Confessions of a Young Lady: Her Doings and Misdoings. Marsh Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ had the looking-glass all the time, and I haven't done a single thing to my hair, and I never can do anything to it in the dark."

      "When a woman is in the state of mind in which she is, those who have to do with her have to put up with her. Don't blame her. Don't even think hard things of her. Try sometimes to practise, what you preach."

      What Hetty Travers meant I again had not the faintest notion. She certainly had no right to hint such things of me. It seemed impossible that the mere contemplation of Miss Frazer's doleful plight could have moved her to tears; but while I fumbled with my hair in my indignant efforts to do it up in one decent plait in the darkness she did make some extraordinary noises, which might have been stifled sobs.

      The following morning, during recreation, when I went into the schoolroom to get a book which I had left, I found Miss Frazer crouching over her desk, not only what I should call crying, but positively bellowing into her pocket-handkerchief. I stared at her in astonishment.

      "Miss Frazer! What is the matter?" She bellowed on. A thought occurred to me. "Has-has anyone been treating you badly?"

      Since she was so taciturn when calm, I expected her to be dumb when torn by her emotions. But I was mistaken. Taking her handkerchief from before her streaming eyes-her spectacles lay on the top of the desk, and I noticed how comical she looked without them-she spluttered out, -

      "I'm the worst treated woman in the whole world!"

      "Someone has been making you unhappy?"

      "Cruelly, wickedly unhappy!"

      "But have you no one to whom you can go for advice and assistance?"

      "Not a single creature! Not a living soul! I am helpless! It is because I am helpless that I am trampled on."

      Trampled on? I recalled Hetty's words. So she had been trampled on. Was being trampled on at that very moment. My blood, as usual, began to boil. Here was still another forlorn woman who had fallen a helpless victim to what Lord Byron called the "divine fever." And so a Frenchman did think that he could kick an Englishwoman about as if she were a football! I jumped at my conclusions with an ease and a rapidity which set all my pulses glowing.

      "Do you think that it would make any difference if anyone spoke for you?"

      "It must make a difference; it must! It is impossible that it should not make a difference! But who is there who would speak for me? Not one being on the earth!"

      Was there not? There she was mistaken, as she should see. But I did not tell her so. Indeed, she must have thought me also lacking in that rare human sympathy, the absence of which she mourned in others, because I hurried out of the schoolroom without another word. To be entirely frank, I was more than half afraid. Unattractive enough in her normal condition, she was absolutely repulsive in her woe. Had I dared I would have advised her, strongly, never under any circumstances to cry. But had I done so I might have wounded her sensitive nature still more deeply. She might have started boohooing with still greater vehemence. Then what would she have looked like? And what would have happened to me?

      Mrs Sawyer had instructed me to go into town to get a particular kind of drawing block for the drawing class which was to take place that afternoon. I knew where M. Doumer lived. When a newcomer appeared in his class it was his custom to present her-with an original article in bows which we irreverently described as the "Doumer twiddle" – with his card, in the corner of which was printed his address, so that the place of his habitation was known to all of us. It was close to the shop where they sold the drawing blocks. In returning one needed to go scarcely out of one's way at all to pass his house. I made it my business to pass his house. And when I reached it I marched straight up to the door, and I knocked.

      The door was opened by a nondescript-looking person whom I took for the landlady. There was a card in the window-"Apartments To Let" – so I immediately concluded that M. Doumer lived in lodgings and that this was the person who kept them. She was a small, thin, hungry, acidulated female, who struck me as being an old maid of the most pronounced type. I have a fatal facility for drawing instant definite deductions from altogether insufficient premises which will one of these days land me goodness alone knows where.

      "I wish to see M. Doumer."

      She led me into the room on the left, in the window of which appeared the legend about apartments.

      "M. Doumer is out. Is it anything which I can say to him?"

      It struck me, even in the midst of the boiling-over state of mind in which I was, that she might have informed me that the man was out before taking me into the house. But I was in much too explosive a condition to allow a trifle of that sort to deter me from letting off some of my steam.

      "Will you please ask him what he means by the way in which he has behaved to Miss Frazer?"

      To judge from the way in which she looked at me I might have said something extraordinary. She had rather nut-cracker jaws, and all at once her mouth went in such a way that one felt sure there must have been a click. And she did look at me.

      "I don't understand," she said.

      "I don't understand either. That's why I want M. Doumer to explain. He has been trampling on Miss Frazer, and broken her heart, so that she's crying her eyes out."

      The landlady person had not quite closed the door when showing me into the room, but had remained standing with her back to it, holding the handle in her hand. Now she turned right round, carefully shut it fast, and moved two or three steps towards me. There was something in her behaviour which, in a person in her position, I thought odd.

      "Who are you?"

      She asked the question in an exceedingly inquisitorial sort of way. I held up my chin as high as I could in the air.

      "I am Molly Boyes."

      "Molly Boyes?" She seemed to be searching in her mind for something with which to associate the name. "I don't remember to have heard of you."

      "Perhaps not. I shouldn't think it likely that you had. I don't suppose that M. Doumer talks to everyone about all of his pupils."

      "Are you one of his pupils?

      "I am. I am at Lingfield House School, and I have been in his French class for now going on for four terms."

      "And who's Miss- What's-her-name? Is she another of the pupils?"

      "Miss Frazer is one of our governesses; and if he thinks that because she is an Englishwoman he can use her as if she were a football he's mistaken."

      "Use her as if she were a football? What do you mean? What's he been doing to her?"

      "He's broken her heart, that's what he's been doing to her. And when I came away just now she was crying so that if someone doesn't stop her soon I know she'll do herself an injury."

      The landlady person made a noise with her nose which I should describe as a sniff. She straightened herself up as if she were trying to add another three or four inches to her stature, which would not have made her very tall even if she had succeeded.

      "I thought as much. I have suspected it for months. But I am not one to speak unless I know. The man's a regular Bluebeard."

      "A regular Bluebeard! – M. Doumer!"

      "A complete Don Juan. I have long been convinced of it. He fascinates every woman he comes across. But he doesn't care."

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