Confessions of a Young Lady Part 4

"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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s which was to take place that afternoon. I knew where M. Doumer lived. When a newcomer appeared in his cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s his house. I made it my business to pa.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sociate 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 cla.s.s 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."

The idea of calling that barrel-shaped monster, with his shining yellow head and scrubbing-brush physiognomy, a "complete Don Juan" so filled me with astonishment that for a second or two I could only look my feelings.

"M. Doumer is not like my idea of Don Juan in the very least."

"Indeed! And pray what do you know about Don Juan? A chit of your age!

At my time of life I suppose I may be allowed to know something of what I'm talking about, and I tell you that I'm persuaded that he breaks hearts like walnuts."

"But--he's so ugly!"

"Ugly! Maximilian Doumer ugly! Misguided girl! But it's not becoming that I should discuss such subjects with a mere child like you. I know what I know. But it is none the less my duty on that account to see that he trifles with no woman's affections. And as his wife my duty shall be done."

When she said that I do believe the blood nearly froze in my veins. I am sure it turned cold, because I know I shivered from head to foot.

His wife? She said his wife. And all the time I had been taking her for his landlady and an old maid, and had been calling M. Doumer ugly, and accusing him to her face of breaking Miss Frazer's heart. I do not know why, but I had never imagined for a single moment that he could be anything but a bachelor. We girls at Mrs Sawyer's had always taken it for granted that he was. At least, the general impression on my mind was that we had. The horror of the situation deprived me of the use of the tiny sc.r.a.p of sense which I possessed. My own impulse was to run for it. But it was far from being Madame Doumer's intention that I should do anything of the kind. And though I think that she was in every respect smaller than I was, I am convinced that I never encountered a person of whom I all at once felt so much afraid. I stammered out something.

"I--I'm afraid I must go."

I made a faltering movement towards the door. She simply placed herself in my way and crushed me.

"You must what?"

"I--I shall be late for dinner."

"Then you will be late for dinner. You will not quit this apartment until M. Doumer returns. Not that that will necessitate your being detained long, because here he is."

I had been desirous of seeing M. Doumer, even anxious. In order to do so I had gone a good deal out of my way, and behaved in a characteristically considerate manner. But so far as I could judge, amid the rush of very curious sensations with which I was struggling, on a sudden, the entire situation had changed. It was far from being my wish to have an interview with him at that particular moment.

Quite the contrary. I really do not know what I would not have given--certainly all the remainder of that term's pocket-money!--to have escaped such an encounter. Picture, therefore, my sensations when I heard the garden gate slam, the front door open, a heavy footstep enter the hall, and, on Madame Doumer opening the sitting-room door, perceived her husband standing without.

"Here is someone who wants to see you."

The lady's tone was sour as sour could be, and what she said was perfectly untrue. I could have wanted nothing less. I should have been only too glad to have been able to disappear up the chimney on a broomstick, or on nothing at all, if I could only have got out of that room. In came M. Doumer, all smiles and smirks, looking to me more shiny-headed and scrubbing-brush faced than ever.

"Ah!--it is Miss Boyes!--Sarah"--he addressed his wife as Sarah, and she looked it--"this is one of my charming pupils at Lingfield House School."

"So she's not an impostor. That's something." The insinuation made my cheeks flame. "You appear to have a number of charming pupils, M.

Doumer. Is Miss Frazer one of them?"