It was truly amazing, the change in the schoolroom, not a book out of place, not a shelf in disorder; even the box lounge had had to be opened and its dumbbells and clubs paired off nicely together—Miss Puddleton always liked things to be paired, perhaps an unrecognized matrimonial instinct. And now Stephen found herself put into harness for the first time in her life, and she loathed the sensation. There were so many rules that a very large time-sheet had had to be fastened to the blackboard in the schoolroom.
“Because,” said Miss Puddleton as she pinned the thing up, “even my brain won’t stand your complete lack of method, it’s infectious; this time-sheet is my antitoxin, so please don’t tear it to pieces!”
Mathematics and algebra, Latin and Greek, Roman history, Greek history, geometry, botany, they reduced Stephen’s mind to a species of beehive in which every bee buzzed on the least provocation. She would gaze at Miss Puddleton in a kind of amazement; that tiny, square box to hold all this grim knowledge! And seeing that gaze Miss Puddleton would smile her most warm, charming smile, and would say as she did so:
“Yes, I know—but it’s only the first effort, Stephen; presently your mind will get neat like the schoolroom, and then you’ll be able to find what you want without all this rummaging and bother.”
But her tasks being over, Stephen must often slip away to visit Raftery in the stables: “Oh, Raftery, I’m hating it so!” she would tell him. “I feel like you’d feel if I put you in harness—hard wooden shafts and a kicking strap, Raftery—but my darling, I’d never put you into harness!”
And Raftery would hardly know what he should answer, since all human creatures, so far as he knew them, must run between shafts—Godlike though they were, they undoubtedly had to run between shafts. …
Nothing but Stephen’s great love for her father helped her to endure the first six months of learning—that and her own stubborn, arrogant will that made her hate to be beaten. She would swing clubs and dumbbells in a kind of fury, consoling herself with the thought of her muscles, and, finding her at it, Miss Puddleton had laughed.
“You must feel that your teacher’s some sort of midge, Stephen—a tiresome midge that you want to brush off!”
Then Stephen had laughed too: “Well, you are little, Puddle—oh, I’m sorry—”
“I don’t mind,” Miss Puddleton had told her; “call me Puddle if you like, it’s all one to me.” After which Miss Puddleton disappeared somehow, and Puddle took her place in the household.
An insignificant creature this Puddle, yet at moments unmistakably self-assertive. Always willing to help in domestic affairs, such as balancing Anna’s chaotic account books, or making out library lists for Jackson’s, she was nevertheless very guardful of her rights, very quick to assert and maintain her position. Puddle knew what she wanted and saw that she got it, both in and out of the schoolroom. Yet everyone liked her; she took what she gave and she gave what she took, yes, but sometimes she gave just a little bit more—and that little bit more is the whole art of teaching, the whole art of living, in fact, and Miss Puddleton knew it. Thus gradually, oh, very gradually at first, she wore down her pupil’s unconscious resistance. With small, dexterous fingers she caught Stephen’s brain, and she stroked it and modelled it after her own fashion. She talked to that brain and showed it new pictures; she gave it new thoughts, new hopes and ambitions; she made it feel certain and proud of achievement. Nor did she belittle Stephen’s muscles in the process, never once did Puddle make game of the athlete, never once did she show by so much as the twitch of an eyelid that she had her own thoughts about her pupil. She appeared to take Stephen as a matter of course, nothing surprised or even amused her it seemed, and Stephen grew quite at ease with her.
“I can always be comfortable with you, Puddle,” Stephen would say in a tone of satisfaction, “you’re like a nice chair; though you are so tiny yet one’s got room to stretch, I don’t know how you do it.”
Then Puddle would smile, and that smile would warm Stephen while it mocked her a little; but it also mocked Puddle—they would share that warm smile with its fun and its kindness, so that neither of them could feel hurt or embarrassed. And their friendship took root, growing strong and verdant, and it flourished like a green bay-tree in the schoolroom.
Came the time when Stephen began to realize that Puddle had genius—the genius of teaching; the genius of compelling her pupil to share in her own enthusiastic love of the Classics.
“Oh, Stephen, if only you could read this in Greek!” she would say, and her voice would sound full of excitement; “the beauty, the splendid dignity of it—it’s like the sea, Stephen, rather terrible but splendid; that’s the language, it’s far more virile than Latin.” And Stephen would catch that sudden excitement, and determine to work even harder at Greek.
But Puddle did not live by the ancients alone, she taught Stephen to appreciate all literary beauty, observing in her pupil a really fine judgment, a great feeling for balance in sentences and words. A vast tract of new interest was thus opened up, and Stephen began to excel in composition; to her own deep amazement she found herself able to write many things that had long lain dormant in her heart—all the beauty of nature, for instance, she could write it. Impressions of childhood—gold light on the hills; the first cuckoo, mysterious, strangely alluring; those rides home from hunting together with her father—bare furrows, the meaning of those bare furrows. And later, how many queer hopes and queer longings, queer joys and even more curious frustrations. Joy of strength, splendid physical strength and courage; joy of health and sound sleep and refreshed awakening;
