The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Crowded StreetThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Crowded StreetAuthor: Winifred HoltbyRelease date: July 28, 2022 [eBook #68629]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1924Credits: anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteers*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROWDED STREET ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Crowded StreetAuthor: Winifred HoltbyRelease date: July 28, 2022 [eBook #68629]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1924Credits: anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteers
Title: The Crowded Street
Author: Winifred Holtby
Author: Winifred Holtby
Release date: July 28, 2022 [eBook #68629]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1924
Credits: anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteers
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROWDED STREET ***
THE CROWDED STREET
BY THE SAME AUTHORANDERBY WOLDTHE BODLEY HEAD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ANDERBY WOLD
ANDERBY WOLD
THE BODLEY HEAD
BY WINIFRED HOLTBY
LONDONJOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD.
First Published in 1924
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY JARROLD AND SONS LTD. NORWICH
TOJEAN FINLAY McWILLIAMAN UNWORTHY RETURNFOR THE DELIGHT OFHER LETTERS
"Beware!You met two travellers in the townWho promised you that they would take you downThe valley far awayTo some strange carnival this summer's dayTake care,Lest in the crowded streetThey hurry past you with forgetting feet,And leave you standing there."
"Beware!You met two travellers in the townWho promised you that they would take you downThe valley far awayTo some strange carnival this summer's dayTake care,Lest in the crowded streetThey hurry past you with forgetting feet,And leave you standing there."
"Beware!
You met two travellers in the town
Who promised you that they would take you down
The valley far away
To some strange carnival this summer's day
Take care,
Lest in the crowded street
They hurry past you with forgetting feet,
And leave you standing there."
Vera Brittain
THE CROWDED STREET
From the crowded doorway to the piano at the other end of the room the surface of the floor stretched, golden, empty, alluring. Ladies in white trailing gowns, the mothers and aunts of other little girls at the party, drifted across it like swans on a lake. Their reflections floated after them, silver-white along the gold. When Muriel rubbed her foot against the floor she could feel with joy its polished slipperiness, broken only at rare intervals by velvet-brown knots in the wood.
Mrs. Marshall Gurney was talking to Mrs. Hammond, so Muriel could wait in the shelter of the doorway. Soon she too would have to cross that shining space and join the other children on the chairs near the wall. She was grateful for the interval of waiting. It was fun to stand there, peering round her mother's skirts at the straight rows of cracks running together up the floor till they met somewhere under the piano. It was fun to watch the black jackets of small boys approaching small girls in stiff muslin dresses who grew like paper flowers round the walls. It was fun to tell herself over and over again that this was the Party, the Party, the Party—and even while saying it to know that the Party lay in none of these things; neither in the palms nor the piano, the pink sashes nor the programmes, even though these had pencils dangling seductively from scarlet cords; nor in the glimpse of jellies and piled-up trifles seen through the half-open door of the supper-room as she walked along red carpets to shake the terrifying splendour of Mrs. Marshall Gurney's white-gloved hand. No, the Party lay in some illusive, indefinable essence of delight, awaiting Muriel beyond the golden threshold of the hall.
"Muriel has been looking forward so much to your party," Mrs. Hammond was saying. "She has never been to one at the Assembly Rooms before."
Mrs. Hammond was small and soft and dove-like. She cooed gently when she talked, and visitors spoke of her to Muriel as "Your Dear Mother." For the Party she wore a new lilac satin gown and amethysts round her pretty throat. Muriel knew that she was more beautiful than anyone in the world.
Mrs. Marshall Gurney replied in the deep throaty voice that belonged to her because she was Mrs. Marshall Gurney. Muriel could not hear what she said, but Mrs. Hammond answered with her gentle little laugh, "Oh, yes, she's only eleven and rather shy." So Muriel knew that they were talking about her.
Grown-ups, of course, always did talk about children as though they were not there. Muriel wished that it wouldn't make her feel hot inside as though she had been naughty, or had begun to cry in front of strangers. Connie, she thought enviously, rather liked it.
What did it matter? What did anything matter? She was at the Party. Her new dress had been made by her mother's dressmaker. It had cost her hours of breathless standing, trying to keep still while that dignified lady crept round her on her knees, with pins in her mouth, for all the world as though she were only nine and a half like Connie, and were playing at bears. There had been a lengthy ceremony of dressing before the nursery fire, with Connie dancing around irrepressibly, wanting to try on Muriel's sandals and silk mittens, and to touch the soft folds of her sash. All the way to Kingsport, dangling her legs from the box-seat of the brougham—she always rode outside with Turner, because to sit inside made her sick—Muriel had watched the thin slip of a moon ride with her above the dark rim of the wolds, and she had sung softly to herself and to the moon and to Victoria, the old carriage horse, "I'm going to the Party, the Party, the Party."
And here she was.
The ecstasy caught and held her spellbound.
Most of the chairs round the wall were full now. Mrs. Marshall Gurney had been seized upon by Mrs. Cartwright. "It's nearly time to begin dancing," said Muriel's mother. "We must get your programme filled. There are a lot of little boys here whom you know. Look, there's Freddy Mason. You remember him, dear, don't you?"
Muriel remembered Freddy. Once, when they had all gone to tea at his father's farm, Freddy had taken Connie and her to play on the stacks. They had climbed a ladder—dizzy work this at the best of times, paralysing when Freddy followed close on one's heels, recounting grisly details of recent accidents. Half-way up, Muriel had felt her hands slip under the weight of a great sack of corn, and the earth sprang up to meet her before the grinding thud of her shoulder on the ground, when she fell as those poor men had fallen. She had scrambled fearfully across the slippery barley straw, shuddering from the pain of a fall that she had felt, although she still miraculously crouched on the top of the stack, instead of lying broken in the yard. She had sat with her legs hanging over space at the top of Freddy's lovely slide, clutching at the treacherous straw with desperate fingers, watching the hens, small as flies, pecking in the yard below, while fear tickled the soles of her feet, and fear breathed on her paling cheeks. Then, as merciful release or culminating agony, she was not sure which, Freddy had pushed her over, and she had dropped limply down, down, down, with a blinding rush, till she lay half buried in straw below the stack, past hope, past fear, past speech, past agony. That had been a long time ago. But she did not now want to dance with Freddy.
"I don't think——" she began in her prim little voice. She was about to add—"that I want to dance with Freddy," when Mrs. Hammond finished her sentence for her.
"Of course he'll want to dance with you, dear." Mrs. Hammond claimed that she knew what went on in Muriel's mind—her own child's mind. She often finished Muriel's hesitating sentences for her. "You mustn't be so shy, dear," she reproved gently. "Well, Freddy, how is your mother? I hope her cold is better. You know my little Muriel, don't you? Of course. You were so kind showing her round your nice farm that summer. Dear me, what a big boy you've grown since then! She did enjoy it, didn't you, dear?"
The edge of Muriel's chair had become a shelf of yielding straw, slipping, slipping beneath her. Miles away below, hens, small as flies, pecked on the polished floor.
"Where's your programme, dear?" asked Mrs. Hammond. Muriel produced it, but hope died in her heart as the scarlet pencil moved in Freddy's stubby fingers.
Polka, barn-dance, waltz. . . .
Her eye ran down the list of dances. Freddy's name alone marred the virgin whiteness of the opposite page. At the thought of the second polka she shivered. Still, he had only asked for one dance. That could not spoil the Party.
A gentleman with a red flower in his buttonhole crossed the room and sat down by the piano. From the way that he walked, Muriel knew that he was going to be one of the funny ones. She could always tell.
The gentleman ran his fingers along the piano like playing a scale, only prettier. In a minute the black coats and muslin dresses would twirl together in a solemn polka. Muriel did not want to dance. She wanted to sit and watch the moving figures weaving strange patterns of shadow across the gleaming floor. She wanted to hear the music, and to tap her foot against the side of her chair to the beat of its "One, two, three, four."
The rows round the wall dissolved. Already Nancy Cartwright—a forward child, Mrs. Hammond said—had lured her blushing partner towards the centre of the room. A second couple followed, and a third.
"Haven't you got a partner for this?" asked Mrs. Hammond.
"Not just for this, Mother," Muriel murmured, vaguely aware of duty unfulfilled.
"Oh, dear, well, let me see," said Mrs. Hammond.
She rose and began to search the room. Muriel wanted to run, to call, to stop her; but she dared not venture into that revolving traffic of dancers. She sat very still, while the circling skirts brushed against her knees.
If only she could be quiet, and watch and listen, somehow during her vigil the Party would come upon her.
From the ceiling swung dark festoons of gleaming laurel and holly, and vivid flags, and lanterns of orange and vermilion. A child's laugh rang out, challenging the echoes of the skipping tune. Oh, be still, be still, said Muriel's dancing heart, and somehow here shall be delight.
The drooping leaves of a palm tickled the back of the pianist's neck. His left hand stopped banging out the bass chords and swooped as though to kill a fly. It missed the leaf, and flung itself back on to the keyboard to do justice to the Fortissima of the Coda. Back swung the leaf over the edge of his collar. Up went the hand, clutching and waving. There followed a battle royal between the palm and the polka. Muriel's chuckles now rose to her throat, but, being a polite child, she sought to stifle them. This would be something to tell Connie. Connie might be trying sometimes, but her sense of humour was superb.
With a savage tug the gentleman at the piano had wrenched a leaf from the palm and flung it aside. At the expense of the polka he had striven for peace. With a sudden burst of rapture, Muriel saw that it was the wrong leaf. Her laughter broke out, delicious, uncontrollable.
Of such delights was the Party made.
Mrs. Hammond stood by Muriel's side.
"Muriel, dear, here is Godfrey Neale. He arrived late and has not got a partner for this dance."
Muriel rose politely to do her duty. Mrs. Hammond was so obviously pleased that Godfrey had not found a partner. And, after all, the thing to do at parties was to dance.
Muriel did not dance well. Madame Bartlett, whose classes she attended every Wednesday, said that she was a stick. Music was beautiful, especially the sort that made clean patterns of sound, interlacing like bare branches against a clear sky. But while Muriel's mind responded to its movement her body did not. She hopped round Godfrey with disconsolate politeness. Only her feathery slenderness made his progress endurable.
He was taller than she, and much, much older. Quite fourteen, she thought with awe. Godfrey Neale, Godfrey Neale; vaguely she was aware of him as something splendid and remote, of a lovely house behind tall iron gates on the road to Wearminster.
They bumped into another couple.
Muriel became suddenly and devastatingly aware of her own shortcomings. She tried to remedy these by moving her feet with conscientious accuracy.
"One, two, three, hop!One, two, three, hop!"
"I beg your pardon," murmured Godfrey.
Only then did she realize that she had been counting aloud.
The next hop brought her down with unexpected violence on to Godfrey's shining dancing pump.
"Sorry!"
"Oh, that's nothing. A fellow kicked me at f—footer last week and made no end of a bump."
"Did he really? How awful! Did it hurt?"
"Oh, nothing to speak of. I say! That was a near shave!"
In her concern, Muriel started suddenly to the right and nearly accomplished the downfall of the offending palm. She had just been summoning her courage to lay before this dazzling creature her greatest conversational gift, the story of the tickling episode. But their latest peril put her tale to flight. Still, she felt that some further effort was required of her.
"Do you often go to parties?" She whispered so softly that he had to ask her to repeat her question.
Repetition emphasized its inanity. She blushed, gulping and trying to control her quavering voice.
"Do you often go to parties?"
"Not very often. These things are a bit slow. I like footer, and riding. I'm going to Winchester next autumn."
"Oh!"
Muriel wondered what mysterious connexion bound Winchester to parties. Winchester, county town of Hampshire. Was that right? Hampshire—Winchester-on-the-Itchen. Muriel had been considered rather good at geography. Places could come real to you. Winchester. Parties. She saw the city, rich with swinging lanterns, while down the lighted streets from every window the tunes of polkas beat and sang.
"One, two, three, four!One, two, three, four!"
The music stopped. In the fairy streets of Winchester, and in the Assembly Rooms of Kingsport there was silence.
Godfrey dropped Muriel's hand and clapped vigorously. He faced life with a genial determination to find every one as pleasant as they so obviously found him. Though he had not exactly enjoyed his dance with Muriel, he smiled down at her kindly. She was a queer little thing, but not bad, though she couldn't dance for nuts.
She smiled back at him gratefully, as though she said, "Thank you for not telling me how badly I dance."
He enjoyed the comfortable feeling of having conferred a favour on her. Muriel's smiles were like that.
The polka was not repeated. The pianist turned to concentrate his attention upon the palm. Godfrey led Muriel back to her mother.
"Did he ask you for any more dances, dear?"
"No, mother."
That was the first dance. A second and third followed while Mrs. Hammond talked to Nancy Cartwright's mother, and no one took any notice of Muriel. She sat quietly, enjoying the Party. There seemed to be no better thing than to watch and listen.
Mrs. Hammond turned.
"Let me see your programme, dear."
On the empty page Freddy's name sprawled, conspicuous in its isolation.
"Dear me," observed Nancy Cartwright's mother, "doesn't Muriel know the children here? I must get Nancy to introduce her to some little boys. Nancy's getting such a little flirt. So popular . . ."
"Muriel is very shy." Mrs. Hammond's voice was, for her, quite stiff. "She really knows almost every one. But of course I like a child to be a child; and she hasn't been going about in the way these Kingsport children do."
But in spite of her implied contempt for the more sophisticated Kingsport children, Mrs. Hammond rose at the end of the dance and found another partner for her daughter. He was a small, pink person in a very short Eton jacket. He danced even worse than Muriel, and in their progress they managed to do a considerable amount of damage to the other couples. After two turns round the room he deserted her with relief. She stood by the door, a little dazed and intimidated, while far away she could see the haven of her mother's chair separated from her by a whirlpool of frothing muslin dresses.
Near the door sat poor Rosie Harpur. Everybody called her "poor Rosie" in a general conspiracy of pity. She had not yet danced one dance. Her plump hands grasped an empty programme. Her round head nodded above the frill of her white frock like a melon on a plate. She had straight, yellow hair and staring blue eyes, and reminded Muriel of her doll, Agatha, whom three years ago she had discarded without regret.
Funnily enough, Mrs. Marshall Gurney was talking about poor Rosie at that moment. Muriel could hear quite well.
"Poor Rosie, I really don't know what to do with that child. I wish that they wouldn't bring her to parties. One has to ask her of course, for the parents' sake, but it's hopeless to try to find her partners."
Muriel's orderly mind registered a new item of information. The unforgivable sin at a party was to have no partners. To sit quietly in the drawing-room at home was a virtue. The same conduct in the Kingsport Assembly Rooms was an undesirable combination of naughtiness and misfortune. In order to realize the Party in its full magnificence, one must have a full programme. All else was failure. Enjoyment of the music, the people, the prettiness—all this counted for nothing. It was not the Party.
Shame fell upon her. Taking advantage of the general confusion when the dance ended, she tried to steal unobserved from the room. Mrs. Marshall Gurney, however, saw her.
"Well, Muriel, quarrelled with your partner? How are you getting on?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Plenty of partners?"
Plenty? Oh, yes, plenty. Three was more than enough. Muriel tried to reconcile her conscience to the lie.
"Yes, thank you," she said.
The great lady nodded.
"That's right, then."
Muriel ran away.
She hadn't told a story. She hadn't. All the same, she felt as though she had.
Under the stairs she found a twilight alcove that would serve to hide her confusion. She was about to enter it when the murmur of voices told her that it was already occupied. Back to the cloak-room she ran, growing now a little desperate in her longing for solitude. A motherly old lady in black silk and bugles looked up from her seat by the fire.
"Well, dearie, have you lost something?"
Not daring to risk a second prevarication, Muriel fled.
The door of the supper-room stood open. Inside she saw a glitter of glass and silver, of quivering crimson jellies and high-piled creams, of jugs brimming with orange cup and lemonade. There were no questioning grown-ups to drive her from that sanctuary. She slipped inside and curled up on a chair near the door. From far away came sounds of music, of laughter, of occasional faint echoes of applause.
She drew her programme from its hiding-place in her sash and, with her head cocked on one side and the tip of her tongue between her lips, began to write.
"First polka . . . Godfrey.
"First Schottische . . . Billie.
"First waltz . . . Frank."
And so on, to the end of the list. When the programme was full she surveyed it with pride. Now, if anybody asked her, it could be exhibited without shame.
How pretty the tables looked! In every tumbler a Japanese serviette of coloured paper had been folded. One was like a lily, one a crown. Kneeling up on her chair she hung ecstatically over one arranged like a purple fan. A silver dish, filled with pink sweets and chocolates in silver paper, stood at her elbow. How perfectly enchanting it all was!
Nobody could mind if Muriel took one sweet. They belonged to the Party, and she was at the Party. They were there for her. And as she did not dance. . . . She used so little of the Party.
She stretched out tentative fingers and took a sweet, the smallest sweet, for she was not a greedy child. Daintily biting it, crumb by crumb with her firm little teeth, she ate every morsel with fastidious delight.
This was the Party. At last it had come to her, almost. Shielded safely from the alarming and incomprehensible regulations of the world, she could find the glorious thing that had kept her wakeful through nights of anticipation.
She did not notice when the music ceased.
Suddenly there came a sound of voices from the corridor. An invisible hand flung wide the door, and they were upon her.
The room was full of people, and they were looking at her, mothers with disapproving faces, little girls and boys with smug and round-eyed wonder, her own mother horrified, almost in tears, Mrs. Marshall Gurney, tactful and insufferable.
"Of course your little Muriel is welcome to the sweets. I dare say that she felt hungry. Children so love these almond fondants—from Fuller's."
"Oh, Muriel, howcouldyou be so naughty?"
It was dreadful to see her mother look like that.
"Muriel Hammond's been stealing all the sweets! I say, do you think she's left us any supper?"
That was Freddy Mason. He was laughing. They were all laughing. Laughing or scolding, or looking the other way and pretending not to notice.
It was more terrible than the worst of nightmares.
But the hour that followed was more terrible still. Her mother wanted to take her straight home, but Mrs. Marshall Gurney would not allow that. There she had to sit on that chair by the door all through supper. She had to try to eat the patties and cakes and jellies. She simply could not swallow.
"She's full up already," said Nancy Cartwright ruthlessly.
How could Muriel explain that it had only been one little pink sweet, the smallest of the sweets, not even the fat round one with an almond on it?
They made their escape as soon as possible, Muriel and her shamed, unhappy mother.
The drive home was almost the worst of all.
"Muriel, how could you be so naughty, dear? How could you disappoint me so?"
Fat tears ran down Muriel's cheeks, and dripped on to the collar of her scarlet cloak.
Because her mother had forgotten that she had to ride outside, half-way home, Muriel began to feel sick. But she dared say nothing, for all that she could say must be used as evidence against her.
"I never thought that my little Muriel could be so naughty and so greedy. Didn't youknowthat people at parties don't go and eat up all the supper? I don't know what Mrs. Marshall Gurney will think."
It was dreadful.
But how could she explain that it had only been the smallest sweet?
When they reached home, Connie was bobbing up and down on her bed in the firelit nursery.
"Was it lovely?" she demanded. "Was it lovely, Muriel?"
Mrs. Hammond spared Muriel the pain of a reply.
"Muriel has been a very naughty girl, Connie. And you must lie down and go to sleep and not talk to her."
To be told no more? Muriel naughty? Good Muriel? Muriel who had always been held up as a model to naughty Connie? Here indeed was a nine days' wonder.
Connie snuggled down with expectant submission in her blankets; but even after Mrs. Hammond had kissed Muriel "Good night" with grave displeasure the culprit would say nothing. She lay gazing at the flickering fire-light with wide, tear-filled eyes, and saying over and over to herself, "The Party was spoilt, The Party was spoilt."
For, in her unhappiness, this was the most poignant anguish, that by some mysterious cruelty of events Muriel had never found the Party.
On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington. Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.
"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a house on Miller's Rise."
It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady. Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her the finest home in Marshington.
Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.
"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Housesissummat."
The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him and removed it.
The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built, awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical Nonconformity.
Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives, Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage, rolling handsomely along the road.
She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.
Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead. Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:
"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide to school."
"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own opinions.
Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.
"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to which school?"
"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a petticoat for Connie.
"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."
"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.
"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.
Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney hasn't got to deal with Arthur."
Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.
"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all, there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."
Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth, leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the pale horizon.
"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.
Her sister nodded.
"Have you decided, then?"
"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."
"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the Neales?"
"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the West Riding Setons."
All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.
A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at their feet.
"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?" boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.
They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them, ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his women.
"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"
His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of his great virility.
"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said, her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many advantages."
"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."
It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.
"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she had already made up her mind.
"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I might ha' had sommat to say."
He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.
"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"
They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter. He smiled down at her with fond assurance.
"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming round t' corner."
"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"
"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.
He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of uninterrupted domesticity before him.
"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if you're a bad girl?"
"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far his threats were serious.
Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.
Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.
"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many families in Marshington as happy as we are?"
A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she reserved especially for her children.
"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."
But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything. That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well. Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson andhishappy family?"
Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little rebuffed, a little sad.
So Muriel was sent to cultivate suitable friendships under the guidance of Mrs. Hancock. Because she believed that school was a place where one learnt things, she had been pleased to go. She wanted to draw, to paint, to play the piano as no one before had played it. Most of all, she wanted to learn about Higher Mathematics and the Stars. Muriel felt rather vague about the exact meaning of Higher Mathematics. But she knew that she found in figures a sober and unfailing delight. They slid through her mind like water, separating easily into their factors, uniting quickly for multiples and additions, revealing their possibilities at a glance as a clear pool reveals the pebbles below its water. Then in figures lay a comforting assurance of absolute truth. In a world where Muriel was beginning to suspect that most conclusions were at best a compromise, she found triumphant satisfaction in the unquestionable certainty that, in all places and at all times, two and two made four.
At Marshington, Muriel's odd tastes had been discouraged. At school, she felt assured that she would reach her heart's desire. She would make wonderful friendships, win all the prizes, filling her beautiful mother's heart with pride, and Heathcroft with the glory of her triumphs.
Before a week had passed, she began to make discoveries. First, with a dull ache of disappointment, she found that school was not so different from Marshington after all; indeed, in a queer way the new place seemed to be more familiar than her home, as the type may be more familiar than the individual. At home, for instance, her mother said, "Muriel, I wish that you would keep the school-room cupboard a little tidier." At school untidiness became a crime, to be punished by order marks, to the disgrace of the whole form or bedroom. The accidental regulations of Marshington life were shaken out of their environment and transformed into infallible rules.
For Mrs. Hancock had been a wise woman when she founded her private school for girls at Hardrascliffe. Opening in business an eye to the main chance that she would have closed in private life, she realized that a head mistress has to make a choice. Generations are like divinities, and he who is not for them is against them. A school must be run either for the parents or for the children. As a business woman, Mrs. Hancock knew that the parents who pay the bills are the indispensable factor of success. She also knew that, for most of her parents, the unacknowledged aim of education was to teach their children to be a comfort to them. And how could a child be a comfort to parents whom she makes uncomfortable? Mrs. Hancock determined that no education received in her school should be responsible for this disaster.
Possibly these considerations influenced her when, during her first term, Muriel unexpectedly asked for an interview. In response to her "Come in, my dear," a small shy person stood before her, whose slight figure was tense with a tremendous effort of courage.
"Well, Muriel?" Mrs. Hancock smiled, with that famous motherly manner so much praised among her parents.
"Mrs. Hancock——" hesitated Muriel. Her temerity was born of deep desire. "You said that those of us who wanted to learn special subjects and things—extras—might come and ask you."
"Well, dear, I don't remember, though, that your mother said—— Now, let me see, where is her letter?" Mrs. Hancock searched among the orderly papers on her desk. "I don't remember that she asked for you to learn any extras, except dressmaking, perhaps, if it fitted in to your time-table."
"It wasn't Mother. It's me." Muriel groped her way to an untutored request. "I want—please, may I have lessons on Astronomy?"
"Astronomy?" Mrs. Hancock gasped. "My dear child, what are you talking about?"
Muriel, whose opinion of the wisdom of all grown-ups was sublimely high, did not take it upon herself to explain. She only protested fervently that she wanted to, always had wanted to, know more about the stars, and to do calculations and things. It must be confessed that it all sounded rather silly. The triumphant thing, the towering audacity of her desire, collapsed into the futility of ruined hopes. She felt that the tears were coming. Her unique adventure beyond habitual self-effacement was going to fail. She gazed appealingly at the head mistress.
Then, with a kindliness that Muriel found consoling even though it sounded the death knell to her hopes, Mrs. Hancock explained how there were some things that it was not suitable for girls to learn. Astronomy, the science of the stars, was a very instructive pursuit for astronomers, and professors (these latter being evidently a race apart), but it was not one of those things necessary for a girl to learn. "How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life, have, as I hope, a house to look after? If you really want to take up an extra, I will write to your mother about the dressmaking. You are quite clever with your fingers, I think, and though it is usual to begin a little later, perhaps——"
"But, but——" Muriel began. She knew now quite certainly that she had resolved to become a great mathematician. She was not quite sure what this involved, nor could she trace her resolution to the day when she first readThe Life of Mary Somervillein theLives of Fine WomenSeries. She was certain that fate held for her something more exciting than dressmaking lessons, and yet her initial failure sapped her courage. She resigned herself to the wisdom of Mrs. Hancock.
Whatever doubts Muriel might have felt about that wisdom, Mrs. Hancock had none. Acceptance of the conclusions reached by experienced and older people, Muriel was told, was one of the first lessons to be learnt by rash, unthinking youth. One day Muriel would laugh at her childish fancies. She did not want to be considered different from other girls, did she? Mrs. Hancock had noticed with regret a tendency to hold herself aloof, to be a little odd. That should not be. Muriel must learn to conform to the standards of other, wiser people. One day she would be grateful to Mrs. Hancock.
Muriel, of course, was grateful. She failed to explain to her head mistress that her aloofness was not of her own making; but she had learnt her lesson. She never again asked Mrs. Hancock for anything until she said good-bye to her on her last day at school.
And yet that interview affected her life more deeply than she might have guessed. For at the dressmaking classes, Muriel met Clare.
It happened during Muriel's second term. She sat in the big school-room, opposite to the door that led up three steps into the hall. The dressmaking class was half over, and Muriel, while her fingers carefully tacked gathered nun's veiling, allowed her thoughts to dance away as usual into a delightful day-dream. Always at this time Muriel used her leisure moments to compose the next instalment of a secret serial history of which she was the heroine. In her dreams, her failures and timidities slipped from her. She became fascinating and audacious. Mistress of life, surrounded by adoring friends, she stood triumphant, poised on the threshold of some great adventure.
At the moment, having rescued the head girl, Rosalie Crook, from a terrible death by drowning, Muriel, still pale and dripping, was received upon the storm-swept sea-shore into the magic circle of "Them," the great ones. "They" were the élite, the prefects and the games captains, the popular and famous, surrounded by the ineffable prestige of tradition-making youth. Yet Rosalie, with tear-filled eyes, bent forward to her companions. "Did you know," she cried, "that Muriel has often been lonely and neglected? Do you know that she has lived in hourly dread of croc-walks, for fear lest she should not have a partner; that she has shrunk in terror from Speech Day, in case no one should ask her to sit next them? That she has been at school two terms, but nobody has asked her to be their friend? Who will be her friend now? I, for one, would have liked that honour, girls, that honour." Her voice quivered with emotion as They, with one accord, rose to claim the friendship of Muriel Hammond. The raging wind swept their ringing voices out to sea, as . . . the door opened and Mrs. Hancock entered, followed by Clare Duquesne.
Muriel rose obediently with the rest of the class, according to the Heathcroft rule of courtesy, but afterwards the action appeared as the natural result of instinctive allegiance to the triumphant personality, not of the head mistress, but of Clare.
Clare stood at the top of the three steps, smiling down at the class, not shyly, not stupidly, but with an assured and indestructible friendliness. She was as much mistress of the situation as a famous actress who has entered amid deafening applause to take her call. Not beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. Wholesome as an apple, tranquil as a September morning, and unmysterious as a glass of water, she yet held for Muriel all mystery and all enchantment. From that moment, without calculation or condition, Muriel gave her heart to Clare Duquesne.
"Now, girls," announced Mrs. Hancock. She never called her pupils "young ladies," having informed their parents that this savoured of middle-class gentility. They, anxious to fling off the least suspicion of resemblance to the class to which they almost all belonged, had approved with emphasis. "Now, girls, I want you to make room in your class for Clare Duquesne. She has come unexpectedly in the middle of the term because her mother has been called to the South of France on account of her father's health. I want you therefore to be specially kind to her, and to give her a pleasant welcome, as I know that you will."
Having made her speech, Mrs. Hancock prepared to withdraw, but this surprising Clare forestalled her.
"Thank you immensely," she said in her clipped, precise voice, speaking as though English were a well-known yet foreign language to her. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me. But," she bubbled with laughter, the dimples quivering in her rounded cheek, "I have no talent with my needle. Félix bet me five francs that I would never learn even to sew on a button."
Mrs. Hancock, slightly surprised, but still benevolently gracious, smiled kindly. "And who is Félix, Clare?"
"Félix? Didn't you know? He's my father." She turned to the class with an engaging air of frankness. "You know, Mamma and I always call him Félix, because she hates to hear me say Mamma or Papa. It makes her feel her age, she says, and when you are on the stage it is a crime to feel your age—on account of the dear public, is it not so?"
Clare's voice deepened to the rich intonation of Sophie O'Hallaghan, the charming Irish-American actress who had married the half-brother of Lord Powell of Eppleford, and who was, incidentally, Clare's mother.
Mrs. Hancock had not intended to divulge the profession of Clare's mother. It was, she considered, the approval of the dear Bishop always in her mind, a delicate subject upon which one might have expected Clare to preserve a little reticence. Especially since Félix Duquesne had been considerate enough to write his distinguished but embarrassing French prose in—French, and was, through his family connections, of unprecedented value as a parent. But Clare knew no more of reticence than a lark on a spring morning or a kettle on the boil. She saw no reason for Mrs. Hancock's sudden stiffness, and continued to smile at her with complete urbanity.
"Well, Clare," replied the head mistress, "I think that perhaps while you are at school you had better refer to your father by his proper title. Is there an empty place, Miss Reeve, for Clare? Now girls, go on with your work. There is no reason for you to let Clare's arrival interrupt it. You can continue just the same."
She swept from the room, masking a faint uneasiness behind her gracious majesty of deportment, but for the first time questioning her wisdom in admitting this new pupil.
In the school-room, however, Providence for once had favoured Muriel. The empty chair to which Clare was conducted by Miss Reeve was next to hers, and when Clare turned towards her with that dazzling smile Muriel knew, for all Mrs. Hancock might say, that things would never be quite the same for her again.
The term after Clare's arrival Muriel lay in bed staring at the faint blur against the wall where Clare lay asleep. The room was dark and still, but near the pale translucent panels of the window the curtains stirred as though moved by the breathing of the seven girls.
The miracle that had led Clare to her on that first day still endured. Clare and Muriel slept in the same room. Of course that did not mean that they were friends. Clare had immediately marched with her cheerful serenity right into the most exclusive circle of the elect, of "Them." But to see Clare was an education; to speak with her a high adventure. To sleep in the same room with her, to see her bath-salts and her powder, only permitted at Heathcroft because she was her father's daughter, to touch her underclothing, embroidered in a Belgian convent—this was to live perpetually on the threshold of a marvellous world, removed by millions of miles from school or Marshington.
She was wonderful, this Clare Duquesne. At night Muriel would raise her head above the bed-clothes and try to tell herself that this was really true, that the world was large enough to hold people so different as Clare and Muriel. Muriel, for all her brave dreams, knew herself to be of those whose eager, clutching hands let slip prizes, friendships and achievement, as quickly as they grasp them. But Clare, lazy, careless, happy Clare, laughed when she made mistakes, was amused by her arithmetic, hopelessly confused by premature acquaintance with the metric system, cared nothing for her erratic spelling, and swung up her average of weekly marks by her staggering proficiency in languages. Her supremacy at singing and dancing cost her no more effort than the wearing of fine raiment cost the lilies of the field. Her French and German were more fluent than her clipped, accentuated English. She could swear in Spanish, order a dinner in Dutch, and write a love-letter in Italian. Impish as a street-urchin, sophisticated as a cocktail, fearless of life, loved by it and its lover, judging no man as no man judged her, she dazzled Heathcroft as a glorious, golden creature not wrought from common clay.
Muriel's heart went out to her in a great wave of adoration. Passionate emotion, stronger than any she had known, even on the hushed silver morning of her First Communion, filled her small body like a mighty wind.
"Oh, I would die for her," she breathed ecstatically. "O God, if you've planned anything awful to happen to Clare, let it happen to me instead. I could bear anything for her, even if she never knew how I cared. But do let me know her. Let me get to be her friend!"
Forlorn hope, thought Muriel next day, preparing reluctantly for the school walk. As usual the time was trapping her, and she had no partner. Life at Heathcroft being organized upon the partner system, this was Muriel's daily and hourly terror—to have no one to walk with, to be driven as an enforced intruder to walk with the last couple in the crocodile, to feel the checked resentment of the juniors upon whom she was thus imposed.
She stood in front of the small glass, pushing the elastic of her sailor hat beneath her long, brown plait, and thinking, "Well, there's one thing about Connie coming here next term. I'll never have to walk alone again." Which just showed how little at this time she knew her Connie.
Then she heard Clare's voice.
"Will you not walk with me, Muriel?"
Muriel gasped. She could not believe that Clare had spoken. But there was no other Muriel in the school, and no other voice like Clare's. Yet, Clare, who could walk with "Them," surely she would never ask Muriel? They never walked with those who were not of the elect. They would not so imperil their dignity. But, of course, Clare never bothered about her dignity. Years afterwards, when Muriel referred to "Them," Clare asked with interest, "Who were 'They'?" But when Muriel said, "Oh, you, and Rosalie and Cathie and Patricia. All the people who counted." Then Clare laughed. "Oh, was I one? How perfectly thrilling! And I never knew. What things we miss!" But now Muriel only blushed and asked: "I beg your pardon?"
"I haven't got a partner," Clare said. "Will you walk with me?"
Muriel, blushing and palpitating, answered, "If you like." Always, when she was profoundly moved, she became a little stiffer and more prim, not gauche, but prim, like a Victorian teapot, or a bit of sprigged muslin.
Clare never noticed. She was arranging her blue serge coat with the air of a mannequin trying on a Paris model.
"Would you mind holding my collar straight?" she asked.
They took their place in the crocodile.
All the way along the Esplanade Clare chattered. Muriel at the time was too much bewildered by her strange good fortune to remember everything that Clare was saying, but she retained a glowing impression of Clare skating outside a gay hotel in Switzerland, of Clare in a box at the Comédie Française, listening to one of her father's plays, of Clare crossing the Irish Channel in a ship, and being sea-sick all the way. It was perhaps the most unquestionable proof of Clare's attraction that even her sea-sickness became distinguished.
Before Muriel had said three words, the girls had reached the cliffs beyond the Esplanade. Beyond the asphalt and clipped box hedges of the Promenade, the cliffs sprawled untidily. They were not even real cliffs, but ragged slopes, overgrown with coarse grass and tamarisk, sprinkled with yarrow, and patched with stunted bushes of rusty gorse. Far below the tide crept up in circles, flat as paper, and washed back, dragging with white sickles at the shelving sand. The place had a deserted look, and Clare was bored.
"What shall we do now?" she asked obligingly, when Miss Reeve gave the order to break rank.
She waited for Muriel to entertain her.
"Oh, I'll do anythingyoulike," said Muriel fatally.
They strolled along the winding path. Abruptly to their right rose a steep rock, witness of the time before the landslide, when the cliffs had been cliffs. For fifteen feet it frowned above the way to the sands. Clare stood still, gazing at it in contemplative silence. Then she had an idea.
"Muriel," she suggested, "do let's see if we can climb that rock. No one can see us now. Miss Reeves's miles away. I'll go first. Come on, do."
Clare was like that. She never noticed natural things except as a potential background to her own action. But, having decided to act, she was prompt. She tore off her gloves and faced the rock. Muriel stood, suddenly smitten dumb by an agony of apprehension. But without looking back, Clare began to climb. Agile as a cat, she scrambled with firm hand-grips and burrowing toes, clutching at the sheer side of the rock and chuckling to herself.
"Clare! You can't. You'll fall. You'll be killed."
Muriel meant to cry out all these things, but somehow she said nothing. She only stood at the bottom of the rock while a sick numbness robbed her of her strength.
Then Clare was up. She swung herself easily on to the summit of the rock. Her figure was outlined against a windy sky. Her laughing face looked down at Muriel.
"It's glorious up here," she called. "But what a wind! I say, do come on, Muriel!"
Before she had thought what she was doing, Muriel began to climb.
"Whatever I do, I mustn't funk in front of Clare," she thought.
Her fingers tore at the sharp ledges of the rock. Her toes slipped on the uneven surface. She grasped at a brittle root of broom. It came away in her hand. She almost fell. Unused to climbing, blind with fear, she hardly saw the places for her hands to hold.
Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.
"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up and tell me where it's going."
But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.
Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on the narrow ledge.
She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage.
Fear swooped upon her, tore her fingers from the rock, poured drops of perspiration on her forehead.
"Clare!" shrieked a voice that was not surely hers. "Clare, I'm slipping!"
Clare's round face appeared between the edge of the rock and the reeling sky. Clare's voice remarked imperturbably: "Oh, well, if you do fall you haven't far to go, so it won't hurt. But hold on a bit and I'll give you a hand."
She came over the edge again. Her solid, shapely ankles were on a level with Muriel's hat, her eyes. A firm hand reached down for Muriel's clutching, sticky one.
"That's all right. Come along. You've got a great dab of mud on your nose, Muriel."
She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to notice even Clare.
She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant. Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.
"Muriel"—when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and golden—"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"
Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness. But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She continued meditatively:
"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of them have hadaffaires de cœur? But very few!"
"Affaires de cœur?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington phraseology assisted her.De Cœur—of the heart. Of course.
"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"
"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and——"
"But were you inlovewith them?"
"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"
"Then, how?"
"Dear me,chérie, have you never observed that I am very attractive?"
Her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous.
"What a solemn face! Muriel, do you ever smile? No, no, I shan't fall in love for years. Perhaps never. But crowds and crowds of men will fall in love with me. That's why Félix decided that I had better come to school. 'They're beginning too soon,' he said. 'You mustn't cut out your mother yet, child.' And he sighed. He's terribly sentimental, my Félix. I'm sure I didn't mind. On the whole it bores me. Men in love are so terribly alike, I think, don't you?"
Fascinating, incredible conversation!
"Of course, really, I'm rather grateful to Félix," Clare continued sagely. "It's no use getting it all over too soon. And of course one day one might go too far, and really I don't want to marry yet, however rich he was. What do you think?"
"But, Clare, do—do men fall in love withallwomen if we let them?"
"Why, of course. Else why be a woman?" Clare responded with tranquility. "Of course there are some, poor dears, like Miss Reeve, I suppose, and most schoolmistresses, and missionaries, and things, but they are hardlywomen, are they?"
"I—I don't know. I——"
Somehow, it must be confessed, Muriel had always thought of these unfortunates as women. That merely showed her terrible simplicity. With a sigh, she pondered over her ignorance of Life.
"Oh, Muriel, do look at Miss Reeve coming up the path!" Clare darted forward and peered over the edge of the rock. The young lady from the Swiss hotel, the sophisticated philosopher on Life, had vanished. The Irish urchin, impish, grinning, disreputable, took her place. "Do just watch her hat bobbing along the path! It's as round as a soup plate. Why do people wear such hats? It should be forbidden by law. Here, hand me one of those little stones. Quick!"
Unthinking and hypnotized, Muriel obeyed.
Plop! went the stone, right into the middle of Miss Reeve's round hat. Clare was back behind the rock.
"Oh, Clare, she'll see you," agonized Muriel.
Clare chuckled. "She won't. I never get found out."
But for once she was wrong. Her crimson scarf, blown by the wind, waved a bright pennon from the rock. Nobody else at Heathcroft wore such a scarf.
"Clare Duquesne, Clare Duquesne!" Miss Reeve's shrill voice was ripped to ribbons of sound by the wind.
Clare leant down, smiling benignly upon the furious lady on the path. "You called?" she inquired politely.
"What are you doing there? Come down! How dare you?"
"How dare I come down? Well, it does look rather steep. I'm not sure that we canthisway," pondered Clare, her head on one side.
"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. Who threw that stone?"
"The stone?" Clare's innocent voice repeated, but Muriel knew that the situation was growing serious. With the ardent heroism of a martyr, she flung herself into the breach—in other words, her head appeared over the rock by the side of Clare. Desire to serve her beloved had vanquished fear, hesitation and conscientiousness.
"It wasn't Clare's fault, Miss Reeve," she called. "We were trying to get to the other path, and—and I slipped, and that set some stones rattling down, and Clare came to stop me falling, and I do hope that nobody's hurt."
Relieved to find that this was not a situation requiring to be dealt with by a major punishment, an embarrassing ordeal at the best of times, devastating when the culprit was Clare Duquesne, Miss Reeve contented herself with a haughty stare.
"I do not think that you two have been behaving very nicely. It is not ladylike to climb these high rocks, and I am sure that it is dangerous. Please come down at once, both of you."
It was impossible to scold two heads detached from bodies, appearing from the sky like cherubs from a Christmas card cloud. Muriel and Clare withdrew.
Safely back behind the rock, Clare chuckled delightedly.
"I didn't know you had it in you, Muriel; that was quite magnificent."
But Muriel, to her own surprise as much as Clare's, suddenly began to cry, aloud and helplessly, like a little child.
"But, Muriel,chérie, what is the matter?"
"I don't know. I'm so sorry to be so stupid. I think—I—you know, I didn't mean to tell a lie. It just came out."
"You? What? Is that all? But you didn't. Weweregoing to the lower path—sometime. And that stonewasloosened with your foot. And you did slip. That wasn't a lie. It was a stroke of genius."