"Mercredi, une heure," and "the poor suffer want--les pauvres ont
besoin."
That was all, and it really seemed to be a bit of exercise, and nothing
else. But then, I had the key in my heart, and could read it as he
meant; though truly it was an exercise for me to find means to overtop
all difficulties and meet him. I knew what he meant well enough--just
as well as if he had written four pages, crossed, in his own niggling,
little, scrimply, unintelligible, Frenchy hand. So I sat thinking of
the six box cords tied together and hidden away in the bottom drawer,
underneath my green silk, and tightly locked up to keep them from prying
eyes.
Well, of course, I told Clara--though I may as well own that I really
should not if I could have helped it. For she was anything but what I
should have liked; and, of course, I did not care to be so teased. And
there was my appetite so spoiled again that I could not eat, and poor me
in such a fidget for the rest of the day, that I did not know what to
do. I slipped upstairs three times to see if the cord was all right,
and the knots tightly tied; and then, the last time, if I did not hear
Miss Furness calling me, and come down in a flurry and leave the key in
the drawer. I turned quite hot all over when I felt for it in my
pocket, and was sure I had lost it somewhere; when if I could not get
some more cord I should be stopped again. All at once I remembered that
the thing must be stuck in the keyhole. So, as soon as the lesson with
Miss Furness was over, I slipped to the back staircase, and was about
halfway up, when I must meet that tiresome, fat, old Fraulein.
"Vots for you heere, Mees Bozerne?" croaked the tiresome old English
killer. "Young ladies 'ave no beesness upstaer in de afternoon. Go you
down."
Of course I had to go down again, for I was breaking rules, and ought to
have been at work at private study in the schoolroom till half an hour
before tea-time.
"It's too bad," I muttered, as I began to descend--"too bad to send me
to a place like this, where one may not even go up to one's bedroom.
I'm sure, I don't feel in the least bit like a school-girl."
Just then I heard Miss Sloman calling the Fraulein to "Come here, dear!"
They always called one another, "my love," and "dear," in private,
though I'm sure no one could have been more unamiable, or looked more
ready to scratch and call names. So the Fraulein again ordered me to go
down, and then turned back, evidently to go to Miss Sloman: so, seizing
the opportunity, I slipped down into the hall, and began bounding up the
front stairs like lightning, when if I did not literally run up against
Mrs Blunt, and strike her right in the chest with my head, just as she
had come out of her room--for I was not looking, but, with head down,
bounding up two stairs at a time.
It was a crash! Poor woman, she could not get breath to speak for some
time. But, there, she was not the only one hurt; for that horrible
twisted vulcanite coronet was driven right into my poor head, and pained
me terribly.
"Ach ten!" cried the Fraulein, who had heard the crash and exclamation
on both sides, and now came waddling up; "I told you go down, ten, Miss
Bozerne, and you come up to knock de lady principal."
So I was, without a word to say in defence, sent down in the most
dreadful disgrace. But there was some fun in it, after all; for Clara
vowed that the poor woman received such a shock that two of her bones--
stay bones--were broken, and she nearly swallowed her teeth. But that
Clara always would exaggerate so dreadfully; and, of course, that was
not true.
I was not going to be threatened with medicine this time because my
appetite was bad, so I kept one slice of bread and butter upon my plate
to bite at, though it was almost enough to choke me; and then I managed
to draw two more slices over the edge of my plate into my lap, where my
pocket-handkerchief was spread all ready; and then I wrapped them up,
when I thought that no one was looking, and put them in my pocket; and
so tea was got over, and I thought what a long time it would be till
midnight.
We were all standing in the middle of the classroom before getting our
books out for the evening studies, when if Patty Smith did not come up
to me, and, without waiting to see whether I would or not, exclaimed--
"Lend me your handkerchief, Laura, dear--I won't keep it a moment!"
Seizing one end, which stuck out of my pocket, she gave it a snatch,
when away it flew, and one piece of bread and butter was slung across
the room, and struck Miss Furness in the face; while the other went flop
up against the window behind her, stuck upon the pane for a moment, and
then fell--leaving a buttery mark where it had been, as a matter of
course. I declare I never felt so much ashamed in my life; while there
were all the girls tittering and giggling, and Miss Furness wiping her
face and scolding terribly about my dreadfully unladylike behaviour,
though nothing could have been more humiliating than what followed, for
I'm sure I wished there was not such a thing as a piece of bread and
butter upon the face of the earth; for said Miss Furness--
"And now, Miss Bozerne, come and pick up those pieces."
I would have given anything to have been able to refuse; but what could
I do? I do not see how I could have helped it, for I really felt
obliged; and there I was kneeling down, humbled and penitent, to pick it
up; and there were the tiresome, buttery pieces, all broken up into
crumbs here and crumbs there, all over the place.
"For your sake, Achille?" I murmured to myself; and that made me bear
it until I had picked up all I could, and held the scraps upon a piece
of exercise paper, wondering what I had better do with them.
"You had better wipe the butter off that window with your handkerchief,
Miss Bozerne," said Miss Furness, stiffly. "Oh! and it's of no use for
you to make up those indignant grimaces, and look like that, Miss
Bozerne," she continued, in her nasty, vinegary way. "If young ladies
are so forgetful of decorum, and cannot be content with a fair share of
food at the tea table, but must gluttonously stoop to steal pieces off
the plate to devour at abnormal times, they must expect to be spoken
to."
Just as if I had taken the horrid stuff to eat, when so great was my
agitation that I could partake of nothing. So there I was, with my face
and neck burning in a most "abnormal" way, as Miss Furness would have
called it, wiping and smearing the butter about over the pane of glass,
and hardly seeing what I was doing for the tears; when there was that
Patty Smith staring at me with her great saucer eyes, and her mouth made
round and open, as if it had been another eye, and Clara the whole time
enjoying it all, and laughing at my discomfort. It was really much too
bad, for it was all her fault: the wicked, mischievous, impish creature
had seen me put the pieces of bread and butter into my pocket, and had
actually set Patty to snatch the handkerchief out.
"The plan succeeded beyond my expectations, darling," she exclaimed
afterwards, when we were alone; and I did not slap her--which, without
boasting, must, I think, show how forgiving a spirit I possess.
But, to return to the scene in the room. When I had finished smearing
the window with my pretty little cambric handkerchief, I threw open the
sash, and was going to fling out the little pieces of bread-crumbs for
the poor little birds--
"Miss Bozerne!" exclaimed Miss Furness, "what are you about?"
"Going to give the crumbs to the birds, ma'am," I said, humbly.
"Oh, dear me, no," exclaimed the old puss, seizing upon what she
considered a good opportunity for making an example of me, and giving a
lesson to the other girls--for that seemed one of the aims of her life:
to make lessons out of everything she said or did, till she was a
perfect nuisance. "Oh, dear me, no--such waste cannot be allowed. Go
and put the fragments upon one of the plates, which James or the cook
will give you, and ask her to save them for your breakfast."
I could have cried with vexation; but I did not, though it was very,
very, very hard work to keep the tears back.
"Oh, Achille! Achille!" I murmured again, "c'est pour toi!"
I walked out, like a martyr, bearing the pieces, with bent-down eyes,
and gave them to the cook, telling her she was to throw them to the
chickens. For I would not have given Miss Furness's message if she had
stood behind me.
Oh, yes, it was nice fun for the other girls, and dearly they used to
enjoy seeing me humbled, because I always was rather distant, and would
not make confidantes of ever so many; and when I went back, there they
were upon the giggle, and Miss Furness not trying to check them one bit,
as she would have done upon another occasion--which shows how partial
and unjust she could be when she liked. But I soon forgot it all,
engrossed as I was with the idea of what was coming that night. As to
my next day's lessons, after sitting before them for an hour, I believe
that I knew less about them than when I took out my books; for right up
at the top of one of the panes in the buttery window there was a spider
spinning its net, and that set me thinking about poor Achille hanging in
a web, and the four old lesson grinders being spiders to devour him.
For there was the nasty creepy thing hanging by one of its strings ever
so far down, and that made me think about the coming night and the rope
ladder, till I could, in my overwrought fancy, imagine I saw poor
Achille bobbing and swinging about, and ready to go through one of the
window-panes every moment. Sometimes the very thought of it made my
face burn, and my hands turn hot and damp as could be inside, just as
they felt when one had shaken hands with Miss Furness, whose palm, in
feel, was for all the world like the tail of a cod-fish.
Sometimes during that evening I felt in misery, and, I believe, all
owing to that spider, and thinking of the danger of the feat to perform
which I had lured poor Achille. I would have given anything to have
been able to beg of him not to attempt it.
"Poor fly," I thought--"poor, beautiful, fluttering, brightly painted
fly; and have I been the means of weaving a net to lure thee to
destruction? Oh, wretch that I am!"
And so I went on for some time, just as people do in books when they are
very bad in their emotions; and that is one advantage in reading, only
emotions are so much more eloquent than they would be, say, in an
ignorant, unlettered person; and really, be it pleasure or pain, it is
as well to be refined and make a grand display; for it is so much more
satisfactory, even if the audience consists of self alone. At times,
though, I was so elated that I could feel my eyes flash and sparkle with
the thoughts that rushed through my brain; when, as if reading my heart,
Clara would creep close, and nip my arm, and keep on whispering--
"I'll tell--I'll tell."