1
Miriam propped “The Story of Adèle” open against the three Bibles on the
dressing-table. It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. It was the
only story-book amongst the rows of volumes which filled the shelves in
the big schoolroom and would have to last her for tea-time reading the
whole term. The “Fleurs de l’Eloquence?” Shiny brown leather covered
with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new although the parchment
pages were yellow with age. The Fleurs were so short ... that curious
page signed “Froissart” with long s’s, coming to an end just as the
picture of the French court was getting clear and interesting. That
other thing, “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” Fascinating. But it would take
so much reading, on and on forgetting everything; all the ordinary
things, seeing things in some new way, some way that fascinated people
for a moment if you tried to talk about it and then made them very
angry, made them hate and suspect you. Impossible to take it out and
have it on the schoolroom table for tea-time reading. What had made the
Pernes begin allowing tea-time reading? Being shy and finding it
difficult to keep conversation going with the girls for so long? They
never did talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not see through
them and understand them. North London girls. So different from the
Fairchild family and the sort of girls they had been accustomed to when
they were young. Anyhow, they hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at
breakfast or dinner-time when they were all three there; and at tea-time
when there was only one of them, there were always the books. How
sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling into the schoolroom, one
of them each Sunday--perhaps the others were asleep--reading aloud; the
Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy, everyone in the book
surrounded with a sort of light, going on and on and on towards heaven,
tea-time seeming so nice and mean and ordinary afterwards--or a book
about a place in the north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a
vicarage and miners; the people in the book horrible, not lit up,
talking about things and being gloomy and not always knowing what to do,
never really sure about Heaven like the Fairchild family, black brackish
book. The “Fairchild Family” was golden and gleaming.
“The Anatomy of Melancholy” would not be golden like “The Fairchild
Family” ... “the cart was now come alongside a wood which was
exceedingly shady and beautiful”; “good manners and civility make
everybody lovely”; but it would be round and real, not just chilly and
moaning like “Saltcoats.” The title would be enough to keep one going at
tea-time. An_at_--omy of _Mel_--ancholy, and the look of the
close-printed pages and a sentence here and there. The Pernes would not
believe she really wanted it there on the table. The girls would stare.
When “The Story of Adèle” was finished she would have to find some other
book; or borrow one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back to the
closed piano facing the great bay of dark green-blinded window, reading
“Nicholas Nickleby.” Just the very one of all the Dickens volumes that
would be likely to come into her hands. Impossible to borrow it when
Nancie had finished with it. Impossible to read a book with such a
title. “David Copperfield” was all right; and “The Pickwick Papers.”
“Little Dorritt”--“A Tale of Two Cities”--“The Old Curiosity Shop.”
There was something suspicious about these, too.
2
Adèle--the story of Adèle. The book had hard, unpleasant covers with
some thin cottony material--bright lobelia blue--strained over them and
fraying out at the corners. Over the front of the cover were little
garlands and festoons of faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval
band of brighter gold was the word Adèle, with little strong tendrils on
the lettering. There was some secret charm about the book. The strong
sunlight striking the window just above the coarse lace curtains that
obscured its lower half, made the gilding shine and seem to move--a
whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-cover on the chest of
drawers, the three Bibles, the little cheap mahogany-framed
looking-glass, Nancie Wilkie’s folding hand-glass, the ugly gas bracket
sticking out above the mirror, her own bed in the corner with its coarse
fringed coverlet, the two alien beds behind her in the room, and the
repellant washstand in the far corner became friendly as the sun shone
on the decorated cover of the blue and gold book.
She propped it open again and began tidying her hair. It must be nearly
tea-time. A phrase caught her eye. “The old château where the first
years of Adèle’s life were spent was situated in the midst of a
high-walled garden. Along one side of the château ran a terrace looking
out over a lovely expanse of flower-beds. Beyond was a little pleasaunce
surrounded by a miniature wall and threaded by little pathways lined
with rose trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little doorway.
When the doorway was open you could see through into a deep orchard.”
The first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adèle flitting about in an
endless summer became again lines of black print. In a moment the girls
would come rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned to the dazzling
window. The sun blazed just above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A
bright yellow pathway led up through the green of the public cricket
ground, pierced the avenue of poplars and disappeared through the
further greenery in a curve that was the beginning of its encirclement
of the park lake. Coming slowly along the pathway was a little figure
dressed bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small and dingy in the
bright scene. The afternoon blazed round it. It was something left over.
What was the explanation of it? As it came near it seemed to change. It
grew real. It was hurrying eagerly along, quite indifferent to the
afternoon glory, with little rolling steps that were like the uneven
toddling of a child, and carrying a large newspaper whose great sheets,
although there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled by the small
hands. Its feathered hat had a wind-blown rakish air. On such a still
afternoon. It was thinking and coming along, thinking and thinking and a
little angry. What a rum little party, murmured Miriam, despising her
words and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle of dingy
clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that low kind of slang--not real
slang. Just North London sneering. Goo--what a _rum_ little party, she
declared aloud, flattening herself against the window. Hotly flushing,
she recognised that she had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying in
to preside at tea.
3
“We’ve been to Jones’s this afternoon, Miss Jenny.”
Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut thickly all the way
across a household loaf, and the three-pound jar of home-made plum jam
belonging to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the table. It had
begun with Miriam, who sat on Miss Jenny’s right hand, and had Nancie
for neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly, unable quite to resist
the enhancement of the solid fare, but fearing that there would be no
possibility of getting anything from home to make a return in kind.
Things were so bad, the dance had cost so much. One of Mary’s cakes, big
enough for five people, would cost so much. And there would be the
postage.
Piling a generous spoonful on to her own thick slice, Nancie coughed
facetiously and repeated her remark which had produced no result but a
giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat opposite to her.
“Eh? Eh? What?”
Miss Jenny looked down the table over the top of her newspaper without
raising her head. Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye appeared
looking through its proper circle, the other glared unprotected just
above a rim of glass.
“Miss Haddie took us to Jones’s this afternoon,” said Nancie almost
voicelessly. Miriam glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie’s small
eyes vanishing to malicious points. She was sitting as usual very solid
and upright in her chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her fine
nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow hair standing strongly
back from her large white brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as
Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied herself to her bread and
jam. If she did not eat she would not get more than two slices from the
piled dishes before the others had consumed four and five apiece and
brought tea to an end.
“Eh? What for? Why are ye laughing, Nancie?”
“I’m not laughing, Miss Jenny.” Nancie’s firm lips curved away from her
large faultless teeth. “I’m only smiling and telling you about our visit
to Jones’s.”
Miss Jenny’s newspaper was lowered and her pince-nez removed.
“Eh? What d’ye say? Nonsense, Nancie, you know you were laughing. Why do
you say you weren’t? What do you mean? Eh?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled me.”
“Yes. Don’t be nonsensical. D’ye see? It’s nonsensical to say no when
you mean yes. D’ye understand what I mean, Nancie? It’s bad manners.”
Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss Jenny returned to her paper.
Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading Adèle to the
accompaniment of bread and jam. She would not hurry over her bread and
jam. As well not have it. She would sacrifice her chance of a third
slice. She reflected that it would be a good thing if she could decide
never to have more than two slices, and have them in peace. Then she
could thoroughly enjoy her reading. But she was always so hungry. At
home she could not have eaten thick bread and butter. But here every
slice seemed better than the last. When she began at the hard thick edge
there always seemed to be tender places on her gums, her three hollow
teeth were uneasy and she had to get through worrying thoughts about
them--they would get worse as the years went by, and the little places
in the front would grow big and painful and disfiguring. After the first
few mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding seemed to take place and
she could go on forgetful.
“They’d got,” said Trixie Sanderson in a velvety tone, “they’d got some
of their Christmas things out, Miss Jenny.” She cleared her throat
shrilly on the last word and toned off the sound with a sigh. Inaudible
laughter went round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced
fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best dress, a loosely
made brown velveteen with a deep lace collar round her soft brown neck.
Her neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by lively silky brown
curls. She held her small head sideways from her book with a questioning
air. One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered serenely with its
thin lid.
She uttered a second gentle sigh and once more cleared her throat,
accompanying the sound with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid.
Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye which tried to search her,
hating the sudden, sharp dimpling which came high up almost under
Trixie’s cheek bones in answer to her own expression.
“Miss Jenny,” breathed Trixie in a high tone, twirling one end of the
bow of black ribbon crowning her head.
Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table opposite the tea-tray,
giggled aloud.
“Eh? What? Did somebody speak?” said Miss Jenny, looking up with a
smile. “Are ye getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for second cups?”
“Beadie spoke,” murmured Trixie, glancing at Beadie whose neat china
doll’s face was half hidden between her cup and the protruding edge of
her thatch of tight gold curls.
Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong the irritating comedy by
choking over her tea.
It was some minutes before the whole incident was made clear to Miss
Jenny. Reading was suspended. Everyone watched while Charlotte Stubbs,
going carefully backwards, came to the end at last of Miss Jenny’s
questions, and when Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating--_well!_ you’re all
very naughty children. I can’t think what’s the matter with you? Eh? Ye
shouldn’t do it. I can’t think what possesses you. What is it, eh? Ye
shouldn’t do it. D’you see?--and having dispensed the second allowance
of tea with small hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to her
newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking guilty. Miriam stole a
glance at the breadth of her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she
hung over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with her tea-drinking, and
her shock of coarse brown-gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck
out bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon glow from the
garden behind her. The others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the
muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly active. She and
Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of
her book with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered on their
final competition for the last few slices.
Miriam returned to her book. The story of Adèle had moved on through
several unassimilated pages. “My child,” she read, “it is important to
remember”--she glanced on gathering a picture of a woman walking with
Adèle along the magic terrace, talking--words and phrases that fretted
dismally at the beauty of the scene. Examining later chapters she found
conversations, discussions, situations, arguments, “fusses”--all about
nothing. She turned back to the early passage of description and caught
the glow once more. But this time it was overshadowed by the promise of
those talking women. That was all there was. She had finished the story
of Adèle.
A resounding slam came up from the kitchen.
“Poor cook--another tooth,” sighed Trixie.
Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. Her thwarted expectations
ranged forth beyond control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for
succour where she had learned there was none.... Nancie, her parents
abroad, her aunt’s house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin from
South Africa coming home to Cromer, taking her out in a dog-cart,
telling her she was his guiding star, going back to South Africa;
everything Nancie said and did, even her careful hair-brushing and her
energetic upright walk, her positive brave way of entering a room,
coming out through those malicious pin-points--things she said about the
Misses Perne and the girls, things she whispered and laughed, little
rhymes she sang with her unbearable laugh.
... Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent servile glancing
laughter, her stepmother, her little half-brother who had fits, her
holidays at Margate, “you’d look neat, on the seat, of a bicyka made for
two”--Beadie brought Miriam the utmost sense of imprisonment within the
strange influence that had threatened her when she first came to Banbury
Park. Beadie was in it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that
she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, realise the whole
fabric of Beadie’s life on and on to the end, no matter what should
happen to her. But she turned from the attempt--any effort at full
realisation threatened complete despair. Trixie too, with a home just
opposite the Banbury Empire.... Miriam slid over this link in her rapid
reflections--a brother named Julian who took instantaneous photographs
of girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was sometimes “tight.” ...
Charlotte. Charlotte carried about a faint suggestion of relief. Miriam
fled to her as she sat with the garden light on her hair, her lingering
flush of distress rekindled by her amusement, her protective responsible
smile beaming out through the endless blue of her eyes. Behind her
painstaking life at the school was a country home, a farm somewhere far
away. Of course it was dreadful for her to be a farmer’s daughter. She
evidently knew it herself and said very little about it. But her large
red hands, so strange handling school-books, were comforting; and her
holland apron with its bib under the fresh colouring of her face--do you
like butter? A buttercup under your chin--brought to Miriam a picture of
the farm, white amidst bright greenery, with a dairy and morning
cock-crow and creamy white sheep on a hillside. It was all there with
her as she sat at table reading “The Lamplighter.” The sound of her
broad husky voice explaining to Miss Jenny had been full of it. But it
was all past. She too had come to Banbury Park. She did not seem to mind
Banbury Park. She was to study hard and be a governess. She evidently
thought she was having a great chance--she was fifteen and quite
“uncultured.” How could she be turned into a governess? A sort of
nursery governess, for farms, perhaps. But farms did not want books and
worry. Miriam wanted to put her back into her farm, and sometimes her
thoughts wearily brushed the idea of going with her. Perhaps, though,
she had come away because her father could not keep her? The little
problem hung about her as she sat sweetly there, common and good and
strong. The golden light that seemed to belong specially to her came
from a London garden, an unreal North London garden. Resounding in its
little spaces were the blatterings and shouts of the deaf and dumb next
door.
4
Miss Jenny left “The Standard” with Miriam after tea, stopping suddenly
as she made her uncertain way from the tea-table to the door and saying
absently, “Eh, you’d better read this, my dear. There’s a leader on the
Education Commission. Would ye like to? Yes, I think you’d better.”
Miriam accepted the large sheets with hesitating expressions of thanks,
wondering rather fearfully what a leader might be and where she should
find it. She knew the word. Her mother read “the leaders” in the
evening--“excellent leader” she sometimes said, and her father would put
down his volume of “Proceedings of the British Association,” or Herbert
Spencer’s “First Principles,” and condescendingly agree. But any
discussion generally ended in his warning her not to believe a thing
because she saw it in print, and a reminder that before she married she
had thought that everything she saw in print was true, and quite often
he would go on to general remarks about the gullibility of women,
bringing in the story of the two large long-necked pearly transparent
drawing-room vases with stems and soft masses of roses and leaves
painted on their sides that she had given too much for at the door to a
man who said they were Italian. Brummagem, Brummagem, he would end,
mouthing the word and turning back to his book with the neighing laugh
that made Miriam turn to the imagined picture of her mother in the first
year of her married life, standing in the sunlight at the back door of
the Babington house, with the varnished coach-house door on her right
and the cucumber frames in front of her sloping up towards the bean-rows
that began the kitchen garden; with her little scallopped bodice, her
hooped skirt, her hair bunched in curls up on her high pad and falling
round her neck, looking at the jugs with grave dark eyes. And that
neighing laugh had come again and again all through the years until she
sat meekly, flushed and suffering under the fierce gaslight, feeling
every night of her life winter and summer as if the ceiling were coming
down on her head, and read “leaders” cautiously, and knew when they were
written in “a fine chaste dignified style.” But that was “The Times.”
“The Standard” was a penny rag and probably not worth considering at
all. In any case she would not read it at evening study. She had never
had a newspaper in her hand before as far as she could remember. The
girls would see that she did not know how to read it, and it would be
snubby towards them to sit there as if she were a Miss Perne, scrumpling
a great paper while they sat with their books. So she read her
text-books, a page of Saxon Kings with a ten-line summary of each reign,
a list of six English counties with their capitals and the rivers the
capitals stood on and the principal industries of each town, devising
ways of remembering the lists and went on to “Bell’s Standard
Elocutionist.” She had found the book amongst the school books on the
schoolroom shelves. It was a “standard” book and must therefore be about
something she ought to know something about if she were to hold her own
in this North London world. There had been no “standard” books at school
and the word offended her. It suggested fixed agreement about the things
people ought to know and that she felt sure must be wrong, and not only
wrong but “common” ... standard readers ... standard pianoforte tutors.
She had learned to read in “Reading without Tears,” and gone on to
“Classical Poems and Prose for the Young,” her arithmetic book instead
of being a thin cold paper-covered thing called Standard I, had been a
pleasant green volume called “Barnard Smith,” that began at the
beginning and went on to compound fractions and stocks. There was no
Morris’s Grammar at Banbury Park, no Wetherell or English Accidence, no
bits from “Piers Plowman” and pages of scraps of words with the way they
changed in different languages and quotations, just sentences that had
made her long for more ... “up-clomb” ... “the mist up-clomb.” She
opened “Bell’s Standard Elocutionist” apprehensively, her mind working
on possible meanings for elocutionist. She thought of ventriloquist and
wondered dismally whether it was a book of conjuring tricks. It was
poems, poems and prose, all mixed up together anyhow. The room was very
still, the girls all sitting reading with their backs to the table so
that nobody “poked.” She could not go on vaguely fluttering pages, so
she read a solid-looking poem that was not divided up into verses.
“Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond Emperor of
Allemaine, Apparelled in magnificent attire, With retinue of many a
knight and squire, On St. John’s eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard
the priests chant the Magnificat.” Should she go on? It was like the
pieces in Scott’s novels, the best bits, before the characters began to
talk.
... “and bay the moon than such a Roman and bay the moon than such a
Roman,” muttered Nancie rapidly, swinging her feet. It would not be fair
to read a thing that would take her right away and not teach her
anything whilst the girls were learning their things for Monday. She
hesitated and turned a page. The poem, she saw, soon began to break up
into sentences with quotation signs; somebody making a to-do. Turning
several pages at once, she caught sight of the word Hanover. “Hamelin
Town’s in Brunswick, by famous Hanover city.” That was irresistible. But
she must read it one day away from the gassy room and the pressure of
the girls. The lines were magic; but the rush that took her to the
German town, the sight and smell and sound of it, the pointed houses,
wood fires, the bürgers, had made her cheeks flare and thrown her out of
the proper teacher’s frame of mind. She wanted to stand up and pull up
the blinds hiding the garden and shout the poem aloud to the girls. They
would stare and giggle and think she had gone mad. “The mountain has
gone mad,” Nancie would mutter. “There is a mountain in Banbury Park,
covered over with yellow bark,” Nancie’s description of herself. That
was how the girls saw her stiff hair--and they thought she was “about
forty.” Well, it was true. She was, practically. She went on holding
Bell up before her face, open at a page of prose, and stared at the
keyboard of the piano just beyond her crossed knees. It aroused the
sight and sense of the strangely moving hands of the various girls whose
afternoon practice it was her business to superintend, their intent
faces, the pages of bad unclassical music, things with horrible names,
by English composers, the uselessness of the hours and terms and years
of practice.
5
Presently the bread and butter and milk came up for the girls, and then
there was prayers--the three servants lined up in front of the
bookshelves; cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin and bent, with a
sloping mob cap and a thin old brown face with a forehead that was like
a buttress of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that protruded so that
they could be seen even when she sat looking down into her lap; and
Flora the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown with an expression of
perfectly serene despair, this was part of Miriam’s daily bread; and
Annie the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning slyly at the
girls--Miss Perne, sitting at the head of the table with the shabby
family Bible and the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss Haddie
one on each side of the fireplace, Miss Jenny’s feet hardly reaching the
floor as she sat bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie in her
cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her thin hands clasped in her
lap, her grey face bent devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin
chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the girls who sat in their
places round the table during the time it took Miss Perne to read a
short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her eyes and close her ears. All
that went on during that short interval left her equally excluded from
either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora, and Miss Perne’s polite
unvarying tone brought her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly
of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with its high windows, its
great dark doors, its annexe of wooden summer-room, Fräulein’s clear,
brooding undertone, the pensive calm of the German girls; the strange
mass of fresh melodious sound as they all sang together. Here there
seemed to be everything to encourage and nothing whatever to check the
sudden murmur, the lightning swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie.
The moment Miss Perne had finished her psalm they all swung round on to
their knees. Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat of her
chair and wondered what she should say to Miss Jenny at supper about the
newspaper, while Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might all be fed
with the sincere milk of the Word and grow thereby.
After the Lord’s Prayer, a unison of breathy mutterings against closed
fingers, they all rose. Then the servants filed out of the room followed
by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the doorway to shake hands
with the girls on their way to bed before joining her sisters in the
little sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants reappeared
almost at once with a tray, distributed its contents at the fire-place
end of the long table and rang the little bell in the hall on her way
back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne filed back across the hall.
6
“Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?” said Miss Jenny, getting into her chair at
Miss Perne’s right hand.
Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned after all. If it were she
would simply say she had been preparing for Monday and was going to read
it after supper. Anyhow there was never any threat with the Pernes of
anything she would not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what
there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie’s eye from across the
table, assumed an air of interested abstraction to cover her
disappointment. Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished with
prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream cheese on a green-edged
dessert plate, a box of plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice
and the red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and nice--the
blancmange would be flavoured with laurel--prussic acid--and the prunes
would be sweet in the wrong sort of way--wholesome, just sweet fruit.
Cheese--how could people eat cheese?
“Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes--Polly Allen
and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats.”
“Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows
sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not
look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling
and pouring the milk from the spoon.
Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the
behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so
sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek.
She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from
a prune.
“Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over
her pince-nez.
Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the
far-off bookshelves.
“I did _not_ speak to them----”
“Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath.
“I did _not_ speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly
at the bookcase, “for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently
near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the
lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell,
who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with
regard to Constance’s prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly
and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground
in the condition I have described to you.”
Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully
over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle.
“Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak to them. They’ve no
business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go.”
“Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the
impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention.”
“Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should have done something. Don’t
you think you ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps--eh?--or managed to get
at the gels in some way--dear, dear, what is to be done? You see it is
hardly of any use to speak to them afterwards. You want to catch them
red-handed and make them feel ashamed of themselves.”
“I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, the justice of all that
you say. But I can only repeat that in the circumstances in which I
found myself I was entirely unable to exercise any control whatever upon
the doings of the gels. They were running; and long before I was free
from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of sight.”
Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative tone that seemed each
moment on the point of delighted laughter, her delicate head held high,
her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained pleasure. Miriam saw
vividly the picture in the park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the
sad asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London greenery, the
October wind rushing through it, Miss Perne’s high stylish arrowy figure
fluttered by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. Brinkwell’s
story, the dreadful asphalt playground away to the left, its gaunt
swings and bars--gallows.... Ingoldsby--the girls rushing across it, and
held herself sternly back from a vision of Miss Perne chasing the
delinquents down the wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? As
much as to say There, my dear Jenny, there’s a problem you can’t answer.
She enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset about the girls.
She spoke exactly as if she were reading aloud from “Robinson Crusoe.”
Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her eyes about as she gently
spooned up her bread and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether Miss
Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen gravely. She was evidently
angry and disgusted. But still she could watch.
“Did ye go that way at all afterwards--the way the girls went?”
“I did not,” beamed Miss Perne, turning to Miss Jenny as if waiting for
a judgment.
“Well, eh, I’m sure, really, it’s most diffikilt. What is one to do with
these gels? Now, Miriam, here’s something for you to exercise your wits
upon. What would ye do, eh?”
Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. Of course she had never rushed
about in a common park where rough boys came. At the same time--if the
girls wanted to rush about and scream and wear no hats nobody had any
right to interfere with them ... they ought to be suppressed though,
North London girls, capable of anything in the way of horridness ... the
Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls were in themselves,
common and knowing and horrid. “Dear, funny little O.M.’s” ... they were
something much more than that. They were wrong about the hats, but it
was good, heavenly to be here like this with them. She turned to Miss
Jenny, her mind in a warm confusion, and smiled into the little red face
peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon loops.
“Well?”
“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie’s soft hollow voice, “how should the
child judge?”
Miriam’s heart leapt. She smiled inanely and eagerly accepted a second
helping of blancmange suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was drawing
little panting breaths and blinking sharply at her.
“Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, it’s a chance for you. Come
along.”
“Tomboys,” said Miss Haddie indignantly.
Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they were not tomboys--she knew they
had not run like tomboys--they had scuttled, she was sure--horrid girls,
that was what they were, nothing the Pernes could understand. The Pernes
ought not to be bothered with them.
“Well,” she said, feeling a sudden security, “are we responsible for
them out of school hours?”
Miss Haddie’s eyebrows moved nervously, and Miss Perne’s smile turned to
a dubious mouthing.
“Eh, there you are. D’ye see, Deborah. That’s it. That’s the crucial
point. Are we responsible? I’m sure I can’t say. That places the whole
difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these gels, not even day boarders.
How far can we control their general behaviour? Eh? I’m sure I don’t
know.”
“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie quickly, her hollow voice
reverberating as if she were using a gargle, “it’s quite obvious that we
can’t have gels known to belong to the school running about in the park
with nothing on.”
“I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny says, how are we to prevent such
conduct?”
“Don’t let us lose sight of Miriam’s point. _Are_ we responsible for
their play-times? I suppose we’re _not_, you know, Deborah, really after
all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are _indirectly_ responsible.
Sheerly. We ought to be able to make it impossible for them to carry on
in this unseemly fashion.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Deborah eagerly, “sheerly.”
“Is it education?” suggested Miriam.
“That’s it, my dear. It is education. That’s what’s wanted. That’s what
these gels want. I don’t know, though. All this talk of education. It
ought to be the thing. And yet look at these two gels. Both of them from
Miss Cass’s. There’s her school now. Famous all over London. Three
hundred gels. We’ve had several here. And they’ve all had that
objectionable noisy tone. Eh, Deborah? I don’t know. How is it to be
accounted for? Eh?”
“I’ve never heard of Miss Cass’s,” said Miriam.
“My _dear_ child! It’s not possible! D’ye mean to say ye don’t know Miss
Cass’s high school?”
“Oh, if it’s a high school, of _course_.”
All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her, making a chorus of
inarticulate sounds.
“Oh well, high schools are simply fearful.”
Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling laughter.
“Well, you know, I think there’s something in it,” giggled Miss Jenny
softly. “It’s the number perhaps. That’s what I always say, Deborah.
Treating the gels like soldiers. Like a regiment. D’ye see? No
individual study of the gels’ characters----”
“Well. However that may be, I am sure of one thing. I am sure that on
Monday Polly and Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely reprimanded.”
“Yes. I suppose they must. They’re nice gels at heart, you know. Both of
them. That’s the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only so often
the naughty gels are so thoroughly--well--nice, likable at bottom, ye
know, eh? I’m sure. I don’t know.”
7
Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper with the newspaper spread
out on the brown American cloth table cover under the gas. She found a
long column headed “The Royal Commission on Education.” The Queen, then,
was interesting herself in education. But in England the sovereign had
no power, was only a figurehead. Perhaps the Queen had been advised to
interest herself in education by the Privy Council and the
Conservatives, people of leisure and cultivation. A commission was a
sort of command--it must be important, something the Privy Council had
decided and sent out in the Queen’s name.
She read her column, sitting comfortlessly between the window and the
open door. As she read the room grew still. The memory of the talking
and clinking supper-table faded, and presently even the ticking of the
clock was no longer there. She raised her head at last. No wonder people
read newspapers. You could read about what was going on in the country,
actually what the Government was doing at that very moment. Of course;
men seemed to know such a lot because they read the newspapers and
talked about what was in them. But anybody could know as much as the men
sitting in the armchairs if they chose; read all about everything,
written down for everybody to see. That was the freedom of the
Press--Areopagitica, that the history books said so much about and was
one of those new important things, more important than facts and dates.
Like the Independence of Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like
newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices. Here was the free Press
that Milton had gone to prison for. Certainly it made a great
difference. The room was quite changed. There was hardly any pain in the
silent cane-seated chairs. There were really people making the world
better. Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy fate to be a teacher
in the Banbury Park school and read newspapers. There were plenty of
people who could neither read nor write. Someone had a servant like that
who did all the marketing and never forgot anything or made any mistake
over the change--none the worse for it, pater said, people who wanted
book-learning could get it, there must always be hewers of wood and
drawers of water, _laissez faire_. But Gladstone did not believe that.
At this moment Gladstone was saying that because the people of England
as a whole were uneducated their “condition of ignorance” affected the
whole of the “body politic.” That was Gladstone. He had found that out
... with large moist silky eyes like a dog and pointed collars seeing
things as they were and going to change them.... Miriam stirred uneasily
as she felt the beating of her heart.... If only she were at home how
she could rush up and down the house and shout about it and shake Mary
by the shoulders. She shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly
discovering she was lounging over the table. As she moved she reflected
that probably Gladstone’s being so very dark made him determined that
things should not go on as they were. In that case Gladstonians would be
dark--perhaps not musical. Someone had said musical people were a queer
soft lot. _Laissez faire_. Lazy fair. But perhaps it was possible to be
fair and musical and to be a Gladstonian too. You can’t have your cake
and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one’s best self knew it was a good
thing that someone had found out why people were so awful; like a
dentist finding out a bad tooth however much it hurt. Only if education
was going to be the principal thing and all teachers were to be
‘qualified’ it was no use going on. Miss Jenny had said private schools
were doomed.
8
For a long time she sat blankly contemplating the new world that was
coming. Everyone would be trained and efficient but herself. She was not
strong enough to earn a living and qualify as a teacher at the same
time. The day’s work tired her to death. She must hide somewhere.... She
would not be wanted.... If you were not wanted.... If you knew you were
not wanted--you ought to get out of the way. Chloroform. Someone had
drunk a bottle of carbolic acid. The clock struck ten. Gathering up the
newspaper she folded it neatly, put it on the hall table and went slowly
upstairs, watching the faint reflection of the half-lowered hall gas
upon the polished balustrade. The staircase was cold and airy. Cold
rooms and landings stretched up away above her into the darkness. She
became aware of a curious buoyancy rising within her. It was so strange
that she stood still for a moment on the stair. For a second, life
seemed to cease in her and the staircase to be swept from under her
feet.... “I’m alive.” ... It was as if something had struck her, struck
right through her impalpable body, sweeping it away, leaving her there
shouting silently without it. I’m alive.... I’m alive. Then with a thump
her heart went on again and her feet carried her body warm and happy and
elastic easily on up the solid stairs. She tried once or twice
deliberately to bring back the breathless moment standing still on a
stair. Each time something of it returned. “It’s me, _me;_ this is _me_
being alive,” she murmured with a feeling under her like the sudden drop
of a lift. But her thoughts distracted her. They were eagerly talking to
her declaring that she had had this feeling before. She opened her
bedroom door very quietly. The air of the room told her that Nancie and
Beadie were asleep. Going lightly across to the chest of drawers
dressing-table by the window as if she were treading on air, she stood
holding its edge in the darkness. Two forgotten incidents flowed past
her in quick succession; one of waking up on her seventh birthday in the
seaside villa alone in a small dark room and suddenly saying to herself
that one day her father and mother would die and she would still be
there, and after a curious moment when the darkness seemed to move
against her, feeling very old and crying bitterly, and another of
standing in the bow of the dining-room window at Barnes looking at the
raindrops falling from the leaves through the sunshine and saying to
Eve, who came into the room as she watched, “D’you know, Eve, I feel as
if I’d suddenly wakened up out of a dream.” The bedroom was no longer
dark. She could see the outlines of everything in the light coming from
the street lamps through the half-closed Venetian blinds. Beadie sighed
and stirred. Miriam began impatiently preparing for bed without lighting
the gas. “What’s the use of feeling like that if it doesn’t stay? It
doesn’t change anything. Next time I’ll make it stay. It might whisk me
right away. There’s something in me that can’t be touched or altered.
Me. If it comes again. If it’s stronger every time.... Perhaps it goes
on getting stronger till you die.”