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Regiment of Women

by Clemence Dane · English · Gutenberg #40264 · 721,061 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Regiment of Women

Author: Clemence Dane


        
Release date: July 17, 2012 [eBook #40264]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGIMENT OF WOMEN ***

     REGIMENT OF WOMEN




     [Illustration: Publisher's Device]

     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
     NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
     ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

     MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
     LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
     MELBOURNE

     THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
     TORONTO




     REGIMENT OF WOMEN


     BY
     CLEMENCE DANE


     'The monstrous empire of a cruell woman we knowe to be the
     onlie occasion of all these miseries: and yet with silence
     we passe the time as thogh the mater did nothinge appertein
     to us.'
                 JOHN KNOX, _First Blast of the Trumpet against
                        the Monstrous Regiment of Women_.


     New York
     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
     1922

     _All rights reserved_




     COPYRIGHT, 1917,
     BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

     Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1917.

     Norwood Press:
     Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.




     To E. A.

     Here's Our Book
     As it grew.
     But it's Your Book!
     For, but for you,
     Who'd look
     At My Book?

     C. D.




REGIMENT OF WOMEN




CHAPTER I


The school secretary pattered down the long corridor and turned into a
class-room.

The room was a big one. There were old-fashioned casement windows and
distempered walls; the modern desks, ranged in double rows, were small
and shallow, scarred, and incredibly inky. In the window-seats stood an
over-populous fish-bowl, two trays of silkworms, and a row of
experimental jam-pots. There were pictures on the walls--_The Infant
Samuel_ was paired with _Cherry Ripe_, and Alfred, in the costume of
Robin Hood, conscientiously ignored a neat row of halfpenny buns. The
form was obviously a low one.

Through the opening door came the hive-like hum of a school at work, but
the room was empty, save for a mistress sitting at the raised desk,
idle, hands folded, ominously patient. A thin woman, undeveloped,
sallow-skinned, with a sensitive mouth, and eyes that were bold and
shining.

They narrowed curiously at sight of the new-comer, but she was greeted
with sufficient courtesy.

"Yes, Miss Vigers?"

Henrietta Vigers was spare, precise, with pale, twitching eyes and a
high voice. Her manner was self-sufficient, her speech deliberate and
unnecessarily correct: her effect was the colourless obstinacy of an
elderly mule. She stared about her inquisitively.

"Miss Hartill, I am looking for Milly Fiske. Her mother has
telephoned----Where is the class? I can't be mistaken. It's a quarter
to one. You take the Lower Third from twelve-fifteen, don't you?"

"Yes," said Clare Hartill.

"Well, but--where is it?" The secretary frowned suspiciously. She was
instinctively hostile to what she did not understand.

"I don't know," said Clare sweetly.

Henrietta gaped. Clare, justly annoyed as she was, could not but be
grateful to the occasion for providing her with amusement. She enjoyed
baiting Henrietta.

"I should have thought you could tell me. Don't you control the
time-table? I only know"--her anger rose again--"that I have been
waiting here since a quarter past twelve. I have waited quite long
enough, I think. I am going home. Perhaps you will be good enough to
enquire into the matter."

"But haven't you been to look for them?" began Henrietta perplexedly.

"No," said Clare. "I don't, you know. I expect people to come to me. And
I don't like wasting my time." Then, with a change of tone, "Really,
Miss Vigers, I don't know whose fault it is, but it has no business to
happen. The class knows perfectly well that it is due here. You must see
that I can't run about looking for it."

"Of course, of course!" Henrietta was taken aback. "But I assure you
that it's nothing to do with me. I have rearranged nothing. Let me
see--who takes them before you?"

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

"How should I know? I hardly have time for my own classes----"

Henrietta broke in excitedly.

"It's Miss Durand! I might have known. Miss Durand, naturally. Miss
Hartill, I will see to the matter at once. It shall not happen again. I
will speak to Miss Marsham. I might have known."

"Miss Durand?" Clare's annoyance vanished. She looked interested and a
trifle amused. "That tall girl with the yellow hair? I've heard about
her. I haven't spoken to her yet, but the children approve, don't they?"
She laughed pointedly and Henrietta flushed. "I rather like the look of
her."

"Do you?" Henrietta smiled sourly. "I can't agree. A most unsuitable
person. Miss Marsham engaged her without consulting me--or you either, I
suppose? The niece or daughter or something, of an old mistress. I
wonder you didn't hear--but of course you were away the first fortnight.
A terrible young woman--boisterous--undignified--a bad influence on the
children!"

Clare's eyes narrowed again.

"Are you sure? The junior classes are working quite as well as
usual--better indeed. I've been surprised. Of course, to-day----"

"To-day is an example. She has detained them, I suppose. It has happened
before--five minutes here--ten there--every one is complaining.
Really--I shall speak to Miss Marsham."

"Of course, if that's the case, you had better," said Clare, rather
impatiently, as she moved towards the door. She regretted the impulse
that had induced her to explain matters to Miss Vigers. If it did not
suit her dignity to go in search of her errant pupils, still less did it
accord with a complaint to the fidgety secretary. She should have
managed the affair for herself. However--it could not be helped....
Henrietta Vigers was looking important.... Henrietta Vigers would enjoy
baiting the new-comer--what was her name--Durand? Miss Durand would
submit, she supposed. Henrietta was a petty tyrant to the younger
mistresses, and Clare Hartill was very much aware of the fact. But the
younger mistresses did not interest her; she was no more than idly
contemptuous of their flabbiness. Why on earth had none of them appealed
to the head mistress? But the new assistant was a spirited-looking
creature.... Clare had noticed her keen nostrils--nothing sheepish
there.... And Henrietta disliked her--distinctly a point in her
favour.... Clare suspected that trouble might yet arise.... She paused
uncertainly. Even now she might herself interfere.... But Miss Durand
had certainly had no right to detain Clare's class.... It was gross
carelessness, if not impertinence.... Let her fight it out with Miss
Vigers.... Nevertheless--she wished her luck....

With another glance at her watch, and a cool little nod to her
colleague, she left the class-room, and was shortly setting out for her
walk home.

Henrietta looked after her with an angry shrug.

For the hundredth time she assured herself that she was submitting
positively for the last time to the dictates of Clare Hartill; that such
usurpation was not to be borne.... Who, after all, had been Authority's
right hand for the last twenty years? Certainly not Clare Hartill....
Why, she could recall Clare's first term, a bare eight years ago! She
had disliked her less in those days; had respected her as a woman who
knew her business.... The school had been going through a lean year,
with Miss Marsham, the head mistress, seriously ill; with a weak staff,
and girls growing riotous and indolent. So lean a year, indeed, that
Henrietta, left in charge, had one day taken a train and her troubles to
Bournemouth, and poured them out to Authority's bath-chair. And Edith
Marsham, the old warhorse, had frowned and nodded and chuckled, and sent
her home again, no wiser than she came. But a letter had come for her
later, and the bearer had been a quiet, any-aged woman with disquieting
eyes. They had summed Henrietta up, and Henrietta had resented it. The
new assistant, given, according to instructions, a free hand, had gone
about her business, asking no advice. But there had certainly followed a
peaceful six months. Then had come speech-day and Henrietta's world had
turned upside down. She had not known such a speech-day for years.
Complacent parents had listened to amazingly efficient performances--the
guest of honour had enjoyed herself with obvious, naïve surprise: there
had been the bomb-shell of the lists. Henrietta had nothing to do with
the examinations, but she knew such a standard had not been reached for
many a long term. And the head mistress, restored and rubicund, had
alluded to her, Henrietta's, vice-regency in a neat little speech. She
had received felicitations, and was beginning, albeit confusedly, to
persuade herself that the stirring of the pie had been indeed due to her
own forefinger, when the guests left, and she had that disturbing little
interview with her principal.

Edith Marsham had greeted her vigorously. She was still in her prime
then, old as she was. She had another six years before senility,
striking late, struck heavily.

"Well--what do you think of her, eh? I hope you were a good girl--did as
she told you?"

Henrietta had flushed, resenting it that Miss Marsham, certainly a head
mistress of forty years' standing, should, as she aged, treat her staff
more and more as if it were but a degree removed from the Upper Sixth.
The younger women might like it, but it did not accord with Henrietta's
notions of her own dignity. She was devoutly thankful that Miss Marsham
reserved her freedom for private interviews; had, in public at least,
the grand manner. Yet she had a respect for her; knew her dimly for a
notable dame, who could have coerced a recalcitrant cabinet as easily as
she bullied the school staff.

She had rubbed her hands together, shrewd eyes a-twinkle.

"I knew what I was doing! How long have you been with me, Henrietta?
Twelve years ago, eh? Ah, well, it's longer ago than that. Let me
see--she's twenty-eight now, Clare Hartill--and she left me at sixteen.
A responsibility, a great responsibility. An orphan--too much money. A
difficult child--I spent a lot of time on her, and prayer, too, my dear.
Well, I don't regret it now. When I met her at Bournemouth that day--oh,
I wasn't pleased with you, Henrietta! It has taken me forty years to
build up my school, and I can't be ill two months, but----Well, I made
up my mind. I found her at a loose end. I talked to her. She'll take
plain speaking from me. I told her she'd had enough of operas and art
schools, and literary societies (she's been running round Europe for the
last ten years). I told her my difficulty--I told her to come back to me
and do a little honest work. Of course she wouldn't hear of it."

"Then how did you persuade Miss Hartill?"

But Henrietta, raising prim brows, had but drawn back a chuckle from the
old woman.

"How many types of schoolgirl have you met, Henrietta? Here, under me?"

Henrietta fidgeted. The question was an offence. It was not in her
department. She had no note of it in her memorandum books.

"Really--I can hardly tell you--blondes and brunettes, do you mean? No
two girls are quite the same, are they?"

But Miss Marsham had not attended.

"Just two--that's my experience. The girl from whom you get work by
telling her you are sure she can do it--and the girl from whom you get
work by telling her you are sure she can't. You'll soon find out which I
told Clare Hartill. And now, understand this, Henrietta. There are to be
no dissensions. I want Clare Hartill to stay. If she gets engrossed in
the work, she will. She won't interfere with you, you'll find. She's too
lazy. Get on with her if you can."

But Henrietta had not got on with her, had resented fiercely Miss
Marsham's preferential treatment of the new-comer. That Miss Marsham was
obviously wise in her generation did not appease her _amour propre_. She
knew that where she had failed, Clare had been uncannily successful. Yet
Clare was not aggressively efficient: indeed it was a grievance that she
was so apparently casual, so gracefully indifferent. But, as if it were
a matter of course, she did whatever she set out to do so much better,
so much more graphically than it had ever been done before, that
inevitably she attracted disciples. But Henrietta's grievance went
deeper. She denied her any vestige of personal charm, and at the same
time insisted fiercely that she was an unscrupulous woman, in that she
used her personal charm to accomplish her aims: her aims, in Henrietta's
eyes, being the ousting of the secretary from her position of trust and
possible succession to the headship. Henrietta did not realise that it
was herself, far more than Clare, who was jeopardising that position.
Though there was no system of prefecture among the staff, she had come
to consider herself responsible for the junior mistresses, encouraging
them to bring complaints to her, rather than to the head of the school.
Old Miss Marsham, little as she liked relaxing her hold on the reins,
dreaded, as old age must, the tussle that would inevitably follow any
insistence on her prerogatives, and had acquiesced; yet with
reservations. Had one of the younger mistresses rebelled and carried her
grievance to the higher court, Miss Vigers' eyes might have been opened;
but as yet no one had challenged her self-assumed supremacy. Clare, who
might have done so, cared little who supervised the boarders or was
supreme in the matter of time-table and commissariat. Her interest lay
in the actual work, in the characters and possibilities of the workers.
There she brooked no interference, and Henrietta attempted little, for
when she did she was neatly and completely routed.

But the more chary Henrietta grew of interfering with Clare's
activities, the more she realised that it was her duty (she would not
have said pleasure) to supervise the younger women. She had a gift that
was almost genius of appearing among them at awkward moments. If a child
were proving refractory and victory hanging in the balance, Miss Vigers
would surely choose that moment to knock at the class-room door, and,
politely refusing to inconvenience the embarrassed novice, wait,
all-observant, until the scene ended, before explaining her errand.
Later in the day the young mistress would be button-holed, and the i's
and t's of her errors of judgment dotted and crossed. Those who would
not submit to tutelage she contrived to render so uncomfortable that,
sooner or later, they retired in favour of temperaments more sheeplike
or more thick-skinned.

To Alwynne Durand, at present under grave suspicion of tampering with
Clare Hartill's literature class, she had been from the first inimical.
She had been engaged without Henrietta's sanction; she was young, and
pretty, and already ridiculously popular. And there was the affair of
the nickname. Alwynne had certainly looked out of place at the
mistresses' table, on the day of her arrival, with her yellow hair and
green gown--"like a daffodil stuck into a bunch of everlastings," as an
early adorer had described her. The phrase had appealed and spread, and
within a week she was "Daffy" to the school; but her popularity among
her colleagues had not been heightened by rumours of the collective
nickname the contrast with their junior had evoked. Her obvious shyness
and desire to please were, however, sufficiently disarming, and her
first days had not been made too difficult for her by any save
Henrietta. But Henrietta was sure she was incompetent--called to witness
her joyous, casual manner, her unorthodox methods, her way of submerging
the mistress in the fellow-creature. She had labelled her
undisciplined--which Alwynne certainly was--lax and undignified; had
prophesied that she would be unable to maintain order; had been annoyed
to find that, inspiring neither fear nor awe, she was yet quite capable
of making herself respected. Alwynne's jolliness never seemed to expose
her to familiarities, ready as she was to join in the laugh against
herself when, new to the ways of the school, she outraged Media, or
reduced Persia to hysterical giggles. She was soon reckoned up by the
shrewd children as "mad, but a perfect dear," and she managed to make
her governance so enjoyable that it would have been considered bad form,
as well as bad policy, to make her unconventionality an excuse for
ragging. She had, indeed, easily assimilated the school atmosphere. She
was humble and anxious to learn, had no notions of her own importance.
But she was quick-tempered, and though she could be meek and grateful to
experience backed by good manners, she reared at patronage. Inevitably
she made mistakes, the mistakes of her age and temperament, but common
sense and good humour saved her from any serious blunders.

Miss Vigers had, nevertheless, noted each insignificant slip, and
carried the tale, less insignificant in bulk, in her mind, ready to
produce at a favourable opportunity.

And now the opportunity had arisen. Miss Hartill had delivered Miss
Durand into her hand. Miss Hartill, she was glad to note, had not shown
any interest in the new-comer.... Miss Hartill had a way of taking any
one young and attractive under her protection.... That it was with Miss
Hartill that the girl had come into conflict, however, did away with any
need of caution.... Miss Durand needed putting in her place....
Henrietta, in all speed, would reconduct her thither.




CHAPTER II


Miss Vigers hurried along to the Upper Third class-room. She
straightened her jersey, and patted her netted hair as she went, much in
the manner of a countryman squaring for a fight, opened the door, after
a tap so rudimentary as to be inaudible to those within, and entered
aggressively, the light of battle in her eye.

To her amazement and annoyance her entry was entirely unnoticed. The
entire class had deserted its desks and was clustered round the rostrum,
where Alwynne Durand, looking flushed and excited and prettier than a
school-mistress had any business to be, was talking fast and eagerly.
She had a little stick in her hand which she was using as a conductor's
baton, emphasising with it the points of the story she was evidently
telling. A map and some portraits were pinned to the blackboard beside
her, and the children's heads were grouped, three and four together,
over pictures apparently taken from the open portfolio lying before her
on the desk. But their eyes were on Miss Durand, and the varying yet
intent attitudes gave the collective effect of an audience at a
melodrama. They were obviously and breathlessly interested, and the
occasional quick crackle of question and answer merely accentuated the
tension. Once, as Alwynne paused a moment, her stick hovering
uncertainly over the map, a child, with a little wriggle of impatience,
piped up--

"We'll find it afterwards. Oh, go on, Miss Durand! Please, go on!"

And Alwynne, equally absorbed, went on and the class hung upon her
words.

The listener was outraged. Children were to be allowed to give
orders--to leave their places--to be obviously and hugely enjoying
themselves--in school hours--and the whole pack of them due elsewhere!
She had never witnessed so disgraceful a scene.

Her dry precision shivered at Alwynne's coruscating adjectives. (It is
not to be denied that Alwynne, at that period of her career, was lax and
lavish in speech, altogether too fond of conceits and superlatives.) She
cut aridly into the lecture.

"Miss Durand! Are you aware of the time?"

Alwynne jumped, and the class jumped with her.

It was curious to watch that which but a moment before had been one
absorbed, collective personality suddenly disintegrating into Lotties
and Maries and Sylvias, shy, curious, impish or indifferent, after their
kind. Miss Vigers's presence intimidated: each peeping personality
retired, snail-like, into its schoolgirl shell. With a curious yet
distinct consciousness of guilt, they edged away from the two women,
huddling sheepishly together, watching and waiting, inimical to the
disturber of their enjoyment, but distinctly doubtful as to whether
"Daffy," in the encounter that they knew quite well was imminent, would
be able to hold her own.

But Miss Durand was self-possessed. She looked down at Miss Vigers from
her high seat and gave a natural little laugh.

"Oh, Miss Vigers! How you startled me!"

"I'm sorry. I have been endeavouring to attract your attention for some
moments. Are you aware of the time?"

Alwynne glanced at the clock. The hands stood at an impossible hour.

"There!" she remarked penitently, "it's stopped again!"

She smiled at the class, all ears and interest.

"One of you children will just have to remind me. Helen? No, you do the
chalks already. Millicent!" She singled out a dreamy child, who was
taking surreptitious advantage of the interruption to pore over the
pictures that had slid from the desk to the floor of the rostrum.

"Milly! Your head's a sieve too! Will you undertake to remind me? Each
time I have to be reminded--in goes a penny to the mission--and each
time you forget to remind me, you do the same. It'll do us both good!
And if we both forget--the rest of the class must pull us up."

The little girl nodded, serious and important.

Alwynne turned to Henrietta.

"Excuse me, Miss Vigers, were you wanting to speak to me? I'm afraid
we're in rather a muddle. Children--pick up those pictures: at
least--Helen and Milly! Go back to your desks, the rest of you." And
then, to Henrietta again, "I suppose the gong will go in a minute?"

She was being courteous, but she was implying quite clearly that she
considered the interruption of her lesson unnecessary.

Henrietta's eyes snapped.

"The twelve-fifteen gong went a long time ago, Miss Durand. It's nearly
one. Miss Hartill wishes to know what has happened to her class."

"My hat!" murmured Alwynne, appalled.

It was the most rudimentary murmur--a mere movement of the lips; but
Henrietta caught it. Justifiably, she detested slang. She stiffened yet
more, but Alwynne was continuing with deprecating gestures.

"This is dreadful! I'm awfully sorry, Miss Vigers, but, you know, we
never heard the gong! Not a sound! Are you sure it rang?" (This to
Henrietta, who never slackened her supervision of the relays of prefects
responsible for the ever-punctual gong. But Alwynne had no eye for
detail.) She continued agitatedly, unconscious of offence--

"But of course I must go and explain to Miss Hartill at once.
Children--get your things together, and go straight to the Lower Second.
I'll come with you. Miss Vigers, I am so sorry--it was entirely my
fault, of course, but we none of us heard the gong."

But as she spoke, and the girls, attentive and curious, obediently
gathered up their belongings and filed into the passage, the gong,
audible enough to any one less absorbed than Alwynne and her class had
been, boomed for its last time that morning, the prolonged boom that was
the signal for the day-girls to go home. The children dispersed
hurriedly, and Alwynne was left alone with Henrietta.

Alwynne was grave--distinctly distressed.

"I must go and explain to Miss Hartill at once," she repeated, making
for the door.

"You needn't trouble yourself," Henrietta called after her. "Miss
Hartill went home half-an-hour-ago."

The irrepressible note of gratification in her voice startled Alwynne.
She turned and faced her.

"I don't understand! You said she was waiting."

"When I left her, she had been waiting over half-an-hour. She told me
that she should do so no longer. Miss Hartill is not accustomed to be
kept waiting while the junior mistresses amuse themselves."

Alwynne raised her eyebrows and regarded her carefully.

"Did Miss Hartill ask you to tell me that? Are you her messenger?" she
asked blandly.

The last sentence had enlightened her, at any rate, as to Miss Vigers's
personal attitude to herself. She was perfectly aware that she had been
guilty of gross carelessness; that, if Miss Hartill chose, she could
make it a serious matter for her; but for the moment her apprehensive
regrets, as well as her profound sense of the apology due to the
formidable Miss Hartill, were shrivelled in the white heat of her anger
at the tone Henrietta Vigers was permitting herself. She was as much
hurt as horrified by the revelation of an antipathy she had been
unconscious of exciting; it was her first experience of gratuitous
ill-will. She rebelled hotly, incapable of analysing her emotion,
indifferent to the probable consequences of a defiance of the older
woman, but passionately resolved that she would not allow any one alive
to be rude to her.

And Henrietta, amazed at the veiled rebuke of her manner, also lost her
temper.

"Miss Hartill and I were overwhelmed by such an occurrence. Do you
realise what you are doing, Miss Durand? You keep the children away from
their lesson--you alter the school time-table to suit your
convenience--without a remark, or warning, or apology."

"I've told you already that I didn't hear the gong," interrupted
Alwynne, between courtesy and impatience. She was trying hard to control
herself.

"That is nonsense. Everybody hears the gong. You didn't choose to hear
it, I suppose. Anyhow, I feel it my duty to tell you that such behaviour
will not be tolerated, Miss Durand, in this, or any school. It is not
your place to make innovations. I was horrified just now when I came in.
The class-room littered about with pictures and papers--the children not
in their places--allowed to interrupt and argue. I never heard of such a
thing."

Alwynne's chin went up.

"Excuse me, Miss Vigers, but I hardly see that it is your business to
criticise my way of teaching."

"I am speaking to you for your own good," said Henrietta.

"That is kind of you; but if you speak to me in such a tone, you cannot
expect me to listen."

Henrietta hesitated.

"Miss Durand, you are new to the school----"

"That gives you no right to be rude to me!"

Henrietta took a step towards her.

"Rude? And you? I consider you insolent. Ever since you came to the
school you have been impossible. You go your own way, teach in your own
way----"

"I do as I'm told," said Alwynne sharply.

"In your own way. You neither ask nor take advice----"

"At any rate, Miss Marsham is satisfied with me--she told me so last
week." She felt it undignified to be justifying herself, but she feared
that silent contempt would be lost on Miss Vigers. Also, such an
attitude was not easy to Alwynne; she had a tongue; when she was angry,
the brutal effectiveness of Billingsgate must always tempt her.

Henrietta countered coldly--

"I am sorry that I shall be obliged to undeceive her; that is, unless
you apologise----"

"To Miss Hartill? Certainly! I intend to. I hope I know when I'm in the
wrong."

"To me----"

"To you?" cried Alwynne, with a little high-pitched laugh. "If you tell
me what for?"

"In Miss Marsham's absence I take her place," began Henrietta.

"Miss Hartill, I was told, did that."

"You are mistaken. The younger mistresses come to me for orders."

"I shall be the exception, then. I am not a housemaid. Will you let me
get to my desk, please, Miss Vigers? I want my books."

She brushed past Henrietta, cheeks flaming, chin in air, and opened her
desk.

The secretary, for all her anger, hesitated uncertainly. She was unused
to opposition, and had been accustomed to allow herself a greater
licence of speech than she knew. Alwynne's instant resentment, for all
its crude young insolence, was, she realised, to some extent justified.
She had, she knew, exceeded her powers, but she had not stopped to
consider whether Alwynne would know that she had done so, or, knowing,
have the courage to act upon that knowledge. She had been staggered by
the girl's swift counter-attack and was soon wishing that she had left
her alone; but she had gone too far to retreat with dignity; also, she
had by no means regained control of her temper.

"I can only report you to Miss Marsham," she remarked lamely, to
Alwynne's back.

Alwynne turned.

"You needn't trouble. If Miss Hartill doesn't, I shall go to her
myself."

"You?" said Henrietta uneasily.

"Why," cried Alwynne, flaming out at her, "d'you think I'm afraid of
you? D'you think I am going to stand this sort of thing? I know I was
careless, and I'm sorry. I'm going straight down to Miss Hartill to tell
her so. And if she slangs me--it's all right. And if Miss Marsham slangs
me--it's all right. She's the head of the school. But I won't be slanged
by you. You are rude and interfering and I shall tell Miss Marsham so."

Shaking with indignation she slammed down the lid of her desk: and with
her head held high, and a dignity that a friendly word would have
dissolved into tears, walked out of the class-room.




CHAPTER III


Alwynne Durand was quite aware that she was an arrant coward. The
cronies of her not remote schooldays would have exclaimed at the label,
have cited this or that memorable audacity in confutation, but Alwynne
herself knew better. When her impulsiveness had jockeyed her into an
uncomfortable situation, pure pride could always be trusted to sustain
her, strengthen her shoulders and sharpen her wits; but she triumphed
with shaking knees. Alwynne, touchy with the touchiness of eighteen, was
bound to fling down her glove before Henrietta Vigers, and be
ostentatiously ready to face cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and
all kinds of music. But Alwynne, half-an-hour later, on her way to Miss
Hartill and her overdue apology, was bound also to be feeling more like
a naughty schoolgirl than a mistress of six weeks' standing has any
business to feel, to be uneasily wondering what she should say, how she
should say it, and why on earth she had been fool enough to get herself
into the mess.

If it had been any one but Miss Hartill, with whom she had not exchanged
five words, but whom she had heard discussed, nevertheless, from every
conceivable and inconceivable point of view, with that accompanying
profusion of anecdote of which only schoolgirl memory, so traditional as
well as personal, is capable.

Miss Marsham, she had been given to understand might be head mistress,
but Miss Hartill was Miss Hartill. Alwynne, accustomed as she was to the
cults of a boarding-school, had ended by growing exceedingly curious.
Yet when Miss Hartill had returned, a week or two late, to her post,
Alwynne could not, as she phrased it, for the life of her see what all
the fuss was about. Miss Hartill was ordinary enough. Alwynne had looked
up one morning, from an obscure corner of the Common-room, at the sound
of a clicking latch, had had an impression of a tall woman, harshly
outlined by the white panelled door, against which she leaned lazily as
she quizzed the roomful of women. Alwynne told herself that she was not
at all impressed.... This the Miss Hartill of a hundred legends? This
the Olympian to whom three-fourths of the school said its prayers? Who
had split the staff into an enthusiastic majority and a minority that
concealed its dislike? Queer! Alwynne, shrugging her shoulders over the
intricacies of a school's enthusiasms, had leaned back in her chair to
watch, between amusement and contempt, the commotion that had broken
out. There was a babble of welcome, a cross-fire of question and answer.
And then, over the heads of the little group that had gathered about the
door, a pair of keen, roving eyes had settled on herself, coolly
appraising. Alwynne had been annoyed with herself for flushing under the
stare. She had a swift impression of being summed up, all raw and
youthful and ambitious as she was, her attitude of unwilling curiosity
detected, expected even. There had been a flicker of a smile, amused,
faintly insolent....

But it had all been merest impression. Miss Hartill, who had been,
indeed, surrounded, inaccessible, from the instant of her entrance until
the prayer bell rang, did not look her way a second time. But the
impression had remained, and Alwynne, obscure in her newness and her
corner, found herself reconsidering this Miss Hartill, more roused than
she would confess. If she were not the Hypatia-Helen of the class-rooms,
she was none the less a personality! Whether Alwynne would like her was
another matter.

Alwynne, in the next few days, had not come into direct contact with
Miss Hartill. She had noticed, however, a certain stirring of the school
atmosphere, a something of briskness and tension that affected her
pleasantly. The children, she supposed, were getting into their
stride.... But she began to see that the classes chiefly affected were
the classes with which Miss Hartill had most to do, that the mistresses,
too, were working with unusual energy, and that Miss Vigers was less in
evidence than heretofore; that, in short, Miss Hartill's return was
making a difference. Insensibly she slipped into the fashion of being
slightly in awe of her--was daily and undeniably relieved that her work
had as yet escaped the swift eyes and lazy criticism. But she was also
aware that she would be distinctly gratified if Miss Hartill should at
any time express satisfaction with her and her efforts. Miss Hartill was
certainly interesting. She had wondered if she should ever get to know
her; had hoped so.

And now Napoleon Buonaparte and a stopped clock had between them managed
the business for her effectually. She was going to know Miss Hartill--a
justifiably, and, according to Miss Vigers, excessively indignant Miss
Hartill. She looked forward without enthusiasm to that acquaintance. She
did not know what she should say to Miss Hartill.... But Miss Hartill
would do the talking, she imagined.... She was extremely sorry for
herself as she knocked at Miss Hartill's door.

The maid left her stranded in the hall, and she waited, uncomfortably
conscious of voices in the next room.

"Brand? But I don't know any----Drand! Oh, Durand! What an
extraordinary time to----All right Bagot. No. Lunch as usual."

The maid slipped across the hall again to her kitchen as Miss Hartill
came forward, polite, unsmiling. She did not offer her hand, but stood
waiting for Alwynne to deliver herself of her errand.

But Alwynne was embarrassed. The exordium she had so carefully prepared
during her walk was eluding her. It had been easy to arrange the
conversation beforehand, but Miss Hartill in the flesh was
disconcerting. She jumbled her opening sentences, flushed, floundered,
and was silent. Ensued a pause.

Clare surveyed her visitor quizzically, enjoying her discomfort. Alwynne
was at her prettiest at a disadvantage. She had an air of shedding eight
of her eighteen years, of recognising in her opponent a long-lost nurse.

Clare repressed a chuckle.

"Try again, Miss Durand," she said solemnly.

"I came," said Alwynne blankly. "You see, I came----" She paused again.

"Yes, I think I see that," said Clare, as one enlightened.

Alwynne eyed her dubiously. There might or might not have been a twinkle
in her colleague's eye. She took heart of grace and began again.

"Miss Hartill, I'm awfully sorry! It was me--I, I mean, I kept the
girls. I didn't hear the gong. Really and truly I didn't. Honestly, it
was an accident. I thought I ought to come and apologise. Truly, I'm
most awfully sorry, quite apart from avoiding getting into a row.
Because I've got into that already."

Clare's lips twitched. Alwynne was built on generous lines. She had a
good carriage, could enter a room effectively. Clare had not been
unaware of her secure manner. Her present collapse was the more amusing.
Clare was beginning to guess that what Miss Durand did, she did
wholeheartedly.

"I expect you're simply wild with me. Miss Vigers said you would be,"
said Alwynne hopelessly.

"Miss Vigers ought to know," said Clare.

There was another pause.

"I'm frightfully sorry," said Alwynne suggestively.

"Are you, Miss Durand?"

"I mean, apart from upsetting you, I'm so savage with myself. One
doesn't exactly enjoy making a fool of oneself, does one, Miss Hartill?
You know how it feels. And it's my first post, and I did mean to do it
well, and I've only been here six weeks, and I'm in a row with three
people already."

"How--three?" said Clare with interest.

"Well--there's you----"

"I think we're settling that," said Clare, with her sudden smile.

"Are we?" Alwynne looked up so warily that Clare laughed outright.

"But the other two, Miss Durand--the other two? This grows interesting."

"Well, you see," Alwynne expanded, "I had an awful row with Miss
Vigers--and she's sure to tell Miss Marsham. I suppose I was rude, but
she did make me so mad. I don't see that it was her business to come and
slang me before my class."

"My class," corrected Clare.

"I wouldn't have minded you," said Alwynne, lifting ingenuous eyes.

"I'm flattered," murmured Clare.

"Well--you would have understood," said Alwynne with conviction. "But
Miss Vigers----I ask you, Miss Hartill, what would be the use of
talking about Napoleon to Miss Vigers?"

"I give it up," said Clare promptly.

"There you are!" Alwynne waved her hand triumphantly.

"But, excuse me"--Clare was elaborately respectful--"has Napoleon any
traceable connection with the kidnapping of my class?"

"Oh, I thought I explained." Alwynne plunged into her story. "You see, I
was giving them Elocution--they're learning the _Incident in the French
Camp_--you know?"

Clare nodded.

"Well, I thought they were rather more wooden than usual, and
I found out that they knew practically nothing about Napoleon!
Marengo--Talleyrand--never heard of 'em! Waterloo, and that he behaved
badly to his wife--that's all they knew!"

"The English in a nutshell!" murmured Clare.

"So, of course, I told them all about him, and his life, and tit-bits
like the Sèvres tea-things, and Madame Sans-gêne. They loved it. And I
was showing them pictures and I suppose we got absorbed. You can't help
it with Napoleon, somehow. Oh, Miss Hartill, doesn't it seem crazy,
though, to keep those children at Latin exercises, and the exports of
Lower Tooting, and Bills of Attainder in the reign of Queen Anne, before
they know about things like Napoleon, and Homer, and the Panama Canal?
Wouldn't you rather know about the life of Buddha than the war of
Jenkins's ear? Not that I ever got to the Georges myself! Oh, it makes
me so wild! It's like stuffing them with pea-nuts, when one has got a
basket of peaches on one's arm. It isn't education! It's goose-cramming!
I can't explain properly what I mean. I expect you think I'm a fool!"

"An enthusiast. It's much the same," said Clare absently. "You'll get
over it." Then, with a twinkle: "Reform's an excellent thing, of
course--but why annex my class to experiment with?"

Alwynne defervesced.

There was an unhappy pause.

"You know, I'm most awfully sorry," said Alwynne at last, as one making
a brilliant and original contribution to the discussion.

A piercing shriek from the kitchen interrupted them. Alwynne jumped, but
Clare was undisturbed.

"It's only Bagot. She's always having accidents. But she's an excellent
cook. After all, what's a shilling's worth of crockery a week compared
with a good cook? But to return to Napoleon and the Lower Third----"

"You don't think she's hurt herself?" Alwynne ventured to interrupt.
"She did squeal."

Clare looked suddenly concerned.

"I hope not. I haven't had lunch yet."

She went to the kitchen door, reappearing with a slightly harried air.

"Miss Durand, I wish you'd come here a minute. She's cut her hand. Oh,
lavishly! Most careless! What is one to do? I suppose one must bandage
it?"

Her tone of helpless disgust was so genuine that Alwynne was inclined to
laugh. So there were circumstances that could be too much even for Miss
Hartill! How reassuring! And how it warmed the cockles of one's heart to
her! Her lips twitched mischievously as she looked from the disconcerted
mistress to the sniffing maid, but she lost no time in stripping off her
gloves and setting to work, issuing orders the while that Clare obeyed
with a meekness that surprised herself.

"Linen, please, Miss Hartill, or old rags! It's rather a bad cut." Then,
to the maid, "How on earth did you do it? A tin-opener? No, no, Miss
Hartill! a duster's no good. An old handkerchief or something." She was
achieving complicated effects with a fork and a knotted scarf as she
spoke, and Clare, obediently tearing linen into strips, considered her
critically. The girl was capable then, as well as amusing.... That
tourniquet might not be professional, but it was at least effective....
The bleeding was stopping.... Very good of her to toil over Bagot's
unappetising hand.... Clare marvelled at her unconcern, for she was
dainty enough in her own person to please even Clare's fastidious eye.
Clare supposed that it was a good thing that some people had the nursing
instinct.... She thanked her stars that she herself had not....

Alwynne, unconscious of scrutiny, put in her final safety-pin, settled
the sling and stepped back at last, surveying her handiwork with some
pride.

"It'll want a stitch, though. She'd better go to the doctor, I think,"
she said decisively. "Shall I come with you?" This to the maid,
complacently the centre of attention.

But the maid preferred to fetch her mother. "Her mother lived quite
close, miss. If Miss 'Artill could get on----"

"She can't do any cooking with that hand," said Alwynne to Clare, more
in decision than appeal, and Clare acquiescing, she fetched hat and
coat, manipulated hatpins, and bundled the girl forth.

She returned to the kitchen to find Miss Hartill, skirts clutched high,
eyeing the crowded table with distaste, and prodding with a
toasting-fork at the half-prepared meal.

"Isn't it disgusting? How these people bleed! I can't stand a mess!
Really, I'm very much obliged to you, Miss Durand for seeing to Bagot.
I'm no good at that sort of thing. I hate touching people. You don't
think it was a bad cut, though?"

"It must have hurt! She won't be able to use her hand for a day or two."

Clare rubbed her nose peevishly. She had a comical air of resenting the
necessity for concerning herself with her own domestic arrangements.

"Well, what am I to do? And I loathe charwomen. She might at least have
got lunch first!"

"The meat's cooked, anyhow," said Alwynne hopefully, drawing forth a
congealing dishful.

Clare shivered.

"Take it away! It's all over Bagot."

"I don't think it is." Alwynne examined it cautiously.

Clare gave her a short laugh.

"Anyhow, it doesn't appeal any more. Never mind, Miss Durand, I shall
manage--I mustn't keep you."

Alwynne disregarded the hint. She seemed preoccupied.

"There aren't any eggs, I suppose," she ventured diffidently.

Clare flung out vague hands.

"Heaven knows! It's Bagot's business. Why?"

"Because," Alwynne had crossed the room and was struggling with a stiff
cupboard door, "Elsbeth says I'm a fool at cooking (Elsbeth's my aunt,
you know), but I can make omelets----" The door gave suddenly and
Alwynne fell forward into the dark pantry. There was a clatter as of
scattered bread-pans. She soon emerged, however, floury but serene.

"Yes! There are some! It wouldn't take ten minutes, Miss Hartill. That
is--if----" she sought delicately for a tactful phrase: "if you would
perhaps like to go away and read. If any one stands about and
watches--you know what I mean----"

"Are you proposing to cook my lunch?" Clare demanded.

"Of course, if you don't like omelets," said Alwynne demurely.

Clare laughed outright.

"I do--I do. All right, Miss Durand, I'm too hungry to refuse. But I see
through it, you know. It's to cry quits!"

Alwynne broke in indignantly--

"It isn't! It's the _amende honorable_--at least, if it doesn't scorch."

"All right, I accept it!" Clare pacified her; then, as she left the
kitchen, "Miss Durand?"

"Yes, Miss Hartill?"

"Are you going to make one for Miss Vigers?"

Alwynne's face fell.

"I'd forgotten Miss Vigers."

Clare twinkled.

"Perhaps--if it doesn't scorch--I'll see what I can do," she promised
her.

The lunch was a success. Alwynne, dishing up, had her hat ordered off
her head, and was soon sharing the omelet and marvelling at herself for
being where she was, and Clare, for her part, found herself enjoying her
visitor as much as her meal.

Clare Hartill led a sufficiently solitary life. She was a woman of
feverish friendships and sudden ruptures. Always the cleverest and most
restless of her circle, she usually found her affinities as unable to
satisfy her demands on their intellect as on their emotions.
Disillusionment would be swift and final: Clare never forgave a bore.
Gradually it came to pass that intercourse she so carefully fostered
with her elder pupils became her absorbing and satisfying interest. She
plumed herself on her independence of social amenities, did not guess,
would not have admitted, that her pleasure in a chance table companion
had its flavour of pathos. It was enough to acknowledge to herself that
Alwynne Durand, with her enthusiasms, her incoherencies, and her
capacities had certainly caught her difficult fancy. She liked the
girl's manner; its compound of shyness and audacity, deference and
independence pleased her sophisticated taste. She found her racy and
original, and, in the exertion of drawing her out, was herself at her
best. A brilliant talker, she chose to listen, and soon heard all there
was to hear of Alwynne's short history; of her mother's sister, Elsbeth
Loveday (Clare pricked up her ears at the name), who had reared her from
babyhood; of her schooldays; her crude young likes and dislikes; her
hero-worships and passionate, vague ambitions. Clare knew it all by
heart, had heard the tale from more pairs of lips than she could
remember, for more years than she cared to count. But Alwynne,
nevertheless, told it in a way of her own that appealed to Clare and
interested her anew. She told herself that the girl was worth
cultivating; and what with apt comments, apter silences, and the
half-finished phrases and abrupt noddings of perfect comprehension,
contrived to make Alwynne think her the most sympathetic person she had
ever had the fortune to meet. Indeed, they pleased each other so well
that when Alwynne, towards tea-time, made an unwilling move, Clare was
as unwilling, for her part, to let her go.

"It was certainly a most excellent omelet," she said, as she sped her
from the door. "I suppose you won't come and cook me another to-night?"

Alwynne took her at her word.

"I will! Of course I will! Would you like me to, really? I will! I'd
love to!"

Clare laughed.

"Oh, I was only in fun. Whatever would your aunt say?"

"She wouldn't mind," began Alwynne eagerly.

Clare temporised.

"But your work? Haven't you any work?"

Alwynne overwhelmed her.

"That's all right! It isn't much! I'll sit up. I wish you'd let me. I
would love to. You must have some one to cook your supper for you,
mustn't you?"

"Well, of course, if you'd really like to----" Clare hesitated between
jest and earnest.

But Alwynne was wholly in earnest.

"I'll come. Thank you very much indeed," said Alwynne, eyes sparkling.




CHAPTER IV


In the months that followed the eating of the omelet, Alwynne would have
agreed that the cynic who said that "an entirely successful love-affair
can only be achieved by foundlings" should have included friendship in
his dictum. For relations ... well, everybody knew what everybody meant
when relations were mentioned in that particular tone; and Elsbeth,
dearest of maiden aunts, was nevertheless at times aggressively a
relation: privileged to wet-blanket enthusiasms.

Elsbeth made, indeed, no stand against the alliance that had sprung
mushroom-like into existence; was courteous, in her sweet silent
fashion, to Clare Hartill at their occasional meetings; but she remained
subtly uninterested. But when, again, had that suppressed and
self-effacing personality shown interest in any living thing save
Alwynne herself?

Alwynne, shrugging her shoulders, and ignoring, as youth must, the
affectionate prevision that had lapped her all her life, supposed that
she must not expect too much of poor, dear Elsbeth.... (It was
characteristic of their relationship that she never called her guardian
"Aunt.") Elsbeth, darling Elsbeth--but a little limited, perhaps? Hardly
to be expected that she should appreciate a Miss Hartill....

Elsbeth, though Alwynne never guessed it, quite understood what went on
in her niece's mind: was resigned to it. She knew that she was not a
clever woman. She had been too much occupied, all her life, in smoothing
the way for other people, to have had leisure for her own cultivation,
physical or mental. Her two years of teaching, in the uncertificated
'eighties, had but served to reveal to herself her ingrained incapacity
for government. She had never forgotten the humiliation of those months
when Clare Hartill, a pitiless fourteen-year-old girl, had headed one
successful revolt after another against her. It had been an episode;
with the advent of Alwynne she had returned to domesticity; but the
experience had intensified her innate lack of self-esteem. There were
times when she seriously debated whether, in bringing up her orphaned
niece, she were indulging herself at the expense of her duty. She knew
quite well, and rejoiced shamefacedly in the knowledge, that Alwynne,
her beautiful, brilliant, headstrong girl, could twist the old aunt
round her little finger. And that, of course, could not be good for
Alwynne.

Alwynne was, to do her justice, extremely fond of her aunt. Till the
advent of Clare Hartill, Elsbeth had been the pole-star of her world.
All the more disconcerting of Elsbeth, receiver of confidences,
therefore, to be so entirely uninterested in the comet that was
deflecting Alwynne from her accustomed orbit.

She wondered occasionally what her aunt's history had been. Elsbeth was
reticent: never a woman of reminiscences. Her relations were distant
ones, whom she rarely mentioned and apparently more rarely missed.
Alwynne was the more surprised one breakfast, when, retailing the
school's latest scandal, she was interrupted by an exclamation of
pleasure.

"Alwynne! The Lumsdens are coming back!" Elsbeth rustled foreign paper
delightedly.

Alwynne wrinkled her brows.

"The Lumsdens? Oh--those cousins of yours?"

"Yes. The youngest, Rosemary, only died last year. Don't you remember?
They've lived abroad for years on account of her health, and her son
Roger always went out to her for his holidays."

"Roger? Is that the velveteen boy in the big album?"

Elsbeth laughed.

"He must be thirty by now. The estate went to him. It was let, you know,
and the Great House at Dene--to a school, I believe. They had lost
money. And Rosemary was always extravagant. Roger went to America for a
time. But still he's well enough off. He came home when his mother died
last year, and now, it seems, he's taken a house close to their old
home, and settled down as a market-gardener. The Lumsdens are to come
and keep house for him. He's very fond of his aunts, I know. Well! To
think of seeing Jean and Alicia again after all these years. They want
us to come and stay when they've settled down."

"You'll enjoy that?" Alwynne eyed her aunt curiously. Elsbeth's pale
cheeks were pink, her faded eyes dreamy. Her unconscious hand was
rapping out its tune upon the tablecloth--the only symptom of excitement
that Elsbeth ever showed. "Were you fond of them? Why haven't you ever
been to see them, Elsbeth?"

"Time flies. And I certainly can't afford to gad about the Riviera. And
there was you, you know. Besides----" she hesitated.

"Besides what?"

Elsbeth did not seem to hear.

"You'll like Dene, Alwynne. Oh, yes, I know it well. I used to stay with
them--before the Great House was let. Years ago. And Roger--I hope
you'll get on with Roger. I haven't seen him since he was five. A jolly
little fellow. And from what Alicia says----"

But Alwynne would not take any interest in Roger. He had a snub nose in
the photograph; and besides, she hated men. So dull. As Clare
said----Indeed, she wasn't always quoting Clare! She didn't always set
up Clare's judgment against Elsbeth's! Elsbeth needn't get huffy! She
would like to go down to Dene very much, if Elsbeth wanted to, some time
or other.

But when the holidays came and the formal invitation, Alwynne was less
amenable.

Why couldn't Elsbeth go alone? Elsbeth couldn't expect her to go and
stay with utter strangers. She hated strangers. Besides, there was
Clare. (It was "Clare" and "Alwynne" by that time.) She and Clare had
planned out every day of the holidays. Everything fixed. She really
couldn't ask Clare to upset all her arrangements. It wouldn't be fair.
Awfully sorry, of course, but why couldn't Alwynne's dear Elsbeth go by
herself? She, Alwynne, could keep house. Oh, perfectly well! She wasn't
a fool! She wouldn't dream of spoiling Elsbeth's holiday, but Elsbeth
must see that there was no need for Alwynne to share it.

But Elsbeth was unusually obstinate. Elsbeth, it appeared, wanted
Alwynne with her; wanted to show Alwynne to these old friends; wanted to
show these old friends to Alwynne; wouldn't enjoy the visit without
Alwynne at her elbow; refused utterly to be convinced of
unreasonableness. Alwynne would enjoy the change, the country--didn't
Alwynne love the country?--and if she herself, and Alicia, and Jean,
were not of Alwynne's generation, there was always Roger! By all
accounts Roger was very nice; witness the aunts who adored him.

Alwynne snorted.

She argued the matter mercilessly, length, breadth, depth and back
again, and ended, as Elsbeth knew she would, by getting her own way. But
Elsbeth did not go to Dene by herself. There she was mulish. Go visiting
and leave the housekeeping to Alwynne's tender mercies? Heaven forbid!
There was more in housekeeping than dusting a bedroom, making peppermint
creams, or wasting four eggs on an omelet.

So Alwynne spent her pleasant holidays in and out of Clare Hartill's
pocket and Elsbeth stayed at home. But Elsbeth had learned her lesson.
It was many a long day before she again suggested a visit to Dene.




CHAPTER V


One of Alwynne's duties was the conduct of a small "extra" class,
consisting of girls, who, for reasons of stupidity, ill-health or
defective grounding, fell too far below the average of knowledge in
their respective classes. She devoted certain afternoons in the week to
coaching them, and was considered to be unusually successful in her
methods. She could be extremely patient, and had quaint and unorthodox
ways of insinuating facts into her pupils' minds. As she told Elsbeth,
she invented their memories for them. She was sufficiently imaginative
to realise their difficulties, yet sufficiently young to dream of
developing, in due course, all her lame ducks into swans. She was
intensely interested in hearing how her coaching had succeeded; her
pleasure at an amended place in class was so genuine, her disappointment
at a collapse so comically real, yet so devoid of contempt, so tinged
with conviction that it was anybody's fault but the culprit's, that
either attitude was an incentive to real effort. Like Clare, she did not
suffer fools gladly, but unlike Clare, she had not the moral courage to
be ruthless. Stupidity seemed as terrible to her as physical deformity;
she treated it with the same touch of motherliness, the same instinctive
desire to spare it realisation of its own unsightliness.

Her rather lovable cowardice brought a mixed reward; she stifled in
sick-rooms, yet invalids liked her well; she was frankly envious of
Clare's circle of brilliant girls and as inevitably surrounded by
inarticulate adorers, who bored her mightily, but whose clumsy affection
she was too kindhearted to suppress.

It had been well for Alwynne, however, that her following was of the
duller portion of the school. This Clare could endure, could
countenance; such boy-bishopry could not affect her own sovereignty, and
her subject's consequence increased her own. But to see Alwynne swaying,
however unconsciously, minds of a finer type, would not have been easy
for Clare. She had grown very fond of Alwynne; but the sentiment was
proprietary; she could derive no pleasure from her that was not
personal, and, in its most literal sense, selfish. She was unmaternal to
the core. She could not see human property admired by others with any
sensation but that of a double jealousy; she was subtly angered that
Alwynne could attract, yet was caught herself in the net of those
attractions, and unable to endure to watch them spread for any but
herself.

Alwynne, quite unconscious of the trait, had at first done herself harm
by her unfeigned interest in Clare's circle. It took the elder woman
some suspicious weeks to realise that Alwynne lacked completely her own
_dompteuse_ instinct, her craving for power; that she was as innocent of
knowledge of her own charm as unwedded Eve; that her impulse to Clare
was an impulse of the freshest, sweetest hero-worship; but the
realisation came at last, and Clare opened her hungry heart to her, and,
warmed by Alwynne's affection, wondered that she had hesitated so long.

Alwynne never guessed that she had been doubted. Clare was proud of her
genuine skill as a character reader--had been a little pleased to give
Alwynne proof of her penetration when occasion arose; and Alwynne, less
trained, less critical, thought her omniscient, and never dreamed that
the motives of her obscurest actions, the sources of her most veiled
references were not plain to Clare. Secure of comprehension, she went
her way: any one in whom Clare was interested must needs attract her: so
she took pains to become intimate with Clare's adorers, from a very real
sympathy with their appreciation of Clare, whom she no more grudged to
them than a priestess would grudge the unveiling of her goddess to the
initiate. She received their confidences, learned their secrets, fanned
the flame of their enthusiasms. Too lately a schoolgirl herself, too
innocent and ignorant to dream of danger, she did her loyal utmost in
furtherance of the cult, measuring the artificial and unbalanced
emotions she encountered by the rule of her own saner affection, and, in
her desire to see her friend appreciated, in all good faith utilised her
degree of authority to encourage what an older woman would have
recognised and combated as incipient hysteria.

Gradually she became, through her frank sympathy, combined with her
slightly indeterminate official position, the intermediary, the
interpreter of Clare to the feverish school. Clare herself, her initial
distrust over, found this useful. She could afford to be moody, erratic,
whimsical; to be extravagant in her praises and reproofs; to
deteriorate, at times, into a caricature of her own bizarre personality,
with the comfortable assurance that there was ever a magician in her
wake to steady her tottering shrines, mix oil with her vitriol, and
prove her pinchbeck gold.

Fatal, this relaxation of effort, to a woman of Clare's type. Love of
some sort was vital to her. Of this her surface personality was dimly,
ashamedly aware, and would, if challenged, have frigidly denied; but the
whole of her larger self knew its need, and saw to it that that need was
satisfied. Clare, unconscious, had taught Clare, conscious, that there
must be effort--constant, straining effort at cultivation of all her
alluring qualities, at concealment of all in her that could
repulse--effort that all appearances of complete success must never
allow her to relax. She knew well the evanescent character of a
schoolgirl's affection; so well that when her pupils left the school she
seldom tried to retain her hold upon them. Their letters would come
thick as autumn leaves at first; she rarely answered, or after long
intervals; and the letters dwindled and ceased. She knew that, in the
nature of things, it must be so, and had no wish to prolong the
farewells.

Also, her interest in her correspondents usually died first; to sustain
it required their physical nearness. But every new year filled the gaps
left by the old, stimulated Clare to fresh exertion.

So the lean years went by. Then came vehement Alwynne--no
schoolgirl--yet more youthful and ingenuous than any mistress had right
to be, loving with all the discrimination of a fine mind, and all the
ardour of an affectionate child. Here was no question of a fleeting
devotion that must end as the schooldays ended. Here was love for Clare
at last, a widow's cruse to last her for all time. Clare thanked the
gods of her unbelief, and, relaxing all effort, settled herself to enjoy
to the full the cushioning sense of security; the mock despot of their
pleasant, earlier intercourse becoming, as she bound Alwynne ever more
closely to her, albeit unconsciously, a very real tyrant indeed.

Yet she had no intention of weakening her hold on any lesser member of
her chosen coterie. Alwynne was too ingenuous, too obviously subject
through her own free impulse, to entirely satisfy: Clare's love of power
had its morbid moments, when a struggling victim, head averted, pleased
her. There was never, among the new-comers, a child, self-absorbed,
nonchalant or rebellious, who passed a term unmolested by Miss Hartill.
Egoism aroused her curiosity, her suspicion of hidden lands, virgin,
ripe for exploration; indifference piqued her; a flung gauntlet she
welcomed with frank amusement. She had been a rebel in her own time, and
had ever a thrill of sympathy for the mutinies she relentlessly crushed.
War, personal war, delighted her; she was a mistress of tactics, and the
certainty of eventual victory gave zest to her campaigns. She did not
realise that the strain upon her childish opponents was very great. The
finer, the more sensitive the character, the more complete the eventual
defeat, the more permanent its effects. Clare was pitiless after
victory: not till then did she examine into the nature thus enslaved,
seldom did she find it worth the trouble of the skirmish. In most cases
she gave semi-liberty; enough of smiles to keep the children feverishly
at work to please her (the average of achievement in her classes was
astounding), and enough of indifference to prevent them from becoming a
nuisance. To the few that pleased her fastidious taste, she gave of her
best, lavishly, as she had given to Alwynne. There are women to-day, old
girls of the school, who owe Clare Hartill the best things of their
lives, their wide knowledge, their original ideas, their hopeful futures
and happy memories: to whom she was an inspiration incarnate. The Clare
they remember is not the Clare that Elsbeth knew, that Alwynne learned
to know, that Clare herself, one bitter night, faced and blanched at.
But which of them had knowledge of the true Clare, who shall say?

       *       *       *       *       *

In Clare's favourite class was a certain Louise Denny. She was
thirteen--nearly three years below the average of the class in age. How
far beyond it in all else, not even Clare realised.

Clare had discovered her, as she phrased it, in the limbo of the Lower
Third. She had been paying one of her surprise visits to the afternoon
extra needlework classes--(the possibility of her occasional appearance,
book in hand, was responsible for the school's un-English proficiency in
hemming, darning and kindred mysteries), to read aloud to the children
carefully edited excerpts from Poe's _Tales_, had forgotten her copy and
had been shyly offered another, private property from Louise Denny's
desk. Thereon must Alwynne, for a week or two, resign perforce her Lower
Third literature classes to Clare, intent on her blue rose. Louise's
compositions had been read--Clare and Alwynne spent a long evening over
them, weighing, comparing, discussing. Clare could be exquisitely
tender, could keep all-patient vigil over an unfolding mind, provided
that the calyx concealed a rare enough blossom. Louise was encouraged,
her shyness swept aside, her ideas developed, her knowledge tested; she
was fed, too, cautiously, on richer and richer food--stray evening
lectures, picture galleries with Alwynne, headiest of cicerones; the
freedom of the library and long talks with Clare. Finally Clare, bearing
down all opposition, transplanted her to the Lower Fifth, containing at
that time some brilliantly clever girls. Louise justified her by
speedily capturing, and doggedly retaining, the highest place in the
class.

Clare was delighted. Her critics--there were some mistresses who vaguely
disapproved of the experiment--were refuted, and the class, already
needing no spur, outdoing itself in its efforts to compete with the
intruder, swept the board at an important public examination.

On the morning of the announcement of results, Clare entered her
form-room radiant. It was a low, many-windowed room, with desks ranged
single-file along the walls. The class being a small one, the girls were
accustomed to sit for their lessons at a large oval table at the upper
end of the room. Beside the passage doorway, there was a smaller one,
that led into the studio, and was never used by the children. Clare,
however, would sometimes enter by it, but so seldom that they invariably
forgot to keep watch. Clare enjoyed the occasional view she thus
obtained of her unconscious and relaxed subjects, and the piquancy of
their uncensored conversation; she enjoyed still more the sudden hush,
the crisp thrill, that ran through their groups, when they became aware
of her, observant in the doorway.

On the morning in question she had watched them for some little while.
Before each girl lay her open exercise-book and school edition of
Browning. They were deep in discussion of their work, very eager upon
some question. By the empty chair at the head of the table sat Marion
Hughes, blonde and placid, a rounded elbow on her neatly written theme,
that her neighbour was trying to pull away, to compare with her own
well-inked manuscript. This neighbour, one Agatha Middleton, was dark,
gaunt, with restless eyes and restless tongue. She was old for her
fifteen years, and had been original until she discovered that her
originality appealed to Miss Hartill. Since then she had imitated her
own mannerisms, and was rapidly degenerating into an eccentric. The law
of opposites had decreed that the sedate Marion should be her bosom
friend. They went up the school together, an incongruous, yet
well-suited pair, for they were so unlike that there could be no
rivalry. Marion was alternately amused and dazzled by the pyrotechnic
Agatha. Agatha's respect for Marion's common sense was pleasantly
tempered by a conviction of superior mental agility. Finally, they were
united by their common devotion to their form-mistress. Whether it would
have occurred to Marion, unprompted, to admire Miss Hartill, is
uncertain. Her affections were domestic and calm. But adoration was in
the air, and she had not sufficient originality to be unfashionable. She
was caught, too, in Agatha's whirlwind emotions, and ended by
worshipping Clare conscientiously and sincerely. Clare, on her side,
respected her, as she told Alwynne, for her "painstaking and intelligent
stupidity," and, recognising a nature too worthy for neglect, yet too
lymphatic to be suitable for experiments, was uniformly kind to her.
Agatha, she had revelled in for six weeks, and had since more or less
ignored as a bore. Below the pair sat a spectacled student, predestined
to scholarships and a junior mistress-ship; opposite, between giggling
twins, a vivid little Jewess, whose showy work was due to the same
vanity that tied her curls with giant bows, and over-corsetted her
matured figure. At the foot of the oval, directly opposite Clare's
vacant chair, stood Louise, flushed and excited, chanting low-voicedly a
snatch of verse.

During a lull in the hubbub Marion called to her down the table--

"How many pages?"

Louise flushed. She was still a little in awe of these elders whom she
had outstripped. She rapidly counted the leaves of her essay, and held
up both hands, smiling shyly.

Marion exclaimed.

"Ten? You marvel! I only got to seven. I simply didn't understand it.
Whatever did you find to say?"

Agatha fell upon the query.

"That's nothing! I've done twenty-two!" she cried triumphantly, and
turned to face the shower of comments.

"Miss Hartill will bless you. She said last time that you thought ink
and ideas were synonyms."

"Agatha only writes three words to a line anyway."

They liked her, but she was of the type whose imperiousness provokes
snubs.

"Well, I thought I shouldn't get it done under forty--an essay on _The
Dark Tower_. It's the beastliest yet. _The Ancient Mariner_ was nothing
to it. I've made an awful hash--didn't you?"

"I understood all right when she read it, and explained. It's so absurd
not to let one take notes. I've been years at it. Fortunately she said
we needn't learn it--Louise and I--with all our extra work." An
unimaginative hockey captain fluttered her pages distractedly.

"Oh, but I have!" Louise looked up quickly.

"Why?" The hockey captain opened her eyes and mouth.

"Oh, I rather wanted to."

The little Jewess giggled.

"'_Déjà?_'" she murmured. She did not love Clare.

Marion returned to the subject with her usual perseverance.

"Did you understand it, kid?"

Louise stammered a little.

"When she reads it, and when I say it aloud, I think I do. It was
impossible to write it down."

"Let's see what you have put." Agatha, by a quick movement, possessed
herself of Louise's exercise-book. Louise, shy and desperate, strove
silently with her neighbours, who, curious, held her back, while Agatha,
holding the book at arm's length, recited from it in a high mocking
voice.

"_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came._ Description! Description!
Description! for three--five--seven pages! You've let yourself go,
Louise! Ah, here we are--_The meaning of the poem_. Now we're getting to
it. _Shakespeare and Browning may have known all the real history of
Childe Roland; the reason of his quest, the secret of the horror of the
Tower; but we are left in ignorance. That does not matter, for, as we
read, the inner meaning of the terrible poem kills all curiosity.
Shuddering we close the book, and pray to God that Childe Roland's
journey may never be ours; that for our adventurous souls,
knight-erranting through this queer life, there may never come a choice
of ways, a turning from the pleasant high-road, to go upon a hideous
journey; till, crossing the Plains of Loneliness, Fear and Sorrow, we
face the Hills of Madness, and enter the Dark Tower of that Despair
which is our soul's death._ With capital letters galore! What a
sentence! Here, shut up, you spit-fire!" Louise had wrenched herself
free and flung herself upon Agatha, in a white heat of anger.

"Give it me! You've no right! You've no right!" she gasped. Her shyness
had gone, she was blazing with indignation.

Agatha, the book held teasingly out of reach, affected to search for her
place. Louise raised her clenched fist desperately.

A cool hand caught her wrist in a firm yet kindly grip. A hush fell on
the voluble group and Agatha collapsed into an apologetic nonentity.

Clare, who had entered in her usual noiseless fashion, stood a moment
between the combatants, watching the effect of her appearance. Her hand
shifted to Louise's bony little shoulder; through the thin blouse she
could feel the driven blood pulsing. She did not move till she felt the
child regaining comparative calm, when, giving her a gentle push towards
her place, she walked slowly to the head of the table and seated
herself. The class watched her furtively. It was quite aware that all
rules of decorum had been transgressed--that pains and penalties would
be in order with any other mistress. But with Miss Hartill there was
always glorious uncertainty--and Miss Hartill did not look annoyed.
Little gestures began to break the tension and Agatha, relieved, smiled
a shade too broadly. Instantly Clare closed with her.

She began blandly--

"Agatha, I thought you could read aloud better than that. You are not
doing your work justice. Pass me your essay."

"It's Louise's," said Agatha helplessly.

"Ah, I see. And you kindly read it to us for her? It's a pity you didn't
understand what you read--but an excuse, of course. Louise must not
expect too much."

Agatha flung up her head angrily.

"Oh, I understood it all right. I thought it was silly."

"You did? Read me your own."

"Now?"

"Certainly."

Now Clare, as she corrected and commented upon the weekly essays, did
occasionally, if the mood took her, read extracts, humorous chiefly,
therefrom; but it had never been customary for a pupil to read her own
work aloud. Agatha had the pioneer spirit--but she was no fool. She
comprehended that, with Clare inimical, she could climb no higher than
the pillory. She fell back upon the tradition of the school.

"Oh, Miss Hartill--I can't!"

"Why not?"

"No one ever does----"

Clare waited.

Agatha protested redly, her fear of ridicule outweighing her fear of
Clare.

"Miss Hartill, I simply couldn't. Before everybody--all this tosh--I
mean all this stuff I wrote. It's a written essay. I couldn't make it
sound right aloud."

Clare waited.

"It's not good enough, Miss Hartill. Honestly! And we never have. You've
never made us. I couldn't."

Clare waited.

Agatha twisted her hands uneasily. The schoolgirl shyness that is
physical misery was upon her.

"I--don't want to, Miss Hartill. I can't. It's not fair to have one's
stuff--to be laughed at--to be----" she subsided just in time.

The class sat, breathless, all eyes on Clare.

And Clare waited; waited till defiance faded to unease--unease to
helplessness, till the girl, overborne by the utter silence, gave way,
and dropping her eyes to her exercise, fluttering its pages in angry
embarrassment, finally, with a giggle of pure nervousness, embarked on
the opening sentence.

Clare cut through the clustering adjectives.

"Stand up, please."

Resistance was over. She rose sullenly.

She had been proud of her essay, had worked at it sincerely, knew its
periods by heart. But her pleasure in it was destroyed, as completely,
she realised, as she had destroyed that of little Louise. More--for
Louise had found a champion. That, she recognised jealously. Unjust! Her
essay was no worse, read soberly--yet she was forced to render it
ridiculous. She read a couple of pages in hurried jerks, stumbling over
the illegibilities of her own handwriting, baulked by Clare's
interpolations. She heard her own voice, high-pitched and out of
control, perverting her meaning, felt the laden sentences breaking up
into chaos on her lips. In her flurry she pronounced familiar words
amiss, Clare's calm voice carefully correcting. Once she heard a
chuckle. Two pages ... three ... only that ... she remembered that she
had boasted of twenty ... seventeen to be read yet and they were all
laughing. To have to stand there ... three pages.... "_But as Childe
Roland turned round_----"

"Louder, please," said Clare.

"_But as Childe Roland turned round_----" and even Marion was
laughing.... "_Turned round to look once more back to the high
road_----"

"And slower."

"_To the high road_----" She stopped suddenly, a lump in her throat.

"Go on, Agatha."

"_To the high road_----" The letters danced up and down mistily. "_To
the high road where the cripple--where the cripple_----Oh, Miss
Hartill," she cried imploringly, "isn't it enough?"

It was surrender. Clare nodded.

"Yes, you may sit down now. Your essay, please: thank you. And now I'll
read you, once more, what Louise has to say on the same subject. I dare
say you'll find, Agatha, that you were almost as unfair to her essay, as
you were to--your own." And she smiled her sudden dazzling smile.
Agatha, against her will, smiled tremulously back.

Clare, with a glance at the little figure, huddling at the foot of the
table, began to read. The essay, for all its schoolgirl slips and
extravagances, was unusual. The thought embodied in it, though tinged
with morbidity, striking and matured. Clare did it more than justice.
Her beautiful voice made music of the crude sentences, revealed,
embellished, glorified. Her own interest growing as she read, infected
the class; she swept them along with her, mutually enthusiastic. She
ended abruptly, her voice like the echoes of a deep bell.

Marion broke the little pause.

"I liked that," she said, as if surprised at herself.

"So did I," Clare was pleased.

She dipped her pen in red ink and initialled the foot of the essay.

"That was good work, Louise. Now, the others."

But Louise, shy and glowing, broke in--

"But it wasn't all mine, Miss Hartill, not a bit."

Clare looked at her, half frowning.

"Not yours? Your handwriting----?"

"Oh, I wrote it. But you've made it different. I hadn't meant it like
that."

Clare raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"I have misinterpreted----?"

Louise was too much in earnest to be fluttered.

"I only mean--you made it sound so beautiful that it was like listening
to--to an organ. I didn't bother about the words while you read. It was
all colours and gold--like the things in the Venetian room. You know.
The meaning didn't matter. But I did mean something, not half so good,
of course, only quite different. Horrid and grizzly like the plain he
travelled through, Childe Roland. It ought to have sounded harsh and
starved, like rats pattering--what I meant--not beautiful."

"I see." Clare was interested. She was quite aware that she had used her
magnificent voice to impress arbitrarily her opinion of Louise's work
upon the class. That Louise, impressionable as she knew her to be,
should have yet detected the trick, amused her greatly.

"So you think I didn't understand your essay?"

Louise's shy laugh was very pleasant.

"Oh, Miss Hartill. I'm not so stupid. It's only that I can't have got
the--the----"

"Atmosphere!" The girl in spectacles helped her.

"The atmosphere that I meant to; so you put in a different one to help
it. And it did. But it wasn't what I meant."

Clare glanced at her inscrutably, and began to score the other essays.
She would get at Louise's meaning in her own way. She skimmed a couple,
Agatha, be it recorded, receiving the coveted initials, before she spoke
again.

"Didn't I tell you to learn _Childe Roland_, too? Ah, I thought so.
Begin, Marion, while I finish these. Two verses."

Her pen scratched on, as Marion's expressionless voice rose, fell and
finished. Agatha continued, jarringly dramatic. Two more followed her.
Then Clare put down her pen.

     "'For mark!'..."

There was a warning undertone in Louise's colourless voice, that crept
across the room like a shadow. Clare lifted her head and stared at her.

     "For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
     Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
     Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
     O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
     Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
     I might go on; nought else remained to do."

There was horror in the whispering voice: the accents of one bowed
beneath intolerable burdens, sick with the knowledge of nearing doom,
gay with the flippancy of despair. Louise was looking straight before
her, vacant as a medium, her hands lying laxly in her lap. Clare made a
quick sign to her neighbour to be silent, and the strained voice rose
anew.

Clare listened perplexedly. She told herself that this was sheer
technique--some trick had been played, she was harbouring some child
actress of parts--only to be convinced of folly. She knew all about
Louise. Besides, she had heard the child read aloud before. Good, clean,
intelligent delivery. But nothing like this--this was uncanny. Uncanny,
yet magnificent. The artist in her settled down to enjoyment; yet she
was uneasy, too.

     "And just as far as ever from the end!"

The creeping voice toiled on across the haunted plain, growing louder,
clearer, nearer.

Vision was forced upon Clare, serene in her form-room, swift and sudden
vision. She not only heard, every sense responded. At her feet lay the
waste land of the poem, she smelt the dank air, shrank from the clammy
undergrowth, watched the bowed figure of the wandering knight,
stumbling forwards doggedly. It was coming towards her, the outline
blurred in the evening mist, the face hidden. The voice was surely his?

     "Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
     Increasing like a bell."

She heard it alive with warning.

Nearer, ever nearer; the bowed form was at her very feet, as the voice
rose anew in despairing defiance.

     "To view the last of me----"

The helmeted head was flung back; the voice echoed from hill to hill--

     "I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
     Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
     And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

The figure fell, face upwards, at her feet. Clare tore at the visor with
desperate hands, for at the last line, the strong voice had broken,
quavering into the pitiful treble of a frightened child. The bars melted
under her touch, as dream things will, and she was staring down at no
bearded face, but at Louise. Louise herself, with blank, dead eyes in a
broken, blood-flecked face. The dead mouth smiled.

"You see, that was what I meant, Miss Hartill. That atmosphere."

Clare roused herself with a start. Louise, rosily alive, and quivering
with eagerness, was waiting for her comments. She got none.

"Begin again," said Clare mechanically, to the next girl.

The brightness died out of Louise's face, as she subsided in her seat.
Clare, dazed as she was, saw it, and was touched. The child deserved
praise--should not be punished for the vagaries of Clare's own phantasy.
And the monkey could recite! She shook off the impression of that
recital as best she could. Curious, the freaks of the imagination! She
must tell Alwynne of the adventure--Alwynne, dreamer of dreams.... And
Alwynne was interested in Louise; was coaching her.... Perhaps she was
responsible ... had coached her in that very poem? She hoped not ... it
would be interference.... She did not like interference. But no--that
performance was entirely original, she felt sure. There was genius in
the child--sheer genius ... and but for Clare herself, she would yet be
rotting undeveloped in the Lower Third. She was pleased with herself,
pleased with Louise too; ready to tell her so, to see the child's face
light up again delightedly; she was less attractive in repose....

Clare's chance came.

It was the turn of the hockey captain to recite. She appealed to Clare.

"Oh, Miss Hartill! You said I needn't, Louise and I--because of all our
extra work. Not the poem."

Clare considered.

"I remember. Very well. But Louise?" She looked at her questioningly,
half smiling. "When did you find the time?"

Louise laughed.

"I don't know, Miss Hartill. It found itself."

"Ah! And how much extra work have you, Louise?"

Louise reflected.

"All the afternoons, I think. And three evenings when I go to lectures.
And, of course, gallery days, when I make up in the evenings."

"And homework?"

"Oh, there's heaps of time at night always."

Clare smiled upon her class.

"Well, Lower Fifth--what do you think of it?"

The class opened its mouth.

"Louise is moved up four forms. She's thirteen. She's top of the class
and first in to-day's results. You hear what her extra work is. And she
finds time to learn _Childe Roland_--optional. What do you think of it?"

Agatha bit down her envy.

"It's pretty good," she said.

Clare's glance approved her.

"Yes. So I think. It's so good that I'm more than pleased.
I'm--impressed. Rather proud of my youngest pupil. For next time you
will learn----" And with one of her quick transitions, she began to
dictate her homework.

The gong clanged as she finished. Alwynne's voice was heard in the
passage, inquiring for Miss Hartill, and Clare hurried out. Followed a
confused banging of books and desk-lids, a tangle of fragmentary
remarks, and much trampling of boots on uncarpeted boards, as one after
another followed her. Within five minutes the room was bare, save for
Clare's forgotten satchel at the upper end of the big table, and Louise,
motionless in her chair at the foot.




CHAPTER VI


Louise was tasting happiness.

Happiness was a new and absorbing experience to Louise. The only child
of a former marriage, she had grown up among boisterous half-brothers
with whom she had little fellowship. Her father, a driving, thriving
merchant, was prouder of his second brood of apple-cheeked youngsters
than of his first-born, who fitted into the scheme of life as ill as her
mother had done. He had imagined himself in love with his first wife,
had married her, piqued by her elusive ways, charmed by her pale,
wood-sorrel beauty; and she, shy and unawakened, had taken his six feet
of bone and muscle for outward and visible sign of the matured spiritual
strength her nature needed. The disappointment was mutual as swift; it
had taken no longer than the honeymoon to convince the one that he had
burdened himself with a phantast, the other that she was tied to a
philistine. For a year they shared bed and board, severed and
inseparable as earth and moon; then the wife having passed on to a
daughter the heritage of a nature rare and impracticable as a sensitive
plant, died and was forgotten.

The widower's speedy re-marriage proved an unqualified success. Indeed,
the worthy man's after life was so uniformly and deservedly prosperous
(he was as shrewd and industrious in his business as he was genial and
domesticated in his home), that he might be forgiven if his affection
for his eldest child were tepid; for, apart from her likeness to his
first wife, she was, in existing, a constant reminder of the one mistake
of a prosperous career. He was kind to her, however, in his fashion;
gave her plenty of pocket-money (he was fond of giving); saw to it that
she had a sufficiency of toys and sweets, though it piqued him that she
had never been known to ask for any. Otherwise was content to leave her
to his wife.

The second Mrs. Denny, kindly, capable and unimaginative as her husband,
had her sense of duty to her step-daughter; but she was too much
occupied in bearing and rearing her own family, whose numbers were
augmented with Victorian regularity, to consider more than the physical
well-being of the child. Louise was well fed and warmly clad, her share
was accorded her in the pleasures of the nursery. What more could a busy
woman do!

Louise, docile and reserved, was not unhappy. Until she went to school,
however, her mental outlook resembled that of a person suffering from
myopia. Her elders, her half-brothers, all the persons of her small
world, were indefinite figures among whom she moved, confused and
blundering. She knew of their existence, but to focus them seemed as
impossible as to establish communication. She did not try over hard; she
was sensitive to ridicule; it was easier to retire within her childish
self, be her own confidante and questioner.

She had an intricate imagination and before she learned to read had
created for herself a fantastically complete inner world, in which she
moved, absorbed and satisfied. Indeed, her outward surroundings became
at last so dangerously shadowy that her manner began to show how entire
was her abstraction, and Mrs. Denny, sworn foe to "sulks" and "moping,"
saw fit to engage a governess as an antidote.

The governess, a colourless lady, achieved little, though she was useful
in taking the little boys for walks. But she taught Louise to read, and
thereafter the child assumed entire charge of her own education.

The mother's books, velvety with dust that had sifted down upon them
since the day, six years back, when they had been tumbled in piles on an
attic floor by busy maids preparing for the advent of the second Mrs.
Denny, were discovered, one rainy day, by a pinafored Siegfried, alert
for treasure. Contented years were passed in consuming the trove.

Her mother's choice of books was so completely to her taste that they
gave the lonely child her first experience of mental companionship;
suggesting to her that there might be other intelligences in the world
about her than the kindly, stolid folk who cherished her growing body
and ignored her growing mind. She was almost startled at times to
realise how completely this vague mother of hers would have understood
her. Each new volume, fanciful or quizzical or gracious, seemed a direct
gift from an invisible yet human personality, that concerned itself with
her as no other had ever done; that was never occupied with the
dustiness of the attic, or a forgotten tea-hour, but was astonishingly
sensitive to the needs of a little soul, struggling unaided to birth.
The pile of books, to her hungry affections, became the temple, the
veritable dwelling-place of her mother's spirit.

Seated on the sun-baked floor, book on knee, the noises of the high road
floating up to her, distance-dulled and soothing, she would shake her
thick hair across her face, and see through its veil a melting, shifting
shadow of a hand that helped to turn her pages. The warm floor was a
soft lap; the battered trunk a shoulder that supported; the faint breeze
a kiss upon her lips. The fantastic qualities the mother had bequeathed,
recreated her in the mind of her child, bringing vague comfort (who
knows?) alike to the dead and the living Louise.

Yet the impalpable intercourse, compact of make-believe and yearnings,
was, at its sweetest, no safe substitute for the human companionships
that were lacking in the life of Louise. Half consciously she desired an
elder sister, a friend, on whom to lavish the stores of her ardent,
reticent nature.

At twelve she was sent to school. At first it did little for her. She
was unaccustomed to companions of her own age and sex and, quite simply,
did not know how to make friends with many who would have been willing
enough, if she could have contributed her share, the small change of
joke and quarrel and confidence, towards intimacy. But Louise was too
inured to the solitude of crowds to be troubled by her continued
loneliness. She met the complaints of Mrs. Denny, that she made no
friends like other children, with a shrug of resignation. What could she
do? She supposed that she was not nice enough; people didn't like her.

Secretly her step-mother agreed. She was kind to Louise, but she, too,
did not like her. She found her irritating. Her dreamy, absent manner,
her very docility and absence of self-assertion were annoying to a
hearty woman who was braced rather than distressed by an occasional
battle of wills. She thought her shyness foolish, doubted the
insincerity of her humility, and looked upon her shrinking from
publicity, noise and rough caresses, her love of books and solitude, as
a morbid pose. Yet she was just a woman and did not let the child guess
at her dislike, though she made no pretence of actual affection. She
knew perfectly well that Louise's mother (they had been schoolgirls
together), had irritated her in exactly the same way.

Educationally, too, the first year at school affected Louise but
slightly. Her brothers' governesses had done their best for the shy,
intelligent girl, and her wide reading had trained, her awkwardness and
childish appearance obscured, a personality in some respects dangerously
matured. But her dreaminess and total ignorance of the routine of
lesson-learning hampered her curiously; she learnt mechanically, using
her brain but little for her easy tasks, and she was not considered
particularly promising.

With Clare's intervention the world was changed for Louise; she had her
first taste of active pleasure.

It is difficult to realise what an effect a woman of Clare's temperament
must have had on the impressionable child. In her knowledge, her
enthusiasms, her delicate intuition and her keen intellectual sympathy,
she must have seemed the embodiment of all dreams, the fulfilment of
every longing, the ideal made flesh. A wanderer in an alien land,
homesick, hungry, for whom, after weary days, a queen descends from her
throne, speaking his language, supplying his unvoiced wants, might feel
something of the adoring gratitude that possessed Louise. She rejoiced
in Clare as a vault-bred flower in sunlight.

On all human beings, child or adult, emotional adventure entails, sooner
or later, physical exhaustion; the deeper, the more novel the
experience, the greater the drain on the bodily strength. To Louise,
involved in the first passionate experience of her short life, in an
affection as violent and undisciplined as a child's must be, an
affection in itself completely occupying her mind and exhausting her
energies, the amount of work made necessary by the position to which
Clare and her own ambition had assigned her, was more of a burden than
either realised. Only Alwynne, sympathetic coach (for Louise had two
years' back work to condense and assimilate), guessed how great were the
efforts the child was making. Clare, who always affected unconsciousness
of her own effect on the ambitions of the children, had persuaded
herself that Louise was entirely in her right place; and Louise herself
was too young, and too feverishly happy, to consider the occasional
headaches, fits of lassitude and nights cinematographed with dreams, as
anything but irritating pebbles in her path to success--and Clare.

The weeks in her new class had been spread with happiness--a happiness
that had grown like Elijah's cloud, till, on the day of the Browning
lesson, as she listened to the beloved voice making music of her halting
sentences, to the words of praise, of affection even, that followed, it
stretched from horizon to horizon.

As she sat in the deserted class-room, her neat packet of sandwiches
untasted in the satchel at her elbow, she re-lived that golden hour,
dwelling on its incidents as a miser counts money. There was the stormy
beginning; Agatha's mockery; her own raging helplessness; Clare's
entrance; the exquisite thrill she had felt at her touch, that was not
only gratitude for championship.... Never before had Clare been so near
to her, so gentle, so protecting.... And afterwards, facing Louise at
the foot of the table, how beautiful she had been.... Yet some of the
girls could not see it.... They were fools.... Her head had been framed
in the small, square window, so darkened and cobwebbed by crimson vines
that only the merest blur of white clouds and blue hills was visible....
She had worn a gown of duller blue that lay in stiff folds: the bowl of
Christmas roses, that mirrored themselves on the dark, polished table,
had hidden the papers and the smeared ink-pot. Suddenly Louise
remembered some austere Dutch Madonnas over whom delightful, but erratic
Miss Durand had lingered, on their last visit to a picture gallery. She
called them beautiful. Louise, with fascinated eyes sidling past a
wallful of riotous Rubens, to fix on the soap and gentian of a
Sasseferato, had wondered if Miss Durand were trying to be funny. She
remembered, too, how some of the younger girls, comparing favourites,
had called Miss Hartill ugly. She had raged loyally--yet, secretly, all
but agreed. With her child's love of pink and white prettiness she had
had no eyes for Clare's irregular features. But to-day something in
Clare's pose had recalled the Dutch pictures, and in a flash she had
understood, and wondered at her blindness. Miss Durand was right: the
drawn, grey faces and rigid outlines had beauty, had charm--the charm of
her stern smile.... The saints were hedged with lilies, and she, too,
had had white flowers before her, that filled the air with the smell of
the marvellous Roman church at Westminster.... The painted ladies were
Madonnas--mothers--and Miss Hartill, too, had worn for a moment their
protective look, half fierce, half tender....

Why was it? What has made her so kind? Not only to-day, but always? The
girls feared her, some of them; those that she did not like talked of
her temper and her tongue; Rose Levy hated her; even Agatha and Marion,
and all of them, were a little frightened, though they adored....
Louise was never frightened.... How could one be frightened of one so
kind and wonderful? She could say what she liked to Miss Hartill, and be
sure that she would understand.... It was like being in the attic,
talking aloud.... Mother would have been like that.... If it could
be....

Louise, her chin in her doubled fists, launched out upon her sea of
make-believe.

If it could be.... If it were possible, that Mother--not Mamma, cheery,
obtuse Mamma of nursery and parlour--but Mother, the shadow of the
attic--had come back? All things are possible to him that believeth: and
Mr. Chesterton had said there was no real reason why tulips should not
grow on oaks.... Heaps of people--all India--believed in reincarnation,
and there was _The Gateless Barrier_ and _The Dead Leman_ for proof....
Might it not be?

The idea was intoxicating. She did not actually believe in it, but she
played with it, wistfully, letting her imagination run riot. She wove
fantastic variations on the themes "why not," "perhaps," "who knows."

She was but thirteen and very lonely.

She was in far too exalted a mood to have an appetite for her
sandwiches, or time for the books beside her. She was due for extra work
with Alwynne at three, and the intervening hour should have been used
for preparation. Wasting her time meant sitting up at night, as Louise
was well aware, and a tussle with Mrs. Denny, concerned for the waste of
gas. But for all that, she would not and could not rouse herself from
the trance of pleasure that was upon her. Her mind was contemplating
Clare as a mystic contemplates his divinity; rapt in an ecstasy of
adoration, oblivious alike of place and time. She did not hear the
luncheon gong, or the gong for afternoon school, or a door, opening and
shutting behind her. Yet it did not startle her, when, turning dreamily
to tap on her shoulder, she found herself facing Miss Hartill herself.
Miss Hartill should have left the school before lunch, she knew, but it
was all in order. What could surprise one on this miraculous day? She
did not even rise, as etiquette demanded; but she smiled up at Clare
with an expression of welcoming delight that disarmed comment.

Clare, too, could ignore conventions. She was merely touched and amused
by the child's expression.

"Well, Louise? Very busy?"

Louise glanced vaguely at her books.

"Yes. I ought to be, I mean. I don't believe I've touched anything. I
was thinking----"

"Two hours on end? Do you know the time? I heard Miss Durand clamouring
for you just now." Clare looked mischievous. She could forgive
forgetfulness of other people's classes.

Louise was serene.

"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I'd forgotten. I must go."

But she made no movement. She sat looking at Miss Hartill as if nothing
else existed for her. The intent, fearless adoration in her eyes was
very pleasant to Clare; novel, too, after the more sophisticated glances
of the older girls.

With an odd little impulse of motherliness she picked up Louise's books,
stacked them neatly and fitted them into the satchel. Louise watched
her. Miss Hartill buckled the strap and handed her the bundle.

"There you are, Louise! Run along, my child, I'm afraid you'll get a
scolding." She stooped to her, bright-eyed, laughing. "And what were you
thinking of, Louise, for two long hours?"

"You," said Louise simply.

A touch of colour stole into Clare's thin cheeks. She took the small
face between her hands and kissed it lightly.

"Silly child!" said Miss Hartill.




CHAPTER VII


Alwynne, drumming with her fingers on the window-sill, as she stood by
Louise's desk, was distinctly annoyed. Louise, for the first time since
she had known her, was late. It was, indeed, not one of her assigned
classes; but she and Louise had found their hours together so
insufficient for all the work that they were trying to make good, that
Alwynne had good-naturedly arranged to give her a daily extra lesson. It
bit into Alwynne's meagre free time; but she was fond of Louise; proud
of her, too; and there was Clare! Clare was so anxious for Louise's
success. Clare had been so pleased with the plan....

Perhaps it was natural that Alwynne, as she made the arrangement, forgot
to consult Elsbeth. She told her about it afterwards, and Elsbeth
praised her for her unselfishness, and was anxious lest she should be
overtired. She did not remind Alwynne that she was alone all day; that
she had been accustomed to look forward to the gay tea-hour, when
Alwynne returned, full of news and nonsense. She resigned herself
cheerfully to a solitary meal, and to keeping the muffins hot against
Alwynne's uncertain home-coming.

The extra lessons had been a real boon to Louise, and she had grown
attached to Alwynne and intimate with her. Alwynne's elder-sisterly
attitude to the children she taught, although it horrified the older
women, was seldom abused; it merely made her the recipient of quaint
confidences, and gave her an insight into the characters of her pupils
that was invaluable to girls and governess alike. To developing girls a
confidante is a necessity. The present boarding-school system of
education ousts the mother from that, her natural position; renders her,
to the daughter steeped in an alien atmosphere, an outsider, lacking
all understanding. Invaluable years pass before the artificial gulf that
boarding-school creates between them, is spanned. And the substitute for
the only form of sympathy and interest that is entirely untainted by
selfish impulses is usually the chance acquaintance, the neighbour of
desk and bedroom; occasionally, very occasionally, for the girl's
feverish admiration usually precludes sane acquaintanceship, a mistress
of more than average insight. Such a mistress, Alwynne, in spite of, or
perhaps because of, her youthful indiscretions of manner, was in a fair
way to become.

And of all the children who had opened their affairs to her, none had
experienced more completely the tonic effect of a kind heart and a sense
of humour, than Louise.

She would come to her lesson, overtired from the strain of the morning
classes, over-stimulated from the contact with Clare, over-hopeful or
utterly depressed, as the mood took her. Alwynne's cheerful interest was
balm to the child's overwrought nerves. Alwynne let her spend a quarter
of an hour or more in confiding the worries and excitements of the day,
after which, Louise, curiously revived, contrived to get through an
amazing amount of work. There was no doubt as to Louise's capacity for
advanced work, but her state of mind affected her output; she was, as
Alwynne once phrased it to Clare, "like a violin--you had to tune her up
before she was fit for use." And Alwynne's "tuning" had done more than
she or Clare or even Louise herself had guessed, towards her success in
her new class.

Bit by bit, Alwynne had heard all about Louise; the details of her
meagre home-life; her attitude to the busy world of school, that
frightened while it attracted her; her difficulties with her fellows;
her delight in her work. Finally, there was Clare. Louise was very shy
about Clare; inclined to scent mockery, to be on the defensive; but
Alwynne's own matter-of-fact enthusiasm had its effect. Also Alwynne's
interest, though it invited, never demanded confidences. It took Louise
some time to realise that it arose from simple friendliness of soul;
that there was neither curiosity nor pedagogic zeal behind it; that,
though she was teased and laughed at, she was respected, and, out of
school hours, treated as an equal; that she and her schoolgirl secrets
were safe with Miss Durand. It was, indeed, in the light of after
events, pathetic that Louise, dazzled by Clare's will-o'-the-wisp
brilliance, never realised how close to her for a season the friend, the
elder sister she had longed for, really stood. With the egoism of a
child, and a child in love, she was humbly and passionately grateful for
Clare's least sign of interest, yet accepted all the many little
kindnesses that Alwynne showed her, as a matter of course. She scarcely
realised, absorbed as she was in Clare, that she was even fond of Miss
Durand, yet she relied on her implicitly: and Alwynne, innocent of the
jealous, acquisitive impulse that tainted Clare's intercourse with any
girl who caught her fancy, was not at all disturbed or hurt by Louise's
attitude. She looked after the child as she would have looked after a
starving cat or a fugitive emperor, if they had come her way, as a
matter of course, and as instinctively as she ate her dinner.

She was thinking of Louise, as she sat waiting, and a little curious as
to what the child would say to her. She had heard all about the Browning
lesson, at lunch, from Rose Levy, whose veiled, epigrammatic malice was
usually amusing. Agatha had been on her other side, and she had
anticipated equally amusing protests and contradictions and a highly
coloured and totally different version. But Agatha had been unusually
subdued that morning. Both had made it apparent, however, that Clare had
been more than a little pleased with Louise.

But, however triumphant Louise's morning might have been, she had no
business to be late now. What did she mean by keeping her waiting? Twice
had Alwynne been down to the preparation room, searching for her: she
did not mean to be impertinent of course, but it was, at least, casual.
Alwynne, with easy, evanescent indignation, resolved to give Louise a
taste of her tongue.

Here the child herself burst in upon her meditations, flushed to her
glowing eyes, that were bright as if with drugs, excited as Alwynne had
never yet guessed that she could be, charged with some indefinable
quality as a live wire is charged with electricity. She stammered her
apologies mechanically, sure of pardon, and, the formality complied
with, was eager, touchingly eager for questions and the relief of
communication.

But Alwynne, at nineteen, could not be expected to forego a legitimate
grievance.

She read Louise a little lecture on punctuality and politeness, and
settled at once to the work in hand. She said, with intention, that they
must not waste any more time.

Louise submitted with her usual meekness, and did, Alwynne could see, do
her utmost to apply herself to her work. But her answers were
ludicrously vague and _mal à propos_, and she met Alwynne's comments,
momentarily sharper, with an abstracted smile.

Suddenly Alwynne lost patience with her.

"I don't know what's the matter with you to-day, Louise," she said
sharply. "I don't believe you've taken in a word of what I've said. If
you can't take a little more trouble, I'd better go home."

Louise, obviously and pathetically jerked back to consciousness from
some dreamer's Paradise, looked up at her with scared, apologetic eyes.
The radiance dimmed slowly from her face. She made no answer, only to
put up her hand to her head, with a queer little gesture of
helplessness.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Alwynne, but already more gently.
Her anger was always fleeting as a puff of smoke.

But Louise merely shrugged her shoulders and looked vaguely at her
again. Then she returned to her work.

Alwynne, walking up and down the room watched her intently as she bent
over the Latin grammar. She was wrinkling her brows over a piece of
prose that she had already construed at the previous lesson, and with an
ease that had astonished Alwynne. She looked bewildered and put her hand
to her head again. Her efforts to recall her wandering thoughts were
patent and almost physical in their intensity; her small hand hovered,
contracting and relaxing, like a baby catching at butterflies.

Alwynne was puzzled by her. The child was sincere: but obviously
something momentous had happened, and was still occupying her, to the
exclusion of all else. Alwynne wished that she had been less hasty: she
felt that she should not have checked her.

She stood a moment beside her, reading what she had written. It was
scarcely legible, and made no sense. She put a hand on her shoulder--

"Louise, you are writing nonsense. What is it? Tell me what the matter
is?"

Louise laid down her pen, gave her a quick, shy smile, hesitated
uncertainly, then, to Alwynne's dismay, collapsed on the low desk in a
fit of wild, hysterical crying.

Alwynne always shed the mistress in emergency.

She whipped her arms about the child, and, sitting down, gathered her
into her lap. She felt how the little, thin body was wrenched and shaken
by the sobs it did not attempt to control, but she said nothing, only
held it comfortingly tight.

Slowly the paroxysm subsided, and the words came, jerky, fragmentary,
faint. Alwynne bent close to catch them.

Louise was so sorry ... she was all right now ... Miss Durand must think
her crazy. No--no--nothing wrong ... it was the other way round ... she
was so happy that it frightened her ... she was madly happy ... she had
been in heaven all day ... it was too wonderful to tell any one
about ... even Miss Durand.... Miss Hartill--no one could ever know what
Miss Hartill was.... She had been so good to her--so wonderful.... She
had made Louise so happy that she was frightened ... she couldn't
believe it was possible to be so madly happy.... That was all.... Yes,
it had made her cry--the pure happiness.... Wasn't it silly? Only she
was so dreadfully tired.... It had hurt her head trying to do the
Latin--because she was so tired.... Yes, she had had headaches
lately.... But she didn't care--it was worth it, to please Miss
Hartill.... It was queer that being so happy should make her want to
cry; it was comical, wasn't it?

She began to laugh as she spoke, with tears brimming over her lashes,
and for a few moments was inclined to be hysterical again.

But Alwynne's firm grasp and calm voice was too much for Louise's will,
weakened by emotion and fatigue; she was soon coaxed and hushed into
quiet again, and after lying passively for a while in Alwynne's arms,
fell into the sudden light sleep of utter exhaustion.

Alwynne, rocking her gently, sat on in the darkening room, without a
thought of the passage of time; puzzling over the problem in her arms.

She was too ignorant and inexperienced to understand Louise's outburst,
or to realise the dangerous strain that the child's sensibilities were
undergoing but the touch of the little figure, clinging, nestling to
her, stirred her. She was vaguely aware that something--somehow--was
amiss. Innocently she rejoiced that Clare was being kind to Louise, that
the child was so happy and content; but the complaint of fatigue, the
frequent headaches, troubled her. She would speak to Elsbeth.... Perhaps
the child needed a tonic? Elsbeth would know....

She glanced down. How different people looked asleep.... She had never
before realised how young Louise was. What was she? Thirteen? But what a
baby she looked, with her thin, child's shape and small, clutching
hands.... It was the long-lashed lids that did it, hiding the beautiful
eyes that were so much older, as she saw now, than the rest of Louise.
With her soul asleep, Louise looked ten, and a frail little ghost of
ten, at that.

Alwynne frowned. She supposed Clare Hartill realised how young Louise
was, was right in allowing her to work so hard? But Clare knew all about
girls, and what did she, Alwynne, know? After all Louise had never
flagged before.... It was probably the usual end of term fatigue--and of
course it was necessarily an unusually stiff three months for her....
She needed a holiday.... Next term would come more easily to her, poor
little impetuous Louise.... Alwynne realised that she was growing fond
of the child.

Suddenly she heard footsteps in the corridor, and her own name in
Clare's impatient accents. Louise, too, roused at the sound, and,
jerking herself upright, slid from Alwynne's lap to her feet, as the
door opened and the light was switched on with a snap. Clare stood in
the doorway.

Serenely Alwynne rose, smoothing the creases in her dress, while with
the other hand she steadied Louise, swaying and blinking in the strong
light. Clare's sharp eyes appreciated her calm no less than the
tear-stains on Louise's cheek; she guessed distortedly at the situation.
She bit her lip. She found nothing to be annoyed at, yet she was not
pleased.

"Alwynne! I've been hunting for you high and low. I thought you were
coming home to tea with me."

Alwynne beamed at her.

"Of course! And do you know, I forgot to tell Elsbeth. Isn't it
disgraceful? But I'm coming."

She turned to Louise.

"My dear, run along home, and get to bed early; you look dreadfully
tired. Doesn't she, Miss Hartill?"

But Clare was already in the passage.

Alwynne hurried after her, with a last cheerful nod, and Louise heard
the echo of their footsteps die away in the distance.

Still dazed and heavy with sleep, her thoughts obscured and chaotic,
she sat down again stupidly at her desk in the alcove of the window. She
leaned her forehead against the cold pane and looked out.

It was a wild night. The wind soughed and shrieked in the bare trees:
the rain tore past in gusts; the lamp-post at the corner was mirrored in
the wet pavement, like a moon on an oily sea.

Louise pushed open the casement. The wind lulled as she did so, and she
lent out. The air, at least, was mild, and a faint back-wash of rain
sprayed soothingly upon her hot cheeks and swollen eyes.

Slowly her thoughts shaped themselves. So the day was over--the happiest
day she had ever had.... She thought God was very wonderful to have made
such a woman as Miss Hartill. She sent Him a hasty little prayer of
thanks. But she had been very foolish that afternoon.... She could not
understand it now.... She hoped Miss Durand would not tell Miss
Hartill.... Miss Hartill had been in a great hurry! Was that why she had
not said good-night to her? But such a little word. She wondered why
Miss Hartill had not said good-night to her....

The front door below the window creaked and opened. Louise peered
downwards. Miss Durand and Miss Hartill came down the steps sheltering
under one umbrella, talking. Their voices floated up.

"I hope you don't spoil her, Alwynne? Yes, I know----" Alwynne was
murmuring friendly adjectives. "But a mistress is in a peculiar
position. You should not let yourself be too familiar----" A gust of
wind and rain whirling down the road bore away the rest of the sentence.

Louise shut the window. She shivered a little as she gathered up her
books.

Her happiest day was over.




CHAPTER VIII


A week before Christmas Alwynne began to wonder how the day itself
should be spent, or rather, if her plans for the spending would ever
pass Elsbeth's censorship. She was doubtful. For the last two or three
years Christmas had been to them a rock of collision.

"The pity of it!" thought Alwynne. Once it had been the event, the
crowning glory, the very reason of the ending year. A year, indeed, had
always presented itself to her in advance as a wide country through
which she must make her way, to reach the hostel, Christmas, hidden in
the mists of time, on its further border. She had the whole map of the
land in her mind, curiously vivid and distinct. She had never
consciously devised the picture; it had, from the first, presented
itself complete and unalterable. She stood, on New Year's Day, at the
entrance of a country lane which ran between uneven hedges through a
varying countryside of fields and woods and heatherland. Each change in
the surroundings represented a month, the smaller differences the weeks
and days. She went down this winding lane as the days went by, in slow
content. January was a silent expanse of high tableland, snow-bound to
the horizon. Winding down hill through the sodden grassland of the bare
February country, where she lighted on nothing but early parsnip fronds
and sleepy celandine buds in the dripping wickery hedges, she passed at
last into the wood of March, a wood of pollard hazels and greening oaks
and bramble-guarded dingles, where the anemones grew, and the first
primroses. She slipped and slithered in and out of mossy leaf-pits, and
the briars clawed her hair and pinafore, as she robbed the primrose
clumps with wet, reddened fingers. The wind shrieked overhead and
wrestled wildly with the bare branches, but beyond there was blue sky
and a drift of cloud. But, unawares, she would always head through the
wood to where the trees grew thinner and dash out at last, through a
mist of pale cuckoo-pint, into the cowslip field that was April.

The path ran on through May and June between fields of ox-eye daisies
and garden roses, always down hill, till she tumbled into August, the
deep hot valley. There she found the sea.

With September the road lifted steadily, growing stony and ever steeper.
It wound on ahead of her like a silver thread through a brocade of red
and gold and purple, that was heather and bracken and beech. But the
beech blossoms could never be gathered; they fell apart into a shower of
dull leaves, and left her with a branch of bare twigs in her hand. The
briony berries that she twisted into wreaths stained her straw hat with
their black, evil juice; even the manna-like old-man's-beard smelled
sour and rotten. The decaying, witchlike beauty of the season tricked
and frightened her; autumn was a hard hill to climb.

But far away, on the summit of that difficult hill, stood a house. An
old house, gaily bricked, dressed in ivy, with a belfry from which
carols rang out unceasingly. It was always night-time where it stood and
cheerful lights were set in every window. Alwynne never saw the house
till she had turned the bend of the road into November; then it faced
her suddenly and she would wave to the distant windows with a thrill of
excitement, and quicken her steps, with the goal of the journey in sight
at last. There was yet a weary climb before it was reached; every day of
December was a boulder, painfully beclambered. But she would come to the
gates at last, and tear up the frosty drive, from the shadow of whose
shrubberies Jacob Marley peered and clanked at her and ghosts of
Christmas turkeys gobbled horribly, to the open holly-hung doorway where
Santa Claus, authentic in beard and dressing-gown, welcomed her with
Elsbeth's voice. Followed stay-at-home days of delirious merry-making,
from which she awoke a week later, to find herself, her back to a closed
door, a spent cracker in her hand, looking out again, eager and a little
wistful, across the white untrodden plain of yet another January.

But ever the next Christmas beckoned her anew.

To Elsbeth, too, Christmas was the day of delights, and Alwynne the
queen of it. To Elsbeth, too, the pleasure of it began many weeks
earlier in the secret fashioning of quaint gifts and surprises, and the
anticipation of the small niece's delight in them. Elsbeth would have
cheerfully cut off one of her slim fingers if Alwynne had happened to
covet it. The childless woman loved Alwynne--the child in Alwynne she
worshipped.

But though the delight of actual motherhood was denied Elsbeth, she was
spared none of its chagrins.

Stooping for years to a child's level, she was cruelly shaken when
Alwynne, suddenly and inexplicably, as it always seems, grew up. It took
Elsbeth almost as many years to straighten herself again. Years when
Alwynne, in the arrogance of her enterprising youth, thought that
Elsbeth was sometimes awfully childish. She supposed that she was
growing old; she used not to be like that....

Thereafter, each Christmas, challenging comparison as it did with the
memory-mellowed charm of its forerunners, emphasised the change that had
taken place. Yearly the ideal Christmas lured them to the old
observances; yearly the reality satisfied them less.

Elsbeth still sat up half the night on Christmas Eve, at work upon the
little tree. Alwynne still planned gorgeous and laborious presents for
her aunt. Elsbeth still filled a stocking (out-size) with tip-toe
secrecy, and Alwynne, at sixteen, still ran across in her dressing-gown,
and curled up on Elsbeth's bed to unpack it.

But at sixteen one is too old and too young to be a child any more. The
tree was a fir-tree, pure and simple; the fairy lights stank of tallow;
and not even for the sake of a new bright sixpence, would Alwynne, in
the thick of a vegetarian fad, devour a slice of the evil-coloured
Christmas pudding.

Elsbeth, as she saw her old-time jokes and small surprises that could no
longer surprise, fall utterly flat, thought that school had altered
Alwynne altogether; that she was assuming airs of maturity ridiculous in
a child of her age, ("Sixteen? She's a mere baby still," affirmed poor
Elsbeth,) that she was growing indifferent, superior, heartless. And
Alwynne, trying to appear amused, wondered why Christmas was so
different from what it used to be and wished heartily that Elsbeth would
not try to be skittish. It didn't suit her--made her seem undignified.
Each, longing for the old days, when the other had conjured up so easily
the true spirit of the festival, tried her affectionate best to do so
still; each, failing inevitably, inevitably blamed the other. Neither
realised, that Dan Christmas is the god of very little children, and
that where they are not, he, too, does not linger.

But the last restless, unsatisfactory day had settled the matter for
them finally. Alwynne had fidgeted through morning service, and pained
her aunt, on the walk home, with her sceptical young comments; had
omitted to kiss her under the mistletoe; had sat through the ceremonious
meal, answering Elsbeth's cheerful pleasantries in monosyllables; and
finally, after an unguarded remark, and the inevitable reproving
comment, had flung out of the room in a fever of irritation. She came
near thinking Elsbeth a foolish and intolerable old maid. And Elsbeth,
sitting sadly over the fire all the lonely afternoon, puzzled meekly
over Alwynne's hardness of heart, and cried a little, in pure longing,
for the baby of a few years back, to whom she had been as God.

They were reconciled, of course, by tea-time. Alwynne, quieted by
solitude, was soon bewildered at her own ill-humour, shocked at the
sentiments she had been able to entertain, remorseful at hurting
Elsbeth's feelings and spoiling her Christmas Day. They were able to
send each other to bed happy again.

But they had no more snap-dragons and early stockings. The next
Christmas, shorn of its splendours, was a strange day to them both, but,
at least, a peaceful one, with Alwynne at her gentlest, and Elsbeth,
forgiving her as best she could, for her long skirts and her seventeen
years.

With the passing of yet another year, however, Alwynne's last scruple as
to the sacrosanct privacy of Christmas celebrations vanished utterly.
The ideal day, she saw at last, and clearly, should be neither a
children's carnival, nor a symposium of relatives. (Alwynne knew of none
but Elsbeth, but she dearly loved a phrase.) Christmas should be a time
of social intercourse, of peace and goodwill towards men--the human
race--neighbours and friends--not merely relations.... One should not
shut oneself up.... It would be a sound idea, for instance, to ask some
one to dinner.... A friend of Elsbeth's--or there was Clare! It would be
very jolly if Clare could come to dinner.... Clare was delightful when
she was in holiday mood; she could keep the table in a roar.... A little
fun would do Elsbeth good.... Surely Elsbeth would enjoy having Clare to
dinner?

She found herself, however, experiencing considerable difficulty in
opening up the project to her aunt. Elsbeth, to whom the possibility of
such a request had long ago presented itself, who could have told you by
sheer intuition at what exact moment the idea occurred to her niece,
gave her no help. Alwynne had contrived to put her in the position of
appearing to approve Clare Hartill. Clare, she felt, had had something
to do with that. She knew that it would be unwise to lose the advantage
of her apparent tolerance; knew that Clare expected her to lose it by
some impulsive expression of mistrust or dislike, and intended to
utilise the lapse for her own ends. It would be easy for Clare to pose
as the generous victim of unreasoning hostility. But Clare should not,
she resolved, have the opportunity. She, Elsbeth, would never be so far
lacking in cordiality as to give her any sort of handle. But Clare
Hartill should not eat her Christmas dinner with them, vowed Elsbeth,
for all that.

So for a couple of days, Alwynne, approaching Elsbeth from all possible
angles, found no crack in her armour, and somewhat puzzled, but entirely
unsuspicious, thought it hard that Elsbeth should be, at times, so
curiously unresponsive. She would not have scrupled to ask her aunt
outright to invite Clare, but she quite genuinely wished to find out
first if Elsbeth would mind, and never guessed that the difficulty she
found in opening the matter was the answer to that question.

The arrival of the turkey was her opportunity.

Sailing into the kitchen in search of raisins (the more maturely
dignified Alwynne's deportment, the more likely her detection in some
absurd child's habit or predilection), she found Elsbeth raging
low-voiced, and the small maid gaping admiration over the brobdingnagian
proportions of their Christmas dinner.

"Look at it, Alwynne! What am I to do? Twenty pounds! And we shan't get
through ten! Really, it's too bad--I wrote so distinctly. It's
impossible to return it--to Devonshire! No time. It's the twenty-second
already. How shall we ever get through it?"

"We might get some one in to help us," began Alwynne delightedly. But
Elsbeth, very busy all of a sudden, with basin and egg-beater, whisked
and bustled her out of the kitchen.

Alwynne returned to the matter, however, later in the day.

"Elsbeth, we shall never manage that turkey alone."

"Of course, I must send some over to Mrs. Marpler," began Elsbeth
hastily.

Mrs. Marpler was a charwoman. Alwynne contrived to make their succession
of little maids adore her, but she and Mrs. Marpler detested one another
cordially. Mrs. Marpler's offences, according to Alwynne, were that she
was torpid, inefficient, breathed heavily, smelled of cats, and, by the
complicated and judicious recital of the authentic calamities which
regularly befell her, lured from Elsbeth more than her share of the
broken meats and old clothes of the establishment, perquisites which
Alwynne, entirely incredulous, coveted for pet dependents of her own.
Alwynne's offences, according to Mrs. Marpler, were, the aforementioned
incredulity, her hostile influence on Miss Loveday, a certain crispness
of manner and a tendency to open all windows in Mrs. Marpler's
neighbourhood. The feud distressed Elsbeth, and Alwynne's diagnosis of
Mrs. Marpler's character; for she liked to believe the best of every
one. Alwynne forced her to agree, but secretly she sympathised with her
feckless char-lady.

"Marpler has been out of work three weeks, and as poor Mrs. Marpler
says, where their Christmas dinner is to come from----"

"How much extra did you pay her this week?" demanded Alwynne
remorselessly. "And last week--and the week before--and the week before
that? Of course he's out of work. Who wouldn't be?"

"My dear Alwynne, if you think they can buy a Christmas dinner on what I
gave them--" retorted Elsbeth heatedly. "But it's absurd to argue with
you. What do you know of what food costs?"

"Anyhow, Mrs. Baker, with six children----" began Alwynne, who also had
been primed by a protégée. But she recollected that she did not wish to
annoy Elsbeth at this juncture. Clare must take precedence of Mrs.
Baker. "Well, you can send them the legs and the carcase," she conceded;
"even then there will be more than we can possibly manage. Couldn't we
ask some one to spend the day with us?"

"I hardly think," said Elsbeth, with a touch of severity, "that you
would find any one. Most people like to keep Christmas with their
Relations."

"Well, I haven't got any. But by all accounts I think I should hate 'em
in the plural as much as I love 'em in the singular." She blew Elsbeth a
kiss. "But if we could find some one--to help us eat up the turkey--and
spend the evening--it would be rather jolly, don't you think? It was
dullish last year, wasn't it?"

"Was it?" said Elsbeth, with careful brightness. "I'm sorry. I had
thought you enjoyed it."

"Oh, why is she so touchy? I didn't mean anything," cried Alwynne within
herself. And aloud--

"Oh, I only meant without a tree or anything specially Christmassy----"

"Alwynne," said Elsbeth, with scrupulous patience, "it was you who
suggested not having one."

"I know, I know, I know, I know!" cried Alwynne, in a fever.

Elsbeth sighed.

Alwynne repented.

"Elsbeth darling, I didn't mean to be rude; I'm a beast. And I didn't
mean it wasn't nice last year. I only meant--it would be--be a change to
have some one--because of the turkey--and I thought, perhaps Clare----"

"Can't you exist for a day without seeing Clare Hartill?" asked Elsbeth,
with a wry smile.

Alwynne dimpled.

"Not very well," she said.

Elsbeth stared at her plate. Alwynne edged her chair along the table,
till she sat at Elsbeth's elbow. She slid an arm round her neck.

"Elsbeth! Elsbeth, dear! You're not cross, Elsbeth? It's a very big
turkey. Do, Elsbeth!"

"Do what?"

"Ask Clare. You like her, don't you?"

No answer.

"Don't you, Elsbeth?" Alwynne's tone was a little anxious.

"Would you care if I didn't?" The pattern of her plate still interested
Elsbeth. She was tracing its windings with her fork.

"You silly--it would just spoil everything. That's just it--I would like
to get you two fond of each other, only with Clare so busy there's never
a chance of your really getting acquainted."

"I knew Clare Hartill long before you did, Alwynne. I knew her as a
schoolgirl."

"But not well--not as I know her."

"No, not as you know her."

"There you are," said Alwynne, with satisfaction. "That's why--you don't
know her properly. Oh, Elsbeth, you must share all my good things, and
Clare's the very best of them. Do let her come."

"She may be engaged; she probably is."

"Oh, no--Clare will be alone--I know, because----" she stopped herself.

Elsbeth questioned her with her eyes.

"Oh, nothing--only I happen to know," said Alwynne.

"Because?"

Alwynne shook her head mischievously.

"Oh, well, if you won't tell me----" began Elsbeth.

"Oh, I will, I will," cried Alwynne hastily.

"My dear, I don't want to know Miss Hartill's secrets, or yours either,"
said Elsbeth huffily. But to herself, "Why am I losing my temper over
these silly trifles?"

"Elsbeth dear, it was nothing. Only Clare did ask me to spend Christmas
Day with her."

"Well?" said Elsbeth jealously.

"What?" asked Alwynne's ingenuous eyes.

"Are you going?"

Alwynne nestled up to her, humming with careful flatness the final bars
of _Home, sweet home_.

"Elsbeth, you old darling--I do believe you're jealous! Are you,
Elsbeth? Are you?"

"Are you going?" repeated Elsbeth.

Alwynne was sobered by her tone.

"I'm going to spend my Christmas Day in my own home, with my own
Elsbeth," she said, "and I think you needn't have asked me."

Elsbeth melted.

"My dear, I'm a silly old woman----"

"Yes, you tell me that once a week."

"One day you'll believe it.--All right--you can ask your Miss
Hartill--or shall I write?"

Alwynne hugged her.

"Elsbeth, you're an angel! I'll go round at once. Oh, it will be jolly."

"If she comes."

Alwynne turned, on the way to her bedroom. Elsbeth's intonation was
peculiar.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think she'll come, Alwynne."

"But I know she'll be alone----"

"Well, you go and ask her."

"But why do you say that--in that tone?"

"I may be wrong. But I've known her longer than you have. But run along
and ask her."

"But why? Why?"

"Oh, don't bother me, child," cried Elsbeth impatiently. "Run along and
ask her."




CHAPTER IX


"I had a letter from Louise yesterday," announced Clare.

She was curled up in a saddle-bag before the roaring golden fire, and
was busy with paper and pencil. Alwynne, big with her as yet unissued
invitation, sat cross-legged on the white bearskin at her feet. The
floor was littered with papers and book-catalogues. At Christmas-time
Clare ordered books as a housewife orders groceries, and she and Alwynne
had spent a luxurious evening over her lists. The vivid flames lit up
Clare's thin, lazy length, and turned the hand she held up against their
heat into transparent carnelian. Her face was in shadow, but there were
dancing specks of light in her sombre eyes that kept time with the
leaping blaze. Clare was a sybarite over her fires. She would not endure
coal or gas or stove--wood, and wood only, must be used; and she would
pay any price for apple-wood, ostensibly for the quality of its flame,
secretly for the mere pleasure of burning fuel with so pleasant a name;
for she liked beautiful words as a child likes chocolate--a sober,
acquisitive liking. She had, too, though she would not own it, a delight
in destruction, costly destruction; she enjoyed the sensation of
reckless power that it gave her. The trait might be morbid, but there
was not a trace of pose in it; she could have enjoyed a Whittington
bonfire, without needing a king to gasp applause. Yet she shivered
nightly as she undressed in her cold bedroom, rather than commit the
extravagance of an extra fire. She never realised the comicality of her
contradictoriness, or even its existence in her character, though it
qualified every act and impulse of her daily life. Her soul was, indeed,
a hybrid, combining the temper of a Calvinist with the tastes of a
Renascence bishop.

At the moment she was in gala mood. The autumn term was but four days
dead, she had not had time to tire of holidays, though, within a week,
she would be bored again, and restless for the heavy work under which
she affected to groan. Her chafing mind seldom allowed her indolent body
much of the peace it delighted in--was ever the American in lotus-land.
It was fidgeted at the moment by Alwynne's absorption in a lavishly
illustrated catalogue.

"Did you hear, Alwynne? A letter from Louise."

Alwynne's "Oh?" was absent. It was in the years of the Rackham craze,
and she had just discovered a reproduction of the _Midsummer_ Helen.

"Any message?" Clare knew how to prod Alwynne.

The girl glanced up amused but a little indignant.

"You've answered it already? Well! And the weeks I've had to wait
sometimes."

"This was such a charming letter," said Clare smoothly. "It deserved an
answer. She really has the quaintest style. And Alwynne--never a blot or
a flourish! It's a pleasure to read."

Alwynne laughed ruefully. She would always squirm good-humouredly under
Clare's pin-pricks, with such amusement at her own discomfiture that
Clare never knew whether to fling away her needle for good, or, for the
mere experiment's sake, to stab hard and savagely. At that stage of
their intimacy, Alwynne's guilelessness invariably charmed and disarmed
her--she knew that it would take a very crude display of cruelty to make
Alwynne believe that she was being hurt intentionally. Clare was amused
by the novel pedestal upon which she had been placed; she was accustomed
to the panoply of Minerva, or the bow of Diana Huntress, but she had
never before been hailed as Bona Dea. It tickled her to be endowed with
every domestic virtue, to be loved, as Alwynne loved her, with the
secure and fearless affection of a daughter for a newly-discovered and
adorable young mother. She appreciated Alwynne's determination of their
relationship, her nice sense of the difference in age, her modesty in
reserving any claim to an equality in their friendship, her frank and
affectionate admiration--yet, while it pleased her, it could pique. Calm
comradeship or surrendering adoration she could cope with, but the
subtle admixture of such alien states of mind was puzzling. She had
acquired a lover with a sense of humour and she felt that she had her
hands full. Her imperious will would, in time, she knew, eliminate
either the lover or the humour--it annoyed her that she was not as yet
quite convinced that it would be the humour. She intended to master
Alwynne, but she realised that it would be a question of time, that she
would give her more trouble than the children to whom she was
accustomed. Alwynne's utter unrealisation of the fact that a trial of
strength was in progress, was disconcerting: yet Clare, jaded and
super-subtle, found her innocence endearing. Without relaxing in her
purpose, she yet caught herself wondering if an ally were not better
than a slave. But the desire for domination was never entirely shaken
off, and Alwynne's free bearing was in itself an ever-present challenge.
Clare loved her for it, but her pride was in arms. It was her misfortune
not to realise that, for all her Olympian poses, she had come to love
Alwynne deeply and enduringly.

Alwynne, meanwhile, laughing and pouting on the hearth, the firelight
revealing every change of expression in her piquant face, was declining
to be classed with Agatha Middleton; her handwriting may be bad, but it
wasn't a beetle-track; anyhow, Queen Elizabeth had a vile fist--Clare
admired Queen Elizabeth, didn't she? She had always so much to say to
Clare, that if she stopped to bother about handwriting----! Had Clare
never got into a row for untidiness in her own young days? Elsbeth had
hinted.... But of course she reserved judgment till she had heard
Clare's version! She settled to attention and Clare, inveigled into
reminiscences, found herself recounting quaint and forgotten incidents
to her own credit and discredit, till, before the evening was over,
Alwynne knew almost as much of Clare's schooldays as Clare did herself.
She could never resist telling Alwynne stories, Alwynne was always so
genuinely breathless with interest.

They returned to Louise at last, and Alwynne read the letter, chuckling
over the odd phrases, and dainty marginal drawings. She would have
dearly liked to see Clare's answer. She was glad, for all her protests,
that Clare had been moved to answer; she knew so well the delight it
would give Louise. The child would need cheering up. For, quite
resignedly and by the way, Louise had mentioned that the Denny family
had developed whooping-cough, and emigrated to Torquay, and she, in
quarantine, though it was hoped she had escaped infection, was preparing
for a solitary Christmas.

Alwynne looked up at Clare with wrinkled brows.

"Poor child! But what can I do? I haven't had whooping-cough, and
Elsbeth is always so afraid of infection; or else she could have come to
us. I know Elsbeth wouldn't have minded."

"You are going to leave me to myself then? You've quite made up your
mind?"

Alwynne's eyes lighted up.

"Oh, Clare, it's all right. You are coming! At least--I mean--Elsbeth
sends her kindest regards, and she would be so pleased if you will come
to dinner with us on Christmas Day," she finished politely.

Clare laughed.

"It's very kind of your aunt."

"Yes, isn't it?" said Alwynne, with ingenuous enthusiasm.

"I'm afraid I can't come, Alwynne."

Alwynne's face lengthened.

"Oh, Clare! Why ever not?"

Clare hesitated. She had no valid reason, save that she preferred the
comfort of her own fireside and that she had intended Alwynne to come to
her. Alwynne's regretful refusal when she first mooted the arrangement,
she had not considered final, but this invitation upset her plans.
Elsbeth's influence was opposing her. She hated opposition. Also she did
not care for Elsbeth. It would not be amiss to make Elsbeth (not her
dislike of Elsbeth) the reason for her refusal. It would have its effect
on Alwynne sooner or later.

She considered Alwynne narrowly, as she answered--

"My dear, I had arranged to be at home, for one thing."

Alwynne looked hurt.

"Of course, if you don't care about it--" she began.

Clare rallied her.

"Be sensible, my child. It is most kind of Miss Loveday; but--wasn't it
chiefly your doing, Alwynne? Imagine her dismay if I accepted. A
stranger in the gate! On Christmas Day! One must make allowances for
little prejudices, you know."

"She'll be awfully disappointed," cried Alwynne, so eager for Clare that
she believed it.

"Will she?" Clare laughed pleasantly. "Every one doesn't wear your
spectacles. What would she do with me, for a whole day?"

"We shouldn't see her much," began Alwynne. "She spends most of her time
in church. I go in the morning--(yes, I'm very good!) but I've drawn the
line at turning out after lunch."

"Then why shouldn't you come to me instead? It would be so much better.
I shall be alone, you know." Clare's wistful intonation was not entirely
artificial.

Alwynne was distressed.

"Oh, Clare, I'd love to--you know I'd love to--but how could I? Elsbeth
would be dreadfully hurt. I couldn't leave her alone on Christmas Day."

"But you can me?"

"Clare, don't put it like that. You know I shall want to be with you all
the time. But Elsbeth's like my mother. It would be beastly of me. You
must put relations first at Christmas-time, even if they're not first
really."

She smiled at Clare, but she felt disloyal as she said it, and hated
herself. Yet wasn't it true? Clare came first, though Elsbeth must never
guess it. Dear old Elsbeth was pretty dense, thank goodness! Where
ignorance is bliss, etcetera! Yet she, Alwynne, felt extraordinarily
mean....

Clare watched her jealously. She had set her heart on securing Alwynne
for Christmas Day, and had thought, ten minutes since, with a secret,
confident smile, that there would not be much difficulty. And here was
Alwynne holding out--refusing categorically! It was incredible! Yet she
could not be angry: Alwynne so obviously was longing to be with her....
Equally obviously prepared to risk her displeasure (a heavy penalty
already, Clare guessed, to Alwynne), rather than ignore the older claim.
Clare thought that an affection that could be so loyal to a tedious old
maid was better worth deflecting than many a more ardent, unscrupulous
enthusiasm. Alwynne was showing strength of character.

She persisted nevertheless--

"Well, it's a pity. I must eat my Christmas dinner alone, I suppose."

"Oh, Clare, you might come to us," cried Alwynne. "I can't see why you
won't."

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

"If you can't see why, my dear Alwynne, there's no more to be said."

Alwynne most certainly did not see; but Clare's delicately reproachful
tone convicted her, and incidentally Elsbeth, of some failure in tact.
She supposed she had blundered ... she often did.... But Elsbeth, at
least, must be exonerated ... she did so want Clare to think well of
Elsbeth....

She perjured herself in hasty propitiation.

"Yes. Yes--I do see. I ought to have known, of course. Elsbeth was quite
right. She said you wouldn't, all along."

"Oh?" Clare sat up. "Oh? Your aunt said that, did she?" She spoke with
detachment, but inwardly she was alert, on guard. Elsbeth had suddenly
become worth attention.

"Oh, yes." Alwynne's voice was rueful. "She was quite sure of it. She
said I might ask you, with pleasure, if I didn't believe her--you see,
she'd love you to come--but she didn't think you would."

"I wonder," said Clare, laughing naturally, "what made her say that?"

"She said she knew you better than I did," confided Alwynne, with one of
her spurts of indignation. "As if----"

"Yes, it's rather unlikely, isn't it?" said Clare, with an intimate
smile. "But you're not going?"

"I must. Look at the time! Elsbeth will be having fits!" Alwynne called
from the hall where she was hastily slipping on her coat and hat.

Clare stood a moment--thinking.

So the duel had been with Elsbeth! So that negligible and mouse-like
woman had been aware--all along ... had prepared, with a thoroughness
worthy of Clare herself, for the inevitable encounter ... had worsted
Clare completely.... It was amazing.... Clare was compelled to
admiration. It was clear to her now that Elsbeth must have distrusted
her from the beginning. It had been Elsbeth's doing, not hers, that
their intercourse had been so slight.... Yet she had never restrained
Alwynne; she had risked giving her her head.... She was subtle! This
affair of the Christmas dinner for instance--Clare appreciated its
cleverness. Elsbeth had not wanted her, Clare now saw clearly; had been
anxious to avoid the intimacy that such an invitation would imply;
equally anxious, surely, that Alwynne should not guess her uneasy
jealousy: so she had risked the invitation, counting on her knowledge of
Clare's character (Clare stamped with vexation--that the woman should
have such a memory!) secure that Clare, unsuspicious of her motives,
would, by refusing, do exactly as Elsbeth wished. It had been the
neatest of gossamer traps--and Clare had walked straight into it....
She was furious. If Alwynne, maddeningly unsuspicious Alwynne, had but
enlightened her earlier in the evening! Now she was caught, committed by
her own decision of manner to the course of action she most would have
wished to avoid.... She could not change her mind now without appearing
foolishly vacillating.... It would not do.... She had been bluffed,
successfully, gorgeously bluffed.... And Elsbeth was sitting at home
enjoying the situation ... too sure of herself and Clare even to be
curious as to the outcome of it all. She knew. Clare stamped again. Oh,
but she would pay Elsbeth for this.... The _casus belli_ was infinitely
trivial, but the campaign should be Homeric.... And this preliminary
engagement could not affect the final issues.... She always won in the
end.... But, after all, Elsbeth could not be blamed, though she must be
crushed; Alwynne was worth fighting for! Elsbeth was a fool.... If she
had treated Clare decently, Clare might--possibly--have shared Alwynne
with her.... She believed she would have had scruples.... Now they were
dispelled.... Alwynne, by fair means or foul, should be detached ...
should become Clare's property ... should be given up to no living woman
or man.

She followed Alwynne into the hall and lit the staircase candle. She
would see Alwynne out. She would have liked to keep Alwynne with her for
a month. She was a delightful companion; it was extraordinary how
indispensable she made herself. Clare knew that her flat would strike
her as a dreary place to return to, when she had shut the door on
Alwynne. She would sit and read and feel restless and lonely. Yet she
did not allow herself to feel lonely as a rule; she scouted the
weakness. But Alwynne wound herself about you, thought Clare, and you
never knew, till she had gone, what a difference she made to you.

She wished she could keep Alwynne another couple of hours.... But it was
eleven already ... her hold was not yet strong enough to warrant
innovations to which Elsbeth could object.... Her time would come
later.... How much later would depend on whether it were affection that
swayed Alwynne, or only a sense of duty.... She believed, because she
hoped, that it was duty--a sense of duty was more easily suborned than
an affection.... For the present, however, Alwynne must be allowed to do
as she thought right. Clare knew when she was beaten, and, with her
capacity for wry admiration of virtues that she had not the faintest
intention of incorporating in her own character, she was able to applaud
Alwynne heartily. Yet she did not intend to make victory easy to her.

They went down the flights of stairs silently, side by side. Alwynne
opened the entrance doors and stood a moment, fascinated.

"Look, Clare! What a night!"

The moon was full and flooded earth and sky with bright, cold light. The
garden, roadway, roofs, trees and fences glittered like powdered
diamonds, white with frost and moonshine. The silence was exquisite.

They stood awhile, enjoying it.

Suddenly Clare shivered. Alwynne became instantly and anxiously
practical.

"Clare, what am I thinking of? Go in at once--you'll catch a dreadful
cold."

With unusual passivity Clare allowed herself to be hurried in. At the
staircase Alwynne said good-bye, handing her her candle, and waiting
till she should have passed out of sight. On the fourth step Clare
hesitated, and turned--

"Alwynne--come to me for Christmas?"

Alwynne flung out her hands.

"Clare! I mustn't."

"Alwynne--come to me for Christmas?"

"You know I mustn't! You know you'd think me a pig if I did, now
wouldn't you?"

"I expect so."

"But I'll come in for a peep at you," cried Alwynne, brightening,
"while Elsbeth's at afternoon service. I could do that. And to say Merry
Christmas!"

"Come to dinner?"

"I can't."

"Then you needn't come at all." Clare turned away.

Alwynne caught her hand, as it leaned on the balustrade. In the other
the candle shook a little.

"Lady Macbeth! Dear Lady Macbeth! Miss Hartill of the Upper Sixth, whom
I'm scared to death of, really--you're behaving like a very naughty
small child. Now, aren't you? Honestly? Oh, do turn round and crush me
with a look for being impudent, and then tell me that I'm only doing
what you really approve. I don't want to, Clare, but you know you hate
selfishness."

Clare looked down at her.

"All right, Alwynne. You must do as you like."

"Say good-night to me," demanded Alwynne. "Nicely, Clare, very nicely!
It's Christmas-time."

Carefully Clare deposited her candlestick on the stair above. Leaning
over the banisters, she put her arms round Alwynne and kissed her
passionately and repeatedly.

"Good-night, my darling," said Clare.

Then, recoiling, she caught up her candlestick, and without another word
or look, hurried up the stairs.

Alwynne walked home on air.




CHAPTER X


Elsbeth bore the news of Clare's defection with stoicism; but her
motherly soul was disturbed by Alwynne's disappointment, though she
could not stifle her pleasure in its cause. She felt, indeed, somewhat
guilty, and was eager to atone by acquiescing in Alwynne's plan of
visiting Clare while she went to church; and met her more than half way
over the question of an altered tea-hour.

Alwynne, who from the first had been fretted, though but half
consciously, by the faintly repellent manner assumed by each of the two
women at mention of the other, was soothed by Elsbeth's advances.
Elsbeth was a dear, after all: there was no one quite like Elsbeth....
For all her obstinacies and unreasonableness, she never really failed
you.... She could be depended on to love you at your worst; you could
quarrel with her with never a fear of real alienation.... Elsbeth might
not be exciting, but she was as indispensable as food.... She was, after
all, the starting-point and ultimate goal of all one's adventures....
Clare would lose some of her delightfulness, if there were no Elsbeth to
whom to en-sky on her.... Alwynne did not see what she wanted with a
mother, so long as she had Elsbeth.... She had said so once to her aunt
and had never guessed, as she was chidden for sacrilege against the
picture over her bed, at the exquisite pleasure she had given.

After the little coolness of the past few days (her aunt's fault
entirely, Alwynne knew, and so could be unruffled) Elsbeth's renewal of
sympathetic interest was very soothing. Alwynne was glad to foster it by
talking of Clare, and Clare, and nothing but Clare, for the rest of the
week. In church on Christmas morning, poor Elsbeth, settling her
spiritual accounts, begging forgiveness for uncharitable thoughts, and
assuring her Maker that she wished Clare no evil, could yet sigh for the
useful age of miracles, and patron saints, and devils, when a prayer in
the right quarter could transport your enemy to inaccessible islands of
the Antipodes. She would have been magnanimous, have bargained for every
comfort--Eden's climate and hot and cold water laid on--but the island
must be definitely inaccessible and Antipodean.

Clare, too, had spent her morning, if not in prayer, at least in
profound meditation. She felt stranded, and was wishing for Alwynne, and
anathematising the superfluous and intriguing aunt.

Clare made the mistake of all tortuous intelligences in being unable to
credit appearances. She was being, as usual, unjust to Elsbeth, Alwynne,
and the world at large. She could not believe in simplicity combined
with brains: a simple soul was necessarily a simpleton in her eyes.
Because her own words were ever two edged, her meaning flavoured by
reservations and implications, she literally could not accept a speech
as expressing no more and no less than its plain dictionary meaning.
With any one of her own type of mind she was at her ease; her mistake
lay in not recognising how rare that type was; in detecting subtleties
where none existed, and wasting hint, suggestion and innuendo on minds
that drove as heartily through them as an ox walks through a spider
thread stretched from post to gatepost of the meadow he means to enter.

Elsbeth, whom she had considered a negligible fool, had yesterday
startled her into respect--not for the kindly and selfless pleasure in
Alwynne's pleasure, that had, for all her little jealous anxieties,
prompted the invitation to Clare, but for the totally imaginary cunning
with which, in Clare's eyes, it had invested her. Alwynne's repetition
of Elsbeth's remark had enlightened Clare: enlightened her to qualities
in Elsbeth which Elsbeth herself would have been horrified to possess.

Clare saw, in the manner of the invitation, a gauntlet flung down, the
preliminaries to a conflict, with Alwynne herself for the prize; and the
first warning of an antagonist sufficiently like herself to be
considered dangerous, the more dangerous, indeed, for the apparently
uninteresting harmlessness that could mask a mind in reality so scheming
and so complex. She did not realise that if she did finally close with
Elsbeth, with the intention of robbing her of Alwynne, she would have
far more to fear from her simple, affectionate goodness of heart than
from any subtlety of intellect with which Clare was choosing to invest
her.

She wondered, as she frittered away the morning, how she should best
counter Elsbeth's attack. She would call, of course--in state; it would
be due; she would not be judged deficient in courtesies. Alwynne should
be there (she would ensure that), and she, Clare, would be exceedingly
charming, and very delicately emphasise the contrast between Elsbeth and
herself. It would be quite easy, with Alwynne already biassed. Her eyes
sparkled with anticipation. It would be amusing. She should enjoy
routing Elsbeth.

And there was the case of Alwynne to be considered. She had been
excessively nice to Alwynne lately, had, in fact, allowed her, for a
moment, to see how necessary she was becoming to Clare.... That was a
mistake.... One must never let people feel secure of their hold upon
one.... That little speech of Alwynne's last night, mocking and
tender--she had thrilled to it at the time--did it not, ever so faintly,
shadow forth a readjustment of attitudes, sound a note of equality?
That, though it had pleased her at the moment, must not be.... Alwynne
must be checked.... It would not hurt her.... She was subdued as easily
as a child, and as easily revived.... She never bore malice. Clare, who
never forgot or forgave a pinprick, had often marvelled at her, could
even now scarcely believe in the spontaneity of her good temper. But
Alwynne, certainly, had been going too far lately; was absurdly popular
in the school; could, Clare guessed, have annexed more than one of her
own special worshippers, if she had chosen. Louise, she knew, confided
in her: she thought with a double stab of jealousy of the scene she had
witnessed but a few days since; of Louise, fresh from her commendations,
from her kiss even (that rare impulse, regretted as soon as gratified),
at rest in Alwynne's arms. She recalled Louise's startled look and
Alwynne's contrasting serenity. She had not enquired what it all
meant--that was not her way. But she had not forgotten it. Alwynne was
hers. Louise was hers. But they had nothing to seek from one another!
Alwynne, undoubtedly, as the elder, the dearer, required the check; not
little Louise. Louise's letter had genuinely touched her--she thought
she would go and see the child, spend her Christmas Day charitably, in
amusing her. And if (in after-thought) Alwynne came round in the
afternoon, and found her gone--it couldn't be helped! It wouldn't hurt
Alwynne to be disappointed.... It wouldn't hurt Alwynne to spend a day
of undiluted Elsbeth.... And Louise would be amusingly charmed to see
Clare.... It was pleasant to please a child--a clever, appreciative
child.... She would go round directly after lunch.... The maid should go
home for the afternoon.... She laughed mischievously as she imagined the
blankness of Alwynne's face, when she should be confronted by silence
and a closed door. Poor, dear Alwynne! Well, it wouldn't hurt her.

But Alwynne set out gaily on Christmas afternoon, and, first escorting
Elsbeth to the lych-gate of her favourite church, walked on as quickly
as her narrow fur-edged skirt would let her.

The clocks were striking three as she turned into Friar's Lane.

It was a cold, still day, and Alwynne shivered a little, and drew her
furs closely about her, as she stood outside the door of Clare's flat.
She had rung, but the maid was usually slow in answering.

The passage was damply cold. It would be all the jollier to toast
oneself before one of Clare's imperial fires.... She wished the maid
would hurry up. She waited a moment and then rang again.

There was no answer.

It struck her that the maid might have been given the afternoon off; but
it was funny that Clare did not hear.

She rang again. She could hear the bell tinging shrilly within, but
there was no other sound save the tick of the solemn little grandmother
on the inner side of the wall.

Suddenly it occurred to her that Clare might be dozing. Clare never
slept in the afternoons, but she did occasionally doze in her chair for
a few minutes. She denied that she did so as strenuously as people
always and unaccountably do; but Alwynne knew better. It always
delighted her when Clare succumbed to drowsiness; a good sleeper
herself, she had been appalled by Clare's acquiescence in four wakeful
nights out of seven, and after a casual description that Clare had once
given her of the arid miseries of insomnia, ten minutes' unexpected
slumber did not give Clare herself more ease than it gave Alwynne.

The possibility of such an explanation of the silence, therefore, had to
be considered respectfully: if Clare slept, far be it from Alwynne to
wake her! Yet she could not go away.... Clare, after that unlucky clash
of wills, would be doubly hurt if Alwynne left without seeing her
first.... But if Clare were asleep....

Resignedly Alwynne sat herself down on Clare's doorstep to wait until a
movement within should be the signal to ring again.

She was not annoyed; she always had plenty to think about; and it would
be very pleasant, when Clare did at last open the door, to be received
with open arms, and pitied, and scolded, and warmed.... It was certainly
very cold.... All the draughts of the town seemed to have their home on
the staircase, and to come sliding and slithering and undulating past,
like a brood of invisible snakes.

She shifted her position. The doorstep was icy. She got up, and placed
her muff, her chinchilla muff (shades of Elsbeth! her beautiful, new
chinchilla muff) on the whitened doorstep. Then she sat on it.

"Ah! That's better," murmured Alwynne appreciatively. She was grateful
to Elsbeth for reminding her to wear her muff.

But it did not get any warmer, and the daylight was beginning to fade.
She glanced at her watch--twenty minutes past three. Surely Clare was
awake again now. But she would wait another five minutes. She watched
the hands--marvelled at the interminable length of a minute, and was
drifting off on her favourite speculation as to the essential unreality
of time, when simultaneously the grandmother struck the half-hour and
she sneezed. She jumped up horrified. A cold would mean a week's absence
from Clare, and a restatement of Elsbeth's thesis "of the advisability
of wearing flannel petticoats and long-sleeved bodices."

Also, half of her hoarded hour was gone. She rang again impatiently. No
answer. Clare must be out.... Gone to the post? No, Alwynne had been
waiting half-an-hour, she would have returned by now.... Impossible that
Clare should be out on Christmas afternoon, when she had refused an
invitation and was expecting Alwynne herself.... She rang; and waited;
and rang again and again and yet again.

"If Clare has gone out----" cried Alwynne indignantly; and subjected the
handle to a final series of vicious tugs. The bell within pealed and
rocked and jarred, gave a last hysterical gurgle and was dumb. She had
broken the bell. She had broken Clare Hartill's bell!

Alwynne looked round about her guiltily; she felt more like nine than
nineteen. The flight of stairs was still empty and silent. No one had
seen her come; no one would see her go.... If she went quietly away, and
said nothing about it? For Clare would be annoyed.... She always got so
annoyed over little things.... What a pity to have a fuss with Clare
over such a little thing as a broken bell!

She crept on tip-toe down the stairs and out into the road. Then she
paused.

Was she being mean? After all--there was no earthly use in telling
Clare.... Clare would never let her pay for the mending.... Yet
naturally she would be annoyed to come back and find her bell broken....
She would think it was the milkman or the paper-boy.... Alwynne hoped
they would not get into trouble.... Perhaps, after all, she had better
tell Clare. Such an absurd thing to confess to, though--that she had
been in such a temper that she had broken the bell! Clare would be
sarcastic.... Yet it was Clare's fault for being out.... That was
unkind.... She would tell Clare so ... she would write and tell her....
She would write a note now, and tell her about the bell at the same
time.... She retraced her steps, pulled out her note-book and pencil,
and began to scribble--

     _Dear Clare--I'm awfully sorry but I'm afraid I've broken the bell.
     I couldn't make you hear. I thought you were asleep, but I suppose
     you are out. I must have rung too hard, but I didn't think you
     would be out._ Heavily underlined. _I'm dreadfully sorry about the
     bell._

She hesitated. If Clare would let her pay for a new one, she wouldn't
feel so bad.... Yet how could she suggest it? It would sound so
crude.... If only Clare would not be angry.... Absurd to be feeling
afraid of Clare--but then she had never done anything so stupid
before.... Angry or not, Clare would never let her pay.... Yet should
she suggest it? She bit her pencil in distracted indecision, till the
lead broke off between her teeth.

That settled it. The damp stump was barely capable of scoring an
_Alwynne_.

She pinned the paper to the door with her only hatpin (a present of the
forenoon) and reluctantly departed.

It was a pity that her best hat blew off twice into the mud.

Elsbeth was glad to get Alwynne back so early. Had Alwynne enjoyed
herself?

Alwynne sneezed as she answered.

Before the evening was over Alwynne reeked of eucalyptus.




CHAPTER XI


Louise was at the nursery window, staring out into the brown, bare
garden. The sky was smooth and a dark yellow, the naked trees barred it
like a tiger's hide. The gathering dusk had swallowed up the wind. Not a
twig stirred, not a sparrow's chirp broke the thick stillness.
Spellbound, the world awaited the imminent snow.

Louise, sitting motionless in the window-seat, with her little pink nose
flattening itself against the panes in dreary expectation of a stray
unlikely postman, looked, with her peaked, ivory face and dark,
unwinking eyes, her colourless clothes, and the sprig of holly with
never a scarlet berry pinned to her flat little chest, like the mood of
the December day made flesh.

Clare, at least, thought so. Dispensing with the indifferent maid, she
had found her own way to the nursery, and pushing open the unlatched
door, stood an instant, appraising the child and her surroundings. She
noted with distaste the remains of the barely tasted lunch, still
encumbering the table, and impingeing on the little pile of austere
Christmas presents, so carefully arranged: the gloves and stockings and
the prim Prayer Book a mere background for a dainty calendar that she
recognised. She smiled, with a touch of irritation--did Alwynne ever
forget any one, she wondered? But it was not suitable for a mistress to
send her pupils presents.... She wished she had thought of sending
Louise something herself ... something more original than that obviously
over-prized calendar.... It was not much of a Christmas table, she
thought ... not much of a Christmas Day for a child....

She marvelled that a well-furnished room could look so dreary. Louise's
huddled pose, the neglected fire, the book crushed face downwards on
the floor, combined to touch her. With her incurable feeling for the
effective attitude, she remained straight and stiff in the shadows of
the doorway, but her gesture was beautiful in its awkward tenderness as
she stretched out her hand to the window.

"Merry Christmas, Louise!"

For an instant the child was silent, rigid, incredulous: then came a
whirl of petticoats and a flash of black legs. Louise, wild with
excitement, dropped to the floor and dashed across the room.

"Oh, Miss Hartill! Oh, Miss Hartill! You?"

"Well, are you pleased to see me?"

"Please, won't you sit down?" Louise, between delight and embarrassment,
did curious things with the big arm-chair. "I can't believe it's you.
And on Christmas Day! Won't you please sit down? Is the room too warm
for you? Will you take off your furs? Would you like some tea? I'll make
up the fire--it's cold in here. Will you take this chair? Oh, Miss
Hartill! It's like the Queen calling on one. I don't know what to do."
She looked up at Clare, blushing. Her pleasure and excitement were
pretty enough.

Clare laughed.

"I'll tell you what to do. Run and put on your coat and hat. Would you
like to come and spend the rest of the day with me?"

"With you?" Louise's eyes opened. "But it's Christmas Day?"

"Well?"

"I shan't be in the way?"

"I don't think so," said Clare coolly. "I'll send you home if you are."

She twinkled, but Louise was serious.

"You could do that, couldn't you?" she remarked with relief. "Oh, Miss
Hartill, you are good! And I was hating my Christmas Day so. Won't you
sit down while I get my things on?"

"Hurry up!" said Clare. And Louise fled to her bedroom.

Their walk back to Friar's Lane was a silent one. The snow was at last
beginning to fall. Clare, half hypnotised by the steady silent motion,
tramped forward, keeping time to some fragment of tune within her head.
She was warmed by the pleasant consciousness of a kindly action
performed, but its object, trotting beside her, was half forgotten.

Louise, very shy at encountering Miss Hartill unofficially, was far too
timid to speak unless she were addressed. But she was perfectly happy;
marvelling and rejoicing at her situation (Miss Hartill's guest, bound
for her home!), overflowing with dog-like devotion to the Olympian who
had actually remembered her existence. She was glad of the silent walk.
It gave her time to realise her own happiness; to learn by heart that
picture of Clare, against the background of the empty nursery, to get
her every sentence by rote, and store all safely in her memory before
turning to the contemplation of the incredible adventure upon which she
was now embarking.

Clare, preceding Louise up the staircase, found Alwynne's note awaiting
her. She frowned as she read it and felt for her latch-key. It was just
like Alwynne to leave a note like that for any one to read.... And the
hatpin for any one to steal.... She wished it had been stolen before it
had scratched her paint.... And the bell! It was really annoying of
Alwynne! It would cost her five shillings to put right.... She, Clare,
was not mean, but she did begrudge money for that sort of thing....
Really, Alwynne might offer to pay for it.... But that, of course, would
never occur to Alwynne.... She was altogether too reckless about other
people's belongings.... Her own were her own affair.... But to break
Clare's bell.... She must have been quite comprehensively annoyed to
have actually broken it.... Clare laughed. She had had a sudden vision
of Alwynne's blank face and indignant pealings. Poor old Alwynne!
Well--it wouldn't hurt her.... If she were careful to let Alwynne know
to whom she had been sacrificed, Alwynne might not be quite so partisan
over Louise next term.... That wouldn't be a bad thing.... She did not
approve of intimacies between the girls and the mistresses.... But she,
Clare, would make it up to both of them.... She would begin now, with
Louise.... She would devote herself to amusing Louise.... She would give
Louise the time of her life.... Louise would be sure to tell Alwynne
about it afterwards....




CHAPTER XII


"What are you going to do with yourself all the holidays?" asked Clare,
with a touch of curiosity. Louise had slipped off her chair on to the
soft hearthrug, and sat, hugging her knees and staring up at Clare.

"Read," she said briefly, and gave a little gurgle of anticipation.

"All day long?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Hartill. I never get a chance in term time. There's such
heaps to read. I'd like to live in a library."

"Yet a peep at the world outside beats all the books that were ever
written."

"I wonder." Louise rubbed her chin meditatively against her knees before
she delivered herself. "You know--I think the way things strike people
is much more interesting than the things themselves. I like exploring
people's minds. Do you know?"

"I know," said Clare. She laughed mischievously. "You mean--that what
you think I am, for instance, is much more interesting than what I
really am."

Louise protested mutely. Her black eyes glowed.

"I daresay you're right, Louise. You wear pink spectacles, you see. I'm
quite sure you would be appalled if any one took them off. I'm a horrid
person really."

Louise looked puzzled; then the twinkle in Miss Hartill's eyes
enlightened her. Miss Hartill was teasing. She laughed merrily.

Clare shook her head.

"It's quite true. I'm an egoist, Louise!"

"It's not true," said Louise passionately. She was on guard in an
instant, ready to justify Miss Hartill to herself and the world.

It amused Clare to excite her.

"My good child--what do you know about it?"

"Lots," said Louise, with a catch in her voice. "You're not! You're
not!"

"I am." Clare leaned forward, much tickled. She could afford to attempt
to disillusion Louise.... Louise would not believe her, but she could
not say later that she had not been warned. But at the same time, Clare
warmed her cold and cynical self in the pure flame of affection her
self-criticism was fanning. "I am," she repeated. "Why do you think I
came round to see you to-day?"

Louise looked up at her shyly, dwelling on her answer as if it gave her
exquisite pleasure.

"Because--because you knew I was alone, and you hated me to be miserable
on Christmas Day."

"You?" Clare's eyebrows lifted for a second, but a glance into the
child's candid eyes dispelled the vague suspicion.... Louise and conceit
were incompatible. She listened with a touch of compunction to the
innocent answer.

"Not me specially, of course. Any one who was down. Only it happened to
be me. I think you can't help being good to people: you're made that
way." Her eyes were full of wondering admiration.

Clare was touched. She sighed as she answered--

"I wish I were. You shouldn't believe in people, Louise. I came round
because--yes, you were a lonely scrap of a schoolgirl, certainly--but
there were lots of other reasons. I wanted a walk and I wanted to be
amused, and I wanted--and I wanted----" she moved restlessly in her
chair, "All pure egoism, anyhow."

"But you came," said Louise.

"To please you, or to punish some one else? I don't know!"

Louise enjoyed her incomprehensibility. She stored up her remarks to
puzzle over later. Yet she would ask questions if Miss Hartill were in a
talking mood.

"Do I know them?" (She had an odd habit of using the plural when she
wished to be discreet.) She wondered who had been punished, and why, and
thrilled deliciously, as she did to a ghost story. She thought that it
would be terrible to have offended Miss Hartill: yet immensely
exciting.... She wondered if all her courage would go if Miss Hartill
were angry? She had always despised poor Jeanne du Barrie: but Miss
Hartill raging would be harder to face than a mob....

"What have they done?" asked Louise eagerly.

"They? It's your dear Miss Durand," said Clare, with a grim smile. "I'm
very angry with her, Louise. She's been behaving badly."

Louise's eyes widened: she looked alarmed and distressed.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill--she hasn't! She couldn't! What has she done?"

"Shall I tell you?" Clare leaned forward mysteriously.

Louise nodded breathlessly.

"She wouldn't copy me and be an egoist. And I wanted her to, rather
badly, Louise. There, that's all! You're none the wiser, are you? Never
mind, you will be, some day. Don't look so worried, you funny child."

"Why do you call yourself such names? You're not an egoist? You can't
be," cried Louise desperately.

Clare laughed.

"Can't I? Most people are. It's not a synonym for murderess! Stop
frowning, child. Why, I don't believe you know what it means even. Do
you know what an egoist is, Louise?"

"Sir Willoughby Patterne!" said Louise promptly.

Clare threw up her hands.

"What next? I wish I'd had charge of you earlier. You shouldn't try so
hard to say 'Humph,' little pig."

"I don't." Louise was indignant.

"Then what possesses you to steer your cockle-boat on to Meredith?
Well--what do you think of him? What have you read?"

"About all. He's queer. He's not Dickens or Scott, of course----" Her
tone deprecated.

"Of course not," said Clare, with grave sympathy.

"But I like him. I like Chloe. I like the sisters--you know--'Fine
Shades and Nice Feeling'----"

"Why?" Clare shot it at her.

"I don't know. They made me laugh. They're awfully real people. And I
liked that book where the two gentlemen drink wine. 'Veuve' something."

"What on earth did you see in that?" Clare was amused.

"I don't know. I just liked them. Of course, I adore Shagpat."

"That I understand. It's a fairy tale to you, isn't it?"

"Not a proper one--only Arabian Nightsy."

"What's a proper one, Louise?"

Louise hesitated.

"Well, heaps that one loves aren't. Grimm's and Hans Andersen's aren't,
or even _The Wondrous Isles_. And, of course, none of the Lang books. I
hate those. You know, proper fairy stories aren't easy to get. You have
to dig. You get bits out of the notes in the Waverley Novels, and
there's _Kilmeny_, and _The Celtic Twilight_, and _The Lore of
Proserpine_, and Lemprière. Do you believe in fairies, Miss Hartill?"

"It depends on the mood I'm in," said Clare seriously, "and the place.
Elves and electric railways are incompatible."

Louise flung herself upon the axiom.

"Do you think so? Now I don't, Miss Hartill--I don't. If they are--they
can stand railways. But you just believe in them literaturily----"

"Literally," Clare corrected.

"No, no--literaturily--just as a pretty piece of writing. You'll never
see them if you think of them like that, Miss Hartill. The Greeks
didn't--they just believed in Pan, and the Oreads, and the Dryads, and
all those delicious people; and the consequence was that the country
was simply crammed with them. You just read Lemprière! I wish I'd lived
then. Miss Hartill, did you ever see a Good Person?"

"I'm afraid not, Louise. But I had a nurse who used to tell me about her
grand-aunt: she was supposed to be a changeling."

Louise wriggled with delight.

"Oh, tell about her, Miss Hartill. What was she like?"

"Tiny and black, with a very white skin. They were a fair family. Nurse
said they all disliked her, though she never did them any harm. She used
to be out in the woods all day--and she ate strange food."

"What?"

"Fungi, and nettle-tops, and young bracken, and blackberries, my nurse
said."

"Blackberries?"

"She was Irish; the Irish peasants won't touch blackberries, you know.
We're just as bad, Louise. Heaps of fungi are delicious--wait till
you've been in Germany. They know what's good: but, then, they won't
touch rabbits, so there you are! I expect my nurse's aunt thought us an
odd lot, us humans."

"Was she really a fairy?" Louise was breathless.

"How do I know? A witch perhaps. I should think a young witch, by all
accounts."

"What happened to her?"

"She was 'swept' on her wedding-day."

"Crossing water?"

"No. She was to marry an old farmer. She went into the woods at dawn to
wash in dew, and gather bindweed for her wreath----" She paused
dramatically, her eyes dancing with fun; but Louise was wholly in
earnest.

"Go on! Oh, go on!"

"She was never seen again."

"Oh, how lovely!" Louise shivered ecstatically. "I wish I'd been her.
What did her foster people do?"

"What could they? I think they were glad to be rid of her." (Clare
suppressed a certain tall young gipsy, who had figured suspiciously in
the original narrative.) "Fairy blood is ill to live with, Louise. I
don't envy Mrs. Blake, or Mrs. Thomas Rhymer."

"No. But it's so difficult to live in two worlds at once."

"Shouldering the wise man's burden already?"

"You get absent-minded, and forget--ink-stains, you know, and messages."

"I know," said Clare.

"You see, I have such a gorgeous world inside my head, Miss Hartill: I
go there when I'm rather down, here. It's a sort of Garden of the
Hesperides, and you are there, and Mother, and all my special friends."

"Who, for instance?" Clare was curious; it was the first she had heard
of Louise with friends of her own.

"Well--Elizabeth Bennett, and the Little Women, and Garm, and Amadis of
Gaul----"

"Oh--not real people?" Clare was amused at herself for being relieved.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill--they are real." Louise was indignant. "Ever so
much more than--oh, most people! Look at Mrs. Bennett and Mamma! Nobody
will think of Mamma in a hundred years--but who'd ever forget Mrs.
Bennett?"

"Mrs Bennett in the Garden of the Hesperides, Louise?" Clare began to
chuckle. "I can't swallow that."

Louise pealed with laughter.

"You should have seen her the other day, with the dragon after her.
She'd been trying to sneak some apples, because Bingley was coming to
tea."

"Who came to the rescue?"

"Oh, I did." Louise was revelling in her sympathetic listener. "I have
to keep order, you know. She was awfully blown, though. Siegfried helped
me."

"I wish I could get to fairyland as easily as you do."

Louise considered.

"I don't. My country is only in my head. Fairyland must be somewhere,
mustn't it? Do you know what I think, Miss Hartill?"

"In patches, Louise."

Louise blushed.

"No, but seriously--don't laugh. You know you explained the fourth
dimension to us the other day?"

"That I'm sure I never did." Clare was lying back in her chair, her arms
behind her head, smiling inscrutably.

"Oh, but Miss Hartill----"

"Never, Louise!"

"Oh, but honestly--I'm not contradicting you, of course--but you did.
Last Thursday fortnight, in second lesson."

"I wish you were as accurate over all your dates, Louise! Your History
paper was not all that it should be."

"It's holidays, Miss Hartill! But don't you remember?"

"I explained to you that the fourth dimension was inexplicable--a very
different thing."

"_The Plattner Story_ explains it--clearly." Louise's tone was
distinctly reproachful.

"Oh no, it doesn't, Louise. Mr. Wells only deludes you into thinking it
does."

"Well, anyhow, I think--don't you think that it's rather likely that
fairyland is the fourth dimension? It would all fit in so beautifully
with all the old stories of enchantment and disappearances. Then there
was another book I read about it. _The Inheritors_----"

"Have done, Louise! You make me dizzy. Don't try to live exclusively on
truffles. If you could continue to confine your attention to books you
have some slight chance of understanding, for the next few years, it
would be an excellent thing. Neither Meredith nor the fourth dimension
is meat for babes, you know."

"I like what I don't understand. It's the finding out is the fun."
Louise looked mutinous.

"And having found out?"

"Then I start on something else."

Clare considered her.

"Louise, I don't know if it's a compliment to either of us--but I
believe we're very much alike."

Louise gave a child's delighted chuckle, but she showed no surprise.

"That's nice, Miss Hartill." She hesitated. "Miss Hartill, did you know
my Mother?"

"Mrs. Denny?" Clare hesitated.

Louise gave an impatient gesture.

"Not Mamma. My very own Mother."

"No, my dear." Clare's voice was soft.

Louise sighed.

"No one does. There are no pictures. Father was angry when I asked about
her once: and Miss Murgatroyd--she was our governess--she said I had no
tact. I miss her, you know, though I don't remember her. I had a nurse:
she told me a little. Mother had grey eyes too, you know," said Louise,
gazing into Clare's. "I expect she was rather like you."

She watched Clare a little breathlessly. There was more of tenderness in
her face than many who thought they knew Clare Hartill would have
credited, but no hint of awakening memory, of the recognition the child
sought. She went on--

"People never come back when they're dead, do they?" She had no idea of
the longing in her voice.

"No, you poor baby!" Clare rose hastily and began to walk up and down
the room, as her fashion was when she was stirred.

"Never?"

"'_Stieg je ein Freund Dir aus dem Grabe wieder?_'" murmured Clare.

"What, Miss Hartill?"

"Never, Louise."

Louise's thistledown fancies were scattered by her tone. Impossible to
discredit any statement of Miss Hartill's. Yet she protested timidly.

"There was the Witch of Endor, Miss Hartill. Samuel, you know."

"Is that Meredith?" said Clare absently. Then she caught Louise's
expression. "What's the matter?"

"But it's the Bible!" cried Louise horrified.

Clare sat down again and began to laugh pleasantly.

"What am I to do with you, Louise? Are you five or fifty? You want to
discuss Meredith with me--(not that I shall let you, my child--don't
think I approve of all this reading--I did it myself at your age, you
see) and five minutes later you look at me round-eyed because I've
forgotten my Joshua or my Judges! Kings? I beg your pardon; Kings be it!
Never mind, Louise. Tell me about the Witch of Endor."

"Only that she called up Samuel, I meant, from the dead."

Louise was evidently abstracted; she was picking her words.

"Don't you believe it, Miss Hartill, quite?"

"It's the Old Testament, after all," temporised Clare. She began to see
Louise's difficulty. She had no beliefs herself but she thought she
would find out how fourteen handled the problem.

"Then the New is different? There was Dorcas, you know, and the widow's
son. That is all true, Miss Hartill?"

Clare fenced.

"Many people think so."

"I want to know the truth," said Louise tensely. "I want to know what
you think." She spoke as if the two things were synonymous.

Clare shook her head.

"I won't help you, Louise. You must find out for yourself. Leave it
alone, if you're wise."

"How can I? I've been reading----"

"Ah?"

"The _Origin of Species_--and _We Two_."

Clare's gravity fled. She lay back shaking with laughter.

"Louise, you're delightful! Anything else?"

Louise pulled up her footstool to Clare's knee.

"Miss Hartill, I've been reading a play. It's horrible. I can't bear it,
though it was thrilling to read----"

Clare interrupted.

"Where do you get all these books, Louise?"

"They are all Mother's, you know. Nobody else wants them. And then
there's the Free Library."

Clare shuddered. She would sooner have drunk from the tin cup of a
public fountain than have handled the greasy volumes of a public
library.

"How can you?" she said disgustedly. "Dirt and dog-ears!"

Louise opened her eyes. She was too young to be squeamish.

"'A book's a book for a' that,'" she laughed. "How else am I to get hold
of any--that I like?"

Clare jerked her head to the lined walls.

"Help yourself," she said.

Louise was radiant.

"May I? Oh, you are good! I will take such care. I'll cover them in
brown paper."

She jumped up and, running across the room, flung herself on her knees
before the wide shelves. Timidly, at first, but with growing
forgetfulness of Clare, she pulled out here a volume and there a volume,
handling them tenderly, yet barely opening each, so eager was she for
fresh discoveries. She reminded Clare of _Alice_ with the scented
rushes. Clare was amused by her absorption, and a little touched. The
child's attitude to books hinted at the solitariness of her life: she
relaxed to them, greeting them as intimates and companions; there was a
new appearance on her; she was obviously at home, welcomed by her
friends; a very different person to the shy-eyed, prim little prodigy
her school-fellows knew.

Clare, glancing at her now and then, sympathised benevolently, and left
her to herself; she understood that side of the child; her remark to
Louise about the resemblance between them had not been made at random;
she was constantly detecting traits and tastes in her similar to her
own. She was interested; she had thought herself unique. Their histories
were not dissimilar; she, too, different as her environment had been,
could look back on a lonely, self-absorbed childhood; she, too, had had
forced and premature successes. They had not been empty ones, she
reflected complacently; she had used those schoolgirl triumphs as
stepping-stones. She doubted if Louise could do the same: there was
something unpractical about Louise--a hint of the visionary in her air.
She had at present none of Clare's passion for power and the incense of
success. Clare, quite aware of her failing, aware that it was a failing
and perversely proud of it, yet hoped that she should not see it
sprouting in the character of Louise. She hated to see her own defects
reproduced (ineffably vulgarised) in others; it jarred her pride. The
discovery of the resemblance between herself and Louise amused and
charmed her, as long as it was confined to the qualities that Clare
admired; but if the girl began to reflect her faults, Clare knew that
she should be irritated.

She considered these things as she sat and sewed. She was an exquisite
needlewoman. The frieze of tapestry that ran round the low-ceilinged
room was her own work. Alwynne had designed it--a history of the loves
of Deirdre and Naismi some months before, when she and Clare had
discovered Yeats together; and Clare had adapted the rough, clever
sketches, working with her usual amazing speed. The foot-deep strips of
needlework and painted silk, with their golden skies and dark
foregrounds, along which the dim, rainbow figures moved, were just what
Clare had wanted to complete her panelled room; for she was
beauty-loving and house-proud, though her love of originality, or more
correctly her tendency to be superior and aloof, often enticed her into
bizarrerie. But the Deirdre frieze was as harmonious as it was unusual;
and Clare, as she daily feasted her eyes on the rich, mellow colours,
was only annoyed that the idea of it had been Alwynne's. That fact,
though she would not own it, was able, though imperceptibly, to taint
Clare's pleasure. She was quite unnecessarily scrupulous in mentioning
Alwynne's share in the work to any one who admired it; but it piqued her
to do so, none the less. If any one had told her that it piqued her she
would have been extremely amused at the absurdity of the idea.

She was at the time working out a medallion of her own design, and
growing interested, she soon forgot all about Louise, sitting Turkish
fashion at the big book-case. The light had long since faded and the
enormous fire, gilding walls and furniture, rendered the candles' steady
light almost superfluous. Candlelight was another predilection of
Clare's--there was neither electricity nor gas in her tiny, perfect
flat. The tick of the clock in the hall and the flutter of turning pages
alone broke the silence. Outside, the snow fell steadily.

Half-a-mile away Alwynne Durand, drumming on the window-pane, while her
aunt dozed in her chair, thought incessantly of Clare, and was filled
with restless longing to be with her. She tried to count the snowflakes
till her brain reeled. She felt cold and dreary, but she would not rouse
Elsbeth by making up the fire. She wished she had something new to read.
She thought it the longest Christmas Day she had ever spent.

The neat maid, bringing in the tea-tray, roused Clare. She pushed aside
her work and began to pour out; but Louise in her corner, made no sign.

Clare laughed.

"Louise, wake up! Don't you want any tea?"

Louise, as if the conversation had not ceased for an instant, scrambled
to her feet and came to the table, a load of books in her arms, saying
as she did so--

"I'll be awfully careful. May I take these, perhaps?"

Clare nodded.

"Presently. I'll look them over first. Muffins?"

She gave Louise a delightful meal and taught her to take tea with a
slice of lemon. She was particular, Louise noticed; some of the muffins
were not toasted to her liking, and were instantly banished; she
criticised the cakes and the flavouring of the dainty sandwiches; then
she laughed wickedly at Louise for her round eyes.

"What's the matter, child?"

"Nothing," said Louise, embarrassed.

"I believe you're shocked because I talked so much about food?"

Louise blushed scarlet.

"I like eating, Louise."

"Yes--yes, of course," she concurred hastily.

Clare was entertained. She knew quite well that Louise, like all
children, considered a display of interest in food, if not indelicate,
at least extremely human. She knew, too, that in Louise's eyes she was
too entirely compounded of ideals and noble qualities to be more than
officially human. She enjoyed upsetting her ideas.

"If you come to actual values, I'd rather do without Shakespeare than
Mrs. Beeton," she remarked blandly.

"Oh, Miss Hartill!" Louise was protesting--suspecting a trap--ready to
ripple into laughter. "You do say queer things."

"I?"

"Yes. As if you meant that!"

"But I do! Eating's an art, Louise, like painting or writing. I had a
pheasant last Sunday----" She gave the entire menu, and enlarged on the
etceteras with enthusiasm.

Louise looked bewildered.

"I never thought you thought about that sort of thing," she remarked. "I
thought you just didn't notice--I thought you would always be thinking
of poetry and pictures----" She subsided, blushing.

Clare laughed at her pleasantly.

"I thought, I thought, I think, I thought! What a lot of thoughts. I'm
sorry, Louise! Is all my star-dust gone?"

Louise shook her head vigorously, but she was still embarrassed. She
changed the subject with agility.

"I've read that!"

"What?"

"The star-dust book--but I've picked out two others of his. May I? All
these?"

Clare ran her finger along the titles.

"Yes--yes--Fiona Mcleod--yes--_Peer Gynt_--yes, if you like, you won't
understand it, or Yeats--but all right. No, not Nietzsche! Not on any
account, Louise."

Louise protested.

"Oh, why not, Miss Hartill? I'm nearly fourteen."

"Are you really?" said Clare, with respect.

"He looks so jolly--Old Testamenty----"

"He does, Louise! That's his little way. But he's not for the Upper
Fifth."

"He's in the Free Library," said Louise, with a twinkle. Clare turned.

"You can have all the books you want, if you come to me. But no more
Free Library, Louise. You understand? I don't wish it."

Louise tingled like a bather under a cold spray. She liked and disliked
the autocratic tone.

Clare went on.

"I detest trash--and there's a good deal, even in a Carnegie collection.
There's no need for you to dull your imagination on melodrama like--what
was it?"

"What, Miss Hartill?"

"The play you began to tell me about--you thought it horrible, you
said."

Louise opened her eyes.

"Miss Hartill, it wasn't melodrama--it was good stuff. That's why it
worried me. It's by a Norwegian or a Dane or some one. _Pastor Sang_
it's called."

"That? I don't follow. I should have thought the theology would have
bored you, but there's nothing horrible in it."

"It worried me. Oh, Miss Hartill, what does it all mean? Darwin says, we
just grew--doesn't he? and that the Bible's all wrong. But you say that
doesn't matter--it's just Old Testament? And this play says--do you
remember? the wife is ill--and the husband, who cures people by
praying--he can't cure her----"

"Well?" said Clare impatiently.

"And he says, if the apostles did miracles, we ought to be able to--he
kills his wife, trying. He can't, you see. But the point is, if he
couldn't, with all his faith--could the apostles? And if the apostles
couldn't, could Christ Himself? The miracles are just only a tale,
perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Clare. "You're not clear, Louise, but I know what you
mean."

"It frightened me, that play," said the child in a low voice. "If there
were no miracles--and everything one reads makes one sure there
weren't--why, then, the Bible's not true! Jesus was just a man! He
didn't rise? Perhaps there isn't an afterwards? Perhaps there isn't
God?"

"Perhaps," said Clare.

The child's eyes were wide and frightened. She put her hand timidly on
Clare's knee.

"Miss Hartill--you believe in God?"

Clare looked at her, weighing her.

Louise spoke again; her voice had grown curiously apprehensive.

"Miss Hartill--you do believe in God?"

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

Louise stared at her appalled.

"If _you_ don't believe in God----" she began slowly, and then stopped.

They sat a long while in silence.

Clare felt uncomfortable. She had not intended to express any opinion,
to let her own attitude to religion appear. But Louise, with her sudden
question, had forced one from her. After all, if Louise had begun to
doubt and to inquire, no silence on Clare's part would stop her....
Every girl went through the phase--with Louise it had begun early, that
was all.... Yet in her heart she knew that Louise, with her already
overworked mind, should have been kept from the mental distress of
religious doubt.... She knew that for some years she could have been so
kept; that, as the mouth can eat what the body will not absorb, so,
though her intelligence might have assimilated all the books she chose
to read, her soul need not necessarily have been disturbed by them. Her
acquired knowledge that the world is round need not have jostled her
rule of thumb conviction that it is flat. Her interest in 'ologies and
'osophies could have lived comfortably enough, with her child's belief
in four angels round her head, for another two or three
years--strengthening, maturing years.

Clare knew her power. At a soothing word from her, Louise would have
shelved her speculations, or at least have continued them impersonally.
Clare could have guaranteed God to her. But Clare had shrugged her
shoulders, and Louise had grown white--and she had felt like a
murderess. Do children really take their religion so seriously?... After
all, what real difference could it make to Louise?... She, Clare, had
been glad to be rid of her clogging and irrational beliefs.... Louise,
too, when she recovered from the shock, would enjoy the sense of freedom
and self-respect.... If Louise talked like a girl of eighteen she could
not be expected to receive the careful handling you gave a child of
twelve.... Anyhow, it was done now....

Suddenly and persuasively she began to talk to Louise. She touched
gently on the history, the growth and inevitable decay of all
religions--the contrasting immutability of the underlying code of
ethics, upon which they, one and all, were founded. She told her vivid
little stories of the religious struggles of the centuries, had her
breathless over the death of Socrates, nailed up for her anew the
ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. Exerting all her
powers, all her knowledge, all her descriptive and dramatic skill, to
charm away one child's distress, Clare was, for an hour, a woman
transformed, sound and honey-sweet. Against all that happened later, she
could at least put the one hour, when, remorsefully, she had given
Louise of the best that was in her.

Incidentally, she delivered to her audience of one the most brilliant
lecture of her career. Later she wrote down what she remembered of it,
and it became the foundation for her monograph on religions that was to
become a minor classic. Its success was immediate--that was typical of
Clare--but she never wrote another line. That also was typical of Clare.
It bored her to repeat a triumph.

She soon had Louise happy again: it was not in Louise to stick to the
high-road of her own thoughts, with Miss Hartill opening gates to
fairyland at every sentence. Clare kept her for the rest of the evening,
and took her home at last, weighed down by her parcel of books, sleepy
from the effects of excitement and happiness. She poured out her
incoherent thanks as they waited on the doorstep of her home. There had
never been such a Christmas--she had never had such a glorious time--she
couldn't thank Miss Hartill properly if she talked till next Christmas
came.

Clare, nodding and laughing, handed her over to the maid, and went home,
not ill-pleased with her Christmas either. She thought of the child as
she walked down the snowy, star-lighted streets, and wondered
whimsically what she was doing at the moment. Would she say her prayers
on her way to bed still, or had Clare's little, calculated shrug stopped
that sort of thing for many a long day? She rather thought so. She shook
off her uneasy sense of compunction and laughed aloud. The cold night
air was like wine to her. After all, for an insignificant spinster, she
had a fair share of power--real power--not the mere authority of kings
and policemen. Her mind, not her office, ruled a hundred other minds,
and in one heart, at least, a shrug of her shoulders had toppled God off
His throne; and the vacant seat was hers, to fill or flout as she
chose.




CHAPTER XIII


With the opening of the spring term began the final and most arduous
preparations for the Easter examinations.

The school had been endowed, some years before, under the will of a
former pupil, with a scholarship, a valuable one, ensuring not only the
freedom of the school, but

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