Well, she has gone to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthly love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were swayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well as Martyr. And there is One Who knows.
It was not until recess after the midday dinner that Greta Du Taine could exhibit her love-letter. She was a Transvaal Dutch girl with old French blood in her, a vivacious, sparkling Gallic champagne mingling with the Dopper in her dainty blue veins. Nothing could be prettier than Greta in a good temper, unless it might be Greta in a rage. She was in a good temper now, as, tossing back her superb golden hair plait, as thick as a child's arm, and nearly four feet long, she drew a smeary envelope from the front of her black alpaca school-dress, and, delicately withdrawing the epistle enclosed, yielded the envelope for the inspection of the Red Class.
"What niggly writing!" objected Nellie Bliecker, wrinkling her snub nose in the disgust that masks the gnawing tooth of envy.
"And the envelope is all over sticky brown," said another carping critic.
"That's because he put the letter inside the chocolate-box," explained Greta, "instead of outside. And the best chocolates – the expensive ones – always go squashy. Only the cheap ones don't melt – because they have got stuff like chalk inside. But wait till I show you as much as the envelope of my next letter – that's all, Julia K. Shaw!"
Julia K. wilted. Greta proceeded:
"It's directed 'To My Fair Addored One,' because, of course, he didn't know my name. I don't object to his putting a d too much in adored; I rather prefer it. His own name is simple, and rather pretty." She made haste to say that, because she felt doubtful about it. "Billy Keyse."
"Billy?"
"Billy Keyse?"
"B-i-l-l-y K-e-y-s-e!"
The name went the round of the Red Class. Nobody liked it.
"He must, of course, have been christened William. Shakespeare was a William. The Emperor of Germany," stated Greta loftily, "is a William. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Gladstone were both Williams. Many other great men have been Williams."
"But not Billies," said Christine Silber, provoking a giggle from the greedily-listening White Class.
Greta scorched them into silence with a look, and continued:
"He is by profession a surveyor, not exactly a partner in the firm of Gadd and Saxby, on Market Square, but something very near it." (Do you who read see W. Keyse carrying the chain and spirit-level, and sweeping out the office when the Kaffir boy forgets?). "He saw me walking in the Stad with the Centipede," Greta added.
This was a fanciful name for the whole school of eighty pupils promenading upon its hundred and sixty legs of various nationalities in search of exercise and fresh air.
"Go on!" said the Red Class in a breath, as the White Class giggled and nudged each other, and the Blue Class opened eyes and ears.
"He was knocked dumb-foolish at once, he says, by my eyes and my figure and my hair. He is not long up from Cape Colony: came out from London through chest-trouble, to catch heart-trouble in Gueldersdorp" (do you hear hectic, coughing Billy Keyse cracking his stupid joke?). "And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du Taine – isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my father? – and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class English drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes the colour of my eyes."
Greta threw her golden head back and laughed, displaying a double row of enviable pearls.
"But I've got to wait for all these things until Billy Keyse strikes pay-reef. Poor Billy! Hand over those chocolates, you greedy things!"
Somebody wanted to know how the package had been smuggled into the Convent. Those lay-Sisters were so sharp…
"They're perfect needles – Sister Tarsesias particularly, and Sister Tobias. But there's a new Emigration Jane among the housemaids. You've seen her – the sallow thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe in curlers, who walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expecting to hear her quack… Well, Billy got hold of her. She didn't know my name, being new, but she recognised me by Billy's description, and sympathised with him, having a young man herself, who doesn't speak a word of English, except 'damn' and 'Three of Scotch, please.' I've promised to translate her letters; he writes them in the Taal. And Billy gave her two dollars, and I've given her a hat. It's the big red one mother brought back from Paris – she paid a hundred francs for it at the Maison Cluny – and Emigration Jane thinks, though it's a bit too quiet for her taste, it'll do her a fair old treat when she trims it up with a bit more colour and one or two 'imitation ostridge' tips… I'd give another hundred francs for the Maison Cluny modiste to hear." Again the birdlike laugh rang out. "Now you know everything there is in the letter, girls, except the bit of poetry at the end, which only my most intimate friends may be permitted to read. Lynette Mildare!"
Lynette, bending over a separate table-desk in the light of the north window of the long deal match-boarded class-room, looked up from her work of tooling leather, the delicate steel instrument in her hand, a little gilding-brush between her white teeth, a little fold of concentrated attention between her slender brown eyebrows.
"Yes. Did you want anything?"
Greta jumped up, leaving the rest of the box of chocolates to dissolve among the White Class, and came over, threading her way between the long rows of desk-stalls.
"Of course I want something."
"What is it?" asked Lynette, laying down the little tool.
"What everyone has a right to expect from the person who is her dearest friend – sympathy," said Greta, jumping up and sitting on the corner of the desk, and biting the thick end of her long flaxen pigtail.
"You have it – when there is anything to sympathise about."
Greta tapped the letter, trying to frown.
"Do you call this nothing?"
"You have saved me from doing so."
"Lynette Mildare, have you a heart inside you?"
"Certainly; I can feel it beating, and it does its work very well."
"Am I, then, nothing to you?"
Lynette smiled, looking up at the piquant, charming face.
"You are a great deal to me."
"And I regard you as a bosom-friend. And the duty of a bosom-friend, besides rushing off at once to tell you if she hears anybody say anything nasty of you behind your back – a thing which you never do – is to sympathise with you in all your love-affairs – a thing which you do even seldomer."
Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe that rested on the beeswaxed boards of the class-room, and kicked the leg of the desk with the heel of the other.
"Please don't spill the white of egg, or upset the gold-leaf. And as I shall be pupil-teacher of the youngest class next term, I suppose I ought to tell you that 'seldomer' isn't in the English dictionary."
"I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me, my own self. I should be ashamed to owe everything I say to silly Nuttall or stupid old Webster. You're artful, Lynette Mildare, trying to change the conversation. I say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs of the heart – and you never, never tell me about yours."
The beautiful black-rimmed, golden-tawny eyes laughed as some eyes can, though there was no quiver of a smile about the purely-modelled, close-folded lips.
"Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any," scolded Greta. "You're too lovely by half. Don't try to scowl me down – you are! I'm pretty enough to make the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them to, but you're a great deal more. Also, you have style and grace