“Mrs. Sterne,” Clare repeated with such an air of vagueness that the Principal spoke sharply.
.”Mrs. Sterne, of Brackenbine. She has been very helpful in several ways. She is interested in the school and it is very proper that the school should pay her the courtesy of accepting her invitation. I'm only sorry that there are so few people here. But Matron and Miss Finch will be required to stay in school to look after the juniors and that only leaves Miss Geary. You must be there quite punctually at half−past four.”
“I've never been to Brackenbine,” said Clare.
“It's perfectly proper for you to go with Miss Geary,” replied the Principal. “Miss Geary knows the family. It will be a very nice change for you, Clare, and I hope you will give Mrs. Sterne an interesting account of the work you are doing for the Oxford Scholarship.”
At luncheon Clare found that Miss Geary had received news of the invitation and welcomed it with scarcely restrained jubilation. Only then, seeing what pleasure the prospect of a little change gave her, did Clare realise what a dull, restricted life the old lady must lead. It was well known to all the girls that Miss Geary had no other home than Paston Hall, but that had never seemed strange to them; they were observant of her eccentricities, but, childlike, they had no comprehension of her circumstances, or sympathy for her loneliness and her difficulties. Clare understood now that Miss Geary was quite alone in the world and probably very poor; she could guess that the school paid her next to nothing and that she would probably never get another post if she left Paston Hall. Now she shared her excitement over Mrs. Sterne's invitation and experienced a gush of remorse for many childish mockings and mimickings.
“I think it's really kind of Mrs. Sterne,” Miss Geary said. “She must have spent a Christmas holiday at school herself, once.”
“I'm surprised I'm allowed to go,” Clare said. She looked at Miss Geary boldly, but the old lady seemed only mildly shocked at the implied rebellion against the customary controls.
“My dear,” she said, “if Mrs. Sterne invites you, that's quite different. Your parents couldn't possibly object to your visiting there. You see, the Sternes are a very old family, and then, you see, they own Paston Hall. It was only because Mr Arthur Sperrod knew old Mr Sterne that the Governors were able to take the Hall, and we are very lucky indeed to have such a delightful place.”
“Old Mr Sterne?” Clare asked, wonderingly.
“Yes, that was Mr Jabez Sterne. He was Mr Andrew Sterne's uncle and he died about nine years ago, soon after we came here. He was rather a queer old gentleman, I believe.”
“I'm getting muddled,” said Clare. “Who is Mr Andrew Sterne? Is he a young man?”
“Oh no! Mr Andrew was Mrs. Sterne's husband. He died a long time ago, before his uncle. Then the estate came to his widow. She was a Trethewy, from Cornwall. Some cousins of mine knew her. But she was related to the Sternes by blood, also. I think I've heard them say that she married her second cousin.”
“Who else lives with her?”
“Well,” Miss Geary hesitated, “I'm afraid I don't really know. I believe there is some family, or at least one son. But I've never met any of them but Rachel— that's Mrs. Sterne. I knew her, oh! ages ago, before she married. I didn't see her again until old Mr Sterne died after we came here. You see, she's lived nearly all her time abroad till recently.”
“But you've been to Brackenbine?” Clare asked.
The old lady looked at her, and seemed to study the question for a while.
“Yes,” she said at length, “I've been invited there before. Some of the other teachers, too. But I haven't been since last summer.”
Clare was too busy wondering how to elicit the particular information she wanted, to pay much attention to the slight embarrassment with which Miss Geary spoke.
“Will there be many people there?” she asked. “I mean, has Mrs. Sterne got people staying with her for Christmas, perhaps?”
“I don't know. I don't know that anybody's heard. I don't think anybody's been there since—well, since last summer. But I think I shall enjoy it better if there isn't a big party. We shall be able to have a much nicer talk. Rachel's very interesting.” Miss Geary mused for a while, looking at Clare, but obviously contemplating someone very different and much further away from her. “She's been able to do the things she wanted, you see,” she went on. “She's been able to carry on with her painting and become really good. She went to Paris and Rome. I was sketching in Cornwall when I first met her.”
The rain ceased before Christmas Eve, and in doing so solved Miss Geary's major problem, which had been how to get to Brackenbine if the weather should be wet. The question whether it would be permissible to order a taxi from Pentabridge to go so short a distance had plunged her into agonies of indecision. Clare herself was not free from some anxiety about the invitation. It was not expected that girls would go to parties or even pay visits outside the school in term−time, and the assumption was that those who stayed at school for the holidays were subject to the same restriction. Besides her school uniform, therefore, Clare's outfit contained nothing but one dark−blue velveteen frock, cut to the general directions laid down by Miss Sperrod for the Senior School's evening dress. She spread her frock out on her bed in the daylight after luncheon on Christmas Eve and dwelt on the signs of age and use it exhibited; she put it on and stood in front of her inadequate looking−glass and brooded helplessly on the fact that she had grown out of it. It was a very good frock, but it had been bought for her the last time her mother was in England nearly two years before, and the hem and cuffs had been let down already to their limit.
She wished she knew whether it was going to be a big party at the Sternes'. If it were only a small family affair she would be conspicuous; but if it were a big party there would be other girls, in pretty frocks. The thing began to seem such an ordeal to her that for a time she debated whether to go to Miss Geary and ask the old lady to leave her behind. Miss Sperrod had already gone to London; Miss Geary might be persuaded. It would be the easier way. She did not think that she had the courage now, when it came to the point, to take the risk of the young man's being at the tea−party. She had deliberately made herself put it no higher than that: a risk that he might be there.
She stood and looked closely into her mirror. Had she been pretty, she thought, she might have carried off her dowdy frock. She imagined how one or two of the senior girls of the last year would have managed the affair, and frankly admitted to herself now, in the time of need, how much she had envied their good looks and self−assurance. She tried to look at her own face objectively: her brown hair was straight and without lustre; her brow and chin were too square, and her eyes, which she called grey, were called green in the school. It seemed a very solemn, scared face in this dusky light of a winter afternoon. Clare counted its sole merit a good complexion; yet there was something there that only experience could have interpreted for her. The steady stare of those greenish eyes, and the straight, sure lines of mouth and chin, might have suggested to another observer that under her adolescent diffidence there was both mental and physical courage—a certain adventurousness of mind and a hardihood that circumstances might cause to be labeled either an obstinate defiance of authority or an admirable independence of character.
Clare had only so far discovered in herself a capacity for revolt; to shirk the consequences of her midnight encounter seemed to her in the end to be a denial of the Tightness of revolt against Paston Hall, and that she would not admit. By the time Miss Geary was ready to go Clare had managed to subordinate most of her misgivings to the necessity of completing her adventure.