ANOTHER PART OF THE WOOD
BY
DENIS MACKAIL
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
A Note on the Author
Chapter I
St. Ethelburga’s System and her Going-away Prize—The kind of girl that Noodles was—Newcliff Central and the citizens of the future—Sickening behaviour of man in canvas gaiters—Ominous accident to Poet Laureate.…
1
Miss Mulberry, the head-mistress of St. Ethelburga’s school at Newcliff-on-Sea, didn’t believe in annual or terminal prize-givings, for the modern theory holds that learning is its own reward and that competition for gilt-edged volumes in half-calf is fraught with terrible danger. A certain stimulus was applied to the junior pupils by the publicity of large charts on the class-room walls, on which industry or intelligence was shown soaring upwards in red chalk, while sloth or stupidity went plunging downwards in blue. Other lines in other tints wobbled about between these two extremes, and were supposed to represent the progress of such students as were neither sheep nor goats; while the whole design—which looked rather like the plan of a shunting yard and rather like the official returns for a number of simultaneous epidemics—made a great impression on the prospective parents who had come down to look over the school.
“Everything here,” Miss Mulberry would say, as she pointed to this prismatic display, “is run on a system.”
The prospective parents frowned and nodded. System, they felt, was exactly what their daughters needed, and nothing could be more convincingly systematic than a large chart covered with small squares and bright colours, and symbolical abbreviations and girls’ names turned over sideways. What it was all about, they never quite liked to ask—especially with an interrupted lesson waiting for their departure. But as they tramped wearily through the dining-hall and the recreation-room and the dormitories and the workshop and the gymnasium and the sanatorium, or panted up the steep pathway to the playing-fields, or sat exhausted in Miss Mulberry’s private study while she did all the cross-examining that they had meant to do themselves, the memory of the large charts filled them with hope and comfort. And then there was the air, which had already nearly blown them out of the taxi on the way up from the station; and the bright sun which dazzled them as it sparkled in Miss Mulberry’s spectacles. Oh, yes, St. Ethelburga’s was undoubtedly the place for a child like theirs. So spacious and clean and cheerful, with its red brick and white paint and the little clumps of euonymus that rattled outside the window in the purest air on the south coast. Would they care to take this printed list of necessary clothing and so forth away with them? They would. Thank you very much, Miss Mulberry.
“2 stout prs. brown shoes with leather soles.
2 stout prs. brown shoes with crêpe soles.
I pr. black rubber Wellingtons.
I pr. gymnasium shoes.
I pr. black indoor shoes, with low heels.
I pr. dancing shoes.
I pr. bedroom slippers …”
The list went on right over the page. The prospective parents saw ruin staring them in the face. But what were the alternatives? Spoiling the daughter’s chances by sending her somewhere cheap, or having a governess sitting opposite one at lunch for the next seven or eight years. No, no; welcome bankruptcy and twelve pairs of brown stockings. Let St. Ethelburga’s altar be decked with sacrifices, and let system do its utmost. After all, this was mere child’s play to what would be happening if the daughter had been a boy.
So the parents rumbled back to the station, and fresh fodder was poured into St. Ethelburga’s maw; and really there have been many worse seaside schools than that which was so ably conducted by Miss Mulberry. From a safe distance we accord her the very fullest meed of praise, and assert that she earned every penny of her income. She was, and is, tackling a problem which is utterly insoluble, but at least she has protected a vast quantity of fathers and mothers from the results of their own affection and folly. Moreover, she has never believed that cricket is a good game for girls.
In the upper school—as we were trying to say when we started talking about all those pairs of shoes—there are no coloured charts on the class-room walls. The incentive to labour in the upper school is supposed to be provided by a general feeling of esprit de corps—Miss Mulberry is very strong on this phrase—accompanied by the fear, which increases as the term proceeds, of being adversely criticised in a document known as one’s report. Since Miss Mulberry stopped using English adjectives and started employing letters of the Greek alphabet in these statements, they have become considerably less terrifying, for very few parents can appreciate the refinements of such a code. When one adds that all that most parents bother about is the bill for extras which arrives in the same envelope, and that practically no St. Ethelburgian has ever continued her education elsewhere—except, of course, in lawn-tennis and marriage, and things like that—then you will realise that Miss Mulberry presides over no forcing-house for blue-stockings. On the other hand quite a lot of young women have wept when the day came for them to say good-bye to St. Ethelburga for good; and whether this is from dread of the future or regret for the past, it seems an equally eloquent testimonial to the system through which they have drifted. Miss Mulberry is almost motherly at such moments. She pats the departing pupils’ hands, and tells them to write to her—not that they ever will—and then she goes over to the cupboard in the corner of her study, and suddenly produces the one tangible prize which St. Ethelburga ever vouchsafes. A fat volume of Lord Tennyson’s poems, with the school arms stamped on the cover, and the head-mistress’s autograph on the fly-leaf. The Going-Away Prize, it is called; but in spite of this Miss Mulberry’s principles remain fixed and unaltered, for there can be no sense of competition in the simple and universal act of leaving the school. Unless you are actually expelled, it is as certain that you will eventually receive that volume of Lord Tennyson’s poetry as that to-morrow’s sun will rise. And in making this comparison let us never forget that Newcliff possesses the highest figures for sunshine on the whole of the south coast.
So on the last day of the spring term word was brought to Noodles Brett, who was watching the luggage being piled on to the station omnibus, that Miss Mulberry was now ready for her. And at this intelligence she put down her hockey-stick and her umbrella, and turned sharp to the left, and marched along the draughty corridor by the dining-hall, and remembered the step in the dark, and turned sharp to the right, and so came to a varnished door on which she knocked, and at which she then listened.
“Come in!” said Miss Mulberry’s voice from inside, and Noodles turned the handle and obeyed.
And there were Miss Mulberry’s bulbs in the earthenware pots on the window-sill, and there was all the pale-green paint, and the chintz curtains, and the cold, bright little fire, and the framed photographs, and the books and papers, and the vast writing-desk, and the hard chairs, and the Spartan sofa, and the red carpet, and all the other surroundings on which Noodles had gazed before whenever she had been summoned to the presence.
And there, pretending as usual to be writing something at the vast desk, was Miss Mulberry herself. And after about thirty seconds of this well-established ritual, she pushed the paper away from her, and looked up.
“Well, Ursula,” she said. “So you’re leaving us.”
At this point the three other young women who had this morning provided exceptions to the normal ru
le by which final departure from St. Ethelburga’s takes place at the end of the summer term, had all begun to sniff, and almost immediately afterwards had burst into tears. Miss Mulberry had then patted their hands, had told them to be sure and write to her, had given them their volume of Lord Tennyson’s poetry, and after chatting with them for a few moments, had dismissed them to three comfortable and happy homes, where three comfortable and happy sets of parents were waiting to lavish money on them, and to give each of them the time of her life until, a little later on, she should fall into the arms of a happy and comfortable husband. And this, when all is said and done, was the normal goal to which Miss Mulberry and Lord Tennyson dismissed about ninety-five per cent of the young women who came knocking at that varnished door.
But Noodles, who was an orphan and wasn’t going to be presented at Court, but on the contrary was going back to live with an elderly guardian in the very depths of the country where (if Miss Mulberry’s assumptions were correct) she would have anything but the time of her life; Noodles (Miss Mulberry could hardly fail to notice) was smiling. No nervous, watery smile, either, such as the first kind word might change to sniffs and tears, but a frank, friendly and companionable sort of smile which for a moment very nearly made the head-mistress smile back. But she controlled this unusual impulse, and proceeded with the ordinary formula.
“And what,” she asked, rather more firmly, “are you going to do?”
“Oh,” said Noodles, cheerfully. “Nothing particular, I expect. You see, there isn’t much that I can do.”
Miss Mulberry let this criticism of nearly seven years’ effort on the part of herself and her staff pass unchallenged. They had all, including Miss Brett, tried their hardest; but even the best of systems could scarcely perform a miracle.
“You’ll be living at home, then?” she asked.
“Home?” Noodles looked a little puzzled. “Oh, with Mr. Cottenham, you mean? Oh, yes; of course.”
“Well, that won’t be so very far away,” said Miss Mulberry, brightly.
Noodles smiled, and agreed.
“Let me see,” said Miss Mulberry. “Your brother’s working in London now, isn’t he?”
Noodles smiled, and nodded.
“And your aunt? The one who came and saw you here that time?”
“Aunt Caroline?” said Noodles, still smiling. “Oh, she’s abroad. She’s always travelling, you know. In fact, she travels and travels.”
As Miss Mulberry had now exhausted all the friends and relations whom Miss Brett was understood to possess, she passed on to the next stage of the formula.
“Well, Ursula,” she said: “I’m very sorry you’re going away from us. It’s——”
“Oh, so am I,” said Noodles, heartily. “It’s ghastly, isn’t it? But—well, you know, I can’t help feeling rather pleased.”
“Pleased?” said Miss Mulberry, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes; you see, I’ve always wanted to be grown-up. I think grown-up people have so much more fun; don’t you?”
It was no part of Miss Mulberry’s business to think anything of the kind, but she should have known better than to resort even to the mildest form of sarcasm. She was tired, though, and vexed at the continued absence of tears.
“So you’re grown-up now, are you?” she asked.
“Well, not quite,” said Noodles, agreeably. “But——”
“Yes?” said the head-mistress, all ready to score her point.
“But I shall be in five minutes,” laughed Noodles. “Because in five minutes I shall be an Old Girl.”
Miss Mulberry gave it up as a bad job. If anything happened to this creature—— But that was exactly it. In five minutes, as the creature had just reminded her so gaily, St. Ethelburga’s responsibility would have ceased. When the school reassembled at the end of April there would be no Ursula Brett to keep cropping up in one incredible crisis after another; to come oozing through watertight rules and regulations with that friendly smile on her face; to punish herself for crimes which the authorities had tried desperately to ignore; to be a perpetual square peg among so many round ones; to work so hard and to learn so little; to be so constant a source of anxiety and rueful amusement, and, in spite of her looks, to be no more self-conscious now that she was going than on the day when she had first arrived.
“There’ll be no one the least like her,” thought Miss Mulberry, as she rose suddenly and went over to the cupboard in the corner of the study. “And for that I can honestly thank Heaven. And nobody could have been more relieved than I was, when Mr. Cottenham decided to take her away. And yet …”
Here a vision of the three weeping maidens who had already passed through this room this morning presented itself to the head-mistress in the light of something acutely disgusting. She knew now that she had wanted them and meant them to weep, and that this was the only reason why they had done it. So much for character and self-reliance as imparted by St. Ethelburga to her model pupils. Why, this queer creature who was following her with those large, watchful eyes was worth fifty of them. Well, not in term-time, perhaps; and not for the purpose of doing conventional credit to a very successful school. But at least—so Miss Mulberry realised in a flash of illumination—she was the only one of them who really liked her, and would really read that volume of Lord Tennyson’s works.
“Ursula!”
“Yes, Miss Mulberry?”
“I’ve got a little present for you here. A book to take away with you. I’ve written your name in it, and——Why, what’s the matter?”
A most extraordinary sound had manifested itself in the back of Noodles’s throat.
“My dear child——”
“Oh, Miss Mulberry—are you really going to gug-give me a gug-going-away prize? Oh——”
Another even louder and more extraordinary sound shook Miss Brett from head to foot. At the precise moment when all the other young women had stopped crying with the utmost punctuality, her large eyes had filled with enormous tears, and she was feeling blindly for her handkerchief.
“Ug,” she said. “Gluk. Snumph!”
“My dear Ursula——”
“Oh, Miss Mulberry—I never thought I’d gug-get one. I know I’ve been the most disap-pup-pointing sort of girl. I know I’ve been awful. And they all said you’d never gug-give me anything, and——”
“What?” said Miss Mulberry, sharply. “Who told you that?”
Noodles shuddered and shook her head.
“Did the other girls say so? Or any of the mistresses?”
Noodles looked excessively stupid and sullen.
“I oughtn’t to have—ug—said that,” she growled. “It was a mum-mistake.”
“But——”
“It wasn’t true,” said Noodles, blankly.
“I shouldn’t have asked you,” said Miss Mulberry, reluctantly yielding to the code of honour. “But it doesn’t matter, Ursula, because whoever said so was talking nonsense. I want you very much to have this book, and——”
“Oh, Miss Mulberry!”
“What?”
“I am so terribly grateful. Thank you most frightfully.”
“There, there,” said Miss Mulberry.
She then tried to pat one of Miss Brett’s hands, and was a little surprised to find that through an obvious misunderstanding she was shaking it instead.
“Good-bye,” said Noodles, huskily but quite coherently. “And thank you most——”
“Good-bye, Ursula,” said Miss Mulberry, coming a little nearer for the farewell kiss.
“And jolly good luck,” said Noodles, turning round and opening the door. She was quite herself again, and quite unconscious that she had turned the whole interview upside-down and left the farewell kiss high and dry. She rushed off down the corridor, occasionally throwing Lord Tennyson up into the. air and catching him again. Miss Mulberry slowly resumed her seat at the vast writing-desk, and stared in some bewilderment at nothing at all.
2
Newc
liff Central station presents a curious and somewhat alarming spectacle at the end of any of the three scholastic terms. Ordinarily—except during the Whitsun and August spates—a rather sombre kind of terminus, with a few middle-aged residents chatting quietly to the invalid aunts whom they are sending back to Malvern or Cheltenham, or perhaps a couple of quiet clergymen welcoming a locum tenens from Bournemouth or Reading, it is suddenly seized with the spirit of carnival at these breaking-up seasons, and for several days in succession echoes to the sound of juvenile pandemonium. The citizens of the future arrive in great numbers and in a high state of excitement, dropping fragments of their hand-baggage wherever they go, losing their tickets, scrambling in and out of the wrong trains, raiding the confectionery-stall, testing the reverberations from the glass roof, swinging on the carriage doors, and generally speaking celebrating their return to freedom with the utmost merriment and licence. The male citizens show a disposition to indulge in intermittent wrestling matches, to throw each other’s hats on to the permanent way, and to weigh themselves, often two or three at a time, on the penny-in-the-slot machines. The female citizens display an unaccountable desire to travel fifteen in a compartment, and while awaiting this pleasurable experience they sing and dance all up and down the long platforms, to the great inconvenience of the porters who have taken charge of their trunks and bicycles.
Yet, on the whole, the porters rather welcome these breaks in their everyday routine, for if on the one hand they have to work a little harder and faster than usual, then on the other hand they are particularly well paid for it. It is quite true that some of the citizens of the future forget to reward them altogether, and that others offer them two hot halfpennies firmly embedded in an acid-drop; but the vast majority are already victims of the illusion that the more you tip the more you show yourself to be an independent man or woman of the world. And the travelling-money which has been dealt out at the beginning of the journey often disappears entirely into the hands which know so well how to foster this belief.
Another Part of the Wood Page 1
