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Regiment of Women

<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> Elsbeth bore the news of Clare's defection with stoicism; but her motherly soul was disturbed by Alwynne's disappointment, though she could not stifle her pleasure in its cause. She felt, indeed, somewhat guilty, and was eager to atone by acquiescing in Alwynne's plan of visiting Clare while she went to church; and met her more than half way over the question of an altered tea-hour. Alwynne, who from the first had been fretted, though but half consciously, by the faintly repellent manner assumed by each of the two women at mention of the other, was soothed by Elsbeth's advances. Elsbeth was a dear, after all: there was no one quite like Elsbeth.... For all her obstinacies and unreasonableness, she never really failed you.... She could be depended on to love you at your worst; you could quarrel with her with never a fear of real alienation.... Elsbeth might not be exciting, but she was as indispensable as food.... She was, after all, the starting-point and ultimate goal of all one's adventures.... Clare would lose some of her delightfulness, if there were no Elsbeth to whom to en-sky on her.... Alwynne did not see what she wanted with a mother, so long as she had Elsbeth.... She had said so once to her aunt and had never guessed, as she was chidden for sacrilege against the picture over her bed, at the exquisite pleasure she had given. After the little coolness of the past few days (her aunt's fault entirely, Alwynne knew, and so could be unruffled) Elsbeth's renewal of sympathetic interest was very soothing. Alwynne was glad to foster it by talking of Clare, and Clare, and nothing but Clare, for the rest of the week. In church on Christmas morning, poor Elsbeth, settling her spiritual accounts, begging forgiveness for uncharitable[88] thoughts, and assuring her Maker that she wished Clare no evil, could yet sigh for the useful age of miracles, and patron saints, and devils, when a prayer in the right quarter could transport your enemy to inaccessible islands of the Antipodes. She would have been magnanimous, have bargained for every comfort—Eden's climate and hot and cold water laid on—but the island must be definitely inaccessible and Antipodean. Clare, too, had spent her morning, if not in prayer, at least in profound meditation. She felt stranded, and was wishing for Alwynne, and anathematising the superfluous and intriguing aunt. Clare made the mistake of all tortuous intelligences in being unable to credit appearances. She was being, as usual, unjust to Elsbeth, Alwynne, and the world at large. She could not believe in simplicity combined with brains: a simple soul was necessarily a simpleton in her eyes. Because her own words were ever two edged, her meaning flavoured by reservations and implications, she literally could not accept a speech as expressing no more and no less than its plain dictionary meaning. With any one of her own type of mind she was at her ease; her mistake lay in not recognising how rare that type was; in detecting subtleties where none existed, and wasting hint, suggestion and innuendo on minds that drove as heartily through them as an ox walks through a spider thread stretched from post to gatepost of the meadow he means to enter. Elsbeth, whom she had considered a negligible fool, had yesterday startled her into respect—not for the kindly and selfless pleasure in Alwynne's pleasure, that had, for all her little jealous anxieties, prompted the invitation to Clare, but for the totally imaginary cunning with which, in Clare's eyes, it had invested her. Alwynne's repetition of Elsbeth's remark had enlightened Clare: enlightened her to qualities in Elsbeth which Elsbeth herself would have been horrified to possess. Clare saw, in the manner of the invitation, a gauntlet[89] flung down, the preliminaries to a conflict, with Alwynne herself for the prize; and the first warning of an antagonist sufficiently like herself to be considered dangerous, the more dangerous, indeed, for the apparently uninteresting harmlessness that could mask a mind in reality so scheming and so complex. She did not realise that if she did finally close with Elsbeth, with the intention of robbing her of Alwynne, she would have far more to fear from her simple, affectionate goodness of heart than from any subtlety of intellect with which Clare was choosing to invest her. She wondered, as she frittered away the morning, how she should best counter Elsbeth's attack. She would call, of course—in state; it would be due; she would not be judged deficient in courtesies. Alwynne should be there (she would ensure that), and she, Clare, would be exceedingly charming, and very delicately emphasise the contrast between Elsbeth and herself. It would be quite easy, with Alwynne already biassed. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation. It would be amusing. She should enjoy routing Elsbeth. And there was the case of Alwynne to be considered. She had been excessively nice to Alwynne lately, had, in fact, allowed her, for a moment, to see how necessary she was becoming to Clare.... That was a mistake.... One must never let people feel secure of their hold upon one.... That little speech of Alwynne's last night, mocking and tender—she had thrilled to it at the time—did it not, ever so faintly, shadow forth a readjustment of attitudes, sound a note of equality? That, though it had pleased her at the moment, must not be.... Alwynne must be checked.... It would not hurt her.... She was subdued as easily as a child, and as easily revived.... She never bore malice. Clare, who never forgot or forgave a pinprick, had often marvelled at her, could even now scarcely believe in the spontaneity of her good temper. But Alwynne, certainly, had been going too far lately; was absurdly popular in the school; could, Clare guessed, have annexed more than one[90] of her own special worshippers, if she had chosen. Louise, she knew, confided in her: she thought with a double stab of jealousy of the scene she had witnessed but a few days since; of Louise, fresh from her commendations, from her kiss even (that rare impulse, regretted as soon as gratified), at rest in Alwynne's arms. She recalled Louise's startled look and Alwynne's contrasting serenity. She had not enquired what it all meant—that was not her way. But she had not forgotten it. Alwynne was hers. Louise was hers. But they had nothing to seek from one another! Alwynne, undoubtedly, as the elder, the dearer, required the check; not little Louise. Louise's letter had genuinely touched her—she thought she would go and see the child, spend her Christmas Day charitably, in amusing her. And if (in after-thought) Alwynne came round in the afternoon, and found her gone—it couldn't be helped! It wouldn't hurt Alwynne to be disappointed.... It wouldn't hurt Alwynne to spend a day of undiluted Elsbeth.... And Louise would be amusingly charmed to see Clare.... It was pleasant to please a child—a clever, appreciative child.... She would go round directly after lunch.... The maid should go home for the afternoon.... She laughed mischievously as she imagined the blankness of Alwynne's face, when she should be confronted by silence and a closed door. Poor, dear Alwynne! Well, it wouldn't hurt her. But Alwynne set out gaily on Christmas afternoon, and, first escorting Elsbeth to the lych-gate of her favourite church, walked on as quickly as her narrow fur-edged skirt would let her. The clocks were striking three as she turned into Friar's Lane. It was a cold, still day, and Alwynne shivered a little, and drew her furs closely about her, as she stood outside the door of Clare's flat. She had rung, but the maid was usually slow in answering. The passage was damply cold. It would be all the jollier to toast oneself before one of Clare's imperial fires....[91] She wished the maid would hurry up. She waited a moment and then rang again. There was no answer. It struck her that the maid might have been given the afternoon off; but it was funny that Clare did not hear. She rang again. She could hear the bell tinging shrilly within, but there was no other sound save the tick of the solemn little grandmother on the inner side of the wall. Suddenly it occurred to her that Clare might be dozing. Clare never slept in the afternoons, but she did occasionally doze in her chair for a few minutes. She denied that she did so as strenuously as people always and unaccountably do; but Alwynne knew better. It always delighted her when Clare succumbed to drowsiness; a good sleeper herself, she had been appalled by Clare's acquiescence in four wakeful nights out of seven, and after a casual description that Clare had once given her of the arid miseries of insomnia, ten minutes' unexpected slumber did not give Clare herself more ease than it gave Alwynne. The possibility of such an explanation of the silence, therefore, had to be considered respectfully: if Clare slept, far be it from Alwynne to wake her! Yet she could not go away.... Clare, after that unlucky clash of wills, would be doubly hurt if Alwynne left without seeing her first.... But if Clare were asleep.... Resignedly Alwynne sat herself down on Clare's doorstep to wait until a movement within should be the signal to ring again. She was not annoyed; she always had plenty to think about; and it would be very pleasant, when Clare did at last open the door, to be received with open arms, and pitied, and scolded, and warmed.... It was certainly very cold.... All the draughts of the town seemed to have their home on the staircase, and to come sliding and slithering and undulating past, like a brood of invisible snakes. She shifted her position. The doorstep was icy. She got up, and placed her muff, her chinchilla muff (shades of[92] Elsbeth! her beautiful, new chinchilla muff) on the whitened doorstep. Then she sat on it. "Ah! That's better," murmured Alwynne appreciatively. She was grateful to Elsbeth for reminding her to wear her muff. But it did not get any warmer, and the daylight was beginning to fade. She glanced at her watch—twenty minutes past three. Surely Clare was awake again now. But she would wait another five minutes. She watched the hands—marvelled at the interminable length of a minute, and was drifting off on her favourite speculation as to the essential unreality of time, when simultaneously the grandmother struck the half-hour and she sneezed. She jumped up horrified. A cold would mean a week's absence from Clare, and a restatement of Elsbeth's thesis "of the advisability of wearing flannel petticoats and long-sleeved bodices." Also, half of her hoarded hour was gone. She rang again impatiently. No answer. Clare must be out.... Gone to the post? No, Alwynne had been waiting half-an-hour, she would have returned by now.... Impossible that Clare should be out on Christmas afternoon, when she had refused an invitation and was expecting Alwynne herself.... She rang; and waited; and rang again and again and yet again. "If Clare has gone out——" cried Alwynne indignantly; and subjected the handle to a final series of vicious tugs. The bell within pealed and rocked and jarred, gave a last hysterical gurgle and was dumb. She had broken the bell. She had broken Clare Hartill's bell! Alwynne looked round about her guiltily; she felt more like nine than nineteen. The flight of stairs was still empty and silent. No one had seen her come; no one would see her go.... If she went quietly away, and said nothing about it? For Clare would be annoyed.... She always got so annoyed over little things.... What a pity to have a fuss with Clare over such a little thing as a broken bell![93] She crept on tip-toe down the stairs and out into the road. Then she paused. Was she being mean? After all—there was no earthly use in telling Clare.... Clare would never let her pay for the mending.... Yet naturally she would be annoyed to come back and find her bell broken.... She would think it was the milkman or the paper-boy.... Alwynne hoped they would not get into trouble.... Perhaps, after all, she had better tell Clare. Such an absurd thing to confess to, though—that she had been in such a temper that she had broken the bell! Clare would be sarcastic.... Yet it was Clare's fault for being out.... That was unkind.... She would tell Clare so ... she would write and tell her.... She would write a note now, and tell her about the bell at the same time.... She retraced her steps, pulled out her note-book and pencil, and began to scribble— <blockquote>Dear Clare—I'm awfully sorry but I'm afraid I've broken the bell. I couldn't make you hear. I thought you were asleep, but I suppose you are out. I must have rung too hard, but I didn't think you would be out. Heavily underlined. I'm dreadfully sorry about the bell. </blockquote> She hesitated. If Clare would let her pay for a new one, she wouldn't feel so bad.... Yet how could she suggest it? It would sound so crude.... If only Clare would not be angry.... Absurd to be feeling afraid of Clare—but then she had never done anything so stupid before.... Angry or not, Clare would never let her pay.... Yet should she suggest it? She bit her pencil in distracted indecision, till the lead broke off between her teeth. That settled it. The damp stump was barely capable of scoring an Alwynne. She pinned the paper to the door with her only hatpin (a present of the forenoon) and reluctantly departed. It was a pity that her best hat blew off twice into the mud.[94] Elsbeth was glad to get Alwynne back so early. Had Alwynne enjoyed herself? Alwynne sneezed as she answered. Before the evening was over Alwynne reeked of eucalyptus. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [95] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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