Letty Fox by Christina Stead Read Free Book Online Page B

over-protected,” she said dolefully; “we have not the money for that, for I realize that is your objection.”
    Mr. McLaren listened, frowning, to this careful student-mother’s recitation, and said, “It’s some form of Voodoo—it’s a secret society”; with my father saying, “Mac, I suppose there’s a lot of Jean-Jacques in the idea, but on the financial side I agree with you”; McLaren saying, “All education should be free and every child will be spoiled till it is”; my father saying, “Middle-class radicals have a curious urge to prove they’re the genteelest of all people”; and McLaren saying, “Point to one gentleman or genius!” and my father saying, “But Mathilde feels she is trying to give Letty the very best education,” it all ended by my mother saying, “If you had suffered as a child, as I did, you would understand everything”; the men both looked at her and said not another word.
    â€œI suppose you think that too is just compensation,” said my mother, using one of the women’s favorite words; “Letty shall want for nothing, she will have nothing to compensate for, and perhaps, when she grows up, her children can go to a free school. Perhaps we’ll be in a different system then”; and the words dragged coldly, childishly, out of her mouth, like a distasteful formula.
    Probably, however, the price of the school was too high, for immediately after I was sent to a public school, where I learned at once to read and write. I liked the school. I never tired of my tricks and of making the girls laugh and jump out of their desks, in fact, do what pleased me. But those girls were too intimidated, or too poor, I don’t know what; they could never be got into the rapture of badness which overcame us so often at The Bairns. I was a great trial to my teachers, contradicting them and even quoting to them bits of doctrine about education from the talk of my mother and father. I made enemies. Many of the girls had become disciplined by this time (I was about six) and even had some ambitions. They disliked me, I upset the lessons. The ugly, ill-dressed ones admitted me, and laughed when I made a noise, though not always with good nature. For them I represented freedom, money, and privilege, and they hoped to see me punished. I let them see I didn’t give a darn for the rules. These poor and ugly girls were always getting punished for lateness and dirt, and were suspected of any thefts. I suppose our mutual dislike helped them into jail, or onto a picket line.
    At home I returned to my progressive school ways and in fact made such a noise around myself (my father calling me “his three-ring-circus”) that I felt stouter, smarter, better every day, and felt sure I would knock the world down later on just by strutting in upon it. So many a fat and loud child feels.
    In all this, I had cronies, followers, and a sidekick, in my father’s words, who was my sister Jacqueline, born a year after me. Jacqueline ( Jacky) wanted to be great, not famous, just great, she explained. She was a lively girl also, with yellow elf-locks, large oval eyes, and straight features, a small nose and a medium red mouth. She was thin at first, with long, thin arms, but when she grew up became like me, middle-sized and plump. She was not always as pretty as I, being graver; but she had a trait I did not have.
    Her gravity threw a shadow over her face and mind, and this shadow was interesting; people even found her charming. When I was nearly seven, we had a world of our own, joky, mad, bad, selfish, scandalous, indecent, alert. We rifled drawers, read and stole letters, faked telephone calls, spied and informed. We became pious or godless together, full of parental respect or odiously unloving together. The beginning of each of these moods was simply the words, “What will we do?” Whatever we did, we did with