Clemence Dane

“ Clare went to the window and watched the sky. The pane of glass 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 rehearsed itself incessantly, pricking, 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. ”

“ With the return to realisation of place and time, her mood was changing. She was no longer of the wood, but in it merely; wandering in the dark heart of it, no dryad returned and welcome, but a stranger, one Alwynne Durand, in thin shoes and an unsuitable dress, with the wood's flowers, not her own, in her hands. Stolen flowers—their weight was suddenly a burden to her. She felt guilty, and had an odd, sudden wish to put them down tenderly at the foot of a tree, hide them with grasses and run for her life. ”

“ Shuddering we close the book, and pray to God that Childe Roland's journey may never be ours; that for our adventurous souls, knight-erranting through this queer life, there may never come a choice of ways, a turning from the pleasant high-road, to go upon a hideous journey; till, crossing the Plains of Loneliness, Fear and Sorrow, we face the Hills of Madness, and enter the Dark Tower of that Despair which is our soul's death. With capital letters galore! What a sentence! Here, shut up, you spit-fire!" Louise had wrenched herself free and flung herself upon Agatha, in a white heat of anger. ”

“ And Alwynne, trying to appear amused, wondered why Christmas was so different from what it used to be and wished heartily that Elsbeth would not try to be skittish. It didn't suit her—made her seem undignified. Each, longing for the old days, when the other had conjured up so easily the true spirit of the festival, tried her affectionate best to do so still; each, failing inevitably, inevitably blamed the other. Neither realised, that Dan Christmas is the god of very little children, and that where they are not, he, too, does not linger. ”

“ The Naboth mood is a dangerous one. Fierce emotions, unable to disperse themselves in speech, can turn in again upon the mind that bred them, to work strange havoc. The affair of the attic, outwardly so trivial, shook the child's nature to its foundation. Though one's house be built of cards, it is none the less bedazing to have it knocked about one's ears. To Louise, the loss of her holy place, but yet more the manner of its loss, was catastrophic. Her nerves, frayed and strained by weeks of overwork and excitement, snapped under the shock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clare waited.
Agatha twisted her hands uneasily. The schoolgirl shyness that is physical misery was upon her.
"I—don't want to, Miss Hartill. I can't. It's not fair to have one's stuff—to be laughed at—to be——" she subsided just in time.
The class sat, breathless, all eyes on Clare.
And Clare waited; waited till defiance faded to unease—unease to helplessness, till the girl, overborne by the utter silence, gave way, and dropping her eyes to her exercise, fluttering its pages in angry embarrassment, finally, with a giggle of pure nervousness, embarked on the opening sentence. ”

“ Outside, the snow fell steadily.
Half-a-mile away Alwynne Durand, drumming on the window-pane, while her aunt dozed in her chair, thought incessantly of Clare, and was filled with restless longing to be with her. She tried to count the snowflakes till her brain reeled. She felt cold and dreary, but she would not rouse Elsbeth by making up the fire. She wished she had something new to read. She thought it the longest Christmas Day she had ever spent.
The neat maid, bringing in the tea-tray, roused Clare. She pushed aside her work and began to pour out; but Louise in her corner, made no sign. ”

“ This, Alwynne supposed, was Alicia. She liked her, liked her fat kind face, her comfortable rotundity, and her sweet voice. She liked her cool disregard of her own comical appearance, wedged in among portmanteaux and Alwynne and a basket of market produce, with an old sun-hat tied bonnet-fashion to shade her eyes, and her scarf ends fluttering madly, as she thwacked and tugged at the iron-mouthed pony.
She was more than middle-aged, a woman of flopping draperies and haphazard hookings, and scatter-brained grey locks, that had been a fringe in the days of fringes. ”

“ At once, indifferently, she left the buttercups to Nicholas Nye and hurried on and into the wood.
There were hyacinths everywhere, hyacinths by the million. It was as if the winds had torn her robes from the faint, spring sky, and had flung them to earth, and she now bent above them naked and shivering.
Alwynne wandered from patch to patch in an ecstasy of delight. As usual, her pleasure shaped itself into exclamations, phrases, whole sentences of the letters she would write [280] to Clare Hartill of her experiences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A brilliant talker, she chose to listen, and soon heard all there was to hear of Alwynne's short history; of her mother's sister, Elsbeth Loveday (Clare pricked up her ears at the name) , who had reared her from babyhood; of her schooldays; her crude young likes and dislikes; her hero-worships and passionate, vague ambitions. Clare knew it all by heart, had heard the tale from more pairs of lips than she could remember, for more years than she cared to count. But Alwynne, nevertheless, told it in a way of her own that appealed to Clare and interested her anew. ”

“ I don't know why I'm even talking to you like this. It's ridiculous. Of course, there can never be any one but Clare."
"Yes, it is ridiculous," he said impatiently.
She faced him angrily.
"Yes, very ridiculous, isn't it? Not to leave a person in the lurch—a person whom you love dearly, and who loves you. You can laugh. It's easy to laugh at women being friends. Men always do. They think it funny, to pretend women are always catty, and spiteful, and disloyal to each other."
"I've never said so or thought so," said Roger.
"You have! You do! Look at the way you've talked about Clare. ”

“ Then she caught Louise's expression. "What's the matter?"
"But it's the Bible!" cried Louise horrified.
Clare sat down again and began to laugh pleasantly.
"What am I to do with you, Louise? Are you five or fifty? You want to discuss Meredith with me— (not that I shall let you, my child—don't think I approve of all this reading—I did it myself at your age, you see) and five minutes later you look at me round-eyed because I've forgotten my Joshua or my Judges! Kings? I beg your pardon; Kings be it! Never mind, Louise. Tell me about the Witch of Endor." ”

“ The girl was accustomed to finding her preoccupied; there was a time, indeed, when there had been subtle flattery in the cavalier welcome, when the lack of ceremony had seemed but a proof of intimacy, and she would bide her time happily enough, exploring book-shelves, darning stockings, tiptoeing from parlour to pantry to refill vases and valet neglected plants, or, curled in the big arm-chair, would sketch upon imaginary canvases Clare's profile, dark against the sun-filled window, or stare half-hypnotised, at the twinkling diamond on her finger. ”

“ She would always squirm good-humouredly under Clare's pin-pricks, with such amusement at her own discomfiture that Clare never knew whether to fling away her needle for good, or, for the mere experiment's sake, to stab hard and savagely. At that stage of their intimacy, Alwynne's guilelessness invariably charmed and disarmed her—she knew that it would take a very crude display of cruelty to make Alwynne believe that she was being hurt intentionally. ”

“ Louise looked up at her shyly, dwelling on her answer as if it gave her exquisite pleasure.
"Because—because you knew I was alone, and you hated me to be miserable on Christmas Day."
"You?" Clare's eyebrows lifted for a second, but a glance into the child's candid eyes dispelled the vague suspicion.... Louise and conceit were incompatible. She listened with a touch of compunction to the innocent answer.
"Not me specially, of course. Any one who was down. Only it happened to be me. I think you can't help being good to people: you're made that way." Her eyes were full of wondering admiration. ”

“ It tickled her to be endowed with every domestic virtue, to be loved, as Alwynne loved her, with the secure and fearless affection of a daughter for a newly-discovered and adorable young mother. She appreciated Alwynne's determination of their relationship, her nice sense of the difference [79] in age, her modesty in reserving any claim to an equality in their friendship, her frank and affectionate admiration—yet, while it pleased her, it could pique. Calm comradeship or surrendering adoration she could cope with, but the subtle admixture of such alien states of mind was puzzling. ”

“ A wanderer in an alien land, homesick, hungry, for whom, after weary days, a queen descends from her throne, speaking his language, supplying his unvoiced wants, might feel something of the adoring gratitude that possessed Louise. She rejoiced in Clare as a vault-bred flower in sunlight.
On all human beings, child or adult, emotional adventure entails, sooner or later, physical exhaustion; the deeper, the more novel the experience, the greater the drain on the bodily strength. ”

“ It's your dear Miss Durand," said Clare, with a grim smile. "I'm very angry with her, Louise. She's been behaving badly."
Louise's eyes widened: she looked alarmed and distressed.
"Oh, but Miss Hartill—she hasn't! She couldn't! What has she done?"
"Shall I tell you?" Clare leaned forward mysteriously.
Louise nodded breathlessly.
"She wouldn't copy me and be an egoist. And I wanted her to, rather badly, Louise. There, that's all! You're none the wiser, are you? Never mind, you will be, some day. Don't look so worried, you funny child."
"Why do you call yourself such names? You're not an egoist? ”

“ Alwynne, eating her wing of chicken, was merely and sheerly shy. She was garrulous enough with women, but she did not in the least know how to talk to men. Therefore and naturally she was full of theories. She had vague ideas that they had to be amused as babies have to be amused, but confronted with the prospect of a prolonged tête-à-tête, without Alicia or Jean to retire upon, she had nothing whatever to say. Yet she had been taught by Elsbeth to consider a lack of table-talk as a lack of manners, and was irritated with herself for her silence, and still more irritated with Roger for his. ”

“ Alwynne caught her breath.
"How you believe in God! I wish I could!"
Roger flushed suddenly like an embarrassed boy.
"You know, it's queer," he confided, subsiding naïvely, "till I began to talk to you, I didn't know I did. I never bother about church and things. You know——"
But Alwynne was not attending.
"Of course—I see what you mean," she murmured. "It applies to Louise too. Why, Roger, she was really fond of me—not as she was of Clare—of course—but quite fond of me. She never would have hurt me. Hurt? Poor mite! She never hurt any one in all her life." ”

“ And Alwynne, immensely flattered by the picture of herself as a woman of the world, had lived up to it with her usual drastic enthusiasm. Elsbeth, not unused to disillusionment and hopes deferred, could sigh and smile and acquiesce, knowing it for the phase that it was and forgiving Alwynne in advance. But Clare, who owed her neither gratitude nor duty, she never forgave. She was a very human woman, for all her saintliness. ”

“ 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 class was a certain Louise Denny. She was thirteen—nearly three years below the average of the class in age. ”