Sometimes they baited her quite deliberately. The older and more intelligent girls understood the situation well enough—understood that Millie was under old Creevy’s thumb and that she got dropped on afterwards when they had been making too much noise; sometimes they made all the noise they dared, just so as to bring old Creevy in and have the pleasure of watching Millie’s face while old Creevy told her off. There were times when Dorothy could keep her temper and forgive them all they did, because she realised that it was only a healthy instinct that made them rebel against the loathsome monotony of their work. But there were other times when her nerves were more on edge than usual, and when she looked round at the score of silly little faces, grinning or mutinous, and found it possible to hate them. Children are so blind, so selfish, so merciless. They do not know when they are tormenting you past bearing, and if they did know they would not care. You may do your very best for them, you may keep your temper in situations that would try a saint, and yet if you are forced to bore them and oppress them, they will hate you for it without ever asking themselves whether it is you who are to blame. How true—when you happen not to be school-teacher yourself—how true those often-quoted lines sound—
Under a cruel eye outworn
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay!
But when you yourself are the cruel eye outworn, you realise that there is another side to the picture.
The last week came, and the dirty farce of “exams,” was carried through. The system, as explained by Mrs. Creevy, was quite simple. You coached the children in, for example, a series of sums until you were quite certain that they could get them right, and then set them the same sums as an arithmetic paper before they had time to forget the answers; and so with each subject in turn. The children’s papers were, of course, sent home for their parents’ inspection. And Dorothy wrote the reports under Mrs. Creevy’s dictation, and she had to write “excellent” so many times that—as sometimes happens when you write a word over and over again—she forgot how to spell it and began writing it “excelent,” “exsellent,” “ecsellent,” “eccelent.”
The last day passed in fearful tumults. Not even Mrs. Creevy herself could keep the children in order. By mid-day Dorothy’s nerves were in rags, and Mrs. Creevy gave her a “talking to” in front of the seven children who stayed to dinner. In the afternoon the noise was worse than ever, and at last Dorothy, overcome, appealed to the girls almost tearfully to stop.
“Girls!” she called out, raising her voice to make herself heard through the din. “Please stop it, please! You’re behaving horribly to me. Do you think it’s kind to go on like this?”
That was fatal, of course. Never, never, never throw yourself on the mercy of a child! There was an instant’s hush, and then one child cried out, loudly and derisively, “Mill-iee!” The next moment the whole class had taken it up, even the imbecile Mavis, chanting all together “Mill-iee! Mill-iee! Mill-iee!” At that, something within Dorothy seemed to snap. She paused for an instant, picked out the girl who was making the most noise, walked up to her, and gave her a smack across the ear almost as hard as she could hit. Happily it was only one of the “medium payers.”
VI
On the first day of the holidays Dorothy received a letter from Mr. Warburton.
“My dear Dorothy [he wrote],—Or should I call you Ellen, as I understand that is your new name? You must, I am afraid, have thought it very heartless of me not to have written sooner, but I assure you that it was not until ten days ago that I even heard anything about our supposed escapade. I have been abroad, first in various parts of France, then in Austria and then in Rome, and, as you know, I avoid my fellow-countrymen most strenuously on these trips. They are disgusting enough even at home, but in foreign parts their behaviour makes me so ashamed of them that I generally try to pass myself off as an American.
“When I got to Knype Hill your father refused to see me, but I managed to get hold of Victor Stone, who gave me your address and the name you are using. He seemed rather reluctant to do so, and I gathered that even he, like everyone else in this poisonous town, still believes that you have misbehaved yourself in some way. I think the theory that you and I eloped together has been dropped, but you must, they feel, have done something scandalous. A young woman has left home suddenly, therefore there must be a man in the case; that is how the provincial mind works, you see. I need not tell you that I have been contradicting the whole story with the utmost vigour. You will be glad to hear that I managed to corner that disgusting hag, Mrs. Semprill, and give her a piece of my mind; and I assure you that a piece of my mind is distinctly formidable. But the woman is simply subhuman. I could get nothing out of her except hypocritical snivellings about ‘poor, poor Dorothy.’
“I hear that your father misses you very much, and would gladly have you home again if it were not for the scandal. His meals are never punctual nowadays, it seems. He gives it out that you ‘went away to recuperate from a slight illness and have now got an excellent post at a girls’ school.’ You will be surprised to hear of one thing that has happened to him. He has been obliged to pay off all his debts! I am told that the tradesmen rose in a body and held what was practically a creditors’ meeting in the Rectory. Not the kind of thing that could have happened at Plumstead Episcopi—but these are democratic days, alas! You, evidently, were the only person who could keep the tradesmen permanently at bay.
“And now I must tell you some of my own news,” etc., etc., etc.
At this point Dorothy tore the letter up in disappointment and even in annoyance. He might have shown a little more sympathy! she thought. It was just like Mr. Warburton, after getting her into serious trouble—for after all, he was principally to blame for what had happened—to be so flippant and unconcerned about it. But when she had thought it over she acquitted him of heartlessness. He had done what little was possible to help her, and he could not be expected to pity her for troubles of which he had not heard. Besides, his own life had been a series of resounding scandals; probably he could not understand that to a woman a scandal is a serious matter.
At Christmas Dorothy’s father also wrote, and what was more, sent her a Christmas present of two pounds. It was evident from the tone of his letter that he had forgiven Dorothy by this time. What exactly he had forgiven her was not certain, because it was not certain what exactly she had done; but still, he had forgiven her. The letter started with some perfunctory but quite friendly enquiries. He hoped her new job suited her, he wrote. And were her rooms at the school comfortable and the rest of the staff congenial? He had heard that they did one very well at schools nowadays—very different from what it had been forty years ago. Now, in his day, etc., etc., etc. He had, Dorothy perceived, not the dimmest idea of her present circumstances. At the mention of schools his mind flew to Winchester, his old school; such a place as Ringwood House was beyond his imagining.
The rest of the letter was taken up with grumblings about the way things were going in the parish. The Rector complained of being worried and overworked. The wretched churchwardens kept bothering him with this and that, and he was growing very