A Fluttered Dovecote

But she would not hear of this, and I don’t know what I should have done if I had not thought of lowering the ladder down a little way, and then trying again, when, to my great delight, up it came, and Clara soon had hold of a pair of great iron hooks, just the sort of hooks I expected to see; and on fixing them upon the sill, my side, we found that they fitted beautifully; so I threw myself upon them to hold them in their places, lest they should slip.

Just after that there was a sharp rustle of the rope, and then it was pulled tight; while now, making Clara hold one hook and Patty the other, I strained out as far as I could reach, so that I could see Achille mounting, slowly ascending, the dangerous thing; and, although we all held on as tightly as we could, when he was about a dozen feet from the ground the tiresome rope began to twist and spin round and round, so that the poor fellow was twisting just as if he was being roasted, and I’m sure he must have been as giddy as giddy.

Fortunately for him, he did not always go the same way round, but twisted back again, or else he must have dropped off. It was not as if he had been close up to the house, for then he could have touched the wall and stopped himself; but the cornice, which was a good width, kept him away, so that he swung clear. And perhaps, after all, it was quite as well, for he might else have gone right through one of the windows.

It was very shuddery and dreadful; but we poor girls could do nothing but grasp the rope and hold our breath, and, as Clara said, hold our tongues; though Patty would keep letting go, and staring out of the window when she was not wanted to.

“Won’t I tease him about this,” she said. “Only see, the first time he finds fault with my exercises.”

“Hush! you foolish child,” I exclaimed. “Good gracious me! you must never say a word to him about it, under any consideration.”

“Mustn’t I?” said Patty, as innocently as could be.

“No, of course not,” cried Clara; “that would ruin everything.”

For I was now reaching as far as could be out of the window, to see what poor Achille was about; for the rope seemed to be doing nothing, and did not jerk as if he was getting higher and higher. And then, oh, dear! if I could not just see one of his feet where his head was last time I looked; for he was sitting upon the sill of the first floor window – the best bedroom, which was, of course, empty – and, I suppose, resting himself.

All at once, though, I heard him whisper —

“Is de ting sauf?”

“Yes, yes,” I whispered in reply.

And then the rope crunched upon the cornice, as if he had again committed to it his weight, when I drew in my head and waited, trembling, for him to reach the window; and it did seem such a long time to come so short a distance; but, as he told me afterwards, the loops would keep slipping away when he wanted to put his feet in them, besides the rope spinning him round until he was giddy. At last I looked out again, and then drew back my head in agony; for if he was not hanging by one leg, head downwards, just like my poor Dick, the canary, did in London, when it caught its claw in the wire of the cage and could not get loose.

As I said, I drew in my head, quite in an agony of fear; but the rope jerked about so that I was obliged to gaze once more, and then I ejaculated, quite loudly —

“Oh, Achille!”

“Eh, yais, oui,” he exclaimed. “I ’ave put in mine’s foot.”

“In what – in what, mon cher?” I whispered.

“Oh,” he gasped, in a thick voice, “mais je suis giddy. I ’ave puts my foot trou de loops, and cannot get him back.”

“Oh, pray come in!” cried Clara, who had heard every word, and seemed quite horrified – “pray come in and shut the window. Let’s go away.”

“Oh, nonsense,” I said, “he will be hung: he will die! His head is hanging down, and his leg sticking up in the rope. He has slipped. Whatever shall we do?”

“Why don’t you cut the rope?” said Patty; but of course no one took any notice of her.

“Let’s unhook the things,” whispered Clara, “and then drop him down into the laurustinus.”

“Oh, how can you be so stupid!” I panted. “It would kill him: he’s right above the first floor window-sill.”

“Well, but we can’t shut the window with those things there,” said Clara; “and it will not do to be found out.”

I looked again, and there he still was twirling round just as if he was being roasted, and the rope shaking so that I thought it must break. I kept whispering to him, but he did not hear me; and just dim and indistinctly as he was seen, I could make out that he was trying to double himself up and get his hands to the rope.

I never, I’m sure, felt anything so dreadful before in my life as those few moments when he was struggling there, and me unable to help him; for, in addition to the horror, there was the pricking of my conscience, as it told me that this was all my fault, and that if he was killed I should have murdered him. Which was very dreadful, you know, when that last affair of the cistern, which he escaped from with a fearful drenching, ought to have been a warning to me to have spared him from running any more risks on my behalf.

I declare that I should have tried to slide down the rope to help him, or else to share his fate, if Clara had not restrained me once more; but she kept tightly hold of my waist, till there came up a sound like the gnashing together of teeth, the rope gave a terrible shake, and the iron hooks fell jingling upon the floor.

There was a crashing and rustling of leaves and branches, as if a heavy body had fallen amongst trees, and then all was still, except for a deep groan – a French groan – which came up, thrilling us all horribly; for the rope had come unfastened, and had slipped through the round rings of the hooks.

We all stood aghast for a few minutes; but at last I summoned up courage enough to lean out, and whisper loudly —

“Achille! mon ami Achille!” when, as if in answer, came a most doleful “H-ooo, o-o-o, ho-o-o-o!” which made one’s very blood run cold.

“That’s only an owl,” said Clara, the next minute.

“A howl!” said Patty; “that it wasn’t, it was a groan, just the same as the pigs give when they’re dying in our slaughter-house at home.”

I leaned out of the window as far as I could, once more, and was trying to pierce the darkness below, when all at once I heard a window to the right opening very gently, and squeaking as it ran up, and that window, I felt sure, was the lady principal’s; so, recollecting the night of the alarm from Clara’s basin – agonised though I was – I felt obliged to close ours quietly, pick up the two hooks, and then we all three glided back to our room – my heart chiding me the while for forsaking poor Achille in such a time of dire distress. But what could I do? To stay or to raise an alarm was to be found out, and perhaps – ay, perhaps! – poor fellow, he was not hurt, after all.

It was just as well that we did slip back, for we had hardly closed the door before the alarm bell on the top of the house began to ring, and we heard the Fraülein spring out of bed with a regular bump upon the floor.

We were not many seconds scuffling into bed; and, just as we lay down, we heard the Fraülein’s door open, and then there were voices talking and a good deal of buzzing about, for quite half an hour. But we thought it better not to go out; for, when Clara took a peep, Miss Furness was hunting several of the girls back into their rooms with —

“Nothing the matter, young ladies. Back to your dormitories.”

So we lay quite still, and listened; while I essayed to allay my horrible fears about poor Achille, and tried to fancy that every sigh of the wind among the branches was him stealing – no, I won’t say stealing, it looks so bad – hurrying away. Then we heard the Fraülein come in, and her bed creak loudly as she lay down; and once more all was quiet, and I felt sure that they could not have seen or heard anything, but I dared not get up once more to see. Clara said she was sure she heard Mrs Blunt talking to the policeman out of the window again. Perhaps she did, but I did not; though it was most likely, after the ringing of the alarm bell.

“What are you sobbing for?” said Clara, all at once.

“Oh, I know he’s killed,” I said.

“Pooh, nonsense,” she replied, in her unfeeling way, “he only went plop among the bushes; and they say exiles always manage to fall on their feet when they come to England, just like cats. He is not hurt, unless he has scratched that beautiful face of his a little bit.”

“Then you don’t think he is killed, dear?” I said, seeking for comfort, alas! where I was but little likely to find it, I’m sorry to say.

“Not I,” said Clara; “it was not far enough to fall.”

“I sha’n’t go no more,” drawled Patty; “it ain’t half such fun as I thought it was. Why didn’t he come right up?”

“Don’t be such a goose!” cried Clara to the noodle. “Why, didn’t he get his leg caught, and then didn’t the rope give way?”

“I’m sure I dunno,” said Patty, yawning; and then, in spite of all the trouble, we all dropped off fast asleep.

Chapter Nineteen.

Memory the Nineteenth – Our New Guardian

For a few moments after I woke I could not make out what made me feel so heavy and dull. Of course, it was partly owing to their ringing that stupid bell down in the hall so early, for fear we should have a morsel too much sleep; but all at once, as upon other occasions, I remembered about the previous night and poor Achille; when, of course, the first thing I did was to rush to the window and throw it up, to try and catch a glimpse of the scene of the last night’s peril, when the first thing my eyes rested upon was that horrid Miss Furness taking her constitutional, and, of course, as soon as she saw me she must shake her finger angrily, because I appeared at the window with my hair all tumbled. I never saw anything like that woman. I always did compare her to an old puss, for she seemed as if she could do without sleep, and always got up at such unnatural hours in the morning, even when the weather was cold and dark, and wet, when it seemed her delight to go out splashing and puddling about in her goloshes; and somehow, or another, she never seemed to catch cold as anybody else would if she had acted in the same way. It must have cost her half her salary for green silk umbrellas; for James generally managed to spoil every one’s umbrella when they were given him to dry, and Miss Furness never would use any but the neatest and most genteel-looking parapluies, being the only thing in which she displayed good taste.

Of course I had a good look out as soon as I was quite ready to go down, when I could see that the flower bed was a great deal trampled, one of the bushes was quite crushed, so that I knew there would be a terrible to do about it as soon as it was noticed.

“Well, is he there?” said Clara, “or is it only his pieces? Do make haste down, and run and secure his heart, before they pick it up, and put it on a barrow to wheel away.”

“La!” said wide-open-mouthed Patty, staring; “he would not break, would he?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Clara. “French gentlemen are very fickle and brittle, so I should not at all wonder if he broke.”

“Better break himself than the jam pots,” I said, spitefully, when Clara coloured up terribly, as she always did when the Signor was in any way alluded to; for though I did not like to hurt her feelings about the jam when she was shut up, of course, she had not been at liberty long before she heard all about it I know it was mean on my part to retaliate as I did, but then she had no business to speak in that way; for it was too bad to make fun out of such trouble. Then, of course, she must turn quite huffy and cross, and go down without speaking; for some people never can bear to be joked themselves, even when their sole delight consists in tormenting other people.

I could not but think that poor Achille had escaped unhurt, though at times I went through the same suffering as I did on the morning after the discovery in the conservatory; – and really, when one comes to think of it, it is wonderful that no suspicion ever attached to either Achille or myself over that dreadful set-out. Breakfast over, I seemed to revive a little; though I must confess that what roused me more than anything was Miss Furness finding out that I looked pale and red-eyed, and saying that she thought I required medicine.

“For you know, Miss Bozerne, a little foresight is often the means of arresting a dangerous illness; so I think I shall call Mrs de Blount’s attention to your state.”

“Oh, please, don’t, ma’am,” I said. “I assure you that I feel particularly well this morning.”

But she only gave one of her self-satisfied smiles and bows; when in came the tall footman to say that the gardener wished to speak with “missus.”

“Missus” was not there, so the footman went elsewhere to find her; but the very mention of that gardener brought my heart to my mouth, as people say; though I really wonder whether that is true – I should like to know. Then I had a fit of trembling, for I made sure that he had found poor Achille, lying where he had crawled, with all his bones broken, in some out-of-the way corner of the garden; perhaps, possibly, to slake his fevered thirst in my favoured spot, close by the ferns, and the miserable fountain that never played, green and damp beneath the trees.

But I could not afford to think; for just then the door was opened, and Mrs Blunt stood with it ajar, talking to the gardener in the hall, and of course I wanted to catch what he said; when, just as if out of aggravation, the girls made a terrible buzzing noise. But I heard enough to tell me that it was all about the past night, and I caught a word here and there about bushes broken, and big footsteps, and trampled, and so on; while, as a conclusion to a conversation which had roused my spirits by telling me that poor Achille had not been found, Mrs Blunt placed a terrible damper upon all by saying —

“It must have been the policeman, gardener; and he shall be spoken to respecting being more careful. But for the future we’ll have a big dog, and he shall be let loose in the garden every night.”

I could have rained down tears upon my exercises, and washed out the ink from the paper, when I heard those words; for in imagination, like some gladiator of old, in the brutal arena, gazed upon by Roman maids and matrons, when battling with some fierce wild beast of the forest, I saw poor Achille struggling with a deep-mouthed, fang-toothed, steel-jawed bloodhound, fighting valiantly to have but a minute’s interview with me; while, dissolving-view-like, the scene seemed to change, and I saw him, torn and bleeding, expiring fast, and blessing me with his last words as his eyes closed. Then I was planting flowers upon his grave, watering them with my tears, and plaiting a wreath of immortelles to hang upon one corner of the stone that bore his name, ere I departed for Guisnes to take the veil and shut myself for ever from a world that had been to me one of woe and desolation.

“Oh, Achille! beloved, martyred Achille!” I muttered, with my eyes closed to keep in the tears, when I was snatched back to the realities of the present by the voice of Miss Furness, who snappishly exclaimed —

“Perhaps you had better go and lie down for an hour, Miss Bozerne, if you cannot get on with your exercise without taking a nap in between the lines.”

I sighed – oh, so bitter and despairing a sigh! – and then went on with my task, sadly, sorrowfully, and telling myself that all was indeed now lost, and ’twere vain to battle with fate, and I must learn to sit and sorrow till the sun should shine upon our love.

The dog came.

Such a wretch! I’m sure no one ever before possessed such a horrible, mongrel creature. Instead of being a large, noble-looking mastiff or hound, or Newfoundland dog, it was a descendant, I feel convinced, of the celebrated Snarleyyow that used to bite poor Smallbones, and devour his dinner. It was one of those dogs that you cannot pet for love, because they are so disagreeable, nor from fear, because they will not let you; for every advance made was met by a display of teeth; while if you bribed it with nice pieces of bread, they were snapped from your hand, and the escapes of your fingers were miraculous. I should have liked to have poisoned the nasty, fierce thing; but, of course, I dared not attempt such a deed. And what surprised me was Mrs Blunt being able to get one so soon, though the reason was plain enough – the wretch had belonged to a neighbour who was only too glad to get rid of it, and hearing that Mrs Blunt wanted a dog, jumped at the chance, and I know he must have gone away laughing and chuckling. We used to call the horrid wretch Cyclops, for he had only one eye; but such an eye! a fiery red orb, that seemed to burn, while the wretch was as big almost as a calf. I knew that poor Achille would never dare any more adventures now for my sake; and it did seem such cruel work, for a whole fortnight had passed since I had heard from or seen him, for when the lesson was due after our last adventure, there came a note from Mrs Jackney’s, saying that Monsieur de Tiraille had been taken ill the night before, and was now confined to his bed.

Only think! confined to his bed, and poor Laura unable to go to him to tend him, to comfort him, and smooth his pillow, at a time when he was in such a state of suffering, and all through me – all for my sake! I’m sure I was very much to be pitied, though no one seemed to care; while as for Clara, she grew unbearable, doing nothing but laugh.

Oh, yes, I knew well enough what was the matter, and so did two more; but, to make matters ten hundred times more aggravating, that lean Miss Furness must go about sighing, and saying that it was a bilious attack, and that England did not agree with Monsieur Achille like la belle France; and making believe that she was entirely in his confidence, when I don’t believe that he had done more than send word to Mrs Blunt herself. And then, as if out of sympathy, Miss Furness must needs make a fuss, and get permission to take the French class – she with her horrid, abominable accent, which was as much like pure French as a penny trumpet is like Sims Reeves’s G above the stave.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “she should be only too happy to take the class while poor Monsieur Achille was ill.”

And one way and another, the old fright made me so vexed that I should have liked to make her jealous by showing her one of Achille’s letters.

So, as I said before we had a dog in the place; and, oh, such a wretch! I’m sure that no one ever before saw such a beast, and there it was baying and howling the whole night through.

The very first day he came to inhabit the smart green kennel that Mrs Blunt had had bought, he worked his collar over his ears and got loose, driving the gardener nearly mad with the pranks he played amongst the flowers; when who should come but poor meek, quiet, innocent, tame Monsieur de Kittville. The wretch made at him, seizing him by the leg of his trousers; but how he ever did it without taking out a bit of his leg I can’t make out, for his things were always dreadfully tight; and there was the wretch of a dog hanging on and dragging back, snarling the while, and the poor little dancing master defending himself with his fiddle, and shrieking out —

“Brigand! Cochon! Diable de chien! Hola, ho! Au secours! I shall be déchiré! Call off te tog!”

And at every word he banged the great beast upon the head with the little fiddle, till it was broken all to bits; but still the dog held on, until the gardener and James ran to his assistance.

“He won’t hurt you, sir,” said the great, tall, stupid footman, grinning.

“But he ayve hurt me, dreadful,” cried the poor dancing master, capering about upon the gravel, and then stooping to tie his handkerchief over his leg, to hide the place where the dog had taken out a piece of the cloth, and was now coolly lying down and tearing it to pieces. “I am hurt! I am scare – I am fright horrible!” cried poor Monsieur de Kittville; “and my nerves and strings – oh, my nerves and strings – and my leetle feetle shall be broken all to pieces. Ah, Madame Bloont, Madame Bloont, why you keep such monster savage to attack vos amis? I shall not dare come for give lessons. I am ver bad, ver bad indeed.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear! how can I sufficiently apologise?” exclaimed Mrs Blunt, who had hurried up, and now began tapping the great dog upon the head with her fan. “I am so extremely sorry, Monsieur de Kittville. Naughty dog, then, to try and bite its mistress’s friends.”

“Aha, madame,” said the poor little man, forgetting his trouble in his excessive politeness and gallantry – “mais ce n’est rien; just nosing at all; but I am agitate. If you will give me one leetle glass wine, I shall nevare forget your bonté.”

“Oh, yes, yes – pray come in,” said Mrs Blunt.

And then we all came round the poor, trembling little martyr; and although we could not help laughing, yet all the while we pitied the good-tempered, inoffensive little man, till he had had his glass of wine and gone away; for, of course, he gave no lesson that day, and I must chronicle the fact that Mrs Blunt gave him a guinea towards buying a new instrument.

“But, oh, Clara,” I said, when we were alone, “suppose that had been poor Achille?”

“Oh, what’s the good of supposing?” said Clara, pettishly. “It was not him, and that ought to be enough.”

“But it might have been, though,” I said; “and then, only think!”

“Think,” said Clara, “oh, yes, I’ll think. Why, he is sure to have him some day.”

“Don’t dear, pray,” I said.

“And then,” continued Clara, “he’ll fight the dog, and kill him as King Richard did the lion.”

“Oh, please, don’t tease,” I said humbly; “I wonder how he is.”

“Miss Furness says he is better,” said Clara.

“How dare Miss Furness know?” I cried, indignantly.

“Dear me! How jealous we are!” she said, in her vulgar, tantalising way. “How should I know?”

And, for the daughter of a titled lady, it was quite disgusting to hear of what common language she made use.

“I don’t believe that she knows a single bit about it at all,” I said, angrily; for it did seem so exasperating and strange for that old thing to know, while somebody else, whom he had promised to make – but there, I am not at liberty to say what he had promised.

“You may depend upon one thing,” said Clara, “and that is that your Achille will not be invulnerable to dogs’ bites; though, even if he is, he will be tender in the heel, which is the first part that he will show Mr Cyclops, if he comes. But you will see if he does not take good care not to come upon these grounds after dark – that is, as soon as he knows about the dog. By-the-by, dear, what a dislike the dog seems to have to anything French.”

“I’d kill the wretch if it bit him,” I said.

Clara laughed as if she did not believe me.

“I would,” I said; “but I’ll take care somehow to warn him, so that he shall run no such risks. For I would not have him bitten for the world.”

“Of course not – a darling?” said Clara, mockingly.

And then no more was said.

But matters went unfortunately, and I had no opportunity for warning poor Achille, who was attacked in his turn by the wretch of a dog – who really seemed, as Clara said, to have a dislike to everything French; while, by a kind of clairvoyance, the brute must have known that poor Achille was coming. For, by a strange coincidence – not the first either that occurred during my stay at the Cedars – the creature managed to get loose, and lay in wait just outside the shrubbery until he came, when he flew at him furiously, as I will tell.

Chapter Twenty.

Memory the Twentieth – The New Prisoner

I had no idea that Achille was well enough to go on with the lessons, neither had anybody in the house; for Miss Furness had just summoned us all to the French class, and my mind was, to a certain extent, free from care and pre-occupation, when I heard a most horrible snarling and yelling, and crying for help. Of course I darted in agony to the window, when it was just as I had anticipated – just as I knew, by means of the electric current existing between our hearts – Achille was in peril; for the horrible dog had attacked him, and there he was in full flight.

As I reached the window, the wretch leaped upon him, seizing his coat, and tearing away a great piece of the skirt; but the next moment poor Achille made a bound, and caught at one of the boughs of the cedar he was beneath; and there he hung, with the horrible dog snapping and jumping at his toes every time they came low enough.