Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

Chapter 21

GATHERING THREADS

“I want to talk to you, Eileen,” said Miss Bulstrode.

Eileen Rich followed Miss Bulstrode into the latter's sitting room. Meadowbank was strangely quiet. About twenty-five pupils were still there. Pupils whose parents had found it either difficult or unwelcome to fetch them. The panic-stricken rush had, as Miss Bulstrode had hoped, been checked by her own tactics. There was a general feeling that by next term everything would have been cleared up. It was much wiser of Miss Bulstrode, they felt, to close the school.

None of the staff had left. Miss Johnson fretted with too much time on her hands. A day in which there was too little to do did not in the least suit her. Miss Chadwick, looking old and miserable, wandered round in a kind of coma of misery. She was far harder hit to all appearance than Miss Bulstrode. Miss Bulstrode, indeed, managed apparently without difficulty to be completely herself, unperturbed, and with no sign of strain or of collapse. The two younger mistresses were not averse to the extra leisure. They bathed in the swimming pool, wrote long letters to friends and relations, and sent for cruise literature to study and compare. Ann Shapland had a good deal of time on her hands and did not appear to resent the fact. She spent a good deal of that time in the garden and devoted herself to gardening with quite unexpected efficiency. That she preferred to be instructed in the work by Adam rather than by old Briggs was perhaps a not unnatural phenomenon.

“Yes, Miss Bulstrode?” said Eileen Rich.

“I've been wanting to talk to you,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Whether this school can continue or not I do not know. What people will feel is always fairly incalculable because they will all feel differently. But the result will be that whoever feels most strongly will end by converting all the rest. So either Meadowbank is finished -”

“No,” said Eileen Rich, interrupting, “not finished.” She almost stamped her foot and her hair immediately began coming down. “You mustn't let it be stopped,” she said. “It would, be a sin - a crime.”

“You speak very strongly,” said Miss Bulstrode.

“I feel strongly. There are so many things that really don't seem worthwhile a bit, but Meadowbank does seem worthwhile. It seemed worthwhile to me the first moment I came here.”

“You're a fighter,” said Miss Bulstrode. “I like fighters, and I assure you that I don't intend to give in tamely. In a way I'm going to enjoy the fight. You know, when everything's too easy and things go too well one gets - I don't know the exact word I mean - complacent? Bored? A kind of hybrid of the two. But I'm not bored now and I'm not complacent and I'm going to fight with every ounce of strength I've got, and with every penny I've got, too. Now what I want to say to you is this: If Meadowbank continues, will you come in on a partnership basis?”

“Me?” Eileen Rich stared at her. “Me?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Bulstrode. “You.”

“I couldn't,” said Eileen Rich. “I don't know enough. I'm too young. Why, I haven't got the experience, the knowledge that you'd want.”

“You must leave it to me to know what I want,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Mind you, this isn't, at the present moment of talking, a good offer. You'd probably do better for yourself elsewhere. But I want to tell you this, and you've got to believe me. I had already decided before Miss Vansittart's unfortunate death, that you were the person I wanted - to carry on this school.”

“You thought so then?” Eileen Rich stared at her. “But I thought - we all thought - that Miss Vansittart...”

“There was no arrangement made with Miss Vansittart,” said Miss Bulstrode. “I had her in mind, I will confess. I've had her in mind for the last two years. But something's always held me back from saying anything definite to her about it. I daresay everyone assumed that she'd be my successor. She may have thought so herself. I myself thought so until very recently. And then I decided that she was not what I wanted.”

“But she was so suitable in every way,” said Eileen Rich. “She would have carried out things in exactly your ways, in exactly your ideas.”

“Yes,” said Miss Bulstrode, “and that's just what would have been wrong. You can't hold on to the past. A certain amount of tradition is good but never too much. A school is for the children of today. It's not for the children of fifty years ago or even of thirty years ago. There are some schools in which tradition is more important than others, but Meadowbank is not one of those. It's not a school with a long tradition behind it. It's a creation, if I may say it, of one woman. Myself. I've tried certain ideas and carried them out to the best of my ability, though occasionally I've had to modify them when they haven't produced the results I'd expected. It's not been a conventional school, but it has not prided itself on being an unconventional school either. It's a school that tries to make the best of both worlds - the past and the future, but the real stress is on the present. That's how it's going to go on, how it ought to go on. Run by someone with ideas - ideas of the present day. Keeping what is wise from the past, looking forward toward the future. You're very much the age I was when I started here but you've got what I no longer can have. You'll find it written in the Bible. Their old men dream dreams and their young men have visions. We don't need dreams here, we need vision. I believe you to have vision and that's why I decided that you were the person and not Eleanor Vansittart.”

“It would have been wonderful,” said Eileen Rich. “Wonderful. The thing I should have liked above all.”

Miss Bulstrode was faintly surprised by the tense, although she did not show it. Instead she agreed promptly.

“Yes,” she said, “it would have been wonderful. But it isn't wonderful now? Well, I suppose I understand that.”

“No, no, I don't mean that at all,” said Eileen Rich.

“Not at all. I - I can't go into details very well, but if you had - if you had asked me, spoken to me like this a week or a fortnight ago I should have said at once that I couldn't, that it would have been quite impossible. The only reason why it - why it might be possible now is because - well, because it is a case of fighting - of taking on things. May I - may I think it over, Miss Bulstrode? I don't know what to say now.”

“Of course,” said Miss Bulstrode. She was still surprised. One never really knew, she thought, about anybody.