Dorothy's heart sank at the sight of Ringwood House. She had not
been expecting anything very magnificent or attractive, but she had
expected something a little better than this mean, gloomy house,
not one of whose windows was lighted, though it was after 8 o'clock
in the evening. She knocked at the door, and it was opened by a
woman, tall and gaunt-looking in the dark hallway, whom Dorothy
took for a servant, but who was actually Mrs Creevy herself.
Without a word, except to inquire Dorothy's name, the woman led the
way up some dark stairs to a twilit, fireless drawing-room, where
she turned up a pinpoint of gas, revealing a black piano, stuffed
horsehair chairs, and a few yellowed, ghostly photos on the walls.
Mrs Creevy was a woman somewhere in her forties, lean, hard, and
angular, with abrupt decided movements that indicated a strong will
and probably a vicious temper. Though she was not in the least
dirty or untidy there was something discoloured about her whole
appearance, as though she lived all her life in a bad light; and
the expression of her mouth, sullen and ill-shaped with the lower
lip turned down, recalled that of a toad. She spoke in a sharp,
commanding voice, with a bad accent and occasional vulgar turns of
speech. You could tell her at a glance for a person who knew
exactly what she wanted, and would grasp it as ruthlessly as any
machine; not a bully exactly--you could somehow infer from her
appearance that she would not take enough interest in you to want
to bully you--but a person who would make use of you and then throw
you aside with no more compunction than if you had been a worn-out
scrubbing-brush.
Mrs Creevy did not waste any words on greetings. She motioned
Dorothy to a chair, with the air rather of commanding than of
inviting her to sir down, and then sat down herself, with her hands
clasped on her skinny forearms.
'I hope you and me are going to get on well together, Miss
Millborough,' she began in her penetrating, subhectoring voice.
(On the advice of Sir Thomas's everwise solicitor, Dorothy had
stuck to the name of Ellen Millborough.) 'And I hope I'm not going
to have the same nasty business with you as I had with my last two
assistants. You say you haven't had an experience of teaching
before this?'
'Not in a school,' said Dorothy--there had been a tarradiddle in
her letter of introduction, to the effect that she had had
experience of 'private teaching'.
Mrs Creevy looked Dorothy over as though wondering whether to
induct her into the inner secrets of school-teaching, and then
appeared to decide against it.
'Well, we shall see,' she said. 'I must say,' she added
complainingly, 'it's not easy to get hold of good hardworking
assistants nowadays. You give them good wages and good treatment,
and you get no thanks for it. The last one I had--the one I've
just had to get rid of--Miss Strong, wasn't so bad so far as the
teaching part went; in fact, she was a B.A., and I don't know what
you could have better than a B.A., unless it's an M.A. You don't
happen to be a B.A. or an M.A., do you, Miss Millborough?'
'No, I'm afraid not,' said Dorothy.
'Well, that's a pity. It looks so much better on the prospectus if
you've got a few letters after your name. Well! Perhaps it
doesn't matter. I don't suppose many of OUR parents'd know what
B.A. stands for; and they aren't so keen on showing their
ignorance. I suppose you can talk French, of course?'
'Well--I've learnt French.'
'Oh, that's all right, then. Just so as we can put it on the
prospectus. Well, now, to come back to what I was saying, Miss
Strong was all right as a teacher, but she didn't come up to my
ideas on what I call the MORAL SIDE. We're very strong on the
moral side at Ringwood House. It's what counts most with the
parents, you'll find. And the one before Miss Strong, Miss Brewer--
well, she had what I call a weak nature. You don't get on with
girls if you've got a weak nature. The end of it all was that one
morning one little girl crept up to the desk with a box of matches
and set fire to Miss Brewer's skirt. Of course I wasn't going to
keep her after that. In fact I had her out of the house the same
afternoon--and I didn't give her any refs either, I can tell you!'
'You mean you expelled the girl who did it?' said Dorothy,
mystified.
'What? The GIRL? Not likely! You don't suppose I'd go and turn
fees away from my door, do you? I mean I got rid of Miss Brewer,
not the GIRL. It's no good having teachers who let the girls get
saucy with them. We've got twenty-one in the class just at
present, and you'll find they need a strong hand to keep them down.'
'You don't teach yourself?' said Dorothy.
'Oh dear, no!' said Mrs Creevy almost contemptuously. 'I've got a
lot too much on my hands to waste my time TEACHING. There's the
house to look after, and seven of the children stay to dinner--I've
only a daily woman at present. Besides, it takes me all my time
getting the fees out of the parents. After all, the fees ARE what
matter, aren't they?'
'Yes. I suppose so,' said Dorothy.
'Well, we'd better settle about your wages,' continued Mrs Creevy.
'In term time I'll give you your board and lodging and ten
shillings a week; in the holidays it'll just be your board and
lodging. You can have the use of the copper in the kitchen for
your laundering, and I light the geyser for hot baths every
Saturday night; or at least MOST Saturday nights. You can't have
the use of this room we're in now, because it's my reception-room,
and I don't want you to go wasting the gas in your bedroom. But
you can have the use of the morning-room whenever you want it.'
'Thank you,' said Dorothy.
'Well, I should think that'll be about all. I expect you're
feeling ready for bed. You'll have had your supper long ago, of
course?'
This was clearly intended to mean that Dorothy was not going to get
any food tonight, so she answered Yes, untruthfully, and the
conversation was at an end. That was always Mrs Creevy's way--she
never kept you talking an instant longer than was necessary. Her
conversation was so very definite, so exactly to the point, that it
was not really conversation at all. Rather, it was the skeleton of
conversation; like the dialogue in a badly written novel where
everyone talks a little too much in character. But indeed, in the
proper sense of the word she did not TALK; she merely said, in her
brief shrewish way, whatever it was necessary to say, and then got
rid of you as promptly as possible. She now showed Dorothy along
the passage to her bedroom, and lighted a gas-jet no bigger than an
acorn, revealing a gaunt bedroom with a narrow white-quilted bed, a
rickety wardrobe, one chair and a wash-hand-stand with a frigid
white china basin and ewer. It was very like the bedrooms in
seaside lodging houses,
but it lacked the one thing that gives such
rooms their air of homeliness and decency--the text over the bed.
'This is your room,' Mrs Creevy said; 'and I just hope you'll keep
it a bit tidier than what Miss Strong used to. And don't go
burning the gas half the night, please, because I can tell what
time you turn it off by the crack under the door.'
With this parting salutation she left Dorothy to herself. The room
was dismally cold; indeed, the whole house had a damp, chilly
feeling, as though fires were rarely lighted in it. Dorothy got
into bed as quickly as possible, feeling bed to be the warmest
place. On top of the wardrobe, when she was putting her clothes
away, she found a cardboard box containing no less than nine empty
whisky bottles--relics, presumably, of Miss Strong's weakness on
the MORAL SIDE.
At eight in the morning Dorothy went downstairs and found Mrs
Creevy already at breakfast in what she called the 'morning-room'.
This was a smallish room adjoining the kitchen, and it had started
life as the scullery; but Mrs Creevy had converted it into the
'morning-room' by the simple process of removing the sink and
copper into the kitchen. The breakfast table, covered with a cloth
of harsh texture, was very large and forbiddingly bare. Up at Mrs
Creevy's end were a tray with a very small teapot and two cups, a
plate on which were two leathery fried eggs, and a dish of
marmalade; in the middle, just within Dorothy's reach if she
stretched, was a plate of bread and butter; and beside her plate--
as though it were the only thing she could be trusted with--a cruet
stand with some dried-up, clotted stuff inside the bottles.
'Good morning, Miss Millborough,' said Mrs Creevy. 'It doesn't
matter this morning, as this is the first day, but just remember
another time that I want you down here in time to help me get
breakfast ready.'
'I'm so sorry,' said Dorothy.
'I hope you're fond of fried eggs for your breakfast?' went on Mrs
Creevy.
Dorothy hastened to assure her that she was very fond of fried
eggs.
'Well, that's a good thing, because you'll always have to have the
same as what I have. So I hope you're not going to be what I call
DAINTY about your food. I always think,' she added, picking up her
knife and fork, 'that a fried egg tastes a lot better if you cut it
well up before you eat it.'
She sliced the two eggs into thin strips, and then served them in
such a way that Dorothy received about two-thirds of an egg. With
some difficulty Dorothy spun out her fraction of egg so as to make
half a dozen mouthfuls of it, and then, when she had taken a slice
of bread and butter, she could not help glancing hopefully in the
direction of the dish of marmalade. But Mrs Creevy was sitting
with her lean left arm--not exactly ROUND the marmalade, but in a
protective position on its left flank, as though she suspected that
Dorothy was going to make an attack upon it. Dorothy's nerve
failed her, and she had no marmalade that morning--nor, indeed,
for many mornings to come.
Mrs Creevy did not speak again during breakfast, but presently the
sound of feet on the gravel outside, and of squeaky voices in the
schoolroom, announced that the girls were beginning to arrive.
They came in by a side-door that was left open for them. Mrs
Creevy got up from the table and banged the breakfast things
together on the tray. She was one of those women who can never
move anything without banging it about; she was as full of thumps
and raps as a poltergeist. Dorothy carried the tray into the
kitchen, and when she returned Mrs Creevy produced a penny notebook
from a drawer in the dresser and laid it open on the table.
'Just take a look at this,' she said. 'Here's a list of the girls'
names that I've got ready for you. I shall want you to know the
whole lot of them by this evening.' She wetted her thumb and
turned over three pages: 'Now, do you see these three lists here?'
'Yes,' said Dorothy.
'Well, you'll just have to learn those three lists by heart, and
make sure you know what girls are on which. Because I don't want
you to go thinking that all the girls are to be treated alike.
They aren't--not by a long way, they aren't. Different girls,
different treatment--that's my system. Now, do you see this lot on
the first page?'
'Yes,' said Dorothy again.
'Well, the parents of that lot are what I call the good payers.
You know what I mean by that? They're the ones that pay cash on
the nail and no jibbing at an extra half-guinea or so now and
again. You're not to smack any of that lot, not on ANY account.
This lot over here are the MEDIUM payers. Their parents do pay up
sooner or later, but you don't get the money out of them without
you worry them for it night and day. You can smack that lot if
they get saucy, but don't go and leave a mark their parents can
see. If you'll take MY advice, the best thing with children is to
twist their ears. Have you ever tried that?'
'No,' said Dorothy.
'Well, I find it answers better than anything. It doesn't leave a
mark, and the children can't bear it. Now these three over here
are the BAD payers. Their fathers are two terms behind already,
and I'm thinking of a solicitor's letter. I don't care WHAT you do
to that lot--well, short of a police-court case, naturally. Now,
shall I take you in and start you with the girls? You'd better
bring that book along with you, and just keep your eye on it all
the time so as there'll be no mistakes.'
They went into the schoolroom. It was a largish room, with grey-
papered walls that were made yet greyer by the dullness of the
light, for the heavy laurel bushes outside choked the windows, and
no direct ray of the sun ever penetrated into the room. There was
a teacher's desk by the empty fireplace, and there were a dozen
small double desks, a light blackboard, and, on the mantelpiece, a
black clock that looked like a miniature mausoleum; but there were
no maps, no pictures, nor even, as far as Dorothy could see, any
books. The sole objects in the room that could be called
ornamental were two sheets of black paper pinned to the walls, with
writing on them in chalk in beautiful copperplate. On one was
'Speech is Silver. Silence is Golden', and on the other
'Punctuality is the Politeness of Princes'.
The girls, twenty-one of them, were already sitting at their desks.
They had grown very silent when they heard footsteps approaching,
and as Mrs Creevy came in they seemed to shrink down in their places
like partridge chicks when a hawk is soaring. For the most part
they were dull-looking, lethargic children with bad complexions, and
adenoids seemed to be remarkably common among them. The eldest of
them might have been fifteen years old, the youngest was hardly more
than a baby. The school had no uniform, and one or two of the
children were
verging on raggedness.
'Stand up, girls,' said Mrs Creevy as she reached the teacher's
desk. 'We'll start off with the morning prayer.'
The girls stood up, clasped their hands in front of them, and shut
their eyes. They repeated the prayer in unison, in weak piping
voices, Mrs Creevy leading them, her sharp eyes darting over them
all the while to see that they were attending.
'Almighty and everlasting Father,' they piped, 'we beseech Thee
that our studies this day may be graced by Thy divine guidance.
Make us to conduct ourselves quietly and obediently; look down upon
our school and make it to prosper, so that it may grow in numbers
and be a good example to the neighbourhood and not a disgrace like
some schools of which Thou knowest, O Lord. Make us, we beseech
Thee, O Lord, industrious, punctual, and ladylike, and worthy in
all possible respects to walk in Thy ways: for Jesus Christ's sake,
our Lord, Amen.'
This prayer was of Mrs Creevy's own composition. When they had
finished it, the girls repeated the Lord's Prayer, and then sat
down.
'Now, girls,' said Mrs Creevy, 'this is your new teacher, Miss
Millborough. As you know, Miss Strong had to leave us all of a
sudden after she was taken so bad in the middle of the arithmetic
lesson; and I can tell you I've had a hard week of it looking for a
new teacher. I had seventy-three applications before I took on
Miss Millborough, and I had to refuse them all because their
qualifications weren't high enough. Just you remember and tell
your parents that, all of you--seventy-three applications! Well,
Miss Millborough is going to take you in Latin, French, history,
geography, mathematics, English literature and composition,
spelling, grammar, handwriting, and freehand drawing; and Mr Booth
will take you in chemistry as usual on Thursday afternoons. Now,
what's the first lesson on your time-table this morning?'
'History, Ma'am,' piped one or two voices.
'Very well. I expect Miss Millborough'll start off by asking you a
few questions about the history you've been learning. So just you
do your best, all of you, and let her see that all the trouble
we've taken over you hasn't been wasted. You'll find they can be
quite a sharp lot of girls when they try, Miss Millborough.'
'I'm sure they are,' said Dorothy.
'Well, I'll be leaving you, then. And just you behave yourselves,
girls! Don't you get trying it on with Miss Millborough like you
did with Miss Brewer, because I warn you she won't stand it. If I
hear any noise coming from this room, there'll be trouble for
somebody.'
She gave a glance round which included Dorothy and indeed suggested
that Dorothy would probably be the 'somebody' referred to, and
departed.
Dorothy faced the class. She was not afraid of them--she was too
used to dealing with children ever to be afraid of them--but she
did feel a momentary qualm. The sense of being an impostor (what
teacher has not felt it at times?) was heavy upon her. It suddenly
occurred to her, what she had only been dimly aware of before, that
she had taken this teaching job under flagrantly false pretences,
without having any kind of qualification for it. The subject she
was now supposed to be teaching was history, and, like most
'educated' people, she knew virtually no history. How awful, she
thought, if it turned out that these girls knew more history than
she did! She said tentatively:
'What period exactly were you doing with Miss Strong?'
Nobody answered. Dorothy saw the older girls exchanging glances,
as though asking one another whether it was safe to say anything,
and finally deciding not to commit themselves.
'Well, whereabouts had you got to?' she said, wondering whether
perhaps the word 'period' was too much for them.
Again no answer.
'Well, now, surely you remember SOMETHING about it? Tell me the