The Crowded Street

by Winifred Holtby

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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