Collected Works. George Orwell
at Dorothy, as though weighing a decision, and then pushed the dish of marmalade across the table.
“Have some marmalade if you like, Miss Millborough,” she said, quite graciously for her.
It was the first time that marmalade had crossed Dorothy’s lips since she had come to Ringwood House. She flushed slightly. “So the woman realises that I have done my best for her,” she could not help thinking.
Thereafter she had marmalade for breakfast every morning. And in other ways Mrs. Creevy’s manner became—not, indeed, genial, for it could never be that, but less brutally offensive. There were even times when she produced a grimace that was intended for a smile; her face, it seemed to Dorothy, creaked with the effort. About this time her conversation became peppered with references to “next term.” It was always “Next term we’ll do this,” and “Next term I shall want you to do that,” until Dorothy began to feel that she had won Mrs. Creevy’s confidence and was being treated more like a colleague than a slave. At that a small, unreasonable but very exciting hope took root in her heart. Perhaps Mrs. Creevy was going to raise her wages! It was profoundly unlikely, and she tried to break herself of hoping for it, but could not quite succeed. If her wages were raised even half a crown a week, what a difference it would make!
The last day came. With any luck Mrs. Creevy might pay her her wages tomorrow, Dorothy thought. She wanted the money very badly indeed; she had been penniless for weeks past, and was not only unbearably hungry, but also in need of some new stockings, for she had not a pair that were not darned almost out of existence. The following morning she did the household jobs allotted to her, and then, instead of going out, waited in the “morning-room” while Mrs. Creevy banged about with her broom and pan upstairs. Presently Mrs. Creevy came down.
“Ah, so there you are, Miss Millborough!” she said in a peculiar meaning tone. “I had a sort of an idea you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get out of doors this morning. Well, as you are here, I suppose I may as well pay you your wages.”
“Thank you,” said Dorothy.
“And after that,” added Mrs. Creevy, “I’ve got a little something as I want to say to you.”
Dorothy’s heart stirred. Did that “little something” mean the longed-for rise in wages? It was just conceivable. Mrs. Creevy produced a worn, bulgy leather purse from a locked drawer in the dresser, opened it and licked her thumb.
“Twelve weeks and five days,” she said. “Twelve weeks is near enough. No need to be particular to a day. That makes six pounds.”
She counted out five dingy pound notes and two ten shilling notes; then, examining one of the notes and apparently finding it too clean, she put it back into her purse and fished out another that had been torn in half. She went to the dresser, got a piece of transparent sticky paper and carefully stuck the two halves together. Then she handed it, together with the other six, to Dorothy.
“There you are, Miss Millborough,” she said. “And now, will you just leave the house at once, please? I shan’t be wanting you any longer.”
“You won’t be——”
Dorothy’s entrails seemed to have turned to ice. All the blood drained out of her face. But even now, in her terror and despair, she was not absolutely sure of the meaning of what had been said to her. She still half thought that Mrs. Creevy merely meant that she was to stay out of the house for the rest of the day.
“You won’t be wanting me any longer?” she repeated faintly.
“No. I’m getting in another teacher at the beginning of next term. And it isn’t to be expected as I’d keep you through the holidays all free for nothing, is it?”
“But you don’t mean that you want me to leave—that you’re dismissing me?”
“Of course I do. What else did you think I meant?”
“But you’ve given me no notice!” said Dorothy.
“Notice!” said Mrs. Creevy, getting angry immediately. “What’s it got to do with you whether I give you notice of not? You haven’t got a written contract, have you?”
“No . . . I suppose not.”
“Well, then! You’d better go upstairs and start packing your box. It’s no good your staying any longer, because I haven’t got anything in for your dinner.”
Dorothy went upstairs and sat down on the side of the bed. She was trembling uncontrollably, and it was some minutes before she could collect her wits and begin packing. She felt dazed. The disaster that had fallen upon her was so sudden, so apparently causeless, that she had difficulty in believing that it had actually happened. But in truth the reason why Mrs. Creevy had sacked her was quite simple and adequate.
Not far from Ringwood House there was a poor, moribund little school called The Gables, with only seven pupils. The teacher was an incompetent old hack called Miss Allcock, who had been at thirty-eight different schools in her life and was not fit to have charge of a tame canary. But Miss Allcock had one outstanding talent; she was very good at double-crossing her employers. In these third-rate and fourth-rate private schools a sort of piracy is constantly going on. Parents are “got round” and pupils stolen from one school to another. Very often the treachery of the teacher is at the bottom of it. The teacher secretly approaches the parents one by one (“Send your child to me and I’ll take her at ten shillings a term cheaper”), and when she has corrupted a sufficient number she suddenly deserts and “sets up” on her own, or carries the children off to another school. Miss Allcock had succeeded in stealing three out of her employer’s seven pupils, and had come to Mrs. Creevy with the offer of them. In return, she was to have Dorothy’s place and a fifteen per cent commission on the pupils she brought.
There were weeks of furtive chaffering before the bargain was clinched, Miss Allcock being finally beaten down from fifteen per cent to twelve and a half. Mrs. Creevy privately resolved to sack old Allcock the instant she was certain that the three children she brought with her would stay. Simultaneously, Miss Allcock was planning to begin stealing old Creevy’s pupils as soon as she had got a footing in the school.
Having decided to sack Dorothy, it was obviously most important to prevent her from finding it out. For of course, if she knew what was going to happen, she would begin stealing pupils on her own account, or at any rate wouldn’t do a stroke of work for the rest of the term. (Mrs. Creevy prided herself on knowing human nature.) Hence the marmalade, the creaky smiles and the other ruses to allay Dorothy’s suspicions. Anyone who knew the ropes would have begun thinking of another job the very moment when that dish of marmalade was pushed across the table.
Just half an hour after her sentence of dismissal, Dorothy, carrying her handbag, opened the front gate. It was the fourth of April, a bright blowy day, too cold to stand about in, with a sky as blue as a hedge-sparrow’s egg, and one of those spiteful spring winds that come tearing along the pavement in sudden gusts and blow dry, stinging dust into your face. Dorothy shut the gate behind her and began to walk very slowly in the direction of the main line station.
She had told Mrs. Creevy that she would give her an address to which her box could be sent, and Mrs. Creevy had instantly exacted five shillings for the carriage. So Dorothy had five pounds fifteen in hand, which might keep her for three weeks with careful economy. What she was going to do, except that she must start by going to London and finding a suitable lodging, she had very little idea. But her first panic had worn off, and she realised that the situation was not altogether desperate. No doubt her father would help her, at any rate for a while, and at the worst, though she hated even the thought of doing it, she could ask her cousin’s help a second time. Besides, her chances of finding a job were probably fairly good. She was young, she spoke with a genteel accent, and she was willing to drudge for a servant’s wages—qualities that are much sought after by the proprietors of fourth-rate schools. Very likely all would be well. But that there was an evil time ahead of her, a time of job-hunting, of uncertainty and possibly of hunger—that, at any rate, was certain.
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