Dr. Cautley scowled horribly and said that if she was ever to be fit for cube-root and decimals again, she positively and absolutely _must_.
Whereupon Miss Quincey gave way to emotion.
To leave St. Sidwell"s, abandon her post for three months, she who had never been absent for a day! If she did that it would be all up with Miss Quincey; a hundred eager applicants were ready to fill her empty place.
It was as if she heard the hungry, leaping pack behind her, the strong young animals trained for the chase; they came tearing on the scent, hunting her, treading her down.
When Rhoda Vivian looked in after morning school, she found a flushed and embarra.s.sed young man trying to soothe Miss Quincey, who paid not the least attention to him; she seemed to have shrunk into her bed, and lay there staring with dilated eyes like a hare crouched flat and trembling in her form. From the other side of the bed Dr. Cautley"s helpless and desperate smile claimed Rhoda as his ally. It seemed to say, "For G.o.d"s sake take my part against this unreasonable woman."
Now no one (not even Miss Quincey) could realize the insecurity of Miss Quincey"s position better than Rhoda, who was fathoms deep in the confidence of the Head. She happened to know that Miss Cursiter was only waiting for an opportunity like this to rid herself for ever of the little obstructive. She knew too that once they had ceased to fill their particular notch in it, the world had no further use for people like Miss Quincey; that she, Rhoda Vivian, belonged to the new race whose eternal destiny was to precipitate their doom. It was the first time that Rhoda had thought of it in that light; the first time indeed that she had greatly concerned herself with any career beside her own. She sat for a few minutes talking to Miss Quincey and thinking as she talked. Perhaps she was wondering how she would like to be forty-five and incompetent; to be overtaken on the terrible middle-way; to feel the hurrying generations after her, their breath on her shoulders, their feet on her heels; to have no hope; to see Mrs. Moon sitting before her, immovable and symbolic, the image of what she must become. They were two very absurd and diminutive figures, but they stood for a good deal.
To Cautley, Rhoda herself as she revolved these things looked significant enough. Leaning forward, one elbow bent on her knee, her chin propped on her hand, her lips pouting, her forehead knit, she might have been a young and pa.s.sionate Pallas, brooding tempestuously on the world.
"Miss Vivian is on my side, I see. I"ll leave her to do the fighting."
And he left her.
Rhoda"s first movement was to capture Miss Quincey"s hand as it wildly reconnoitred for a pocket handkerchief among the pillows.
"Don"t worry about it," she said, "I"ll speak to Miss Cursiter."
Dr. Cautley, enduring a perfunctory five minutes with Mrs. Moon, could hear Miss Vivian running downstairs and the front door opening and closing upon her. With a little haste and discretion he managed to overtake her before she had gone very far. He stopped to give his verdict on her friend.
She had expected him.
"Well," she asked, "it _is_ overwork, isn"t it?"
"Very much overwork; and no wonder. I knew she was a St. Sidwell"s woman as soon as I saw her."
"That was clever of you. And do you always know a St. Sidwell"s woman when you see one?"
"I do; they all go like this, more or less. It seems to me that St.
Sidwell"s sacrifices its women to its girls, and its girls to itself. I don"t imagine you"ve much to do with the place, so you won"t mind my saying so."
Rhoda smiled a little maliciously.
"You seem to take a great deal for granted. As it happens I am Cla.s.sical Mistress there."
Dr. Cautley looked at her and bit his lip. He was annoyed with himself for his blunder and with her for being anything but Rhoda Vivian--pure and simple.
Rhoda laughed frankly at his confusion.
"Never mind. Appearances are deceitful. I"m glad I don"t look like it."
"You certainly do not. Still, Miss Quincey is a warning to anybody."
"She? She was never fit for the life."
"No. Your race is to the swift and your battle to the strong."
He was still looking at her as he spoke. She was looking straight before her, her nostrils slightly distended, her grey eyes wide, as if she sniffed the battle, saw the goal.
"We must make her strong," said he.
She had quickened her pace as if under a renewed impulse of energy and will. Suddenly at the door of the College she stopped and held out her hand.
"You will look after her well, will you not?" Her voice was resonant on the note of appeal.
Now you could withstand Rhoda in her domineering mood if you were strong enough and cool enough; but when she looked straight through your eyes in that way she was irresistible. Cautley did not attempt to resist her.
He went on his way thinking how intolerable the question might have been in some one else"s mouth; how suggestive of impertinent coquetry, the beautiful woman"s a.s.sumption that he would do for her what he would not do for insignificant Miss Quincey. She had taken it for granted that his interest in Miss Quincey was supreme.
CHAPTER V
Healers and Regenerators
Rhoda had spoken to Miss Cursiter. n.o.body ever knew what she said to her, but the next day Miss Cursiter"s secretary had the pleasure to inform Miss Quincey that she would have leave of absence for three months, and that her place would be kept for her.
Miss Quincey had become a person of importance. Old Martha fumbled about, unnaturally attentive, even Mrs. Moon acknowledged Juliana"s right to be ill if her foolish mind were set on it. There was nothing active or spontaneous in the Old Lady"s dislike of her niece, it was simply a habit she had got.
An agreeable sense of her dignity stole in on the little woman of no account. She knew and everybody knew that hers was no vulgar illness.
It was brain exhaustion; altogether a n.o.ble and transcendental affair; Miss Quincey was a victim of the intellectual life. In all the five-and-twenty years she had worked there St. Sidwell"s had never heard so much about Miss Quincey"s brain. And on her part Miss Quincey was surprised to find that she had so many friends. Day after day the teachers left their cards and sympathy; the girls sent flowers with love; there were even messages of inquiry from Miss Cursiter. And not only flowers and sympathy, but more solid testimonials poured in from St.
Sidwell"s, parcels which by some curious coincidence contained everything that Dr. Cautley had suggested and Miss Quincey refused on the grounds that she "couldn"t fancy it." For a long time Miss Quincey was supremely happy in the belief that these delicacies were sent by the Head; and she said to herself that one had only to be laid aside a little while for one"s worth to be appreciated. It was as if a veil of blessed illusion had been spread between her and her world; and n.o.body knew whose fingers had been busy in weaving it so close and fine.
Dr. Cautley came every day and always at the same time. At first he was pretty sure to find Miss Vivian, sitting with Miss Quincey or drinking tea in perilous intimacy with Mrs. Moon. Then came a long spell when, time it as he would, he never saw her at all. Rhoda had taken it into her head to choose six o"clock for her visits, and at six he was bound to be at home for consultations. But Rhoda or no Rhoda, he kept his promise. He was looking well after Miss Quincey. He would have done that as a matter of course; for his worst enemies--and he had several--could not say that Cautley ever neglected his poorer patients. Only he concentrated or dissipated himself according to the nature of the case, giving five minutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours to Miss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; his spirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you would have thought that Miss Quincey"s case was one of exquisite interest, rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on her recovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We _must_ get you well, Miss Quincey," his manner implied that it would be a very serious thing for the universe if Miss Quincey did not get well. When he looked at her his eyes seemed to be taking her in, taking her in, seeing nothing in all the world but her.
As it happened, sooner than anybody expected Miss Quincey did get well.
Mrs. Moon was the first to notice that. She hailed Juliana"s recovery as a sign of grace, of returning allegiance to the memory of Tollington Moon.
"Now," said the Old Lady, "I hope we"ve seen the last of Dr. Cautley."
"Of course we have," said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, but everybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returning health. "What should he come for?"
"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don"t imagine he comes for the pleasure of seeing _you_?"
"I never imagine anything," said the little arithmetic teacher with some truth.
But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady"s theory was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well; and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be pa.s.sing," or "to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that you cannot get made up at the chemist"s, insight, understanding, sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if these things were not the most expensive.
All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was always dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wells of literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_, and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progress with glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr.
Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_."
"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life."
It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air of adventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into the realms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennyson and Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, what could he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelled extensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poets and intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able to make jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside his light-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter"s academic manner showed like the punctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern this young man. He served strange G.o.ds, healers and regenerators whose names had never penetrated to St. Sidwell"s. Some days he was really dreadful; he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of his unbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of _In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines have gone.