Read Ebook: Regiment of Women by Dane Clemence

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Ebook has 1455 lines and 48742 words, and 30 pages

the old warhorse yet.... Anything that she could be persuaded to believe would benefit her school would have her instant sanction.... She would be nominally responsible, of course, and would give Clare, nevertheless, a free hand.... And Clare, sweeping clean, would sweep away whatever withstood her.... Henrietta would have little energy left for Alwynne when Clare had finished her spring-cleaning....

For the next few weeks, Clare spent nearly all her spare time at the school. She would stay to supper, and even, on occasion, superintend "lights out." She would ask artless questions, and the matron and the young mistresses found her "so sympathetic when you really got her to yourself. So sensible, you know--always sees what you mean."

Finally, Clare shut herself up for a Saturday and a Sunday with a neat little note-book, and drew up plans and made some calculations. Then she went to see Miss Marsham. She went to see Miss Marsham several times.

The plan was certainly an excellent one.... Miss Marsham could not follow the details very well ... but that, of course, would be dear Clare's affair.... A great saving ... an immense improvement.... There would be changes, of course.... This idea of separate houses, for instance.... It would mean taking extra premises--but Clare was quite right, they were overcrowded--had had to turn away girls.... She quite agreed with Clare ... she had always preferred boarders herself; one had a freer hand.... With a mistress responsible for each house, though, what would there be left for Miss Vigers to do?... Yes--she might take over a house, of course.... But Miss Marsham paused uneasily. She anticipated trouble with Henrietta.

She was justified. Henrietta refused utterly to discuss the suggested alterations. Miss Marsham must excuse her; she had her position.... One house? after controlling the entire school's economy? She did not suggest that Miss Marsham could be serious--that was impossible.... Miss Marsham was serious? Then there was no more to be said....

She said a good deal, however, and at considerable length; ended, breathless, waspish, leaving her resignation in her principal's hands. Neither she nor Miss Marsham dreamed that it would be accepted.

But Clare Hartill, consulted by Miss Marsham, was puzzlingly relieved. Very delicately she congratulated her chief on being extricated from a difficult position; praised Miss Vigers's tact--or her sense of fitness. Unusual good sense.... People so seldom realised their limitations, unprompted ... poor Miss Vigers was certainly no longer young ... hardly the woman for a modern house-mistress-ship.... Old fashioned ... in these days of degrees and college-training so much more was expected ... and after that affair in the summer no doubt she had lost confidence in herself.... Clare was sure that Miss Vigers had appreciated Miss Marsham's forbearance, but of course, she must know, in her own heart, that if she had taken proper precautions--it was her business to arrange for a mistress to be on duty, wasn't it?--the accident could not have happened. Poor little Louise! Oh, and of course, poor Miss Vigers too!... Well, it was for the best, she supposed ... and Miss Vigers seemed to feel that it was time for her to go.... Perhaps it was.... But they would all be sorry to lose her.... Clare really thought that she would like to get up a presentation from the school.... Now what did Miss Marsham consider appropriate?

So Henrietta found herself taken at her word. She left, passionately resentful, at the half-term; hoping, at least, to embarrass her employer thereby.

Henrietta Vigers was forty-seven when she left. She had spent youth and prime at the school, and had nothing more to sell. She had neither certificates nor recommendations behind her. She was hampered by her aggressive gentility. Out of a ?50 salary she had scraped together ?500. Invested daringly it yielded her ?25 a year. She had no friends outside the school. She left none within it.

Miss Marsham presented her with a gold watch, decorously inscribed; the school with a handsomely bound edition of Shakespeare.

Heaven knows what became of her.

Said Clare to Elsbeth at their next meeting--

"I found out what the trouble was. Henrietta Vigers has been slave-driving her. I should have guessed before, but you know that sort of thing can go on in a school unnoticed."

"Oh, yes," said Elsbeth.

Clare shot a suspicious glance at her, but Elsbeth's face was impassive.

"But she'll be all right now. Miss Vigers is leaving us at half-term."

"So I hear."

Their eyes met. Clare flushed faintly.

"I couldn't have Alwynne bullied."

"I know exactly how you feel," said Elsbeth quietly. Then, with a direct glance, "Has Miss Vigers got another post?"

"I haven't enquired."

"You're a bad enemy," Elsbeth's tone was quaintly reflective, almost admiring.

"But a good friend, I hope?" Clare laughed.

"I hope so," said Elsbeth doubtfully, and Clare laughed again. It amused her to cross swords with Elsbeth. At times she felt, that had it not been for Alwynne--that bone of contention she could have liked her.

"You can't be one without the other," she instructed her. "I don't pretend to be a saint. And you'll see how much better Alwynne will be next term."

But the spring term came, and Alwynne was no better. She flagged like a transplanted tree. She went about her business as usual, but even Clare, not too willing to acknowledge what interfered with her scheme of things, realised that her efficiency was laborious, that her high spirits were forced, her comicalities not spontaneous, that she was in fact, not herself, but merely an elaborate imitation.

But where Elsbeth grew anxious Clare grew irritated. She spied a mystery. Some obscure, yet powerful instinct prevented her from probing it, but she was none the less piqued at being left in the dark. It annoyed her too, that Alwynne should be obviously and daily losing her health and good looks. Clare required above all vitality in her associates. It had been, in her eyes, one of Alwynne's most attractive characteristics. This changing Alwynne, whitened, quieted, submissive, the sparkle gone from her eyes and the snap from her tongue, was less to her taste. Alwynne, very conscious of her shortcomings and of Clare's irritation at them, grew daily more nervously propitiatory--ever a fatal attitude to Clare. It roused the petty tyrant in her. There were jarrings, misunderstandings, exhausting scenes and more exhausting reconciliations. Yet the two were always together. Clare, viciously adroit as she grew in those days in piercing the armour of Alwynne's peace, exacted nevertheless her incessant service. And never had Alwynne so strained every nerve to please her.

Elsbeth, guessing at the situation, could give thanks when influenza, sweeping over the school, claimed Alwynne as its earliest victim. Her turn had come. She nursed Alwynne through the attack, prolonged her convalescence, excluded all enquirers, censored messages and letters. When Alwynne grew better, and talked, restless yet unwilling, of fixing the date of her return, Elsbeth, lips firmly set, went out one afternoon to pay a call upon Miss Marsham, and returning, sat down to write a letter. She busied herself for the rest of that day and all the next over Alwynne's wardrobe, mending and pressing and freshening.

Alwynne protested.

"Elsbeth dear, do leave my things alone. I'll mend them some time--honestly. They're all right. I wish you wouldn't fuss."

But Elsbeth fussed placidly on.

In the evening came letters for them both. Alwynne read hers hurriedly.

"Elsbeth, it's from Clare! She wants to know why I'm not coming back. What does she mean? Of course I'm coming back. Mademoiselle Charette is already, and she was ill after I was!"

Elsbeth sniffed.

"She was only in bed two days--Miss Marsham said so. You're not going back this term, Alwynne. I've seen Miss Marsham myself. I told her what the doctor said. I've arranged things. She agrees with me--you're not fit to. It's only a month to end of term. They can manage. You've simply got to have a change. So I wrote to Dene--to the Lumsdens, and Alicia's answer has just come. They're delighted to have you. I knew they would be, of course. They have asked us so often. Such a lovely place. Now, my dear, be a sensible child and don't argue, because I've made up my mind. It'll do you good to get away."

For in Alwynne's face astonishment had been succeeded by indignation. Elsbeth prepared herself resignedly to face a storm of protest, if not a blank refusal. To be arranged for as if she were a child--unconsulted--Clare--the school--the coaching--leaving Elsbeth alone--Dene--utter strangers--perfectly well--simply ridiculous. Elsbeth saw it all coming.

"Perhaps it will," said Alwynne wearily. "All right, Elsbeth! I'll go if you want me to. Anyway, I don't much care."

A week later Alwynne was sitting in a diminutive go-cart drawn by a large pony, and driven by a large lady with a wide smile and bulgy knees, with which, as the little cart jolted over the stony road, she unconsciously nudged Alwynne, imparting an air of sly familiarity to her pleasant, formal talk. 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. She moved, as Alwynne noticed later, like a hurried cow, and tripped continually over her long skirts. Yet, in spite of her ramshackle exterior, she was not ridiculous. The good-men and stray children they encountered greeted her with obvious respect. Alwynne, comparing the keen eyes and their cheerful crowsfeet, with the chin, firm enough in its cushion of fat, guessed her the ruling spirit of the Dene household, and wondered why she had not married a vicar.

But Alicia, though Alwynne listened politely to her flow of talk, and answered prettily when she must, did not long occupy her attention.

She was in her own country again. She loved the country--woods, fields, hedges and lanes--as she loved no city or sea-town of them all. London, Paris, Rome--Swiss mountains or Italian lakes--she would have given them all for Kent and Hampshire and the Sussex Weald. But Clare would never hear of a country holiday. Alwynne took deep breaths of the clean, kindly air, and wondered to herself that she had taken the proposal of her holiday so dully. She had not realised that she was going into the country--she had not realised anything, except that she was tired, and that Elsbeth would not leave her alone. She had shrunk painfully from the idea of meeting strangers, from the exertion of accommodating herself to them. But this good air made one feel alive again....

She stared over the pony's ears at the gay spring landscape.

"Those are the Dene fields," said Alicia, following her glance. "There are two Denes, you know--Dene Village and Dene Fields. There's a couple of miles between them. We are in the hollow, where the road dips, at the foot of Witch Hill."

"Witch Hill?"

Alicia flourished her whip at the sky-line. The fields were spread over the hillside in sections of chocolate and magenta and silver-green, with here and again a parti-coloured patch, where oats and dandelions, pimpernel and sky-blue flax choked and strangled on an ash-heap. From the slopes Witch Hill lifted a brow of blank white chalk, crowned and draped in woodland, lying against pillows of cloud, for all the world like a hag abed, knees hunched, and patchwork quilt drawn up to ragged eyebrows. Round her neck the road wound like a silver riband; looped, dipped, disappeared, for two unfenced miles--to flash into view but a parrot's flight away, and swerve, with a steep little rush, round a house with French windows thatched in yellow jessamine.

Alwynne's eyes lit up.

"What a good name! Who was she before she was turned into that?" She stopped, flushing. Alicia would think her stupid.

Alicia laughed pleasantly.

"Do you like fairy tales? You've come to the right place--the country-side's full of them. There's a fairy fort--Roman I suppose, really, and a haunted barn out beyond Dene Compton, besides Witch Hill and the Witch Wood just behind our house. There's a story, of course. I don't know it--you must ask Roger. He's always picking up stories."

"Roger?"

"Oh yes, of course."

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