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 Clarecould 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 owndompteuseinstinct, 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 theirenthusiasms. 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 everynew 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 childrenfeverishly 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'sTales, 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 withAlwynne, 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 thenshe 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 onThe Dark Tower. It's the beastliest yet.The Ancient Marinerwas 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 therewas 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 evenMarion 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 learnChilde 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 foundPledged to the plain, after a pace or two,Than, pausing to throw backward a last viewO'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 tolledIncreasing 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 yetDauntless 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 learnChilde 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.
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 asufficiency 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, alertfor 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, ifshe 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; theexquisite 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, andall 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 wasThe Gateless BarrierandThe Dead Lemanfor 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 theschool 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.
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 analien 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 demandedconfidences. 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 andmal 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 intentlyas 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.... Shehad 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 therest 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 obscuredand 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.