Yet Julia was not impersonal.
Miss Deborah, … teaching the whole school to be “good” in the Fairchild way; with her beautiful quivering nodding black head held high—blinking, and not looking at the girls separately—in a grave voice, full of Scripture history, but broken all the time, quivering with laughter and shoutings which she never uttered … hilarious, … she taught a system of things she had been brought up in. But all the same, she rushed along sweeping the girls with her … and the girls believed her. If I taught her system I should have false lips and the girls would not believe me. If ever anyone had the courage to tell her of any dreadful thing, she would weep it all away; and the person would begin all over again certainly, as much as possible in the Fairchild way … again and again until they died. Supposing a murderer came and sat down in the hall? Supposing Miss Deborah had been brought up as a Thug—killing people from behind? …
Miss Jenny, exasperatedly trying to wake all the girls up to the importance of public life, sitting round in their blouses and skirts, half-amused and sometimes trying to argue, because the tone of Miss Jenny’s voice made them sorry for the other side. Politics, politics, reading history and the newspapers, the importance of history if you wanted to have any understanding of your own times. To come into the room to take the class after Miss Jenny always meant finding her stating and protesting and tapping the end of her nose, and the air hot and excited, and the girls in some sort of state of excitement which could only be got over by being very quiet and pretending not to notice them except to be very surprised if there were any disturbance.
Miss Haddie, in horror of their badness, teaching them to master little set tasks because it was shocking to be an idler; loving the sinner but hating the sin much more, with a sort of horror like a girl, a horror in her eyes that was the same as the horror of insects, fearing God who was so close in the room, gloomily, all the time—wanting to teach them all to fawn on Christ. Christ would make everything all right if you made up to him. “Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. He faileth not and thou art dear.” Awful. …
And then Julia, making the children love her, herself, as a person. They would all love her in time. Even Burra after her first grief would fling herself upon Julia. … Gertie would not though, ever. Cold, quiet little Gertie, the doctor’s daughter. She would make no response however much she were kissed and called a little darling. Gertie even as a child was the English thing that Julia disliked. Julia, with all her success was not the answer to the problem of why Englishwomen were abominable. She left out so much. “Julia, you know, I think things are more important than people. Much more. People, if you let them for one single instant, grin and pounce upon you and try to make you forget things. But they’re there all the time and you have to go back to them,” and Julia laughing suddenly aloud, “Ah—you’re a duck—a tonic.” And everyone was a little afraid of Julia, the children, the boarders whom she managed so high-handedly with her laughter, even the Pernes.
Perhaps Julia’s “personal” way and the English “personal” way were somehow both wrong and horrid … girls’ schools were horrid, bound to be horrid, sly, mean, somehow tricky and poisonous. It was a hopeless problem. The English sentimental way was wrong, the way of Englishwomen with children—it made them grow up with those treacherous smiles.
The scientific and “aesthetic” way, the way of the Putney school—ah, blessed escape! … But it left nearly all the girls untouched.
Julia’s sentimental way was better than the English sentimental way; its smiles had tears and laughter too, they were not so hypocritical. But it was wrong. It was the strongest thing though in the Wordsworth House school.
Julia was not happy. She dreamed fearful dreams. … Why did she speak of them as if they were something that no one in this English world into which she had come would understand? She had her strange nights all to herself there across the landing; either lying awake or sleeping and moaning all the time. The girls in her room slept like rocks and did not know that she moaned. They knew she had nightmares and sometimes cried out and woke them. But passing the open door late at night one could hear her moaning softly on every breath with closed lips. That was Julia, her life, all laid bare, moaning. … She knows she is alive and that there is no escape from being alive. But it has never made her feel breathless with joy. She laughs all day, at everybody and everything, and at night when she is naked and alone she moans; moan, moan, moan, heartbroken; wind and rain alone in the dark in a great open space.
She sometimes hinted at things, those real unknown things that were her own life unshared by anybody; in a low soft terrible broken voice, with eyes dilated and quivering lips; quite suddenly, with hardly any words. And she would speak passionately about the sea, how she hated it and could not look at it or listen to it;
