I
The coming of the new year meant the going of the Jampot, and the
going of the Jampot meant the breaking of a life-time's traditions. The
departure was depressing and unsettling; the weather was--as it always
is during January in Glebeshire--at its worst, and the Jampot, feeling
it all very deeply, maintained a terrible Spartan composure, which was
meant to show indifference and a sense of injustice. She had to the very
last believed it incredible that she should really go. She had been
in the old Orange Street house for eight years, and had intended to be
there until she died. She was forced to admit that Master Jeremy was
going beyond her; but in September he would go to school, and then she
could help with the sewing and other things about the house. The real
truth of the matter was that she had never been a very good servant,
having too much of the Glebeshire pride and independence and too little
of the Glebeshire fidelity.
Mrs. Cole had been glad of the opportunity that Hamlet's arrival in the
family had given her. The Jampot, only a week before the date of her
departure, came to her mistress and begged, with floods of tears, to
be allowed to continue in her service. But Mrs. Cole, with all her
placidity, was firm. The Jampot had to go.
I would like to paint a pleasant picture of the sentiment of the Cole
children on this touching occasion; something, perhaps, in the vein of
tragi-comedy with which Mr. Kenneth Graham embroiders a similar occasion
in his famous masterpiece--but in this case there was very little
sentiment and no tragedy at all. They did not think of the event
beforehand, and then when it suddenly occurred there was all the
excitement of being looked after by Rose, the housemaid, of having
a longer time with their mother in the evening, and, best of all,
a delightful walk with Aunt Amy, whose virginal peace of mind they
attacked from every possible quarter.
The Jampot left in a high state of sulks, declaring to the kitchen that
no woman had ever been so unfairly treated; that her married sister
Sarah Francis, of Rafiel, with whom she was now to live, should be told
all about it, and that the citizens of Rafiel should be compelled to
sympathise. The children were not unfeeling, but they hated the Jampot's
sulks, and while she waited in the nursery, longing for a word or
movement of affection, but wearing a face of stony disapproval, they
stood awkwardly beholding her, and aching for her to go. She was the
more unapproachable in that she wore her Sunday silks and a heavy black
bonnet with shiny rattling globes of some dark metal that nodded and
becked and bowed like live things. Hamlet, who had, of course, always
hated the Jampot, barked at this bonnet furiously, and would have bitten
at it had it been within his reach. She had meant to leave them all with
little sentences about life and morals; but the noise of the dog, the
indifference of the children, and the general air of impatience for her
departure strangled her aphorisms. Poor Jampot! She was departing to a
married sister who did not want her, and would often tell her so;
her prospects in life were not bright, and it is sad to think that no
inhabitant of the Orange Street house felt any sorrow at the sight of
the last gesticulating wave of her black bonnet as she stepped into the
old mouldy Polchester cab.
“The King is dead--long live the King!” The Jampot as a power in the
Cole family has ceased to be.
The day following the Jampot's departure offered up the news that, for
the first time in the history of the Coles, there was to be a governess.
The word “governess” had an awful sound, and the children trembled with
a mixture of delight and terror. Jeremy pretended indifference.
“It's only another woman,” he said. “She'll be like the Jampot--only, a
lady, so she won't be able to punish us as the Jampot could.”
I expect that Mr. and Mrs. Cole had great difficulty in finding anyone
who would do. Thirty years ago governesses were an incapable race, and
belonged too closely either to the Becky Sharp or the Amelia type to be
very satisfactory. It was then that the New Woman was bursting upon the
scene, but she was not to be found amongst the governesses. No one in
Polchester had learnt yet to cycle in rational costume, it was several
years before the publication of “The Heavenly Twins,” and Mr. Trollope's
Lilys and Lucys were still considered the ideal of England's maidenhood.
Mrs. Cole, therefore, had to choose between idiotic young women and
crabbed old maids, and she finally chose an old maid. I don't think that
Miss Jones was the very best choice that she could have made, but time
was short. Jeremy, aided by Hamlet, was growing terribly independent,
and Mr. Cole had neither the humour nor the courage to deal with him.
No, Miss Jones was not ideal, but the Dean had strongly recommended her.
It is true that the Dean had never seen her, but her brother, with whom
she had lived for many years, had once been the Dean's curate. It was
true that he had been a failure as a curate, but that made the Dean the
more anxious to be kind now to his memory, he--Mr. Jones--having just
died of general bad-temper and selfishness.
Miss Jones, buried during the last twenty years in the green depths of
a Glebeshire valley, found herself now, at the age of fifty, without
friends, without money, without relations. She thought that she would be
a governess.
The Dean recommended her, Mrs. Cole approved of her birth, education and
sobriety, Mr. Cole liked the severity of her countenance when she came
to call, and she was engaged.
“Jeremy needs a tight hand,” said Mr. Cole. “It's no use having a young
girl.”
“Miss Jones easily escapes that charge,” said Uncle Samuel, who had met
her in the hall.
The children were prepared to be good. Jeremy felt that it was time to
take life seriously. He put away his toy village, scolded Hamlet for
eating Mary's pincushion, and dragged out his dirty exercise-book in
which he did sums.
“I do hate sums!” he said, with a sigh, regarding the hideous smudges
of thumbs and tears that scored the page. “I shall never understand
anything about them.”
“I'll help you,” said Mary, who was greatly excited at the thought of a
governess. “We'll do them together.”
“No we won't,” said Jeremy, who hated to be dependent.
“I'll learn it myself--if only the paper didn't get dirty so quickly.”
“Mother says,” remarked Helen, “that she's had a very hard life, and no
one's ever been kind to her. 'She wants affection,' Mother says.”
“I'll give her my napkin-ring that you gave me last Christmas, Mary,”
said Jeremy. “You don't mind, do you? It's all dirty now. I hope Hamlet
won't bark at her.”
Hamlet was worrying Mary's pincushion at the moment, holding it between
his paws, his body stretched out in quivering excitement, his short,
“snappy” tail, as Uncle Samuel called it, standing up straight in air.
He stopped for an instant when he heard his name, and shook one ear.
“Mother says,” continued Helen, “that she lived with a brother who never
gave her enough to eat.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. This seemed to him a horrible thing.
“She shall have my porridge, if she likes,” he said; “I don't like it
very much. And I'll give her that chocolate that Mr. Jellybrand sent us.
There's still some, although it's rather damp now, I expect.”
“How silly you are!” said Helen scornfully. “Of course, Mother will give
her anything she wants.”
“It isn't silly,” said Jeremy. “Perhaps she'll want more than she really
wants. I often do.”
“Oh, you!” said Helen.
“And if for ever so long,” said Jeremy, “she hasn't had enough to eat,
she'll want twice as big meals now as other people--to make up.”
“Mother says we've got to remember she's a lady,” said Helen.
“What's the difference,” asked Jeremy, “between a lady and not a lady?”
“Oh, you are!” said Helen. “Why, Aunt Amy's a lady, and Rose isn't.”
“Rose is nicer,” said Jeremy.
Miss Jones had, I am sorry to say, lied to Mrs. Cole in one particular.
She had told her that “she had had to do with children all her life,”
the fact being that on several occasions some little cousins had come to
stay with herself and her brother. On these occasions the little
cousins had been so paralysed with terror that discipline had not been
difficult. It was from these experiences that Miss Jones flattered
herself that “she understood children.”
So audacious a self-confidence is doomed to invite the scornful
punishment of the gods.
Miss Jones arrived upon a wet January afternoon, one of those Glebeshire
days when the town sinks into a bath of mud and mist and all the pipes
run water and the eaves drip and horses splash and only ducks are happy.
Out of a blurred lamp-lit dusk stumbled Miss Jones's cab, and out of a
blurred unlit cab stumbled Miss Jones.
As she stood in the hall trying to look warm and amiable, Mrs. Cole's
heart forsook her. On that earlier day of her visit Miss Jones had
looked possible, sitting up in Mrs. Cole's drawing-room, smiling her
brightest, because she so desperately needed the situation, and wearing
her best dress. Now she was all in pieces; she had had to leave her
little village early in the morning to catch the village bus; she had
waited at wayside stations, as in Glebeshire only one can wait; the
world had dripped upon her head and spattered upon her legs. She had
neuralgia and a pain in her back; she had worn her older dress because,
upon such a day, it would not do to travel in her best; and then, as a
climax to everything, she had left her umbrella in the train. How she
could do such a thing upon such a day! Her memory was not her strongest
point, poor lady, and it was a good umbrella, and she could not afford
to buy another. Perhaps they would find it for her, but it was very
unlikely.
She had had it for a number of years.
She was a little woman, all skin and bone, with dried withered cheeks,
a large brown nose and protruding ears. Her face had formed severe lines
in self-defence against her brother, but her eyes were mild, and when
she smiled her mouth was rather pleasantly pathetic.
“Oh, she'll never do,” thought Mrs. Cole, as she looked at her dripping
in the hall.
“I can't think how I forgot it,” said the poor lady, her mind fixed upon
her umbrella. “They said that perhaps they would find it for me, but
there was a man in my carriage, I remember, who will most certainly have
taken it--and it was a nice one with a silver handle.”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Cole cheerfully, “I'm sure they'll find it. You
must come up to the nursery--or the schoolroom I suppose we must call
it now; there's a lovely fire there, and we'll both have tea with
the children to-day, so as to feel at home, all of us, as quickly as
possible.”
What Miss Jones wanted was to lie down on a bed in a dark room and try
and conquer her neuralgia. The thought of a lighted nursery filled her
with dismay. However, first impressions are so important. She pulled
herself together.
The children had heard the arrival; they waited in a bunch by the fire,
their eyes partly fixed on the door, partly on the strawberry jam that
they were allowed to-day as a treat in the new governess's honour.
Hamlet, his eyes and ears also upon the door, expecting perhaps a rat,
perhaps Aunt Amy, sat in front of the group, its bodyguard.
“She's in the hall,” said Helen, “and now Mother's saying: 'Do take off
your things. You must be wet,' and now she's saying: 'You'll like to see
the children, I expect,' and now--”
There they were, standing in the doorway, Mrs. Cole and Miss Jones.
There followed a dismal pause. The children had not expected anyone so
old and so ugly as Miss Jones. Hamlet did not bark--nothing occurred.
At last Mrs. Cole said: “Now, children, come and say, 'How do you do?'
to Miss Jones. This is Helen, our eldest--this Mary--and this Jeremy.”
Miss Jones did a dreadful thing. In her eagerness to be pleasant and
friendly she kissed the girls, and then, before anyone could stop her,
kissed Jeremy. He took it like a man, never turning his head nor wiping
his mouth with his hand afterwards, but she might have seen in his eyes,
had she looked, what he felt about it.
She said: “I hope we shall be happy together, dears.”
The children said nothing, and presently they all sat down to tea.
II
It was unfortunate that there was so little precedent on both sides.
Miss Jones had never been a governess before and the children had never
had one. Of course, many mistakes were made. Miss Jones had had a true
admiration for what she used to call “her brother's indomitable spirit,”
her name for his selfishness and bad temper. She was herself neither
selfish nor bad-tempered, but she was ignorant, nervous, over-anxious,
and desperately afraid of losing her situation. She had during so many
years lived without affection that the wells of it had dried up within
her, and now, without being at all a bad old lady, she was simply
preoccupied with the business of managing her neuralgia, living
on nothing a week, and building to her deceased brother's memory a
monument, of heroic character and self-sacrifice. She was short-sighted
and had a perpetual cold; she was forgetful and careless. She had,
nevertheless, a real knowledge of many things, a warm heart somewhere
could she be encouraged to look for it again, and a sense of humour
buried deep beneath her cares and preoccupations. There were many worse
persons in the world than Miss Jones. But, most unfortunately, her
love for her brother's memory led her to resolve on what she called
“firmness.” Mrs. Cole had told her that Jeremy was “getting too much”
for his nurse; she approached Jeremy with exactly the tremors and
quaking boldness that she would have summoned to her aid before a
bull loose in a field. She really did look frightening with her large
spectacles on the end of her large nose, her mouth firmly set, and a
ruler in her hand. “I insist on absolute obedience,” was her motto.
Jeremy looked at her but said no word. It was made clear to them all
that the new regime was to be far other than the earlier nursery one.
There were to be regular lesson hours--nine to twelve and four to five.
A neat piece of white paper was fastened to the wall with “Monday:
Geography 9-10, Arithmetic 10-11,” and so on. A careful graduation of
punishments was instituted, copies to be written so many times, standing
on a chair, three strokes on the hand with a ruler, and, worst of all,
standing in the corner wearing a paper Dunce's cap. (This last she had
read of in books.) At first Jeremy had every intention of behaving well,
in spite of that unfortunate embrace. He was proud of his advance in
life; he was no longer a baby; the nursery was now a schoolroom; he
stayed up an hour later at night; he was to be allowed twopence a week
pocket-money; his whole social status had risen. He began to read for
pleasure, and discovered that it was easier than he had expected, so
that he passed quite quickly through “Lottie's Visit to Grandmama” into
“Stumps” and out again in “Jackanapes.” He heard some elder say that the
road to a large fortune lay through “Sums,” and, although this seemed to
him an extremely mysterious statement, he determined to give the theory
a chance. In fact, he sat down the first day at the schoolroom table,
Mary and Helen on each side of him, and Miss Jones facing them, with
fine resolves and high ambitions. Before him lay a pure white page, and
at the head of this the noble words in a running hand: “Slow and steady
wins the race.” He grasped his pencil, and Miss Jones, eager to lose no
time in asserting her authority, cried: “But that's not the way to hold
your pencil, Jeremy, your thumb so, your finger so.” He scowled and
found that lifting his thumb over the pencil was as difficult as lifting
Hamlet over a gate. He made a bold attempt, but the pencil refused to
move.
“Can't hold it that way,” he said.
“You must never say 'can't,' Jeremy,” remarked Miss Jones. “There isn't
such a word.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mary eagerly, “there is; I've seen it in books.”
“You musn't contradict, Mary,” said Miss Jones. “I only meant that you
must behave as though there isn't, because nothing is impossible to one
who truly tries.”
“My pencil waggles this way,” said Jeremy politely. “I think I'll hold
it the old way, please.”
“There's only one way of doing anything,” said Miss Jones, “and that's
the right way.”
“This is the right way for me,” said Jeremy.
“If I say it's not the right way--”
“But it waggles,” cried Jeremy.
The discussion was interrupted by a cry from Helen.
“Oh, do look, Miss Jones, Hamlet's got your spectacle-case. He thinks
it's a mouse.”
There followed general confusion. Miss Jones jumped up, and, with little
cries of distress, pursued Hamlet, who hastened into his favourite
corner and began to worry the spectacle-case, with one eye on Miss Jones
and one on his spoils.
Jeremy hurried up crying: “Put it down, Hamlet, naughty dog, naughty
dog,” and Mary and Helen laughed with frantic delight.
At last Miss Jones, her face red and her hair in disorder, rescued her
property and returned to the table, Hamlet meanwhile wagging his tail,
panting and watching for a further game.
“I can't possibly,” said Miss Jones, “allow that dog in here during
lesson hours. It's impossible.”
“Oh, but Miss Jones--” began Jeremy.
“Not one word,” said she, “let us have no more of this. Lead him from
the room, Jeremy!”
“But, Miss Jones, he must be here. He's learning too. In a day or two
he'll be as good as anything, really he will. He's so intelligent. He
really thought it was his to play with, and he did give it up, didn't
he, as soon as I said--”
“Enough,” said Miss Jones, “I will listen to no more. I say he is not to
remain--”
“But if I promise--” said Jeremy.
Then Miss Jones made a bad mistake. Wearied of the argument, wishing to
continue the lesson, and hoping perhaps to please her tormentors, she
said meekly:
“Well, if he really is good, perhaps--”
From that instant her doom was sealed. The children exchanged a glance
of realisation. Jeremy smiled. The lesson was continued. What possessed
Jeremy now? What possesses any child, naturally perhaps, of a kindly and
even sentimental nature at the sight of something helpless and in its
power? Is there any cruelty in after life like the cruelty of a small
boy, and is there anything more powerful, more unreasoning, and more
malicious than the calculating tortures that small children devise for
those weaker than themselves? Jeremy was possessed with a new power.
It was something almost abstract in its manifestations; it was something
indecent, sinister, secret, foreign to his whole nature felt by him now
for the first time, unanalysed, of course, but belonging, had he known
it, to that world of which afterwards he was often to catch glimpses,
that world of shining white faces in dark streets, of muffled cries
from shuttered windows, of muttered exclamations, half caught, half
understood. He was never again to be quite free from the neighbourhood
of that half-world; he would never be quite sure of his dominance of it
until he died.
He had never felt anything like this power before. With the Jampot
his relations had been quite simple; he had been rebellious, naughty,
disobedient, and had been punished, and there was an end. Now there was
a game like tracking Red Indians in the prairie or tigers in the jungle.
He watched Miss Jones and discovered many things about her. He
discovered that when she made mistakes in the things that she taught
them she was afraid to confess to her mistakes, and so made them worse
and worse. He discovered that she was very nervous, and that a sudden
noise made her jump and turn white and put her hand to her heart. He
discovered that she would punish him and then try to please him by
saying he need not finish his punishment. He discovered that she would
lose things, like her spectacles, her handkerchief, or her purse,
and then be afraid to confess that she had lost them and endeavour to
proceed without them. He discovered that she hated to hit him on the
hand with a ruler (he scarcely felt the strokes). He discovered that
when his mother or father was in the room she was terrified lest he
should misbehave.
He discovered that she was despised by the servants, who quite openly
insulted her.
All these things fed his sense of power. He did not consider her a human
being at all; she was simply something upon which he could exercise his
ingenuity and cleverness. Mary followed him in whatever he did; Helen
pretended to be superior, but was not. Yes, Miss Jones was in the hands
of her tormentors, and there was no escape for her.
Surely it must have been some outside power that drove Jeremy on. The
children called it “teasing Miss Jones,” and the aboriginal savagery in
their behaviour was as unconscious as their daily speech or fashion of
eating their food--some instinct inherited, perhaps, from the days when
the gentleman with the biggest muscles extracted for his daily amusement
the teeth and nails of his less happily muscular friends.
There were many games to be played with Miss Jones. She always began
her morning with a fine show of authority, accumulated, perhaps, during
hours of Spartan resolution whilst the rest of the household slept.
“To-morrow I'll see that they do what I tell them--”
“Now, children,” she would say, “I'm determined to stand no nonsense
this morning. Get out your copy books.” Five minutes later would begin:
“Oh, Miss Jones, I can't write with this pencil. May I find a better
one?” Granted permission, Mary's head and large spectacles would
disappear inside the schoolroom cupboard. Soon Jeremy would say very
politely: “Miss Jones, I think I know where it is. May I help her
to find it?” Then Jeremy's head would disappear. There would follow
giggles, whispers, again giggles; then from the cupboard a book tumbles,
then another, then another. Then Miss Jones would say: “Now, Jeremy,
come back to the table. You've had quite enough time--” interrupted by a
perfect avalanche of books. Mary crying:
“Oh, Jeremy!” Jeremy crying: “I didn't; it was you!” Miss Jones: “Now,
children--”
Then Jeremy, very politely:
“Please, Miss Jones, may I help Mary to pick the books up? There are
rather a lot.” Then, both on their knees, more whispers and giggles.
Miss Jones, her voice trembling: “Children, I really insist--” And
more books dropped, and more whispers and more protests, and so on ad
infinitum. A beautiful game to be played all the morning.
Or there was the game of Not Hearing. Miss Jones would say: “And twice
two are four.” Mary would repeat loudly: “And twice two is five--”
“Four, Mary.”
“Oh, I thought you said five.”
And then a second later Jeremy would ask:
“Did you say four or five, Miss Jones?”
“I told Mary I said four--”
“Oh, I've written five--and now it's all wrong. Didn't you write five,
Mary?”
“Yes, I've written five. You did say four, didn't you, Miss Jones?”
“Yes--yes. And three makes--”
“What did you say made five?” asked Jeremy.
“I didn't say five. I said four. Twice two.”
“Is that as well as 'add three,' Miss Jones? I've got twice two, and
then add three, and then twice two--”
“No, no. I was only telling Jeremy--”
“Please, Miss Jones, would you mind beginning again--”
This is a very unpleasant game for a lady with neuralgia.
Or there is the game of Making a Noise. At this game, without any
earlier training or practice, Jeremy was a perfect master. The three
children would be sitting there very, very quiet, learning the first
verse of “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright--” A very gentle creaking sound
would break the stillness--a creaking sound that can be made, if you are
clever, by rubbing a boot against a boot. It would not come regularly,
but once, twice, thrice, a pause, and then once, twice and another
pause.
“Who's making a noise?”
Dead silence. A very long pause, and then it would begin again.
“That noise must cease, I say. Jeremy, what are you doing?”
He would lift to her then eyes full of meekness and love.
“Nothing, Miss Jones.”
Soon it would begin again. Miss Jones would be silent this time, and
then Mary would speak.
“Please, would you ask Jeremy not to rub his boots together? I can't
learn my verse--”
“I didn't know I was,” says Jeremy.
Then it would begin again. Jeremy would say:
“Please, may I take my boots off?”
“Take your boots off? Why?”
“They will rub together, and I can't stop them, because I don't know
when I do it, and it is hard for Mary--”
“Of course not! I never heard of such a thing! Next time you do it you
must stand on your chair.”
Soon Jeremy is standing on his chair. Soon his poetry book drops with
a terrible crash to the ground, and five million pins stab Miss Jones's
heart. With white face and trembling hands, she says:
“Go and stand in the corner, Jeremy! I shall have to speak to your
mother!”
He goes, grinning at Mary, and stands there knowing that his victim is
watching the door in an agony lest Mrs. Cole should suddenly come in
and inquire what Jeremy had done, and that so the whole story of his
insubordination be revealed and Miss Jones lose her situation for
incapacity.
How did he discover this final weakness of Miss Jones? No one told him;
but he knew, and, as the days passed, rejoiced in his power and his
might and his glory.
Then came the climax. The children were not perfectly sure whether,
after all, Miss Jones might not tell their mother. They did not wish
this to happen, and so long as this calamity was possible they were not
complete masters of the poor lady. Then came a morning when they had
been extremely naughty, when every game had been played and every
triumph scored. Miss Jones, almost in tears, had threatened four times
that the Powers Above should be informed. Suddenly Mrs. Cole entered.
“Well, Miss Jones, how have the children been this morning? If they've
been good I have a little treat to propose.”
The children waited, their eyes upon their governess. Her eyes stared
back upon her tormentors. Her hands worked together. She struggled. Why
not call in Mrs. Cole's authority to her aid? No; she knew what it would
mean--“I'm very sorry, Miss Jones, but I think a younger governess,
perhaps--”
Her throat moved.
“They've been very good this morning, Mrs. Cole.”
The eyes of Mary and of Jeremy were alight with triumph.
They had won their final victory.
III
I know what Miss Jones suffered during those weeks. She was not an old
lady of very great power of resistance, and it must have positively
terrified her that these small children should so vindictively hate
her. She could not have seen it as anything but hatred, being entirely
ignorant of children and the strange forces to whose power they are
subject, and she must have shivered in her bedroom at the dreariness
and terror of the prospect before her. Many, many times she must have
resolved not to be beaten, and many, many times she must have admitted
herself beaten as badly as any one can be.
Her life with the people downstairs was not intimate enough, nor were
those people themselves perceptive enough for any realisation of what
was occurring to penetrate.
“I hope you're happy with the children, Miss Jones,” once or twice said
Mrs. Cole.
“Very, thank you,” said Miss Jones.
“They're good children, I think, although parents are always prejudiced,
of course. Jeremy is a little difficult perhaps. It's so hard to tell
what he's really thinking. You find him a quiet, reserved little boy?”
“Very,” said Miss Jones.
“In a little while, when you know him better, he will come out. Only you
have to let him take his time. He doesn't like to be forced--”
“No,” said Miss Jones.
Meanwhile, that morning descent into the schoolroom was real hell
for her. She had to summon up her courage, walking about her bedroom,
pressing her hands together, evoking the memory of her magnificent
iron-souled brother, who would, she knew, despise such tremors. If only
she could have discovered some remedy! But sentiment, attempted tyranny,
anger, contempt, at all these things they laughed. She could not touch
them anywhere. And she saw Jeremy as a real child of Evil in the very
baldest sense. She could not imagine how anyone so young could be
so cruel, so heartless, so maliciously clever in his elaborate
machinations. She regarded him with real horror, and on the occasions
when she found him acting kindly towards his sisters or a servant, or
when she watched him discoursing solemnly to Hamlet, she was helplessly
puzzled, and decided that these better manifestations were simply masks
to hide his devilish young heart. She perceived meanwhile the inevitable
crisis slowly approaching, when she would be compelled to invite Mrs.
Cole's support. That would mean her dismissal and a hopeless future.
There was no one to whom she might turn. She had not a relation, not a
friend--too late to make friends now.
She could see nothing in front of her at all.
The crisis did come, but not as she expected it.
There arrived a morning when the dark mist outside and badly made
porridge inside tempted the children to their very worst. Miss Jones
had had a wakeful night struggling with neuralgia and her own hesitating
spirit. The children had lost even their customary half-humourous,
half-contemptuous reserve. They let themselves appear for what they
were--infant savages discontented with food, weather and education.
I will not detail the incidents of that morning. The episodes that were
on other mornings games were today tortures. There was the Torture of
Losing Things, the Torture of Not Hearing, the Torture of Many Noises,
the Torture of Sudden Alarm, the Torture of Outright Defiance, the
Torture of Expressed Contempt. When twelve struck and the children were
free, Miss Jones was not far from a nervous panic that can be called,
without any exaggeration, incipient madness. The neuralgia tore at her
brain, her own self-contempt tore at her heart, her baffled impotence
bewildered and blinded her. She did not leave the schoolroom with the
children, but went to the broad window-sill and sat there looking out
into the dreary prospect. Then, suddenly for no reason except general
weakness and physical and spiritual collapse she began to cry.
Jeremy was considered to have a cold, and was, therefore, not permitted
to accompany his mother and sisters on an exciting shopping expedition,
which would certainly lead as far as old Poole's, the bookseller, and
might even extend to Martins', the pastrycook, who made lemon biscuits
next door to the Cathedral. He was, therefore, in a very bad temper
indeed when he returned sulkily to the schoolroom. He stood for a moment
there unaware that there was anybody in the room, hesitating as to
whether he should continue “A Flat Iron for a Farthing” or hunt up
Hamlet. Suddenly he heard the sound of sobbing. He turned and saw Miss
Jones.
He would have fled had flight been in any way possible, but she had
looked up and seen him, and her sudden arrested sniff held them both
there as though by some third invisible power. He saw that she was
crying; he saw her red nose, mottled cheeks, untidy hair. It was the
most awful moment of his young life. He had never seen a grown-up person
cry before; he had no idea that they ever did cry. He had, indeed, never
realised that grown-up persons had any active histories at all, any
histories in the sense in which he and Mary had them. They were all a
background, simply a background that blew backwards and forwards like
tapestry according to one's need of them. His torture of Miss Jones had
been founded on no sort of realisation of her as a human being; she
had been a silly old woman, of course, but just as the battered
weather-beaten Aunt Sally in the garden was a silly old woman.
Her crying horrified, terrified, and disgusted him. It was all so
dreary, the horrible weather outside, the beginning of a cold in his
head, the schoolroom fire almost out, everyone's bad temper, including
his own, and this sudden horrible jumping-to-life of a grown-up human
being. She, meanwhile, was too deeply involved now in the waters of her
affliction to care very deeply who saw her or what anyone said to her.
She did feel dimly that she ought not to be crying in front of a small
boy of eight years old, and that it would be better to hide herself in
her bedroom, but she did not mind--she COULD not mind--her neuralgia was
too bad.
“It's the neuralgia in my head,” she said in a muffled confused voice.
That he could understand. He also had pains in his head. He drew closer
to her, flinging a longing backward look at the door. She went on in
convulsed tones:
“It's the pain--awake all night, and the lessons. I can't make them
attend; they learn nothing. They're not afraid of me--they hate me. I've
never really known children before--”
He did not know what to say. Had it been Mary or Helen the formula would
have been simple. He moved his legs restlessly one against the other.
Miss Jones went on:
“And now, of course, I must go. It's quite impossible for me to stay
when I manage so badly--” She looked up and suddenly realised that it
was truly Jeremy. “You're only a little boy, but you know very well that
I can't manage you. And then where am I to go to? No one will take me
after I've been such a failure.”
The colour stole into his cheeks. He was immensely proud. No grown-up
person had ever before spoken to him as though he was himself a grown-up
person--always laughing at him like Uncle Samuel, or talking down to
him like Aunt Amy, or despising him like Mr. Jellybrand. But Miss Jones
appealed to him simply as one grown-up to another. Unfortunately he did
not in the least know what to say. The only thing he could think of at
the moment was: “You can have my handkerchief, if you like. It's pretty
clean--”
But she went on: “If my brother had been alive he would have advised
me. He was a splendid man. He rowed in his college boat when he was
at Cambridge, but that, of course, was forty years ago. He could keep
children in order. I thought it would be so easy. Perhaps if my health
had been better it wouldn't have been so hard.”
“Do your pains come often?” asked Jeremy.
“Yes. They're very bad.”
“I have them, too,” said Jeremy. “It's generally, I expect, because I
eat too much--at least, the Jampot used to say so. They're in my head
sometimes, too. And then I'm really sick. Do you feel sick?”
Miss Jones began to pull herself together. She wiped her eyes and patted
her hair.
“It's my neuralgia,” she said again. “It's from my eyes partly, I
expect.”
“It's better to be sick,” continued Jeremy, “if you can be--”
She flung him then a desperate look, as though she were really an animal
at bay.
“You see, I can't go away,” she said. “I've nowhere to go to. I've no
friends, nor relations, and no one will take me for their children, if
Mrs. Cole says I can't keep order.”
“Then I suppose you'd go to the workhouse,” continued Jeremy, pursuing
her case with excited interest. “That's what the Jampot always used
to say, that one day she'd end in the workhouse; and that's a horrible
place, SHE said, where there was nothing but porridge to eat, and
sometimes they took all your clothes off and scrubbed your back with
that hard yellow soap they wash Hamlet with.”
His eyes grew wide with the horrible picture.
“Oh, Miss Jones, you mustn't go there!”
“Would you mind,” she said, “just getting me some water from the jug over
there? There's a glass there.”
Still proud of the level to which he had been raised, but puzzled beyond
any words as to this new realisation of Miss Jones, he fetched her the
water, then, standing quite close to her, he said:
“You must stay with us, always.”
She looked up at him, and they exchanged a glance.
With that glance Miss Jones learnt more about children than she had ever
learnt before--more, indeed, than most people learn in all their mortal
lives.
“I can't stay,” she said, and she even smiled a little, “if you're
always naughty.”
“We won't be naughty any more.” He sighed. “It was great fun, of course,
but we won't do it any more. We never knew you minded.”
“Never knew I minded?”
“At least, we never thought about you at all. Helen did sometimes. She
said you had a headache when you were very yellow in the morning, but I
said it was only because you were old. But we'll be good now. I'll tell
them too--”
Then he added: “But you won't go away now even if we're not always good?
We won't always be, I suppose; and I'm going to school in September,
and it will be better then, I expect. I'm too old, really, to learn with
girls now.”
She wanted terribly to kiss him, and, had she done so, the whole good
work of the last quarter of an hour would have been undone. He was aware
of her temptation; he felt it in the air. She saw the warning in his
eyes. The moment passed.
“You won't go away, will you?” he said again.
“Not if you're good,” she said.
IV
Half an hour later, when Mary and Helen returned from their walk, they
were addressed by Jeremy.
“She was crying because we'd been so naughty, and she had pains in her
head, and her brother was dead. Her brother was very strong, and he
used to row in a boat forty years ago. She told me all about it, just as
though I'd been Aunt Amy or Mother. And she says that if we go on being
naughty she'll go away, and no one else will have her, because they'll
hear about our having been naughty. And I told her about the workhouse
and the porridge and the yellow soap that the Jampot told us of, and it
would be awful if she went there because of us, wouldn't it?”
“Awful,” said Mary.
But Helen said: “She wouldn't go there. She'd take a little house,
like Miss Dobell, and have tea-parties on Thursdays--somewhere near the
Cathedral.”
“No, she wouldn't!” said Jeremy excitedly. “How could she take a little
house if she hadn't any money? She told me she hadn't, and no friends,
nor nobody, and she cried like anything--” He paused for breath, then
concluded: “So we've got to be good now, and learn sums, and not make
her jump. Really and truly, we must.”
“I always thought you were very silly to make so much noise,” said Helen
in a superior fashion. “You and Mary--babies!”
“We're not babies,” shouted Jeremy.
“Yes, you are.”
“No, we're not.”
Miss Jones was no longer the subject of the conversation.
That same day it happened that rumours were brought to Mrs. Cole through
Rose, the housemaid, or some other medium for the first time, of Miss
Jones's incapacity.
That evening Jeremy was spending his last half-hour before bedtime in
his mother's room happily in a corner with his toy village. He suddenly
heard his mother say to Aunt Amy:
“I'm afraid Miss Jones won't do. I thought she was managing the
children, but now I hear that she can't keep order at all. I'm
sorry--it's so difficult to get anyone.”
Jeremy sprang up from the floor, startling the ladies, who had forgotten
that he was there.
“She's all right,” he cried. “Really she is, Mother. We're going to be
as good as anything, really we are. You won't send her away, will you?”
“My dear Jeremy,” his mother said, “I'd forgotten you were there. Rose
says you don't do anything Miss Jones tells you.”
“Rose is silly,” he answered. “She doesn't know anything about it. But
you will keep her, won't you, Mother?”
“I don't know--if she can't manage you--”
“But she can manage us. We'll be good as anything, I promise. You will
keep her, won't you, Mother?”
“Really, Jeremy,” said Aunt Amy, “to bother your mother so! And it's
nearly time you went to bed.”
He brushed her aside. “You will keep her, Mother, won't you?”
“It depends, dear,” said Mrs. Cole, laughing. “You see--”
“No--we'll be bad with everyone else,” he cried. “We will,
really--everyone else. And we'll be good with Miss Jones.”
“Well, so long as you're good, dear,” she said. “I'd no idea you liked
her so much.”
“Oh, she's all right,” he said. “But it isn't that--” Then he stopped;
he couldn't explain--especially with that idiot Aunt Amy there, who'd
only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else horrible.
Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in the
dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him, only the
clocks whispering.
What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were dead!
And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At the same
time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most strangely
moved him--her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack of relations.
Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps she also cried!
The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging figures,
all with businesses of their own.
It was very odd.
He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.