Clare ran her finger along the t.i.tles.

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

Louise protested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clare went on.

"I detest trash--and there's a good deal, even in a Carnegie collection.

There's no need for you to dull your imagination on melodrama like--what was it?"

"What, Miss Hartill?"

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

Louise opened her eyes.

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

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

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

"Well?" said Clare impatiently.

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

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

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

"Perhaps," said Clare.

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

"Miss Hartill--you believe in G.o.d?"

Clare looked at her, weighing her.

Louise spoke again; her voice had grown curiously apprehensive.

"Miss Hartill--you do believe in G.o.d?"

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

Louise stared at her appalled.

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

They sat a long while in silence.

Clare felt uncomfortable. She had not intended to express any opinion, to let her own att.i.tude to religion appear. But Louise, with her sudden question, had forced one from her. After all, if Louise had begun to doubt and to inquire, no silence on Clare's part would stop her....

Every girl went through the phase--with Louise it had begun early, that was all.... Yet in her heart she knew that Louise, with her already overworked mind, should have been kept from the mental distress of religious doubt.... She knew that for some years she could have been so kept; that, as the mouth can eat what the body will not absorb, so, though her intelligence might have a.s.similated all the books she chose to read, her soul need not necessarily have been disturbed by them. Her acquired knowledge that the world is round need not have jostled her rule of thumb conviction that it is flat. Her interest in 'ologies and 'osophies could have lived comfortably enough, with her child's belief in four angels round her head, for another two or three years--strengthening, maturing years.

Clare knew her power. At a soothing word from her, Louise would have shelved her speculations, or at least have continued them impersonally.

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

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

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

It bored her to repeat a triumph.

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

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

The school had been endowed, some years before, under the will of a former pupil, with a scholarship, a valuable one, ensuring not only the freedom of the school, but substantial help in the subsequent college career, that the winning of it entailed.

The rules were strict. The papers were set and corrected by persons chosen by the trustees of the bequest. The scholarship was open to the school, but no girl over seventeen might enter: and though an unsuccessful candidate might compete a second time, she must gain a percentage of marks in the first attempt. Total failure debarred her from making a second. This last rule limited in effect, the entries to members of the Sixths and Fifths, for the scholarship was too valuable for a chance of it to be risked through insufficient training. The standard, too, was high, and the rules so strictly enforced that withheld the grant if it were not attained, that Miss Marsham was accustomed to make special arrangements for those competing. They were called the "Scholarship Cla.s.s," and had certain privileges and a great amount of extra work. To most of them the particular privilege that compensated for six months' drudgery was the fact that they were almost entirely under Miss Hartill's supervision. She considered their training her special task and spared neither time nor pains. She loved the business. She understood the art of rousing their excitement, pitting ambition against ambition. She worked them like slaves, weeding out remorselessly the useless members. Theoretically all had the right to enter; but none remained against Miss Hartill's wishes.

In spite of the work, the members of the Scholarship Cla.s.s had an envied position in the school. Clare saw to that. Without attackable bias, she differentiated subtly between them and the majority. Each of the group was given to understand, without words, impalpably, yet very definitely, that if Miss Hartill, the inexorable, could have a preference, one had but to look in the gla.s.s to find it; and that to outstrip the rest of the cla.s.s, to be listed an easy first, would be the most exquisite justification that preference could have. And as the type of girl who succ.u.mbed the most surely to Clare's witchcraft was also usually of the type to whom intellectual work was in itself attractive, it was not surprising if her favourite cla.s.s were a hot-bed of emulation and enthusiasm--enthusiasm that was justified of its origin, for not even Henrietta Vigers denied that Clare contributed her full share to the earning of the scholarship, Miss Marsham, towards the end of the spring, was wont to declare, with her usual kindly concern, that she was thankful that the examination was not an annual affair.... Their good Miss Hartill was too anxious, too conscientious.... Miss Marsham must really forbid her to make herself ill. And, indeed, when the cla.s.s was a large one, Clare was as reckless of her own strength as of that of her pupils, and suffered more from its expenditure. Where they were responsible, each for herself, Clare toiled early and late for them all.

She fed them, moreover, from her own resources of energy, was entirely willing to devitalise herself on their behalf. The strain once over, she appeared slack, gaunt, debilitated. She had, however, her own methods of recuperation. Her ends gained, she could take back what she had given--take back more than ever she had given. Moreover, the supply of child-life never slackened. Old scholars might go--but ever the new ones came. Was it not Clare who gave the school its latter-day reputation? By the end of the summer term Clare would be once more in excellent condition.

When the promotion of Louise to the Upper School had first been mooted, Miss Hartill had not forgotten that the scholarship examination was once more drawing near. She saw no reason why Louise should not compete. That Louise, the whilom dullard of the Third, the youngest girl in the Upper School, should s.n.a.t.c.h the prize from the expectants of the Sixths and Fifths, would be an effective retort on Clare's critics, would redound very pleasantly to Clare's credit.

If she let the opportunity pa.s.s, Louise must wait two years: at thirteen it would be a triumph for Louise and Clare; at fifteen there would be nothing notable in her success. And the baby herself would be delighted.

Clare was already sufficiently taken with Louise to enjoy the antic.i.p.ation of her delight.