Two Worlds and Their Ways (12 page)

“Well, if I may make a personal remark, it is very pretty. I hope she will take care of it. Do you manage it yourself, Clemence?”

“I have not done it yet. But I think I could learn. I am supposed to be careless with it.”

“Dear, dear, we must have an end of that,” said Miss Tuke. “What a confession!”

“I am sure you could learn a good many things, Clemence,” said Miss Chancellor.

“Twelve weeks of term!” said Esther, sinking into a chair. “Shall we, any of us, survive?”

“Yes, I think I may say you all will, Esther. Anyhow your having done so several times is a reasonable ground for supposing it. And this happens to be a short term. Christmas is not so far away.”

“Three months to plum pudding,” said Gwendolen, “and I am ravenous already.”

“Really, Gwendolen, the unvarying line of your thought!”

“She is growing, poor child,” said Miss Tuke.

“I wish it was not necessary to be educated. Why is it, Miss Chancellor?”

“Now I do not think you expect that question to be answered, Gwendolen.”

“If it were not, our parents could have the advantage of us. And mine find me a great pleasure. I think being educated is rather selfish.”

“Well, it has that side, Gwendolen,” said Miss Chancellor, in an unbiased tone. “It is true that it has. But the result should give you more for everyone in the end.”

“If we were not being educated, Miss Chancellor would not have to be here—would not be here,” said Esther, rapidly. “She would be as glad as we should.”

“Well, it would have its bright side, Esther,” said Miss Chancellor, in a dispassionate tone. “But there are compensations in every life, if we look for them. I have always found them in mine and been grateful for them.”

“You want compensation for being with us, Miss Chancellor. That is a cruel thing to say to hungry and helpless children,” said Gwendolen. “The tea-bell! The sound that cheers so much that it almost inebriates!”

“That is an individual turn to the expression, Gwendolen,” said Miss Chancellor, turning her instinctive movement to the door into a smiling advance towards her pupil.

“Are you going out, Miss Chancellor?” said Maud, pausing in the doorway.

“Thank you, Maud. I suppose we must obey the summons,” said Miss Chancellor, leading the way with another adjustment of her glasses.

“What would happen to Miss Chancellor's spectacles, if she did not keep on attending to them?” said Gwendolen.

“They would fall off, Gwendolen,” said Miss Chancellor, turning with some liveliness. “That is what would happen. My nose is the wrong shape for glasses, and my eyes the wrong kind for doing without them. And they are glasses, not spectacles.”

“Would spectacles interfere with your personality?” said Verity.

“Yes, in the sense that most people would see them as you evidently do, Verity.”

“Miss Chancellor is really as eager for food as any of us,” said Esther, in a whisper, or what she intended to be such, breaking off as she observed a modification of Miss Chancellor's bearing.

The latter paused, threw back her head, and emitted a little peal of mirth.

“Well, really, Esther, what a way of expressing yourself! I hope we all have good appetites, and shall satisfy them to the extent of keeping well and being equal to our work. I never heard that an appetite was a thing to be ashamed of. Indeed, I was taught that that kind of refinement belonged to another sphere.”

“Yes, Miss Chancellor,” muttered Esther, glancing at her companions.

“And I am quite content to do my duty in that station of life to which—to which I am called,” said Miss Chancellor, adapting the quotation to the lightness of the moment, and taking her stand in readiness for grace, with her eyes held above the board, as though disregard of food were natural in certain conditions.

Lesbia came to the table and looked at its supplies before she bent her head. Meals were a welcome break in her routine and she did not disguise it, thinking it a healthy view of them.

Gwendolen murmured to her neighbour as she took her seat.

“There was an old woman and what do you think?

She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink.”

“What did you say, Gwendolen?”

“I said that—we lived upon nothing but victuals and drink, Miss Firebrace.”

“Well, have some of both, Gwendolen. I am sorry we can offer you nothing else.”

A thin, dark, grey-haired woman at Lesbia's hand, who was a partner in the school, turned absent, grey eyes on the newcomer.

“Clemence Shelley? Your little cousin, Miss Firebrace?”

“Yes,” said Lesbia, in an audible tone of saying what was of sufficient, but not excessive interest. “Or my little connection by marriage. She is to be in Miss Chancellor's form and so will be with you for some subjects.”

Miss Laurence smiled at Clemence in automatic, kindly interest, and appeared to sink into abstraction, a state that
so often claimed her that it had come almost to be required of her, and tended to be less complete than it seemed.

“I think she is adapting herself easily to her new surroundings,” said another voice, as the third partner smiled at Clemence. “And that is a great art.”

The number of partners in the school was in excess of its resources. It had been necessary to bring it into being, and was still so, to maintain it in this state. Lesbia drew a veil over it, and tended to pass over her partners' existence, when they were not there to establish it.

Miss Marathon's upright figure, pronounced nose and prominent, expressionless eyes gave her a somewhat forbidding aspect, that was hardly borne out by her pupils' demeanour towards her. She sat among them and supervised their needs in a. manner at once precise and kindly, critical and tolerant. Miss Laurence was recognised as too intellectual for tangible affairs, and remained aloof and did nothing, thereby both creating and fulfilling a part. Her pupils regarded her with affection and fear, or merely with the latter. Miss Marathon they regarded with neither, and with no other particular feeling.

Miss Chancellor sat by Miss Laurence, and seemed to identify herself with her aloof attitude, and indeed with any other that she displayed.

“Clemence, do have some victuals and drink,” said Gwendolen. “I hope you do not feel as if every mouthful would choke you. Clemence feels that every mouthful will choke her, Miss Chancellor. And it is not reasonable when she is not taking any mouthfuls.”

“It sounds as if you were right to urge her to modify her course, Gwendolen.”

“All the attention will be for Clemence now, I expect,” said Esther.

“What did you say, Esther?” said Lesbia, in a tone of according interest to everyone's utterance.

“Nothing, Miss Firebrace.”

“Then it is of no good for us to pursue it. But how you
managed to observe something and say nothing, I do not know.”

“An answer unworthy of your years, Esther,” said Miss Chancellor.

“Did you enjoy your holiday, Maud?” said Miss Marathon, going on to safe ground with a safe companion.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Marathon. I have never enjoyed a holiday more. But I find I am glad to get back to work again.”

A sighing sound, as of incredulous consternation, went round the girls, and Lesbia turned her eyes on them.

“Now which of you is acting in accordance with her real convictions? Or is ‘acting' the right word in another sense? Do you really feel such an objection to being educated, Gwendolen?”

“Yes, Miss Firebrace.”

“Do you, Esther?”

“Well, Miss Firebrace, it is not the pleasantest part of the year, and it is two-thirds of it.”

“And you, Verity?”

“Well, I do not agree that our schooldays are the happiest time of our life, Miss Firebrace. Or anyhow I hope they are not.”

“Neither do I agree, Verity. I hope that will not be the case. I hope there are fuller and more useful—yes, more useful, Verity—times ahead of you, more useful to other people. But the foundations of them have to be laid. I should have thought you were old enough to realise that. We may not always be enough in ourselves to come to our own fulfilment without help.”

“I don't expect people ever realise that the times they are living are foundations of other times,” said Clemence.

Miss Laurence and Miss Marathon smiled towards her, welcoming her entry into the talk, faintly deprecating any advance upon the freedom of it.

Lesbia remained grave.

“We must beware of presenting ourselves according to
some rule of our own, and not in our true colours,” she said, as she rose from her seat. “That is at best a mere lip-service to convention.”

There was silence, and Miss Laurence and Miss Marathon raised their eyes.

“And at its worst a simple acting for effect,” said Lesbia, leaving the table.

Her partners looked at their pupils almost in sympathy for the consequences of their heedlessness.

“So we are under a cloud already,” said Esther. “The storm has rolled up in the first few hours.”

“That is very graphic, Esther,” said Miss Marathon, in an uncertain tone.

“I feel I managed to bring it on you all,” said Maud.

Miss Laurence and Miss Marathon rose and left the room, leaving what was irrepressible to find its outlet.

“No, Maud, you need not feel that,” said Miss Chancellor. “You spoke the truth simply and sincerely, and no one can be asked to regret that.”

“I ask Maud to regret it,” said Gwendolen. “She startled us into betraying ourselves. We could have told Miss Firebrace we were glad to languish in exile.”

“If you did not feel it, Gwendolen, it was better not to say it.”

“It was probably better not to say that,” said Clemence.

“It did not seem so much better,” said Gwendolen.

“We suffered for the faith that was in us,” said Verity.

“And what faith is that, Verity?” said Lesbia's voice.

There was the slightest pause.

“Faith in the value of freedom, Miss Firebrace.”

“That was ready, Verity,” said Lesbia, in a tone of giving ungrudging approbation where it was merited. “I do not know how far it was the expression of the truth, but I hold to what I say; it was ready.”

Verity suppressed a smile.

“Miss Firebrace felt she had gone rather far,” muttered Esther. “She is trying to retrieve her position.”

Lesbia turned her eyes on Esther, kept them on her for some seconds, and withdrew them without speaking.

“Esther, you and I are the only ones who do not attain any credit,” said Gwendolen.

“Is that so, Gwendolen? Then take some credit for bringing back to us a cheerful face,” said Lesbia, smoothing Gwendolen's hair, and then turning to Esther with a different expression.

“Are you very tired after your journey, Esther?”

“Yes, Miss Firebrace; I cannot endure travelling.”

“Poor child!” said Lesbia, putting out her hand with a similar purpose, but seeming to reconsider the matter and withdrawing it. “I shall be glad to feel you are in bed. I think you had better go up to Miss Tuke now. Yes, go straight upstairs, Esther. If you are so tired, that is the right course for you.”

“Good-night, Miss Firebrace.”

“Good-night, Esther.”

The girls bade Lesbia a formal good-night, and received each a separate and full response. She stood and watched them as they left the room, and meeting a glance from Miss Chancellor, nodded as though in agreement. As the latter went to the door, there was a sound of Gwendolen's voice.

“My movements were stiff and self-conscious under Miss Firebrace's eyes.”

Lesbia and Miss Chancellor yielded to amusement, and the latter followed her pupils to the dormitory.

“I suppose Miss Firebrace is really our second mother,” said Gwendolen. “Anyhow I do not know who is, if she is not. And I think people generally have second mothers. It is second fathers they do not seem to have. I don't know why.”

“It is not the term I should apply to her,” said Esther.

“Now, be careful, Esther,” said Miss Chancellor. “You are over-tired, and may say things you will regret.”

“I will have Miss Tuke for my second mother. I think her feelings towards us come more from the heart. It is a
mistake to come to bed so early. We shall have to cry for so long.”

“Well, really, Gwendolen, what a very odd compulsion!”

“You ought not to brush other people's troubles lightly aside, Miss Chancellor. We have been torn from home and kindred.”

“Well, so have I, Gwendolen, and I am not going to cry.”

“Yes, but, Miss Chancellor, you can do as you like,” said Verity. “You are not forced to spend three months away from your natural surroundings.”

“No, I cannot do as I like, Verity; you are mistaken,” said Miss Chancellor, looking straight at her pupil as she made her admission. “I am also the victim of compulsion, a different one from yours, but quite as binding.”

“And then people say the age of slavery is past,” said Gwendolen, sitting down on her bed.

“Slavery, but not service, Gwendolen. I hope we shall never get beyond that.”

“Gwendolen, your quilt!” said Miss Tuke. “It is fresh today, and the bed has not been turned down.”

“I knew we had come upstairs too soon.”

“You are too old for such carelessness, Gwendolen,” said Miss Chancellor.

“I am too old for the things I do, and not old enough for the things I want to do. Fifteen is an intolerable age.”

“Indeed it is not, Gwendolen, if you would realise its opportunities. I wish I had realised them at that age and made the most of them.”

“So do I, Miss Chancellor. I already wish it,” said Maud.

“Well, I think that is rather premature, Maud. You can put off your regrets a little longer. You have still plenty of time to make up for any you have lost.”