REGIMENT OF WOMEN
[Illustration: Publisher's Device]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
REGIMENT OF WOMEN
BY
CLEMENCE DANE
'The monstrous empire of a cruell woman we knowe to be the
onlie occasion of all these miseries: and yet with silence
we passe the time as thogh the mater did nothinge appertein
to us.'
JOHN KNOX, _First Blast of the Trumpet against
the Monstrous Regiment of Women_.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1917.
Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.
To E. A.
Here's Our Book
As it grew.
But it's Your Book!
For, but for you,
Who'd look
At My Book?
C. D.
REGIMENT OF WOMEN
CHAPTER I
The school secretary pattered down the long corridor and turned into a
class-room.
The room was a big one. There were old-fashioned casement windows and
distempered walls; the modern desks, ranged in double rows, were small
and shallow, scarred, and incredibly inky. In the window-seats stood an
over-populous fish-bowl, two trays of silkworms, and a row of
experimental jam-pots. There were pictures on the walls--_The Infant
Samuel_ was paired with _Cherry Ripe_, and Alfred, in the costume of
Robin Hood, conscientiously ignored a neat row of halfpenny buns. The
form was obviously a low one.
Through the opening door came the hive-like hum of a school at work, but
the room was empty, save for a mistress sitting at the raised desk,
idle, hands folded, ominously patient. A thin woman, undeveloped,
sallow-skinned, with a sensitive mouth, and eyes that were bold and
shining.
They narrowed curiously at sight of the new-comer, but she was greeted
with sufficient courtesy.
"Yes, Miss Vigers?"
Henrietta Vigers was spare, precise, with pale, twitching eyes and a
high voice. Her manner was self-sufficient, her speech deliberate and
unnecessarily correct: her effect was the colourless obstinacy of an
elderly mule. She stared about her inquisitively.
"Miss Hartill, I am looking for Milly Fiske. Her mother has
telephoned----Where is the class? I can't be mistaken. It's a quarter
to one. You take the Lower Third from twelve-fifteen, don't you?"
"Yes," said Clare Hartill.
"Well, but--where is it?" The secretary frowned suspiciously. She was
instinctively hostile to what she did not understand.
"I don't know," said Clare sweetly.
Henrietta gaped. Clare, justly annoyed as she was, could not but be
grateful to the occasion for providing her with amusement. She enjoyed
baiting Henrietta.
"I should have thought you could tell me. Don't you control the
time-table? I only know"--her anger rose again--"that I have been
waiting here since a quarter past twelve. I have waited quite long
enough, I think. I am going home. Perhaps you will be good enough to
enquire into the matter."
"But haven't you been to look for them?" began Henrietta perplexedly.
"No," said Clare. "I don't, you know. I expect people to come to me. And
I don't like wasting my time." Then, with a change of tone, "Really,
Miss Vigers, I don't know whose fault it is, but it has no business to
happen. The class knows perfectly well that it is due here. You must see
that I can't run about looking for it."
"Of course, of course!" Henrietta was taken aback. "But I assure you
that it's nothing to do with me. I have rearranged nothing. Let me
see--who takes them before you?"
Clare shrugged her shoulders.
"How should I know? I hardly have time for my own classes----"
Henrietta broke in excitedly.
"It's Miss Durand! I might have known. Miss Durand, naturally. Miss
Hartill, I will see to the matter at once. It shall not happen again. I
will speak to Miss Marsham. I might have known."
"Miss Durand?" Clare's annoyance vanished. She looked interested and a
trifle amused. "That tall girl with the yellow hair? I've heard about
her. I haven't spoken to her yet, but the children approve, don't they?"
She laughed pointedly and Henrietta flushed. "I rather like the look of
her."
"Do you?" Henrietta smiled sourly. "I can't agree. A most unsuitable
person. Miss Marsham engaged her without consulting me--or you either, I
suppose? The niece or daughter or something, of an old mistress. I
wonder you didn't hear--but of course you were away the first fortnight.
A terrible young woman--boisterous--undignified--a bad influence on the
children!"
Clare's eyes narrowed again.
"Are you sure? The junior classes are working quite as well as
usual--better indeed. I've been surprised. Of course, to-day----"
"To-day is an example. She has detained them, I suppose. It has happened
before--five minutes here--ten there--every one is complaining.
Really--I shall speak to Miss Marsham."
"Of course, if that's the case, you had better," said Clare, rather
impatiently, as she moved towards the door. She regretted the impulse
that had induced her to explain matters to Miss Vigers. If it did not
suit her dignity to go in search of her errant pupils, still less did it
accord with a complaint to the fidgety secretary. She should have
managed the affair for herself. However--it could not be helped....
Henrietta Vigers was looking important.... Henrietta Vigers would enjoy
baiting the new-comer--what was her name--Durand? Miss Durand would
submit, she supposed. Henrietta was a petty tyrant to the younger
mistresses, and Clare Hartill was very much aware of the fact. But the
younger mistresses did not interest her; she was no more than idly
contemptuous of their flabbiness. Why on earth had none of them appealed
to the head mistress? But the new assistant was a spirited-looking
creature.... Clare had noticed her keen nostrils--nothing sheepish
there.... And Henrietta disliked her--distinctly a point in her
favour.... Clare suspected that trouble might yet arise.... She paused
uncertainly. Even now she might herself interfere.... But Miss Durand
had certainly had no right to detain Clare's class.... It was gross
carelessness, if not impertinence.... Let her fight it out with Miss
Vigers.... Nevertheless--she wished her luck....
With another glance at her watch, and a cool little nod to her
colleague, she left the class-room, and was shortly setting out for her
walk home.
Henrietta looked after her with an angry shrug.
For the hundredth time she assured herself that she was submitting
positively for the last time to the dictates of Clare Hartill; that such
usurpation was not to be borne.... Who, after all, had been Authority's
right hand for the last twenty years? Certainly not Clare Hartill....
Why, she could recall Clare's first term, a bare eight years ago! She
had disliked her less in those days; had respected her as a woman who
knew her business.... The school had been going through a lean year,
with Miss Marsham, the head mistress, seriously ill; with a weak staff,
and girls growing riotous and indolent. So lean a year, indeed, that
Henrietta, left in charge, had one day taken a train and her troubles to
Bournemouth, and poured them out to Authority's bath-chair. And Edith
Marsham, the old warhorse, had frowned and nodded and chuckled, and sent
her home again, no wiser than she came. But a letter had come for her
later, and the bearer had been a quiet, any-aged woman with disquieting
eyes. They had summed Henrietta up, and Henrietta had resented it. The
new assistant, given, according to instructions, a free hand, had gone
about her business, asking no advice. But there had certainly followed a
peaceful six months. Then had come speech-day and Henrietta's world had
turned upside down. She had not known such a speech-day for years.
Complacent parents had listened to amazingly efficient performances--the
guest of honour had enjoyed herself with obvious, naïve surprise: there
had been the bomb-shell of the lists. Henrietta had nothing to do with
the examinations, but she knew such a standard had not been reached for
many a long term. And the head mistress, restored and rubicund, had
alluded to her, Henrietta's, vice-regency in a neat little speech. She
had received felicitations, and was beginning, albeit confusedly, to
persuade herself that the stirring of the pie had been indeed due to her
own forefinger, when the guests left, and she had that disturbing little
interview with her principal.
Edith Marsham had greeted her vigorously. She was still in her prime
then, old as she was. She had another six years before senility,
striking late, struck heavily.
"Well--what do you think of her, eh? I hope you were a good girl--did as
she told you?"
Henrietta had flushed, resenting it that Miss Marsham, certainly a head
mistress of forty years' standing, should, as she aged, treat her staff
more and more as if it were but a degree removed from the Upper Sixth.
The younger women might like it, but it did not accord with Henrietta's
notions of her own dignity. She was devoutly thankful that Miss Marsham
reserved her freedom for private interviews; had, in public at least,
the grand manner. Yet she had a respect for her; knew her dimly for a
notable dame, who could have coerced a recalcitrant cabinet as easily as
she bullied the school staff.
She had rubbed her hands together, shrewd eyes a-twinkle.
"I knew what I was doing! How long have you been with me, Henrietta?
Twelve years ago, eh? Ah, well, it's longer ago than that. Let me
see--she's twenty-eight now, Clare Hartill--and she left me at sixteen.
A responsibility, a great responsibility. An orphan--too much money. A
difficult child--I spent a lot of time on her, and prayer, too, my dear.
Well, I don't regret it now. When I met her at Bournemouth that day--oh,
I wasn't pleased with you, Henrietta! It has taken me forty years to
build up my school, and I can't be ill two months, but----Well, I made
up my mind. I found her at a loose end. I talked to her. She'll take
plain speaking from me. I told her she'd had enough of operas and art
schools, and literary societies (she's been running round Europe for the
last ten years). I told her my difficulty--I told her to come back to me
and do a little honest work. Of course she wouldn't hear of it."
"Then how did you persuade Miss Hartill?"
But Henrietta, raising prim brows, had but drawn back a chuckle from the
old woman.
"How many types of schoolgirl have you met, Henrietta? Here, under me?"
Henrietta fidgeted. The question was an offence. It was not in her
department. She had no note of it in her memorandum books.
"Really--I can hardly tell you--blondes and brunettes, do you mean? No
two girls are quite the same, are they?"
But Miss Marsham had not attended.
"Just two--that's my experience. The girl from whom you get work by
telling her you are sure she can do it--and the girl from whom you get
work by telling her you are sure she can't. You'll soon find out which I
told Clare Hartill. And now, understand this, Henrietta. There are to be
no dissensions. I want Clare Hartill to stay. If she gets engrossed in
the work, she will. She won't interfere with you, you'll find. She's too
lazy. Get on with her if you can."
But Henrietta had not got on with her, had resented fiercely Miss
Marsham's preferential treatment of the new-comer. That Miss Marsham was
obviously wise in her generation did not appease her _amour propre_. She
knew that where she had failed, Clare had been uncannily successful. Yet
Clare was not aggressively efficient: indeed it was a grievance that she
was so apparently casual, so gracefully indifferent. But, as if it were
a matter of course, she did whatever she set out to do so much better,
so much more graphically than it had ever been done before, that
inevitably she attracted disciples. But Henrietta's grievance went
deeper. She denied her any vestige of personal charm, and at the same
time insisted fiercely that she was an unscrupulous woman, in that she
used her personal charm to accomplish her aims: her aims, in Henrietta's
eyes, being the ousting of the secretary from her position of trust and
possible succession to the headship. Henrietta did not realise that it
was herself, far more than Clare, who was jeopardising that position.
Though there was no system of prefecture among the staff, she had come
to consider herself responsible for the junior mistresses, encouraging
them to bring complaints to her, rather than to the head of the school.
Old Miss Marsham, little as she liked relaxing her hold on the reins,
dreaded, as old age must, the tussle that would inevitably follow any
insistence on her prerogatives, and had acquiesced; yet with
reservations. Had one of the younger mistresses rebelled and carried her
grievance to the higher court, Miss Vigers' eyes might have been opened;
but as yet no one had challenged her self-assumed supremacy. Clare, who
might have done so, cared little who supervised the boarders or was
supreme in the matter of time-table and commissariat. Her interest lay
in the actual work, in the characters and possibilities of the workers.
There she brooked no interference, and Henrietta attempted little, for
when she did she was neatly and completely routed.
But the more chary Henrietta grew of interfering with Clare's
activities, the more she realised that it was her duty (she would not
have said pleasure) to supervise the younger women. She had a gift that
was almost genius of appearing among them at awkward moments. If a child
were proving refractory and victory hanging in the balance, Miss Vigers
would surely choose that moment to knock at the class-room door, and,
politely refusing to inconvenience the embarrassed novice, wait,
all-observant, until the scene ended, before explaining her errand.
Later in the day the young mistress would be button-holed, and the i's
and t's of her errors of judgment dotted and crossed. Those who would
not submit to tutelage she contrived to render so uncomfortable that,
sooner or later, they retired in favour of temperaments more sheeplike
or more thick-skinned.
To Alwynne Durand, at present under grave suspicion of tampering with
Clare Hartill's literature class, she had been from the first inimical.
She had been engaged without Henrietta's sanction; she was young, and
pretty, and already ridiculously popular. And there was the affair of
the nickname. Alwynne had certainly looked out of place at the
mistresses' table, on the day of her arrival, with her yellow hair and
green gown--"like a daffodil stuck into a bunch of everlastings," as an
early adorer had described her. The phrase had appealed and spread, and
within a week she was "Daffy" to the school; but her popularity among
her colleagues had not been heightened by rumours of the collective
nickname the contrast with their junior had evoked. Her obvious shyness
and desire to please were, however, sufficiently disarming, and her
first days had not been made too difficult for her by any save
Henrietta. But Henrietta was sure she was incompetent--called to witness
her joyous, casual manner, her unorthodox methods, her way of submerging
the mistress in the fellow-creature. She had labelled her
undisciplined--which Alwynne certainly was--lax and undignified; had
prophesied that she would be unable to maintain order; had been annoyed
to find that, inspiring neither fear nor awe, she was yet quite capable
of making herself respected. Alwynne's jolliness never seemed to expose
her to familiarities, ready as she was to join in the laugh against
herself when, new to the ways of the school, she outraged Media, or
reduced Persia to hysterical giggles. She was soon reckoned up by the
shrewd children as "mad, but a perfect dear," and she managed to make
her governance so enjoyable that it would have been considered bad form,
as well as bad policy, to make her unconventionality an excuse for
ragging. She had, indeed, easily assimilated the school atmosphere. She
was humble and anxious to learn, had no notions of her own importance.
But she was quick-tempered, and though she could be meek and grateful to
experience backed by good manners, she reared at patronage. Inevitably
she made mistakes, the mistakes of her age and temperament, but common
sense and good humour saved her from any serious blunders.
Miss Vigers had, nevertheless, noted each insignificant slip, and
carried the tale, less insignificant in bulk, in her mind, ready to
produce at a favourable opportunity.
And now the opportunity had arisen. Miss Hartill had delivered Miss
Durand into her hand. Miss Hartill, she was glad to note, had not shown
any interest in the new-comer.... Miss Hartill had a way of taking any
one young and attractive under her protection.... That it was with Miss
Hartill that the girl had come into conflict, however, did away with any
need of caution.... Miss Durand needed putting in her place....
Henrietta, in all speed, would reconduct her thither.