Wicked Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Alice once asked an older teacher. “And do they expect us to be able to afford French models on our salaries?”
    The girl slowly descended the broad white stone stairs of the school, while the spring snow compassionately soothed her tense and weary face. She looked behind her at the school, a fine, rich, two-story building of rosy brick, very modern, very expensive, with tessellated floors, washrooms a Caesar would have envied, gymnasiums fit for kings, a swimming pool of aquamarine tiles, schoolrooms as comfortable and charming as drawing rooms, and a small theater which would have excited envy in actors on Broadway. But Alice’s salary, in her first year, was less than four thousand dollars a year, after the deductions for pension, taxes, and sundries. And she and the other teacher paid eighty dollars a month for their tiny third-floor apartment under the roof, sharing a bathroom, very primitive, with two other teachers in another apartment. We’re damn fools, thought Alice, with anger. We should demand twice as much money as we’re getting; we should demand that parents respect our authority and keep out of our business; we should demand less extravagant school plants: we should demand that no extracurricular activities be asked of us, so that we have the time and energy to devote ourselves to pure teaching, and nothing else. Schools aren’t “happiness centers.” They are places to teach the young the rigors of reality. the disciplines of living, and above all, as much subject matter as possible.
    A few teachers passed her; they were too tired to stop for gossip; they merely exchanged tight white smiles with the girl. Some were old, shabby and bent. Some were beginning to show the intense strain after a few years of teaching; some were as young and confused and rebellious as herself. But all were tired.
    Sometimes a visiting psychiatrist would lecture the teachers sternly. They must teach the children “life-adiustment. happiness, social amenities, group cooperation.” They must be “alert” for emotional problems among their charges. These were complex days, the psychiatrist would say, letting his quelling eyes rove over the silent women. A child must have a center of security, love and happiness in his school, in the midst of the world’s storm and rage and insecurity. What the fool doesn’t remember, or know, thought Alice, who knew her history well, is that the world has always been full of storm and rage and insecurity, from its very birth, and that somehow, and with strength and courage and fortitude, the children of the past managed to survive and create civilizations and art and science and maintain and build churches and enforce both the laws of God and men. They learned their first disciplines, their first responsibilities to the world in which they lived, in school. But the parents had demanded a more “modern” approach to teaching, and they had it, and they also had undisciplined, weak, screeching, and exigent children, ripe for crime, for dominance by the unprincipled strong, for atheism. When and where did this adoration for “The Children” begin? Who had told them they were the most important creatures in the world? There was another ominous sign in the schools these days: many of the boys and girls were exhibiting the traits of Alice’s own nephew, Angelo Bruce Saint.
    Sighing, shifting the books and papers on her arm, Alice walked down the street to a drugstore where she could buy a badly needed cup of coffee. She wished to delay, as long as possible, the return to the chill and dreary apartment in which she lived. The drugstore was already filled with howling boys and girls of all ages, swarming from booth to booth, spilling over the soda counters, snatching comic books from each other, shrilling, laughing, running. Why weren’t those great boys and girls in their early teens at home, helping their mothers or earning their own spending money at some neighborhood job? All were