The insecurity of my steps gave me an impression of great weakness and I was in a state of consternation.
I got as far as a large mirror, level with the ground along the wall opposite the door, between two cupboards. Mechanically I looked and was transfixed by what the mirror revealed. I saw with wretched surprise a face which was the reflection of my own. I saw its look of shame and its tear-dimmed eyes. Yes! I saw myself in a little girl's drawers with bare arms and shoulders, wearing ridiculous wretched stays; absurd stockings and hateful, uncomfortable boots, grotesquely arched and high.
At the sensation of the hand of the mistress upon my shoulder, I trembled. She was tying shoulder-straps to my corset, but the leather of this appliance for making me keep my chest well up was very thick and stiff. She pressed herself against me and put her cheek close to mine. I saw in the glass her amused, smiling expression; her large face contrasting with the despairing features against which it was held.
I should have long remained staring at this picture, for my power of volition seemed to have died within me, if she had not roughly burst in upon my thoughts.
'We've no time to lose. You must dress and eat a scrap of something in your fingers. You can see that playtime has already begun and soon the bell will ring for work to start again. It won't do for you not to be in your place on the very first day. It would be a bad example.'
As she spoke, she pulled me away from the glass and her quick hands busied themselves in the task of dressing me. I let her do as she liked, lost in my thoughts. Playhours, she had told me, had begun; and I could not hear a sound save the clattering on stones of heels of the same pattern, doubtless, as those I was myself condemmed to use.
What then could be the meaning of this play, which was conducted in silence?
How little it resembled the playground of that good parish school I so sorely regretted! There the master stood apart from us, looking at us and seldom speaking. His few words were a remonstrance addressed to any scholar who was not sufficiently exerting himself, or who was altogether neglecting to play, and always in those calm even tones. He was indeed in the habit of telling us, as though he were citing a maxim, that exercise ought to be violent and work tranquil.
I was dressed. The mistress pushed me in front of the mirror. Except for my short hair, I looked a girl, indeed a pretty girl, if I may say so. This conclusion gave me little pleasure.
I was thoroughly sick at heart.
Still guided by the under-mistress, Mrs. Eagle, I reached the dining-hall, which had been vacated by everyone a quarter of an hour before. The cloth had already been removed from the immense table, but a napkin had been spread and a knife and fork placed thereon for me. I had to sit down and do honour to the food which a maid brought me. I was served by the mistress. I managed to eat, but at each mouthful, a lump seemed to rise in my throat and nearly choke me.
I had the habit not unusual with little boys, of leaning far forward over my plate and eating quickly. But this was now out of the question. The leather shoulder-straps cut into my flesh and the bones of my corset were very painful so soon as ever I attempted to lean forward. My unhappiness took away my appetite and I ate without pleasure and consequently not very quickly.
The under-mistress, however, pressed me to eat. She cut up my meat and scolded me.
At length the cheese was brought and I ate more rapidly and was again scolded.
This time my offence consisted in having let a little butter fall on my white muslin bodice, whence it threatened to slip on to the sash of azure-hued silk with which I had been adorned.
We the dining-hall and went into the school-room where the pupils were already taking their places. The vigour and energy of my under-mistress saved me for the nonce. By dint of hustling me along, she succeeded in getting me to enter the room with the last comers. Although the distance was so short, I had more than twenty times nearly measured my length on the floor thanks to my abominable heels. But she had roughly pushed me and half carried me along, appearing to attach vast importance to our not arriving after the others.
Her face was smiling, out of breath though she was, as she dragged me by the hand right up in front of the high desk where the scraggy Mrs. Stuart was enthroned. She replied by a nod of the head, as abrupt as though caused by pulling a trigger, to the profound curtsey with which she was honoured by graceful, dumpy Mrs. Eagle. The under-mistress shook my arm roughly, whispering:
'You too have got to salute!'
I did as I had been accustomed to do at the parish school when saluting our stiff and starched schoolmaster. That is to say, I executed a sort of military salute. I rapidly raised the forefinger of my right hand to the level of where I had been used to wearing a cap, and with equal celerity let my hand fall again to my side.
The stifled laughter which came from behind me did not have the eflect of reassuring me. Mrs. Stuart, however, had risen to her feet as though worked by a spring, displaying in the action the flat charms of her lengthy body. With finger outstretched threateningly, she snapped out:
'The whole class shall receive punishment for this lack of politeness to a newcomer and to my friend Mrs. Eagle.'
Silence reigned once more as though by the enchantment of fear. Mrs. Stuart then turned to me, meantime slowly jamming her glasses upon a nose as long and thin as the blade of a knife. She then fixed a prolonged stare upon me as though she had not so much as set eyes on me a short time previously when I was in boy's clothes.
When she had finished her contemplation which lasted two good minutes, and appeared to be going to last an eternity, she negligently let her pretentious folders fall and to my great consternation pronounced these words:
'I recognise the talent of Mrs. Eagle… No, dear friend, it is useless for you to protest! You have extraordinary skill. I said the same thing only yesterday to Lady Flayskin and Mr. Gostock… There you are, young man, so well fitted out that anyone would declare you were a little girl, though certainly a very badly-behaved one. A salutation is not made in that way. And your steps are too long. But your heels will teach you that without anyone's help. The curtsey, however, is another matter. You must learn that from us. What is your name?'
'Jim… Jimmy.'
'James? Very good. In the future I shall call you Alice. It is right that you should have a woman's name as your dress is feminine.'
At this fresh insult, I could not contain myself and burst into hysterical sobs.
This time, in spite of the threat of a moment before, laughter broke out behind me quite openly and distinctly. Mrs. Eagle laughed also. And although Mrs. Stuart made no sound, her long thin nose quivered, her thin lips twisted, her eyes became fixed in a horrible doll-like stare. This, as I afterwards discovered, was her manner of laughing, and very disagreeable it was.
As to myself, the shame I felt at being called by a girl's name was so overwhelming that I was unable to experience any additional shame for the moment. The laughter, the grimace of Mrs. Stuart, this and all the rest had no further effect upon me. I was, as it were, beyond all feeling.
'Will you have the kindness to take Miss Alice to her place?' said Mrs. Stuard. 'There, to that unoccupied desk between Miss Carrie and Miss Lizzie.'
I was taken to the indicated seat and now to my own resources as to my manner of behaving. But my environment seemed pitted against me. As the lesson (it was geography) continued, I again became the butt of my fellow-pupils. 'Butt' is a perfectly correct term in this connection. Not only was I the object of sly looks froom all quarters, but I was also the target for balls of chewed paper well soaked in saliva, and a storm of pellets rained around me: This attack provoked in me a healthy revulsion of feeling. My masculine instincts were roused and I wished in turn to attack my persecutors. For the moment I became oblivious of the girlish frippery dishonouring me.
The class-room was fairly capacious although adapted for only twenty pupils. Each had his separate desk, which did not touch that of his neighbour: In front of the teacher's desk, at the back of the room, near the, Wall, whence the mistress could at a glance command every thing, ran a kind of broad gangway separating the two rows of desks. On the boys' side, where my own place was, there were eight places occupied, counting mine. Four desks were vacant. On the girls' side all the twelve desks were occupied.
I looked about me openly, bodly facing the tempest of covert malice, a cyclone in which there was less of thunder than of hail and rain. Suddenly a ball of paper, more skilfully directed than the others, flattened itself
