CHAPTER IV

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

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

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

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

Alwynne was, to do her justice, extremely fond of her aunt. Till the advent of Clare Hartill, Elsbeth had been the pole-star of her world.

All the more disconcerting of Elsbeth, receiver of confidences, therefore, to be so entirely uninterested in the comet that was deflecting Alwynne from her accustomed orbit.

She wondered occasionally what her aunt's history had been. Elsbeth was reticent: never a woman of reminiscences. Her relations were distant ones, whom she rarely mentioned and apparently more rarely missed.

Alwynne was the more surprised one breakfast, when, retailing the school's latest scandal, she was interrupted by an exclamation of pleasure.

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

Alwynne wrinkled her brows.

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

"Yes. The youngest, Rosemary, only died last year. Don't you remember?

They've lived abroad for years on account of her health, and her son Roger always went out to her for his holidays."

"Roger? Is that the velveteen boy in the big alb.u.m?"

Elsbeth laughed.

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

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

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

"Besides what?"

Elsbeth did not seem to hear.

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

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

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

Why couldn't Elsbeth go alone? Elsbeth couldn't expect her to go and stay with utter strangers. She hated strangers. Besides, there was Clare. (It was "Clare" and "Alwynne" by that time.) She and Clare had planned out every day of the holidays. Everything fixed. She really couldn't ask Clare to upset all her arrangements. It wouldn't be fair.

Awfully sorry, of course, but why couldn't Alwynne's dear Elsbeth go by herself? She, Alwynne, could keep house. Oh, perfectly well! She wasn't a fool! She wouldn't dream of spoiling Elsbeth's holiday, but Elsbeth must see that there was no need for Alwynne to share it.

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

Alwynne snorted.

She argued the matter mercilessly, length, breadth, depth and back again, and ended, as Elsbeth knew she would, by getting her own way. But Elsbeth did not go to Dene by herself. There she was mulish. Go visiting and leave the housekeeping to Alwynne's tender mercies? Heaven forbid!

There was more in housekeeping than dusting a bedroom, making peppermint creams, or wasting four eggs on an omelet.

So Alwynne spent her pleasant holidays in and out of Clare Hartill's pocket and Elsbeth stayed at home. But Elsbeth had learned her lesson.

It was many a long day before she again suggested a visit to Dene.

CHAPTER V

One of Alwynne's duties was the conduct of a small "extra" cla.s.s, consisting of girls, who, for reasons of stupidity, ill-health or defective grounding, fell too far below the average of knowledge in their respective cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s 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 att.i.tude was an incentive to real effort. Like Clare, she did not suffer fools gladly, but unlike Clare, she had not the moral courage to be ruthless. Stupidity seemed as terrible to her as physical deformity; she treated it with the same touch of motherliness, the same instinctive desire to spare it realisation of its own unsightliness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the lean years went by. Then came vehement Alwynne--no schoolgirl--yet more youthful and ingenuous than any mistress had right to be, loving with all the discrimination of a fine mind, and all the ardour of an affectionate child. Here was no question of a fleeting devotion that must end as the schooldays ended. Here was love for Clare at last, a widow's cruse to last her for all time. Clare thanked the G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. She had been a rebel in her own time, and had ever a thrill of sympathy for the mutinies she relentlessly crushed.

War, personal war, delighted her; she was a mistress of tactics, and the certainty of eventual victory gave zest to her campaigns. She did not realise that the strain upon her childish opponents was very great. The finer, the more sensitive the character, the more complete the eventual defeat, the more permanent its effects. Clare was pitiless after victory: not till then did she examine into the nature thus enslaved, seldom did she find it worth the trouble of the skirmish. In most cases she gave semi-liberty; enough of smiles to keep the children feverishly at work to please her (the average of achievement in her cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s was a certain Louise Denny. She was thirteen--nearly three years below the average of the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses--(the possibility of her occasional appearance, book in hand, was responsible for the school's un-English proficiency in hemming, darning and kindred mysteries), to read aloud to the children carefully edited excerpts from Poe's _Tales_, had forgotten her copy and had been shyly offered another, private property from Louise Denny's desk. Thereon must Alwynne, for a week or two, resign perforce her Lower Third literature cla.s.ses to Clare, intent on her blue rose. Louise's compositions had been read--Clare and Alwynne spent a long evening over them, weighing, comparing, discussing. Clare could be exquisitely tender, could keep all-patient vigil over an unfolding mind, provided that the calyx concealed a rare enough blossom. Louise was encouraged, her shyness swept aside, her ideas developed, her knowledge tested; she was fed, too, cautiously, on richer and richer food--stray evening lectures, picture galleries with Alwynne, headiest of cicerones; the freedom of the library and long talks with Clare. Finally Clare, bearing down all opposition, transplanted her to the Lower Fifth, containing at that time some brilliantly clever girls. Louise justified her by speedily capturing, and doggedly retaining, the highest place in the cla.s.s.

Clare was delighted. Her critics--there were some mistresses who vaguely disapproved of the experiment--were refuted, and the cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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.