I shan't," said Isobel.
Caroline had listened in mild surprise at all this. It had never struck her that there could be anything to object to in Mrs Lester's attitude.
"Do you know," she said, changing the conversation, "I had to pay for the hire of my kimono. I hadn't expected to have to pay after giving my services free, and making so many things for the bazaar. But it all goes to a good cause, I suppose."
Caroline had rather regretted that none of the other three girls had been present at the bazaar in the afternoon, to see how rapidly her tea-cosies had sold; but each of the three had had a different excuse for not coming. Isobel's absence, of course, was a foregone conclusion—she would have loved to go, but could not on account of Miss Crabingway's instructions.
Pamela, as we know, hated bazaars. "Don't ask me to come, Caroline," she had said kindly. "But will you take this donation for 'the cause' and put it in one of the boxes or whatever they have to collect the money in."
Caroline had had hopes that Beryl, at any rate, would not like to refuse to come. But lack of money to spend made Beryl desperate, and, although she was quite resolved in her own mind not to go, she half promised Caroline she would go, if she felt up to it. She even made a feint of preparing to go. Then a sudden imaginary attack of neuralgia made it impossible, and she sent word by Pamela to tell Caroline not to wait, and went and lay down in her bedroom and pulled down the blind. There in her cool and darkened room she listened to Caroline departing, and felt very much ashamed of herself for the story she had made up about neuralgia.
"But I couldn't explain that I had no money—and why," she made excuses to herself. "Oh, it isn't fair!"
About a week after the bazaar Isobel went over to Inchmoor alone one day to Madame Clarence's, a bad toothache compelling Caroline to miss a lesson for the first time. When her dancing-lesson was over Isobel did a little shopping, and then went and had tea in a smart and popular confectioner's, where she could watch all the fashion of the town go by from her seat near the window. Finding that she had missed her usual train back to Barrowfield and that there was a long wait before the next train, she finished her tea leisurely and then started out to walk back home.
She had got about half-way back when a thunderstorm broke suddenly. And there was Isobel in a light cotton dress, and a hat that would be 'absolutely ruined' if it got wet, in the middle of a country lane—a couple of miles from anywhere. She had not paid much attention to the warning clouds overhead, and when the first growl of thunder was heard she looked up startled and hastened her footsteps.
A few minutes later the rain started—great slow thunder-spots at first, and then it came down in torrents. Isobel, casting her eyes hastily around for some place of shelter, saw on the hill-top the ruined windmill. She made for this, and dashed in wet and gasping, and found that although the wind and rain lashed in through the many holes in the ruin, yet it afforded a considerable amount of protection if she chose the right corner to stand in. It was fortunate that she did not remember how Caroline, in spite of her toothache, had come out to the front door to advise her to take an umbrella with her, or she would have felt even more out of temper with the world than she did.
The corner she was crouching in was partly hidden from the doorway by a couple of thick beams of wood which were leaning, like props, from the walls to the ground. The beams and a pile of dust and bricks formed a partial screen, but not sufficient to hide her white frock, if anyone had been present in that deserted spot.
Isobel had been there about five minutes, and the storm showed no signs of abating, when she heard voices and hurrying feet, and the next instant two people dashed in at the doorway.
"Here you are, mother, stand this side—and hold the rug round you this way—it'll protect us a bit," said a deep voice.
"It really is most annoying—the car breaking down like that," said a woman's voice. "Don't go outside, Harry.... Oh, mind!" She gave a little shriek at a flash of lightning.
It was not the lightning nor the crash of thunder that followed that made Isobel's heart thump so madly. The two new-comers—who had not caught sight of her yet, as they were standing with their backs to her—were no others than Lady Prior and her son!
Whatever should she do, thought poor Isobel. She was caught in a trap. If they turned and saw her, as they undoubtedly would do sooner or later, they would probably speak—and then what was she to do? Of course they wouldn't know who she was. Surely Miss Crabingway wouldn't mean her not to speak, under the circumstances. It was so perfectly silly! ... But old ladies were queer creatures sometimes. And only a few weeks more—and then the fifty pounds was hers, and she could do what she liked. Isobel did not want to lose the money just by making some stupid little mistake a week or so before it was due. She thought of her Wishing Well wish.... Of course, she could explain just how this meeting came about, to Miss Crabingway—but would Miss Crabingway understand?—or was she hoping that most of the girls would break one or other of the rules, and so lose the money?
All this flashed through Isobel's mind during the few minutes she waited for the two by the doorway to turn round and discover her. How she wished—wished most fervently—that they would not turn round. For, besides the chief reason, Isobel felt she did not wish them to see her because she must look such 'a sight'—dripping wet, and crumpled, and blown about, and her hat flopping limply.
She gathered from the disjointed conversation that was going on that Lady Prior and her son had been driving home in the motor when the car had broken down in one of the by-lanes about a hundred yards from the mill. The storm had come on while the son was trying to mend matters, and Lady Prior being rather nervous of lightning had been unwilling to stay in the car covered with rugs, and had insisted on getting under a roof of some sort where she felt more protected. She had also insisted on Harry coming with her, and so, covering the motor over, they had brought a rug and taken shelter inside the windmill. Although Harry had thought that they would be just as safe if they had remained in the car, Lady Prior thought otherwise. And so here they were.
Isobel glanced round about to see if there were any possible way of escape; but there appeared to be none. "Now what shall I do when they turn round?" she kept asking herself. Had Beryl been in the same predicament as Isobel all sorts of wild ideas would have been rushing through her brain. Beryl would have thought of things like this: Should she pretend she was a foreigner, and could not understand English? Or, better still, should she pretend she was deaf and dumb? Should she pretend to have fainted—and so escape from having to speak; but this might have had awkward consequences if they insisted on taking her home or to a doctor. Should she pretend to go mad, and tear past them and out of the door?
But these sorts of ideas did not occur to Isobel, who was not used to practising deceptions as Beryl was. What Isobel did do was, after all, the most natural thing. When Lady Prior and Harry turned and caught sight of her, and Lady Prior gave a little shriek (because the lightning had unnerved her), and then broke into exclamations and questions, Isobel, quite unable to control herself, began to cry, her face buried in her hands. ("And now, I simply can't let them see my face," she thought to herself. "My nose always goes so red when I cry.... I must look such an awful fright.... I must keep my face hidden somehow.")
She became aware that Lady Prior was speaking to her in a slightly condescending voice, forbidding her to cry, and telling her not be alarmed at the lightning.
"These country creatures are sometimes so frightfully hysterical during thunderstorms," Isobel heard Lady Prior remark in an undertone to her son. "I suppose she's a girl from one of the villages around here.... There, there, my good girl, don't cry like that—the storm's almost over now."
Lady Prior asked her a few more questions—Where did she come from? Had she far to go home? But receiving no reply she turned to her son, smiled faintly, and shrugged her shoulders.
Isobel sobbed on. Her feelings beggar description. To be talked to in such a tone by Lady Prior! To be mistaken for a dowdy, hysterical village girl by Lady Prior! (But, of course, her wet clothes and flopping hat and streaky hair must look so positively awful that no wonder Lady Prior could not tell what she was nor what she looked like.) Nevertheless, it was the last drop in Isobel's cup of humiliation. Not for anything on earth would she let them see her face now!
Stealthily she watched for her opportunity. Lady Prior and her son had moved away from the door because the rain was lashing in too furiously, and their backs were turned to her again. She edged quietly round the wall, climbed swiftly over the pile of bricks and dust, and made a sudden dash for the door.
Lady Prior gave another little shriek and clutched hold of Harry's arm.
Isobel's action had been so sudden and unexpected that before anyone could stop her she had gained the door and was rushing blindly down the hill in the pouring rain.
Whether Harry was sent after her she did not know. Probably not, as it was still raining, and Lady Prior would think the girl was hysterical beyond control and that it was the best thing to let her run home as quickly as possible.
Isobel reached home just as the storm was over. Do what she would to avoid seeing the other girls she could not escape them. They all three came out into the hall to exclaim over her drenched state and offer their help, but she kept her head down as much as possible so that they should not see she had been crying, and hurried off to her room to change her clothes at once.
She would not look in the glass until she was warm and dry again. She felt she could not stand this last blow to her self-respect. When she did see her reflection she was almost her old self again, and the feeling of humiliation was considerably lightened. She began to feel somewhat virtuous for not breaking Miss Crabingway's rule, and pleased with herself for having got out of the predicament without Lady Prior and Harry suspecting her identity.