The Independence of Claire Part 14

Whatever might be her private sufferings, the English mistress must be at her post each morning at nine o'clock; she must wrestle all day with the minds of dull girls, listless girls, clever girls, girls who were eager to learn, and girls whose energies seemed condensed in the effort to avoid learning at all. However sore might be the English mistress's heart, it was her duty to be bright and alert; however exhausted her own stock of patience, she must still be a female Job in her treatment of her many pupils. A school-mistress must banish her individuality as a woman on the threshold of the form-room; while on duty she must banish every outside interest from her mind. No lying in bed, with her face to the pillow; no weeping far into the night. Headache and swollen eyelids are not for her. If her love-story goes wrong, she must lock her sorrow in her own heart. What wonder if, as a result, her mind grows bitter and her tongue grows sharp!

"That's a lesson for me! I must never, never allow myself to fall in love!" sighed Claire to herself. It was a depressing necessity, but vaguely she allowed herself to dream of a distant Someday, when the ban should be removed. Something might happen to set her free. Something most certainly _would_ happen! Optimistic one-and-twenty is ready enough to face a short term of renunciation, but it resolutely refuses to believe in its continuance.

A shadow fell over Claire's happy face as the practical application of this resolve came into her mind. Erskine Fanshawe! At the moment he was the one masculine figure on her horizon, but she did not disguise from herself that of all the men she had met, he attracted her the most.

What a mercy that she had had the resolution to put a stop to a friendship which might have ended in unfitting her for the work in hand!

It had been hard to refuse the desired information, but the fact that the second refusal had been twice as hard as the first was in itself a proof of the wisdom of her decision. And then, in illogical girlish fashion, Claire fell to wondering if perchance Captain Fanshawe would discover her address for himself? It would be the easiest of tasks, since he had nothing to do but to put the question to Mrs Willoughby.

At one moment Claire openly hoped that he would; at the next she recalled the expression on Janet Willoughby's face as she stood staring across the supper room, and then she was not so sure. What if the continuance of the friendship brought trouble on Janet as well as herself?

Laboriously Claire thrust the thought of Erskine Fanshawe from her mind, but just because inclination would have led her to so blithely meet him, she felt a keener sympathy with her companion's preparations for similar meetings.

The time of examinations had come, and night after night the dining- table of the little parlour was littered with the sheets of foolscap which were to test the progress of the pupils throughout the term.

Cecil's older forms had been studying _The Merchant of Venice, Richard the Second_, and the _Essays of Elia_; the younger forms, _Tanglewood Tales_ and Kingsley's _Heroes_. She had set the questions not only as a test of memory, but with a view of drawing out original thought. But, to judge from her groans and lamentations, the result was poor.

"Of all the dull, stupid, unimaginative--_sheep_! Not an original idea between them. Every answer exactly like the last--a hash-up of my own remarks in cla.s.s. If there's a creature on earth I despise more than another, it's an English flapper. Silly, vain, egotistical--"

Then the French mistress would scowl across the table, and say, "Now you've put me out! I was just counting up my marks. Oh, do be quiet!"

"Sorry!" Cecil would say shortly, and taking up her pencil slash scathing comments at the side of the foolscap sheets. Anon she would smile, and smile again, and forgetting Claire's request, would interrupt once more.

"Can you remember the name of Florence Mason?"

"If I strain my intellect to its utmost, I believe I can."

"Well, remember, then! It will be worth while. She'll do something-- that girl. When you are an insignificant old woman, you may be proud to boast that you used to sit at the very table on which her first English essays were corrected."

"So they are not all dull, stupid, unimaginative?"

"The exception proves the rule!" cried Cecil, and swept the papers together with a sigh of relief. "Done at last. Now for my blouse."

Claire cast a glance at the clock.

"Half-past ten. And you are so tired. Surely you won't begin to sew at this hour?"

"I must. I want it for Sat.u.r.day. I tried it on last night, and it wasn't a bit nice at the neck. I've got to alter it somehow."

"I have some tr.i.m.m.i.n.g upstairs. Just be quiet for five minutes, while I finish my list, and then I'll bring down my sc.r.a.p-box, and we'll see what we can find."

That sc.r.a.p-box was in constant request during the next weeks. It was filled with the dainty oddments which a woman of means and taste collects in the course of years; tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and laces, and sc.r.a.ps of fine brocades; belts and buckles, and b.u.t.tons of silver and paste; glittering ends of tinsel, ends of silk and ribbons that were really too pretty to throw away, and cunning little motifs which had the magic quality of disguising deficiencies and making both ends meet. Claire gave with a lavish hand, and Cecil's grat.i.tude was pathetic in its intensity. More and more as the weeks pa.s.sed on did she become obsessed with the craze for decking herself in fine garments; new gloves, shoes, and veils were purchased to supplement the home-made garments, and one memorable night there arrived a large dress-box containing an evening dress and cloak.

"I have been out so little these last years. I have no clothes to wear," Cecil said in explanation. "It's not fair to--er--people, when they take you about, to look as if you had come out of the Ark... And these ready-made things are _so_ cheap!"

She spoke with an air of excusing herself, and with a flush of embarra.s.sment on her cheeks, and Claire hastened to sympathise and agree. She wondered if the embarra.s.sment arose from the fact that for the last two weeks Cecil had not paid her share of the joint expenses!

The omission had happened naturally enough, for on each occasion when the landlady appeared with the bill, Cecil had been absent on one of her now frequent excursions, when it had seemed the simplest thing to settle in full, and await repayment next day.

Repayment, however, had not come. Half a dozen times over Cecil had exclaimed, "Oh, dear, there's that money. I _must_ remember!" but apparently she never had remembered at a moment when her purse was at hand.

Claire was honestly indifferent. The hundred pounds which she had deposited in a bank was considerably diminished, since it had been drawn on for all her needs, but the term's salary would be paid in a short time, and the thought of that, added to the remainder, gave her a pleasant feeling of ease. It was only when for the third Sat.u.r.day Cecil hurried off with an air of fl.u.s.ter and embarra.s.sment, that an unpleasant suspicion arose. The weekly bill was again due, and Cecil had not forgotten, she was only elaborately pretending to forget! Claire was not angry, she was perfectly willing to play the part of banker until the end of the term, but she hated the thought that Cecil was acting a part, and deliberately trying to deceive. What if she had been extravagant in her expenditure on clothes and had run herself short for necessary expenses, there was nothing criminal in that! Foolish it might be, but a fellow-girl would understand that, after being staid and sensible for a long, long time, it was a blessed relief to the feminine mind to have a little spell of recklessness for a change. Cecil had only to say, "I've run myself horribly short. Can you pay up till I get my screw?" and the whole matter would have been settled in a trice. But to pretend to forget was so _mean_!

The next morning after breakfast the vexed question of the Christmas holidays came up for discussion for the twentieth time. Cecil had previously stated that she always spent the time with her mother, but it now appeared that to a certain extent she had changed her plans.

"I shall have to go down over Christmas Day and the New Year, I suppose.

Old people make such a fuss over those stupid anniversaries, but I shall come up again on the second. I prefer to be in town. We have to pay for the rooms in any case, so we may as well use them."

Claire's face lengthened.

"_Pay_ for them! Even if we go away?"

"Of course. What did you expect? The landlady isn't let off her own rent, because we choose to take a holiday. There's no saving except for the light and coal. By the way, I owe you for a third week now. I _must_ remember! Have you decided what you are going to do?"

Claire shook her head. It was a forlorn feeling that Christmas was coming, and she had nowhere to go. Until now she had gone on in faith, feeling sure that before the time arrived, some one would remember her loneliness, and invite her if only for the day itself. Possibly Cecil in virtue of three months' daily companionship would ask her mother's permission to invite her friend, if only for a couple of days. Or bright, friendly Sophie Blake, who had sympathised with her loneliness, might have some proposition to make, or Mrs Willoughby, who was so interested in girls who were working for themselves, or Miss Farnborough, who knew that it was the French mistress's first Christmas without her mother; but no such suggestion had been made. No one seemed to care.

"I must say it's _strange_ that no one has invited you!" said Cecil sharply. "I don't think much of your grand friends if they can't look after you on Christmas Day. What about the people in Brussels? Did no one send you an invitation? If you lived there for three years, surely you must know some one intimately enough to offer to go, even if they don't suggest it."

"It is not necessary, thank you," said Claire with an air. "I have an open invitation to several houses, but I am saving up Brussels for Easter, when the weather will be better, and it will be more of a change. And I have an old grand-aunt in the North, but she is an invalid, confined to her room. I should be an extra trouble in the house. I shall manage to amuse myself somehow. It will be an opportunity for exploring London."

"Oh well," Cecil said vaguely, "when I come back!" but she spoke no word of Christmas Day.

The next week brought the various festivities with which Saint Cuthbert's celebrated the end of the Christmas term. There was a school dance in the big cla.s.s-room, a Christmas-tree party, given to the children in an East End parish, and last and most important of all the breaking-up ceremony in the local Town Hall, when an old girl, now developed into a celebrated auth.o.r.ess, presented the prizes, and gave an amusing account of her own schooldays, which evoked storms of applause from the audience, even Miss Farnborough smiling benignly at the recital of misdoings which would have evoked her sternest displeasure on the part of present-day pupils! Then the singing-cla.s.s girls sang a short cantata, and the eldest girls gave a scene from Shakespeare, very dull and exceedingly correct, and the youngest girls acted a little French play, while the French mistress stood in the wings, ready to prompt, her face very hot, and her feet very cold, and her heart beating at express speed.

This moment was a public test of her work during the term, and she had a horror that the children would forget their parts and disgrace their leader as well as themselves. She need not have feared, however, for the publicity which she dreaded was just the stimulus needed to spur the juvenile actors to do their very best, and they shrugged, they gesticulated, they rolled their r's, they reproduced Claire's own little mannerisms with an _aplomb_ which brought down the house. Claire's lack of teaching experience might make her less sound on rules and routine, but it was obvious that she had succeeded in one important point; she had lifted "French" from the level of a task, and converted it into a living tongue.

Miss Farnborough was very gracious in her parting words to her new mistress.

"I have not come to my present position without learning to trust my perceptions," said she. "I recognised at once that you possessed the true teaching instinct, and to-day you have justified my choice. I have had many congratulations on your pupils' performance." Then she held out her hand with a charming smile. "I hope you will have very pleasant holidays!"

She made no inquiries as to the way in which this young girl was to spend her leisure. She herself was worn-out with the strain of the long term, and when the morrow came she intended to pack her bag, and start off for a sunny Swiss height, where for the next few weeks it would be her chief aim to forget that she had ever seen a school. But the new French mistress turned away with a heavy heart. It seemed at that moment as if n.o.body cared.

That year Christmas fell on a Monday. On the Sat.u.r.day morning Cecil packed up her bag, and departed, grumbling, for her week at home.

Before she left, Claire presented her with a Christmas gift in the shape of a charming embroidered scarf, and Cecil kissed her, and flushed, and looked at the same time pleased and oppressed, and hastily pulling out her purse extracted two sovereigns and laid them down on the table.

"I keep forgetting that money! Three weeks, wasn't it? There's two pounds; let me know the rest when I come back and I'll settle up.

Christmas is an awful time. The money simply melts."

Claire had an uncomfortable and wholly unreasonable feeling of being paid for her present as she put the two sovereigns in her purse. Cecil had given her no gift, and the lack of the kindly attention increased the feeling of desolation with which she returned to her empty room.

Even the tiniest offering to show that she had been thought of, would have been a comfort!

The landlady came into the room to remove the luncheon tray, her lips pursed into an expression which her lodger recognised as the preliminary to "a bit of my mind." When the outlying cruets and dishes had been crowded together in a perilous pile, the bit of her mind came out.

"I was going to say, miss, that of course you will arrange to dine out on Christmas Day. I never take ladies as a rule, but Miss Rhodes, she said, being teachers, you would be away all holiday time. I never had a lodger before who stayed in the house over Christmas, and of course you must understand that we go over to Highgate to my mother's for the day and the girl goes out, and I couldn't possibly think of cooking--"

"Don't be afraid, Mrs Mason. I am going out for the day."

Mrs Mason lifted the tray and carried it out of the room, shutting the door behind her by the skilful insertion of a large foot encased in a cashmere boot, and Claire stood staring at her, wondering if it were really her own voice which had spoken those last words, and from what source had sprung the confidence which had suddenly flooded her heart.

At this last blow of all, when even the little saffron-coloured parlour closed the door against her, the logical course would have been to collapse into utter despair, instead of which the moment had brought the first gleam of hope.

"Now," said the voice in her heart, "everyone has failed me. I am helpless, I am alone. This is G.o.d's moment. I will worry no more, but leave it to Him. Something will open for me when the time arrives!"

She went upstairs, put on her hat, and sallied out into the busy streets. All the world was abroad, men and women and small eager children all bent on the same task, thronging the shops to the doors, waiting in rows for the favour of being served, emerging triumphant with arms laden with spoils. On every side fragments of the same conversation floated to the ears. "What can I get for Kate?"