Snake and Sword Part 11

"Yes," agreed Lucille, and added, "Pa.r.s.e _Smellie,_" whereupon, with one voice and heart and purpose the twain broke into a paean, not of praise--a kind of tribal lay, and chanted:--

"_Smellie_--Very common noun, absurd person, singular back number, tutor gender, objectionable case governed by the word _I_," and so _da capo_.

And yet the poor lady strove to do her duty in that station of life in which it had pleased Providence (or a drunken father) to place her--and to make the children "genteel". Had she striven to win their love instead, her ministrations might have had some effect (other than infinite irritation and bitter dislike).

She was the Compleat Governess, on paper, and all that a person entrusted with the training of young children should not be, in reality. She had innumerable and admirable testimonials from various employers of what she termed "aristocratic standing"; endless certificates that testified unto her successful struggles in Music, Drawing, Needlework, German, French, Calisthenics, Caligraphy, and other mysteries, including the more decorous Sciences (against Physiology, Anatomy, Zoology, Biology, and Hygiene she set her face as subjects apt to be, at times, improper), and an appearance and manner themselves irrefragible proofs of the highest moral virtue.

She also had the warm and unanimous witness of the children at Monksmead that she was a Beast.

To those who frankly realize with open eyes that the student of life must occasionally encounter indelicacies upon the pleasant path of research, it may be revealed, in confidence, that they alluded to Miss Smellie as "Sniffy" when not, under extreme provocation, as "Stinker".

She taught them many things and, prominently, Deceit, Hate, and an utter dislike of her G.o.d and her Religion--a most disastrous pair.

Poor old "Grumper"; advertising, he got her, paid her highly, and gave her almost absolute control of the minds, souls, and bodies of his young wards and "grandchildren".

"The best of everything" for them--and they, at the average age of eight, a band of depressed, resentful babes, had "hanged, drawed, and quartered" her in effigy, within a month of coming beneath her stony ministrations.

In appearance Miss Smellie was tall, thin, and flat. Most exceedingly and incredibly flat. Impossibly flat. Her figure, teeth, voice, hair, manner, hats, clothes, and whole life and conduct were flat as Euclid's plane-surface or yesterday's champagne.

To counter-balance the possession, perhaps, of so many virtues, gifts, testimonials, and certificates she had no chin, no eyebrows, and no eyelashes. Her eyes were weak and watery; her spectacles strong and thick; her nose indeterminate, wavering, erratic; her ears large, her teeth irregular and protrusive, her mouth unfortunate and not guaranteed to close.

An ugly female face is said to be the index and expression of an ugly mind. It certainly was so in the case of Miss Smellie. Not that she had an evil or vicious mind in any way--far from it, for she was a narrowly pious and dully conscientious woman. Her mind was ugly as a useful building may be very ugly--or as a room devoid of beautiful furniture or over-crowded with cheap furniture may be ugly.

And her mind was devoid of beautiful thought-furniture, and over-crowded with cheap and ugly furniture of text-book facts. She was an utterly loveless woman, living unloving, and unloved--a terrible condition.

One _could not_ like her.

Deadly dull, narrow, pedantic, petty, uninspiring, Miss Smellie's ideals, standards, and aims were incredibly low.

She lived, and taught others to live, for appearances.

The children were so to behave that they might appear "genteel". If they were to do this or that, no one would think they were young ladies or young gentlemen.

"If we were out at tea and you did that, I _should_ be ashamed," she would cry when some healthy little human licked its jarnmy fingers, and "_Do_ you wish to be considered vulgar or a little gentleman, Damocles?"

Damocles was profoundly indifferent on the point and said so plainly.

They were not to be clean of hand for hygienic reasons--but for fear of what people might "think"; they were not to be honourable, gentle, brave and truthful because these things are fine--but because of what the World might dole out in reward; they were not to eat slowly and masticate well for their health's sake--but by reason of "good manners"; they were not to study that they might develop their powers of reasoning, store their minds, and enlarge their horizons--but that they might pa.s.s some infernal examination or other, _ad majorem Smelliae gloriam_; they were not to practise the musical art that they might have a soul-developing aesthetic training, a means of solace, delight, and self-expression--but that they might "play their piece"

to the casual visitor to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it was the recommended way to Eternal Bliss and a Good Time Hereafter--the whole duty of canny and respectable man being to "save his soul" therefore.

Her charges were skilfully, if unintentionally, trained in hypocrisy and mean motive, to look for low reward and strive for paltry ends--to do what looked well, say what sounded well, to be false, veneered, ungenuine.

And Miss Smellie was giving them the commonly accepted "education" of their cla.s.s and kind.

The prize product of the Smellie system was the Haddock whose whole life was a pose, a lie, a refusal to see the actual. Perhaps she influenced him more strongly than the others because he was caught younger and was of weaker fibre. Anyhow he grew up the perfect and heartless sn.o.b, and by the time he left Oxford, he would sooner have been seen in a Black Maria with Lord Snooker than in a heavenly chariot with a prophet of unmodish garment and vulgar ancestry.

To the finished Haddock, a tie was more than a character, and the cut of a coat more than the cutting of a loving heart.

To him a "gentleman" was a person who had the current accent and waistcoat, a competence, the entree here and there--a goer unto the correct places with the correct people. Manners infinitely more than conduct; externals everything; let the whitening be white and the sepulchre mattered not.

The Haddock had no bloodful vice, but he was unstable as water and could not excel, a moral coward and weakling, a liar, a borrower of what he never intended to return, undeniably and incurably mean, the complete parasite.

From the first he feared and blindly obeyed Miss Smellie, propitiated while loathing her; accepted her statements, standards, and beliefs; curried favour and became her spy and informer.

"What's about the record cricket-ball throw, Dam?" inquired Lucille, as they strolled down the path to the orchard and kitchen-garden, hot-houses, stream and stables, to seek the coy, reluctant worm.

"Dunno," replied the boy, "but a hundred yards wants a lot of doing."

"Wonder if _I_ could do it," mused Lucille, picking up a tempting egg-shaped pebble, nearly as big as her fist, and throwing it with remarkably neat action (for a girl) at the first pear-tree over the bridge that spanned the trout-stream.

_At_, but not into.

With that extraordinary magnetic attraction which gla.s.s has for the missile of the juvenile thrower, the orchid-house, on the opposite side of the path from the pear-tree, drew the errant stone to its hospitable shelter.

Through the biggest pane of gla.s.s it crashed, neatly decapitated a rare, choice exotic, the pride of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, released from its hold a hanging basket, struck a large pot (perched high in a state of unstable equilibrium), and pa.s.sed out on the other side with something accomplished, something done, to earn a long repose.

So much for the stone.

The descending pot lit upon the edge of one side of the big gla.s.s aquarium, smashed it, and continued its career, precipitating an avalanche of lesser pots and their priceless contents.

The hanging basket, now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exact.i.tude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, irascible child and woman hater.

"Bull's-eye!" commented Dam--always terse when not composing fairy-tales.

"Crikey!" shrieked Lucille. "That's done it," and fled straightway to her room and violent earnest prayer, not for forgiveness but for salvation, from consequences. (What's the good of Saying your Prayers if you can't look for Help in Time of Trouble such as this?)

The face of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith was not pleasant to see as he pranced forth from the orchid-house, brandishing an implement of his trade.

"Ye'll be needing a wash the day, Mon Sandy, and the Sawbath but fower days syne," opined Dam, critically observing the moss-and-mud streaked head, face and neck of the raving, incoherent victim of Lucille's effort.

When at all lucid and comprehensible Mr. MacIlwraith was understood to say he'd give his place (and he twanty-twa years in it) to have the personal trouncing of Dam, that Limb, that Deevil, that predestined and fore-doomed Child of Sin, that--

Dam pocketed his hands and said but:--

"_Havers_, Mon Sandy!"

"I'll tak' the hide fra y'r bones yet, ye f.e.c.kless, impident--"

Dam shook a disapproving head and said but:--

"_Clavers_, Mon Sandy!"

"I'll _see_ ye skelped onny-how--or lose ma job, ye--"

More in sorrow than in anger Dam sighed and said but:--

"_Hoots_, Mon Sandy!"