“It is with an especial feeling that I welcome you back to-day,” said Josephine Napier, rising from her desk and advancing across her study to greet the woman who had entered it. “I do not forget that you are embarking upon your eighth year on my staff. Believe me, I have not been unmindful of my growing debt. May I say that I think no one has lived a more useful seven years? You will allow me to say just that to you?”
Josephine Napier, the head of a large girls’ school in a prosperous English town, was a tall, spare woman of fifty-four, with greying auburn hair, full hazel eyes, an impressive, high-featured, but simply modelled face, a conscious sincerity and simplicity of mien, rather surprisingly jewelled hands, and hair and dress arranged to set off rather than disguise experience.
Miss Theodora Luke, a mistress in her school, was an erect, pale woman of thirty-eight, with a simply straightforward and resolute face, smooth, coiled hair, grey eyes with a glance of interest and appreciation, and an oddity of dress displayed in the manner of the university woman of Victorian days, as the outward sign of the unsuspected inner truth.
“Indeed I will allow you to say it, Mrs. Napier,” she said in a quick, deep voice, with a quick, deep laugh. “It definitely smoothes my path towards decrepitude.”8
“I think that maturity has very few disadvantages inherent in itself,” said Josephine, speaking as if simply from her own experience, and adding by way of putting the full gulf of years between her companion and herself: “Did you have a pleasant journey, my dear?”
“Yes, very pleasant, thank you. The train was rather crowded. But I see no reason myself for objecting to the presence of my fellow creatures.” Miss Luke looked full at Josephine as she set forth her individual view. “It is extraordinary how seldom we meet unpleasant people, or see an unpleasant face. Have you ever met a repulsive person, Mrs. Napier? I think I have not.”
“No, I think all faces I have met have had their human dignity and charm. But then I have spent my life amongst educated and intelligent people. I would not say that some faces might not show signs of—shall we say a different history? I hope”—Josephine bent towards her companion with a humorously guilty smile—“that you had none of those in your carriage?”
Miss Luke yielded for a moment to laughter.
“Well, what I always feel, Mrs. Napier, in meeting such people, is simply respect for their harder experience. I pay the rightful homage of the highly civilised—yes, that is what I choose to call myself—to those whose lives are spent at the base of the civilisation. Surely no other view should be admissible?”
“No, indeed it should not. I think you have given more thought to the matter than I have; to the equality of all kinds of usefulness. Possibly I have been too busy with the practical observance of it. Now, if I may claim your attention for a humdrum matter not within your province, I have to tell you that your room is changed.” Josephine took up some slips of paper. “Yes, it is on the left side of the second corridor, with the south facing. You remember that the doctor said you were to have sun? 9I hope you will not mind making the adjustment?” She raised her eyes with her pencil on her lips, concerned simply with her programme.
“Mind? What a question, Mrs. Napier! I hope the change did not involve too much trouble. I am most grateful.”
“Grateful?” said Josephine, in a faintly perplexed tone, still preoccupied. “And I have put Miss Rosetti next door. I like to feel that intimate friends are together. In a case of sudden sickness that may mean a good deal. It is good of you all to make my task of general so light.”
“Ah, I hardly think it can be that,” said Miss Luke.
“Well, so pleasant then. And that would be my choice. I have no desire for any lessening of my labour. I hope you are happy to come back to yours?”
“Well, yes, the ayes have it,” said Miss Luke.
“I am glad that there is a pull on the other side,” said Josephine, looking at her with searching kindness. “That means at once more for you, and for other people. And now you must want your tea, and anyhow I want it for you. Crowded railway carriages need an antidote. So go and do your duty to yourself and to me.”
Josephine rose for a moment as her companion rose, and then sat down at her desk and took up her pen, but in a minute rose again to welcome the successor. This was a grey-haired, foreign-looking woman, taller and frailer and some years older than Miss Luke, with finely chiselled features, pale, dreamy eyes, with a cynical look that came as a surprise, and openly languid movements, whom Josephine greeted in a manner which showed her less assured of her own impression.
“Well, you have followed close upon Miss Luke. I remembered that your trains were near together. I hope you have escaped her experience of a crowded carriage?”10
“No, I have not escaped it. I have been sitting upright in the middle of one row of people, and opposite another,” said the newcomer, in a deep, dragging voice, a movement of her shoulders implying that the posture she mentioned was unnatural.
“Well, I suppose we have no reason for objecting to the presence of our fellow creatures,” said Josephine, continuing in Miss Luke’s line.
“I had reasons for objecting to the presence of these creatures. And I don’t know why they were my fellows: I saw no basis of fellowship.”
“I confess it does not always strike the eye,” said Josephine, giving a full smile. “Though we should not dare to say so to Miss Luke. At least, I should not. Perhaps you, as one admitted to greater intimacy, would have more courage.”
Maria Rosetti had been born of Italian parents and brought up in France, and was qualified by these means, and by others in herself which Josephine recognised, as an exponent of modern languages.
“Well, I trust your holiday has been pleasanter than your journey back to us?”
“I have not had a holiday; I have been in a holiday post. It is wise for me to earn what I can, while I can. I have been happy and well.”
“Well, I hope you will have a pleasant term. We must see that your work is not too much. Or rather I must see to it; for I do not believe I can trust you.” Josephine considered a time-table fastened to her desk. “Could we cut out your afternoon conversation classes? Yes, I think we might do that.” She drew her pencil through them. “Then I shall feel that your afternoons are your own.”
“My holiday work has nothing to do with my work in the term, Mrs. Napier.”11
“Has it not?” said Josephine, on a musical note. “But it has to do with my opinion of your fitness for it. I am glad you have told me: I quite see that that was a piece of luck.”
“I am quite fit for my work, Mrs. Napier.”
“You need not tell me that,” said Josephine gravely. “It is easy, indeed, for you to be fit for work so well within your powers. I often wish I had duties for you more up to them. But failing that, I must feel that the daily round is not enough to be a burden.”
“My work is hardly up to me,” said Miss Rosetti, in a level voice. “I do not give it the whole of myself, as it does not claim it. I have been waiting to say that, if you ever have an opening for a partner, I should be grateful for it. I am in a position to meet the material demand; or why should I not say, pay for it?”
“Now, I hope I do not seem to you self-sufficient,” said Josephine after a pause, leaning over her desk with an open expression. “Believe me, I am only hard-working, and unused to having anyone to take the work off my hands. And at the moment I am grateful, for your giving me this mark of your confidence early enough for it to have its meaning. I will bear it in mind for the future; and bear it in mind for the present for my own encouragement. And we must see that the common task is not a tax upon capacities too rare for it. I think a little lightening of it will secure that.”
“You are very kind, Mrs. Napier.”
“No. Why am I kind?” said Josephine, seeming to speak in an aside from jotting something down. “You have always done all you can for me.”
“I will certainly do it, Mrs. Napier,” said Miss Rosetti, her eyes just resting on Josephine’s empty page, as she left the room.
She was succeeded in course by a short, rather ponderous woman of faintly comical aspect, who advanced towards Josephine with an expression that suggested an appreciation of her own 12ambling gait. She had a fresh, round face, nondescript features, unmarked for her fifty years, drab-coloured hair arranged at the least expense of effort, and prominent, vague, bright eyes, that roved and suddenly withdrew as if their owner were informed.
“How do you do, Mrs. Napier? I have come back to-day because the term begins to-morrow.”
Having uttered this greeting, Miss Emmeline Munday stood at ease and in silence.
“That is very considerate. I hoped we should see you to-day. Miss Luke and Miss Rosetti have arrived, and will be waiting in your common room. I hope you are one of those people who find holidays agreeable? Which do your find the more enjoyable, the holidays or the term?”
“The holidays,” said Miss Munday, looking steadily at Josephine.
“I should rather ask, which gives you the more satisfaction?”
Josephine paused for the corresponding amendment.
“The holidays,” said Miss Munday, her lip twitching.
“Well, that is healthy,” said Josephine, not prone to be dissatisfied. “Have you any suggestion to make to me before you join your friends?”
“No,” said Miss Munday, blinking her eyes.
“Nothing about your hours, your classes, your number of pupils; anything? You know you are my senior mistress; you have been with me longer than any member of my staff; and I have nothing to ask of you, but that you will consult yourself in any matter that arises. You know that that could be my only wish for you?”
“Yes,” said Miss Munday, and upon her corroboration turned and left the room.
The fourth arrival was the only married member of Josephine’s staff, a small, harried-looking woman of forty-five, with a small, brown, untidily-featured face, small, brown, flurried hands, 13unkempt, noticeable clothes, and the alert, enquiring, engaging aspect of some little woodland beast. Her husband had been blamed for leaving her without provision, but with some injustice, as she was qualified for teaching English literature, by being the widow of a man who wrote. The senior branch of this subject Miss Munday conducted, by virtue of a degree, thus indicating the place of her colleague’s equipment in the scale. Mrs. Chattaway seldom referred to her wedded life, and her companions, in spite of their sincere deprecation of the married state, assigned her reticence to her sense of loss; whereas the truth was, as they might consistently have guessed, that the memory was uncongenial.
“Oh, I am sure I am later than all the others; I am so ashamed. But I have had a dreadful journey. My train was late, and while I was waiting for it, it went on without me. I did not notice it; it was my own fault. So I had to wait for the next.”
“Well, I am glad that that one did not go on without you,” said Josephine, smiling and retaining the speaker’s hand. “It is not at all the duty of trains to us, to go on while we are waiting. We cannot be expected to do more than arrive and wait. I am afraid you must be very tired?”
“I am not so much tired as flustered and vexed with myself. And I feel so hopelessly untidy; I cannot guess how I must look.” Mrs. Chattaway remedied this inability by glancing in the mirror, but seemed to take advantage of her distraught condition to pass over what she saw. “I am so very sorry to begin again by being late; I know you like us to be here for tea.”
“Well, if I like that, it is for your own sake. And if you are going to arrive as troubled as this, I feel I am right. But you are mistaken in thinking that you are so late; the others have only just arrived. And if you were, fresh tea could be sent up to you. Though I admit that I do not care for you to run your meals too close, as nothing 14is more prejudicial to appetite. Now, may I depend on you to take the rest you need to-morrow, whether in working hours or out of them? You will serve me in that matter?” Josephine’s manner was held in lighter check with this member of her house.
“You are too kind, Mrs. Napier. It is quite like coming home to come back to work here.”
“Well, I should hope it is. You give me two-thirds of your life; and it would be a pretty thing if my house did not seem like home to you. There would be something very wrong with me if that could be so. If there is ever any little thing that would make it seem more homelike, you will tell me of it? May I trust you?”
“Indeed I will; indeed you may, Mrs. Napier. Not that there ever is anything; it is all thought of before we can imagine it. We do appreciate your kindness. I think you do a great work in making a self-supporting life so pleasant for the women who have to lead it.”
“I am sorry you feel that about your life. May I congratulate you on hiding it so well? For it must need courage.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Napier; indeed it does not. There is nothing to hide. I don’t know what I meant by saying it. And of course I should not foster a feeling that might unfit me for my work.”
“A feeling of that kind, even if not fostered, does unfit you for your work,” said Josephine in a serious tone. “But may I pay you a compliment, and say that I do not think you can have it? I have watched you—No, no! No more and no less than it has been my duty to watch you—and I think that the feeling was a part of the disturbance of your life, when you first joined us—Believe me, I saw it with great sympathy—and that it has since vanished. Am I not right?”
“Yes, indeed you are, Mrs. Napier; I had not realised it myself. I am glad to be shown how happy I am in my life. I should be most ungrateful if I were anything else.”15
“You would be most unfortunate. Not to be contented in a life of useful work, that is within our power, is indeed to be unfortunate. I can imagine no lot more satisfying, and I am speaking from my own experience. I am not a person to speak lightly from a position that is not my own. And now I have preached at you long enough; I will not keep you from your tea another moment. And here is your new colleague, Miss Keats, arrived in time to share it with you! Run away, and if you will do me a kindness, ring for fresh tea for yourself and for her. Thank you very much.”
Mrs. Chattaway literally ran away, and a tall, thin girl of twenty-three advanced towards Josephine, lifting her pale grey eyes from her small, pale, lively face, alert to turn to the ends of her own tongue whatever might be said.
“I am glad indeed to see you safely under this roof after your long journey. You have been in my thoughts more than once to-day. I hope you found it a good one?”
“I must shatter that hope,” said Miss Helen Keats, in her soft, staccato voice, meeting Josephine’s eyes with her expression unsteady. “I found it a bad one. A girls’ school was returning; and as this school returns to-morrow, I knew that they were returning on the wrong day. I did not say to them: ‘This is the mistresses’ day.’ I realised that the time for controlling myself with girls was at hand.”
Josephine stood smiling into her face, looking as if she would bend her head, if the face were not on a level with her own.
“You must be tired, and ready for tea and rest.”
“Yes, I find that girls in numbers have that effect. It augurs well for my appetite here, if not for my work.”
“I hope the appetite will not wait until to-morrow for the numbers. The tea is ready now. And you will not see much of the numbers, my dear. Nothing except in school hours; and then 16your classes will be small. I do not make it difficult for people to use their gifts.”
“It sounds as if I had brought with me a healthy aversion from the class of beings I am concerned with. I may see the better how to improve them.”
“My dear, you have brought with you a brave spirit, or you could not have joined us at all. Believe me, I am not thinking little of it, your first plunge into professional life. My own memories are not so blunt. Will you remember that a woman older than your mother is waiting here for you, if you can put her to any of the uses that youth has for middle age? And now go and make some use of that appetite you were boasting of. If you remain so pale and slender, I shall think it was an empty boast. Your common room, the senior mistresses’, is on the upper floor to the right. You are very young to belong to it, but people must be in their own place. No, I will not come up with you. The room is yours, not mine. You will hear the voices through the door.”
Helen went upstairs and knocked at the door described.
“Is this where I am to be?” she said.
“Yes, it is, though I don’t wonder that it strikes you as improbable,” said Miss Luke, coming cordially forward. “So you are the glimpse of youth promised to our failing eyes; and we—there is nothing stranger than truth—are your future companions! Did Mrs. Napier warn you that you would find us all in the sere and yellow leaf?”
“Yes, I believe she did just warn me,” said Helen.
Miss Luke showed amusement at finding her surmise correct, and recovered herself to introduce Miss Munday.
“I am the eldest, the senior mistress,” said Miss Munday, lifting herself from the sofa to offer her hand, and sinking down again with her eyes on the floor.17
“It is thoughtful of you to arrive after the rest of us, so that we are assembled to look at you,” said Miss Rosetti, in the mellow tones of some of her moods, her eyes roving over Helen’s form.
“You look so fresh and charming after your journey, that I can hardly believe it,” said Mrs. Chattaway. “I dare not think how I must look beside you. I hardly liked to appear before Mrs. Napier, kind though she is. I think she was especially kind to-day.”
“I noticed that her standard was high,” said Helen.
“It is wonderful how she enters into the lives of all the people about her. If I had known it when I first came, I should have had a happier beginning.”
“I suppose she forgot to tell you,” said Helen. “She cannot remember with everybody.”
Miss Rosetti laughed, and Miss Luke a little dubiously did the same.
“She may think that self-praise is no recommendation,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“I think she meant it for a recommendation,” said Helen. “I don’t see what other purpose it could serve.”
“I think it often is a recommendation,” said Miss Luke, standing rather squarely. “A little self-praise may augur a good deal of quality. We none of us like to praise ourselves as much as we deserve.” She laughed.
“I think Mrs. Napier would like it. But I admit that she only hinted at the whole.”
“Ah, she is a large person, our principal,” said Miss Luke, looking round. “You should all support me when I say a thing like that. You make me feel I have been fulsome.”
“I support you most warmly,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
Miss Rosetti raised her eyebrows, and Mrs. Chattaway at once turned towards her. 18
“You are too clever and cynical, Miss Rosetti, to see the ordinary good qualities the rest of us see in people,” she said, intending no disparagement of anyone involved.
“I see a great many qualities in Mrs. Napier, some of them good, and very few of them ordinary.”
“We have a remarkable employer, head mistress,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“We have both,” said Miss Luke, gently and frankly.
“It must be trying to be the head of a school,” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“It is surely the least undesirable position in it,” said Miss Rosetti.
“Let me get you all some more tea,” said Mrs. Chattaway. “It is too humble a duty for any of you.”
“We must wait on our qualified women,” said Miss Rosetti, coming to her aid.
“They say that more and more women are qualifying every year,” said Mrs. Chattaway, her sequences of thought vague.
Miss Luke fell into open mirth.
“I did not mean that you were not unusual. I meant that more women were struggling to your level, who did not find it so easy.”
“Oh, it was not done so easily,” said Miss Luke.
“Even Mrs. Napier is not qualified, is she?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“No,” said Miss Luke, in a colourless tone.
“It is a privilege for me to have your friendship, your companionship.”
“Oh, don’t grudge us the status of friendship. Don’t be so snubbing to mere spinsters,” said Miss Luke.
“I don’t mean we must call Miss Keats a spinster yet; I mean, she has not reached the age of final decision.” 19
“Are you sure that was what you meant?” said Miss Luke, with a roguish eye.
“Can anyone tell me where I am to lay my head?” said Helen.
“On the landing above, in number forty-three,” said Miss Luke. “It seems that I have been probing into what is no concern of mine.”
“That is very convenient for me. I will go and take advantage of it.”
“Well, what is our verdict?” said Miss Luke.
“A most charming girl!” said Mrs. Chattaway. “It is extraordinary to think she has been to Oxford and taken such a high place. She gives no sign of it at all.”
“The rest of you find the matter requires consideration?” said Miss Luke, glancing at Miss Rosetti.
“What do you think yourself, Miss Luke?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“Well,” said Miss Luke in a judicial tone, “perhaps a thought self-assured for a young girl and a newcomer, among the middle-aged and established. No, well, that is rather needless. Why should she not be assured? I am sure she has every reason. But definitely and consciously a significant young woman.”
“But surely that is not to her disadvantage?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“Certainly not; to her advantage,” said Miss Luke.
“And not to the disadvantage of anyone else?” said Mrs. Chattaway.
“Certainly not,” said Miss Luke. “What a line to take, to be critical of the valuable gift of young confidence, to be blind to the claim of youth!”
“Must we lay the burden of our middle age on the girl?” said Miss Rosetti. “As you said, she did not lay the burden of her youth on us. And I think she was right.”20
“She was undoubtedly right; and so are you; and I am wrong,” said Miss Luke.
Mrs. Chattaway looked at Miss Luke with appreciation.
“I think I will follow her example and go and unpack,” said Miss Rosetti.
“I will do the same,” said Miss Luke.
Mrs. Chattaway sat with her eyes going after the pair.
“That is a wonderful case of devotion,” she said to Miss Munday.
“Yes,” said Miss Munday, looking at her empty tea-cup.
Mrs. Chattaway ran to replenish the cup, and came up to her companion.
“It must be a great thing in a life like this, such a friendship.”
“Yes,” said Miss Munday, stirring the cup and then raising her eyes. “It must.”
“Are you interested in different human relationships?” said Mrs. Chattaway, on a more urgent note.
“Yes,” said Miss Munday.
“You are more interested in abstract theories, I am sure,” said Mrs. Chattaway, with compliment. “But some human relationships, that arise out of certain conditions, are worthy of attention.”
“Yes,” said Miss Munday.
“Both Miss Luke and Miss Rosetti have great gifts for intimacy.”
“Yes, they have,” said Miss Munday.
“You have watched them, have known them, ever since they have been here together?”
“Yes,” said Miss Munday. “I was here before either of them.”
“And they both have great powers of affection?” said Mrs. Chattaway, pausing for result at length to arise from her words.
“Yes, I have found them both very affectionate,” said Miss Munday, going to the door.21
“I think Miss Rosetti is the less constant,” said Mrs. Chattaway, taking some running steps after her.
“I have found them both quite constant,” said Miss Munday.
Miss Luke and Miss Rosetti mounted arm in arm to the second floor, and pausing outside their adjoining rooms, confronted each other.
“The new young woman is along the corridor, is she not?” said Miss Luke.
“I hope so, as that was the direction you gave her.”
“Is not her room the next but one to mine, next door to yours?”
“I hope so again, as that is what you said,” said Miss Rosetti, pushing the other against the wall, and looking into her face.
“Did you approach Mrs. Napier on the matter of the partnership?”
“With no avail.”
“She can do without you?”
“That is what she was obliged to explain, at some cost to herself and to me.”
“Yes, it must have been at cost to her,” said Miss Luke in a low, quick tone.
Miss Rosetti was silent.
“I am at once glad and sorry,” said Miss Luke. “Glad to keep you, and sorry not to see you rising above us.”
“I am only sorry.”
“Ah, you have come to the end of us. But Miss Keats is fresh ground for you to plough, until you can approach your ultimate goal. I believe you have an unconscious affection for our head.”
Miss Rosetti turned from Miss Luke, and sauntering past her own door, knocked at the next.
“You are settling in?” she said. “Why not sit down and let me unpack for you?” 22
“I see no reason against it,” said Helen. “At least none that need weigh with me, if it does not with you.”
“This is your first post?”
“Yes; or perhaps I should be prepared to be unpacked for by my seniors. It is a custom here? A way of putting newcomers at their ease?”
“Well, I have done it before.”
“If it is not invariably done, it does not put me at my ease.”
“Is this the latest fashion, and this the one before?” said Miss Rosetti, handling some dresses with open interest.
“It does not put me at my ease to be told that my second gown is out of date. Have you never been taught about poverty not being a thing to be ashamed of?”
“I have always been ashamed of it. I would save anyone in my power from it. I have done so in the one case I could. I can alter the dress so that it bears no hint of it. I am a better dressmaker than I have had any reason to be. You need not be afraid of my old maid’s history.”
“But why should you trouble about other people’s clothes? And I have not convinced myself that poverty is shameful.”
“The clothes are not other people’s. They are yours. And things like poverty and old age and death are shameful. We cannot help them; but that is the humiliation. To accept conditions that would not be your choice must be a disgrace.”
Miss Rosetti went to the door, swinging the dress and whistling to herself.