They stood awhile, enjoying it.

Suddenly Clare shivered. Alwynne became instantly and anxiously practical.

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

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

"Alwynne--come to me for Christmas?"

Alwynne flung out her hands.

"Clare! I mustn't."

"Alwynne--come to me for Christmas?"

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

"I expect so."

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

"Come to dinner?"

"I can't."

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

Alwynne caught her hand, as it leaned on the bal.u.s.trade. In the other the candle shook a little.

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

Clare looked down at her.

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

"Say good-night to me," demanded Alwynne. "Nicely, Clare, very nicely!

It's Christmas-time."

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

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

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

Alwynne walked home on air.

CHAPTER X

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

Alwynne, who from the first had been fretted, though but half consciously, by the faintly repellent manner a.s.sumed by each of the two women at mention of the other, was soothed by Elsbeth's advances.

Elsbeth was a dear, after all: there was no one quite like Elsbeth....

For all her obstinacies and unreasonableness, she never really failed you.... She could be depended on to love you at your worst; you could quarrel with her with never a fear of real alienation.... Elsbeth might not be exciting, but she was as indispensable as food.... She was, after all, the starting-point and ultimate goal of all one's adventures....

Clare would lose some of her delightfulness, if there were no Elsbeth to whom to en-sky on her.... Alwynne did not see what she wanted with a mother, so long as she had Elsbeth.... She had said so once to her aunt and had never guessed, as she was chidden for sacrilege against the picture over her bed, at the exquisite pleasure she had given.

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

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

Clare made the mistake of all tortuous intelligences in being unable to credit appearances. She was being, as usual, unjust to Elsbeth, Alwynne, and the world at large. She could not believe in simplicity combined with brains: a simple soul was necessarily a simpleton in her eyes.

Because her own words were ever two edged, her meaning flavoured by reservations and implications, she literally could not accept a speech as expressing no more and no less than its plain dictionary meaning.

With any one of her own type of mind she was at her ease; her mistake lay in not recognising how rare that type was; in detecting subtleties where none existed, and wasting hint, suggestion and innuendo on minds that drove as heartily through them as an ox walks through a spider thread stretched from post to gatepost of the meadow he means to enter.

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

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

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

And there was the case of Alwynne to be considered. She had been excessively nice to Alwynne lately, had, in fact, allowed her, for a moment, to see how necessary she was becoming to Clare.... That was a mistake.... One must never let people feel secure of their hold upon one.... That little speech of Alwynne's last night, mocking and tender--she had thrilled to it at the time--did it not, ever so faintly, shadow forth a readjustment of att.i.tudes, sound a note of equality?

That, though it had pleased her at the moment, must not be.... Alwynne must be checked.... It would not hurt her.... She was subdued as easily as a child, and as easily revived.... She never bore malice. Clare, who never forgot or forgave a pinp.r.i.c.k, had often marvelled at her, could even now scarcely believe in the spontaneity of her good temper. But Alwynne, certainly, had been going too far lately; was absurdly popular in the school; could, Clare guessed, have annexed more than one of her own special worshippers, if she had chosen. Louise, she knew, confided in her: she thought with a double stab of jealousy of the scene she had witnessed but a few days since; of Louise, fresh from her commendations, from her kiss even (that rare impulse, regretted as soon as gratified), at rest in Alwynne's arms. She recalled Louise's startled look and Alwynne's contrasting serenity. She had not enquired what it all meant--that was not her way. But she had not forgotten it. Alwynne was hers. Louise was hers. But they had nothing to seek from one another!

Alwynne, undoubtedly, as the elder, the dearer, required the check; not little Louise. Louise's letter had genuinely touched her--she thought she would go and see the child, spend her Christmas Day charitably, in amusing her. And if (in after-thought) Alwynne came round in the afternoon, and found her gone--it couldn't be helped! It wouldn't hurt Alwynne to be disappointed.... It wouldn't hurt Alwynne to spend a day of undiluted Elsbeth.... And Louise would be amusingly charmed to see Clare.... It was pleasant to please a child--a clever, appreciative child.... She would go round directly after lunch.... The maid should go home for the afternoon.... She laughed mischievously as she imagined the blankness of Alwynne's face, when she should be confronted by silence and a closed door. Poor, dear Alwynne! Well, it wouldn't hurt her.

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

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

It was a cold, still day, and Alwynne shivered a little, and drew her furs closely about her, as she stood outside the door of Clare's flat.

She had rung, but the maid was usually slow in answering.

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

There was no answer.

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

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

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

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

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