Soon after the incident of the canary,
the three older girls went to school. When her
first home-sickness was passed, Henrietta enjoyed the
life. It was strict, but home had been strict,
and there was much more variety here. She was
clever, and took eager delight in her lessons; dull,
stupid Miss Weston had found her beyond her.
She would have liked school even more
if her temper had been under better control.
But at thirteen she had settled down to bad temper
as a habit. She did not exactly put her feelings
into thoughts, but there was an impression in her
mind that as she had been out of it so much of her
life she should be allowed to be bad-tempered as a
consolation. This brought her into constant conflicts,
which made no one so unhappy as herself.
She had two great interests at school,
Miranda Hardcastle and Miss Arundel. Miranda
was the kind of girl whom everybody is always going
to adore, very pretty, very amusing, and with much
cordiality of manner. Henrietta fell a victim
at once, and Miranda, who drank in all adoration,
gave Henrietta some good-natured friendship in return.
Henrietta fagged for her, did as many of her lessons
as she could, applauded all her remarks, amply rewarded
by Miranda’s welcoming smile and her, “I’ve
been simply pining for you, my child; come and hear
me my French at once, like a seraphim.”
This happy state of things continued
until unfortunately Henrietta’s temper, over
which she had kept an anxious guard in Miranda’s
presence, showed signs of activity. The first
time this occurred Miranda opened her large eyes very
wide and said, “What’s come over my young
friend, has it got the hydrophobia? I shall try
and cure it by kindness and give it some chocolate.”
Henrietta’s clouds dispersed,
but she was not always so easily restored to good-humour;
and Miranda, with the whole school at her feet, was
not going to stand bad temper, the fault on the whole
least easily forgiven by girls. Henrietta had
a heartrending scene with her: at fifteen she
liked heartrending scenes. Miranda was too fond
of popularity to give Henrietta up entirely, so the
two remained friendly, but they were no longer intimate.
Miss Arundel was the head-mistress’s
sister, and undertook all the serious teaching that
was not in the hands of masters. She did not have
many outward attractions of face and form, but schoolgirls
will know that that is not of much importance.
She was adored, possibly because she had a bad temper
(bad temper is an asset in a teacher), which was liable
to burst forth unexpectedly; then she was clever and
enthusiastic, and gave good lessons. She marked
out Henrietta, and it came round that she had said,
“Etta Symons is an interesting girl, she has
possibilities. I wonder how she will turn out.”
It came round also that Miss Arundel had said, “I
only wish she had more control and tenacity of purpose,”
but this sentence Henrietta put out of her head.
The first sentence she thought of for hours on end,
and set to work to be more interesting than ever;
in fact for some days she was so affected and exasperating
that Miss Arundel could hardly contain herself.
Still, even Miss Arundel’s sarcasm was endurable,
anything was endurable, after that gratifying remark.
When Miranda ceased to be her special
friend, she transferred her whole heart and soul to
Miss Arundel. She waylaid her with flowers, hung
about in the passage on the chance of seeing her walk
by, and waited on her as much as she dared. Some
teachers apparently enjoy girl adorations,
and even take pains to secure them. Miss Arundel
had had enough of them to find them disagreeable.
She therefore gave out in the presence of two or three
of Henrietta’s circle that she thought it was
a pity Etta Symons wasted so much of her pocket-money
on buttonholes which gave very little pleasure to
anyone, certainly not to her, who particularly disliked
strong scents; she thought the money could be much
better expended.
Jessie Winsley repeated this speech
to Henrietta, little thinking what anguish it would
cause. Henrietta had very little pride, very little
proper pride some people might have said; she did not
at all mind giving a great deal more than she got.
But this speech, which was not, after all, so very
malignant, drove her to despair. She went to Miranda,
who hugged her, and said: “Old cat! barbaric
old cat! Never think of her again, she isn’t
worth it. Try dear little Stanley, he’s
a pet; men are much nicer.” Stanley was
the drawing-master.
But after all one must have a little
encouragement to start an adoration, and as Henrietta
never could draw, she got none from Stanley.
Besides she was constant, so instead, she brooded over
Miss Arundel. She had not been so unhappy, when
she had her Miranda and her Arundel. Now she
had lost them both. Miss Arundel, with her cool,
unaffectionate interest, had, of course, never been
“had” at all, but Henrietta had imagined
that when Miss Arundel said “Yes, quite right,
that’s a good answer,” it was a kind of
beginning of friendship. She, Henrietta, small
and insignificant, was singled out for Miss Arundel’s
friendship; that was what she thought. She did
not realize that it was possible to care merely for
intellectual development.
When she was prepared for Confirmation,
there were serious talks about her character.
The Vicar, whose classes she attended, was mostly
concerned with doctrines, and Mrs. Marston with what
one might call a list of ideal vices and temptations
which pupils must guard themselves against. Miss
Arundel talked to her about her untidy exercise books,
her unpunctuality, her loud voice in the corridor,
and her round shoulders, and explained very properly
that inattention in these comparatively small matters
showed a general want of self-control. She did
not speak about bad temper, for Henrietta was much
too frightened of her to show any signs of temper
in her proximity. Miss Arundel did not give her
an opportunity of unburdening herself of the problem
that weighed on her mind, not that she would have
taken the opportunity if it had occurred, not after
that speech about the buttonholes. This was the
problem: Why was it that people did not love her? she
to whom love was so much that if she did not have
it, nothing else in the world was worth having.
There had been Evelyn, it is true, but now Evelyn did
lessons with a little friend of her own age, and she
and the friend were all in all, and did not want Henrietta
in the holidays. Henrietta reflected that she
was not uglier, or stupider, or duller than anyone
else. There was a large set at school who were
ugly, stupid, and dull, and they were devoted to one
another, though they none of them cared about her.
Why had God sent her into the world, if she was not
wanted? She found the problem insoluble, but
a certain amount of light was thrown on it by one
of the girls.
She had been snarling with two or
three of her classmates over the afternoon preparation,
and had flounced off in a rage by herself. She
felt a touch on her arm, and turning round saw Emily
Mence, a rather uncouth, clever girl, whom she hardly
knew.
“I just came to say, Why are you such
an idiot?”
“Me?”
“Yes, why do you lose your temper
like that? All the girls are laughing at you;
they always do when you get cross.”
“Then I think it’s horrid of them.”
“Well, you can’t be surprised;
of course people won’t stand you, if you’re
so cross.”
“Won’t they?” said
Henrietta. “And the one thing I want in
the world is to be liked.”
“Do you really? Fancy wanting
these girls to like you; they’re such silly
little things.”
“I shouldn’t mind that if only they liked
me.”
“I like you,” said
Emily. “Do you remember you said Charles
I. deserved to have his head cut off because he was
so stupid, and all the others gushed over him?”
“Did I?”
“I don’t like the other
girls to laugh at you; that’s why I thought I
would tell you.”
They walked up and down the path and
talked about Charles I. Here there seemed the beginning
of a friendship, but it was nipped in the bud, for
Emily left unexpectedly at the end of the term.
Henrietta received no further overtures from any of
the girls.
Emily’s words had made an impression
however, and for six weeks Henrietta took a great
deal of pains with her temper. For this concession
on her part she expected Providence to give her an
immediate and abundant measure of popularity.
It did not. The Symons family had not the friend-making
quality a capricious quality, which withholds
itself from those who have the greatest desire, and
even apparently the best right, to possess it.
The girls were kind, kinder, on the whole, than the
grown-up world, and they were perfectly willing to
give her their left arms round the garden, but their
right would be occupied by their real friends, to
whom they would be telling their experiences, and
Henrietta would only come in for a, “Wasn’t
it sickening, Etta?” now and then. She
was disappointed, and she relaxed her efforts.
She had missed the excitement of saying disagreeable
things. The day had become chilly without them.
By the middle of the term she was as disagreeable
as ever.
She very rarely received good advice
in her life, and now that she had got it, she made
no use of it. If she had, it might have changed
the whole of her future. But from henceforth,
on birthdays, New Year’s Eves, and other anniversaries,
when she took stock of herself and her character,
she ignored her temper, and would not count it as a
factor that could be modified. There were others
as lonely as herself at school, there are always many
lonely in a community; but she did not realize this,
and felt herself exceptional. She imagined that
she was overwhelmed with misery at this time, but
really the life was so busy, and she was so fond of
the lessons, and did them so well, that she was not
to be pitied as much as she thought.
It was clear she was to be lonely
at school and lonely at home. Where was she to
find relief? There was a supply of innocuous story-books
for the perusal of Mrs. Marston’s pupils on
Saturday half-holidays, innocuous, that is to say,
but for the fact that they gave a completely erroneous
view of life, and from them Henrietta discovered that
heroines after the sixteenth birthday are likely to
be pestered with adorers. The heroines, it is
true, were exquisitely beautiful, which Henrietta knew
she was not, but from a study of “Jane Eyre”
and “Villette” in the holidays, Charlotte
Bronte was forbidden at school owing to her excess
of passion, Henrietta realized that the plain may be
adored too, so she had a modest hope that when the
magic season of young ladyhood arrived, a Prince Charming
would come and fall in love with her. This hope
filled more and more of her thoughts, and all her
last term, when other girls were crying at the thought
of leaving, she was counting the days to her departure.