"Oh you. We know all about that. I asked for your opinion."
"And when I gave it you told me I was under an influence."
"What if I did? And what if it were so?"
"What indeed? You would get the benefit of two opinions instead of one."
Now if Miss Cursiter were thinking of Dr. Cautley there was some point in what Rhoda said; for in the back of her mind the Head had a curious respect for masculine judgment.
"There can be no two opinions about Miss Quincey."
"I don"t know. Miss Quincey," said Rhoda thoughtfully to her pencil, "is a large subject."
"Yes, if you mean that Miss Quincey is a terrible legacy from the past.
The question for me is--how long am I to let her hamper our future?"
"The future? It strikes me that we"re not within shouting distance of the future. We talk as if we could see the end, and we"re nowhere near it, we"re in all the muddle of the middle--that"s why we"re hampered with Miss Quincey and other interesting relics of the past."
"We are slowly getting rid of them."
At that Rhoda blazed up. She was young, and she was reckless, and she had too many careers open to her to care much about consequences. Miss Cursiter had asked for her opinion and she should have it with a vengeance.
"It"s not enough to get rid of them. We ought to provide for them. Who or what do we provide for, if it comes to that? We"re always talking about specialisation, and the fact is we haven"t specialised enough. Don"t we give the same test papers to everybody?"
"I shall be happy to set separate papers for each girl if you"ll undertake to correct them."
The more Rhoda fired the more Miss Cursiter remained cold.
"That"s just it--we couldn"t if we tried. We know nothing about each girl. That"s where we shall have to specialise in the future if we"re to do any good. We"ve specialised enough with our teachers and our subjects; chipped and chopped till we can"t divide them any more; and we"ve taken our girls in the lump. We know less about them than they do themselves.
As for the teachers--"
"Which by the way brings us back to Miss Quincey."
"Everything brings us back to Miss Quincey. Miss Quincey will be always with us."
"We must put younger women in her place."
Rhoda winced as though Miss Cursiter had struck her.
"They will soon grow old. Our profession is a cruel one. It uses up the finest and most perishable parts of a woman"s nature. It takes the best years of her life--and throws the rest away."
"Yet thousands of women are willing to take it up, and leave comfortable homes to do it too."
"Yes," sighed Rhoda, "it"s the rush for the open door."
"My dear Rhoda, the women"s labour market is the same as every other. The best policy is the policy of the open door. Don"t you see that the remedy is to open it wider--wider!"
"And when we"ve opened all the doors as wide as ever they"ll go, what then? Where are we going to?"
"I can"t tell you." Miss Cursiter looked keenly at her. "Do you mean that you"ll go no further unless you know?"
Rhoda was silent.
"There are faults in the system. I can see that as well as you, perhaps better. I am growing old too, Rhoda. But you are youth itself. It is women like you we want--to save us. Are you going to turn your back on us?"
Miss Cursiter bore down on her with her steady gaze, a gaze that was a menace and an appeal, and Rhoda gave a little gasp as if for breath.
"I can"t go any farther."
"Do you realize what this means? You are not a deserter from the ranks.
It is the second in command going over to the enemy."
The words were cold, but there was a fiery court-martial in Miss Cursiter"s eyes that accused and condemned her. If Rhoda had been dashing her head against the barrack walls her deliverance was at hand. It seemed that she could never strike a blow for Miss Quincey without winning the battle for herself.
"I can"t help it," said she. "I hate it--I hate the system."
"The system? Suppose you do away with it--do away with every woman"s college in the kingdom--have you anything to put in its place?"
"No. I have nothing to put in its place."
"Ah," said Miss Cursiter, "you are older than I thought."
Rhoda smiled. By this time, wrong or right, she was perfectly reckless.
If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture in being wildly and wilfully in the wrong. She had flung up the game.
Miss Cursiter saw it. "I was right," said she. "You are under an influence, and a dangerous one."
"Perhaps--but, influence for influence" (here Rhoda returned Miss Cursiter"s gaze intrepidly), "I"m not far wrong. I honestly think that if we persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall hand over worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation."
Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what a mouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley"s theories and temper.
"My dear Rhoda, you"re an intellectual monstrosity yourself."
"I know. And in another twenty years" time they"ll want to get rid of _me_."
"Of me too," thought the Head. Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn.
She had invoked Rhoda"s youth and it had risen up against her. Influence for influence, her power was dead.
Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in Miss Quincey"s case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, to escape judgment in her own.
"And how about Miss Quincey?" she asked.
Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey. She had done with that section of her subject. She understood that Rhoda had said in effect, "If Miss Quincey goes, I go too." Nevertheless her mind was made up; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey.
Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quincey had no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal when presented to her in this neat way. Not even when Miss Cursiter said to her, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning, "For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego your valuable--most valuable services."
Miss Cursiter hesitated, warned by something in the aspect of the tiny woman who had been a thorn in her side so long. Somehow, for this occasion, the most incompetent, most insignificant member of her staff had contrived to clothe herself with a certain n.o.bility. She was undeniably the more dignified of the two.