To Michelle it was the temple of learning, connected incongruously in her mind with her little white town by the sea-shore. Here she was taught to think. At every class she went to it seemed to her that her teacher’s mind struck upon hers as steel clinks on flint and that from their contact a flame was born. As the day went on flame was added to flame till the whole world blazed with light and all the dark places seemed illumined. As she sat at her desk with her pale absorbed face tilted towards the teacher’s desk, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted in a most unbecoming way, she was determining in that tiny portion of her mind which was not engrossed by the business in hand that she would become a teacher. She would so train and discipline her mind that it became a thing of tempered steel, a thing fit to create flame. How marvellous to create light! Yet it was a miracle she could and would perform. She would light a thousand candles and a thousand eyes should look on beauty. Because of her those eyes should see how the gold woof of truth and beauty ran through the drab warp of life and would have their hearts lightened.
“Yes, in spite of all
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.”
She muttered the words to herself as she hastily dragged on her indoor shoes and hung up her hat.
“You’ve burst the button off and that’s my peg you’ve put your rotten hat on,” said Jessie Lemezurier, a particularly objectionable red-haired girl whose pigeon-hole in the cloakroom was next to Michelle’s.
“You ought to be pleased to have my nice hat on your loathsome peg,” and putting her tongue out at Jessie, Michelle ran off. The first lesson was English literature and she wanted to get to her classroom in time to read over that last speech of Romeo’s once more. How did it go?
“How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning?”
and then, later on,
“Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. . . .
. . . Here’s to my love!”
If only the play could have ended there, at that perfect moment, instead of going on to that final welter of irritating relations. She could, she thought, have taught Shakespeare a thing or two.
Peronelle, though no less eager than Michelle, prepared herself for the pursuit of knowledge with a thoughtfulness and precision. She unplaited her already perfectly tidy hair, combed it and plaited it again. As she combed, her hair, electric and vivid as Peronelle herself, crackled and curled itself about her fingers as though imploring her to let it free, but she had no mercy on it. On Saturdays and Sundays she allowed it to fly loose, but on other days it must do as it was told. With her mouth closed in a firm determined line she dealt firmly with it, allowing no nonsense. Then she fastened her slippers carefully, hung her hat and coat on the right pegs, kissed Jacqueline good-bye—they were all three in different forms—and danced away to her math class. She liked lessons. She had a quick and eager mind, and it was a pleasure to her to use it. But what she loved best about school was being with the other girls. Of all Peronelle’s gifts the greatest was her gift for human contact. People interested her more than anything else in the world and her chief study, now and always, was that of practical living. She wanted everyone to be happy, and her thoughts were always absorbed in deciding what different paths her different friends ought to pursue to attain to happiness, and having chosen their paths for them she used all her strength in propelling them kindly, but firmly, upon the right way. Like her mother she was perfectly convinced that the paths she chose were the right paths and that terrible disasters would befall those who did not follow her leading and, again like her mother, her instinct was so sure that she was nearly always right. Her thoughts were always directed outward towards others, and never inward towards herself. Except that her practical love of neatness and cleanliness led her to take pains over her appearance she never gave herself a thought. She never in all her life knew an introspective moment. Because of this there was no murky fog of self-consciousness between herself and others. She saw not her own disabilities but them and like unclouded sunshine her warmth and light were theirs without hindrance. No one was ever shy of Peronelle—she did not give them time to be shy. She looked at them, she loved them, and with one leap she had curled herself inside their hearts. When she grew up even the most reticent could tell their troubles to Peronelle simply because saying things to Peronelle was like saying things to God, one felt that she was already inside one, and knew it all already, so it did not matter if the tale were badly told; one stood hand in hand with her inside the tortured rubbish heap of one’s soul and mourned with her over the mess there was, and then watched and marvelled as she tidied it all up. There was only one thing she could not understand—selfish morbidity. She could agonize over Jacqueline but she could not help her. A self-absorption like Jacqueline’s was beyond her comprehension. Nor could she always quite understand Michelle, for she was too well-balanced to feel Michelle’s hatred of the body. To her the body was a fair and lovely thing to be reverently tended and beautified. . . . Her own body carried her soul as a flower its perfume.
As she ran down the passage to the classroom she slipped her hands in her pockets to see if she still had safely a few things she had brought with her to solve the problems of her various friends. Marguerite Vesin’s sister’s boy was still as bald as an egg at four months, but she had found in a paper a recipe for making the loveliest curls appear upon an infant head, and had cut it out for Marguerite. Then she had a few of Rachell’s cough lozenges done up in a screw of paper for Blanche Portier, and a tiny gold brooch of her own for Marie Lemezurier whose birthday it was. These things were in her pockets, but in her head she carried Browning’s poem Prospice to repeat to Tonnette Laroche, who was scared of death, and Rachell’s recipe for apricot pudding for Miss Jenkins the maths. mistress, who was engaged to be married and whose poor husband couldn’t possibly spend all his time on the Asses’ Bridge with nothing to eat. . . . Miss Jenkins’ culinary knowledge was nil and Peronelle was very anxious indeed about her poor husband.
When the door swung joyously open and gave Peronelle to the maths. class it was to Miss Jenkins and the girls as though a blackbird sang in a lilac bush.
IV
And Jacqueline? Jacqueline had been silent all the way in to St. Pierre while the others chattered, and in the cloakroom, when Peronelle had kissed her and left her, she cried a little as she hung up her hat. School to her was slow torture. Nothing ever seemed to go right. She could never make friends and she was always at the bottom of her class. She felt it must look to other people as though she was both unlovable and stupid and she worked terribly hard to correct this impression. Between the classes, after desperate struggles with her shyness, she would go up to other girls and put her arm round their waists so as to show herself and them that she was not unpopular, and in the classes she would sit with her rapt gaze fixed on the teacher’s face so that the others should see how clever she was. But somehow it never did any good. The girls she embraced simply shook her off and went on talking to someone else, and the teachers would say snappily, “Jacqueline, don’t pretend to understand when you are not understanding.” At the end of the day her head felt heavy and hot, and she couldn’t remember anything she had been learning, her heart felt cold and empty with loneliness and she was so dreadfully tired that she felt quite sick.
To-day there was a special torment awaiting her—French translation. She opened her exercise book and there on the left-hand page was the English poem she had taken down from dictation three days ago, but opposite it, on the right-hand page, where she should have written the French translation of it, there was a virgin blank. It wasn’t that she didn’t know French, her mother had sung French songs to her when she had been a baby in her cradle and Sophie’s
patois echoed through Bon Repos all day, the trouble was that she did not understand the English poem and she had been too afraid of displaying her ignorance to ask Michelle or Peronelle or her mother to help her—she always pretended to her family that she knew everything. Mademoiselle Lebrun, when she had dictated it, had been afraid it might be too difficult for Jacqueline, the idiot of the class, and had said, “Now, Jacqueline, is it that you quite under-r-r-stand?” The eyes of every girl in the room had been turned upon Jacqueline, and a few had sniggered. Jacqueline was in agony. She did not understand the poem but if she had said so the others would think she was stupid. On the other hand if she said she did understand then nothing would be explained to her, she would not be able to translate the poem and there would be a dreadful scene three days later. She struggled with herself for a moment and then the thought came to her that in three days’ time she would probably be dead—she had a sore throat that she was convinced was the beginning of diphtheria—so it would be best to appear clever to-day. She had looked up brightly and intelligently and said “Thank you, Mademoiselle, I understand perfectly.”
But the sore throat had turned into an ordinary cold in the head, she had not died of diphtheria, and here she was on Monday morning with no French translation. She would be sent to the bottom of the class again. What on earth was she to do? Hot tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes and she rubbed them fiercely away with her knuckles. Well, anyway, French translation was the second class of the morning, drill came first. She would think what to do during drill. She gave a final dab to her eyes, put on her gym shoes, took her books to her classroom, and ran off to the school hall for drill.
In the middle of standing on one leg and swinging the other, with her arms stuck out at the side like a scarecrow’s—this was Miss Brown’s idea of training girls to be graceful—inspiration came to her. She would make her nose bleed, get excused from drill, go to the empty classroom and copy out the poem from someone else’s book. The idea had the simplicity of genius. She couldn’t think why she had not thought of it before. How thankful she was for her one great gift—the gift of making her nose bleed at will. It was a wonderful gift and she did not know how she had come by it. She had not inherited it from Rachell or André, it was peculiar to herself. She had only to blow her nose very violently, at the same time closing her mouth and gulping in a particular way, for the blood to gush forth. While Miss Brown was absorbed in crashing out some chords on the piano and the class was taking a half turn to the right she did this, and the result was entirely satisfactory. She turned to Miss Brown with a most convincing stain creeping over the handkerchief she had clapped to her nose.
“Please, Miss Brown, my nose is bleeding. Will you excuse me to go to the cloak room?”
The amiable Miss Brown glanced up over her spectacles.
“Yes, dear, certainly, try cold water and if that won’t stop it go to matron.”
As Jacqueline left the hall glances of envy and hatred pursued her. . . . The girls knew perfectly well that Jacqueline du Frocq made her nose bleed on purpose. . . . Underhand little beast.
In the cloak room Jacqueline checked the obliging flow by holding a spongeful of cold water to the bridge of her nose and dropping the key down her back. Then she ran to her classroom. It was as she had hoped, perfectly empty, and on Mademoiselle’s desk was a pile of exercise books placed there for her to correct. At the very top was Julie Lefroy’s. Julie was disgustingly clever and her work was always good. Jacqueline took the book and peeped in. . . . There was the translation. . . . She carried it to her own desk and copied it out in her book. . . . Then, for Mademoiselle would be coming to correct the books, she put hers with the others, went back to the cloak room and lay flat on the floor. There she was found by the girls when they came to change their gym shoes. They had a good deal to say, and said it rather nastily, but she did not care so much as usual for to-day, at least, she was safe not to be sent to the bottom of the class.
Mademoiselle was already at her desk when they entered, running her eye over the last of the exercise books. They went to their desks and sat down. Mademoiselle handed back the books one by one, with biting comments. Jacqueline sat with her ears getting pinker and pinker, and the palms of her hands wet with perspiration. . . . At last her turn came.
“Verie good, Jacqueline,” said Mademoiselle, “très bon. It is not pairfeect—I do not expect pairfection from this so idiot class—but it is good. At least you have been tr-r-rying.”
For the rest of the class Jacqueline sat in a glow of happiness. Mademoiselle, whenever she looked at her, smiled kindly, and the girls cast glances of surprise, even of admiration, in her direction. It was heaven. Jacqueline even felt that she had translated the poem by her own unaided efforts.
But, alas, retribution awaited her. After the second class of the morning there was a ten minutes break, and no sooner had Mademoiselle’s blue skirt swished round the door and disappeared than a heavy hand seized Jacqueline by her plait. . . . It was Julie Lefroy.
“Come along outside, Jacqueline,” said Julie in a voice whose awfulness it is impossible to describe, “and you’re to come too, all you girls.”
The entire class, in a dreadful silence, trooped out into the garden and took up its position beneath the unsympathetic branches of a monkey puzzle.
Jacqueline felt as those condemned to death must feel when they stand blindfolded, awaiting the volley of bullets. She did not seem to see anything but she could hear sounds that seemed to come from hundreds of miles away, the tinkle of a piano, a bee buzzing in the dahlias, a girl singing, the sighing of a little wind in the monkey puzzle. Julie’s voice broke the silence like the rip-rip of the bullets.
“I didn’t go to drill this morning—I’ve twisted my ankle and Miss Brown excused me—I went into the garden. I looked through the window and there was Jacqueline du Frocq copying out my translation into her exercise book.”
There was a little rippling murmur among the girls and then silence again. The condemned man would have been out of his torment by this time but poor Jacqueline was still alive. Julie, enjoying herself, continued:
“We knew Jacqueline was a sneak and a liar, but now we know she is a thief too. It’s stealing to take someone else’s translation. I shan’t say anything to Mademoiselle—I’m not a sneak—but I thought it right that you girls should know.”
Again there was that horrible murmur, threatening this time to grow into a hubbub, but Julie self-righteously quelled it.
“I don’t want any of you to say anything, or to bully Jacqueline or anything like that, goodness knows she’s a poor little worm and we don’t want to crush her completely, but I do think that, for the honour of the school, Jacqueline ought to be sent to Coventry. Those in favour of sending Jacqueline to Coventry hold up their hands.”
All the hands shot up into the monkey puzzle.
“Carried unanimously,” said Julie. “Now you understand, all of you, that Jacqueline has been sent to Coventry. Not one of our form will speak to Jacqueline or have any dealings with her whatever for the rest of the term. . . . Now let’s go and have some milk or the bell will be going.”
They all followed Julie towards the dining-room and the eleven o’clock milk and biscuits, one or two of them pinching Jacqueline as they passed but most of them, obedient to Julie, the injured party, simply turning from her as though she were a bad smell.
Jacqueline stood perfectly still beneath the monkey puzzle. Anyone looking at her face would have thought that she had just been suffering the extreme of physical torture. Her body was cold as ice, but her mind was burning and filled to suffocation with two things, one the phrase “we knew she was a sneak and a liar, but now we know she is a thief too,” the other the knowledge that what Julie had said was true. She had suffered too much in the last few moments to have the strength left to erect a barrier of self-deception between herself and the truth. For the fi
rst time in her life she quite clearly and definitely looked at herself and the result was a self-loathing so deadly that she would have liked to have died there and then under the monkey puzzle. But the bell rang and instead of dying she walked mechanically back to her classroom.
She sat through two more classes, grammar and English literature, without hearing a single word of either of them, she washed her hands and brushed her hair and then went in to school dinner with the others. After that she seemed to sit for hours and hours putting bits of boiled beef and suet pudding in her mouth, and swallowing them with an effort that seemed to wrench her whole body. When dinner was over she went quietly to the cloak room and was sick. The physical distress seemed to relieve the mental. She crawled to her pigeon hole, curled herself up in it and began to sob. Coventry! Not to be spoken to for the rest of the term. To live in complete and utter loneliness when loneliness was what she dreaded most of all in life. How could she bear it? And she was a sneak, a liar, and a thief. Everybody hated her and she hated herself.
Here in her pigeon hole Peronelle found her, the most deplorable bundle of misery ever beheld.
“My stars!” cried Peronelle and locked her in her arms. But no amount of scolding, kissing, petting, or shaking, could get the story of her grief and shame out of Jacqueline. Her character had been revealed in all its horror to herself and her form but she was not going to show it to her family, no indeed, not if she knew it, she’d sooner die. Peronelle could get nothing out of her except that she had been sick, that her nose had bled, and that she did not like Julie Lefroy. . . . There was more in it than this, Peronelle knew.
“Let’s go home to mother,” said Peronelle at last, turning in despair to Rachell as the solvent of all difficulties.