Lark Rise to Candleford (28 page)

'Oh, Laura! What a dunce you are!' Miss Holmes used to say
every time she examined it, and Laura really was the dunce of the school in
those two subjects. However, as time went on, she improved a little, and managed
to pass her standard every year with moderate success until she came to
Standard V and could go no farther, for that was the highest in the school. By
that time the other children she had worked with had left, excepting one girl
named Emily Rose, who was an only child and lived in a lonely cottage far out
in the fields. For two years Standard V consisted of Laura and Emily Rose. They
did few lessons and those few mostly those they could learn from books by
themselves, and much of their time was spent in teaching the babies and
assisting the schoolmistress generally.

That mistress was not Miss Holmes. She had married her head
gardener while Laura was still in the Infants and gone to live in a pretty old cottage
which she had renamed 'Malvern Villa'. Immediately after her had come a young
teacher, fresh from her training college, with all the latest educational
ideas. She was a bright, breezy girl, keen on reform, and anxious to be a
friend as well as a teacher to her charges.

She came too early. The human material she had to work on was
not ready for such methods. On the first morning she began a little speech, meaning
to take the children into her confidence:

'Good morning, children. My name is Matilda Annie Higgs, and
I want us all to be friends——' A giggling murmur ran round the school. 'Matilda
Annie! Matilda Annie! Did she say Higgs or pigs?' The name made direct appeal
to their crude sense of humour, and, as to the offer of friendship, they
scented weakness in that, coming from one whose office it was to rule.
Thenceforth, Miss Higgs might drive her pigs in the rhyme they shouted in her
hearing; but she could neither drive nor lead her pupils. They hid her cane,
filled her inkpot with water, put young frogs in her desk, and asked her silly,
unnecessary questions about their work. When she answered them, they all
coughed in chorus.

The girls were as bad as the boys. Twenty times in one
afternoon a hand would shoot upward and it would be: 'Please, miss, can I have
this or that from the needlework box?' and poor Miss Higgs, trying to teach a class
at the other end of the room, would come and unlock and search the box for
something they had already and had hidden.

Several times she appealed to them to show more
consideration. Once she burst into tears before the whole school. She told the
woman who cleaned that she had never dreamed there were such children anywhere.
They were little savages.

One afternoon, when a pitched battle was raging among the big
boys in class and the mistress was calling imploringly for order, the Rector appeared
in the doorway.

'Silence!' he roared.

The silence was immediate and profound, for they knew he was
not one to be trifled with. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, he strode
into the midst of them, his face flushed with anger, his eyes flashing blue fire.
'Now, what is the meaning of this disgraceful uproar?'

Some of the younger children began to cry; but one look in
their direction froze them into silence and they sat, wide-eyed and horrified, while
he had the whole class out and caned each boy soundly, including those who had
taken no part in the fray. Then, after a heated discourse in which he reminded
the children of their lowly position in life and the twin duties of gratitude
to and respect towards their superiors, school was dismissed. Trembling hands
seized coats and dinner-baskets and frightened little figures made a dash for
the gate. But the big boys who had caused the trouble showed a different
spirit. 'Who cares for him?' they muttered, 'Who cares? Who cares? He's only an
old parson!' Then, when safely out of the playground, one voice shouted:

Old Charley-wag!

Old Charley-wag!

Ate the pudden and gnawed the bag!

The other children expected the heavens to fall; for Mr.
Ellison's Christian name was Charles. The shout was meant for him and was one
of defiance. He did not recognize it as such. There were several Charleses in
the school, and it must have been inconceivable to him that his own Christian
name should be intended. Nothing happened, and, after a few moments of tense
silence, the rebels trooped off to get their own account of the affair in first
at home.

After that, it was not long before the station fly stood at
the school gate and Miss Higgs's trunk and bundles and easy-chair were hauled
on top. Back came the married Miss Holmes, now Mrs. Tenby. Girls curtsied again
and boys pulled their forelocks. It was 'Yes, ma'am', and 'No, ma'am', and
'What did you please to say, ma'am?' once more. But either she did not wish to
teach again permanently or the education authorities already had a rule against
employing married-women teachers, for she only remained a few weeks until a new
mistress was engaged.

This turned out to be a sweet, frail-looking, grey-haired,
elderly lady named Miss Shepherd, and a gentle shepherd she proved to her
flock. Unfortunately, she was but a poor disciplinarian, and the struggle to maintain
some degree of order wore her almost to shreds: Again there was always a buzz
of whispering in class; stupid and unnecessary questions were asked, and too
long intervals elapsed between the word of command and the response. But,
unlike Miss Higgs, she did not give up. Perhaps she could not afford to do so
at her age and with an invalid sister living with and dependent upon her. She
ruled, if she can be said to have ruled at all, by love and patience and ready
forgiveness. In time, even the blackest of her sheep realized this and kept
within certain limits; just sufficient order was maintained to avoid scandal,
and the school settled down under her mild rule for five or six years.

Perhaps these upheavals were a necessary part of the
transition which was going on. Under Miss Holmes, the children had been weaned
from the old free life; they had become accustomed to regular attendance, to sitting
at a desk and concentrating, however imperfectly. Although they had not learned
much, they had been learning to learn. But Miss Holmes's ideas belonged to an
age that was rapidly passing. She believed in the established order of society,
with clear divisions, and had done her best to train the children to accept
their lowly lot with gratitude to and humility before their betters. She belonged
to the past; the children's lives lay in the future, and they needed a guide
with at least some inkling of the changing spirit of the times. The new mistresses,
who came from the outside world, brought something of this spirit with them.
Even the transient and unappreciated Miss Higgs, having given as a subject for
composition one day 'Write a letter to Miss Ellison, telling her what you did
at Christmas', when she read over one girl's shoulder the hitherto conventional
beginning 'Dear and Honoured Miss', exclaimed 'Oh, no! That's a very
old-fashioned beginning. Why not say, "Dear Miss Ellison?"' An
amendment which was almost revolutionary.

Miss Shepherd went further. She taught the children that it
was not what a man or woman had, but what they were which mattered. That poor people's
souls are as valuable and that their hearts may be as good and their minds as
capable of cultivation as those of the rich. She even hinted that on the material
plane people need not necessarily remain always upon one level. Some boys, born
of poor parents, had struck out for themselves and become great men, and
everybody had respected them for rising upon their own merits. She would read
them the lives of some of these so-called self-made men (there were no women,
Laura noticed!) and though their circumstances were too far removed from those
of her hearers for them to inspire the ambition she hoped to awaken, they must have
done something to widen their outlook on life.

Meanwhile the ordinary lessons went on. Reading, writing,
arithmetic, all a little less rather than more well taught and mastered than formerly.
In needlework there was a definite falling off. Miss Shepherd was not a great
needle-woman herself and was inclined to cut down the sewing time to make way
for other work. Infinitesimal stitches no longer provoked delighted
exclamations, but more often a 'Child! You will ruin your eyes!' As the bigger
girls left who in their time had won county prizes, the standard of the output
declined, until, from being known as one of the first needlework schools in the
district, Fordlow became one of the last.

Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools came once a year on a date
of which previous notice had been given. There was no singing or quarrelling on
the way to school that morning. The children, in clean pinafores and well
blackened boots, walked deep in thought; or, with open spelling or table books
in hand, tried to make up in an hour for all their wasted yesterdays.

Although the date of 'Inspector's' visit had been notified,
the time had not. Some years he would come to Fordlow in the morning; other
years in the afternoon, having examined another school earlier. So, after prayers,
copybooks were given out and the children settled down for a long wait. A few
of the more stolid, leaning forward with tongues slightly protruding, would
copy laboriously, 'Lightly on the up-strokes, heavy on the down', but most of
the children were too apprehensive even to attempt to work and the mistress did
not urge them, for she felt even more apprehensive herself and did not want
nervously executed copies to witness against her.

Ten—eleven—the hands of the clock dragged on, and forty odd
hearts might almost be heard thumping when at last came the sound of wheels crunching
on gravel and two top hats and the top of a whip appeared outside the upper
panes of the large end window.

Her Majesty's Inspector was an elderly clergyman, a little
man with an immense paunch and tiny grey eyes like gimlets. He had the
reputation of being 'strict', but that was a mild way of describing his autocratic
demeanour and scathing judgement. His voice was an exasperated roar and his
criticism was a blend of outraged learning and sarcasm. Fortunately, nine out
of ten of his examinees were proof against the latter. He looked at the rows of
children as if he hated them and at the mistress as if he despised her. The
Assistant Inspector was also a clergyman, but younger, and, in comparison,
almost human. Black eyes and very red lips shone through the bushiness of the
whiskers which almost covered his face. The children in the lower classes,
which he examined, were considered fortunate.

The mistress did not have to teach a class in front of the
great man, as later; her part was to put out the books required and to see that
the pupils had the pens and paper they needed. Most of the time she hovered about
the Inspector, replying in low tones to his scathing remarks, or, with
twitching lips, smiling encouragement at any child who happened to catch her
eye.

What kind of a man the Inspector really was it is impossible
to say. He may have been a great scholar, a good parish priest, and a good
friend and neighbour to people of his own class. One thing, however, is certain,
he did not care for or understand children, at least not national school
children. In homely language, he was the wrong man for the job. The very sound
of his voice scattered the few wits of the less gifted, and even those who
could have done better were too terrified in his presence to be able to collect
their thoughts or keep their hands from trembling.

But, slowly as the hands of the clock seemed to move, the
afternoon wore on. Classes came out and toed the chalk line to read; other
classes bent over their sums, or wrote letters to grandmothers describing
imaginary summer holidays. Some wrote to the great man's dictation pieces full
of hard spelling words. One year he made the confusion of their minds doubly
confused by adopting the, to them, new method of giving out the stops by name:
'Water-fowl and other aquatic birds dwell on their banks semicolon while on the
surface of the placid water float the wide-spreading leaves of the
Victoria
regia
comma and other lilies and water dash plants full stop.'

Of course, they all wrote the names of the stops, which,
together with their spelling, would have made their papers rich reading had
there been any one there capable of enjoying it.

The composition class made a sad hash of their letters. The
children had been told beforehand that they must fill at least one page, so
they wrote in a very large hand and spaced their lines well; but what to say was
the difficulty! One year the Inspector, observing a small boy sitting bolt
upright gazing before him, called savagely: 'Why are you not writing—you at the
end of the row? You have your pen and your paper, have you not?'

'Yes, thank you, sir.'

'Then why are you idling?'

'Please, sir, I was only thinking what to say.'

A grunt was the only answer. What other was possible from one
who must have known well that pen, ink, and paper were no good without at least
a little thinking.

Once he gave out to Laura's class two verses of
The
Ancient Mariner
, reading them through first, then dictating them very slowly,
with an air of aloof disdain, and yet rolling the lines on his tongue as if he relished
them:

'All in a hot and copper sky,' he bawled. Then his voice
softened. So perhaps there was another side to his nature.

At last the ordeal was over. No one would know who had passed
and who had not for a fortnight; but that did not trouble the children at all. They
crept like mice from the presence, and then, what shouting and skipping and
tumbling each other in the dust as soon as they were out of sight and hearing!

When the papers arrived and the examination results were read
out it was surprising to find what a number had passed. The standard must have
been very low, for the children had never been taught some of the work set, and
in what they had learned nervous dread had prevented them from reaching their
usual poor level.