The Beth Book Part 59

"Just go where you see the other girls go," Mademoiselle rejoined sharply.

Not being a favourite, the French mistress was left to wander about alone. Popular teachers always had some girls hanging on to their arms out in the garden, and sitting with them when they were on duty indoors; but Mademoiselle seldom had a satellite, and never one who was respected. The girls thought her deceitful, and deceit was one of the things not tolerated in the school. Miss Bey was believed to be above deceit of any kind, and was liked and respected accordingly in spite of her angular appearance, sharp manner, the certainty that she was not a lady by birth, and the suspicion that her father kept a shop. The girls had certain simple tests of character and station.

They attend more to each other's manners in the matter of nicety at girls' schools than at boys', more's the pity for those who have to live with the boys afterwards. If a new girl drank with her mouth full, ate audibly, took things from the end instead of the side of a spoon, or bit her bread instead of breaking it at dinner, she was set down as nothing much at home, which meant that her people were socially of no importance, not to say common; and if she were not perfectly frank and honest, or if she ever said coa.r.s.e or indelicate things, she was spoken of contemptuously as a dockyard girl, which meant one of low mind and objectionable manners, who was in a bad set at home and made herself cheap after the manner of a garrison hack, the terms being nearly equivalent. There was no pretence of impossible innocence among the elder girls, but neither was there any impropriety of language or immodesty of conduct. Certain subjects were avoided, and if a girl made any allusion to them by chance, she was promptly silenced; if she recurred to them persistently, she was set down at once as a dockyard girl and an outsider. The consequence of this high standard was an extremely good tone all through the school.

Beth turned into the lime-tree avenue, where she met several sets of girls all walking in rows with their arms round each other. None of them took any notice of her, until she got out on to the drive, where she met Amy Wynne with her children. Amy let go the two she had her arms round, sent them all on, and stopped to speak to Beth.

"Have you no mother?" she asked.

"I have one at home," Beth answered coldly in spite of herself.

"But you know our custom here," Amy rejoined. "The elder girls are mothers to the young ones."

"I know," said Beth, "but I don't want a mother. I should hate to have my thoughts interrupted by a lot of little girls in a row, all cackling together."

"I was going to offer," Amy began, "but, of course, if you are so self-reliant, it would only be an impertinence."

"Oh no!" said Beth, sincerely regretting her own ungraciousness. "It is kind of you, and if it were you alone, I should be glad, but I could not stand the others."

"Well, I hope you won't be lonely," Amy answered, and hurried on after her children.

"Lonely I must be," Beth muttered to herself with sudden foreboding.

When the girls went in, Beth was summoned to the big music-room. "Old Tom" was there with Dr. Centry, who came twice a week to hear the girls play. There were twelve pianos in the room, ten upright and two grand, besides Old Tom's own private grand, all old, hard, and metallic; and twelve girls hammered away on them, all together, at the same piece; but if one made a mistake, Old Tom instantly detected it, and knew which it was.

"Do ye know any music?" she asked Beth in a gruff voice with a rough Scotch accent.

"A little," Beth answered.

"What, for instance?" Old Tom pursued, looking at Beth as if she were a culprit up for judgment.

"Some of Chopin," Beth replied. "I like him best."

Old Tom raised her eyebrows incredulously. "Sit down here and play one of his compositions, if you please--here, at my piano," she said, opening the instrument.

But Beth felt intimidated for once, partly by the offensive manners of the formidable-looking old woman, her bulk and gruffness, but also because Old Tom's doubt of her powers, which she perceived, was shaking her confidence. She sat down at the piano, however, and struck a few notes; then her nerve forsook her.

"I can't play," she said. "I'm nervous."

"Humph!" snarled Old Tom. "I thought that 'ud be your Chopin! Go and learn exercises with the children in Miss Tait's cla.s.s-room."

Miss Tait, acting on Old Tom's report, put Beth into one of her lower cla.s.ses, and left her to practise with the beginners. When she had gone, Beth glanced at the exercises, and then began to rattle them off at such a rate that no one in the cla.s.s could keep up with her. Miss Tait came hurrying back.

"Who is that playing so fast?" she said. "Was it you, Miss Caldwell?"

"Yes," Beth answered.

"Then you must go into a higher cla.s.s," said Miss Tait.

But the same thing happened in every cla.s.s until at last Beth had run up through them all, as up a flight of stairs, into Old Tom's first.

Her piano in the first, when the whole cla.s.s was present and she had no choice, was a hard old instrument, usually avoided because it was the nearest to the table at which Old Tom sat (when she did not walk about) during a lesson. The first time Beth took her place at it, the other girls were only beginning to a.s.semble, and Old Tom was not in the room. A great teasing of instruments, as Old Tom called it, was going on. A new piece was to be taken that morning, and each girl began to try it as soon as she sat down, so that they were all at different pa.s.sages. They stopped, however, and looked up when Beth appeared.

"That's your piano," the head girl said.

"I hope you'll like it!" one of the others added sarcastically.

"Oh, but I'm glad to be here!" said Beth, striking a few firm chords.

"Now I feel like Chopin," and she burst out into one of his most brilliant waltzes triumphantly.

Old Tom had come in while she was speaking, but Beth did not see her.

Old Tom waited till she had done.

"Oh, so now ye feel like Chopin, Miss Caldwell," she jeered. "And it appears ye are not above shamming nervous when it suits ye to mak'

yerself interesting. I shall remember that."

Old Tom taught by a series of jeers and insults. If a girl were poor, she never failed to remind her of the fact. "But, indeed, ye're beggars all," was her favourite summing up when they stumbled at troublesome pa.s.sages. Most of the girls cowered under her insults, but Beth looked her straight in the face at this second encounter, and at the third her spirit rose and she argued the point. Old Tom tried to shout her down, but Beth left her seat, and suggested that they should go and get Miss Clifford to decide between them. Then Old Tom subsided, and from that time she and Beth were on amicable terms.

Beth had an excellent musical memory when she went to school, but she lost it entirely whilst she was there, and the delicacy of her touch as well; both being destroyed, as she supposed, by the system of practising with so many others at a time, which made it impossible for her to feel what she was playing or put any individuality of expression into it.

On that opening day, Beth had to go from the music-room to her first English lesson in the sixth. All the girls sat round the long narrow table, Miss Smallwood, the mistress, being at the end, with her back to the window. The lesson was "Guy," a collection of questions and answers, used also by the first-cla.s.s girls, only that they were farther on in the book. Who was William the Conqueror? When did he arrive? What did he do on landing? and so on. Beth, at the bottom of the cla.s.s on Miss Smallwood's right, was in a good position to ask questions herself. She could have told the whole history of William the Conqueror in her own language after once reading it over; but the answers to the questions had to be learnt by heart and repeated in the exact language of the book, and in the struggle to be word-perfect enough to keep up with the cla.s.s, the significance of what she was saying was lost upon her. It was her mother's system exactly, and Beth was disappointed, having hoped for something different These pillules of knowledge only exasperated her; she wanted enough to enable her to grasp the whole situation.

"What is the use of learning these little bits by heart about William the Conqueror and the battle of Hastings, and all that, Miss Smallwood?" she exclaimed one day.

"It is a part of your education, Beth," Miss Smallwood answered precisely.

"I know," Beth grumbled, "but couldn't one read about it, and get on a little quicker? I want to know what he did when he got here."

"Why, my dear child, how can you be so stupid? You have just said he fought the battle of Hastings."

"Yes, but what did the battle of Hastings do?" Beth persisted, making a hard but ineffectual effort to express herself.

"Oh, now, Beth, you are silly!" Miss Smallwood rejoined impatiently, and all the girls grinned in agreement. But it was not Beth who was silly. Miss Smallwood had had nothing herself but the trumpery education provided everywhere at that time for girls by the part of humanity which laid undisputed claim to a superior sense of justice, and it had not carried her far enough to enable her to grasp any more comprehensive result of the battle of Hastings than was given in the simple philosophy of Guy. Most of the girls at the Royal Service School would have to work for themselves, and teaching was almost the only occupation open to them, yet such education as they received, consisting as it did of mere rudiments, was an insult to the high average of intelligence that obtained amongst them. They were not taught one thing thoroughly, not even their own language, and remained handicapped to the end of their lives for want of a grounding in grammar. When you find a woman's diction at fault, never gird at her for want of intelligence, but at those in authority over her in her youth, who thought anything in the way of education good enough for a girl. Even the teachers at St. Catherine's, some of them, wrote in reply to invitations, "I shall have much pleasure in accepting." The girls might be there eight years, but were never taught French enough in the time either to read or speak it correctly. Their music was an offence to the ear, and their drawings to the eye. History was given to them in outlines only, which isolated kings and their ministers, showing little or nothing of their influence on the times they lived in, and ignoring the condition of the people, who were merely introduced as a background to some telling incident in the career of a picturesque personage; and everything else was taught in the same superficial way--except religion. But the fact that the religious education was good in Beth's time was an accident due to Miss Clifford's character and capacity, and therefore no credit to the governors of the school, who did not know that she was specially qualified in that respect when they made her Lady Princ.i.p.al. She was a high-minded woman, Low Church, of great force of character and exemplary piety, and her spirit pervaded the whole school. She gave the Bible lessons herself in the form of lectures which dealt largely with the conduct of life; and as she had the power to make her subject interesting, and the faith which carries conviction, both girls and mistresses profited greatly by her teaching. Many of them became deeply religious under her, and most of them had phases of piety; whilst there were very few who did not leave the school with yearnings at least towards honour and uprightness, which were formed by time and experience into steady principles.

Beth persisted in roaming the garden alone. She loved to hover about a large fountain there, with a deep wide basin round it, in which gold-fish swam and water-lilies grew. She used to go and hang over it, peering into the water, or, when the fountain played, she would loiter near, delighting in the sound of it, the splash and murmur.

One of the windows of Miss Clifford's sitting-room overlooked this part of the garden, and Beth noticed the old lady once or twice standing in the window, but it did not occur to her that she was watching her. One day, however, Miss Clifford sent a maid-of-honour to fetch her; and Beth went in, wondering what she had done, but asked no questions; calm indifference was still her pose.

Miss Clifford dismissed the maid-of-honour. She was sitting in her own special easy-chair, and Beth stood before her.

"My dear child," she said to Beth, "why are you always alone? Are the girls not kind to you?"

"Oh yes, thank you," Beth answered, "they are quite kind."

"Then why are you always alone?"

"I like it best."

"Are you sure," said Miss Clifford, "that the others do not shun you for some reason or other?"

"One of them wished to be my mother," Beth rejoined, "but I did not care about it."