The tortoiseshell cat

You could never be quite sure how Mrs. Lysaght would take anything. Even thin Miss Winter, the Secretary, who must have loved her or she could never have stood it, went about her duties murmuring, “I hope I’ve done right....” And, as Miss Fairfax said, you could feel the pit of the poor thing’s stomach sink on hope. Miss Fairfax was a little coarse at times: like a man. It was the result of a classical tripos. Gillian had gathered this from Mrs. Lysaght on the bewildering occasion when she had first received the head mistress’s instructions, at tea. Mrs. Lysaght had been in bed that afternoon.

“I seize every opportunity of rest—facing the light—so revealing—and thick bread and butter—you will not mind, dear.”

Gillian did mind being called “dear,” and the bread and butter was certainly thick; but she was so much engrossed in wondering how Mrs. Lysaght either rested or enjoyed whatever revelation the faced light might bring (though quite in bed) while eating thick bread and butter, interviewing a junior mistress and writing what might be a diary and again might at the same time be a prospectus, with one of those collapsible gold pencils which requires to be un-collapsed every half-page or so, that she missed the next two hundred words—you couldn’t call any of Mrs. Lysaght’s utterances sentences—and only caught up with those on which she left Miss Fairfax.

“Sound scholarship but coarseness—very sad—still the Greeks—_and_ the Romans—passages in the Epistles—and the Joint Board’s set-books this year—Satires, dear—Horace—_such_ a pity—English purity—French refinement—Yours so different.”

Gillian, whose subjects were English and Foreign Literature (“foreign” being a term comprehending French and German only), found her mind rocketing between Le Misanthrope and Hamlet, also “set-books” that year, with horrid memories of lines the full significance of which she had never quite explored herself, but which in her new capacity she was now about to purvey to the young and inquisitive. What, for example, was the grosser name that liberal shepherds gave...?

“Correlate—always correlate.” Mrs. Lysaght was getting a little breathless and the lead had sunk below the rim of the gold case of her pencil. “References to History—dear Miss Parratt, so essentially refined—to Geography and Botany—the whole time-table—especially in the middle forms, and, whenever possible in dramatic form. The teaching of the Church, dear, Miracle and Mystery Plays—on the chest of drawers, dear—a little red box. Thank you—the school motto—_our utmost for the highest_—once a week for five minutes in every subject—and _low_-heeled shoes—ah! no—that was little Miss Battinson—but Saint Paul—infallible—if only all women—but you with such a father will know how right....”

On the way home Gillian met Miss Fairfax.

“Well, child,” said the classical mistress, “did you count the finite verbs? Parratt and I keep a book of them and the one who gets ten in one week wins. But she’s a great woman once you’ve got out of the mist.”

But Gillian never got out of the mist; not quite. It is true that the improbable connexion between her father (dead long ago of black-water fever in Burma) and Saint Paul, turned out, like the low-heeled shoes, to be proper to little Miss Battinson whose heels were very high and whose father was a well-known Dissenting Minister. And, little by little, she learnt to follow, with surprising success, the flying leaps taken by Mrs. Lysaght’s conversation from branch to branch of the Tree of Life, as she passed in and out of the great old Georgian house and across the spreading lawns, in which her famous school was lodged.

It was when the squirrel talk leapt—not only in the Tree of Life, but across the spaces which divide its branches from those of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that Gillian failed, and it was this failure which had brought her to the disaster she was now facing.

There was, Gillian had gathered this from the conversation in the Assistant Mistresses’ Room, one week in the year when Mrs. Lysaght deserted her post to make a pilgrimage. Colonel Lysaght was buried in Jersey, where he had died, and his death had synchronized with the dates not only of his own, but of his mother’s birthday as well. Old Lady Alice Lysaght, who had married at seventeen, was a woman of indomitable sentimentality, and, as her widowed daughter-in-law was her only surviving relative, the celebration of this triple anniversary on the spot where a comprehensive monument had been erected to it, was an event before which even the routine of Pelham House broke down.

In June, in the first week of June, Mrs. Lysaght always went to Jersey and left Miss Fairfax to rule in her stead. The one lesson a week which the head mistress gave in each form was distributed among the staff, and until you had occupied one of these forsaken posts during the annual retreat, you were not really established at Pelham House. It would generally take a new mistress eighteen months to attain what, in deference to the Colonel’s military shade, was called her majority, especially if, as Gillian had, she only joined the staff at the beginning of the summer term. But in Gillian’s case, the confirmation was swift and took place before she had been at Pelham House for more than six weeks.

“I hope I’m doing right in telling you, Miss Armstrong,” poor Miss Winter had said, “but Mrs. Lysaght wishes you to take the Scripture Class in V.B. next week while she is away.”

“Me?” said Gillian, looking up from the French Composition she was correcting. “What book are they doing?”

Miss Winter consulted her sheaf of notes.

“Psalms,” she discovered; “but you are to do whatever you like. A single lesson is what Mrs. Lysaght always asks for. She prefers not to have her own treatment of the set-books interrupted. She thinks it might confuse the girls’ minds.” Miss Winter was incapable of disrespect and Gillian’s gurgle of delight died away in the long silence into which it travelled.

“I’ll do Naaman the Syrian,” she said. “It’s the finest short story in the world. I always want to send it in for one of those competitions.”

“You’ve got a horrid, secular mind, my girl,” said Miss Fairfax. “And you don’t seem to realize the signal honour bestowed on you.”

“No,” said Gillian, “it doesn’t seem very honourable—extra work. That’s why I chose Naaman. I know him by heart. Besides, it’s so well done.”

Miss Fairfax snorted.

“The mind of your principal is still a sealed book to you,” and she left the room without further argument.

On the following Tuesday, after Recreation, Gillian took V.B. through the finest short story in the world and felt her own enthusiasm merge in the collective excitement of the class as the drama turned on itself and worked back from healing to destruction in the great anticlimax:—

“Went not my heart with thee when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee?”

Miss Parratt, whose subject was History, and whose essential refinement was a quality attributed to her by Mrs. Lysaght on account of her fretful manner rather than in consequence of any real knowledge of her character, complained about it at luncheon:

“I took V.B. for the last lesson this morning, after you, Miss Armstrong. They were all quite excited. As though they’d been to the theatre.”

“Well, it was rather like that,” Gillian admitted; “it was bound to be. I got terribly excited myself.”

“It’s not at all the state I’m used to for that class,” said Miss Parratt.

“Do you think they ought to be excited after a Scripture lesson?” asked little Miss Battinson, not without malice.

“Don’t be silly, Battinson,” said Miss Fairfax; “all Armstrong’s lessons are exciting. I can’t hear myself speak in the Shell when the Third Form’s singing French verbs at her next door. I’m going to bring it up at the next mistresses’ meeting.”

Gillian apologized.

“They do make a noise, I know. But it was the only way I could think of to keep them quiet.”

“I do see what you mean, though I don’t think you put it very accurately; however, that is only a passing problem. What I really should like to know is why Mrs. Lysaght gave you, of all people, V.B. for her Scripture hour. The confirmation class. It was mine by right. You’ve cut me out. You’re a thruster. I’m now in the outer darkness with Science and Physical Exercise. Praise God!” and Miss Fairfax helped herself to a great deal of rather weak mustard which ran down into the gravy on her plate.

Two days later, Mrs. Lysaght having returned to Pelham House, Miss Fairfax learned the truth.

“It seems,” she told Gillian, “that she was looking in on your Literature lesson one day and found the Fourth Form standing in serried ranks saying as one girl:

“‘And so the whole round world in every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.’

She says the deep devotional note you had so patiently got out of that particularly callous set—what’s the matter?”

“In the first place,” said Gillian, “how do you understand all that from what she says?”

“I’m used to it. How did you get the Fourth Form...?”

“But I was making them use their chest notes on all those o’s and ou’s, whole, round, bound, gold.”

“You’d chosen a particularly high-class sentiment.”