CHAPTER XVI
MR. MUSTARD'S FIRST ASSISTANT
Yes, I was surprised. But there were several other and greatersurprises waiting me. I got one the very next day.
I met Dan McConchie on his way home from school, at the dinner hour.He was kicking his bag before him in the way that was popular at ourschool, where all self-respecting boys brought their books in a strap.Girls had green baize bags and always swung them like pendulums as theytalked. But boys, if they had to have bags, used them as footballs.This was what Dan was doing now.
He said, "Halloo, Joe Yarrow, your girl's gone and been made a teacher.You had better come back. Old Mustard is as sweet to her as sugarcandy. She is teaching the babies in the little classroom--'A b--ab!B a--baa!'"
He imitated the singsong of the lowest forms.
Now I put no faith in Dan or any other McConchie. But I clumped himhard and sound for presuming to talk about Elsie at all or call her "mygirl."
Then I met little Kit Seymour, a girl from the south, who had reddishhair, all crimpy, and spoke soft, soft English as if she were breathingwhat she said at you. She lisped a little, too, was good-looking(though I did not care for that), and did not tell lies--had not beenlong enough in Breckonside to learn, I expect.
At any rate she told me in other words what I had just clouted Dan for.Early the morning before, the school had been astonished to find Mr.Mustard giving Elsie a lesson--when they came to spend a half hour inthe playground at marbles and steal-the-bonnets. Their wonder grewgreater when, as the bell rang, Elsie was found installed in the littleschoolroom, which hitherto had been used chiefly for punishments anddoing copybook writing. She was given the infant classes, and had beenthere all day, so I was told, with Mr. Mustard popping in and outgiving her instructions, and smiling like a fusty old hawk that hascaught a goldfinch which he fears some one will take away from him.
Of course I did not care a button for Mr. Mustard. But he had alwaysbeen the Enemy of Youth so far as we were concerned. And it gave me aqueer feeling, I can tell you, to think of Elsie--my Elsie--teachingalongside that snuffy old badger. He was neither snuffy nor yet veryold, but that is the way I felt toward him. Elsie, too--at least sheused to. But I could bet it was all the doing of that hook-nosedsister of his--Betty Martin Mustard, we called her, though her name wasonly Elizabeth, and not Martin at all.
Little Kit Seymour kept on lingering. She was smiling mischievously,too, which she had no business to do. And she wouldn't have done itlong if she had been a boy. It got sort of irritating after a while,though I wasn't donkey enough to let her see it. I knew better.
I just said that I hoped she, Elsie, would like school-teaching, andthat my father had always said that was what she should go in for. ButKit went on swinging her green baize bag, like I've seen them do theincense pot in Mr. Ablethorpe's church up at Breckonton. Father wouldhave skinned me alive if he knew I had gone there. He was a Churchman,was father, but death on incense pots, confessions, and all apostolicthingummies, such as Mr. Ablethorpe was just nuts on. He had evenstopped going to church at home because our old vicar had said that theAnglican Church was a church catholic. I bet he didn't mean any harm.He was a first-rate old fellow. But my father waited behind and toldhim out loud that the Church of England is a Protestant church, and"whoever says it isn't is a liar!"
That caused a coolness, of course. Yet I believe they both meant thesame thing. For our vicar wasn't one of Mr. Ablethorpe's sort, butjust wanted to let people alone, and was content if people left himalone. But all things about churches made our Breckonside folk easilymad--being, as I said before, actually on the border-line, or at leastvery near to it.
Little Kit Seymour, with her lisp and soft south country English, was asmart girl. I knew very well she was seeing how I would take the newsabout Elsie. However, she did not get much change out of me.
"You aren't coming back to school again?" she said next, looking at thetoe of her boot.
"Oh, I don't know that," I told her; "old Mustard is well up inmathematics and mensuration----"
"What's mensuration?" She said "men_th_uration," and curiously enoughit sounded rather nice. But if a boy had done it everybody would havelaughed. Some things are all in favour of girls--others again not.Girls can't go into the army or the navy. Most boys can't, either.But they think they can for a year or two, and that does just as well.They can talk big about it till the fit goes off.
Well, I got rid of Kit Seymour. She went on to school, and as sheparted from me she said: "Well, I thuppose we shall be theeing you downthere by and by!"
She meant at the school--because Elsie was there. But I had somethingelse in my mind. I was keen to find out whether Elsie had gone therebecause of our quarrel about Harriet Caw. The fault, of course, in anyother girl, would have been Elsie's. For she would not listen to anyjustification--not even to the truth. But I never blamed Elsie. Ionly thought she had been led into it by old Betty Martin--Mr.Mustard's sister--who is so ugly that it gives you a gumboil only tolook at her.
Now the school of Breckonside--Mr. Mustard's, that is--lies right upagainst the woods on a sloping piece of land, from which the grass haslong been worn off by generations of children playing. There isanother little yard with some grass at the back. That is where thegirls play, and across it with its gable to the big schoolhouse is thelittle class-room where Elsie was teaching.
It was right bang in the woods. So I knew very well I could lie hiddenalong the branch of a tree and look in at the window.
Mean, you say! Not a scrap. Elsie and I had always been such friends,like brother and sister, that surely I had a right to look after her abit. Of course, if she had known she would have let out at me--scoldedI mean. But all the same she would have found it quite natural.
So I went and got hold of a ripping good place in a kind of sunk fence.Here I found, not a beech, but the trunk of an old willow that had bentitself down into the dry ditch as if feeling for the water. It wasjust the shape, too, and when I lay down on my face it fitted me betterthan my bed. There was even a rising bit at the bank for me to hook myfeet round. You never saw anything so well arranged. The hazel busheshid me from above, too, and unless you fairly stepped on me there wasnothing to be seen. I had only to put aside some leafy shoots to rakethe whole three windows of the little infant school.
Mean? I tell you not a bit. Why, I was really the only protectorElsie had got, and though she was mad with me just at that moment, itmade no difference. Besides I had got an idea--I did not get themoften, and so hung on the tighter to those I did find. And this onehad really been forced upon me. It was that somehow Elsie was the keyto all the mysteries, and that through her would come the solution ofeverything we had been trying to find out. Also--though this I wouldnot for the life of me have mentioned to Elsie herself--that some perilhung imminent over her, and of this I should soon have proof if Iwanted any.
Now it is curious how different both things and people look when youare watching them--as it were unbeknown. It is something like lookingthrough between your legs at a landscape. You see the coloursbrighter, naturally, and as for the people--none of them do anythingunless as if with some horrid secret purpose. When Mr. Mustard wipedhis brow with a spotted handkerchief, or knocked a fly off the end ofhis nose, I was lost in wonderment what he meant by it. When he calledElsie to come down for her own private lessons in the big school-house,I watched carefully to see that he had not a weapon concealed under hisrusty coat tails. I suppose policemen and detectives get used to thissort of thing, but certainly I never did.
Then I had always thought that we all started for school together. Weseemed to. But Mr. Mustard's scholars certainly didn't--and I supposeschools all over the world are the same. Nobody came alone. If theystarted from home by themselves, they yelled and signalled till theywere joined by somebody else. Only a few groups arrived by the road,generally hand-in-hand if they were girls, and the boys with their armsabout each
other's waists. Most, however, ducked through hedges,clambered over stone dykes, crossed ditches by planks, and so finallygot to school over broken-down pieces of wire fencing, or by edgingthemselves between the gate post and the wall. I remember now that Ihad generally done the same thing myself. But I never knew it tillthat day I lay on the old willow, watching Mr. Mustard's schoolgathering for morning lessons.
Seen from a distance Mr. Mustard was a youngish-looking man, gettingbald, however, except about his ears. He wore a perfect delta ofwrinkles at the corner of each eye. He was teaching Elsie about halfan hour, and during this time, his sister looked in twice from themaster's cottage, just to see how things were going. I lay still andwaited. From the big school-house there came the sound of a hymn sungall together, with Elsie leading. I could distinguish her voice quitewell. And then Mr. Mustard said a prayer. It was always the sameprayer, and had been written by some bishop or other for the purpose.Then Elsie came out followed by all the infant class, most of themclinging to her skirts, the rest straggling behind, and pausing to pickup stray toddlers of three or four who had fallen on their faces. InBreckonside they send babies like that to school to be out of the way.
At first I did not get much out of my cramped position on the willowtrunk. True, Elsie did turn and look twice toward the tall blackpaling of my father's storehouse yard. But even that I could not betoo sure of, for the next moment Elsie had opened the door of thelittle class-room and passed within with all her tribe scuffling afterher.
Then I could hear her begin with another hymn, very simple. Then sheset the elder to learn the mysteries of "two and two make four," whileshe combined a little drill with the teaching of the alphabet to themost youthful of her flock behind a green rep curtain. After that camethe turn of the slates, and at the first rasp Elsie, long unaccustomedto that music at close range, put her fingers to her ears. But whenshe had set the children to their task of drawing lopsided squares,drunken triangles, and wobbly circles, she left the infant class todrone on in the heat of the morning. She arranged the windows, pullingthem down to their utmost limit, and springing up on the sill shecleverly tacked bits of white netting over the open spaces. Elsie knewthat there is nothing so demoralizing to the average infant class as avisiting wasp of active habits.
The drone of the infant department was behind her. I could see a softperspiration bedewing the tender skins. Hair clung moist and clammyabout bent necks. One or two slumbered openly, their brows on theirslates, only to awake when Mr. Mustard came smiling in, satisfied witheverything, and particularly commending the wasp protectors. Strangethat in twenty years he had never thought of such a thing! He wouldget his sister to make some immediately.
No need of that! Elsie could tear the required size from her roll in amoment. Would he have them now? No, he would wait till the interval,and then she and Mr. Mustard would put them up together. There was nouse troubling Elizabeth. She had her own domestic duties to attend to.Of course, she, that is Elsie, would partake with them of their simpleand frugal midday meal? It would be more convenient for allparties--better than going all the way back to the cottage at theBridge End. Besides, Miss Edgar would doubtless be absent, and nodinner would be ready. Yes (concluded Mr. Mustard), on all accounts itwould be much preferable to dine together. He had talked it over withhis sister the night before.
I could see her hesitate. But the arrangement was really so much moreconvenient--indeed obvious, that Elsie, after provising that she wouldhave to arrange terms with Miss Elizabeth, ended by accepting.
I began to hate Mr. Mustard.
What could he be after? It could not be love--fancy that red-nosed,blear-eyed, baldish old badger with the twitchy eyebrows in love! Ilaughed on my branch. But whatever it was his sister was in it. Yes,Betty Martin was a confederate--yet her brother's marriage would(conceiving for a moment such a thing to be possible) put her out of aplace.
It was altogether beyond me. Only as I say, I did not love Mr. Mustardany the better for all this, and if I could have pinked him cheerfullywith my catapult, without the risk of hitting Elsie, he would have gotsomething particularly stinging for himself.