A Fluttered Dovecote
Page 11
me, and the dreadfully worriedstate I was in--I grew quite low-spirited, and could not eat, and usedto sit and mope, and I could see that I was getting paler and palerevery day.
This sort of thing, though, would not do for Mrs Blunt, who saw in itthe probable loss of a pupil and plenty of pounds a year; and onemorning there was a summons for me to go into the drawing-room, whereI found Mrs Blunt and a gentleman in black--so prim, sowhite-handkerchiefed and gold-sealed! All his grey hair was brushed upinto a point, like an ice-mountain on the top of his head; while,whenever he spoke, his words came rolling out like great sugar-coatedpills--so soft, so sweet, so smooth, you might have taken him for agreat mechanical bon-bon box, and the hand he gently waved for thespring that set him in motion. I knew well enough that he was a doctor,as soon as I went in, and that he had been sent for to see me.
"Miss Bozerne, Dr Boole," said Mrs Blunt.
And then, after ever so much bowing and saluting, there was the horridold wretch, screwing his face up, and wagging his head, and peeping atme out of his half-shut eyes; and he felt my pulse and told me to putout my tongue. While directly after he drew in a long breath andpinched his lips together, as if he knew all about my complaint, andcould see through it in a moment. But he did not know that I wasmentally delivering him a homily upon hypocrisy, of which dreadful stuffit seemed to me there was an abundance at Allsham, it being about theplace like an epidemic--or I suppose I ought to say it was in the placelike an epidemic. And I must confess I had caught the complaint verybadly, though Dr Boole was no use for that, seeing that he could notcure himself. Oh! if everybody troubled with hypocrisy would only callin the doctor, what a fortune each medical man would soon make!
Well, the doctor left hold of my wrist, after putting it down gently, asif it were something breakable, and put his gold eyeglasses up foranother inspection.
Was not my appetite rather failing? Did I not have a strong inclinationto sigh? Did I not feel low-spirited, and wake of a morningunrefreshed?
Why, of course I did. And so would any one who had been treated as Ihad, and so I felt disposed to tell him; but it would have been oflittle use. So I let them say and think what they liked; and when theinterview was over, the doctor rose and walked out of the room, bowingin a way that must have delighted Mrs Blunt's ideas of deportment; forhe had written something upon a half-sheet of note-paper, and leftorders that the prescription should be immediately made up.
"Of course," said Mrs Blunt, "I shall write to your dear mamma by thenext post, Miss Bozerne; but she need be under no concern, for thekindness of a home will be bestowed upon you. And now you had betterreturn to the pursuance of your course of studies."
I took the extremely polite hint; but I did not take the medicine whenit was sent in. What did I want with medicine? Why, it was absurd. Iused to pour it out into the glass, and then take it to the open windowand throw it as far out as I could, so as to make a shower of finephysic fall upon the grass and pathway--such small drops that no onecould see it had been thrown out. And, after all, I'm sure it was onlya little bitter water, coloured and scented, and labelled to lookimportant.
At the doctor's next visit I was horribly afraid that he would ask mewhether I had taken the medicine; and sure enough he did, only MrsBlunt directly said "Yes," and he was satisfied, and said I was muchbetter, though he did not quite like my flushed, feverish-looking face.So he wrote another prescription for that, when I was only colouring upon account of being asked about his nasty stuff.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
MEMORY THE SEVENTH--FRENCH WITH A MASTER.
That dreadful man had pronounced me to be decidedly better, and had beenand gone for the last time, while I felt quite sorry as I thought of theexpense, and of how it would figure in the account along with the booksand extras. The creature had rubbed his hands and smiled, andcongratulated me upon my improved looks and rapid return to health. Butreally I did feel decidedly better, though it was not his doing; and ifany prescription at all had done me good, it was a tiny one written inFrench. And now, somehow, I did seem to find the Cedars a little morebearable, and my spirits were brighter and better; but not one drop ofthe odious medicine had I taken.
Clara had more than once seen me throw it away, and had said "Oh!" and"My!" and "What a shame!" but I had thrown it away all the same, excepttwice or three times when I got Patty Smith to take it for me, which shedid willingly, upon my promising to do her exercises; and I really thinkshe would have taken quarts of the odious stuff on the same conditions,for she could eat and drink almost anything, and I believe that she wasall digestive apparatus instead of brains. Pasty wasters, fat, sourgooseberries, vinegar pippins, it was all the same to her; and she usedto be always having great dry seed-cakes sent to her from home, to sitvoraciously devouring at night when we went to bed; and then out ofgenerosity, when I had helped her with her exercises--which I often didas I grew more contented--she would cut me off wedges of the nasty,branny stuff with her scissors, which was a lucky thing for thesparrows, who used to feast upon seed-cake crumbs from morning to night,for I never ate any.
And now I began to pay more attention to the lessons: singing with theSignor or the Fraulein, who had one of the most croaky voices I everheard, though she was certainly a most brilliant pianiste. Her name wasGretchen, but we used to call her Clarionette, for that seemed to suitbest with her horrid, reedy, croaky voice. Then, too, I used topractise hard with my instrumental music; but such a jangly piano we hadfor practice, though there was a splendid Collard in the drawing-roomthat it was quite a treat to touch. But only fancy working up BrinleyRichards, or Vincent Wallace, or Czerny upon a horrible skeleton-keyedpiano that would rattle like old bones, while it was always out of tune,had a dumb note somewhere, and was not even of full compass. Then Itried hard to take to the dancing, and to poor little Monsieur deKittville--droll little man!--who always seemed to have two more armsthan belonged to him; and there they were, tight in his coat sleeves,and hung out, one on each side, as if he did not know where to put them;and he a master of deportment!
I had quite taken the turn now, and was trying to bear it all, and putup with everything as well as I could, even with the horribly regularmeals which we used to sit down to at a table where all the knives andforks were cripples--some loose in their handles, some were cracked,some were bent, and others looked over their shoulders. One horridthing came out one day, and peppered my dinner with rosiny dust; andthere it was--a fork--sticking upright in a piece of tough stewed steak,although two of the prongs were bent; and when some of the girlstittered, Miss Furness said that I ought to have known better, and thatsuch behaviour was most unladylike and unbecoming.
But there, she was naturally an unpleasant, crabby old thing, and neverhardly opened her lips to speak without saying words that were allcrooked and full of corners. She once told Celia Blang--the pupil shepetted, and who used to tell her tales--that she had been consideredvery handsome, and was called the "flower of the village;" but if shewas, they must have meant the flower of the vinegar plant--for it isimpossible to conceive a more acid old creature. In church, too, it wasenough to make one turn round and slap her; for if she did not copy fromthe vicar, and take to repeating the responses out quite terribly loud,and before the officiating priest, so as to make believe how devout shewas, when it really seemed to me that it was only to make herselfconspicuous. And then, to see the way in which the vain old thing usedto dress her thin, straggley hair! I do not laugh at people becausetheir hair is not luxuriant or is turning grey, but at their vanity,which I am sure deserves it; and anybody is welcome to laugh at mine.
As for Miss Furness's hair, there was a bit of false here and anotherbit there, and so different in shade and texture to her own that it wasquite shocking to see how artificial she looked; while, to make mattersten times worse, she could not wear her hair plain, but in thatold-fashioned Eugenie style, stretching the skin of her face out sotightly that her red nose shone, and she was continually on the grin.And yet I'
ve caught her standing before the glass in the drawing-room,to simper and smile at herself, as if she were a goddess of beauty.
After a time the Eugenie style was dismissed to make way for a greatpad; when, very soon, her light silk dress was all over pomatumy marksbetween the shoulders, though she rubbed it well with bread-crumbs everynight. I was so annoyed that I curled my hair all round, and next daywore it hanging in ringlets; and this was the day upon which I receivedthe prescription written in French, which did me so much good. It wasFrench lesson day, and while my exercise was being corrected and I wastrying to translate, I felt something pressed into my hand; and somehowor another--though I knew how horribly wicked it was--I had not theheart to refuse it, but blushed, and trembled, and stood there with myface suffused, blundering through the translation, until the lesson wasended, and without daring to look at the giver, I rushed away upstairsand devoured