I
For some days school had seemed to me even more tedious than usual.
The long train journey in the morning, the walk through Farringdon
Meat Market, which æsthetic butchers made hideous with mosaics of the
intestines of animals, as if the horror of suety pavements and bloody
sawdust did not suffice, the weariness of inventing lies that no one
believed to account for my lateness and neglected homework, and the
monotonous lessons that held me from my dreams without ever for a
single instant capturing my interest--all these things made me ill
with repulsion. Worst of all was the society of my cheerful,
contented comrades, to avoid which I was compelled to mope in
deserted corridors, the prey of a sorrow that could not be enjoyed, a
hatred that was in no way stimulating. At the best of times the
atmosphere of the place disgusted me. Desks, windows, and floors, and
even the grass in the quadrangle, were greasy with London soot, and
there was nowhere any clean air to breathe or smell. I hated the
gritty asphalt that gave no peace to my feet and cut my knees when my
clumsiness made me fall. I hated the long stone corridors whose
echoes seemed to me to mock my hesitating footsteps when I passed
from one dull class to another. I hated the stuffy malodorous
classrooms, with their whistling gas-jets and noise of inharmonious
life. I would have hated the yellow fogs had they not sometimes
shortened the hours of my bondage. That five hundred boys shared this
horrible environment with me did not abate my sufferings a jot; for
it was clear that they did not find it distasteful, and they
therefore became as unsympathetic for me as the smell and noise and
rotting stones of the school itself.
The masters moved as it were in another world, and, as the classes
were large, they understood me as little as I understood them. They
knew that I was idle and untruthful, and they could not know that I
was as full of nerves as a girl, and that the mere task of getting to
school every morning made me physically sick. They punished me
repeatedly and in vain, for I found every hour I passed within the
walls of the school an overwhelming punishment in itself, and nothing
I made any difference to me. I lied to them because they expected it,
and because I had no words in which to express the truth if I knew
it, which is doubtful. For some reason I could not tell them at home
why I got on so badly at school, or no doubt they would have taken me
away and sent me to a country school, as they did afterwards. Nearly
all the real sorrows of childhood are due to this dumbness of the
emotions; we teach children to convey facts by means of words, but we
do not teach them how to make their feelings intelligible.
Unfortunately, perhaps, I was very happy at night with my story-books
and my dreams, so that the real misery of my days escaped the
attention of the grown-up people. Of course I never even thought of
doing my homework, and the labour of inventing new lies every day to
account for my negligence became so wearisome that once or twice I
told the truth and simply said I had not done it; but the masters
held that this frankness aggravated the offence, and I had to take up
anew my tiresome tale of improbable calamities. Sometimes my stories
were so wild that the whole class would laugh, and I would have to
laugh myself; yet on the strength of this elaborate politeness to
authority I came to believe myself that I was untruthful by nature.
The boys disliked me because I was not sociable, but after a time
they grew tired of bullying me and left me alone. I detested them
because they were all so much alike that their numbers filled me with
horror. I remember that the first day I went to school I walked round
and round the quadrangle in the luncheon-hour, and every boy who
passed stopped me and asked me my name and what my father was. When I
said he was an engineer every one of the boys replied, "Oh! the man
who drives the engine." The reiteration of this childish joke made me
hate them from the first, and afterwards I discovered that they were
equally unimaginative in everything they did. Sometimes I would stand
in the midst of them, and wonder what was the matter with me that I
should be so different from all the rest. When they teased me,
repeating the same questions over and over again, I cried easily,
like a girl, without quite knowing why, for their stupidities could
not hurt my reason; but when they bullied me I did not cry, because
the pain made me forget the sadness of my heart. Perhaps it was
because of this that they thought I was a little mad.
Grey day followed grey day, and I might in time have abandoned
all efforts to be faithful to my dreams, and achieved a kind of
beast-like submission that was all the authorities expected of
notorious dunces. I might have taught my senses to accept the
evil conditions of life in that unclean place; I might even have
succeeded in making myself one with the army of shadows that
thronged in the quadrangle and filled the air with meaningless
noise.
But one evening when I reached home I saw by the faces of the
grown-up people that something had upset their elaborate
precautions for an ordered life, and I discovered that my brother,
who had stayed at home with a cold, was ill in bed with the
measles. For a while the significance of the news escaped me;
then, with a sudden movement of my heart, which made me feel ill,
I realised that probably I would have to stay away from school
because of the infection. My feet tapped on the floor with joy,
though I tried to appear unconcerned. Then, as I nursed my sudden
hope of freedom, a little fearfully lest it should prove an
illusion, a new and enchanting idea came to me. I slipped from the
room, ran upstairs to my bedroom and, standing by the side of my
bed, tore open my waistcoat and shirt with clumsy, trembling
fingers. One, two, three, four, five! I counted the spots in a
triumphant voice, and then with a sudden revulsion sat down on the
bed to give the world an opportunity to settle back in its place.
I had the measles, and therefore I should not have to go back to
school! I shut my eyes for a minute and opened them again, but
still I had the measles. The cup of happiness was at my lips, but
I sipped delicately because it was full to the brim, and I would
not spill a drop.
This mood did not last long. I had to run down the house and tell
the world the good news. The grown-up people rebuked my joyousness,
while admitting that it might be as well that I should have the
measles then as later on. In spite of their air of resignation I
could hardly sit still for excitement. I wanted to go into the
kitchen and show my measles to the servants, but I was told to stay
where I was in front of the fire while my bed was moved into my
brother's room. So I stared at the glowing coals till my eyes
smarted, and dreamed long dreams. I would be in bed for days, all
warm from head to foot, and no one would interrupt my pleasant
excursions in the world I preferred to this. If I had heard of the
beneficent microbe to which lowed my happiness, I would have
mentioned it in my prayers.
Late that night, I called over to my brother to ask how long measles
lasted. He told me to go to sleep, so that I knew he did not know the
answer to my question. I lay at ease tranquilly turning the problem
over in my mind. Four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks; why, if I was
lucky, it would carry me through to the holidays! At all events,
school was already very far away, like a nightmare remembered at
noon. I said good-night to my brother, and received an irritated
grunt in reply. I did not mind his surliness; tomorrow when I woke
up, I would begin my dreams.