The Independence of Claire Part 38

"Did he send you the cuckoo clock?"

"I--think so! It had no name, but it came from Switzerland while he was there. He has never referred to it since."

"Ah!" Janet began pulling on her gloves. "I knew that, too. I _felt_ that he had sent it. Well! I must go. It will all come right, of course, and you will be very happy. I've known Erskine so long, and his wife is sure to be happy." Janet forced an artificial little laugh.

"You will be engaged before me, after all, but I dare say I shall soon follow suit. It's nice to be loved. As one grows older, one appreciates it more. And Captain Humphreys is a good man."

"He is splendid! I loved his face. And he is so devoted to you. It was quite beautiful to watch him," cried Claire, thankful from her heart to be able to enthuse honestly.

A load was lifted from her heart by Janet's prophecy of her own future.

For the moment it had no doubt been made more out of bravado than any real conviction, and inevitably there must be a period of suffering, but Janet was of a naturally buoyant nature, and her wounded spirit would gradually find consolation in the love which had waited so patiently for its reward. It needed no great gift of prophecy to see her in the future, a happy, contented wife.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

EASIER TO DIE.

When Janet had taken her departure Claire looked at the clock and found that it was time to start for the hospital. She went out of the station, and, pa.s.sing a shop for flowers and fruit went in, spent ten s.h.i.+llings in the filling of a reed basket, and, leaving the shop, seated herself in one of the taxis which were standing in readiness outside the great porch. Such carelessness of money was a natural reversion to habit, which came as a consequence of her absorbed mind.

The great hospital looked bare and grim, the smell of iodoform was more repellent than ever, after the sweet scents of the country. Claire knew her way by this time, and ascended by lift to the women's ward, where Sophie lay. Beside almost every bed one or two visitors were seated, but Sophie was alone. Down the length of the ward Claire caught a glimpse of a rec.u.mbent form, and felt a pang at the thought of the many visiting days when her friend had remained alone. With no relations in town, her brother's family too pressed for means to afford expeditions from the country, Sophie had no hope of seeing a familiar face, and her very att.i.tude bespoke dejection.

Claire walked softly to the further side of the bed, and dangled the basket before the half-covered face, whereupon Sophie pushed back the clothes and sat up, her eyes lighting with joy.

"_Claire_! You! Oh, you dearly beloved, I thought you were still away!

Oh, I am glad--I am glad! I was so dreadfully blue!"

She looked it. Even in the eagerness of welcome her face looked white and drawn, and the pretty pink jacket, Claire's own gift, seemed to accentuate her pallor. The hands with which she fondled the flowers were surely thinner than they had been ten days before.

"My dear, what munificence! Have you come into a fortune? And fruit underneath! I shall be able to treat the whole ward! When did you come back? Have you had a good time? Are you going on to the farm? It _is_ good of you to come again. It's--it's hard being alone when you see the other patients with their own people. The nurses are dears, but they are so rushed, poor things, they haven't time to stay and talk. And oh, Claire, the days! They're so wearily _long_!"

Claire murmured tender exclamations of understanding and pity. A pained conviction that Sophie was no better made her shrink from putting the obvious question; but Sophie did not wait to be asked.

"Oh, Claire," she cried desperately, "it's so hard to be patient and to keep on hoping, when there's no encouragement to hope! I'm not one sc.r.a.p better after all that has been tried, and I've discovered that they did not expect me to be better; the best they seem to hope for is that I may not grow worse! It's like running at the pitch of one's speed, and succeeding only in keeping in the same place. And there are other arthritics in this ward!" She shuddered. "When I think that I may become like _them_! It would be much easier to die."

"I think it would often seem easier," Claire agreed sadly, her thoughts turning to Cecil, whose trouble at the moment seemed as heavy as the one before her. "But we can't be deserters, Sophie. We must stick to our posts, and play the game. When these troubles come, we just _have_ to bear them. There's no hiding, or running away. There's only one choice open to us--whether we bear it badly or well."

But Sophie's endurance was broken by weeks of suffering, and her bright spirit was momentarily under an eclipse.

"Everybody doesn't have to bear them! Things are so horribly uneven,"

she cried grudgingly. "Look at your friend Miss Willoughby, with that angel of a mother, and heaps of money, and health, and strength, and a beautiful home, and able to have anything she wants, as soon as she wants it. What does _she_ know of trouble?"

Claire thought of Janet's face, as it had faced her across the table in the refreshment room, but it was not for her to betray another's secret, so she was silent, and Sophie lifted a spray of pink roses, and held them against her face, saying wistfully--

"You're a good little soul, Claire, and it's because you are good that I want to know what your opinion is about all this trouble and misery.

What good can it possibly do me to have my life ruined by this illness?

Don't tell me that it will not be ruined. It must be, in a material sense, and I'm not all spiritual yet; there's a lot of material in my nature, and I live in a material world, and I want to be able to enjoy all the dear, sweet, natural, human joys which come as a right to ordinary human beings. I want to _walk_! Oh, my dear, I look out of these windows sometimes and see all the thousands and thousands of people pa.s.sing by, and I wonder if a single one out of all the crowd ever thinks of being thankful that he can _move_! I didn't myself, but now--when I hobble along--"

She broke off, shaking back her head as though to defy the rising tears, then lay back against the pillows, looking at Claire, and saying urgently--"Go on! Tell me what you think!"

"I think," Claire answered slowly, "that we are bound to grow! The mere act of death is not going to lift us at once to our full height. Our training must go on after we leave this sphere; but, Sophie dear, some of us have an extra hard training here, and if we bear it in the right way, surely, surely when we move up, it must be into a higher cla.s.s than if things had been all smooth and easy. There must be less to learn, less to conquer, more to enjoy. You and I are school-mistresses and ought to realise the difficulties of mastering difficult tasks. Don't look upon this illness as cheating you out of a pleasant holiday, dear-- look upon it as special training for an honours exam.!"

Sophie smiled, her old twinkling smile, and stroked Claire's hand with the spray of roses.

"I knew you'd say something nice! I knew you'd put it in a quaint, refres.h.i.+ng way. I shall remember that, when I am alone, and feel courage oozing out of every pore. Two o'clock in the morning is a particularly cheery time when you are racked with pain! Claire, I asked the doctor to tell me honestly whether there was any chance of my ever taking up the old work again, and he said, honestly, he feared there was none."

"But Mrs Willoughby--"

"I asked that, too. He says he quite hopes to get me well enough to go to Egypt in October or November, and that I should certainly be much better there. It would be the best thing that could happen if it came off! But--"

Claire held up a protesting hand.

"No ifs! No buts! Do your part, and get better, and leave the rest to Providence and--Mrs Willoughby! It's her mission in life to help girls, and she'll help _you_, too, or know the reason why. The truly sensible thing would be for you to begin to prepare your clothes. What about starting a fascinating blouse at once? Your hands are quite able to sew, and if you once got to work with chiffon and lace the time would fly! You might write for patterns to-night. You would enjoy looking at patterns."

When Claire took her departure half an hour later, she left behind a very different Sophie from the wan dejected-looking creature whom she had found on her arrival.

Hers was a happy nature, easily cheered, responsive to comfort, and Claire had a happy conviction that whatever physical handicaps might be in store, her spirit would rise valiantly to the rescue. A winter in Egypt was practically a.s.sured, since Mrs Willoughby had privately informed Claire that if nothing better offered, she would send Sophie at her own expense to help in the household of her niece--an officer's wife, who would be thankful for a.s.sistance, though she could not afford to pay the pa.s.sage out. What was to happen in the future no one could tell, and there was no profit in asking the question. The next step was clear, and the rest must be left to faith, but with a chilling of the blood Claire asked herself what became of the disabled working women who had no influential friends to help in such a crisis; the women who fell out of the ranks to die by the roadside homeless, penniless, _alone_?

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

SURRENDER.

It was a very limp and exhausted Claire who arrived at the farm that evening, and if she had had her own way she would have hurried to bed without waiting for a meal, but the kind countrywoman displayed such disappointment at the idea that she allowed herself to be dissuaded, sat down to a table spread with home-made dainties and discovered that she was hungrier than she had believed. The fried ham and eggs, the fresh b.u.t.ter, the thick yellow cream, the sweet coa.r.s.e bread, were all the best of their kind, and Claire smiled at her own expense as she looked at the emptied dishes, and reflected that, for a person who had professed herself unable to eat a bite, she had made a pretty good sweep!

The bed was somewhat b.u.mpy, as farmhouse beds have a habit of being; there was one big ball in especial which took many wrigglings to avoid; but on the other hand the sheets smelt deliciously, not of lavender, but of lemon thyme, and the prevailing air of cleanliness was delicious after the smoke-laden atmosphere of town. Claire told herself that she could not expect to sleep. She resigned herself to hear the clock strike every hour--and as a matter of fact after ten o'clock she was unconscious of the whole world, until her breakfast-tray was carried into the room next morning.

After breakfast she had another nap, and after lunch still another, and in the intervals wandered about the farm-yard, laboriously striving to take an interest in what really interested her not at all. Hens seemed to her the dullest of created creatures, pigs repelled, cows were regarded with uneasy suspicion, and sheep, seen close at hand, lost all the picturesque quality of a distant flock, and became stupid long-faced creatures, by no means as clean as they might be. Milking-time aroused no ambition to experiment on her own account, and a gla.s.s of foaming new milk proved unexpectedly nauseous. Sad as it was to confess it, she infinitely preferred the chalked and watered edition of the city!

Indoors things were no better, for the tiny sitting-room stood by itself at the end of a pa.s.sage, cut off from the life of the house. It was spotlessly clean and the pride of its owner's heart, but contained nothing of interest to an outsider. Pictures there were none, with the exception of portraits of the farmer and his wife, of the enlarged photograph type, and a selection of framed funeral cards in a corner.

Books there were none, with the exception of a catalogue of an Agricultural Show, and a school prize copy of _Black Beauty_. Before the second night was over Claire had read _Black Beauty_ from cover to cover; the next morning she was dipping into the catalogue, and trying to concentrate her attention on "stock."

As her body grew rested, Claire's mind became increasingly active. It was inevitable, but the second stage was infinitely harder to bear. For the first hours after her arrival her supreme longing had been to lie down and shut her eyes; but now restlessness overtook her, and with every fresh hour drove her more helplessly to and fro. She went out for long walks over the countryside, her thoughts so engrossingly turned inward that she saw nothing of the landscape on either hand; she returned to the house and endeavoured to write, to read, to sew, only to give up the attempt at the end of half an hour, and once more wander helplessly forth.

The good countrywoman was quick to sense that some hidden trouble was preying on her guest, and showed her sympathy in practical fas.h.i.+on.

"A bit piney-like, aren't you? I seed from the first that you was piney-like," she said, standing tray in hand on the threshold of the little parlour, her fresh, highly-coloured face smiling kindly upon the pale girl. "I always do say that I pities ladies when they has anything on their minds; sitting about, same as you do now, with nothing to take them off theirselves. A body like me that has to keep a house clean, and cook and wash, and mind the children, to say naught of the sewing and the mending, and looking after the cows and the hens, and all the extra fusses and worries that come along, she hasn't got no time to remember herself, and when she gets to bed she's too tired to think.

Now if you was to have some work--"

Claire's face brightened with a sudden inspiration.

"Will you give me some work? Let me help _you_! Do, please, Mrs Corby; I'd be so grateful. Let me come into the kitchen and do something now. I feel so lonely shut off here, all by myself."

Mrs Corby laughed, her fat comfortable laugh.

"Bless your 'art, you can come along and welcome. I'll be proud to have you. It ain't much you know of housework, I expect, but it'll do you no harm to learn. I'll find you some little jobs."

"Oh, I'm not so useless as you think. I can brush and dust, and polish, and wash up, and I know a good deal about cooking. I'll make a salad to eat with the cold meat--a real French salad. I'm sure Mr Corby would enjoy a French salad," cried Claire, glancing out of the window at the well-stocked kitchen garden, and thinking of the wet lettuce and uncut onions, which were the good woman's idea of the dish in question. "May I make one to-day?"