There was no doubt of her erudition and ability to teach. The Reverend William Connalt had determined to send her into the world equipped to earn a living. She had taken lessons with the sons of the local squire, and I fancied that she had made an attempt to keep up with them if not surpass them. There was something I quickly learned about Christabel; she wanted to be not only as good as everyone else but better. I presumed that came from being poor.
At first there was a certain amount of restraint between us, but I determined to break that down and I did succeed quite well-largely because she found me somewhat ignorant. It appeared that my father really had been right and that if I had been left any longer to the mercies of Emily Philpots I should have emerged into the world of adults as a somewhat ignorant young lady.
All that was going to be changed.
We studied Latin, Greek, French and arithmetic, at all of which I Scarcely shone.
At English literature I was not so bad. Visits to Aunt Harriet (as I called her, though she was not my real aunt) had made me interested in plays and I could quote passages of Shakespeare. Aunt Harriet, though long retired from the stage, was still fond of arranging little entertainments and we all had to become players when we were there. I enjoyed it and it had the effect of arousing my interest.
I noticed that during our English literature sessions Christabel was less pleased than during others. It was then that I realized she was happy only when she could show me how much cleverer she was than I. She did not have to stress that. She had come to teach me, hadn’t she? Moreover she was about ten years older than I so she ought to have learned more.
It was very odd. When I made stupid errors, although she would speak gravely, her mouth told me that she felt rather pleased; and when I shone-as I did with literature-although she would say, “That was excellent, Priscilla,” her mouth would form itself into that tight little line, so I knew she wasn’t pleased.
I had always been greatly interested in people. I remembered the things they said which taught me something about them. My mother used to laugh at me, and Emily Philpots said: “If you could only remember the things that mattered, you’d be more credit to me.” The longest rivers, the highest mountains, I simply could not care about them. But I was completely intrigued by the way people thought and what was going on in their minds.
That was why I quickly discovered that there was some resentment in Christabel; and if it had not seemed so absurd, I should have thought it was directed against me.
My father had said that Christabel should take one of the horses from the stables which suited her and ride with me. She was very pleased about this. She was a fair horsewoman and told me that she had been allowed to exercise the Westerings’ horses.
We would often stop at an inn when we went riding together, and drink cider and eat cheese with clapbread, which was made entirely of oats, or eat crusty bread straight from the oven.
Sometimes we rode down to the sea and galloped along the shore. I discovered that if I suggested a race and let her beat me, she was overcome with a sort of secret joy.
I believed this was because she had had a very unhappy childhood and that she was vaguely envious of mine, which had been so comfortable and secure that I had never thought about it until now.
Carl had taken a fancy to her. He used to come in sometimes and share a lesson, which was strange, for when he went to the rectory, he had always reminded me of the schoolboy creeping like the snail unwillingly to school. He asked what her favourite tune was and tried to play it-with distressing results to all within earshot.
She did not seem to want to talk about herself at first, but I set myself to lure her into confidences, and once she started to tell me she seemed as though she wanted to talk. It was rather like opening the floodgates.
Soon she had made me see that loveless household: the rectory which was always cold and damp, with the graveyard close by so that on looking out of her windows she could see tombstones, and when she was a child had been told by the washerwoman that at night the dead came out of their tombs and danced, and if anyone saw them, they themselves would be dead before the year was out.
“I used to lie in bed shivering,” she said, “while I was overcome by the temptation to get out of bed and go to the window to see if they were dancing. I remember the cold boards and the wind that used to rattle the windows. I would stand there at the window terrified, freezing, yet unable to go back to bed.”
“I should have done the same,” I told her.
“You have no idea what my childhood was like. They thought they were so good, and they thought that to be good one had to be miserable. They thought there was some virtue hi suffering.”
