“Far from the sun and summer shade”--far, that is to say, from the
distractions and liability to intrusion of the more public parts of the
house, lay a gallery; and off that gallery lay a room which had
witnessed the evolution of Camilla. It was to witness the evolution of
Bonnybell.
“In my old schoolroom you will be quite safe from interruption,” Mrs.
Tancred had said, when first breaking to her future pupil her intention
of repairing the yawning gaps in that pupil’s education. It was on the
Monday morning, and there had been very little “breaking” about the--to
the ears that received it--horrible and staggering announcement.
“You are only seventeen, I believe?”
“Yes, only seventeen.” She would be eighteen in three days, but did not
think it necessary to add this superfluous admission. And, as she
reflected afterwards, it would not have saved her.
“So that, if taken in hand at once, you will be able in some degree to
make up for the time you have so grievously lost.”
An indistinct assent. To what grisly project was this the preface?
Miss Ransome had been boredly speculating as to how she was to get
through the day with Edward away in the City; and Toby so near and yet
so far at the Dower House, but it seemed that the solving of the problem
was to be done for her.
“I do not know whether you are aware of it, but your spelling is
phonetic.”
“Yes, I know it is.” The speaker had not the faintest notion of the
sense of the adjective employed, but as applied to her own
accomplishment, it evidently connoted something bad, so that it was safe
to acquiesce.
“You know what phonetic means?”
“Oh yes, perfectly.”
“It is carrying your principle a little far to spell the carriage I sent
to meet you ‘b-r-o-o-m.’”
“It must have been a slip of the pen,” replied Bonnybell, devoutly
praying that she might not be asked how the word that had played her
this scurvy trick really spelt itself.
“It will be safer to guard against the possibility of such slips in the
future,” rejoined Camilla, with a resolute dryness, which showed how
little she believed in her future disciple’s gloss.
The disciple made another feeble struggle against the meshes of the net
which she felt to be closing round her.
“Do you think that it is any use to teach people spelling? Isn’t it born
with them? I have heard it said that there are people who can never
learn to spell; perhaps I am one of them.”
“It is, at all events, worth a trial,” replied Mrs. Tancred, with a
determination which brooked no further attempt to overset it.
Half an hour later saw Bonnybell established in solitary confinement in
her prison, with the instruments of her torture methodically arrayed
around her. During that baleful half hour she had, in answer to
questions, revealed a knowledge of history and geography quite on a par
with her orthography, since she had married Richard II. of England to
his grandmother Philippa; had treated Argentina as a town, and
generously given it a seat on the Italian sea-board.
When the depths of her hitherto unsunned ignorance had been
satisfactorily plumbed, Mrs. Tancred left her, having pencil-marked the
limit to which her investigation of each volume must extend, having
opened an atlas and hinted at sums. (“Oh, but I am very good at figures!
I could always calculate the odds in all the races!” was an unconsidered
interpolation which did her no good.) With a detestable promise to
return in an hour and a half’s time to give her a lesson in dictation,
with a view to fettering the freedom of her spelling, and the
observation “Your ignorance is incredible; but at seventeen nothing is
irremediable,” her instructress withdrew.
Bonnybell remained for a few moments sedulously staring at the first
words of the opening chapter of Green’s “History of the English People;”
as who knew to what treachery of sudden return and inexcusable espionage
she might be liable? Not even the sound of the swing-door at the end of
the passage closing behind Camilla’s departing form, nor the perfect
silence that settled down upon her practically uninhabited wing,
reassured Miss Ransome.
She peeped cautiously out, and finding the coast clear, at once deserted
her studies in order to ascertain on what the range of windows that
lighted the gallery upon which her torture-chamber opened, looked out?
They gave upon a court-yard, surrounded by offices, and in which, at the
moment of her survey, nothing livelier was happening than the crossing
it by a footman in shirt-sleeves. Her own prospect--that from the
schoolroom itself--was even more hopeless. Two tall sash-windows looked
right into an impenetrable belt of thick evergreen trees and shrubs,
which entirely baffled all attempts to penetrate it. To the girl’s angry
fancy it seemed as if the old witch who had laid this tedious spell upon
her, must have made it spring up in the night in its choking density.
She turned her attention to the interior of the room, and beguiled some
half-hour in examining and inwardly ridiculing its appointments and
adornments--the aniline-dyed carpet, the crinolined and whiskered
hideousities in the shape of photographs, presumably of Camilla’s
parents, since they were male and female, and a portrait of Camilla,
herself in a sashed frock and frilled trousers, with a hoop in one hand,
artistically balanced by a hoop-stick in the other. The likeness was
still a staring one: large bald forehead, long upper lip, and piercing
eyes, already in evidence. “Put her into a sash and frilled trousers,
and she would not look much different now! When I get to know Edward a
good deal better I shall suggest it to him!”
She laughed out loud, excessively tickled by the idea of this humane and
feasible project, then pulled herself together in alarm. Who knew how
far her voice might carry in the echoing void of this desolate region?
nor what spies might be set to check and report her movements? Candour
compelled her to reject the latter supposition as soon as formed,
divining and acknowledging the absolute straightness--stupid,
contemptible, and unaccountable as it was--of her tyrant.
After having exhausted the objects of interest and mirth afforded her by
the--to Camilla--sacred relics of her severe infancy and adolescence,
and having learnt from a perfectly accurate bald-faced clock, upon which
she fastened an imaginary likeness to its owner, that she had succeeded
in frittering three-quarters of an hour out of the hour and a half
allotted to her in which to prepare for Mrs. Tancred’s re-appearance and
the threatened dictation lesson, she returned most reluctantly to
Greene, skimming and peeping and skipping, in the style of the true-born
dunce, in search of what she would call “plums.” Her acquaintance with
history was indeed slender; but she had a sort of idea that in the
driest of that species of literature might be found oases in the shape
of anecdotes about king’s mistresses, etc. Her quest in this case was
very poorly rewarded, and with a heartfelt sigh she returned to Chapter
I. “Angles, Saxons, Jutes! What tommy rot! _Jutes!_ What a ridiculous
name! _Jute!_ That is the cheap stuff to cover chairs with, whose colour
always flies.”
Her eye left the page, and fixed itself absently upon that branch of the
nearest of the shrubbery trees, which absolutely swept the window. To
think of _her_, Bonnybell Ransome, of all people, sitting here like a
good little schoolchild learning lessons! She, with her experiences in
the past! Memory went back to them; indeed, they were never very far
away. To do her justice, the reminiscences, begun with a scornful smile
of superiority, ended by sending a slight shudder over her. That evening
when they automobiled down from Paris to dine at the Réservoir at
Versailles, that was about the nearest shave she ever had! Hateful,
hateful old Charlie Landon! And to have to be civil to him afterwards!
It would never have done to tell poor Claire. She had plenty of other
things to worry her, and latterly it was so difficult to make her
understand anything. But how angry even _she_ would have been! Well,
_assommant épatant_ as it was here, it was at all events better than
that.
Good Heavens! she could not have been thinking of Charlie Landon and the
park at Versailles for three-quarters of an hour; yet some one--Camilla,
of course--was nearing the door, and she had not yet mastered even those
wretched elementary Jutes! But it was not Camilla.
Camilla was frying other fish, and, for the morning at least, Miss
Ransome was saved from any exposure of her frittered opportunities.
Perhaps, however, she would be glad to compound for such an exposure in
exchange for the one that was hovering over her unsuspecting head. Mrs.
Tancred was sitting at her large and business-like writing-table,
tranquilly attacking her daily task. Her correspondence was immense, and
as she never left any letter or note unanswered, but sent speedy and
conscientious replies, even to such valueless trivialities as most
people commit at once to the waste-paper basket; as she flouted the idea
of a secretary or typist, occasionally suggested by Edward, her labours
sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. But the threat was never
fulfilled; to-day she was going through her tale of bricks with a heart
at peace. Bonnybell was out of possible mischief, with her feet set on
the upward path, and in her long solitary hours of the previous day
Camilla had drawn strength from communion with her own strong spirit and
earnest appeal to her Unknown God worthily to bear and even profit by
the heavy burden and responsibility laid upon her. Whether Miss Ransome
would be flattered did she know that she was regarded in the light of a
hair shirt is doubtful.
It was an understood thing that Mrs. Tancred was not to be disturbed
during the forenoon, and it was a displeased face that she turned upon
the butler who invaded her busy privacy.
“Mrs. Aylmer and Miss Aylmer are in the morning-room, ma’am, and wish to
speak to you.”
“There must be some mistake. Mrs. Aylmer knows that I am never at home
in the morning.”
“Mrs. Aylmer told me to say that she wished to apologize for disturbing
you, but that, as it is something very urgent, she thought you would not
mind breaking through your rule for once in a way.”
Without any further remonstrance or inquiry, and no change of
countenance to indicate the surprise that her friend’s audacity bred in
her, Mrs. Tancred obeyed the summons to the morning-room. There she
found the Aylmers, mother and eldest daughter, standing close together,
and somehow giving the impression of doing it for mutual protection,
near the fireplace.
“What can it be that will not keep till the afternoon?” she asked,
rather severely, but holding out a hand to each in a manner that implied
intimacy and goodwill.
She looked from one to the other as she put her rebuking question, and
it would need a much less penetrating vision than hers to perceive that
both were, in servant phrase, “very much upset.”
“I am going to London in the afternoon,” replied Mrs. Aylmer, “as I sent
word by Edward last evening, but even if I was not I do not think I
could have borne to put it off--to delay getting it off my mind.”
“To put _what_ off? To getting _what_ off your mind? Will you please
come to the point?”
There was a very perceptible stiffening in Camilla’s manner; anything of
the evasive or shilly-shallying being abhorrent to her. Her friend was
well aware of this peculiarity, and was very much frightened by having
provoked it, but she was also too much frightened at the task she had
in hand to state even now directly her errand.
“It is the first--the very first touch of anything disagreeable that has
ever come into our relations with each other.”
“Had not we better sit down?” rejoined Camilla, with an elaborate
patience. “There is no use in tiring ourselves by standing until we get
to the point.”
The expectation of an immense period of waiting implied by this
suggestion ought to have decided the matron addressed to take the
plunge; but it did not.
“I do not think that I should ever have had the courage to tell you--to
enter upon so painful a subject at all--if Catherine----” She broke off
with a drowning-man look at her daughter.
Mrs. Tancred looked also at that daughter. She had never liked Catherine
as much as she did Catherine’s mother, nor had ever hidden from herself
that it was because of her supposed high appreciation by Edward, and
because the neighbourhood’s habitual observation, “What a nice and
suitable wife she would have made for him!” had penetrated, if not to
her bodily ears, yet to the ears of her heart. For these very reasons,
driven by her unsquarable conscience, she had always treated the girl
with an unusual leniency.
“Perhaps Catherine will explain,” she said, with a strained patience,
but not harshly.
Miss Alymer was already highly pink; she waxed pinker.
“I think it would come better from mother.”
Mrs. Tancred made a movement, instantly checked, of extreme irritation
at being thus shuttle-cocked between two foolish battledores to the
waste of time and temper.
“I will get my knitting until you have decided which of you is likely to
regain your powers of speech first,” she said, moving towards her large
work-basket, and drawing it within reach of her chair.
The determined endurance expressed by her knitting-needles--for she was
nearing the end of her patience, and was never much of a hand at
feigning--at length goaded the jibbing pair into more explicit
utterance.
“We came to speak to you about the girl that Edward brought to see us
yesterday.”
“Yes?” Mrs. Tancred had laid down the cardigan upon which she had just
engaged, and her gimlet eyes were looking over, not through, her large
spectacles in that manner which made erring kitchen-maids, drunken
husbands, and even Edward himself, call on the mountains to fall on
them.
“She--she is a very lovely creature!”
“But you did not break through my rule to tell me that?”
“Oh no, of course not; of course not.”
“What, then?”
“I did not catch her name at first.”
“Her name is Ransome”--articulated very distinctly--“that is, her
surname; her Christian name is Bonnybell, an extremely silly one, but
she is not responsible for it.” There was a feeling in the air as of
putting armour on. “She is the daughter of that--that”--an adjective at
once presentable and applicable seemed hard to find--“that very
notorious Lady Ransome who died this year.”
“She is the daughter of that infamous woman! What first surprised me
about her was that she seemed so intimate with Lady Tennington, who
happened to be calling at the same time.”
“That is a fact which I should not have been able to verify.” Here Mrs.
Tancred undoubtedly scored, strong in her immovable resolve to have no
“truck” with the good-natured but completely unvirtuous Flora. Yet even
this weapon might be turned against her.
Mrs. Aylmer, like her daughter, was growing rosy. There was no drop of
vitriol or even gall in her whole composition, but when a stone had been
thrown at her, would she be human if she did not return it?
“I was surprised that any one coming from _your_ house, any girl under
your wing, should be intimate to the degree of Christian-naming with
Lady Tennington.”
“I am to understand, then, that it is on the score of her acquaintance
with Lady Tennington that you have come to complain of Miss Ransome?”
The glaring inconsistency with their own practice thus coldly fastened
upon them loosened still further the string of both intruders’ tongues.
“What a misrepresentation!” said Catherine, in a low key of indignation;
and, “Oh, dear Camilla, how you do manage to put one in the wrong when
one knows that one is absolutely in the right!” cried her more emotional
mother.
Camilla’s reply was to fold her bony hands.
“I wait for an explanation.”
“I came to speak to you about the girl,” returned the other, attacking
her words at a great pace, for fear they should decline to come at all,
“not because I have any grudge against her--in fact, I was very much
prepossessed by her appearance--but because--because--I am afraid--I
really and truly think that she is not a fit companion for my children.”
There was a slight pause.
“You think that because the fathers have eaten sour grapes the
children’s teeth should be set on edge? Well, there is a good deal to be
said in favour of your view.”
The cold impartiality aimed at, if not quite attained, in this utterance
with its underlying suggestion of Pharisaism in the person addressed,
called forth a hurried retort.
“You are quite mistaken; I am not blaming her for her unfortunate
origin. It would be iniquitous to do that, but for her own behaviour.”
“What has she done?”
“As I told you, I knew nothing about her, but, thinking that she looked
uncomfortable while Lady Tennington was talking to her, I sent her up to
tea in the schoolroom. Catherine can tell you the rest.”
The burden thus shifted was taken up with evident reluctance, but yet
without flinching, by the daughter.
“She seemed rather shy with Miss Barnacre, who did her best to put her
at ease by asking her questions about subjects she thought would
interest her.” (Here a slight upward curl, like an angry tom cat’s, of
the corners of Mrs. Tancred’s rigid lips, incomprehensible to her
companions, would have revealed to the initiated a recalling on her part
of one of the subjects, _i.e._ her own religious creed, of the
governess’s catechism as retailed by the culprit now under discussion.)
“She got up suddenly, and went over to the other side of the table, and
joined Meg, who was looking at an illustrated paper.”
“Well?”
“Miss Barnacre and I went on talking, but I could not help catching
snatches of the two girls’ conversation--of Miss Ransome’s, rather--and
I can only say that it was of such a kind that I thought it best to send
Meg out of the room.”
“I shall be glad to know precisely what you overheard.”
“She was retailing to Meg very objectionable scandal.”
“Yes?”
Miss Aylmer was evidently to be spared no detail of the attributed
crime, nor had she indeed, now that the action was well engaged, any
objection to making good her accusation.
“I heard her telling Meg _apropos_ of a picture of some prize
Schipperkes, that Lady Cressida Beaulieu, who showed them, had no money
of her own, but was “run” by Waddy, the indiarubber-tyre manufacturer. I
thought then”--with a well-justified air of having made out her cause,
“that it would be better that Meg should hear no more.”
The case for the prosecution was complete.
“You were perfectly right,” said Camilla, without a moment’s hesitation,
though her voice was even harsher than usual, and as she spoke she
walked to the bell, and rang it.
“You are not going to send for her?” gasped Mrs. Aylmer, in a key of the
most unvarnished consternation.
“That is exactly what I _am_ going to do.”