The New Mistress: A Tale

“Hah!” an ejaculation that might mean anything, and one that committed him to naught.

“Is – ah, this your first class. Miss – ah – ah – ”

“Thorne,” said Hazel quietly. “No, sir, this is the second.”

“Thorne, ah – exactly. Yes, I see – ah. Yes, needlework – ah. Stand.”

The girls in the first class stood up smartly, and Feelier Potts’s thimble flew off, went tinkling across the floor, and was flattened beneath one of Ann Straggalls’s big feet.

“Oh, you see if I don’t serve you out for that,” began Feelier loudly, her face scarlet with rage.

“Hush! silence! How dare you, child?”

“Well, but she’s squeedged it flat.”

“Silence, girl!” exclaimed the inspector indignantly. “Back to your place.”

Hazel turned crimson as she hurriedly took Feelier Potts by the arm, and in her excitement and dread of a scene, knowing as she did the fearless nature of the girl, she said softly —

“Be a good girl, Ophelia, and I will give you a new thimble.”

There was quite a sensation during this little episode. Miss Lambent whispering to her sister, who nodded and shook her head, Mrs Canninge looking with raised eyebrows at the first class through her gold-rimmed glasses, and little Miss Burge furiously shaking her fat forefinger at “that naughty child.” There was a hearty laugh on its way to George Canninge’s lips, but, seeing the pain the chatter was causing Hazel, he checked his mirth and remained serious.

Mr Barracombe seemed to be in doubt as to whether he ought not to expel Feelier Potts there and then, and as she resumed her place he frowned at her severely, the culprit looking up at him with a most mild and innocent aspect, till he turned his gaze upon another pupil, when Feelier began nodding at Ann Straggalls and uttering whispered menaces of what she would do as soon as they were out of school.

Then all eyes were turned to the inspector, who unfolded some printed blue papers, and after coughing to clear his voice, searched in his waistcoat pocket, and brought out a gold pencil-case, which required a good deal of screwing about before it would condescend to mark. Having pinched his nose between his glasses, he commenced examining the needlework, of which he was evidently a good judge, and doubtless knew the difference between hemming, stitching, tacking, herring-boning, and the other mysterious processes by which cloth, calico, and other woven fabrics are held together.

Then there was an entry made upon the blue paper, and the inspector looked severely through his glasses at Ann Straggalls.

“Can you tell me, my good girl, how many yards of long-cloth would be required for a full-sized shirt?”

Ann Straggalls allowed her jaw to drop and stood staring hard at the querist for a few moments, and then, like that certain man in the scriptural battle, she drew a bow at a venture, but she failed to hit the useful under garment in question, for she eagerly replied “twelve.”

“Next girl,” said the inspector.

“Eight.”

“Next girl.”

“Sixteen.”

“Next.”

“Twenty.”

“Next. How many yards of long-cloth would be required for a full-sized shirt?”

The next was Feelier Potts, whose eyes were twinkling as she answered —

“Mother always makes father’s of calico.”

“Very good, my girl; then tell me how many yards it would take.”

“Night shirt or day shirt?” cried Feelier sharply.

“Day shirt,” replied the inspector severely; and George Canninge became red in the face as the disposition to laugh grew stronger.

“Wouldn’t take half so much to make one for my brother Tom as it would for – ”

“Silence!” exclaimed the inspector, and Feelier Potts pretended to look very much alarmed, drawing her eyes together towards her nose and nearly making Ann Straggalls titter as the inspector stooped for a fresh entry.

Hazel’s attention was here taken up by another class, for, being left unattended, the girls began to grow restive.

“Now,” said the inspector, “I will ask you another question, my good girls. Can any one tell me what proportion the gusset bears to the whole shirt? The girl who knows put out her hand.”

Miss Rebecca had been hoping that Mr Slingsby Barracombe would enter upon some other branch of education; but he clung to the needlework, and smiled approvingly as half-a-dozen, and then two more hands were thrust out.

“Well,” he said, “suppose you tell me.”

“Three yards,” said the first girl.

“You do not apprehend my question, my good child,” said the inspector blandly. “I asked what proportion the gusset bore to the whole of the shirt.”

“Please, sir, I know, sir,” said Feelier Potts, who was standing with her hand pointing straight at the visitor.

“Then tell us,” said the inspector, smiling.

“Four yards!” cried Feelier triumphantly.

“I said what proportion, my good girl; do you not know what I mean by proportion?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what!”

“Rule o’ three sums, same as boys learn.”

“Tut-tut-tut! this is very sad,” said the inspector, shaking his head, a motion that seemed to be infectious, for it was taken up by Miss Rebecca, communicated to Miss Beatrice, and then caught up by little Miss Burge, whose head-shaking was, however, meant to be in sympathy with Hazel.

“I wish he’d let me ask the girls some queshtuns, Betsey,” whispered Mr William Forth Burge, as he saw the inspector’s pencil going; “I could make them answer better than that.”

But the visitor had no intention of choosing a deputy, and he went on asking several more questions of a similar class, relating to cutting out and making up, not one of which produced a satisfactory answer; and the vicar looked very grave as he saw entries that he knew to be unfavourable made with the gold pencil-case.

Then the girls had to read, and got on better; but as soon as the inspector began to ask scriptural questions the class appeared to have run wild, and the answers were of the most astonishing nature. Simple matters of knowledge that they knew perfectly the day before, seemed to have passed entirely out of the girls’ minds, and they guessed and answered at random. Sometimes a correct reply was given, but whenever it came to the turn of Feelier Potts, if she did happen to know, she managed to pervert the answer.

She told the inspector in the most unblushing manner that during the plagues of Egypt the children of Israel suffered from fleas, and had rice in all their four quarters. Corrected upon this, she asserted that these same people crossed the Red Sea on a dry day. The class was asked why Moses struck the rock, and Feelier whispered an answer to Ann Straggalls, who eagerly replied – “Because it was naughty.” Due to the same mischief-loving brain, another girl asserted that the ark of the covenant contained Shem, Ham, and Japhet; that it was a pillar of salt that went before the wanderers in the desert; and that it was the manna that was swallowed up during the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

Taken altogether, the children did not shine in Scripture history.

Slates were passed round with a good deal of clatter, and then a question was propounded.

“How many pounds of butter at one-and-fourpence per pound can I buy for eight shillings?”

Ann Straggalls, after a great deal of staring at the ceiling and biting at her pencil, proved it to be forty. Feelier Potts rapidly dashed the pencil to her slate, screwed up her forehead, and made some figures, finishing off by carefully watching that no other girl should see, and smiling triumphantly at those who had not finished; but when it came to show slates, Feelier displayed a large pound with the figure 2 following certain other figures, which did not show how she had arrived at this result.

“This is very sad,” said the inspector. “My good children, you cannot properly apprehend my questions. Do you know what I mean by ‘apprehend’?”

Out flew Feelier Potts’s hand like a semaphore, and she pointed straight at the top button of the inspector’s waistcoat.

“I – ah, don’t think, my good child, that you know,” said the inspector. “You answer at random.”

“No, sir, plee, sir; I know, sir.”

“Know what? What did I ask?”

“Plee, sir, what ‘apprehend’ means. I know, sir.”

“Good girl; quite right,” said the inspector, smiling, “Tell us, then, what ‘apprehend’ means.”

“Policeman taking up tipsy man,” cried Feelier excitedly.

George Canninge could not resist this, but burst out into a hearty roar of laughter, and then turned his back, for Feelier Potts was at once struck with the idea that she had said something good, and joined in the mirth, till she caught the inspector’s eye glaring at her balefully, when the laughter froze stiff and she began to squint so horribly that Mr Slingsby Barracombe turned away in disgust to say to the vicar —

“Most extraordinary child this!”

George Canninge’s laughter came to an end also very suddenly, for, as he stood wiping his eyes, he found that Hazel Thorne was looking in his direction with so much pain and annoyance expressed in her countenance that he bit his lips, and his eyes said plainly, if she could have read the glance, “Pray forgive me; it was very foolish.”

Just then the inspector took out another sheet of paper, and moved on to a different class, that which Hazel had been keeping in order, and here, in due rotation, he tried the children in the various subjects they had been learning with a most melancholy effect. The timid children he seemed to freeze; others he puzzled by his peculiar way of asking questions; while, again, others he made stare at him in a way that plainly indicated that they did not understand a word he said.

Mr Barracombe, however, paid little heed to this, but went on putting queries, and making notes most industriously, while the sisters stood tightening their lips, till George Canninge came and joined them, when Beatrice, who had been growing more and more acid every minute, began to beam once more, and made remarks to him about the school.

“I am so sorry that the children are answering in this absurd way. I take great interest in the schools, and come down and teach, so that it seems like a reflection upon me.”

“They don’t understand him,” said George Canninge impatiently.

“I’m afraid they do,” replied Beatrice quickly, for she could not resist the temptation to say something unpleasant, “but they are so backward.” She meant to have said “badly taught,” but hesitated at the last moment.

“Well, what can you expect?” said Canninge. “The inspector asks too much of children of their class. Why, they could not answer his questions in a first-class school.”

“But this is a first-class school, Mr Canninge,” cried Rebecca sharply.

“Hush, dear; Mr Barracombe is asking the second class some geography questions;” and as they listened they caught the end of an inquiry about the Ouse – its source, tributaries course, and the chief towns upon its banks.

“Well, hang me if I could tell him,” said Canninge; “and I shall be surprised if the children do.”

He was not surprised, for no satisfactory answer came. The children told the inspector the capital of England readily enough, and the names of the principal rivers; but his way was so strange to them that for the most part the little things did not comprehend his questions, and Hazel’s heart sank as she sighed for the apparent density that had fallen upon the different classes.

Everything went badly: the writing from dictation was terrible, and the sentences made of the words read out by the inspector were horribly void of meaning. The Reverend Henry Lambent’s face grew more troubled, the ladies whispered together, and the buzz of the school seemed to Hazel to make her dizzy, as she strove hard, with her nerves strained by excitement, to keep the different classes in order, while every time she thought of the ordeal that had to come, she turned sick with misery, and longed for the end of the day.

“I should like to punch his ’ead, Betsey,” whispered Mr William Forth Burge at last. “What’s the good of asking them children a queshtun like that! They can’t make out a word he says.”

“Hush! Don’t interfere, Bill. It might make Miss Thorne more nervous. Pore dear, she do look bad.”

“I don’t know as I shan’t interfere,” whispered back the great man of Plumton. “I consider that I’ve got a bit of a voice in this school, and I don’t see no fun in this chap going away saying that everything’s wrong when I know it ain’t. How can he tell, just coming strange among the bairns, and asking a few queshtuns anyhow like! If they don’t answer ’em he sets it down they can’t, when I know all the time they can.”

“But you’ll make it worse for Miss Thorne,” whispered little Miss Burge; “and she’s worried to death as it is.”

“Well, I don’t want to do that,” he said sulkily; and he held his tongue whilst class after class was examined, even those children who were tried in catechism mixing the answers up in the most absurd way, or staring helplessly in the speaker’s face.

“I don’t care,” whispered Mr William Forth Burge at last; “he don’t know how to ask queshtuns, and for two pins I’d tell him so; now then.”

“Oh don’t, Bill dear; it would not be gentlemanly. Pray do be quiet.”

“Look here, then; if Lambent asks me up to dinner to meet that chap, I shan’t go.”

“Hush, Bill! She’s going to give the girls, a hobject lesson.”

For the crucial time had come, and about forty of the elder girls had been faced and marched into the gallery to sit opposite their teacher, while the visitors rearranged themselves – the Misses Lambent with an air of long-suffering, the vicar with an air of intense trouble upon his face, while Mrs Canninge looked vexed, and the Burges disappointed and cross.

The inspector seated himself at one of the desks and commenced a fresh sheet of paper, while, saving the subdued buzz in the various classes, a painful stillness was in the room, and Hazel felt her heart throb heavily, and plainly heard its beats.

She took a simple subject, and began in a low, trembling voice, which sounded pained and husky, while the intensity of her nervousness was patent to all present; but after she had been going on for a minute or two, to her great relief George Canninge rose and left the schoolroom.

The girls were beginning to answer better now, and Hazel felt her courage rise a little; but her heart sank and she began to tremble again as she heard the door open once more, a step crossing the floor, and coming to where she was speaking. The next moment George Canninge said —

“One moment, Miss Thorne. You are hoarse and tired.”

As he spoke there was the pleasant gurgle of cold water being poured into a glass, and Beatrice turned pale with the rush of blood to her heart as she saw the young squire thoughtfully hand the glass to Hazel, who took it, giving him a grateful glance as she did so, and then drank the refreshing fluid with avidity.

“I will take the glass,” he said in the most quiet, matter-of-fact way; and then Hazel felt as if a new spirit had been sent into her veins. It was so gentle and thoughtful an act, coming as it did when she was faint and sick with the heat and agitation; and, turning to her classes, she felt a strength within her that seemed to her astonishing.

She went on with the lesson, and her faltering voice grew stronger, her questions clearer and more incisive; she described and painted in vivid colours to the children the object she had made the theme of her lesson; and in another few moments as if by a sympathetic touch, the children were en rapport with her; their young cheeks flushed, their eyes were full of eagerness, and there was an excited burst of answers every time she spoke, clearer and brighter and plainer. Word-painting in the simplest and cleverest touches, simplicity and yet vivid colouring. The teacher had forgotten self, the nervousness had gone, and a quarter of an hour passed rapidly by as Hazel, in her ambition to prove that the children over whom she had worked so hard were not the dunces they had seemed, explained her subject, making it geographical, historical, and orthographical as well, till when at last, after an admirable finish, she stood there flushed, her eyes brightened and turned to the inspector as if to ask for further commands, Mr William Forth Burge “forgot himself” – so Miss Lambent afterwards put it – for he burst out with a hearty —

“Brayvo! brayvo! brayvo!” clapping his hands loudly; and this infected George Canninge, who joined in the applause.

“A capital lesson,” he said aloud; “a capital lesson, indeed.”

Mr Lambent smiled, and bowed to Hazel, saying softly —

“Very good indeed.”

“Ah – yes,” said the inspector, rising; “I must say – a very good lesson. Miss Thorne; and I hope by the time I come again I may find the girls considerably advanced. At present – I will say no more. Good morning.”

There was a polite procession formed, and the visitors slowly passed through the door, the gentlemen seeing the ladies off first, but not until little Miss Burge had trotted back to whisper to Hazel —

“You did it beautiful, my dear,” and then hurried away.

Hazel hardly grasped her words, for George Canninge had turned to bow as he went out, and the glance he then gave set her trembling as she stood with one hand resting upon the desk; for it seemed to her that every one must have seen that look, and she began to ask herself if she was mad to let that man’s presence fill her with thoughts that seemed to agitate her strangely.

Chapter Twenty Two.

A Lesson in Teaching

After the plain manner in which the Reverend Henry Lambent had shown himself disposed to take the part of the young schoolmistress against his sisters, the attacks made by Rebecca and Beatrice were not so open; but they found many little ways of displaying in a petty spirit that they were by no means her friends.

Ladies by birth, it was hardly to be expected that they should stoop to pettiness, but years of residence in a little country place with few people of their own class for associates, and that mutual friction which is an imperceptible popular educator in manners, had made them what they were, and disposed to grow more little of mind as the years went on. Their lives were too smooth and regular, too uneventful. A school examination, a blanket club, and a harvest festival, were the great points of their existence, and though they visited in the parish, and were supposed to make themselves acquainted with the cares and sorrows of the poor, their calls were made in a perfunctory spirit, and they did not possess that simple power of appealing to the heart which wins the confidence of rich and poor. Unfortunately, then, they grew narrower as their years became more, and, at the same time, from the want of some good, genuine, honest troubles to take them out of themselves, acidity began to cark and corrode their natures, and work a considerable change. If Rebecca Lambent had met with a man who possessed good firm qualities and been married, she would doubtless have turned out a quiet matronly body, ready to smile at trifles, and make the best of things; but unfortunately the right he had never presented himself, and Rebecca had become a thorough district-visiting old maid, as narrow as could be, and ready to look upon a child who had not read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” as on the high road to destruction.

Beatrice Lambent’s heart was still tender. Rebecca said that she quite hated men. Beatrice thought the declaration quite suitable, as far as her sister was concerned, but her own hatreds were directed at the other sex, and Hazel Thorne was made the scapegoat in her eyes to bear the sins of others. For as the days glided by, she felt a growing dislike to the young schoolmistress, who was always committing some grievous error, her last being that of accepting the glass of water offered to her by George Canninge.

It would be going far to say that Beatrice Lambent would gladly have put poison in that water had she dared, but certainly she would gladly have dashed it in the recipient’s face.

It was terrible to her that George Canninge – the hope to which her somewhat ardent imagination was now clinging as probably the last likely to come in her way – should take so much notice of this stranger girl, finding in her an attraction that asked from him the attentions he would in an ordinary way have paid to the vicar’s sister; and more than once she had shed tears on Mrs Canninge’s breast, when that lady bade her be of good cheer, and not to take any notice of these acts.

“It is a mere nothing, my dear Beatrice,” said Mrs Canninge. “George is naturally very chivalrous, and he seems to have taken it into his head that this girl needs his help and protection.”

“But it is so cruel to me,” sighed Beatrice. “If you could let him think it caused me pain, he might not act so again.”

“My dear child,” replied Mrs Canninge, “you do not know my son so well as I. Poor boy, he is very headstrong, and fond of asserting himself. Depend upon it if I were to attempt to lead him towards you, the consequences would be disastrous. We should be setting him from sheer obstinacy towards this girl, who by-the-way appears to me to be either very innocent and weak, or else crafty and clever to a degree.”

“But surely you cannot think she dare aspire to a thought of your son wishing to be attentive to her.”

“Oh no, my dear child. That would be impossible. But there, do not trouble yourself about it. You will see that George has forgotten all about her in a few weeks.”

Beatrice promised that she would not trouble, but went on growing more exercised in spirit day by day. She took herself to task also about several little acts of pettiness in which she had detected herself, and made a vow that she would not be so contemptible again, but preserve towards Hazel Thorne a ladylike dignity of manner that would be more in keeping with her position as sister of the vicar of Plumton All Saints.

Human nature is, however, very weak, and the nature of Beatrice Lambent was a little weaker. She had always her sister Rebecca at her elbow – a lady who was rapidly becoming the incarnation of old-maidish pettiness and narrow-minded local policies – and strive how she would, Rebecca’s constant droppings kept wearing a nature which, though desirous of being firm, was not hardened like unto stone.

The sisters attended the schools with their old readiness and every now and then, as if something within prompted her to be constantly watching for a chance of attack, Beatrice found herself making unpleasant remarks to or of Hazel Thorne and then going home angry and bitter, as she realised how ladylike and quiet the schoolmistress remained under every attack.

For, calling up the whole strength of her character, Hazel had determined to persevere. She had several times been so cruelly mortified by the treatment of the sisters that she felt that she must go; but this was her first school, and she knew that she was bound to stay there a sufficient time to obtain good testimonials for a second.

The vicar came down on the day following the examination, and told her that the inspector had expressed himself greatly disappointed at the state of the school.

“I am sorry to say, Miss Thorne, that he casually let drop his intention of speaking rather hardly respecting our state, which – I am afraid I must tell you his exact words.”

“If you please, sir,” said Hazel quietly; and she raised her eyes with the strange effect of making him lower his, and speak in a quick, indirect way.

“He said that the state the school was the more to be deplored from the fact that we had secured a young lady of evident power of teaching. The object lesson, he said, was most masterly, and therefore – ”

The vicar stopped and raised his eyes for a moment to meet the dear, candid look that seemed to search his soul.

“Pray tell me all, sir.”

“I – I hesitate. Miss Thorne,” he said, “because I do not think the inspector’s opinion was just.”

“I thank you, sir,” said Hazel gravely.

“He – he suggested that you could not be giving your heart to your work, and that in consequence the children were far more backward than in either of the neighbouring schools.”

“It must be from want of ability, sir,” said Hazel; “for I cannot charge myself with neglecting my duties in the slightest degree.”

“Exactly. I am sure of it. I know you have not, Miss Thorne. I merely repeat the inspector’s words as a kind of duty, and I leave it to you to make any alterations you may think best in the direction of your teaching, for I sincerely hope that we may have a better account to show on Mr Barracombe’s next visit.”