CHAPTER XVI.
ELEANOR'S REPUTATION--THE MAD GENTLEMAN--FANCIES AND FOLLIES--MATILDA'SHEALTH--THE NEW DOCTOR.
We were not jealous of Eleanor's popularity. She was popular with thegirls as well as with the teachers. If she was apt to be opinionated,she was candid, generous, and modest. She was always willing to help anyone, and (the firmest seal of friendship!) she was utterly sincere.
She worked harder than any of us, so it was but just that she should bemost commended. But of all who lagged behind her, and who felt Madame'sseverity, and created despair in the mind of the littlearithmetic-master, the most unlucky was poor Matilda.
Matilda and I were now on the best of terms, and the credit of thishappy condition of matters is more hers than mine.
It was not so much that I had learned more tact and sympathy (though Ihope these qualities do ripen with years and better knowledge!) asbecause Matilda did most faithfully try to fulfil the good resolutionsMajor Buller's kindness had led her to make.
So far as Matilda's ailments were mental, I think that school-life mayhave been of some benefit.
Since the torments which have taught me caution in a household hauntedby boys, I am less confidential with my diary than I used to be. And ifI do not confide all my own follies to it, I am certainly not justifiedin recording other people's.
Not that Matilda makes any secret of the hero-worship she wasted on theman with the chiselled face and weird eyes, whom we used to see on theRiflebury Esplanade. She never spoke to him; but neither for that matterdid his dog, a Scotch deerhound with eyes very like his master's, and along nose which (uncomfortable as the position must have been) he keptalways resting in his master's hand as the two paced up and down, hourafter hour, by the sea.
What folly Miss Perry talked on the subject it boots not at this date torecord. _I_ never indulged a more fanciful feeling towards him thanwonder, just dashed with a little fear--but I would myself have liked toknow the meaning of that long gaze he and the dog sometimes turned onus!
We shall never know now, however, for the poor gentleman died in alunatic asylum.
I hope, when they shut him up, that they found the deerhound guilty alsoof some unhydrophobiac madness, and imprisoned the two friendstogether!
Of course we laugh now about Matilda's fancy for the insane gentleman,though she declares that at the time she could never keep him out of herhead--that if she had met him thirty-four successive times on theEsplanade, she would have borne no small amount of torture to earn theprivilege of one more turn to meet him for the thirty-fifth--and thather rest was broken by waking dreams of the possible misfortunes whichmight account for his (and the dog's) obvious melancholy, and ofimpossible circumstances in which she should act as their good angel anddeliverer.
At the time she kept her own counsel, and it was not because she hadever heard of the weird-eyed gentleman and his deerhound that Mrs.Minchin concluded her advice to Aunt Theresa on one occasion by a showerof nods which nearly shook the poppies out of her bonnet, and theoracular utterance--"She's got some nonsense or other into her head,depend upon it. Send her to school!"
One thing has often struck me in reading the biographies of greatpeople. They must have to be written in quite a different way to thebiographies of common people like ourselves.
For instance, when a practised writer is speaking of the early days ofcelebrated poets, he says quite gravely--"Like Byron, Scott, and otherillustrious men, Hogg (the Ettrick shepherd) fell in love in his veryearly childhood." And of course it sounds better than if one said, "LikeSmith, and Brown, and Jones, and nine out of every ten children, he didnot wait for years of discretion to make a fool of himself."
Not being illustrious, Matilda blushes to remember this early folly; andnot being a poet's biographer, Aunt Theresa said in a severe voice, forthe general behoof of the school-room, that "Little girls were sometimesvery silly, and got a great deal of nonsense into their heads." I do notthink it ever dawned upon her mind that girls' heads not beingjam-pots--which if you do not fill them will remain empty--the best wayto keep folly out was to put something less foolish in.
She would have taken a great deal of trouble that her daughters mightnot be a flounce behind the fashions, and was so far-seeing in hermotherly anxieties, that she junketed herself and Major Buller to manyan entertainment, where they were bored for their pains, that anextensive acquaintance might ensure to the girls partners, both forballs and for life when they came to require them. But after whatfashion their fancies should be shaped, or whether they had wholesomefood and tender training for that high faculty of imagination by virtueof which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right orwrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of thisworld, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better--anxiety onthese matters Mrs. Buller had none.
As to Mrs. Minchin, she would not have known what it meant if it hadbeen put in print for her to read.
Matilda's irritability was certainly repressed in public by schooldiscipline, and from Eleanor's companionship our interests were variedand enlarged. But in spite of these advantages her health rapidlydeclined. And this without its seeming to attract Miss Mulberry'snotice.
Indeed, she meddled very little in the matter of our health. She kept astock of "family pills," which she distributed from time to time amongstus. They cured her headaches, she said; and she seemed rather aggrievedthat they did not cure Matilda's.
But poor Matilda's headaches brought more than their own pain to her.They seemed to stupefy her, and make her quite incapable of work. Hercomplexion took a deadly, pasty hue, one eye was almost entirely closed,and to a superficial observer she perhaps did look--what Madame alwayspronounced her--sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at herfingers' ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders toutter downfall; and Madame's wrath was only equalled by her irony. Todo Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in herefforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she wassuccessful in defying pain; but by some odd revenge of nature, what shelearned in such circumstances was afterwards wiped as completely fromher memory as an old sum is sponged from a slate.
To headache and backache, to vain cravings for more fresh air, and to aninequality of spirits and temper to which Eleanor and I patientlysubmitted, Matilda still added a cough, which seemed to exasperateMadame as much as her stupidity.
Not that our French governess was cruelly disposed. When she tookMatilda's health in hand and gave her a tumbler of warm water everymorning before breakfast, she did so in all good faith. It was a remedythat she used herself.
Poor Matilda was furious both with Madame's warm-water cure and MissMulberry's pill-box. She had a morbid hatred of being "doctored," whichis often characteristic of chest complaints. She struggled harder thanever to work, in spite of her headaches; she ceased to complain of them,and concealed her cough to a great extent, by a process known amongst usas "smothering." The one remedy she pined for--fresh air--was the lastthat either Miss Mulberry or Madame considered appropriate to any formof a "cold."
This craving for fresh air helped Matilda in her struggle with illness.Our daily "promenade" was dull enough, but it was in the open air; andto be kept indoors, either as a punishment for ill-said lessons, or as acure for her cough, was Matilda's great dread.
Night after night, when Madame had paid her final visit to our rooms,and we were safe, did Eleanor creep out of bed and noiselessly lower theupper sash of our window to please Matilda; whilst I sat (sometimes foran hour or more) upon the bolster of the bed in which Matilda and Islept together, and "nursed her head."
What quaint, pale, grave little maids we were! As full of aches andpains, and small anxieties, and self-repression, and tender sympathy, asany other daughters of Mother Eve.
Eleanor and I have often since said that we believe we should makeexcellent nurses for the insane, looking back upon our treatment of poorMatilda. We knew exactly when to be authoritative, and when tosym
pathize almost abjectly. I became skilful in what we called "nursingher head," which meant much more than that I supported it on my knees.Softly, but firmly, I stroked her brow and temples with both hands, andpassed my fingers through her hair to the back of her head. I rarelyfailed to put her to sleep, and as she never woke when I laid her down,I have since suspected myself of unconscious mesmerism.
One night, when I had long been asleep, I was awakened by Matilda'shysterical sobs. She "couldn't get into a comfortable position;" her"back ached so." Our bed was very narrow, and I commonly lay so poisedupon the outer edge to give Matilda room that more than once I haverolled on to the floor.
We spoke in undertones, but Eleanor was awake.
"Come and see if you can sleep with me, Margery," she said. "I lie verystraight."
I scrambled out, and willingly crept in behind Eleanor, into her stillnarrower bed; and after tearful thanks and protestations, poor Matildadoubled herself at a restful angle, and fell asleep.
Happily for me, I was very well. Eleanor suffered from the utter changeof mode of life a good deal; but she had great powers of endurance.
Fatigue, and "muddle on the brain," often hindered her at night fromlearning the lessons for next day. But she worked at them nevertheless;and tasks, that by her own account she "drove into her head" in bed,though she was quite unable to say them that evening, seemed to arrangethemselves properly in her memory before the morning.
Matilda's ill-health came to a crisis at last. To smother a coughsuccessfully, you must be able to escape at intervals. On one occasionthe smothering was tried too long, and after the aggravated outburstwhich ensued, the doctor was called in. The Bush House familypractitioner being absent, a new man came for him, who, after a fewglances at Matilda, postponed the examination of her lungs, and beggedto see Miss Mulberry.
Matilda had learned her last lesson in Bush House.
From the long interview with the doctor, Miss Mulberry emerged with atroubled face.
Lessons went irregularly that day. Our quarter of an hour's recreationwas as much extended as it was commonly cut short, and Madame herselfwas subdued. She became a very kind nurse to Matilda, and crept manytimes from her bed during the night to see if "la pauvre petite" weresleeping, or had a wish that she could satisfy.
Indeed, an air of remorse seemed to tinge the kindness of the heads ofBush House to poor Matilda, which connected itself in Eleanor's mindwith a brief dialogue that she overheard between Miss Mulberry and thedoctor at the front door:
"I feel there has been culpable neglect," said Miss Mulberry mournfully."But----"
"No, no. At least, not wilful," said the doctor; "and springing from thebest motives. But I should not be doing my duty, madam, towards a ladyin your responsible position, if I did not say that I have known toomany cases in which the ill-results have been life-long, and some inwhich they have been rapidly fatal."