Black Beech and Honeydew by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

Charles and Roderick and were kind. Roderick became a soldier and Charles a man of letters. Both of them left New Zealand. When, on separate occasions and about thirty years afterwards, I met them again, something of the intense gratitude I had felt for them returned. We talked about our first term at Tib’s.
    I did not say anything at all about these miseries to my parents but I think my mother must have known that all was not well and decided that I should stick it out. Very properly so, I expect. After all, she was up against the problem of the only child. It is true that by some process of adaptation the picture gradually changed. I was no longer bullied. I formed heartening friendships with other small girls. I toughened.
    As time went on I was even given certain responsibilities at Tib’s. When Ian, a fighting boy in a kilt, was brought at eleven o’clock every morning by his nanny, I was one of two sent to take delivery of him in the porch. He yelled, bit and kicked, while his nurse recommended that he should go with the nice young ladies to his lesson. We led him, roaring, to his desk, rather impressed than otherwise by the extremity of his passion. Dick, a fat boy, was more vulnerable and wept sometimes. He was jeered at by my former tormentors and I’m glad to remember that I was sorry for him and didn’t join in. I was out of the wood by that time. Rightly or wrongly, however, I still think that my first term at Tib’s was far from being all to the good. It does not improve the character to be bullied. Children are microcosms ofpeople. Treat them badly for long enough and then give them a little power and they will punctually repeat with greater emphasis the behaviour to which they have been subjected. Fear is the most damaging emotion that can be inflicted on the character of any child and on one already as morbidly prone to inexplicable terrors as I was, the early torments I underwent at Tib’s were pretty deadly. When they moderated and I was no longer in thrall, I reacted predictably. I don’t think that on the whole I was all that much more obnoxious than any other little girl of my age but for a time I became so: bossy, bullying, and secretive, paying back however unconsciously, I am sure, for what had been dealt out to me. I don’t think it lasted very long but it happened and in my old age I still remember and am sorry about it.
    Fear can be perhaps the most corrupting of our basic emotions and fear without the possibility of release, the worst of all. The child who has been overtaken by it is a microcosm of the mob. If you rule a people by fear and treat them as an inferior race and then give them power, don’t expect them to use it like angels. You have corrupted them and many of them will abuse it.
    One day, while I and other Fendaltonians waited for Miss Irving to put us on the bus, we heard a clatter of hooves in the quiet street and mounted policemen rode splendidly by, followed by a carriage with a crown on the door.
    ‘The Governor,’ gabbled Miss Irving in a fluster. ‘Girls curtsey and boys bow. Off with your caps. Quick.’
    We bobbed and nodded, eyeing each other sideways and then looked up to see the Governor smiling and bowing very pointedly to us. With him was his wife and unless I am at fault, a little girl of about my own age of whom there will be much more to say.
    Away rolled the carriage and up came the bus.
    One other incident sticks in my memory. Miss Ross, rather ominously smiling, asks her pupils what they wish to be when they grow up. She concentrates upon the boys since the girls are destined for matrimony: an employment not to be examined in detail with propriety. I, however, hold up my hand. ‘I want,’ I venture, ‘to be an artist.’ ‘Ho!’ Miss Ross atrociously says, ‘you’ll never do that, my dear. Your hand shakes.’
    I suppose I had attended Miss Ross’s school for about a year when the great change came. We went to live on the hills.
II
    When I