Outside the bedroom the night was black and still.
The small rain fell too softly to be heard in the garden; not a leaf
stirred in the airless calm; the watch-dog was asleep, the cats were
indoors; far or near, under the murky heaven, not a sound was stirring.
Inside the bedroom the night was black and still.
Miss Ladd knew her business as a schoolmistress too well to allow
night-lights; and Miss Ladd’s young ladies were supposed to be fast
asleep, in accordance with the rules of the house. Only at intervals the
silence was faintly disturbed, when the restless turning of one of
the girls in her bed betrayed itself by a gentle rustling between the
sheets. In the long intervals of stillness, not even the softly audible
breathing of young creatures asleep was to be heard.
The first sound that told of life and movement revealed the mechanical
movement of the clock. Speaking from the lower regions, the tongue of
Father Time told the hour before midnight.
A soft voice rose wearily near the door of the room. It counted the
strokes of the clock--and reminded one of the girls of the lapse of
time.
“Emily! eleven o’clock.”
There was no reply. After an interval the weary voice tried again, in
louder tones:
“Emily!”
A girl, whose bed was at the inner end of the room, sighed under
the heavy heat of the night--and said, in peremptory tones, “Is that
Cecilia?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m getting hungry, Emily. Is the new girl asleep?”
The new girl answered promptly and spitefully, “No, she isn’t.”
Having a private object of their own in view, the five wise virgins of
Miss Ladd’s first class had waited an hour, in wakeful anticipation
of the falling asleep of the stranger--and it had ended in this way!
A ripple of laughter ran round the room. The new girl, mortified and
offended, entered her protest in plain words.
“You are treating me shamefully! You all distrust me, because I am a
stranger.”
“Say we don’t understand you,” Emily answered, speaking for her
schoolfellows; “and you will be nearer the truth.”
“Who expected you to understand me, when I only came here to-day? I have
told you already my name is Francine de Sor. If want to know more, I’m
nineteen years old, and I come from the West Indies.”
Emily still took the lead. “Why do you come _here?_” she asked. “Who
ever heard of a girl joining a new school just before the holidays? You
are nineteen years old, are you? I’m a year younger than you--and I have
finished my education. The next big girl in the room is a year younger
than me--and she has finished her education. What can you possibly have
left to learn at your age?”
“Everything!” cried the stranger from the West Indies, with an outburst
of tears. “I’m a poor ignorant creature. Your education ought to have
taught you to pity me instead of making fun of me. I hate you all. For
shame, for shame!”
Some of the girls laughed. One of them--the hungry girl who had counted
the strokes of the clock--took Francine’s part.
“Never mind their laughing, Miss de Sor. You are quite right, you have
good reason to complain of us.”
Miss de Sor dried her eyes. “Thank you--whoever you are,” she answered
briskly.
“My name is Cecilia Wyvil,” the other proceeded. “It was not, perhaps,
quite nice of you to say you hated us all. At the same time we have
forgotten our good breeding--and the least we can do is to beg your
pardon.”
This expression of generous sentiment appeared to have an irritating
effect on the peremptory young person who took the lead in the room.
Perhaps she disapproved of free trade in generous sentiment.
“I can tell you one thing, Cecilia,” she said; “you shan’t beat ME in
generosity. Strike a light, one of you, and lay the blame on me if Miss
Ladd finds us out. I mean to shake hands with the new girl--and how can
I do it in the dark? Miss de Sor, my name’s Brown, and I’m queen of the
bedroom. I--not Cecilia--offer our apologies if we have offended you.
Cecilia is my dearest friend, but I don’t allow her to take the lead in
the room. Oh, what a lovely nightgown!”
The sudden flow of candle-light had revealed Francine, sitting up in her
bed, and displaying such treasures of real lace over her bosom that
the queen lost all sense of royal dignity in irrepressible admiration.
“Seven and sixpence,” Emily remarked, looking at her own night-gown and
despising it. One after another, the girls yielded to the attraction of
the wonderful lace. Slim and plump, fair and dark, they circled round
the new pupil in their flowing white robes, and arrived by common
consent at one and the same conclusion: “How rich her father must be!”
Favored by fortune in the matter of money, was this enviable person
possessed of beauty as well?
In the disposition of the beds, Miss de Sor was placed between Cecilia
on the right hand, and Emily on the left. If, by some fantastic turn of
events, a man--say in the interests of propriety, a married doctor, with
Miss Ladd to look after him--had been permitted to enter the room, and
had been asked what he thought of the girls when he came out, he would
not even have mentioned Francine. Blind to the beauties of the expensive
night-gown, he would have noticed her long upper lip, her obstinate
chin, her sallow complexion, her eyes placed too close together--and
would have turned his attention to her nearest neighbors. On one side
his languid interest would have been instantly roused by Cecilia’s
glowing auburn hair, her exquisitely pure skin, and her tender blue
eyes. On the other, he would have discovered a bright little creature,
who would have fascinated and perplexed him at one and the same time. If
he had been questioned about her by a stranger, he would have been at
a loss to say positively whether she was dark or light: he would have
remembered how her eyes had held him, but he would not have known of
what color they were. And yet, she would have remained a vivid picture
in his memory when other impressions, derived at the same time, had
vanished. “There was one little witch among them, who was worth all the
rest put together; and I can’t tell you why. They called her Emily. If
I wasn’t a married man--” There he would have thought of his wife, and
would have sighed and said no more.
While the girls were still admiring Francine, the clock struck the
half-hour past eleven.
Cecilia stole on tiptoe to the door--looked out, and listened--closed
the door again--and addressed the meeting with the irresistible charm of
her sweet voice and her persuasive smile.
“Are none of you hungry yet?” she inquired. “The teachers are safe in
their rooms; we have set ourselves right with Francine. Why keep the
supper waiting under Emily’s bed?”
Such reasoning as this, with such personal attractions to recommend
it, admitted of but one reply. The queen waved her hand graciously, and
said, “Pull it out.”
Is a lovely girl--whose face possesses the crowning charm of expression,
whose slightest movement reveals the supple symmetry of her figure--less
lovely because she is blessed with a good appetite, and is not ashamed
to acknowledge it? With a grace all her own, Cecilia dived under
the bed, and produced a basket of jam tarts, a basket of fruit and
sweetmeats, a basket of sparkling lemonade, and a superb cake--all
paid for by general subscriptions, and smuggled into the room by kind
connivance of the servants. On this occasion, the feast was especially
plentiful and expensive, in commemoration not only of the arrival of the
Midsummer holidays, but of the coming freedom of Miss Ladd’s two leading
young ladies. With widely different destinies before them, Emily and
Cecilia had completed their school life, and were now to go out into the
world.
The contrast in the characters of the two girls showed itself, even in
such a trifle as the preparations for supper.
Gentle Cecilia, sitting on the floor surrounded by good things, left it
to the ingenuity of others to decide whether the baskets should be all
emptied at once, or handed round from bed to bed, one at a time. In the
meanwhile, her lovely blue eyes rested tenderly on the tarts.
Emily’s commanding spirit seized on the reins of government, and
employed each of her schoolfellows in the occupation which she was
fittest to undertake. “Miss de Sor, let me look at your hand. Ah! I
thought so. You have got the thickest wrist among us; you shall draw
the corks. If you let the lemonade pop, not a drop of it goes down your
throat. Effie, Annis, Priscilla, you are three notoriously lazy girls;
it’s doing you a true kindness to set you to work. Effie, clear the
toilet-table for supper; away with the combs, the brushes, and the
looking-glass. Annis, tear the leaves out of your book of exercises, and
set them out for plates. No! I’ll unpack; nobody touches the baskets but
me. Priscilla, you have the prettiest ears in the room. You shall act as
sentinel, my dear, and listen at the door. Cecilia, when you have done
devouring those tarts with your eyes, take that pair of scissors (Miss
de Sor, allow me to apologize for the mean manner in which this school
is carried on; the knives and forks are counted and locked up every
night)--I say take that pair of scissors, Cecilia, and carve the cake,
and don’t keep the largest bit for yourself. Are we all ready? Very
well. Now take example by me. Talk as much as you like, so long as you
don’t talk too loud. There is one other thing before we begin. The men
always propose toasts on these occasions; let’s be like the men. Can any
of you make a speech? Ah, it falls on me as usual. I propose the first
toast. Down with all schools and teachers--especially the new teacher,
who came this half year. Oh, mercy, how it stings!” The fixed gas in the
lemonade took the orator, at that moment, by the throat, and effectually
checked the flow of her eloquence. It made no difference to the girls.
Excepting the ease of feeble stomachs, who cares for eloquence in
the presence of a supper-table? There were no feeble stomachs in that
bedroom. With what inexhaustible energy Miss Ladd’s young ladies ate
and drank! How merrily they enjoyed the delightful privilege of talking
nonsense! And--alas! alas!--how vainly they tried, in after life, to
renew the once unalloyed enjoyment of tarts and lemonade!
In the unintelligible scheme of creation, there appears to be no
human happiness--not even the happiness of schoolgirls--which is ever
complete. Just as it was drawing to a close, the enjoyment of the feast
was interrupted by an alarm from the sentinel at the door.
“Put out the candle!” Priscilla whispered “Somebody on the stairs.”