CHAPTER X

“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.”