Читать книгу The Third Eye - Ethel Lina White - Страница 7

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THE next day the veil was lifted and Caroline met Mrs. Nash. She felt no advance qualms of nerves when she was summoned to her interview, because Miss Melody's plea for her championship of the Head had suggested some one blurred and muddled as the White Queen. It made her forget that Mrs. Nash had built up a successful enterprise.

She remembered the fact directly she crossed the threshold of the private study, which was plain and business-like as an office. Neither was there any trace of her pathetic lady in the clear-cut personality of Mrs. Nash. She was chilled, polished and immaculate—with satin-smooth, iron-grey hair which matched her tailored suit.

Scarcely removing her eyes from a ledger, she contrived to absorb, dissect, classify and reassemble Caroline in one glance from her penetrating grey eyes.

"Miss Watts' file," she said to her secretary, who had forestalled her request.

Her voice, although low-pitched, was vibrant and incisive. She made a rapid survey of the meagre contents of the folder, compared Caroline's flattering photograph with the original, and then asked the inevitable question:

"Why have you no diploma for Physical Culture?"

"I hadn't time to train," faltered Caroline heroically. "I meant to be a teacher. But I couldn't pass the examinations."

Mrs. Nash showed her first sign of approval in the flicker of a smile like winter sunshine.

"I have taken you without experience or qualifications," she said. "It is up to you to prove your worth." While Caroline was beginning to stammer her thanks, she found herself dismissed and outside the door. She was still gasping from the shock of her surprise, when she suddenly recalled the meaning mutter of the titled pupil:

"She'll listen to her Master's Voice."

The insinuation that this capable woman, who had all but mentally electrocuted her, could be the puppet of another's will, was preposterous. But she had no time to waste on solving mysteries, while she was trying to get her bearings and fit into the time-table of the school.

Although she localised the rooms and memorised faces, she remained an outsider—a fact which was not entirely due to the Professor's advice. She rarely came into contact with the teaching staff, who ignored her as a sort of super-schoolgirl. Kewpie was a merry little soul, but rather volatile for her sober taste, while Auriol was too inclined to dramatise herself. As for Miss Melody, she seemed that pathetic figure—the predestined failure, with her warped devotion, her incompetence, and her complaints.

It was not long before she fell victim to the mass-suggestion of Miss Yaxley-Moore's infallibility and the belief that there was no limit to the range of her general knowledge and accomplishments. Caroline, who worshipped efficiency, was hypnotised into accepting her boasts, when she witnessed her exhibition of horsemanship during the promised jumping practice.

As she swaggered on to the field, wearing breeches and a polo jersey, she looked preposterously clumsy beside the slim girls in jodhpurs; but directly she was mounted, there was a miracle of readjustment. Instead of a woman and an animal, there was a Centaur, as she became one with the horse—in striking contrast with the cleavage of the girls when they tried to emulate her over the hurdles.

In the days that followed, Caroline saw little of Mrs. Nash, although—from the retreat of her private office—she appeared to have her fingers on the reins of government and to be aware of the slightest development. The school itself was dominated by the autocratic Yaxley-Moore, against whose judgements there was no appeal. Stunned by her terrific personality, Caroline was astounded when she heard of some one who was even mightier than the Matron.

Mindful of her brother-in-law's warning, she asked no personal questions about the staff. But she was vaguely conscious that every one seemed on guard, as though aware of a secret whirlpool, and anxious to avoid being sucked into the outmost rim of a zone of danger.

"Has Yaxley-Moore told you about her half-sister?" asked Kewpie one evening.

"No," replied Caroline.

"Well, she will. She's her King Charles's Head. She can't keep her out of the conversation. She's got her knife into her. According to her, the half-sister prevented her marriage."

"I can't imagine her married!" objected Caroline. "She's definitely sporty Old English. I can see her fighting cocks and biting off badgers' heads."

"But when she was young, she might have shaped all right in some primitive place where women can't be squeamish. She'd enjoy joking about the chicken and the axe. I'd like to see that half-sister. She must be a regular man-eater to get our Glaxo down."

Instantly there flashed into Caroline's mind a vision of a taller, vaster and even more formidable edition of Yaxley-Moore, since the half-sister was reinforced with wealth and social prestige.

It was not long before she had proof of the Matron's obsession. Faced with the problem of projecting her authority with girls only slightly younger than herself, she was a martinet on the hockey-field. Fortunately, she could make a quick decision and stick to it, as she was spared the confusion of a split personality.

One practice, when she was giving a good sample of her slanging powers, she was rather disconcerted to find that she had an appreciative audience in Miss Yaxley-Moore, who stood grinning on the touch-line.

"That's right," she said approvingly. "Let yourself rip." Then, as though struck by an after-thought, she added, "I'm throwing a sherry party tonight, in my room, after nine. Come?"

Since the invitation was practically a command, Caroline went. She was rather jarred, however, to discover that, in addition to some of the junior mistresses, the two privileged titled pupils were present.

"You meet as equals," boomed Miss Yaxley-Moore, sensing her disapproval. "I know I've been criticised for taking girls into a cocktail bar at Plume. But it would be a fine advertisement for the school if they got tight at their first party."

She made a generous hostess, especially to herself, although Caroline got the impression that she could drink the party under the table and remain unaffected. In her favourite place, before the fire, her great figure loomed solid as a rock through the smoky air; but there was a blurred look in her violet eyes as suddenly she began to talk about her half-sister.

"Call the abbey old?" she said scornfully, singling out Caroline for her boast. "You should see my half-sister's place. Been in the family for centuries."

"Does she live there all alone?" asked Caroline.

"Yes. She has all the cash, you know. I plonked down my inheritance on a spin of the wheel, at Monte. I lost—and that's why I'm here...She interfered with my life. But for her, I should be in Canada now—the mother of lusty sons."

"Oh...Where does she live?" asked Caroline, who did not dare to offer sympathy.

Miss Yaxley-Moore did not reply at once. Although there was always a foundation of truth in her stories, she liked to trample down boundaries and be unhampered by fact.

"Wiltshire," she replied vaguely.

"Has she the same name as you?"

"Yes."

Reluctant to be localized, Miss Yaxley-Moore would not mention a name which Caroline might have heard through the medium of some one who could check up on her statements.

That was the reason why Caroline was misled when she met the ominous half-sister—for they were fated to meet. Otherwise, as Miss Yaxley-Moore had guessed, the name might have stuck in her memory.

"Miss Bat, of Bat House."

In any case, Caroline was too confused to make deductions: she tired of the party and wanted to slip out of the hot noisy little room, but her hostess stopped her.

"But for my half-sister," she repeated, harping on her grievance, "I should be now surrounded with men, instead of a pack of women. My sons would be heroes. I've no use for weaklings...Now, you've got guts. You're not like that other fool of a games mistress, who had convulsions if she met a worm. I couldn't stick her."

Caroline was aware of a sudden hush in the noisy room as the Matron rambled on.

"Disgusting—that sort of squeamishness. Middle-class. It revolts me. What's there to be afraid of in some poor harmless creature, just because it wriggles or crawls? Why, I remember one glorious rag at a house-party of Lord Pontypool's, when you never knew what you were going to find in your bed. Mice, spiders, frogs."

As she broke off to laugh loudly at the recollections, Caroline asked a careless question:

"Did you put anything in any one's bed?"

She had the uneasy sense of having blundered, when Miss Yaxley-Moore froze into icy hostility.

"No," she said with emphasis. "Never!"

"I'm afraid we must go now," declared Kewpie, becoming suddenly time-conscious as she gripped Caroline's arm. "Come, Watts."

When they were outside in the corridor, she lowered her voice.

"You dropped an awful brick just now," she said. "You know a servant started some wild story that something had been put in Miss Tate's bed for a joke, and she passed out from shock. Of course, it was a lie on the face of it, because she'd have thrown a fit and screamed blue murder; but there wasn't a sound all night, and she was rigid as a poker in the morning, while the bedclothes were perfectly tidy...I thought I'd give you the tip not to mention it again. Nighty-night."

Kewpie grinned broadly as they parted at her door, but Caroline went on to her room with quivering nerves. She remembered her dream when she lay locked in paralysis—with frozen vocal chords; yet in her own case of an imaginary experience, there must have been a skin of protective tissue between her and the stark horror.

"I know what it felt like," she thought. "She couldn't move. She was mesmerised."

The clean buff walls of her room—innocent of spiders—looked cheerful in the electric light. On her toilet-chest was placed a picture post-card from the Professor. It contained a photograph of King's College and a Browning quotation.

"How rolls the Wairoa at your World's far end?" he had scrawled. "Free translation—'It's your turn to write.' Don't forget our guest suite is still vacant."

Caroline glanced at her comfortable bed, contrasting it with the narrow divan and, to her surprise, a lump rose in her throat. She felt homesick for the little hot dining-room, lit by every passing bus—as she thought of the Professor playing, on the sly, with his sons' mechanical toys; of Lesley who, although a mathematical swell, was beaten regularly by her housekeeping books; of the small nephews whom she tried to make into pugilists.

That far-away life seemed so safe and normal as she questioned whether her bedroom had actually been the scene of a brutal practical joke, whose terror yet lingered on.

Then she shook her head. As Kewpie had declared, there was no foundation for the lie. She reminded herself that Mrs. Nash, in her ruthless competence, and in the school's interests, would have dismissed Yaxley-Moore—however close their friendship—had the alleged episode been fact.

To steady her nerves, she sat down and wrote an immediate answer to the Professor's letter.

She told him all about the food.