Superseded

Superseded

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Title: Superseded
Author: May Sinclair
Release Date: September 24, 2004 [EBook #13522]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SUPERSEDED ***

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SUPERSEDED
BY MAY SINCLAIR
_Author of "The Divine Fire"_
1906

PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished in
America, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "The
Divine Fire." It originally appeared with another work in a volume
entitled "Two Sides of a Question," a small imported edition of which

is now exhausted.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. PROLOGUE.--MISS QUINCEY STOPS THE WAY II.
HOUSEHOLD GODS III. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES IV.
BASTIAN CAUTLEY, M.D. V. HEALERS AND REGENERATORS
VI. SPRING FASHIONS VII. UNDER A BLUE MOON VIII. A
PAINFUL MISUNDERSTANDING IX. THROUGH THE
STETHOSCOPE X. MISS QUINCEY STANDS BACK XI. DR.
CAUTLEY SENDS IN HIS BILL XII. EPILOGUE.--THE MAN AND
THE WOMAN

SUPERSEDED

CHAPTER I
Prologue.--Miss Quincey Stops the Way
"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please."
The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It
came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot
by the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying
itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy
intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be
more or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the Second
Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, loose
hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then the
straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white pinafores, a
confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, shuffling in a
frantic effort to keep time.

On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with
innumerable eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own
flowing, that flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was
tossed upwards, or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back
the light. A stream that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its
soul, obscurely or luminously feminine; it might have been a single
living thing that throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the
radiance and pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your
senses judged St. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and
colour to the stream. The rest were nowhere.
So at least it seemed to Miss Cursiter, the Head. That tall, lean,
iron-grey Dignity stood at the cross junction of two corridors, talking to
Miss Rhoda Vivian, the new Classical Mistress. And while she talked
she watched her girls as a general watches his columns wheeling into
action. A dangerous spot that meeting of the corridors. There the
procession doubles the corner at a swinging curve, and there, time it as
she would, the little arithmetic teacher was doomed to fall foul of the
procession. Daily Miss Quincey thought to dodge the line; daily it
caught her at the disastrous corner. Then Miss Quincey, desperate
under the eye of the Head, would try to rush the thing, with ridiculous
results. And Fate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter
should always be there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss
Cursiter; if her face grew tender for the young girls and the
eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance,
cynically braced to bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of
effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the
lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the
spectacle as a whole. To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile,
and somehow that smile annoyed Miss Cursiter.
She, Miss Quincey, was a little dry, brown woman, with a soft pinched
mouth, and a dejected nose. So small and insignificant was she that she
might have crept along for ever unnoticed but for her punctuality in
obstruction. As St. Sidwell's prided itself on the brilliance and
efficiency of its staff, the wonder was how Miss Quincey came to be
there, but there she had been for five-and-twenty years. She seemed to

have stiffened into her place. Five-and-twenty years ago she had been
arithmetic teacher, vaguely attached to the Second Division, and she
was arithmetic teacher still. Miss Quincey