“Keep it, keep it, till the letter is read,
then bring it me; I shall read the billet’s
tenor in your eyes.”
When he was gone, the pupils having already poured
out of the schoolroom into the berceau, and thence
into the garden and court to take their customary
recreation before the five-o’clock dinner, I
stood a moment thinking, and absently twisting the
handkerchief round my arm. For some reason—gladdened,
I think, by a sudden return of the golden glimmer
of childhood, roused by an unwonted renewal of its
buoyancy, made merry by the liberty of the closing
hour, and, above all, solaced at heart by the joyous
consciousness of that treasure in the case, box, drawer
up-stairs,—I fell to playing with the handkerchief
as if it were a ball, casting it into the air and
catching it—as it fell. The game was
stopped by another hand than mine-a hand emerging
from a paletot-sleeve and stretched over my shoulder;
it caught the extemporised plaything and bore it away
with these sullen words:
“Je vois bien que vous vous moquez de moi et
de mes effets.”
Really that little man was dreadful: a mere sprite
of caprice and, ubiquity: one never knew either
his whim or his whereabout.
THE LETTER.
When all was still in the house; when dinner was over
and the noisy recreation-hour past; when darkness
had set in, and the quiet lamp of study was lit in
the refectory; when the externes were gone home, the
clashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening;
when Madame was safely settled in the salle-a-manger
in company with her mother and some friends; I then
glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for one half-hour
for a particular occasion, found acceptance of my
petition at the hands of my friend Goton, who answered,
“Mais certainement, chou-chou, vous en aurez
deux, si vous voulez;” and, light in hand, I
mounted noiseless to the dormitory.
Great was my chagrin to find in that apartment a pupil
gone to bed indisposed,—greater when I
recognised, amid the muslin nightcap borders, the
“figure chiffonnee” of Mistress Ginevra
Fanshawe; supine at this moment, it is true—but
certain to wake and overwhelm me with chatter when
the interruption would be least acceptable: indeed,
as I watched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids
warned me that the present appearance of repose might
be but a ruse, assumed to cover sly vigilance over
“Timon’s” movements; she was not
to be trusted. And I had so wished to be alone,
just to read my precious letter in peace.
Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought
and found my prize in its casket, I descended.
Ill-luck pursued me. The classes were undergoing
sweeping and purification by candle-light, according
to hebdomadal custom: benches were piled on desks,
the air was dim with dust, damp coffee-grounds (used
by Labassecourien housemaids instead of tea-leaves)
darkened the floor; all was hopeless confusion.
Baffled, but not beaten, I withdrew, bent as resolutely
as ever on finding solitude somewhere.
