such a low voice but that the indignant Miss Furness overheard her.
"You will do nothing of the kind," said the cross old maid, "and Idesire that you instantly go back to your seat. If you know anything,you will be silent--silence is golden. Such things are not to be talkedabout, Miss Blang."
Celia made a grimace behind her back, although she was said to be MissFurness's spy, and supposed to tell her everything; so Patty's curiosityremained unsatisfied, while of course I pretended to know nothing at allabout what had been going on.
Directly after breakfast, though, Patty had it all by heart, and camered-hot to tell me how that Clara had been caught trying to elope out ofthe conservatory, whilst Ann was talking from the tall staircase window,when Miss Sloman happened to hear a whispering--for she was lying awakewith a bad fit of the toothache. So she went and alarmed the ladyprincipal; and then, with Miss Furness and the Fraulein, they had allwatched, and they found it out. Some one, too, had been in the tank,and the conservatory windows were broken, and that was all, except thatMrs Blunt had been writing to Lady Fitzacre--Clara's mamma--and thepoor girl was to be expelled; while for the present she was to be keptin her room till her mamma came, unless she would say who was thegentleman she was about to elope with--such stuff!--and then, if shewould confess, she was to sit with Mrs Blunt, under surveillance, asthey called it. When, leaving alone betraying the poor Signor, ofcourse Clara preferred staying in her own room.
Such a miserable wet morning, and though I wanted to, very badly indeed,I could not get into the conservatory to set my poor mind at rest bypoking down into the cistern with a blind lath; for if I had gone itmight have raised suspicions.
Could he still be in the tank, and were my dreams in slumber right?
"Oh, how horrible!" I thought; "why, I should feel always like hismurderer."
But, there, I could not help it--it was fate, my fate, and his fate--myfate to be his murderess, his to be drowned; and I would have givenworlds, if I had had them, to be able to faint, when about eleveno'clock the cook came to the door, and asked Mrs Blunt, in a strange,mysterious way, to please come into the conservatory. For the manservant had not come back from the station, and taking Ann's boxes.
"Oh, he's there, he's there!" I muttered, as I wrung my hands beneaththe table, and closed my eyes, thinking of the inquest and the otherhorrors to come; and seeing in imagination his wet body laid upon thewhite stones in the conservatory.
Oh, how I wanted to faint--how I tried to faint, and go off in a deepswoon, that should rest me for a while from the racking thoughts thattroubled me. But I could not manage it anyhow; for of course nothingbut the real thing would do at such a time as this.
Out went Mrs Blunt, to return in five minutes with what I thought to bea terribly pale face, as she beckoned out the three teachers who weremost in her confidence, Miss Murray being considered too young andimprudent.
There! I never felt anything so agonising in my life--never; and Icould not have borne it any longer anyhow. I'm sure, in another momentI must have been horribly hysterical and down upon the floor, tappingthe boards with my heels, as I once saw mamma--and of course such thingsare hereditary--only I was saved by hearing a step upon the gravel.Then my heart leaped just after the fashion of that gentleman's whowanted Maud to come into the garden so very badly. For there I couldsee the real eyes coming along the shrubbery, peeping over the furcollar of a long cloak, which hung down to the heels. And I felt sorelieved, that a great heavy sob, that had been sticking in my throatall the morning, leaped out suddenly, and made Patty Smith look up andstare.
Then came tramping in Mrs Blunt and the three teachers, and as theywhispered together, I was quite startled, for they talked aboutsomething being dragged out of the cistern with the tongs. And now Iknew it could not be Achille, but made sure it was the poor Signor; whenI felt nearly as bad as before, though I kept telling myself that it wasquite impossible for them to have lifted the poor, dear, drowned deadman out with a pair of tongs--even if he was not so very stout. Butthere, my misery was again put an end to by the Fraulein, who said, outloud,--
"Oh, yes, it was. I see de mark--C. Fitzacre."
And then I knew that it must have been one of Clara's handkerchiefs thathad been fished out, and "blessed my stars that my stars blessed me" bynot letting it be my handkerchief that they had discovered.
There was a step in the hall, and how my heart fluttered!
"Monsieur Achille de Tiraille for the French lesson," squeaked MissFurness.
And soon after we were busy at work, going over the irregular verbs, andI could see Achille's eyes wandering from face to face, as if to seewhether there were any suspicion attaching to him. Then followed thereading and exercise correcting, while I could see plainly enough thathe was terribly agitated--so much so, that he made at lest four mistakeshimself, and passed over several in the pupils. And when he found thatI did not give him a note with my exercise--one that should explain, Isuppose, all that had since passed--when I had not had the eighth partof a chance to write one, he turned quite cross and pettish, and snappedone, and snubbed another. As for poor me, I could have cried, I could,only that all the teachers and Mrs Blunt were there, and Miss Furnesslooking triumphant. As a rule, all the teachers did not stay in theroom while the French lessons were progressing, and this all tendedtowards making poor Achille fidgety and cross; but he need not havebehaved quite so unkindly to me, for I'm sure I had been suffering quiteenough upon his account, and so I should have liked to have told him ifI had had the opportunity; while now that all this upset had come, Ifelt quite sorry for the disloyal thought that I had had, and shouldhave been ready to do anything for his sake.
The lessons were nearly over, when all at once the door opened suddenly,and I saw poor Achille jump so that the pen with which he was correctingPatty Smith's exercise made a long scrawling tail to one of the letters;but he recovered himself directly.
Well, the door opened suddenly, and the cook stood there, wiping herfloury hands, for it was pasty-waster day, and she exclaimed loudly,--
"O'm! please'm! the little passage is all in a swim."
"C-o-o-o-k!" exclaimed Mrs Blunt, in a dreadful voice, as if she meantto slay her upon the spot.
"O'm! please'm!" cried the cook again.
"Why, where is James, cook?" said Mrs Blunt, sternly.
"Cleaning hisself, mum," said cook; "and as Hann's gone, mum, I wasobliged to come--not as I wanted to, I'm sure," and cook looked verymuch ill-used.
Mrs Blunt jumped up, as much to get rid of the horrible apparition asanything; while cook continued,--
"There, do come, mum; it's perfeckly dreadful!" and they went offtogether; when such a burst of exclamations followed that the three ladyteachers rose and left the room, and I took the opportunity of MissMurray's back being turned to exchange glances with poor Achille, whohad, at the least, been wet; while I longed, for poor Clara's sake, toask him about the Signor. But to speak was impossible, and there weretoo many eyes about for the glance to be long. So I let mine drop to myexercise, and then sat, with a strange, nervous sensation that I couldnot explain creeping over me, and it seemed like the forerunner ofsomething about to happen.
Just then Miss Furness hurried in and out again, leaving the door ajar,so that from where I sat I could command a view of the little passage,and saw Mrs Blunt walk up, jingling her keys, and stepping upon thepoints of her toes over a little stream of water that was slowly flowingalong. Then going up to the store-room door, I heard the key thrust in,as impelled by I know not what, I left my seat, and formed one of thegroup which stood looking upon the little stream that I could now seecame from beneath the store-room door.
"The skylight must have been left open," exclaimed Mrs Blunt, flingingopen the door, and at the same moment the recollection of the crashflashed across my mind; for, as she flung open the door, in her pompous,bouncing way, and was about to step in, oh!--horror of horrors! how canI describe it all? There was the floor of the little room c
overed withbroken glass, water, bits of putty, wood, and a mass of broken jam pots;and the little table, that had evidently stood beneath the skylight, hadtwo of its legs broken off, and had slid its saccharine burden (that isbetter than saying load of jam) upon the floor in hideous ruin. Somepots were broken to pieces, some in half; while others had rolled to theother end of the room, and were staining their paper covers, or dyeingthe water with their rich, cloying contents. But worse, far worse thanall, with his face cut, scratched, and covered with dry blood, his shirtfront and waistcoat all jam, crouching back in the farthest corner, wasthe poor Signor--regularly trapped when he had fallen through theskylight; for it was impossible for any one to have climbed up to theopening, through which the rain came like a shower bath, and there wasno other way of exit.
The lady
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