I have often awoke of a morning with the sensation of a heavy,
pressing-down weight upon my mental faculties; and so it was after the
dreadful catastrophe narrated in the last chapter. I opened my eyes,
feeling--no, let me be truthful, I did not wake, for Patty Smith brought
me to my senses by tapping my head with her nasty penetrating
hair-brush--feeling, as I said before, feeling that the dull pressure
upon me was caused by the dread truth that poor Achille really was
drowned; while it was the Signor whom I had heard escaping. And so
strong was the impression, and so nervous and so low did I feel with the
adventures of the past night, that I turned quite miserable, and could
not keep from crying.
The morning was enough to give anybody the horrors, for it rained
heavily; and there were the poor birds, soaking wet, and with their
feathers sticking close to their sides, hopping about upon the lawn,
looking for worms. All over the window-panes, and hanging to the
woodwork, were great tears, as if the clouds shared my trouble and
sorrow; while all the flowers looked drooping and dirty, and splashed
and miserable.
Then I began to think about Achille, and his coming to give his lesson
that morning; and then about his being in the cistern, with those
wonderful eyes looking out at me; when, there again, if there was not
that tiresome old Tennyson's poem getting into my poor, weary head, and,
do what I would, I could not keep it out. There it was--buzz, buzz,
buzz--"Dreary--and weary--and will not come, she said;" till at last I
began to feel as if I was the real Mariana in the Moated Grange.
To make me worse, too, there was that poor Clara--pale-faced, red-eyed,
and desolate-looking--sitting there dressed, and resting her hot head
upon her hand as she gazed out of the window; and though I wished to
comfort her, I felt to want the comfort more myself. At last I could
bear it no longer, and, in place of weeping gently, I was so nervous,
and low, and upset with the night's troubles, that I sat down and had a
regular good cry, and all the while with that great, stupid, fat, gawky
goose of a Patty sitting and staring at me, with her head all on one
side, as she was brushing out half of her hair, which she had not
finished in all the time I had taken to dress.
"Don't, Patty!" I half shrieked, at last--she was so tiresome.
"Well, I ain't," said Patty.
"But please don't, then!" I exclaimed, angrily.
"Don't what?" said the great, silly thing.
"Don't stare so, and look so big and glumpy!" I exclaimed; for I felt
as if I could have knocked off her tiresome head, only it was so
horribly big; and I don't care what anybody says, there never were
anywhere before such a tempting pair of cheeks to slap as Patty's--they
always looked so round, and red, and soft, and pluffy.
"You ain't well," said the nasty, aggravating thing, in her silly, slow
way. "Take one of my Seidlitz powders."
"Ugh!" I shuddered at the very name of them. Just as if one of the
nasty, prickly-water, nose-tickling things was going to do me any good
at such a time as this.
It really was enough to make one hit her. I never did take a Seidlitz
powder but once, and then it was just after reading "Undine" with the
Fraulein, and my head was all full of water-nymphs, and gods, and "The
Mummelsee and the Water Maidens," and all sorts. And when I shut my
eyes, and drank the fizzing-up thing, it all seemed to tickle my nose
and lips; and I declare if I did not half fancy I was drinking the
waters of the sparkling Rhine, and one of the water-gods had risen to
kiss me, and that was his nasty prickly moustache I had felt. But to
return to that dreadful morning when Patty wanted me to take one of her
Seidlitz powders.
"Mix 'em in two glasses is best," she went on, without taking any notice
of my look of disgust--"the white paper in one, and the blue paper in
the other, and then drink off the blue first, and wait while you count
twenty, and then drink off the white one--slushions they call 'em. It
does make you feel so droll, and does your head ever so much good. Do
have one, dear!"
I know that I must have slapped her--nothing could have prevented it--if
just then the door had not been unlocked, and that horrible Miss Furness
came in.
"When you are ready, Miss Smith, you will descend with Miss Bozerne--I
will wait for you," said the screwy old thing; but she took not the
slightest notice of poor Clara, who sat there by the window, with her
forehead all wrinkled up, and looking at least ten years older. It was
of no good for one's heart to bleed for her, not a bit, with Miss
Furness, who had undertaken to act the part of gaoler, there; so I gave
the poor, suffering darling one last, meaning look, which was of no use,
for it was wasted through the poor thing not looking up; and then I
followed Miss Furness out of the room, side by side with Patty Smith,
whose saucer eyes grew quite cheese-platish as she saw the door locked
to keep poor Clara in; and then the tiresome thing kept bothering me in
whispers to know what was the matter, for she was quite afraid of Miss
Furness.
However, I answered nothing, and went into the miserable, dreary,
damp-looking classroom with an aching heart, and waited till the
breakfast bell rang. For there was a bell rung for everything, when
there was not the slightest necessity for such nonsense, only it all
aided to make the Cedars imposing, and advertised it to the country
round. But when I went into the hall, to cross it to reach the
breakfast-room, there were a couple of boxes and a bundle at the foot of
the back stairs, and the tall page getting himself into a tangle with
some cord as he pretended to be tying them up.