The Daughter of the Hawk

by C. S. Forester

  Before Nina woke Dawkins ran heavily back to the village to obtain more drinking water, for he would not trust the water of the stream, and by the time Nina began to wonder in puzzled fashion where she was he had all the ingredients for breakfast ready to hand and firewood cut. She came out of the open mouth of the tent blinking at the strange new world; two fields away a colony of rooks had just arrived and were beginning a tremendous powwow about the day’s work, and the dew was on the grass and the hedges, and the little morning mist, presage of another scorching day, had not yet been dispelled. Dawkins in some odd way was quite embarrassed at sight of Nina in her artless attire, and he averted his eyes as he suggested that she wash and pointed to the stream.

  “There’s no soap,” said Nina.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Dawkins.

  “And no towel.”

  “Use the clean hankie I gave you for a pillow-slip last night.”

  Nina washed, kneeling at the water’s edge, filling her hands with the clear cold water and splashing it excitingly over her face and neck. She was a pretty picture in her boyish clothes, with her thin shapely arms coming out of her white vest and ending in sunburned boyish hands.

  When she came back Dawkins had just poured the boiling water into the teapot and was cracking eggs into a spluttering frying-pan. And the odor which arose from that frying-pan was simply heavenly. Nina ate bacon and eggs with barbaric appetite, and drank great cups of tea, and secured more than her fair share of bread and butter. She felt deliciously savage as she looked across to where Dawkins was busy with knife and fork, with his hair tousled and a ferocious potential beard sprouting over his sun-scorched cheeks. She loved him then for the set of his heavy shoulders, and the vigor of the glance of his blue eyes, and his big, dexterous, square hands. Nina was just reaching the age when people were becoming a combination of details to her instead of a blurred complete effect, and the change did not diminish the favor Dawkins found in her eyes. But then he had the advantage of a good start.

  After breakfast Dawkins regarded Nina with a hint of trouble in his face.

  “I don’t know what Miss Lamb will say to us when we get home, old lady,” he said. “We oughtn’t to have done it, you know.”

  “No,” said Nina, “but I don’t think she’ll mind very much when we tell her what a good time we’ve had together—daddy.”

  Their eyes met across the dying fire, and in that very second the name question was settled once and for all.

  “I suppose now we’ve got to go home,” said Nina plaintively, “and we haven’t discovered the source of the river even now. I don’t want to go home.”

  Dawkins brought a campaigner’s mind to bear on the subject. He knew that although they were seven hours from home by water, they were not more than two hours by road—and that two hours might cut down to twenty minutes if they could find a motor-car anywhere. He put forward a suggestion which brought the light back into Nina’s eyes, and ten minutes afterward, with the sack of stores cached under a hedge, they were pushing on up-stream again in the boat.

  That was how it happened that an hour later a certain Eminent Gentleman walking round his marvelous garden in the freshness of the morning (most of his week-end guests were just beginning to think about breakfast) saw a tiny green boat suddenly shoot out on to his lake. When they saw him beside the water the occupants clearly hesitated; then they decided to make the best of it and drew into the bank where he stood. The Eminent Gentleman looked at them curiously. One of them was a burly figure in an expensive but bedraggled plus-fours suit, terminating comically in bare legs, and the other was a small girl who might have been nondescript were it not for the keenness and acuteness of her features. She, too, was barelegged (and more than that) and bedraggled—no one would believe what a time the two had had getting the boat over little weirs and up little waterfalls.

  “Good morning,” said the Eminent Gentleman.

  “Good morning,” said the little girl. The man was rather too conscious of trespassing and intrusion to say anything. “We’re exploring.”

  “That’s more than most people ever think of doing,” said the Eminent Gentleman.

  “Yes,” said the little girl. “We started yesterday, and we haven’t been home all night. We’re looking for the source of the river.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve found it at last,” said the Eminent Gentleman. “I’m sorry.”

  His voice reechoed sympathetically the disappointment in Nina’s face. There is always something disappointing about the sudden end of a journey of unknown length.

  “You see,” went on the Eminent Gentleman, “this lake is where the river starts from. There’s a spring, so they tell me, at the bottom of it, coming from the hills up there.”

  “I see,” said Nina.

  “But even if you’ve reached the end of your journey,” went on the Eminent Gentleman, “isn’t there anything else I can show you? I’ve some flowers people say are well worth seeing. Or up at the house we might find some breakfast.”

  “We’ve had our breakfast,” said Nina. “We cooked it ourselves over a fire. But—but it seems a dreadfully long time ago. And I’d love to see your flowers.”

  That was how Nina and Mr. Dawkins arrived back at the Other House in good time to make themselves respectable for lunch—and how it came about that they arrived in a big touring car driven by a smart chauffeur, with a coat-of-arms on the paneling and the boat and the sack of stores on the floor at their feet. And Miss Lamb was not at all cross, either. For one thing she could see for herself that Nina was as happy and as healthy as she could be, and that she certainly had not caught cold in the dreadful night air. For another thing she had implicit trust in Mr. Dawkins. For another—she was resolute in keeping herself as modern as she could be, and she knew that modern ideas were favorable to even little girls running wild occasionally. And she could see something, too, in both Dawkins’ and Nina’s faces which had not been there before they went off on this wild excursion—something of new kindliness and fellowship; and it was not lost on her that Nina was calling Dawkins “daddy.” The fact that they had breakfasted in the house of the Eminent Gentleman (whose name meant much more to her than to Dawkins) and had come home in his car was the crowning argument in their favor. Miss Lamb sat at lunch and listened to Nina’s excited account of the voyage, from the narrow escape from shipwreck on a cow to their final reception on the lake. Miss Lamb did not realize that this first primitive excursion would lead in the end to the three of them making trips along rivers in the most unheard-of places—that her next sight of Paris would be from Mr. Dawkins’ cabin motor-cruiser on the Seine.

  Chapter XVII

  It was only a few days after this, one Friday afternoon, that Mary the parlor-maid brought into Dawkins in his study a letter on a tray.

  “A boy’s just brought this on a bicycle, sir,” she said. “He said it was urgent.”

  Mr. Dawkins opened it and read:

  “Gilding High School for Girls,

  “Gilding,

  “Surrey.

  “Dear Sir:

  “I regret to have to inform you that your ward Nina this afternoon has been guilty of very bad conduct, including malicious damage to property, avoidance of lessons, rudeness to mistresses, and finally inciting her fellow pupils to similar offenses. There is no need to remind you, I am sure, of the seriousness of all these actions, for each of which she is liable to expulsion from the school. I sincerely hope, however, that I shall not have to resort to such an extreme measure, and I trust that you will be able to show Nina her conduct in its true light, as at the moment of writing she is still inclined to” treat the matter with a levity which I can only describe as most unpleasant.

  “I am retaining her at school for an extra half-hour to make sure that my messenger will deliver this letter to you before her arrival home, in order that you will be able to make your plans for convincing her of the impropriety of her conduct, so that she will be able on Monday to say s
he is sorry.

  “Yours truly,

  “Edith M. Willow,

  “Headmistress.”

  Mr. Dawkins read this letter and read it again. He even turned it over and looked at its blank back in search of further enlightenment. He was appalled by Miss Willow’s horrible catalogue of Nina’s crimes, and he had a sinking feeling at his heart until he brought himself to realize that what Miss Willow meant by her academic “impropriety of conduct” was not what some people would have meant. Nina had clearly been a very naughty girl, and it was up to him to make her sorry for it, since apparently Miss Willow had been unsuccessful. What on earth did one do to naughty girls? If Nina had been a boy he would not have had to think twice about that—but then neither would the authorities. With a girl it was different. He couldn’t spank Nina. And anyway, he would have to find out what on earth it was she had done. He read Miss Willow’s list again and felt no wiser. He thought for a moment of consulting Miss Lamb, but he put the idea aside. This was his job. He was still in a condition of confused debate when he heard the front door open to Nina, and he was about to ring and ask for her when the study door opened and Nina looked round it. Their eyes met, and Nina came in, noting the letter which Dawkins was twisting nervously in his fingers. But she did not seem at all frightened.

  “Now what in the name of fortune,” began Dawkins sternly, “have you been up to? Miss Willow has written saying you ought to be expelled from school.”

  “She told me she was writing to you,” said Nina.

  “And what did you say to that?”

  “I said—I said I didn’t think it would do much good.”

  That was a facer for a start, but Dawkins was not deterred.

  “I’m not angry yet,” he said, “because I don’t know what it is you’ve done. You must tell me that first.”

  Dawkins prided himself that he had caught exactly the right tone of pained justice and conveyed the right suggestion of inexorable punishment. Nina quite admired him for it, but then Nina really looked for things to admire about Dawkins.

  “It wasn’t very much,” she said. “Really it wasn’t, except that I started laughing and couldn’t stop myself, and that made Miss Willow wild and Miss Shorter wild.”

  “Begin at the beginning,” said Dawkins solemnly.

  “I’ve told you about the beginning already,” said Nina. “I told you last week. You know, about how IIIB were always making fun of IIIA and calling us names and upsetting our desks when they got the chance. It’s been going on for—oh, for years and years now.”

  “And what did you do about it?”

  “Oh, some of us wanted to do one thing and some of us something else, at first. But all silly things, you know, like sending them a note saying what we thought about them. That wouldn’t have been any good at all, so I—so we made up our minds to do something worth doing. Before prayers this morning Jean Mason sneaked into the hall and put a whole lot of Seccotine on their bench—at least she meant it to be their bench but it wasn’t theirs at all because she was in such a hurry, it was IVB’s, and when they stood up to say prayers when Miss Willow came in the bench came up with them and fell down with a bang just when Miss Willow was beginning ‘dearly beloved.’ And IVB guessed it was us and were simply furious, and IIIB went on like anything about it so we had to do something.”

  “M’m,” said Mr. Dawkins.

  “You see on Friday afternoons we have singing for all the Thirds together in the hall, that’s when Mr. Newton comes, and we stay there for two periods straight off. So we made up our minds about it in the dinner hour, and after dinner Betty Slaughter and I hooked off and hid in the cloak-rooms while the others went in to singing, because we knew we shouldn’t be missed by old Mr. Newton. And we had our needles and cotton with us and when singing started we went to IIIB’s hooks and we took their coats and we began to sew up all their sleeves—with little tiny stitches so that they wouldn’t be able to undo them easily. And we sewed up all the sleeves, and Betty started doing some of ‘em twice, and I tied all the shoelaces together in big hard knots and started sewing up the boot bags. And when we’d nearly sewed ‘em all up we heard some people coming in from the garden, and when I peeped out of the window it was IVB coming in from practical botany and Miss Shorter was with them and we didn’t know what to do.

  “So we hid in one of the boot holes—we just managed to climb up and squeeze in and the coats hung over us and I got hold of an attaché case and stood it up in front of our legs and we stood there, and IVB came in with Miss Shorter and they had to change their shoes and they took hours. And Miss Shorter kept on saying, ‘Hurry up, girls.’ And every time she said it we wanted to laugh and we held on to each other and tried ever so hard not to laugh. It was awful because Betty got the hiccups and every now and then she’d give a tremendous great ‘Hie!’ that made us want to laugh all the more. Miss Shorter heard one of the ‘hics’ and said, ‘Whatever’s that?’ because she was standing just by us and it wasn’t one of IVB . Betty said ‘Hic’ again, and Miss Shorter jumped, and we were simply bursting, and somehow the attaché case fell down with a terrific bang beside her and she jumped and she looked and Betty and I were shaking like anything trying not to laugh and then Miss Shorter said, ‘Why, there are some girls in the boot hole!’ Just as she said it Betty went ‘Hie!’ again louder than ever, and we fell out of the boot hole and Miss Shorter screamed. We started laughing then, and laughed and laughed, and Miss Shorter was trying to ask us what we were doing there, and we couldn’t stop so that she got crosser and crosser. And IVB started laughing too and Miss Shorter said, ‘I will not have this impertinence,’ and stamped her foot. Betty hiccuped again, awfully loud, and we all laughed, that time.

  “And then Miss Shorter said, ‘If you two girls do not try to behave yourselves at once I shall take you straight to Miss Willow.’ But Betty went on hiccuping and so we went on laughing, IVB and all.

  “And Miss Shorter was terribly angry and all red in the face and she stood IVB up in line against the wall and told them not to move, not if anything happened at all. She said, ‘You come with me,’ to us, and she took us up-stairs, and we had to keep on stopping to laugh so that she got raving mad. We marched into Miss Willow’s room and Miss Shorter tried to tell Miss Willow about how she found us in the cloakroom trying to dodge lessons and how rude we had been to her.

  “Miss Willow looked very angry and said, ‘What have you got to say about this?’ to us. We might have said something, but just then we heard the Thirds come out of the hall and we knew they were going down to the cloak-room and so IIIB would find out about their coats and things, and Betty caught my eye and we laughed so hard I broke my elastic and of course that made Betty laugh all the more, and it made Miss Willow most fearfully cross. She said, ‘I will stand you up with your faces to the wall until you recover yourselves!’

  “Oh, and Miss Howe—that’s the nice fat one, you know —had come in and she said, ‘Hadn’t I better get the poor child a safety pin first?’ That made us shriek all over again.

  “We simply didn’t know what to do, and when we had nearly got over that I thought of IVB still standing against the wall in the cloak-room downstairs and that started it again. Miss Willow was standing up at her desk looking perfectly awful, and she was just going to say something more when in came Miss Mackie of IIIB and she was angry too, and Betty just shrieked with laughing and fell into my arms and we sat down on the floor because we couldn’t stand up any longer.

  “Miss Mackie said, ‘Some one has been behaving dreadfully down in the cloak-room,’ and Miss Willow said, ‘Indeed?’ and Miss Mackie told her that all her girls had found their coats sewn up and their boot bags sewn up and they were having to unpick them and there weren’t nearly enough scissors to go round and IIIA was being very naughty. Oh, and she told Miss Shorter that she’d found IVB standing against the wall and they were still there and wanted to go home and what was Miss Shorter going to do about it, and at every word she said B
etty and I shrieked and I had such a pain with laughing and what with us laughing and Miss Mackie and Miss Shorter talking at each other and Miss Howe trying to put a safety pin into me Miss Willow was so worried she didn’t know what to do.

  “And other people came and knocked at the door and we could hear an awful noise coming up from the cloak-room underneath, and at last Miss Willow left Miss Howe with us and marched off with Miss Mackie and Miss Shorter downstairs to put things right, so that Miss Howe was able to get the safety pin into me at last and we managed to stop laughing and Miss Howe brushed us down and told us how naughty we were, but we knew that Miss Howe likes us to be naughty. And—and—that’s all that happened except that when Miss Willow came back she tried to be angry with us and she shut me into one room and Betty into another while she wrote to Betty’s mother and you, but I had Miss Howe with me and it didn’t matter. Miss Mackie was in with Betty and I can’t think what she said to her because Miss Mackie is an awful cat just like all the other IIIB’s. And after Miss Willow had written the letters she had us back in her study to lecture us about how wicked we had been, but I had such a pain from laughing that I couldn’t listen to what she was saying, and when she asked me to repeat what she had said I told her so. If it hadn’t been for Miss Howe I don’t know what she would have done, but Miss Howe quieted her down—she is a brick, you know. And then she let us go and Miss Howe put me into the bus to come home.”