Clare laughed shrilly.

"I shall do exactly what your Mr. Lumsden wants to do. I'm not poor. I can give her a home as well as he, if you are so anxious to get her off your hands. She seems to be going begging."

Elsbeth rose.

"I'm wasting time. I'll say good-bye, Miss Hartill. I shouldn't have come. But it was for Alwynne's sake. I hoped to touch you, to persuade you to forego, for her future's sake, for the sake of her ultimate happiness, the hold you have on her. I sympathised with you. I knew it would be a sacrifice. I knew, because I made the same sacrifice two years ago, when you first began to attract her. I thought you would develop her. I am not a clever woman, Miss Hartill, and you are; so I made no stand against you; but it was hard for me. Alwynne did not make it easier. She was not always kind. But hearing you to-day, I understand. You made Alwynne suffer more than I guessed. I don't blame her if sometimes it recoiled on me. You were always cruel. I remember you. The others were always snails for you to throw salt upon. I might have known you'd never change. Do you think I don't know your effect on the children at the school? Oh, you are a good teacher! You force them successfully; but all the while you eat up their souls. Sneer if you like! Have you forgotten Louise? I tell you, it's vampirism. And now you are to take Alwynne. And when she is squeezed dry and flung aside, who will the next victim be? And the next, and the next? You grow greedier as you grow older, I suppose. One day you'll be old. What will you do when your glamour's gone? I tell you, Clare Hartill, you'll die of hunger in the end."

The small relentless voice ceased. There was a silence. Clare, who had remained quiescent for sheer amaze at the attack from so negligible a quarter, pulled herself together. Rather white, she began to clap her hands gently, as a critic surprised into applause.

"My dear woman, you're magnificent! Really you are. I never thought you had it in you. The Law and the Prophets incarnate. How Alwynne will laugh when I tell her. I wish she'd been here. You ought to be on the stage, you know, or in the pulpit. Have you quite finished? Quite? Do unburden yourself completely, you won't be given another opportunity.

You understand that, of course? If Alwynne wishes to see you, she must make arrangements to do so elsewhere. That is the one condition I shall make. This is the way out."

Elsbeth rose. She was furious with herself that her lips must tremble and her hands shake, as she gathered up scarf and reticule; but she followed her hostess with sufficient dignity.

Clare flung open the door with a gesture a shade too ample.

Elsbeth laughed tremulously as she pa.s.sed her and crossed the hall.

"Oh, you are not altered," she said, and bent to fumble at the latch.

"But it doesn't impress me. You've not won yet. You count too much on Alwynne. And you have still to reckon with Mr. Lumsden."

"And his three acres and a cow!" Clare watched her contemptuously. It did not seem worth while to keep her dignity with Elsbeth. She felt that it would be a relief to lose her temper completely, to override this opponent by sheer, crude invective. She let herself go.

"What a fool you are! Do you flatter yourself that you understand Alwynne? Go back to your Coelebs and tell him from Alwynne--I tell you I speak for Alwynne--that he's wasting his time. Let him take his goods to another market: Alwynne won't buy. I've other plans for her--she has other plans for yourself. She doesn't want a husband. She doesn't want a home. She doesn't want children. She wants me--and all I stand for. She wants to use her talents--and she shall--through me. She wants success--she shall have it--through me. She wants friendship--can't I give it? Affection? Haven't I given it? What more can she want? A home?

I'm well off. A brat to play with? Let her adopt one, and I'll house it. I'll give her anything she wants. What more can your man offer? But I won't let her go. I tell you, we suffice each other. Thank G.o.d, there are some women who can do without marriage--marriage--marriage!"

Elsbeth, as if she heard nothing, tugged at the catch. The door swung open, and she stepped quietly into the sunny pa.s.sage. Then she turned to Clare, a grey, angry shadow in the dusk of the hall.

"Poor Clare!" she said. "Are the grapes very sour?"

She pulled-to the door behind her.

Later in the evening, as she sat, flushed, tremulous, utterly joyful over Roger's telegram, she considered the manner of her exit and was shocked at herself.

"I don't know what possessed me," said Elsbeth apologetically. "And if I had only known. It was unladylike--it was unwomanly--it was unchristian." She shook her head at her mild self in the gla.s.s. "But she made me so angry! If I'd only known that this was coming!" She fingered the pink envelope. "She'll think I knew. She'll always think I knew. And then to say what I did? It was unpardonable.

"But I was right, all the same," cried Elsbeth incorrigibly; "and I don't care. I'm glad I said it--I'm glad--I'm glad!"

CHAPTER XLVII

The sun slid over the edge of the sweating earth. Its red-hot plunge into the sea behind the hills was almost audible. The black cloud, fuming up from its setting-place, was as the steam of the collision. In great clots and coils it rolled upwards, spreading as it thinned, till it was a pall of vapour that sheeted all the lemon-coloured sky.

Suddenly a cold wind sprang up, raced down the silent heavens, and, by way of Eastern Europe and the North Sea and the straight Roman road that drives down England, tore along the Utterbridge byways, and into the open window of Clare Hartill's parlour. A touch of its cold lips on her hair, and brow, and breast, and it was out again, driving the dust before it.

Clare shivered. She was very tired of waiting.... It was inexplicable that Alwynne should be late; but Clare with a half laugh, promised Alwynne to forego her scolding if she would but come.... The dusk and the wind and the silence were getting on her nerves.... The tick of the hall clock, for instance, was aggressive, insistent, maddening in its precise monotony.... Oh, unbearable! With a gesture that was hysterical in its abandonment, Clare rose suddenly and flung into the hall, plucked open the clock door, and removed the pendulum. The released wire waggled foolishly into silence, like an idiot, tongue a-loll.

As the quiet hunted Clare into her sitting-room again, a little silver wire flickered down the sky like a scared snake, and for an instant she saw herself reflected in a convex mirror, a Clare bleached and shining and askew, like a St. Michael in a stained-gla.s.s window. Dusk and the thunder followed. The storm was beginning.

Clare moved about restlessly. She disliked storms. Her eyes ached, and she was cramped with waiting, and Alwynne had not come. She would, of course.... That woman had detained her, purposely, no doubt, and now there was the storm to delay her.... But Alwynne would come.... Clare smiled securely.

Again the lightning whipped across the heavens, and thunder roared in its wake.

Clare went to the window and watched the sky. The pane of gla.s.s was grateful to her hot forehead. She was too tired, too bruised and shaken by her own recent anger to arrange her thoughts, to pose for the moment, even to herself--of all audiences the most critical. The interview with Elsbeth Loveday rehea.r.s.ed itself incessantly, p.r.i.c.king, probing, bludgeoning, in crescendo of intonation, innuendo, open attack, to the final triumphant insult. Triumphant, because true. The insult could cut through her defences and strike at her very self, because it was true.

Her pride agonised. She had thought herself shrouded, invulnerable. And yet Elsbeth, whom of all women she had reckoned negligible, had guessed, had pitied.... Yet even her enemy was forgotten, as she sat and shuddered at the wound dealt; plucked and shrank, and plucked again at the arrow-tip rankling in it still.

The hours had pa.s.sed in an evil mazement. But Alwynne was to come....

She thought of Alwynne with shifting pa.s.sions of relief and longing and sheer crude l.u.s.t for revenge. Alwynne would come.... Alwynne would soothe and comfort, intuitive, never waiting for the cry for help.

And Alwynne should pay.... Oho! Alwynne should pay Elsbeth's debts ...

should wince, and shrink, and whiten. _Scientific vivisection of one nerve._ Wait a little, Alwynne!--Ah, Alwynne--the dearest--the beloved--the light and laughter of one's life.... What fool is whispering that Clare can hurt her?... Alwynne shall see when she comes, who loves her.... There shall be a welcome, the royalest welcome she has ever had.... For what in all the world has Clare but Alwynne, and having Alwynne, has not Clare the world?

Ah, well.... Perhaps, she had not been always good to Alwynne....

To-day, for instance, she might have been kinder.... But Alwynne always understood.... That was the comfort of Alwynne, that she always understood.... Why didn't she come? Wasn't there an echo of a step far down the street?

When Alwynne came, they would make plans.... It would not be easy to wean the girl from her aunt, at least while they lived in the same town, the same country.... But one could travel, could take Alwynne quite away.... Italy.... Greece.... Egypt.... they would go round the world together, shake off the school and all it stood for.... In a new world, begin a new life.... Why not? She had money enough to burn.... It would not be hard to persuade Alwynne, adventurous, infatuate.... Once gone, Elsbeth might whistle for her niece.... They would talk it over to-morrow ... to-night ... as soon as Alwynne came....

Was that thunder or a knocking? Rat-tat! Rat-tat! She had not been mistaken after all.... Alwynne! Alwynne!

And Clare, with an appearance on her that even Alwynne had never seen, ran like a child to open the door.

On the threshold stood a messenger boy, proffering a telegram. She took it.

"Any answer, Miss!" for she had offered to close the door.

"Oh, of course!" She frowned, and pulled open the flimsy sheet.

The boy waited. He peered past her, interested in the odd pictures on the walls, and the glimpse of a table luxuriously set. The minutes sped.

He had soon seen all he could, and began to fidget.

"Any answer, Miss?" he hinted.

"Oh!" said Clare vaguely. "Answer? No. No answer. No answer at all."

The boy knuckled his forehead and clattered away down the staircase.

Mechanically Clare shut the door, locked and bolted it and secured it with the chain. Then she returned to the sitting-room and crossed to her former station by the open window.

The storm was ending in a downpour of furious tropical rain. It beat in unheeded upon her thin dress and bare neck and the open telegram in her hands, as, with lips parted and a faint, puzzled pucker between her brows, she conned over the message--

_I cannot come to-night.--I have gone to Dene. I am going to marry Roger._

She read it and re-read, twisting it this way and that, for it was barely visible in the wet dusk. It seemed an eternity before its full meaning dawned upon her. And yet she had known all there was to know when she confronted the messenger boy (Oh, Destiny is up to date) and took her sentence from his grimy hand.

_I am going to marry Roger._