Chapter II: Book I: Clare (1)

June, 1903--April, 1907

I

On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington. Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.

"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a house on Miller's Rise."

It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady. Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her the finest home in Marshington.

Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.

"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Houses _is_ summat."

The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him and removed it.

The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built, awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical Nonconformity.

Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives, Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage, rolling handsomely along the road.

She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.

Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead. Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:

"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide to school."

"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own opinions.

Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.

"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to which school?"

"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a petticoat for Connie.

"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."

"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.

"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.

Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney hasn't got to deal with Arthur."

Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.

"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all, there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."

Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth, leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the pale horizon.

"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.

Her sister nodded.

"Have you decided, then?"

"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."

"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the Neales?"

"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the West Riding Setons."

All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.

A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at their feet.

"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?" boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.

They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them, ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his women.

"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"

His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of his great virility.

"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said, her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many advantages."

"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."

It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.

"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she had already made up her mind.

"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I might ha' had sommat to say."

He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.

"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"

They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter. He smiled down at her with fond assurance.

"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming round t' corner."

"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"

"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.

He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of uninterrupted domesticity before him.

"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if you're a bad girl?"

"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far his threats were serious.

Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.

Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.

"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many families in Marshington as happy as we are?"

A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she reserved especially for her children.

"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."

But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything. That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well. Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson and _his_ happy family?"

Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little rebuffed, a little sad.

II

So Muriel was sent to cultivate suitable friendships under the guidance of Mrs. Hancock. Because she believed that school was a place where one learnt things, she had been pleased to go. She wanted to draw, to paint, to play the piano as no one before had played it. Most of all, she wanted to learn about Higher Mathematics and the Stars. Muriel felt rather vague about the exact meaning of Higher Mathematics. But she knew that she found in figures a sober and unfailing delight. They slid through her mind like water, separating easily into their factors, uniting quickly for multiples and additions, revealing their possibilities at a glance as a clear pool reveals the pebbles below its water. Then in figures lay a comforting assurance of absolute truth. In a world where Muriel was beginning to suspect that most conclusions were at best a compromise, she found triumphant satisfaction in the unquestionable certainty that, in all places and at all times, two and two made four.

At Marshington, Muriel's odd tastes had been discouraged. At school, she felt assured that she would reach her heart's desire. She would make wonderful friendships, win all the prizes, filling her beautiful mother's heart with pride, and Heathcroft with the glory of her triumphs.

Before a week had passed, she began to make discoveries. First, with a dull ache of disappointment, she found that school was not so different from Marshington after all; indeed, in a queer way the new place seemed to be more familiar than her home, as the type may be more familiar than the individual. At home, for instance, her mother said, "Muriel, I wish that you would keep the school-room cupboard a little tidier." At school untidiness became a crime, to be punished by order marks, to the disgrace of the whole form or bedroom. The accidental regulations of Marshington life were shaken out of their environment and transformed into infallible rules.

For Mrs. Hancock had been a wise woman when she founded her private school for girls at Hardrascliffe. Opening in business an eye to the main chance that she would have closed in private life, she realized that a head mistress has to make a choice. Generations are like divinities, and he who is not for them is against them. A school must be run either for the parents or for the children. As a business woman, Mrs. Hancock knew that the parents who pay the bills are the indispensable factor of success. She also knew that, for most of her parents, the unacknowledged aim of education was to teach their children to be a comfort to them. And how could a child be a comfort to parents whom she makes uncomfortable? Mrs. Hancock determined that no education received in her school should be responsible for this disaster.

Possibly these considerations influenced her when, during her first term, Muriel unexpectedly asked for an interview. In response to her "Come in, my dear," a small shy person stood before her, whose slight figure was tense with a tremendous effort of courage.

"Well, Muriel?" Mrs. Hancock smiled, with that famous motherly manner so much praised among her parents.

"Mrs. Hancock----" hesitated Muriel. Her temerity was born of deep desire. "You said that those of us who wanted to learn special subjects and things--extras--might come and ask you."

"Well, dear, I don't remember, though, that your mother said---- Now, let me see, where is her letter?" Mrs. Hancock searched among the orderly papers on her desk. "I don't remember that she asked for you to learn any extras, except dressmaking, perhaps, if it fitted in to your time-table."

"It wasn't Mother. It's me." Muriel groped her way to an untutored request. "I want--please, may I have lessons on Astronomy?"

"Astronomy?" Mrs. Hancock gasped. "My dear child, what are you talking about?"

Muriel, whose opinion of the wisdom of all grown-ups was sublimely high, did not take it upon herself to explain. She only protested fervently that she wanted to, always had wanted to, know more about the stars, and to do calculations and things. It must be confessed that it all sounded rather silly. The triumphant thing, the towering audacity of her desire, collapsed into the futility of ruined hopes. She felt that the tears were coming. Her unique adventure beyond habitual self-effacement was going to fail. She gazed appealingly at the head mistress.

Then, with a kindliness that Muriel found consoling even though it sounded the death knell to her hopes, Mrs. Hancock explained how there were some things that it was not suitable for girls to learn. Astronomy, the science of the stars, was a very instructive pursuit for astronomers, and professors (these latter being evidently a race apart), but it was not one of those things necessary for a girl to learn. "How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life, have, as I hope, a house to look after? If you really want to take up an extra, I will write to your mother about the dressmaking. You are quite clever with your fingers, I think, and though it is usual to begin a little later, perhaps----"

"But, but----" Muriel began. She knew now quite certainly that she had resolved to become a great mathematician. She was not quite sure what this involved, nor could she trace her resolution to the day when she first read _The Life of Mary Somerville_ in the _Lives of Fine Women_ Series. She was certain that fate held for her something more exciting than dressmaking lessons, and yet her initial failure sapped her courage. She resigned herself to the wisdom of Mrs. Hancock.

Whatever doubts Muriel might have felt about that wisdom, Mrs. Hancock had none. Acceptance of the conclusions reached by experienced and older people, Muriel was told, was one of the first lessons to be learnt by rash, unthinking youth. One day Muriel would laugh at her childish fancies. She did not want to be considered different from other girls, did she? Mrs. Hancock had noticed with regret a tendency to hold herself aloof, to be a little odd. That should not be. Muriel must learn to conform to the standards of other, wiser people. One day she would be grateful to Mrs. Hancock.

Muriel, of course, was grateful. She failed to explain to her head mistress that her aloofness was not of her own making; but she had learnt her lesson. She never again asked Mrs. Hancock for anything until she said good-bye to her on her last day at school.

And yet that interview affected her life more deeply than she might have guessed. For at the dressmaking classes, Muriel met Clare.

III

It happened during Muriel's second term. She sat in the big school-room, opposite to the door that led up three steps into the hall. The dressmaking class was half over, and Muriel, while her fingers carefully tacked gathered nun's veiling, allowed her thoughts to dance away as usual into a delightful day-dream. Always at this time Muriel used her leisure moments to compose the next instalment of a secret serial history of which she was the heroine. In her dreams, her failures and timidities slipped from her. She became fascinating and audacious. Mistress of life, surrounded by adoring friends, she stood triumphant, poised on the threshold of some great adventure.

At the moment, having rescued the head girl, Rosalie Crook, from a terrible death by drowning, Muriel, still pale and dripping, was received upon the storm-swept sea-shore into the magic circle of "Them," the great ones. "They" were the élite, the prefects and the games captains, the popular and famous, surrounded by the ineffable prestige of tradition-making youth. Yet Rosalie, with tear-filled eyes, bent forward to her companions. "Did you know," she cried, "that Muriel has often been lonely and neglected? Do you know that she has lived in hourly dread of croc-walks, for fear lest she should not have a partner; that she has shrunk in terror from Speech Day, in case no one should ask her to sit next them? That she has been at school two terms, but nobody has asked her to be their friend? Who will be her friend now? I, for one, would have liked that honour, girls, that honour." Her voice quivered with emotion as They, with one accord, rose to claim the friendship of Muriel Hammond. The raging wind swept their ringing voices out to sea, as . . . the door opened and Mrs. Hancock entered, followed by Clare Duquesne.

Muriel rose obediently with the rest of the class, according to the Heathcroft rule of courtesy, but afterwards the action appeared as the natural result of instinctive allegiance to the triumphant personality, not of the head mistress, but of Clare.

Clare stood at the top of the three steps, smiling down at the class, not shyly, not stupidly, but with an assured and indestructible friendliness. She was as much mistress of the situation as a famous actress who has entered amid deafening applause to take her call. Not beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. Wholesome as an apple, tranquil as a September morning, and unmysterious as a glass of water, she yet held for Muriel all mystery and all enchantment. From that moment, without calculation or condition, Muriel gave her heart to Clare Duquesne.

"Now, girls," announced Mrs. Hancock. She never called her pupils "young ladies," having informed their parents that this savoured of middle-class gentility. They, anxious to fling off the least suspicion of resemblance to the class to which they almost all belonged, had approved with emphasis. "Now, girls, I want you to make room in your class for Clare Duquesne. She has come unexpectedly in the middle of the term because her mother has been called to the South of France on account of her father's health. I want you therefore to be specially kind to her, and to give her a pleasant welcome, as I know that you will."

Having made her speech, Mrs. Hancock prepared to withdraw, but this surprising Clare forestalled her.

"Thank you immensely," she said in her clipped, precise voice, speaking as though English were a well-known yet foreign language to her. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me. But," she bubbled with laughter, the dimples quivering in her rounded cheek, "I have no talent with my needle. Félix bet me five francs that I would never learn even to sew on a button."

Mrs. Hancock, slightly surprised, but still benevolently gracious, smiled kindly. "And who is Félix, Clare?"

"Félix? Didn't you know? He's my father." She turned to the class with an engaging air of frankness. "You know, Mamma and I always call him Félix, because she hates to hear me say Mamma or Papa. It makes her feel her age, she says, and when you are on the stage it is a crime to feel your age--on account of the dear public, is it not so?"

Clare's voice deepened to the rich intonation of Sophie O'Hallaghan, the charming Irish-American actress who had married the half-brother of Lord Powell of Eppleford, and who was, incidentally, Clare's mother.

Mrs. Hancock had not intended to divulge the profession of Clare's mother. It was, she considered, the approval of the dear Bishop always in her mind, a delicate subject upon which one might have expected Clare to preserve a little reticence. Especially since Félix Duquesne had been considerate enough to write his distinguished but embarrassing French prose in--French, and was, through his family connections, of unprecedented value as a parent. But Clare knew no more of reticence than a lark on a spring morning or a kettle on the boil. She saw no reason for Mrs. Hancock's sudden stiffness, and continued to smile at her with complete urbanity.

"Well, Clare," replied the head mistress, "I think that perhaps while you are at school you had better refer to your father by his proper title. Is there an empty place, Miss Reeve, for Clare? Now girls, go on with your work. There is no reason for you to let Clare's arrival interrupt it. You can continue just the same."

She swept from the room, masking a faint uneasiness behind her gracious majesty of deportment, but for the first time questioning her wisdom in admitting this new pupil.

In the school-room, however, Providence for once had favoured Muriel. The empty chair to which Clare was conducted by Miss Reeve was next to hers, and when Clare turned towards her with that dazzling smile Muriel knew, for all Mrs. Hancock might say, that things would never be quite the same for her again.

IV

The term after Clare's arrival Muriel lay in bed staring at the faint blur against the wall where Clare lay asleep. The room was dark and still, but near the pale translucent panels of the window the curtains stirred as though moved by the breathing of the seven girls.

The miracle that had led Clare to her on that first day still endured. Clare and Muriel slept in the same room. Of course that did not mean that they were friends. Clare had immediately marched with her cheerful serenity right into the most exclusive circle of the elect, of "Them." But to see Clare was an education; to speak with her a high adventure. To sleep in the same room with her, to see her bath-salts and her powder, only permitted at Heathcroft because she was her father's daughter, to touch her underclothing, embroidered in a Belgian convent--this was to live perpetually on the threshold of a marvellous world, removed by millions of miles from school or Marshington.

She was wonderful, this Clare Duquesne. At night Muriel would raise her head above the bed-clothes and try to tell herself that this was really true, that the world was large enough to hold people so different as Clare and Muriel. Muriel, for all her brave dreams, knew herself to be of those whose eager, clutching hands let slip prizes, friendships and achievement, as quickly as they grasp them. But Clare, lazy, careless, happy Clare, laughed when she made mistakes, was amused by her arithmetic, hopelessly confused by premature acquaintance with the metric system, cared nothing for her erratic spelling, and swung up her average of weekly marks by her staggering proficiency in languages. Her supremacy at singing and dancing cost her no more effort than the wearing of fine raiment cost the lilies of the field. Her French and German were more fluent than her clipped, accentuated English. She could swear in Spanish, order a dinner in Dutch, and write a love-letter in Italian. Impish as a street-urchin, sophisticated as a cocktail, fearless of life, loved by it and its lover, judging no man as no man judged her, she dazzled Heathcroft as a glorious, golden creature not wrought from common clay.

Muriel's heart went out to her in a great wave of adoration. Passionate emotion, stronger than any she had known, even on the hushed silver morning of her First Communion, filled her small body like a mighty wind.

"Oh, I would die for her," she breathed ecstatically. "O God, if you've planned anything awful to happen to Clare, let it happen to me instead. I could bear anything for her, even if she never knew how I cared. But do let me know her. Let me get to be her friend!"

Forlorn hope, thought Muriel next day, preparing reluctantly for the school walk. As usual the time was trapping her, and she had no partner. Life at Heathcroft being organized upon the partner system, this was Muriel's daily and hourly terror--to have no one to walk with, to be driven as an enforced intruder to walk with the last couple in the crocodile, to feel the checked resentment of the juniors upon whom she was thus imposed.

She stood in front of the small glass, pushing the elastic of her sailor hat beneath her long, brown plait, and thinking, "Well, there's one thing about Connie coming here next term. I'll never have to walk alone again." Which just showed how little at this time she knew her Connie.

Then she heard Clare's voice.

"Will you not walk with me, Muriel?"

Muriel gasped. She could not believe that Clare had spoken. But there was no other Muriel in the school, and no other voice like Clare's. Yet, Clare, who could walk with "Them," surely she would never ask Muriel? They never walked with those who were not of the elect. They would not so imperil their dignity. But, of course, Clare never bothered about her dignity. Years afterwards, when Muriel referred to "Them," Clare asked with interest, "Who were 'They'?" But when Muriel said, "Oh, you, and Rosalie and Cathie and Patricia. All the people who counted." Then Clare laughed. "Oh, was I one? How perfectly thrilling! And I never knew. What things we miss!" But now Muriel only blushed and asked: "I beg your pardon?"

"I haven't got a partner," Clare said. "Will you walk with me?"

Muriel, blushing and palpitating, answered, "If you like." Always, when she was profoundly moved, she became a little stiffer and more prim, not gauche, but prim, like a Victorian teapot, or a bit of sprigged muslin.

Clare never noticed. She was arranging her blue serge coat with the air of a mannequin trying on a Paris model.

"Would you mind holding my collar straight?" she asked.

They took their place in the crocodile.

All the way along the Esplanade Clare chattered. Muriel at the time was too much bewildered by her strange good fortune to remember everything that Clare was saying, but she retained a glowing impression of Clare skating outside a gay hotel in Switzerland, of Clare in a box at the Comédie Française, listening to one of her father's plays, of Clare crossing the Irish Channel in a ship, and being sea-sick all the way. It was perhaps the most unquestionable proof of Clare's attraction that even her sea-sickness became distinguished.

Before Muriel had said three words, the girls had reached the cliffs beyond the Esplanade. Beyond the asphalt and clipped box hedges of the Promenade, the cliffs sprawled untidily. They were not even real cliffs, but ragged slopes, overgrown with coarse grass and tamarisk, sprinkled with yarrow, and patched with stunted bushes of rusty gorse. Far below the tide crept up in circles, flat as paper, and washed back, dragging with white sickles at the shelving sand. The place had a deserted look, and Clare was bored.

"What shall we do now?" she asked obligingly, when Miss Reeve gave the order to break rank.

She waited for Muriel to entertain her.

"Oh, I'll do anything _you_ like," said Muriel fatally.

They strolled along the winding path. Abruptly to their right rose a steep rock, witness of the time before the landslide, when the cliffs had been cliffs. For fifteen feet it frowned above the way to the sands. Clare stood still, gazing at it in contemplative silence. Then she had an idea.

"Muriel," she suggested, "do let's see if we can climb that rock. No one can see us now. Miss Reeves's miles away. I'll go first. Come on, do."

Clare was like that. She never noticed natural things except as a potential background to her own action. But, having decided to act, she was prompt. She tore off her gloves and faced the rock. Muriel stood, suddenly smitten dumb by an agony of apprehension. But without looking back, Clare began to climb. Agile as a cat, she scrambled with firm hand-grips and burrowing toes, clutching at the sheer side of the rock and chuckling to herself.

"Clare! You can't. You'll fall. You'll be killed."

Muriel meant to cry out all these things, but somehow she said nothing. She only stood at the bottom of the rock while a sick numbness robbed her of her strength.

Then Clare was up. She swung herself easily on to the summit of the rock. Her figure was outlined against a windy sky. Her laughing face looked down at Muriel.

"It's glorious up here," she called. "But what a wind! I say, do come on, Muriel!"

Before she had thought what she was doing, Muriel began to climb.

"Whatever I do, I mustn't funk in front of Clare," she thought.

Her fingers tore at the sharp ledges of the rock. Her toes slipped on the uneven surface. She grasped at a brittle root of broom. It came away in her hand. She almost fell. Unused to climbing, blind with fear, she hardly saw the places for her hands to hold.

Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.

"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up and tell me where it's going."

But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.

Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on the narrow ledge.

She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage.

Fear swooped upon her, tore her fingers from the rock, poured drops of perspiration on her forehead.

"Clare!" shrieked a voice that was not surely hers. "Clare, I'm slipping!"

Clare's round face appeared between the edge of the rock and the reeling sky. Clare's voice remarked imperturbably: "Oh, well, if you do fall you haven't far to go, so it won't hurt. But hold on a bit and I'll give you a hand."

She came over the edge again. Her solid, shapely ankles were on a level with Muriel's hat, her eyes. A firm hand reached down for Muriel's clutching, sticky one.

"That's all right. Come along. You've got a great dab of mud on your nose, Muriel."

She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to notice even Clare.

She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant. Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.

"Muriel"--when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and golden--"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"

Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness. But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She continued meditatively:

"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of them have had _affaires de cœur_? But very few!"

"_Affaires de cœur_?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington phraseology assisted her. De Cœur--of the heart. Of course.

"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"

"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and----"

"But were you in _love_ with them?"

"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"

"Then, how?"

"Dear me, _chérie_, have you never observed that I am very attractive?"

Her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous.

"What a solemn face! Muriel, do you ever smile? No, no, I shan't fall in love for years. Perhaps never. But crowds and crowds of men will fall in love with me. That's why Félix decided that I had better come to school. 'They're beginning too soon,' he said. 'You mustn't cut out your mother yet, child.' And he sighed. He's terribly sentimental, my Félix. I'm sure I didn't mind. On the whole it bores me. Men in love are so terribly alike, I think, don't you?"

Fascinating, incredible conversation!

"Of course, really, I'm rather grateful to Félix," Clare continued sagely. "It's no use getting it all over too soon. And of course one day one might go too far, and really I don't want to marry yet, however rich he was. What do you think?"

"But, Clare, do--do men fall in love with _all_ women if we let them?"

"Why, of course. Else why be a woman?" Clare responded with tranquility. "Of course there are some, poor dears, like Miss Reeve, I suppose, and most schoolmistresses, and missionaries, and things, but they are hardly _women_, are they?"

"I--I don't know. I----"

Somehow, it must be confessed, Muriel had always thought of these unfortunates as women. That merely showed her terrible simplicity. With a sigh, she pondered over her ignorance of Life.

"Oh, Muriel, do look at Miss Reeve coming up the path!" Clare darted forward and peered over the edge of the rock. The young lady from the Swiss hotel, the sophisticated philosopher on Life, had vanished. The Irish urchin, impish, grinning, disreputable, took her place. "Do just watch her hat bobbing along the path! It's as round as a soup plate. Why do people wear such hats? It should be forbidden by law. Here, hand me one of those little stones. Quick!"

Unthinking and hypnotized, Muriel obeyed.

Plop! went the stone, right into the middle of Miss Reeve's round hat. Clare was back behind the rock.

"Oh, Clare, she'll see you," agonized Muriel.

Clare chuckled. "She won't. I never get found out."

But for once she was wrong. Her crimson scarf, blown by the wind, waved a bright pennon from the rock. Nobody else at Heathcroft wore such a scarf.

"Clare Duquesne, Clare Duquesne!" Miss Reeve's shrill voice was ripped to ribbons of sound by the wind.

Clare leant down, smiling benignly upon the furious lady on the path. "You called?" she inquired politely.

"What are you doing there? Come down! How dare you?"

"How dare I come down? Well, it does look rather steep. I'm not sure that we can _this_ way," pondered Clare, her head on one side.

"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. Who threw that stone?"

"The stone?" Clare's innocent voice repeated, but Muriel knew that the situation was growing serious. With the ardent heroism of a martyr, she flung herself into the breach--in other words, her head appeared over the rock by the side of Clare. Desire to serve her beloved had vanquished fear, hesitation and conscientiousness.

"It wasn't Clare's fault, Miss Reeve," she called. "We were trying to get to the other path, and--and I slipped, and that set some stones rattling down, and Clare came to stop me falling, and I do hope that nobody's hurt."

Relieved to find that this was not a situation requiring to be dealt with by a major punishment, an embarrassing ordeal at the best of times, devastating when the culprit was Clare Duquesne, Miss Reeve contented herself with a haughty stare.

"I do not think that you two have been behaving very nicely. It is not ladylike to climb these high rocks, and I am sure that it is dangerous. Please come down at once, both of you."

It was impossible to scold two heads detached from bodies, appearing from the sky like cherubs from a Christmas card cloud. Muriel and Clare withdrew.

Safely back behind the rock, Clare chuckled delightedly.

"I didn't know you had it in you, Muriel; that was quite magnificent."

But Muriel, to her own surprise as much as Clare's, suddenly began to cry, aloud and helplessly, like a little child.

"But, Muriel, _chérie_, what is the matter?"

"I don't know. I'm so sorry to be so stupid. I think--I--you know, I didn't mean to tell a lie. It just came out."

"You? What? Is that all? But you didn't. We _were_ going to the lower path--sometime. And that stone _was_ loosened with your foot. And you did slip. That wasn't a lie. It was a stroke of genius."

Then, with a sudden access of delighted interest, Clare turned upon Muriel.

"My dear, is it possible that you have a temperament? And I never guessed it. But how very odd. I should not have thought it somehow. It just shows that you never can tell. And I _have_ been so bored with these suet dumplings of girls." _Them_! The elect and sacred "Them" suet dumplings! Muriel forgot her tears. "Although I, thank heaven, I have no temperament myself. That is why Félix says that I shall never be a singer."

She flashed her dazzling smile upon the embarrassment of Muriel, who, resolutely determined to acquire a temperament--whatever this might be--immediately, was returning thanks to a benevolent providence who sends success to people in spite of their own failures.

V

Friendships at Heathcroft should usually be registered, like births, deaths, and marriages, with all due publicity and certitude. It was just like Muriel that, right up to the moment of leaving school, she should never know whether she could really call herself Clare's friend.

She stood on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the York train that was to carry Clare off to London, Leipzig, singing lessons and Fame. Clare, radiant, blossoming already into a young lady in a hat sent by her mamma from Paris, smiled serenely from the carriage window down at Muriel.

"Au revoir," she laughed. Her rich voice lightly dropped the words for Muriel to take up or to leave as she would. Clare did not care.

"Good-bye, Clare," Muriel replied solemnly. She made no fuss about it, for that would have been cheek, as though she had some right to mind saying good-bye. "I hope that you will have a good time in Germany. I expect that when I see you again you will be a famous singer. But don't forget that if ever you _should_ want to stay in Yorkshire we should love to have you at Miller's Rise."

"Oh, thank you, _chérie_, I shall not forget."

She smiled and waved her hand, tossing back to Muriel, like a fallen flower, the invitation that had cost such terrific courage to propose. But Muriel rushed away to her own carriage on the local line to Kingsport with a sense of desolation that ached sullenly beneath the excitement of being grown-up at last.

Because Muriel did not much care for babies, they pursued her in railway trains and buses with relentless faithfulness. The carriage into which she hurled herself after Connie's vanishing figure was hot and overcrowded, and directly opposite to Muriel sat a baby, wriggling on its mother's knee, its mouth smeared with chocolate and crumbs of biscuits.

"Disgusting," thought Muriel. "How like Connie to choose a carriage full of babies." For Connie was at this time indiscriminately friendly, always scraping acquaintance with babies, all crumbs and chocolate, or puppies, all smells and fleas. And now, because of her lack of sensitiveness, Muriel at this crisis in her life had to endure a slow train, where at every station people with baskets crowded in upon her, even more hurriedly than her own overwhelming emotions. Connie would come by this train, because it arrived at Marshington half an hour before the express, and Muriel always tried to be unselfish. She might have guessed what it would be like, for circumstances never had much reverence for her feelings. Perhaps that was why she had come to think that they did not much matter herself.

The world was all right. It was she who was wrong, caring for all the wrong things. She could not, however hard she tried, stop herself from loving Clare, though passionate friendships between girls had been firmly discouraged by the sensible Mrs. Hancock. Their intimacy, she considered, was usually silly and frequently disastrous. If carried too far, it even wrecked all hope of matrimony without offering any satisfaction in return. Love was a useful emotion ordained by God and regulated by society for the propagation of the species; or else it inspired sometimes the devotion of a daughter to a mother, or a parent to a child. It could even be extended to a relative, such as a cousin or an aunt. Or in a somewhat diluted form it might embrace Humanity, engendering a vague Joan-of-Arc-Florence-Nightingale-Mrs.-Beecher-Stowish philanthropy, to which Muriel aspired faintly, but without much hope of realization. But Love between two girls was silly sentiment. By loving Clare, Muriel knew that she had been guilty of extreme foolishness. And she wanted so much to be good.

The words of Mrs. Hancock's farewell interview returned to her through the smoke-laden atmosphere of the train. "My dear, to-morrow you are going to take your place in the world outside your school, and there are one or two things that I want you to remember. I believe that sometimes you girls laugh at those words of Kingsley's, 'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,' but they contain a great truth, Muriel. Character, my dear, to be a fine womanly woman, that matters so much more than intellectual achievement. To serve first your parents, then, I hope, your husband and your children, to be pure, unselfish and devoted, that is my prayer for each one of my girls." Mrs. Hancock coughed. She had repeated this little homily so often that she did not hesitate for words, and yet now and then, unguessed by her hearers, would come a moment of wistful doubting whether this message contained the final expression of her wisdom. Below her worldly wisdom, Mrs. Hancock, like Muriel, wanted to be good. "I want you to remember the school motto, dear, '_Læta sorte mea_,' Happy in my lot. God will, I hope, give you happiness, but if He chooses to send you disappointment and sorrow you will, I hope, resign yourself to His dear will."

Forget? How could Muriel forget? It had been so sweetly solemn. A vast desire seized upon her then to serve, to be devoted, to be faithful. Sometimes at the early service she had knelt in the dim chancel, and thought the fluttering candle flames above the altar to be stirred by the soft breathing of the Holy Ghost. Then, too, she had prayed with passionate ardour for self-abnegation and for service. But last night the desire had swept upon her with rushing, mighty wings, and she had stood gazing into Mrs. Hancock's face with eloquent eyes, and murmuring, "I will try. I will try."

Connie's strident voice swung Muriel back from the dream of life to its business:

"Did you say that his name was Tommie? That's a nice name, isn't it? Tommie, Tom! No, my sister isn't fond of babies."

"Oh, I am," protested Muriel, always ready to sacrifice her tastes to other people's feelings. "Sometimes," she added, respectful to the truth. Her appealing eye sought those of the baby's mother, who nodded understandingly.

"Lor, bless you! I know. A bit scared of 'em, eh? You wait till you've had eight on 'em like me. Then a bairn's neither here nor there as the saying goes. Ah've got six an' buried two, dearie me, but Ivy's in service now, so I'm not complaining. The Lord's will be done, as I says to Mrs. Dalton, who's had fourteen. The Lord's will be done so long as He don't overdo it."

"Of course," smiled Muriel shyly, feeling somehow that the answer was inadequate.

Was that really the end of it all? Six alive and two buried, and the Lord's will being done, while one's face grew florid and coarse, with a network of purplish veins across the cheek, and days and nights passed in an endless race to keep abreast with small domestic duties?

Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams. Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service. And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness, He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And, lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and deepest mercy, Death.

Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just must end right, was about to begin.

She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck. Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really make such a difference?

The train jerked on. Beyond the window the flat, dun country slid past wearily. Hot July fields, ripening into dusty yellow for the harvest, paddocks dried to rusted fawn, hundreds and hundreds of allotments, variegated as a patchwork quilt, speckled with crazy tool sheds, seamed with straight dykes, splashed here and there with the silver-green of cabbages, or the faded motley of a wilted border of July flowers--this was the country that surrounded Marshington. After the ringing splendor of the wind-swept wolds, the stale flatness of the plain seemed doubly depressing.

But Muriel was not depressed. Marshington to her was not a select residential suburb of Kingsport, compensating for its ugliness by its respectability. It was the threshold of life, the gateway to a brimming, lovely world, whence she might start upon a thousand strange adventures. Its raw, red villas were transfigured. Its gardens glowed to meet her. When she could see from the right-hand window the elm-crowned hill of Miller's Rise, her excitement almost choked her.

She leaned back in her seat, half wishing that she need never rise, but Connie darted to the window.

"I say, Mu, hadn't we better pull the bags down? Look out! There's your tennis racket. Where's my book box? My book box, Mu? Good-bye, Tommie, bye-bye! See, Muriel, he's ta-ing his little hand at us! Isn't he an angel? Oh, there's Father! Cooee, father, cooee! We're here! We're here!"

VI

It really mattered. To have a belt that fastened trimly on to one's new serge skirt, a safety-pin that under no circumstances would expose itself to public view, a straw hat that sat jauntily (so long as it was not _too_ jaunty) upon one's piled up hair, all these things meant more than just "being tidy."

Being grown up was puzzling. It seemed to make no difference at all in most things, and then to matter frightfully in quite unexpected ways. It meant, for instance, not so much the assumption of new duties as the acceptance of new values.

Was she more stupid than other people, or did every one feel like this at first? She was travelling in a land of which she only imperfectly understood the language. Would she learn gradually, as one learnt French at Heathcroft, or would the new significance of things suddenly flash out at her, like the meaning of a cipher when one has found the key?