I sincerely hope the readers of all this do not expect to find any plot
or exciting mystery; because, if they do, they will be most terribly
disappointed, since I am not leading them into the realms of fiction.
No lady is going to be poisoned; there is no mysterious murder; neither
bigamy, trigamy, nor quadrigamy; in fact, not a single gamy in the book,
though once bordering upon that happy state. Somebody does not turn out
to be somebody else, and anybody is not kept out of his rightful
property by a false heir, any more than a dreadfully good man's wife
runs away from him with a very wicked _roue_, gets injured in a railway
accident, and then comes back to be governess to her own children, while
her husband does not know her again.
Oh, no! there is no excitement of that kind, nothing but a twelvemonth's
romance of real life; the spreading of the clouds of sorrow where all
was sunshine; the descent of a bitter blight, to eat into and canker a
young rose-bud. But there, I won't be poetical, for I am not making an
album.
I was too much out of humour, and too low-spirited, to be much amused
with the country during my journey down; while as to reading the sort of
circular thing about the Cedars and the plan of operations during the
coming session, now about to commence, I could not get through the first
paragraph; for every time I looked up, there was a dreadful
foreign-looking man with his eyes fixed upon me, though he pretended to
be reading one of those Windsor-soap-coloured paper-covered
_Chemin-de-Fer_ novels, by Daudet, that one buys on the French railways.
Of course we should not have been subjected to that annoyance--shall I
call it so?--only mamma must throw the expenses of my education at my
head, and more; and say it was necessary we should travel second-class,
though I'm sure papa would have been terribly angry had he known.
I had my tatting with me, and took it out when I laid the circular
aside; but it was always the same--look up when I would, there were his
sharp, dark, French-looking eyes fixed upon me; while I declare if it
did not seem that in working my pattern I was forming a little
cotton-lace framework to so many bright, dark eyes, which kept on
peering out at me, till the porter shouted out "'sham, All--sham," where
the stranger also descended and watched us into the station fly.
Mamma said that if we came down second-class, we would go up to the
Cedars in a decent form; and we did, certainly, in one of the nastiest,
stably-smelling, dusty, jangling old flys I was ever in. The window
would not stop up on the dusty side, while on the other it would not let
down; and I told mamma we might just as well have brought the trunks
with us, and not left them for the station people to send, for all the
difference it would have made. But mamma knew best, of course, and it
was no use for me to speak.
But I wish to be just; and I must say that the Cedars was a very pretty
place to look at, just outside Allsham town; though of course its
prettiness was only for an advertisement, and not to supply home comfort
to the poor little prisoners within. We entered by a pair of large iron
gates, where upon the pillars on either side were owls, with
outstretched wings--put there, of course, to remind parents of the
goddess Minerva; but we all used to say that they were likenesses of
Mrs Blount and the Fraulein. There was a broad gravel sweep up to the
portico, while in front was a beautiful velvet lawn with a couple of
cedar trees, whose graceful branches swept the grass.
"Mrs and Miss Bozerne," said mamma to the footman, a nasty tall, thin,
straggley young man, with red hair that would not brush smooth, and a
freckly face, a horrible caricature of our John, in a drab coat and
scarlet plushes, and such thin legs that I could not help a smile. But
he was terribly thin altogether, and looked as if he had been a page-boy
watered till he grew out of knowledge, and too fast; and he clung to the
door in such a helpless way, when he let us in, that he seemed afraid to
leave it again, lest he should fall.
"This way, ladies," he said, with a laugh-and-water sort of a smile; and
he led us across a handsome hall, where there were four statues and a
great celestial globe hanging from the ceiling--only the globe hanging;
though I'm sure it would have been a charity and a release for some
young people if a few of the muses had shared the fate of the globe--at
all events, that four. First and foremost of all was Clio. I wish she
had been hung upon a date tree!
"This way, ladies," said the tall creature, saving himself once more
from tippling over by seizing the drawing-room door-handle, and then, as
he turned and swung by it, sending the blood tingling into my cheeks by
announcing--
"Mrs and Miss Bosom."
Any one with a heart beating beneath her own can fancy our feelings. Of
course I am aware that some unfeeling, ribald men--I do not include
thee, oh, Achille!--would have turned the wretch's blunder into a
subject for jest; but thanks to the goddess of _Bonheur_, there was none
of the race present, and Mrs Fortesquieu de Blount came mincing
forward, smiling most benignly in her pet turban.
A dreadful old creature--I shall never forget her! Always dressed in
black satin, a skin parting front, false teeth, and a thick gold chain
hung over her shoulders; while the shocking old thing always thrust
everything artificial that she wore right under your eyes, so that you
could not fail to see how deceptive she was.
She was soon deep in conversation with mamma; while I looked wearily
round the room, which was full to overflowing with all sorts of fancy
work, so that you could not stir an inch without being hooked, or
caught, or upsetting something. There were antimacassars,
sofa-cushions, fire-screens, bead-mats, wool-mats, crochet-mats,
coverings for the sofa, piano, and chimney-piece, candle-screens,
curtains, ottomans, pen wipers--things enough, in short, to have set up
a fancy fair. And, of course, I knew well enough what they all meant--
presents from pupils who had been foolish enough to spend their money in
buying the materials, and then working them up to ornament the old
tabby's drawing-room.
Well, I don't care. It's the truth; she was a horrible old tabby, with
nothing genuine or true about her, or I would not speak so
disrespectfully. She did not care a bit for her pupils, more than to
value them according to how much they brought her in per annum, so that
the drawing-room boarders--there were no parlour boarders there, nothing
so common--stood first in her estimation.
I felt so vexed that first day, sitting in the drawing-room, I could
have pulled off the old thing's turban; and I'm sure that if I had the
false front would have come with it. There she was, pointing out the
different crayon-drawings upon the wall; and mamma, who cannot tell a
decent sketch from a bad one, lifting up her hand and pretending to be
in ecstasies.
Do you mean to tell me that they did not both know how they were
deceiving one another? Stuff! Of course they did, and they both liked
it. Mamma praised Mrs Blount, and Mrs Blount praised mamma and her
"sweet child"; and I declare it was just like what the dreadful American
man said in his horrid, low, clever book--that was so funny, and yet one
felt ashamed at having laughed--where he writes to the newspaper editor
to puff his show, and promises to return the favour by having all his
printing done at his office; and papa read it so funnily, and called it
"reciprocity of allaying the irritation of the dorsal region," which we
said was much more refined than Mr Artemus Ward's way of putting it.
I was quite ashamed of mamma, that I was, for it did seem so little;
and, oh! how out of patience I was! But there, that part of the
interview came to an end, and a good thing too; for I knew well enough a
great deal of it was to show off before me, for of course Mrs Blount
had shown mamma the drawings and things before.
So then we were taken over the place, and introduced to the teachers and
the pupils who had returned, and there really did seem to be some nice
girls; but as for the teachers--of all the old, yellow, spectacled
things I ever did see, they were the worst; while as for the German
Fraulein, I don't know what to say bad enough to describe her, for I
never before did see any one so hooked-nosed and parroty.
Then we went upstairs to see the dormitories--there were no bedrooms--
and afterwards returned to the drawing-room, where the lady principal
kissed me on both cheeks and said I was most welcome to her
establishment, and I declare I thought she meant to bite me, for her
dreadful teeth went _snap_, though perhaps, like mamma's, they were not
well under control.
Then mamma had some sherry, and declared that she was more enchanted
with the place than she had been at her last visit; and she hoped I
should be very happy and very good, and make great progress in my
studies. When Mrs Blount said she was quite certain that I should
gratify my parents' wishes in every respect, and be a great credit to
the establishment; and I knew she was wondering all the time how many
silk dresses and how many bonnets I had brought, for everything about
the place was show, show always, and I soon found out how the
plainly-dressed girls were snubbed and kept in the background. As for
Miss Grace Murray, the half-teacher, half-pupil, who had her education
for the assistance she gave with the younger girls, I'm sure it was
shameful--such a sweet, gentle, lovable girl as she was--shameful that
she should have been so ill-treated. I speak without prejudice, for she
never was any friend of mine, but always distrusted me, and more than
once reported what I suppose she was right in calling flippant
behaviour; but I could not help it. I was dreadfully wicked while at
the Cedars.
At last the fly bore mamma away, and I wanted to go to my dormitory, to
try and swallow down my horrible grief and vexation, which would show
itself; while that horrible Mrs Blunt--I won't call her anything else,
for her husband's name was spelt without the "o," and he was a painter
and glazier in Tottenham Court Road--that horrible Mrs Blunt kept on
saying that it was a very proper display of feeling, and did me great
credit; and patting me on the back and calling me "my child," when all
the time I could have boxed her ears.
There I was, then, really and truly once more at school, and all the
time feeling so big, and old, and cross, and as if I was being insulted
by everything that was said to me.
The last months I spent at Guisnes the sisters made pleasant for me by
behaving with a kind of respect, and a sort of tacit acknowledgment that
I was no longer a child; and, oh, how I look back now upon those quiet,
retired days! Of course they were _too_ quiet and _too_ retired; but
then anything seemed better than being brought down here; while as to
religion, the sisters never troubled themselves about my not being the
same as themselves, nor tried to make a convert of me, nor called me
heretic, or any of that sort of thing. All the same it was quite
dreadful to hear Aunt Priscilla go on at papa when I was at home for the
vacation, telling him it was sinful to let me be at such a place, and
that it was encouraging the sisters to inveigle me into taking the veil.
That we should soon have the Papists overrunning the country, and
relighting the fires in Smithfield, and all such stuff as that; while
papa used very coolly to tell her that he most sincerely hoped that she
would be the first martyr, for it would be a great blessing for her
relatives.
That used to offend her terribly, and mamma too; but it served her right
for making such a fuss--the place being really what they called a
pension, and Protestant and Catholic young ladies were there together.
Plenty of them were English, and the old sisters were the dearest,
darlingest, quietest, lovablest creatures that ever lived, and I don't
believe they would have roasted a fly, much more an Aunt Priscilla.
And there I was, then, though I could hardly believe it true, and was at
school; and as I said before, I wanted to get up to my dormitory. I
said "my," but it was not all mine; for there were two more beds in the
room.
As soon as I got up there, and was once more alone, I threw myself down
upon my couch, and had such a cry. It was a treat, that was; for I
don't know anything more comforting than a good cry. There's something
softening and calming to one's bruised and wounded feelings; just as if
nature had placed a reservoir of tears ready to gently flood our eyes,
and act as a balm in times of sore distress. It was so refreshing and
nice; and as I lay there in the bedroom, with the window open, and the
soft summer breeze making the great cedar trees sigh, and the dimity
curtains gently move, I gazed up into the bright blue sky till a veil
seemed to come over my eyes, and I went fast asleep.
There I was in the train once more, with the eyes of that
foreign-looking man regularly boring holes through my lids, until it was
quite painful; for, being asleep, of course I kept them closely shut.
It was like a fit of the nightmare; and as to this description, if I
thought for a moment that these lines would be read by man--save and
except the tradesmen engaged in their production--I would never pen
them. But as the editor and publisher will be careful to announce that
they are for ladies only, I write in full.
First of all the eyes seemed to be quite small, but, oh! so piercing;
while I can only compare the sensation to that of a couple of beautiful,
bright, precious stone seals, making impressions upon the soft wax of my
brain. And they did, too--such deeply-cut, sharp impressions as will
never be effaced.
Well, as I seemed to be sitting in the train, the eyes appeared to come
nearer, and nearer, and nearer, till I could bear it no longer; and I
opened mine to find that my dream was a fact, and that there really were
a pair of bright, piercing orbs close to mine, gazing earnestly at me,
so that I felt that I must scream out; but as my lips parted to give
utterance to a shrill cry, it was stayed, for two warm lips rested upon
mine, to leave there a soft, tender kiss; and it seemed so strange that
my dream should have been all true.
But there, it was not all true; though I was awake and there were a pair
of beautiful eyes looking into mine, and the soft, red lips just leaving
their impression; and as I was fighting hard to recover my scattered
senses, a sweet voice whispered--
"Don't cry any more, dear, please."
I saw through it all, for the dear girl who had just spoken was Clara
Fitzacre; but just behind, and staring hard at me with her great, round,
saucer eyes, was a fat, stupid-looking girl, whose name I soon learned
was Martha Smith--red-faced and sleepy, and without a word to say for
herself. As for Clara, I felt to love her in a moment, she was so
tender and gentle, and talked in such a consolatory strain.
"I'm so glad to find that you are to be in our room," said Clara, who
was a tall, dark-haired, handsome girl. "We were afraid it would turn
out to be some cross, frumpy, stuck-up body, weren't we, Patty?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said the odious thing, whose words all sounded
fat and sticky. "I thought you said that you wouldn't have anybody else
in our room. I wish it was tea-time."
"But I should not have said so if I had known who was coming," said
Clara, turning very red. "But Patty has her wish, for it is tea-time;
so sponge your poor eyes, and let me do your hair, and then we'll go
down. You need not wait, Patty."
Patty Smith did not seem as if she wished to wait, for she gave a great,
coarse yawn, for all the world like a butcher's daughter, and then went
out of the room.
"She is so fat and stupid," said Clara, "that it has been quite
miserable here; and I'm so glad that you've come, dear."
"I'm not," said I, dismally. "I don't like beginning school over
again."
"But then we don't call this school," said Clara.
"But it is, all the same," I said. "Oh, no," said Clara, kindly; "we
only consider that we are finishing our studies here, and there are such
nice teachers."
"How can you say so!" I exclaimed indignantly. "I never saw such a set
of ugly, old, cross-looking--"
"Ah, but you've only seen the lady teachers yet. You have not seen
Monsieur Achille de Tiraille, and Signor Pazzoletto--such fine,
handsome, gentlemanly men; and then there's that dear, good-tempered,
funny little Monsieur de Kittville."
I could not help sighing as I thought of Mr Saint Purre, and his long,
black, silky beard; and how nice it would have been to have knelt down
and confessed all my troubles to him, and I'm sure I should have kept
nothing back.
"All the young ladies are deeply in love with them," continued Clara, as
she finished my hair; "so pray don't lose your heart, and make any one
jealous."
"There is no fear for me," I said, with a deep sigh; and then, somehow
or another, I began thinking of the church, and wondering what sort of a
clergyman we should have, and whether there would be early services like
there were at Saint Vestment's, and whether I should be allowed to
attend them as I had been accustomed.
I sighed and shivered, while the tears filled my eyes; for it seemed
that all the happy times of the past were gone for ever, and life was to
be a great, dreary blank, full of horrible teachers and hard lessons.
Though, now one comes to think of it, a life could not be a blank if it
were full of anything, even though they were merely lessons.
I went down with Clara to tea, and managed to swallow a cup of the
horribly weak stuff; but as to eating any of the coarse, thick
bread-and-butter, I could not; though, had my heart been at rest, the
sight of Patty Smith devouring the great, thick slices, as if she was
absolutely ravenous, would have quite spoiled my repast. At first
several of the pupils were very kind and attentive, but seeing how put
out and upset I was, they left me alone till the meal was finished;
while, though I could not eat, I could compare and think how different
all this was from what I should have had at home, or at dinner parties,
or where papa took me when we went out. For he was very good that way,
and mamma did not always know how we had dined together at Richmond and
Blackwall. Such nice dinners, too, as I had with him in Paris when he
came to fetch me from the sisters. He said it was experience to see the
capital, and certainly it was an experience that I greatly liked. There
is such an air of gaiety about a _cafe_; and the ices--ah!
And from that to come down to thick bread-and-butter like a little
child!
After tea I was summoned to attend Mrs Blunt in her study--as if the
old thing ever did anything in the shape of study but how to make us
uncomfortable, and how to make money--and upon entering the place, full
of globes, and books, and drawings, I soon found that she had put her
good temper away with the cake and wine, as a thing too scarce with her
to be used every day.
The reason for my being summoned was that I might be examined as to my
capabilities; and I found the lady principal sitting in state, supported
by the Fraulein and two of the English teachers--Miss Furness and Miss
Sloman.
I bit my lips as soon as I went in, for, I confess it freely, I meant to
be revenged upon that horrible Mrs Blunt for tempting mamma with her
advertisement; and I determined that if she was to be handsomely paid
for my residence at the Cedars, the money should be well earned.
And now, once for all, let me say that I offer no excuse for my
behaviour; while I freely confess to have been, all through my stay at
the Cedars, very wicked, and shocking, and reprehensible.
"I think your mamma has come to a most sensible determination, Miss
Bozerne," said Mrs Blunt, after half an hour's examination. "What do
you think, ladies?"
"Oh, quite so," chorused the teachers.
"Really," said Mrs Blunt, "I cannot recall having had a young lady of
your years so extremely backward."
Then she sat as if expecting that I should speak, for she played with
her eyeglass, and occasionally took a glance at me; but I would not have
said a word, no, not even if they had pinched me.
"But I think we can raise the standard of your acquirements, Miss
Bozerne. What do you say, ladies?"
"Oh, quite so," chorused the satellites, as if they had said it hundreds
of times before; and I feel sure that they had.
"And now," said Mrs Blunt, "we will close this rather unsatisfactory
preliminary examination. Miss Bozerne, you may retire."
I was nearly at the door--glad to have it over, and to be able to be
once more with my thoughts--when the old creature called me back.
"Not in that way, Miss Bozerne," she exclaimed, with a dignified, cold,
contemptuous air, which made me want to slap her--"not in that way at
the Cedars, Miss Bozerne. Perhaps, Miss Sloman, as the master of
deportment is not here, you will show Miss Laura Bozerne the manner in
which to leave a room.--Your education has been sadly neglected, my
child."
This last she said to me with rather an air of pity, just as if I was
only nine or ten years old; and, as a matter of course, being rather
proud of my attainments, I felt dreadfully annoyed.
But my attention was now taken up by Miss Sloman, a dreadfully skinny
old thing, in moustachios, who had risen from her seat, and began
backing towards the door in an awkward way, like two clothes-props in a
sheet, till she contrived to catch against a little gipsy work-table and
overset it, when, cross as I felt, I could not refrain from laughing.
"Leave the room, Miss Bozerne," exclaimed Mrs Blunt, haughtily.
This to me! whose programme had been rushed at when I appeared at a
dance, and not a vacant place left. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I feel the
thrill of annoyance even now.
Of course I made my way out of the room to where Clara was waiting for
me; and then we had a walk out in the grounds, with our arms round each
other, just as if we had been friends for years; though you will agree
it was only natural I should cling to the first lovable thing which
presented itself to me in my then forlorn condition.