A School for Brides (22 page)

She paid a call on the school and requested a private interview with Miss Crump. However, when Miss Crump appeared after a long interval (during which Miss le Strange minutely examined the room for evidence of slovenly housekeeping, without success), she was accompanied by Miss Mainwaring.

Miss le Strange peered at this interloper through the silver lorgnette she kept on a chain around her neck. She in fact possessed excellent eyesight, but found that being scrutinized in this manner was apt to make social inferiors uneasy. Miss Mainwaring, who had had some experience of tigresses in her former life, remained unperturbed. Instead of offering any excuse for her presence, she sat down beside her friend, took a piece of embroidery out of her workbag, and began to thread her needle.

“I know you will understand, Miss . . . Miss . . . er, hmm,” said Miss le Strange through gritted teeth, “when I ask you to leave me alone with my ward. We have a number of things to discuss that are not for strangers' ears.”

Miss Mainwaring looked up from her work. “Oh, I am so sorry, Miss le Strange!” she said in apologetic and deferential tones. “But, you see, Miss Crump asked me particularly to come with her to this interview, and as we are
most intimate friends
, I could not think of disappointing her. You do not wish me to leave, do you, dear Jane?”

Miss Crump shook her bonneted head violently. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, I do not wish you to leave. Not at all!” And she clutched Miss Mainwaring's arm as though Miss le Strange might attempt to separate them by brute force. Miss Mainwaring smiled, and bent once more to her embroidery as though the question were settled.

Miss le Strange's eyes narrowed. It did indeed seem as though physical means would be required to remove Miss Mainwaring from the room, and that, of course, was out of the question. The best she could do was to pretend the little chit did not exist. She turned toward her former pupil, fixing her with the flat stare that had so often reduced the child to tears.

“Your father is ill,” she said in a level voice. “He may die at any moment. You will want to go to him, I know, but of course you must have a companion on the journey. I am ready to accompany you to Bath—you need only speak the word, and we shall be off.”

“Oh, but—”

“Do you not love your father, Jane?”

Miss Crump cast an agonized look at her friend. Miss Mainwaring folded her embroidery and crossed her hands over it on her lap.

“Miss Crump has written to her papa,” said she. “We understand that his health is improving. Although he still cannot speak, he was able to make his desires about his daughter known. He wishes her to remain in Lesser Hoo until he sends for her.”

“What?”
demanded Miss le Strange. “And how was he able to make these
‘wishes'
known, if he was unable to speak?”

“We understand—” began Miss Mainwaring, but she was interrupted by a loud scream, followed by a number of other excited vocalizations immediately without.

The door to the room flew open and an enormous creature galloped in, all eyes and teeth and long, pointed claws. The two girls drew back into their chairs, terrified. Even the indomitable Miss le Strange gasped. She stood up and braced herself, ready to do battle against this nightmarish monster, like Saint George facing the dragon.

And indeed, it seemed to be Miss le Strange the beast sought. Gathering itself together, it leaped toward her, mouth agape and drooling, every tooth it owned on display, its massive paws aimed at her shoulders as though to bring her to the floor.

Uttering a strangled cry, she turned and fled, with the fearful apparition close behind. Out the front door she ran, down the drive to the main road. She did not stop to rest until she was convinced it no longer followed her, and she leaned, gasping, against a stone wall a quarter-mile from the school. The tigress had been routed by the wolf.

“Wolfie! Bad, bad dog! Oh Wolfie, how could you behave so?” wailed Miss Pffolliott. “Just when I wanted you to make a good impression!” She dragged the dog back into the house by the simple expedient of grasping at the loose skin around his neck and tugging. “I am so dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, Miss Hopkins, Miss Winthrop! Oh, Miss Quince, I do apologize! It is only that he is so friendly, you see!” And she burst into tears.

Here Mr. Godalming interceded, explaining the situation to the astounded inhabitants of the school. “And I thought Wolfie here might be quite useful in the event that a house-breaker came prowling around,” he concluded.

“Or a fox after the chi-ickens,” sobbed Miss Pffolliott.

Miss Quince was the first to recover. She gazed at the open front door whence Miss le Strange had made her hurried departure.

At last she spoke. “I should say that Wolfie has already proved his value.”

THE HEADMISTRESSES OF
the Winthrop Hopkins Academy dispatched Robert to the dower house at Gudgeon Park the next day with a note of apology. The dog, they explained, was new to their establishment and not yet trained. As he was intended to be a guard dog, they must ask their neighbors' indulgence while they struggled to curb the animal's rather
savage
propensities. No doubt, in time it would be safe to accept visits from people the dog did not know, but for the moment they must ask for a period of forbearance until the animal settled in.

Miss le Strange, who received this apology in the morning room, regarded Robert with hatred.
Of course
it was a coincidence that this new guard dog—to frighten off house-breakers, they claimed—had first arrived as she was attempting to detach her pupil from the school. Oh, certainly.

“
You
ought to be in prison,” was her reply, and she left the room. Robert, who had managed to forget about the necklace and the unpleasant emotions associated with it, regarded her retreating back with concern. Was the poor lady perhaps going a bit daft?

“Yes, Ma'am,” he said.

Miss Franklin was now engaged in a contest of wills with Cuthbert the gardener, who managed the hothouse at the school. It was Cuthbert's unenlightened opinion that this building, so costly to build and to heat, was only to be used for the purpose of providing out-of-season fruits and vegetables, and not for experiments, no matter how scientific. As the growing season was drawing to a close, Miss Franklin's eye had fallen upon the hothouse as the proper place to begin her inherited variability studies.

It took quite an hour's argument, during which she trailed him relentlessly as he went about his autumn tasks, to convince him that her experiments could be combined with his goal of supplying bunches of grapes, tender lettuces, and French beans for the table during the winter months. Perched on a limb harvesting late apples, he found himself quite literally treed, with Miss Franklin haranguing him about pea plants on the ladder below. Unable to descend the tree without pacifying her, in the end he capitulated.

Perhaps,
perhaps
, if Miss Hopkins agreed, then a small section of the space might be allotted to Miss Franklin's foolishness. However, the plants chosen must be something that Cuthbert himself approved, must be something he would have grown in any event.

Oh, certainly,
certainly
! Miss Franklin had little doubt of carrying her point after this concession, and graciously moved aside to allow her victim to climb back down to earth.

On her way out of the orchard, she paused and pulled a small notebook and pencil from the pocket of her apron skirt. How could she utilize the space given to her to the utmost and still allow her plants the necessary air and light? She bent over her notebook, sketching out plans. At last, satisfied for the moment at any rate, she straightened.

Her eye fell upon an old, gnarled apple tree that, like an elderly woman needing the support of a cane, had gradually transferred much of its weight onto the wall that enclosed the orchard and separated it from the main road. Something about the tree stirred a memory in Miss Franklin's mind. Something . . . something odd . . .

Ah! She had it now. She left the orchard and turned down the drive to walk out onto the road. Soon she came abreast of the tree, which was leaning out over the thoroughfare, its scanty but sweet apples a temptation for a hungry passerby. Looking toward the school from this vantage point, she could see sunlight winking off the ranks of bedroom windows on the third floor. Her own room, third from the left, commanded an excellent view of the place where she stood right now, particularly when seen through a telescope.

And, yes, as she had suspected, there was a hole in the trunk of the tree. A person in her present position could have easily reached up and placed a parcel inside without ever entering the school property. Putting this thought into action, she climbed atop a boulder next to the wall and thrust her hand into the hole, indifferent to the possibility that some small creature might have made it a home. Immediately her fingertips met the surface of an object wrapped in cloth, invisible to anyone passing by, even those on horseback.

She pulled it out and, remembering how she herself had observed the person who had placed it there, thrust the bundle casually into her apron pocket for later inspection. A brief consideration of the propriety of her behavior did not worry her much. If one party secretes an object inside a tree belonging to another party and then abandons it, surely it must now belong to the second party, must it not? If the item appeared to be of any interest she would present it to Miss Hopkins, on whose property the tree stood.

She was about to retire to her chamber to examine it when she noticed Miss Quince sitting in the parlor correcting some Italian conjugations. Deeming it wise to get Miss Quince on her side before the matter of the hothouse was broached to the other two headmistresses, she postponed the unwrapping of the parcel until a later time. And once she had done with explaining to Miss Quince and gone back to her chamber, a great improvement in plant racks occurred to her and, fetching paper and charcoal, she began to sketch it out. At last, on being called to dinner, she cast off her apron, with its lumpy pocket, and hung it on a hook in the back of her wardrobe.

By the time she laid herself down on her bed that night, her mind filled with visions of hundreds and hundreds of tiny seedlings, each meticulously labeled and documented, she had forgotten the existence of the parcel found in the old apple tree.

Miss Asquith was unhappy. Even the approach of the upcoming ball could not rescue her from periods of despondency and gloom. She laughed less, smiled less, made fewer extravagant remarks, and ceased playing pranks altogether. She disliked the person she was becoming, and attempted, by dint of much silent scolding, to shame herself into happiness again, but to no avail. She
would
find herself staring into space, hands and thoughts idle, sunk in melancholy.

Some fifty miles from here,
he
was also presumably sitting and thinking wretched thoughts about his father, whose case was even now being decided by the House of Lords. Notwithstanding the fact that Lord Hardcastle was a peer of the realm, his crime had been committed in view of several respected members of the community, and there was no help for it: he must be punished. If the death had occurred as a result of a duel, or if, like the great-uncle of the poet Lord Byron, he had merely shot his coachman or some other person of lowly position, the matter might have been hushed up, but Sir Grimm was a man of some consequence, and his family was clamoring for justice.

So wretched was Miss Asquith that Miss Franklin discovered her in tears only a short time before the ball. Even Miss Franklin was unable to ignore this obvious sign of suffering, and sought an explanation for it in her own feelings.

“Oh, pray do not distress yourself so, my dear Emily,” she urged her friend. “The ball will be over soon enough, and then we can return to a more rational way of life. You must claim to be indisposed, and I daresay no one will insist that you dance.”

This was enough to make Miss Asquith laugh through her tears. She embraced Miss Franklin, causing that young lady to blush and grow confused. “You silly!” Miss Asquith cried. “Do you still not understand what a frivolous creature I am? I love to dance above all things! Given the opportunity, I should dance from morning until night without ceasing to take breath.”

Miss Franklin attempted to sort out this contradictory information. “But why, then, do you weep? Have you got a pain somewhere?”

Miss Asquith met this simplicity with some of her own. “Yes, my dear, I do have a pain, in my heart and my head. I weep because I am missing Mr. Crabbe, and because I fear that he is undergoing a dreadful ordeal, listening to his father be roundly abused by the Lord High Steward and the entire House of Peers. Oh! If only I could know what the verdict is! For he
must
know by now.”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Emily! I had quite forgot about the two Mr. Crabbes and their troubles. Why do you not write to him and ask? I've no doubt we could learn his address from his friends Mr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Hadley.”

Miss Asquith looked at her in wonderment. “I believe you tell the truth! I believe you
have
forgotten about Mr. Rupert Crabbe and his abominable behavior toward you, Rosalind. Happy woman, to be able to dismiss such an unpleasant memory, and replace it with plans for a study of the characteristics of French beans!

“But no,” she continued with a rueful smile, “I could not write to Mr. Crabbe. Even
I
have not the courage to fly so determinedly in the face of convention. I shall learn soon enough, I suppose—it will be the latest scandal, and sure to be much talked of. Still, I fear I am not a patient woman.”

Miss Franklin considered this. “I am sorry you should be so unhappy, Emily. In a matter where your peace of mind is so much at stake, I cannot understand why we should not ignore society's strictures. However, I will believe that you would not find such a letter easy or comfortable to write. If there is anything I can do to help you, believe me, I will do it.”

Miss Asquith embraced her friend again and, to show her appreciation, began to make the minutest inquiries as to Miss Franklin's plans for the corner of the glasshouse that was to be dedicated to her pursuits.