"Hetty, what do you mean?"
"Poor Miss Frazer!"
She sighed, actually. Or she emitted a sound which appeared to me to be a sigh. A light dawned on me.
"You don't mean-you don't mean that you think that she's in love?"
Miss Frazer was short, square, and squat. Sandy-haired, with not much of that. Short-sighted, her spectacles would not keep straight owing to the absence of a bridge on her abbreviated nose. Freckled, you might have been able to stick a pin between some of the freckles, but I doubt it. To me, then, she seemed ancient; but I suppose she was about forty. And, considering her general appearance and style of figure, she had a most unfortunate fondness for Scotch plaids. Up to that moment my sentimentalism had been all theory. I had not associated the tender passion with Miss Frazer. It was left for Hetty to direct my theoretical sympathy into a practical channel.
"Do I think? No, I do not think."
"Do you know that she's in love?"
"I know nothing. I want to know nothing. I will know nothing. But with you, who are always talking, it is different."
"Hetty, if you don't tell me what you mean, I-I-I'll throw my shoe at you."
"Throw away. You never hit anything you aimed at yet." She went on calmly brushing her hair, as if she had not made me all over pins and needles. Presently she gave utterance to an observation which was Sphinx-like in its mystery: "A Frenchman thinks no more of breaking an Englishwoman's heart than-than of eating his breakfast."
"Hetty! what do you mean?"
"Ask Monsieur Doumer."
Monsieur Doumer! Ask Monsieur Doumer! Why, M. Doumer was our French master, as unromantic-looking an example of the one sex as Miss Frazer was of the other. He was immensely stout, perfectly bald-headed, with cheeks and skin which looked as if they were covered with iron-mould, because he never shaved them. That anything feminine could regard with equanimity the prospect of being brought within measurable distance of that scrubby countenance did seem incredible. And yet here was Hetty hinting.
"Do you mean to say that Miss Frazer's in love with M. Doumer?"
"You say yourself that she seems to be going mad."
"Yes; but I don't quite see what that has to do with it."
"Not when a woman's being trampled on?"
"Trampled on? Really, Hetty, I do wish you would say straight out what it is you're driving at. You can't be suggesting that M. Doumer has been literally trampling on Miss Frazer, because, since he weighs about two tons, she'd have been killed upon the spot."
"There are more ways of killing a pig than one."
"You are mysterious. I daresay you think it's clever, but I think it's stupid."
"Are there not more ways of killing a pig than one?"
"I daresay there may be; but I don't see what that has to do with Miss Frazer."
"I don't say that it has anything to do with Miss Frazer. But, as I began by observing, when you consider how every Frenchman considers himself entitled to treat an Englishwoman exactly as he pleases, and perceive where Miss Frazer is plainly drifting, I should have thought you would have been able to see something for yourself." She seemed to me to be more mysterious than ever. "Perhaps," she added, as if by an afterthought, "if someone were to take him to task, and give him to understand that an Englishwoman is not a football for anyone to kick about, matters might be brought to wear a different aspect. But no doubt, as she is alone and unprotected, he knows that there is nothing of that kind to be feared. Because, of course, no one is going to play Don Quixote for a freckled Scotchwoman."
"I don't see why not. I should have thought that the fact of her being alone and-and not good-looking-would have made anyone with a grain of chivalry in them stand up for her all the more on that account."
"It looks like it! When you yourself just said that she is going mad because of the way she has been treated."
I had not said that or anything of the kind. I was trying to think of what I had said when the door opened and Miss Frazer herself came in. She had her watch in her hand, at which she was pointing an accusatory finger. I do not know what time it was-she did not give us a chance to see-but I expect it was later than we had supposed, because, taking the candle off the dressing-table, she marched straight out of the room with it without a word, and left us in total darkness.
"Well," I exclaimed, "this is pleasant. I'm not undressed, you've had the looking-glass all the time, and I haven't done a single thing to my hair, and I never can do anything to it in the dark."
"When a woman is in the state of mind in which she is, those who have to do with her have to put up with her. Don't blame her. Don't even think hard things of her. Try sometimes to practise, what you preach."
What Hetty Travers meant I again had not the faintest notion. She certainly had no right to hint such things of me. It seemed impossible that the mere contemplation of Miss Frazer's doleful plight could have moved her to tears; but while I fumbled with my hair in my indignant efforts to do it up in one decent plait in the darkness she did make some extraordinary noises, which might have been stifled sobs.
The following morning, during recreation, when I went into the schoolroom to get a book which I had left, I found Miss Frazer crouching over her desk, not only what I should call crying, but positively bellowing into her pocket-handkerchief. I stared at her in astonishment.
"Miss Frazer! What is the matter?" She bellowed on. A thought occurred to me. "Has-has anyone been treating you badly?"
Since she was so taciturn when calm, I expected her to be dumb when torn by her emotions. But I was mistaken. Taking her handkerchief from before her streaming eyes-her spectacles lay on the top of the desk, and I noticed how comical she looked without them-she spluttered out, -
"I'm the worst treated woman in the whole world!"
"Someone has been making you unhappy?"
"Cruelly, wickedly unhappy!"
"But have you no one to whom you can go for advice and assistance?"
"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 circumstances 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 class which was to take place that afternoon. I knew where M. Doumer lived. When a newcomer appeared in his class 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