One of Alwynne's duties was the conduct of a small "extra" class,
consisting of girls, who, for reasons of stupidity, ill-health or
defective grounding, fell too far below the average of knowledge in
their respective classes. She devoted certain afternoons in the week to
coaching them, and was considered to be unusually successful in her
methods. She could be extremely patient, and had quaint and unorthodox
ways of insinuating facts into her pupils' minds. As she told Elsbeth,
she invented their memories for them. She was sufficiently imaginative
to realise their difficulties, yet sufficiently young to dream of
developing, in due course, all her lame ducks into swans. She was
intensely interested in hearing how her coaching had succeeded; her
pleasure at an amended place in class was so genuine, her disappointment
at a collapse so comically real, yet so devoid of contempt, so tinged
with conviction that it was anybody's fault but the culprit's, that
either attitude was an incentive to real effort. Like Clare, she did not
suffer fools gladly, but unlike Clare, she had not the moral courage to
be ruthless. Stupidity seemed as terrible to her as physical deformity;
she treated it with the same touch of motherliness, the same instinctive
desire to spare it realisation of its own unsightliness.
Her rather lovable cowardice brought a mixed reward; she stifled in
sick-rooms, yet invalids liked her well; she was frankly envious of
Clare's circle of brilliant girls and as inevitably surrounded by
inarticulate adorers, who bored her mightily, but whose clumsy affection
she was too kindhearted to suppress.
It had been well for Alwynne, however, that her following was of the
duller portion of the school. This Clare could endure, could
countenance; such boy-bishopry could not affect her own sovereignty, and
her subject's consequence increased her own. But to see Alwynne swaying,
however unconsciously, minds of a finer type, would not have been easy
for Clare. She had grown very fond of Alwynne; but the sentiment was
proprietary; she could derive no pleasure from her that was not
personal, and, in its most literal sense, selfish. She was unmaternal to
the core. She could not see human property admired by others with any
sensation but that of a double jealousy; she was subtly angered that
Alwynne could attract, yet was caught herself in the net of those
attractions, and unable to endure to watch them spread for any but
herself.
Alwynne, quite unconscious of the trait, had at first done herself harm
by her unfeigned interest in Clare's circle. It took the elder woman
some suspicious weeks to realise that Alwynne lacked completely her own
_dompteuse_ instinct, her craving for power; that she was as innocent of
knowledge of her own charm as unwedded Eve; that her impulse to Clare
was an impulse of the freshest, sweetest hero-worship; but the
realisation came at last, and Clare opened her hungry heart to her, and,
warmed by Alwynne's affection, wondered that she had hesitated so long.
Alwynne never guessed that she had been doubted. Clare was proud of her
genuine skill as a character reader--had been a little pleased to give
Alwynne proof of her penetration when occasion arose; and Alwynne, less
trained, less critical, thought her omniscient, and never dreamed that
the motives of her obscurest actions, the sources of her most veiled
references were not plain to Clare. Secure of comprehension, she went
her way: any one in whom Clare was interested must needs attract her: so
she took pains to become intimate with Clare's adorers, from a very real
sympathy with their appreciation of Clare, whom she no more grudged to
them than a priestess would grudge the unveiling of her goddess to the
initiate. She received their confidences, learned their secrets, fanned
the flame of their enthusiasms. Too lately a schoolgirl herself, too
innocent and ignorant to dream of danger, she did her loyal utmost in
furtherance of the cult, measuring the artificial and unbalanced
emotions she encountered by the rule of her own saner affection, and, in
her desire to see her friend appreciated, in all good faith utilised her
degree of authority to encourage what an older woman would have
recognised and combated as incipient hysteria.
Gradually she became, through her frank sympathy, combined with her
slightly indeterminate official position, the intermediary, the
interpreter of Clare to the feverish school. Clare herself, her initial
distrust over, found this useful. She could afford to be moody, erratic,
whimsical; to be extravagant in her praises and reproofs; to
deteriorate, at times, into a caricature of her own bizarre personality,
with the comfortable assurance that there was ever a magician in her
wake to steady her tottering shrines, mix oil with her vitriol, and
prove her pinchbeck gold.
Fatal, this relaxation of effort, to a woman of Clare's type. Love of
some sort was vital to her. Of this her surface personality was dimly,
ashamedly aware, and would, if challenged, have frigidly denied; but the
whole of her larger self knew its need, and saw to it that that need was
satisfied. Clare, unconscious, had taught Clare, conscious, that there
must be effort--constant, straining effort at cultivation of all her
alluring qualities, at concealment of all in her that could
repulse--effort that all appearances of complete success must never
allow her to relax. She knew well the evanescent character of a
schoolgirl's affection; so well that when her pupils left the school she
seldom tried to retain her hold upon them. Their letters would come
thick as autumn leaves at first; she rarely answered, or after long
intervals; and the letters dwindled and ceased. She knew that, in the
nature of things, it must be so, and had no wish to prolong the
farewells.
Also, her interest in her correspondents usually died first; to sustain
it required their physical nearness. But every new year filled the gaps
left by the old, stimulated Clare to fresh exertion.
So the lean years went by. Then came vehement Alwynne--no
schoolgirl--yet more youthful and ingenuous than any mistress had right
to be, loving with all the discrimination of a fine mind, and all the
ardour of an affectionate child. Here was no question of a fleeting
devotion that must end as the schooldays ended. Here was love for Clare
at last, a widow's cruse to last her for all time. Clare thanked the
gods of her unbelief, and, relaxing all effort, settled herself to enjoy
to the full the cushioning sense of security; the mock despot of their
pleasant, earlier intercourse becoming, as she bound Alwynne ever more
closely to her, albeit unconsciously, a very real tyrant indeed.
Yet she had no intention of weakening her hold on any lesser member of
her chosen coterie. Alwynne was too ingenuous, too obviously subject
through her own free impulse, to entirely satisfy: Clare's love of power
had its morbid moments, when a struggling victim, head averted, pleased
her. There was never, among the new-comers, a child, self-absorbed,
nonchalant or rebellious, who passed a term unmolested by Miss Hartill.
Egoism aroused her curiosity, her suspicion of hidden lands, virgin,
ripe for exploration; indifference piqued her; a flung gauntlet she
welcomed with frank amusement. She had been a rebel in her own time, and
had ever a thrill of sympathy for the mutinies she relentlessly crushed.
War, personal war, delighted her; she was a mistress of tactics, and the
certainty of eventual victory gave zest to her campaigns. She did not
realise that the strain upon her childish opponents was very great. The
finer, the more sensitive the character, the more complete the eventual
defeat, the more permanent its effects. Clare was pitiless after
victory: not till then did she examine into the nature thus enslaved,
seldom did she find it worth the trouble of the skirmish. In most cases
she gave semi-liberty; enough of smiles to keep the children feverishly
at work to please her (the average of achievement in her classes was
astounding), and enough of indifference to prevent them from becoming a
nuisance. To the few that pleased her fastidious taste, she gave of her
best, lavishly, as she had given to Alwynne. There are women to-day, old
girls of the school, who owe Clare Hartill the best things of their
lives, their wide knowledge, their original ideas, their hopeful futures
and happy memories: to whom she was an inspiration incarnate. The Clare
they remember is not the Clare that Elsbeth knew, that Alwynne learned
to know, that Clare herself, one bitter night, faced and blanched at.
But which of them had knowledge of the true Clare, who shall say?
* * * * *
In Clare's favourite class was a certain Louise Denny. She was
thirteen--nearly three years below the average of the class in age. How
far beyond it in all else, not even Clare realised.
Clare had discovered her, as she phrased it, in the limbo of the Lower
Third. She had been paying one of her surprise visits to the afternoon
extra needlework classes--(the possibility of her occasional appearance,
book in hand, was responsible for the school's un-English proficiency in
hemming, darning and kindred mysteries), to read aloud to the children
carefully edited excerpts from Poe's _Tales_, had forgotten her copy and
had been shyly offered another, private property from Louise Denny's
desk. Thereon must Alwynne, for a week or two, resign perforce her Lower
Third literature classes to Clare, intent on her blue rose. Louise's
compositions had been read--Clare and Alwynne spent a long evening over
them, weighing, comparing, discussing. Clare could be exquisitely
tender, could keep all-patient vigil over an unfolding mind, provided
that the calyx concealed a rare enough blossom. Louise was encouraged,
her shyness swept aside, her ideas developed, her knowledge tested; she
was fed, too, cautiously, on richer and richer food--stray evening
lectures, picture galleries with Alwynne, headiest of cicerones; the
freedom of the library and long talks with Clare. Finally Clare, bearing
down all opposition, transplanted her to the Lower Fifth, containing at
that time some brilliantly clever girls. Louise justified her by
speedily capturing, and doggedly retaining, the highest place in the
class.
Clare was delighted. Her critics--there were some mistresses who vaguely
disapproved of the experiment--were refuted, and the class, already
needing no spur, outdoing itself in its efforts to compete with the
intruder, swept the board at an important public examination.
On the morning of the announcement of results, Clare entered her
form-room radiant. It was a low, many-windowed room, with desks ranged
single-file along the walls. The class being a small one, the girls were
accustomed to sit for their lessons at a large oval table at the upper
end of the room. Beside the passage doorway, there was a smaller one,
that led into the studio, and was never used by the children. Clare,
however, would sometimes enter by it, but so seldom that they invariably
forgot to keep watch. Clare enjoyed the occasional view she thus
obtained of her unconscious and relaxed subjects, and the piquancy of
their uncensored conversation; she enjoyed still more the sudden hush,
the crisp thrill, that ran through their groups, when they became aware
of her, observant in the doorway.
On the morning in question she had watched them for some little while.
Before each girl lay her open exercise-book and school edition of
Browning. They were deep in discussion of their work, very eager upon
some question. By the empty chair at the head of the table sat Marion
Hughes, blonde and placid, a rounded elbow on her neatly written theme,
that her neighbour was trying to pull away, to compare with her own
well-inked manuscript. This neighbour, one Agatha Middleton, was dark,
gaunt, with restless eyes and restless tongue. She was old for her
fifteen years, and had been original until she discovered that her
originality appealed to Miss Hartill. Since then she had imitated her
own mannerisms, and was rapidly degenerating into an eccentric. The law
of opposites had decreed that the sedate Marion should be her bosom
friend. They went up the school together, an incongruous, yet
well-suited pair, for they were so unlike that there could be no
rivalry. Marion was alternately amused and dazzled by the pyrotechnic
Agatha. Agatha's respect for Marion's common sense was pleasantly
tempered by a conviction of superior mental agility. Finally, they were
united by their common devotion to their form-mistress. Whether it would
have occurred to Marion, unprompted, to admire Miss Hartill, is
uncertain. Her affections were domestic and calm. But adoration was in
the air, and she had not sufficient originality to be unfashionable. She
was caught, too, in Agatha's whirlwind emotions, and ended by
worshipping Clare conscientiously and sincerely. Clare, on her side,
respected her, as she told Alwynne, for her "painstaking and intelligent
stupidity," and, recognising a nature too worthy for neglect, yet too
lymphatic to be suitable for experiments, was uniformly kind to her.
Agatha, she had revelled in for six weeks, and had since more or less
ignored as a bore. Below the pair sat a spectacled student, predestined
to scholarships and a junior mistress-ship; opposite, between giggling
twins, a vivid little Jewess, whose showy work was due to the same
vanity that tied her curls with giant bows, and over-corsetted her
matured figure. At the foot of the oval, directly opposite Clare's
vacant chair, stood Louise, flushed and excited, chanting low-voicedly a
snatch of verse.
During a lull in the hubbub Marion called to her down the table--
"How many pages?"
Louise flushed. She was still a little in awe of these elders whom she
had outstripped. She rapidly counted the leaves of her essay, and held
up both hands, smiling shyly.
Marion exclaimed.
"Ten? You marvel! I only got to seven. I simply didn't understand it.
Whatever did you find to say?"
Agatha fell upon the query.
"That's nothing! I've done twenty-two!" she cried triumphantly, and
turned to face the shower of comments.
"Miss Hartill will bless you. She said last time that you thought ink
and ideas were synonyms."
"Agatha only writes three words to a line anyway."
They liked her, but she was of the type whose imperiousness provokes
snubs.
"Well, I thought I shouldn't get it done under forty--an essay on _The
Dark Tower_. It's the beastliest yet. _The Ancient Mariner_ was nothing
to it. I've made an awful hash--didn't you?"
"I understood all right when she read it, and explained. It's so absurd
not to let one take notes. I've been years at it. Fortunately she said
we needn't learn it--Louise and I--with all our extra work." An
unimaginative hockey captain fluttered her pages distractedly.
"Oh, but I have!" Louise looked up quickly.
"Why?" The hockey captain opened her eyes and mouth.
"Oh, I rather wanted to."
The little Jewess giggled.
"'_Déjà?_'" she murmured. She did not love Clare.
Marion returned to the subject with her usual perseverance.
"Did you understand it, kid?"
Louise stammered a little.
"When she reads it, and when I say it aloud, I think I do. It was
impossible to write it down."
"Let's see what you have put." Agatha, by a quick movement, possessed
herself of Louise's exercise-book. Louise, shy and desperate, strove
silently with her neighbours, who, curious, held her back, while Agatha,
holding the book at arm's length, recited from it in a high mocking
voice.
"_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came._ Description! Description!
Description! for three--five--seven pages! You've let yourself go,
Louise! Ah, here we are--_The meaning of the poem_. Now we're getting to
it. _Shakespeare and Browning may have known all the real history of
Childe Roland; the reason of his quest, the secret of the horror of the
Tower; but we are left in ignorance. That does not matter, for, as we
read, the inner meaning of the terrible poem kills all curiosity.
Shuddering we close the book, and pray to God that Childe Roland's
journey may never be ours; that for our adventurous souls,
knight-erranting through this queer life, there may never come a choice
of ways, a turning from the pleasant high-road, to go upon a hideous
journey; till, crossing the Plains of Loneliness, Fear and Sorrow, we
face the Hills of Madness, and enter the Dark Tower of that Despair
which is our soul's death._ With capital letters galore! What a
sentence! Here, shut up, you spit-fire!" Louise had wrenched herself
free and flung herself upon Agatha, in a white heat of anger.
"Give it me! You've no right! You've no right!" she gasped. Her shyness
had gone, she was blazing with indignation.
Agatha, the book held teasingly out of reach, affected to search for her
place. Louise raised her clenched fist desperately.
A cool hand caught her wrist in a firm yet kindly grip. A hush fell on
the voluble group and Agatha collapsed into an apologetic nonentity.
Clare, who had entered in her usual noiseless fashion, stood a moment
between the combatants, watching the effect of her appearance. Her hand
shifted to Louise's bony little shoulder; through the thin blouse she
could feel the driven blood pulsing. She did not move till she felt the
child regaining comparative calm, when, giving her a gentle push towards
her place, she walked slowly to the head of the table and seated
herself. The class watched her furtively. It was quite aware that all
rules of decorum had been transgressed--that pains and penalties would
be in order with any other mistress. But with Miss Hartill there was
always glorious uncertainty--and Miss Hartill did not look annoyed.
Little gestures began to break the tension and Agatha, relieved, smiled
a shade too broadly. Instantly Clare closed with her.
She began blandly--
"Agatha, I thought you could read aloud better than that. You are not
doing your work justice. Pass me your essay."
"It's Louise's," said Agatha helplessly.
"Ah, I see. And you kindly read it to us for her? It's a pity you didn't
understand what you read--but an excuse, of course. Louise must not
expect too much."
Agatha flung up her head angrily.
"Oh, I understood it all right. I thought it was silly."
"You did? Read me your own."
"Now?"
"Certainly."
Now Clare, as she corrected and commented upon the weekly essays, did
occasionally, if the mood took her, read extracts, humorous chiefly,
therefrom; but it had never been customary for a pupil to read her own
work aloud. Agatha had the pioneer spirit--but she was no fool. She
comprehended that, with Clare inimical, she could climb no higher than
the pillory. She fell back upon the tradition of the school.
"Oh, Miss Hartill--I can't!"
"Why not?"
"No one ever does----"
Clare waited.
Agatha protested redly, her fear of ridicule outweighing her fear of
Clare.
"Miss Hartill, I simply couldn't. Before everybody--all this tosh--I
mean all this stuff I wrote. It's a written essay. I couldn't make it
sound right aloud."
Clare waited.
"It's not good enough, Miss Hartill. Honestly! And we never have. You've
never made us. I couldn't."
Clare waited.
Agatha twisted her hands uneasily. The schoolgirl shyness that is
physical misery was upon her.
"I--don't want to, Miss Hartill. I can't. It's not fair to have one's
stuff--to be laughed at--to be----" she subsided just in time.
The class sat, breathless, all eyes on Clare.
And Clare waited; waited till defiance faded to unease--unease to
helplessness, till the girl, overborne by the utter silence, gave way,
and dropping her eyes to her exercise, fluttering its pages in angry
embarrassment, finally, with a giggle of pure nervousness, embarked on
the opening sentence.
Clare cut through the clustering adjectives.
"Stand up, please."
Resistance was over. She rose sullenly.
She had been proud of her essay, had worked at it sincerely, knew its
periods by heart. But her pleasure in it was destroyed, as completely,
she realised, as she had destroyed that of little Louise. More--for
Louise had found a champion. That, she recognised jealously. Unjust! Her
essay was no worse, read soberly--yet she was forced to render it
ridiculous. She read a couple of pages in hurried jerks, stumbling over
the illegibilities of her own handwriting, baulked by Clare's
interpolations. She heard her own voice, high-pitched and out of
control, perverting her meaning, felt the laden sentences breaking up
into chaos on her lips. In her flurry she pronounced familiar words
amiss, Clare's calm voice carefully correcting. Once she heard a
chuckle. Two pages ... three ... only that ... she remembered that she
had boasted of twenty ... seventeen to be read yet and they were all
laughing. To have to stand there ... three pages.... "_But as Childe
Roland turned round_----"
"Louder, please," said Clare.
"_But as Childe Roland turned round_----" and even Marion was
laughing.... "_Turned round to look once more back to the high
road_----"
"And slower."
"_To the high road_----" She stopped suddenly, a lump in her throat.
"Go on, Agatha."
"_To the high road_----" The letters danced up and down mistily. "_To
the high road where the cripple--where the cripple_----Oh, Miss
Hartill," she cried imploringly, "isn't it enough?"
It was surrender. Clare nodded.
"Yes, you may sit down now. Your essay, please: thank you. And now I'll
read you, once more, what Louise has to say on the same subject. I dare
say you'll find, Agatha, that you were almost as unfair to her essay, as
you were to--your own." And she smiled her sudden dazzling smile.
Agatha, against her will, smiled tremulously back.
Clare, with a glance at the little figure, huddling at the foot of the
table, began to read. The essay, for all its schoolgirl slips and
extravagances, was unusual. The thought embodied in it, though tinged
with morbidity, striking and matured. Clare did it more than justice.
Her beautiful voice made music of the crude sentences, revealed,
embellished, glorified. Her own interest growing as she read, infected
the class; she swept them along with her, mutually enthusiastic. She
ended abruptly, her voice like the echoes of a deep bell.
Marion broke the little pause.
"I liked that," she said, as if surprised at herself.
"So did I," Clare was pleased.
She dipped her pen in red ink and initialled the foot of the essay.
"That was good work, Louise. Now, the others."
But Louise, shy and glowing, broke in--
"But it wasn't all mine, Miss Hartill, not a bit."
Clare looked at her, half frowning.
"Not yours? Your handwriting----?"
"Oh, I wrote it. But you've made it different. I hadn't meant it like
that."
Clare raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"I have misinterpreted----?"
Louise was too much in earnest to be fluttered.
"I only mean--you made it sound so beautiful that it was like listening
to--to an organ. I didn't bother about the words while you read. It was
all colours and gold--like the things in the Venetian room. You know.
The meaning didn't matter. But I did mean something, not half so good,
of course, only quite different. Horrid and grizzly like the plain he
travelled through, Childe Roland. It ought to have sounded harsh and
starved, like rats pattering--what I meant--not beautiful."
"I see." Clare was interested. She was quite aware that she had used her
magnificent voice to impress arbitrarily her opinion of Louise's work
upon the class. That Louise, impressionable as she knew her to be,
should have yet detected the trick, amused her greatly.
"So you think I didn't understand your essay?"
Louise's shy laugh was very pleasant.
"Oh, Miss Hartill. I'm not so stupid. It's only that I can't have got
the--the----"
"Atmosphere!" The girl in spectacles helped her.
"The atmosphere that I meant to; so you put in a different one to help
it. And it did. But it wasn't what I meant."
Clare glanced at her inscrutably, and began to score the other essays.
She would get at Louise's meaning in her own way. She skimmed a couple,
Agatha, be it recorded, receiving the coveted initials, before she spoke
again.
"Didn't I tell you to learn _Childe Roland_, too? Ah, I thought so.
Begin, Marion, while I finish these. Two verses."
Her pen scratched on, as Marion's expressionless voice rose, fell and
finished. Agatha continued, jarringly dramatic. Two more followed her.
Then Clare put down her pen.
"'For mark!'..."
There was a warning undertone in Louise's colourless voice, that crept
across the room like a shadow. Clare lifted her head and stared at her.
"For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do."
There was horror in the whispering voice: the accents of one bowed
beneath intolerable burdens, sick with the knowledge of nearing doom,
gay with the flippancy of despair. Louise was looking straight before
her, vacant as a medium, her hands lying laxly in her lap. Clare made a
quick sign to her neighbour to be silent, and the strained voice rose
anew.
Clare listened perplexedly. She told herself that this was sheer
technique--some trick had been played, she was harbouring some child
actress of parts--only to be convinced of folly. She knew all about
Louise. Besides, she had heard the child read aloud before. Good, clean,
intelligent delivery. But nothing like this--this was uncanny. Uncanny,
yet magnificent. The artist in her settled down to enjoyment; yet she
was uneasy, too.
"And just as far as ever from the end!"
The creeping voice toiled on across the haunted plain, growing louder,
clearer, nearer.
Vision was forced upon Clare, serene in her form-room, swift and sudden
vision. She not only heard, every sense responded. At her feet lay the
waste land of the poem, she smelt the dank air, shrank from the clammy
undergrowth, watched the bowed figure of the wandering knight,
stumbling forwards doggedly. It was coming towards her, the outline
blurred in the evening mist, the face hidden. The voice was surely his?
"Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell."
She heard it alive with warning.
Nearer, ever nearer; the bowed form was at her very feet, as the voice
rose anew in despairing defiance.
"To view the last of me----"
The helmeted head was flung back; the voice echoed from hill to hill--
"I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
The figure fell, face upwards, at her feet. Clare tore at the visor with
desperate hands, for at the last line, the strong voice had broken,
quavering into the pitiful treble of a frightened child. The bars melted
under her touch, as dream things will, and she was staring down at no
bearded face, but at Louise. Louise herself, with blank, dead eyes in a
broken, blood-flecked face. The dead mouth smiled.
"You see, that was what I meant, Miss Hartill. That atmosphere."
Clare roused herself with a start. Louise, rosily alive, and quivering
with eagerness, was waiting for her comments. She got none.
"Begin again," said Clare mechanically, to the next girl.
The brightness died out of Louise's face, as she subsided in her seat.
Clare, dazed as she was, saw it, and was touched. The child deserved
praise--should not be punished for the vagaries of Clare's own phantasy.
And the monkey could recite! She shook off the impression of that
recital as best she could. Curious, the freaks of the imagination! She
must tell Alwynne of the adventure--Alwynne, dreamer of dreams.... And
Alwynne was interested in Louise; was coaching her.... Perhaps she was
responsible ... had coached her in that very poem? She hoped not ... it
would be interference.... She did not like interference. But no--that
performance was entirely original, she felt sure. There was genius in
the child--sheer genius ... and but for Clare herself, she would yet be
rotting undeveloped in the Lower Third. She was pleased with herself,
pleased with Louise too; ready to tell her so, to see the child's face
light up again delightedly; she was less attractive in repose....
Clare's chance came.
It was the turn of the hockey captain to recite. She appealed to Clare.
"Oh, Miss Hartill! You said I needn't, Louise and I--because of all our
extra work. Not the poem."
Clare considered.
"I remember. Very well. But Louise?" She looked at her questioningly,
half smiling. "When did you find the time?"
Louise laughed.
"I don't know, Miss Hartill. It found itself."
"Ah! And how much extra work have you, Louise?"
Louise reflected.
"All the afternoons, I think. And three evenings when I go to lectures.
And, of course, gallery days, when I make up in the evenings."
"And homework?"
"Oh, there's heaps of time at night always."
Clare smiled upon her class.
"Well, Lower Fifth--what do you think of it?"
The class opened its mouth.
"Louise is moved up four forms. She's thirteen. She's top of the class
and first in to-day's results. You hear what her extra work is. And she
finds time to learn _Childe Roland_--optional. What do you think of it?"
Agatha bit down her envy.
"It's pretty good," she said.
Clare's glance approved her.
"Yes. So I think. It's so good that I'm more than pleased.
I'm--impressed. Rather proud of my youngest pupil. For next time you
will learn----" And with one of her quick transitions, she began to
dictate her homework.
The gong clanged as she finished. Alwynne's voice was heard in the
passage, inquiring for Miss Hartill, and Clare hurried out. Followed a
confused banging of books and desk-lids, a tangle of fragmentary
remarks, and much trampling of boots on uncarpeted boards, as one after
another followed her. Within five minutes the room was bare, save for
Clare's forgotten satchel at the upper end of the big table, and Louise,
motionless in her chair at the foot.