A really splendid piece of cheek, affecting every one 10
Also whoever does it shall be called Queen A.S.S. for the term and preside at all meetings.
Top marks otherwise for the week make a president.
“This society was the idea of M.C.”
“I have a really splendid idea,” announced Midge.
“All right. Get up on to the president’s seat.”
Judy slid down; Midge climbed.
She sat on the shelf dangling her legs, looking down on to the ring of upturned faces in the lamplight.
These were Them. These were her friends. She had triumphed. In the first term of her second year she sat there, presiding over Judy and Maud and Gwynneth, warm and secure in the confidence of their friendship. She was one of a Group, a Family. She belonged.
Her triumph was all the more sweet because she had nearly lost it. She had returned to Maythorpe after the Measle Term to the worst summer holidays that she had ever known. After the bright precision of Miss Burton’s little house, after the discipline and companionship of school, Maythorpe seemed lost in unhappy desolation.
The neglected lawns grew tall as a watered meadow. The unpruned roses straggled across the paths and dripped from the leaning archways. Apples rotted as they fell below the orchard trees. No callers came, but as human life receded from the old house it seemed to take to itself its own nonhuman populace. Mice scratched and whimpered under the bedroom floors; bats hung in the attic; earwigs and spiders ran up the window curtains. When Midge tossed her tennis ball accidentally against the ivy, sparrows and starlings flew out with such shrill chatter that the whole house seemed to have come alive to scold her.
Her loneliness first bored, then terrified her. Elsie, disgruntled and dour, banged about the kitchen. Her father was out all day. Castle was worse. The harvest had not gone well. Hicks was just awful. Daddy had sold three hunters before harvest. The morning when they went away, Trix, Ladybird and the Adjutant, Midge stood on the step that led from the little tiled back-yard to the great gravelled stable-yard, and watched Hicks lead out of the stable first the big bay, then the grey flea-bitten spotted mare, the Ladybird, then her father’s bright golden heavyweight, the Adjutant. Carne took the bridle reins, looked at their mouths, bent down and felt their knees. Ladybird was saddled; the other two wore their stable cloths. Hicks mounted the grey, and Carne handed him the bridle reins of the others.
“Be back about four?” asked Carne.
Hicks did not speak. Midge saw his ugly, rather comical face distorted by an odd convulsion. He nodded; he chirruped to the horses; he was off down the drive, riding one, leading two. Carne watched them go.
Midge ran down to him, torn by forebodings, urgent to ask, “Daddy, where’s he gone? What’s happening?”
But Carne did not seem to hear her. He strode off past the stables towards the hind’s house beyond the western stackyard without a word, his face set hard as stone.
So Midge was glad when the holidays were over.
She returned to school eager yet suspicious, sniffing its atmosphere, shying back from innovation like a suspicious and timid little animal. Her habit of suspecting the worst made her inclined to see every change as frightful. There were over fifty new girls and they were awful, slummy, common, with appalling accents. There was another boarding-house along Cliff Terrace. There was a new form, the Remove, and Midge was in it. “It’s for us duds,” said the irrepressible Judy. “Not at all,” Midge replied. “It’s for delicate girls who need special attention and don’t take matric. That’s why I’m in it. I had measles very badly, and Dr. Campbell says I must be careful of my heart.”
But, heart or no, Midge missed the special privileges of illness. Miss Burton had withdrawn from her brief intimacy. She was preoccupied with new buildings, new girls and reorganisation. People said that the school was being a success, but what mattered to Midge was whether she could be a success inside the school. She was uncertain again, and insecure.
So something had to be done, or life would be too wretched. “The sensitive girl, aristocratic and delicate, looked with dismay upon the vulgar rabble surrounding her,” she told herself. It was bad enough that Miss Carne of Maythorpe should be herded with all these tradesmen’s just too frightful daughters, but if, on top of that, she was to find herself, Lord Sedgmire’s granddaughter, despised by her inferiors, she could not bear it.
Then, with a sudden ecstasy of creation, she invented the Anti-Sig Society.
Ragging the Sig was fun and it was easy. It was part of a popular and legitimate Kiplington fashion. It was Sporting.
There was no intention of malice in it. Mistresses, with their huge statutory powers, were fair game. They were not human beings. They did not possess the common human feelings. Their lives were mysterious. They appeared at the beginning of term and vanished at its close. From the Great Deep to the Great Deep they went, incalculable, inapproachable, unreal.
Therefore for girls to persecute them was heroic. All the risk, all the adventure, lay on the side of youth, which must brave the anger of entrenched authority. Therefore Midge, swinging her thin brown legs in the light of the bicycle lamp after second school, surveyed her audience with legitimate pride.
“Listen,” she said. “You know our nature prep.?”
“‘Write a study of some living creature whose habits you have observed for yourself,’” quoted Maud.
“I’ve got a marvellous idea. You know how she loves the stickleback. The little stickleback? Why not the Sigglesback? Who’ll dare to write an essay on the Sigglesback? We’ve studied it, haven’t we? We’ve observed it for ourselves?”
She watched her great idea rippling across their faces like light on water.
“The sigglesback—a bony little creature—cold-blooded— lives in the mud.”
“Builds nest.”
“In its hair.”
The idea was catching on.
Here was creation. Here was glory.
“It prefers dirty water.”
“It never mates.”
Glory, glory, glory. Midge was a leader. She was popular. She was safe. Friendship encircled her. Leadership enthroned her. When had she doubted? When had she been afraid?
“It’s marvellous!”
“Midge, you’re priceless!”
“Shu-uh!”
The creaking door at the far end of the shed opened. The Sigglesback herself, dank hair in a fringe below her drenched felt hat, mackintosh dripping about her tall bowed figure, botany specimen tin slung from her shoulders, entered pushing her bicycle.
She found difficulty in shoving it into its place. She had been collecting leaves and bark and Mycetozoa for tomorrow’s lesson. She was almost blind and half crying with exhaustion after pedalling her cycle against the blustering wind. She was a figure irresistibly comic.
The choking giggles in the corner roused her.
She raised her mild short-sighted eyes and saw Midge Carne enthroned, the ring of girls below her, the A.S.S. notice fluttering by her head.
Pushing her bicycle painfully into its place, panting with effort, she withdrew. The suppressed giggles broke into a guffaw as she shut the door.
“My dear, I could have died!”
“Midge, you were awful.”
“Do you think she’ll guess?”
“Whatever will she say?”
“She’ll never dare do anything. She can’t report us unless she shows our essays to Sally and she’ll never dare do that! The Sigglesback. Long live the Sigglesback!”
“Bet you she never even sees the point at all.”
It did not occur to them that their gloating voices rang clear and unmistakable through the wooden wall, and that Miss Sigglesthwaite, trudging up the path to the science room, heard every word.
She did not stop to listen. She had been educated according to a code which declared eavesdropping to be dishonourable. But though she despised these children, though they bored her inexpressibly, she c
ould not learn complete indifference to them.
When on Thursday evening she packed the pile of nature notebooks into her basket and cycled back with them to her lodgings, she was acutely aware of hatred and contempt surrounding her.
Miss Sigglesthwaite’s landlady served her with high tea. It was less trouble. She had to-night provided a smoked kipper. Because Agnes was late it seemed a peculiarly dried and bony kipper, yet its oily effulgence penetrated the air of the bed-sitting-room as though it had been the fattest and juiciest on the east coast. Before she entered the room, Agnes had a headache; she had not been there long before she felt sick as well. Edie’s letter was no more cheerful than usual. Her wireless battery had run down and she had decided to economise by selling the whole thing.
She dismissed her tea uneaten, closed her window because the fire smoked when she opened it, and shut herself in with the nature notebooks.
There was no reason why she should dread them so much. She scolded her apprehensive mind and cowardly heart. After all—what were these vulgar stupid little adolescents? Why should she care whatever they did or said?
She laid the books on the crimson tablecloth; she brought out her red ink and her marking pen. She sat down stalwartly beside them. She breathed her prayer for grace, “Lord, give me patience.”
She opened Gwynneth Rogers’ composition upon “The Life and Habits of the Sigglesback.”
Gwynneth, Maud, Nancy, Enid, Midge. Mechanically underlining words, surrounding blots with red circles, counting spelling faults, Agnes Sigglesthwaite went through the blurred uneven pages. She learned that she was dull, dirty, ugly, boring; that she had silly manners; that her hair was a bird’s nest and her dress untidy.
“The Sigglesback never mates; it is too bony. Also it has a most peculiar smell. It builds nests in its hair for breeding purposes. It has no voice but a kind of piping squeak when it is angry.”
They were not clever children. They had small powers of invention. Their venom outran their wit.
But it was enough for Agnes. It was too much.
Oh, cruel, cruel! They want to drive me away.
Do they think I like it? Do they think I want to stay here? Do they think it’s fun to put aside the important work I know I could do, and set nature essays to be mangled by their crude nasty little minds?
But they’re right. They’re right. That is what makes it intolerable. Because I ought not to be here. I’m no use with children. I dislike them. They bore me.
But Mother—Edie? How can I let them down? “My clever daughter, Agnes. Oh, God, what shall I do?”
Wasn’t it enough that I had to hate my work? Must they make me hate myself too?
Unattractive, dreary, tired. . . .
Ought I to have gone on wearing that old jumper?
But it doesn’t smell. Oh, no, it doesn’t smell!
Am I like that? “It has no voice—but a kind of piping squeak when it is angry.”
I am Agnes Sigglesthwaite. I won a scholarship to Cambridge. Professor Hemingway said I had a distinguished mind.
She touched her withered cheek with anxious explorative fingers. She moved to the looking-glass and gazed at her thin defenceless face, the mild blue eyes, the soft small unformed chin, the pretty mouth undeveloped as a child’s, the long reddened dyspeptic nose. She looked and looked. She could not believe that Agnes Sigglesthwaite, her father’s darling daughter, the brilliant scholar, the beloved respected sister, had come to this.
Oh, no! she moaned. Oh, no!
The landlady turned off the lights in the basement and went to bed. The public-house at the corner closed, and the men tramped home. The last train whistled, leaving the coast for Kingsport. Face downwards on the floor of her dreary room, beneath the white singing light of the incandescent gas, Agnes lay, calling upon her God who had turned His countenance from her, her father, who was dead, and her own fortitude, which had been exhausted. In her room at Maythorpe, watching the slow march of the moon, Midge lay and shuddered. God, I’ve been brave. I’ve proved myself a leader. Let them like me, God, please make me popular.
But Midge slept long before the science mistress. Agnes woke to hear her landlady on the stairs, panting up with the clattering breakfast tray. She crawled to her feet and stood as the door opened.
“Dressed already? Early this morning, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” murmured Agnes.
The hot tea revived her a little. But she felt so strange that she had to sit, clutching the arms of her chair as the room waltzed round her, up and down, swaying sideways, like the golden swans on a merry-go-round.
It was nine o’clock before she rose from the table. She must go to school. She must not be late for prayers. She gathered her books together.
Half-way down the stairs she remembered that she had not washed her face. That was very dirty. She climbed up again panting, but once in her room she could no longer remember why she had returned.
She was late for prayers after all, so went straight through to Form Remove, where she was due to take first period. When the girls filed into the form room, marching demurely, they saw her standing vaguely beside the blackboard, white-faced, red-eyed, her hair in wild disorder.
Members of the A.S.S. glanced at each other. They winked to keep up their spirits.
“Good-morning, Miss Sigglesthwaite.”
“Good-morning, girls. Sit down”—the customary formula.
They sat.
There was a pause. She looked vacantly at them.
Jennifer Howe, form prefect, who was not a member of the A.S.S., said helpfully:
“Shall I give out the notebooks for you, Miss Sigglesthwaite?”
“The notebooks. The nature notebooks.”
Agnes lifted a green-covered book and looked at it. Her voice sounded thick and strange. “Yes. I have read your nature essays. I have also read notices in the cycle shed. We will have a viva-voce examination. Midge Carne!”
Midge sprang to her feet, vibrating with heroic tension.
“What does the A.S.S. stand for?”
“I—I——”
“Nancy!” Pause. “Gwynneth!”
No answer.
“Come here, Midge.”
Midge marched to the desk, swaggering. If she also trembled none knew it—not even herself.
“Is this your work?”
“Yes, Miss Sigglesback.”
It was a slip of the tongue, a trick of nerves. Midge gulped back a snigger.
“You formed the A.S.S.?”
“Yes.”
“You are its president?”
“Yes.”
“You organised this—this” a thin dirty finger trembled on the offending books. The snigger broke from control. Midge began to giggle.
“So you think it’s funny, do you! To persecute someone who never did you harm? To drive me away when I have my living to make? To organise a cruel malicious attack, a—a— Because your father’s a school governor you think you can do what you like. But I tell you, I tell you . . .”
The mumbling furious voice scared Midge out of all sense. Her terrified giggling rose to shrill frightened laughter.
“You laugh now! You dare to laugh at me!”
The science mistress rose from her chair and towered above the child.
“You beast! You little beast!” she hissed, and with the ruler in her hand struck twice at the child’s thin sallow face.
Midge gasped.
Never in her life had any one struck her.
For a moment shock overcame her pain.
Then, as at the second blow, the sharp edge of the ruler caught and cut her delicate skin, she shrank back with a startled cry.
Miss Sigglesthwaite looked down at her handiwork and for the first time she knew what she had done. Her violence had restored her sanity. She became completely calm.
Carefully she laid down the ruler on the blotting-paper, straightening it with meticulous precision.
“Girls,” she said, “get ou
t your botany text books. Turn to see here. Start learning the lists that you will find there. Midge, go back to your seat. Jennifer, you are in charge.”
She turned to the door. Jennifer, astonished beyond question, sprang to open it. With a dignity that she had never shown before, Miss Sigglesthwaite left the room and stalked down the passage.
She went straight to Miss Burton’s office and entered. She saw the head mistress seated at her desk.
“Yes? Well, Miss Sigglesthwaite, what is it?”
Sarah was none too pleased at the interruption. The timetable over her desk showed her that Miss Sigglesthwaite should be giving a natural history lesson to Form Remove.
“I wish to hand in my resignation.”
“Your what?”
“My resignation. I am leaving at once. I have hit Midge Carne. I have cut her cheek open.”
“Hit—Midge?”
“I wanted to kill her,” observed Agnes calmly. Then, with a vague gesture. “I don’t—feel—very well.”
She sat down on the chair facing Sarah’s desk and, with a mumbled apology, lost consciousness.
3
Mr. Huggins Tastes the Madness of Victory
MOTORISTS down the Pudsea Buttock road could see a notice-board on a square brick house from which faded letters peeled, proclaiming:
Alfred Ezekiel Huggins
Haulage Contractor, Carrier
The house stood back behind a little garden, tangled with leggy chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies. Beyond it loomed the lichen-mottled roofs of dilapidated stables, sheds and granaries which had belonged to it when it was a farm. To the north, protruding like a pimple from the high wall of the barn, bulged Mrs. Pidney’s cottage. The little Pidneys were always overflowing from their cramped quarters into the more spacious domain of Mr. Huggins, scrambling over shafts, falling off stepladders, hiding themselves in lorries, and nearly driving Mrs. Huggins frantic.
For Mrs. Huggins was a constant sufferer in the same way in which some women are constant readers. She suffered from rheumatism, neuritis, headaches, nervous dyspepsia and the Gentlemen. One gathered from her whispered confidence to refined female friends that the Gentlemen constituted a chronic though mysterious disease, hardly to be mentioned in polite society.
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