Home > Authors Index > Hall Caine > Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill > This page
The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
||
Part 1. My Girlhood - Chapter 8 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ FIRST PART. MY GIRLHOOD EIGHTH CHAPTER From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged to him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and her stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property. It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by a Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped in a charity school. Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who had exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his account with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display her gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my character had gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directly under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class, although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher. I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as a goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved the fate that followed. One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter. "Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but I went on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter. I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying something about herself--making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance--for after a moment she said, in her rapid accents: "Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying." I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer. "Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven't you?" But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said: "Mary O'Neill, come forward." She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey when I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction, seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see." I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said: "You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out, miss, this very moment." I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement. "Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy _me_?" That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a rock. Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself afresh. "You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big girls come and help me?" With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes. By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion. "Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril." My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious position. "Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the scholars, "put down your slates and listen." Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my side and pointing down to me: "This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience she has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil the child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there is no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ." With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped back and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane out of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and limber. I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--the pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady, and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before all the village children. At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph. Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp voice: "Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without permission? Go back, sir, this very moment." Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands pulled it down hard on his head. "Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike. The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against the wall. Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the school. _ |
||