Chapter Sixteen.
Memory the Sixteenth—Pangs.
I meant in the last chapter to have told a great deal more; but so many of my troubles and misadventures kept creeping in, that I did not get in one-half of what I intended. What pains I took to gain an interview—or, rather, to grant the poor fellow an interview, though it would have been to me the reaching of a green oasis in my journey across life’s desert, when, for a short time, the gentle palm branches would have waved, as it were, in gentle motion above our heads, while our cheeks would have been fanned by the gentle breath of love.
Of course there was a terrible to do about the basin in the morning, but it so happened, luckily, that the cat was not beneath our window, but beyond the Fraülein’s; so that in trying to reach it, Clara had thrown the basin for some distance, and right past our neighbour’s window. The Fraülein declared that she had never opened hers; and, poor woman, she opened her mouth into quite a round O when told that she must have thrown it out. There was nothing to cast suspicion upon us, for it was more likely to have been Celia Blang, on the other side of the Fraülein; and so, at last, the matter dropped, and we heard no more of it then.
But I had such a delightful treat two days after; for while we were going down the High Street, Miss Furness must turn faint, and have to be helped into the first house at hand, to sit down and rest, and that was Mrs Jackney’s, the milliner’s; and there we were, four or five of us at once, in the little parlour—dear Achille’s “apartment meublée,” as he called it. He was from home, giving lessons somewhere, no doubt; but while they were bathing Miss Furness’s face, and giving her sniffs of salts, and glasses of water to drink, I had such a look round the place, and saw his dear old boots in one corner—the pair, I was sure, he must put on for ease and comfort of a night; and I was so glad to see them, for, if, instead, I had caught sight of a nice, handsomely worked pair of slippers, they would have given me quite a pang. Now I felt that the task—no, the pleasure—was left for me.
Then there was a dear, duck of an old coat hanging behind the door; and such nice, funny little holes in the elbows, where he had rested his arms upon the table while he studied; and there was his pipe, and two bits of cigars, and a few yellow paper-covered books, and one thing which did, I must own, make me feel a little uncomfortable, a scarlet and black smoking cap—at least, it had been scarlet once, and had evidently been made by a lady, and, of course, one would have liked to have known who was the maker.
At first, in remembrance of her bitter, teasing words, I thought that it might have been Clara; but it did not look new enough; for the scarlet was fast verging upon the black, and, no doubt, in a short time it would have been impossible to make out the pattern. But I was glad to see it; for it was a hint that Achille would soon require a new one, and I knew who would make it. However, I did not much care; and taking advantage of there being no one looking, I contrived to drop my handkerchief inside it; but directly after I trembled, and wanted to have it back again, for there was my name marked upon it in full, in ink, and I was afraid that his landlady, Mrs Jackney, might see it.
I had a good look at her, to see whether I need feel jealous, and found, to my great delight, that I need not; for she was worse in appearance than Miss Furness, but evidently a very pleasant body; though, all the same I should not have liked her to find my handkerchief. However, there was no getting it back; for Miss Furness was now able to sit up, and I was one of the first to be obliged to leave the room, and stand agonised in the passage, lest any one should find out what I had done. But nothing was seen, and I heard afterwards from Achille, in one of his notes—the best, I think, that he ever wrote to me—how fondly he prized the treasure; and I mentally declared that it was not a bad way of laying out the value of a pocket-handkerchief, and that he should soon have another.
It was all so horribly unfortunate. If we made an engagement to meet, something was sure to happen; while, in spite of the time that had now passed since the poor Signor left, not one short five minutes had poor Achille and I had together. It was enough to make me ever so fond and devoted; and though I might be trembling a little in my allegiance at one time, I was ready to become a martyr now for his sake. But, as I said before, the very fact of an assignation being made was the signal for, or precursor of, something to happen; so that, I’m sure, I was quite in a tremble, a few days after Miss Furness’s faint, when Achille gave me a few lines inside De Porquet, telling me, in a few simple words, that he was again that night about to try his fortune, when he hoped I should be able to assist him to benefit the poor exiles, who were now in a great state of distress. No one, to have found that scrap of paper, would have imagined that it was anything more than a piece torn off to act as book-mark, and he gave me the book with it standing right out, so that Miss Furness could see it quite plainly as he passed it right under her nose, saying—
“I have put a piece of paper where you shall go on, Miss Bozerne.”
When I looked at it there was only hastily scrawled—
“Mercredi, une heure,” and “the poor suffer want—les pauvres ont besoin.”
That was all, and it really seemed to be a bit of exercise, and nothing else. But then, I had the key in my heart, and could read it as he meant; though truly it was an exercise for me to find means to overtop all difficulties and meet him. I knew what he meant well enough—just as well as if he had written four pages, crossed, in his own niggling, little, scrimply, unintelligible, Frenchy hand. So I sat thinking of the six box cords tied together and hidden away in the bottom drawer, underneath my green silk, and tightly locked up to keep them from prying eyes.
Well, of course, I told Clara—though I may as well own that I really should not if I could have helped it. For she was anything but what I should have liked; and, of course, I did not care to be so teased. And there was my appetite so spoiled again that I could not eat, and poor me in such a fidget for the rest of the day, that I did not know what to do. I slipped upstairs three times to see if the cord was all right, and the knots tightly tied; and then, the last time, if I did not hear Miss Furness calling me, and come down in a flurry and leave the key in the drawer. I turned quite hot all over when I felt for it in my pocket, and was sure I had lost it somewhere; when if I could not get some more cord I should be stopped again. All at once I remembered that the thing must be stuck in the keyhole. So, as soon as the lesson with Miss Furness was over, I slipped to the back staircase, and was about halfway up, when I must meet that tiresome, fat, old Fraülein.
“Vots for you heere, Mees Bozerne?” croaked the tiresome old English killer. “Young ladies ’ave no beesness upstaer in de afternoon. Go you down.”
Of course I had to go down again, for I was breaking rules, and ought to have been at work at private study in the schoolroom till half an hour before tea-time.
“It’s too bad,” I muttered, as I began to descend—“too bad to send me to a place like this, where one may not even go up to one’s bedroom. I’m sure, I don’t feel in the least bit like a school-girl.”
Just then I heard Miss Sloman calling the Fraülein to “Come here, dear!” They always called one another, “my love,” and “dear,” in private, though I’m sure no one could have been more unamiable, or looked more ready to scratch and call names. So the Fraülein again ordered me to go down, and then turned back, evidently to go to Miss Sloman: so, seizing the opportunity, I slipped down into the hall, and began bounding up the front stairs like lightning, when if I did not literally run up against Mrs Blunt, and strike her right in the chest with my head, just as she had come out of her room—for I was not looking, but, with head down, bounding up two stairs at a time.
It was a crash! Poor woman, she could not get breath to speak for some time. But, there, she was not the only one hurt; for that horrible twisted vulcanite coronet was driven right into my poor head, and pained me terribly.
“Ach ten!” cried the Fraülein, who had heard the crash and exclamation on both sides, and now came waddling up; “I told you go down, ten, Miss Bozerne, and you come up to knock de lady principal.”
So I was, without a word to say in defence, sent down in the most dreadful disgrace. But there was some fun in it, after all; for Clara vowed that the poor woman received such a shock that two of her bones—stay bones—were broken, and she nearly swallowed her teeth. But that Clara always would exaggerate so dreadfully; and, of course, that was not true.
I was not going to be threatened with medicine this time because my appetite was bad, so I kept one slice of bread and butter upon my plate to bite at, though it was almost enough to choke me; and then I managed to draw two more slices over the edge of my plate into my lap, where my pocket-handkerchief was spread all ready; and then I wrapped them up, when I thought that no one was looking, and put them in my pocket; and so tea was got over, and I thought what a long time it would be till midnight.
We were all standing in the middle of the classroom before getting our books out for the evening studies, when if Patty Smith did not come up to me, and, without waiting to see whether I would or not, exclaimed—
“Lend me your handkerchief, Laura, dear—I won’t keep it a moment!”
Seizing one end, which stuck out of my pocket, she gave it a snatch, when away it flew, and one piece of bread and butter was slung across the room, and struck Miss Furness in the face; while the other went flop up against the window behind her, stuck upon the pane for a moment, and then fell—leaving a buttery mark where it had been, as a matter of course. I declare I never felt so much ashamed in my life; while there were all the girls tittering and giggling, and Miss Furness wiping her face and scolding terribly about my dreadfully unladylike behaviour, though nothing could have been more humiliating than what followed, for I’m sure I wished there was not such a thing as a piece of bread and butter upon the face of the earth; for said Miss Furness—
“And now, Miss Bozerne, come and pick up those pieces.”
I would have given anything to have been able to refuse; but what could I do? I do not see how I could have helped it, for I really felt obliged; and there I was kneeling down, humbled and penitent, to pick it up; and there were the tiresome, buttery pieces, all broken up into crumbs here and crumbs there, all over the place.
“For your sake, Achille?” I murmured to myself; and that made me bear it until I had picked up all I could, and held the scraps upon a piece of exercise paper, wondering what I had better do with them.
“You had better wipe the butter off that window with your handkerchief, Miss Bozerne,” said Miss Furness, stiffly. “Oh! and it’s of no use for you to make up those indignant grimaces, and look like that, Miss Bozerne,” she continued, in her nasty, vinegary way. “If young ladies are so forgetful of decorum, and cannot be content with a fair share of food at the tea table, but must gluttonously stoop to steal pieces off the plate to devour at abnormal times, they must expect to be spoken to.”
Just as if I had taken the horrid stuff to eat, when so great was my agitation that I could partake of nothing. So there I was, with my face and neck burning in a most “abnormal” way, as Miss Furness would have called it, wiping and smearing the butter about over the pane of glass, and hardly seeing what I was doing for the tears; when there was that Patty Smith staring at me with her great saucer eyes, and her mouth made round and open, as if it had been another eye, and Clara the whole time enjoying it all, and laughing at my discomfort. It was really much too bad, for it was all her fault: the wicked, mischievous, impish creature had seen me put the pieces of bread and butter into my pocket, and had actually set Patty to snatch the handkerchief out.
“The plan succeeded beyond my expectations, darling,” she exclaimed afterwards, when we were alone; and I did not slap her—which, without boasting, must, I think, show how forgiving a spirit I possess.
But, to return to the scene in the room. When I had finished smearing the window with my pretty little cambric handkerchief, I threw open the sash, and was going to fling out the little pieces of bread-crumbs for the poor little birds—
“Miss Bozerne!” exclaimed Miss Furness, “what are you about?”
“Going to give the crumbs to the birds, ma’am,” I said, humbly.
“Oh, dear me, no,” exclaimed the old puss, seizing upon what she considered a good opportunity for making an example of me, and giving a lesson to the other girls—for that seemed one of the aims of her life: to make lessons out of everything she said or did, till she was a perfect nuisance. “Oh, dear me, no—such waste cannot be allowed. Go and put the fragments upon one of the plates, which James or the cook will give you, and ask her to save them for your breakfast.”
I could have cried with vexation; but I did not, though it was very, very, very hard work to keep the tears back.
“Oh, Achille! Achille!” I murmured again, “c’est pour toi!”
I walked out, like a martyr, bearing the pieces, with bent-down eyes, and gave them to the cook, telling her she was to throw them to the chickens. For I would not have given Miss Furness’s message if she had stood behind me.
Oh, yes, it was nice fun for the other girls, and dearly they used to enjoy seeing me humbled, because I always was rather distant, and would not make confidantes of ever so many; and when I went back, there they were upon the giggle, and Miss Furness not trying to check them one bit, as she would have done upon another occasion—which shows how partial and unjust she could be when she liked. But I soon forgot it all, engrossed as I was with the idea of what was coming that night. As to my next day’s lessons, after sitting before them for an hour, I believe that I knew less about them than when I took out my books; for right up at the top of one of the panes in the buttery window there was a spider spinning its net, and that set me thinking about poor Achille hanging in a web, and the four old lesson grinders being spiders to devour him. For there was the nasty creepy thing hanging by one of its strings ever so far down, and that made me think about the coming night and the rope ladder, till I could, in my overwrought fancy, imagine I saw poor Achille bobbing and swinging about, and ready to go through one of the window-panes every moment. Sometimes the very thought of it made my face burn, and my hands turn hot and damp as could be inside, just as they felt when one had shaken hands with Miss Furness, whose palm, in feel, was for all the world like the tail of a cod-fish.
Sometimes during that evening I felt in misery, and, I believe, all owing to that spider, and thinking of the danger of the feat to perform which I had lured poor Achille. I would have given anything to have been able to beg of him not to attempt it.
“Poor fly,” I thought—“poor, beautiful, fluttering, brightly painted fly; and have I been the means of weaving a net to lure thee to destruction? Oh, wretch that I am!”
And so I went on for some time, just as people do in books when they are very bad in their emotions; and that is one advantage in reading, only emotions are so much more eloquent than they would be, say, in an ignorant, unlettered person; and really, be it pleasure or pain, it is as well to be refined and make a grand display; for it is so much more satisfactory, even if the audience consists of self alone. At times, though, I was so elated that I could feel my eyes flash and sparkle with the thoughts that rushed through my brain; when, as if reading my heart, Clara would creep close, and nip my arm, and keep on whispering—
“I’ll tell—I’ll tell.”