By the close of the evening the arrivals had already amounted to two-and-twenty, and during the next day nearly double that number were brought to the gate.
Mrs. Wewitz had already been given to understand that two-and-twenty Frenchmen had slept the night previous in the bed-room of the young ladies belonging to the upper school, and now, to her great horror, she saw the number of foreigners under her roof increased by couples almost every half-hour throughout the day.
At dusk she thought it high time to remonstrate with M. le Comte, and on requesting to be informed how many there were at present lodged in his room, she was horrified to hear that, including himself, there were no less than eight-and-forty occupants. She begged to remind the Comte that she had let the room to him alone. But the Comte, with the greatest politeness possible, assured her that he was at liberty to do with the apartment as he pleased so long as he paid the rent for it, and that she need not be under the least alarm, for that they were all perfect gentlemen, and that many of them, like himself, were persons of title.
Mrs. Wewitz knew not what to do under the circumstances. To endeavour to put eight-and-forty soldiers to the rout was more than she dare attempt—and to call in the aid of the police would be, perhaps, not only to cause bloodshed, but to get the whole affair published in the newspapers, and so ruin the school; for what parent, as she justly observed to herself, would dream of confiding an innocent daughter to the care of an establishment where as many as four dozen foreigners were in the habit of being located in one apartment alone. Then she was in a state of continual alarm lest the Sandboys should discover the colony of National Guards she had under her left wing; and how to keep their presence a secret from them was beyond her power to conceive. If she only dare venture to break the distressing intelligence to her daughter in town, she perhaps might be able to bring the business to a happy and speedy termination; but she knew that her dearest Cleopatra would never forgive her imprudence. Then, again, how was she to get rid of the fellows, even before the young ladies returned? for if they would not go now, how was it likely that they would stir at a time when London would have become more full, and there would then be the extra inducement of the impudent fellows remaining on the premises to make love to the young ladies? She would not have that Emily Bonpoint back while those wretches of Frenchmen were about for all she was worth. For if she and her daughter couldn’t be a match for her at other times, a pretty life she would lead them with the left wing packed full of foreigners. It would break her Cleopatra’s heart she knew when she came to hear of it, that the filthy, dirty fellows had been sleeping two together in those beautiful white beds of hers—though how they managed in the short, narrow slips of things, was impossible to say. Besides, if there was one thing that her daughter paid more attention to than another, it was the morals of the tender plants that were placed under her culture—and she would never forgive herself, she was sure, if with all those Frenchmen under the roof any elopement should take place—for not one of them, she was sure, had got a halfpenny to bless himself.
For a few days the Sandboys remained in a state of comparative ignorance as to the small army that was then barracked under the same roof with them. Jobby, to be sure, had noticed the number of men in red pantaloons that continually kept going in and out of the premises; but, beyond a passing remark, this had excited little or no astonishment.
Mrs. Sandboys moreover, had noticed, on the very first day of the foreigners entering the establishment, a strong smell of tobacco smoke, and a fogginess in every one of the rooms that she could in no way account for; but this had worn off, and she had since paid but little attention to the matter, for, whether from continual use her senses had become in a measure accustomed to the smell, or whether from the Sandboys being located at the other side of the house, it was difficult to say, but certain it was, that after the first evening she had not been heard to complain.
One night, however, the lady being rather nervous, after partaking heartily of a cold rice-pudding for supper, she felt satisfied that she heard some noise in the house. Sandboys had been fast asleep for some time, but she thumped him on the back and confided to him her suspicions that all was not right below stairs. But Cursty was too tired to trouble himself much about the matter, so he merely murmured that it was all owing to that cold rice-pudding she would eat, and immediately re-arranged himself for the continuation of his slumbers.
Mrs. Sandboys was too firmly convinced of the soundness of the conclusion at which she had arrived, to be able to rest quiet in her bed. She tried to close her eyes and shut out all thought of the unpleasant circumstance from her mind, but it was useless; the noise still forced itself upon her, and she could not help thinking of the lonely situation of the house, so near that wicked London as it was. They might all scream their very lives out before they could make any one hear. Nor did the stories told of the highwaymen that in the last century had infested the common, and the anecdotes she had heard of the parties who used to wait at the road-side inn, at the corner of it, till a sufficient number of travellers had arrived to allow them to cross the deserted place in a body formidable enough to prevent their being plundered.
Mrs. Sandboys, therefore, rose from her bed, determined to satisfy herself whence the noise proceeded. At times she would declare that she heard voices at the opposite side of the building. Accordingly, slipping on her flannel gown, she proceeded with the rushlight shade to inspect the premises.
She had not gone far in the direction of the other wing of the establishment, when the smoke grew so thick that it was almost impossible for her to see her hand before her, and it was of so pungent a nature, that it almost blinded as well as stifled her. At first it smelt to her very like the fumes of tobacco, but as she was not aware of there being any one addicted to “the weed” in the “Establishment for Young Ladies”—a taste, indeed, that seemed utterly at variance with the feminine character of the institution—she got to be convinced that there was some tarry substance smouldering away in one of the rooms, and that it only required a breath of air to cause it to burst into a sheet of flame, when they would be all burnt alive in their beds.