The Independence of Claire Part 15

"I can't think what in the world to buy for John."

"Do try to give me an idea what Rose would like!..."

Claire mingled with the throng, pushed her way towards the crowded counters, waited a preposterous time for her change, and then hurried off to another department to go through the same struggle once more.

Deliberately she threw herself into the Christmas feeling, turning her thoughts from herself, considering only how she could add to the general happiness. She bought presents for everybody, for the cross landlady, for the untidy servant girl, for Sophie Blake, and Flora Ross, for the maid at Saint Cuthbert's who waited upon the Staff-Room, with a selection of dainty oddments for girl friends at Brussels, and when the presents themselves had been secured she bought prettily tinted paper, and fancy ribbons, and decorated name cards for the adornment of the parcels.

The saffron parlour looked quite Christmas-like that evening, and Claire knew a happy hour as she made up her gifts in their dainty wrappings.

They looked so gay and seasonable that she decided to defer putting them into the sober outer covering of brown paper as long as possible. They were all the Christmas decoration she would have!

On Sunday morning the feeling of loneliness took an acute turn. Claire longed for a church which long a.s.sociation had made into a home; for a clergyman who was also a friend; for a congregation of people who knew her, and cared for her well-being, instead of the long rows of strange faces. She remembered how Cecil had declared that in London a girl might attend the same church for years on end, and never hear a word of welcome, and hope died low in her breast. The moment of exaltation had pa.s.sed, and she told herself drearily that on Christmas afternoon she must take a book and sit by the fire in the waiting-room of some great station, dine at a restaurant, and perhaps go to a concert at night.

For weeks past Claire had been intending to go to a West End church to hear one of the finest of modern preachers. She decided to go this morning, since the length of journey now seemed rather an advantage than a drawback, as helping to fill up another of the long, dragging hours.

She dressed herself with the care and nicety which was the result of her French training, and which had of late become almost a religious duty, for the study of the fifteen women who daily a.s.sembled round the table in the Staff-Room was as a danger signal to warn new-comers of the perils ahead. With the one exception of Sophie Blake, not one of the number seemed to make any effort to preserve their feminine charm. They dressed their hair in the quickest and easiest fas.h.i.+on without considering the question of appearance; they wore dun-coloured garments with collars of the same material; though severely neat, all their skirts seemed to suffer from the same depressing tendency to drop at the back; their bony wrists emerged from tightly-b.u.t.toned sleeves. The point of view adopted was that appearance did not matter, that it was waste of time to consider the adornment of the outer woman. Brain was the all-important factor; every possible moment must be devoted to the cultivation of brain; but an outsider could not fail to note that, with this destroying of a natural instinct, something which went deeper than the surface was also lost; with the grace of the body certain feminine graces of soul died also, and the world was poorer for their loss.

The untidy servant maid peered out of the window to watch Claire as she left the house that morning, and evolved a whole feuilleton to account for the inconsistency of her appearance with her position as a first floor front. "You'd take her for a lady to look at her! P'raps she _is_ a lady in disguise!" and from, this point the making of the feuilleton began.

The service that morning was food to Claire's hungering soul, for the words of the preacher might have been designed to meet her own need. As she listened she realised that the bitterness of loneliness was impossible to one who believed and trusted in the great, all-compa.s.sing love. Sad one might still be, so long as the human heart demanded a human companions.h.i.+p, but the sting of feeling uncared for, could never touch a child of G.o.d. She took the comfort home to her heart, and stored it there to help her through the difficult time ahead, and on her knees at the end of the service she sent up her own little pet.i.tion for help.

"There are so many homes in this great city! Is there no home for me on Christmas Day?" With the words the tears sprang, and Claire mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, thankful that she was surrounded by strangers by whom her reddened eyes would pa.s.s unnoticed. Then rising to her feet, she turned to lift the furs which hung on the back of the pew, and met the brown eyes of a girl who had been sitting behind her the whole of the service.

The girl was Janet Willoughby.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

ENTER MAJOR CAREW.

In the street outside the church door the two girls shook hands and exchanged greetings. Janet wore a long fur coat, and a toque of dark Russian sable, with a sweeping feather at one side. The price of these two garments alone would equal the whole of Claire's yearly salary, but it had the effect of making the wearer look clumsy and middle-aged compared with the graceful simplicity of the other's French-cut costume.

Janet Willoughby was not thinking of clothes at that moment, however; she was looking at reddened eyelids, and remembering the moment when she had seen a kneeling figure suddenly shaken with emotion. The sight of those tears had wiped away the rankling grudge which had lain at her heart since the evening of her mother's At Home, and revived the warm liking which at first sight she had taken to this pretty attractive girl.

"Which way are you going? May I walk with you? It's just the morning for a walk. I hope it will keep cold and bright over Christmas. It's so inappropriate when it's muggy. Last year we were in Switzerland, but mother is old-fas.h.i.+oned, and likes to have the day at home, so this time we don't start till the new year. You are not going sporting by any chance?"

"I'm not!" said Claire, and, for all her determination, could not resist a grimace, so far from sporting seemed the prospect ahead. Janet caught the grimace, and smiled in sympathy, but the next moment her face sobered.

"But I hope you _are_ going to have jolly holidays?"

"Oh, I hope so. Oh, yes, I mean to enjoy them very much," Claire said valiantly, and swiftly turned the subject. "Where do you go in Switzerland?"

"Saint Moritz. We've gone there for years--a large party of friends.

It has become quite a yearly reunion. It's so comfy to have one's own party, and be independent of the other hoteliers. They may be quite nice, of course, but then, again, they may not. I feel rather mean sometimes when I see a new arrival looking with big eyes at our merry table. Theoretically, I think one _ought_ to be nice to new-comers in an hotel. It's such a pelican-in-the-wilderness feeling. I'd hate it myself, but practically I'm afraid I'm not particularly friendly. We are so complete that we don't want outsiders. They'd spoil the fun.

Don't you think one is justified in being a little bit selfish at Christmas-time?"

Claire laughed, her old, happy, gurgling laugh. It warmed her heart to have Janet Willoughby's companions.h.i.+p once more.

"It isn't exactly the orthodox att.i.tude, is it? Perhaps you will be more justified this year, after you have got through your Christmas duties at home."

"Yes! That's a good idea. I _shall_, for it was pure unselfishness which prevented me running away last week with the rest of the party.

Mother would have given in if I'd persisted, and I wanted to so dreadfully badly." She sighed, and looked quite dejected, but Claire remained unmoved.

"I don't pity you one bit. You have only a week to wait. That's not a great trial of patience!"

"Oh, yes, it is.--Sometimes!" said Janet with an emphasis which gave the words an added eloquence.

Claire divined at once that Switzerland had an attraction apart from winter sports--an attraction centred in some individual member of the merry party. Could it by any chance be Erskine Fanshawe? She longed to ask the question. Not for a hundred pounds would she have asked the question. She hoped it was Captain Fanshawe. She hoped Janet would have a lovely time. Some girls had everything. Some had nothing. It was unfair--it was cruel. Oh, dear, what was the use of going to church, and coming out to have such mean, grudging thoughts? Janet Willoughby too! Such a dear! She deserved to be happy. Claire forced a smile, and said bravely--

"It will be all the nicer for waiting."

"It couldn't be nicer," Janet replied.

Then she looked in the other girl's face, and it struck her that the pretty eyelids had taken an additional shade of red, and her warm heart felt a throb of compunction. "Grumbling about my own little bothers, when she had so much to bear--hateful of me! I've been mean not to ask her again; mother wanted to; but she's so pretty. I admired her so much that I was afraid--other people might too! But she was crying; I saw her cry. Perhaps she is lonely, and it's my fault--"

"What do you generally do on Sundays?" she asked aloud. "There are lots of other mistresses at your school, aren't there? I suppose you go about together, and have tea at each other's rooms in the afternoon, and sit over the fire at night and talk, and brew cocoa, as the girls do in novels. It all sounds so interesting. The girls are generally rather plain and very learned; but there is always one among them who is like you. I don't mean that you are not learned--I'm sure you are--but--er-- pretty, you know, and attractive, and fond of things! And all the others adore her, and are jealous if she is nicer to one than to the others..."

Claire grimaced again, more unrestrainedly than before.

"That's not my part. I wish it were. I could play it quite well. The other mistresses are quite civil and pleasant, but they don't hanker after me one bit. With two exceptions, the girl I live with, and one other, I have not spoken to one of them out of school hours. I don't even know where most of them live."

Janet's face lengthened. Suddenly she turned and asked a sharp direct question:

"Where are you going on Christmas Day?"

Pride and weakness struggled together in Claire's heart, and pride won.

She would _not_ pose as an object of pity!

"Oh, I'm going--out!" said she with an air, but Janet Willoughby was not to be put off so easily as that. Her brown eyes sent out a flash of light. She demanded sternly:

"Where?"

"Really--" Claire tossed her head with the air of a d.u.c.h.ess who was so overburdened with invitations that she found it impossible to make a choice between them. "Really, don't you know, I haven't quite decided--"

"Claire Gifford, you mean, horrid girl, don't dare to quibble! You are going nowhere, and you know it. n.o.body has invited you for Christmas Day; that's why you were crying just now--because you had nowhere to go.

And you would have gone away this morning, and said nothing, and sat alone in your rooms... I call it _mean_! Talk of the spirit of Christmas! It's an insult to me and to mother. How do you suppose we should have felt if we'd found out _afterwards_?"

"W-what else could I do? How could I tell you?" stammered Claire, blus.h.i.+ng. "It would have seemed such a barefaced _hint_, and I detest hints. And really why should you have felt bad? I'm a stranger.

You've only seen me once. There could be no blame on you. There's no blame on anyone. It just happens that it doesn't quite fit in to visit friends at a distance, and in town--well! I'm a stranger, you see. I _have_ no friends!"

Janet set her lips.

"Just as a matter of curiosity I should like to know exactly what you _were_ going to do? You said, I believe, that you were going out. And now you say you had nowhere to go. Both statements can't be true--"

"Oh, yes, they can. I have nowhere to go, but I had to find somewhere, because my good landlady is going to her mother's at Highgate, and disapproves of lodgers who stay in on Christmas Day. She gave me notice that I must go out as the house would be locked up."

"But where--what--where _could_ you go?"

"I thought of a restaurant and a concert, and a station waiting-room to fill in the gaps. Quite comfortable, you know. They have lovely fires, and with a nice book--"

"If you don't stop this minute I shall begin to cry--here, in the open street!" cried Janet hotly. "Oh, you poor dear, you poor dear! A station waiting-room. I never heard of anything so piteous. Oh, how thankful I am that I met you! Tell me honestly, was it about that that you were crying?"