6
“Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?” said Miss Jenny, getting into her chair at Miss Perne’s right hand.
Perhaps the newspaper would not be mentioned after all. If it were she would simply say she had been preparing for Monday and was going to read it after supper. Anyhow there was never any threat with the Pernes of anything she would not be able to deal with. She glanced to see what there was to eat, and then, feeling Miss Haddie’s eye from across the table, assumed an air of interested abstraction to cover her disappointment. Cold white blancmange in a round dish garnished with prunes, bread and butter, a square of cream cheese on a green-edged dessert plate, a box of plain biscuits, the tall bottle of lime juice and the red glass jug of water. Nothing really sweet and nice—the blancmange would be flavoured with laurel—prussic acid—and the prunes would be sweet in the wrong sort of way—wholesome, just sweet fruit. Cheese—how could people eat cheese?
“Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes—Polly Allen and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats.”
“Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling and pouring the milk from the spoon.
Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek. She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from a prune.
“Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over her pince-nez.
Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the far-off bookshelves.
“I did not speak to them——”
“Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath.
“I did not speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly at the bookcase, “for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with regard to Constance’s prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground in the condition I have described to you.”
Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle.
“Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak to them. They’ve no business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go.”
“Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention.”
“Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should have done something. Don’t you think you ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps—eh?—or managed to get at the gels in some way—dear, dear, what is to be done? You see it is hardly of any use to speak to them afterwards. You want to catch them red-handed and make them feel ashamed of themselves.”
“I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, the justice of all that you say. But I can only repeat that in the circumstances in which I found myself I was entirely unable to exercise any control whatever upon the doings of the gels. They were running; and long before I was free from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of sight.”
Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative tone that seemed each moment on the point of delighted laughter, her delicate head held high, her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained pleasure. Miriam saw vividly the picture in the park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the sad asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London greenery, the October wind rushing through it, Miss Perne’s high stylish arrowy figure fluttered by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. Brinkwell’s story, the dreadful asphalt playground away to the left, its gaunt swings and bars—gallows.... Ingoldsby—the girls rushing across it, and held herself sternly back from a vision of Miss Perne chasing the delinquents down the wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? As much as to say There, my dear Jenny, there’s a problem you can’t answer. She enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset about the girls. She spoke exactly as if she were reading aloud from “Robinson Crusoe.” Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her eyes about as she gently spooned up her bread and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether Miss Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen gravely. She was evidently angry and disgusted. But still she could watch.
“Did ye go that way at all afterwards—the way the girls went?”
“I did not,” beamed Miss Perne, turning to Miss Jenny as if waiting for a judgment.
“Well, eh, I’m sure, really, it’s most diffikilt. What is one to do with these gels? Now, Miriam, here’s something for you to exercise your wits upon. What would ye do, eh?”
Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. Of course she had never rushed about in a common park where rough boys came. At the same time—if the girls wanted to rush about and scream and wear no hats nobody had any right to interfere with them ... they ought to be suppressed though, North London girls, capable of anything in the way of horridness ... the Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls were in themselves, common and knowing and horrid. “Dear, funny little O.M.’s” ... they were something much more than that. They were wrong about the hats, but it was good, heavenly to be here like this with them. She turned to Miss Jenny, her mind in a warm confusion, and smiled into the little red face peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon loops.
“Well?”
“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie’s soft hollow voice, “how should the child judge?”
Miriam’s heart leapt. She smiled inanely and eagerly accepted a second helping of blancmange suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was drawing little panting breaths and blinking sharply at her.
“Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, it’s a chance for you. Come along.”
“Tomboys,” said Miss Haddie indignantly.
Miriam drew a breath. It was wrong, they were not tomboys—she knew they had not run like tomboys—they had scuttled, she was sure—horrid girls, that was what they were, nothing the Pernes could understand. The Pernes ought not to be bothered with them.
“Well,” she said, feeling a sudden security, “are we responsible for them out of school hours?”
Miss Haddie’s eyebrows moved nervously, and Miss Perne’s smile turned to a dubious mouthing.
“Eh, there you are. D’ye see, Deborah. That’s it. That’s the crucial point. Are we responsible? I’m sure I can’t say. That places the whole difficulty in a nutshell. Here are these gels, not even day boarders. How far can we control their general behaviour? Eh? I’m sure I don’t know.”
“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie quickly, her hollow voice reverberating as if she were using a gargle, “it’s quite obvious that we can’t have gels known to belong to the school running about in the park with nothing on.”
“I agree, my dear Haddie. But, as Jenny says, how are we to prevent such conduct?”
“Don’t let us lose sight of Miriam’s point. Are we responsible for their play-times? I suppose we’re not, you know, Deborah, really after all. Not directly, perhaps. But sheerly we are indirectly responsible. Sheerly. We ought to be able to make it impossible for them to carry on in this unseemly fashion.”
“Yes, yes,” said Miss Deborah eagerly, “sheerly.”
“Is it education?” suggested Miriam.
“That’s it, my dear. It is education. That’s what’s wanted. That’s what these gels want. I don’t know, though. All this talk of education. It ought to be the thing. And yet look at these two gels. Both of them from Miss Cass’s. There’s her school now. Famous all over London. Three hundred gels. We’ve had several here. And they’ve all had that objectionable noisy tone. Eh, Deborah? I don’t know. How is it to be accounted for? Eh?”
“I’ve never heard of Miss Cass’s,” said Miriam.
“My dear child! It’s not possible! D’ye mean to say ye don’t know Miss Cass’s high school?”
“Oh, if it’s a high school, of course.”
All three ladies waited, with their eyes on her, making a chorus of inarticulate sounds.
“Oh well, high schools are simply fearful.”
Miriam glowed in a tide of gentle cackling laughter.
“Well, you know, I think there’s something in it,” giggled Miss Jenny softly. “It’s the number perhaps. That’s what I always say, Deborah. Treating the gels like soldiers. Like a regiment. D’ye see? No individual study of the gels’ characters——”
“Well. However that may be, I am sure of one thing. I am sure that on Monday Polly and Eunice must be reprimanded. Severely reprimanded.”
“Yes. I suppose they must. They’re nice gels at heart, you know. Both of them. That’s the worst of it. Well, I hardly mean that. Only so often the naughty gels are so thoroughly—well—nice, likable at bottom, ye know, eh? I’m sure. I don’t know.”