Anne of Windy Willows (3 page)

I went out and down the harbour road. There was such a nice frosty, Octobery smell in the air, blent with the delightful odour of newly ploughed fields. I walked on and on until twilight had deepened into a moonlit autumn night. I was alone, but not lonely. I held a series of imaginary conversations with imaginary comrades, and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at myself. I couldn’t help enjoying myself in spite of my Pringle worries.

The spirit moves me to utter a few yowls regarding the Pringles. I hate to admit it, but things are not going any too well in Summerside High. There is no doubt that a cabal has been organized against me.

For one thing, homework is never done by any of the Pringles or half-Pringles. And there is no use in appealing to the parents. They are suave, polite, evasive. I know all the pupils who are not Pringles like me, but the Pringle virus of disobedience is undermining the morale of the whole room. One morning I found my desk turned inside out and upside down. Nobody knew who did it, of course. And no one could or would tell who left on it another day the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it. But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my face. I suppose I did look wildly startled.

Jen Pringle comes late for school half the time, always with some perfectly watertight excuse, delivered politely, with an insolent tilt to her mouth. She passes notes in class under my very nose. I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on today. I would love to lock that girl up on bread and water until she learned how to behave herself.

The worst thing to date was the caricature of myself I found on the blackboard one morning, done in white chalk with
scarlet
hair. Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that. It
was
done well. My nose – which, as you know, has always been my one pride and joy – was humpbacked, and my mouth was the mouth of a vinegary spinster who had been teaching a school full of Pringles for thirty years. But it was
me
. I woke up at three o’clock that night and writhed over the recollection. Isn’t it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.

All sorts of things are being said. I am accused of ‘marking down’ Hattie Pringle’s examination papers just because she is a Pringle. I am said to laugh when the children make mistakes. (Well, I
did
laugh when Fred Pringle defined a centurion as ‘a man who had lived a hundred years’. I couldn’t help it.)

James Pringle is saying, ‘There is no dis
ci
pline in the school, no dis
ci
pline whatever.’ And a report is being circulated that I am a ‘foundling’.

I am beginning to encounter the Pringle antagonism in other quarters. Socially as well as educationally Summerside seems to be under the Pringle thumb. No wonder they are called the Royal Family. I wasn’t invited to Alice Pringle’s walking party last Friday. And when Mrs Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a church project (Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to ‘build’ the new spire!) I was the only girl in the Presbyterian Church who was not asked to take a table. I have heard that the minister’s wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking me to sing in the choir, and was informed that all the Pringles would drop out of it if she did. That would leave such a skeleton that the choir simply couldn’t carry on.

Of course, I’m not the only one of the staff who has trouble with pupils. When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be ‘disciplined’ – how I hate that word! – half of them are Pringles. But there is never any complaint made about
them
.

Two evenings ago I kept Jen in after school to do some work she had deliberately left undone. Ten minutes later the carriage from Maplehurst drew up before the schoolhouse and Miss Ellen was at the door, a beautifully dressed, sweetly smiling old lady, with elegant black-lace mitts and a fine hawk-like nose, looking as if she had just stepped out of an 1840 band-box. She was so sorry, but could she have Jen? She was going to visit friends in Lowvale, and had promised to take Jen. Jen went off triumphantly, and I realized afresh the forces arrayed against me.

In my pessimistic moods I think the Pringles are a compound of Sloanes and Pyes. But I know they’re not. I feel that I could like them if they were not my enemies. They are, for the most part, a frank, jolly, loyal set. I could even like Miss Ellen. I’ve never seen Miss Sarah. Miss Sarah has not left Maplehurst for ten years.

‘Too delicate – or thinks she is,’ says Rebecca Dew with a sniff. ‘But there ain’t anything the matter with her pride. All the Pringles are proud, but those two old girls pass everything. You should hear them talk about their ancestors. Well, their old father, Captain Abraham Pringle,
was
a fine old fellow. His brother Myrom wasn’t quite so fine, but you don’t hear the Pringles talking much about
him
. But I’m desprit afraid you’re going to have a hard time with them all. When they make up their mind about anything or anybody they’ve never been known to change it. But keep your chin up, Miss Shirley, keep your chin up.’

‘I wish I could get Miss Sarah’s recipe for pound cake,’ sighed Aunt Chatty. ‘She’s promised it to me time and again, but it never comes. It’s an old English family recipe. They’re
so
exclusive about their recipes.’

In wild, fantastic dreams I see myself compelling Miss Sarah to hand that recipe over to Aunt Chatty on bended knee and making Jen mind her
p
’s and
q
’s. The maddening thing is that I could easily make Jen do it myself if her whole clan weren’t backing her up in her devilry.

(Two pages omitted)

Your obedient servant,

A
NNE
S
HIRLEY

P
.
S
. That was how Aunt Chatty’s grandmother signed her love-letters.

October 17

We heard today that there had been a burglary at the other end of the town last night. A house was entered and some money and a dozen silver spoons stolen. So Rebecca Dew has gone up to Mr Hamilton’s to see if she can borrow a dog. She will tie him on the back veranda, and she advises me to lock up my engagement ring!

By the way, I found out why Rebecca Dew cried. It seems there had been a domestic convulsion. Dusty Miller had ‘misbehaved’ again, and Rebecca Dew told Aunt Kate she would really have to do something about That Cat. He was wearing her to a fiddle-string. It was the third time in a year, and she knew he did it on purpose. And Aunt Kate said that if Rebecca Dew would always let the cat out when he meowed there would be no danger of his misbehaving.

‘Well, this
is
the last straw!’ said Rebecca Dew.

Consequently, tears!

The Pringle situation grows a little more acute every week. Something very impertinent was written across one of my books yesterday and Homer Pringle turned handsprings all the way down the aisle when leaving school. Also, I got an anonymous letter recently full of nasty innuendoes. Somehow I don’t blame Jen for either the book or the letter. Imp as she is, there are things she wouldn’t stoop to. Rebecca Dew is furious, and I shudder to think what she would do to the Pringles if she had them in her power. Nero’s wish isn’t to be compared with it. I really don’t blame her, for there are times when I feel myself that I could cheerfully hand any and all of the Pringles a poisoned philtre of the Borgias’ brewing.

I don’t think I’ve told you much about the other teachers. There are two, you know – the Vice-Principal, Katherine Brooke of the Junior Room, and George MacKay of the Prep. Of George I have little to say. He is a shy, good-natured lad of twenty, with a slight, delicious Highland accent suggestive of low shielings and misty islands – his grandfather was Isle of Skye – and does very well with the Preps. So far as I know him I like him. But I’m afraid I’m going to have a hard time liking Katherine Brooke.

Katherine is a girl of, I think, about twenty-eight, though she looks thirty-five. I have been told she cherished hopes of promotion to the Principalship, and I suppose she resents my getting it, especially when I am considerably her junior. She is a good teacher – a bit of a martinet – but she is not popular with anyone. And doesn’t worry over it! She doesn’t seem to have any friends or relations and boards in a gloomy-looking house on grubby little Temple Street. She dresses very dowdily, never goes out socially, and is said to be mean. She is very sarcastic, and her pupils dread her biting remarks. I am told that her way of raising her thick black eyebrows and drawling at her class reduces them to pulp. I wish I could work it on the Pringles. But I really wouldn’t like to govern by fear as she does. I want my pupils to love me.

In spite of the fact that she has apparently no trouble in making them toe the line she is constantly sending some of them up to me, especially Pringles. I know she does it purposely, and I feel miserably certain that she exults in my difficulties, and would be glad to see me worsted.

Rebecca Dew says that no one can make friends with her. The widows have invited her several times to Sunday supper – the dear souls are always doing that for lonely people and always have the most delicious chicken salad for them – but she never came. So they have given it up, because, as Aunt Kate says, ‘There are limits.’

There are rumours that she is very clever, and can sing and recite – ‘elocute’,
á la
Rebecca Dew – but will not do either. Aunt Chatty once asked her to recite at a church supper.

‘We thought she refused very ungraciously,’ said Aunt Kate.

‘Just growled,’ said Rebecca Dew.

Katherine has a deep, throaty voice, almost a man’s voice, and it does sound like a growl when she isn’t in a good humour.

She isn’t pretty, but she might make more of herself. She is dark and swarthy, with magnificent black hair always dragged back from her high forehead and coiled in a clumsy knot at the base of her neck. Her eyes don’t match her hair, being a clear, light amber under her black brows. She has ears she needn’t be ashamed to show and the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen. Also, she has a well-cut mouth. But she dresses terribly. Seems to have a positive genius for getting the colours and lines she should not wear. Dull dark greens and drab greys, when she is too sallow for greens and greys, and stripes which make her tall, lean figure even taller and leaner. And her clothes always look as if she’d slept in them.

Her manner is very repellent. As Rebecca Dew would say, she always has a chip on her shoulder. Every time I pass her on the stairs I feel that she is thinking horrid things about me. Every time I speak to her she makes me feel I’ve said the wrong thing. And yet I’m very sorry for her, though I know she would resent my pity furiously. And I can’t do anything to help her, because she doesn’t want to be helped. She is really hateful to me. One day, when we three teachers were all in the staff room, I did something which, it seems, transgressed one of the unwritten laws of the school, and Katherine said cuttingly, ‘Perhaps you think
you
are above rules, Miss Shirley.’ At another time, when I was suggesting some changes which I thought would be for the good of the school, she said, with a scornful smile, ‘I am not interested in fairytales.’ Once, when I said some nice things about her work and methods, she said, ‘And what is to be the pill in all this jam?’

But the thing that annoyed me most… Well, one day when I happened to pick up a book of hers in the staff room and glance at the flyleaf I said, ‘I’m glad you spell your name with a K. Katherine is so much more alluring than Catherine, just as K is ever so much more a gipsier letter than smug C.’

She made no response, but the next note she sent up was signed ‘Catherine Brooke’

I sneezed all the way home.

I really would give up trying to be friends with her if I hadn’t a queer, unaccountable feeling that under all her brusqueness and aloofness she is actually starved for companionship.

Altogether, what with Katherine’s antagonism and the Pringle attitude, I don’t know just what I’d do if it wasn’t for dear Rebecca Dew and your letters – and little Elizabeth.

Because I’ve got acquainted with little Elizabeth. And she is a darling.

Three nights ago I took the glass of milk to the wall door, and little Elizabeth herself was there to get it instead of the Woman, her head just coming above the solid part of the door, so that her face was framed in the ivy. She is small, pale, golden, and wistful. Her eyes, looking at me through the autumn twilight, are large and golden-hazel. Her silver-gold hair was parted in the middle, sleeked plainly down over her head with a circular comb, and fell in waves on her shoulders. She wore a pale blue gingham dress and the expression of a princess of elf-land. She had what Rebecca Dew calls a ‘delicate air’, and gave me the impression of a child who was more or less under-nourished – not in body, but in soul. More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam.

‘And this is Elizabeth?’ I said.

‘Not tonight,’ she answered gravely. ‘This is my night for being Betty, because I love everything in the world tonight. I was Elizabeth last night, and tomorrow night I’ll probably be Beth. It all depends on how I feel.’

There was the touch of the kindred spirit for you! I thrilled to it at once.

‘How very nice to have a name you can change so easily and still feel it’s your own!’

Little Elizabeth nodded. ‘I can make so many names out of it: Elsie and Betty and Bess and Elisa and Lisbeth and Beth. But not Lizzie; I never can feel like Lizzie.’

‘Who could?’ I said.

‘Do you think it silly of me, Miss Shirley? Grandmother and the Woman do.’

‘Not silly at all. Very wise and very delightful,’ I said.

Little Elizabeth made saucer eyes at me over the rim of her glass. I felt that I was being weighed in some secret spiritual balance, and presently I realized thankfully that I had not been found wanting. For little Elizabeth asked a favour of me, and little Elizabeth does not ask favours of people she does not like.