Читать книгу Swiss Sonata - Gwethalyn Graham - Страница 7

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At twenty-nine minutes to four the teaching staff of Pensionnat Les Ormes met at the door of the study, came in together, and stood about awkwardly for a while, waiting for the headmistress, who was apparently lost in thought, to take some notice of them. She and Jeanne d’Ormonde were approximately the same age, but whereas Mlle d’Ormonde was small and delicately beautiful, with a black velvet ribbon always at her throat, her cousin Amélie Tourain was fairly tall, with greying brown hair piled on the top of her head, and no pretence to beauty of any sort. Her nose was broad and slightly aquiline, her skin naturally rather sallow, and sallowed still further by the rusty browns and blacks of her clothes. She took no interest in her appearance, and combined shapeless brown wool dresses with black or grey jerseys and shawls indiscriminately, without noticing the effect she created, exactly as she sat now, at her desk, unaware of her surroundings and either unaware of or indifferent to the presence of her staff. These, after more hesitations, settled down in the straight-backed chairs which Mlle Tourain had brought in from the dining-room and arranged in a semi-circle before her desk.

Her black eyes swept over them in one comprehensive glance: she saw that Mlle Devaux’s face had that mottled look which always betrayed her nervousness; realized that Rose Dupraix, who was sitting with her hands folded and her mouth set in a way designed to be pleasant, would oppose her politely yet vindictively no matter what she said, deploring any irregularity, disapproving of any action on the part of Amélie Tourain as she always did, wondered fleetingly what was the matter with Fräulein Lange to make her look so childishly and pathetically upset; observed with moderate satisfaction that Miss Williams at least looked as usual, and experienced her usual slight irritation at the sight of Mlle Lemaitre’s thin, feverish face. The woman was as good a scholar as herself, so why was she so lacking in ordinary common sense that she could not take care of her health? That was the trouble with the whole French nation; they were, beyond a shadow of doubt, the most highly educated and intelligent race on earth but with faces like pastrycooks! They never ate the right food, never got enough exercise nor went out of doors if they could help it, kept their shutters closed at night, neglected their bodies for the sake of their minds from kindergarten onwards, and what was the result? A nation running on nervous energy, without stamina, without vitality ... without ordinary common sense!

Her eyes reached Miss Ellerton, the games mistress, who, after a few impatient glances in Mlle Tourain’s direction, had got up from her chair and wandered over to the french windows where she was standing now, holding the curtain back with one hand and looking over the lovely grey town where dusk already lurked here and there. Some of the light which yet remained in the outer world was caught in her hair and outlined her small features so that the others, sitting patiently in their chairs, were aged by their contrasting dullness. Amélie Tourain leaned forward a little and switched on her desk light, then remained motionless looking at the girl by the window. An unaccountable conviction that Miss Ellerton was in some way connected with the turmoil in her mind had complete possession of her.

Mlle Devaux found it hard not to fidget. Whatever position she took was uncomfortable; she was troubled periodically by twinges of rheumatism in her legs, and for the whole day she had been moving restlessly whenever she sat down, the pain relieved only during those few minutes which she had been able to snatch after lunch, in order to lie down in her room. She became increasingly nervous and anxious as the silence continued, her mind going over the events of the past few days in a rather haphazard way as she tried to remember whether or not she had committed any error, or been guilty of some neglect which might account for Mlle Tourain calling this entirely unprecedented meeting.

With a series of slow and almost imperceptible movements she managed to arrange her right leg so that the twinges were less frequent and transferred her eyes from the china shepherdess in pink ... who appeared to be poised on the edge of a precipice with her three sheep ... to Mlle Tourain’s face. All her life she had been self-conscious in the presence of authority but during the past two months her uneasiness with Mlle Tourain had increased, due to the impertinence of Vicky Morrison, who had become the focal point of all her nervousness and dissatisfactions ever since Vicky had first noticed that Henriette Devaux was invariably panic-stricken during Mlle Tourain’s weekly fifteen-minute inspections. Vicky had apparently then decided that it was up to her to relieve the general tension a little and thereby help out Mlle Devaux by drawing attention to herself. The third occasion on which she said something funny the headmistress had glanced at her over Doris Anderson’s note-book, then at Mlle Devaux, and after that things went much easier with the grammar teacher. She however became convinced that Mlle Tourain despised her because she could not keep order, for she was a rather unintelligent woman and failed to realize that the headmistress regarded her inspections of Mlle Devaux’s class as the least dull of the lot, owing to Vicky’s presence and ingenuity.

Fräulein Lange was thinking of her sister in Zurich who was expecting a baby in two months. She had written to her that morning saying that she was crippled with sciatica; Fräulein Lange did not think that was natural, and immediately, in her first free period, she had gone down to the Place St. François and bought a book on obstetrics. She had arrived back with the book just in time for her next class, which was a small one, consisting of Vicky, Theodora Cohen, the two Cummings-Gordon girls from Philadelphia, and Yasha Livovna. She had set them to translating a long poem of Heinrich Heine and then sat down on the opposite side of the table from them, with the book on obstetrics in her lap and the volume of Heine propped in front of her, so that they would think she was following them, and skimmed through the entire section on symptoms.

She was staring now at the bookcases behind Mlle Tourain, wondering whether her neglect of that class would be discovered or not, for she also feared authority and knew that German teachers were easy to come by. A moment later her mind returned to Maria, her sister. The book had said something about kidney trouble, and it might be that, rather than sciatica. There was no way of knowing. The book said that women ought to be examined very regularly; when she, Fräulein Lange had ventured to suggest that to her brother-in-law Adolf, that Maria should at least see a doctor once a month because she had always been rather delicate with a poor constitution, Adolf had paid no attention to her, beyond remarking that having babies was natural to women and that Maria should not be babied. The book said that kidney trouble was the most ... or one of the most ... dangerous of all complications; supposing then that Maria had kidney trouble and something happened to her?

She drew in her breath suddenly and sharply, so that Mlle Dupraix and Mlle Lemaitre on either side of her turned and stared. The French woman averted her feverish eyes quickly, but Mlle Dupraix continued to look at her disapprovingly. For once in her life Fräulein Lange was unmoved by her disapproval. Her hands, lying clenched in her lap, were cold and very red as she looked down at them. Her worry was turning to panic; she began to feel sick and looked about the room in a desperate effort to get her mind on something else. She must control herself; she was the German mistress at Pensionnat Les Ormes in Lausanne, and she had no right to let herself get into such a state; she had no right to be thinking of anything or anyone but the school and its forty-eight girls. Yet her heart cried that she cared nothing for the school and its forty-eight girls, she cared only for Maria.

Mlle Dupraix had been trying to make up her mind whether or not she should clear her throat, lean forward and ask deliberately, ‘Mlle Tourain, is it possible that you are feeling ill?’ In the end she decided to allow the headmistress her small triumph, her public exercise of authority in keeping them all waiting like this in that contemptuous and ill-mannered way, and resuming her former position ... she had been forced to shift a little in order to look disapprovingly at the German teacher beside her ... which spoke plainly of her well-bred self-containment, she turned her thoughts once more to Vicky. It required almost no effort of will on her part; she saved up Vicky for her disoccupied moments and might almost be said to have thought of her most of the time when she was not actively engaged in something else, ever since the girl’s arrival four months before. Settling herself a little more comfortably in her chair, she gave herself up to the fulsome enjoyment to be derived from hating, cruelly and maliciously, someone twenty-five years younger than herself.

Her hatred was based on two things: that the girl knew more about Mlle Dupraix’s subject, Beaux Arts, than Mlle Dupraix herself, and that no matter what she said or did, she could never feel that she had done more than very lightly scratch Vicky’s surface, for the girl appeared to be imperturbable. Mlle Dupraix had, however, both said and done so much, that she suffered a certain amount of anxiety at times for fear Mlle Tourain should find out and dismiss her out of hand. But the headmistress could not do that, when it came right down to it, for during that woman’s first day at school, when she had come in and discovered Mlle Tourain moving Jeanne d’Ormonde’s desk from the place in which it had stood for ten years, she, Rose Dupraix, had made her position clear. She had said, looking down at the stout elderly woman sitting behind the desk and purring a little from her exertions, who returned her look with that detached and unsmiling expression which was her outstanding characteristic, ‘You realize, of course, that I have kept house for Mlle d’Ormonde ever since she took over the school, and have, besides that, been teaching Beaux Arts for the past eight years. You will be able to understand that although I am, of course, anxious to do everything I can to assist you, I find it impossible to look upon you as anything but my ... nominal ... head. I have worked for Mlle d’Ormonde for so long that she has come to be my ... my spiritual principal. I know you will understand what I am trying to say....’

That shabby, fat, ill-dressed woman had remained looking up at her for a long time, nodding slowly, and then remarked at last, ‘Tell me, Mlle Dupraix, what is this Beaux Arts which you teach? Or should I say what are these Beaux Arts....’

She often asked herself how Mlle Tourain ... that brown lump of a woman ... could possibly be related to Jeanne, who was so refined in every way. At any rate, the headmistress could not dismiss her, because she was employed by Mlle d’Ormonde, who assured her of that fact every time she made her monthly journey across the lake to Evian to take her flowers. Mlle Dupraix saw to it that Mlle d’Ormonde was regularly posted on the happenings in her beloved school, and it had been her opinion that Vicky should be got rid of ... although she had added that since her cousin Amélie had charge of the school during her temporary confinement in the hospital at Evian, it was her affair, to be dealt with as she thought fit.

Mlle Dupraix was almost startled when the headmistress’s voice at last broke into her thoughts. Mlle Tourain was sitting back in her chair now, and had begun to tap the rubber end of her pencil against the brass ink-pot. The intermittent and irregular sound was an invariable accompaniment to her speech when she was in doubt or more than usually perplexed. The four teachers, seated in front of her, came to attention. Mary Ellerton hesitated a moment, then returned to her chair nearest the window and sat down with one leg crossed over the other, her arm along the back.

She was wearing a dark brown tweed skirt and a bright green sweater which increased her natural vividness. Her hair was the shade of reddish gold which Amélie Tourain had always imagined existed only in the minds of second-rate novelists; when Miss Ellerton had come to see her about the job that first day, she had actually hesitated to engage her. She was altogether too striking. She would never fit into the background of Pensionnat Les Ormes. Yet something about the girl ... a kind of quiet strength which suggested to the headmistress that at some time she had undergone a good deal of suffering ... had attracted her so strongly that she had taken her on, dismissing the question which had been occupying the minds of the rest of her staff ever since, as to why such a creature should choose to go out in all weathers to give instruction in hockey, basket-ball, skating, ski-ing and tennis in exchange for twenty-five Swiss francs a month, board, lodging and the privilege of speaking French ... which she could speak fairly well already ... as being none of her business. The others continued to watch Miss Ellerton running up and down stairs, going at all her work with interest, almost as though she found the school entertaining, and supposed that she had an independent income since nothing else could conceivably account for that look of inner happiness, that look of separateness, as though she had an existence of her own quite apart from the school ... even while attending a staff-meeting.

Mlle Tourain said, ‘I called this meeting with the intention of asking your advice. I wanted to take these few minutes to tell you some of the things which are troubling me, so that you could think about them between now and this evening’s meeting and possibly offer some suggestions then.’

Her mind was racing ahead of her speech; she was aware of her audience and at the same time aware of herself, looking at Amélie Tourain quite impersonally.

Her whole point of view had been, until very recently, that of a person looking through a window at something which is taking place in the room beyond. She had remained mentally ... which was the only way which really counted ... in her study, issuing from it to meals, to general assembly each morning after breakfast, for her rounds of inspection and the two hours which she was forced to spend each evening with the girls in their living-room, but she had neither given one word of advice nor performed one action with the idea that she would be there to see that the thing was carried out. Since the doctors in Evian had said until very recently that it would be merely a matter of months before Jeanne could resume her position, she had simply sat and waited for four years.

The change had come imperceptibly; she could not have said when it was that she first faced the possibility of being saddled with the school for the rest of her life. Lately she had been drawn more and more from her mental retreat; there had been sporadic outbursts which had shown her the emotional pitch of the school so clearly that, try as she might, she could no longer avoid facing a few issues. She had heard, involuntarily ... for she would have given a great deal for her old serene and comfortable ignorance ... snatches of conversation hastily switched from German, English, Italian, Spanish into French as she went along the halls: someone was stealing, and Truda Meyer for quite obvious reasons ... her father owned steel mills in Essen and was ardently Fascist ... had started the rumour that Ilse Brüning from Saarbrücken was the thief. Ilse’s mother was Jewish, Ilse was engaged to a Jew, and Ilse was too easily terrified. One does not expect forty-eight girls of every conceivable nationality and from every conceivable sort of background to be able to adapt themselves to living together in perfect harmony, under the best circumstances. When those circumstances appeared to be the worst imaginable, short of actual war between their countries, schoolgirl quarrels took on significance, pretexts were readily available, and adolescent imaginations started to work.

She tried to get some of these ideas across to her staff, seated in front of her. She was remembering, as she spoke, that the results of the little talk she had given the school the preceding Saturday night on the League of Nations, had not been all that she had hoped for. They had listened to her politely, all those children, agreeing with her in principle no doubt, but all having the idea ... this also she had gathered from chance conversations as they went about the school ... that the function of the League was to bring every other country into line with their own.

She had spoken with an undercurrent of passion running through her words, as she was speaking now. She believed intensely in the integrity and value of her country, although during her fifty-eight years of life she had come to the bitter knowledge that the rest of the world thought merely of a Switzerland which was divided into three parts, possessed no national language and no national identity of its own, and was distinguished for nothing but the manufacture of watches, cheese, lace, chocolate, and its winter sports. People seemed to know of the Swiss schools, but to think of them chiefly as a convenient way in which to familiarize their children with ski-ing and skating. She realized that culturally and economically the Swiss were relatively unimportant; educationally ... which was the only way in which they could hope to contribute toward human advancement in general ... they were attempting too much, for it was beyond the range of possibility that conventional, non-thinking adolescents could be made over in one year or even three. So far as she could see, the only thing which could be done would be to abandon the idea of finishing schools altogether, and attempt to get foreign students at twelve or thirteen, and equip them for any university in their respective countries which they might wish to attend, taking five years to do it. In that way the schools might complement the League idea.

The existing Swiss schools were in a curious position since, so far as the parents of their pupils were concerned, their chief function was to provide instruction in French and winter sports; the international idea was purely incidental. Yet, she supposed, they must have some vague idea of giving their children a chance to see through the eyes of other countries, or they would send them elsewhere. If you have a ‘my country right or wrong’ point of view, surely you don’t send your children to a school where they will be forced to speak French, share rooms with a Norwegian or a Pole, and eat their meals with Armenians, Hungarians, Greeks, Danes, Germans?

‘We are in a peculiar position,’ she concluded. ‘No one else in the world has our opportunity to ... to ... inculcate the international idea in minds which are not yet too set, too limited by prejudice, too mired in conventional patriotism, if you care to look at it in that light. However, although that ought to be our working basis, our actual raison d’être, we cannot attempt to remedy a situation as bad as the present one, through such a circuitous route.’

‘What situation?’ asked Rose Dupraix.

Mlle Tourain leaned forward with one elbow on her desk, looking at her with a faintly amused expression. ‘I should have thought that after your twenty years in this school, you would have been the first to detect psychological changes, Mlle Dupraix.’ She looked down at her pencil, still tapping impatiently on the brass ink-pot, and went on a moment later, ‘I put it to you like this ... if the atmosphere of this school continues to be as strained, as unpleasant, as it is at the moment, we shall lose our pupils ... and our means of livelihood. It’s hard enough combining an American Jewess of Theodora Cohen’s temperament with a hysterical fourteenth-century Fascist like Truda Meyer, without throwing in a peace-loving and devout Bavarian Catholic like Anna von Landenburg, a half-Jewish girl from the Saar who doesn’t yet know what nationality she is, and adding a Swiss and English staff who are too detached to consider these girls as anything but so many troublesome children learning lessons in the schoolroom of a mountain village.’

She thought, looking from one to another, that none of these women would have been here had it not been necessary for them to earn their living ... no one, that is, but Mary Ellerton. Miss Williams took her remark in the spirit in which it was offered, and instantly looked apologetic; Fräulein Lange did not appear even to have heard her ... what was the matter with the woman? ... Mlle Lemaitre’s black eyes said ‘Fair enough’ but the headmistress was afraid that that was as far as she would go. Mlle Devaux was all ears and eyes as usual, but the headmistress had a shrewd suspicion that the grammar teacher had misunderstood her completely. Mlle Dupraix’s chinless face ... she was the only one of the Swiss women who was free of obligations and could afford to buy good clothes ... was merely bored; Mary Ellerton smiled appreciatively.

‘Somehow or other, we’ve got to smooth things over ...’ She stopped, asking herself impatiently what good that would do. Somehow the school had to be brought back to its normal atmosphere; as it was now, the girls were all divided into their five or six cliques and when they went outside them there was immediate trouble. If this sort of thing was to continue, they might just as well stay home, thought Amélie Tourain. She had no desire to waste her time as headmistress of a school giving instruction in French, winter sports and deportment; someone else could certainly do that job equally well, if not better, and leave her free to return to her own work. The international aspect was the only one which appealed to her, and for the past few days she had had an uncomfortable suspicion that Jeanne had chosen her, uprooted her from her study in the house off Avenue Ruchonnet, for precisely that reason.

The task before her was taking hold of one corner of her mind, pulling on it gently, so that her history had begun to slide away from her. She was alarmed for a fleeting moment, not in the least attracted by the prospect of spending the rest of her life in Pensionnat Les Ormes, then once more her mind reverted to the immediate problem. What was a normal atmosphere? Even supposing there was such a thing, would it be good enough in these times? And how could it possibly be restored without censoring all the girls’ mail and stopping all newspapers? She had borrowed a copy of Truda Meyer’s Nationalzeitung and read it from cover to cover. It had once been owned or controlled by Göring; whether it was still or not, the propaganda which filled the issue, the urging of people to do this and that and feel this and that was so palpably obvious that she could not imagine a ten-year-old child reading it without feeling that it was an insult to his intelligence. So far as the other newspapers were concerned, they only served to increase her profound discouragement that after so many centuries of supposed civilization the truth should still be subject to so much distortion.

‘You know that our common aim in this school is to weld together the various nationalities. I want you to try and break down the barrier which exists between the staff and pupils in almost all schools. You know as well as I do that as soon as these girls stray beyond their own particular little group, there’s trouble. I have been forced to put the two Jewish girls on different floors from some of the Germans; I have been forced more than once to interfere in conversations which appeared to be going to develop along ... along undesirable lines. We are failing and failing badly, yet for some reason which I am at present completely unable to fathom, my staff refuses to recognize the gravity of the situation.’ She stopped her incessant tapping at last and glanced from one to the other of the faces before her, poorly illuminated by the desk light, for it was almost dusk now.

When her eyes arrived at Miss Williams’s face, the Englishwoman cleared her throat, peering uncertainly through her thick spectacles at the headmistress, and said doubtfully, ‘I am sure we will all do anything we can, Mademoiselle, but the only thing which appears to me to be at all feasible at the moment is to carry on our dining-room arrangements away from meals ... group the girls with as many different people as possible, and then have one of us with them. And surveillance of that sort would be rather trying for them.’

‘Yes,’ said Mary Ellerton from down the line. ‘You can’t stand guard over girls of nineteen and twenty.’ She remembered Vicky’s remark that the only place she could secure any privacy was in the toilet, and even there one was liable to be disturbed by Mlle Dupraix, who had lately taken to coming and rapping on the door if one were not to be found in one’s room. She went on deliberately, leaning forward with her elbow on one knee so that she could see her audience on the right. ‘Some of the girls haven’t sufficient privacy as it is.’ Her eyes reached Mlle Dupraix’s face and remained fixed there. ‘It would be better to pay more attention to the trouble-makers, and less to girls like Anna, and Ilse, Marian, Consuelo, Vicky and Rosalie....’

‘Really, Miss Ellerton, considering the fact that Rosalie has not been out of her bed these past two months, I hardly think she need be included.’ It was Mlle Dupraix and she was about to express herself further when Mlle Lemaitre interrupted with an impatient and irritable glance at the Beaux Arts teacher across Fräulein Lange’s unhappy face.

The Frenchwoman could not forgive Mlle Dupraix her lack of knowledge of her own subject, and her persecution of Vicky. ‘Let us leave, for a moment, the question of keeping an eye on the unfortunate Vicky ... I feel sure you were coming to that, Mlle Dupraix ... for I should like to know what is to become of that poor little Rosalie?’

The headmistress sighed, and relaxing against the back of her chair for a moment said patiently, ‘No one appears to know where Madame Garcenot is. She simply set the child on our doorstep as it were, telling us that she was rather delicate. To do the woman justice, I do not think that she had any idea that Rosalie had a heart condition. She has been in a convent since she was five or six, and from what little I know of such places, I think it unlikely that she ever had a thorough cardiac examination before she came to us. Dr. Laurent is not worried about her, although he considers it vitally important that the child should not be upset nor in any way troubled.’ She met Miss Ellerton’s green eyes and, shaking her head slightly, looked beyond her at the blank expanse of folding doors. The green eyes were warning her ... or that was the feeling she had ... that the less said about Rosalie the better. She went on rapidly a moment later, ‘I would suggest, as a first step, that the teachers discontinue their present practice of seeing the girls only at specified times.’

She stopped again, as though anticipating some objection, then went on in silence. ‘You are all, to a certain extent, in their position. You, Miss Williams ... your heart is in England.’ The Englishwoman flushed, but continued to look straight at her. ‘You, Mlle Dupraix, are not just in your dealings with the girls.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mlle Tourain!’ she said angrily, half-rising from her chair.

The headmistress ignored her, and said to her staff in general, ‘I am taking the risk of offending you because this situation is so serious. You, Fräulein Lange ... you are ... preoccupied ...’ Her voice trailed away as she looked at the German teacher’s thin, troubled face, and she continued gently after a moment, ‘I realize, of course, that at times it is impossible to be otherwise.’ She made an apologetic and old-fashioned little bow which was returned by the German teacher. ‘You, Mlle Devaux, are too concerned with grammar. I wish you would try to be a little more understanding, a little less rigid. Discipline is not everything.’ Mlle Devaux looked as though she might cry, and the headmistress hastily shifted her gaze to Mlle Lemaitre’s thin face with its flushed cheeks and hawklike nose. ‘It is a characteristic of the French to concentrate upon brains, to the detriment of bodies ...’ she began, with the complete change in manner with which she always addressed Mlle Lemaitre, for whose brilliant, though too-early exhausted mind she had a wholesome respect.

‘I find it difficult to reconcile myself to anything less than the most thorough work possible,’ said Mlle Lemaitre, cutting short the headmistress’s tactful preamble. She pushed back a loose strand of black hair and shoved her glasses a little farther up her nose. It was a characteristic gesture which had delighted hundreds of girls. She was a small, thin dark woman with an extremely nervous manner as though she were constantly over-stimulated, and small black eyes which darted here and there like a bird’s, and were unnaturally bright.

‘So do I,’ said Mlle Tourain, looking down at her pencil again, ‘but you and I ... in fact all of us ... must remind ourselves that this is only a finishing school, although our curriculum is a great deal heavier than in most such places.’ She raised her eyes again and looked straight at each member of her staff in turn. ‘So far as I myself am concerned, I have neglected my duty more seriously than any of you. That also must be remedied. When Mlle d’Ormonde comes back I should like her to find the school in the state in which she left it, if that is possible, considering the changes which have taken place in the world since then.’

‘And I, Mlle Tourain?’ asked Mary Ellerton.

‘You have not been here long enough.’ She looked at the English girl in silence for a moment, then went on quickly, with a change of expression and a slight movement in her chair, which suggested that she was throwing off some idea which had intruded itself. ‘I do not feel that you ... really believe ... you are here. Sometimes I think that I should not be at all surprised to wake up one morning and find that you had gone ... exactly as you came ...’ She leaned forward, without offering any explanation for her extraordinary remark and as usual not looking to see the effect of it, and began to address her audience again. ‘Some people think that a school is a deadly and unnatural place for women. I have erred in the opposite direction; I have unconsciously tried to preserve my own life in the face of constant interruptions and distractions, resenting this place because it drew me into the world ... rather than away from it, as most people seem to think any school does.’

She seemed to be speaking to herself; with one last anxious look at the faces before her, she turned her eyes once more to the folding doors behind them and continued as though she were unaware of them, her low voice flowing in the stillness of the room, ‘This is a microcosm; what we face here, the world faces; what we suffer, thousands of others suffer in the same way. Yet only we ... the school-teachers and the parents of the world ... we, and we alone are granted the opportunity to work changes in the lives of other people, before change of any fundamental sort becomes impossible. I am not, of course, including that part of human experience which lies within the province of the Church. You think of this school as an isolated place in which there is no real living, as we understand the word .... The incidents of the day, when they vary from the incidents of every other day, are an intrusion, and often strike a false, hysterical note. We feel that monotony must be restored at any cost.’ She glanced at them once more, and with her eyes on the brass ink-pot again, she said, ‘I am trying to make you see that what we are up against here is not exceptional, is not merely an undesirable ... manifestation of adolescent instability ... but life itself.’ And after another brief silence, ‘That is all, Mesdemoiselles....’

She looked up and watched them prepare to leave, bothered by a feeling of guilt which had crept into her half-way through her speech. She had put into words something which she herself only half apprehended; she had spoken the words as the ideas occurred to her, and had given the impression that she had been thinking about them for some time past. That was not honest. In actual fact, she as yet only partly conceived the truth in her remarks, and she needed time in which to think them out. These women before her were bored, bored. She was in a totally different position, since all along she had disliked and resented the very liveliness and activity of the school, had been irritated by the incessant interruptions and petty detail which constantly broke into her mind and scattered her thoughts. Whereas her staff seemed to regard the general tension, the flare-ups, the emotional currents, as melodramatic and exaggerated, she herself had an uncomfortable suspicion that they were a part of life, and as such significant. Unfortunately, however, she did not want life; she only wanted peace of mind.

Mlle Dupraix and Mary Ellerton had remained behind. The English girl closed the door behind the others and returned to her place beside the french windows, evidently wishing to see the headmistress alone. Mlle Dupraix stood in front of the desk, one hand straightening her very smart leather belt. She said deliberately, ‘Vicky’s been smoking.’

Miss Ellerton swung round and looked at her angrily. Before Mlle Tourain had a chance to speak, she said, ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Vicky does not smoke. She ... she doesn’t know how. I happen to know that.’ Her head was thrown back a little and she stood rather stiffly, almost defiantly, as though she half-expected a fight and rather hoped that there would be one.

‘Then possibly you can explain how it was she brought in a new package of cigarettes yesterday, after she’d been out shopping with you?’ The Beaux Arts teacher was facing Mary now, leaving the still, heavy figure of the headmistress in the background behind the big desk.

‘How did you come to know that Vicky had them?’ asked Mlle Tourain curiously. She liked her position, just out of the light. She was able to watch what went on in front of her without being drawn into it, as it were, leaning forward on her arms and looking from the vivid girl by the window to Mlle Dupraix in front of her. Her indifference to the Beaux Arts teacher had not yet reached the stage of active dislike; she considered her such mediocre human material that she simply could not be bothered with her at the moment, that was all. Jeanne, who was surprisingly wise in most of her dealings with people, had certainly shown poor judgment where Mlle Dupraix was concerned. Amélie Tourain thought she knew how that had happened, for her cousin believed, with Ruskin, that those who think human nature high will usually find it even higher than they thought it. It was that essential part of her which had made her such an outstanding principal, but it had also made her incapable of seeing the few worthless people who came into her life in their true light. Either Jeanne had led Mlle Dupraix to believe, or the Beaux Arts teacher had come to believe on her own, that she would be the next head of Pensionnat Les Ormes. Amélie Tourain was able to appreciate her feelings when she herself had arrived instead.

‘I was here when Vicky came for Rosalie’s mail. She opened her handbag to take out a handkerchief and I saw them.’ She switched her gaze back to the headmistress again, anxious to eliminate the undependable Miss Ellerton.

‘Your eyesight is too good when it comes to Vicky,’ said Mary, and pulling back the curtain, looked out over the town again. A few lights sparkled here and there on the hill-side across the lake, and the atmosphere was heavy and grey. There would be snow during the night or the next day, she thought.

Mlle Tourain started to speak, and thought better of it. She was interested to discover that almost everyone suffered by comparison with Miss Ellerton, appearing lifeless, or rather only partly animated, and rather unfinished, as though they were still in the early stages of evolution. It was not only that her face and body were so finely moulded that she seemed civilized, while they appeared almost cloddish, but she had a spark of vitality, a lightness, which diminished those about her so that no one but that strange Canadian girl, Vicky Morrison, could retain their identity beside her. The headmistress shook her head slightly, trying to rid her mind of Vicky’s pale, disciplined face, knowing only too well that the rest of her staff were allowing themselves to become preoccupied with her to such an extent that the school was beginning to consist of forty-seven girls and Vicky Morrison. They met her on a level, and endowed her with a quite disproportionate importance by always showing their awareness of her, and by constant reference to her. The rest of the school formed a hazy background against which that girl seemed to move with extraordinary clearness. Mlle Tourain herself had felt that same impulse to look at Vicky when she was addressing the whole school, and if she could not prevent the others from making fools of themselves, at least she still retained some remnants of control over herself. The problem of Vicky, thought the headmistress uncomfortably, was further complicated by the fact that she was Mary Ellerton’s best friend.

She wished, suddenly, that she were nearer Mary Ellerton’s age herself, that there was not the gulf of thirty-three years’ experience between them. She would have liked to see more of Miss Ellerton, for she had retained the idea which had flashed into her mind before she began to speak, that they were two people with, each of them, sufficient fire, vitality, enthusiasm ... however you want to put it ... to work well together. With the others, all the work, all the enthusiasm would have to come from her, for they were too limited by years of routine, of doing no more than they had to do, of keeping as much back as they could and still do their work efficiently. If someone would only act with her she might be able to follow up some of the various ideas which had been pouring into her mind during the past half-hour. She had the sensation, as she sat behind her desk just out of the light, of being in the hands of a sculptor intent on remodelling her; she was conscious of change, of being pushed and pulled by some force within her which was at war with all her preconceived, all her lifelong desires. It was a painful process.

Mlle Dupraix was talking in a stream of words to Mary Ellerton. The headmistress shook her head slightly, trying to clear it a little, and looked from one to the other in an effort to bring her mind back to the present.

‘... and since no one seems to be aware of that girl’s subtle Bolshevism, no one but me, I have to do the disciplining which should normally fall to half a dozen people. I assure you it is only for that reason.... I, apparently, am the only one who sees through her. You must remember that I have been dealing with girls for twenty years, and it is naturally easier for me to detect her ... her ...’

‘... subtle Bolshevism,’ said Mary, looking bored. She came back to the desk and picked up a pencil, fingering it absently. With her eyes on it she said, ‘I’m afraid that I can’t find anything wrong with Vicky. The only trouble with her is that she’s too mature.’

‘Mlle Ellerton!’ said the Beaux Arts teacher in genuine astonishment.

The headmistress was both startled and annoyed. She sat up and stared across the desk at Miss Ellerton’s pencil for a moment, then looked up at her. ‘How do you explain the cigarettes then?’ she demanded.

‘I left her at the chemist’s while I went to pick up some things I’d ordered at a shop in Rue du Bourg.’ She looked up, from one to the other, then down again. ‘I must confess that I don’t quite see what Mlle Dupraix is getting at. Vicky may bring cigarettes by the dozen into the school, provided she doesn’t smoke them here. I presume that you have not seen Vicky smoking them here, Mlle Dupraix? And that since you have scarcely left Vicky undisturbed for so much as an hour until midnight or later during the past month, that if she had smoked them you would have found it out for yourself.’

Mlle Dupraix decided to ignore her. Looking across the desk at the headmistress, she said, ‘You will, of course, go into this ...’

Miss Ellerton cut in quickly, ‘It’s not my business, Mlle Tourain, but I imagine Vicky brought those in for someone else. Everyone knows she doesn’t smoke. If she’s questioned about this, she’ll certainly take the blame on herself and the whole school will realize it. That’s bad for discipline. We don’t want to make foo ... to put ourselves into an awkward position ...’

‘An awkward position, Miss Ellerton ...’ said Mlle Dupraix meditatively, and looked once more at the headmistress. ‘We can hardly allow Vicky ...’

‘Yes, Mlle Dupraix,’ said the headmistress wearily. The whole petty incident had got on her nerves; she would have preferred to let the matter drop, but Mlle Dupraix was evidently not going to allow it. It was essential to keep the Beaux Arts teacher in her place, or she would go rushing over to Evian and retail everything mercilessly to poor Jeanne, who was in no state to be informed that her school was going to rack and ruin through the negligence of Amélie Tourain. She sighed, then went on rather irritably, ‘I am surprised that you did not immediately deal with Vicky yourself, Mlle Dupraix, knowing how ... er ... conscientious you are ....’

‘It was scarcely my concern ...’

‘That has not restrained you in the past,’ said Mary coldly. She looked straight at the headmistress and went on deliberately, ‘Mlle Tourain, you know that I have only been here a little more than two months. There are some things which I am still not quite clear about. Is the staff permitted to enter the girls’ rooms, at any hour of the day or night, without knocking? Are they supposed to limit the amount of time which a girl may spend in the lavatory, and after a period of a minute or so, rap on the door and order them to come out?’

‘They are not,’ said Mlle Tourain grimly.

‘Thank you,’ said Mary, and returned to her place by the window.

The headmistress was regarding Mlle Dupraix unfavourably. The Beaux Arts teacher returned the look for a moment, then went on with a rising inflexion, ‘Smoking is not all she does. She reads by candlelight every night. Last night she was not reading French either ...’

‘What was she reading?’ asked Mlle Tourain, half-hoping that Vicky had been reading one of her volumes of Euripides in the original Greek. The idea of forcing Mlle Dupraix to admit that Vicky’s nocturnal tastes ran to Greek drama appealed to her.

‘Fogazzaro,’ said Mlle Dupraix. ‘A most unsuitable novel, Daniele Cortis ....’

‘I’m afraid I must disagree with you. I don’t think we need feel concerned with Vicky’s choice of novels. It’s a long time since I read Daniele Cortis, but I should think that no one ... not even you, Mlle Dupraix ... could find anything in the least undesirable in that book. Both the heroine and hero always struck me as being considerably more virtuous than was consistent with my experience of people. As for her reading by candlelight, I never can bring myself to feel that that is very reprehensible. Perhaps it is because I myself read by candlelight for many years ... I remember,’ she went on reminiscently, ‘that I kept a copy of Anna Karenina under my cabinet de toilette for some months ...’ A half-suppressed chuckle from Mary Ellerton who was still looking out of the window brought her back to normal. She said, with a return to her old unsmiling dignity, ‘I presume you took the book away from her?’

‘No.’ And in answer to the headmistress’s look of surprise she went on in exasperation, ‘How could I? You know that she and Theodora are studying Italian with Signora Bellini ... and she gave her the book ... or told her to buy it ... it’s the same thing. What I want to know is, however, how long you intend to allow that girl to be excused to play her piano, owing to bad eyesight, when she ought to be downstairs sewing with the other girls every night after dinner, if her eyesight is good enough to permit her to read by candlelight?’ Her voice had risen in anger, and she continued with exaggerated emphasis, ‘That girl is being treated as a special being. One would think she were a ... a ... well, what made her come here in the first place? How long is she going to stay? Who is she, when it comes right down to it? Do anyone of us know anything about her?’

‘You’d better answer that, Miss Ellerton,’ said Mlle Tourain wearily.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, turning so that she was facing them. ‘Vicky never talks about herself or her background. I know nothing whatever about her family. I know she was brought up in Toronto, but whether her parents were or are Canadian, whether they’re living or dead ... I don’t know. If you will forgive my saying so, Mlle Dupraix, I do not regard it as my business, and since she’s twenty-two, I do not feel that it is anyone’s concern but her own. I have too much respect for her to try and pry information out of her. Anyhow, it’s not important to us ... what is important to us is her uncanny knack with people ... or her understanding, if you like. She’s a very good influence.’

‘A good influence!’ said Mlle Dupraix. ‘Well!’ She started toward the door. ‘I’m afraid you’re due for disillusionment, Miss Ellerton,’ she said, and went out.

Mary sank into one of the big leather chairs by the desk, rubbing her forehead with one hand, as she waited for the headmistress to speak.

‘You have a headache, Miss Ellerton,’ said Mlle Tourain with concern.

‘A little ... not very much,’ she answered, looking up.

‘I’m glad you stayed behind. I wanted to talk to you about Rosalie ... to ask if you know anything at all about her which might possibly help me to understand her a little better.’

Mary shook her head, looking over the corner of the big desk at the elderly woman seated behind it. ‘I don’t know any more for a fact than you do ... I feel a great many things, but that’s not a great deal of help.’

She looked at Miss Ellerton swiftly, then down at her hands folded on the green blotting-paper in front of her. ‘One can’t help feeling a great many things. But it’s not enough, as you say. Does anyone know anything about her? Has she any intimate friends?’

‘There’s only Vicky,’ she said rather unwillingly.

‘Vicky! Is Vicky running this school? She obsesses my staff, she ... really, Miss Ellerton, this is too much altogether. The girl apparently concerns herself with everyone and everything.’ She shrugged impatiently and, rubbing her hands together, decided to question the girl about those cigarettes at dinner. The publicity might have a good effect on her.

Mary sat up, with one hand on either arm of her chair, and said decisively, ‘No, she’s the least interfering person here. Everyone talks to her, that’s the trouble. Don’t blame her for it, it’s not her fault. I don’t know what it is,’ she went on meditatively, looking down at the floor as though she were thinking out loud and were anxious to find the answer for her own sake. ‘There’s something in her ... a certain quality which people are drawn to. With a different upbringing and a different environment, she might have been a religieuse. There’s something more besides.’ She paused, as though choosing her words very carefully. ‘She has the gift of self-dismissal ... so that people are not afraid to talk to her, knowing that she won’t ... I can’t explain. They’re simply not self-conscious with her, that’s all.’

The headmistress was looking at her rather awkwardly. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I won’t argue with you about that. I suppose I’ll have to see if she can help me with Rosalie. Something’s got to be done about her ... we can’t leave her lying there alone in her room without having any real contact with her much longer. But I’ve got to have something to go on.’ And as Mary said nothing she went on with growing annoyance, ‘It’s really too much to have to ask that girl about one of my own pupils....’

Mary said awkwardly, ‘I’m afraid Vicky can’t help you....’

‘You mean she won’t,’ said the headmistress sharply.

‘Won’t then.’

‘Why? Why?’ she demanded impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, I know all about the Anglo-Saxon objection to telling tales ... others have it besides the saintly English. It isn’t a question of that. I simply want to understand ... I want to know why that little girl lies there all day and all night with a face like death, telling her beads, never smiling. Although I had never thought a child of that age could suffer mental agony, the last time I was up there in her room, I believed that she was. I came away with the conviction that whatever it was that was going on in that girl’s mind, it’s beyond my comprehension. I am perfectly powerless to help her, because I don’t understand. There is something there, in that girl’s mind, which is slowly taking her away from life ... I don’t mean at all that I think she is mentally unbalanced ... it’s not mysticism, because it’s too personal ... it’s rather a kind of spiritual resignation, a letting go of her vital forces which is extremely alarming, and yet, as you say, it is something that one feels rather than knows, and I will admit frankly that I would not say this to anyone but you for fear of being charged with ... hysterical ... exaggeration.’

She pulled herself up a moment later, as Mary said nothing, and went on, ‘This doesn’t seem to me to be the time for Vicky to take things into her own hands’.

Miss Ellerton stood up. ‘I’d help if I possibly could, but I’m afraid ...’

‘You mean that you yourself don’t feel like trying to influence Vicky,’ she said shrewdly.

Mary started to say something, then checked herself. She found that clear, dispassionate gaze rather trying. She moved a little, then said rather uneasily, ‘I realize that it sounds absurd. But I do believe Vicky knows what she’s doing. I couldn’t bring myself to go beyond a certain point in trying to influence her, because, quite honestly, she knows people instinctively much better than I do.’

‘She seems to have you all hypnotized. One half of the staff blame everything that ever happens upon her; the other half regard her as a species of saint. All this Vicky, Vicky, Vicky, is becoming farcical. Whether she intrudes herself, or whether, as you seem to believe, there is something about her which engrosses other people to such an extent that they force her to a place of undue prominence, I cannot have such an ... an incubus ... in a school which is run for the majority, not for the individual.’ She spoke jerkily, because half-way through her speech she had suddenly recollected that the only opportunity she herself had had to talk to Vicky had been during the early autumn when the Canadian girl sat at the head table. During those weeks the headmistress had liked her because she had not intruded herself.

‘This is too absurd. How am I going to run this school if I don’t know what half my girls are thinking about? None of my staff know anything about them either. Do you know?’ she asked abruptly.

‘No,’ said Mary almost inaudibly.

‘I shall find out what’s the matter with that child if I have to cross-examine Vicky for three hours. I will not be put in a position of inferiority and ignorance by this ... this ... species of saint from Canada....’ She stopped, looking suddenly embarrassed, and sank back a little in her chair. She was making a most undignified exhibition of herself, but if you are wandering about in a room full of furniture, blindfolded, how on earth can you be dignified?

She shrugged again, then went on, utterly unaware that Mary was baffled and rather charmed by this sudden revelation of Amélie Tourain as a human being of fine, rich texture, ‘We all run away from the idea that there is anything in the mind of an ordinary adolescent which is not straightforward and infantile. We only go so far as to allow them emotions such as love for their parents and friends, sports, a certain very limited amount of intellectual acumen and a conventional outlook ... when they suddenly show us something which doesn’t fit into our conceptions of the normal, wholesome schoolgirl, we say, ‘Let us stamp it out, at whatever cost.’ It’s a question of inconvenience to ourselves, of having to deal with individuals rather than with types, which is altogether too much trouble, and requires too much time and effort to understand ... for anyone to whom teaching is a simple method of earning a somewhat inadequate income, rather than a genuine vocation. I wonder why it is that this most important of all professions should be riddled with people who do it because other hopes have failed? Not through a knowledge of others, or a knowledge of themselves, nor from a desire to lead, to inspire, to teach something of the way in which life should be lived.’

And a moment later, ‘There is, of course, something back of Truda Meyer’s determination to dominate above all else; there is something behind this series of headaches which have kept Marian Comstock in bed for more than a week. And what about Anna von Landenburg? She is enduring something ... she is something besides a gentle, devout, sweet-faced young Bavarian girl ... and Rosalie. She is the greatest problem of all. I agree with you, as you know, that there is something besides her bad heart ... a great deal besides her bad heart, but what can a girl of that age know of life, or of suffering? She’s been brought up in a convent! You would think that life would be as uncomplicated by doubts and fears for that girl as for anyone on earth. How can a sixteen-year-old endure ... whatever it is which she is undeniably enduring? I don’t know. I’m living to see the total collapse of all my theories ... it seems that one’s theories remain intact only so long as one generalizes from ignorance, and avoids particularizing from knowledge.’

Mary was astonished. She sat down on the arm of her chair and watched the face opposite her which had come alive during the past few minutes, half-perceiving at last that this woman was quite remarkable, that she possessed a mind which was not only objectively analytical, but subjectively analytical as well, and which was tempered by sufficient emotion to make her understanding almost unlimited once she was willing to rely on her intuition as well as on her intellect. Until this moment she had considered her brilliant, but humanly speaking, unimaginative. She had thought that Amélie Tourain might be of some use if she would only exert herself, but that even then her sphere of usefulness would be limited by her too-theoretical and academic experience of life.

With a swift, nervous glance at her, Amélie Tourain continued anxiously, ‘I have everyone’s tendency to judge others by myself. When I was sixteen, I was a bookish, heavy creature ... if I had my dreams, I never knew it’. She paused for one moment, looking upwards, her face tense, then apparently shook off some idea which had no connection with the present and went on, ‘There may have been something more than that. Nowadays one is harassed by doctors and psychologists haranguing us about the unconscious mind. One doesn’t know where one’s at. There’s no reasonable, logical answer to the argument that such and such is true of you, even though you have not been aware of it. You see ... until now, I have always believed that everything, including human beings, was susceptible to pure reason.’ One of her rare smiles flashed across her face. ‘I can’t help feeling that these girls are all unnatural. I was never like that ... I’m not making the conventional, adult excuse either. I was not like that! A psychologist might say that I was, and have never realized it ... but it’s the same thing, because my basis for understanding at the moment is what I can remember of my own actual experience ... not some psychical fact of which I am unaware. So I have the normal tendency to try to force them into being like myself ... to translate them, in other words, into terms I can understand ... since one cannot apprehend truth only with the intellect ... there is a spiritual and emotional apprehension as well. One’s no good without the other. I have to be able to feel, vicariously, what they are feeling, and to do that I need a little knowledge of them ... I can’t go on pure guesswork, any more than I can go on pure reason. And of course the problem is made all the harder by the fact that I know so well that if environment and suggestion count for anything at all, these girls cannot possibly be the kind of girls who were produced in Switzerland in 1890.’

She seemed to fall into thought then, allowing her mind to run backwards in one of her rare moments of mental relaxation. Mary made no effort to bring her back, but continued to sit opposite her in the dim, quiet study until the tea-bell rang with a sharp, discordant clanging. From then on their conversation was carried on against the noise of whispering, talking, shuffling, and clattering as forty girls rushed past the door to the dining-room.

‘These girls ... these extraordinary girls ...’ said Amélie Tourain, bringing herself back to the troubled atmosphere of January 1935. ‘I mean Vicky, Rosalie, poor little Ilse looking forward to Jewish persecution if Hitler gets the Saar on Sunday ... Yasha ... Anna ...’ She dropped her hands wearily into her lap; she was wondering at the outgrowth of that bookish, heavy girl, and the woman whom she saw sitting in the book-filled study of the little house off Avenue Ruchonnet, a scholarly serene woman who was most strangely herself. Was it possible that the way to true living lay not through the rejection of human desires, trouble, pain and joy? Was it possible that she had lived for fifty-eight years in a world rendered sterile because there, in her little house down the hill-side, there had been no ebb and flow of life ... only the slow passage of time, only so many days, weeks, months and years which now, as she looked back, melted into one another, an unbroken continuity.

She could go on in compromise no longer; that much she knew now, and no more. She had yet to be convinced that this way, through Pensionnat Les Ormes, lay her road, not the other life of contemplation and study.

She was wrenched back once more by Mary’s voice asking: ‘Is it necessary to hold the faculty meeting to-night?’

‘I’m afraid it is. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this stealing ... we can’t allow it to go on any longer.’

‘It was because of that,’ said Mary with difficulty, ‘that I asked about it. I don’t think Ilse and Truda should be left alone any more than is absolutely necessary. I don’t know whether you know or not, but Truda thought she discovered Ilse copying during a test on Monday, and that gave her the idea that Ilse was the thief. Besides that ... you know how naturally uncongenial they are. Ilse’s too mild and gentle ... Jewish cowardice and weakness, Truda calls it, inherited from Ilse’s Jewish mother ... and Truda, as you said, likes to bully.’ She stood up, glancing at her watch. ‘I could ask Vicky to stay in the living-room this evening to keep an eye on things,’ she added tentatively.

‘Certainly not,’ replied Mlle Tourain, with a return to her old manner. ‘Vicky’s always gone upstairs after dinner to work at her piano ... I couldn’t have her suddenly appear in the living-room without everyone knowing that she’d been instructed to “keep an eye on things”. And I couldn’t have that. She’s only one of forty-eight girls to me, whatever she is to the rest of you.’