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diff --git a/old/13522-8.txt b/old/13522-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c8a976 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13522-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3489 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Superseded, by May Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Superseded + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: September 24, 2004 [EBook #13522] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUPERSEDED *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + + + + SUPERSEDED + + BY MAY SINCLAIR + + _Author of "The Divine Fire"_ + + 1906 + + + + +PUBLISHERS' NOTE + + +Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished in +America, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "The +Divine Fire." It originally appeared with another work in a volume +entitled "Two Sides of a Question," a small imported edition of which is +now exhausted. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I. PROLOGUE.--MISS QUINCEY STOPS THE WAY + II. HOUSEHOLD GODS + III. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES + IV. BASTIAN CAUTLEY, M.D. + V. HEALERS AND REGENERATORS + VI. SPRING FASHIONS + VII. UNDER A BLUE MOON + VIII. A PAINFUL MISUNDERSTANDING + IX. THROUGH THE STETHOSCOPE + X. MISS QUINCEY STANDS BACK + XI. DR. CAUTLEY SENDS IN HIS BILL + XII. EPILOGUE.--THE MAN AND THE WOMAN + + + + +SUPERSEDED + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Prologue.--Miss Quincey Stops the Way + + +"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." + +The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It +came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by +the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying +itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy +intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be +more or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the Second +Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, +loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then +the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white +pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, +shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time. + +On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerable +eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, that +flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, +or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A stream +that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely or +luminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing that +throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance and +pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judged +St. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and colour to the +stream. The rest were nowhere. + +So at least it seemed to Miss Cursiter, the Head. That tall, lean, +iron-grey Dignity stood at the cross junction of two corridors, talking +to Miss Rhoda Vivian, the new Classical Mistress. And while she talked +she watched her girls as a general watches his columns wheeling into +action. A dangerous spot that meeting of the corridors. There the +procession doubles the corner at a swinging curve, and there, time it as +she would, the little arithmetic teacher was doomed to fall foul of the +procession. Daily Miss Quincey thought to dodge the line; daily it caught +her at the disastrous corner. Then Miss Quincey, desperate under the eye +of the Head, would try to rush the thing, with ridiculous results. And +Fate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter should always +be there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her +face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the +sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to +bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the +unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, +demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. +To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow that smile +annoyed Miss Cursiter. + +She, Miss Quincey, was a little dry, brown woman, with a soft pinched +mouth, and a dejected nose. So small and insignificant was she that she +might have crept along for ever unnoticed but for her punctuality in +obstruction. As St. Sidwell's prided itself on the brilliance and +efficiency of its staff, the wonder was how Miss Quincey came to be +there, but there she had been for five-and-twenty years. She seemed to +have stiffened into her place. Five-and-twenty years ago she had been +arithmetic teacher, vaguely attached to the Second Division, and she was +arithmetic teacher still. Miss Quincey was going on for fifty; she had +out-lived the old Head, and now she was the oldest teacher there, twice +as old as Miss Vivian, the new Classical Mistress, older, far older than +Miss Cursiter. She had found her way into St. Sidwell's, not because she +was brilliant or efficient, but because her younger sister Louisa already +held an important post there. + +Louisa was brilliant and efficient enough for anybody, so brilliant and +so efficient that the glory of it rested on her family. And when she +married the Greek master and went away Juliana stayed on as a matter of +course, wearing a second-hand aureole of scholarship and supporting a +tradition. + +She stayed on and taught arithmetic for one thing. And when she was not +teaching arithmetic, she was giving little dictations, setting little +themes, controlling some fifty young and very free translators of _Le +Philosophe sous les Toils_. Miss Quincey had a passion for figures and +for everything that could be expressed in figures. Not a pure passion, +nothing to do with the higher mathematics, which is the love of the soul, +but an affection sadly alloyed with baser matter, with rods and perches, +firkins and hogsheads, and articles out of the grocer's shop. + +Among these objects Miss Quincey's imagination ran voluptuous riot. But +upon such things as history or poetry she had a somewhat blighting +influence. The flowers in the school Anthology withered under her +fingers, and the flesh and blood of heroes crumbled into the dust of +dates. As for the philosopher under the roofs, who he was, and what was +his philosophy, and how he ever came to be under the roofs at all, nobody +in St. Sidwell's ever knew or ever cared to know; Miss Quincey had made +him eternally uninteresting. Yet Miss Quincey's strength was in her +limitations. It was the strength of unreasoning but undying conviction. +Nothing could shake her belief in the supreme importance of arithmetic +and the majesty of its elementary rules. Pale and persistent and +intolerably meek, she hammered hard facts into the brain with a sort of +muffled stroke, hammered till the hardest stuck by reason of their +hardness, for she was a teacher of the old school. Thus in her own way +she made her mark. Among the other cyphers, the irrelevant and +insignificant figure of Miss Quincey was indelibly engraved on many an +immortal soul. There was a curious persistency about Miss Quincey. + +Miss Quincey was not exactly popular. The younger teachers pronounced her +cut and dried; for dryness, conscientiously acquired, passed for her +natural condition. Nobody knew that it cost her much effort and industry +to be so stiff and starched; that the starch had to be put on fresh every +morning; that it was quite a business getting up her limp little +personality for the day. In five-and-twenty years, owing to an incurable +malady of shyness, she had never made friends with any of her pupils. + +Her one exception proved her rule. Miss Quincey seemed to have gone out +of her way to attract that odious little Laura Lazarus, who was known at +St. Sidwell's as the Mad Hatter. At fourteen, being still incapable of +adding two and two together, the Mad Hatter had been told off into an +idiot's class by herself for arithmetic; and Miss Quincey, because she +was so meek and patient and persistent, was told off to teach her. The +child, a queer, ugly little pariah, half-Jew, half-Cockney, held all +other girls in abhorrence, and was avoided by them with an equal +loathing. She seemed to have attached herself to the unpopular teacher +out of sheer perversity and malignant contempt of public opinion. +Abandoned in their corner, with their heads bent together over the sums, +the two outsiders clung to each other in a common misery and isolation. + +Miss Quincey was well aware that she was of no account at St. Sidwell's. +She supposed that it was because she had never taken her degree. To be +sure she had never tried to take it; but it was by no means certain that +she could have taken it if she had tried. She was not clever; Louisa had +carried off all the brains and the honours of the family. It had been +considered unnecessary for Juliana to develop an individuality of her +own; enough for her that she belonged to Louisa, and was known as +Louisa's sister. Louisa's sister was a part of Louisa; Louisa was a part +of St. Sidwell's College, Regent's Park; and St. Sidwell's College, +Regent's Park, was a part--no, St. Sidwell's was the whole; it was the +glorious world. Miss Quincey had never seen, or even desired to see any +other. That college was to her a place of exquisite order and light. +Light that was filtered through the high tilted windows, and reflected +from a prevailing background of green tiles and honey-white pine, from +countless rows of shining desks and from hundreds of young faces. Light, +the light of ideas, that streamed from the platform in the great hall +where three times in the year Miss Cursiter gave her address to the +students and teachers of St. Sidwell's. + +Now Miss Cursiter was a pioneer at war with the past, a woman of vast +ambitions, a woman with a system and an end; and she chose her +instruments finely, toiling early and late to increase their brilliance +and efficiency. She was new to St. Sidwell's, and would have liked to +make a clean sweep of the old staff and to fill their places with women +like Rhoda Vivian, young and magnificent and strong. As it was, she had +been weeding them out gradually, as opportunity arose; and the new staff, +modern to its finger-tips, was all but complete and perfect now. Only +Miss Quincey remained. St. Sidwell's in the weeding time had not been a +bed of roses for Miss Cursiter, and Miss Quincey, blameless but +incompetent, was a thorn in her side, a thorn that stuck. Impossible to +remove Miss Quincey quickly, she was so very blameless and she worked so +hard. + +She worked from nine till one in the morning, from two-thirty till +four-thirty in the afternoon, and from six-thirty in the evening till any +hour in the night. She worked with the desperate zeal of the superseded +who knows that she holds her post on sufferance, the terrified tenacity +of the middle-aged who feels behind her the swift-footed rivalry of +youth. And the more she worked the more she annoyed Miss Cursiter. + +So now, above all the tramping and shuffling and hissing, you heard the +self-restrained and slightly metallic utterance of the Head. + +"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." + +And Miss Quincey stood back, flattening herself against the wall, and the +procession passed her by, rosy, resonant, exulting, a triumph of life. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +Household Gods + + +Punctually at four-thirty Miss Quincey vanished from the light of St. +Sidwell's, Regent's Park, into the obscurity of Camden Town. Camden Town +is full of little houses standing back in side streets, houses with +porticoed front doors monstrously disproportioned to their size. Nobody +ever knocks at those front doors; nobody ever passes down those side +streets if they can possibly help it. The houses are all exactly alike; +they melt and merge into each other in dingy perspective, each with its +slag-bordered six foot of garden uttering a faint suburban protest +against the advances of the pavement. Miss Quincey lived in half of one +of them (number ninety, Camden Street North) with her old aunt Mrs. Moon +and their old servant Martha. She had lived there five-and-twenty years, +ever since the death of her uncle. + +Tollington Moon had been what his family called unfortunate; that is to +say, he had mislaid the greater portion of his wife's money and the whole +of Juliana's and Louisa's; he, poor fellow, had none of his own to lose. +Uncle Tollington, being the only male representative of the family, had +been appointed to drive the family coach. He was a genial good-natured +fellow and he cheerfully agreed, declaring that there was nothing in the +world he liked better than driving; though indeed he had had but little +practice in the art. So they started with a splendid flourishing of whips +and blowing of horns; Tollington driving at a furious break-neck pace in +a manner highly diverting and exhilarating to the ladies inside. The +girls (they were girls in those days) sat tight and felt no fear, while +Mrs. Moon, with her teeth shaking, explained to them the advantages of +having so expert a driver on the box seat. Of course there came the +inevitable smash at the corner. The three climbed out of that coach more +dead than alive; but they uttered no complaints; they had had their fun; +and in accidents of this kind the poor driver generally gets the worst of +it. + +Mrs. Moon at any rate found consolation in disaster by steadily ignoring +its most humiliating features. Secure in the new majesty of her +widowhood, she faced her nieces with an unflinching air and demanded of +them eternal belief in the wisdom and rectitude of their uncle +Tollington. She hoped that they would never forget him, never forget what +he had to bear, never forget all he had done for them. Her attitude +reduced Juliana to tears; in Louisa it roused the instinct of revolt, and +Louisa was for separating from Mrs. Moon. It was then, in her first +difference from Louisa, that Miss Quincey's tender and foolish little +face acquired its strangely persistent air. Hitherto the elder had served +the younger; now she took her stand. She said, "Whatever we do, we must +keep together"; and she professed her willingness to believe in her uncle +Tollington and remember him for ever. + +To this Louisa, who prided herself on speaking the truth or at any rate +her mind, replied that she wasn't likely to forget him in a hurry; that +her uncle Tollington had ruined her life, and she did not want to be +reminded of him any more than she could help. Moreover, she found her +aunt Moon's society depressing. She meant to get on and be independent; +and she advised Juliana to do the same. + +Juliana did not press the point, for it was a delicate one, seeing that +Louisa was earning a hundred and twenty pounds a year and she but eighty. +So she added her eighty pounds to her aunt's eighty and went to live with +her in Camden Street North, while Louisa shrugged her shoulders and +carried herself and her salary elsewhere. + +There was very little room for Mrs. Moon and Juliana at number ninety. +The poor souls had crowded themselves out with relics of their past, a +pathetic salvage, dragged hap-hazard from the wreck in the first frenzy +of preservation. Dreadful things in marble and gilt and in _papier-maché_ +inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, rickety work tables with pouches underneath +them, banner-screens in silk and footstools in Berlin wool-work fought +with each other and with Juliana for standing-room. For Juliana, with her +genius for collision, was always knocking up against them, always getting +in their way. In return, Juliana's place at an oblique angle of the +fireside was disputed by a truculent cabinet with bandy legs. There was a +never-ending quarrel between Juliana and that piece of furniture, in +which Mrs. Moon took the part of the furniture. Her own world had shrunk +to a square yard between the window and the fire. There she sat and +dreamed among her household gods, smiling now and then under the spell of +the dream, or watched her companion with critical disapproval. She had +accepted Juliana's devotion as a proper sacrifice to the gods; but for +Juliana, or Louisa for the matter of that, she seemed to have but little +affection. If anything Louisa was her favourite. Louisa was better +company, to begin with; and Louisa, with her cleverness and her salary +and her general air of indifference and prosperity, raised no questions. +Besides, Louisa was married. + +But Juliana, toiling from morning till night for her eighty pounds a +year; Juliana, painful and persistent, growing into middle-age without a +hope, Juliana was an incarnate reproach, a perpetual monument to the +folly of Tollington Moon. Juliana disturbed her dream. + +But nobody else disturbed it, for nobody ever came to their half of the +house in Camden Street North. Louisa used to come and go in a brief +perfunctory manner; but Louisa had married the Greek professor and gone +away for good, and her friends at St. Sidwell's were not likely to waste +their time in cultivating Juliana and Mrs. Moon. The thing had been tried +by one or two of the younger teachers who went in for all-round +self-development and were getting up the minor virtues. But they had met +with no encouragement and they had ceased to come. Then nobody came; not +even the doctor or the clergyman. The two ladies were of one mind on that +point; it was convenient for them to ignore their trifling ailments, +spiritual or bodily. And as soon as they saw that the world renounced +them they adopted a lofty tone and said to each other that they had +renounced the world. For they were proud, Mrs. Moon especially so. +Tollington Moon had married slightly, ever so slightly beneath him, the +Moons again marking a faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys. +But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with the +Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "_my_ +family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a +feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into +an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of +paradise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat dilapidated tail. + +So the two lived on together; so they had always lived. Mrs. Moon +was an old woman before she was five-and-fifty; and before she was +five-and-twenty Juliana's youth had withered away in the sour and +sordid atmosphere born of perishing gentility and acrid personal remark. +And their household gods looked down on them, miniatures and silhouettes +of Moons and Quinceys, calm and somewhat contemptuous presences. From the +post of honour above the mantelshelf, Tollington, attired as an Early +Victorian dandy, splendid in velvet waistcoat, scarf and chain-pin, +leaned on a broken column symbolical of his fortunes, and smiled genially +on the ruin he had made. + +That was how Miss Quincey came to St. Sidwell's. And now she was +five-and-forty; she had always been five-and-forty; that is to say, she +had never been young, for to be young you must be happy. And this was so +far an advantage, that when middle-age came on her she felt no +difference. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Inaugural Addresses + + +It was evening, early in the winter term, and Miss Cursiter was giving +her usual inaugural address to the staff. Their number had increased so +considerably that the little class-room was packed to overflowing. Miss +Cursiter stood in the free space at the end, facing six rows of eager +faces arranged in the form of a horse-shoe. She looked upon them and +smiled; she joyed with the joy of the creator who sees his idea incarnate +before him. + +A striking figure, Miss Cursiter. Tall, academic and austere; a keen +eagle head crowned with a mass of iron-grey hair; grey-black eyes burning +under a brow of ashen grey; an intelligence fervent with fire of the +enthusiast, cold with the renunciant's frost. Such was Miss Cursiter. She +was in splendid force to-day, grappling like an athlete with her enormous +theme--"The Educational Advantages of General Culture." She delivered her +address with an utterance rapid but distinct, keeping one eye on the +reporter and the other on Miss Rhoda Vivian, M.A. + +She might well look to Rhoda Vivian. If she had needed a foil for her own +commanding personality, she had found it there. But the new Classical +Mistress was something more than Miss Cursiter's complement. Nature, +usually so economical, not to say parsimonious, seemed to have made her +for her own delight, in a fit of reckless extravagance. She had given her +a brilliant and efficient mind in a still more brilliant and efficient +body, clothed her in all the colours of life; made her a creature of +ardent and elemental beauty. Rhoda Vivian had brown hair with sparkles of +gold in it and flakes of red fire; her eyes were liquid grey, the grey of +water; her lips were full, and they pouted a little proudly; it was the +pride of life. And she had other gifts which did not yet appear at St. +Sidwell's. There was something about her still plastic and unformed; you +could not say whether it was the youth of genius, or only the genius of +youth. But at three-and-twenty she had chosen her path, and gone far on +it, and it had been honours all the way. She went up and down at St. +Sidwell's, adored and unadoring, kindling the fire of a secret worship. +In any other place, with any other woman at the head of it, such a vivid +individuality might have proved fatal to her progress. But Miss Cursiter +was too original herself not to perceive the fine uses of originality. +All her hopes for the future were centred in Rhoda Vivian. She looked +below that brilliant surface and saw in her the ideal leader of young +womanhood. Rhoda was a force that could strike fire from a stone; what +she wanted she was certain to get; she seemed to compel work from the +laziest and intelligence from the dullest by the mere word of her will. +What was more, her nature was too large for vanity; she held her +worshippers at arm's length and consecrated her power of personal +seduction to strictly intellectual ends. At the end of her first term her +position was second only to the Head. If Miss Cursiter was the will and +intelligence of St. Sidwell's, Rhoda Vivian was its subtle poetry and its +soul. And Miss Cursiter meant to keep her there; being a woman who made +all sacrifices and demanded them. + +So now, while Miss Cursiter stood explaining, ostensibly to the entire +staff, the unique advantages of General Culture, it was to Rhoda Vivian +as to a supreme audience that she addressed her deeper thought and her +finer phrase. If Miss Cursiter had not had to consult her notes now and +again, she must have seen that Rhoda Vivian's mind was wandering, that +the Classical Mistress was if anything more interested in her companions +than in the noble utterances of the Head. As her grey eyes swept the +tiers of faces, they lingered on that corner where Miss Quincey seemed +perpetually striving to suppress, consume, and utterly obliterate +herself. And each time she smiled, as she had smiled earlier in the day +when first she saw Miss Quincey. + +For Miss Quincey was there, far back in the ranks of the brilliant and +efficient. Note-book on desk, she followed the quick march of thought +with a fatigued and stumbling brain. She was painfully, ludicrously out +of step; yet to judge by the light that shone now and then in her eyes, +by the smile that played about the corners of her weak, tender mouth, she +too had caught the sympathetic rapture, the intellectual thrill. Ready to +drop was Miss Quincey, but she would not have missed that illuminating +hour, not if you had paid her--three times her salary. It was her one +glimpse of the larger life; her one point of contact with the ideal. Her +pencil staggered over her note-book as Miss Cursiter flamed and lightened +in her peroration. + +"We have looked at our subject in the light of the ideals by which and +for which we live. Let us now turn to the practical side of the matter, +as it touches our business and our bosoms. Do not say we have no room for +poetry in our crowded days." A score of weary heads looked up; there was +a vague inquiry in all eyes. "You have your evenings--all of you. Much +can be done with evenings; if your training has done nothing else for you +it has taught you the economy of time. You are tired in the evenings, +yes. But the poets, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning, are the great +healers and regenerators of worn-out humanity. When you are faint and +weary with your day's work, the best thing you can do is to rise and +refresh yourselves at the living wells of literature." + +Long before the closing sentence Miss Quincey's MS. had become a +sightless blur. But she had managed to jot down in her neat arithmetical +way: "Poets = healers and regenerators." + +The address was printed and a copy was given to each member of the staff. +Miss Quincey treasured up hers as a priceless scripture. + +Miss Quincey was aware of her shortcomings and had struggled hard to mend +them, toiling pantingly after those younger ones who had attained the +standard of brilliance and efficiency. She joined the Teachers' Debating +Society. Not that she debated. She had once put some elementary questions +in an inaudible voice, and had been requested to speak a little louder, +whereupon she sank into her seat and spoke no more. But she heard a great +deal. About the emancipation of women; about the women's labour market; +about the doors that were now thrown open to women. She was told that all +they wanted was a fair field and no favour. (The speaker, a rosy-cheeked +child of one-and-twenty, was quite violent in her repudiation of favour.) +And Miss Quincey believed it all, though she understood very little about +it. + +But it was illumination, a new gospel to her, this doctrine of General +Culture; it was the large easy-fitting formula which she had seemed to +need. With touching simplicity she determined to follow the course +recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some +seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for +the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the +healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like +going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little +body there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; night after +night twelve o'clock would find her painfully trying to draw water from +the wells of literature. She had begun upon Browning; set herself to read +through the whole of _Sordello_ from beginning to end. It is as easy as a +sum in arithmetic if you don't bother your head too much about the +Guelphs and Ghibellines and the metaphors and things, and if you take it +in short fits, say three pages every evening. Never any more, or you +might go to sleep and forget all about it; never any less, or you would +have bad arrears. As there are exactly two hundred and thirteen pages, +she calculated that she would finish it in ten weeks and a day. There was +no place for Miss Quincey and her pile of marble-backed exercise-books in +the dim and dingy first-floor drawing-room (Mrs. Moon and the +bandy-legged cabinet would have had something to say to that). All this +terrific intellectual travail went on in a dimmer and dingier dining-room +beneath it. + +Then one night, old Martha, disturbed by sounds that came from Miss +Juliana's bedroom, groped her way fumblingly in and found Miss Juliana +sitting up in her sleep and posing the darkness with a problem. + +"If," said Miss Juliana, "three men can finish one hundred and nineteen +hogsheads of Browning in eight weeks, how long will it take seven women +to finish a thousand and forty-five--forty-five--forty-five, if one woman +works twice as hard as eleven men?" + +Martha shook her head and went fumbling back to bed again; and being a +conscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frightening +the old lady. + +About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, came +upon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning up +against the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books. The sweat +streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn. She +could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as +equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot +air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pile +of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey +was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian was +going to take her home. She even smiled her little pinched smile and +pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." +Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the +sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss +Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the +bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, +and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss +Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have +wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was +a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed +washed up and abandoned by the tide. When Miss Quincey's head was inside +it the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive +anything more melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired in +pale grey cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big +black Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey +would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but +Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were +enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a +superfluity, a luxury. + +Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home went +off in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of Miss +Quincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets and +conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find her +man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Bastian Cautley, M.D. + + +It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house +jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a +pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to +himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He had +been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobody +could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as he +stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. His +very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all his +weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state +in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed +an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with +book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy +maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was +not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six +o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a +frock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, all +patience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peace +for him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go on +incessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it +meant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously +early age of nine-and-twenty. + +There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs. + +"There's another damned patient," said Dr. Cautley. + +He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously of +patients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him before +their time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The servant was +certainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling sounds in the +hall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much patience and much +politeness would then be required of him, and he was feeling anything but +patient and polite. + +"Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him. He +did not know Miss Rhoda Vivian. + +The gas-jets were turned low in the consulting-room; when he raised them +he saw a beautiful woman standing by the fire in an attitude of +impatience. He had kept her waiting; and it seemed that this adorable +person knew the value of time. She was not going to waste words either. +As it was impossible to associate her with the ordinary business of the +place, he was prepared for her terse and lucid statement of somebody +else's case. He said he would look round early in the morning (Miss +Vivian looked dissatisfied); or perhaps that evening (Miss Vivian was +dubious); or possibly at once (Miss Vivian smiled in hurried approval). +She was eager to be gone. And when she had gone he stood deliberating. +Miss Quincey was a pathological abstraction, Miss Vivian was a radiant +reality; it was clear that Miss Quincey was not urgent, and that once +safe in her bed she could very well wait till to-morrow; but when he +thought of Miss Vivian he became impressed with the gravity and interest +of Miss Quincey's case. + +While the doctor was making up his mind, little Miss Quincey, in her +shabby back bedroom, lay waiting for him, trembling, fretting her nerves +into a fever, starting at imaginary footsteps, and entertaining all kinds +of dismal possibilities. She was convinced that she was going to die, or +worse still, to break down, to be a perpetual invalid. She thought of +several likely illnesses, beginning with general paralysis and ending +with anemia of the brain. It _might_ be anemia of the brain, but she +rather thought it would be general paralysis, because this would be so +much the more disagreeable of the two. Anyhow Rhoda Vivian must have +thought she was pretty bad or she would not have called in a doctor. To +call in a doctor seemed to Miss Quincey next door to invoking Providence +itself; it was the final desperate resort, implying catastrophe and the +end of all things. Oh, dear! Miss Quincey wished he would come up if he +was coming, and get it over. + +After all he did not keep her waiting long, and it was over in five +minutes. And yet it was amazing the amount of observation, and insight, +and solid concentrated thought the young man contrived to pack into those +five minutes. + +Well--it seemed that it was not general paralysis this time, nor yet +anemia of the brain; but he could tell her more about it in the morning. +Meanwhile she had nothing to do but to do what he told her and stay where +she was till he saw her again. And he was gone before she realized that +he had been there. + +Again? So he was coming again, was he? Miss Quincey did not know whether +to be glad or sorry. His presence had given her a rare and curiously +agreeable sense of protection, but she had to think of the expense. She +had to think too of what Mrs. Moon would say to it--of what she would say +to him. + +Mrs. Moon had a good deal to say to it. She took Juliana's illness as a +personal affront, as a deliberate back-handed blow struck at the memory +of Tollington Moon. With all the base implications of her daily acts, +Juliana had never attempted anything like this. + +"Capers and nonsense," she said, "Juliana has never had an illness in her +life." + +She said it to Rhoda Vivian, the bold young person who had taken upon +herself to bring the doctor into the house. Mrs. Moon spoke of the doctor +as if he was a disease. + +Fortunately Miss Vivian was by when he endured the first terrifying +encounter. Her manner suggested that she took him under her protection, +stood between him and some unfathomable hostility. + +He found the Old Lady disentangling herself with immense dignity from her +maze of furniture. Mrs. Moon was a small woman shrunk with her eighty +years, shrunk almost to extinction in her black woollen gown and black +woollen mittens. Her very face seemed to be vanishing under the immense +shadow of her black net cap. Spirals of thin grey hair stuck flat to her +forehead; she wore other and similar spirals enclosed behind glass in an +enormous brooch; it was the hair of her ancestors, that is to say of the +Quinceys. As the Old Lady looked at Cautley her little black eyes burned +like pinpoints pierced in a paste-board mask. + +"I think you've been brought here on a wild goose chase, doctor," said +she, "there is nothing the matter with my niece." + +He replied (battling sternly with his desire to laugh) that he would be +delighted if it were so; adding that a wild goose chase was the sport he +preferred to any other. + +Here he looked at Miss Vivian to the imminent peril of his self-control. +Mrs. Moon's gaze had embraced them in a common condemnation, and the +subtle sympathy of their youth linked them closer and made them one in +their intimate appreciation of her. + +"Then you must be a very singular young man. I thought you doctors were +never happy until you'd found some mare's nest in people's constitutions? +You'd much better let well alone." + +"Miss Quincey is very far from well," said Cautley with recovered +gravity, "and I rather fancy she has been let alone too long." + +Cautley thought that he had said quite enough to alarm any old lady. And +indeed Mrs. Moon was slowly taking in the idea of disaster, and it sent +her poor wits wandering in the past. Her voice sank suddenly from +grating; antagonism to pensive garrulity. + +"I've no faith in medicine," she quavered, "nor in medical men either. +Though to be sure my husband had a brother-in-law once on his wife's +side, Dr. Quincey, Dr. Arnold Quincey, Juliana's father and Louisa's. He +was a medical man. He wrote a book, I daresay you've heard of it; +_Quincey on Diseases of the Heart_ it was. But he's dead now, of one of +'em, poor man. We haven't seen a doctor for five-and-twenty years." + +"Then isn't it almost time that you should see one now?" said he, +cheerfully taking his leave. "I shall look round again in the morning." + +He looked round again in the morning and sat half an hour with Miss +Quincey; so she had time to take a good look at him. + +He was very nice to look at, this young man. He was so clean-cut and tall +and muscular; he had such an intellectual forehead; his mouth was so +firm, you could trust it to tell no secrets; and his eyes (they were dark +and deep set) looked as if they saw nothing but Miss Quincey. Indeed, at +the moment he had forgotten all about Rhoda Vivian, and did see nothing +but the little figure in the bed looking more like a rather worn and +wizened child than a middle-aged woman. He was very gentle and +sympathetic; but for that his youth would have been terrible to her. As +it was, Miss Quincey felt a little bit in awe of this clever doctor, who +in spite of his cleverness looked so young, and not only so young but so +formidably fastidious and refined. She had not expected him to look like +that. All the clever young men she had met had displayed a noble contempt +for appearances. To be sure, Miss Quincey knew but little of the world of +men; for at St. Sidwell's the types were limited to three little +eccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for the +gods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever Miss +Quincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband, +Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannel +shirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow. +But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had a +distinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen, +irreproachable itself, reproved her silently. + +Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full of +little tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't look +so much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopic +observation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet and +the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the +quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for +hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned +instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat, +perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense +of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then she +tried to compose herself for the verdict. + +It did not come all at once. First of all he asked her a great many +questions about herself and her family, whereupon she gave him a complete +pathological story of the Moons and Quinceys. And all the time he looked +so hard at her that it was quite embarrassing. His eyes seemed to be +taking her in (no other eyes had ever performed that act of hospitality +for Miss Quincey). He pulled out a little book from his pocket and made +notes of everything she said; Miss Quincey's biography was written in +that little book (you may be sure nobody else had ever thought of writing +it). And when he had finished the biography he talked to her about her +work (nobody else had ever been the least interested in Miss Quincey's +work). Then Miss Quincey sat up in bed and became lyrical as she +described the delirious joy of decimals--recurring decimals--and the +rapture of cube-root. She herself had never got farther than cube-root; +but it was enough. Beyond that, she hinted, lay the infinite. And Dr. +Cautley laughed at her defence of the noble science. Oh yes, he could +understand its fascination, its irresistible appeal to the emotions; he +only wished to remind her that it was the most debilitating study in the +world. He refused to commit himself to any opinion as to the original +strength and magnitude of Miss Quincey's brain; he could only assure her +that the most powerful intellect in the world would break down if you +kept it perpetually doing sums in arithmetic. It was the monotony of the +thing, you see; year after year Miss Quincey had been ploughing up the +same little patch of brain. No, certainly _not_--she mustn't think of +going back to St. Sidwell's for another three months. + +Three months! Impossible! It was a whole term. + +Dr. Cautley scowled horribly and said that if she was ever to be fit for +cube-root and decimals again, she positively and absolutely _must_. +Whereupon Miss Quincey gave way to emotion. + +To leave St. Sidwell's, abandon her post for three months, she who had +never been absent for a day! If she did that it would be all up with Miss +Quincey; a hundred eager applicants were ready to fill her empty place. +It was as if she heard the hungry, leaping pack behind her, the strong +young animals trained for the chase; they came tearing on the scent, +hunting her, treading her down. + +When Rhoda Vivian looked in after morning school, she found a flushed and +embarrassed young man trying to soothe Miss Quincey, who paid not the +least attention to him; she seemed to have shrunk into her bed, and lay +there staring with dilated eyes like a hare crouched flat and trembling +in her form. From the other side of the bed Dr. Cautley's helpless and +desperate smile claimed Rhoda as his ally. It seemed to say, "For God's +sake take my part against this unreasonable woman." + +Now no one (not even Miss Quincey) could realize the insecurity of Miss +Quincey's position better than Rhoda, who was fathoms deep in the +confidence of the Head. She happened to know that Miss Cursiter was only +waiting for an opportunity like this to rid herself for ever of the +little obstructive. She knew too that once they had ceased to fill their +particular notch in it, the world had no further use for people like Miss +Quincey; that she, Rhoda Vivian, belonged to the new race whose eternal +destiny was to precipitate their doom. It was the first time that Rhoda +had thought of it in that light; the first time indeed that she had +greatly concerned herself with any career beside her own. She sat for a +few minutes talking to Miss Quincey and thinking as she talked. Perhaps +she was wondering how she would like to be forty-five and incompetent; to +be overtaken on the terrible middle-way; to feel the hurrying generations +after her, their breath on her shoulders, their feet on her heels; to +have no hope; to see Mrs. Moon sitting before her, immovable and +symbolic, the image of what she must become. They were two very absurd +and diminutive figures, but they stood for a good deal. + +To Cautley, Rhoda herself as she revolved these things looked significant +enough. Leaning forward, one elbow bent on her knee, her chin propped on +her hand, her lips pouting, her forehead knit, she might have been a +young and passionate Pallas, brooding tempestuously on the world. + +"Miss Vivian is on my side, I see. I'll leave her to do the fighting." + +And he left her. + +Rhoda's first movement was to capture Miss Quincey's hand as it wildly +reconnoitred for a pocket handkerchief among the pillows. + +"Don't worry about it," she said, "I'll speak to Miss Cursiter." + +Dr. Cautley, enduring a perfunctory five minutes with Mrs. Moon, could +hear Miss Vivian running downstairs and the front door opening and +closing upon her. With a little haste and discretion he managed to +overtake her before she had gone very far. He stopped to give his verdict +on her friend. + +She had expected him. + +"Well," she asked, "it _is_ overwork, isn't it?" + +"Very much overwork; and no wonder. I knew she was a St. Sidwell's woman +as soon as I saw her." + +"That was clever of you. And do you always know a St. Sidwell's woman +when you see one?" + +"I do; they all go like this, more or less. It seems to me that St. +Sidwell's sacrifices its women to its girls, and its girls to itself. I +don't imagine you've much to do with the place, so you won't mind my +saying so." + +Rhoda smiled a little maliciously. + +"You seem to take a great deal for granted. As it happens I am Classical +Mistress there." + +Dr. Cautley looked at her and bit his lip. He was annoyed with himself +for his blunder and with her for being anything but Rhoda Vivian--pure +and simple. + +Rhoda laughed frankly at his confusion. + +"Never mind. Appearances are deceitful. I'm glad I don't look like it." + +"You certainly do not. Still, Miss Quincey is a warning to anybody." + +"She? She was never fit for the life." + +"No. Your race is to the swift and your battle to the strong." + +He was still looking at her as he spoke. She was looking straight before +her, her nostrils slightly distended, her grey eyes wide, as if she +sniffed the battle, saw the goal. + +"We must make her strong," said he. + +She had quickened her pace as if under a renewed impulse of energy and +will. Suddenly at the door of the College she stopped and held out her +hand. + +"You will look after her well, will you not?" Her voice was resonant on +the note of appeal. + +Now you could withstand Rhoda in her domineering mood if you were strong +enough and cool enough; but when she looked straight through your eyes in +that way she was irresistible. Cautley did not attempt to resist her. + +He went on his way thinking how intolerable the question might have been +in some one else's mouth; how suggestive of impertinent coquetry, the +beautiful woman's assumption that he would do for her what he would not +do for insignificant Miss Quincey. She had taken it for granted that his +interest in Miss Quincey was supreme. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Healers and Regenerators + + +Rhoda had spoken to Miss Cursiter. Nobody ever knew what she said to +her, but the next day Miss Cursiter's secretary had the pleasure to +inform Miss Quincey that she would have leave of absence for three +months, and that her place would be kept for her. + +Miss Quincey had become a person of importance. Old Martha fumbled about, +unnaturally attentive, even Mrs. Moon acknowledged Juliana's right to be +ill if her foolish mind were set on it. There was nothing active or +spontaneous in the Old Lady's dislike of her niece, it was simply a habit +she had got. + +An agreeable sense of her dignity stole in on the little woman of no +account. She knew and everybody knew that hers was no vulgar illness. +It was brain exhaustion; altogether a noble and transcendental +affair; Miss Quincey was a victim of the intellectual life. In all the +five-and-twenty years she had worked there St. Sidwell's had never heard +so much about Miss Quincey's brain. And on her part Miss Quincey was +surprised to find that she had so many friends. Day after day the +teachers left their cards and sympathy; the girls sent flowers with love; +there were even messages of inquiry from Miss Cursiter. And not only +flowers and sympathy, but more solid testimonials poured in from St. +Sidwell's, parcels which by some curious coincidence contained everything +that Dr. Cautley had suggested and Miss Quincey refused on the grounds +that she "couldn't fancy it." For a long time Miss Quincey was supremely +happy in the belief that these delicacies were sent by the Head; and she +said to herself that one had only to be laid aside a little while for +one's worth to be appreciated. It was as if a veil of blessed illusion +had been spread between her and her world; and nobody knew whose fingers +had been busy in weaving it so close and fine. + +Dr. Cautley came every day and always at the same time. At first he was +pretty sure to find Miss Vivian, sitting with Miss Quincey or drinking +tea in perilous intimacy with Mrs. Moon. Then came a long spell when, +time it as he would, he never saw her at all. Rhoda had taken it into her +head to choose six o'clock for her visits, and at six he was bound to be +at home for consultations. But Rhoda or no Rhoda, he kept his promise. He +was looking well after Miss Quincey. He would have done that as a matter +of course; for his worst enemies--and he had several--could not say that +Cautley ever neglected his poorer patients. Only he concentrated or +dissipated himself according to the nature of the case, giving five +minutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours to +Miss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; his +spirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you would +have thought that Miss Quincey's case was one of exquisite interest, +rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on her +recovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We _must_ get you +well, Miss Quincey," his manner implied that it would be a very serious +thing for the universe if Miss Quincey did not get well. When he looked +at her his eyes seemed to be taking her in, taking her in, seeing nothing +in all the world but her. + +As it happened, sooner than anybody expected Miss Quincey did get well. +Mrs. Moon was the first to notice that. She hailed Juliana's recovery as +a sign of grace, of returning allegiance to the memory of Tollington +Moon. + +"Now," said the Old Lady, "I hope we've seen the last of Dr. Cautley." + +"Of course we have," said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, but +everybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returning +health. "What should he come for?" + +"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don't imagine he comes for the +pleasure of seeing _you_?" + +"I never imagine anything," said the little arithmetic teacher with some +truth. + +But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theory +was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young +men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He +kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well; +and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to +see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be passing," or +"to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of +light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to +supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that +you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, +sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if +these things were not the most expensive. + +All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard +imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious +disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with +time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed +that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her +for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was +always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells +of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_, +and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress +with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr. +Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_." + +"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life." + +It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of +adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the +realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson +and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what +could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled +extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets +and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to +make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his +light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like the +punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this +young man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose names +had never penetrated to St. Sidwell's. Some days he was really dreadful; +he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of his +unbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of +_In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines have +gone. + +Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave him +a copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's," +and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers and +regenerators, and refreshing yourself at the wells of literature. "That +is a beautiful passage," said Miss Quincey. + +He laughed more than ever. + +"Oh yes, beautiful, beautiful. They're to do it in their evenings, are +they? And when they're faint and weary with their day's work?" And he +laughed again quite loud, laughed till Mrs. Moon woke out of a doze and +started as if this world had come to an end and another one had begun. He +was very sorry, and he begged a thousand pardons; but, really, that +passage was unspeakably funny. He didn't know that Miss Cursiter had such +a rich vein of humour in her. For the life of her Miss Quincey could not +see what there was to laugh at, nor why she should be teased about +Tennyson and bantered on the subject of Browning; but she enjoyed it all +the same. He was so young; he was like a big schoolboy throwing stones +into the living wells of literature and watching for the splash; it did +her good to look at him. So she looked, smiling her starved smile and +snatching a fearful joy from his profane conversation. + +There were moments when she asked herself how he came to be there at all; +he was so out-of-place somehow. The Moons and Quinceys denounced him as a +stranger and intruder; the very chairs and tables had memories, +associations that rejected him; everything in the room suggested the same +mystic antagonism; it was as if Mrs. Moon and all her household gods were +in league against him. Oddly enough this attitude of theirs heightened +her sense of intimacy with him, made him hers and no one else's for the +time. The pleasure she took in his society had some of the peculiar +private ecstasy of sin. + +And Mrs. Moon wondered what the young man was going to charge for that +little visit; and what the total of his account would be. She said that +if Juliana didn't give him a hint, she would be obliged to speak to him +herself; and at that Juliana looked frightened and begged that Mrs. Moon +would do nothing of the kind. "There will be no charge for friendly +visits," said she; and she made a rapid calculation in the top of her +head. Nineteen visits at, say, seven-and-six a visit, would come to +exactly nine pounds nine and sixpence. And she smiled; possibly she +thought it was worth it. + +And really those friendly visits had sometimes an ambiguous character; he +dragged his profession into them by the head and shoulders. He had left +off scribbling prescriptions, but he would tell her what to take in a +light and literary way, as if it was just part of their very interesting +conversation. Browning was bitter and bracing, he was like iron and +quinine, and by the way she had better take a little of both. Then when +he met her again he would ask, "Have you been taking any more Browning, +Miss Quincey?" and while Miss Quincey owned with a blush that she had, he +would look at her and say she wanted a change--a little Tennyson and a +lighter tonic; strychnine and arsenic was the thing. + +And Mrs. Moon still wondered. "I never saw anything like the indelicacy +of that young man," said she. "You're running up a pretty long bill, I +can tell you." + +Oh, yes, a long, long bill; for we pay heavily for our pleasures in this +sad world, Juliana! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Spring Fashions + + +Winter had come and gone, and spring found Miss Quincey back again at St. +Sidwell's, the place of illumination; a place that knew rather less of +her than it had known before. After five-and-twenty years of constant +attendance she had only to be away three months to be forgotten. The new +staff was not greatly concerned with Miss Quincey; it was always busy. As +for the girls, they were wholly given over to the new worship of Rhoda +Vivian; impossible to rouse them to the faintest interest in Miss +Quincey. + +Her place had been kept for her by Rhoda. Rhoda had put out the strong +young arm that she was so proud of, and held back for a little while Miss +Quincey's fate; and now at all costs she was determined to stand between +her and the truth. So Miss Quincey never knew that it was Rhoda who was +responsible for the delicate attentions she had received during her +illness; Rhoda who had bought and sent off the presents from St. +Sidwell's; Rhoda who had conceived that pretty little idea of flowers +"with love"; and Rhoda who had inspired the affectionate messages of the +staff. (The Classical Mistress had to draw most extravagantly on her +popularity in order to work that fraud.) Rhoda had taken her place, and +it was not in Rhoda's power to give it back to her. But Miss Quincey +never saw it; for a subtler web than that of Rhoda's spinning was woven +about her eyes. + +Possibly in some impressive and inapparent way her unhappy little +favourite Laura Lazarus may have been glad to see her back again, though +the two queer creatures exchanged no greeting more intimate than an +embarrassed smile. In this rapidly-advancing world the Mad Hatter alone +remained where Miss Quincey had left her. She explained at some length +how the figures twisted themselves round in her head and would never stay +the same for a minute together. Miss Quincey listened patiently to this +explanation; she was more indulgent, less persistent than before. + +Under that veil of illusion she herself had become communicative. She +went up and down between the classes and poured out her soul as to an +audience all interest, all sympathy. There was a certain monotony about +her conversation since the epoch of her illness. It was, "Oh yes, I am +quite well now, thank you. Dr. Cautley is so very clever. Dr. Cautley has +taken splendid care of me. Dr. Cautley has been so very kind and +attentive, I think it would be ungrateful of me if I had not got well. +Dr. Cautley--" Perhaps it was just as well for Miss Quincey that the +staff were too busy to attend to her. The most they noticed was that in +the matter of obstruction Miss Quincey was not quite so precipitate as +she had been. She offended less by violent contact and rebound than by +drifting absently into the processions and getting mixed up with them. + +Rhoda saw a change in her; Rhoda was never too busy to spare a thought +for Miss Quincey. "Yes," she said, "you _are_ better. Your eyes are +brighter." + +"That," said Miss Quincey, with simple pride "is the arsenic. Dr. Cautley +is giving me arsenic." + +Now arsenic (like happiness) has some curious properties. It looks most +innocently like sugar, which it is not. A little of it goes a long way +and undoubtedly acts as a tonic; a little more may undermine the stoutest +constitution, and a little too much of it is a deadly poison and kills +you. As yet Miss Quincey had only taken it in microscopic doses. +Something had changed her; it may have been happiness, it may have been +illusion; whatever it was Miss Quincey thought it was the arsenic--if it +was not the weather, the very remarkable weather. For that year Spring +came with a burst. + +Indeed there is seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure and +gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a +hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she +has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless of +delicacies and shades, relying on broad telling strokes, on strong +outlines and stinging contrasts. She is like a clever artist handicapped +with her materials. Only a patch of grass, a few trees and the sky; but +you wake one morning and the boughs are drawn black and bold against the +blue; and leaves are sharp as emeralds against the black; and the grass +in the squares and the shrubs in the gardens repeat the same brilliant +extravaganza; and it is all very eccentric and beautiful and daring. That +is the way of a Cockney Spring, and when you are used to it the charm is +undeniable. + +One day Miss Quincey walked in Camden Town and noted the singular +caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, +stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden +Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young +fashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window +blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form. +There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that you +could have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eye +would be to wrong that maidenly garment. There was nothing blatant, +nothing importunate in its behaviour. Gently, imperceptibly, it stole +into the field of vision and stood there, delicately alluring. It could +afford to wait. It had not even any pattern to speak of, only an +indefinable white something, a dice, a diaper, a sprig. It was the sprig +that touched her, tempted her. + +Amongst the poorer ranks of Miss Quincey's profession the sumptuary laws +are exceptionally severe. It is a crime, a treachery, to spend money on +mere personal adornment. You are clothed, not for beauty's sake, but +because the rigour of the climate and of custom equally require it. Miss +Quincey's conscience pricked her all the time that she stood looking in +at Hunter's window. Never before had she suffered so terrible a +solicitation of the senses. It was as if all those dim and germinal +desires had burst and blossomed in this sinful passion for a blouse. She +resisted, faltered, resisted; turned away and turned back again. The +blouse sat immovable on its wooden bust, absolute in its policy of +reticence. Miss Quincey had just decided that it had a thought too much +mauve in it, and was most successfully routing desire by depreciation of +its object when a shopman stepped on to the stage, treading airily among +the gauzes and the flowers. There was no artifice about the young man; it +was in the dreamiest abstraction that he clasped that fair form round the +collar and turned it to the light. It shuddered like a living thing; its +violent mauve vanished in silver grey. The effect was irresistible. Miss +Quincey was tempted beyond all endurance; and she fell. Once in +possession of the blouse, its price, a guinea, paid over the counter, +Miss Quincey was all discretion. She carried her treasure home in a +pasteboard box concealed under her cape; lest its shameless arrival in +Hunter's van should excite scandal and remark. + +That night, behind a locked door, Miss Quincey sat up wrestling and +battling with her blouse. To Miss Quincey in the watches of the night it +seemed that a spirit of obstinate malevolence lurked in that deceitful +garment. Like all the things in Hunter's shop, it was designed for +conventional well-rounded womanhood. It repudiated the very idea of Miss +Quincey; in every fold it expressed its contempt for her person; its +collar was stiff with an invincible repugnance. Miss Quincey had to take +it in where it went out, and let it out where it went in, to pinch, pull, +humour and propitiate it before it would consent to cling to her +diminished figure. When all was done she wrapped it in tissue paper and +hid it away in a drawer out of sight, for the very thought of it +frightened her. But when next she went to look at it she hardly knew it +again. The malignity seemed all smoothed out of it; it lay there with its +meek sleeves folded, the very picture of injured innocence and reproach. +Miss Quincey thought she might get reconciled to it in time. A day might +even come when she would be brave enough to wear it. + +Not many days after, Miss Quincey might have been seen coming out of St. +Sidwell's with a reserved and secret smile playing about her face; so +secret and so reserved, that nobody, not even Miss Quincey, could tell +what it was playing at. + +Miss Quincey was meditating an audacity. + +That night she took pen and paper up to her bedroom and sat down to write +a little note. Sat down to write it and got up again; wrote it and tore +it up, and sat down to write another. This she left open for such +emendations and improvements as should occur to her in the night. Perhaps +none did occur; perhaps she realized that a literary work loses its force +and spontaneity in conscious elaboration; anyhow the note was put up just +as it was and posted first thing in the morning at the pillar-box on her +way to St. Sidwell's. + +Old Martha was cleaning the steps as Miss Quincey went out; but Miss +Quincey carefully avoided looking Martha's way. Like the ostrich she +supposed that if she did not see Martha, Martha could not see her. But +Martha had seen her. She saw everything. She had seen the note open on +Miss Juliana's table by the window in the bedroom when she was drawing up +the blind; she had seen the silk blouse lying in its tissue paper when +she was tidying Miss Juliana's drawer; and that very afternoon she +discovered a certain cake deposited by Miss Juliana in the dining-room +cupboard with every circumstance of secrecy and disguise. + +And Martha shook her old head and put that and that together, the blouse, +the cake and the letter; though what connection there could possibly be +between the three was more than Miss Juliana could have told her. Even to +Martha the association was so singular that it pointed to some painful +aberration of intellect on Miss Juliana's part. + +As in duty bound, Martha brought up her latest discovery and laid it +before Mrs. Moon. Beyond that she said nothing, indeed there was nothing +to be said. The cake (it was of the expensive pound variety, crowned with +a sugar turret and surrounded with almond fortifications) spoke for +itself, though in an unknown language. + +"What does that mean, Martha?" + +"Miss Juliana, m'm, I suppose." + +Martha pursed up her lips, suppressing the impertinence of her own +private opinion and awaiting her mistress's with respect. + +No doubt she would have heard it but that Miss Juliana happened to come +in at that moment, and Mrs. Moon's attention was distracted by the really +amazing spectacle presented by her niece. And Miss Juliana, who for +five-and-twenty years had never appeared in anything but frowsy drab or +dingy grey, Miss Juliana flaunting in silk at four o'clock in the +afternoon, Miss Juliana, all shining and shimmering like a silver and +mauve chameleon, was a sight to take anybody's breath away. Martha dearly +loved a scene, for to be admitted to a scene was to be admitted to her +mistress's confidence; but the excellent woman knew her place, and before +that flagrant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from a +family scandal. + +Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had to +cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less +abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of +Dr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact +explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her +hand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural. + +Mrs. Moon restrained her feelings until her niece had moved about a bit, +and sat down by her enemy the cabinet, and presented herself in every +possible aspect. The Old Lady's eyes lost no movement of the curious +figure; when she had taken it in, grasped it in all its details, she +began. + +"Well, I declare, Juliana"--(five-and-twenty years ago she used to call +her "Jooley," keeping the full name to mark disapproval or displeasure. +Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanently +displeased)--"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition of +yourself? (And will you draw your chair back--you're incommoding the +cabinet.) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in _my_ +life--at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig out +of a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you're +very much mistaken." + +That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea--to carry it off; to brazen it +out; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at all +remarkable in her personal appearance. + +"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could stand +that shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn't +mauve-pink." + +"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in Miss +Quincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt could +not look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at that +word. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked in +an awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse shivered as Miss Quincey +trembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns it +paled and flushed its painful pink. They were blushing for each other. +For it _was_ mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now. + +"Turn round!" + +Miss Quincey turned round. + +"Much too young for you! Why, bless me, if it doesn't throw up every bit +of yellow in your face! If you don't believe me, look in the glass." + +Miss Quincey looked in the glass. + +It _did_ throw up the yellow tints. It threw everything up to her. If she +had owned to a little fear of it before, it affected her now with +positive terror. The thing was young, much too young; and it was brutal +and violent in its youth. It was possessed by a perfect demon of +juvenility; it clashed and fought with every object in the room; it made +them all look old, ever so old, and shabby. And as Miss Quincey stood +with it before the looking glass, it flared up and told her to her face +that she was forty-five--forty-five, and looked fifty. + +"Louisa," murmured the Old Lady, "was the only one of our family who +could stand pink." + +"I will give it to Louisa," cried Miss Quincey with a touch of passion. + +"Tchee--tchee!" At that idea the Old Lady chuckled in supreme derision. +"Capers and nonsense! Louisa indeed! Much good it'll do Louisa when +you've been and nipped all the shape out of it to suit yourself. However +you came to be so skimpy and flat-chested is a mystery to me. All the +Quinceys were tall, your uncle Tollington was tall, your father, he was +tall; and your sister, well; I will say this for Louisa, she's as tall as +any of 'em, and she has a _bust_." + +"Yes, I daresay it would have been very becoming to Louisa," said Miss +Quincey humbly. "I--I thought it was lavender." + +"Lavender or no lavender, I'm surprised at you--throwing money away on a +thing like that." + +"I can afford it," said Miss Quincey with the pathetic dignity of the +turning worm. + +Now it was not worm-like subtlety that suggested that reply. It was +positive inspiration. By those simple words Juliana had done something to +remove the slur she was always casting on a certain character. Tollington +Moon had not managed his nieces' affairs so badly after all if one of +them could afford herself extravagances of that sort. The blouse +therefore might be taken as a sign and symbol of his innermost integrity. +So Mrs. Moon was content with but one more parting shot. + +"I don't say you can't afford the money, I say you can't afford the +colour--not at your time of life." + +Two tears that had gathered in Miss Quincey's eyes now fell on the silk, +deepening the mauve-pink to a hideous magenta. + +"I was deceived in the colour," she said as she turned from her +tormentor. + +She toiled upstairs to the back bedroom and took it off. She could never +wear it. It was waste--sheer waste; for no other woman could wear it +either; certainly not Louisa; she had made it useless for Louisa by +paring it down to her own ridiculous dimensions. Louisa was and always +had been a head and shoulders taller than she was; and she had a bust. + +So Miss Quincey came down meek and meagre in the old dress that she +served her for so many seasons, and she looked for peace. But that +terrible old lady had not done with her yet, and the worst was still to +come. + +No longer having any grievance against the blouse, Mrs. Moon was +concentrating her attention on that more mysterious witness to Juliana's +foolishness--the Cake. + +"And now," said she, pointing as she might have pointed to a monument, +"will you kindly tell me the meaning of this?" + +"I expect--perhaps--it is very likely--that Dr. Cautley will come in to +tea this afternoon." + +The Old Lady peered at Miss Quincey and her eyes were sharp as needles, +needles that carried the thread of her thought pretty plainly too, but it +was too fine a thread for Miss Quincey to see. Besides she was looking +at the cake and almost regretting that she had bought it, lest he should +think that it was eating too many of such things that had made her ill. + +"And what put that notion into your head, I should like to know?" + +"He has written to say so." + +"Juliana--you don't mean to tell me that he invited himself?" + +"Well, no. That is--it was an answer to my invitation." + +"_Your_ invitation? You were not content to have that man poking his nose +in here at all hours of the day and night, but you must go out of your +way to send him invitations?" + +"Dr. Cautley has been most kind and attentive, and--I thought--it was +time we paid him some little attention." + +"Attention indeed! I should be very sorry to let any young man suppose +that I paid any attention to him. I should have thought you'd have had a +little more maidenly reserve. Besides, you know perfectly well that I +don't enjoy my tea unless we have it by ourselves." + +Oh yes, she knew; they had been having it that way for five-and-twenty +years. + +"As for that cake," continued the Old Lady, "it's ridiculous. Look at it. +Why, you might just as well have ordered wedding cake at once. I tell you +what it is, Juliana, you're getting quite flighty." + +Flighty? No mind but a feminine one, grown up and trained under the +shadow of St. Sidwell's, could conceive the nature of Miss Quincey's +feelings on being told that she was flighty. She herself made no attempt +to express them. She sat down and gasped, clutching her Browning to give +herself a sense of moral support. All the rest was intelligible, she had +understood and accepted it; but to be told that she, a teacher in St. +Sidwell's, was flighty--the charge was simply confusing to the intellect, +and it left her dumb. + +Flighty? When Martha came in with the tea-tray and she had to order a +knife for the cake and an extra cup for Dr. Cautley, she saw Mrs. Moon +looking at Martha, and Martha looking at Mrs. Moon, and they seemed to be +saying to each other, "How flighty Miss Juliana is getting." + +Flighty? The idea afflicted her to such a degree that when Dr. Cautley +came she had not a word to say to him. + +For a whole week she had looked forward to this tea-drinking with tremors +of joyous expectancy and palpitations of alarm. It was to have been one +of those rare and solitary occasions that can only come once in a blue +moon. The lump sum of pleasure that other people get spread for them more +or less thickly over the surface of the years, she meant to take once for +all, packed and pressed into one rapturous hour, one Saturday afternoon +from four-thirty to five-thirty, the memory of it to be stored up and +economised so as to last her life-time, thus justifying the original +expense. She knew that success was doubtful, because of the uncertainty +of things in general and of the Old Lady's temper in particular. And then +she had to stake everything on his coming; and the chances, allowing for +the inevitable claims on a doctor's time, were a thousand to one against +it. She had nothing to go upon but the delicate incalculable balance of +events. And now, when the blue moon had risen, the impossible thing +happened, and the man had come, he might just as well, in fact a great +deal better, have stayed away. The whole thing was a waste and failure +from beginning to end. The tea was a waste and a failure, for Martha +would bring it in a quarter of an hour too soon; the cake was a waste +and a failure, for nobody ate any of it; and she was a waste and a +failure--she hardly knew why. She cut her cake with trembling fingers and +offered it, blushing as the gash in its side revealed the thoroughly +unwholesome nature of its interior. She felt ashamed of its sugary +artifice, its treacherously festive air, and its embarrassing affinity to +bride's-cake. No wonder that he had no appetite for cake, and that Miss +Quincey had no appetite for conversation. He tried to tempt her with bits +of Browning, but she refused them all. She had lost her interest in +Browning. + +He thought, "She is too tired to talk," and left half an hour sooner than +he had intended. + +She thought, "He is offended. Or else--he thinks me flighty." + +And that was all. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Under a Blue Moon + + +It was early on another Saturday evening, a fortnight after that +disastrous one, and Miss Quincey was taking the air in Primrose Hill +Park. She was walking to keep herself warm, for the breeze was brisk and +cool. There was a little stir and flutter in the trees and a little stir +and flutter in her heart, for she had caught sight of Dr. Cautley in the +distance. He was coming round the corner of one of the intersecting +walks, coming at a frantic pace, with the tails of his frock-coat waving +in the wind. + +He pulled himself up as he neared her and held out a friendly hand. + +"That's right, Miss Quincey. I'm delighted to see you out. You really are +getting strong again, aren't you?" + +"Yes, thank you--very well, very strong." + +Was it her fancy, or did his manner imply that he wanted to sink that +humiliating episode of the tea-party and begin again where they had left +off? It might be so; his courtesy was so infinitely subtle. He had +actually turned and was walking her way now. + +"And how is _Sordello?_" he asked, the tone of his inquiry suggesting +that there was something seriously the matter with _Sordello_. + +"Getting on. Only fifty-six pages more." + +"You _are_ advancing, Miss Quincey--gaining on him by leaps and bounds. +You're not overdoing it, I hope?" + +"Oh no, I read a little in the evenings--I have to keep up to the +standard of the staff. Indeed," she added, turning with a sudden suicidal +panic, "I ought to be at home and working now." + +"What? On a half-holiday? It _is_ a half-holiday?" + +"For some people--not for me." + +His eyes--she could not be mistaken--were taking her in as they had done +before. + +"And why not for you? Do you know, you're looking horribly tired. Suppose +we sit down a bit." + +Miss Quincey admitted that it would be very nice. + +"Hadn't you better put your cape on--the wind's changing." + +She obeyed him. + +"That's hardly a thick enough wrap for this weather, is it?" + +She assured him it was very warm, very comfortable. + +"Do you know what I would like to do with you, Miss Quincey?" + +"No." + +"I should like to pack you off somewhere--anywhere--for another three +months' holiday." + +"Another three months! What would my pupils do, and what would Miss +Cursiter say?" + +It was part of the illusion that she conceived herself to be +indispensable to Miss Cursiter. + +"Confound Miss Cursiter!" + +Evidently he felt strongly on the subject of Miss Cursiter. He confounded +her with such energy that the seat provided for them by the London County +Council vibrated under it. He stared sulkily out over the park a moment; +he gave his cuffs a hitch as if he were going to fight somebody, and +then--he let himself go. + +At a blind headlong pace, lashing himself up as he went, falling +furiously on civilization, the social order, women's education and +women's labour, the system that threw open all doors to them, and let +them be squeezed and trampled down together in the crush. He was ready to +take the nineteenth century by the throat and strangle it; he squared +himself against the universe. + +"What," said Miss Quincey, "do you not believe in equal chances for men +and women?" She was eager to redeem herself from the charge of +flightiness. + +"Equal chances? I daresay. But not unequal work. The work must be unequal +if the conditions are unequal. It's not the same machine. To turn a woman +on to a man's work is like trying to run an express train by clock-work, +with a pendulum for a piston, and a hairspring for steam." + +Miss Quincey timidly hinted that the question was a large one, that there +was another side to it. + +"Of course there is; there are fifty sides to it; but there are too many +people looking at the other forty-nine for my taste. I loathe a crowd." + +Stirred by a faint _esprit de corps_ Miss Quincey asked him if he did not +believe in the open door for women? + +He said, "It would be kinder to shut it in their faces." + +She threw in a word about the women's labour market--the enormous demand. + +He said that only meant that women's labour could be bought cheap and +sold dear. + +She sighed. + +"But women must do something--surely you see the necessity?" + +He groaned. + +"Oh yes. It's just the necessity that I do see--the damnable necessity. I +only protest against the preventable evil. If you must turn women into so +many machines, for Heaven's sake treat them like machines. You don't work +an engine when it's undergoing structural alterations--because, you know, +you can't. Your precious system recognises no differences. It sets up the +same absurd standard for every woman, the brilliant genius and the +average imbecile. Which is not only morally odious but physiologically +fatuous. There must be one of two results--either the average imbeciles +are sacrificed by thousands to a dozen or so of brilliant geniuses, or +it's the other way about." + +"Whichever way it is," said Miss Quincey, with her back, so to speak, to +the wall, "it's all part of civilization, of our intellectual progress." + +"They're not the same thing. And it isn't civilization, it's intellectual +savagery. It isn't progress either, it's a blind rush, an inhuman +scrimmage--the very worst form of the struggle for existence. It doesn't +even mean survival of the intellectually fittest. It develops +monstrosities. It defeats its own ends by brutalising the intellect +itself. And the worst enemies of women are women. I swear, if I were a +woman, I'd rather do without an education than get it at that price. Or +I'd educate myself. After all, that's the way of the fittest--the one in +a thousand." + +"Do you not approve of educated women then?" Miss Quincey was quite +shaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering of +the old beacons and landmarks. + +He stared into the distance. + +"Oh yes, I approve of them when they are really educated--not when +they are like that. You won't get the flower of womanhood out of a +forcing-house like St. Sidwell's; though I daresay it produces pumpkins +to perfection." + +What did he say to Miss Vivian then? Miss Quincey could not think badly +of a system that could produce women like Miss Vivian. + +A cloud came over his angry eyes as they stared into the distance. + +"That's it. It hasn't produced them. They have produced it." + +Miss Quincey smiled. Evidently consistency was not to be expected of this +young man. He was so young, and so irresponsible and passionate. She +admired him for it; and not only for that; she admired him--she could not +say exactly why, but she thought it was because he had such a beautiful, +bumpy, intellectual forehead. And as she sat beside him and shook to that +vibrating passion of his, she felt as if the blue moon had risen again +and was shining through the trees of the park; and she was happy, +absolutely, indubitably happy and safe; for she felt that he was her +friend and her protector and the defender of her cause. It was for her +that he raged and maddened and behaved himself altogether so +unreasonably. + +Now as it happened, Cautley did champion certain theories which Miss +Cursiter, when she met them, denounced as physiologist's fads. But it was +not they, nor yet Miss Quincey, that accounted for his display of +feeling. He was angry because he wanted to come to a certain +understanding with the Classical Mistress; to come to it at once; and the +system kept him waiting. It was robbing him of Rhoda, and Rhoda of her +youth. Meanwhile Rhoda was superbly happy at St. Sidwell's, playing at +being Pallas Athene; as for checking her midway in her brilliant career, +that was not to be thought of for an instant. + +The flower of womanhood--it was the flower of life. He had never seen a +woman so invincibly and superlatively alive. Cautley deified life; and in +his creed, which was simplicity itself, life and health were one; health +the sole source of strength, intelligence and beauty, of all divine and +perfect possibilities. At least that was how he began. But three years' +practice in London had somewhat strained the faith of the young devotee. +He soon found himself in the painful position of a priest who no longer +believes in his deity; overheard himself asking whether health was not an +unattainable ideal; then declaring that life itself was all a matter of +compromise; finally coming to the conclusion that the soul of things was +Neurosis. + +Beyond that he refused to commit himself to any theory of the universe. +He even made himself unpleasant. A clerical patient would approach him +with conciliatory breadth, and say: "I envy you, Cautley; I envy your +marvellous experience. Your opportunities are greater than mine. And +sometimes, do you know, I think you see deeper into the work of the +Maker." And Cautley would shrug his shoulders and smile in the good man's +face, and say, "The Maker! I can only tell you I'm tired of mending the +work of the Maker." Yet the more he doubted the harder he worked; though +his world spun round and round, shrieking like a clock running down, and +he had persuaded himself that all he could do was to wind up the crazy +wheels for another year or so. Which all meant that Cautley was working a +little too hard and running down himself. He had begun to specialize in +gynecology and it increased his scepticism. + +Then suddenly, one evening, when he least looked for it, least wanted it, +he saw his divinity incarnate. Rhoda had appealed to him as the supreme +expression of Nature's will to live. That was the instantaneous and +visible effect of her. Rhoda was the red flower on the tree of life. + +At St. Sidwell's, that great forcing-house, they might grow some +vegetables to perfection; whether it was orchids or pumpkins he neither +knew nor cared; but he defied them to produce anything like that. He was +sorry for the vegetables, the orchids and the pumpkins; and he was sorry +for Miss Quincey, who was neither a pumpkin nor an orchid, but only a +harmless little withered leaf. Not a pleasant leaf, the sort that goes +dancing along, all crisp and curly, in the arms of the rollicking wind; +but the sort that the same wind kicks into a corner, to lie there till it +rots and comes in handy as leaf mould for the forcing-house. Rhoda's +friend was not like Rhoda; yet because the leaf may distantly suggest the +rose, he liked to sit and talk to her and think about the most beautiful +woman in the world. To any other man conversation with Miss Quincey would +have been impossible; for Miss Quincey in normal health was uninteresting +when she was not absurd. But to Cautley at all times she was simply +heart-rending. + +For this young man with the irritable nerves and blasphemous temper had +after all a divine patience at the service of women, even the foolish and +hysterical; because like their Maker he knew whereof they were made. This +very minute the queer meta-physical thought had come to him that somehow, +in the infinite entanglement of things, such women as Miss Quincey were +perpetually being sacrificed to such women as Rhoda Vivian. It struck him +that Nature had made up for any little extra outlay in one direction by +cruel pinching in another. It was part of her rigid economy. She was not +going to have any bills running up against her at the other end of the +universe. Nature had indulged in Rhoda Vivian and she was making Miss +Quincey pay. + +He wondered if that notion had struck Rhoda Vivian too, and if she were +trying to make up for it. He had noticed that Miss Quincey had the power +(if you could predicate power of such a person), a power denied to him, +of drawing out the woman-hood of the most beautiful woman in the world; +some infinite tenderness in Rhoda answered to the infinite absurdity in +her. He was not sure that her attitude to Miss Quincey was not the most +beautiful thing about her. He had begun by thinking about the colour of +Rhoda's eyes. He could not for the life of him remember whether they were +blue or green, till something (Miss Quincey's eyes perhaps) reminded him +that they were grey, pure grey, without a taint of green or a shadow of +blue in them. That was what his mind was running on as he looked into the +distance and Miss Quincey imagined that his bumpy intellectual forehead +was bulging with great thoughts. And now Miss Quincey supplied a +convenient pivot for the wild gyrations of his wrath. He got up and with +his hands behind his back he seemed to be lashing himself into a fury +with his coat-tail. + +"The whole thing is one-sided and artificial and absurd. Bad enough for +men, but fatal for women. Any system that unfits them for their proper +functions--" + +"And do we know--have we decided--yet--what they are?" Miss Quincey was +anxious to sustain her part in the dialogue with credit. + +He stared, not at the distance but at her. + +"Why, surely," he said more gently, "to be women first--to be wives and +mothers." + +She drew her cape a little closer round her and turned from him with +half-shut eyes. She seemed at once to be protecting herself against +his theory and blinding her sight to her own perishing and thwarted +woman-hood. + +"All Nature is against it," he said. + +"Nature?" she repeated feebly. + +"Yes, Nature; and she'll go her own way in spite of all the systems that +ever were. Don't you know---you are a teacher, so you ought to know--that +overstrain of the higher faculties is sometimes followed by astonishing +demonstrations on the part of Nature?" + +Miss Quincey replied that no cases of the kind had come under _her_ +notice. + +"Well--your profession ought to go hand-in-hand with mine. If you only +saw the half of what we see--But you only see the process; we get the +results. By the way I must go and look at some of them." + +His words echoed madly in a feverish little brain, "Ought to +go--hand-in-hand--hand-in-hand with mine." + +"Nature can be very cruel," said she. + +Something in her tone recalled him from his flight. He stood looking down +at her, thoughtful and pitiful. "And Nature can be very kind; kinder than +we are. You are a case in point. Nature is trying to make you well +against your will. A little more rest--a little more exercise--a little +more air--" + +She smiled. Yes, a little more of all the things she wanted and had never +had. That was what her smile said in its soft and deprecating bitterness. + +He held out his hand, and she too rose, shivering a little in her thin +dress. + +She was the first to hurry away. + +He looked after her small figure, noted her nervous gait and the agitated +movement of her hand as the streamers on her poor cape flapped and +fluttered, the sport of the unfeeling wind. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A Painful Misunderstanding + + +And now, on early evenings and Saturday afternoons when the weather was +fine, Miss Quincey was to be found in Primrose Hill Park. Not that +anybody ever came to look for Miss Quincey. Nevertheless, whether she was +walking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had a +certain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearing +round the corner with his coat-tails flying, or as if she might look up +and find him sitting beside her and talking to her. But he did not come. +There are some histories that never repeat themselves. + +And he had never called since that day--Miss Quincey remembered it well; +it was Saturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she had +not seen him now for more than two months; and she began to think there +must be a reason for it. + +At last she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park where +they had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past that +part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. +Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but he +never raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. And +yet he had recognised her; there could be no possible doubt of it. + +Depend upon it there was a reason for _that_. Miss Quincey was one of +those innocent people who believe that every variety of human behaviour +must have a reason (as if only two months ago she had not been favoured +with the spectacle of an absolutely unreasonable young man). To be sure +it was not easy to find one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, and +in any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. +Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, +a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of Camden +Street North it looked ominous indeed. Not that her faith in Bastian +Cautley wavered for an instant. Because Bastian Cautley was what he was, +he could never be guilty of spontaneous discourtesy; on the other hand, +she had seen that he could be fierce enough on provocation; therefore, +she argued, he had some obscure ground of offence against her. + +Miss Quincey passed a sleepless night reasoning about the reason, a +palpitating never-ending night, without a doze or a dream in it or so +much as the winking of an eyelid. She reasoned about it for a week +between the classes, and in her spare time (when she had any) in the +evening (thus running into debt to _Sordello_ again). At the end of the +week Miss Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; every +thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She +saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible +mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but +irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the +bottom of it--or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of +giving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied that +for the future all accounts with him were closed? Had he called on Mrs. +Moon and been received with crushing hostility? Or had Martha permitted +herself to say that she, Miss Quincey, was out when perhaps he knew for a +positive fact that she was in? But she soon dismissed these conjectures +as inadequate and fell back on her original hypothesis. + +And all the time the Old Lady's eyes, and her voice too, were sharper +than ever; from the corner where she dreamed she watched Miss Quincey +incessantly between the dreams. At times the Old Lady was shaken with +terrible and mysterious mirth. Bastian Cautley began to figure +fantastically in her conversation. Her ideas travelled by slow trains of +association that started from nowhere but always arrived at Bastian +Cautley as a terminus. If Juliana had a headache Mrs. Moon supposed that +she wanted that young man to be dancing attendance on her again; if +Juliana sighed she declared that Dr. Cautley was a faithless swain who +had forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered when +Dr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. +Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery now +crumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in its +side and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey with +all sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts of +Teenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to his +father, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything but +Greek, and Miss Quincey remarked that if she had children she wouldn't +bring them up so, the Old Lady laughed--"Tchee--Tchee! We all know about +old maids' children." Miss Quincey said nothing to that; but she hardened +her heart against Louisa's children, and against Louisa's husband and +Louisa. She couldn't think how Louisa could have married such a dreadful +little man as Andrew Mackinnon, with his unmistakable accent and +problematical linen. The gentle creature who had never said a harsh word +to anybody in her life became mysteriously cross and captious. She +hardened her heart even to little Laura Lazarus. + +And one morning when she came upon the Mad Hatter in her corner of the +class-room, and found her adding two familiar columns of figures together +and adding them all wrong, Miss Quincey was very cross and very captious +indeed. The Mad Hatter explained at more length than ever that the +figures twisted themselves about; they wouldn't stay still a minute so +that she could hold them; they were always going on and on, turning over +and over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, +trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; you +could go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you could +even--here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, for +Laura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will--you could +even think with them, if you knew how; in short you could do anything +with them but turn them into sums. And as all this was very confusing to +the intellect Miss Quincey became crosser than ever. And while Miss +Quincey quivered all over with irritability, the Mad Hatter paid no heed +whatever to her instructions, but thrust forward a small yellow face that +was all nose and eyes, and gazed at Miss Quincey like one possessed by a +spirit of divination. + +"Have you got a headache, Miss Quincey?" she inquired on hearing herself +addressed for the third time as "Stupid child!" + +Miss Quincey relied tartly that no, she had not got a headache. The Mad +Hatter appeared to be absorbed in tracing rude verses on her rough +notebook with a paralytic pencil. + +"I'm sorry; because then you must be unhappy. When people are cross," she +continued, "it means one of two things. Either their heads ache or they +are unhappy. You must be very unhappy. I know all about it." The +paralytic pencil wavered and came to a full stop. "You like somebody, and +so somebody has made you unhappy." + +But for the shame of it, Miss Quincey could have put her head down on the +desk and cried as she had seen the Mad Hatter cry over her sums, and for +the same reason; because she could not put two and two together. + +And what Mrs. Moon saw, what Martha saw, what the Mad Hatter divined with +her feverish, precocious brain, Rhoda Vivian could not fail to see. It +was Dr. Cautley's business to look after Miss Quincey in her illness, and +it was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantly +report the slightest threatening of a break-down. Miss Quincey's somewhat +eccentric behaviour filled her with misgivings; and in order to +investigate her case at leisure, she chose the first afternoon when Miss +Cursiter was not at home to ask the little arithmetic teacher to lunch. + +After Rhoda's lunch, soothed with her sympathy and hidden, not to say +extinguished, in an enormous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked into +the right mood for confidences; indeed she was in that state of mind when +they rush out of their own accord in the utter exhaustion of the will. + +"Are you sure you are perfectly well?" so Rhoda began her inquiry. + +"Perfectly, perfectly--in myself," said Miss Quincey, "I think, +perhaps--that is, sometimes I'm a little afraid that taking so much +arsenic may have disagreed with me. You know it is a deadly poison. But +I've left it off lately, so I ought to be better--unless perhaps I'm +feeling the want of it." + +"You are not worrying about St. Sidwell's--about your work?" + +"It's not that--not that. But to tell you the truth, I _am_ worried, +Rhoda. For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost a +friend. It's a hard thing," said Miss Quincey, "to lose a friend." + +"Oh, I am sure--Do you mean Miss Cursiter?" + +"No, I do not mean Miss Cursiter." + +"Do you mean--me then? Not me?" + +"You, dear child? Never. To be plain--this is in confidence, Rhoda--I am +speaking of Dr. Cautley." + +"Dr. Cautley?" + +"Yes. I do not know what I have done, or how I have offended him, but he +has not been near me for over two months." + +"Perhaps he has been busy--in fact, I know he has." + +"He has always been busy. It is not that. It is something--well, I hardly +care to speak of it, it has been so very painful. My dear"--Miss +Quincey's voice sank to an awful whisper--"he has cut me in the street." + +"Oh, I know--he _will_ do it; he has done it to all his patients. He is +so dreadfully absent-minded." + +If Miss Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, +she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, she +said with superior conviction, "My dear, I _know_ Dr. Cautley. He has +never cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason. There +has been some awful mistake. If I only knew what I had done!" + +"You've done nothing. I wouldn't worry if I were you." + +"I can't help worrying. You don't know, Rhoda. The bitter and terrible +part of this friendship is, and always has been, that I am under +obligations to Dr. Cautley. I owe everything to him; I cannot tell you +what he has done for me, and here I am, not allowed, and I never shall be +allowed, to do anything for him." A sob struggled in Miss Quincey's +throat. + +Rhoda was silent. Did she know? Very dimly, with a mere intellectual +perception, but still a great deal better than the little arithmetic +teacher could have told her, she understood the desire of that innocent +person, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay down +her life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be consumed in +sacrifice. And the bitter and terrible thing was that she was not allowed +to do it. The friend had no use for the life, the deity no appetite for +the sacrifice. + +"Don't think about it," she said; it seemed the best thing to say in the +singular circumstances. "It will all come right." + +By this time Miss Quincey had got the better of the sob in her throat. +"It may," she replied with dignity; "but I shall not be the first to make +advances." + +"Advances? Rather not. But if I thought he was thinking things--he isn't, +you know, he's not that sort; still, if I thought it I should have it out +with him." + +"How could you have it--'out with him'?" + +"Oh I should just ask him what he thought of me; or better still, tell +him what I thought of him." + +Miss Quincey shrank visibly from the bold suggestion. + +"Would you? Oh, that would never do. You won't mind my saying so, but I +think it would look a little indelicate. Of course it would be very +different if it were a woman; if it were you for instance." + +"I should do it any way. It's the straightest thing." + +"I daresay, dear, in your friendships it is. But I think you can hardly +judge of this. You do not know Dr. Cautley as I do." + +"No," said Rhoda meekly, "perhaps I don't." Not for worlds would she have +destroyed that beautiful illusion. + +"It has been," continued Miss Quincey, "a very peculiar, a very +interesting relationship. Strange too--considering. If you had asked me +six months ago I should have told you that the thing was impossible, or +rather, that in nine cases out of ten--I mean I should have said it was +highly improbable that Dr. Cautley would take the faintest interest in +me, let alone like me." + +"He does like you, dear Miss Quincey, I know he does." + +"How do you know?" + +"He told me so." (Miss Quincey quivered and a faint flush worked up +through the sallow of her cheek.) "And I'm sure he would be most +distressed to think you were unhappy." + +"It is not unhappiness; certainly not unhappiness. On the contrary I have +been happy, quite happy lately. And I think it has been bad for me. I +wasn't used to it. Perhaps, if it had happened five-and-twenty years +ago--Do not misunderstand me, I am merely speaking of friendship, dear; +but it might--I mean I might--" + +Far back in the chair and favoured by Rhoda's silence, Miss Quincey +dropped into a dream. Presently she woke up as it were with a start. + +"What am I thinking of? Let us be reasonable; let us reduce it to +figures. Forty-five--thirty--he is thirty. Take twenty-five from thirty +and five remain. Why, Rhoda, he would have been--" + +They looked at each other, but neither said: "He would have been five +years old." + +Miss Quincey seemed quite prostrated by the result of her calculations. +To everything that Rhoda could urge to soothe her she answered steadily: + +"You do not know him as I do." + +The voice was not Miss Quincey's voice; it was the monotonous, melancholy +voice of the Fixed Idea. + +Her knowledge of him. After all, nothing could take from her the +exquisite privacy of that possession. + + * * * * * + +"_Eros anikate machan_," said Rhoda. + +Miss Quincey was gone and the Classical Mistress was in school again, +coaching a backward student through the "Antigone." + +"Oh Love, unconquered in fight. Love who--Love who fliest, who fliest +about among things," said the student. And the teacher laughed. + +Laughed, for the entertaining blunder called up a vivid image of the god +in Miss Quincey's drawing-room, fluttering about among the furniture and +doing terrific damage with his wings. + +"What's wrong?" asked the student. + +"Oh nothing; only a slight confusion between flying about and falling +upon. 'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'; please go on." + +"'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'--" The chorus mumbled and stumbled, +and the student sighed heavily, for the Greek was hard. "He who has--he +who has--Oh dear, I can't see any sense in these old choruses; I do hate +them." + +"Still," said Rhoda sweetly, "you mustn't murder them. 'He who has love +has madness.'" + +The chorus limped to its end and the student left the coach to some +curious reflections. + +"_Eros anikate machan_!" + +"Oh Love, unconquered in fight!" It sang in her ears persistently, +joyously, ironically--a wedding-song, a battle-song, a song of victory. + +Bastian Cautley was right when he said that the race was to the swift and +the battle to the strong. How eager she had been for the fight, how mad +for the crowded course! She had rushed on, heat after heat, outstripping +all competitors and carrying off all the crowns and the judges' +compliments at the end of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, +this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the compliments +very much as a matter of course, she had come to look on life as nothing +but an endless round of Olympic games. And just as she forgot each +successive event in the excitement of the next, she also had forgotten +the losers and those who were tumbled in the dust. Until she had seen +Miss Quincey. + +Miss Quincey--so they had let her come to this among them all? They had +left her so bare of happiness that the first man (it happened to be her +doctor) who spoke two kind words to her became necessary to her +existence. No, that was hardly the way to put it; it was underrating +Bastian Cautley. He was the sort of man that any woman--But who would +have thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that she +did not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life had +been. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neither +brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least +she had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman had +seemed absorbed in her miserable arithmetical function. And yet at fifty +(she looked fifty) she had contrived to develop that particular form of +foolishness which it was Miss Cursiter's business to exterminate. There +were some of them who talked as if the thing was done; as if competitive +examinations had superseded the primitive rivalry of sex. + +Bastian Cautley was right. You may go on building as high as you please, +but you will never alter the original ground-plan of human nature. And +how she had scoffed at his "man's view"; how indignantly she had repulsed +his suggestion that there was a side to the subject that her friends the +idealists were much too ideal to see. + +Were they really, as Bastian Cautley put it, so engrossed in producing a +new type that they had lost sight of the individual? Was the system so +far in accordance with Nature that it was careless of the single life? +Which was the only life open to most of them, poor things. + +And she had blundered more grossly than the system itself. What, after +all, had she done for that innocent whom she had made her friend? She had +taken everything from her. She had promised to keep her place for her at +St. Sidwell's and was monopolising it herself. Worse than that, she had +given her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with the +other. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so much +already could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or to +keep--for her very own. There was not a bit of him that could by any +possibility belong to Miss Quincey.) She had tried to stand between her +and her Fate, and she had become her Fate. Worse than all, she had kept +from her the knowledge of the truth--the truth that might have cured her. +Of course she had done that out of consideration for Bastian Cautley. + +There it seemed that Rhoda's regard for his feelings ended. Though she +admitted ten times over that he was right, she was by no means more +disposed to come to an understanding with him on that account. On the +contrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosen +his moment indiscreetly) she endeavoured to repair her blunders by +visiting them on his irreproachable head, dealing to him a certain +painful, but not wholly unexpected back-hander in the face. + +She had done all she could for Miss Quincey. At any rate, she said to +herself, she had spared her the final blow. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Through the Stethoscope + + +One morning the Mad Hatter was madder than ever. It was impossible to +hold her attention. The black eyes blazed as they wandered, the paralytic +pencil was hot in her burning fingers. When she laid it down towards the +end of the morning and rested her head on her hands, Miss Quincey had not +the heart to urge her to the loathsome toil. She let her talk. + +"Miss Quincey," said the Mad Hatter in a solemn whisper, "I'm going to +tell you a secret. Do you see _her_?" She indicated Miss Rhoda Vivian +with the point of her pencil. + +It was evident that Laura Lazarus did not adore the Classical Mistress, +and Rhoda, sick of her worshippers, had found this attitude refreshing. +Even now she bestowed a smile and a nod on the Mad Hatter that would have +kept any other St. Sidwellite in a fortnight's ecstasy. + +"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your teachers." + +The child raised the Semitic arch of her eye-brows. Her face belonged to +the type formed from all eternity for the expression of contempt. + +"She's not my teacher, thank goodness. Do you know what I'm going to be +some day, when she's married and gone away? I'm going to be what she +is--Classical Mistress. I shan't have to do any sums for that, you know. +I shall only have to know Greek, and isn't it a shame, Miss Quincey, +they won't let me learn it till I'm in the Fourth, and I never shall be. +But--don't tell any one--they've stuck me here, behind her now, and when +she's coaching that young idiot Susie Parker--" + +"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your school-fellows." + +"I know it isn't, but she _is_, you know. I've bought the books, and I +get behind them and I listen hard, and I can read now. What's more, I've +done a bit of a chorus. Look--" The pariah took a dirty bit of paper from +the breast of her gown. "It goes, 'Oh Love unconquered in battle,' and +it's simply splend_if_erous. Miss Quincey--when you like anything very +much--or any_body_--it doesn't matter which--do you turn red all over? Do +you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The +child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You _do_, you do, +Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!" + +She gazed into the teacher's face, and again the power of divination was +upon her. + +"Laura!" Miss Quincey gasped; for the Head had been looming in their +neighbourhood, a deadly peril, and now she was sweeping down on them, +smiling a dangerous smile. + +"Miss Quincey, I hope you've been making that child work," said she and +passed on. + +"I _say_! She didn't see my verses, did she? You _won't_ let on that I +wrote them?" + +"You'll never write verses," said Miss Quincey, deftly improving a bad +occasion, "if you don't understand arithmetic. Why, it's the science of +numbers. Come now, if ninety hogsheads--" + +"Oh-h! I'm so tired of hogsheads; mayn't it be firkins this time?" + +And, for fancy's sake, firkins Miss Quincey permitted it to be. + +Now Rhoda was responsible for much, but for what followed the Mad Hatter +must, strictly speaking, be held accountable. + +Miss Quincey had never been greatly interested in the movements of her +heart; but now that her attention had been drawn to them she admitted +that it was beating in a very extraordinary way; there was a decided +palpitation, a flutter. + +That night she lay awake and listened to it. + +It was going diddledy, diddledy, like the triplets in a Beethoven sonata +(only that it had no idea of time); then it suddenly left off till she +put her hand over it, when it gave a terrifying succession of runaway +knocks. Then it pretended that it was going to stop altogether, and Miss +Quincey implicitly believed it and prepared to die. Then its tactics +changed; it seemed to have shifted its habitation; to be rising and +rising, to be entangled with her collar-bone and struggling in her +throat. Then it sank suddenly and lay like a lump of lead, dragging her +down through the mattress, and through the bedstead, and through the +floor, down to the bottom of all things. Miss Quincey did not mind much; +she had been so unhappy. And then it gave an alarming double-knock at her +ribs, and Miss Quincey came to life again as unhappy as ever. + +And of what it all meant Miss Quincey had no more idea than the man in +the moon, though even the Mad Hatter could have told her. Her heart went +through the same performance a second and a third night, and Miss Quincey +said to herself that if it happened again she would have to send for Dr. +Cautley. Nothing would have induced her to see him for a mere trifle, but +pride was one thing and prudence was another. + +It did happen again, and she sent. + +She may have hoped that he would discover something wrong, being dimly +conscious that her chance lay there, that suffering constituted the +incontestable claim on his sympathy; most distinctly she felt the desire +(monstrous of course in a woman of no account) to wear the aureole of +pain for its own sake; to walk for a little while in the glory and +glamour of death. She did not want or mean to give any trouble, to be a +source of expense; she had saved a little money for the supreme luxury. +But she had hardly entertained the idea for a moment when she dismissed +it as selfish. It was her duty to live, for the sake of St. Sidwell's and +of Mrs. Moon; and she was only calling Dr. Cautley in to help her to do +it. But through it all the feeling uppermost was joy in the certainty +that she would see him on an honourable pretext, and would be able to set +right that terrible misunderstanding. + +She hardly expected him till late in the day; so she was a little +startled, when she came in after morning school, to find Mrs. Moon +waiting for her at the stairs, quivering with indignation that could have +but one cause. + +He had lost no time in answering her summons. + +The drawing-room door was ajar; the Old Lady closed it mysteriously, and +pushed her niece into the bedroom behind. + +"Will you tell me the meaning of this? _That man_ has been cooling his +heels in there for the last ten minutes, and he says you sent for him. Is +that the case?" + +Miss Quincey meekly admitted that it was, and entered upon a vague +description of her trouble. + +"It's all capers and nonsense," said the Old Lady, "there's nothing the +matter with your heart. You're just hysterical, and you just want--?" + +"I want to _know_, and Dr. Cautley will tell me." + +"Oh ho! I daresay he'll find some mare's nest fast enough, if you tell +him where to look." + +Miss Quincey took off her hat and cape and laid them down with a sigh. +She gave a terrified glance at the looking-glass and smoothed her thin +hair with her hand. + +"Auntie--I must go. I can't keep him waiting any longer." + +"Go then--I won't stop you." + +She went trembling, followed so closely by Mrs. Moon that she looked like +a prisoner conducted to the dock. + +"How will he receive me?" she wondered. + +He received her coldly and curtly. There was a hurry and abstraction in +his manner utterly unlike his former leisurely sympathy. Many causes +contributed to this effect; he was still all bruised and bleeding from +the blow dealt to him by Rhoda's strong young arm; an epidemic had kept +him on his legs all day and a great part of the night; his time had never +been so valuable, and he had been obliged to waste ten minutes of it +contemplating the furniture in that detestable drawing-room. He was +worried and overworked, and Miss Quincey thought he was still offended; +his very appearance made her argue the worst. No hope to-day of clearing +up that terrible misunderstanding. + +She tremulously obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing the +buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless +as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the +tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards +from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Lady +looked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much to +say, "Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!" + +He put up the stethoscope with a click. + +"There is nothing the matter with you." + +Mrs. Moon gave out a subdued ironical chuckle. + +Miss Quincey looked anxiously into his face. "Do you not think the +heart--the heart is a little--?" + +He smiled and at the same time he sighed. "Heart's all right. But you've +left off your tonic." + +She had, she was afraid that so much poison-- + +"Poison?" (He was not in the least offended.) "Do you mean the arsenic? +There are some poisons you can't live without; but you must take them in +moderation." + +"Will you--will you want to see me again?" + +"It will not be necessary." + +At that Mrs. Moon's chuckle broke all bounds and burst into a triumphant +"Tchee-tchee-chee!" He went away under cover of it. It was her way of +putting a pleasant face on the matter. + +She hardly waited till his back was turned before she delivered herself +of that which was working within her. + +"I tell you what it is, Juliana; you're a silly woman." + +Miss Quincey looked up with a faint premonitory fear. Her fingers began +nervously buttoning and unbuttoning her dress bodice; while half-dressed +and shivering she waited the attack. + +"And a pretty exhibition you've made of yourself this day. Anybody might +have thought you _wanted_ to let that young man see what was the matter +with you." + +"So I did. He says there is nothing the matter with me." + +"Nothing the matter with you, indeed! _He_ knows well enough what's the +matter with you." + +The victim was staring now, with terror in her tired eyes. Her mouth +dropped open with the question her tongue refused to utter. + +"If you," continued Mrs. Moon, "had wanted to tell him plainly that you +were in love with him, you couldn't have set about it better. I should +have thought you'd have been ashamed to look him in the face--at your +age. You're a disgrace to my family!" + +The poor fingers ceased their labour of buttoning and unbuttoning; Miss +Quincey sat with her shoulders naked as it were to the lash. + +"There!" said Mrs. Moon with an air of drawing back the whip and putting +it by for the present. "If I were you I'd cover myself up, and not sit +there catching cold with my dress-body off." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Miss Quincey Stands Back + + +As it happened on a Saturday morning she had plenty of time to think +about it. All the afternoon and the evening and the night lay before her; +she was powerless to cope with Sunday and the night beyond that. + +The remarkable revelation made to her by Mrs. Moon was so great a shock +that her mind refused to realize it all at once. It was an outrage to all +the meek reticences and chastities of her spirit. But she owned its +truth; she saw it now, the thing they all had seen, that she only could +not see. + +She had sinned the sin of sins, the sin of youth in middle-age. + +Now it was not imagination in Miss Quincey, so much as the tradition of +St. Sidwell's, that gave her innocent affection the proportions of a +crime. Miss Quincey had lived all her life in ignorance of her own +nature, having spent the best part of five-and-forty years in acquiring +other knowledge. She had nothing to go upon, for she had never been +young; or rather she had treated her youth unkindly, she had fed it on +saw-dust and given it nothing but arithmetic books to play with, so that +its experiences were of no earthly use to her. + +And now, if they had only let her alone, she might have been none the +wiser; her folly might have put on many quaint disguises, friendship, +literary sympathy, intellectual esteem--there were a thousand delicate +subterfuges and innocent hypocrisies, and under any one of them it might +have crept about unchallenged in the shadows and blind alleys of thought. +As love pure and simple, if it came to that, there was no harm in it. +Many an old maid, older than she, has just such a secret folded up and +put away all sweet and pure; the poor lady does not call it love, but +remembrance, which is so to speak love laid in lavender; and she--who +knows? She might have contrived a little shrine for it somewhere; she had +always understood that love was a holy thing. + +Unfortunately, when a holy thing has been pulled about and dragged in the +mud, it may be as holy as ever but it will never look the same. In Miss +Quincey's case mortal passion had been shaken out of its sleep and forced +to look at itself before it had time to put on a shred of immortality. In +the sudden glare it stood out monstrous, naked and ashamed; she herself +had helped to deprive it of all the delicacies and amenities that made it +tolerable to thought. With her own hands she had delivered it up to the +stethoscope. + +He knew, he knew. In the mad rush of her ideas one sentence detached +itself from the torrent. "_He_ knows well enough what's the matter with +you." + +The nature of the crime was such that there was no possibility or +explanation or defence against the accuser whose condemnation weighed +heaviest on her soul. He loomed before her, hovered over her, with the +tubes of the heart-probing stethoscope in his ears (as a matter of fact +they gave him a somewhat grotesque appearance, remotely suggestive of a +Hindoo idol; but Miss Quincey had not noticed that); his bumpy forehead +was terrible with intelligence; his eyes were cold and comprehensive; the +smile of a foregone conclusion flickered on his lips. + +He must have known it all the time. There never had been any +misunderstanding. That was the clue to his conduct; that was the reason +why he had left off coming to the house; for he was the soul of delicacy +and honour. And yet she had never said a word that might be +interpreted--He must have seen it in her face, then,--that day--when +she allowed herself to sit with him in the park. She remembered--things +that he had said to her--did they mean that he had seen? She saw it all +as he had seen it. "Delicacy" and "honour" indeed! Disgust and contempt +would be more likely feelings. + +She lay awake all Saturday night and all Sunday night, until four o'clock +on Monday morning; always reviewing the situation, always going over the +same patch of ground in the desperate hope of finding some place where +her self-respect could rest, and discovering nothing but the traces of +her guilty feet. A subtler woman would have flourished lightly over the +territory, till she had whisked away every vestige of her trail; another +would have seen the humour of the situation and blown the whole thing +into the inane with a burst of healthy laughter; but subtlety and humour +were not Miss Quincey's strong points. She could do nothing but creep +shivering to bed and lie there, face to face with her own enormity. + +On Monday morning and on many mornings after she crept out into the +street stealthily, like a criminal seeking some shelter where she could +hide her head. She acquired a habit--odd enough to the casual +onlooker--of slinking cautiously round every turning and rushing every +crossing in her abject terror of meeting Bastian Cautley. + +There was nobody to tell her that it would not matter if she did meet +him; no cheerful woman of the world to smile in her frightened face and +say: "My dear Miss Quincey, there is nothing remarkable in this. We all +do it, sooner or later. Too late? Not a bit of it; better too late than +never, and if it's that Cautley man I'm sure I don't wonder. I'm in love +with him myself. Lost your self-respect, have you? Self-respect, indeed, +why bless your soul, you are all the nicer for it. As for hiding your +head I never heard such rubbish in my life. Nobody is looking at +you--certainly not the Cautley man. In fact, to tell you the truth, +at this moment he is particularly engaged in looking the other way." + +But Miss Quincey did not know that lady. She knew no one but Rhoda and +Mrs. Moon; and if Mrs. Moon was too old, Rhoda was too young to take that +view; besides, Mrs. Moon was not a woman of the world and no ridiculous +delicacy prompted her to look the other way. In any case Juliana's state +of mind, advertised as it was by her complexion and many eccentricities +of behaviour, could not have escaped her notice. + +The Old Lady had reverted to her former humorous attitude, and was trying +whether Juliana's state of mind would not yield to skilfully directed +banter. In these tactics she was not left unsupported. Louisa had written +a long letter about her husband and her children, with a postscript. + +"P.S.--I don't half like what you tell me about Juliana and Dr. C--. For +goodness' sake don't encourage her in any of that nonsense. Sit on it. +Laugh her out of it. I agree with you that it would be better if she +cultivated her mind a little more. + +"P.P.S.--Andrew has just come in. He says we oughtn't to call her +Juliana, but Fooliana." + +So laughed Louisa, the married woman. + +And Fooliana she was called. The joke was quite unworthy of the Greek +Professor's reputation, but for Mrs. Moon's purposes he could hardly have +made a better one. + +Louisa had put a terrible weapon into the Old Lady's hands. It was +many weapons in one. It could be turned on in all its broad robust +humour--"Fooliana!" Or refined away into a playful or delicate +suggestion, pointed with an uplifted finger--"Fooli!" Or cut down and +compressed into its essential meaning--"Fool!" + +But whichever missile came handy, the effect was much the same. Juliana's +complexion grew redder or grayer, but her state of mind remained +unchanged. Sometimes the Old Lady tried a graver method. + +"If you would cultivate your mind a little in the evenings you would have +no time for all this nonsense." + +But Juliana had abandoned the cultivation of her mind. She made no +attempt to pay off that small outstanding debt to _Sordello._ There was +an end of the intellectual life; for the living wells of literature were +tainted; Browning had become a bitter memory and Tennyson a shame. + +But if Miss Quincey had no heart for General Culture, she was busier than +ever in the discharge of her regular duties. At the end of the midsummer +term the pressure on the staff was heavy. Her work had grown with the +growth of St. Sidwell's, and the pile of marble and granite copy-books +rose higher than ever; it was monumental, and Miss Quincey was glad +enough to bury her grief under it for a time. Indeed it looked as if in +St. Sidwell's she had found the shelter where she could hide her head; +and a very desirable shelter too, as long as Mrs. Moon continued in that +lively temper. Gradually she began to realize that of all those five +hundred pairs of eyes there was none that had discovered her secret; that +not one of those busy brains was occupied with her affairs. It was a +relief to lose herself among them all and be of no account again. +In the corner behind Rhoda Vivian she and the Mad Hatter seemed to be +clinging together more than ever in an ecstasy of isolation. + +After all, above the turmoil of emotion a little tremulous, attenuated +ideal was trying to raise its head. Her duty. She dimly discerned a +possibility of deliverance, of purification from her sin. Therefore she +clung more desperately than ever to her post. Seeing that she had served +the system for five-and-twenty years, it was hard if she could not get +from it a little protection against her own weakness, if she could not +claim the intellectual support it professed to give. It was the first +time she had ever put it to the test. If she could only stay on another +year or two-- + +And now at the very end of the midsummer term it really looked as if St. +Sidwell's was anxious to keep her. Everybody was curiously kind; the +staff cast friendly glances on her as she sat in her corner; Rhoda was +almost passionate in her tenderness. Even Miss Cursiter seemed softened. +She had left off saying "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please"; and +Miss Quincey began to wonder what it all meant. + +She was soon to know. + +One night, the last of the term, the Classical Mistress was closeted with +the Head. Rhoda, elbow-deep in examination papers, had been critically +considering seventy variously ingenious renderings of a certain chorus, +when the sudden rapping of a pen on the table roused her from her +labours. + +"You must see for yourself, Rhoda, how we are placed. We must keep up to +a certain standard of efficiency in the staff. Miss Quincey is getting +past her work." + +(Rhoda became instantly absorbed in sharpening a pencil.) + +"For the last two terms she has been constantly breaking down; and now +I'm very much afraid she is breaking-up." + +The Head remained solemnly unconscious of her own epigram. + +"No wonder," said Rhoda to herself, "first love at fifty is new wine in +old bottles; everybody knows what happens to the bottles." + +The flush and the frown on the Classical Mistress's face might have been +accounted for by the sudden snapping of the pencil. + +"You see," continued Miss Cursiter, as if defending herself from some +accusation conveyed by the frown, "as it is we have kept her on a long +while for her sister's sake." + +(A murmur from the Classical Mistress.) + +"Of course we must put it to her prettily, wrap it up--in tissue paper." + +(The Classical Mistress is still inarticulate.) + +"You are not giving me your opinion." + +"It seems to me I've said a great deal more than I've any right to say." + +"Oh you. We know all about that. I asked for your opinion." + +"And when I gave it you told me I was under an influence." + +"What if I did? And what if it were so?" + +"What indeed? You would get the benefit of two opinions instead of one." + +Now if Miss Cursiter were thinking of Dr. Cautley there was some point in +what Rhoda said; for in the back of her mind the Head had a curious +respect for masculine judgment. + +"There can be no two opinions about Miss Quincey." + +"I don't know. Miss Quincey," said Rhoda thoughtfully to her pencil, "is +a large subject." + +"Yes, if you mean that Miss Quincey is a terrible legacy from the past. +The question for me is--how long am I to let her hamper our future?" + +"The future? It strikes me that we're not within shouting distance of the +future. We talk as if we could see the end, and we're nowhere near it, +we're in all the muddle of the middle--that's why we're hampered with +Miss Quincey and other interesting relics of the past." + +"We are slowly getting rid of them." + +At that Rhoda blazed up. She was young, and she was reckless, and she had +too many careers open to her to care much about consequences. Miss +Cursiter had asked for her opinion and she should have it with a +vengeance. + +"It's not enough to get rid of them. We ought to provide for them. Who or +what do we provide for, if it comes to that? We're always talking about +specialisation, and the fact is we haven't specialised enough. Don't we +give the same test papers to everybody?" + +"I shall be happy to set separate papers for each girl if you'll +undertake to correct them." + +The more Rhoda fired the more Miss Cursiter remained cold. + +"That's just it--we couldn't if we tried. We know nothing about each +girl. That's where we shall have to specialise in the future if we're to +do any good. We've specialised enough with our teachers and our subjects; +chipped and chopped till we can't divide them any more; and we've taken +our girls in the lump. We know less about them than they do themselves. +As for the teachers--" + +"Which by the way brings us back to Miss Quincey." + +"Everything brings us back to Miss Quincey. Miss Quincey will be always +with us." + +"We must put younger women in her place." + +Rhoda winced as though Miss Cursiter had struck her. + +"They will soon grow old. Our profession is a cruel one. It uses up the +finest and most perishable parts of a woman's nature. It takes the best +years of her life--and throws the rest away." + +"Yet thousands of women are willing to take it up, and leave comfortable +homes to do it too." + +"Yes," sighed Rhoda, "it's the rush for the open door." + +"My dear Rhoda, the women's labour market is the same as every other. The +best policy is the policy of the open door. Don't you see that the remedy +is to open it wider--wider!" + +"And when we've opened all the doors as wide as ever they'll go, what +then? Where are we going to?" + +"I can't tell you." Miss Cursiter looked keenly at her. "Do you mean that +you'll go no further unless you know?" + +Rhoda was silent. + +"There are faults in the system. I can see that as well as you, perhaps +better. I am growing old too, Rhoda. But you are youth itself. It is +women like you we want--to save us. Are you going to turn your back on +us?" + +Miss Cursiter bore down on her with her steady gaze, a gaze that was a +menace and an appeal, and Rhoda gave a little gasp as if for breath. + +"I can't go any farther." + +"Do you realize what this means? You are not a deserter from the ranks. +It is the second in command going over to the enemy." + +The words were cold, but there was a fiery court-martial in Miss +Cursiter's eyes that accused and condemned her. If Rhoda had been dashing +her head against the barrack walls her deliverance was at hand. It seemed +that she could never strike a blow for Miss Quincey without winning the +battle for herself. + +"I can't help it," said she. "I hate it--I hate the system." + +"The system? Suppose you do away with it--do away with every woman's +college in the kingdom--have you anything to put in its place?" + +"No. I have nothing to put in its place." + +"Ah," said Miss Cursiter, "you are older than I thought." + +Rhoda smiled. By this time, wrong or right, she was perfectly reckless. +If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture in +being wildly and wilfully in the wrong. She had flung up the game. + +Miss Cursiter saw it. "I was right," said she. "You are under an +influence, and a dangerous one." + +"Perhaps--but, influence for influence" (here Rhoda returned Miss +Cursiter's gaze intrepidly), "I'm not far wrong. I honestly think that if +we persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall hand +over worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation." + +Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what a +mouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley's theories and temper. + +"My dear Rhoda, you're an intellectual monstrosity yourself." + +"I know. And in another twenty years' time they'll want to get rid of +_me_." + +"Of me too," thought the Head. Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn. +She had invoked Rhoda's youth and it had risen up against her. Influence +for influence, her power was dead. + +Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in Miss +Quincey's case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, to +escape judgment in her own. + +"And how about Miss Quincey?" she asked. + +Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey. She had done with +that section of her subject. She understood that Rhoda had said in +effect, "If Miss Quincey goes, I go too." Nevertheless her mind was made +up; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey. + +Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quincey +had no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal when +presented to her in this neat way. Not even when Miss Cursiter said to +her, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning, +"For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego your +valuable--most valuable services." + +Miss Cursiter hesitated, warned by something in the aspect of the tiny +woman who had been a thorn in her side so long. Somehow, for this +occasion, the most incompetent, most insignificant member of her staff +had contrived to clothe herself with a certain nobility. She was +undeniably the more dignified of the two. + +The Head, usually so eloquent at great moments, found actual difficulty +in getting to the end of her next sentence. + +"What I was thinking of--really again entirely for your own sake--was +whether it would not be better for you to take a little longer holiday. I +do feel in your case the imperative necessity for rest. Indeed if you +found that you _wished_ to retire at the end of the holidays--of course +receiving your salary for the term--" + +Try as she would to speak as though she were conferring a benefit, the +Head had the unmistakable air of asking a favour from her subordinate, of +imploring her help in a delicate situation, of putting it to her honour. + +Miss Quincey's honour was more than equal to the demand made on it. She +had sunk so low in her own eyes lately that she was glad to gain some +little foothold for her poor pride. She faced Miss Cursiter bravely with +her innocent dim eyes as she answered: "I am ready to go, Miss Cursiter, +whenever it is most convenient to you; but I cannot think of taking +payment for work I have not done." + +"My dear Miss Quincey, the rule is always a term's notice--or if--if any +other arrangement is agreed upon, a term's salary. There can be no +question--you must really allow me--" + +There Miss Cursiter's address failed her and her voice faltered. She had +extracted the thorn; but it had worked its way deeper than she knew, and +the operation was a painful one. A few compliments on the part of the +Head, and the hope that St. Sidwell's would not lose sight of Miss +Quincey altogether, and the interview was closed. + +It was understood by the end of the morning that Miss Quincey had sent in +her resignation. The news spread from class to class--"Miss Quincey is +going"--and was received by pupils and teachers with cries of +incredulity. After all, Miss Quincey belonged to St. Sidwell's; she was +part and parcel of the place; her blood and bones had been built into its +very walls, and her removal was not to be contemplated without dismay. +Why, what would a procession be like without Miss Quincey to enliven it? + +And so, as she went her last round, a score of hands that had never +clasped hers in friendship were stretched out over the desks in a wild +leave-taking; three girls had tears in their eyes; one, more emotional +than the rest, sobbed audibly without shame. The staff were unanimous in +their sympathy and regret. Rhoda withdrew hastily from the painful scene. +Only the Mad Hatter in her corner made no sign. She seemed to take the +news of Miss Quincey's departure with a resigned philosophy. + +"Well, little Classical Mistress," said Miss Quincey, "we must say +good-bye. You know I'm going." + +The child nodded her small head. "Of course you're going. I might have +known it. I did know it all along. You were booked to go." + +"Why, Laura?" Miss Quincey was mystified and a little hurt. + +"Because"--a sinister convulsion passed over the ugly little +pariah face--"because"--the Mad Hatter had learnt the force of +under-statement--"because I _like_ you." + +At that Miss Quincey broke down. "My dear little girl--I am going because +I am too old to stay." + +"Write to me, dear," she said at the last moment; "let me know how you +are getting on." + +But she never knew. The Mad Hatter did not write. In fact she never wrote +anything again, not even verses. She was handed over next term to Miss +Quincey's brilliant and efficient successor, who made her work hard, with +the result that the Mad Hatter got ill of a brain fever just before the +Christmas holidays and was never fit for any more work; and never became +Classical Mistress or anything else in the least distinguished. But this +is by the way. + +As the College clock struck one, Miss Quincey walked home as usual and +went up into her bedroom without a word. She opened a drawer and took +from it her Post Office Savings Bank book and looked over her account. +There stood to her credit the considerable sum of twenty-seven pounds +four shillings and eight pence. No, not quite that, for the blouse, the +abominable blouse, had been paid for out of her savings and it had cost a +guinea. Twenty-six pounds three shillings and eight pence was all that +she had saved in five-and-twenty years. This, with the term's salary +which Miss Cursiter had insisted on, was enough to keep her going for a +year. And a year is a long time. She came slowly downstairs to the +drawing-room where her aunt was dozing and dreaming in her chair. There +still hung about her figure the indefinable dignity that had awed Miss +Cursiter. If she was afraid of Mrs. Moon she was too proud to show her +fear. + +"This morning," she said simply, "I received my dismissal." + +The old lady looked up dazed, not with the news but with her dream. Miss +Quincey repeated her statement. + +"Do you mean you are not going back to that place there?" she asked +mildly. + +"I am never going back." + +Still with dignity she waited for the burst of feeling she felt to be +justifiable in the circumstances. None came; neither anger, nor +indignation, nor contempt, not even surprise. In fact the Old Lady was +smiling placidly, as she was wont to smile under the spell of the dream. + +Slowly, very slowly, it was dawning upon her that the reproach had been +taken away from the memory of Tollington Moon. Henceforth his niece Miss +Quincey would be a gentlewoman at large. At the same time it struck her +that after all poor Juliana did not look so very old. + +"Very well then," said she, "if I were you I should put on that nice silk +blouse in the evenings." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Dr. Cautley Sends in his Bill + + +"I wonder," Mrs. Moon observed suddenly one morning, "if that man is +going to let his bill run on to the day of judgment?" + +The Old Lady had not even distantly alluded to Dr. Cautley for as +many as ten months. After the great day of what she called Juliana's +"resignation" she seemed to have tacitly agreed that since Juliana had +spared her dream she would spare Juliana's. Did she not know, she too, +that the dream is the reality? As Miss Quincey, gentlewoman at large, +Juliana had a perfect right to set up a dream of her own; as to whether +she was able to afford the luxury, Juliana was the best judge. Her +present wonder, then, had no malignant reference; it was simply wrung +from her by inexorable economy. Juliana's supplies were calculated to +last a year; as it was the winter season that they had lately weathered, +she was rather more than three-quarters of the way through her slender +resources, and it behoved them to look out for bills ahead. And Mrs. +Moon had always suspected that young man, not only of a passion for +mare's-nesting, but of deliberately and systematically keeping back +his accounts that he might revel in a larger haul. + +The remark, falling with a shock all the greater for a silence of ten +months, had the effect of driving Juliana out of the room. Out of the +room and out of the house, down High Street, where Hunter's shop was +already blossoming in another spring; up Park Street and past the long +wall of St. Sidwell's, till she found herself alone in Primrose Hill +Park. + +The young day was so glorious that Miss Quincey had some thoughts of +climbing Primrose Hill and sitting on the top; but after twenty yards or +so of it she abandoned the attempt. For the last few months her heart had +been the seat of certain curious sensations, so remarkably like those she +had experienced in the summer that she took them for the same, and +sternly resolved to suppress their existence by ignoring it. That, she +understood, was the right treatment for hysteria. + +But this morning Miss Quincey's heart protested so violently against her +notion of ascending Primrose Hill, threatening indeed to strangle her if +she persisted in it, that Miss Quincey unwillingly gave in and contented +herself with a seat in one of the lower walks of the park. There she +leaned back and looked about her, but with no permanent interest in one +thing more than another. + +Presently, as she settled down to quieter breathing, there came to her a +strange sensation, that grew till it became an unusually vivid perception +of the outer world; a perception mingled with a still stranger double +vision, a sense that seemed to be born in the dark of the brain and to +be moving there to a foregone conclusion. And all the time her eyes +were busy, now with a bush of May in crimson blossom, now with the +many-pointed leaves of a sycamore pricked against the blue; now with the +straight rectangular paths that made the park an immense mathematical +diagram. From where she sat her eyes swept the length of the wide walk +that cuts the green from east to west. Far down at the west end was a +seat, and she could see two people, a man and a woman, sitting on it; +they must have been there a quarter of an hour or more; she had noticed +them ever since she came into the park. + +They had risen, and her gaze left everything else to follow them; or +rather, it went to meet them, for they had turned and were coming slowly +eastward now. They had stopped; they were facing each other, and her gaze +rested with them, fascinated yet uncertain. And now she could see nothing +else; the park, with the regions beyond it and the sky above it, had +become merely a setting for one man and one woman; the avenue, fresh +strewn with red golden gravel, led up to them and ended there at their +feet; a young poplar trembled in the wind and shook its silver green fans +above them in delicate confusion. The next minute a light went up in that +obscure and prophetic background of her brain; and she saw Rhoda Vivian +and Bastian Cautley coming towards her, greeting her, with their kind +faces shining. + +She rose, turned from them, and went slowly home. + +It was the last rent in the veil of illusion that Rhoda had spun so well. +Up till then Miss Quincey had seen only half the truth. Now she had seen +the whole, with all that Rhoda had disguised and kept hidden from her; +the truth that kills or cures. + +Miss Quincey did not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silent +in her chair. Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up later +than had been her wont since she recovered her freedom. She seemed to be +trying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability in the past. + +At eleven she got up and stood before the Old Lady in the attitude of a +penitent. Apparently she had been seized with a mysterious impulse of +confession. + +"Aunt," she said, "there's something I want to say to you." + +She paused, casting about in her mind for the sins she had committed. +They were three in all. + +"I am afraid I have been very extravagant"--she was thinking of the +blouse--"and--and very foolish"--she was thinking of Bastian +Cautley--"and very selfish"--she was thinking of her momentary desire to +die. + +"Juliana, if you're worrying about that money"--the Old Lady was thinking +of nothing else--"don't. I've plenty for us both. As long as we can keep +together I don't care what I eat, nor what I drink, nor what I put on my +poor back. And if the worst comes to the worst I'll sell the furniture." + +It seemed to Miss Quincey that she had never known her aunt in all those +five-and-twenty years; never known her until this minute. For perhaps, +after all, being angry with Juliana was only Mrs. Moon's way of being +sorry for her. But how was Juliana to know that? + +"Only," continued the Old Lady, "I won't part with your uncle's picture. +Don't ask me to part with your uncle's picture." + +"You won't have to part with anything. I'll--I'll get something to do. +I'm not worrying. There's nothing to worry about." + +She stooped down and tenderly kissed the wrinkled forehead. + +A vague fear clutched at the Old Lady's heart. + +"Then, Juliana, you are not well. Hadn't you better see"--she +hesitated--pausing with unwonted delicacy for her words--"a doctor?" + +"I don't want to see a doctor. There is nothing the matter with me." And +still insisting that there was nothing the matter with her, she went to +bed. + +And old Martha had come with her early morning croak to call Miss +Juliana; she had dumped down the hot-water can in the basin with a clash, +pulled up the blind with a jerk, and drawn back the curtains with a +clatter, before she noticed that Miss Juliana was up all the time. Up and +dressed, and sitting in her chair by the hearth, warming her feet at +an imaginary fire. + +She had been sitting up all night, for her bed was as Martha had left it +the night before. Martha approached cautiously, still feeling her way, +though there was no need for it, the room being full of light. + +She groped like a blind woman for Miss Juliana's forehead, laying her +hand there before she looked into her face. + +After some fumbling futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and a +feather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; she +disarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have been +left by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew a shawl over the head +and shoulders of the figure in the chair; pulled down the blind and +closed the curtains till the room was dark again. Then she groped her way +out and down the stairs to her mistress's door. There she stayed a +moment, gathering her feeble wits together for the part she meant to +play. She had made up her mind what she would do. + +So she called the Old Lady as usual; said she was afraid there was +something the matter with Miss Juliana; thought she might have got up a +bit too early and turned faint like. + +The Old Lady answered that she would come and see; and the two crept up +the stairs, and went groping their way in the dark of the curtained room. +Old Martha fumbled a long time with the blind; she drew back the curtains +little by little, with infinite precaution letting in the light upon the +fearful thing. + +But the Old Lady approached it boldly. + +"Don't you know me, Jooley dear?" she said, peering into the strange +eyes. There was no recognition in them for all their staring. + +"Don't know _me_, m'm," said Martha soothingly; "seems all of a white +swoon, don't she?" + +Martha was warming to her part. She made herself busy; she brought hot +water bottles and eau de cologne; she spent twenty minutes chafing the +hands and forehead and laying warmth to the feet, that the Old Lady might +have the comfort of knowing that everything had been done that could be +done. She shuffled off to find brandy, as if she had only thought of it +that instant; and she played out the play with the looking-glass and the +feather. + +The feather fluttered to the floor, and Martha ceased bending and +peering, and looked at her mistress. + +"She's gone, m'm, I do believe." + +The Old Lady sank by the chair, her arms clinging to those rigid knees. + +"Jooley--Jooley--don't you _know_ me?" she cried, as if in a passion of +affront. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Epilogue.--The Man and the Woman + + +By daylight there is neither glamour nor beauty in the great +burying-ground of North London; you must go to it at evening, in the +first fall of the summer dusk, to feel the fascination of that labyrinth +of low graves, crosses and headstones, urns and sarcophagi, crowded in +the black-green of the grass; of marble columns, granite pyramids and +obelisks, massed and reared and piled in the grey of the air. It is +nothing if not fantastic. Even by day that same mad grouping and jostling +of monumental devices, gathered together from the ends of the world, +gives to the place a cheerful half-pagan character; now, in its confusion +and immensity, it might be some city of dreams, tossed up in cloud and +foam and frozen into marble; some aerial half-way limbo where life slips +a little from the living and death from the dead. + +For these have their own way here. No priest interferes with them, and +whatever secular power ordains these matters is indulgent to its +children. If one of them would have his horse or his dog carved on his +tomb instead of an angel, or a pair of compasses instead of a cross, +there is no one to thwart his fancy. He may even be humorous if he will. +It is as if he implored us to laugh with him a little while though the +jest be feeble, and not to chill him with so many tears. + +At twilight a man and a woman were threading their way through this +cemetery, and as they went they smiled faintly at the memorial caprices +of the living and the still quainter originalities of the dead. But on +the whole they seemed to be trying not to look too happy. They said +nothing to each other till they came to a mound raised somewhere in the +borderland that divides the graves of the rich from the paupers' ground. +There was just room for them to stand together on the boards that roofed +in the narrow pit dug ready for the next comer. + +"If I believed in a Creator" (it was the man who spoke), "I should want +to know what pleasure he found in creating that poor little woman." + +The woman did not answer as she looked at him. + +"Yet," he went on, "I'm selfish enough to be glad that she lived. If I +had not known Miss Quincey, I should not have known you." + +"And I," said the woman, and her face was rosy under the touch of grief, +"if I had not loved Miss Quincey, I could not have loved you." + +They seemed to think Miss Quincey had justified her existence. Perhaps +she had. + +And the woman took the roses that she wore in her belt and laid them on +the breast of the grave. She stood for a minute studying the effect with +a shamefaced look, as if she had mocked the dead woman with flowers flung +from her wedding-wreath of youth and joy. + +Then she turned to the man; the closing bell tolled, and they passed +through the iron gates into the ways of the living. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Superseded, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUPERSEDED *** + +***** This file should be named 13522-8.txt or 13522-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/5/2/13522/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Superseded + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: September 24, 2004 [EBook #13522] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUPERSEDED *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + + + + SUPERSEDED + + BY MAY SINCLAIR + + _Author of "The Divine Fire"_ + + 1906 + + + + +PUBLISHERS' NOTE + + +Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished in +America, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "The +Divine Fire." It originally appeared with another work in a volume +entitled "Two Sides of a Question," a small imported edition of which is +now exhausted. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I. PROLOGUE.--MISS QUINCEY STOPS THE WAY + II. HOUSEHOLD GODS + III. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES + IV. BASTIAN CAUTLEY, M.D. + V. HEALERS AND REGENERATORS + VI. SPRING FASHIONS + VII. UNDER A BLUE MOON + VIII. A PAINFUL MISUNDERSTANDING + IX. THROUGH THE STETHOSCOPE + X. MISS QUINCEY STANDS BACK + XI. DR. CAUTLEY SENDS IN HIS BILL + XII. EPILOGUE.--THE MAN AND THE WOMAN + + + + +SUPERSEDED + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Prologue.--Miss Quincey Stops the Way + + +"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." + +The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It +came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by +the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying +itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy +intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be +more or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the Second +Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, +loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then +the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white +pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, +shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time. + +On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerable +eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, that +flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, +or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A stream +that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely or +luminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing that +throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance and +pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judged +St. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and colour to the +stream. The rest were nowhere. + +So at least it seemed to Miss Cursiter, the Head. That tall, lean, +iron-grey Dignity stood at the cross junction of two corridors, talking +to Miss Rhoda Vivian, the new Classical Mistress. And while she talked +she watched her girls as a general watches his columns wheeling into +action. A dangerous spot that meeting of the corridors. There the +procession doubles the corner at a swinging curve, and there, time it as +she would, the little arithmetic teacher was doomed to fall foul of the +procession. Daily Miss Quincey thought to dodge the line; daily it caught +her at the disastrous corner. Then Miss Quincey, desperate under the eye +of the Head, would try to rush the thing, with ridiculous results. And +Fate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter should always +be there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her +face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the +sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to +bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the +unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, +demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. +To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow that smile +annoyed Miss Cursiter. + +She, Miss Quincey, was a little dry, brown woman, with a soft pinched +mouth, and a dejected nose. So small and insignificant was she that she +might have crept along for ever unnoticed but for her punctuality in +obstruction. As St. Sidwell's prided itself on the brilliance and +efficiency of its staff, the wonder was how Miss Quincey came to be +there, but there she had been for five-and-twenty years. She seemed to +have stiffened into her place. Five-and-twenty years ago she had been +arithmetic teacher, vaguely attached to the Second Division, and she was +arithmetic teacher still. Miss Quincey was going on for fifty; she had +out-lived the old Head, and now she was the oldest teacher there, twice +as old as Miss Vivian, the new Classical Mistress, older, far older than +Miss Cursiter. She had found her way into St. Sidwell's, not because she +was brilliant or efficient, but because her younger sister Louisa already +held an important post there. + +Louisa was brilliant and efficient enough for anybody, so brilliant and +so efficient that the glory of it rested on her family. And when she +married the Greek master and went away Juliana stayed on as a matter of +course, wearing a second-hand aureole of scholarship and supporting a +tradition. + +She stayed on and taught arithmetic for one thing. And when she was not +teaching arithmetic, she was giving little dictations, setting little +themes, controlling some fifty young and very free translators of _Le +Philosophe sous les Toils_. Miss Quincey had a passion for figures and +for everything that could be expressed in figures. Not a pure passion, +nothing to do with the higher mathematics, which is the love of the soul, +but an affection sadly alloyed with baser matter, with rods and perches, +firkins and hogsheads, and articles out of the grocer's shop. + +Among these objects Miss Quincey's imagination ran voluptuous riot. But +upon such things as history or poetry she had a somewhat blighting +influence. The flowers in the school Anthology withered under her +fingers, and the flesh and blood of heroes crumbled into the dust of +dates. As for the philosopher under the roofs, who he was, and what was +his philosophy, and how he ever came to be under the roofs at all, nobody +in St. Sidwell's ever knew or ever cared to know; Miss Quincey had made +him eternally uninteresting. Yet Miss Quincey's strength was in her +limitations. It was the strength of unreasoning but undying conviction. +Nothing could shake her belief in the supreme importance of arithmetic +and the majesty of its elementary rules. Pale and persistent and +intolerably meek, she hammered hard facts into the brain with a sort of +muffled stroke, hammered till the hardest stuck by reason of their +hardness, for she was a teacher of the old school. Thus in her own way +she made her mark. Among the other cyphers, the irrelevant and +insignificant figure of Miss Quincey was indelibly engraved on many an +immortal soul. There was a curious persistency about Miss Quincey. + +Miss Quincey was not exactly popular. The younger teachers pronounced her +cut and dried; for dryness, conscientiously acquired, passed for her +natural condition. Nobody knew that it cost her much effort and industry +to be so stiff and starched; that the starch had to be put on fresh every +morning; that it was quite a business getting up her limp little +personality for the day. In five-and-twenty years, owing to an incurable +malady of shyness, she had never made friends with any of her pupils. + +Her one exception proved her rule. Miss Quincey seemed to have gone out +of her way to attract that odious little Laura Lazarus, who was known at +St. Sidwell's as the Mad Hatter. At fourteen, being still incapable of +adding two and two together, the Mad Hatter had been told off into an +idiot's class by herself for arithmetic; and Miss Quincey, because she +was so meek and patient and persistent, was told off to teach her. The +child, a queer, ugly little pariah, half-Jew, half-Cockney, held all +other girls in abhorrence, and was avoided by them with an equal +loathing. She seemed to have attached herself to the unpopular teacher +out of sheer perversity and malignant contempt of public opinion. +Abandoned in their corner, with their heads bent together over the sums, +the two outsiders clung to each other in a common misery and isolation. + +Miss Quincey was well aware that she was of no account at St. Sidwell's. +She supposed that it was because she had never taken her degree. To be +sure she had never tried to take it; but it was by no means certain that +she could have taken it if she had tried. She was not clever; Louisa had +carried off all the brains and the honours of the family. It had been +considered unnecessary for Juliana to develop an individuality of her +own; enough for her that she belonged to Louisa, and was known as +Louisa's sister. Louisa's sister was a part of Louisa; Louisa was a part +of St. Sidwell's College, Regent's Park; and St. Sidwell's College, +Regent's Park, was a part--no, St. Sidwell's was the whole; it was the +glorious world. Miss Quincey had never seen, or even desired to see any +other. That college was to her a place of exquisite order and light. +Light that was filtered through the high tilted windows, and reflected +from a prevailing background of green tiles and honey-white pine, from +countless rows of shining desks and from hundreds of young faces. Light, +the light of ideas, that streamed from the platform in the great hall +where three times in the year Miss Cursiter gave her address to the +students and teachers of St. Sidwell's. + +Now Miss Cursiter was a pioneer at war with the past, a woman of vast +ambitions, a woman with a system and an end; and she chose her +instruments finely, toiling early and late to increase their brilliance +and efficiency. She was new to St. Sidwell's, and would have liked to +make a clean sweep of the old staff and to fill their places with women +like Rhoda Vivian, young and magnificent and strong. As it was, she had +been weeding them out gradually, as opportunity arose; and the new staff, +modern to its finger-tips, was all but complete and perfect now. Only +Miss Quincey remained. St. Sidwell's in the weeding time had not been a +bed of roses for Miss Cursiter, and Miss Quincey, blameless but +incompetent, was a thorn in her side, a thorn that stuck. Impossible to +remove Miss Quincey quickly, she was so very blameless and she worked so +hard. + +She worked from nine till one in the morning, from two-thirty till +four-thirty in the afternoon, and from six-thirty in the evening till any +hour in the night. She worked with the desperate zeal of the superseded +who knows that she holds her post on sufferance, the terrified tenacity +of the middle-aged who feels behind her the swift-footed rivalry of +youth. And the more she worked the more she annoyed Miss Cursiter. + +So now, above all the tramping and shuffling and hissing, you heard the +self-restrained and slightly metallic utterance of the Head. + +"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." + +And Miss Quincey stood back, flattening herself against the wall, and the +procession passed her by, rosy, resonant, exulting, a triumph of life. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +Household Gods + + +Punctually at four-thirty Miss Quincey vanished from the light of St. +Sidwell's, Regent's Park, into the obscurity of Camden Town. Camden Town +is full of little houses standing back in side streets, houses with +porticoed front doors monstrously disproportioned to their size. Nobody +ever knocks at those front doors; nobody ever passes down those side +streets if they can possibly help it. The houses are all exactly alike; +they melt and merge into each other in dingy perspective, each with its +slag-bordered six foot of garden uttering a faint suburban protest +against the advances of the pavement. Miss Quincey lived in half of one +of them (number ninety, Camden Street North) with her old aunt Mrs. Moon +and their old servant Martha. She had lived there five-and-twenty years, +ever since the death of her uncle. + +Tollington Moon had been what his family called unfortunate; that is to +say, he had mislaid the greater portion of his wife's money and the whole +of Juliana's and Louisa's; he, poor fellow, had none of his own to lose. +Uncle Tollington, being the only male representative of the family, had +been appointed to drive the family coach. He was a genial good-natured +fellow and he cheerfully agreed, declaring that there was nothing in the +world he liked better than driving; though indeed he had had but little +practice in the art. So they started with a splendid flourishing of whips +and blowing of horns; Tollington driving at a furious break-neck pace in +a manner highly diverting and exhilarating to the ladies inside. The +girls (they were girls in those days) sat tight and felt no fear, while +Mrs. Moon, with her teeth shaking, explained to them the advantages of +having so expert a driver on the box seat. Of course there came the +inevitable smash at the corner. The three climbed out of that coach more +dead than alive; but they uttered no complaints; they had had their fun; +and in accidents of this kind the poor driver generally gets the worst of +it. + +Mrs. Moon at any rate found consolation in disaster by steadily ignoring +its most humiliating features. Secure in the new majesty of her +widowhood, she faced her nieces with an unflinching air and demanded of +them eternal belief in the wisdom and rectitude of their uncle +Tollington. She hoped that they would never forget him, never forget what +he had to bear, never forget all he had done for them. Her attitude +reduced Juliana to tears; in Louisa it roused the instinct of revolt, and +Louisa was for separating from Mrs. Moon. It was then, in her first +difference from Louisa, that Miss Quincey's tender and foolish little +face acquired its strangely persistent air. Hitherto the elder had served +the younger; now she took her stand. She said, "Whatever we do, we must +keep together"; and she professed her willingness to believe in her uncle +Tollington and remember him for ever. + +To this Louisa, who prided herself on speaking the truth or at any rate +her mind, replied that she wasn't likely to forget him in a hurry; that +her uncle Tollington had ruined her life, and she did not want to be +reminded of him any more than she could help. Moreover, she found her +aunt Moon's society depressing. She meant to get on and be independent; +and she advised Juliana to do the same. + +Juliana did not press the point, for it was a delicate one, seeing that +Louisa was earning a hundred and twenty pounds a year and she but eighty. +So she added her eighty pounds to her aunt's eighty and went to live with +her in Camden Street North, while Louisa shrugged her shoulders and +carried herself and her salary elsewhere. + +There was very little room for Mrs. Moon and Juliana at number ninety. +The poor souls had crowded themselves out with relics of their past, a +pathetic salvage, dragged hap-hazard from the wreck in the first frenzy +of preservation. Dreadful things in marble and gilt and in _papier-mache_ +inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, rickety work tables with pouches underneath +them, banner-screens in silk and footstools in Berlin wool-work fought +with each other and with Juliana for standing-room. For Juliana, with her +genius for collision, was always knocking up against them, always getting +in their way. In return, Juliana's place at an oblique angle of the +fireside was disputed by a truculent cabinet with bandy legs. There was a +never-ending quarrel between Juliana and that piece of furniture, in +which Mrs. Moon took the part of the furniture. Her own world had shrunk +to a square yard between the window and the fire. There she sat and +dreamed among her household gods, smiling now and then under the spell of +the dream, or watched her companion with critical disapproval. She had +accepted Juliana's devotion as a proper sacrifice to the gods; but for +Juliana, or Louisa for the matter of that, she seemed to have but little +affection. If anything Louisa was her favourite. Louisa was better +company, to begin with; and Louisa, with her cleverness and her salary +and her general air of indifference and prosperity, raised no questions. +Besides, Louisa was married. + +But Juliana, toiling from morning till night for her eighty pounds a +year; Juliana, painful and persistent, growing into middle-age without a +hope, Juliana was an incarnate reproach, a perpetual monument to the +folly of Tollington Moon. Juliana disturbed her dream. + +But nobody else disturbed it, for nobody ever came to their half of the +house in Camden Street North. Louisa used to come and go in a brief +perfunctory manner; but Louisa had married the Greek professor and gone +away for good, and her friends at St. Sidwell's were not likely to waste +their time in cultivating Juliana and Mrs. Moon. The thing had been tried +by one or two of the younger teachers who went in for all-round +self-development and were getting up the minor virtues. But they had met +with no encouragement and they had ceased to come. Then nobody came; not +even the doctor or the clergyman. The two ladies were of one mind on that +point; it was convenient for them to ignore their trifling ailments, +spiritual or bodily. And as soon as they saw that the world renounced +them they adopted a lofty tone and said to each other that they had +renounced the world. For they were proud, Mrs. Moon especially so. +Tollington Moon had married slightly, ever so slightly beneath him, the +Moons again marking a faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys. +But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with the +Moons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "_my_ +family." In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as a +feather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, into +an entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird of +paradise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat dilapidated tail. + +So the two lived on together; so they had always lived. Mrs. Moon +was an old woman before she was five-and-fifty; and before she was +five-and-twenty Juliana's youth had withered away in the sour and +sordid atmosphere born of perishing gentility and acrid personal remark. +And their household gods looked down on them, miniatures and silhouettes +of Moons and Quinceys, calm and somewhat contemptuous presences. From the +post of honour above the mantelshelf, Tollington, attired as an Early +Victorian dandy, splendid in velvet waistcoat, scarf and chain-pin, +leaned on a broken column symbolical of his fortunes, and smiled genially +on the ruin he had made. + +That was how Miss Quincey came to St. Sidwell's. And now she was +five-and-forty; she had always been five-and-forty; that is to say, she +had never been young, for to be young you must be happy. And this was so +far an advantage, that when middle-age came on her she felt no +difference. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Inaugural Addresses + + +It was evening, early in the winter term, and Miss Cursiter was giving +her usual inaugural address to the staff. Their number had increased so +considerably that the little class-room was packed to overflowing. Miss +Cursiter stood in the free space at the end, facing six rows of eager +faces arranged in the form of a horse-shoe. She looked upon them and +smiled; she joyed with the joy of the creator who sees his idea incarnate +before him. + +A striking figure, Miss Cursiter. Tall, academic and austere; a keen +eagle head crowned with a mass of iron-grey hair; grey-black eyes burning +under a brow of ashen grey; an intelligence fervent with fire of the +enthusiast, cold with the renunciant's frost. Such was Miss Cursiter. She +was in splendid force to-day, grappling like an athlete with her enormous +theme--"The Educational Advantages of General Culture." She delivered her +address with an utterance rapid but distinct, keeping one eye on the +reporter and the other on Miss Rhoda Vivian, M.A. + +She might well look to Rhoda Vivian. If she had needed a foil for her own +commanding personality, she had found it there. But the new Classical +Mistress was something more than Miss Cursiter's complement. Nature, +usually so economical, not to say parsimonious, seemed to have made her +for her own delight, in a fit of reckless extravagance. She had given her +a brilliant and efficient mind in a still more brilliant and efficient +body, clothed her in all the colours of life; made her a creature of +ardent and elemental beauty. Rhoda Vivian had brown hair with sparkles of +gold in it and flakes of red fire; her eyes were liquid grey, the grey of +water; her lips were full, and they pouted a little proudly; it was the +pride of life. And she had other gifts which did not yet appear at St. +Sidwell's. There was something about her still plastic and unformed; you +could not say whether it was the youth of genius, or only the genius of +youth. But at three-and-twenty she had chosen her path, and gone far on +it, and it had been honours all the way. She went up and down at St. +Sidwell's, adored and unadoring, kindling the fire of a secret worship. +In any other place, with any other woman at the head of it, such a vivid +individuality might have proved fatal to her progress. But Miss Cursiter +was too original herself not to perceive the fine uses of originality. +All her hopes for the future were centred in Rhoda Vivian. She looked +below that brilliant surface and saw in her the ideal leader of young +womanhood. Rhoda was a force that could strike fire from a stone; what +she wanted she was certain to get; she seemed to compel work from the +laziest and intelligence from the dullest by the mere word of her will. +What was more, her nature was too large for vanity; she held her +worshippers at arm's length and consecrated her power of personal +seduction to strictly intellectual ends. At the end of her first term her +position was second only to the Head. If Miss Cursiter was the will and +intelligence of St. Sidwell's, Rhoda Vivian was its subtle poetry and its +soul. And Miss Cursiter meant to keep her there; being a woman who made +all sacrifices and demanded them. + +So now, while Miss Cursiter stood explaining, ostensibly to the entire +staff, the unique advantages of General Culture, it was to Rhoda Vivian +as to a supreme audience that she addressed her deeper thought and her +finer phrase. If Miss Cursiter had not had to consult her notes now and +again, she must have seen that Rhoda Vivian's mind was wandering, that +the Classical Mistress was if anything more interested in her companions +than in the noble utterances of the Head. As her grey eyes swept the +tiers of faces, they lingered on that corner where Miss Quincey seemed +perpetually striving to suppress, consume, and utterly obliterate +herself. And each time she smiled, as she had smiled earlier in the day +when first she saw Miss Quincey. + +For Miss Quincey was there, far back in the ranks of the brilliant and +efficient. Note-book on desk, she followed the quick march of thought +with a fatigued and stumbling brain. She was painfully, ludicrously out +of step; yet to judge by the light that shone now and then in her eyes, +by the smile that played about the corners of her weak, tender mouth, she +too had caught the sympathetic rapture, the intellectual thrill. Ready to +drop was Miss Quincey, but she would not have missed that illuminating +hour, not if you had paid her--three times her salary. It was her one +glimpse of the larger life; her one point of contact with the ideal. Her +pencil staggered over her note-book as Miss Cursiter flamed and lightened +in her peroration. + +"We have looked at our subject in the light of the ideals by which and +for which we live. Let us now turn to the practical side of the matter, +as it touches our business and our bosoms. Do not say we have no room for +poetry in our crowded days." A score of weary heads looked up; there was +a vague inquiry in all eyes. "You have your evenings--all of you. Much +can be done with evenings; if your training has done nothing else for you +it has taught you the economy of time. You are tired in the evenings, +yes. But the poets, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning, are the great +healers and regenerators of worn-out humanity. When you are faint and +weary with your day's work, the best thing you can do is to rise and +refresh yourselves at the living wells of literature." + +Long before the closing sentence Miss Quincey's MS. had become a +sightless blur. But she had managed to jot down in her neat arithmetical +way: "Poets = healers and regenerators." + +The address was printed and a copy was given to each member of the staff. +Miss Quincey treasured up hers as a priceless scripture. + +Miss Quincey was aware of her shortcomings and had struggled hard to mend +them, toiling pantingly after those younger ones who had attained the +standard of brilliance and efficiency. She joined the Teachers' Debating +Society. Not that she debated. She had once put some elementary questions +in an inaudible voice, and had been requested to speak a little louder, +whereupon she sank into her seat and spoke no more. But she heard a great +deal. About the emancipation of women; about the women's labour market; +about the doors that were now thrown open to women. She was told that all +they wanted was a fair field and no favour. (The speaker, a rosy-cheeked +child of one-and-twenty, was quite violent in her repudiation of favour.) +And Miss Quincey believed it all, though she understood very little about +it. + +But it was illumination, a new gospel to her, this doctrine of General +Culture; it was the large easy-fitting formula which she had seemed to +need. With touching simplicity she determined to follow the course +recommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected some +seventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson for +the next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to the +healers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more like +going to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor little +body there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; night after +night twelve o'clock would find her painfully trying to draw water from +the wells of literature. She had begun upon Browning; set herself to read +through the whole of _Sordello_ from beginning to end. It is as easy as a +sum in arithmetic if you don't bother your head too much about the +Guelphs and Ghibellines and the metaphors and things, and if you take it +in short fits, say three pages every evening. Never any more, or you +might go to sleep and forget all about it; never any less, or you would +have bad arrears. As there are exactly two hundred and thirteen pages, +she calculated that she would finish it in ten weeks and a day. There was +no place for Miss Quincey and her pile of marble-backed exercise-books in +the dim and dingy first-floor drawing-room (Mrs. Moon and the +bandy-legged cabinet would have had something to say to that). All this +terrific intellectual travail went on in a dimmer and dingier dining-room +beneath it. + +Then one night, old Martha, disturbed by sounds that came from Miss +Juliana's bedroom, groped her way fumblingly in and found Miss Juliana +sitting up in her sleep and posing the darkness with a problem. + +"If," said Miss Juliana, "three men can finish one hundred and nineteen +hogsheads of Browning in eight weeks, how long will it take seven women +to finish a thousand and forty-five--forty-five--forty-five, if one woman +works twice as hard as eleven men?" + +Martha shook her head and went fumbling back to bed again; and being a +conscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frightening +the old lady. + +About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, came +upon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning up +against the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books. The sweat +streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn. She +could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as +equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot +air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pile +of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey +was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian was +going to take her home. She even smiled her little pinched smile and +pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." +Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the +sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss +Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the +bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, +and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss +Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have +wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was +a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed +washed up and abandoned by the tide. When Miss Quincey's head was inside +it the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive +anything more melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired in +pale grey cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big +black Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey +would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but +Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were +enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a +superfluity, a luxury. + +Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home went +off in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of Miss +Quincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets and +conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find her +man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Bastian Cautley, M.D. + + +It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house +jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a +pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to +himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He had +been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobody +could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as he +stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. His +very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all his +weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state +in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed +an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with +book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy +maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was +not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six +o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a +frock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, all +patience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peace +for him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go on +incessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it +meant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously +early age of nine-and-twenty. + +There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs. + +"There's another damned patient," said Dr. Cautley. + +He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously of +patients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him before +their time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The servant was +certainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling sounds in the +hall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much patience and much +politeness would then be required of him, and he was feeling anything but +patient and polite. + +"Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him. He +did not know Miss Rhoda Vivian. + +The gas-jets were turned low in the consulting-room; when he raised them +he saw a beautiful woman standing by the fire in an attitude of +impatience. He had kept her waiting; and it seemed that this adorable +person knew the value of time. She was not going to waste words either. +As it was impossible to associate her with the ordinary business of the +place, he was prepared for her terse and lucid statement of somebody +else's case. He said he would look round early in the morning (Miss +Vivian looked dissatisfied); or perhaps that evening (Miss Vivian was +dubious); or possibly at once (Miss Vivian smiled in hurried approval). +She was eager to be gone. And when she had gone he stood deliberating. +Miss Quincey was a pathological abstraction, Miss Vivian was a radiant +reality; it was clear that Miss Quincey was not urgent, and that once +safe in her bed she could very well wait till to-morrow; but when he +thought of Miss Vivian he became impressed with the gravity and interest +of Miss Quincey's case. + +While the doctor was making up his mind, little Miss Quincey, in her +shabby back bedroom, lay waiting for him, trembling, fretting her nerves +into a fever, starting at imaginary footsteps, and entertaining all kinds +of dismal possibilities. She was convinced that she was going to die, or +worse still, to break down, to be a perpetual invalid. She thought of +several likely illnesses, beginning with general paralysis and ending +with anemia of the brain. It _might_ be anemia of the brain, but she +rather thought it would be general paralysis, because this would be so +much the more disagreeable of the two. Anyhow Rhoda Vivian must have +thought she was pretty bad or she would not have called in a doctor. To +call in a doctor seemed to Miss Quincey next door to invoking Providence +itself; it was the final desperate resort, implying catastrophe and the +end of all things. Oh, dear! Miss Quincey wished he would come up if he +was coming, and get it over. + +After all he did not keep her waiting long, and it was over in five +minutes. And yet it was amazing the amount of observation, and insight, +and solid concentrated thought the young man contrived to pack into those +five minutes. + +Well--it seemed that it was not general paralysis this time, nor yet +anemia of the brain; but he could tell her more about it in the morning. +Meanwhile she had nothing to do but to do what he told her and stay where +she was till he saw her again. And he was gone before she realized that +he had been there. + +Again? So he was coming again, was he? Miss Quincey did not know whether +to be glad or sorry. His presence had given her a rare and curiously +agreeable sense of protection, but she had to think of the expense. She +had to think too of what Mrs. Moon would say to it--of what she would say +to him. + +Mrs. Moon had a good deal to say to it. She took Juliana's illness as a +personal affront, as a deliberate back-handed blow struck at the memory +of Tollington Moon. With all the base implications of her daily acts, +Juliana had never attempted anything like this. + +"Capers and nonsense," she said, "Juliana has never had an illness in her +life." + +She said it to Rhoda Vivian, the bold young person who had taken upon +herself to bring the doctor into the house. Mrs. Moon spoke of the doctor +as if he was a disease. + +Fortunately Miss Vivian was by when he endured the first terrifying +encounter. Her manner suggested that she took him under her protection, +stood between him and some unfathomable hostility. + +He found the Old Lady disentangling herself with immense dignity from her +maze of furniture. Mrs. Moon was a small woman shrunk with her eighty +years, shrunk almost to extinction in her black woollen gown and black +woollen mittens. Her very face seemed to be vanishing under the immense +shadow of her black net cap. Spirals of thin grey hair stuck flat to her +forehead; she wore other and similar spirals enclosed behind glass in an +enormous brooch; it was the hair of her ancestors, that is to say of the +Quinceys. As the Old Lady looked at Cautley her little black eyes burned +like pinpoints pierced in a paste-board mask. + +"I think you've been brought here on a wild goose chase, doctor," said +she, "there is nothing the matter with my niece." + +He replied (battling sternly with his desire to laugh) that he would be +delighted if it were so; adding that a wild goose chase was the sport he +preferred to any other. + +Here he looked at Miss Vivian to the imminent peril of his self-control. +Mrs. Moon's gaze had embraced them in a common condemnation, and the +subtle sympathy of their youth linked them closer and made them one in +their intimate appreciation of her. + +"Then you must be a very singular young man. I thought you doctors were +never happy until you'd found some mare's nest in people's constitutions? +You'd much better let well alone." + +"Miss Quincey is very far from well," said Cautley with recovered +gravity, "and I rather fancy she has been let alone too long." + +Cautley thought that he had said quite enough to alarm any old lady. And +indeed Mrs. Moon was slowly taking in the idea of disaster, and it sent +her poor wits wandering in the past. Her voice sank suddenly from +grating; antagonism to pensive garrulity. + +"I've no faith in medicine," she quavered, "nor in medical men either. +Though to be sure my husband had a brother-in-law once on his wife's +side, Dr. Quincey, Dr. Arnold Quincey, Juliana's father and Louisa's. He +was a medical man. He wrote a book, I daresay you've heard of it; +_Quincey on Diseases of the Heart_ it was. But he's dead now, of one of +'em, poor man. We haven't seen a doctor for five-and-twenty years." + +"Then isn't it almost time that you should see one now?" said he, +cheerfully taking his leave. "I shall look round again in the morning." + +He looked round again in the morning and sat half an hour with Miss +Quincey; so she had time to take a good look at him. + +He was very nice to look at, this young man. He was so clean-cut and tall +and muscular; he had such an intellectual forehead; his mouth was so +firm, you could trust it to tell no secrets; and his eyes (they were dark +and deep set) looked as if they saw nothing but Miss Quincey. Indeed, at +the moment he had forgotten all about Rhoda Vivian, and did see nothing +but the little figure in the bed looking more like a rather worn and +wizened child than a middle-aged woman. He was very gentle and +sympathetic; but for that his youth would have been terrible to her. As +it was, Miss Quincey felt a little bit in awe of this clever doctor, who +in spite of his cleverness looked so young, and not only so young but so +formidably fastidious and refined. She had not expected him to look like +that. All the clever young men she had met had displayed a noble contempt +for appearances. To be sure, Miss Quincey knew but little of the world of +men; for at St. Sidwell's the types were limited to three little +eccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for the +gods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever Miss +Quincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband, +Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannel +shirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow. +But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had a +distinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen, +irreproachable itself, reproved her silently. + +Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full of +little tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't look +so much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopic +observation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet and +the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the +quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for +hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned +instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat, +perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense +of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then she +tried to compose herself for the verdict. + +It did not come all at once. First of all he asked her a great many +questions about herself and her family, whereupon she gave him a complete +pathological story of the Moons and Quinceys. And all the time he looked +so hard at her that it was quite embarrassing. His eyes seemed to be +taking her in (no other eyes had ever performed that act of hospitality +for Miss Quincey). He pulled out a little book from his pocket and made +notes of everything she said; Miss Quincey's biography was written in +that little book (you may be sure nobody else had ever thought of writing +it). And when he had finished the biography he talked to her about her +work (nobody else had ever been the least interested in Miss Quincey's +work). Then Miss Quincey sat up in bed and became lyrical as she +described the delirious joy of decimals--recurring decimals--and the +rapture of cube-root. She herself had never got farther than cube-root; +but it was enough. Beyond that, she hinted, lay the infinite. And Dr. +Cautley laughed at her defence of the noble science. Oh yes, he could +understand its fascination, its irresistible appeal to the emotions; he +only wished to remind her that it was the most debilitating study in the +world. He refused to commit himself to any opinion as to the original +strength and magnitude of Miss Quincey's brain; he could only assure her +that the most powerful intellect in the world would break down if you +kept it perpetually doing sums in arithmetic. It was the monotony of the +thing, you see; year after year Miss Quincey had been ploughing up the +same little patch of brain. No, certainly _not_--she mustn't think of +going back to St. Sidwell's for another three months. + +Three months! Impossible! It was a whole term. + +Dr. Cautley scowled horribly and said that if she was ever to be fit for +cube-root and decimals again, she positively and absolutely _must_. +Whereupon Miss Quincey gave way to emotion. + +To leave St. Sidwell's, abandon her post for three months, she who had +never been absent for a day! If she did that it would be all up with Miss +Quincey; a hundred eager applicants were ready to fill her empty place. +It was as if she heard the hungry, leaping pack behind her, the strong +young animals trained for the chase; they came tearing on the scent, +hunting her, treading her down. + +When Rhoda Vivian looked in after morning school, she found a flushed and +embarrassed young man trying to soothe Miss Quincey, who paid not the +least attention to him; she seemed to have shrunk into her bed, and lay +there staring with dilated eyes like a hare crouched flat and trembling +in her form. From the other side of the bed Dr. Cautley's helpless and +desperate smile claimed Rhoda as his ally. It seemed to say, "For God's +sake take my part against this unreasonable woman." + +Now no one (not even Miss Quincey) could realize the insecurity of Miss +Quincey's position better than Rhoda, who was fathoms deep in the +confidence of the Head. She happened to know that Miss Cursiter was only +waiting for an opportunity like this to rid herself for ever of the +little obstructive. She knew too that once they had ceased to fill their +particular notch in it, the world had no further use for people like Miss +Quincey; that she, Rhoda Vivian, belonged to the new race whose eternal +destiny was to precipitate their doom. It was the first time that Rhoda +had thought of it in that light; the first time indeed that she had +greatly concerned herself with any career beside her own. She sat for a +few minutes talking to Miss Quincey and thinking as she talked. Perhaps +she was wondering how she would like to be forty-five and incompetent; to +be overtaken on the terrible middle-way; to feel the hurrying generations +after her, their breath on her shoulders, their feet on her heels; to +have no hope; to see Mrs. Moon sitting before her, immovable and +symbolic, the image of what she must become. They were two very absurd +and diminutive figures, but they stood for a good deal. + +To Cautley, Rhoda herself as she revolved these things looked significant +enough. Leaning forward, one elbow bent on her knee, her chin propped on +her hand, her lips pouting, her forehead knit, she might have been a +young and passionate Pallas, brooding tempestuously on the world. + +"Miss Vivian is on my side, I see. I'll leave her to do the fighting." + +And he left her. + +Rhoda's first movement was to capture Miss Quincey's hand as it wildly +reconnoitred for a pocket handkerchief among the pillows. + +"Don't worry about it," she said, "I'll speak to Miss Cursiter." + +Dr. Cautley, enduring a perfunctory five minutes with Mrs. Moon, could +hear Miss Vivian running downstairs and the front door opening and +closing upon her. With a little haste and discretion he managed to +overtake her before she had gone very far. He stopped to give his verdict +on her friend. + +She had expected him. + +"Well," she asked, "it _is_ overwork, isn't it?" + +"Very much overwork; and no wonder. I knew she was a St. Sidwell's woman +as soon as I saw her." + +"That was clever of you. And do you always know a St. Sidwell's woman +when you see one?" + +"I do; they all go like this, more or less. It seems to me that St. +Sidwell's sacrifices its women to its girls, and its girls to itself. I +don't imagine you've much to do with the place, so you won't mind my +saying so." + +Rhoda smiled a little maliciously. + +"You seem to take a great deal for granted. As it happens I am Classical +Mistress there." + +Dr. Cautley looked at her and bit his lip. He was annoyed with himself +for his blunder and with her for being anything but Rhoda Vivian--pure +and simple. + +Rhoda laughed frankly at his confusion. + +"Never mind. Appearances are deceitful. I'm glad I don't look like it." + +"You certainly do not. Still, Miss Quincey is a warning to anybody." + +"She? She was never fit for the life." + +"No. Your race is to the swift and your battle to the strong." + +He was still looking at her as he spoke. She was looking straight before +her, her nostrils slightly distended, her grey eyes wide, as if she +sniffed the battle, saw the goal. + +"We must make her strong," said he. + +She had quickened her pace as if under a renewed impulse of energy and +will. Suddenly at the door of the College she stopped and held out her +hand. + +"You will look after her well, will you not?" Her voice was resonant on +the note of appeal. + +Now you could withstand Rhoda in her domineering mood if you were strong +enough and cool enough; but when she looked straight through your eyes in +that way she was irresistible. Cautley did not attempt to resist her. + +He went on his way thinking how intolerable the question might have been +in some one else's mouth; how suggestive of impertinent coquetry, the +beautiful woman's assumption that he would do for her what he would not +do for insignificant Miss Quincey. She had taken it for granted that his +interest in Miss Quincey was supreme. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Healers and Regenerators + + +Rhoda had spoken to Miss Cursiter. Nobody ever knew what she said to +her, but the next day Miss Cursiter's secretary had the pleasure to +inform Miss Quincey that she would have leave of absence for three +months, and that her place would be kept for her. + +Miss Quincey had become a person of importance. Old Martha fumbled about, +unnaturally attentive, even Mrs. Moon acknowledged Juliana's right to be +ill if her foolish mind were set on it. There was nothing active or +spontaneous in the Old Lady's dislike of her niece, it was simply a habit +she had got. + +An agreeable sense of her dignity stole in on the little woman of no +account. She knew and everybody knew that hers was no vulgar illness. +It was brain exhaustion; altogether a noble and transcendental +affair; Miss Quincey was a victim of the intellectual life. In all the +five-and-twenty years she had worked there St. Sidwell's had never heard +so much about Miss Quincey's brain. And on her part Miss Quincey was +surprised to find that she had so many friends. Day after day the +teachers left their cards and sympathy; the girls sent flowers with love; +there were even messages of inquiry from Miss Cursiter. And not only +flowers and sympathy, but more solid testimonials poured in from St. +Sidwell's, parcels which by some curious coincidence contained everything +that Dr. Cautley had suggested and Miss Quincey refused on the grounds +that she "couldn't fancy it." For a long time Miss Quincey was supremely +happy in the belief that these delicacies were sent by the Head; and she +said to herself that one had only to be laid aside a little while for +one's worth to be appreciated. It was as if a veil of blessed illusion +had been spread between her and her world; and nobody knew whose fingers +had been busy in weaving it so close and fine. + +Dr. Cautley came every day and always at the same time. At first he was +pretty sure to find Miss Vivian, sitting with Miss Quincey or drinking +tea in perilous intimacy with Mrs. Moon. Then came a long spell when, +time it as he would, he never saw her at all. Rhoda had taken it into her +head to choose six o'clock for her visits, and at six he was bound to be +at home for consultations. But Rhoda or no Rhoda, he kept his promise. He +was looking well after Miss Quincey. He would have done that as a matter +of course; for his worst enemies--and he had several--could not say that +Cautley ever neglected his poorer patients. Only he concentrated or +dissipated himself according to the nature of the case, giving five +minutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours to +Miss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; his +spirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you would +have thought that Miss Quincey's case was one of exquisite interest, +rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on her +recovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We _must_ get you +well, Miss Quincey," his manner implied that it would be a very serious +thing for the universe if Miss Quincey did not get well. When he looked +at her his eyes seemed to be taking her in, taking her in, seeing nothing +in all the world but her. + +As it happened, sooner than anybody expected Miss Quincey did get well. +Mrs. Moon was the first to notice that. She hailed Juliana's recovery as +a sign of grace, of returning allegiance to the memory of Tollington +Moon. + +"Now," said the Old Lady, "I hope we've seen the last of Dr. Cautley." + +"Of course we have," said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, but +everybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returning +health. "What should he come for?" + +"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don't imagine he comes for the +pleasure of seeing _you_?" + +"I never imagine anything," said the little arithmetic teacher with some +truth. + +But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theory +was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young +men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He +kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well; +and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to +see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be passing," or +"to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of +light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to +supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that +you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, +sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if +these things were not the most expensive. + +All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard +imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious +disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with +time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed +that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her +for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was +always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells +of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_, +and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress +with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr. +Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_." + +"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life." + +It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of +adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the +realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson +and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what +could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled +extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets +and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to +make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his +light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like the +punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this +young man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose names +had never penetrated to St. Sidwell's. Some days he was really dreadful; +he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of his +unbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of +_In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines have +gone. + +Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave him +a copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's," +and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers and +regenerators, and refreshing yourself at the wells of literature. "That +is a beautiful passage," said Miss Quincey. + +He laughed more than ever. + +"Oh yes, beautiful, beautiful. They're to do it in their evenings, are +they? And when they're faint and weary with their day's work?" And he +laughed again quite loud, laughed till Mrs. Moon woke out of a doze and +started as if this world had come to an end and another one had begun. He +was very sorry, and he begged a thousand pardons; but, really, that +passage was unspeakably funny. He didn't know that Miss Cursiter had such +a rich vein of humour in her. For the life of her Miss Quincey could not +see what there was to laugh at, nor why she should be teased about +Tennyson and bantered on the subject of Browning; but she enjoyed it all +the same. He was so young; he was like a big schoolboy throwing stones +into the living wells of literature and watching for the splash; it did +her good to look at him. So she looked, smiling her starved smile and +snatching a fearful joy from his profane conversation. + +There were moments when she asked herself how he came to be there at all; +he was so out-of-place somehow. The Moons and Quinceys denounced him as a +stranger and intruder; the very chairs and tables had memories, +associations that rejected him; everything in the room suggested the same +mystic antagonism; it was as if Mrs. Moon and all her household gods were +in league against him. Oddly enough this attitude of theirs heightened +her sense of intimacy with him, made him hers and no one else's for the +time. The pleasure she took in his society had some of the peculiar +private ecstasy of sin. + +And Mrs. Moon wondered what the young man was going to charge for that +little visit; and what the total of his account would be. She said that +if Juliana didn't give him a hint, she would be obliged to speak to him +herself; and at that Juliana looked frightened and begged that Mrs. Moon +would do nothing of the kind. "There will be no charge for friendly +visits," said she; and she made a rapid calculation in the top of her +head. Nineteen visits at, say, seven-and-six a visit, would come to +exactly nine pounds nine and sixpence. And she smiled; possibly she +thought it was worth it. + +And really those friendly visits had sometimes an ambiguous character; he +dragged his profession into them by the head and shoulders. He had left +off scribbling prescriptions, but he would tell her what to take in a +light and literary way, as if it was just part of their very interesting +conversation. Browning was bitter and bracing, he was like iron and +quinine, and by the way she had better take a little of both. Then when +he met her again he would ask, "Have you been taking any more Browning, +Miss Quincey?" and while Miss Quincey owned with a blush that she had, he +would look at her and say she wanted a change--a little Tennyson and a +lighter tonic; strychnine and arsenic was the thing. + +And Mrs. Moon still wondered. "I never saw anything like the indelicacy +of that young man," said she. "You're running up a pretty long bill, I +can tell you." + +Oh, yes, a long, long bill; for we pay heavily for our pleasures in this +sad world, Juliana! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Spring Fashions + + +Winter had come and gone, and spring found Miss Quincey back again at St. +Sidwell's, the place of illumination; a place that knew rather less of +her than it had known before. After five-and-twenty years of constant +attendance she had only to be away three months to be forgotten. The new +staff was not greatly concerned with Miss Quincey; it was always busy. As +for the girls, they were wholly given over to the new worship of Rhoda +Vivian; impossible to rouse them to the faintest interest in Miss +Quincey. + +Her place had been kept for her by Rhoda. Rhoda had put out the strong +young arm that she was so proud of, and held back for a little while Miss +Quincey's fate; and now at all costs she was determined to stand between +her and the truth. So Miss Quincey never knew that it was Rhoda who was +responsible for the delicate attentions she had received during her +illness; Rhoda who had bought and sent off the presents from St. +Sidwell's; Rhoda who had conceived that pretty little idea of flowers +"with love"; and Rhoda who had inspired the affectionate messages of the +staff. (The Classical Mistress had to draw most extravagantly on her +popularity in order to work that fraud.) Rhoda had taken her place, and +it was not in Rhoda's power to give it back to her. But Miss Quincey +never saw it; for a subtler web than that of Rhoda's spinning was woven +about her eyes. + +Possibly in some impressive and inapparent way her unhappy little +favourite Laura Lazarus may have been glad to see her back again, though +the two queer creatures exchanged no greeting more intimate than an +embarrassed smile. In this rapidly-advancing world the Mad Hatter alone +remained where Miss Quincey had left her. She explained at some length +how the figures twisted themselves round in her head and would never stay +the same for a minute together. Miss Quincey listened patiently to this +explanation; she was more indulgent, less persistent than before. + +Under that veil of illusion she herself had become communicative. She +went up and down between the classes and poured out her soul as to an +audience all interest, all sympathy. There was a certain monotony about +her conversation since the epoch of her illness. It was, "Oh yes, I am +quite well now, thank you. Dr. Cautley is so very clever. Dr. Cautley has +taken splendid care of me. Dr. Cautley has been so very kind and +attentive, I think it would be ungrateful of me if I had not got well. +Dr. Cautley--" Perhaps it was just as well for Miss Quincey that the +staff were too busy to attend to her. The most they noticed was that in +the matter of obstruction Miss Quincey was not quite so precipitate as +she had been. She offended less by violent contact and rebound than by +drifting absently into the processions and getting mixed up with them. + +Rhoda saw a change in her; Rhoda was never too busy to spare a thought +for Miss Quincey. "Yes," she said, "you _are_ better. Your eyes are +brighter." + +"That," said Miss Quincey, with simple pride "is the arsenic. Dr. Cautley +is giving me arsenic." + +Now arsenic (like happiness) has some curious properties. It looks most +innocently like sugar, which it is not. A little of it goes a long way +and undoubtedly acts as a tonic; a little more may undermine the stoutest +constitution, and a little too much of it is a deadly poison and kills +you. As yet Miss Quincey had only taken it in microscopic doses. +Something had changed her; it may have been happiness, it may have been +illusion; whatever it was Miss Quincey thought it was the arsenic--if it +was not the weather, the very remarkable weather. For that year Spring +came with a burst. + +Indeed there is seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure and +gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a +hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she +has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless of +delicacies and shades, relying on broad telling strokes, on strong +outlines and stinging contrasts. She is like a clever artist handicapped +with her materials. Only a patch of grass, a few trees and the sky; but +you wake one morning and the boughs are drawn black and bold against the +blue; and leaves are sharp as emeralds against the black; and the grass +in the squares and the shrubs in the gardens repeat the same brilliant +extravaganza; and it is all very eccentric and beautiful and daring. That +is the way of a Cockney Spring, and when you are used to it the charm is +undeniable. + +One day Miss Quincey walked in Camden Town and noted the singular +caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, +stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden +Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young +fashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window +blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form. +There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that you +could have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eye +would be to wrong that maidenly garment. There was nothing blatant, +nothing importunate in its behaviour. Gently, imperceptibly, it stole +into the field of vision and stood there, delicately alluring. It could +afford to wait. It had not even any pattern to speak of, only an +indefinable white something, a dice, a diaper, a sprig. It was the sprig +that touched her, tempted her. + +Amongst the poorer ranks of Miss Quincey's profession the sumptuary laws +are exceptionally severe. It is a crime, a treachery, to spend money on +mere personal adornment. You are clothed, not for beauty's sake, but +because the rigour of the climate and of custom equally require it. Miss +Quincey's conscience pricked her all the time that she stood looking in +at Hunter's window. Never before had she suffered so terrible a +solicitation of the senses. It was as if all those dim and germinal +desires had burst and blossomed in this sinful passion for a blouse. She +resisted, faltered, resisted; turned away and turned back again. The +blouse sat immovable on its wooden bust, absolute in its policy of +reticence. Miss Quincey had just decided that it had a thought too much +mauve in it, and was most successfully routing desire by depreciation of +its object when a shopman stepped on to the stage, treading airily among +the gauzes and the flowers. There was no artifice about the young man; it +was in the dreamiest abstraction that he clasped that fair form round the +collar and turned it to the light. It shuddered like a living thing; its +violent mauve vanished in silver grey. The effect was irresistible. Miss +Quincey was tempted beyond all endurance; and she fell. Once in +possession of the blouse, its price, a guinea, paid over the counter, +Miss Quincey was all discretion. She carried her treasure home in a +pasteboard box concealed under her cape; lest its shameless arrival in +Hunter's van should excite scandal and remark. + +That night, behind a locked door, Miss Quincey sat up wrestling and +battling with her blouse. To Miss Quincey in the watches of the night it +seemed that a spirit of obstinate malevolence lurked in that deceitful +garment. Like all the things in Hunter's shop, it was designed for +conventional well-rounded womanhood. It repudiated the very idea of Miss +Quincey; in every fold it expressed its contempt for her person; its +collar was stiff with an invincible repugnance. Miss Quincey had to take +it in where it went out, and let it out where it went in, to pinch, pull, +humour and propitiate it before it would consent to cling to her +diminished figure. When all was done she wrapped it in tissue paper and +hid it away in a drawer out of sight, for the very thought of it +frightened her. But when next she went to look at it she hardly knew it +again. The malignity seemed all smoothed out of it; it lay there with its +meek sleeves folded, the very picture of injured innocence and reproach. +Miss Quincey thought she might get reconciled to it in time. A day might +even come when she would be brave enough to wear it. + +Not many days after, Miss Quincey might have been seen coming out of St. +Sidwell's with a reserved and secret smile playing about her face; so +secret and so reserved, that nobody, not even Miss Quincey, could tell +what it was playing at. + +Miss Quincey was meditating an audacity. + +That night she took pen and paper up to her bedroom and sat down to write +a little note. Sat down to write it and got up again; wrote it and tore +it up, and sat down to write another. This she left open for such +emendations and improvements as should occur to her in the night. Perhaps +none did occur; perhaps she realized that a literary work loses its force +and spontaneity in conscious elaboration; anyhow the note was put up just +as it was and posted first thing in the morning at the pillar-box on her +way to St. Sidwell's. + +Old Martha was cleaning the steps as Miss Quincey went out; but Miss +Quincey carefully avoided looking Martha's way. Like the ostrich she +supposed that if she did not see Martha, Martha could not see her. But +Martha had seen her. She saw everything. She had seen the note open on +Miss Juliana's table by the window in the bedroom when she was drawing up +the blind; she had seen the silk blouse lying in its tissue paper when +she was tidying Miss Juliana's drawer; and that very afternoon she +discovered a certain cake deposited by Miss Juliana in the dining-room +cupboard with every circumstance of secrecy and disguise. + +And Martha shook her old head and put that and that together, the blouse, +the cake and the letter; though what connection there could possibly be +between the three was more than Miss Juliana could have told her. Even to +Martha the association was so singular that it pointed to some painful +aberration of intellect on Miss Juliana's part. + +As in duty bound, Martha brought up her latest discovery and laid it +before Mrs. Moon. Beyond that she said nothing, indeed there was nothing +to be said. The cake (it was of the expensive pound variety, crowned with +a sugar turret and surrounded with almond fortifications) spoke for +itself, though in an unknown language. + +"What does that mean, Martha?" + +"Miss Juliana, m'm, I suppose." + +Martha pursed up her lips, suppressing the impertinence of her own +private opinion and awaiting her mistress's with respect. + +No doubt she would have heard it but that Miss Juliana happened to come +in at that moment, and Mrs. Moon's attention was distracted by the really +amazing spectacle presented by her niece. And Miss Juliana, who for +five-and-twenty years had never appeared in anything but frowsy drab or +dingy grey, Miss Juliana flaunting in silk at four o'clock in the +afternoon, Miss Juliana, all shining and shimmering like a silver and +mauve chameleon, was a sight to take anybody's breath away. Martha dearly +loved a scene, for to be admitted to a scene was to be admitted to her +mistress's confidence; but the excellent woman knew her place, and before +that flagrant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from a +family scandal. + +Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had to +cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less +abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of +Dr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact +explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her +hand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural. + +Mrs. Moon restrained her feelings until her niece had moved about a bit, +and sat down by her enemy the cabinet, and presented herself in every +possible aspect. The Old Lady's eyes lost no movement of the curious +figure; when she had taken it in, grasped it in all its details, she +began. + +"Well, I declare, Juliana"--(five-and-twenty years ago she used to call +her "Jooley," keeping the full name to mark disapproval or displeasure. +Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanently +displeased)--"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition of +yourself? (And will you draw your chair back--you're incommoding the +cabinet.) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in _my_ +life--at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig out +of a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you're +very much mistaken." + +That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea--to carry it off; to brazen it +out; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at all +remarkable in her personal appearance. + +"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could stand +that shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn't +mauve-pink." + +"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in Miss +Quincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt could +not look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at that +word. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked in +an awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse shivered as Miss Quincey +trembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns it +paled and flushed its painful pink. They were blushing for each other. +For it _was_ mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now. + +"Turn round!" + +Miss Quincey turned round. + +"Much too young for you! Why, bless me, if it doesn't throw up every bit +of yellow in your face! If you don't believe me, look in the glass." + +Miss Quincey looked in the glass. + +It _did_ throw up the yellow tints. It threw everything up to her. If she +had owned to a little fear of it before, it affected her now with +positive terror. The thing was young, much too young; and it was brutal +and violent in its youth. It was possessed by a perfect demon of +juvenility; it clashed and fought with every object in the room; it made +them all look old, ever so old, and shabby. And as Miss Quincey stood +with it before the looking glass, it flared up and told her to her face +that she was forty-five--forty-five, and looked fifty. + +"Louisa," murmured the Old Lady, "was the only one of our family who +could stand pink." + +"I will give it to Louisa," cried Miss Quincey with a touch of passion. + +"Tchee--tchee!" At that idea the Old Lady chuckled in supreme derision. +"Capers and nonsense! Louisa indeed! Much good it'll do Louisa when +you've been and nipped all the shape out of it to suit yourself. However +you came to be so skimpy and flat-chested is a mystery to me. All the +Quinceys were tall, your uncle Tollington was tall, your father, he was +tall; and your sister, well; I will say this for Louisa, she's as tall as +any of 'em, and she has a _bust_." + +"Yes, I daresay it would have been very becoming to Louisa," said Miss +Quincey humbly. "I--I thought it was lavender." + +"Lavender or no lavender, I'm surprised at you--throwing money away on a +thing like that." + +"I can afford it," said Miss Quincey with the pathetic dignity of the +turning worm. + +Now it was not worm-like subtlety that suggested that reply. It was +positive inspiration. By those simple words Juliana had done something to +remove the slur she was always casting on a certain character. Tollington +Moon had not managed his nieces' affairs so badly after all if one of +them could afford herself extravagances of that sort. The blouse +therefore might be taken as a sign and symbol of his innermost integrity. +So Mrs. Moon was content with but one more parting shot. + +"I don't say you can't afford the money, I say you can't afford the +colour--not at your time of life." + +Two tears that had gathered in Miss Quincey's eyes now fell on the silk, +deepening the mauve-pink to a hideous magenta. + +"I was deceived in the colour," she said as she turned from her +tormentor. + +She toiled upstairs to the back bedroom and took it off. She could never +wear it. It was waste--sheer waste; for no other woman could wear it +either; certainly not Louisa; she had made it useless for Louisa by +paring it down to her own ridiculous dimensions. Louisa was and always +had been a head and shoulders taller than she was; and she had a bust. + +So Miss Quincey came down meek and meagre in the old dress that she +served her for so many seasons, and she looked for peace. But that +terrible old lady had not done with her yet, and the worst was still to +come. + +No longer having any grievance against the blouse, Mrs. Moon was +concentrating her attention on that more mysterious witness to Juliana's +foolishness--the Cake. + +"And now," said she, pointing as she might have pointed to a monument, +"will you kindly tell me the meaning of this?" + +"I expect--perhaps--it is very likely--that Dr. Cautley will come in to +tea this afternoon." + +The Old Lady peered at Miss Quincey and her eyes were sharp as needles, +needles that carried the thread of her thought pretty plainly too, but it +was too fine a thread for Miss Quincey to see. Besides she was looking +at the cake and almost regretting that she had bought it, lest he should +think that it was eating too many of such things that had made her ill. + +"And what put that notion into your head, I should like to know?" + +"He has written to say so." + +"Juliana--you don't mean to tell me that he invited himself?" + +"Well, no. That is--it was an answer to my invitation." + +"_Your_ invitation? You were not content to have that man poking his nose +in here at all hours of the day and night, but you must go out of your +way to send him invitations?" + +"Dr. Cautley has been most kind and attentive, and--I thought--it was +time we paid him some little attention." + +"Attention indeed! I should be very sorry to let any young man suppose +that I paid any attention to him. I should have thought you'd have had a +little more maidenly reserve. Besides, you know perfectly well that I +don't enjoy my tea unless we have it by ourselves." + +Oh yes, she knew; they had been having it that way for five-and-twenty +years. + +"As for that cake," continued the Old Lady, "it's ridiculous. Look at it. +Why, you might just as well have ordered wedding cake at once. I tell you +what it is, Juliana, you're getting quite flighty." + +Flighty? No mind but a feminine one, grown up and trained under the +shadow of St. Sidwell's, could conceive the nature of Miss Quincey's +feelings on being told that she was flighty. She herself made no attempt +to express them. She sat down and gasped, clutching her Browning to give +herself a sense of moral support. All the rest was intelligible, she had +understood and accepted it; but to be told that she, a teacher in St. +Sidwell's, was flighty--the charge was simply confusing to the intellect, +and it left her dumb. + +Flighty? When Martha came in with the tea-tray and she had to order a +knife for the cake and an extra cup for Dr. Cautley, she saw Mrs. Moon +looking at Martha, and Martha looking at Mrs. Moon, and they seemed to be +saying to each other, "How flighty Miss Juliana is getting." + +Flighty? The idea afflicted her to such a degree that when Dr. Cautley +came she had not a word to say to him. + +For a whole week she had looked forward to this tea-drinking with tremors +of joyous expectancy and palpitations of alarm. It was to have been one +of those rare and solitary occasions that can only come once in a blue +moon. The lump sum of pleasure that other people get spread for them more +or less thickly over the surface of the years, she meant to take once for +all, packed and pressed into one rapturous hour, one Saturday afternoon +from four-thirty to five-thirty, the memory of it to be stored up and +economised so as to last her life-time, thus justifying the original +expense. She knew that success was doubtful, because of the uncertainty +of things in general and of the Old Lady's temper in particular. And then +she had to stake everything on his coming; and the chances, allowing for +the inevitable claims on a doctor's time, were a thousand to one against +it. She had nothing to go upon but the delicate incalculable balance of +events. And now, when the blue moon had risen, the impossible thing +happened, and the man had come, he might just as well, in fact a great +deal better, have stayed away. The whole thing was a waste and failure +from beginning to end. The tea was a waste and a failure, for Martha +would bring it in a quarter of an hour too soon; the cake was a waste +and a failure, for nobody ate any of it; and she was a waste and a +failure--she hardly knew why. She cut her cake with trembling fingers and +offered it, blushing as the gash in its side revealed the thoroughly +unwholesome nature of its interior. She felt ashamed of its sugary +artifice, its treacherously festive air, and its embarrassing affinity to +bride's-cake. No wonder that he had no appetite for cake, and that Miss +Quincey had no appetite for conversation. He tried to tempt her with bits +of Browning, but she refused them all. She had lost her interest in +Browning. + +He thought, "She is too tired to talk," and left half an hour sooner than +he had intended. + +She thought, "He is offended. Or else--he thinks me flighty." + +And that was all. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Under a Blue Moon + + +It was early on another Saturday evening, a fortnight after that +disastrous one, and Miss Quincey was taking the air in Primrose Hill +Park. She was walking to keep herself warm, for the breeze was brisk and +cool. There was a little stir and flutter in the trees and a little stir +and flutter in her heart, for she had caught sight of Dr. Cautley in the +distance. He was coming round the corner of one of the intersecting +walks, coming at a frantic pace, with the tails of his frock-coat waving +in the wind. + +He pulled himself up as he neared her and held out a friendly hand. + +"That's right, Miss Quincey. I'm delighted to see you out. You really are +getting strong again, aren't you?" + +"Yes, thank you--very well, very strong." + +Was it her fancy, or did his manner imply that he wanted to sink that +humiliating episode of the tea-party and begin again where they had left +off? It might be so; his courtesy was so infinitely subtle. He had +actually turned and was walking her way now. + +"And how is _Sordello?_" he asked, the tone of his inquiry suggesting +that there was something seriously the matter with _Sordello_. + +"Getting on. Only fifty-six pages more." + +"You _are_ advancing, Miss Quincey--gaining on him by leaps and bounds. +You're not overdoing it, I hope?" + +"Oh no, I read a little in the evenings--I have to keep up to the +standard of the staff. Indeed," she added, turning with a sudden suicidal +panic, "I ought to be at home and working now." + +"What? On a half-holiday? It _is_ a half-holiday?" + +"For some people--not for me." + +His eyes--she could not be mistaken--were taking her in as they had done +before. + +"And why not for you? Do you know, you're looking horribly tired. Suppose +we sit down a bit." + +Miss Quincey admitted that it would be very nice. + +"Hadn't you better put your cape on--the wind's changing." + +She obeyed him. + +"That's hardly a thick enough wrap for this weather, is it?" + +She assured him it was very warm, very comfortable. + +"Do you know what I would like to do with you, Miss Quincey?" + +"No." + +"I should like to pack you off somewhere--anywhere--for another three +months' holiday." + +"Another three months! What would my pupils do, and what would Miss +Cursiter say?" + +It was part of the illusion that she conceived herself to be +indispensable to Miss Cursiter. + +"Confound Miss Cursiter!" + +Evidently he felt strongly on the subject of Miss Cursiter. He confounded +her with such energy that the seat provided for them by the London County +Council vibrated under it. He stared sulkily out over the park a moment; +he gave his cuffs a hitch as if he were going to fight somebody, and +then--he let himself go. + +At a blind headlong pace, lashing himself up as he went, falling +furiously on civilization, the social order, women's education and +women's labour, the system that threw open all doors to them, and let +them be squeezed and trampled down together in the crush. He was ready to +take the nineteenth century by the throat and strangle it; he squared +himself against the universe. + +"What," said Miss Quincey, "do you not believe in equal chances for men +and women?" She was eager to redeem herself from the charge of +flightiness. + +"Equal chances? I daresay. But not unequal work. The work must be unequal +if the conditions are unequal. It's not the same machine. To turn a woman +on to a man's work is like trying to run an express train by clock-work, +with a pendulum for a piston, and a hairspring for steam." + +Miss Quincey timidly hinted that the question was a large one, that there +was another side to it. + +"Of course there is; there are fifty sides to it; but there are too many +people looking at the other forty-nine for my taste. I loathe a crowd." + +Stirred by a faint _esprit de corps_ Miss Quincey asked him if he did not +believe in the open door for women? + +He said, "It would be kinder to shut it in their faces." + +She threw in a word about the women's labour market--the enormous demand. + +He said that only meant that women's labour could be bought cheap and +sold dear. + +She sighed. + +"But women must do something--surely you see the necessity?" + +He groaned. + +"Oh yes. It's just the necessity that I do see--the damnable necessity. I +only protest against the preventable evil. If you must turn women into so +many machines, for Heaven's sake treat them like machines. You don't work +an engine when it's undergoing structural alterations--because, you know, +you can't. Your precious system recognises no differences. It sets up the +same absurd standard for every woman, the brilliant genius and the +average imbecile. Which is not only morally odious but physiologically +fatuous. There must be one of two results--either the average imbeciles +are sacrificed by thousands to a dozen or so of brilliant geniuses, or +it's the other way about." + +"Whichever way it is," said Miss Quincey, with her back, so to speak, to +the wall, "it's all part of civilization, of our intellectual progress." + +"They're not the same thing. And it isn't civilization, it's intellectual +savagery. It isn't progress either, it's a blind rush, an inhuman +scrimmage--the very worst form of the struggle for existence. It doesn't +even mean survival of the intellectually fittest. It develops +monstrosities. It defeats its own ends by brutalising the intellect +itself. And the worst enemies of women are women. I swear, if I were a +woman, I'd rather do without an education than get it at that price. Or +I'd educate myself. After all, that's the way of the fittest--the one in +a thousand." + +"Do you not approve of educated women then?" Miss Quincey was quite +shaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering of +the old beacons and landmarks. + +He stared into the distance. + +"Oh yes, I approve of them when they are really educated--not when +they are like that. You won't get the flower of womanhood out of a +forcing-house like St. Sidwell's; though I daresay it produces pumpkins +to perfection." + +What did he say to Miss Vivian then? Miss Quincey could not think badly +of a system that could produce women like Miss Vivian. + +A cloud came over his angry eyes as they stared into the distance. + +"That's it. It hasn't produced them. They have produced it." + +Miss Quincey smiled. Evidently consistency was not to be expected of this +young man. He was so young, and so irresponsible and passionate. She +admired him for it; and not only for that; she admired him--she could not +say exactly why, but she thought it was because he had such a beautiful, +bumpy, intellectual forehead. And as she sat beside him and shook to that +vibrating passion of his, she felt as if the blue moon had risen again +and was shining through the trees of the park; and she was happy, +absolutely, indubitably happy and safe; for she felt that he was her +friend and her protector and the defender of her cause. It was for her +that he raged and maddened and behaved himself altogether so +unreasonably. + +Now as it happened, Cautley did champion certain theories which Miss +Cursiter, when she met them, denounced as physiologist's fads. But it was +not they, nor yet Miss Quincey, that accounted for his display of +feeling. He was angry because he wanted to come to a certain +understanding with the Classical Mistress; to come to it at once; and the +system kept him waiting. It was robbing him of Rhoda, and Rhoda of her +youth. Meanwhile Rhoda was superbly happy at St. Sidwell's, playing at +being Pallas Athene; as for checking her midway in her brilliant career, +that was not to be thought of for an instant. + +The flower of womanhood--it was the flower of life. He had never seen a +woman so invincibly and superlatively alive. Cautley deified life; and in +his creed, which was simplicity itself, life and health were one; health +the sole source of strength, intelligence and beauty, of all divine and +perfect possibilities. At least that was how he began. But three years' +practice in London had somewhat strained the faith of the young devotee. +He soon found himself in the painful position of a priest who no longer +believes in his deity; overheard himself asking whether health was not an +unattainable ideal; then declaring that life itself was all a matter of +compromise; finally coming to the conclusion that the soul of things was +Neurosis. + +Beyond that he refused to commit himself to any theory of the universe. +He even made himself unpleasant. A clerical patient would approach him +with conciliatory breadth, and say: "I envy you, Cautley; I envy your +marvellous experience. Your opportunities are greater than mine. And +sometimes, do you know, I think you see deeper into the work of the +Maker." And Cautley would shrug his shoulders and smile in the good man's +face, and say, "The Maker! I can only tell you I'm tired of mending the +work of the Maker." Yet the more he doubted the harder he worked; though +his world spun round and round, shrieking like a clock running down, and +he had persuaded himself that all he could do was to wind up the crazy +wheels for another year or so. Which all meant that Cautley was working a +little too hard and running down himself. He had begun to specialize in +gynecology and it increased his scepticism. + +Then suddenly, one evening, when he least looked for it, least wanted it, +he saw his divinity incarnate. Rhoda had appealed to him as the supreme +expression of Nature's will to live. That was the instantaneous and +visible effect of her. Rhoda was the red flower on the tree of life. + +At St. Sidwell's, that great forcing-house, they might grow some +vegetables to perfection; whether it was orchids or pumpkins he neither +knew nor cared; but he defied them to produce anything like that. He was +sorry for the vegetables, the orchids and the pumpkins; and he was sorry +for Miss Quincey, who was neither a pumpkin nor an orchid, but only a +harmless little withered leaf. Not a pleasant leaf, the sort that goes +dancing along, all crisp and curly, in the arms of the rollicking wind; +but the sort that the same wind kicks into a corner, to lie there till it +rots and comes in handy as leaf mould for the forcing-house. Rhoda's +friend was not like Rhoda; yet because the leaf may distantly suggest the +rose, he liked to sit and talk to her and think about the most beautiful +woman in the world. To any other man conversation with Miss Quincey would +have been impossible; for Miss Quincey in normal health was uninteresting +when she was not absurd. But to Cautley at all times she was simply +heart-rending. + +For this young man with the irritable nerves and blasphemous temper had +after all a divine patience at the service of women, even the foolish and +hysterical; because like their Maker he knew whereof they were made. This +very minute the queer meta-physical thought had come to him that somehow, +in the infinite entanglement of things, such women as Miss Quincey were +perpetually being sacrificed to such women as Rhoda Vivian. It struck him +that Nature had made up for any little extra outlay in one direction by +cruel pinching in another. It was part of her rigid economy. She was not +going to have any bills running up against her at the other end of the +universe. Nature had indulged in Rhoda Vivian and she was making Miss +Quincey pay. + +He wondered if that notion had struck Rhoda Vivian too, and if she were +trying to make up for it. He had noticed that Miss Quincey had the power +(if you could predicate power of such a person), a power denied to him, +of drawing out the woman-hood of the most beautiful woman in the world; +some infinite tenderness in Rhoda answered to the infinite absurdity in +her. He was not sure that her attitude to Miss Quincey was not the most +beautiful thing about her. He had begun by thinking about the colour of +Rhoda's eyes. He could not for the life of him remember whether they were +blue or green, till something (Miss Quincey's eyes perhaps) reminded him +that they were grey, pure grey, without a taint of green or a shadow of +blue in them. That was what his mind was running on as he looked into the +distance and Miss Quincey imagined that his bumpy intellectual forehead +was bulging with great thoughts. And now Miss Quincey supplied a +convenient pivot for the wild gyrations of his wrath. He got up and with +his hands behind his back he seemed to be lashing himself into a fury +with his coat-tail. + +"The whole thing is one-sided and artificial and absurd. Bad enough for +men, but fatal for women. Any system that unfits them for their proper +functions--" + +"And do we know--have we decided--yet--what they are?" Miss Quincey was +anxious to sustain her part in the dialogue with credit. + +He stared, not at the distance but at her. + +"Why, surely," he said more gently, "to be women first--to be wives and +mothers." + +She drew her cape a little closer round her and turned from him with +half-shut eyes. She seemed at once to be protecting herself against +his theory and blinding her sight to her own perishing and thwarted +woman-hood. + +"All Nature is against it," he said. + +"Nature?" she repeated feebly. + +"Yes, Nature; and she'll go her own way in spite of all the systems that +ever were. Don't you know---you are a teacher, so you ought to know--that +overstrain of the higher faculties is sometimes followed by astonishing +demonstrations on the part of Nature?" + +Miss Quincey replied that no cases of the kind had come under _her_ +notice. + +"Well--your profession ought to go hand-in-hand with mine. If you only +saw the half of what we see--But you only see the process; we get the +results. By the way I must go and look at some of them." + +His words echoed madly in a feverish little brain, "Ought to +go--hand-in-hand--hand-in-hand with mine." + +"Nature can be very cruel," said she. + +Something in her tone recalled him from his flight. He stood looking down +at her, thoughtful and pitiful. "And Nature can be very kind; kinder than +we are. You are a case in point. Nature is trying to make you well +against your will. A little more rest--a little more exercise--a little +more air--" + +She smiled. Yes, a little more of all the things she wanted and had never +had. That was what her smile said in its soft and deprecating bitterness. + +He held out his hand, and she too rose, shivering a little in her thin +dress. + +She was the first to hurry away. + +He looked after her small figure, noted her nervous gait and the agitated +movement of her hand as the streamers on her poor cape flapped and +fluttered, the sport of the unfeeling wind. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A Painful Misunderstanding + + +And now, on early evenings and Saturday afternoons when the weather was +fine, Miss Quincey was to be found in Primrose Hill Park. Not that +anybody ever came to look for Miss Quincey. Nevertheless, whether she was +walking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had a +certain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearing +round the corner with his coat-tails flying, or as if she might look up +and find him sitting beside her and talking to her. But he did not come. +There are some histories that never repeat themselves. + +And he had never called since that day--Miss Quincey remembered it well; +it was Saturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she had +not seen him now for more than two months; and she began to think there +must be a reason for it. + +At last she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park where +they had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past that +part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. +Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but he +never raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. And +yet he had recognised her; there could be no possible doubt of it. + +Depend upon it there was a reason for _that_. Miss Quincey was one of +those innocent people who believe that every variety of human behaviour +must have a reason (as if only two months ago she had not been favoured +with the spectacle of an absolutely unreasonable young man). To be sure +it was not easy to find one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, and +in any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. +Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, +a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of Camden +Street North it looked ominous indeed. Not that her faith in Bastian +Cautley wavered for an instant. Because Bastian Cautley was what he was, +he could never be guilty of spontaneous discourtesy; on the other hand, +she had seen that he could be fierce enough on provocation; therefore, +she argued, he had some obscure ground of offence against her. + +Miss Quincey passed a sleepless night reasoning about the reason, a +palpitating never-ending night, without a doze or a dream in it or so +much as the winking of an eyelid. She reasoned about it for a week +between the classes, and in her spare time (when she had any) in the +evening (thus running into debt to _Sordello_ again). At the end of the +week Miss Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; every +thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She +saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible +mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but +irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the +bottom of it--or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of +giving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied that +for the future all accounts with him were closed? Had he called on Mrs. +Moon and been received with crushing hostility? Or had Martha permitted +herself to say that she, Miss Quincey, was out when perhaps he knew for a +positive fact that she was in? But she soon dismissed these conjectures +as inadequate and fell back on her original hypothesis. + +And all the time the Old Lady's eyes, and her voice too, were sharper +than ever; from the corner where she dreamed she watched Miss Quincey +incessantly between the dreams. At times the Old Lady was shaken with +terrible and mysterious mirth. Bastian Cautley began to figure +fantastically in her conversation. Her ideas travelled by slow trains of +association that started from nowhere but always arrived at Bastian +Cautley as a terminus. If Juliana had a headache Mrs. Moon supposed that +she wanted that young man to be dancing attendance on her again; if +Juliana sighed she declared that Dr. Cautley was a faithless swain who +had forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered when +Dr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. +Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery now +crumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in its +side and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey with +all sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts of +Teenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to his +father, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything but +Greek, and Miss Quincey remarked that if she had children she wouldn't +bring them up so, the Old Lady laughed--"Tchee--Tchee! We all know about +old maids' children." Miss Quincey said nothing to that; but she hardened +her heart against Louisa's children, and against Louisa's husband and +Louisa. She couldn't think how Louisa could have married such a dreadful +little man as Andrew Mackinnon, with his unmistakable accent and +problematical linen. The gentle creature who had never said a harsh word +to anybody in her life became mysteriously cross and captious. She +hardened her heart even to little Laura Lazarus. + +And one morning when she came upon the Mad Hatter in her corner of the +class-room, and found her adding two familiar columns of figures together +and adding them all wrong, Miss Quincey was very cross and very captious +indeed. The Mad Hatter explained at more length than ever that the +figures twisted themselves about; they wouldn't stay still a minute so +that she could hold them; they were always going on and on, turning over +and over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, +trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; you +could go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you could +even--here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, for +Laura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will--you could +even think with them, if you knew how; in short you could do anything +with them but turn them into sums. And as all this was very confusing to +the intellect Miss Quincey became crosser than ever. And while Miss +Quincey quivered all over with irritability, the Mad Hatter paid no heed +whatever to her instructions, but thrust forward a small yellow face that +was all nose and eyes, and gazed at Miss Quincey like one possessed by a +spirit of divination. + +"Have you got a headache, Miss Quincey?" she inquired on hearing herself +addressed for the third time as "Stupid child!" + +Miss Quincey relied tartly that no, she had not got a headache. The Mad +Hatter appeared to be absorbed in tracing rude verses on her rough +notebook with a paralytic pencil. + +"I'm sorry; because then you must be unhappy. When people are cross," she +continued, "it means one of two things. Either their heads ache or they +are unhappy. You must be very unhappy. I know all about it." The +paralytic pencil wavered and came to a full stop. "You like somebody, and +so somebody has made you unhappy." + +But for the shame of it, Miss Quincey could have put her head down on the +desk and cried as she had seen the Mad Hatter cry over her sums, and for +the same reason; because she could not put two and two together. + +And what Mrs. Moon saw, what Martha saw, what the Mad Hatter divined with +her feverish, precocious brain, Rhoda Vivian could not fail to see. It +was Dr. Cautley's business to look after Miss Quincey in her illness, and +it was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantly +report the slightest threatening of a break-down. Miss Quincey's somewhat +eccentric behaviour filled her with misgivings; and in order to +investigate her case at leisure, she chose the first afternoon when Miss +Cursiter was not at home to ask the little arithmetic teacher to lunch. + +After Rhoda's lunch, soothed with her sympathy and hidden, not to say +extinguished, in an enormous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked into +the right mood for confidences; indeed she was in that state of mind when +they rush out of their own accord in the utter exhaustion of the will. + +"Are you sure you are perfectly well?" so Rhoda began her inquiry. + +"Perfectly, perfectly--in myself," said Miss Quincey, "I think, +perhaps--that is, sometimes I'm a little afraid that taking so much +arsenic may have disagreed with me. You know it is a deadly poison. But +I've left it off lately, so I ought to be better--unless perhaps I'm +feeling the want of it." + +"You are not worrying about St. Sidwell's--about your work?" + +"It's not that--not that. But to tell you the truth, I _am_ worried, +Rhoda. For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost a +friend. It's a hard thing," said Miss Quincey, "to lose a friend." + +"Oh, I am sure--Do you mean Miss Cursiter?" + +"No, I do not mean Miss Cursiter." + +"Do you mean--me then? Not me?" + +"You, dear child? Never. To be plain--this is in confidence, Rhoda--I am +speaking of Dr. Cautley." + +"Dr. Cautley?" + +"Yes. I do not know what I have done, or how I have offended him, but he +has not been near me for over two months." + +"Perhaps he has been busy--in fact, I know he has." + +"He has always been busy. It is not that. It is something--well, I hardly +care to speak of it, it has been so very painful. My dear"--Miss +Quincey's voice sank to an awful whisper--"he has cut me in the street." + +"Oh, I know--he _will_ do it; he has done it to all his patients. He is +so dreadfully absent-minded." + +If Miss Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, +she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, she +said with superior conviction, "My dear, I _know_ Dr. Cautley. He has +never cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason. There +has been some awful mistake. If I only knew what I had done!" + +"You've done nothing. I wouldn't worry if I were you." + +"I can't help worrying. You don't know, Rhoda. The bitter and terrible +part of this friendship is, and always has been, that I am under +obligations to Dr. Cautley. I owe everything to him; I cannot tell you +what he has done for me, and here I am, not allowed, and I never shall be +allowed, to do anything for him." A sob struggled in Miss Quincey's +throat. + +Rhoda was silent. Did she know? Very dimly, with a mere intellectual +perception, but still a great deal better than the little arithmetic +teacher could have told her, she understood the desire of that innocent +person, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay down +her life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be consumed in +sacrifice. And the bitter and terrible thing was that she was not allowed +to do it. The friend had no use for the life, the deity no appetite for +the sacrifice. + +"Don't think about it," she said; it seemed the best thing to say in the +singular circumstances. "It will all come right." + +By this time Miss Quincey had got the better of the sob in her throat. +"It may," she replied with dignity; "but I shall not be the first to make +advances." + +"Advances? Rather not. But if I thought he was thinking things--he isn't, +you know, he's not that sort; still, if I thought it I should have it out +with him." + +"How could you have it--'out with him'?" + +"Oh I should just ask him what he thought of me; or better still, tell +him what I thought of him." + +Miss Quincey shrank visibly from the bold suggestion. + +"Would you? Oh, that would never do. You won't mind my saying so, but I +think it would look a little indelicate. Of course it would be very +different if it were a woman; if it were you for instance." + +"I should do it any way. It's the straightest thing." + +"I daresay, dear, in your friendships it is. But I think you can hardly +judge of this. You do not know Dr. Cautley as I do." + +"No," said Rhoda meekly, "perhaps I don't." Not for worlds would she have +destroyed that beautiful illusion. + +"It has been," continued Miss Quincey, "a very peculiar, a very +interesting relationship. Strange too--considering. If you had asked me +six months ago I should have told you that the thing was impossible, or +rather, that in nine cases out of ten--I mean I should have said it was +highly improbable that Dr. Cautley would take the faintest interest in +me, let alone like me." + +"He does like you, dear Miss Quincey, I know he does." + +"How do you know?" + +"He told me so." (Miss Quincey quivered and a faint flush worked up +through the sallow of her cheek.) "And I'm sure he would be most +distressed to think you were unhappy." + +"It is not unhappiness; certainly not unhappiness. On the contrary I have +been happy, quite happy lately. And I think it has been bad for me. I +wasn't used to it. Perhaps, if it had happened five-and-twenty years +ago--Do not misunderstand me, I am merely speaking of friendship, dear; +but it might--I mean I might--" + +Far back in the chair and favoured by Rhoda's silence, Miss Quincey +dropped into a dream. Presently she woke up as it were with a start. + +"What am I thinking of? Let us be reasonable; let us reduce it to +figures. Forty-five--thirty--he is thirty. Take twenty-five from thirty +and five remain. Why, Rhoda, he would have been--" + +They looked at each other, but neither said: "He would have been five +years old." + +Miss Quincey seemed quite prostrated by the result of her calculations. +To everything that Rhoda could urge to soothe her she answered steadily: + +"You do not know him as I do." + +The voice was not Miss Quincey's voice; it was the monotonous, melancholy +voice of the Fixed Idea. + +Her knowledge of him. After all, nothing could take from her the +exquisite privacy of that possession. + + * * * * * + +"_Eros anikate machan_," said Rhoda. + +Miss Quincey was gone and the Classical Mistress was in school again, +coaching a backward student through the "Antigone." + +"Oh Love, unconquered in fight. Love who--Love who fliest, who fliest +about among things," said the student. And the teacher laughed. + +Laughed, for the entertaining blunder called up a vivid image of the god +in Miss Quincey's drawing-room, fluttering about among the furniture and +doing terrific damage with his wings. + +"What's wrong?" asked the student. + +"Oh nothing; only a slight confusion between flying about and falling +upon. 'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'; please go on." + +"'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'--" The chorus mumbled and stumbled, +and the student sighed heavily, for the Greek was hard. "He who has--he +who has--Oh dear, I can't see any sense in these old choruses; I do hate +them." + +"Still," said Rhoda sweetly, "you mustn't murder them. 'He who has love +has madness.'" + +The chorus limped to its end and the student left the coach to some +curious reflections. + +"_Eros anikate machan_!" + +"Oh Love, unconquered in fight!" It sang in her ears persistently, +joyously, ironically--a wedding-song, a battle-song, a song of victory. + +Bastian Cautley was right when he said that the race was to the swift and +the battle to the strong. How eager she had been for the fight, how mad +for the crowded course! She had rushed on, heat after heat, outstripping +all competitors and carrying off all the crowns and the judges' +compliments at the end of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, +this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the compliments +very much as a matter of course, she had come to look on life as nothing +but an endless round of Olympic games. And just as she forgot each +successive event in the excitement of the next, she also had forgotten +the losers and those who were tumbled in the dust. Until she had seen +Miss Quincey. + +Miss Quincey--so they had let her come to this among them all? They had +left her so bare of happiness that the first man (it happened to be her +doctor) who spoke two kind words to her became necessary to her +existence. No, that was hardly the way to put it; it was underrating +Bastian Cautley. He was the sort of man that any woman--But who would +have thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that she +did not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life had +been. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neither +brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least +she had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman had +seemed absorbed in her miserable arithmetical function. And yet at fifty +(she looked fifty) she had contrived to develop that particular form of +foolishness which it was Miss Cursiter's business to exterminate. There +were some of them who talked as if the thing was done; as if competitive +examinations had superseded the primitive rivalry of sex. + +Bastian Cautley was right. You may go on building as high as you please, +but you will never alter the original ground-plan of human nature. And +how she had scoffed at his "man's view"; how indignantly she had repulsed +his suggestion that there was a side to the subject that her friends the +idealists were much too ideal to see. + +Were they really, as Bastian Cautley put it, so engrossed in producing a +new type that they had lost sight of the individual? Was the system so +far in accordance with Nature that it was careless of the single life? +Which was the only life open to most of them, poor things. + +And she had blundered more grossly than the system itself. What, after +all, had she done for that innocent whom she had made her friend? She had +taken everything from her. She had promised to keep her place for her at +St. Sidwell's and was monopolising it herself. Worse than that, she had +given her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with the +other. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so much +already could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or to +keep--for her very own. There was not a bit of him that could by any +possibility belong to Miss Quincey.) She had tried to stand between her +and her Fate, and she had become her Fate. Worse than all, she had kept +from her the knowledge of the truth--the truth that might have cured her. +Of course she had done that out of consideration for Bastian Cautley. + +There it seemed that Rhoda's regard for his feelings ended. Though she +admitted ten times over that he was right, she was by no means more +disposed to come to an understanding with him on that account. On the +contrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosen +his moment indiscreetly) she endeavoured to repair her blunders by +visiting them on his irreproachable head, dealing to him a certain +painful, but not wholly unexpected back-hander in the face. + +She had done all she could for Miss Quincey. At any rate, she said to +herself, she had spared her the final blow. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Through the Stethoscope + + +One morning the Mad Hatter was madder than ever. It was impossible to +hold her attention. The black eyes blazed as they wandered, the paralytic +pencil was hot in her burning fingers. When she laid it down towards the +end of the morning and rested her head on her hands, Miss Quincey had not +the heart to urge her to the loathsome toil. She let her talk. + +"Miss Quincey," said the Mad Hatter in a solemn whisper, "I'm going to +tell you a secret. Do you see _her_?" She indicated Miss Rhoda Vivian +with the point of her pencil. + +It was evident that Laura Lazarus did not adore the Classical Mistress, +and Rhoda, sick of her worshippers, had found this attitude refreshing. +Even now she bestowed a smile and a nod on the Mad Hatter that would have +kept any other St. Sidwellite in a fortnight's ecstasy. + +"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your teachers." + +The child raised the Semitic arch of her eye-brows. Her face belonged to +the type formed from all eternity for the expression of contempt. + +"She's not my teacher, thank goodness. Do you know what I'm going to be +some day, when she's married and gone away? I'm going to be what she +is--Classical Mistress. I shan't have to do any sums for that, you know. +I shall only have to know Greek, and isn't it a shame, Miss Quincey, +they won't let me learn it till I'm in the Fourth, and I never shall be. +But--don't tell any one--they've stuck me here, behind her now, and when +she's coaching that young idiot Susie Parker--" + +"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your school-fellows." + +"I know it isn't, but she _is_, you know. I've bought the books, and I +get behind them and I listen hard, and I can read now. What's more, I've +done a bit of a chorus. Look--" The pariah took a dirty bit of paper from +the breast of her gown. "It goes, 'Oh Love unconquered in battle,' and +it's simply splend_if_erous. Miss Quincey--when you like anything very +much--or any_body_--it doesn't matter which--do you turn red all over? Do +you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The +child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You _do_, you do, +Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!" + +She gazed into the teacher's face, and again the power of divination was +upon her. + +"Laura!" Miss Quincey gasped; for the Head had been looming in their +neighbourhood, a deadly peril, and now she was sweeping down on them, +smiling a dangerous smile. + +"Miss Quincey, I hope you've been making that child work," said she and +passed on. + +"I _say_! She didn't see my verses, did she? You _won't_ let on that I +wrote them?" + +"You'll never write verses," said Miss Quincey, deftly improving a bad +occasion, "if you don't understand arithmetic. Why, it's the science of +numbers. Come now, if ninety hogsheads--" + +"Oh-h! I'm so tired of hogsheads; mayn't it be firkins this time?" + +And, for fancy's sake, firkins Miss Quincey permitted it to be. + +Now Rhoda was responsible for much, but for what followed the Mad Hatter +must, strictly speaking, be held accountable. + +Miss Quincey had never been greatly interested in the movements of her +heart; but now that her attention had been drawn to them she admitted +that it was beating in a very extraordinary way; there was a decided +palpitation, a flutter. + +That night she lay awake and listened to it. + +It was going diddledy, diddledy, like the triplets in a Beethoven sonata +(only that it had no idea of time); then it suddenly left off till she +put her hand over it, when it gave a terrifying succession of runaway +knocks. Then it pretended that it was going to stop altogether, and Miss +Quincey implicitly believed it and prepared to die. Then its tactics +changed; it seemed to have shifted its habitation; to be rising and +rising, to be entangled with her collar-bone and struggling in her +throat. Then it sank suddenly and lay like a lump of lead, dragging her +down through the mattress, and through the bedstead, and through the +floor, down to the bottom of all things. Miss Quincey did not mind much; +she had been so unhappy. And then it gave an alarming double-knock at her +ribs, and Miss Quincey came to life again as unhappy as ever. + +And of what it all meant Miss Quincey had no more idea than the man in +the moon, though even the Mad Hatter could have told her. Her heart went +through the same performance a second and a third night, and Miss Quincey +said to herself that if it happened again she would have to send for Dr. +Cautley. Nothing would have induced her to see him for a mere trifle, but +pride was one thing and prudence was another. + +It did happen again, and she sent. + +She may have hoped that he would discover something wrong, being dimly +conscious that her chance lay there, that suffering constituted the +incontestable claim on his sympathy; most distinctly she felt the desire +(monstrous of course in a woman of no account) to wear the aureole of +pain for its own sake; to walk for a little while in the glory and +glamour of death. She did not want or mean to give any trouble, to be a +source of expense; she had saved a little money for the supreme luxury. +But she had hardly entertained the idea for a moment when she dismissed +it as selfish. It was her duty to live, for the sake of St. Sidwell's and +of Mrs. Moon; and she was only calling Dr. Cautley in to help her to do +it. But through it all the feeling uppermost was joy in the certainty +that she would see him on an honourable pretext, and would be able to set +right that terrible misunderstanding. + +She hardly expected him till late in the day; so she was a little +startled, when she came in after morning school, to find Mrs. Moon +waiting for her at the stairs, quivering with indignation that could have +but one cause. + +He had lost no time in answering her summons. + +The drawing-room door was ajar; the Old Lady closed it mysteriously, and +pushed her niece into the bedroom behind. + +"Will you tell me the meaning of this? _That man_ has been cooling his +heels in there for the last ten minutes, and he says you sent for him. Is +that the case?" + +Miss Quincey meekly admitted that it was, and entered upon a vague +description of her trouble. + +"It's all capers and nonsense," said the Old Lady, "there's nothing the +matter with your heart. You're just hysterical, and you just want--?" + +"I want to _know_, and Dr. Cautley will tell me." + +"Oh ho! I daresay he'll find some mare's nest fast enough, if you tell +him where to look." + +Miss Quincey took off her hat and cape and laid them down with a sigh. +She gave a terrified glance at the looking-glass and smoothed her thin +hair with her hand. + +"Auntie--I must go. I can't keep him waiting any longer." + +"Go then--I won't stop you." + +She went trembling, followed so closely by Mrs. Moon that she looked like +a prisoner conducted to the dock. + +"How will he receive me?" she wondered. + +He received her coldly and curtly. There was a hurry and abstraction in +his manner utterly unlike his former leisurely sympathy. Many causes +contributed to this effect; he was still all bruised and bleeding from +the blow dealt to him by Rhoda's strong young arm; an epidemic had kept +him on his legs all day and a great part of the night; his time had never +been so valuable, and he had been obliged to waste ten minutes of it +contemplating the furniture in that detestable drawing-room. He was +worried and overworked, and Miss Quincey thought he was still offended; +his very appearance made her argue the worst. No hope to-day of clearing +up that terrible misunderstanding. + +She tremulously obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing the +buttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formless +as a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted the +tubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwards +from heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Lady +looked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much to +say, "Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!" + +He put up the stethoscope with a click. + +"There is nothing the matter with you." + +Mrs. Moon gave out a subdued ironical chuckle. + +Miss Quincey looked anxiously into his face. "Do you not think the +heart--the heart is a little--?" + +He smiled and at the same time he sighed. "Heart's all right. But you've +left off your tonic." + +She had, she was afraid that so much poison-- + +"Poison?" (He was not in the least offended.) "Do you mean the arsenic? +There are some poisons you can't live without; but you must take them in +moderation." + +"Will you--will you want to see me again?" + +"It will not be necessary." + +At that Mrs. Moon's chuckle broke all bounds and burst into a triumphant +"Tchee-tchee-chee!" He went away under cover of it. It was her way of +putting a pleasant face on the matter. + +She hardly waited till his back was turned before she delivered herself +of that which was working within her. + +"I tell you what it is, Juliana; you're a silly woman." + +Miss Quincey looked up with a faint premonitory fear. Her fingers began +nervously buttoning and unbuttoning her dress bodice; while half-dressed +and shivering she waited the attack. + +"And a pretty exhibition you've made of yourself this day. Anybody might +have thought you _wanted_ to let that young man see what was the matter +with you." + +"So I did. He says there is nothing the matter with me." + +"Nothing the matter with you, indeed! _He_ knows well enough what's the +matter with you." + +The victim was staring now, with terror in her tired eyes. Her mouth +dropped open with the question her tongue refused to utter. + +"If you," continued Mrs. Moon, "had wanted to tell him plainly that you +were in love with him, you couldn't have set about it better. I should +have thought you'd have been ashamed to look him in the face--at your +age. You're a disgrace to my family!" + +The poor fingers ceased their labour of buttoning and unbuttoning; Miss +Quincey sat with her shoulders naked as it were to the lash. + +"There!" said Mrs. Moon with an air of drawing back the whip and putting +it by for the present. "If I were you I'd cover myself up, and not sit +there catching cold with my dress-body off." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Miss Quincey Stands Back + + +As it happened on a Saturday morning she had plenty of time to think +about it. All the afternoon and the evening and the night lay before her; +she was powerless to cope with Sunday and the night beyond that. + +The remarkable revelation made to her by Mrs. Moon was so great a shock +that her mind refused to realize it all at once. It was an outrage to all +the meek reticences and chastities of her spirit. But she owned its +truth; she saw it now, the thing they all had seen, that she only could +not see. + +She had sinned the sin of sins, the sin of youth in middle-age. + +Now it was not imagination in Miss Quincey, so much as the tradition of +St. Sidwell's, that gave her innocent affection the proportions of a +crime. Miss Quincey had lived all her life in ignorance of her own +nature, having spent the best part of five-and-forty years in acquiring +other knowledge. She had nothing to go upon, for she had never been +young; or rather she had treated her youth unkindly, she had fed it on +saw-dust and given it nothing but arithmetic books to play with, so that +its experiences were of no earthly use to her. + +And now, if they had only let her alone, she might have been none the +wiser; her folly might have put on many quaint disguises, friendship, +literary sympathy, intellectual esteem--there were a thousand delicate +subterfuges and innocent hypocrisies, and under any one of them it might +have crept about unchallenged in the shadows and blind alleys of thought. +As love pure and simple, if it came to that, there was no harm in it. +Many an old maid, older than she, has just such a secret folded up and +put away all sweet and pure; the poor lady does not call it love, but +remembrance, which is so to speak love laid in lavender; and she--who +knows? She might have contrived a little shrine for it somewhere; she had +always understood that love was a holy thing. + +Unfortunately, when a holy thing has been pulled about and dragged in the +mud, it may be as holy as ever but it will never look the same. In Miss +Quincey's case mortal passion had been shaken out of its sleep and forced +to look at itself before it had time to put on a shred of immortality. In +the sudden glare it stood out monstrous, naked and ashamed; she herself +had helped to deprive it of all the delicacies and amenities that made it +tolerable to thought. With her own hands she had delivered it up to the +stethoscope. + +He knew, he knew. In the mad rush of her ideas one sentence detached +itself from the torrent. "_He_ knows well enough what's the matter with +you." + +The nature of the crime was such that there was no possibility or +explanation or defence against the accuser whose condemnation weighed +heaviest on her soul. He loomed before her, hovered over her, with the +tubes of the heart-probing stethoscope in his ears (as a matter of fact +they gave him a somewhat grotesque appearance, remotely suggestive of a +Hindoo idol; but Miss Quincey had not noticed that); his bumpy forehead +was terrible with intelligence; his eyes were cold and comprehensive; the +smile of a foregone conclusion flickered on his lips. + +He must have known it all the time. There never had been any +misunderstanding. That was the clue to his conduct; that was the reason +why he had left off coming to the house; for he was the soul of delicacy +and honour. And yet she had never said a word that might be +interpreted--He must have seen it in her face, then,--that day--when +she allowed herself to sit with him in the park. She remembered--things +that he had said to her--did they mean that he had seen? She saw it all +as he had seen it. "Delicacy" and "honour" indeed! Disgust and contempt +would be more likely feelings. + +She lay awake all Saturday night and all Sunday night, until four o'clock +on Monday morning; always reviewing the situation, always going over the +same patch of ground in the desperate hope of finding some place where +her self-respect could rest, and discovering nothing but the traces of +her guilty feet. A subtler woman would have flourished lightly over the +territory, till she had whisked away every vestige of her trail; another +would have seen the humour of the situation and blown the whole thing +into the inane with a burst of healthy laughter; but subtlety and humour +were not Miss Quincey's strong points. She could do nothing but creep +shivering to bed and lie there, face to face with her own enormity. + +On Monday morning and on many mornings after she crept out into the +street stealthily, like a criminal seeking some shelter where she could +hide her head. She acquired a habit--odd enough to the casual +onlooker--of slinking cautiously round every turning and rushing every +crossing in her abject terror of meeting Bastian Cautley. + +There was nobody to tell her that it would not matter if she did meet +him; no cheerful woman of the world to smile in her frightened face and +say: "My dear Miss Quincey, there is nothing remarkable in this. We all +do it, sooner or later. Too late? Not a bit of it; better too late than +never, and if it's that Cautley man I'm sure I don't wonder. I'm in love +with him myself. Lost your self-respect, have you? Self-respect, indeed, +why bless your soul, you are all the nicer for it. As for hiding your +head I never heard such rubbish in my life. Nobody is looking at +you--certainly not the Cautley man. In fact, to tell you the truth, +at this moment he is particularly engaged in looking the other way." + +But Miss Quincey did not know that lady. She knew no one but Rhoda and +Mrs. Moon; and if Mrs. Moon was too old, Rhoda was too young to take that +view; besides, Mrs. Moon was not a woman of the world and no ridiculous +delicacy prompted her to look the other way. In any case Juliana's state +of mind, advertised as it was by her complexion and many eccentricities +of behaviour, could not have escaped her notice. + +The Old Lady had reverted to her former humorous attitude, and was trying +whether Juliana's state of mind would not yield to skilfully directed +banter. In these tactics she was not left unsupported. Louisa had written +a long letter about her husband and her children, with a postscript. + +"P.S.--I don't half like what you tell me about Juliana and Dr. C--. For +goodness' sake don't encourage her in any of that nonsense. Sit on it. +Laugh her out of it. I agree with you that it would be better if she +cultivated her mind a little more. + +"P.P.S.--Andrew has just come in. He says we oughtn't to call her +Juliana, but Fooliana." + +So laughed Louisa, the married woman. + +And Fooliana she was called. The joke was quite unworthy of the Greek +Professor's reputation, but for Mrs. Moon's purposes he could hardly have +made a better one. + +Louisa had put a terrible weapon into the Old Lady's hands. It was +many weapons in one. It could be turned on in all its broad robust +humour--"Fooliana!" Or refined away into a playful or delicate +suggestion, pointed with an uplifted finger--"Fooli!" Or cut down and +compressed into its essential meaning--"Fool!" + +But whichever missile came handy, the effect was much the same. Juliana's +complexion grew redder or grayer, but her state of mind remained +unchanged. Sometimes the Old Lady tried a graver method. + +"If you would cultivate your mind a little in the evenings you would have +no time for all this nonsense." + +But Juliana had abandoned the cultivation of her mind. She made no +attempt to pay off that small outstanding debt to _Sordello._ There was +an end of the intellectual life; for the living wells of literature were +tainted; Browning had become a bitter memory and Tennyson a shame. + +But if Miss Quincey had no heart for General Culture, she was busier than +ever in the discharge of her regular duties. At the end of the midsummer +term the pressure on the staff was heavy. Her work had grown with the +growth of St. Sidwell's, and the pile of marble and granite copy-books +rose higher than ever; it was monumental, and Miss Quincey was glad +enough to bury her grief under it for a time. Indeed it looked as if in +St. Sidwell's she had found the shelter where she could hide her head; +and a very desirable shelter too, as long as Mrs. Moon continued in that +lively temper. Gradually she began to realize that of all those five +hundred pairs of eyes there was none that had discovered her secret; that +not one of those busy brains was occupied with her affairs. It was a +relief to lose herself among them all and be of no account again. +In the corner behind Rhoda Vivian she and the Mad Hatter seemed to be +clinging together more than ever in an ecstasy of isolation. + +After all, above the turmoil of emotion a little tremulous, attenuated +ideal was trying to raise its head. Her duty. She dimly discerned a +possibility of deliverance, of purification from her sin. Therefore she +clung more desperately than ever to her post. Seeing that she had served +the system for five-and-twenty years, it was hard if she could not get +from it a little protection against her own weakness, if she could not +claim the intellectual support it professed to give. It was the first +time she had ever put it to the test. If she could only stay on another +year or two-- + +And now at the very end of the midsummer term it really looked as if St. +Sidwell's was anxious to keep her. Everybody was curiously kind; the +staff cast friendly glances on her as she sat in her corner; Rhoda was +almost passionate in her tenderness. Even Miss Cursiter seemed softened. +She had left off saying "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please"; and +Miss Quincey began to wonder what it all meant. + +She was soon to know. + +One night, the last of the term, the Classical Mistress was closeted with +the Head. Rhoda, elbow-deep in examination papers, had been critically +considering seventy variously ingenious renderings of a certain chorus, +when the sudden rapping of a pen on the table roused her from her +labours. + +"You must see for yourself, Rhoda, how we are placed. We must keep up to +a certain standard of efficiency in the staff. Miss Quincey is getting +past her work." + +(Rhoda became instantly absorbed in sharpening a pencil.) + +"For the last two terms she has been constantly breaking down; and now +I'm very much afraid she is breaking-up." + +The Head remained solemnly unconscious of her own epigram. + +"No wonder," said Rhoda to herself, "first love at fifty is new wine in +old bottles; everybody knows what happens to the bottles." + +The flush and the frown on the Classical Mistress's face might have been +accounted for by the sudden snapping of the pencil. + +"You see," continued Miss Cursiter, as if defending herself from some +accusation conveyed by the frown, "as it is we have kept her on a long +while for her sister's sake." + +(A murmur from the Classical Mistress.) + +"Of course we must put it to her prettily, wrap it up--in tissue paper." + +(The Classical Mistress is still inarticulate.) + +"You are not giving me your opinion." + +"It seems to me I've said a great deal more than I've any right to say." + +"Oh you. We know all about that. I asked for your opinion." + +"And when I gave it you told me I was under an influence." + +"What if I did? And what if it were so?" + +"What indeed? You would get the benefit of two opinions instead of one." + +Now if Miss Cursiter were thinking of Dr. Cautley there was some point in +what Rhoda said; for in the back of her mind the Head had a curious +respect for masculine judgment. + +"There can be no two opinions about Miss Quincey." + +"I don't know. Miss Quincey," said Rhoda thoughtfully to her pencil, "is +a large subject." + +"Yes, if you mean that Miss Quincey is a terrible legacy from the past. +The question for me is--how long am I to let her hamper our future?" + +"The future? It strikes me that we're not within shouting distance of the +future. We talk as if we could see the end, and we're nowhere near it, +we're in all the muddle of the middle--that's why we're hampered with +Miss Quincey and other interesting relics of the past." + +"We are slowly getting rid of them." + +At that Rhoda blazed up. She was young, and she was reckless, and she had +too many careers open to her to care much about consequences. Miss +Cursiter had asked for her opinion and she should have it with a +vengeance. + +"It's not enough to get rid of them. We ought to provide for them. Who or +what do we provide for, if it comes to that? We're always talking about +specialisation, and the fact is we haven't specialised enough. Don't we +give the same test papers to everybody?" + +"I shall be happy to set separate papers for each girl if you'll +undertake to correct them." + +The more Rhoda fired the more Miss Cursiter remained cold. + +"That's just it--we couldn't if we tried. We know nothing about each +girl. That's where we shall have to specialise in the future if we're to +do any good. We've specialised enough with our teachers and our subjects; +chipped and chopped till we can't divide them any more; and we've taken +our girls in the lump. We know less about them than they do themselves. +As for the teachers--" + +"Which by the way brings us back to Miss Quincey." + +"Everything brings us back to Miss Quincey. Miss Quincey will be always +with us." + +"We must put younger women in her place." + +Rhoda winced as though Miss Cursiter had struck her. + +"They will soon grow old. Our profession is a cruel one. It uses up the +finest and most perishable parts of a woman's nature. It takes the best +years of her life--and throws the rest away." + +"Yet thousands of women are willing to take it up, and leave comfortable +homes to do it too." + +"Yes," sighed Rhoda, "it's the rush for the open door." + +"My dear Rhoda, the women's labour market is the same as every other. The +best policy is the policy of the open door. Don't you see that the remedy +is to open it wider--wider!" + +"And when we've opened all the doors as wide as ever they'll go, what +then? Where are we going to?" + +"I can't tell you." Miss Cursiter looked keenly at her. "Do you mean that +you'll go no further unless you know?" + +Rhoda was silent. + +"There are faults in the system. I can see that as well as you, perhaps +better. I am growing old too, Rhoda. But you are youth itself. It is +women like you we want--to save us. Are you going to turn your back on +us?" + +Miss Cursiter bore down on her with her steady gaze, a gaze that was a +menace and an appeal, and Rhoda gave a little gasp as if for breath. + +"I can't go any farther." + +"Do you realize what this means? You are not a deserter from the ranks. +It is the second in command going over to the enemy." + +The words were cold, but there was a fiery court-martial in Miss +Cursiter's eyes that accused and condemned her. If Rhoda had been dashing +her head against the barrack walls her deliverance was at hand. It seemed +that she could never strike a blow for Miss Quincey without winning the +battle for herself. + +"I can't help it," said she. "I hate it--I hate the system." + +"The system? Suppose you do away with it--do away with every woman's +college in the kingdom--have you anything to put in its place?" + +"No. I have nothing to put in its place." + +"Ah," said Miss Cursiter, "you are older than I thought." + +Rhoda smiled. By this time, wrong or right, she was perfectly reckless. +If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture in +being wildly and wilfully in the wrong. She had flung up the game. + +Miss Cursiter saw it. "I was right," said she. "You are under an +influence, and a dangerous one." + +"Perhaps--but, influence for influence" (here Rhoda returned Miss +Cursiter's gaze intrepidly), "I'm not far wrong. I honestly think that if +we persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall hand +over worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation." + +Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what a +mouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley's theories and temper. + +"My dear Rhoda, you're an intellectual monstrosity yourself." + +"I know. And in another twenty years' time they'll want to get rid of +_me_." + +"Of me too," thought the Head. Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn. +She had invoked Rhoda's youth and it had risen up against her. Influence +for influence, her power was dead. + +Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in Miss +Quincey's case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, to +escape judgment in her own. + +"And how about Miss Quincey?" she asked. + +Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey. She had done with +that section of her subject. She understood that Rhoda had said in +effect, "If Miss Quincey goes, I go too." Nevertheless her mind was made +up; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey. + +Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quincey +had no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal when +presented to her in this neat way. Not even when Miss Cursiter said to +her, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning, +"For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego your +valuable--most valuable services." + +Miss Cursiter hesitated, warned by something in the aspect of the tiny +woman who had been a thorn in her side so long. Somehow, for this +occasion, the most incompetent, most insignificant member of her staff +had contrived to clothe herself with a certain nobility. She was +undeniably the more dignified of the two. + +The Head, usually so eloquent at great moments, found actual difficulty +in getting to the end of her next sentence. + +"What I was thinking of--really again entirely for your own sake--was +whether it would not be better for you to take a little longer holiday. I +do feel in your case the imperative necessity for rest. Indeed if you +found that you _wished_ to retire at the end of the holidays--of course +receiving your salary for the term--" + +Try as she would to speak as though she were conferring a benefit, the +Head had the unmistakable air of asking a favour from her subordinate, of +imploring her help in a delicate situation, of putting it to her honour. + +Miss Quincey's honour was more than equal to the demand made on it. She +had sunk so low in her own eyes lately that she was glad to gain some +little foothold for her poor pride. She faced Miss Cursiter bravely with +her innocent dim eyes as she answered: "I am ready to go, Miss Cursiter, +whenever it is most convenient to you; but I cannot think of taking +payment for work I have not done." + +"My dear Miss Quincey, the rule is always a term's notice--or if--if any +other arrangement is agreed upon, a term's salary. There can be no +question--you must really allow me--" + +There Miss Cursiter's address failed her and her voice faltered. She had +extracted the thorn; but it had worked its way deeper than she knew, and +the operation was a painful one. A few compliments on the part of the +Head, and the hope that St. Sidwell's would not lose sight of Miss +Quincey altogether, and the interview was closed. + +It was understood by the end of the morning that Miss Quincey had sent in +her resignation. The news spread from class to class--"Miss Quincey is +going"--and was received by pupils and teachers with cries of +incredulity. After all, Miss Quincey belonged to St. Sidwell's; she was +part and parcel of the place; her blood and bones had been built into its +very walls, and her removal was not to be contemplated without dismay. +Why, what would a procession be like without Miss Quincey to enliven it? + +And so, as she went her last round, a score of hands that had never +clasped hers in friendship were stretched out over the desks in a wild +leave-taking; three girls had tears in their eyes; one, more emotional +than the rest, sobbed audibly without shame. The staff were unanimous in +their sympathy and regret. Rhoda withdrew hastily from the painful scene. +Only the Mad Hatter in her corner made no sign. She seemed to take the +news of Miss Quincey's departure with a resigned philosophy. + +"Well, little Classical Mistress," said Miss Quincey, "we must say +good-bye. You know I'm going." + +The child nodded her small head. "Of course you're going. I might have +known it. I did know it all along. You were booked to go." + +"Why, Laura?" Miss Quincey was mystified and a little hurt. + +"Because"--a sinister convulsion passed over the ugly little +pariah face--"because"--the Mad Hatter had learnt the force of +under-statement--"because I _like_ you." + +At that Miss Quincey broke down. "My dear little girl--I am going because +I am too old to stay." + +"Write to me, dear," she said at the last moment; "let me know how you +are getting on." + +But she never knew. The Mad Hatter did not write. In fact she never wrote +anything again, not even verses. She was handed over next term to Miss +Quincey's brilliant and efficient successor, who made her work hard, with +the result that the Mad Hatter got ill of a brain fever just before the +Christmas holidays and was never fit for any more work; and never became +Classical Mistress or anything else in the least distinguished. But this +is by the way. + +As the College clock struck one, Miss Quincey walked home as usual and +went up into her bedroom without a word. She opened a drawer and took +from it her Post Office Savings Bank book and looked over her account. +There stood to her credit the considerable sum of twenty-seven pounds +four shillings and eight pence. No, not quite that, for the blouse, the +abominable blouse, had been paid for out of her savings and it had cost a +guinea. Twenty-six pounds three shillings and eight pence was all that +she had saved in five-and-twenty years. This, with the term's salary +which Miss Cursiter had insisted on, was enough to keep her going for a +year. And a year is a long time. She came slowly downstairs to the +drawing-room where her aunt was dozing and dreaming in her chair. There +still hung about her figure the indefinable dignity that had awed Miss +Cursiter. If she was afraid of Mrs. Moon she was too proud to show her +fear. + +"This morning," she said simply, "I received my dismissal." + +The old lady looked up dazed, not with the news but with her dream. Miss +Quincey repeated her statement. + +"Do you mean you are not going back to that place there?" she asked +mildly. + +"I am never going back." + +Still with dignity she waited for the burst of feeling she felt to be +justifiable in the circumstances. None came; neither anger, nor +indignation, nor contempt, not even surprise. In fact the Old Lady was +smiling placidly, as she was wont to smile under the spell of the dream. + +Slowly, very slowly, it was dawning upon her that the reproach had been +taken away from the memory of Tollington Moon. Henceforth his niece Miss +Quincey would be a gentlewoman at large. At the same time it struck her +that after all poor Juliana did not look so very old. + +"Very well then," said she, "if I were you I should put on that nice silk +blouse in the evenings." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Dr. Cautley Sends in his Bill + + +"I wonder," Mrs. Moon observed suddenly one morning, "if that man is +going to let his bill run on to the day of judgment?" + +The Old Lady had not even distantly alluded to Dr. Cautley for as +many as ten months. After the great day of what she called Juliana's +"resignation" she seemed to have tacitly agreed that since Juliana had +spared her dream she would spare Juliana's. Did she not know, she too, +that the dream is the reality? As Miss Quincey, gentlewoman at large, +Juliana had a perfect right to set up a dream of her own; as to whether +she was able to afford the luxury, Juliana was the best judge. Her +present wonder, then, had no malignant reference; it was simply wrung +from her by inexorable economy. Juliana's supplies were calculated to +last a year; as it was the winter season that they had lately weathered, +she was rather more than three-quarters of the way through her slender +resources, and it behoved them to look out for bills ahead. And Mrs. +Moon had always suspected that young man, not only of a passion for +mare's-nesting, but of deliberately and systematically keeping back +his accounts that he might revel in a larger haul. + +The remark, falling with a shock all the greater for a silence of ten +months, had the effect of driving Juliana out of the room. Out of the +room and out of the house, down High Street, where Hunter's shop was +already blossoming in another spring; up Park Street and past the long +wall of St. Sidwell's, till she found herself alone in Primrose Hill +Park. + +The young day was so glorious that Miss Quincey had some thoughts of +climbing Primrose Hill and sitting on the top; but after twenty yards or +so of it she abandoned the attempt. For the last few months her heart had +been the seat of certain curious sensations, so remarkably like those she +had experienced in the summer that she took them for the same, and +sternly resolved to suppress their existence by ignoring it. That, she +understood, was the right treatment for hysteria. + +But this morning Miss Quincey's heart protested so violently against her +notion of ascending Primrose Hill, threatening indeed to strangle her if +she persisted in it, that Miss Quincey unwillingly gave in and contented +herself with a seat in one of the lower walks of the park. There she +leaned back and looked about her, but with no permanent interest in one +thing more than another. + +Presently, as she settled down to quieter breathing, there came to her a +strange sensation, that grew till it became an unusually vivid perception +of the outer world; a perception mingled with a still stranger double +vision, a sense that seemed to be born in the dark of the brain and to +be moving there to a foregone conclusion. And all the time her eyes +were busy, now with a bush of May in crimson blossom, now with the +many-pointed leaves of a sycamore pricked against the blue; now with the +straight rectangular paths that made the park an immense mathematical +diagram. From where she sat her eyes swept the length of the wide walk +that cuts the green from east to west. Far down at the west end was a +seat, and she could see two people, a man and a woman, sitting on it; +they must have been there a quarter of an hour or more; she had noticed +them ever since she came into the park. + +They had risen, and her gaze left everything else to follow them; or +rather, it went to meet them, for they had turned and were coming slowly +eastward now. They had stopped; they were facing each other, and her gaze +rested with them, fascinated yet uncertain. And now she could see nothing +else; the park, with the regions beyond it and the sky above it, had +become merely a setting for one man and one woman; the avenue, fresh +strewn with red golden gravel, led up to them and ended there at their +feet; a young poplar trembled in the wind and shook its silver green fans +above them in delicate confusion. The next minute a light went up in that +obscure and prophetic background of her brain; and she saw Rhoda Vivian +and Bastian Cautley coming towards her, greeting her, with their kind +faces shining. + +She rose, turned from them, and went slowly home. + +It was the last rent in the veil of illusion that Rhoda had spun so well. +Up till then Miss Quincey had seen only half the truth. Now she had seen +the whole, with all that Rhoda had disguised and kept hidden from her; +the truth that kills or cures. + +Miss Quincey did not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silent +in her chair. Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up later +than had been her wont since she recovered her freedom. She seemed to be +trying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability in the past. + +At eleven she got up and stood before the Old Lady in the attitude of a +penitent. Apparently she had been seized with a mysterious impulse of +confession. + +"Aunt," she said, "there's something I want to say to you." + +She paused, casting about in her mind for the sins she had committed. +They were three in all. + +"I am afraid I have been very extravagant"--she was thinking of the +blouse--"and--and very foolish"--she was thinking of Bastian +Cautley--"and very selfish"--she was thinking of her momentary desire to +die. + +"Juliana, if you're worrying about that money"--the Old Lady was thinking +of nothing else--"don't. I've plenty for us both. As long as we can keep +together I don't care what I eat, nor what I drink, nor what I put on my +poor back. And if the worst comes to the worst I'll sell the furniture." + +It seemed to Miss Quincey that she had never known her aunt in all those +five-and-twenty years; never known her until this minute. For perhaps, +after all, being angry with Juliana was only Mrs. Moon's way of being +sorry for her. But how was Juliana to know that? + +"Only," continued the Old Lady, "I won't part with your uncle's picture. +Don't ask me to part with your uncle's picture." + +"You won't have to part with anything. I'll--I'll get something to do. +I'm not worrying. There's nothing to worry about." + +She stooped down and tenderly kissed the wrinkled forehead. + +A vague fear clutched at the Old Lady's heart. + +"Then, Juliana, you are not well. Hadn't you better see"--she +hesitated--pausing with unwonted delicacy for her words--"a doctor?" + +"I don't want to see a doctor. There is nothing the matter with me." And +still insisting that there was nothing the matter with her, she went to +bed. + +And old Martha had come with her early morning croak to call Miss +Juliana; she had dumped down the hot-water can in the basin with a clash, +pulled up the blind with a jerk, and drawn back the curtains with a +clatter, before she noticed that Miss Juliana was up all the time. Up and +dressed, and sitting in her chair by the hearth, warming her feet at +an imaginary fire. + +She had been sitting up all night, for her bed was as Martha had left it +the night before. Martha approached cautiously, still feeling her way, +though there was no need for it, the room being full of light. + +She groped like a blind woman for Miss Juliana's forehead, laying her +hand there before she looked into her face. + +After some fumbling futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and a +feather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; she +disarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have been +left by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew a shawl over the head +and shoulders of the figure in the chair; pulled down the blind and +closed the curtains till the room was dark again. Then she groped her way +out and down the stairs to her mistress's door. There she stayed a +moment, gathering her feeble wits together for the part she meant to +play. She had made up her mind what she would do. + +So she called the Old Lady as usual; said she was afraid there was +something the matter with Miss Juliana; thought she might have got up a +bit too early and turned faint like. + +The Old Lady answered that she would come and see; and the two crept up +the stairs, and went groping their way in the dark of the curtained room. +Old Martha fumbled a long time with the blind; she drew back the curtains +little by little, with infinite precaution letting in the light upon the +fearful thing. + +But the Old Lady approached it boldly. + +"Don't you know me, Jooley dear?" she said, peering into the strange +eyes. There was no recognition in them for all their staring. + +"Don't know _me_, m'm," said Martha soothingly; "seems all of a white +swoon, don't she?" + +Martha was warming to her part. She made herself busy; she brought hot +water bottles and eau de cologne; she spent twenty minutes chafing the +hands and forehead and laying warmth to the feet, that the Old Lady might +have the comfort of knowing that everything had been done that could be +done. She shuffled off to find brandy, as if she had only thought of it +that instant; and she played out the play with the looking-glass and the +feather. + +The feather fluttered to the floor, and Martha ceased bending and +peering, and looked at her mistress. + +"She's gone, m'm, I do believe." + +The Old Lady sank by the chair, her arms clinging to those rigid knees. + +"Jooley--Jooley--don't you _know_ me?" she cried, as if in a passion of +affront. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Epilogue.--The Man and the Woman + + +By daylight there is neither glamour nor beauty in the great +burying-ground of North London; you must go to it at evening, in the +first fall of the summer dusk, to feel the fascination of that labyrinth +of low graves, crosses and headstones, urns and sarcophagi, crowded in +the black-green of the grass; of marble columns, granite pyramids and +obelisks, massed and reared and piled in the grey of the air. It is +nothing if not fantastic. Even by day that same mad grouping and jostling +of monumental devices, gathered together from the ends of the world, +gives to the place a cheerful half-pagan character; now, in its confusion +and immensity, it might be some city of dreams, tossed up in cloud and +foam and frozen into marble; some aerial half-way limbo where life slips +a little from the living and death from the dead. + +For these have their own way here. No priest interferes with them, and +whatever secular power ordains these matters is indulgent to its +children. If one of them would have his horse or his dog carved on his +tomb instead of an angel, or a pair of compasses instead of a cross, +there is no one to thwart his fancy. He may even be humorous if he will. +It is as if he implored us to laugh with him a little while though the +jest be feeble, and not to chill him with so many tears. + +At twilight a man and a woman were threading their way through this +cemetery, and as they went they smiled faintly at the memorial caprices +of the living and the still quainter originalities of the dead. But on +the whole they seemed to be trying not to look too happy. They said +nothing to each other till they came to a mound raised somewhere in the +borderland that divides the graves of the rich from the paupers' ground. +There was just room for them to stand together on the boards that roofed +in the narrow pit dug ready for the next comer. + +"If I believed in a Creator" (it was the man who spoke), "I should want +to know what pleasure he found in creating that poor little woman." + +The woman did not answer as she looked at him. + +"Yet," he went on, "I'm selfish enough to be glad that she lived. If I +had not known Miss Quincey, I should not have known you." + +"And I," said the woman, and her face was rosy under the touch of grief, +"if I had not loved Miss Quincey, I could not have loved you." + +They seemed to think Miss Quincey had justified her existence. Perhaps +she had. + +And the woman took the roses that she wore in her belt and laid them on +the breast of the grave. She stood for a minute studying the effect with +a shamefaced look, as if she had mocked the dead woman with flowers flung +from her wedding-wreath of youth and joy. + +Then she turned to the man; the closing bell tolled, and they passed +through the iron gates into the ways of the living. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Superseded, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUPERSEDED *** + +***** This file should be named 13522.txt or 13522.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/5/2/13522/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the PG Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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