When Deborah left college she took a school in the country.
“Now, you are quite sure you know your own mind,” the principal
observed, for he had not expected this application.
“Yes, quite sure,” and he was only too pleased to get it filled up.
A country school to the uninitiated may probably appear a haven of
rest and peacefulness. But under certain circumstances, and in certain
places, it may be the exact opposite of this. The one to which Deborah
had gone was a most charming one, and on the outside it looked all that
was successful.
“You have come here to learn, and you must bear it and put up with it,”
said a voice, but at times the misery and meanness and littleness of
the surroundings choked the voice altogether.
The feminine portion of the aristocracy in that place were of that
section which believes implicitly in the art of snubs and condescension.
Such women are pretty numerous in the world—if they were not so the
world would be a vastly different place.
At first the manifold bows and smiles and nods amused her, but at last
they palled, as all things do in time.
“If they only knew how ridiculous and insincere it makes them look
they would not do it,” she thought. “The only one among them for whom
I have any respect or affection is the clergyman’s wife—and that is
because she treats me sensibly as a working woman and does not try to
overpower me with her excessively charming manner.”
This village was a very good school in which to learn, and it taught
Deborah more than any town school would have.
Not that she had any belief in anything. Far from it. Why she so often
thought of Christ and His doctrine she could not tell.
“I don’t believe in Him, and I never get any good from praying to Him.
If He is all love and all-powerful, why doesn’t He give me back my old
faith?”
But every time she knelt down to pray the old feeling of suffocation
and blackness returned.
At last she began to think of Christ as a man.
“If I forget that He is a God I shall catch hold of Him better.”
And no sooner had she done this than she was struck by the extreme
marvellous beauty of His character. “I’ll cling on to Christ, though I
don’t understand Him very well,” she thought.
But if you follow Christ He will lead you by the most terrible uphill
undiscovered paths that ever you trod in your life, and if you try to
follow Him blindly, without any clear guiding light showing the way
upward, you are of all creatures on earth most miserable.
So because she thought that Christ would have approved she would often
light the school fire and sweep up the hearth. There were more people,
doubtless, who approved of this besides Christ, the woman who cleaned
the school being prominent among the number.
The clergyman in the parish was very fond of Deborah. It was only
natural, because she managed the school very well and kept the children
in order. He was a very interesting study, though he was old, and at
times he could be very charming.
There was, however, one gentleman there whom Deborah much liked. He was
the father of a boy whom she went to teach every night. He was always
kind to her, and always polite whenever she might meet him, and never
condescending. And she was very thankful.
“If it were not for this gentleman,” she used to think at times, “I
should get to fancying there was something wrong with me, I get so many
snubs which seem to me uncalled for.” So she felt a certain respect
for him: unobtrusive kindness always excited that feeling in her, as
perhaps it does in most of us.
At last the snubs ceased to have any effect; when one is subjected to a
great deal of that kind of thing it generally happens that way.
For some months before she left the people had become nonentities to
her; she was taken up with things which were far more a case of life
and death to her than they could ever be.