Rising from the table, Claire caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the strip of mirror over the chimney-piece, and at the sight a little thrill, half-painful, half-pleasant, passed through her veins. The soft bloom of her complexion, the dainty finish of her dress, differentiated her almost painfully from her companions, and she felt a pang of dread lest that difference should ever grow less. While she affected to read one of the magazines which lay on a side table, she was really occupied making a number of vehement resolutions: Never to slack in her care of her personal appearance; never to give up brushing her hair at night; never to wear a flannel blouse; never to give up manicuring her hands; never, no, never to allow herself to grow short-sighted, and be obliged to submit to specs!
The different mistresses seemed to be on friendly terms, but there was an absence of the camaraderie which comes from living under the same roof. School was a common possession, but home hours were spent apart, except when, as in Claire’s own case, two mistresses shared the same rooms, and it followed as a matter of course that personal interests were divided. To-day the conversation was less scholastic than usual, the intervening holidays forming a topic of interest. The Art mistress had been on a bicycle sketching tour with a friend; the German mistress had taken a cheap trip home; Miss Blake announced that all her money had gone on “hateful massage,” and the faces of her listeners sobered as they listened, for Sophy Blake, who led the exercises with such verve and go, had of late complained of rheumatic pains, and her companions heard of her symptoms with dread. What would become of Sophy if those pains increased? One after another the mistresses drifted over to where Claire sat turning the pages of her magazine, and exchanged a few fragments of conversation, and then the great bell clanged again, and afternoon school began.
The first half-hour of afternoon school proved the most trying of the day. Claire was tired after the exertions of the morning, and a very passion for sleep consumed her being. She fought against it with all her might, but the yawns would come; she fought against the yawns, and the tears flowed. To her horror the infection spread, and the girls began to yawn in their turn, with long, uncontrolled gapes. It was a junior class, and the new mistress shrewdly suspected that the infection was welcomed as an agreeable interlude. It was obvious that she could not afford to reject that cup of coffee. Good or bad it must be drunk! Rich or poor that penny must be dedicated to the task of vitalising that first hour of sleepiness.
At the end of six weeks Claire felt as though she had been a High School-mistress all her life. The regular methodical days, in which every hour was mapped out, had a deadening effect on one who had been used to constant variety, and except for a difference in the arrangement of classes there seemed no distinction between one and the other. She was a machine wound up to work steadily from Monday morning until Friday night, and absurdly ready to run down when the time was over.
Every morning after breakfast she started forth with Miss Rhodes, by foot if the weather were fine, by Tube if wet; every mid-day she dined in the Staff-Room with the fifteen other mistresses, and gulped down a cup of chicory coffee. At four o’clock the mistresses met once more for tea, a free meal this time, supplemented by an occasional cake which one of the fifteen provided for the general good. At five she and her table companion returned to their rooms, and rested an hour before taking the evening meal.
Claire was sufficiently French to be intolerant of badly cooked food, and instead of resigning herself to eat and grumble, after the usual habit of lodging-house dwellers, resolutely set to work to improve the situation. The coffee machine had now a chafing-dish as companion, and it was a delightful change of work to set the two machines to work to provide a dainty meal.
“High Tea” consisted as a rule of coffee and some light dish, the materials for which were purchased on the way home. On hungry days, when work had been unusually trying, the butcher supplied cutlets, which were grilled with tomatoes, or an occasional quarter of a pound of mushrooms: on economical days the humble kipper—legendary food of all spinsters in lodgings!—was transformed into quite a smart and restaurant-ey dish, separated from its bones, pounded with butter and flavouring, and served in neat little mounds on the top of hot buttered toast. Moreover, Claire was a proficient in the making of omelettes, and it was astonishing how large and tempting a dish could be compounded of two eggs, and the minutest scrap of ham left over from the morning’s breakfast!
“Every luxury of the season, with the smell thrown in! In nice cooking the smell is almost the best part. All the cedars in Lebanon wouldn’t smell as good at this moment as this nice ham-ey coffee-y frizzle,” Claire declared one Friday evening as she served the meal on red-hot plates, and glowed with delight at her own sleight of hand. “Don’t you admire eggs for looking so small, when they possess such powers of expansion? All the result of beating. Might make a simile out of that, mightn’t you?”
“Might, but won’t,” the English teacher replied, sipping luxuriously at her coffee. “I’m not a teacher any more at this moment. I’m a gourmand, pure and simple, and I’ll stay a gourmand straight on till this omelette is finished. When all trades fail, you might go out as a missioner to women living in diggings, and teach them how to prepare their meals, and sell chafing-dishes by instalment payments at the door, as the touts sell sewing machines to the maids. It would be a noble vocation!”
Claire smirked complacently. “I flatter myself I have made a difference to your material comfort! Poor we may be, but we do have nice, dainty little meals, and there’s no reason why every able-bodied woman shouldn’t have them at the same cost. I’ve just remembered another nice dish. We’ll have it to-morrow night.” She paused, and a wistful look came into her eyes, for the next day was Saturday, and it was on holiday afternoons that the feeling of loneliness grew most acute. School life was monotonous, but it was never lonely; from morning to night one lived in a crowd, and already each class had furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there was always a crowd, always a hum and babble of voices, but at the end of the week came a dead calm.