George Fenn - A Fluttered Dovecote

“My love!”

“I should do a bit of Banting first,” continued papa, with one of those sneers against mamma’s embonpoint which do make her so angry.

And then, after a great deal of talking and arguing, in which of course mamma must have it all her own way, and me not consulted a bit, they settled that mamma was to write to Allsham, and then if the letter in reply proved satisfactory, she was to go down at once and see the place. If she liked it, I was to spend a year there for a finishing course of education; for they would not call it – as I spitefully told papa they ought to – they would not call it sending me back to school; and it was too bad, after promising that the two years I passed in the convent at Guisnes should be the last.

Yes: too bad. I could not help it if my grammar was what papa called, in his slangy way, “horribly slack.” I never did like that horrid parsing, and I’m sure it comes fast enough with reading. Soeur Celine never found fault with my French grammatical construction when I wrote letters to her, and I wrote one that very day; for it did seem such a horrid shame to treat me in so childish a way.

And while I was writing – or rather, while I was sitting at the window, thinking of what to say, and biting the end of my pen – who should come by but the new curate, Mr Saint Purre, of Saint Sympathetica’s, and when he saw how mournful I looked, he raised his hat with such a sad smile, and passed on.

By the way, what an improvement it is, the adoption of the beard in the church. Mr Saint Purre’s is one of the most beautiful black, glossy, silky beards ever seen; and I’m sure I thought so then, when I was writing about going back to school – a horrible, hateful place! How I bit my lips and shook my head! I could have cried with vexation, but I would not let a soul see it; for there are some things to which I could not stoop. In fact, after the first unavailing remonstrance, if it had been to send me to school for life, I would not have said another word.

For only think of what mamma said, and she must have told papa what she thought. Such dreadful ideas.

“You are becoming too fond of going to church, Laura,” she said with a meaning look. “I’m afraid we did wrong in letting you go to the sisters.”

“Absurd, mamma!” I cried. “No one can be too religious.”

“Oh, yes, my dear, they can,” said mamma, “when they begin to worship idols.”

“What do you mean, mamma?” I cried, blushing, for there was a curious meaning in her tone.

“Never mind, my dear,” she said, tightening her lips. “Your papa quite agreed with me that you wanted a change.”

“But I don’t, mamma,” I pleaded.

“Oh yes you do, my dear,” she continued, “you are getting wasted and wan, and too fond of morning services. What do you think papa said?”

“I don’t know, mamma.”

“He said, ‘That would cure it.’”

She pronounced the last word as if it was spelt “ate,” and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, feeling speechless for a time, but I recovered soon after, as I told myself that most likely mamma had no arrière-pensée .

If it had been a ball, or a party, or fête, the time would have gone on drag, drag, dawdle, dawdle, for long enough. But because I was going back to school it must rush along like an express train. First, there were the answers back to mamma’s letters, written upon such stiff thick paper that it broke all along the folds; scented, and with a twisty, twirly monogram-thing done in blue upon paper and envelope; while the writing – supposed to be Mrs de Blount’s, though it was not, for I soon found that out, and that it was written, like all the particular letters, by Miss Furness – was of the finest and most delicate, so fine that it seemed as if it was never meant to be read, but only to be looked at, like a great many more ornamental things we see every day done up in the disguise of something useful.

Well, there were the letters answered, mamma had been, and declared to papa that she was perfectly satisfied, for everything was as it should be, and nothing seemed outré – that being a favourite word of mamma’s, and one out of the six French expressions she remembers, while it tumbles into all sorts of places in conversation where it has no business.

I did tell her, though, it seemed outré to send me back to one of those terrible child prisons, crushing down my young elastic soul in so cruel a way; but she only smiled, and said that it was all for my good.

Then came the day all in a hurry; and I’m sure, if it was possible, that day had come out of its turn, and pushed and elbowed its way into the front on purpose to make me miserable.

But there it was, whether or no; and I’d been packing my boxes – first a dress, then a tear, then another dress, and then another tear, and so on, until they were full – John said too full, and that I must take something out or they would not lock. But there was not a single thing that I could possibly have done without, so Mary and Eliza both had to come and stand upon the lid, and then it would not go quite close, when mamma came fussing in to say how late it was, and she stood on it as well; so that there were three of them, like the Graces upon a square pedestal. But we managed to lock it then; and John was cording it with some new cord, only he left that one, because mamma said perhaps they had all better stand on the other box, in case it would not lock; while when they were busy about number two, if number one did not go off “bang,” like a great wooden shell, and burst the lock off, when we had to be content with a strap.

Nobody minded my tears – not a bit; and there was the cab at the door at last, and the boxes lumbered down into the hall, and then bumped up, as if they wanted to break them, on to the roof of the cab; and mamma all the while in a regular knot trying to understand “Bradshaw” and the table of the Allsham and Funnleton Railway. Papa had gone to the City, and said good-bye directly after breakfast; and when mamma and I went out, the first thing mamma must do was to take out her little china tablets and pencil, and put down the cabman’s number; if the odious, low wretch did not actually wink at me – such insolence.

When we reached the station, if my blood did not quite boil when mamma would stop and haggle with the horrible tobaccoey wretch about sixpence of the fare, till there was quite a little crowd, when the money was paid, and the tears brought into my eyes by being told that the expenses of my education necessitated such parsimony; and that, too, at a time when I did not wish for a single fraction of a penny to go down to that dreadful woman at Allsham. But that was always the way; and some people are only too glad to make excuses and lay their meannesses upon some one else. Of course, I am quite aware that it is very shocking to speak of mamma in this manner; but then some allowance must be made for my wretched feelings, and besides, I don’t mean any harm.

I sincerely hope the readers of all this do not expect to find any plot or exciting mystery; because, if they do, they will be most terribly disappointed, since I am not leading them into the realms of fiction. No lady is going to be poisoned; there is no mysterious murder; neither bigamy, trigamy, nor quadrigamy; in fact, not a single gamy in the book, though once bordering upon that happy state. Somebody does not turn out to be somebody else, and anybody is not kept out of his rightful property by a false heir, any more than a dreadfully good man’s wife runs away from him with a very wicked roué , gets injured in a railway accident, and then comes back to be governess to her own children, while her husband does not know her again.