School for Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

could say it after all I’ve done for them.’ She sat still again, brooding and silent, with Felix standing in sympathetic watchfulness, until Frau Leszno came in with the meal; then she jerked herself upright and looked as though nothing unusual had happened.
    ‘Go on up now, Felix,’ she said loudly and cheerfully, ‘and wash your hands. I want to get luncheon over quickly. I’ve a pupil coming in twenty minutes.’
    But as they ate, it was as though some barrier were down. Frau Leszno, coming in and out with a smirking look of guilt, seemed to sense this new relationship and slammed the door each time she left.
    ‘Oh dear!’ said Miss Bohun as it crashed a second time, ‘and I’ve been so good to them. Well,
I
have nothing with which to reproach myself . . . but I must not lose heart. Whatever happens, I find I’m always rewarded in the end. When I make a gift to someone, it is returned to me a hundredfold. Does that happen to you, Felix?’
    ‘I haven’t noticed it.’
    ‘Well, notice next time and you’ll see.’
    Felix, though he lacked other education, was deeply read in children’s classics and he recognised here a true goodness. He was very impressed but, unable to think of anything adequate to say, remained silent.
    ‘You know, Felix,’ said Miss Bohun after a pause, ‘I came out here when I was still a young woman. Yes, I was under forty when I came. It was just when I realised nobody was going to want to marry me that I felt drawn to come here and join the “Ever-Readies”. My little income made it possible. By giving my heart and soul tothe cause, I’ve worked my way to the top. Yes, it’s my own little show now. I think – I think I can say I’ve not wasted my life?’
    This, both statement and question, was spoken with so unexpected a tremulousness that Felix, although quite ignorant of the facts, felt bound to declare stoutly: ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re terrific, like a missionary, like Livingstone. Anyway, you’ve been jolly decent to me.’
    ‘I try to do good. I’m only an old spinster. No one, except God, has chosen me.’
    Miss Bohun’s mood of humility discomforted Felix very much, but he recognised it as a part of virtue.
    ‘I haven’t a family. I have no children, but I have a whole circle of people who’re indebted to me. I thought that meant something. I thought the Lesznos . . .’ she broke off, swallowed, then continued in stronger tones: ‘They’ve never
shown
much gratitude, it’s true, but I always told myself that deep down they must be grateful. That’s why I can’t understand Frau Leszno saying that this morning. I
can’t
understand it.’
    ‘I think she’s beastly,’ said Felix with deeper feeling than he knew he possessed.
    ‘Do you?’ Miss Bohun glanced up with interest, ‘you
really
think that, Felix?’
    ‘I don’t like her voice, and I think she’s mean,’ and for the first time he told Miss Bohun about the incident of the bath-boiler on the night of his arrival.
    Miss Bohun was not, as he had hoped she would be, indignant over his failure to get a bath, but instead said in an elated and excited tone: ‘There! I’ve always said it! Children’s instincts are so acute, children’s and dogs’. And she’s always telling me she’s a lady. She says shewent to a boarding-school when she was a girl, and she says she’s been used to every comfort money could buy. And she’s always telling me how well servants are treated in Germany – like members of the family. That doesn’t sound very German to me. After all, she and her husband had to do a bolt from the Germans; I’ve had to remind her of that more than once. Well, no one could have done more for anyone than I’ve done for her. That’s the trouble, of course. Time was when she and Nikky were simply in possession here. They did what they liked. Nikky was getting so insolent, my students started to remark on it. I could see the danger. I’ve been forced to wean them from