“Of course I will have a shot at it. But it would be a reinforcement, in the way of keeping order, if the Head — you Miss Wanostrocht — and one or two others of the Mistresses would be strolling about. In relays, of course; not all of the staff all the morning…”
That had been two and a half hours or so ago: before the world changed, the Conference having taken place at eight-thirty. Now here she was, after having kept those girls pretty exhaustingly jumping about for most of the intervening time — here she was treating with disrespect obviously constituted Authority. For whom ought you to respect if not the wife of the Head of a Department, with a title, a country place, and most highly attended Thursday afternoons?
She was not really listening to the telephone because Edith Ethel was telling her about the condition of Sir Vincent: so overworked, poor man, over Statistics that a nervous breakdown was imminently to be expected. Worried over money, too. Those dreadful taxes for this iniquitous affair….
Valentine took leisure to wonder why — why in the world! — Miss Wanostrocht who must know at the least the burden of Edith Ethel’s story had sent for her to hear this farrago? Miss Wanostrocht must know: she had obviously been talked to by Edith Ethel for long enough to form a judgment. Then the matter must be of importance. Urgent even, since the keeping of discipline in the playground was of such utter importance to Miss Wanostrocht; a crucial point in the history of the School and the mothers of Europe.
But to whom, then, could Lady Macmaster’s communication be of life and death importance? To her, Valentine Wannop? It could not be: there were no events of importance that could affect her life outside the playground, her mother safe at home and her brother safe on a mine-sweeper in Pembroke Dock…
Then… of importance to Lady Macmaster herself? But how? What could she do for Lady Macmaster? Was she wanted to teach Sir Vincent to perform physical exercises so that he might avoid his nervous breakdown and, in excess of physical health, get the mortgage taken off his country place which she gathered was proving an overwhelming burden on account of iniquitous taxes the result of a war that ought never to have been waged?
It was absurd to think that she could be wanted for that? An absurd business… There she was, bursting with health, strength, good-humour, perfectly full of beans — there she was, ready in the cause of order to give Leah Heldenstamm, the large girl, no end of a clump on the side of the jaw or, alternatively, for the sake of all the beanfeastishnesses in the world to assist in the amiable discomfiture of the police. There she was in a sort of nonconformist cloister. Nun-like! Positively nunlike! At the parting of the ways of the universe!
She whistled slightly to herself.
“By Jove,” she exclaimed coolly, “I hope it does not mean an omen that I’m to be — oh, nunlike — for the rest of my career in the reconstructed world!”
She began for a moment seriously to take stock of her position — of her whole position in life. It had certainly been hitherto rather nunlike. She was twenty-threeish, rising twenty-four. As fit as a fiddle; as clean as a whistle. Five foot in her gym shoes. And no one had ever wanted to marry her. No doubt that was because she was so clean and fit. No one even had ever tried to seduce her. That was certainly because she was so clean-run. She didn’t obviously offer — what was it the fellow called it? — promise of pneumatic bliss to the gentlemen with sergeant-majors’ horse-shoe moustaches and gurglish voices! She never would. Then perhaps she would never marry. And never be seduced!
Nunlike! She would have to stand at an attitude of attention besides a telephone all her life; in an empty schoolroom with the world shouting from the playground. Or not even shouting from the playground any more. Gone to Piccadilly!
But, hang it all, she wanted some fun! Now!
For years now she had been — oh, yes, nunlike! — looking after the lungs and limbs of the girls of the adenoidy, nonconformitish — really undenominational or so little Established as made no difference! — Great Public Girl’s School. She had had to worry about impossible but not repulsive little Cockney creatures’ breathing when they had their arms extended… You mustn’t breath rhythmically with your movements. No. No. No!… Don’t breathe out with the first movement and in with the second! Breathe naturally! Look at me!… She breathed perfectly!
Well, for years, that! War-work for a b—y Pro-German. Or Pacifist. Yes, that too she had been for years. She hadn’t liked being it because it was the attitude of the superior and she did not like being superior. Like Edith Ethel!
But now! Wasn’t it manifest? She could put her hand whole-heartedly into the hand of any Tom, Dick or Harry. And wish him luck! Whole-heartedly! Luck for himself and for his enterprise. She came back, into the fold, into the Nation even. She could open her mouth! She could let out the good little Cockney yelps that were her birthright. She could be free, independent!
Even her dear, blessed, muddle-headed, tremendously eminent mother by now had a depressed-looking Secretary. She, Valentine Wannop, didn’t have to sit up all night typing after all day enjoining perfection of breathing in the playground…. By Jove they could go all, brother, mother in untidy black and mauve, secretary in untidy black without mauve, and she, Valentine, out of her imitation Girl Scout’s uniform and in — oh, white muslin or Harris tweeds — and with Cockney yawps discuss the cooking under the stone-pines of Amalfi. By the Mediterranean…. No one, then, would be able to say that she had never seen the sea of Penelope, the Mother of the Gracchi, Delia, Lesbia, Nausicaä, Sappho…
“Saepe te in somnis vidi!”
She said:
“Good… God!”
Not in the least with a Cockney intonation but like a good Tory English gentleman confronted by an unspeakable proposition. Well, it was an unspeakable proposition. For the voice from the telephone had been saying to her inattention, rather crawlingly, after no end of details as to the financial position of the house of Macmaster:
“So I thought, my dear Val, in remembrance of old times, that… If in short I were the means of bringing you together again…. For I believe you have not been corresponding…. You might in return…. You can see for yourself that at this moment the sum would be absolutely crushing…”
II
TEN minutes later she was putting to Miss Wanostrocht, firmly if without ferocity, the question:
“Look here, Head, what did that woman say to you. I don’t like her; I don’t approve of her and I didn’t really listen to her. But I want to hear!”
Miss Wanostrocht, who had been taking her thin, black cloth coat from its peg behind the highly varnished pitch-pine door of her own private cell, flushed, hung up her garment again and turned from the door. She stood, thin, a little rigid, a little flushed, faded, and a little as it were at bay.
“You must remember,” she began, “that I am a schoolmistress.” She pressed, with a gesture she constantly had, the noticeably golden plait of her dun-coloured hair with the palm of her thin left hand. None of the gentlewomen of that school had had quite enough to eat — for years now. “It’s,” she continued, “an instinct to accept any means of knowledge. I like you so much, Valentine — if in private you’ll let me call you that. And it seemed to me that if you were in…”
“In what?” Valentine asked, “Danger?… Trouble?”
“You understand,” Miss Wanostrocht replied, “That… person seemed as anxious to communicate to me facts about yourself as to give you — that was her ostensible reason for ringing you up — news about a… another person. With whom you once had… relations. And who has reappeared.”