Westwood (30 page)

Her classes continued to be orderly but they did not do well in the examinations at the end of the Easter term, and she was made to feel this by Miss Lathom’s manner. Miss Lathom was indeed surprised, for Margaret had begun well, very well, and her headmistress had not expected these poor results. Something must have happened in her promising new form-mistress’s private life to upset her work, and Miss Lathom had to make an effort not to be irritated by the obvious fact. She had little sympathy with people who took up teaching without a vocation, and she now suspected that Margaret, though possessing many of the qualities that make a first-class teacher, had been guilty of just this fault, and was now being attracted by other interests. Miss Lathom was intelligent enough to hope that at least they might be connected with a young man, but feared (thinking of Margaret’s looks) that they were not.

One afternoon towards the end of the Easter term Margaret was told by another member of the staff that Miss Lathom would like to see her at once, and hurried to the headmistress’s room. Her heart was beating unpleasantly hard, for she feared that her class’s disappointing results in the examinations were about to be discussed.

But when she opened the door in response to Miss Lathom’s ‘Come in,’ she saw two figures sitting by the open window among the bowls of spring flowers, and one was Miss Lomax, her former headmistress at Lukeborough. Miss Lathom benevolently watched the greeting between them, and after a little general conversation there was a pause. Margaret was in a dilemma; she knew that she ought to ask her former headmistress home to tea or at least suggest that they should spend some time together that evening, but she and Zita had planned a walk to Hampstead to look at the beautiful old parish church, and she had been looking forward to this all day. While she hesitated, Miss Lathom glanced at her watch and observed:

‘Well, Monica, I’m expecting a parent in three minutes, so I shall have to send you two good people away. That’s settled, then; you’ll have tea with me on Thursday. I expect Miss Steggles has a great deal to tell you,’ and she dismissed them both with a smile, having previously told her old friend of her recent dissatisfaction with Margaret, and asked her to try to discover where the trouble lay. She would hear Miss Lomax’s report on Thursday.

Margaret and Miss Lomax walked down the long bare corridors, chatting about Lukeborough friends and life in London, with Margaret feeling more and more bitterly the sacrifice of her evening. Her feelings towards Miss Lomax had always been affectionate, but tinged with awe for Miss Lomax’s superior culture and strength of character. Now, as she looked down on the top of Miss Lomax’s good plain felt hat from her greater height, she still felt affectionate, but the awe had quite vanished: Miss Lomax’s manner seemed unnecessarily peremptory, rather than commanding, and her charmless clothes offended eyes used to those worn by Mrs Challis and Hebe Niland. The prospect of spending an evening with this emphatic little person was dismal indeed.

‘You will come home and have tea with me, won’t you, Miss Lomax?’ she asked at last, the very form of the invitation being different from what it would have been six months ago, and with sinking heart heard the reply.

‘I should like to very much, Margaret,’ answered Miss Lomax graciously; it did not occur to her that a junior mistress might have pleasanter occupations than the entertaining of herself. ‘I shall enjoy seeing your mother again, and I want a good long talk with
you
.’

Nothing more of a personal nature was said on the bus-ride to Highgate, and during tea the
conversation was general, though far from comfortable or entertaining, for Mrs Steggles, warned by telephone of the distinguished guest’s approach, had got out the finest lawn tablecloth and rushed up some little cakes, the baking of which had left her flushed and irritable. She kept referring to Miss Lomax’s kindness to Margaret and Margaret’s good fortune in having such interesting work with such pleasant colleagues, and succeeded in creating such an atmosphere of insincerity and strain that Margaret was heartily relieved to find herself at last walking up the hill with Miss Lomax in the late sunshine, the headmistress having expressed the wish to see Highgate Village and then take the bus along the top of the Spaniard’s Walk to Hampstead, where she was dining with friends.

But when they reached the village she suggested that they should walk along the Spaniards and enjoy the freshness of the spring air. On either side of the road steep banks sloped down into tangles of white-flowered bushes, full of the sweet evening calling of blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool blue sky was reflected in pools of rainwater gleaming in the hollows. The broad, lifted highway ran straight between the two commons lying in their valleys and over it, smelling of new leaves and rain, pounced the gusts of April.

‘Why is it called the Spaniards?’ demanded Miss Lomax, marching along and sniffing the air.

‘It’s the Spaniard’s Walk, really: I don’t know why,’ confessed Margaret, recalling her attention with difficulty. She had telephoned Zita to cancel their appointment just before leaving the house, and Zita had sounded annoyed and hurt, and there would be all the tiresome business of soothing her.

‘You should make it your business to find out,’ laughed Miss Lomax pleasantly. ‘There must be a rich field for the amateur antiquarian in these two villages, Margaret, and I am surprised to find you know so little about them. Have you been indulging your weakness for romancing over what’s far away and out of reach, and neglecting the romance under your nose, I wonder?’ she ended, with a keen glance and a twirl of her umbrella. She liked tackling people about their shortcomings and backslidings.

Margaret coloured so deeply that she was compelled to turn her face away in a glance over the valley, but it was not at what Miss Lomax said. Suddenly there had come into her disturbed, disappointed, weary mind a line of Alice Meynell’s:

I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart
,

and for the moment she could not answer. She felt herself in Gerard Challis’s arms, her face hidden on his shoulder, and all sorrow calmed and soothed away. She so seldom allowed herself to indulge in such daydreams that the power with which this one enveloped her was all the stronger.

‘Have you?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Miss Lomax.’

‘Because that’s always been your danger, you know, my dear. You have no idea of what real life is like, in its ugliness and harshness. You have always been very sheltered, Margaret.’

‘Have I? I don’t feel I have.’

‘I don’t expect you do. All the same, it’s a fact. You have great powers for good, as I have always told you, but they aren’t yet directed upon anything
real
. Think of your blessings, your mercies. A good home, kind parents (I am prepared to admit that perhaps they don’t completely understand you, but they
are
kind) and congenial work under a
wonderful
Head. And yet –’

‘I haven’t said I was discontented, Miss Lomax,’ said Margaret, recovering herself and speaking with more force than she would have been capable of in her Lukeborough days. ‘I am perfectly conscious of my advantages, I assure you, and very grateful to you for all your kindness.’

Miss Lomax said nothing for a moment. Margaret’s new tone slightly disconcerted her. She thought her protégée much changed, and not for the better, though it was hard to say exactly where the change lay. She decided to alter her own tone.

‘Well, there is something wrong, I am sure,’ she said, almost playfully. ‘What is all this I hear about poor examination results? After such a good beginning, too!’

Margaret met her inquisitive glance gravely.

‘Yes, my class did do badly,’ she answered with composure. ‘It’s because my heart isn’t in teaching any more.’

‘Well!’ exclaimed Miss Lomax, after a rather appalling pause, ‘that’s candid, at least! Do you realize what you’ve just said?’

Margaret nodded. ‘It must sound very bad to you, I know, and especially after you’ve been so kind to me. I’m sorry to seem ungrateful.’

‘It isn’t that, my dear,’ said Miss Lomax seriously. ‘I have always thought that you had a real gift for teaching, as you know, and I have been glad to put you in the way of developing it. But I am really worried, and alarmed too, to hear you say so calmly that your heart isn’t in teaching. Where is it, then?’ she ended, on the playful note, bearing in mind Miss Lathom’s hint that there might be a young man in the case.

‘It’s not easy to say,’ answered Margaret after a pause. ‘Part of it is in Wolf’s and Schubert’s songs, and I’ve made some new friends – and –’

‘Ah! So that’s it!’ said Miss Lomax keenly, her eyes positively darting with triumph and the umbrella twirling like mad. ‘Now, who are these
new friends
?’

‘I don’t think you would find them interesting,’ Margaret replied, in such a tone that Miss Lomax was completely silenced, and for what seemed a long time they walked along without speaking, while the varied colours of the April sky above them drifted towards a delicate sunset of grey and turquoise and orange-pink.

At last Margaret glanced down at the little figure marching at her side and felt penitent, for she had been both ungrateful and unkind.

‘I am sorry I was rude,’ she said, putting warmth into her voice, as she knew how. ‘Please forgive me.’

‘Ah, that is the Margaret I used to know!’ said Miss Lomax, turning towards her a somewhat shaken face under the good felt hat. ‘You sounded so hard, so bitter! I hardly knew you!’

‘I’m not hard at all, really.’

‘Well, I hope not, my dear, for your sake. But you are certainly changed. I have always thought, you know, that what you need to make a really fine human being of
you
is a great shock; suffering; self-sacrifice –’

‘Someone else said that,’ said Margaret, turning her face again towards the valley, ‘though not about me specially.’

‘– just as the camomile gives out a stronger scent when it is bruised,’ ended Miss Lomax.

‘And what about happiness? Can’t that make a fine human being, too?’

‘Happy people are always selfish, or nearly always.
Suffering is the anvil upon which the crystal sword of integrity is hammered
. I found that in a volume of plays I was reading the other day – I forget the author’s name –’

‘Gerard Challis. It comes in a play of his called
Mountain Air
,’ said Margaret, still studying the valley.

‘Well, it is true. Until you have
really
suffered, Margaret, you won’t be the fine person you could be. And now, enough of lecturing! In spite of your heart not being in teaching, tell me how you are getting on at school.’

This conversation was duly reported to Miss Lathom on Thursday, and both teachers came to the disturbing conclusion that it was no temporary dissatisfaction with her profession Margaret was suffering from, but a corruption of her sense of duty by bad company, namely, the new friends of whom she had spoken. Miss Lathom could do no more than think of some phrases for that lecture for which she felt the moment was not yet ripe, but Miss Lomax could write a long, severe and vigorously worded letter, and did; hinting to Margaret that she did not realize how serious her neglect of her duties might be, and ending with these words:

‘If we believe with Keats that this world is “a vale of soul-making” (and I, for one, do) we cannot ignore any opportunity for strengthening and sweetening and beautifying our own souls, or leave any other soul to flounder into the Slough of Despond without a word of friendly warning. This is what I am giving you, Margaret!’

It sometimes happens that an ordinary pleasant person whom we have known all our lives comes out with a remark which we never forget, just as it happens that a comparative stranger may let fall some comment or piece of wisdom that we treasure as a lifelong influence. Miss Lomax’s quotation from Keats’s letter was unfamiliar to Margaret, and it struck full on her imagination with a shadowy beauty, like that of a huge cloud at midday which stealthily obscures the sunshine but lends a new kind of light to the landscape. She did not take much notice of the rest of the letter, as it was exactly what Miss Lomax might be expected to think and feel; but the words of Keats haunted her and sank into her heart.

She did, however, take a
little
notice of what Miss Lomax so earnestly said, and as a result her class’s work began to improve. She no longer gave all her ardent, conscientious powers to teaching her girls, but she no longer completely scamped the work, and she was cynically amused to see how well she could do by exerting only half her capabilities. Miss Lathom was relieved and her manner grew more cordial.

Meanwhile, Mr Challis’s new play was completed and about to burst upon London. Margaret had heard scraps of gossip from Zita about its progress from time to time and had treasured them: a big parcel of memoirs by Austrian diplomats and Viennese society women had arrived from the London Library for Mr Challis; he was working every night until the small hours; he was reading Arthur Schnitzler; he was lunching with the notorious and ill-tempered woman who was considered to be the only actress with enough temperament to play Kattë. The play was in rehearsal; Edward Early was to play the hero, only Mr Challis says that there is no hero; the first night would be on the fourth of May.

Margaret, with the advantage of being primed by Zita, had a letter waiting for the box-office at the theatre on the morning that the date was announced by the Press – for she had insisted that Zita must not ask the family for a ticket, and had offered to pay for them both, realizing that she would have to go with Zita; all would be revealed to Zita’s keen eye if she insisted upon going alone, and she would have to be content with going by herself later on. It would be a real trial to sit through three hours in Zita’s company and conceal her feelings, but it must be done, and there was the prospect of seeing his play, and of hearing his beautiful work praised, to console her for the ordeal. As the fourth of May drew near she could think of little else.