TAKING AN ITALIAN LESSON.
But the evening is not yet over at Pomeranian Knoll.
The dinner-table had broken up. Anthony Dare left the house soon after
his father. Mrs. Dare turned to the fire for her after-dinner nap: the
young ladies, Adelaide excepted, proceeded to the drawing-room. Adelaide
Dare was thinner than formerly; and there was a worn, restless look upon
her face, that told of care or of disappointment. She remained in her
seat at the dessert-table, and, fencing herself round with a newspaper,
lest Mrs. Dare's eyes should open, took a letter from her pocket and
spread it on the table.
Viscount Hawkesley had never come forward to make her the Viscountess;
but he had not given up his visits to Pomeranian Knoll, and Adelaide had
never ceased hoping. It was one of his letters that she was poring over
now. Two or three years ago she might have married well. A clergyman had
desired to make her his wife. Adelaide declined. She had possibly her
own private reasons for believing in the good faith of Lord Hawkesley.
Adelaide Dare was not the first who has thrown away the substance to
grasp the shadow.
Mademoiselle Varsini, on leaving the dinner-table, had gone up to the
school-room. There she stirred the fire into a blaze, sat down in a
chair, and bent her head in what seemed to be an attitude of listening.
She did not listen in vain. Soon, stealthy footsteps were heard
ascending the stairs, and a streak of vermilion flashed into her olive
cheek, and she pressed her hand upon her bosom, as if to still its
beating. "_Que je suis bete!_" she murmured. French was far more
familiar to her than her native tongue.
The footsteps proved to be those of Herbert Dare. A tall, handsome man
now, better-looking than Anthony. He, Herbert, would have been very
handsome indeed, but that his features were spoiled by the free
expression they had worn in his youth--free as that which characterised
the face of Mr. Dare. He was coming in to pay a visit to the governess.
He paid her a good many visits: possibly thought it polite to do so.
Some gentlemen are polite, and some are the contrary; some take every
opportunity of improving their minds; some don't care whether they
improve them or not. Herbert Dare we should place amidst the former: a
thirst for foreign languages must, undoubtedly, be reckoned one of the
desires for improvement. Minny Dare had one evening broken in upon a
visit her brother was paying to mademoiselle, and she (very
impertinently, it must be owned) inquired what he was doing there.
"Taking an Italian lesson," Herbert answered, and he did not want Minny
to bother him over it. Minny made a wry face at the books spread out
between Herbert and mademoiselle, seated opposite each other at either
end of the table, and withdrew with all speed lest the governess should
press her to share in it. Minny did not like Italian lessons as much as
Herbert appeared to do.
He came in with quiet footsteps, and the first thing he did was to--lock
the door. The action may have been intended as a quiet reproof to Miss
Minny: if so, it is a pity she was not there to profit by it.
"Have they asked for me in the salon?" began the governess.
"Not they," replied Herbert. "They are too much occupied with their own
concerns."
"Herbert, why were you not here on Saturday night?" she asked.
"On Saturday night? Oh--I remember. I had to go out to keep an
engagement."
"You might have spoken to me first, then," she answered resentfully.
"Just one little word. I did come up here, and I waited--I waited! After
the tea I came up, and I waited again. Ah! quelle patience!"
"Waited to give me my Italian lesson?"
Herbert Dare spoke in a voice of laughing raillery. The Italian girl did
not seem inclined to laugh. She stood on one side the fire, and its
blaze--it was the only light in the room--flickered on her compressed
lips. More compressed than ever were they to-night.
"Now, what's the use of turning cross, Bianca?" continued Herbert, still
laughing. "You are as exacting as if I paid you a guinea a lesson, and
went upon a system of 'no lesson, no pay.' If----"
"Bah!" interrupted mademoiselle angrily: and it certainly was not
respectful of Herbert, as pupil, to call her by her Christian name--if
it was that which angered her. "I am getting nearly tired of it all."
"Tired of me! You might have a worse pupil----"
"Will you be quiet, then!" cried she, stamping her foot. "I am not
inclined for folly to-night. You shall not say again you are coming
here, if you don't come, mind, as you did on Saturday night."
"Well, I had an engagement, and I went straight off from the
dinner-table to keep it," answered Herbert, becoming serious. "Upon my
word of honour it was not my fault, Bianca; it was a business
engagement. I had not time to come here before I went."
"Then you might have come when you returned," she said.
"Scarcely," replied he. "I was not home till two in the morning."
Bianca Varsini lifted her strange eyes to his. "Why tell me that?" she
asked, her voice changing to one of mournful complaint. "I know you went
out from dinner--I watched you out; and I saw you when you went out
again. It was past ten. I saw you with my own eyes."
"You must have good eyes, Bianca. I went out from the dinner-table----"
"Not then--not then; I speak not of then," she vehemently interrupted.
"You might have come here before you went out the second time."
"I declare I don't know what you mean," he said, staring at her. "I did
not come in until two in the morning. It was past two."
"But I saw you," she persisted. "It was moonlight, and I saw you cross
the lawn from the dining-room window, and go out. I was at this window,
and I watched you go in the direction of the gate. It was long past
ten."
"Bianca, you were dreaming! I was not near the house."
Again she stamped her foot. "_Why_ you deceive me? Would I say I saw you
if I did not?"
Herbert had once seen Bianca Varsini in a passion. He did not care to
see her in one again. When he said that he had not come near the house,
from the time of his leaving it on rising from dinner, until two in the
morning, he had spoken the strict truth. What the Italian girl was
driving at, he could not imagine: but he deemed it as well to drop the
subject.
"You are a folle, Bianca, as you often call yourself," said he
jestingly, taking her hands. "You go into a temper for nothing. I'd get
rid of that haste, if I were you."
"It was my mother's temper," she answered, drawing her hands away and
letting them fall by her side. "Do you know what she once did! She spit
in the face of the Archeveque of Paris!"
"She was a lady!" cried Herbert ironically. "How was that?"
"He offended her. He was passing her in procession at the _Fete Dieu_,
and he said something reproachful to her, and it put her in a temper,
and she spit at him! She could do worse than that if she liked! She
could have died for those who were kind to her; but let them offend
her--je les en fais mes compliments!"
"I say, mademoiselle, who was your mother?"
"Never you mind! She was on the stage; not what you English call good.
But she was good to me; and she wished me to be what she was not. When I
was twelve she put me into a convent. La maudite place!"
Herbert laughed. He knew enough of French to understand the expression.
"It was maudite to me. I must not dance; I must not sing; I must not
have my liberty to do the simplest thing on earth. I must be up in the
morning to prayers; and then at my lessons all day; and then at prayers
again. I did pray. I did pray to the Virgin to take me from it. I nearly
prayed my heart out--and she never heard me! I had been there a
year--figure to yourself, a year!--when my mother came to see me. She
had been back in Italy. 'Take me away,' I said to her, 'before I die!'
'No, Bianca mia,' she answered, 'I leave you here that you may not die;
that your life may be happier than mine is, for mine is the vraie
misere.' I not tell you in Italian, as she spoke, for you not understand
it," rapidly interrupted mademoiselle. "My mother, she continued to me:
'When you are instructed, you shall become a gouvernante in a family of
the noblesse; you shall consort with the princes without shame; and
perhaps you will make a good parti in marriage. Though you have no
fortune, you will be accomplished; you will have the maniere and the
tournure; you will be belle.' Do you think me belle?" she abruptly broke
off again.
"Enchanting!" answered Herbert. "Have I not told you so five hundred
times?"
She stole a glance at the little old-fashioned oval glass which hung
over the mantel-piece, and then went on.
"My mother would not take me out. Though I lay on the flagstones of the
visitors' parlour, though I wept for it, she would not take me out. 'It
is for your good, Bianca mia,' she said. And I remained there seven
years. Seven years! Do you figure it?"
"But I suppose you grew reconciled?"
"We grow reconciled to the worst in time," she answered, dreamily gazing
into the fire with her strange eyes. "I pressed down my despair into
myself at first, and I looked out for the opportunity to run away. We
were as closely kept as the nuns in their cells, in their barred rooms,
in their grated chapel; but, sooner than not have had my will and get
away, I would have set the place on fire!"
"I say, mademoiselle, don't you talk treason!" cried Herbert, laughing.
"Do you think I would not?" she answered, turning to him, a gleaming
look in her eyes. "But I had to wait for the opportunity to escape; and,
while I waited, news came that my mother had died. She caught cold one
night when she was in her evening robe, and it settled in her throat,
and formed a depot, and she died. And so it was all over with my escape!
My mother gone, I had nowhere to fly to. And I stopped in that enfer
seven years."
"You are complimentary to convents, Bianca. Maudite in one breath, enfer
in another!"
"They are all that, and worse!" intemperately responded the Italian
girl. "They are--mais n'importe; c'est fini pour moi. I had to beat down
my heart then, and stop in one. Ah! I know not how I did it. I look back
and wonder. Seven years!"
"But who paid for you all that time?"
"My mother was not poor. She had enough for that. She made the
arrangements with a priest when she was dying, and paid the money to
him. The convent educated me, and dressed me, and made me hard. Their
cold rules beat down my rebellious heart; beat it down to hardness. I
should not have been so hard but for that convent!"
"Oh, you are hard, then?" was the remark of Herbert Dare.
"I can be!" nodded Mademoiselle Varsini. "Better not cross _me_!"
"And how did you get out of the convent?"
"When I was nineteen, they sent me out into a situation, to teach music
and my own language, and French and English. They taught well in the
convent: I could speak English then as readily as I speak it now: and
they gave me a box of clothes and four five-franc pieces, saying that
was the last of my mother's effects. What cared I? Had they turned me
out penniless, I should have jumped to go. I served in that first
situation two years. It was easy, and it was good pay."
"French people?"
"But certainly: Parisians. It was not more than one mile from the
convent. There was but one little pupil."
"Why did you leave?"
"I was put into a passion one day, and madame said after that she was
frightened to keep me. Ah! I have had adventures, I can tell you. In the
next place I did not stay three months; the ennui came to me, and I left
it for another that I found; and the other one I liked--I had my
liberty. I should have stayed in that, but one came and turned me out of
it."
"A fresh governess?"
"No; a man. A hideous. He was madame's brother, and he was wrinkled and
yellow, and his long skinny fingers were like claws. He wanted me to
marry him; he said he was rich. Sell myself to that monster?
No!--continue a governess, rather. One evening madame and my two pupils
had gone to the Odeon, and he came to the little etude where I sat. He
locked the door, and said he would not unlock it till I gave him a
promise to be his wife. I stormed, and I stormed: he tried to take my
hand, the imbecile! He laughed at me, and said I was caged----"
"Why did you not ring the bell?" interrupted Herbert.
"Bon! Do we have bells in every room in the old Parisian houses? I would
have pulled open the window, but he stood against the fastening,
laughing still; so I dashed my hand through a pane, and the glass
clattered down to the court below, and the servants came out to look up.
'I cannot undo the etude door,' I called to them; 'come and break it
open!' So that hideous undid it then, and the servants got some water
and bathed my hand. 'But why need the signora have put her hand through
the glass? Why not have opened the window?' said one. 'What is that to
you?' I said. 'You will not have to pay for it. Bind my hand up.' They
wrapped it in a handkerchief, and I put on my bonnet and cloak, and went
out. Madeleine--she was the cook, and a good old soul--saw me. 'But
where is the signorina going so late as this?' she asked. 'Where should
I be going, but to the pharmacien's?' I answered; and I went my way."
"We say chemist's in England," observed Herbert. "Did he find your hand
much damaged?"
"I did not go there. Think you I made attention to my hand? I went to
the--what you call it?--cutler's shops, through the Rue Montmartre, and
I bought a two-edged stiletto. It was that long"--pointing from her
wrist to the end of her finger--"besides the handle. I showed it to that
hideous the next day. 'You come to the room where I sit again,' I said
to him, 'and you will see.' He told madame his sister, and she said I
must leave."
Herbert Dare looked at her--at her pale face, which had gone white in
the telling, her glistening, stony eyes, her drawn lips. "You would not
have dared to use the stiletto, though!" he cried, in some wonder.
"I not dare! You do not know me. When I am roused, there's not a thing I
would not dare to do. I am not ruffled at trifles: things that excite
others do not trouble me. 'Bah! What matter trifles?' I say. My mother
always told me to let the evil spirit lie torpid within me, or I should
not die in my bed."
"I say," cried Herbert, half mockingly, "what religion do you call
yourself?"
She took the question literally. "I am a Catholic or Protestant as is
agreeable to my places," was the very candid answer. "I am not a
devote--a saint. Where's the use of it?"
"That is why you generally have those violent headaches on Sunday," said
Herbert Dare, laughing. "You ought----"
There was an interruption. Rosa Dare's footsteps were heard on the
stairs, and they halted at the door.
"Mademoiselle!" she called out.
Mademoiselle did not answer. Herbert Dare flung his handkerchief over
the handle of the door in a manner that hid the key-hole. Rosa Dare
tried the door, found it fastened, and went off grumbling.
"It's my belief mademoiselle locks herself in there to get a nap after
dinner, as mamma does in the dining-room!"
She was heard to enter the drawing-room and slam the door. Herbert
softly opened that of the school-room, and went down after his sister.
"I say, Herbert," cried Rosa, when he entered, "have you seen anything
of mademoiselle?"
"I!" responded Herbert. "Do you think I keep mademoiselle in my pocket?"
"She goes and locks herself up in the school-room after dinner, and I
can't think what she does there, or what she can be at," retorted Rosa.
"At her devotions, perhaps," suggested Herbert.
The words did not please Mrs. Dare, who had then joined the circle.
"Herbert, I will not have Mademoiselle Varsini ridiculed," she said
quite sternly. "She is a most efficient instructress for Rosa and Minny,
and we must be careful not to give her offence, or she might leave."
"I'm sure I have heard of foreign women telling their beads till
cock-crowing," persisted Herbert.
"Those are Roman Catholics. A Protestant, as is Mademoiselle
Varsini----"
Mrs. Dare's angry words were cut short by the appearance of Mademoiselle
Varsini herself. She, the governess, turned to Rosa. "What did you want
just now when you came to the school-room door?"
"I wanted you here to show me that filet stitch," answered Rosa, slight
impertinence peeping out in her tone. "And I don't see why you should
not answer when I knock, mademoiselle."
"It may not always suit me to answer," was the calm reply of the
governess. "My time is my own after dinner; and Madame Dare will agree
with me that a governess should hold full control over her school-room."
"You are perfectly right, mademoiselle," acquiesced Mrs. Dare.
Mademoiselle went to the piano and dashed off a symphony. She was a
brilliant player. Herbert, looking at his watch, and finding it later
than he thought, hurried from the house.