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Regiment of Women

<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> Clare Hartill's precautions proved to be unnecessary as the alarms of her colleagues. The inquest was a formal and quickly concluded affair, and the only corollary to the verdict of accidental death was an expression of sympathy with all concerned. Whereon, there being no further cause for the detaining of Louise Denny above ground, she was elegantly and expeditiously buried. The whole school attended the funeral. The flowers required a second carriage, and for the first time in his life, Mr. Denny was genuinely proud of his daughter. He did not believe that his own death could have extracted more lavish tributes from the purses of his acquaintances. Clare Hartill, writing a card for her wreath of incredible orchids, did not regret her extravagance. After all—one must keep up one's position.... There would certainly not be such another wreath in the churchyard.... How Louise would have exclaimed over it! Poor child.... It was all one could do for her now. Clare hesitated, pen arrested—"With deepest sympathy." It was not necessary to write anything more.... Her name was printed already.... But Louise would have liked a message.... After all, she had been very proud of Louise.... She reversed the card, and wrote, almost illegibly, in a corner, "Louise—with love. C. H." She paused, lips pursed. Sentimental, perhaps? Possibly.... But let it go.... Hastily she impaled her card on its attendant pin, and thrust it, print upward, among the flowers. The message was for Louise; no one else need see it.[232] Alwynne, too, sent flowers. But as usual she had spent all but a fraction of her salary. Seven and sixpence does not make a show, even if the garland be home-made. The shabby wreath was forgotten among the crowd of hot-house blooms. It lay in a corner till the day after the funeral. Then the housemaid threw it away. So Louise had no message from Alwynne. By the end of a fortnight Louise was barely a memory in the school. A month had obliterated her entirely. Yet her short career and sudden death had its influence on school and individual alike. Miss Marsham had had her lesson; she began to make her preliminary preparations for giving up her head mistress-ship, and selling her interest in the school; though it was the following spring before she began to negotiate definitely with Clare, on whom her choice had finally fallen. She would not be hurried; she would not appear anxious to settle her affairs; but she had determined, between regret and relief, that the next summer should be the last of her reign. Henrietta, though her anxieties were abated by the turn affairs had taken, was still doubtful whether Miss Marsham were as blindly reliant upon her as usual. But, though feeling her position still somewhat insecure, her spirits had risen, and her natural love of interference had risen with them. She could not forget her conversation with Miss Hartill: an amazing conversation—a conversation teeming with suggestions and possibilities.... Of course, Miss Hartill had had no idea, poor distracted woman, of how skilfully Henrietta had drawn her out.... Henrietta felt pleased with herself. Without once referring to Miss Hartill, she could follow out her own plans as far as Miss Durand was concerned.... Later, Miss Hartill might remember that apparently innocent conversation and realise that Henrietta had stolen a march on her.... Yet, though she might be loyally angry, for her friend's sake, she could not do anything to cross Henrietta's arrangements ... could not wish to do anything, because essentially,[233] if reluctantly, she had approved them, had recognised that it was time to curtail Miss Durand's activities.... Henrietta felt virtuous. Miss Durand had brought it on herself.... She wished her no harm.... But it was right that Marsham should realise how far she was from an ideal school-mistress.... She had been engaged as scholastic maid-of-all-work.... Yet in a few terms she had become second only to Miss Hartill herself.... It was not fit.... Let her go back to her beginnings.... She, Henrietta, had only to open Miss Marsham's eyes.... But to that end there must be evidence.... For the rest of the term, patient and peering as a rag-picker, she went about collecting her evidence. Clare did not give another thought to her conversation with the gimlet-eyed secretary. It had served its purpose—had been a barrier between herself and the possibility of attack—had given her a feeling of security. She perceived, nevertheless, that her transient affability had made Henrietta violently her adherent. Clare was resigned to knowing that the change of face would be temporary—she could not allow a parading of herself as an intimate, and thither, she shrewdly suspected, would Henrietta's amenities lead. But she found it amusing to be gracious, as long as no more was expected of her. She did not like Henrietta one whit the better; felt herself, indeed, degraded by the expedient to which she had resorted, and fiercely despised her tool. Henrietta should be given rope, might attack Alwynne unhindered, nevertheless she should hang herself at the last.... Clare would ensure that.... Once—Henrietta had called her a cat.... Oh, she had heard of it! Well—for the present, she would purr to Henrietta, blank-eyed, claws sheathed.... Let her serve her turn. But Clare, beneath her schemes and jealousies, was, nevertheless, deeply and sincerely unhappy. The removal of the entirely selfish and cold-blooded panic that had been upon her since Louise's death, left her free to entertain[234] deeper and sincerer feelings. She thought of Louise incessantly, with a growing feeling of regret and responsibility. She hated responsibility, though she loved authority—she had always shut her eyes to the effects of her caprices. But the more she thought of Louise, the more insistent grew her qualms. That the child was dead of its own will, she never doubted; but she fought desperately against the suggestion that her own conduct could have affected its state of mind, was ready to accept the most preposterous premise, whose ensuing chain of reasoning could acquit her. But nobody having accused her, no ingenuity of herself or another, could, for the time being, acquit her. She was merely a prey to her own intangible uneasinesses. Yet it needed but a key to set the whole machinery of her conscience in motion against her. The key was to be found. The term was drawing to an end, and Alwynne, rounding off her special classes and generally making up arrears, was proportionately busy. She still spent her week-ends with Clare, but she brought her work along with her. She had her corner of the table, and Clare her desk, and the two would work till the small hours. But by the last Sunday evening, Clare's piles of reports and examination papers had disappeared, and she was free to lie at ease on her sofa, and to laugh at Alwynne, still immersed in exercise books, and tantalise her with airy plans for the long, delicious holidays. It had been, in spite of the season, a day of rain and cold winds. The skies had cleared at the sunset, with its red promise of fine weather once more, but the remnant of a fire still smouldered on the hearth. Alwynne was flushed with the interest of her work, but ever and again Clare shivered, and pulled the quilted sofa-wrap more closely about her. She wished that Alwynne would be quick.... Surely Alwynne could finish off her work some other time.... It wouldn't hurt her to get up early for once, for that matter.... She was bored.... She was dull.... She wanted amusement.... She wanted Alwynne, and attention, and affection, and a little[235] butterfly kiss or two.... Alwynne ought to be awake to the fact that she was wanted.... She watched her, between fretfulness and affection, æsthetically appreciative of the big young body in the lavender frock, and the crown of shining hair, pleased with her property, intensely impatient of its interest in anything but herself. "Alwynne——?" There was a hint of neglect in her voice. Alwynne beamed, but her eyes were abstracted. "Only another half-hour, Clare. I must just finish these. You don't mind, do you?" "I? Mind?" Clare laughed elaborately. She picked up a book, and there was silence once more. Leaves fluttered and a pen scraped. The light began to fade. Suddenly Alwynne gave a smothered exclamation. Clare looked up and pulled herself upright, angry enough. "Alwynne! Your carelessness—you've dropped your wet pen on my carpet. It's too bad." Alwynne groped hastily beneath the table. But even the prolonged stooping had not brought back the colour to her cheek, as she replaced her pen on the stand. "I'm sorry. I was startled. It hasn't marked it. Clare—just listen to this." "What have you got hold of?" demanded Clare irritably. She disliked spots and spillings and mess, as Alwynne might know. "It's Louise's composition book. I always wondered where it had got to, when I cleared out her desk. It must have lain about and got collected in with the rest, yesterday." "Well?" said Clare, with a show of indifference. "Here's that essay on King John and his times. Do you remember? You gave it to them to do just before the play. It's not corrected. Not finished." She hesitated. "Clare! It's rather queer."[236] "Is it any good?" said Clare meditatively. "What for?" "The School Magazine. We're short of copy. The child wrote well. But I suppose it wouldn't do to use it—though I don't see why not." Suddenly Alwynne began to read aloud. <blockquote>"Another way by which King John got money from the Jews was by threatening them with torture. He was all-powerful. He could draw their teeth, tooth by tooth, twist their thumbs, or leave them to rot in dark, silent prisons. They could not do anything against him. If he could not force them to yield up their treasure he would have them burned, or cause them to be pressed to death. This is a horrible torture. I read about a woman who was killed in this way in the 'Hundred Best Books'; and there was a man in Good King Charles's days whom they killed like this. It is the worst death of any. They tie you down, so that you cannot move at all, and there is a slab of stone that hangs a little above you. This sinks very slowly, so that all the first day you just lie and stare at it and wonder if it really moves. People come and give you food and laugh at you. You are scarcely afraid, because it moves so little and you think nobody could be really so cruel and hurt you so horribly, and that you will be saved somehow. But all the time the stone is sinking—sinking—and the day goes by and the night comes and they leave you alone. And perhaps you go to sleep at last. You are horribly tired, because of the weeks of fear that are behind you. Perhaps you dream. You dream you are free and people love you, and you have done nothing wrong and you are frightfully happy, and the one you love most kisses your forehead. But then the kiss grows so cold that you shrink away, only you cannot, and it presses you harder and harder, and you wake up and it is the stone. It is the sinking stone that is pressing you, pressing you, pressing you to death—and you cannot move. And you shriek and[237] shriek for help within your gagged mouth, and no one comes, and always the stone is pressing you, pressing you, pressing you——" </blockquote> Clare caught the exercise-book from Alwynne's hand and thrust it into the heart of the half-dead fire. It lay unlighted, charring and smouldering. The unformed handwriting stood out very clearly. Clare caught at a matchbox, and tore it open; the matches showered out over her hand on to the rug and grate. She struck one after another, breaking them before they could light. Silently Alwynne took the box from her shaking fingers, lit a match and held it to the twisting papers. A thin little flame flickered up, overran them eagerly, wavered a second, and died with a faint whistling sigh. "Do you hear that? Did you see that?" Clare knelt upright on the hearth. She held up her forefinger. "Listen! Like a voice! Like a child's voice! A child sighing! Light the candles—light all the candles! I want light everywhere. No room for any shadow." But as Alwynne moved obediently, she caught at her hand. "Alwynne! Stay with me! Don't go into another room. Alwynne, I'm frightened of my thoughts." Alwynne put her hand shyly on her shoulders, talking at random. "Clare, dear, do get up. Come on to the sofa. You mustn't kneel there. You'll strain yourself. I always get tired kneeling in church. It makes one's heart ache." Clare would not move. "Don't you think my heart aches?" she said. "Don't you think it aches all day? You're young—you're cold—you can sit there reading, reading—with a ghost at your shoulder——" An undecipherable expression flashed across Alwynne's face. It came but to go—and Clare, absorbed in her own passion, saw nothing.[238] "It's Louise!" she cried, between sincerity and histrionics. "Calling to some one. Calling from her grave. They call it an accident, like fools. Oh, can't you hear? She died because she was forced. She's complaining—plaining—plaining——I tell you it's nothing to do with me. It wasn't my fault!" She flung her arms about Alwynne's waist and clutched her convulsively. She was sincere enough at last. "Alwynne! Alwynne! Say it was not my fault." Alwynne sank to her knees beside her and held her close. They clung to each other like scared children. But Clare's abandonment awoke all Alwynne's protective instincts. She crushed down whatever emotions had hollowed her eyes and whitened her cheeks in the last long weeks, and addressed herself to quieting Clare. Clare, stepped off her pedestal, unpoised, clinging helplessly, was a new experience. In the face of it she felt herself childish, inadequate. But Clare was in trouble and needed her. The very marvel of it steadied. All her love for Clare rose within her, overflowed her, like a warm tide. By sheer strength she pulled Clare into a chair and dropped on to the floor beside her, face upturned, talking fast and eagerly. "You're not to talk like that. Of course it's not your fault. If anything could be your fault. Clare, darling, don't look like that. You must lean back and rest. You're just tired, you know. We've talked of it so often. You know it was an accident. Why can't you believe it, if every one else does?" "Do you?" said Clare intently. Alwynne's eyes met hers defiantly. "I do. Of course I do. It's wicked to torment yourself. But if I didn't—if the poor baby was overtired and overworked—is it your fault? You only saw her in class at the last. You couldn't help it if the exams, and the play were suddenly too much—if something snapped——" "You see, you do think so," said Clare bitterly. "I've[239] always known you did. Well—think what you like—what do I care?" She put up her clenched hands and rubbed and kneaded at her dry aching eyes. Alwynne watched her, desperately. Here was her lady wanting comfort, and she had found none. She wracked her brains as the sluggish minutes passed. Clare's hands dropped at last. She met Alwynne's anxious gaze and laughed harshly. "Well? The verdict? That I was a brute to Louise, I suppose?" Alwynne looked at her wistfully. "Clare, I do love you so." Clare stiffened. "Then I warn you—stop! I'm not good for you. I hurt people who love me. You always pestered me about hurting Louise. You needn't protest. You always did. And now you lay her death at my door. I see it in your face. Can't I read you like a book? Can't I? Can't I?" Her face was distorted by the conflict within her. Alwynne's simplicity was convinced. Here, she felt, was tragedy. Awe and pity tore at her sense of reality. Love loosened her tongue. Her words rushed forth in a torrent of incoherent argument. She was so eager that her fallacies had power to convince herself, much more Clare. "Clare, I won't have it. You don't know what you say. What is this mad idea you've got? What would poor Louise think if she heard? Why, she adored you. And you were kind—always kind—only when you thought it better for her, you were strict. It's folly to torment yourself. If you do—what about me?" "You?" Clare's eyes glinted suddenly. "Me! If you are to blame, how much more I? Oh, don't you see?" Alwynne's face grew rapt. Here was inspiration; her path grew suddenly clear. "Clare, don't you see? If she did—" she paused imperceptibly—"I ought to have seen what was coming. I knew her so much better than you."[240] Clare repressed a denial. "Oh, darling—you mustn't worry. It's my responsibility. Try and think—at the play, for instance. Did you think her manner strained? No, of course you didn't. But I did. I thought at the time it had all been too much for her. I did notice—I did! I thought—that child will get brain-fever if we're not careful——I meant to speak to Elsbeth. I meant to speak to you. Oh, I'd noticed before. Only I was busy, and lazy, and put it off. She was unhappy at failing—I knew. I wanted to tell you that I know how much it meant to her—and I didn't. I was afraid——" She broke off abruptly; her eloquence ended as suddenly as it had begun. But she had succeeded in her desire. Clare was recovering poise; would soon have herself all the more rigidly in control for her recent collapse. She stiffened as she spoke. "Afraid of whom?" "I mean I was afraid all along of what might happen," Alwynne concluded lamely. "You see, it was my fault?" There was an odd half-query in her voice. "If you noticed so much and never tried to warn me, you are certainly to blame." Clare's voice was full of reluctant conviction. "I can't remember that you tried very hard." "Oh, Clare!" began Alwynne. Their eyes met. Clare's face was hard and impassive—all trace of emotion gone. Her eyes challenged. Alwynne's lids dropped as she finished her sentence. "That is—no, I didn't try very hard." "And why not?" Inconceivably an answer suggested itself to Alwynne, an unutterable iconoclasm. Her mind edged away from it horrified and in an instant it was not. But it had been. "I don't know," she stammered. "You realised the responsibility you incurred?" Clare went on. "I didn't. No, never!" Alwynne supplicated her. "You do now?"[241] "Oh, yes," she said despairingly. She rejoiced that Clare could believe and be comforted, but it hurt her that she believed so easily. It alarmed her, too, made her, knowing her own motives, yet doubt herself. She felt trapped. "I'm sorry you told me," said Clare abruptly. They sat a moment in silence. A ray from the dying sun illuminated their faces. In Alwynne an innocent air of triumph fought with distress, and a growing uneasiness. Clare was expressionless. Clare put up her hand to shelter herself, and her face was scarcely visible as she went on. She spoke softly. "My dear, I can't say I'm not relieved. I feel exonerated—completely. Yet I wish you hadn't told me. I'd have rather thought it my fault than known it——" "Mine," said Alwynne huskily. Clare bent towards her, tender, gracious, yet subtly aloof; confessor, not friend. "Oh, Alwynne! Why will you always be so sure of yourself? Why not have come to me for advice as you used to? What are we elder folk for? I love your impetuosity—your self-reliance—and I believe, I shall always believe, that you wanted to spare me trouble and worry. I know you. But you're not all enough, Alwynne, to decide everything for yourself. You won't believe it, I suppose—oh, I was just the same. But doesn't all this dreadful business show you? A few words—and Louise might have been with us now. Of course you acted for the best, but——There, my dear, there, there——" for her beautiful, pitiful voice had played too exquisitely on Alwynne's nerves, and the girl was sobbing helplessly. And Clare was very kind to Alwynne, and let her cry in peace. And when she was tired of watching her, she braced her with deft praises of courage and self-control. Self-control appealed very strongly to Clare, Alwynne knew. While she dried her eyes, Clare whispered to her that the past was past and that one couldn't repair one's mistakes[242] by dwelling on them. Let devotion to the living blot out a debt to the dead. She must try and forget. Clare would help her. Clare would try to forget too. They would never speak of it again. Never by word or look would Clare refer to it. It should be blotted out and forgotten. And after a discreet interval, when there was no chance of big, irrepressible tears dropping into the gravy, or salting the butter, Clare thought she would like her supper. She made quite a hearty meal, and Alwynne crumbled bread and drank thirstily, and watched her with humble, adoring eyes. Clare, in soft undertones, was delicately amusing, full of dainty quips that coaxed Alwynne gently back to smiles and naturalness. She spared no pains, and sent Alwynne home at last, with, metaphorically speaking, her blessing. But Alwynne stooped as she walked, as though she carried a burden. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [243] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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