When the depths of her hitherto unsunned ignorance had been satisfactorily plumbed, Mrs. Tancred left her, having pencil-marked the limit to which her investigation of each volume must extend, having opened an atlas and hinted at sums. (“Oh, but I am very good at figures! I could always calculate the odds in all the races!” was an unconsidered interpolation which did her no good.) With a detestable promise to return in an hour and a half’s time to give her a lesson in dictation, with a view to fettering the freedom of her spelling, and the observation “Your ignorance is incredible; but at seventeen nothing is irremediable,” her instructress withdrew.
Bonnybell remained for a few moments sedulously staring at the first words of the opening chapter of Green’s “History of the English People;” as who knew to what treachery of sudden return and inexcusable espionage she might be liable? Not even the sound of the swing-door at the end of the passage closing behind Camilla’s departing form, nor the perfect silence that settled down upon her practically uninhabited wing, reassured Miss Ransome.
She peeped cautiously out, and finding the coast clear, at once deserted her studies in order to ascertain on what the range of windows that lighted the gallery upon which her torture-chamber opened, looked out? They gave upon a court-yard, surrounded by offices, and in which, at the moment of her survey, nothing livelier was happening than the crossing it by a footman in shirt-sleeves. Her own prospect—that from the schoolroom itself—was even more hopeless. Two tall sash-windows looked right into an impenetrable belt of thick evergreen trees and shrubs, which entirely baffled all attempts to penetrate it. To the girl’s angry fancy it seemed as if the old witch who had laid this tedious spell upon her, must have made it spring up in the night in its choking density. She turned her attention to the interior of the room, and beguiled some half-hour in examining and inwardly ridiculing its appointments and adornments—the aniline-dyed carpet, the crinolined and whiskered hideousities in the shape of photographs, presumably of Camilla’s parents, since they were male and female, and a portrait of Camilla, herself in a sashed frock and frilled trousers, with a hoop in one hand, artistically balanced by a hoop-stick in the other. The likeness was still a staring one: large bald forehead, long upper lip, and piercing eyes, already in evidence. “Put her into a sash and frilled trousers, and she would not look much different now! When I get to know Edward a good deal better I shall suggest it to him!”
She laughed out loud, excessively tickled by the idea of this humane and feasible project, then pulled herself together in alarm. Who knew how far her voice might carry in the echoing void of this desolate region? nor what spies might be set to check and report her movements? Candour compelled her to reject the latter supposition as soon as formed, divining and acknowledging the absolute straightness—stupid, contemptible, and unaccountable as it was—of her tyrant.
After having exhausted the objects of interest and mirth afforded her by the—to Camilla—sacred relics of her severe infancy and adolescence, and having learnt from a perfectly accurate bald-faced clock, upon which she fastened an imaginary likeness to its owner, that she had succeeded in frittering three-quarters of an hour out of the hour and a half allotted to her in which to prepare for Mrs. Tancred’s re-appearance and the threatened dictation lesson, she returned most reluctantly to Greene, skimming and peeping and skipping, in the style of the true-born dunce, in search of what she would call “plums.” Her acquaintance with history was indeed slender; but she had a sort of idea that in the driest of that species of literature might be found oases in the shape of anecdotes about king’s mistresses, etc. Her quest in this case was very poorly rewarded, and with a heartfelt sigh she returned to Chapter I. “Angles, Saxons, Jutes! What tommy rot! Jutes! What a ridiculous name! Jute! That is the cheap stuff to cover chairs with, whose colour always flies.”
Her eye left the page, and fixed itself absently upon that branch of the nearest of the shrubbery trees, which absolutely swept the window. To think of her, Bonnybell Ransome, of all people, sitting here like a good little schoolchild learning lessons! She, with her experiences in the past! Memory went back to them; indeed, they were never very far away. To do her justice, the reminiscences, begun with a scornful smile of superiority, ended by sending a slight shudder over her. That evening when they automobiled down from Paris to dine at the Réservoir at Versailles, that was about the nearest shave she ever had! Hateful, hateful old Charlie Landon! And to have to be civil to him afterwards! It would never have done to tell poor Claire. She had plenty of other things to worry her, and latterly it was so difficult to make her understand anything. But how angry even she would have been! Well, assommant épatant as it was here, it was at all events better than that.
Good Heavens! she could not have been thinking of Charlie Landon and the park at Versailles for three-quarters of an hour; yet some one—Camilla, of course—was nearing the door, and she had not yet mastered even those wretched elementary Jutes! But it was not Camilla.
Camilla was frying other fish, and, for the morning at least, Miss Ransome was saved from any exposure of her frittered opportunities. Perhaps, however, she would be glad to compound for such an exposure in exchange for the one that was hovering over her unsuspecting head. Mrs. Tancred was sitting at her large and business-like writing-table, tranquilly attacking her daily task. Her correspondence was immense, and as she never left any letter or note unanswered, but sent speedy and conscientious replies, even to such valueless trivialities as most people commit at once to the waste-paper basket; as she flouted the idea of a secretary or typist, occasionally suggested by Edward, her labours sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. But the threat was never fulfilled; to-day she was going through her tale of bricks with a heart at peace. Bonnybell was out of possible mischief, with her feet set on the upward path, and in her long solitary hours of the previous day Camilla had drawn strength from communion with her own strong spirit and earnest appeal to her Unknown God worthily to bear and even profit by the heavy burden and responsibility laid upon her. Whether Miss Ransome would be flattered did she know that she was regarded in the light of a hair shirt is doubtful.
It was an understood thing that Mrs. Tancred was not to be disturbed during the forenoon, and it was a displeased face that she turned upon the butler who invaded her busy privacy.
“Mrs. Aylmer and Miss Aylmer are in the morning-room, ma’am, and wish to speak to you.”