Regiment Of Women Part 24

Henrietta grew pink.

"No. Cynthia herself. She--er--offered me a slice. She had the impertinence--the entirely American impertinence--to come to my room--after midnight--to borrow a tooth-gla.s.s. To eat ices in. It appeared that they were short of receptacles."

"Ices?" came the chorus.

"Her mother provided them, I believe. In a pail," said Henrietta stiffly.

"Did you lend the tooth-gla.s.s?" asked Clare.

Henrietta coughed.

"It was difficult to refuse. She had bare feet. I did not wish her to catch cold."

Clare turned away abruptly. Her shoulders shook.

"I do not wish to be unjust. I do not think she was intentionally insubordinate." Henrietta fingered one of the tall pink roses that had appeared on her desk that morning. "I believe she meant well."

"She was a dear!" said the little gym mistress.

"She was an impossible young woman," retorted Henrietta with spirit. "At the same time----"

"At the same time?" Clare spoke with unusual friendliness.

"She certainly had a way with her," said Henrietta.

CHAPTER XV

Cynthia Griffiths had set a fashion.

Her kewpie hair-ribbons and abbreviated blouses were an unofficial uniform long after she had ceased, probably, to know that such articles of dress existed. Her slang phrases incorporated themselves in the school vocabulary. Her deeds of derring-do were imitated from afar. To have been on intimate terms with her would have been an impressive distinction, had not every member of the school been able to lay claim to it. For Cynthia's jolly temperament laughed at schoolgirl etiquette, could never be brought to realise the existence of caste and clique. She darted into their lives and out again, like a dragon-fly through a cloud of gnats. It was not strange that her beauty, her prodigality, in conjunction with the all-excusing fact of her nationality, should have attracted the weather-c.o.c.k enthusiasm of her companions: should have made her, short as her career had been, the rage.

Yet the one person on whom that career was to have a lasting influence was, to all appearance, the least affected by it.

Cynthia and Louise Denny were cla.s.s-mates, for Clare, amused and interested by the new type, had, after all, arranged for Cynthia to join the Scholarship Cla.s.s, though there could be no idea of her entering.

She agreed with Alwynne that there was not much likelihood of Cynthia's sojourn being a long one. In the meantime, as she had explained to Miss Marsham, it was better to have the fire-brand under her own eye. Miss Marsham agreed with alacrity, and contrasted Clare's calmly capable manner with the protests of Henrietta. She realised joyfully that Cynthia would not be permitted to appeal from any decision of Miss Hartill. She recalled, not for the first time, that in all Clare's years there had never come a crisis for which she had been found unprepared.

Details of a campaign might finally reach the ears of Authority--there would be always birds of the air to carry the matter--but from Miss Hartill herself, no word; if pressed, there would be a brief summary, a laughing comment, never an appeal for help. Miss Marsham had built up her school by sheer force of personality. She was old now, grown slack and easy, but instinctively she recognised a ruling spirit, a kindred mind. One day she must choose her successor.... She was rich. Her school need not fall to the highest bidder.... There were Henrietta and Clare.

Henrietta had sc.r.a.ped and saved, she knew.... Henrietta was fond of trying on Authority's shoes.... Of Clare's wishes she was less sure....

But Clare was a capable girl--a capable girl.... Clare had never let any one worry her....

She read Clare correctly. Clare had no intention of allowing Cynthia Griffiths to lessen her prestige. But she had her own method of solving the American problem. She treated her new pupil with the easy good humour, the mocking friendliness of an equal. She realised the impossibility of counteracting the effects of a haphazard education, but recognising equally the inherent kindliness and lawlessness of the character, played on both qualities in her management of the girl. Her cla.s.ses were not demoralised, but stimulated, by the new-comer's presence: yet Clare had said nothing to Cynthia of rules and regulations. But Miss Hartill's manner had certainly implied that while to her, too, they were a folly and a weariness, after all it was easy to conform. It saved trouble and pleased people. All conveyed without prejudice to the morals of her other pupils in a shrug, and a twinkle, and a half-finished phrase.

Cynthia was charmed. Here was common-sense. For the first time she felt herself at home. She appalled the cla.s.ses by her loud encomiums, her delighted discovery of qualities that it was blasphemy to connect with Miss Hartill. For Cynthia, with the pitiful shrewdness that her cosmopolitan years had instilled, admired Clare for reasons that bewildered the worshippers. To them Clare moved through the school, apart, Olympian, a G.o.ddess, condescending delightfully. To Cynthia, accustomed to intrigue, she was obviously and admirably Macchiavellian.

It amazed her that the English girls could not perceive Miss Hartill's cleverness, that they should adore her for qualities as foreign to her character as they were essentially insipid, and be indignant at understanding and discriminating praise.

But Cynthia was above all philosophical. She shrugged her shoulders over the crazy crew, and reserved her comments for--Louise. For in Louise, incredible as Alwynne Durand, for instance, would have thought it, she did find a listener--an antagonist, easily p.r.i.c.ked into amusing indignation, into white-hot denials--nevertheless, a listener. Indeed, it was the att.i.tude of Cynthia to Clare Hartill rather than her personal attraction that was responsible for Louise's departure from her original and sincere att.i.tude of indifference to the advances of the popular American.

Louise was less in the foreground than she had been in the previous term. She had come back to school, less talkative, less brilliant, but working with a dogged persistence that had on Alwynne, at least, a depressing effect. But Alwynne, also, was seeing less of the girl.

Cynthia Griffiths obstructed her view--Cynthia, taking one of her vociferous likings to a sufficiently unresponsive Louise. For the _rapprochement_ was scarcely a normal, schoolgirl intimacy. Cynthia Griffiths had been intrigued by Louise's personality. She had been quick to grasp the importance of the child's position--to guess her there by reason of her brains and temperament. Yet to Cynthia, judging life, as she did, chiefly by exterior appearances, Louise, insignificant, timid, shadowy, was an incessant denial of her nevertheless recognisable influence in school politics. In the language of Cynthia, she was a dark horse. Cynthia was charmed--school life was dull--the mildest of mysteries was better than none. She would devote herself to deciphering a new type. This little English kid had undoubted influence with girl and mistress alike. Cynthia had intercepted glances between her and Miss Hartill, and Miss Durand too, that spoke of mutual understanding.

Perhaps it was money--half the school in her pay? Or secret influences of the most sinister? Hypnotism, maybe? Cynthia Griffiths, fed on dime novels and magazine literature, was not ten minutes concocting the hopefullest of mare's nests. She approached Louise between excitement and suspicion.

Cynthia was not scrupulous. She forced her way through the reserves and defences of the younger girl like a b.u.mble-bee clawing and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and buzzing into the heart of a half-shut flower.

She found much to puzzle her, more to amuse, but nothing to justify her gorgeous suspicions. She confessed them one day to Louise, in a burst of confidence, and Louise was hugely delighted. Cynthia always delighted her. She liked her jolly ways, and her sense of fun, and was quite convinced that she had no sense of humour at all. The conviction saved her some suffering. She was jealous, inevitably jealous, of the brilliant new-comer, painfully alive to, exaggerating and writhing at Clare's preoccupation with her; yet the warped shrewdness proper to her state of mind, she could calculate with painful accuracy how long it would take Clare to tire of her new toy, what qualities would soonest induce satiety. She guessed, hoped, prayed, that Miss Hartill would discover, as she had done, Cynthia's lack of conscious humour, the obtuseness that underlay her boisterous ease. She was not fine enough to hold Miss Hartill long: she would grow too fond of Miss Hartill: would, in the terrible craving to render up her whole soul, expose herself in all her crudity. Louise did, for a while, soothe the jealousy, the tearing, clawing beast in her breast, with that comfortable conviction.

That her reasoning was subconscious, that she was unaware of the process of a.n.a.lysation and deduction that led to her conclusions, is immaterial; she felt--and as she felt, she acted; her reasons for her actions were sounder than she dreamed.

She made mistakes often enough: her profound occupation with Clare Hartill had induced a spiritual myopia; the rest of the world was out of focus; and it was her initial misunderstanding of Cynthia Griffiths that led to their curious, unaffectionate alliance. In all Louise's ponderings, she had never doubted but that Cynthia would, like the rest of the world, fall down and worship at the shrine of Clare Hartill.

Cynthia Griffiths, amused spectator of an alien life, did nothing of the kind. And Louise--amazed, fiercely incredulous, all-suspicious, yet finally convinced of the inconceivable fact--it had a curious effect.

She should have been indignant, contemptuous of the obtuse creature--as, indeed, in a sense, she was--but chiefly she was conscious of a lifted weight--of an enormous and hysterical grat.i.tude.

Cynthia was a fool--a purblind philistine. But what relief was in her folly, what immense security! Jealousy could not die out in Louise, but it entered on a new phase--became pa.s.sive, enduring resignedly inevitable pain. But its vigilance, its fierce pugnacity was dead; for Cynthia--dear fool--did not care. Pearls had been cast before Americans.

Louise was ready enough to be gracious to such exquisite insensibility.

She became friendly. She had guarded her secret jealousy from the world.

She was "keen" on Miss Hartill, certainly, but so was half the school, at least. She was merely in the fashion. Insignificant and circ.u.mspect, giving no confidences, no one but Clare herself, and Alwynne Durand, guessed at the intensity of her affection. But with Cynthia Griffiths she was reckless. Ostrich-like, she trusted to the protection of her formal disclaimer, while with each new discussion, each half-confidence, she exposed herself and her feelings more completely.

And Cynthia, dropping her theories, began to be interested in the strange, vehement imp, with its alternating fits of frankness and reticence, wit and childishness, its big brain and its inexplicable yet obvious unhappiness. She affected Louise, was accustomed to pet and parade her, long before she had solved the problem of her character; indeed, it was not until she had confided to the child her plans for an early departure, that Louise relaxed her self-protective vigilance. She had begun, in her walks with Cynthia, to realise the relief and healing of self-expression. If Cynthia were going away to Paris, America, never to be seen again, what harm in talking--in saying for once what she felt? There was wry pleasure in it, and, oh, what harm?

Louise found an odd satisfaction in leading Cynthia--on her side, if you please, alert for evidence, the amateur detective still--to sit in judgment on Clare Hartill; would sit, horrified, thrilled, drinking in blasphemy. She would have allowed no other human being to impeach the smallest detail of Clare Hartill's conduct, but from Cynthia, though she raged hotly, she did allow, and in some queer fashion, enjoy it. She had, perhaps, a vague a.s.surance that Cynthia, being a foreigner, could not be taken seriously.

So the pair discussed Clare Hartill from all possible angles till Louise occasionally forgot to keep up her elaborate pretence of indifference, to insist on its being understood that the discussion was rhadamanthine in its impersonality.

"Yes, I'm off soon," Cynthia had confided. They were sitting together in her cubicle. "All this is slow--slow. Ne' mind! Wait till this child gets going!" She stretched herself lazily, and flung back on her little white bed, arms behind her. Louise studied her magnificent torso.

"Why did you come?" she demanded.

Cynthia laughed.

"Italy--France--Deutschland--I'd done everywhere but England. Now comes a tour round the world--and so home. I'm Californian, you know. I'll have great times then. You don't live, over here. You're afraid of your own shadows. Now an American girl----"

"How do you mean?"

"Aren't you? Always afraid of breaking rules? Haven't I asked you--haven't I begged you to come out with me one day? Oh, Louise, it would be great! I saw a taxi-man yesterday, outside church, with the duckiest eyes! Lunch somewhere, and 'phone through for the new show at Daly's. An American show! Dandy! Only taken you four years to transfer here! Let's go, Louise? We'd be back to supper."

Louise twinkled.

"Rot! We'd be expelled."

Cynthia opened her china-blue eyes.

"For a little thing like that? Why? We wouldn't miss a cla.s.s. Besides, we'd say you asked me home to tea."

Louise looked distressed. Their ideas of veracity had clashed before.

Cynthia, watching mischievously, giggled.

"Poor kid! Doesn't it want to tell lies, then?"