Monica's Choice

"Tell Miss Monica I wish her to come to me at once, Barnes."

The door closed silently after the retreating maid, and Mrs. Beauchamp sighed wearily. How often, lately, she had been obliged to send some such message to her wilful young granddaughter, and, how many more times would she have the same thing to do? Her aristocratic features wore a perturbed expression, as her slender fingers toyed mechanically with the many rings on her left hand; so great a responsibility was her only grandchild.

"I am sure I wish Conrad had never left her with me," she mused; "and yet there seemed no other solution of the difficulty when the regiment was ordered out to Simla. It was impossible, of course, to take her with him, and poor Helen was so opposed to boarding-schools. But it has certainly been a mistake having her here. Such an unruly, passionate nature as Monica's needs very careful handling, and not one of these governesses has had the tact to manage her. I'm sure I don't know what to do about her."

Mrs. Beauchamp's ruminations were cut short by the abrupt entrance of a girl of fifteen, tall, and with a haughty mien, but possessing a face which denoted much character, albeit it wore an unpleasant scowl at the present moment. Pushing the door to behind her with no gentle hand, so that it slammed violently, causing a jingling among the pretty knick-knacks with which the handsome drawing-room was lavishly ornamented, Monica Beauchamp stood before her grandmother, like a young lioness at bay.

"Barnes told me that you had sent for me, grand-mamma."

With a visible shudder at the noise made by the slamming door, Mrs. Beauchamp sat erect, and spoke with much annoyance, as she gave the delinquent an aggrieved look over her gold-rimmed pince-nez.

"Really, Monica----" she began, in severe tones, but she was interrupted.

"Sorry," exclaimed her granddaughter, nonchalantly. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but doors always seem to slip out of my fingers. What did you want me for, grandmamma? Would you mind being quick, because I'm in a great hurry?"

Even insubordinate Monica quailed before the expressions which flitted across the old lady's features--amazement, anger, and finally scorn.

"I am simply astounded at your rudeness, Monica," she said, sternly. "How you can possibly allow yourself to speak to me in such a manner, I cannot imagine. It is very evident that you are no Beauchamp."

The scorn expressed in her grandmother's tones acted in the same way as a touch of the whip about the ears of a thoroughbred mare. She started, and tears of wounded pride welled up in her flashing hazel eyes, but they were quickly forced back.

"I am a Beauchamp!" she cried, her lips quivering with anger, and her head thrown back. "Every one says I am my father over again."

"So you may be, in looks, Monica, but he would never have dreamed of addressing me in the manner you did just now."

"Well, perhaps he wasn't aggravated like I am. Miss Thompson is enough to provoke a saint," she added, sotto voce, with a furtive glance at the old lady's face.

But Mrs. Beauchamp took no notice of it; indeed, it is doubtful if she heard the remark, so engrossed was she in deciding how best to deliver the lecture she had undertaken to give Monica. A startled exclamation from her grandchild, who had been moodily staring out of one of the French windows, which overlooked a large sweep of the carriage drive, effectually roused her.

"Oh! now he's gone; I do call it too bad!"

"What do you mean, Monica?" queried the old lady, rising from her chair and following the direction of Monica's glance.

"Who has gone?"

"Why, Tom. The stable-boy, you know, grand-mamma," she added, as Mrs. Beauchamp looked incredulous. "I was in the yard when you sent for me, and he was telling me about the jolliest little wire-haired terrier his father wants to sell, and I----"

"Monica, how many times have I told you I will not allow you to frequent the stable-yard? I am sure it is there that you pick up all the vulgar expressions you are so continually using. I begin to think Miss Thompson is right in saying you are no lady."

"Bother Miss Thompson!" cried Monica, now thoroughly angry, and losing all control of her words; "she's a sly old cat, that's what she is, spying round after me all day long. It's the only bit of fun I get, when I----"

"Be quiet, Monica, and listen to me," said her grandmother, who was scarcely less angry, but who held herself in admirable check. "It is quite time that some one controlled you, and I have sent for you this afternoon to tell you that I am going to----"

"Send me away to boarding school?" interrupted Monica, her anger temporarily subsiding, for, of all things, she desired to go away to school, but it had always been tabooed. "Oh! grandmamma, do! I would really behave well there." And she seized one of the old lady's white hands impulsively in her warm, and decidedly dirty young fingers, while the girlish face quivered with excitement, until she looked a totally different being. But she was doomed to disappointment.

"Nothing of the kind, Monica," replied Mrs. Beauchamp coldly, and withdrawing her hand. She never responded to her granddaughter's advances, which probably accounted for the difficulty she had in dealing with her; for Monica had a warm heart hidden away somewhere, which no one but her father had ever reached. "I was going to say, when you so rudely interrupted me again, that as you have had four governesses within very little more than a year, who, one and all, have declared that you are unmanageable, and that it is an utter impossibility to teach you, I shall be obliged to seek some other mode of education for you."

Monica's face, which had fallen considerably at the beginning of her grandmother's speech, now brightened visibly.

"There is nothing else but boarding-school left," she said, with satisfaction. It was to this end that she had made the lives of her long-suffering instructresses unendurable by her tricks and general unruliness.

"You know perfectly well, Monica, that you will never go to a boarding-school," replied Mrs. Beauchamp.

"That was only a fad of mother's," said Monica, disdainfully. "Dad would never have forbidden it. He thought no end of Harrow, and I'm sure he would let me go to school if you told him what a bother the old governesses are."

"He knows what a trouble you are," said her grandmother sententiously, and her glance fell on a foreign letter lying on her escritoire near by, which Monica now noticed for the first time.

"Oh! have you heard from dad, grandmamma? Is there a letter for me?" she cried eagerly.

"Yes. I have heard from your father, and there is a letter for you," Mrs. Beauchamp repeated, slowly, but she did not reach out her hand for it.

Impetuous Monica was about to snatch it up, but her grandmother stayed her hand.

"Wait, Monica, until I have finished, and then you may take your letter to the schoolroom to read. For months I did not tell your father a word about your troublesome ways, but lately you have been so incorrigible that I was compelled to let him know. And now this letter has come in reply to mine, and your father is grieved beyond expression. No doubt he will tell you the same in your letter; and he wishes me to consult Mr. Bertram, the lawyer, as to which school it will be best to send you to, immediately. But ... it will be a day-school. Now you may go."

Monica snatched up the letter handed to her without a word, and was gone. Mrs. Beauchamp breathed a sigh of relief, and rang the bell for tea; the letter and consequent interview with her unruly grandchild had tired her out.

Meanwhile Monica had fled to her own room, a perfect little paradise, containing all the things most dear to a young girl's heart. Everything in it, from the dainty bed to the little rocking-chair beside the open window, was blue; carpet, curtains, walls, all took the prevailing tint, and most girls of Monica's age would have revelled in such surroundings, and have taken a pride in having everything kept in spick-and-span order, in so charming a domain. But not so Monica; one of her worst failings was untidiness. The shoes which she had worn out of doors that morning, and which had been carelessly tossed in a corner, were making dirty little puddles on the blue and white linoleum: for she had been caught in a heavy April shower. Her hat and jacket had been tossed promiscuously on to the most convenient chair; one glove was lying on the bed, the other--well, as a matter of fact she had dropped that half-way home, but had not missed it yet; that would mean a fruitless hunt through drawers, all more or less in confusion, next time she went out. The comb and brush she had hastily used, to make herself sufficiently tidy to pass muster with her grandmother at the luncheon table, were still lying on the dainty little duchesse table, while the drawer which should have contained them was half open, disclosing a medley of all kinds.

These are only samples of "Miss Monica's muddles," as the long-suffering under-housemaid (whose duty it was to keep the young lady's room in order) called them. "I can't seem to keep things tidy nohow," she would confide to the kitchenmaid; "as soon as ever I get it straightened up of a morning, in she bounces, and begins a-topsy-turvying up of everything."

But Monica noticed none of these things; if the room had been in absolute chaos she would have been oblivious of it, while she held a thin sheet of foreign paper, covered with her father's writing, in her hand.

Pausing only to slip a tiny brass bolt into its place, in order to secure privacy, she flung herself into the little blue rocker, and tore open the envelope with eager fingers.

As she read her letter, a smile of pleasure hovered about her lips, for her father gave in his own racy style a description of a Hindu mela at which he had been present the day before; but soon her expression changed, for his next topic was very different. It was evident that he was deeply concerned about her behaviour to her grandmother and governesses, and the thought of her fast growing up into a headstrong, self-willed young woman grieved him terribly. He spoke of the loving little girl to whom he had bid farewell only eighteen months before, and could scarcely imagine that in so short a time she should have become so changed; what would she be like when he returned to England, if she were allowed to follow her own way?

Monica's tears were slowly falling as she reached the last page. She began to realise, for the first time, that she was disappointing her father's hopes for his only and much-loved child, and although the knowledge was painful, it was very salutary. With eyes blinded with tears, so that the writing seemed blurred and indistinct, she read on to the end, and then as she saw the well-known signature, she bowed her proud young head on the broad window-ledge, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

"Oh! dad, my darling dad, if only you needn't have left me, I would have tried to be just what you wanted; but it's all so stiff and dull here, and I am so lonely without any friend." For several minutes she wept on unrestrainedly, and then a few lines in the letter recurred to her, and she looked at it once again. They ran thus--

"You see, my child, we must always remember that we are all 'under authority.' Although I am a colonel, I must obey orders just as unquestioningly as the youngest recruit, and if my Monica would be a true soldier's daughter, she must learn first of all to be obedient. It is a hard, a very hard lesson to learn, and neither you nor I can hope to master it, unless we ask His help who was obedient even unto death.

"It is difficult for me to explain what I mean, for I am naturally very reserved over religious things; but I am confident of this, my child, that if you took Jesus Christ as your Example, you would grow day by day more like Him, and you would soon learn to shun all the faults and failings which now threaten to spoil your character."

"I wish I could, daddy dear," sighed Monica, as she re-read the lines, "but there is no one here to help me. I don't believe grandmamma is a bit religious, for any little excuse is enough to keep her away from church on Sunday mornings, and she never goes out at night. And all the time I have been here she has never said a word about it, except to ask me once or twice if I remember to say my prayers. Neither did any of the governesses, except Miss Romaine, and grand-mamma was glad when she went, because she said she had such 'peculiar views.' Well, perhaps some one at the new school will show me how to be 'good.'" And Monica tossed her letter into one of the table drawers, and began with commendable zeal to make herself more tidy than she had been for a long time. She knew that that was one step in the right direction.

The next day the family lawyer was closeted with Mrs. Beauchamp for over an hour. She told him of her son's desire that Monica should go daily to school, and asked his advice as to a suitable one.

"There is not much choice in the neighbourhood of Mydenham," said Mr. Bertram as he tapped his gold-rimmed spectacles meditatively on his knee. "We are just beyond the suburban limits here, you see, and consequently suffer in various ways. Let me see, there is Miss Beach's on the Osmington Road; she receives a few day-scholars, I believe, although hers is primarily a boarding school."

"That will not do," replied the old lady decisively. "The late Mrs. Conrad had a very strong objection to a boarding-school life for Monica."

"Certainly, certainly," agreed the obsequious man of law, although he by no means agreed with the late Mrs. Beauchamp's views; "then I do not see that there is any other resource than the High school at Osmington."

"Oh! that is two miles away, and I have never thought very much of High Schools; there is no restriction as to the social position of the scholars. Really, I don't think I----" And Mrs. Beauchamp paused helplessly.

"If the distance were not an insuperable objection, I think, under the circumstances, no school could better be calculated to meet with Colonel Beauchamp's wishes," said the lawyer, with decision. "You say he expressly desires his daughter to mix with companions of her own age, and have the opportunity of plenty of open-air exercise, and yet be under firm, but well-regulated control. As regards its educational system, I venture to say that in very few respects can the High School methods be improved upon. Of course, the girls are drawn from varied ranks, but in a day school it is unnecessary, indeed, it is impossible, for them to have much opportunity of mixing with more than a few of the pupils, and naturally your granddaughter would make companions of those who were in a similar social position to her own."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know," replied Mrs. Beauchamp, while her face still wore its perturbed look; "Monica is so rash, she would be just as likely to choose a butcher's or grocer's daughter as any one else."

"I doubt if there are many there," said Mr. Bertram, smiling. "I have always heard that the Osmington school is one of the best, and Mr. Drury and Canon Monroe have daughters there, as well as many other leading families."

"If the Osmington clergy think the school is good enough, I suppose it is all right," agreed his client, not without some misgivings, still. "The distance is the difficulty; but Barnes must accompany Monica, and the regular walks will, no doubt, be good for her."

"The majority of the pupils who live at a distance bicycle there," observed the lawyer.

"Most unwomanly!" was Mrs. Beauchamp's horrified reply. "I cannot imagine what the mothers of the present day are dreaming of. We might as well have no girls at all; they seem to become boys as soon as they can toddle. No, Monica shall not have a bicycle. If she must go to the school, she must; but she will walk when fine, and Richards will have to drive her in the brougham when it is wet. I suppose--oh, dear me! I do wish she had been reasonable and got on with her governesses."

With an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, Mr. Bertram bade his client good-day, having undertaken to make all necessary arrangements. He was a childless man himself, but he felt sure that had he possessed a high-spirited daughter like Monica, he could have improved upon Mrs. Beauchamp's method of up-bringing.