TheHit or Misstavern, to customers (rough customers, at least) who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the river’s brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. TheHit or Misswas not more antique in its aspect than modern in its fortunes. Few public-houses, if any, boasted for their landlord such a person as Robert Maitland, M.A., Fellow of St. Gatien’s, in the University of Oxford.
It is, perhaps, desirable and even necessary to explain how this arrangement came into existence. We have already made acquaintance with “mine host” of theHit or Miss, and found him to be by no means the rosy, genial Boniface of popular tradition. That a man like Maitland should be the lessee of a waterside tavern, like theHit or Miss, was only one of the anomalies of this odd age of ours. An age of revivals, restorations, experiments—an age of dukes who are Socialists—an age which sees the East-end brawling in Pall Mall, and parties of West-end tourists personally conducted down Ratcliffe Highway—need not wonder at Maitland’s eccentric choice in philanthropy.
Maitland was an orphan, and rich. He had been an unpopular lonely boy at a public school, where he was known as a “sap,” or assiduous student, and was remarked for an almost unnatural indifference to cricket and rowing. At Oxford, as he had plenty of money, he had been rather less unpopular. His studies ultimately won him a Fellowship at St. Gatien’s, where his services as a tutor were not needed. Maitland now developed a great desire to improve his own culture by acquaintance with humanity, and to improve humanity by acquaintance with himself. This view of life and duty had been urged on him by his college “coach,” philosopher, and friend, Mr. Joseph Bielby. A man of some energy of character, Bielby had made Maitland leave his desultory reading and dull hospitalities at St. Gatien’s and betake himself to practical philanthropy.
“You tell me you don’t see much in life,” Bielby had said. “Throw yourself into the life of others, who have not much to live on.”
Maitland made a few practical experiments in philanthropy at Oxford. He once subsidized a number of glaziers out on strike, and thereon had his own windows broken by conservative undergraduates. He urged on the citizens the desirability of running a steam tramway for the people from the station to Cowley, through Worcester, John’s, Baliol, and Wadham Gardens and Magdalene. His signature headed a petition in favor of having three “devils,” or steam-whoopers, yelling in different quarters of the town between five and six o’clock every morning, that the artisans might be awakened in time for the labors of the day.
As Maitland’s schemes made more noise than progress at Oxford, Bielby urged him to come out of his Alma Mater and practise benevolence in town. He had a great scheme for building over Hyde Park, and creating a Palace of Art in Poplar with the rents of the new streets. While pushing this ingenious idea in the columns of theDaily Trumpet, Maitland looked out for some humbler field of personal usefulness. The happy notion of taking a philanthropic public-house occurred to him, and was acted upon at the first opportunity. Maitland calculated that in his own bar-room he could acquire an intimate knowledge of humanity in its least sophisticated aspects. He would sell good beer, instead of drugged and adulterated stuff He would raise the tone of his customers, while he would insensibly gain some of their exuberant vitality. He would shake off the prig (which he knew to be a strong element in his nature), and would, at the same time, encourage temperance by providing good malt liquor.
The scheme seemed feasible, and the next thing to do was to acquire a tavern. Now, Maitland had been in the Oxford movement just when æstheticism was fading out, like a lovely sun-stricken lily, while philanthropy and political economy and Mr. Henry George were coming in, like roaring lions. Thus in Maitland there survived a little of the old leaven of the student of Renaissance, a touch of the amateur of “impressions” and of antiquated furniture. He was always struggling against this “side,” as he called it, of his “culture,” and in his hours of reaction he was all for steam tramways, “devils,” and Kindergartens standing where they ought not. But there were moments when his old innocent craving for the picturesque got the upper hand; and in one of those moments Maitland had come across the chance of acquiring the lease of theHit or Miss.
That ancient bridge-house pleased him, and he closed with his opportunity. TheHit or Misswas as attractive to an artistic as most public-houses are to a thirsty soul When the Embankment was made, the bridge-house had been one of a street of similar quaint and many-gabled old buildings that leaned up against each other for mutual support near the rivers edge. But the Embankment slowly brought civilization that way: the dirty rickety old houses were both condemned and demolished, till at last only the tavern remained, with hoardings and empty spaces, and a dust-yard round it.
The house stood at what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was sohigh-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of theattics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-wallswere broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs coveringprojecting casements, and the house was shored up and supported by hugewooden beams. You entered (supposing you to enter a public-house) by alow-browed door in front, if you passed in as ordinary customers did. Atone corner was an odd little board, with the old-fashioned sign:“Jack’s Bridge House.“Hit or Miss—Luck’s All.”
But there was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way, over which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the plaster) lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building. From this door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house kept for its intimates; a side even more picturesque with red-tiled roofs and dormer windows than that which faced the street. The passage led down to a slum, and on the left hand, as you entered, lay the empty space and the dust-yard where the carts were sheltered in sheds, or left beneath the sky, behind the ruinous hoarding.
Within, theHit or Misslooked cosey enough to persons entering out of the cold and dark. There was heat, light, and a bar-parlor with a wide old-fashioned chimney-place, provided with seats within the ingle. On these little benches did Tommy and his friends make haste to place themselves, comfortably disposed, and thawing rapidly, in a room within a room, as it were; for the big chimney-place was like a little chamber by itself. Not on an ordinary night could such a party have gained admittance to the bar-parlor, where Maitland himself was wont to appear, now and then, when he visited the tavern, and to produce by his mere presence, and without in the least intending it, an Early Closing Movement.
But to-night was no common night, and Mrs. Gullick, the widowed landlady, or rather manager, was as eager to hear all the story of the finding of poor Dicky Shields as any of the crowd outside had been. Again and again the narrative was repeated, till conjecture once more began to take the place of assertion.
“I wonder,” asked one of the men, “how old Dicky got the money for a boose?”
“The money, ay, and the chance,” said another. “That daughter of his—a nice-looking girl she is—kept poor Dicky pretty tight.”
“Didn’t let him get—” the epigrammatist of the company was just beginning to put in, when the brilliant witticism he was about to utter burst at once on the intellect of all his friends.
“Didn’t let himgettight, you was a-goin’ to say, Tommy,” howled three or four at once, and there ensued a great noise of the slapping of thighs, followed by chuckles which exploded, at intervals, like crackers.
“Dicky ‘ad been ‘avin’ bad times for long,” the first speaker went on. “I guess he ‘ad about tattooed all the parish as would stand a pint for tattooing. There was hardly a square inch of skin not made beautiful forever about here.”
“Ah! and there was no sale for his beastesses and bird-ses nuther; or else he was clean sold out, and hadn’t no capital to renew his stock of hairy cats and young parrots.”
“The very stuffed beasts, perched above old Dicky’s shop, had got to look real mangey and mouldy. I think I see them now: the fox in the middle, the long-legged moulting foreign bird at one end, and that ‘ere shiny old rhinoceros in the porch under them picters of the dying deer and t’other deer swimming. Poor old Dicky! Where he raised the price o’ a drain, let alone a booze, beats me, it does.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Gullick, who had been in the outer room during the conversation, “why, it was a sailor gentleman that stood Dicky treat A most pleasant-spoken man for a sailor, with a big black beard He used to meet Dicky here, in the private room up-stairs, and there Dicky used to do him a turn of his trade—tattooing him, like. ‘I’m doing him to pattern, mum,’ Dicky sez, sez he: ‘afacsimileo’ myself, mum.’ It wasn’t much they drank neither—just a couple of pints; for sez the sailor gentleman, he sez, ‘I’m afeared, mum, our friend here can’t carry much even ofyourcapital stuff. We must excuse’ sez he, ‘the failings of an artis’; but I doesn’t want his hand to shake or slip when he’s a doin’me,’ sez he. ‘Might > spile the pattern,’ he sez, ‘also hurt’ And I wouldn’t have served old Dicky with more than was good for him, myself, not if it was ever so, I wouldn’t I promised that poor daughter of his, before Mr. Maitland sent her to school—years ago now—I promised as I would keep an eye on her father, and speak of—A hangel, if here isn’t Mr. Maitland his very self!”
And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord, the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one—some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness—they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland’s appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.
“Well, Mrs. Gullick,” said poor Maitland, ruefully, “I came here for a chat with our friends—a little social relaxation—on economic questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away.”
“Oh, sir, they’re a rough lot, and don’t think themselves company for the likes of you. But,” said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly—with the delight of the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale—“you ‘ve heard this hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood—”
What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland, growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
“What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!”
“Nothing toherself, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir.”
Maitland seemed sensibly relieved.
“Well, what about her father?”
“Gone, sir—gone! In a cartload o’ snow, this very evening, he was found, just outside o* this very door.”
“In a cartload of snow!” cried Maitland. “Do you mean that he went away in it, or that he was found in it dead?”
“Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I do assure you. He had been steady—oh, steady for weeks.”
Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopelessmauvais sujet. But Dicky’s daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having her educated there, and after she was educated—why, then, Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle; not that he objected—on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his views in writing. There were times—there had lately, above all, been times—when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man’s way; he was nobody’s enemy now, not even his own.
The vision of all these circumstances passed rapidly, like a sensation rather than a set of coherent thoughts, through Maitland’s consciousness.
“Tell me everything you know of this wretched business,” he said, rising and closing the door which led into the outer room.
“Well, sir, you have not been here for some weeks, or you would know that Dicky had found a friend lately—an old shipmate, or petty-officer, he called him—a sailor-man. Well-to-do, he seemed; the mate of a merchant vessel he might be. He had known Dicky, I think, long ago at sea, and he’d bring him here ‘to yarn with him,’ he said, once or twice it might be in this room, but mainly in the parlor up-stairs. He let old Dicky tattoo him a bit, up there, to put him in the way of earning an honest penny by his trade—a queer trade it was. Never more than a pint, or a glass of hot rum and water, would he give the old man. Most considerate and careful, sir, he ever was. Well, last night he brought him in about nine, and they sat rather late; and about twelve the sailor comes in, rubbing his eyes, and ‘Good-night, mum,’ sez he. ‘My friend’s been gone for an hour. An early bird he is, and I’ve been asleep by myself. If you please, I’ll just settle our little score. It’s the last for a long time, for I’m bound to-morrow for the China Seas, eastward. Oh, mum, a sailor’s life!’ So he pays, changing a half-sovereign, like a gentleman, and out he goes, and that’s the last I ever see o’ poor Dicky Shields till he was brought in this afternoon, out of the snow-cart, cold and stiff, sir.”
“And how do you suppose all this happened? How did Shields getintothe cart?”
“Well, that’s just what they’ve been wondering at, though the cart was handy and uncommon convenient for a man as ‘ad too much, if ‘ad he ‘ad; as believe it I cannot, seeing a glass of hot rum and water would not intoxicate a babe. May be he felt faint, and laid down a bit, and never wakened. But, Lord a mercy, what’sthat?” screamed Mrs. Gullick, leaping to her feet in terror.
The latched door which communicated with the staircase had been burst open, and a small brown bear had rushed erect into the room, and, with a cry, had thrown itself on Mrs. Gullick’s bosom.
“Well, if ever I ‘ada fright!” that worthy lady exclaimed, turning toward the startled Maitland, and embracing at the same time the little animal in an affectionate clasp. “Well, ifeverthere was such a child as you, Lizer! What is the matter with younow?”
“Oh, mother,” cried the bear, “I dreamed of that big Bird I saw on the roof, and I ran down-stairs before I was ‘arf awake, I was that horful frightened.”
“Well, you just go up-stairs again—and here’s a sweet-cake for you—and you take this night-light,” said Mrs. Gullick, producing the articles she mentioned, “and put it in the basin careful, and knock on the floor with the poker if you want me. If it wasn’t for that bearskin Mr. Toopny was kind enough to let you keep, you’d get your death o’ cold, you would, running about in the night. And look ‘ere, Lizer,” she added, patting the child affectionately on the shoulder, “do get that there Bird out o’ your head. It’s just nothing but indigestion comes o’ you and the other children—himps they may well call you, and himps I’m sure you are—always wasting your screws on pasty and lemonade and raspberry vinegar. Just-nothing but indigestion.”
Thus admonished, the bear once more threw its arms, in a tight embrace, about Mrs. Gullick’s neck; and then, without lavishing attention on Maitland, passed out of the door, and could be heard skipping up-stairs.
“I’m sure, sir, I ask your pardon,” exclaimed poor Mrs. Gullick; “but Lizer’s far from well just now, and she did have a scare last night, or else, which is more likely, her little inside (saving your presence) has been upset with a supper the Manager gave all them pantermime himps.”
“But, Mrs. Gullick, why is she dressed like a bear?”
“She’s such a favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man, and all of them at theHilarity, you can’tthink, sir,” said Mrs. Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland’s general capacity for abstract speculation. “A regular little genius that child is, though I says it as shouldn’t. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father, sir.” And Mrs. Gullick raised her apron to her eyes.
Now the late Mr. Gullick had been a clown of considerable merit; but, like too many artists, he was addicted beyond measure to convivial enjoyment. Maitland had befriended him in his last days, and had appointed Mrs. Gullick (and a capital appointment it was) to look after his property when he became landlord of theHit or Miss.
“What a gift, sir, that child always had! Why, when she was no more than four, I well remember her going to fetch the beer, and her being a little late, and Gullick with the thirst on him, when she came in with the jug, he made a cuff at her, not to hurt her, and if the little thing didn’t drop the jug, and take the knap! Lord, I thought Gullick would ‘a died laughing, and him so thirsty, too.”
“Take the knap?” said Maitland, who imagined that “the knap” must be some malady incident to childhood.
“Oh, sir, it’s when one person cuffs at another on the stage, you know, and the other slaps his own hand, on the far side, to make the noise of a box on the ear: that’s what we call ‘taking the knap’ in the profession. And the beer was spilt, and the jug broken, and all—Lizer was that clever? And this is her second season, just ended, as a himp at theHilaritypantermime; and they’re that good to her, they let her bring her bearskin home with her, what she wears, you know, sir, as the Little Bear in ‘The Three Bears,’ don’t you know, sir.”
Maitland was acquainted with the legend of the Great Bear, the Middle Bear, and the Little Tiny Small Bear, and had even proved, in a learned paper, that the Three Bears were the Sun, the Moon, and the Multitude of Stars in the Aryan myth. But he had not seen the pantomime founded on the traditional narrative.
“But what was the child saying about a big Bird?” he asked. “What was it that frightened her?”
“Oh, sir, I think it was just tiredness, and may be, a little something hot at that supper last night; and, besides, seeing so many queer things in pantermimes might put notions in a child’s head. But when she came home last night, a little late, Lizer was very strange. She vowed and swore she had seen a large Bird, far bigger than any common bird, skim over the street. Then when I had put her to bed in the attic, down she flies, screaming she saw the Bird on the roof. I had hard work to get her to sleep. To-day I made her lay a-bed and wear her theatre pantermime bearskin, that fits her like another skin—and she’ll be too big for it next year—just to keep her warm in that cold garret. That’s all about it, sir. She’ll be well enough in a day or two, will Lizer.”
“I am sure I hope she will, Mrs. Gullick,” said Maitland; “and, as I am passing his way, I will ask Dr. Barton to call and see the little girl. Now I must go, and I think the less we say to anyone about Miss Shields, you know, the better. It will be very dreadful for her to learn about her father’s death, and we must try to prevent Her from hearing how it happened.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Gullick, bobbing; “and being safe away at school, sir, we’ll hope she won’t be told no more than she needn’t know about it.”
Maitland went forth into the thick night: a half-hearted London thaw was filling the shivering air with a damp brown fog.
He walked to the nearest telegraph office, and did not observe, in the raw darkness and in the confusion of his thoughts, that he was followed at no great distance by a man muffled up in a great-coat and a woollen comforter. The stranger almost shouldered against him, as he stood reading his telegram, and conscientiously docking off a word here and there to save threepence,
“From Robert Maitland to Miss Marlett.“The Dovecot, Conisbeare,“Tiverton.“I come to-morrow, leaving by 10.30 train. Donot let Margaret see newspaper. Her father dead.Break news.”
This telegram gave Maitland, in his excited state, more trouble to construct than might have been expected. We all know the wondrous badness of post-office pens or pencils, and how they tear or blot the paper when we are in a hurry; and Maitland felt hurried, though there was no need for haste. Meantime the man in the woollen comforter was buying stamps, and, finishing his bargain before the despatch was stamped and delivered, went out into the fog, and was no more seen.
Girls’ schools are chilly places. The unfortunate victims, when you chance to meet them, mostly look but half-alive, and dismally cold. Their noses (however charming these features may become in a year or two, or even may be in the holidays) appear somehow of a frosty temperature in the long dull months of school-time. The hands, too, of the fair pupils are apt to seem larger than common, inclined to blue in color, and, generally, are suggestive of inadequate circulation. À tendency to get as near the fire as possible (to come within the frontiers of the hearth-rug is forbidden), and to cower beneath shawls, is also characteristic of joyous girlhood—school-girlhood, that is. In fact, one thinks of a girls’ school as too frequently a spot where no one takes any lively exercise (for walking in a funereal procession is not exercise, or Mutes might be athletes), and where there is apt to be a pervading impression of insufficient food, insufficient clothing, and general unsatisfied tedium.
Miss Marlett’s Establishment for the Highest Education of Girls, more briefly known as “The Dovecot, Conisbeare,” was no exception, on a particularly cold February day—the day after Dicky Shields was found dead—to these pretty general rules. The Dovecot, before it became a girls’ school, was, no doubt, a pleasant English home, where “the fires wass coot,” as the Highlandman said. The red-brick house, with its lawn sloping down to the fields, all level with snow, stood at a little distance from the main road, at the end of a handsome avenue of Scotch pines. But the fires at Miss Marlett’s were not good on this February morning. They neverweregood at the Dovecot. Miss Marlett was one of those people who, fortunately for themselves, and unfortunately for persons dwelling under their roofs, never feel cold, or never know what they feel. Therefore, Miss Marlett never poked the fire, which, consequently used to grow black toward its early death, and was only revived, at dangerously long intervals, by the most minute doses of stimulant in the shape of rather damp small coals. Now, supplies of coal had run low at the Dovecot, for the very excellent reason that the roads were snowed up, and that convoys of the precious fuel were scarcely to be urged along the heavy ways.
This did not matter much to the equable temperature of Miss Marlett; but it did matter a great deal to her shivering pupils, three of whom were just speeding their morning toilette, by the light of one candle, at the pleasant hour of five minutes to seven on a frosty morning.
“Oh dear,” said one maiden—Janey Harman by name—whose blonde complexion should have been pink and white, but was mottled with alien and unbecoming hues, “whywon’t that old Cat let us have fires to dress by? Gracious, Margaret, how black your fingers are!”
“Yes; and I cant get them clean,” said Margaret, holding up two very pretty dripping hands, and quoting, in mock heroic parody:
“Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,Are not myhandswashed white?”
“No talking in the bedrooms, young ladies,” came a voice, accompanied by an icy draught, from the door, which was opened just enough to admit a fleeting vision of Miss Mariettas personal charms.
“I was only repeating my lay, Miss Marlett,” replied the maiden thus rebuked, in a tone of injured innocence—
“‘Ho, dogs of false Tarentum,’”
—and the door closed again on Miss Marlett, who had not altogether the best of it in this affair of outposts, and could not help feeling as if “that Miss Shields” was laughing at her.
“Old Cat!” the young lady went on, in a subdued whisper. “But no wonder my hands were a little black, Janey. You forget that it’s my week to be Stoker. Already, girls, by an early and unexpected movement, I have cut off some of the enemy’s supplies.”
So speaking, Miss Margaret Shields proudly displayed a small deposit of coals, stored, for secrecy, in the bottom of a clothes-basket.
“Gracious, Daisy, how clever! Well, you are somethinglikea stoker,” exclaimed the third girl, who by this time had finished dressing: “we shall have a blaze to-night.”
Now, it must be said that at Miss Marlett’s school, by an unusual and inconsistent concession to comfort and sanitary principles, the elder girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter. But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked, inasmuch as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots, the girls were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it could be found. Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each other’s fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their pockets. But this conduct—resembling what is fabled of the natives of the Scilly Islands, that they “eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other’s washing”—led to strife and bickering; so that the Stoker for the week (as the girl appointed to collect these supplies was called) had to infringe a little on the secret household stores of Miss Marlett. This week, as it happened, Margaret Shields was the Stoker, and she so bore herself in her high office as to extort the admiration of the very housemaids.
“Even the ranks of TusculumCould scarce forbear to cheer,”
If we may again quote the author who was at that time Miss Shields’ favorite poet. Miss Shields had not studied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and was mercifully unaware that not to detect the “pinchbeck” in theLaysis the sign of a grovelling nature.
Before she was sent to Miss Marlett’s, four years ere this date, Margaret Shields’ instruction had been limited. “The best thing that could be said for it,” as the old sporting prophet remarked of his own education, “was that it had been mainly eleemosynary.” The Chelsea School Board fees could but rarely be extracted from old Dicky Shields. But Robert Maitland, when still young in philanthropy, had seen the clever, merry, brown-eyed child at some school treat, or inspection, or other function; had covenanted in some sort with her shiftless parent; had rescued the child from the streets, and sent her as a pupil to Miss Marlett’s. Like Mr. Day, the accomplished author of “Sandford and Merton,” and creator of the immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or “ready-made,” a helpmate meet for him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
Maitland could “please himself,” as people say; that is, in his choice of a partner he had no relations to please—no one but the elect young lady, who, after all, might not be “pleased” with alacrity.
Whether pleased or not, there could be no doubt that Margaret Shields was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates (“chamber-dekyns” they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett’s shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight knot, and with a smile (which knew when it was well off) always faithful to her lips. These features, it is superfluous to say in speaking of a heroine, “were rather too large for regular beauty.” She was perfectly ready to face the enemy (in which light she humorously regarded her mistress) when the loud cracked bell jangled at seven o’clock exactly, and the drowsy girls came trooping from the dormitories down into the wintry class-rooms.
Arithmetical diversions, in a cold chamber, were the intellectual treat which awaited Margaret and her companions. Arithmetic and slates! Does anyone remember—can anyone forget—how horribly distasteful a slate can be when the icy fingers of youth have to clasp that cold educational formation (Silurian, I believe), and to fumble with the greasy slate-pencil? With her Colenso in her lap, Margaret Shields grappled for some time with the mysteries of Tare and Tret. “Tare an’ ‘ouns,Icall it,” whispered Janey Harman, who had taken, in the holidays, a “course” of Lever’s Irish novels. Margaret did not make very satisfactory progress with her commercial calculations. After hopelessly befogging herself, she turned to that portion of Colenso’s engaging work which is most palpitating with actuality:
“If ten Surrey laborers, in mowing a field of forty acres, drink twenty-three quarts of beer, how much cider will thirteen Devonshire laborers consume in building a stone wall of thirteen roods four poles in length, and four feet six in height?”
This problem, also, proved too severe for Margaret’s mathematical endowments, and (it is extraordinary how childish the very greatest girls can be) she was playing at “oughts and crosses” with Janey Harman when the arithmetic master came round. He sat down, not unwillingly, beside Miss Shields, erased, without comment, the sportive diagrams, and set himself vigorously to elucidate (by “the low cunning of algebra”) the difficult sum from Colenso.
“You see, it is likethis,” he said, mumbling rapidly, and scribbling a series of figures and letters which the pupil was expected to follow with intelligent interest. But the rapidity of the processes quite dazed Margaret: a result not unusual when the teacher understands his topic so well, and so much as a matter of course that he cannot make allowance for the benighted darkness of the learner.
“Ninety-five firkins fourteen gallons three quarts. You see, it’s quite simple,” said Mr. Cleghorn, the arithmetic master.
“Oh, thank you; Isee,” said Margaret, with the kind readiness of woman, who would profess to “see” the Secret of Hegel, or the inmost heart of the Binomial Theorem, or the nature of the duties of cover-point, or the latest hypothesis about the frieze of the Parthenon, rather than be troubled with prolonged explanations, which the expositor, after all, might find it inconvenient to give.
Arithmetic and algebra were not this scholar’sforte; and no young lady in Miss Marlett’s establishment was so hungry, or so glad when eight o’clock struck and the bell rang for breakfast, as Margaret Shields.
Breakfast at Miss Marlett’s was not a convivial meal. There was a long narrow table, with cross-tables at each end, these high seats, ordais, being occupied by Miss Marlett and the governesses. At intervals down the table were stacked huge piles of bread and butter—of extremely thick bread and surprisingly thin butter—each slice being divided into four portions. The rest of the banquet consisted solely of tea. Whether this regimen was enough to support growing girls, who had risen at seven, till dinnertime at half-past one, is a problem which, perhaps, the inexperienced intellect of man can scarcely approach with confidence. But, if girls do not always learn as much at school as could be desired, intellectually speaking, it is certain that they have every chance of acquiring Spartan habits, and of becoming accustomed (if familiarity really breeds contempt) to despise hunger and cold. Not that Miss Marlett’s establishment was aDothegirls Hall, nor a school much more scantily equipped with luxuries than others. But the human race has still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than, persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places; but boys have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their breakfasts, which would be considered horribly indelicate and insubordinate conduct in girls.
“Est ce que vous aimez les tartines à l’Anglaise,” said Janey Harman to Margaret.
“Ce que j’aime dans la tartine, c’est la simplicité prime-sautière da sa nature,” answered Miss Shields.
It was one of the charms of the “matinal meal” (as the author of “Guy Livingstone” calls breakfast) that the young ladies were all compelled to talk French (and such French!) during this period of refreshment.
“Toutes choses, la cuisine exceptée, sont Françaises, dans cet établissement peu recréatif,” went on Janey, speaking low and fast.
“Je déteste le Français,” Margaret answered, “mais je le préfère infiniment à l’Allemand.”
“Comment accentuez, vous le mot préfère, Marguerite?” asked Miss Marlett, who had heard the word, and who neglected no chance of conveying instruction.
“Oh, two accents—one this way, and the other that,” answered Margaret, caught unawares. She certainly did not reply in the most correct terminology.
“Vous allez perdre dix marks,” remarked the schoolmistress, if incorrectly, perhaps not too severely. But perhaps it is not easy to say, off-hand, what word Miss Marlett ought to have employed for “marks.”
“Voici les lettres qui arrivent,” whispered Janey to Margaret, as the post-bag was brought in and deposited before Miss Marlett, who opened it with a key and withdrew the contents.
This was a trying moment for the young ladies. Miss Marlett first sorted out all the letters for the girls, which came, indubitably and unmistakably, from fathers and mothers. Then she picked out the other letters, those directed to young ladies whom she thought she could trust, and handed them over in honorable silence. These maidens were regarded with envy by the others. Among them was not Miss Harman, whose letters Miss Marlett always deliberately opened and read before delivering them.
“Il y a une lettre pour moi, et elle va la lire,” said poor Janey to her friend, who, for her part, never received any letters, save a few, at stated intervals, from Maitland. These Miss Shields used to carry about in her pocket without opening them till they were all crumply at the edges. Then she hastily mastered their contents, and made answer in the briefest and most decorous manner.
“Qui est votre correspondent?” Margaret asked. We are not defending her French.
“C’est le pauvre Harry Wyville,” answered Janey. “Il est sous-lieutenant dans les Berkshires à Aldershot Pourquoi ne doit il pas écrire à moi, il est comme on diroit, mon frère.”
“Est il votre parent?”
“Non, pas du tout, mais je l’ai connu pour des ans. Oh, pour des ans! Voici, elle à deux dépêches télégraphiques,” Janey added, observing two orange colored envelopes which had come in the mail-bag with the letters.
As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
“Jeanne je veux vous parler à part, après, dans mon boudoir,” remarked Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched, displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to one by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who is just like one’s brother, is a trial to any girl.
Then Miss Marlett betook herself to her own correspondence, which, as Janey had noticed, includedtwotelegraphic despatches in orange-colored envelopes.
That she had not rushed at these, and opened them first, proves the admirable rigidity of her discipline. Any other woman would have done so, but it was Miss Marietta rule to dispose of the pupils’ correspondence before attending to her own. “Business first, pleasure afterward,” was the motto of this admirable woman.
Breakfast ended, as the girls were leaving the room for the tasks of the day, Miss Marlett beckoned Margaret aside.
“Come to me, dear, in the boudoir, after Janey Harman,” said the schoolmistress in English, and in a tone to which Margaret was so unaccustomed that she felt painfully uneasy and anxious—unwonted moods for this careless maiden.
“Janey, something must have happened,” she whispered to her friend, who was hardening her own heart for the dreadful interview.
“Something’sgoingto happen, I’m sure,” said poor Janey, apprehensively, and then she entered the august presence, alone.
Margaret remained at the further end of the passage, leading to what Miss Marlett, when she spoke French, called her “boudoir.” The girl felt colder than even the weather warranted. She looked alternately at Miss Marietta door and out of the window, across the dead blank flats to the low white hills far away. Just under the window one of the little girls was standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins and sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of the ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray haze was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and the branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black holes in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish plash.
Margaret shivered. Then she heard the boudoir door open, and Janey came out, making a plucky attempt not to cry.
“What is it?” whispered Margaret, forgetting the dread interview before her, and her own unformed misgivings.
“She won’t give me the letter. I’m to have it when I go home for good; and I’m to go home for good at the holidays,” whimpered Janey.
“Poor Janey!” said Margaret, petting the blonde head on her shoulder.
“Margaret Shields, come here!” cried Miss Marlett, in a shaky voice, from the boudoir.
“Come to the back music-room when she’s done with you,” the other girl whispered. And Margaret marched, with a beating heart, into Miss Marlett’s chamber.
“My dear Margaret!” said Miss Marlett, holding out her hands. She was standing up in the middle of the boudoir. She ought to have been sitting grimly, fortified behind her bureau; that was the position in which she generally received pupils on these gloomy occasions.
“My dear Margaret!” she repeated. The girl trembled a little as the school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
“What has happened?” she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could scarcely speak.
“You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father——”
“Was it an accident?” asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no prophet to foretell. “Was it anything very dreadful?”
“Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor Daisy!”
“Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!” the girl sobbed. Somehow she was kneeling now, with her head buried in the elder lady’s lap. “I have been horrid to you. I am so wretched!”
A little kindness and a sudden trouble had broken down Miss Margaret Shields. For years she had been living, like Dr. Johnson at college, with a sad and hungry heart, trying to “carry it off by her wild talk and her wit.” “It was bitterness they mistook for frolic.” She had known herself to be a kind of outcast, and she determined to hold her own with the other girls who had homes and went to them in the holidays. Margaret had not gone home for a year. She had learned much, working harder than they knew; she had been in the “best set” among the pupils, by dint of her cheery rebelliousness. Now she suddenly felt all her loneliness, and knew, too, that she had been living, socially, in that little society at the expense of this kind queer old Miss Marlett’s feelings.
“I have been horrid to you,” she repeated. “I wish I had never been born.”
The school-mistress said nothing at all, but kept stroking the girl’s beautiful head. Surreptitiously Miss Marlett wiped away a frosty tear.
“Don’t mind me,” at last Miss Marlett said. “I never thought hardly of you; I understood. Now you must go and get ready for your journey; you can have any of the girls you like to help you to pack.”
Miss Marlett carried generosity so far that she did not even ask which of the girls was to be chosen for this service. Perhaps she guessed that it was the other culprit.
Then Margaret rose and dried her eyes, and Miss Marlett took her in her arms and kissed her and went off to order a travelling luncheon and to select the warmest railway rug she could find; for the teacher, though she was not a very learned nor judicious school-mistress, had a heart and affections of her own. She had once, it is true, taken the wordlegibus(dative plural of lex, a law) for an adjective of the third declension, legibus, legiba, legibum; and Margaret had criticised this grammatical subtlety with an unsparing philological acumen, as if she had been Professor Moritz Haupt and Miss Marlett, Orelli. And this had led to the end of Latin lessons at the Dovecot, wherefore Margaret was honored as a goddess by girls averse to studying the classic languages. But now Miss Marlett forgot these things, and all the other skirmishes of the past.
Margaret went wearily to her room, where she bathed her face with cold water; it could not be too cold for her, A certain numb forgetfulness seemed to steep her mind while she was thus deadening her eyes again and again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with her fingers.
“Come to my room, Janey,” she said, beckoning.
Now, to consort together in their bedrooms during school-hours was forbidden to the girls.
“Why, well only get into another scrape,” said Janey, ruefully.
“No, come away; I’ve got leave for you. You’re to help me to pack”
“To pack!” cried Janey. “Why,you’renot expelled, are you? You’ve done nothing. You’ve not even had a perfectly harmless letter from a boy who is just like a brother to you and whom you’ve known for years.”
Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence and intense curiosity.
When they reached their room, where Margaret’s portmanteau had already been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair “had a good cry,” and comforted each other as well as they might.
“And what are you going to do?” asked Janey, when, as Homer says, “they had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.”
“I don’t know!”
“Have you no one else in all the world?”
“No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna. Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers, and we were at Marseilles, and then in London.”
“But you have a guardian, haven’t you?”
“Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he’s been very kind, and done everything for me; but he’s quite a young man, not thirty, and he’s so stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like a book. And he’s so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides—”
But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien’s.
“And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?” Janey asked.
“There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had been an officer in father’s ship, I think, or had known him long ago at sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all.”
“And you don’t know any of your father’s family?”
“No,” said Margaret, wearily. “Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my prayer-book.” And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with silver clasps. “This was a book my father gave me,” she said. “It has a name on it—my grandfather’s, I suppose—‘Richard Johnson, Linkheaton, 1837.’” Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.
“Your mother’s father it may have belonged to,” said Janey.
“I don’t know,” Margaret replied, looking out of the window.
“I hope you won’t stay away long, dear,” said Janey, affectionately.
“Butyouare going, too, you know,” Margaret answered, without much tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break down, when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the snow-laden drive.
“Why, here’s some one coming!” cried Janey, rushing to the window. “Two horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for you!”