DOMINIE AT DUNMORE
In the spring, Jean Gibson went to school. She was relieved of the necessity of taking a peat in payment of fees since Ned MacWhirrie gave a donation to Johnny Gibb, the dominie, that exempted the pupils from Craigdaroch.
Her mother was sorry to lose Jean for she was becoming a great help in the house and her assistance in domestic duties was considerable. But her mother knew how necessary it would be for her to be able to read and write and become at least tolerably proficient in elementary arithmetic.
Jean went willingly enough. She liked her mother and she liked working in the house – but school offered an unknown quality of excitement and change. Going to school meant that she was growing up: that she was not to be recognised as a child any longer.
School, even from the first year, lasted from nine till four. As she had three miles to walk to it, there was no question of getting home for a meal in the middle of the day.
So off she went at eight o’clock with two farrels of dry oatcake in her bag for lunch. She went with older children from Craigdaroch. Excitement prevented her from eating her oatcake on the way to school as most of the older children did; but she soon came to feel the pangs of childish hunger going through the fields to the school-house at Dunmore. And she was soon to experience the worse hunger-pangs at mid-day when there was nothing left to eat but the dry crumbs from her bag. Then she resolved not to eat her piece on the way to school the following morning. But this excellent resolution was broken, bit by bit, till, when she again arrived at Dunmore, nothing but the crumbs remained.
Johnny Gibb was a ‘far-out’ relation of her father’s – a second cousin or something of the kind. He was an undersized hunch-backed creature with a soured irritable nature. His wife nagged him relentlessly.
Mrs. Gibb bullied the dominie more than the dominie bullied his pupils. But the dominie was fortunate in having pupils to bully.
The school was a long low-ceilinged building built on to the three-roomed school-house. It had twelve forms each seating four pupils. It was heated by an American stove that stood against the gable wall beside the dominie’s desk. A door gave access from the house and a door led to the strip of playground outside.
It was a comfortable building as school buildings went in Galloway and Johnny Gibb was reckoned a good master. Indeed Johnny had been to college in Glasgow and was something of a lawyer, theologian and general adviser to the parish on most subjects not connected with agriculture.
Dominie Gibb had four stages in his class. He taught them simultaneously. The younger children picked up what they could of the instruction devoted to the older children: the older children listened to the younger children’s lessons by way of revision. The curriculum was limited: there was no time for any frills and fancies. Reading, writing, arithmetic and Bible knowledge were the main subjects. Occasionally there was some attempt at a geography lesson: occasionally there was some reference made to the more outstanding events in British history. But there was no instruction in grammar or English composition – other than by dogma, rule and precept.
If Johnny wanted to fill a spare hour he usually fell back on hand-writing. The rules of this art were simple and rigid. There was only one way to hold the pen and there was only one way to form the characters. Nor could adequate character formation be tolerated when the pen was held in an unorthodox fashion. The lesson in handwriting was usually imposed on the class by way of punishment – when it responded worse than usual to the dominie’s instruction. For then the individual pupil’s failings were writ large and Johnny could pounce without mercy.
His task was as laborious as it was thankless. More than laborious, it was both nerve-racking and heart-breaking. The attendance was never perfect: many of the pupils had no desire whatever to learn even the rudiments of their alphabet. The sum total of their attendance was from four to five broken years and of what use was handwriting to a scholar whose hands were already reaching out to grasp the plough handles or the lugs of the milk pails?
Not all of the pupils were minded to take their instruction seriously, whatever intention the dominie had. There were boys who treated the day spent in the school-house as a day in prison. They had no love for their jailer and bitterly resented his punishment. For punishment there was. When Johnny Gibb went forward to attack he did so with a stout pointer (like a short billiard cue) and he plied it with considerable vigour and venom on their heads and shoulders. Johnny did not believe in the strap: his diminutive and deformed stature placed him at a disadvantage here. But with the pointer in hand and the scholar seated he had all the advantages.
Naturally there were reprisals, as Jean soon found out. She had not been at school more than a week when she witnessed a reprisal that turned the tables against the dominie.
When Johnny entered the school-room from his dwelling, the first thing he did was to attack the American stove vigorously with the poker. The act was symbolic of his whole nervously impulsive nature.
Ned MacCalman, a burly but unscholarly ploughman’s son who had suffered many belabourings with the pointer, was due to leave school as soon as there was a pair of horse ready for him. Indeed he was only sent to school when there was no work for him in order that he might be kept out of mischief. The dominie knew this and wasted no time in imparting knowledge to him. Ned served the purpose of a whipping boy.
But Ned was determined to get his revenge on his taskmaster. He had come to accept the morning attack on the stove as something in the nature of a ritual when one morning there flashed across his brain the perfect plan of revenge. All he had to do the following morning was to heat the handle of the poker in the stove and leave it convenient to the dominie’s hand.
And the next morning Ned went about his plan so thoroughly that no one guessed what he was about. When the bell rang Ned withdrew the poker and placed it, head up, beside the stove. By the time the pupils had taken their seats and the dominie had emerged from the house, the head of the poker had lost its bright glow and the eye was deceived.
The dominie emerged briskly enough: he had had a row with his wife about the saltness of the porridge and his wife had told him if he didn’t like them he knew what to do. Fine Johnny knew what to do. They were too salt to be eaten: so he had to drink his milk and leave them.
So great was his haste to get to the stove he almost tripped over his own feet and it took all Ned MacCalman’s self-control to prevent himself from laughing outright.
A moment later the pupils were startled by a bloodcurdling howl. Johnny had seized the poker firmly and his hand was painfully roasted. He made several fantastic and frantic leaps in the air. Many of the older pupils roared their delight at the unusual spectacle. Jean Gibson, uncomprehending, sat in open-eyed wonder. By a series of bounds and leaps the dominie reached his dwelling door and disappeared.
His amazing exit was the signal for a pandemonious outbreak. Ned MacCalman laughed till the tears rolled down his red weatherbeaten cheeks. But Ned was careful not to divulge his secret: time enough to boast of that when he was driving his pair of horse and quit for ever of Dunmore school.
But the merriment and excited speculation died when Johnny Gibb reappeared with a bandaged hand. His face, twisted with pain and fury, was truly diabolical. His drawn lips revealed his pointed double set of yellow teeth, curved like a hare’s. His breathing was short and laboured and came and went with a peculiar hissing noise. His eyes were fixed on the senior pupils and he crept forward as if walking with his bare feet on sharp gravel.
‘Come out the boy who did that.’
There was no response.
‘Very well.’
The dominie grasped the pointer: his eyes seemed to roll in their sockets.
‘I said: come out the infernal limb of Satan who did that. D’ye hear?’
His voice rose to a scream. Jean Gibson crouched on her seat. Ned MacCalman’s face went sickly white.
‘Very well. Is there any one prepared to volunteer the necessary information? Will any one tell me who the culprit is?