by Bronte · Cluster: Education · Self-Made Man · Wheel
Abstract
Charlotte Bronte’s first novel (written before Jane Eyre, published 1857), the first-person account of William Crimsworth who works his way from trade through teaching in Brussels, falling in love with his pupil-teacher Frances; a sober realist Bildungsroman on self-reliance, work earned by merit, love and self-discipline.
Capitoli / Chapters
Connections
Archetypes: Self-Made Man, Lover, Outsider Motifs: Money and Gold, Letters and Writing Themes & Concepts: Self-Reliance and Earned Success, Romantic Love, Marriage and Fidelity, Education, Identity, Class Conflict, Self-Knowledge, Maturation and Growth, Faith, Common Man, Economics Forms & Genres: Novel, Bildungsroman, Fictional Autobiography, Nonfiction Settings: Industrial City, Continental Europe (Brussels) Characters: William Crimsworth, Frances Henri, Edward Crimsworth, Monsieur Pelet, Zoraide Reuter, Yorke Hunsden
Testo integrale / Full text
THE PROFESSOR
by (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
T H E P R O F E S S O R
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
PREFACE.
This little book was written before either “Jane Eyre” or “Shirley,”
and yet no indulgence can be solicited for it on the plea of a first
attempt. A first attempt it certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it
had been previously worn a good deal in a practice of some years. I had
not indeed published anything before I commenced “The Professor,” but
in many a crude effort, destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had
got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamented and
redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely.
At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the subject of
incident, &c., such as would be generally approved in theory, but the
result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an
author more surprise than pleasure.
I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life as I had
seen real living men work theirs—that he should never get a shilling
he had not earned—that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to
wealth and high station; that whatever small competency he might gain,
should be won by the sweat of his brow; that, before he could find so
much as an arbour to sit down in, he should master at least half the
ascent of “the Hill of Difficulty;” that he should not even marry a
beautiful girl or a lady of rank. As Adam’s son he should share Adam’s
doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.
In the sequel, however, I find that publishers in general scarcely
approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative
and poetical—something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with
a taste for pathos, with sentiments more tender, elevated, unworldly.
Indeed, until an author has tried to dispose of a manuscript of this
kind, he can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie
hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such
treasures. Men in business are usually thought to prefer the real; on
trial the idea will be often found fallacious: a passionate preference
for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling—the strange, startling, and
harrowing—agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface.
Such being the case, the reader will comprehend that to have reached
him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone
through some struggles—which indeed it has. And after all, its
worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes
comfort—subdues fear—leans on the staff of a moderate expectation—and
mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of the public,
“He that is low need fear no fall.”
CURRER BELL.
The foregoing preface was written by my wife with a view to the
publication of “The Professor,” shortly after the appearance of
“Shirley.” Being dissuaded from her intention, the authoress made some
use of the materials in a subsequent work—“Villette.” As, however,
these two stories are in most respects unlike, it has been represented
to me that I ought not to withhold “The Professor” from the public. I
have therefore consented to its publication.
A. B. NICHOLLS
Haworth Parsonage,
September 22nd, 1856.
T H E P R O F E S S O R
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
THE other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the
following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an old school
acquaintance:—
“DEAR CHARLES,
“I think when you and I were at Eton together, we were neither of
us what could be called popular characters: you were a sarcastic,
observant, shrewd, cold-blooded creature; my own portrait I will
not attempt to draw, but I cannot recollect that it was a strikingly
attractive one—can you? What animal magnetism drew thee and me together
I know not; certainly I never experienced anything of the Pylades and
Orestes sentiment for you, and I have reason to believe that you, on
your part, were equally free from all romantic regard to me. Still,
out of school hours we walked and talked continually together; when the
theme of conversation was our companions or our masters we understood
each other, and when I recurred to some sentiment of affection, some
vague love of an excellent or beautiful object, whether in animate or
inanimate nature, your sardonic coldness did not move me. I felt myself
superior to that check THEN as I do NOW.
“It is a long time since I wrote to you, and a still longer time since
I saw you. Chancing to take up a newspaper of your county the other day,
my eye fell upon your name. I began to think of old times; to run over
the events which have transpired since we separated; and I sat down
and commenced this letter. What you have been doing I know not; but you
shall hear, if you choose to listen, how the world has wagged with me.
“First, after leaving Eton, I had an interview with my maternal uncles,
Lord Tynedale and the Hon. John Seacombe. They asked me if I would enter
the Church, and my uncle the nobleman offered me the living of Seacombe,
which is in his gift, if I would; then my other uncle, Mr. Seacombe,
hinted that when I became rector of Seacombe-cum-Scaife, I might perhaps
be allowed to take, as mistress of my house and head of my parish, one
of my six cousins, his daughters, all of whom I greatly dislike.
“I declined both the Church and matrimony. A good clergyman is a good
thing, but I should have made a very bad one. As to the wife—oh how
like a night-mare is the thought of being bound for life to one of
my cousins! No doubt they are accomplished and pretty; but not an
accomplishment, not a charm of theirs, touches a chord in my bosom.
To think of passing the winter evenings by the parlour fire-side of
Seacombe Rectory alone with one of them—for instance, the large and
well-modelled statue, Sarah—no; I should be a bad husband, under such
circumstances, as well as a bad clergyman.
“When I had declined my uncles’ offers they asked me ‘what I intended
to do?’ I said I should reflect. They reminded me that I had no fortune,
and no expectation of any, and, after a considerable pause, Lord
Tynedale demanded sternly, ‘Whether I had thoughts of following my
father’s steps and engaging in trade?’ Now, I had had no thoughts of the
sort. I do not think that my turn of mind qualifies me to make a good
tradesman; my taste, my ambition does not lie in that way; but such was
the scorn expressed in Lord Tynedale’s countenance as he pronounced
the word TRADE—such the contemptuous sarcasm of his tone—that I was
instantly decided. My father was but a name to me, yet that name I did
not like to hear mentioned with a sneer to my very face. I answered
then, with haste and warmth, ‘I cannot do better than follow in
my father’s steps; yes, I will be a tradesman.’ My uncles did not
remonstrate; they and I parted with mutual disgust. In reviewing this
transaction, I find that I was quite right to shake off the burden of
Tynedale’s patronage, but a fool to offer my shoulders instantly for the
reception of another burden—one which might be more intolerable, and
which certainly was yet untried.
“I wrote instantly to Edward—you know Edward—my only brother, ten
years my senior, married to a rich mill-owner’s daughter, and now
possessor of the mill and business which was my father’s before he
failed. You are aware that my father—once reckoned a Croesus of
wealth—became bankrupt a short time previous to his death, and that my
mother lived in destitution for some six months after him, unhelped by
her aristocratical brothers, whom she had mortally offended by her union
with Crimsworth, the----shire manufacturer. At the end of the six months
she brought me into the world, and then herself left it without, I
should think, much regret, as it contained little hope or comfort for
her.
“My father’s relations took charge of Edward, as they did of me, till I
was nine years old. At that period it chanced that the representation of
an important borough in our county fell vacant; Mr. Seacombe stood for
it. My uncle Crimsworth, an astute mercantile man, took the opportunity
of writing a fierce letter to the candidate, stating that if he and Lord
Tynedale did not consent to do something towards the support of their
sister’s orphan children, he would expose their relentless and malignant
conduct towards that sister, and do his best to turn the circumstances
against Mr. Seacombe’s election. That gentleman and Lord T. knew well
enough that the Crimsworths were an unscrupulous and determined race;
they knew also that they had influence in the borough of X----; and,
making a virtue of necessity, they consented to defray the expenses of
my education. I was sent to Eton, where I remained ten years, during
which space of time Edward and I never met. He, when he grew up, entered
into trade, and pursued his calling with such diligence, ability, and
success, that now, in his thirtieth year, he was fast making a fortune.
Of this I was apprised by the occasional short letters I received from
him, some three or four times a year; which said letters never concluded
without some expression of determined enmity against the house of
Seacombe, and some reproach to me for living, as he said, on the bounty
of that house. At first, while still in boyhood, I could not understand
why, as I had no parents, I should not be indebted to my uncles Tynedale
and Seacombe for my education; but as I grew up, and heard by degrees of
the persevering hostility, the hatred till death evinced by them against
my father—of the sufferings of my mother—of all the wrongs, in short,
of our house—then did I conceive shame of the dependence in which I
lived, and form a resolution no more to take bread from hands which had
refused to minister to the necessities of my dying mother. It was by
these feelings I was influenced when I refused the Rectory of Seacombe,
and the union with one of my patrician cousins.
“An irreparable breach thus being effected between my uncles and myself,
I wrote to Edward; told him what had occurred, and informed him of my
intention to follow his steps and be a tradesman. I asked, moreover, if
he could give me employment. His answer expressed no approbation of my
conduct, but he said I might come down to ----shire, if I liked, and he
would ‘see what could be done in the way of furnishing me with work.’
I repressed all—even mental comment on his note—packed my trunk and
carpet-bag, and started for the North directly.
“After two days’ travelling (railroads were not then in existence) I
arrived, one wet October afternoon, in the town of X----. I had always
understood that Edward lived in this town, but on inquiry I found that
it was only Mr. Crimsworth’s mill and warehouse which were situated in
the smoky atmosphere of Bigben Close; his RESIDENCE lay four miles out,
in the country.
“It was late in the evening when I alighted at the gates of the
habitation designated to me as my brother’s. As I advanced up the
avenue, I could see through the shades of twilight, and the dark gloomy
mists which deepened those shades, that the house was large, and the
grounds surrounding it sufficiently spacious. I paused a moment on the
lawn in front, and leaning my back against a tall tree which rose in the
centre, I gazed with interest on the exterior of Crimsworth Hall.
“Edward is rich,” thought I to myself. ‘I believed him to be doing
well—but I did not know he was master of a mansion like this.’ Cutting
short all marvelling; speculation, conjecture, &c., I advanced to the
front door and rang. A man-servant opened it—I announced myself—he
relieved me of my wet cloak and carpet-bag, and ushered me into a
room furnished as a library, where there was a bright fire and candles
burning on the table; he informed me that his master was not yet
returned from X----market, but that he would certainly be at home in the
course of half an hour.
“Being left to myself, I took the stuffed easy chair, covered with red
morocco, which stood by the fireside, and while my eyes watched the
flames dart from the glowing coals, and the cinders fall at intervals on
the hearth, my mind busied itself in conjectures concerning the meeting
about to take place. Amidst much that was doubtful in the subject of
these conjectures, there was one thing tolerably certain—I was in no
danger of encountering severe disappointment; from this, the moderation
of my expectations guaranteed me. I anticipated no overflowings of
fraternal tenderness; Edward’s letters had always been such as to
prevent the engendering or harbouring of delusions of this sort. Still,
as I sat awaiting his arrival, I felt eager—very eager—I cannot tell
you why; my hand, so utterly a stranger to the grasp of a kindred hand,
clenched itself to repress the tremor with which impatience would fain
have shaken it.
“I thought of my uncles; and as I was engaged in wondering whether
Edward’s indifference would equal the cold disdain I had always
experienced from them, I heard the avenue gates open: wheels approached
the house; Mr. Crimsworth was arrived; and after the lapse of some
minutes, and a brief dialogue between himself and his servant in the
hall, his tread drew near the library door—that tread alone announced
the master of the house.
“I still retained some confused recollection of Edward as he was ten
years ago—a tall, wiry, raw youth; NOW, as I rose from my seat and
turned towards the library door, I saw a fine-looking and powerful man,
light-complexioned, well-made, and of athletic proportions; the first
glance made me aware of an air of promptitude and sharpness, shown
as well in his movements as in his port, his eye, and the general
expression of his face. He greeted me with brevity, and, in the moment
of shaking hands, scanned me from head to foot; he took his seat in the
morocco covered arm-chair, and motioned me to another seat.
“‘I expected you would have called at the counting-house in the Close,’
said he; and his voice, I noticed, had an abrupt accent, probably
habitual to him; he spoke also with a guttural northern tone, which
sounded harsh in my ears, accustomed to the silvery utterance of the
South.
“‘The landlord of the inn, where the coach stopped, directed me here,’
said I. ‘I doubted at first the accuracy of his information, not being
aware that you had such a residence as this.’
“‘Oh, it is all right!’ he replied, ‘only I was kept half an hour behind
time, waiting for you—that is all. I thought you must be coming by the
eight o’clock coach.’
“I expressed regret that he had had to wait; he made no answer, but
stirred the fire, as if to cover a movement of impatience; then he
scanned me again.
“I felt an inward satisfaction that I had not, in the first moment of
meeting, betrayed any warmth, any enthusiasm; that I had saluted this
man with a quiet and steady phlegm.
“‘Have you quite broken with Tynedale and Seacombe?’ he asked hastily.
“‘I do not think I shall have any further communication with them; my
refusal of their proposals will, I fancy, operate as a barrier against
all future intercourse.’
“‘Why,’ said he, ‘I may as well remind you at the very outset of our
connection, that “no man can serve two masters.” Acquaintance with Lord
Tynedale will be incompatible with assistance from me.’ There was a kind
of gratuitous menace in his eye as he looked at me in finishing this
observation.
“Feeling no disposition to reply to him, I contented myself with an
inward speculation on the differences which exist in the constitution
of men’s minds. I do not know what inference Mr. Crimsworth drew from
my silence—whether he considered it a symptom of contumacity or an
evidence of my being cowed by his peremptory manner. After a long and
hard stare at me, he rose sharply from his seat.
“‘To-morrow,’ said he, ‘I shall call your attention to some other
points; but now it is supper time, and Mrs. Crimsworth is probably
waiting; will you come?’
“He strode from the room, and I followed. In crossing the hall, I
wondered what Mrs. Crimsworth might be. ‘Is she,’ thought I, ‘as alien
to what I like as Tynedale, Seacombe, the Misses Seacombe—as the
affectionate relative now striding before me? or is she better than
these? Shall I, in conversing with her, feel free to show something of
my real nature; or—’ Further conjectures were arrested by my entrance
into the dining-room.
“A lamp, burning under a shade of ground-glass, showed a handsome
apartment, wainscoted with oak; supper was laid on the table; by the
fire-place, standing as if waiting our entrance, appeared a lady;
she was young, tall, and well shaped; her dress was handsome and
fashionable: so much my first glance sufficed to ascertain. A gay
salutation passed between her and Mr. Crimsworth; she chid him, half
playfully, half poutingly, for being late; her voice (I always take
voices into the account in judging of character) was lively—it
indicated, I thought, good animal spirits. Mr. Crimsworth soon checked
her animated scolding with a kiss—a kiss that still told of the
bridegroom (they had not yet been married a year); she took her seat
at the supper-table in first-rate spirits. Perceiving me, she begged
my pardon for not noticing me before, and then shook hands with me, as
ladies do when a flow of good-humour disposes them to be cheerful to
all, even the most indifferent of their acquaintance. It was now further
obvious to me that she had a good complexion, and features sufficiently
marked but agreeable; her hair was red—quite red. She and Edward
talked much, always in a vein of playful contention; she was vexed, or
pretended to be vexed, that he had that day driven a vicious horse in
the gig, and he made light of her fears. Sometimes she appealed to me.
“‘Now, Mr. William, isn’t it absurd in Edward to talk so? He says he
will drive Jack, and no other horse, and the brute has thrown him twice
already.
“She spoke with a kind of lisp, not disagreeable, but childish. I
soon saw also that there was more than girlish—a somewhat infantine
expression in her by no means small features; this lisp and expression
were, I have no doubt, a charm in Edward’s eyes, and would be so to
those of most men, but they were not to mine. I sought her eye, desirous
to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face
or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw
vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in
vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips
and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that
Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded,
the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers
are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons
of disaster, when a man’s hearth and home would be cold indeed, without
the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.
“Having perused the fair page of Mrs. Crimsworth’s face, a deep,
involuntary sigh announced my disappointment; she took it as a homage to
her beauty, and Edward, who was evidently proud of his rich and handsome
young wife, threw on me a glance—half ridicule, half ire.
“I turned from them both, and gazing wearily round the room, I saw two
pictures set in the oak panelling—one on each side the mantel-piece.
Ceasing to take part in the bantering conversation that flowed on
between Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth, I bent my thoughts to the examination
of these pictures. They were portraits—a lady and a gentleman, both
costumed in the fashion of twenty years ago. The gentleman was in the
shade. I could not see him well. The lady had the benefit of a full beam
from the softly shaded lamp. I presently recognised her; I had seen this
picture before in childhood; it was my mother; that and the companion
picture being the only heir-looms saved out of the sale of my father’s
property.
“The face, I remembered, had pleased me as a boy, but then I did not
understand it; now I knew how rare that class of face is in the world,
and I appreciated keenly its thoughtful, yet gentle expression. The
serious grey eye possessed for me a strong charm, as did certain lines
in the features indicative of most true and tender feeling. I was sorry
it was only a picture.
“I soon left Mr. and Mrs. Crimsworth to themselves; a servant
conducted me to my bed-room; in closing my chamber-door, I shut out all
intruders—you, Charles, as well as the rest.
“Good-bye for the present,
“WILLIAM CRIMSWORTH.”
To this letter I never got an answer; before my old friend received it,
he had accepted a Government appointment in one of the colonies, and was
already on his way to the scene of his official labours. What has become
of him since, I know not.
The leisure time I have at command, and which I intended to employ
for his private benefit, I shall now dedicate to that of the public at
large. My narrative is not exciting, and above all, not marvellous;
but it may interest some individuals, who, having toiled in the same
vocation as myself, will find in my experience frequent reflections
of their own. The above letter will serve as an introduction. I now
proceed.
CHAPTER II.
A FINE October morning succeeded to the foggy evening that had witnessed
my first introduction to Crimsworth Hall. I was early up and walking in
the large park-like meadow surrounding the house. The autumn sun, rising
over the ----shire hills, disclosed a pleasant country; woods brown and
mellow varied the fields from which the harvest had been lately carried;
a river, gliding between the woods, caught on its surface the somewhat
cold gleam of the October sun and sky; at frequent intervals along the
banks of the river, tall, cylindrical chimneys, almost like slender
round towers, indicated the factories which the trees half concealed;
here and there mansions, similar to Crimsworth Hall, occupied agreeable
sites on the hill-side; the country wore, on the whole, a cheerful,
active, fertile look. Steam, trade, machinery had long banished from
it all romance and seclusion. At a distance of five miles, a valley,
opening between the low hills, held in its cups the great town of X----.
A dense, permanent vapour brooded over this locality—there lay Edward’s
“Concern.”
I forced my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell
on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable
emotion to my heart—that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought
to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life’s career—I
said to myself, “William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are
a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade and you shall
be a tradesman. Look!” I continued mentally—“Look at the sooty smoke in
that hollow, and know that there is your post! There you cannot dream,
you cannot speculate and theorize—there you shall out and work!”
Thus self-schooled, I returned to the house. My brother was in the
breakfast-room. I met him collectedly—I could not meet him cheerfully;
he was standing on the rug, his back to the fire—how much did I read in
the expression of his eye as my glance encountered his, when I advanced
to bid him good morning; how much that was contradictory to my nature!
He said “Good morning” abruptly and nodded, and then he snatched, rather
than took, a newspaper from the table, and began to read it with the air
of a master who seizes a pretext to escape the bore of conversing with
an underling. It was well I had taken a resolution to endure for a time,
or his manner would have gone far to render insupportable the disgust
I had just been endeavouring to subdue. I looked at him: I measured his
robust frame and powerful proportions; I saw my own reflection in the
mirror over the mantel-piece; I amused myself with comparing the two
pictures. In face I resembled him, though I was not so handsome; my
features were less regular; I had a darker eye, and a broader brow—in
form I was greatly inferior—thinner, slighter, not so tall. As an
animal, Edward excelled me far; should he prove as paramount in mind
as in person I must be a slave—for I must expect from him no lion-like
generosity to one weaker than himself; his cold, avaricious eye, his
stern, forbidding manner told me he would not spare. Had I then force of
mind to cope with him? I did not know; I had never been tried.
Mrs. Crimsworth’s entrance diverted my thoughts for a moment. She looked
well, dressed in white, her face and her attire shining in morning
and bridal freshness. I addressed her with the degree of ease her last
night’s careless gaiety seemed to warrant, but she replied with coolness
and restraint: her husband had tutored her; she was not to be too
familiar with his clerk.
As soon as breakfast was over Mr. Crimsworth intimated to me that they
were bringing the gig round to the door, and that in five minutes he
should expect me to be ready to go down with him to X----. I did not
keep him waiting; we were soon dashing at a rapid rate along the
road. The horse he drove was the same vicious animal about which Mrs.
Crimsworth had expressed her fears the night before. Once or twice
Jack seemed disposed to turn restive, but a vigorous and determined
application of the whip from the ruthless hand of his master soon
compelled him to submission, and Edward’s dilated nostril expressed his
triumph in the result of the contest; he scarcely spoke to me during the
whole of the brief drive, only opening his lips at intervals to damn his
horse.
X---- was all stir and bustle when we entered it; we left the clean
streets where there were dwelling-houses and shops, churches, and public
buildings; we left all these, and turned down to a region of mills and
warehouses; thence we passed through two massive gates into a great
paved yard, and we were in Bigben Close, and the mill was before us,
vomiting soot from its long chimney, and quivering through its thick
brick walls with the commotion of its iron bowels. Workpeople were
passing to and fro; a waggon was being laden with pieces. Mr. Crimsworth
looked from side to side, and seemed at one glance to comprehend all
that was going on; he alighted, and leaving his horse and gig to the
care of a man who hastened to take the reins from his hand, he bid me
follow him to the counting-house. We entered it; a very different place
from the parlours of Crimsworth Hall—a place for business, with a bare,
planked floor, a safe, two high desks and stools, and some chairs. A
person was seated at one of the desks, who took off his square cap when
Mr. Crimsworth entered, and in an instant was again absorbed in his
occupation of writing or calculating—I know not which.
Mr. Crimsworth, having removed his mackintosh, sat down by the fire. I
remained standing near the hearth; he said presently—
“Steighton, you may leave the room; I have some business to transact
with this gentleman. Come back when you hear the bell.”
The individual at the desk rose and departed, closing the door as he
went out. Mr. Crimsworth stirred the fire, then folded his arms, and sat
a moment thinking, his lips compressed, his brow knit. I had nothing to
do but to watch him—how well his features were cut! what a handsome man
he was! Whence, then, came that air of contraction—that narrow and hard
aspect on his forehead, in all his lineaments?
Turning to me he began abruptly:
“You are come down to ----shire to learn to be a tradesman?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Have you made up your mind on the point? Let me know that at once.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I am not bound to help you, but I have a place here vacant, if
you are qualified for it. I will take you on trial. What can you do? Do
you know anything besides that useless trash of college learning—Greek,
Latin, and so forth?”
“I have studied mathematics.”
“Stuff! I dare say you have.”
“I can read and write French and German.”
“Hum!” He reflected a moment, then opening a drawer in a desk near him
took out a letter, and gave it to me.
“Can you read that?” he asked.
It was a German commercial letter; I translated it; I could not tell
whether he was gratified or not—his countenance remained fixed.
“It is well,” he said, after a pause, “that you are acquainted with
something useful, something that may enable you to earn your board and
lodging: since you know French and German, I will take you as second
clerk to manage the foreign correspondence of the house. I shall give
you a good salary—90l. a year—and now,” he continued, raising his
voice, “hear once for all what I have to say about our relationship, and
all that sort of humbug! I must have no nonsense on that point; it
would never suit me. I shall excuse you nothing on the plea of being my
brother; if I find you stupid, negligent, dissipated, idle, or possessed
of any faults detrimental to the interests of the house, I shall dismiss
you as I would any other clerk. Ninety pounds a year are good wages, and
I expect to have the full value of my money out of you; remember,
too, that things are on a practical footing in my
establishment—business-like habits, feelings, and ideas, suit me best.
Do you understand?”
“Partly,” I replied. “I suppose you mean that I am to do my work for my
wages; not to expect favour from you, and not to depend on you for any
help but what I earn; that suits me exactly, and on these terms I will
consent to be your clerk.”
I turned on my heel, and walked to the window; this time I did not
consult his face to learn his opinion: what it was I do not know, nor
did I then care. After a silence of some minutes he recommenced:—
“You perhaps expect to be accommodated with apartments at Crimsworth
Hall, and to go and come with me in the gig. I wish you, however, to be
aware that such an arrangement would be quite inconvenient to me. I
like to have the seat in my gig at liberty for any gentleman whom for
business reasons I may wish to take down to the hall for a night or so.
You will seek out lodgings in X----.”
Quitting the window, I walked back to the hearth.
“Of course I shall seek out lodgings in X----,” I answered. “It would
not suit me either to lodge at Crimsworth Hall.”
My tone was quiet. I always speak quietly. Yet Mr. Crimsworth’s blue eye
became incensed; he took his revenge rather oddly. Turning to me he said
bluntly—
“You are poor enough, I suppose; how do you expect to live till your
quarter’s salary becomes due?”
“I shall get on,” said I.
“How do you expect to live?” he repeated in a louder voice.
“As I can, Mr. Crimsworth.”
“Get into debt at your peril! that’s all,” he answered. “For aught I
know you may have extravagant aristocratic habits: if you have, drop
them; I tolerate nothing of the sort here, and I will never give you a
shilling extra, whatever liabilities you may incur—mind that.”
“Yes, Mr. Crimsworth, you will find I have a good memory.”
I said no more. I did not think the time was come for much parley. I
had an instinctive feeling that it would be folly to let one’s temper
effervesce often with such a man as Edward. I said to myself, “I will
place my cup under this continual dropping; it shall stand there still
and steady; when full, it will run over of itself—meantime patience.
Two things are certain. I am capable of performing the work Mr.
Crimsworth has set me; I can earn my wages conscientiously, and those
wages are sufficient to enable me to live. As to the fact of my brother
assuming towards me the bearing of a proud, harsh master, the fault is
his, not mine; and shall his injustice, his bad feeling, turn me at once
aside from the path I have chosen? No; at least, ere I deviate, I will
advance far enough to see whither my career tends. As yet I am only
pressing in at the entrance—a strait gate enough; it ought to have a
good terminus.” While I thus reasoned, Mr. Crimsworth rang a bell; his
first clerk, the individual dismissed previously to our conference,
re-entered.
“Mr. Steighton,” said he, “show Mr. William the letters from Voss,
Brothers, and give him English copies of the answers; he will translate
them.”
Mr. Steighton, a man of about thirty-five, with a face at once sly and
heavy, hastened to execute this order; he laid the letters on the
desk, and I was soon seated at it, and engaged in rendering the English
answers into German. A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first
effort to earn my own living—a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened
by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some
time as I wrote. I thought he was trying to read my character, but I
felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with the
visor down—or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence
that one would show an unlearned man a letter written in Greek; he might
see lines, and trace characters, but he could make nothing of them; my
nature was not his nature, and its signs were to him like the words of
an unknown tongue. Ere long he turned away abruptly, as if baffled, and
left the counting-house; he returned to it but twice in the course of
that day; each time he mixed and swallowed a glass of brandy-and-water,
the materials for making which he extracted from a cupboard on one side
of the fireplace; having glanced at my translations—he could read both
French and German—he went out again in silence.
CHAPTER III.
I SERVED Edward as his second clerk faithfully, punctually, diligently.
What was given me to do I had the power and the determination to do
well. Mr. Crimsworth watched sharply for defects, but found none; he set
Timothy Steighton, his favourite and head man, to watch also. Tim was
baffled; I was as exact as himself, and quicker. Mr. Crimsworth made
inquiries as to how I lived, whether I got into debt—no, my accounts
with my landlady were always straight. I had hired small lodgings, which
I contrived to pay for out of a slender fund—the accumulated savings of
my Eton pocket-money; for as it had ever been abhorrent to my nature to
ask pecuniary assistance, I had early acquired habits of self-denying
economy; husbanding my monthly allowance with anxious care, in order to
obviate the danger of being forced, in some moment of future exigency,
to beg additional aid. I remember many called me miser at the time,
and I used to couple the reproach with this consolation—better to be
misunderstood now than repulsed hereafter. At this day I had my reward;
I had had it before, when on parting with my irritated uncles one of
them threw down on the table before me a 5l. note, which I was able to
leave there, saying that my travelling expenses were already provided
for. Mr. Crimsworth employed Tim to find out whether my landlady had
any complaint to make on the score of my morals; she answered that she
believed I was a very religious man, and asked Tim, in her turn, if he
thought I had any intention of going into the Church some day; for, she
said, she had had young curates to lodge in her house who were nothing
equal to me for steadiness and quietness. Tim was “a religious man”
himself; indeed, he was “a joined Methodist,” which did not (be it
understood) prevent him from being at the same time an engrained rascal,
and he came away much posed at hearing this account of my piety. Having
imparted it to Mr. Crimsworth, that gentleman, who himself frequented
no place of worship, and owned no God but Mammon, turned the information
into a weapon of attack against the equability of my temper. He
commenced a series of covert sneers, of which I did not at first
perceive the drift, till my landlady happened to relate the conversation
she had had with Mr. Steighton; this enlightened me; afterwards I came
to the counting-house prepared, and managed to receive the millowner’s
blasphemous sarcasms, when next levelled at me, on a buckler of
impenetrable indifference. Ere long he tired of wasting his ammunition
on a statue, but he did not throw away the shafts—he only kept them
quiet in his quiver.
Once during my clerkship I had an invitation to Crimsworth Hall; it
was on the occasion of a large party given in honour of the master’s
birthday; he had always been accustomed to invite his clerks on similar
anniversaries, and could not well pass me over; I was, however, kept
strictly in the background. Mrs. Crimsworth, elegantly dressed in satin
and lace, blooming in youth and health, vouchsafed me no more notice
than was expressed by a distant move; Crimsworth, of course, never
spoke to me; I was introduced to none of the band of young ladies, who,
enveloped in silvery clouds of white gauze and muslin, sat in array
against me on the opposite side of a long and large room; in fact, I was
fairly isolated, and could but contemplate the shining ones from afar,
and when weary of such a dazzling scene, turn for a change to the
consideration of the carpet pattern. Mr. Crimsworth, standing on the
rug, his elbow supported by the marble mantelpiece, and about him
a group of very pretty girls, with whom he conversed gaily—Mr.
Crimsworth, thus placed, glanced at me; I looked weary, solitary, kept
down like some desolate tutor or governess; he was satisfied.
Dancing began; I should have liked well enough to be introduced to some
pleasing and intelligent girl, and to have freedom and opportunity
to show that I could both feel and communicate the pleasure of social
intercourse—that I was not, in short, a block, or a piece of furniture,
but an acting, thinking, sentient man. Many smiling faces and graceful
figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the
figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized,
left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No
fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked
for and found my mother’s picture. I took a wax taper from a stand,
and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image.
My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and
countenance—her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular beauty
pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined
likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with complacency
the lineaments of their daughters’ faces, where frequently their own
similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and
delicacy of outline. I was just wondering how that picture, to me so
interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close
behind me pronounced the words—
“Humph! there’s some sense in that face.”
I turned; at my elbow stood a tall man, young, though probably five or
six years older than I—in other respects of an appearance the opposite
to common place; though just now, as I am not disposed to paint his
portrait in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I
have just thrown off; it was all I myself saw of him for the moment: I
did not investigate the colour of his eyebrows, nor of his eyes either;
I saw his stature, and the outline of his shape; I saw, too, his
fastidious-looking RETROUSSE nose; these observations, few in number,
and general in character (the last excepted), sufficed, for they enabled
me to recognize him.
“Good evening, Mr. Hunsden,” muttered I with a bow, and then, like a
shy noodle as I was, I began moving away—and why? Simply because Mr.
Hunsden was a manufacturer and a millowner, and I was only a clerk, and
my instinct propelled me from my superior. I had frequently seen Hunsden
in Bigben Close, where he came almost weekly to transact business with
Mr. Crimsworth, but I had never spoken to him, nor he to me, and I owed
him a sort of involuntary grudge, because he had more than once been the
tacit witness of insults offered by Edward to me. I had the conviction
that he could only regard me as a poor-spirited slave, wherefore I now
went about to shun his presence and eschew his conversation.
“Where are you going?” asked he, as I edged off sideways. I had already
noticed that Mr. Hunsden indulged in abrupt forms of speech, and I
perversely said to myself—
“He thinks he may speak as he likes to a poor clerk; but my mood is not,
perhaps, so supple as he deems it, and his rough freedom pleases me not
at all.”
I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and
continued to move away. He coolly planted himself in my path.
“Stay here awhile,” said he: “it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides,
you don’t dance; you have not had a partner to-night.”
He was right, and as he spoke neither his look, tone, nor manner
displeased me; my AMOUR-PROPRE was propitiated; he had not addressed
me out of condescension, but because, having repaired to the cool
dining-room for refreshment, he now wanted some one to talk to, by way
of temporary amusement. I hate to be condescended to, but I like well
enough to oblige; I stayed.
“That is a good picture,” he continued, recurring to the portrait.
“Do you consider the face pretty?” I asked.
“Pretty! no—how can it be pretty, with sunk eyes and hollow cheeks?
but it is peculiar; it seems to think. You could have a talk with that
woman, if she were alive, on other subjects than dress, visiting, and
compliments.”
I agreed with him, but did not say so. He went on.
“Not that I admire a head of that sort; it wants character and force;
there’s too much of the sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling
his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides, there is Aristocrat
written on the brow and defined in the figure; I hate your aristocrats.”
“You think, then, Mr. Hunsden, that patrician descent may be read in a
distinctive cast of form and features?”
“Patrician descent be hanged! Who doubts that your lordlings may have
their ‘distinctive cast of form and features’ as much as we----shire
tradesmen have ours? But which is the best? Not theirs assuredly. As
to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from
childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain
degree of excellence in that point, just like the oriental odalisques.
Yet even this superiority is doubtful. Compare the figure in that frame
with Mrs. Edward Crimsworth—which is the finer animal?”
I replied quietly: “Compare yourself and Mr. Edward Crimsworth, Mr
Hunsden.”
“Oh, Crimsworth is better filled up than I am, I know besides he has a
straight nose, arched eyebrows, and all that; but these advantages—if
they are advantages—he did not inherit from his mother, the patrician,
but from his father, old Crimsworth, who, MY father says, was as
veritable a ----shire blue-dyer as ever put indigo in a vat yet withal
the handsomest man in the three Ridings. It is you, William, who are
the aristocrat of your family, and you are not as fine a fellow as your
plebeian brother by long chalk.”
There was something in Mr. Hunsden’s point-blank mode of speech which
rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at my ease. I
continued the conversation with a degree of interest.
“How do you happen to know that I am Mr. Crimsworth’s brother? I thought
you and everybody else looked upon me only in the light of a poor
clerk.”
“Well, and so we do; and what are you but a poor clerk? You do
Crimsworth’s work, and he gives you wages—shabby wages they are, too.”
I was silent. Hunsden’s language now bordered on the impertinent, still
his manner did not offend me in the least—it only piqued my curiosity;
I wanted him to go on, which he did in a little while.
“This world is an absurd one,” said he.
“Why so, Mr. Hunsden?”
“I wonder you should ask: you are yourself a strong proof of the
absurdity I allude to.”
I was determined he should explain himself of his own accord, without my
pressing him so to do—so I resumed my silence.
“Is it your intention to become a tradesman?” he inquired presently.
“It was my serious intention three months ago.”
“Humph! the more fool you—you look like a tradesman! What a practical
business-like face you have!”
“My face is as the Lord made it, Mr. Hunsden.”
“The Lord never made either your face or head for X---- What good can
your bumps of ideality, comparison, self-esteem, conscientiousness,
do you here? But if you like Bigben Close, stay there; it’s your own
affair, not mine.”
“Perhaps I have no choice.”
“Well, I care nought about it—it will make little difference to me what
you do or where you go; but I’m cool now—I want to dance again; and
I see such a fine girl sitting in the corner of the sofa there by
her mamma; see if I don’t get her for a partner in a jiffy! There’s
Waddy—Sam Waddy making up to her; won’t I cut him out?”
And Mr. Hunsden strode away. I watched him through the open
folding-doors; he outstripped Waddy, applied for the hand of the
fine girl, and led her off triumphant. She was a tall, well-made,
full-formed, dashingly-dressed young woman, much in the style of Mrs. E.
Crimsworth; Hunsden whirled her through the waltz with spirit; he kept
at her side during the remainder of the evening, and I read in her
animated and gratified countenance that he succeeded in making himself
perfectly agreeable. The mamma too (a stout person in a turban—Mrs.
Lupton by name) looked well pleased; prophetic visions probably
flattered her inward eye. The Hunsdens were of an old stem; and scornful
as Yorke (such was my late interlocutor’s name) professed to be of
the advantages of birth, in his secret heart he well knew and fully
appreciated the distinction his ancient, if not high lineage conferred
on him in a mushroom-place like X----, concerning whose inhabitants
it was proverbially said, that not one in a thousand knew his own
grandfather. Moreover the Hunsdens, once rich, were still independent;
and report affirmed that Yorke bade fair, by his success in business,
to restore to pristine prosperity the partially decayed fortunes of his
house. These circumstances considered, Mrs. Lupton’s broad face might
well wear a smile of complacency as she contemplated the heir of Hunsden
Wood occupied in paying assiduous court to her darling Sarah Martha. I,
however, whose observations being less anxious, were likely to be more
accurate, soon saw that the grounds for maternal self-congratulation
were slight indeed; the gentleman appeared to me much more desirous of
making, than susceptible of receiving an impression. I know not what it
was in Mr. Hunsden that, as I watched him (I had nothing better to do),
suggested to me, every now and then, the idea of a foreigner. In form
and features he might be pronounced English, though even there one
caught a dash of something Gallic; but he had no English shyness: he had
learnt somewhere, somehow, the art of setting himself quite at his ease,
and of allowing no insular timidity to intervene as a barrier between
him and his convenience or pleasure. Refinement he did not affect, yet
vulgar he could not be called; he was not odd—no quiz—yet he resembled
no one else I had ever seen before; his general bearing intimated
complete, sovereign satisfaction with himself; yet, at times, an
indescribable shade passed like an eclipse over his countenance, and
seemed to me like the sign of a sudden and strong inward doubt of
himself, his words and actions an energetic discontent at his life or
his social position, his future prospects or his mental attainments—I
know not which; perhaps after all it might only be a bilious caprice.
CHAPTER IV.
No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of
his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against
wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, “I am baffled!” and
submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my
residence in X---- I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself—the
work of copying and translating business-letters—was a dry and tedious
task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the
nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double
desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the
resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured
in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have
whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent
in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its
distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony and joyless tumult of
Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I
should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my
small bedroom at Mrs. King’s lodgings, and they two should have been
my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret,
Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness
or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which
had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and
spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the
sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid
darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.
Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward
Crimsworth had for me—a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and
which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement,
look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree
of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality,
industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour
and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a
successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would
not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what
was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental
wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a
ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I
was guarded by three faculties—Caution, Tact, Observation; and
prowling and prying as was Edward’s malignity, it could never baffle
the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice
watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like
on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.
I had received my first quarter’s wages, and was returning to my
lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that
the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that hard-earned
pittance—(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth as my brother—he
was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an inexorable tyrant: that
was all). Thoughts, not varied but strong, occupied my mind; two voices
spoke within me; again and again they uttered the same monotonous
phrases. One said: “William, your life is intolerable.” The other: “What
can you do to alter it?” I walked fast, for it was a cold, frosty night
in January; as I approached my lodgings, I turned from a general view of
my affairs to the particular speculation as to whether my fire would be
out; looking towards the window of my sitting-room, I saw no cheering
red gleam.
“That slut of a servant has neglected it as usual,” said I, “and I shall
see nothing but pale ashes if I go in; it is a fine starlight night—I
will walk a little farther.”
It WAS a fine night, and the streets were dry and even clean for X----;
there was a crescent curve of moonlight to be seen by the parish church
tower, and hundreds of stars shone keenly bright in all quarters of the
sky.
Unconsciously I steered my course towards the country; I had got into
Grove-street, and began to feel the pleasure of seeing dim trees at the
extremity, round a suburban house, when a person leaning over the iron
gate of one of the small gardens which front the neat dwelling-houses in
this street, addressed me as I was hurrying with quick stride past.
“What the deuce is the hurry? Just so must Lot have left Sodom, when he
expected fire to pour down upon it, out of burning brass clouds.”
I stopped short, and looked towards the speaker. I smelt the fragrance,
and saw the red spark of a cigar; the dusk outline of a man, too, bent
towards me over the wicket.
“You see I am meditating in the field at eventide,” continued this
shade. “God knows it’s cool work! especially as instead of Rebecca on
a camel’s hump, with bracelets on her arms and a ring in her nose, Fate
sends me only a counting-house clerk, in a grey tweed wrapper.” The
voice was familiar to me—its second utterance enabled me to seize the
speaker’s identity.
“Mr. Hunsden! good evening.”
“Good evening, indeed! yes, but you would have passed me without
recognition if I had not been so civil as to speak first.”
“I did not know you.”
“A famous excuse! You ought to have known me; I knew you, though you
were going ahead like a steam-engine. Are the police after you?”
“It wouldn’t be worth their while; I’m not of consequence enough to
attract them.”
“Alas, poor shepherd! Alack and well-a-day! What a theme for regret, and
how down in the mouth you must be, judging from the sound of your voice!
But since you’re not running from the police, from whom are you running?
the devil?”
“On the contrary, I am going post to him.”
“That is well—you’re just in luck: this is Tuesday evening; there are
scores of market gigs and carts returning to Dinneford to-night; and he,
or some of his, have a seat in all regularly; so, if you’ll step in
and sit half-an-hour in my bachelor’s parlour, you may catch him as he
passes without much trouble. I think though you’d better let him alone
to-night, he’ll have so many customers to serve; Tuesday is his busy day
in X---- and Dinneford; come in at all events.”
He swung the wicket open as he spoke.
“Do you really wish me to go in?” I asked.
“As you please—I’m alone; your company for an hour or two would be
agreeable to me; but, if you don’t choose to favour me so far, I’ll not
press the point. I hate to bore any one.”
It suited me to accept the invitation as it suited Hunsden to give it.
I passed through the gate, and followed him to the front door, which he
opened; thence we traversed a passage, and entered his parlour; the door
being shut, he pointed me to an arm-chair by the hearth; I sat down, and
glanced round me.
It was a comfortable room, at once snug and handsome; the bright grate
was filled with a genuine ----shire fire, red, clear, and generous, no
penurious South-of-England embers heaped in the corner of a grate. On
the table a shaded lamp diffused around a soft, pleasant, and equal
light; the furniture was almost luxurious for a young bachelor,
comprising a couch and two very easy chairs; bookshelves filled the
recesses on each side of the mantelpiece; they were well-furnished, and
arranged with perfect order. The neatness of the room suited my taste;
I hate irregular and slovenly habits. From what I saw I concluded that
Hunsden’s ideas on that point corresponded with my own. While he removed
from the centre-table to the side-board a few pamphlets and periodicals,
I ran my eye along the shelves of the book-case nearest me. French and
German works predominated, the old French dramatists, sundry modern
authors, Thiers, Villemain, Paul de Kock, George Sand, Eugene Sue; in
German—Goethe, Schiller, Zschokke, Jean Paul Richter; in English there
were works on Political Economy. I examined no further, for Mr. Hunsden
himself recalled my attention.
“You shall have something,” said he, “for you ought to feel disposed for
refreshment after walking nobody knows how far on such a Canadian night
as this; but it shall not be brandy-and-water, and it shall not be
a bottle of port, nor ditto of sherry. I keep no such poison. I have
Rhein-wein for my own drinking, and you may choose between that and
coffee.”
Here again Hunsden suited me: if there was one generally received
practice I abhorred more than another, it was the habitual imbibing of
spirits and strong wines. I had, however, no fancy for his acid German
nectar, but I liked coffee, so I responded—
“Give me some coffee, Mr. Hunsden.”
I perceived my answer pleased him; he had doubtless expected to see a
chilling effect produced by his steady announcement that he would give
me neither wine nor spirits; he just shot one searching glance at my
face to ascertain whether my cordiality was genuine or a mere feint
of politeness. I smiled, because I quite understood him; and, while I
honoured his conscientious firmness, I was amused at his mistrust; he
seemed satisfied, rang the bell, and ordered coffee, which was presently
brought; for himself, a bunch of grapes and half a pint of something
sour sufficed. My coffee was excellent; I told him so, and expressed the
shuddering pity with which his anchorite fare inspired me. He did not
answer, and I scarcely think heard my remark. At that moment one of
those momentary eclipses I before alluded to had come over his face,
extinguishing his smile, and replacing, by an abstracted and alienated
look, the customarily shrewd, bantering glance of his eye. I employed
the interval of silence in a rapid scrutiny of his physiognomy. I had
never observed him closely before; and, as my sight is very short, I had
gathered only a vague, general idea of his appearance; I was surprised
now, on examination, to perceive how small, and even feminine, were his
lineaments; his tall figure, long and dark locks, his voice and general
bearing, had impressed me with the notion of something powerful and
massive; not at all:—my own features were cast in a harsher and squarer
mould than his. I discerned that there would be contrasts between his
inward and outward man; contentions, too; for I suspected his soul
had more of will and ambition than his body had of fibre and muscle.
Perhaps, in these incompatibilities of the “physique” with the “morale,”
lay the secret of that fitful gloom; he WOULD but COULD not, and the
athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion. As to his
good looks, I should have liked to have a woman’s opinion on that
subject; it seemed to me that his face might produce the same effect
on a lady that a very piquant and interesting, though scarcely pretty,
female face would on a man. I have mentioned his dark locks—they were
brushed sideways above a white and sufficiently expansive forehead; his
cheek had a rather hectic freshness; his features might have done well
on canvas, but indifferently in marble: they were plastic; character
had set a stamp upon each; expression re-cast them at her pleasure, and
strange metamorphoses she wrought, giving him now the mien of a morose
bull, and anon that of an arch and mischievous girl; more frequently,
the two semblances were blent, and a queer, composite countenance they
made.
Starting from his silent fit, he began:—
“William! what a fool you are to live in those dismal lodgings of Mrs.
King’s, when you might take rooms here in Grove Street, and have a
garden like me!”
“I should be too far from the mill.”
“What of that? It would do you good to walk there and back two or three
times a day; besides, are you such a fossil that you never wish to see a
flower or a green leaf?”
“I am no fossil.”
“What are you then? You sit at that desk in Crimsworth’s counting-house
day by day and week by week, scraping with a pen on paper, just like an
automaton; you never get up; you never say you are tired; you never ask
for a holiday; you never take change or relaxation; you give way to
no excess of an evening; you neither keep wild company, nor indulge in
strong drink.”
“Do you, Mr. Hunsden?”
“Don’t think to pose me with short questions; your case and mine
are diametrically different, and it is nonsense attempting to draw a
parallel. I say, that when a man endures patiently what ought to be
unendurable, he is a fossil.”
“Whence do you acquire the knowledge of my patience?”
“Why, man, do you suppose you are a mystery? The other night you seemed
surprised at my knowing to what family you belonged; now you find
subject for wonderment in my calling you patient. What do you think I do
with my eyes and ears? I’ve been in your counting-house more than once
when Crimsworth has treated you like a dog; called for a book, for
instance, and when you gave him the wrong one, or what he chose to
consider the wrong one, flung it back almost in your face; desired you
to shut or open the door as if you had been his flunkey; to say nothing
of your position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither
place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby hanger-on; and
how patient you were under each and all of these circumstances!”
“Well, Mr. Hunsden, what then?”
“I can hardly tell you what then; the conclusion to be drawn as to
your character depends upon the nature of the motives which guide
your conduct; if you are patient because you expect to make something
eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his tyranny, or perhaps by
means of it, you are what the world calls an interested and mercenary,
but may be a very wise fellow; if you are patient because you think it a
duty to meet insult with submission, you are an essential sap, and in
no shape the man for my money; if you are patient because your nature is
phlegmatic, flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch
of resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all
means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you.”
Mr. Hunsden’s eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the smooth and
oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem to recognize in him
one of those characters who, sensitive enough themselves, are selfishly
relentless towards the sensitiveness of others. Moreover, though he
was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I
suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in
the urgency of the very reproaches by which he aimed at goading the
oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still
more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a
resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might
often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over
these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved
thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man.
It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his
incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and
himself was chafed by a laugh, scarce louder than a whisper.
His brow darkened, his thin nostril dilated a little.
“Yes,” he began, “I told you that you were an aristocrat, and who but
an aristocrat would laugh such a laugh as that, and look such a look?
A laugh frigidly jeering; a look lazily mutinous; gentlemanlike irony,
patrician resentment. What a nobleman you would have made, William
Crimsworth! You are cut out for one; pity Fortune has baulked Nature!
Look at the features, figure, even to the hands—distinction all
over—ugly distinction! Now, if you’d only an estate and a mansion,
and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the
rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the
peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support
your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in
churls’ blood; as it is, you’ve no power; you can do nothing; you’re
wrecked and stranded on the shores of commerce; forced into collision
with practical men, with whom you cannot cope, for YOU’LL NEVER BE A
TRADESMAN.”
The first part of Hunsden’s speech moved me not at all, or, if it did,
it was only to wonder at the perversion into which prejudice had twisted
his judgment of my character; the concluding sentence, however, not only
moved, but shook me; the blow it gave was a severe one, because Truth
wielded the weapon. If I smiled now, it, was only in disdain of myself.
Hunsden saw his advantage; he followed it up.
“You’ll make nothing by trade,” continued he; “nothing more than the
crust of dry bread and the draught of fair water on which you now live;
your only chance of getting a competency lies in marrying a rich widow,
or running away with an heiress.”
“I leave such shifts to be put in practice by those who devise them,”
said I, rising.
“And even that is hopeless,” he went on coolly. “What widow would have
you? Much less, what heiress? You’re not bold and venturesome enough for
the one, nor handsome and fascinating enough for the other. You think
perhaps you look intelligent and polished; carry your intellect and
refinement to market, and tell me in a private note what price is bid
for them.”
Mr. Hunsden had taken his tone for the night; the string he struck was
out of tune, he would finger no other. Averse to discord, of which I had
enough every day and all day long, I concluded, at last, that silence
and solitude were preferable to jarring converse; I bade him good-night.
“What! Are you going, lad? Well, good-night: you’ll find the door.” And
he sat still in front of the fire, while I left the room and the house.
I had got a good way on my return to my lodgings before I found out that
I was walking very fast, and breathing very hard, and that my nails were
almost stuck into the palms of my clenched hands, and that my teeth were
set fast; on making this discovery, I relaxed both my pace, fists, and
jaws, but I could not so soon cause the regrets rushing rapidly through
my mind to slacken their tide. Why did I make myself a tradesman? Why
did I enter Hunsden’s house this evening? Why, at dawn to-morrow, must
I repair to Crimsworth’s mill? All that night did I ask myself these
questions, and all that night fiercely demanded of my soul an answer. I
got no sleep; my head burned, my feet froze; at last the factory bells
rang, and I sprang from my bed with other slaves.
CHAPTER V.
THERE is a climax to everything, to every state of feeling as well as to
every position in life. I turned this truism over in my mind as, in the
frosty dawn of a January morning, I hurried down the steep and now
icy street which descended from Mrs. King’s to the Close. The factory
workpeople had preceded me by nearly an hour, and the mill was all
lighted up and in full operation when I reached it. I repaired to my
post in the counting-house as usual; the fire there, but just lit, as
yet only smoked; Steighton had not yet arrived. I shut the door and sat
down at the desk; my hands, recently washed in half-frozen water, were
still numb; I could not write till they had regained vitality, so I
went on thinking, and still the theme of my thoughts was the “climax.”
Self-dissatisfaction troubled exceedingly the current of my meditations.
“Come, William Crimsworth,” said my conscience, or whatever it is that
within ourselves takes ourselves to task—“come, get a clear notion of
what you would have, or what you would not have. You talk of a climax;
pray has your endurance reached its climax? It is not four months old.
What a fine resolute fellow you imagined yourself to be when you told
Tynedale you would tread in your father’s steps, and a pretty treading
you are likely to make of it! How well you like X----! Just at this
moment how redolent of pleasant associations are its streets, its shops,
its warehouses, its factories! How the prospect of this day cheers
you! Letter-copying till noon, solitary dinner at your lodgings,
letter-copying till evening, solitude; for you neither find pleasure
in Brown’s, nor Smith’s, nor Nicholl’s, nor Eccle’s company; and as
to Hunsden, you fancied there was pleasure to be derived from his
society—he! he! how did you like the taste you had of him last night?
was it sweet? Yet he is a talented, an original-minded man, and even
he does not like you; your self-respect defies you to like him; he has
always seen you to disadvantage; he always will see you to disadvantage;
your positions are unequal, and were they on the same level your
minds could not assimilate; never hope, then, to gather the honey of
friendship out of that thorn-guarded plant. Hello, Crimsworth! where are
your thoughts tending? You leave the recollection of Hunsden as a bee
would a rock, as a bird a desert; and your aspirations spread eager
wings towards a land of visions where, now in advancing daylight—in
X---- daylight—you dare to dream of congeniality, repose, union. Those
three you will never meet in this world; they are angels. The souls of
just men made perfect may encounter them in heaven, but your soul will
never be made perfect. Eight o’clock strikes! your hands are thawed, get
to work!”
“Work? why should I work?” said I sullenly: “I cannot please though I
toil like a slave.” “Work, work!” reiterated the inward voice. “I may
work, it will do no good,” I growled; but nevertheless I drew out a
packet of letters and commenced my task—task thankless and bitter as
that of the Israelite crawling over the sun-baked fields of Egypt in
search of straw and stubble wherewith to accomplish his tale of bricks.
About ten o’clock I heard Mr. Crimsworth’s gig turn into the yard, and
in a minute or two he entered the counting-house. It was his custom to
glance his eye at Steighton and myself, to hang up his mackintosh, stand
a minute with his back to the fire, and then walk out. Today he did
not deviate from his usual habits; the only difference was that when
he looked at me, his brow, instead of being merely hard, was surly; his
eye, instead of being cold, was fierce. He studied me a minute or two
longer than usual, but went out in silence.
Twelve o’clock arrived; the bell rang for a suspension of labour; the
workpeople went off to their dinners; Steighton, too, departed, desiring
me to lock the counting-house door, and take the key with me. I
was tying up a bundle of papers, and putting them in their place,
preparatory to closing my desk, when Crimsworth reappeared at the door,
and entering closed it behind him.
“You’ll stay here a minute,” said he, in a deep, brutal voice, while his
nostrils distended and his eye shot a spark of sinister fire.
Alone with Edward I remembered our relationship, and remembering that
forgot the difference of position; I put away deference and careful
forms of speech; I answered with simple brevity.
“It is time to go home,” I said, turning the key in my desk.
“You’ll stay here!” he reiterated. “And take your hand off that key!
leave it in the lock!”
“Why?” asked I. “What cause is there for changing my usual plans?”
“Do as I order,” was the answer, “and no questions! You are my servant,
obey me! What have you been about—?” He was going on in the same
breath, when an abrupt pause announced that rage had for the moment got
the better of articulation.
“You may look, if you wish to know,” I replied. “There is the open desk,
there are the papers.”
“Confound your insolence! What have you been about?”
“Your work, and have done it well.”
“Hypocrite and twaddler! Smooth-faced, snivelling greasehorn!” (This
last term is, I believe, purely ----shire, and alludes to the horn of
black, rancid whale-oil, usually to be seen suspended to cart-wheels,
and employed for greasing the same.)
“Come, Edward Crimsworth, enough of this. It is time you and I wound up
accounts. I have now given your service three months’ trial, and I find
it the most nauseous slavery under the sun. Seek another clerk. I stay
no longer.”
“What! do you dare to give me notice? Stop at least for your wages.” He
took down the heavy gig whip hanging beside his mackintosh.
I permitted myself to laugh with a degree of scorn I took no pains to
temper or hide. His fury boiled up, and when he had sworn half-a-dozen
vulgar, impious oaths, without, however, venturing to lift the whip, he
continued:
“I’ve found you out and know you thoroughly, you mean, whining
lickspittle! What have you been saying all over X---- about me? answer
me that!”
“You? I have neither inclination nor temptation to talk about you.”
“You lie! It is your practice to talk about me; it is your constant
habit to make public complaint of the treatment you receive at my hands.
You have gone and told it far and near that I give you low wages and
knock you about like a dog. I wish you were a dog! I’d set-to this
minute, and never stir from the spot till I’d cut every strip of flesh
from your bones with this whip.”
He flourished his tool. The end of the lash just touched my forehead.
A warm excited thrill ran through my veins, my blood seemed to give a
bound, and then raced fast and hot along its channels. I got up nimbly,
came round to where he stood, and faced him.
“Down with your whip!” said I, “and explain this instant what you mean.”
“Sirrah! to whom are you speaking?”
“To you. There is no one else present, I think. You say I have been
calumniating you—complaining of your low wages and bad treatment. Give
your grounds for these assertions.”
Crimsworth had no dignity, and when I sternly demanded an explanation,
he gave one in a loud, scolding voice.
“Grounds! you shall have them; and turn to the light that I may see your
brazen face blush black, when you hear yourself proved to be a liar and
a hypocrite. At a public meeting in the Town-hall yesterday, I had the
pleasure of hearing myself insulted by the speaker opposed to me in the
question under discussion, by allusions to my private affairs; by cant
about monsters without natural affection, family despots, and such
trash; and when I rose to answer, I was met by a shout from the filthy
mob, where the mention of your name enabled me at once to detect the
quarter in which this base attack had originated. When I looked round, I
saw that treacherous villain, Hunsden acting as fugleman. I detected you
in close conversation with Hunsden at my house a month ago, and I know
that you were at Hunsden’s rooms last night. Deny it if you dare.”
“Oh, I shall not deny it! And if Hunsden hounded on the people to hiss
you, he did quite right. You deserve popular execration; for a worse
man, a harder master, a more brutal brother than you are has seldom
existed.”
“Sirrah! sirrah!” reiterated Crimsworth; and to complete his apostrophe,
he cracked the whip straight over my head.
A minute sufficed to wrest it from him, break it in two pieces, and
throw it under the grate. He made a headlong rush at me, which I evaded,
and said—
“Touch me, and I’ll have you up before the nearest magistrate.”
Men like Crimsworth, if firmly and calmly resisted, always abate
something of their exorbitant insolence; he had no mind to be brought
before a magistrate, and I suppose he saw I meant what I said. After
an odd and long stare at me, at once bull-like and amazed, he seemed
to bethink himself that, after all, his money gave him sufficient
superiority over a beggar like me, and that he had in his hands a surer
and more dignified mode of revenge than the somewhat hazardous one of
personal chastisement.
“Take your hat,” said he. “Take what belongs to you, and go out at
that door; get away to your parish, you pauper: beg, steal, starve, get
transported, do what you like; but at your peril venture again into
my sight! If ever I hear of your setting foot on an inch of ground
belonging to me, I’ll hire a man to cane you.”
“It is not likely you’ll have the chance; once off your premises, what
temptation can I have to return to them? I leave a prison, I leave a
tyrant; I leave what is worse than the worst that can lie before me, so
no fear of my coming back.”
“Go, or I’ll make you!” exclaimed Crimsworth.
I walked deliberately to my desk, took out such of its contents as were
my own property, put them in my pocket, locked the desk, and placed the
key on the top.
“What are you abstracting from that desk?” demanded the millowner.
“Leave all behind in its place, or I’ll send for a policeman to search
you.”
“Look sharp about it, then,” said I, and I took down my hat, drew on my
gloves, and walked leisurely out of the counting-house—walked out of it
to enter it no more.
I recollect that when the mill-bell rang the dinner hour, before Mr.
Crimsworth entered, and the scene above related took place, I had had
rather a sharp appetite, and had been waiting somewhat impatiently to
hear the signal of feeding time. I forgot it now, however; the images
of potatoes and roast mutton were effaced from my mind by the stir and
tumult which the transaction of the last half-hour had there excited. I
only thought of walking, that the action of my muscles might harmonize
with the action of my nerves; and walk I did, fast and far. How could
I do otherwise? A load was lifted off my heart; I felt light and
liberated. I had got away from Bigben Close without a breach of
resolution; without injury to my self-respect. I had not forced
circumstances; circumstances had freed me. Life was again open to me;
no longer was its horizon limited by the high black wall surrounding
Crimsworth’s mill. Two hours had elapsed before my sensations had so far
subsided as to leave me calm enough to remark for what wider and clearer
boundaries I had exchanged that sooty girdle. When I did look up, lo!
straight before me lay Grovetown, a village of villas about five miles
out of X----. The short winter day, as I perceived from the far-declined
sun, was already approaching its close; a chill frost-mist was rising
from the river on which X---- stands, and along whose banks the road I
had taken lay; it dimmed the earth, but did not obscure the clear icy
blue of the January sky. There was a great stillness near and far; the
time of the day favoured tranquillity, as the people were all employed
within-doors, the hour of evening release from the factories not being
yet arrived; a sound of full-flowing water alone pervaded the air, for
the river was deep and abundant, swelled by the melting of a late snow.
I stood awhile, leaning over a wall; and looking down at the current:
I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired memory to take a clear
and permanent impression of the scene, and treasure it for future years.
Grovetown church clock struck four; looking up, I beheld the last of
that day’s sun, glinting red through the leafless boughs of some
very old oak trees surrounding the church—its light coloured and
characterized the picture as I wished. I paused yet a moment, till the
sweet, slow sound of the bell had quite died out of the air; then ear,
eye and feeling satisfied, I quitted the wall and once more turned my
face towards X----.
CHAPTER VI.
I RE-ENTERED the town a hungry man; the dinner I had forgotten recurred
seductively to my recollection; and it was with a quick step and sharp
appetite I ascended the narrow street leading to my lodgings. It was
dark when I opened the front door and walked into the house. I wondered
how my fire would be; the night was cold, and I shuddered at the
prospect of a grate full of sparkless cinders. To my joyful surprise,
I found, on entering my sitting-room, a good fire and a clean hearth.
I had hardly noticed this phenomenon, when I became aware of another
subject for wonderment; the chair I usually occupied near the hearth was
already filled; a person sat there with his arms folded on his chest,
and his legs stretched out on the rug. Short-sighted as I am, doubtful
as was the gleam of the firelight, a moment’s examination enabled me to
recognize in this person my acquaintance, Mr. Hunsden. I could not of
course be much pleased to see him, considering the manner in which I had
parted from him the night before, and as I walked to the hearth, stirred
the fire, and said coolly, “Good evening,” my demeanour evinced as
little cordiality as I felt; yet I wondered in my own mind what had
brought him there; and I wondered, also, what motives had induced him to
interfere so actively between me and Edward; it was to him, it appeared,
that I owed my welcome dismissal; still I could not bring myself to
ask him questions, to show any eagerness of curiosity; if he chose to
explain, he might, but the explanation should be a perfectly voluntary
one on his part; I thought he was entering upon it.
“You owe me a debt of gratitude,” were his first words.
“Do I?” said I; “I hope it is not a large one, for I am much too poor to
charge myself with heavy liabilities of any kind.”
“Then declare yourself bankrupt at once, for this liability is a ton
weight at least. When I came in I found your fire out, and I had it lit
again, and made that sulky drab of a servant stay and blow at it with
the bellows till it had burnt up properly; now, say ‘Thank you!’”
“Not till I have had something to eat; I can thank nobody while I am so
famished.”
I rang the bell and ordered tea and some cold meat.
“Cold meat!” exclaimed Hunsden, as the servant closed the door, “what a
glutton you are; man! Meat with tea! you’ll die of eating too much.”
“No, Mr. Hunsden, I shall not.” I felt a necessity for contradicting
him; I was irritated with hunger, and irritated at seeing him there, and
irritated at the continued roughness of his manner.
“It is over-eating that makes you so ill-tempered,” said he.
“How do you know?” I demanded. “It is like you to give a pragmatical
opinion without being acquainted with any of the circumstances of the
case; I have had no dinner.”
What I said was petulant and snappish enough, and Hunsden only replied
by looking in my face and laughing.
“Poor thing!” he whined, after a pause. “It has had no dinner, has it?
What! I suppose its master would not let it come home. Did Crimsworth
order you to fast by way of punishment, William!”
“No, Mr. Hunsden.” Fortunately at this sulky juncture, tea, was brought
in, and I fell to upon some bread and butter and cold beef directly.
Having cleared a plateful, I became so far humanized as to intimate to
Mr. Hunsden that he need not sit there staring, but might come to the
table and do as I did, if he liked.
“But I don’t like in the least,” said he, and therewith he summoned the
servant by a fresh pull of the bell-rope, and intimated a desire to
have a glass of toast-and-water. “And some more coal,” he added; “Mr.
Crimsworth shall keep a good fire while I stay.”
His orders being executed, he wheeled his chair round to the table, so
as to be opposite me.
“Well,” he proceeded. “You are out of work, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said I; and not disposed to show the satisfaction I felt on this
point, I, yielding to the whim of the moment, took up the subject as
though I considered myself aggrieved rather than benefited by what had
been done. “Yes—thanks to you, I am. Crimsworth turned me off at
a minute’s notice, owing to some interference of yours at a public
meeting, I understand.”
“Ah! what! he mentioned that? He observed me signalling the lads, did
he? What had he to say about his friend Hunsden—anything sweet?”
“He called you a treacherous villain.”
“Oh, he hardly knows me yet! I’m one of those shy people who don’t come
out all at once, and he is only just beginning to make my acquaintance,
but he’ll find I’ve some good qualities—excellent ones! The Hunsdens
were always unrivalled at tracking a rascal; a downright, dishonourable
villain is their natural prey—they could not keep off him wherever
they met him; you used the word pragmatical just now—that word is the
property of our family; it has been applied to us from generation to
generation; we have fine noses for abuses; we scent a scoundrel a mile
off; we are reformers born, radical reformers; and it was impossible for
me to live in the same town with Crimsworth, to come into weekly contact
with him, to witness some of his conduct to you (for whom personally
I care nothing; I only consider the brutal injustice with which he
violated your natural claim to equality)—I say it was impossible for
me to be thus situated and not feel the angel or the demon of my race
at work within me. I followed my instinct, opposed a tyrant, and broke a
chain.”
Now this speech interested me much, both because it brought out
Hunsden’s character, and because it explained his motives; it interested
me so much that I forgot to reply to it, and sat silent, pondering over
a throng of ideas it had suggested.
“Are you grateful to me?” he asked, presently.
In fact I was grateful, or almost so, and I believe I half liked him at
the moment, notwithstanding his proviso that what he had done was not
out of regard for me. But human nature is perverse. Impossible to answer
his blunt question in the affirmative, so I disclaimed all tendency
to gratitude, and advised him if he expected any reward for his
championship, to look for it in a better world, as he was not likely
to meet with it here. In reply he termed me “a dry-hearted aristocratic
scamp,” whereupon I again charged him with having taken the bread out of
my mouth.
“Your bread was dirty, man!” cried Hunsden—“dirty and unwholesome!
It came through the hands of a tyrant, for I tell you Crimsworth is a
tyrant,—a tyrant to his workpeople, a tyrant to his clerks, and will
some day be a tyrant to his wife.”
“Nonsense! bread is bread, and a salary is a salary. I’ve lost mine, and
through your means.”
“There’s sense in what you say, after all,” rejoined Hunsden. “I must
say I am rather agreeably surprised to hear you make so practical
an observation as that last. I had imagined now, from my previous
observation of your character, that the sentimental delight you would
have taken in your newly regained liberty would, for a while at least,
have effaced all ideas of forethought and prudence. I think better of
you for looking steadily to the needful.”
“Looking steadily to the needful! How can I do otherwise? I must live,
and to live I must have what you call ‘the needful,’ which I can only
get by working. I repeat it, you have taken my work from me.”
“What do you mean to do?” pursued Hunsden coolly. “You have influential
relations; I suppose they’ll soon provide you with another place.”
“Influential relations? Who? I should like to know their names.”
“The Seacombes.”
“Stuff! I have cut them.”
Hunsden looked at me incredulously.
“I have,” said I, “and that definitively.”
“You must mean they have cut you, William.”
“As you please. They offered me their patronage on condition of my
entering the Church; I declined both the terms and the recompence; I
withdrew from my cold uncles, and preferred throwing myself into my
elder brother’s arms, from whose affectionate embrace I am now torn by
the cruel intermeddling of a stranger—of yourself, in short.”
I could not repress a half-smile as I said this; a similar
demi-manifestation of feeling appeared at the same moment on Hunsden’s
lips.
“Oh, I see!” said he, looking into my eyes, and it was evident he did
see right down into my heart. Having sat a minute or two with his chin
resting on his hand, diligently occupied in the continued perusal of my
countenance, he went on:
“Seriously, have you then nothing to expect from the Seacombes?”
“Yes, rejection and repulsion. Why do you ask me twice? How can hands
stained with the ink of a counting-house, soiled with the grease of
a wool-warehouse, ever again be permitted to come into contact with
aristocratic palms?”
“There would be a difficulty, no doubt; still you are such a complete
Seacombe in appearance, feature, language, almost manner, I wonder they
should disown you.”
“They have disowned me; so talk no more about it.”
“Do you regret it, William?”
“No.”
“Why not, lad?”
“Because they are not people with whom I could ever have had any
sympathy.”
“I say you are one of them.”
“That merely proves that you know nothing at all about it; I am my
mother’s son, but not my uncles’ nephew.”
“Still—one of your uncles is a lord, though rather an obscure and not a
very wealthy one, and the other a right honourable: you should consider
worldly interest.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Hunsden. You know or may know that even had I desired to
be submissive to my uncles, I could not have stooped with a good enough
grace ever to have won their favour. I should have sacrificed my own
comfort and not have gained their patronage in return.”
“Very likely—so you calculated your wisest plan was to follow your own
devices at once?”
“Exactly. I must follow my own devices—I must, till the day of my
death; because I can neither comprehend, adopt, nor work out those of
other people.”
Hunsden yawned. “Well,” said he, “in all this, I see but one thing
clearly-that is, that the whole affair is no business of mine.” He
stretched himself and again yawned. “I wonder what time it is,” he went
on: “I have an appointment for seven o’clock.”
“Three quarters past six by my watch.”
“Well, then I’ll go.” He got up. “You’ll not meddle with trade again?”
said he, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece.
“No; I think not.”
“You would be a fool if you did. Probably, after all, you’ll think
better of your uncles’ proposal and go into the Church.”
“A singular regeneration must take place in my whole inner and outer man
before I do that. A good clergyman is one of the best of men.”
“Indeed! Do you think so?” interrupted Hunsden, scoffingly.
“I do, and no mistake. But I have not the peculiar points which go to
make a good clergyman; and rather than adopt a profession for which I
have no vocation, I would endure extremities of hardship from poverty.”
“You’re a mighty difficult customer to suit. You won’t be a tradesman
or a parson; you can’t be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a gentleman, because
you’ve no money. I’d recommend you to travel.”
“What! without money?”
“You must travel in search of money, man. You can speak French—with
a vile English accent, no doubt—still, you can speak it. Go on to the
Continent, and see what will turn up for you there.”
“God knows I should like to go!” exclaimed I with involuntary ardour.
“Go: what the deuce hinders you? You may get to Brussels, for instance,
for five or six pounds, if you know how to manage with economy.”
“Necessity would teach me if I didn’t.”
“Go, then, and let your wits make a way for you when you get there. I
know Brussels almost as well as I know X----, and I am sure it would
suit such a one as you better than London.”
“But occupation, Mr. Hunsden! I must go where occupation is to be had;
and how could I get recommendation, or introduction, or employment at
Brussels?”
“There speaks the organ of caution. You hate to advance a step before
you know every inch of the way. You haven’t a sheet of paper and a
pen-and-ink?”
“I hope so,” and I produced writing materials with alacrity; for I
guessed what he was going to do. He sat down, wrote a few lines, folded,
sealed, and addressed a letter, and held it out to me.
“There, Prudence, there’s a pioneer to hew down the first rough
difficulties of your path. I know well enough, lad, you are not one of
those who will run their neck into a noose without seeing how they
are to get it out again, and you’re right there. A reckless man is
my aversion, and nothing should ever persuade me to meddle with the
concerns of such a one. Those who are reckless for themselves are
generally ten times more so for their friends.”
“This is a letter of introduction, I suppose?” said I, taking the
epistle.
“Yes. With that in your pocket you will run no risk of finding yourself
in a state of absolute destitution, which, I know, you will regard as a
degradation—so should I, for that matter. The person to whom you will
present it generally has two or three respectable places depending upon
his recommendation.”
“That will just suit me,” said I.
“Well, and where’s your gratitude?” demanded Mr. Hunsden; “don’t you
know how to say ‘Thank you?’”
“I’ve fifteen pounds and a watch, which my godmother, whom I never saw,
gave me eighteen years ago,” was my rather irrelevant answer; and I
further avowed myself a happy man, and professed that I did not envy any
being in Christendom.
“But your gratitude?”
“I shall be off presently, Mr. Hunsden—to-morrow, if all be well: I’ll
not stay a day longer in X---- than I’m obliged.”
“Very good—but it will be decent to make due acknowledgment for the
assistance you have received; be quick! It is just going to strike
seven: I’m waiting to be thanked.”
“Just stand out of the way, will you, Mr. Hunsden: I want a key there is
on the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll pack my portmanteau before I go
to bed.”
The house clock struck seven.
“The lad is a heathen,” said Hunsden, and taking his hat from a
sideboard, he left the room, laughing to himself. I had half an
inclination to follow him: I really intended to leave X---- the next
morning, and should certainly not have another opportunity of bidding
him good-bye. The front door banged to.
“Let him go,” said I, “we shall meet again some day.”
CHAPTER VII.
READER, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don’t know the
physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments defined upon
your memory, as I have them on mine?
Three—nay four—pictures line the four-walled cell where are stored for
me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that picture is in far
perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly coloured, green, dewy,
with a spring sky, piled with glittering yet showery clouds; for my
childhood was not all sunshine—it had its overcast, its cold, its
stormy hours. Second, X----, huge, dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked;
a yellow sky, sooty clouds; no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs
blighted and sullied—a very dreary scene.
Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the
fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or may not,
as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for the present it
must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name
that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such
as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can
produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight.
It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves
unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept,
are seen by me ascending from the clouds—haloed most of them—but while
I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their
outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all,
like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns,
resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!
This is Belgium, reader. Look! don’t call the picture a flat or a dull
one—it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it. When I
left Ostend on a mild February morning, and found myself on the road
to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment
possessed an edge whetted to the finest, untouched, keen, exquisite.
I was young; I had good health; pleasure and I had never met; no
indulgence of hers had enervated or sated one faculty of my nature.
Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of
her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.
Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that
from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what
if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not; his eyes are
fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having
gained it he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the sun will
face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon,
and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the
god’s career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl
and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained
by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot
no hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson
peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and
I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns
scratching my face and hands.
I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence
(these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads).
Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. Green, reedy
swamps; fields fertile but flat, cultivated in patches that made them
look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut trees, formal as
pollard willows, skirting the horizon; narrow canals, gliding slow by
the road-side; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a
gray, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful,
scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to
me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair
so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp
days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain
recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye
caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the
city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a
fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ----, where I had been advised by a
fellow-traveller to put up; having eaten a traveller’s supper, I retired
to bed, and slept a traveller’s sleep.
Next morning I awoke from prolonged and sound repose with the impression
that I was yet in X----, and perceiving it to be broad daylight I
started up, imagining that I had overslept myself and should be behind
time at the counting-house. The momentary and painful sense of restraint
vanished before the revived and reviving consciousness of freedom, as,
throwing back the white curtains of my bed, I looked forth into a wide,
lofty foreign chamber; how different from the small and dingy, though
not uncomfortable, apartment I had occupied for a night or two at a
respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the packet!
Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that little dingy room!
It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness,
I first heard the great bell of St. Paul’s telling London it was
midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full
charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window
of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I
suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are
felt but once; treasure them, Memory; seal them in urns, and keep them
in safe niches! Well—I rose. Travellers talk of the apartments in
foreign dwellings being bare and uncomfortable; I thought my chamber
looked stately and cheerful. It had such large windows—CROISEES that
opened like doors, with such broad, clear panes of glass; such a great
looking-glass stood on my dressing-table—such a fine mirror glittered
over the mantelpiece—the painted floor looked so clean and glossy;
when I had dressed and was descending the stairs, the broad marble steps
almost awed me, and so did the lofty hall into which they conducted.
On the first landing I met a Flemish housemaid: she had wooden shoes, a
short red petticoat, a printed cotton bedgown, her face was broad,
her physiognomy eminently stupid; when I spoke to her in French, she
answered me in Flemish, with an air the reverse of civil; yet I thought
her charming; if she was not pretty or polite, she was, I conceived,
very picturesque; she reminded me of the female figures in certain Dutch
paintings I had seen in other years at Seacombe Hall.
I repaired to the public room; that, too, was very large and very lofty,
and warmed by a stove; the floor was black, and the stove was black, and
most of the furniture was black: yet I never experienced a freer
sense of exhilaration than when I sat down at a very long, black table
(covered, however, in part by a white cloth), and, having ordered
breakfast, began to pour out my coffee from a little black coffee-pot.
The stove might be dismal-looking to some eyes, not to mine, but it
was indisputably very warm, and there were two gentlemen seated by
it talking in French; impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or
comprehend much of the purport of what they said—yet French, in the
mouths of Frenchmen, or Belgians (I was not then sensible of the horrors
of the Belgian accent) was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen
presently discerned me to be an Englishman—no doubt from the fashion in
which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in
my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English.
The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice, politely accosted
me in very good English; I remember I wished to God that I could speak
French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for
the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the
capital I was in; it was my first experience of that skill in living
languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels.
I lingered over my breakfast as long as I could; while it was there
on the table, and while that stranger continued talking to me, I was a
free, independent traveller; but at last the things were removed, the
two gentlemen left the room; suddenly the illusion ceased, reality and
business came back. I, a bondsman just released from the yoke, freed for
one week from twenty-one years of constraint, must, of necessity, resume
the fetters of dependency. Hardly had I tasted the delight of being
without a master when duty issued her stern mandate: “Go forth and seek
another service.” I never linger over a painful and necessary task; I
never take pleasure before business, it is not in my nature to do so;
impossible to enjoy a leisurely walk over the city, though I perceived
the morning was very fine, until I had first presented Mr. Hunsden’s
letter of introduction, and got fairly on to the track of a new
situation. Wrenching my mind from liberty and delight, I seized my hat,
and forced my reluctant body out of the Hotel de ---- into the foreign
street.
It was a fine day, but I would not look at the blue sky or at the
stately houses round me; my mind was bent on one thing, finding out “Mr.
Brown, Numero —, Rue Royale,” for so my letter was addressed. By dint
of inquiry I succeeded; I stood at last at the desired door, knocked,
asked for Mr. Brown, and was admitted.
Being shown into a small breakfast-room, I found myself in the
presence of an elderly gentleman—very grave, business-like, and
respectable-looking. I presented Mr. Hunsden’s letter; he received me
very civilly. After a little desultory conversation he asked me if there
was anything in which his advice or experience could be of use. I said,
“Yes,” and then proceeded to tell him that I was not a gentleman of
fortune, travelling for pleasure, but an ex-counting-house clerk, who
wanted employment of some kind, and that immediately too. He replied
that as a friend of Mr. Hunsden’s he would be willing to assist me as
well as he could. After some meditation he named a place in a mercantile
house at Liege, and another in a bookseller’s shop at Louvain.
“Clerk and shopman!” murmured I to myself. “No.” I shook my head. I
had tried the high stool; I hated it; I believed there were other
occupations that would suit me better; besides I did not wish to leave
Brussels.
“I know of no place in Brussels,” answered Mr. Brown, “unless indeed you
were disposed to turn your attention to teaching. I am acquainted with
the director of a large establishment who is in want of a professor of
English and Latin.”
I thought two minutes, then I seized the idea eagerly.
“The very thing, sir!” said I.
“But,” asked he, “do you understand French well enough to teach Belgian
boys English?”
Fortunately I could answer this question in the affirmative;
having studied French under a Frenchman, I could speak the language
intelligibly though not fluently. I could also read it well, and write
it decently.
“Then,” pursued Mr. Brown, “I think I can promise you the place, for
Monsieur Pelet will not refuse a professor recommended by me; but come
here again at five o’clock this afternoon, and I will introduce you to
him.”
The word “professor” struck me. “I am not a professor,” said I.
“Oh,” returned Mr. Brown, “professor, here in Belgium, means a teacher,
that is all.”
My conscience thus quieted, I thanked Mr. Brown, and, for the present,
withdrew. This time I stepped out into the street with a relieved heart;
the task I had imposed on myself for that day was executed. I might now
take some hours of holiday. I felt free to look up. For the first time
I remarked the sparkling clearness of the air, the deep blue of the sky,
the gay clean aspect of the white-washed or painted houses; I saw what
a fine street was the Rue Royale, and, walking leisurely along its broad
pavement, I continued to survey its stately hotels, till the palisades,
the gates, and trees of the park appearing in sight, offered to my eye a
new attraction. I remember, before entering the park, I stood awhile to
contemplate the statue of General Belliard, and then I advanced to the
top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow
back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d’Isabelle.
I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a rather large
house opposite, where, on a brass plate, was inscribed, “Pensionnat de
Demoiselles.” Pensionnat! The word excited an uneasy sensation in
my mind; it seemed to speak of restraint. Some of the demoiselles,
externats no doubt, were at that moment issuing from the door—I looked
for a pretty face amongst them, but their close, little French bonnets
hid their features; in a moment they were gone.
I had traversed a good deal of Brussels before five o’clock arrived,
but punctually as that hour struck I was again in the Rue Royale.
Re-admitted to Mr. Brown’s breakfast-room, I found him, as before,
seated at the table, and he was not alone—a gentleman stood by the
hearth. Two words of introduction designated him as my future master.
“M. Pelet, Mr. Crimsworth; Mr. Crimsworth, M. Pelet,” a bow on each
side finished the ceremony. I don’t know what sort of a bow I made; an
ordinary one, I suppose, for I was in a tranquil, commonplace frame of
mind; I felt none of the agitation which had troubled my first interview
with Edward Crimsworth. M. Pelet’s bow was extremely polite, yet not
theatrical, scarcely French; he and I were presently seated opposite to
each other. In a pleasing voice, low, and, out of consideration to my
foreign ears, very distinct and deliberate, M. Pelet intimated that he
had just been receiving from “le respectable M. Brown,” an account of my
attainments and character, which relieved him from all scruple as to
the propriety of engaging me as professor of English and Latin in
his establishment; nevertheless, for form’s sake, he would put a few
questions to test my powers. He did, and expressed in flattering terms
his satisfaction at my answers. The subject of salary next came on; it
was fixed at one thousand francs per annum, besides board and lodging.
“And in addition,” suggested M. Pelet, “as there will be some hours
in each day during which your services will not be required in my
establishment, you may, in time, obtain employment in other seminaries,
and thus turn your vacant moments to profitable account.”
I thought this very kind, and indeed I found afterwards that the terms
on which M. Pelet had engaged me were really liberal for Brussels;
instruction being extremely cheap there on account of the number of
teachers. It was further arranged that I should be installed in my new
post the very next day, after which M. Pelet and I parted.
Well, and what was he like? and what were my impressions concerning him?
He was a man of about forty years of age, of middle size, and rather
emaciated figure; his face was pale, his cheeks were sunk, and his eyes
hollow; his features were pleasing and regular, they had a French
turn (for M. Pelet was no Fleming, but a Frenchman both by birth
and parentage), yet the degree of harshness inseparable from Gallic
lineaments was, in his case, softened by a mild blue eye, and a
melancholy, almost suffering, expression of countenance; his physiognomy
was “fine et spirituelle.” I use two French words because they define
better than any English terms the species of intelligence with which his
features were imbued. He was altogether an interesting and prepossessing
personage. I wondered only at the utter absence of all the ordinary
characteristics of his profession, and almost feared he could not be
stern and resolute enough for a schoolmaster. Externally at least
M. Pelet presented an absolute contrast to my late master, Edward
Crimsworth.
Influenced by the impression I had received of his gentleness, I was a
good deal surprised when, on arriving the next day at my new employer’s
house, and being admitted to a first view of what was to be the
sphere of my future labours, namely the large, lofty, and well-lighted
schoolrooms, I beheld a numerous assemblage of pupils, boys of course,
whose collective appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing,
and well-disciplined seminary. As I traversed the classes in company
with M. Pelet, a profound silence reigned on all sides, and if by chance
a murmur or a whisper arose, one glance from the pensive eye of this
most gentle pedagogue stilled it instantly. It was astonishing, I
thought, how so mild a check could prove so effectual. When I had
perambulated the length and breadth of the classes, M. Pelet turned and
said to me—
“Would you object to taking the boys as they are, and testing their
proficiency in English?”
The proposal was unexpected. I had thought I should have been allowed at
least three days to prepare; but it is a bad omen to commence any career
by hesitation, so I just stepped to the professor’s desk near which we
stood, and faced the circle of my pupils. I took a moment to collect
my thoughts, and likewise to frame in French the sentence by which I
proposed to open business. I made it as short as possible:—
“Messieurs, prenez vos livres de lecture.”
“Anglais ou Francais, monsieur?” demanded a thickset, moon-faced young
Flamand in a blouse. The answer was fortunately easy:—
“Anglais.”
I determined to give myself as little trouble as possible in this
lesson; it would not do yet to trust my unpractised tongue with the
delivery of explanations; my accent and idiom would be too open to the
criticisms of the young gentlemen before me, relative to whom I felt
already it would be necessary at once to take up an advantageous
position, and I proceeded to employ means accordingly.
“Commencez!” cried I, when they had all produced their books. The
moon-faced youth (by name Jules Vanderkelkov, as I afterwards learnt)
took the first sentence. The “livre de lecture” was the “Vicar of
Wakefield,” much used in foreign schools because it is supposed to
contain prime samples of conversational English; it might, however,
have been a Runic scroll for any resemblance the words, as enunciated by
Jules, bore to the language in ordinary use amongst the natives of Great
Britain. My God! how he did snuffle, snort, and wheeze! All he said was
said in his throat and nose, for it is thus the Flamands speak, but
I heard him to the end of his paragraph without proffering a word of
correction, whereat he looked vastly self-complacent, convinced,
no doubt, that he had acquitted himself like a real born and bred
“Anglais.” In the same unmoved silence I listened to a dozen in
rotation, and when the twelfth had concluded with splutter, hiss, and
mumble, I solemnly laid down the book.
“Arretez!” said I. There was a pause, during which I regarded them all
with a steady and somewhat stern gaze; a dog, if stared at hard enough
and long enough, will show symptoms of embarrassment, and so at length
did my bench of Belgians. Perceiving that some of the faces before me
were beginning to look sullen, and others ashamed, I slowly joined my
hands, and ejaculated in a deep “voix de poitrine”—
“Comme c’est affreux!”
They looked at each other, pouted, coloured, swung their heels; they
were not pleased, I saw, but they were impressed, and in the way
I wished them to be. Having thus taken them down a peg in their
self-conceit, the next step was to raise myself in their estimation; not
a very easy thing, considering that I hardly dared to speak for fear of
betraying my own deficiencies.
“Ecoutez, messieurs!” said I, and I endeavoured to throw into my
accents the compassionate tone of a superior being, who, touched by the
extremity of the helplessness, which at first only excited his scorn,
deigns at length to bestow aid. I then began at the very beginning of
the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and read, in a slow, distinct voice, some
twenty pages, they all the while sitting mute and listening with fixed
attention; by the time I had done nearly an hour had elapsed. I then
rose and said:—
“C’est assez pour aujourd’hui, messieurs; demain nous recommencerons, et
j’espere que tout ira bien.”
With this oracular sentence I bowed, and in company with M. Pelet
quitted the school-room.
“C’est bien! c’est tres bien!” said my principal as we entered his
parlour. “Je vois que monsieur a de l’adresse; cela, me plait, car, dans
l’instruction, l’adresse fait tout autant que le savoir.”
From the parlour M. Pelet conducted me to my apartment, my “chambre,”
as Monsieur said with a certain air of complacency. It was a very small
room, with an excessively small bed, but M. Pelet gave me to understand
that I was to occupy it quite alone, which was of course a great
comfort. Yet, though so limited in dimensions, it had two windows. Light
not being taxed in Belgium, the people never grudge its admission into
their houses; just here, however, this observation is not very APROPOS,
for one of these windows was boarded up; the open windows looked into
the boys’ playground. I glanced at the other, as wondering what aspect
it would present if disencumbered of the boards. M. Pelet read, I
suppose, the expression of my eye; he explained:—
“La fenetre fermee donne sur un jardin appartenant a un pensionnat
de demoiselles,” said he, “et les convenances exigent—enfin, vous
comprenez—n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“Oui, oui,” was my reply, and I looked of course quite satisfied; but
when M. Pelet had retired and closed the door after him, the first thing
I did was to scrutinize closely the nailed boards, hoping to find
some chink or crevice which I might enlarge, and so get a peep at the
consecrated ground. My researches were vain, for the boards were well
joined and strongly nailed. It is astonishing how disappointed I felt. I
thought it would have been so pleasant to have looked out upon a
garden planted with flowers and trees, so amusing to have watched the
demoiselles at their play; to have studied female character in a variety
of phases, myself the while sheltered from view by a modest muslin
curtain, whereas, owing doubtless to the absurd scruples of some old
duenna of a directress, I had now only the option of looking at a bare
gravelled court, with an enormous “pas de geant” in the middle, and the
monotonous walls and windows of a boys’ school-house round. Not only
then, but many a time after, especially in moments of weariness and
low spirits, did I look with dissatisfied eyes on that most tantalizing
board, longing to tear it away and get a glimpse of the green region
which I imagined to lie beyond. I knew a tree grew close up to the
window, for though there were as yet no leaves to rustle, I often heard
at night the tapping of branches against the panes. In the daytime,
when I listened attentively, I could hear, even through the boards, the
voices of the demoiselles in their hours of recreation, and, to speak
the honest truth, my sentimental reflections were occasionally a trifle
disarranged by the not quite silvery, in fact the too often brazen
sounds, which, rising from the unseen paradise below, penetrated
clamorously into my solitude. Not to mince matters, it really seemed to
me a doubtful case whether the lungs of Mdlle. Reuter’s girls or those
of M. Pelet’s boys were the strongest, and when it came to shrieking
the girls indisputably beat the boys hollow. I forgot to say, by-the-by,
that Reuter was the name of the old lady who had had my window bearded
up. I say old, for such I, of course, concluded her to be, judging from
her cautious, chaperon-like proceedings; besides, nobody ever spoke of
her as young. I remember I was very much amused when I first heard her
Christian name; it was Zoraide—Mademoiselle Zoraide Reuter. But the
continental nations do allow themselves vagaries in the choice of names,
such as we sober English never run into. I think, indeed, we have too
limited a list to choose from.
Meantime my path was gradually growing smooth before me. I, in a
few weeks, conquered the teasing difficulties inseparable from the
commencement of almost every career. Ere long I had acquired as much
facility in speaking French as set me at my ease with my pupils; and
as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and
continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they
never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree
acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the
relation in which professors and pupils too frequently stand towards
each other in those establishments, will consider an important and
uncommon one. Before concluding this chapter I will say a word on the
system I pursued with regard to my classes: my experience may possibly
be of use to others.
It did not require very keen observation to detect the character of the
youth of Brabant, but it needed a certain degree of tact to adopt one’s
measures to their capacity. Their intellectual faculties were generally
weak, their animal propensities strong; thus there was at once an
impotence and a kind of inert force in their natures; they were dull,
but they were also singularly stubborn, heavy as lead and, like lead,
most difficult to move. Such being the case, it would have been truly
absurd to exact from them much in the way of mental exertion; having
short memories, dense intelligence, feeble reflective powers, they
recoiled with repugnance from any occupation that demanded close study
or deep thought. Had the abhorred effort been extorted from them by
injudicious and arbitrary measures on the part of the Professor, they
would have resisted as obstinately, as clamorously, as desperate swine;
and though not brave singly, they were relentless acting EN MASSE.
I understood that before my arrival in M. Pelet’s establishment, the
combined insubordination of the pupils had effected the dismissal of
more than one English master. It was necessary then to exact only the
most moderate application from natures so little qualified to apply—to
assist, in every practicable way, understandings so opaque and
contracted—to be ever gentle, considerate, yielding even, to a certain
point, with dispositions so irrationally perverse; but, having reached
that culminating point of indulgence, you must fix your foot, plant it,
root it in rock—become immutable as the towers of Ste. Gudule; for a
step—but half a step farther, and you would plunge headlong into the
gulf of imbecility; there lodged, you would speedily receive proofs
of Flemish gratitude and magnanimity in showers of Brabant saliva and
handfuls of Low Country mud. You might smooth to the utmost the path of
learning, remove every pebble from the track; but then you must finally
insist with decision on the pupil taking your arm and allowing himself
to be led quietly along the prepared road. When I had brought down my
lesson to the lowest level of my dullest pupil’s capacity—when I
had shown myself the mildest, the most tolerant of masters—a word of
impertinence, a movement of disobedience, changed me at once into
a despot. I offered then but one alternative—submission and
acknowledgment of error, or ignominious expulsion. This system answered,
and my influence, by degrees, became established on a firm basis. “The
boy is father to the man,” it is said; and so I often thought when
looked at my boys and remembered the political history of their
ancestors. Pelet’s school was merely an epitome of the Belgian nation.
CHAPTER VIII.
AND Pelet himself? How did I continue to like him? Oh, extremely well!
Nothing could be more smooth, gentlemanlike, and even friendly, than
his demeanour to me. I had to endure from him neither cold neglect,
irritating interference, nor pretentious assumption of superiority. I
fear, however, two poor, hard-worked Belgian ushers in the establishment
could not have said as much; to them the director’s manner was
invariably dry, stern, and cool. I believe he perceived once or twice
that I was a little shocked at the difference he made between them and
me, and accounted for it by saying, with a quiet sarcastic smile—
“Ce ne sont que des Flamands—allez!”
And then he took his cigar gently from his lips and spat on the painted
floor of the room in which we were sitting. Flamands certainly they
were, and both had the true Flamand physiognomy, where intellectual
inferiority is marked in lines none can mistake; still they were men,
and, in the main, honest men; and I could not see why their being
aboriginals of the flat, dull soil should serve as a pretext for
treating them with perpetual severity and contempt. This idea, of
injustice somewhat poisoned the pleasure I might otherwise have derived
from Pelet’s soft affable manner to myself. Certainly it was agreeable,
when the day’s work was over, to find one’s employer an intelligent
and cheerful companion; and if he was sometimes a little sarcastic
and sometimes a little too insinuating, and if I did discover that
his mildness was more a matter of appearance than of reality—if I did
occasionally suspect the existence of flint or steel under an external
covering of velvet—still we are none of us perfect; and weary as I was
of the atmosphere of brutality and insolence in which I had constantly
lived at X----, I had no inclination now, on casting anchor in calmer
regions, to institute at once a prying search after defects that were
scrupulously withdrawn and carefully veiled from my view. I was willing
to take Pelet for what he seemed—to believe him benevolent and friendly
until some untoward event should prove him otherwise. He was not
married, and I soon perceived he had all a Frenchman’s, all a Parisian’s
notions about matrimony and women. I suspected a degree of laxity in
his code of morals, there was something so cold and BLASE in his tone
whenever he alluded to what he called “le beau sexe;” but he was too
gentlemanlike to intrude topics I did not invite, and as he was really
intelligent and really fond of intellectual subjects of discourse, he
and I always found enough to talk about, without seeking themes in the
mire. I hated his fashion of mentioning love; I abhorred, from my soul,
mere licentiousness. He felt the difference of our notions, and, by
mutual consent, we kept off ground debateable.
Pelet’s house was kept and his kitchen managed by his mother, a real
old Frenchwoman; she had been handsome—at least she told me so, and I
strove to believe her; she was now ugly, as only continental old women
can be; perhaps, though, her style of dress made her look uglier than
she really was. Indoors she would go about without cap, her grey hair
strangely dishevelled; then, when at home, she seldom wore a gown—only
a shabby cotton camisole; shoes, too, were strangers to her feet, and in
lieu of them she sported roomy slippers, trodden down at the heels. On
the other hand, whenever it was her pleasure to appear abroad, as on
Sundays and fete-days, she would put on some very brilliant-coloured
dress, usually of thin texture, a silk bonnet with a wreath of flowers,
and a very fine shawl. She was not, in the main, an ill-natured old
woman, but an incessant and most indiscreet talker; she kept chiefly
in and about the kitchen, and seemed rather to avoid her son’s august
presence; of him, indeed, she evidently stood in awe. When he reproved
her, his reproofs were bitter and unsparing; but he seldom gave himself
that trouble.
Madame Pelet had her own society, her own circle of chosen visitors,
whom, however, I seldom saw, as she generally entertained them in what
she called her “cabinet,” a small den of a place adjoining the kitchen,
and descending into it by one or two steps. On these steps, by-the-by,
I have not unfrequently seen Madame Pelet seated with a trencher on
her knee, engaged in the threefold employment of eating her dinner,
gossiping with her favourite servant, the housemaid, and scolding her
antagonist, the cook; she never dined, and seldom indeed took any meal
with her son; and as to showing her face at the boys’ table, that was
quite out of the question. These details will sound very odd in English
ears, but Belgium is not England, and its ways are not our ways.
Madame Pelet’s habits of life, then, being taken into consideration,
I was a good deal surprised when, one Thursday evening (Thursday was
always a half-holiday), as I was sitting all alone in my apartment,
correcting a huge pile of English and Latin exercises, a servant
tapped at the door, and, on its being opened, presented Madame Pelet’s
compliments, and she would be happy to see me to take my “gouter” (a
meal which answers to our English “tea”) with her in the dining-room.
“Plait-il?” said I, for I thought I must have misunderstood, the
message and invitation were so unusual; the same words were repeated. I
accepted, of course, and as I descended the stairs, I wondered what
whim had entered the old lady’s brain; her son was out—gone to pass the
evening at the Salle of the Grande Harmonie or some other club of which
he was a member. Just as I laid my hand on the handle of the dining-room
door, a queer idea glanced across my mind.
“Surely she’s not going to make love to me,” said I. “I’ve heard of
old Frenchwomen doing odd things in that line; and the gouter? They
generally begin such affairs with eating and drinking, I believe.”
There was a fearful dismay in this suggestion of my excited imagination,
and if I had allowed myself time to dwell upon it, I should no doubt
have cut there and then, rushed back to my chamber, and bolted myself
in; but whenever a danger or a horror is veiled with uncertainty,
the primary wish of the mind is to ascertain first the naked truth,
reserving the expedient of flight for the moment when its dread
anticipation shall be realized. I turned the door-handle, and in an
instant had crossed the fatal threshold, closed the door behind me, and
stood in the presence of Madame Pelet.
Gracious heavens! The first view of her seemed to confirm my worst
apprehensions. There she sat, dressed out in a light green muslin gown,
on her head a lace cap with flourishing red roses in the frill; her
table was carefully spread; there were fruit, cakes, and coffee, with a
bottle of something—I did not know what. Already the cold sweat started
on my brow, already I glanced back over my shoulder at the closed
door, when, to my unspeakable relief, my eye, wandering mildly in the
direction of the stove, rested upon a second figure, seated in a large
fauteuil beside it. This was a woman, too, and, moreover, an old woman,
and as fat and as rubicund as Madame Pelet was meagre and yellow; her
attire was likewise very fine, and spring flowers of different hues
circled in a bright wreath the crown of her violet-coloured velvet
bonnet.
I had only time to make these general observations when Madame Pelet,
coming forward with what she intended should be a graceful and elastic
step, thus accosted me:
“Monsieur is indeed most obliging to quit his books, his studies, at the
request of an insignificant person like me—will Monsieur complete his
kindness by allowing me to present him to my dear friend Madame Reuter,
who resides in the neighbouring house—the young ladies’ school.”
“Ah!” thought I, “I knew she was old,” and I bowed and took my seat.
Madame Reuter placed herself at the table opposite to me.
“How do you like Belgium, Monsieur?” asked she, in an accent of the
broadest Bruxellois. I could now well distinguish the difference between
the fine and pure Parisian utterance of M. Pelet, for instance, and
the guttural enunciation of the Flamands. I answered politely, and then
wondered how so coarse and clumsy an old woman as the one before me
should be at the head of a ladies’ seminary, which I had always heard
spoken of in terms of high commendation. In truth there was something
to wonder at. Madame Reuter looked more like a joyous, free-living old
Flemish fermiere, or even a maitresse d’auberge, than a staid, grave,
rigid directrice de pensionnat. In general the continental, or at least
the Belgian old women permit themselves a licence of manners, speech,
and aspect, such as our venerable granddames would recoil from as
absolutely disreputable, and Madame Reuter’s jolly face bore evidence
that she was no exception to the rule of her country; there was a
twinkle and leer in her left eye; her right she kept habitually half
shut, which I thought very odd indeed. After several vain attempts to
comprehend the motives of these two droll old creatures for inviting me
to join them at their gouter, I at last fairly gave it up, and resigning
myself to inevitable mystification, I sat and looked first at one, then
at the other, taking care meantime to do justice to the confitures,
cakes, and coffee, with which they amply supplied me. They, too, ate,
and that with no delicate appetite, and having demolished a large
portion of the solids, they proposed a “petit verre.” I declined. Not
so Mesdames Pelet and Reuter; each mixed herself what I thought rather
a stiff tumbler of punch, and placing it on a stand near the stove, they
drew up their chairs to that convenience, and invited me to do the same.
I obeyed; and being seated fairly between them, I was thus addressed
first by Madame Pelet, then by Madame Reuter.
“We will now speak of business,” said Madame Pelet, and she went on to
make an elaborate speech, which, being interpreted, was to the effect
that she had asked for the pleasure of my company that evening in
order to give her friend Madame Reuter an opportunity of broaching an
important proposal, which might turn out greatly to my advantage.
“Pourvu que vous soyez sage,” said Madame Reuter, “et a vrai dire,
vous en avez bien l’air. Take one drop of the punch” (or ponche, as she
pronounced it); “it is an agreeable and wholesome beverage after a full
meal.”
I bowed, but again declined it. She went on:
“I feel,” said she, after a solemn sip—“I feel profoundly the
importance of the commission with which my dear daughter has entrusted
me, for you are aware, Monsieur, that it is my daughter who directs the
establishment in the next house?”
“Ah! I thought it was yourself, madame.” Though, indeed, at that moment
I recollected that it was called Mademoiselle, not Madame Reuter’s
pensionnat.
“I! Oh, no! I manage the house and look after the servants, as my friend
Madame Pelet does for Monsieur her son—nothing more. Ah! you thought I
gave lessons in class—did you?”
And she laughed loud and long, as though the idea tickled her fancy
amazingly.
“Madame is in the wrong to laugh,” I observed; “if she does not give
lessons, I am sure it is not because she cannot;” and I whipped out a
white pocket-handkerchief and wafted it, with a French grace, past my
nose, bowing at the same time.
“Quel charmant jeune homme!” murmured Madame Pelet in a low voice.
Madame Reuter, being less sentimental, as she was Flamand and not
French, only laughed again.
“You are a dangerous person, I fear,” said she; “if you can forge
compliments at that rate, Zoraide will positively be afraid of you; but
if you are good, I will keep your secret, and not tell her how well you
can flatter. Now, listen what sort of a proposal she makes to you. She
has heard that you are an excellent professor, and as she wishes to get
the very best masters for her school (car Zoraide fait tout comme une
reine, c’est une veritable maitresse-femme), she has commissioned me to
step over this afternoon, and sound Madame Pelet as to the possibility
of engaging you. Zoraide is a wary general; she never advances without
first examining well her ground. I don’t think she would be pleased
if she knew I had already disclosed her intentions to you; she did not
order me to go so far, but I thought there would be no harm in letting
you into the secret, and Madame Pelet was of the same opinion. Take
care, however, you don’t betray either of us to Zoraide—to my
daughter, I mean; she is so discreet and circumspect herself, she cannot
understand that one should find a pleasure in gossiping a little—”
“C’est absolument comme mon fils!” cried Madame Pelet.
“All the world is so changed since our girlhood!” rejoined the other:
“young people have such old heads now. But to return, Monsieur. Madame
Pelet will mention the subject of your giving lessons in my daughter’s
establishment to her son, and he will speak to you; and then to-morrow,
you will step over to our house, and ask to see my daughter, and you
will introduce the subject as if the first intimation of it had reached
you from M. Pelet himself, and be sure you never mention my name, for I
would not displease Zoraide on any account.”
“Bien! bien!” interrupted I—for all this chatter and circumlocution
began to bore me very much; “I will consult M. Pelet, and the thing
shall be settled as you desire. Good evening, mesdames—I am infinitely
obliged to you.”
“Comment! vous vous en allez deja?” exclaimed Madame Pelet.
“Prenez encore quelquechose, monsieur; une pomme cuite, des biscuits,
encore une tasse de cafe?”
“Merci, merci, madame—au revoir.” And I backed at last out of the
apartment.
Having regained my own room, I set myself to turn over in my mind
the incident of the evening. It seemed a queer affair altogether, and
queerly managed; the two old women had made quite a little intricate
mess of it; still I found that the uppermost feeling in my mind on the
subject was one of satisfaction. In the first place it would be a change
to give lessons in another seminary, and then to teach young ladies
would be an occupation so interesting—to be admitted at all into a
ladies’ boarding-school would be an incident so new in my life. Besides,
thought I, as I glanced at the boarded window, “I shall now at last see
the mysterious garden: I shall gaze both on the angels and their Eden.”
CHAPTER IX.
M. PELET could not of course object to the proposal made by Mdlle.
Reuter; permission to accept such additional employment, should it
offer, having formed an article of the terms on which he had engaged me.
It was, therefore, arranged in the course of next day that I should
be at liberty to give lessons in Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment four
afternoons in every week.
When evening came I prepared to step over in order to seek a conference
with Mademoiselle herself on the subject; I had not had time to pay the
visit before, having been all day closely occupied in class. I remember
very well that before quitting my chamber, I held a brief debate with
myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something
smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. “Doubtless,”
thought I, “she is some stiff old maid; for though the daughter of
Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if
it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome,
and no dressing can make me so, therefore I’ll go as I am.” And off
I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table,
surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk,
dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom
or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a
lady’s love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid.
I was soon at the entrance of the pensionnat, in a moment I had pulled
the bell; in another moment the door was opened, and within appeared a
passage paved alternately with black and white marble; the walls were
painted in imitation of marble also; and at the far end opened a glass
door, through which I saw shrubs and a grass-plat, looking pleasant in
the sunshine of the mild spring evening—for it was now the middle of
April.
This, then, was my first glimpse of the garden; but I had not time to
look long, the portress, after having answered in the affirmative
my question as to whether her mistress was at home, opened the
folding-doors of a room to the left, and having ushered me in, closed
them behind me. I found myself in a salon with a very well-painted,
highly varnished floor; chairs and sofas covered with white draperies,
a green porcelain stove, walls hung with pictures in gilt frames, a gilt
pendule and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, a large lustre pendent
from the centre of the ceiling, mirrors, consoles, muslin curtains, and
a handsome centre table completed the inventory of furniture. All looked
extremely clean and glittering, but the general effect would have been
somewhat chilling had not a second large pair of folding-doors, standing
wide open, and disclosing another and smaller salon, more snugly
furnished, offered some relief to the eye. This room was carpeted, and
therein was a piano, a couch, a chiffonniere—above all, it contained
a lofty window with a crimson curtain, which, being undrawn, afforded
another glimpse of the garden, through the large, clear panes, round
which some leaves of ivy, some tendrils of vine were trained.
“Monsieur Creemsvort, n’est ce pas?” said a voice behind me; and,
starting involuntarily, I turned. I had been so taken up with the
contemplation of the pretty little salon that I had not noticed the
entrance of a person into the larger room. It was, however, Mdlle.
Reuter who now addressed me, and stood close beside me; and when I had
bowed with instantaneously recovered sang-froid—for I am not easily
embarrassed—I commenced the conversation by remarking on the pleasant
aspect of her little cabinet, and the advantage she had over M. Pelet in
possessing a garden.
“Yes,” she said, “she often thought so;” and added, “it is my garden,
monsieur, which makes me retain this house, otherwise I should probably
have removed to larger and more commodious premises long since; but you
see I could not take my garden with me, and I should scarcely find one
so large and pleasant anywhere else in town.”
I approved her judgment.
“But you have not seen it yet,” said she, rising; “come to the window
and take a better view.” I followed her; she opened the sash, and
leaning out I saw in full the enclosed demesne which had hitherto been
to me an unknown region. It was a long, not very broad strip of cultured
ground, with an alley bordered by enormous old fruit trees down the
middle; there was a sort of lawn, a parterre of rose-trees, some
flower-borders, and, on the far side, a thickly planted copse of lilacs,
laburnums, and acacias. It looked pleasant, to me—very pleasant, so
long a time had elapsed since I had seen a garden of any sort. But it
was not only on Mdlle. Reuter’s garden that my eyes dwelt; when I had
taken a view of her well-trimmed beds and budding shrubberies, I allowed
my glance to come back to herself, nor did I hastily withdraw it.
I had thought to see a tall, meagre, yellow, conventual image in black,
with a close white cap, bandaged under the chin like a nun’s head-gear;
whereas, there stood by me a little and roundly formed woman, who might
indeed be older than I, but was still young; she could not, I thought,
be more than six or seven and twenty; she was as fair as a fair
Englishwoman; she had no cap; her hair was nut-brown, and she wore it
in curls; pretty her features were not, nor very soft, nor very regular,
but neither were they in any degree plain, and I already saw cause
to deem them expressive. What was their predominant cast? Was it
sagacity?—sense? Yes, I thought so; but I could scarcely as yet be
sure. I discovered, however, that there was a certain serenity of eye,
and freshness of complexion, most pleasing to behold. The colour on her
cheek was like the bloom on a good apple, which is as sound at the core
as it is red on the rind.
Mdlle. Reuter and I entered upon business. She said she was not
absolutely certain of the wisdom of the step she was about to take,
because I was so young, and parents might possibly object to a professor
like me for their daughters: “But it is often well to act on one’s own
judgment,” said she, “and to lead parents, rather than be led by them.
The fitness of a professor is not a matter of age; and, from what I have
heard, and from what I observe myself, I would much rather trust you
than M. Ledru, the music-master, who is a married man of near fifty.”
I remarked that I hoped she would find me worthy of her good opinion;
that if I knew myself, I was incapable of betraying any confidence
reposed in me. “Du reste,” said she, “the surveillance will be strictly
attended to.” And then she proceeded to discuss the subject of terms.
She was very cautious, quite on her guard; she did not absolutely
bargain, but she warily sounded me to find out what my expectations
might be; and when she could not get me to name a sum, she reasoned and
reasoned with a fluent yet quiet circumlocution of speech, and at last
nailed me down to five hundred francs per annum—not too much, but I
agreed. Before the negotiation was completed, it began to grow a little
dusk. I did not hasten it, for I liked well enough to sit and hear
her talk; I was amused with the sort of business talent she displayed.
Edward could not have shown himself more practical, though he might have
evinced more coarseness and urgency; and then she had so many reasons,
so many explanations; and, after all, she succeeded in proving herself
quite disinterested and even liberal. At last she concluded, she could
say no more, because, as I acquiesced in all things, there was no
further ground for the exercise of her parts of speech. I was obliged to
rise. I would rather have sat a little longer; what had I to return to
but my small empty room? And my eyes had a pleasure in looking at
Mdlle. Reuter, especially now, when the twilight softened her features a
little, and, in the doubtful dusk, I could fancy her forehead as open
as it was really elevated, her mouth touched with turns of sweetness
as well as defined in lines of sense. When I rose to go, I held out
my hand, on purpose, though I knew it was contrary to the etiquette of
foreign habits; she smiled, and said—
“Ah! c’est comme tous les Anglais,” but gave me her hand very kindly.
“It is the privilege of my country, Mademoiselle,” said I; “and,
remember, I shall always claim it.”
She laughed a little, quite good-naturedly, and with the sort of
tranquillity obvious in all she did—a tranquillity which soothed and
suited me singularly, at least I thought so that evening. Brussels
seemed a very pleasant place to me when I got out again into the street,
and it appeared as if some cheerful, eventful, upward-tending career
were even then opening to me, on that selfsame mild, still April night.
So impressionable a being is man, or at least such a man as I was in
those days.
CHAPTER X.
NEXT day the morning hours seemed to pass very slowly at M. Pelet’s; I
wanted the afternoon to come that I might go again to the neighbouring
pensionnat and give my first lesson within its pleasant precincts; for
pleasant they appeared to me. At noon the hour of recreation arrived; at
one o’clock we had lunch; this got on the time, and at last St. Gudule’s
deep bell, tolling slowly two, marked the moment for which I had been
waiting.
At the foot of the narrow back-stairs that descended from my room, I met
M. Pelet.
“Comme vous avez l’air rayonnant!” said he. “Je ne vous ai jamais vu
aussi gai. Que s’est-il donc passe?”
“Apparemment que j’aime les changements,” replied I.
“Ah! je comprends—c’est cela—soyez sage seulement. Vous etes bien
jeune—trop jeune pour le role que vous allez jouer; il faut prendre
garde—savez-vous?”
“Mais quel danger y a-t-il?”
“Je n’en sais rien—ne vous laissez pas aller a de vives
impressions—voila tout.”
I laughed: a sentiment of exquisite pleasure played over my nerves at
the thought that “vives impressions” were likely to be created; it was
the deadness, the sameness of life’s daily ongoings that had hitherto
been my bane; my blouse-clad “eleves” in the boys’ seminary never
stirred in me any “vives impressions” except it might be occasionally
some of anger. I broke from M. Pelet, and as I strode down the passage
he followed me with one of his laughs—a very French, rakish, mocking
sound.
Again I stood at the neighbouring door, and soon was re-admitted into
the cheerful passage with its clear dove-colour imitation marble walls.
I followed the portress, and descending a step, and making a turn, I
found myself in a sort of corridor; a side-door opened, Mdlle. Reuter’s
little figure, as graceful as it was plump, appeared. I could now see
her dress in full daylight; a neat, simple mousseline-laine gown fitted
her compact round shape to perfection—delicate little collar and
manchettes of lace, trim Parisian brodequins showed her neck, wrists,
and feet, to complete advantage; but how grave was her face as she
came suddenly upon me! Solicitude and business were in her eye—on her
forehead; she looked almost stern. Her “Bon jour, monsieur,” was quite
polite, but so orderly, so commonplace, it spread directly a cool, damp
towel over my “vives impressions.” The servant turned back when her
mistress appeared, and I walked slowly along the corridor, side by side
with Mdlle. Reuter.
“Monsieur will give a lesson in the first class to-day,” said she;
“dictation or reading will perhaps be the best thing to begin with, for
those are the easiest forms of communicating instruction in a foreign
language; and, at the first, a master naturally feels a little
unsettled.”
She was quite right, as I had found from experience; it only remained
for me to acquiesce. We proceeded now in silence. The corridor
terminated in a hall, large, lofty, and square; a glass door on one side
showed within a long narrow refectory, with tables, an armoire, and
two lamps; it was empty; large glass doors, in front, opened on the
playground and garden; a broad staircase ascended spirally on the
opposite side; the remaining wall showed a pair of great folding-doors,
now closed, and admitting, doubtless, to the classes.
Mdlle. Reuter turned her eye laterally on me, to ascertain, probably,
whether I was collected enough to be ushered into her sanctum sanctorum.
I suppose she judged me to be in a tolerable state of self-government,
for she opened the door, and I followed her through. A rustling sound of
uprising greeted our entrance; without looking to the right or left, I
walked straight up the lane between two sets of benches and desks,
and took possession of the empty chair and isolated desk raised on an
estrade, of one step high, so as to command one division; the other
division being under the surveillance of a maitresse similarly elevated.
At the back of the estrade, and attached to a moveable partition
dividing this schoolroom from another beyond, was a large tableau of
wood painted black and varnished; a thick crayon of white chalk lay on
my desk for the convenience of elucidating any grammatical or verbal
obscurity which might occur in my lessons by writing it upon the
tableau; a wet sponge appeared beside the chalk, to enable me to efface
the marks when they had served the purpose intended.
I carefully and deliberately made these observations before allowing
myself to take one glance at the benches before me; having handled the
crayon, looked back at the tableau, fingered the sponge in order to
ascertain that it was in a right state of moisture, I found myself cool
enough to admit of looking calmly up and gazing deliberately round me.
And first I observed that Mdlle. Reuter had already glided away, she
was nowhere visible; a maitresse or teacher, the one who occupied the
corresponding estrade to my own, alone remained to keep guard over me;
she was a little in the shade, and, with my short sight, I could only
see that she was of a thin bony figure and rather tallowy complexion,
and that her attitude, as she sat, partook equally of listlessness and
affectation. More obvious, more prominent, shone on by the full light of
the large window, were the occupants of the benches just before me, of
whom some were girls of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, some young women
from eighteen (as it appeared to me) up to twenty; the most modest
attire, the simplest fashion of wearing the hair, were apparent in all;
and good features, ruddy, blooming complexions, large and brilliant
eyes, forms full, even to solidity, seemed to abound. I did not bear
the first view like a stoic; I was dazzled, my eyes fell, and in a voice
somewhat too low I murmured—
“Prenez vos cahiers de dictee, mesdemoiselles.”
Not so had I bid the boys at Pelet’s take their reading-books. A
rustle followed, and an opening of desks; behind the lifted lids which
momentarily screened the heads bent down to search for exercise-books, I
heard tittering and whispers.
“Eulalie, je suis prete a pleuer de rire,” observed one.
“Comme il a rougi en parlant!”
“Oui, c’est un veritable blanc-bec.”
“Tais-toi, Hortense—il nous ecoute.”
And now the lids sank and the heads reappeared; I had marked three, the
whisperers, and I did not scruple to take a very steady look at them as
they emerged from their temporary eclipse. It is astonishing what ease
and courage their little phrases of flippancy had given me; the idea by
which I had been awed was that the youthful beings before me, with their
dark nun-like robes and softly braided hair, were a kind of half-angels.
The light titter, the giddy whisper, had already in some measure
relieved my mind of that fond and oppressive fancy.
The three I allude to were just in front, within half a yard of my
estrade, and were among the most womanly-looking present. Their names
I knew afterwards, and may as well mention now; they were Eulalie,
Hortense, Caroline. Eulalie was tall, and very finely shaped: she was
fair, and her features were those of a Low Country Madonna; many a
“figure de Vierge” have I seen in Dutch pictures exactly resembling
hers; there were no angles in her shape or in her face, all was curve
and roundness—neither thought, sentiment, nor passion disturbed by line
or flush the equality of her pale, clear skin; her noble bust heaved
with her regular breathing, her eyes moved a little—by these evidences
of life alone could I have distinguished her from some large handsome
figure moulded in wax. Hortense was of middle size and stout, her
form was ungraceful, her face striking, more alive and brilliant than
Eulalie’s, her hair was dark brown, her complexion richly coloured;
there were frolic and mischief in her eye: consistency and good sense
she might possess, but none of her features betokened those qualities.
Caroline was little, though evidently full grown; raven-black hair,
very dark eyes, absolutely regular features, with a colourless olive
complexion, clear as to the face and sallow about the neck, formed in
her that assemblage of points whose union many persons regard as the
perfection of beauty. How, with the tintless pallor of her skin and the
classic straightness of her lineaments, she managed to look sensual, I
don’t know. I think her lips and eyes contrived the affair between
them, and the result left no uncertainty on the beholder’s mind. She was
sensual now, and in ten years’ time she would be coarse—promise plain
was written in her face of much future folly.
If I looked at these girls with little scruple, they looked at me
with still less. Eulalie raised her unmoved eye to mine, and seemed to
expect, passively but securely, an impromptu tribute to her majestic
charms. Hortense regarded me boldly, and giggled at the same time, while
she said, with an air of impudent freedom—
“Dictez-nous quelquechose de facile pour commencer, monsieur.”
Caroline shook her loose ringlets of abundant but somewhat coarse hair
over her rolling black eyes; parting her lips, as full as those of a
hot-blooded Maroon, she showed her well-set teeth sparkling between
them, and treated me at the same time to a smile “de sa facon.”
Beautiful as Pauline Borghese, she looked at the moment scarcely purer
than Lucrece de Borgia. Caroline was of noble family. I heard her
lady-mother’s character afterwards, and then I ceased to wonder at the
precocious accomplishments of the daughter. These three, I at once saw,
deemed themselves the queens of the school, and conceived that by their
splendour they threw all the rest into the shade. In less than five
minutes they had thus revealed to me their characters, and in less than
five minutes I had buckled on a breast-plate of steely indifference, and
let down a visor of impassible austerity.
“Take your pens and commence writing,” said I, in as dry and trite a
voice as if I had been addressing only Jules Vanderkelkov and Co.
The dictee now commenced. My three belles interrupted me perpetually
with little silly questions and uncalled-for remarks, to some of which I
made no answer, and to others replied very quietly and briefly. “Comment
dit-on point et virgule en Anglais, monsieur?”
“Semi-colon, mademoiselle.”
“Semi-collong? Ah, comme c’est drole!” (giggle.)
“J’ai une si mauvaise plume—impossible d’ecrire!”
“Mais, monsieur—je ne sais pas suivre—vous allez si vite.”
“Je n’ai rien compris, moi!”
Here a general murmur arose, and the teacher, opening her lips for the
first time, ejaculated—
“Silence, mesdemoiselles!”
No silence followed—on the contrary, the three ladies in front began to
talk more loudly.
“C’est si difficile, l’Anglais!”
“Je deteste la dictee.”
“Quel ennui d’ecrire quelquechose que l’on ne comprend pas!”
Some of those behind laughed: a degree of confusion began to pervade the
class; it was necessary to take prompt measures.
“Donnez-moi votre cahier,” said I to Eulalie in an abrupt tone; and
bending over, I took it before she had time to give it.
“Et vous, mademoiselle—donnez-moi le votre,” continued I, more mildly,
addressing a little pale, plain looking girl who sat in the first row of
the other division, and whom I had remarked as being at once the ugliest
and the most attentive in the room; she rose up, walked over to me, and
delivered her book with a grave, modest curtsey. I glanced over the
two dictations; Eulalie’s was slurred, blotted, and full of silly
mistakes—Sylvie’s (such was the name of the ugly little girl) was
clearly written, it contained no error against sense, and but few
faults of orthography. I coolly read aloud both exercises, marking the
faults—then I looked at Eulalie:
“C’est honteux!” said I, and I deliberately tore her dictation in four
parts, and presented her with the fragments. I returned Sylvie her book
with a smile, saying—
“C’est bien—je suis content de vous.”
Sylvie looked calmly pleased, Eulalie swelled like an incensed turkey,
but the mutiny was quelled: the conceited coquetry and futile flirtation
of the first bench were exchanged for a taciturn sullenness, much more
convenient to me, and the rest of my lesson passed without interruption.
A bell clanging out in the yard announced the moment for the cessation
of school labours. I heard our own bell at the same time, and that of a
certain public college immediately after. Order dissolved instantly; up
started every pupil, I hastened to seize my hat, bow to the maitresse,
and quit the room before the tide of externats should pour from the
inner class, where I knew near a hundred were prisoned, and whose rising
tumult I already heard.
I had scarcely crossed the hall and gained the corridor, when Mdlle.
Reuter came again upon me.
“Step in here a moment,” said she, and she held open the door of
the side room from whence she had issued on my arrival; it was a
SALLE-A-MANGER, as appeared from the beaufet and the armoire vitree,
filled with glass and china, which formed part of its furniture. Ere she
had closed the door on me and herself, the corridor was already filled
with day-pupils, tearing down their cloaks, bonnets, and cabas from
the wooden pegs on which they were suspended; the shrill voice of a
maitresse was heard at intervals vainly endeavouring to enforce some
sort of order; vainly, I say: discipline there was none in these rough
ranks, and yet this was considered one of the best-conducted schools in
Brussels.
“Well, you have given your first lesson,” began Mdlle. Reuter in the
most calm, equable voice, as though quite unconscious of the chaos from
which we were separated only by a single wall.
“Were you satisfied with your pupils, or did any circumstance in their
conduct give you cause for complaint? Conceal nothing from me, repose in
me entire confidence.”
Happily, I felt in myself complete power to manage my pupils without
aid; the enchantment, the golden haze which had dazzled my perspicuity
at first, had been a good deal dissipated. I cannot say I was chagrined
or downcast by the contrast which the reality of a pensionnat de
demoiselles presented to my vague ideal of the same community; I was
only enlightened and amused; consequently, I felt in no disposition to
complain to Mdlle. Reuter, and I received her considerate invitation to
confidence with a smile.
“A thousand thanks, mademoiselle, all has gone very smoothly.”
She looked more than doubtful.
“Et les trois demoiselles du premier banc?” said she.
“Ah! tout va au mieux!” was my answer, and Mdlle. Reuter ceased to
question me; but her eye—not large, not brilliant, not melting, or
kindling, but astute, penetrating, practical, showed she was even with
me; it let out a momentary gleam, which said plainly, “Be as close as
you like, I am not dependent on your candour; what you would conceal I
already know.”
By a transition so quiet as to be scarcely perceptible, the directress’s
manner changed; the anxious business-air passed from her face, and she
began chatting about the weather and the town, and asking in neighbourly
wise after M. and Madame Pelet. I answered all her little questions; she
prolonged her talk, I went on following its many little windings; she
sat so long, said so much, varied so often the topics of discourse,
that it was not difficult to perceive she had a particular aim in thus
detaining me. Her mere words could have afforded no clue to this
aim, but her countenance aided; while her lips uttered only affable
commonplaces, her eyes reverted continually to my face. Her glances were
not given in full, but out of the corners, so quietly, so stealthily,
yet I think I lost not one. I watched her as keenly as she watched me;
I perceived soon that she was feeling after my real character; she was
searching for salient points, and weak points, and eccentric points;
she was applying now this test, now that, hoping in the end to find some
chink, some niche, where she could put in her little firm foot and stand
upon my neck—mistress of my nature. Do not mistake me, reader, it was
no amorous influence she wished to gain—at that time it was only the
power of the politician to which she aspired; I was now installed as a
professor in her establishment, and she wanted to know where her mind
was superior to mine—by what feeling or opinion she could lead me.
I enjoyed the game much, and did not hasten its conclusion; sometimes I
gave her hopes, beginning a sentence rather weakly, when her shrewd eye
would light up—she thought she had me; having led her a little way, I
delighted to turn round and finish with sound, hard sense, whereat her
countenance would fall. At last a servant entered to announce dinner;
the conflict being thus necessarily terminated, we parted without having
gained any advantage on either side: Mdlle. Reuter had not even given
me an opportunity of attacking her with feeling, and I had managed to
baffle her little schemes of craft. It was a regular drawn battle. I
again held out my hand when I left the room, she gave me hers; it was a
small and white hand, but how cool! I met her eye too in full—obliging
her to give me a straightforward look; this last test went against
me: it left her as it found her—moderate, temperate, tranquil; me it
disappointed.
“I am growing wiser,” thought I, as I walked back to M. Pelet’s. “Look
at this little woman; is she like the women of novelists and romancers?
To read of female character as depicted in Poetry and Fiction, one would
think it was made up of sentiment, either for good or bad—here is
a specimen, and a most sensible and respectable specimen, too, whose
staple ingredient is abstract reason. No Talleyrand was ever more
passionless than Zoraide Reuter!” So I thought then; I found
afterwards that blunt susceptibilities are very consistent with strong
propensities.
CHAPTER XI.
I HAD indeed had a very long talk with the crafty little politician, and
on regaining my quarters, I found that dinner was half over. To be late
at meals was against a standing rule of the establishment, and had it
been one of the Flemish ushers who thus entered after the removal of the
soup and the commencement of the first course, M. Pelet would probably
have greeted him with a public rebuke, and would certainly have mulcted
him both of soup and fish; as it was, that polite though partial
gentleman only shook his head, and as I took my place, unrolled my
napkin, and said my heretical grace to myself, he civilly despatched a
servant to the kitchen, to bring me a plate of “puree aux carottes”
(for this was a maigre-day), and before sending away the first course,
reserved for me a portion of the stock-fish of which it consisted.
Dinner being over, the boys rushed out for their evening play; Kint and
Vandam (the two ushers) of course followed them. Poor fellows! if they
had not looked so very heavy, so very soulless, so very indifferent to
all things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, I could have pitied
them greatly for the obligation they were under to trail after those
rough lads everywhere and at all times; even as it was, I felt disposed
to scout myself as a privileged prig when I turned to ascend to my
chamber, sure to find there, if not enjoyment, at least liberty; but
this evening (as had often happened before) I was to be still farther
distinguished.
“Eh bien, mauvais sujet!” said the voice of M. Pelet behind me, as I
set my foot on the first step of the stair, “ou allez-vous? Venez a la
salle-a-manger, que je vous gronde un peu.”
“I beg pardon, monsieur,” said I, as I followed him to his private
sitting-room, “for having returned so late—it was not my fault.”
“That is just what I want to know,” rejoined M. Pelet, as he ushered me
into the comfortable parlour with a good wood-fire—for the stove had
now been removed for the season. Having rung the bell he ordered “Coffee
for two,” and presently he and I were seated, almost in English comfort,
one on each side of the hearth, a little round table between us, with
a coffee-pot, a sugar-basin, and two large white china cups. While
M. Pelet employed himself in choosing a cigar from a box, my thoughts
reverted to the two outcast ushers, whose voices I could hear even now
crying hoarsely for order in the playground.
“C’est une grande responsabilite, que la surveillance,” observed I.
“Plait-il?” dit M. Pelet.
I remarked that I thought Messieurs Vandam and Kint must sometimes be a
little fatigued with their labours.
“Des betes de somme,—des betes de somme,” murmured scornfully the
director. Meantime I offered him his cup of coffee.
“Servez-vous mon garcon,” said he blandly, when I had put a couple of
huge lumps of continental sugar into his cup. “And now tell me why you
stayed so long at Mdlle. Reuter’s. I know that lessons conclude, in her
establishment as in mine, at four o’clock, and when you returned it was
past five.”
“Mdlle. wished to speak with me, monsieur.”
“Indeed! on what subject? if one may ask.”
“Mademoiselle talked about nothing, monsieur.”
“A fertile topic! and did she discourse thereon in the schoolroom,
before the pupils?”
“No; like you, monsieur, she asked me to walk into her parlour.”
“And Madame Reuter—the old duenna—my mother’s gossip, was there, of
course?”
“No, monsieur; I had the honour of being quite alone with mademoiselle.”
“C’est joli—cela,” observed M. Pelet, and he smiled and looked into the
fire.
“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” murmured I, significantly.
“Je connais un peu ma petite voisine—voyez-vous.”
“In that case, monsieur will be able to aid me in finding out what was
mademoiselle’s reason for making me sit before her sofa one mortal hour,
listening to the most copious and fluent dissertation on the merest
frivolities.”
“She was sounding your character.”
“I thought so, monsieur.”
“Did she find out your weak point?”
“What is my weak point?”
“Why, the sentimental. Any woman sinking her shaft deep enough, will
at last reach a fathomless spring of sensibility in thy breast,
Crimsworth.”
I felt the blood stir about my heart and rise warm to my cheek.
“Some women might, monsieur.”
“Is Mdlle. Reuter of the number? Come, speak frankly, mon fils; elle est
encore jeune, plus agee que toi peut-etre, mais juste assey pour unir
la tendresse d’une petite maman a l’amour d’une epouse devouee; n’est-ce
pas que cela t’irait superieurement?”
“No, monsieur; I should like my wife to be my wife, and not half my
mother.”
“She is then a little too old for you?”
“No, monsieur, not a day too old if she suited me in other things.”
“In what does she not suit you, William? She is personally agreeable, is
she not?”
“Very; her hair and complexion are just what I admire; and her turn of
form, though quite Belgian, is full of grace.”
“Bravo! and her face? her features? How do you like them?”
“A little harsh, especially her mouth.”
“Ah, yes! her mouth,” said M. Pelet, and he chuckled inwardly. “There is
character about her mouth—firmness—but she has a very pleasant smile;
don’t you think so?”
“Rather crafty.”
“True, but that expression of craft is owing to her eyebrows; have you
remarked her eyebrows?”
I answered that I had not.
“You have not seen her looking down then?” said he.
“No.”
“It is a treat, notwithstanding. Observe her when she has some knitting,
or some other woman’s work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly
intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on
around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being
developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in it;
her humble, feminine mind is wholly with her knitting; none of her
features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown
disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending
task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec
completed, it is enough for her. If gentlemen approach her chair, a
deeper quiescence, a meeker modesty settles on her features, and clothes
her general mien; observe then her eyebrows, et dites-moi s’il n’y a pas
du chat dans l’un et du renard dans l’autre.”
“I will take careful notice the first opportunity,” said I.
“And then,” continued M. Pelet, “the eyelid will flicker, the
light-coloured lashes be lifted a second, and a blue eye, glancing out
from under the screen, will take its brief, sly, searching survey, and
retreat again.”
I smiled, and so did Pelet, and after a few minutes’ silence, I asked:
“Will she ever marry, do you think?”
“Marry! Will birds pair? Of course it is both her intention and
resolution to marry when she finds a suitable match, and no one is
better aware than herself of the sort of impression she is capable
of producing; no one likes better to captivate in a quiet way. I am
mistaken if she will not yet leave the print of her stealing steps on
thy heart, Crimsworth.”
“Of her steps? Confound it, no! My heart is not a plank to be walked
on.”
“But the soft touch of a patte de velours will do it no harm.”
“She offers me no patte de velours; she is all form and reserve with
me.”
“That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first
floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle. Reuter is a skilful architect.”
“And interest, M. Pelet—interest. Will not mademoiselle consider that
point?”
“Yes, yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone. And now
we have discussed the directress, what of the pupils? N’y a-t-il pas de
belles etudes parmi ces jeunes tetes?”
“Studies of character? Yes; curious ones, at least, I imagine; but one
cannot divine much from a first interview.”
“Ah, you affect discretion; but tell me now, were you not a little
abashed before these blooming young creatures?”
“At first, yes; but I rallied and got through with all due sang-froid.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It is true, notwithstanding. At first I thought them angels, but they
did not leave me long under that delusion; three of the eldest and
handsomest undertook the task of setting me right, and they managed
so cleverly that in five minutes I knew them, at least, for what they
were—three arrant coquettes.”
“Je les connais!” exclaimed M. Pelet. “Elles sont toujours au premier
rang a l’eglise et a la promenade; une blonde superbe, une jolie
espiegle, une belle brune.”
“Exactly.”
“Lovely creatures all of them—heads for artists; what a group they
would make, taken together! Eulalie (I know their names), with her
smooth braided hair and calm ivory brow. Hortense, with her rich chesnut
locks so luxuriantly knotted, plaited, twisted, as if she did not know
how to dispose of all their abundance, with her vermilion lips, damask
cheek, and roguish laughing eye. And Caroline de Blemont! Ah, there is
beauty! beauty in perfection. What a cloud of sable curls about the face
of a houri! What fascinating lips! What glorious black eyes! Your Byron
would have worshipped her, and you—you cold, frigid islander!—you
played the austere, the insensible in the presence of an Aphrodite so
exquisite?”
I might have laughed at the director’s enthusiasm had I believed
it real, but there was something in his tone which indicated got-up
raptures. I felt he was only affecting fervour in order to put me off my
guard, to induce me to come out in return, so I scarcely even smiled. He
went on:
“Confess, William, do not the mere good looks of Zoraide Reuter appear
dowdyish and commonplace compared with the splendid charms of some of
her pupils?”
The question discomposed me, but I now felt plainly that my principal
was endeavouring (for reasons best known to himself—at that time I
could not fathom them) to excite ideas and wishes in my mind alien to
what was right and honourable. The iniquity of the instigation proved
its antidote, and when he further added:—
“Each of those three beautiful girls will have a handsome fortune; and
with a little address, a gentlemanlike, intelligent young fellow like
you might make himself master of the hand, heart, and purse of any one
of the trio.”
I replied by a look and an interrogative “Monsieur?” which startled him.
He laughed a forced laugh, affirmed that he had only been joking, and
demanded whether I could possibly have thought him in earnest. Just then
the bell rang; the play-hour was over; it was an evening on which M.
Pelet was accustomed to read passages from the drama and the belles
lettres to his pupils. He did not wait for my answer, but rising, left
the room, humming as he went some gay strain of Beranger’s.
CHAPTER XII.
DAILY, as I continued my attendance at the seminary of Mdlle. Reuter,
did I find fresh occasions to compare the ideal with the real. What
had I known of female character previously to my arrival at Brussels?
Precious little. And what was my notion of it? Something vague, slight,
gauzy, glittering; now when I came in contact with it I found it to be
a palpable substance enough; very hard too sometimes, and often heavy;
there was metal in it, both lead and iron.
Let the idealists, the dreamers about earthly angel and human flowers,
just look here while I open my portfolio and show them a sketch or
two, pencilled after nature. I took these sketches in the second-class
schoolroom of Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment, where about a hundred
specimens of the genus “jeune fille” collected together offered a
fertile variety of subject. A miscellaneous assortment they were,
differing both in caste and country; as I sat on my estrade and glanced
over the long range of desks, I had under my eye French, English,
Belgians, Austrians, and Prussians. The majority belonged to the class
bourgeois; but there were many countesses, there were the daughters of
two generals and of several colonels, captains, and government EMPLOYES;
these ladies sat side by side with young females destined to be
demoiselles de magasins, and with some Flamandes, genuine aborigines of
the country. In dress all were nearly similar, and in manners there was
small difference; exceptions there were to the general rule, but the
majority gave the tone to the establishment, and that tone was rough,
boisterous, masked by a point-blank disregard of all forbearance towards
each other or their teachers; an eager pursuit by each individual of her
own interest and convenience; and a coarse indifference to the interest
and convenience of every one else. Most of them could lie with audacity
when it appeared advantageous to do so. All understood the art of
speaking fair when a point was to be gained, and could with consummate
skill and at a moment’s notice turn the cold shoulder the instant
civility ceased to be profitable. Very little open quarrelling ever took
place amongst them; but backbiting and talebearing were universal. Close
friendships were forbidden by the rules of the school, and no one girl
seemed to cultivate more regard for another than was just necessary to
secure a companion when solitude would have been irksome. They were each
and all supposed to have been reared in utter unconsciousness of vice.
The precautions used to keep them ignorant, if not innocent, were
innumerable. How was it, then, that scarcely one of those girls having
attained the age of fourteen could look a man in the face with modesty
and propriety? An air of bold, impudent flirtation, or a loose, silly
leer, was sure to answer the most ordinary glance from a masculine eye.
I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I
am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of this
precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to
be found in the discipline, if not the doctrines of the Church of Rome.
I record what I have seen: these girls belonged to what are called the
respectable ranks of society; they had all been carefully brought up,
yet was the mass of them mentally depraved. So much for the general
view: now for one or two selected specimens.
The first picture is a full length of Aurelia Koslow, a German fraulein,
or rather a half-breed between German and Russian. She is eighteen years
of age, and has been sent to Brussels to finish her education; she is
of middle size, stiffly made, body long, legs short, bust much developed
but not compactly moulded, waist disproportionately compressed by an
inhumanly braced corset, dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured
into small bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and
gummed to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive
grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather high-cheek
bones, yet the ensemble not positively ugly; tolerably good complexion.
So much for person. As to mind, deplorably ignorant and ill-informed:
incapable of writing or speaking correctly even German, her native
tongue, a dunce in French, and her attempts at learning English a mere
farce, yet she has been at school twelve years; but as she invariably
gets her exercises, of every description, done by a fellow pupil, and
reads her lessons off a book concealed in her lap, it is not wonderful
that her progress has been so snail-like. I do not know what Aurelia’s
daily habits of life are, because I have not the opportunity of
observing her at all times; but from what I see of the state of her
desk, books, and papers, I should say she is slovenly and even dirty;
her outward dress, as I have said, is well attended to, but in passing
behind her bench, I have remarked that her neck is gray for want of
washing, and her hair, so glossy with gum and grease, is not such as
one feels tempted to pass the hand over, much less to run the fingers
through. Aurelia’s conduct in class, at least when I am present, is
something extraordinary, considered as an index of girlish innocence.
The moment I enter the room, she nudges her next neighbour and indulges
in a half-suppressed laugh. As I take my seat on the estrade, she
fixes her eye on me; she seems resolved to attract, and, if possible,
monopolize my notice: to this end she launches at me all sorts of looks,
languishing, provoking, leering, laughing. As I am found quite proof
against this sort of artillery—for we scorn what, unasked, is lavishly
offered—she has recourse to the expedient of making noises; sometimes
she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters inarticulate sounds, for
which language has no name. If, in walking up the schoolroom, I pass
near her, she puts out her foot that it may touch mine; if I do not
happen to observe the manoeuvre, and my boot comes in contact with her
brodequin, she affects to fall into convulsions of suppressed laughter;
if I notice the snare and avoid it, she expresses her mortification in
sullen muttering, where I hear myself abused in bad French, pronounced
with an intolerable Low German accent.
Not far from Mdlle. Koslow sits another young lady by name Adele
Dronsart: this is a Belgian, rather low of stature, in form heavy,
with broad waist, short neck and limbs, good red and white complexion,
features well chiselled and regular, well-cut eyes of a clear brown
colour, light brown hair, good teeth, age not much above fifteen, but as
full-grown as a stout young Englishwoman of twenty. This portrait gives
the idea of a somewhat dumpy but good-looking damsel, does it not? Well,
when I looked along the row of young heads, my eye generally stopped at
this of Adele’s; her gaze was ever waiting for mine, and it frequently
succeeded in arresting it. She was an unnatural-looking being—so young,
fresh, blooming, yet so Gorgon-like. Suspicion, sullen ill-temper were
on her forehead, vicious propensities in her eye, envy and panther-like
deceit about her mouth. In general she sat very still; her massive shape
looked as if it could not bend much, nor did her large head—so broad
at the base, so narrow towards the top—seem made to turn readily on her
short neck. She had but two varieties of expression; the prevalent one
a forbidding, dissatisfied scowl, varied sometimes by a most pernicious
and perfidious smile. She was shunned by her fellow-pupils, for, bad as
many of them were, few were as bad as she.
Aurelia and Adele were in the first division of the second class; the
second division was headed by a pensionnaire named Juanna Trista. This
girl was of mixed Belgian and Spanish origin; her Flemish mother was
dead, her Catalonian father was a merchant residing in the ---- Isles,
where Juanna had been born and whence she was sent to Europe to be
educated. I wonder that any one, looking at that girl’s head and
countenance, would have received her under their roof. She had precisely
the same shape of skull as Pope Alexander the Sixth; her organs
of benevolence, veneration, conscientiousness, adhesiveness, were
singularly small, those of self-esteem, firmness, destructiveness,
combativeness, preposterously large; her head sloped up in the penthouse
shape, was contracted about the forehead, and prominent behind; she
had rather good, though large and marked features; her temperament was
fibrous and bilious, her complexion pale and dark, hair and eyes black,
form angular and rigid but proportionate, age fifteen.
Juanna was not very thin, but she had a gaunt visage, and her “regard”
was fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it presented space enough
for the legible graving of two words, Mutiny and Hate; in some one of
her other lineaments I think the eye—cowardice had also its distinct
cipher. Mdlle. Trista thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a
coarse work-day sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like
a horse, she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind
and below her were seated a band of very vulgar, inferior-looking
Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of person
and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low Countries would
seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as to induce degeneracy
of the human mind and body; these, I soon found, were completely under
her influence, and with their aid she got up and sustained a swinish
tumult, which I was constrained at last to quell by ordering her and two
of her tools to rise from their seats, and, having kept them standing
five minutes, turning them bodily out of the schoolroom: the accomplices
into a large place adjoining called the grands salle; the principal
into a cabinet, of which I closed the door and pocketed the key. This
judgment I executed in the presence of Mdlle. Reuter, who looked much
aghast at beholding so decided a proceeding—the most severe that had
ever been ventured on in her establishment. Her look of affright I
answered with one of composure, and finally with a smile, which perhaps
flattered, and certainly soothed her. Juanna Trista remained in Europe
long enough to repay, by malevolence and ingratitude, all who had ever
done her a good turn; and she then went to join her father in the----
Isles, exulting in the thought that she should there have slaves, whom,
as she said, she could kick and strike at will.
These three pictures are from the life. I possess others, as marked and
as little agreeable, but I will spare my reader the exhibition of them.
Doubtless it will be thought that I ought now, by way of contrast, to
show something charming; some gentle virgin head, circled with a halo,
some sweet personification of innocence, clasping the dove of peace to
her bosom. No: I saw nothing of the sort, and therefore cannot portray
it. The pupil in the school possessing the happiest disposition was
a young girl from the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently
benevolent and obliging, but not well taught nor well mannered;
moreover, the plague-spot of dissimulation was in her also; honour and
principle were unknown to her, she had scarcely heard their names. The
least exceptionable pupil was the poor little Sylvie I have mentioned
once before. Sylvie was gentle in manners, intelligent in mind; she was
even sincere, as far as her religion would permit her to be so, but her
physical organization was defective; weak health stunted her growth and
chilled her spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister,
her whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame, trained
subjection of her manner, one read that she had already prepared herself
for her future course of life, by giving up her independence of thought
and action into the hands of some despotic confessor. She permitted
herself no original opinion, no preference of companion or employment;
in everything she was guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton
air, she went about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she
liked, or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The
poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the dictates
of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to the will of
her spiritual director. She was the model pupil of Mdlle. Reuter’s
establishment; pale, blighted image, where life lingered feebly, but
whence the soul had been conjured by Romish wizard-craft!
A few English pupils there were in this school, and these might be
divided into two classes. 1st. The continental English—the daughters
chiefly of broken adventurers, whom debt or dishonour had driven from
their own country. These poor girls had never known the advantages
of settled homes, decorous example, or honest Protestant education;
resident a few months now in one Catholic school, now in another, as
their parents wandered from land to land—from France to Germany, from
Germany to Belgium—they had picked up some scanty instruction, many bad
habits, losing every notion even of the first elements of religion and
morals, and acquiring an imbecile indifference to every sentiment that
can elevate humanity; they were distinguishable by an habitual look
of sullen dejection, the result of crushed self-respect and constant
browbeating from their Popish fellow-pupils, who hated them as English,
and scorned them as heretics.
The second class were British English. Of these I did not encounter half
a dozen during the whole time of my attendance at the seminary; their
characteristics were clean but careless dress, ill-arranged hair
(compared with the tight and trim foreigners), erect carriage, flexible
figures, white and taper hands, features more irregular, but also more
intellectual than those of the Belgians, grave and modest countenances,
a general air of native propriety and decency; by this last circumstance
alone I could at a glance distinguish the daughter of Albion and
nursling of Protestantism from the foster-child of Rome, the PROTEGEE
of Jesuistry: proud, too, was the aspect of these British girls; at once
envied and ridiculed by their continental associates, they warded off
insult with austere civility, and met hate with mute disdain; they
eschewed company-keeping, and in the midst of numbers seemed to dwell
isolated.
The teachers presiding over this mixed multitude were three in number,
all French—their names Mdlles. Zephyrine, Pelagie, and Suzette; the two
last were commonplace personages enough; their look was ordinary,
their manner was ordinary, their temper was ordinary, their thoughts,
feelings, and views were all ordinary—were I to write a chapter on the
subject I could not elucidate it further. Zephyrine was somewhat more
distinguished in appearance and deportment than Pelagie and Suzette,
but in character genuine Parisian coquette, perfidious, mercenary, and
dry-hearted. A fourth maitresse I sometimes saw who seemed to come daily
to teach needlework, or netting, or lace-mending, or some such flimsy
art; but of her I never had more than a passing glimpse, as she sat in
the CARRE, with her frames and some dozen of the elder pupils about her,
consequently I had no opportunity of studying her character, or even of
observing her person much; the latter, I remarked, had a very English
air for a maitresse, otherwise it was not striking; of character I
should think she possessed but little, as her pupils seemed constantly
“en revolte” against her authority. She did not reside in the house; her
name, I think, was Mdlle. Henri.
Amidst this assemblage of all that was insignificant and defective, much
that was vicious and repulsive (by that last epithet many would have
described the two or three stiff, silent, decently behaved, ill-dressed
British girls), the sensible, sagacious, affable directress shone like a
steady star over a marsh full of Jack-o’-lanthorns; profoundly aware
of her superiority, she derived an inward bliss from that consciousness
which sustained her under all the care and responsibility inseparable
from her position; it kept her temper calm, her brow smooth, her manner
tranquil. She liked—as who would not?—on entering the school-room,
to feel that her sole presence sufficed to diffuse that order and
quiet which all the remonstrances, and even commands, of her underlings
frequently failed to enforce; she liked to stand in comparison, or
rather—contrast, with those who surrounded her, and to know that in
personal as well as mental advantages, she bore away the undisputed
palm of preference—(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she
managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the
office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns
every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her
with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her,
but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the
various masters who attended her school were each and all in some way
or other under her influence; over one she had acquired power by her
skilful management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions
to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a fourth—a
timid man—she kept in awe by a sort of austere decision of mien; me,
she still watched, still tried by the most ingenious tests—she roved
round me, baffled, yet persevering; I believe she thought I was like
a smooth and bare precipice, which offered neither jutting stone nor
tree-root, nor tuft of grass to aid the climber. Now she flattered
with exquisite tact, now she moralized, now she tried how far I was
accessible to mercenary motives, then she disported on the brink of
affection—knowing that some men are won by weakness—anon, she talked
excellent sense, aware that others have the folly to admire judgment.
I found it at once pleasant and easy to evade all these efforts; it was
sweet, when she thought me nearly won, to turn round and to smile in
her very eyes, half scornfully, and then to witness her scarcely veiled,
though mute mortification. Still she persevered, and at last, I am bound
to confess it, her finger, essaying, proving every atom of the casket,
touched its secret spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she
laid her hand on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or
whether the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you
shall know.
It happened that I came one day to give a lesson when I was indisposed;
I had a bad cold and a cough; two hours’ incessant talking left me very
hoarse and tired; as I quitted the schoolroom, and was passing along the
corridor, I met Mdlle. Reuter; she remarked, with an anxious air, that
I looked very pale and tired. “Yes,” I said, “I was fatigued;” and then,
with increased interest, she rejoined, “You shall not go away till you
have had some refreshment.” She persuaded me to step into the parlour,
and was very kind and gentle while I stayed. The next day she was kinder
still; she came herself into the class to see that the windows were
closed, and that there was no draught; she exhorted me with friendly
earnestness not to over-exert myself; when I went away, she gave me
her hand unasked, and I could not but mark, by a respectful and gentle
pressure, that I was sensible of the favour, and grateful for it. My
modest demonstration kindled a little merry smile on her countenance;
I thought her almost charming. During the remainder of the evening, my
mind was full of impatience for the afternoon of the next day to arrive,
that I might see her again.
I was not disappointed, for she sat in the class during the whole of my
subsequent lesson, and often looked at me almost with affection. At four
o’clock she accompanied me out of the schoolroom, asking with solicitude
after my health, then scolding me sweetly because I spoke too loud and
gave myself too much trouble; I stopped at the glass-door which led into
the garden, to hear her lecture to the end; the door was open, it was a
very fine day, and while I listened to the soothing reprimand, I looked
at the sunshine and flowers, and felt very happy. The day-scholars began
to pour from the schoolrooms into the passage.
“Will you go into the garden a minute or two,” asked she, “till they are
gone?”
I descended the steps without answering, but I looked back as much as to
say—
“You will come with me?”
In another minute I and the directress were walking side by side down
the alley bordered with fruit-trees, whose white blossoms were then in
full blow as well as their tender green leaves. The sky was blue, the
air still, the May afternoon was full of brightness and fragrance.
Released from the stifling class, surrounded with flowers and foliage,
with a pleasing, smiling, affable woman at my side—how did I feel? Why,
very enviably. It seemed as if the romantic visions my imagination had
suggested of this garden, while it was yet hidden from me by the jealous
boards, were more than realized; and, when a turn in the alley shut out
the view of the house, and some tall shrubs excluded M. Pelet’s
mansion, and screened us momentarily from the other houses, rising
amphitheatre-like round this green spot, I gave my arm to Mdlle. Reuter,
and led her to a garden-chair, nestled under some lilacs near. She sat
down; I took my place at her side. She went on talking to me with that
ease which communicates ease, and, as I listened, a revelation dawned
in my mind that I was on the brink of falling in love. The dinner-bell
rang, both at her house and M. Pelet’s; we were obliged to part; I
detained her a moment as she was moving away.
“I want something,” said I.
“What?” asked Zoraide naively.
“Only a flower.”
“Gather it then—or two, or twenty, if you like.”
“No—one will do—but you must gather it, and give it to me.”
“What a caprice!” she exclaimed, but she raised herself on her tip-toes,
and, plucking a beautiful branch of lilac, offered it to me with grace.
I took it, and went away, satisfied for the present, and hopeful for the
future.
Certainly that May day was a lovely one, and it closed in moonlight
night of summer warmth and serenity. I remember this well; for, having
sat up late that evening, correcting devoirs, and feeling weary and
a little oppressed with the closeness of my small room, I opened the
often-mentioned boarded window, whose boards, however, I had persuaded
old Madame Pelet to have removed since I had filled the post of
professor in the pensionnat de demoiselles, as, from that time, it
was no longer “inconvenient” for me to overlook my own pupils at their
sports. I sat down in the window-seat, rested my arm on the sill,
and leaned out: above me was the clear-obscure of a cloudless
night sky—splendid moonlight subdued the tremulous sparkle of the
stars—below lay the garden, varied with silvery lustre and deep shade,
and all fresh with dew—a grateful perfume exhaled from the closed
blossoms of the fruit-trees—not a leaf stirred, the night was
breezeless. My window looked directly down upon a certain walk of Mdlle.
Reuter’s garden, called “l’allee defendue,” so named because the pupils
were forbidden to enter it on account of its proximity to the boys’
school. It was here that the lilacs and laburnums grew especially thick;
this was the most sheltered nook in the enclosure, its shrubs screened
the garden-chair where that afternoon I had sat with the young
directress. I need not say that my thoughts were chiefly with her as
I leaned from the lattice, and let my eye roam, now over the walks and
borders of the garden, now along the many-windowed front of the house
which rose white beyond the masses of foliage. I wondered in what part
of the building was situated her apartment; and a single light, shining
through the persiennes of one croisee, seemed to direct me to it.
“She watches late,” thought I, “for it must be now near midnight. She
is a fascinating little woman,” I continued in voiceless soliloquy; “her
image forms a pleasant picture in memory; I know she is not what the
world calls pretty—no matter, there is harmony in her aspect, and I
like it; her brown hair, her blue eye, the freshness of her cheek, the
whiteness of her neck, all suit my taste. Then I respect her talent;
the idea of marrying a doll or a fool was always abhorrent to me: I know
that a pretty doll, a fair fool, might do well enough for the honeymoon;
but when passion cooled, how dreadful to find a lump of wax and wood
laid in my bosom, a half idiot clasped in my arms, and to remember that
I had made of this my equal—nay, my idol—to know that I must pass the
rest of my dreary life with a creature incapable of understanding what
I said, of appreciating what I thought, or of sympathizing with what I
felt! “Now, Zoraide Reuter,” thought I, “has tact, CARACTERE, judgment,
discretion; has she heart? What a good, simple little smile played
about her lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her
crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may not much
that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct be only
the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing
difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the
world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient
in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She
has been brought up a Catholic: had she been born an Englishwoman, and
reared a Protestant, might she not have added straight integrity to
all her other excellences? Supposing she were to marry an English and
Protestant husband, would she not, rational, sensible as she is, quickly
acknowledge the superiority of right over expediency, honesty over
policy? It would be worth a man’s while to try the experiment; to-morrow
I will renew my observations. She knows that I watch her: how calm she
is under scrutiny! it seems rather to gratify than annoy her.” Here a
strain of music stole in upon my monologue, and suspended it; it was
a bugle, very skilfully played, in the neighbourhood of the park, I
thought, or on the Place Royale. So sweet were the tones, so subduing
their effect at that hour, in the midst of silence and under the
quiet reign of moonlight, I ceased to think, that I might listen more
intently. The strain retreated, its sound waxed fainter and was soon
gone; my ear prepared to repose on the absolute hush of midnight once
more. No. What murmur was that which, low, and yet near and approaching
nearer, frustrated the expectation of total silence? It was some one
conversing—yes, evidently, an audible, though subdued voice spoke in
the garden immediately below me. Another answered; the first voice was
that of a man, the second that of a woman; and a man and a woman I saw
coming slowly down the alley. Their forms were at first in shade, I
could but discern a dusk outline of each, but a ray of moonlight met
them at the termination of the walk, when they were under my very nose,
and revealed very plainly, very unequivocally, Mdlle. Zoraide Reuter,
arm-in-arm, or hand-in-hand (I forget which) with my principal,
confidant, and counsellor, M. Francois Pelet. And M. Pelet was saying—
“A quand donc le jour des noces, ma bien-aimee?”
And Mdlle. Reuter answered—
“Mais, Francois, tu sais bien qu’il me serait impossible de me marier
avant les vacances.”
“June, July, August, a whole quarter!” exclaimed the director. “How can
I wait so long?—I who am ready, even now, to expire at your feet with
impatience!”
“Ah! if you die, the whole affair will be settled without any trouble
about notaries and contracts; I shall only have to order a slight
mourning dress, which will be much sooner prepared than the nuptial
trousseau.”
“Cruel Zoraide! you laugh at the distress of one who loves you so
devotedly as I do: my torment is your sport; you scruple not to stretch
my soul on the rack of jealousy; for, deny it as you will, I am certain
you have cast encouraging glances on that school-boy, Crimsworth; he has
presumed to fall in love, which he dared not have done unless you had
given him room to hope.”
“What do you say, Francois? Do you say Crimsworth is in love with me?”
“Over head and ears.”
“Has he told you so?”
“No—but I see it in his face: he blushes whenever your name is
mentioned.” A little laugh of exulting coquetry announced Mdlle.
Reuter’s gratification at this piece of intelligence (which was a lie,
by-the-by—I had never been so far gone as that, after all). M. Pelet
proceeded to ask what she intended to do with me, intimating pretty
plainly, and not very gallantly, that it was nonsense for her to think
of taking such a “blanc-bec” as a husband, since she must be at least
ten years older than I (was she then thirty-two? I should not have
thought it). I heard her disclaim any intentions on the subject—the
director, however, still pressed her to give a definite answer.
“Francois,” said she, “you are jealous,” and still she laughed; then, as
if suddenly recollecting that this coquetry was not consistent with the
character for modest dignity she wished to establish, she proceeded,
in a demure voice: “Truly, my dear Francois, I will not deny that this
young Englishman may have made some attempts to ingratiate himself with
me; but, so far from giving him any encouragement, I have always treated
him with as much reserve as it was possible to combine with civility;
affianced as I am to you, I would give no man false hopes; believe me,
dear friend.” Still Pelet uttered murmurs of distrust—so I judged, at
least, from her reply.
“What folly! How could I prefer an unknown foreigner to you? And
then—not to flatter your vanity—Crimsworth could not bear comparison
with you either physically or mentally; he is not a handsome man at all;
some may call him gentleman-like and intelligent-looking, but for my
part—”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the distance, as the pair, rising
from the chair in which they had been seated, moved away. I waited their
return, but soon the opening and shutting of a door informed me that
they had re-entered the house; I listened a little longer, all was
perfectly still; I listened more than an hour—at last I heard M. Pelet
come in and ascend to his chamber. Glancing once more towards the long
front of the garden-house, I perceived that its solitary light was
at length extinguished; so, for a time, was my faith in love and
friendship. I went to bed, but something feverish and fiery had got into
my veins which prevented me from sleeping much that night.
CHAPTER XIII.
NEXT morning I rose with the dawn, and having dressed myself and stood
half-an-hour, my elbow leaning on the chest of drawers, considering what
means I should adopt to restore my spirits, fagged with sleeplessness,
to their ordinary tone—for I had no intention of getting up a scene
with M. Pelet, reproaching him with perfidy, sending him a challenge, or
performing other gambadoes of the sort—I hit at last on the
expedient of walking out in the cool of the morning to a neighbouring
establishment of baths, and treating myself to a bracing plunge.
The remedy produced the desired effect. I came back at seven o’clock
steadied and invigorated, and was able to greet M. Pelet, when he
entered to breakfast, with an unchanged and tranquil countenance; even
a cordial offering of the hand and the flattering appellation of “mon
fils,” pronounced in that caressing tone with which Monsieur had, of
late days especially, been accustomed to address me, did not elicit any
external sign of the feeling which, though subdued, still glowed at
my heart. Not that I nursed vengeance—no; but the sense of insult and
treachery lived in me like a kindling, though as yet smothered coal. God
knows I am not by nature vindictive; I would not hurt a man because I
can no longer trust or like him; but neither my reason nor feelings
are of the vacillating order—they are not of that sand-like sort where
impressions, if soon made, are as soon effaced. Once convinced that my
friend’s disposition is incompatible with my own, once assured that he
is indelibly stained with certain defects obnoxious to my principles,
and I dissolve the connection. I did so with Edward. As to Pelet, the
discovery was yet new; should I act thus with him? It was the question I
placed before my mind as I stirred my cup of coffee with a half-pistolet
(we never had spoons), Pelet meantime being seated opposite, his pallid
face looking as knowing and more haggard than usual, his blue eye
turned, now sternly on his boys and ushers, and now graciously on me.
“Circumstances must guide me,” said I; and meeting Pelet’s false glance
and insinuating smile, I thanked heaven that I had last night opened
my window and read by the light of a full moon the true meaning of that
guileful countenance. I felt half his master, because the reality of
his nature was now known to me; smile and flatter as he would, I saw his
soul lurk behind his smile, and heard in every one of his smooth phrases
a voice interpreting their treacherous import.
But Zoraide Reuter? Of course her defection had cut me to the quick?
That stint must have gone too deep for any consolations of philosophy
to be available in curing its smart? Not at all. The night fever over,
I looked about for balm to that wound also, and found some nearer home
than at Gilead. Reason was my physician; she began by proving that the
prize I had missed was of little value: she admitted that, physically,
Zoraide might have suited me, but affirmed that our souls were not in
harmony, and that discord must have resulted from the union of her mind
with mine. She then insisted on the suppression of all repining,
and commanded me rather to rejoice that I had escaped a snare. Her
medicament did me good. I felt its strengthening effect when I met the
directress the next day; its stringent operation on the nerves suffered
no trembling, no faltering; it enabled me to face her with firmness,
to pass her with ease. She had held out her hand to me—that I did not
choose to see. She had greeted me with a charming smile—it fell on my
heart like light on stone. I passed on to the estrade, she followed me;
her eye, fastened on my face, demanded of every feature the meaning of
my changed and careless manner. “I will give her an answer,” thought I;
and, meeting her gaze full, arresting, fixing her glance, I shot into
her eyes, from my own, a look, where there was no respect, no love,
no tenderness, no gallantry; where the strictest analysis could detect
nothing but scorn, hardihood, irony. I made her bear it, and feel it;
her steady countenance did not change, but her colour rose, and she
approached me as if fascinated. She stepped on to the estrade, and
stood close by my side; she had nothing to say. I would not relieve her
embarrassment, and negligently turned over the leaves of a book.
“I hope you feel quite recovered to-day,” at last she said, in a low
tone.
“And I, mademoiselle, hope that you took no cold last night in
consequence of your late walk in the garden.”
Quick enough of comprehension, she understood me directly; her face
became a little blanched—a very little—but no muscle in her rather
marked features moved; and, calm and self-possessed, she retired from
the estrade, taking her seat quietly at a little distance, and occupying
herself with netting a purse. I proceeded to give my lesson; it was a
“Composition,” i.e., I dictated certain general questions, of which the
pupils were to compose the answers from memory, access to books being
forbidden. While Mdlle. Eulalie, Hortense, Caroline, &c., were pondering
over the string of rather abstruse grammatical interrogatories I had
propounded, I was at liberty to employ the vacant half hour in further
observing the directress herself. The green silk purse was progressing
fast in her hands; her eyes were bent upon it; her attitude, as she
sat netting within two yards of me, was still yet guarded; in her whole
person were expressed at once, and with equal clearness, vigilance and
repose—a rare union! Looking at her, I was forced, as I had often been
before, to offer her good sense, her wondrous self-control, the tribute
of involuntary admiration. She had felt that I had withdrawn from her
my esteem; she had seen contempt and coldness in my eye, and to her, who
coveted the approbation of all around her, who thirsted after universal
good opinion, such discovery must have been an acute wound. I had
witnessed its effect in the momentary pallor of her cheek—cheek unused
to vary; yet how quickly, by dint of self-control, had she recovered
her composure! With what quiet dignity she now sat, almost at my side,
sustained by her sound and vigorous sense; no trembling in her somewhat
lengthened, though shrewd upper lip, no coward shame on her austere
forehead!
“There is metal there,” I said, as I gazed. “Would that there were fire
also, living ardour to make the steel glow—then I could love her.”
Presently I discovered that she knew I was watching her, for she stirred
not, she lifted not her crafty eyelid; she had glanced down from her
netting to her small foot, peeping from the soft folds of her purple
merino gown; thence her eye reverted to her hand, ivory white, with a
bright garnet ring on the forefinger, and a light frill of lace round
the wrist; with a scarcely perceptible movement she turned her head,
causing her nut-brown curls to wave gracefully. In these slight signs
I read that the wish of her heart, the design of her brain, was to lure
back the game she had scared. A little incident gave her the opportunity
of addressing me again.
While all was silence in the class—silence, but for the rustling of
copy-books and the travelling of pens over their pages—a leaf of the
large folding-door, opening from the hall, unclosed, admitting a
pupil who, after making a hasty obeisance, ensconced herself with some
appearance of trepidation, probably occasioned by her entering so
late, in a vacant seat at the desk nearest the door. Being seated, she
proceeded, still with an air of hurry and embarrassment, to open her
cabas, to take out her books; and, while I was waiting for her to look
up, in order to make out her identity—for, shortsighted as I was, I had
not recognized her at her entrance—Mdlle. Reuter, leaving her chair,
approached the estrade.
“Monsieur Creemsvort,” said she, in a whisper: for when the schoolrooms
were silent, the directress always moved with velvet tread, and spoke
in the most subdued key, enforcing order and stillness fully as much
by example as precept: “Monsieur Creemsvort, that young person, who has
just entered, wishes to have the advantage of taking lessons with you in
English; she is not a pupil of the house; she is, indeed, in one sense,
a teacher, for she gives instruction in lace-mending, and in little
varieties of ornamental needle-work. She very properly proposes to
qualify herself for a higher department of education, and has asked
permission to attend your lessons, in order to perfect her knowledge
of English, in which language she has, I believe, already made
some progress; of course it is my wish to aid her in an effort
so praiseworthy; you will permit her then to benefit by your
instruction—n’est ce pas, monsieur?” And Mdlle. Reuter’s eyes were
raised to mine with a look at once naive, benign, and beseeching.
I replied, “Of course,” very laconically, almost abruptly.
“Another word,” she said, with softness: “Mdlle. Henri has not received
a regular education; perhaps her natural talents are not of the highest
order: but I can assure you of the excellence of her intentions, and
even of the amiability of her disposition. Monsieur will then, I am
sure, have the goodness to be considerate with her at first, and not
expose her backwardness, her inevitable deficiencies, before the young
ladies, who, in a sense, are her pupils. Will Monsieur Creemsvort favour
me by attending to this hint?” I nodded. She continued with subdued
earnestness—
“Pardon me, monsieur, if I venture to add that what I have just said is
of importance to the poor girl; she already experiences great difficulty
in impressing these giddy young things with a due degree of deference
for her authority, and should that difficulty be increased by new
discoveries of her incapacity, she might find her position in my
establishment too painful to be retained; a circumstance I should much
regret for her sake, as she can ill afford to lose the profits of her
occupation here.”
Mdlle. Reuter possessed marvellous tact; but tact the most exclusive,
unsupported by sincerity, will sometimes fail of its effect; thus, on
this occasion, the longer she preached about the necessity of being
indulgent to the governess pupil, the more impatient I felt as I
listened. I discerned so clearly that while her professed motive was a
wish to aid the dull, though well-meaning Mdlle. Henri, her real one
was no other than a design to impress me with an idea of her own exalted
goodness and tender considerateness; so having again hastily nodded
assent to her remarks, I obviated their renewal by suddenly demanding
the compositions, in a sharp accent, and stepping from the estrade, I
proceeded to collect them. As I passed the governess-pupil, I said to
her—
“You have come in too late to receive a lesson to-day; try to be more
punctual next time.”
I was behind her, and could not read in her face the effect of my not
very civil speech. Probably I should not have troubled myself to do so,
had I been full in front; but I observed that she immediately began
to slip her books into her cabas again; and, presently, after I had
returned to the estrade, while I was arranging the mass of compositions,
I heard the folding-door again open and close; and, on looking up, I
perceived her place vacant. I thought to myself, “She will consider her
first attempt at taking a lesson in English something of a failure;” and
I wondered whether she had departed in the sulks, or whether stupidity
had induced her to take my words too literally, or, finally, whether
my irritable tone had wounded her feelings. The last notion I dismissed
almost as soon as I had conceived it, for not having seen any appearance
of sensitiveness in any human face since my arrival in Belgium, I had
begun to regard it almost as a fabulous quality. Whether her physiognomy
announced it I could not tell, for her speedy exit had allowed me no
time to ascertain the circumstance. I had, indeed, on two or three
previous occasions, caught a passing view of her (as I believe has been
mentioned before); but I had never stopped to scrutinize either her face
or person, and had but the most vague idea of her general appearance.
Just as I had finished rolling up the compositions, the four o’clock
bell rang; with my accustomed alertness in obeying that signal, I
grasped my hat and evacuated the premises.
CHAPTER XIV.
IF I was punctual in quitting Mdlle. Reuter’s domicile, I was at least
equally punctual in arriving there; I came the next day at five minutes
before two, and on reaching the schoolroom door, before I opened it, I
heard a rapid, gabbling sound, which warned me that the “priere du midi”
was not yet concluded. I waited the termination thereof; it would have
been impious to intrude my heretical presence during its progress. How
the repeater of the prayer did cackle and splutter! I never before or
since heard language enounced with such steam-engine haste. “Notre Pere
qui etes au ciel” went off like a shot; then followed an address to
Marie “vierge celeste, reine des anges, maison d’or, tour d’ivoire!” and
then an invocation to the saint of the day; and then down they all sat,
and the solemn (?) rite was over; and I entered, flinging the door wide
and striding in fast, as it was my wont to do now; for I had found
that in entering with aplomb, and mounting the estrade with emphasis,
consisted the grand secret of ensuring immediate silence. The
folding-doors between the two classes, opened for the prayer, were
instantly closed; a maitresse, work-box in hand, took her seat at her
appropriate desk; the pupils sat still with their pens and books before
them; my three beauties in the van, now well humbled by a demeanour of
consistent coolness, sat erect with their hands folded quietly on their
knees; they had given up giggling and whispering to each other, and no
longer ventured to utter pert speeches in my presence; they now only
talked to me occasionally with their eyes, by means of which organs
they could still, however, say very audacious and coquettish things. Had
affection, goodness, modesty, real talent, ever employed those bright
orbs as interpreters, I do not think I could have refrained from giving
a kind and encouraging, perhaps an ardent reply now and then; but as it
was, I found pleasure in answering the glance of vanity with the gaze
of stoicism. Youthful, fair, brilliant, as were many of my pupils, I can
truly say that in me they never saw any other bearing than such as an
austere, though just guardian, might have observed towards them. If any
doubt the accuracy of this assertion, as inferring more conscientious
self-denial or Scipio-like self-control than they feel disposed to
give me credit for, let them take into consideration the following
circumstances, which, while detracting from my merit, justify my
veracity.
Know, O incredulous reader! that a master stands in a somewhat different
relation towards a pretty, light-headed, probably ignorant girl, to
that occupied by a partner at a ball, or a gallant on the promenade.
A professor does not meet his pupil to see her dressed in satin and
muslin, with hair perfumed and curled, neck scarcely shaded by aerial
lace, round white arms circled with bracelets, feet dressed for the
gliding dance. It is not his business to whirl her through the waltz,
to feed her with compliments, to heighten her beauty by the flush of
gratified vanity. Neither does he encounter her on the smooth-rolled,
tree shaded Boulevard, in the green and sunny park, whither she repairs
clad in her becoming walking dress, her scarf thrown with grace over her
shoulders, her little bonnet scarcely screening her curls, the red rose
under its brim adding a new tint to the softer rose on her cheek; her
face and eyes, too, illumined with smiles, perhaps as transient as the
sunshine of the gala-day, but also quite as brilliant; it is not his
office to walk by her side, to listen to her lively chat, to carry her
parasol, scarcely larger than a broad green leaf, to lead in a ribbon
her Blenheim spaniel or Italian greyhound. No: he finds her in the
schoolroom, plainly dressed, with books before her. Owing to her
education or her nature books are to her a nuisance, and she opens them
with aversion, yet her teacher must instil into her mind the contents
of these books; that mind resists the admission of grave information, it
recoils, it grows restive, sullen tempers are shown, disfiguring frowns
spoil the symmetry of the face, sometimes coarse gestures banish grace
from the deportment, while muttered expressions, redolent of native and
ineradicable vulgarity, desecrate the sweetness of the voice. Where the
temperament is serene though the intellect be sluggish, an unconquerable
dullness opposes every effort to instruct. Where there is cunning but
not energy, dissimulation, falsehood, a thousand schemes and tricks
are put in play to evade the necessity of application; in short, to the
tutor, female youth, female charms are like tapestry hangings, of which
the wrong side is continually turned towards him; and even when he sees
the smooth, neat external surface he so well knows what knots, long
stitches, and jagged ends are behind that he has scarce a temptation to
admire too fondly the seemly forms and bright colours exposed to general
view.
Our likings are regulated by our circumstances. The artist prefers a
hilly country because it is picturesque; the engineer a flat one because
it is convenient; the man of pleasure likes what he calls “a fine
woman”—she suits him; the fashionable young gentleman admires the
fashionable young lady—she is of his kind; the toil-worn, fagged,
probably irritable tutor, blind almost to beauty, insensible to airs and
graces, glories chiefly in certain mental qualities: application, love
of knowledge, natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness,
are the charms that attract his notice and win his regard. These he
seeks, but seldom meets; these, if by chance he finds, he would fain
retain for ever, and when separation deprives him of them he feels as if
some ruthless hand had snatched from him his only ewe-lamb. Such being
the case, and the case it is, my readers will agree with me that there
was nothing either very meritorious or very marvellous in the
integrity and moderation of my conduct at Mdlle. Reuter’s pensionnat de
demoiselles.
My first business this afternoon consisted in reading the list of
places for the month, determined by the relative correctness of the
compositions given the preceding day. The list was headed, as usual,
by the name of Sylvie, that plain, quiet little girl I have described
before as being at once the best and ugliest pupil in the establishment;
the second place had fallen to the lot of a certain Leonie Ledru, a
diminutive, sharp-featured, and parchment-skinned creature of quick
wits, frail conscience, and indurated feelings; a lawyer-like thing, of
whom I used to say that, had she been a boy, she would have made a
model of an unprincipled, clever attorney. Then came Eulalie, the proud
beauty, the Juno of the school, whom six long years of drilling in the
simple grammar of the English language had compelled, despite the stiff
phlegm of her intellect, to acquire a mechanical acquaintance with most
of its rules. No smile, no trace of pleasure or satisfaction appeared in
Sylvie’s nun-like and passive face as she heard her name read first.
I always felt saddened by the sight of that poor girl’s absolute
quiescence on all occasions, and it was my custom to look at her, to
address her, as seldom as possible; her extreme docility, her assiduous
perseverance, would have recommended her warmly to my good opinion;
her modesty, her intelligence, would have induced me to feel most
kindly—most affectionately towards her, notwithstanding the almost
ghastly plainness of her features, the disproportion of her form, the
corpse-like lack of animation in her countenance, had I not been aware
that every friendly word, every kindly action, would be reported by her
to her confessor, and by him misinterpreted and poisoned. Once I laid my
hand on her head, in token of approbation; I thought Sylvie was going to
smile, her dim eye almost kindled; but, presently, she shrank from me;
I was a man and a heretic; she, poor child! a destined nun and devoted
Catholic: thus a four-fold wall of separation divided her mind from
mine. A pert smirk, and a hard glance of triumph, was Leonie’s method of
testifying her gratification; Eulalie looked sullen and envious—she had
hoped to be first. Hortense and Caroline exchanged a reckless grimace on
hearing their names read out somewhere near the bottom of the list; the
brand of mental inferiority was considered by them as no disgrace, their
hopes for the future being based solely on their personal attractions.
This affair arranged, the regular lesson followed. During a brief
interval, employed by the pupils in ruling their books, my eye, ranging
carelessly over the benches, observed, for the first time, that the
farthest seat in the farthest row—a seat usually vacant—was
again filled by the new scholar, the Mdlle. Henri so ostentatiously
recommended to me by the directress. To-day I had on my spectacles; her
appearance, therefore, was clear to me at the first glance; I had not to
puzzle over it. She looked young; yet, had I been required to name her
exact age, I should have been somewhat nonplussed; the slightness of her
figure might have suited seventeen; a certain anxious and pre-occupied
expression of face seemed the indication of riper years. She was
dressed, like all the rest, in a dark stuff gown and a white collar; her
features were dissimilar to any there, not so rounded, more defined, yet
scarcely regular. The shape of her head too was different, the superior
part more developed, the base considerably less. I felt assured,
at first sight, that she was not a Belgian; her complexion, her
countenance, her lineaments, her figure, were all distinct from theirs,
and, evidently, the type of another race—of a race less gifted with
fullness of flesh and plenitude of blood; less jocund, material,
unthinking. When I first cast my eyes on her, she sat looking fixedly
down, her chin resting on her hand, and she did not change her attitude
till I commenced the lesson. None of the Belgian girls would have
retained one position, and that a reflective one, for the same length of
time. Yet, having intimated that her appearance was peculiar, as
being unlike that of her Flemish companions, I have little more to say
respecting it; I can pronounce no encomiums on her beauty, for she was
not beautiful; nor offer condolence on her plainness, for neither
was she plain; a careworn character of forehead, and a corresponding
moulding of the mouth, struck me with a sentiment resembling surprise,
but these traits would probably have passed unnoticed by any less
crotchety observer.
Now, reader, though I have spent more than a page in describing Mdlle.
Henri, I know well enough that I have left on your mind’s eye no
distinct picture of her; I have not painted her complexion, nor her
eyes, nor her hair, nor even drawn the outline of her shape. You cannot
tell whether her nose was aquiline or retrousse, whether her chin was
long or short, her face square or oval; nor could I the first day,
and it is not my intention to communicate to you at once a knowledge I
myself gained by little and little.
I gave a short exercise: which they all wrote down. I saw the new pupil
was puzzled at first with the novelty of the form and language; once
or twice she looked at me with a sort of painful solicitude, as not
comprehending at all what I meant; then she was not ready when the
others were, she could not write her phrases so fast as they did; I
would not help her, I went on relentless. She looked at me; her eye
said most plainly, “I cannot follow you.” I disregarded the appeal, and,
carelessly leaning back in my chair, glancing from time to time with a
NONCHALANT air out of the window, I dictated a little faster. On looking
towards her again, I perceived her face clouded with embarrassment, but
she was still writing on most diligently; I paused a few seconds; she
employed the interval in hurriedly re-perusing what she had written, and
shame and discomfiture were apparent in her countenance; she evidently
found she had made great nonsense of it. In ten minutes more the
dictation was complete, and, having allowed a brief space in which to
correct it, I took their books; it was with a reluctant hand Mdlle.
Henri gave up hers, but, having once yielded it to my possession, she
composed her anxious face, as if, for the present she had resolved to
dismiss regret, and had made up her mind to be thought unprecedentedly
stupid. Glancing over her exercise, I found that several lines had been
omitted, but what was written contained very few faults; I instantly
inscribed “Bon” at the bottom of the page, and returned it to her; she
smiled, at first incredulously, then as if reassured, but did not
lift her eyes; she could look at me, it seemed, when perplexed and
bewildered, but not when gratified; I thought that scarcely fair.
CHAPTER XV.
SOME time elapsed before I again gave a lesson in the first class; the
holiday of Whitsuntide occupied three days, and on the fourth it was the
turn of the second division to receive my instructions. As I made
the transit of the CARRE, I observed, as usual, the band of sewers
surrounding Mdlle. Henri; there were only about a dozen of them, but
they made as much noise as might have sufficed for fifty; they seemed
very little under her control; three or four at once assailed her with
importunate requirements; she looked harassed, she demanded silence, but
in vain. She saw me, and I read in her eye pain that a stranger should
witness the insubordination of her pupils; she seemed to entreat
order—her prayers were useless; then I remarked that she compressed
her lips and contracted her brow; and her countenance, if I read
it correctly, said—“I have done my best; I seem to merit blame
notwithstanding; blame me then who will.” I passed on; as I closed the
school-room door, I heard her say, suddenly and sharply, addressing one
of the eldest and most turbulent of the lot—
“Amelie Mullenberg, ask me no question, and request of me no assistance,
for a week to come; during that space of time I will neither speak to
you nor help you.”
The words were uttered with emphasis—nay, with vehemence—and a
comparative silence followed; whether the calm was permanent, I know
not; two doors now closed between me and the CARRE.
Next day was appropriated to the first class; on my arrival, I found the
directress seated, as usual, in a chair between the two estrades, and
before her was standing Mdlle. Henri, in an attitude (as it seemed to
me) of somewhat reluctant attention. The directress was knitting and
talking at the same time. Amidst the hum of a large school-room, it was
easy so to speak in the ear of one person, as to be heard by that person
alone, and it was thus Mdlle. Reuter parleyed with her teacher. The face
of the latter was a little flushed, not a little troubled; there was
vexation in it, whence resulting I know not, for the directress looked
very placid indeed; she could not be scolding in such gentle whispers,
and with so equable a mien; no, it was presently proved that her
discourse had been of the most friendly tendency, for I heard the
closing words—
“C’est assez, ma bonne amie; a present je ne veux pas vous retenir
davantage.”
Without reply, Mdlle. Henri turned away; dissatisfaction was plainly
evinced in her face, and a smile, slight and brief, but bitter,
distrustful, and, I thought, scornful, curled her lip as she took her
place in the class; it was a secret, involuntary smile, which lasted but
a second; an air of depression succeeded, chased away presently by one
of attention and interest, when I gave the word for all the pupils to
take their reading-books. In general I hated the reading-lesson, it
was such a torture to the ear to listen to their uncouth mouthing of
my native tongue, and no effort of example or precept on my part ever
seemed to effect the slightest improvement in their accent. To-day,
each in her appropriate key, lisped, stuttered, mumbled, and jabbered as
usual; about fifteen had racked me in turn, and my auricular nerve was
expecting with resignation the discords of the sixteenth, when a full,
though low voice, read out, in clear correct English.
“On his way to Perth, the king was met by a Highland woman, calling
herself a prophetess; she stood at the side of the ferry by which he was
about to travel to the north, and cried with a loud voice, ‘My lord the
king, if you pass this water you will never return again alive!’”—(VIDE
the HISTORY OF SCOTLAND).
I looked up in amazement; the voice was a voice of Albion; the accent
was pure and silvery; it only wanted firmness, and assurance, to be the
counterpart of what any well-educated lady in Essex or Middlesex might
have enounced, yet the speaker or reader was no other than Mdlle. Henri,
in whose grave, joyless face I saw no mark of consciousness that she had
performed any extraordinary feat. No one else evinced surprise either.
Mdlle. Reuter knitted away assiduously; I was aware, however, that at
the conclusion of the paragraph, she had lifted her eyelid and honoured
me with a glance sideways; she did not know the full excellency of the
teacher’s style of reading, but she perceived that her accent was not
that of the others, and wanted to discover what I thought; I masked my
visage with indifference, and ordered the next girl to proceed.
When the lesson was over, I took advantage of the confusion caused by
breaking up, to approach Mdlle. Henri; she was standing near the window
and retired as I advanced; she thought I wanted to look out, and did
not imagine that I could have anything to say to her. I took her
exercise-book out of her hand; as I turned over the leaves I addressed
her:—
“You have had lessons in English before?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
“No! you read it well; you have been in England?”
“Oh, no!” with some animation.
“You have been in English families?”
Still the answer was “No.” Here my eye, resting on the flyleaf of the
book, saw written, “Frances Evan Henri.”
“Your name?” I asked
“Yes, sir.”
My interrogations were cut short; I heard a little rustling behind me,
and close at my back was the directress, professing to be examining the
interior of a desk.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, looking up and addressing the teacher, “Will
you have the goodness to go and stand in the corridor, while the young
ladies are putting on their things, and try to keep some order?”
Mdlle. Henri obeyed.
“What splendid weather!” observed the directress cheerfully, glancing at
the same time from the window. I assented and was withdrawing. “What of
your new pupil, monsieur?” continued she, following my retreating steps.
“Is she likely to make progress in English?”
“Indeed I can hardly judge. She possesses a pretty good accent; of
her real knowledge of the language I have as yet had no opportunity of
forming an opinion.”
“And her natural capacity, monsieur? I have had my fears about that: can
you relieve me by an assurance at least of its average power?”
“I see no reason to doubt its average power, mademoiselle, but really
I scarcely know her, and have not had time to study the calibre of her
capacity. I wish you a very good afternoon.”
She still pursued me. “You will observe, monsieur, and tell me what you
think; I could so much better rely on your opinion than on my own; women
cannot judge of these things as men can, and, excuse my pertinacity,
monsieur, but it is natural I should feel interested about this poor
little girl (pauvre petite); she has scarcely any relations, her own
efforts are all she has to look to, her acquirements must be her sole
fortune; her present position has once been mine, or nearly so; it is
then but natural I should sympathize with her; and sometimes when I see
the difficulty she has in managing pupils, I feel quite chagrined.
I doubt not she does her best, her intentions are excellent; but,
monsieur, she wants tact and firmness. I have talked to her on the
subject, but I am not fluent, and probably did not express myself
with clearness; she never appears to comprehend me. Now, would you
occasionally, when you see an opportunity, slip in a word of advice
to her on the subject; men have so much more influence than women
have—they argue so much more logically than we do; and you, monsieur,
in particular, have so paramount a power of making yourself obeyed;
a word of advice from you could not but do her good; even if she were
sullen and headstrong (which I hope she is not), she would scarcely
refuse to listen to you; for my own part, I can truly say that I never
attend one of your lessons without deriving benefit from witnessing your
management of the pupils. The other masters are a constant source of
anxiety to me; they cannot impress the young ladies with sentiments of
respect, nor restrain the levity natural to youth: in you, monsieur, I
feel the most absolute confidence; try then to put this poor child
into the way of controlling our giddy, high-spirited Brabantoises.
But, monsieur, I would add one word more; don’t alarm her AMOUR PROPRE;
beware of inflicting a wound there. I reluctantly admit that in that
particular she is blameably—some would say ridiculously—susceptible.
I fear I have touched this sore point inadvertently, and she cannot get
over it.”
During the greater part of this harangue my hand was on the lock of the
outer door; I now turned it.
“Au revoir, mademoiselle,” said I, and I escaped. I saw the directress’s
stock of words was yet far from exhausted. She looked after me, she
would fain have detained me longer. Her manner towards me had
been altered ever since I had begun to treat her with hardness and
indifference: she almost cringed to me on every occasion; she consulted
my countenance incessantly, and beset me with innumerable little
officious attentions. Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage,
instead of softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and
exacting in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me
like a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid pillar of
stone; her flatteries irritated my scorn, her blandishments confirmed
my reserve. At times I wondered what she meant by giving herself such
trouble to win me, when the more profitable Pelet was already in her
nets, and when, too, she was aware that I possessed her secret, for I
had not scrupled to tell her as much: but the fact is that as it was
her nature to doubt the reality and under-value the worth of modesty,
affection, disinterestedness—to regard these qualities as foibles of
character—so it was equally her tendency to consider pride, hardness,
selfishness, as proofs of strength. She would trample on the neck
of humility, she would kneel at the feet of disdain; she would meet
tenderness with secret contempt, indifference she would woo with
ceaseless assiduities. Benevolence, devotedness, enthusiasm, were
her antipathies; for dissimulation and self-interest she had a
preference—they were real wisdom in her eyes; moral and physical
degradation, mental and bodily inferiority, she regarded with
indulgence; they were foils capable of being turned to good account as
set-offs for her own endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she
succumbed—they were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate,
no impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in some
hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that the false and
selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased termed her charitable,
the insolent and unjust dubbed her amiable, the conscientious and
benevolent generally at first accepted as valid her claim to be
considered one of themselves; but ere long the plating of pretension
wore off, the real material appeared below, and they laid her aside as a
deception.
CHAPTER XVI.
In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient of Frances
Evans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinion of her
character. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkable degree of at
least two good points, viz., perseverance and a sense of duty; I
found she was really capable of applying to study, of contending with
difficulties. At first I offered her the same help which I had always
found it necessary to confer on the others; I began with unloosing for
her each knotty point, but I soon discovered that such help was regarded
by my new pupil as degrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proud
impatience. Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solve
alone any perplexities they might present. She set to the task with
serious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour, eagerly
demanded more. So much for her perseverance; as to her sense of duty,
it evinced itself thus: she liked to learn, but hated to teach; her
progress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself she
could calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly,
perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painful
effort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour
to bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in
general the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as
unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it
she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went
counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle
with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children
especially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate to
persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the
sense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful
expense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances
toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere her
conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on their
part, because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as by
resisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control—by
forcing her to the employment of coercive measures—they could
inflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings—human children
especially—seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power
which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist
only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are
duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and
his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that
instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very
young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize
nor how to spare. Frances, I fear, suffered much; a continual weight
seemed to oppress her spirits; I have said she did not live in the
house, and whether in her own abode, wherever that might be, she wore
the same preoccupied, unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that always
shaded her features under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell.
One day I gave, as a devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfred tending
cakes in the herdsman’s hut, to be related with amplifications. A
singular affair most of the pupils made of it; brevity was what they
had chiefly studied; the majority of the narratives were perfectly
unintelligible; those of Sylvie and Leonie Ledru alone pretended to
anything like sense and connection. Eulalie, indeed, had hit, upon a
clever expedient for at once ensuring accuracy and saving trouble; she
had obtained access somehow to an abridged history of England, and had
copied the anecdote out fair. I wrote on the margin of her production
“Stupid and deceitful,” and then tore it down the middle.
Last in the pile of single-leaved devoirs, I found one of several
sheets, neatly written out and stitched together; I knew the hand, and
scarcely needed the evidence of the signature “Frances Evans Henri” to
confirm my conjecture as to the writer’s identity.
Night was my usual time for correcting devoirs, and my own room the
usual scene of such task—task most onerous hitherto; and it seemed
strange to me to feel rising within me an incipient sense of interest,
as I snuffed the candle and addressed myself to the perusal of the poor
teacher’s manuscript.
“Now,” thought I, “I shall see a glimpse of what she really is; I shall
get an idea of the nature and extent of her powers; not that she can be
expected to express herself well in a foreign tongue, but still, if she
has any mind, here will be a reflection of it.”
The narrative commenced by a description of a Saxon peasant’s hut,
situated within the confines of a great, leafless, winter forest; it
represented an evening in December; flakes of snow were falling, and
the herdsman foretold a heavy storm; he summoned his wife to aid him in
collecting their flock, roaming far away on the pastoral banks of the
Thone; he warns her that it will be late ere they return. The good woman
is reluctant to quit her occupation of baking cakes for the evening
meal; but acknowledging the primary importance of securing the herds and
flocks, she puts on her sheep-skin mantle; and, addressing a stranger
who rests half reclined on a bed of rushes near the hearth, bids him
mind the bread till her return.
“Take care, young man,” she continues, “that you fasten the door well
after us; and, above all, open to none in our absence; whatever sound
you hear, stir not, and look not out. The night will soon fall; this
forest is most wild and lonely; strange noises are often heard therein
after sunset; wolves haunt these glades, and Danish warriors infest the
country; worse things are talked of; you might chance to hear, as it
were, a child cry, and on opening the door to afford it succour, a great
black bull, or a shadowy goblin dog, might rush over the threshold;
or, more awful still, if something flapped, as with wings, against the
lattice, and then a raven or a white dove flew in and settled on the
hearth, such a visitor would be a sure sign of misfortune to the house;
therefore, heed my advice, and lift the latchet for nothing.”
Her husband calls her away, both depart. The stranger, left alone,
listens awhile to the muffled snow-wind, the remote, swollen sound of
the river, and then he speaks.
“It is Christmas Eve,” says he, “I mark the date; here I sit alone on
a rude couch of rushes, sheltered by the thatch of a herdsman’s hut;
I, whose inheritance was a kingdom, owe my night’s harbourage to a poor
serf; my throne is usurped, my crown presses the brow of an invader; I
have no friends; my troops wander broken in the hills of Wales; reckless
robbers spoil my country; my subjects lie prostrate, their breasts
crushed by the heel of the brutal Dane. Fate! thou hast done thy worst,
and now thou standest before me resting thy hand on thy blunted blade.
Ay; I see thine eye confront mine and demand why I still live, why I
still hope. Pagan demon, I credit not thine omnipotence, and so cannot
succumb to thy power. My God, whose Son, as on this night, took on Him
the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls
thy hand, and without His behest thou canst not strike a stroke. My God
is sinless, eternal, all-wise—in Him is my trust; and though stripped
and crushed by thee—though naked, desolate, void of resource—I do not
despair, I cannot despair: were the lance of Guthrum now wet with my
blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray; Jehovah,
in his own time, will aid.”
I need not continue the quotation; the whole devoir was in the same
strain. There were errors of orthography, there were foreign idioms,
there were some faults of construction, there were verbs irregular
transformed into verbs regular; it was mostly made up, as the above
example shows, of short and somewhat rude sentences, and the style stood
in great need of polish and sustained dignity; yet such as it was, I
had hitherto seen nothing like it in the course of my professorial
experience. The girl’s mind had conceived a picture of the hut, of the
two peasants, of the crownless king; she had imagined the wintry forest,
she had recalled the old Saxon ghost-legends, she had appreciated
Alfred’s courage under calamity, she had remembered his Christian
education, and had shown him, with the rooted confidence of those
primitive days, relying on the scriptural Jehovah for aid against the
mythological Destiny. This she had done without a hint from me: I had
given the subject, but not said a word about the manner of treating it.
“I will find, or make, an opportunity of speaking to her,” I said to
myself as I rolled the devoir up; “I will learn what she has of English
in her besides the name of Frances Evans; she is no novice in the
language, that is evident, yet she told me she had neither been in
England, nor taken lessons in English, nor lived in English families.”
In the course of my next lesson, I made a report of the other devoirs,
dealing out praise and blame in very small retail parcels, according to
my custom, for there was no use in blaming severely, and high encomiums
were rarely merited. I said nothing of Mdlle. Henri’s exercise, and,
spectacles on nose, I endeavoured to decipher in her countenance her
sentiments at the omission. I wanted to find out whether in her existed
a consciousness of her own talents. “If she thinks she did a clever
thing in composing that devoir, she will now look mortified,” thought
I. Grave as usual, almost sombre, was her face; as usual, her eyes were
fastened on the cahier open before her; there was something, I thought,
of expectation in her attitude, as I concluded a brief review of the
last devoir, and when, casting it from me and rubbing my hands, I bade
them take their grammars, some slight change did pass over her air
and mien, as though she now relinquished a faint prospect of pleasant
excitement; she had been waiting for something to be discussed in which
she had a degree of interest; the discussion was not to come on, so
expectation sank back, shrunk and sad, but attention, promptly filling
up the void, repaired in a moment the transient collapse of feature;
still, I felt, rather than saw, during the whole course of the lesson,
that a hope had been wrenched from her, and that if she did not show
distress, it was because she would not.
At four o’clock, when the bell rang and the room was in immediate
tumult, instead of taking my hat and starting from the estrade, I sat
still a moment. I looked at Frances, she was putting her books into her
cabas; having fastened the button, she raised her head; encountering my
eye, she made a quiet, respectful obeisance, as bidding good afternoon,
and was turning to depart:—
“Come here,” said I, lifting my finger at the same time. She hesitated;
she could not hear the words amidst the uproar now pervading both
school-rooms; I repeated the sign; she approached; again she paused
within half a yard of the estrade, and looked shy, and still doubtful
whether she had mistaken my meaning.
“Step up,” I said, speaking with decision. It is the only way of dealing
with diffident, easily embarrassed characters, and with some slight
manual aid I presently got her placed just where I wanted her to be,
that is, between my desk and the window, where she was screened from the
rush of the second division, and where no one could sneak behind her to
listen.
“Take a seat,” I said, placing a tabouret; and I made her sit down. I
knew what I was doing would be considered a very strange thing, and,
what was more, I did not care. Frances knew it also, and, I fear, by an
appearance of agitation and trembling, that she cared much. I drew from
my pocket the rolled-up devoir.
“This is yours, I suppose?” said I, addressing her in English, for I now
felt sure she could speak English.
“Yes,” she answered distinctly; and as I unrolled it and laid it out
flat on the desk before her with my hand upon it, and a pencil in that
hand, I saw her moved, and, as it were, kindled; her depression beamed
as a cloud might behind which the sun is burning.
“This devoir has numerous faults,” said I. “It will take you some years
of careful study before you are in a condition to write English with
absolute correctness. Attend: I will point out some principal defects.”
And I went through it carefully, noting every error, and demonstrating
why they were errors, and how the words or phrases ought to have been
written. In the course of this sobering process she became calm. I now
went on:
“As to the substance of your devoir, Mdlle. Henri, it has surprised me;
I perused it with pleasure, because I saw in it some proofs of taste and
fancy. Taste and fancy are not the highest gifts of the human mind, but
such as they are you possess them—not probably in a paramount degree,
but in a degree beyond what the majority can boast. You may then take
courage; cultivate the faculties that God and nature have bestowed on
you, and do not fear in any crisis of suffering, under any pressure of
injustice, to derive free and full consolation from the consciousness of
their strength and rarity.”
“Strength and rarity!” I repeated to myself; “ay, the words are probably
true,” for on looking up, I saw the sun had dissevered its screening
cloud, her countenance was transfigured, a smile shone in her eyes—a
smile almost triumphant; it seemed to say—
“I am glad you have been forced to discover so much of my nature; you
need not so carefully moderate your language. Do you think I am myself a
stranger to myself? What you tell me in terms so qualified, I have known
fully from a child.”
She did say this as plainly as a frank and flashing glance could, but
in a moment the glow of her complexion, the radiance of her aspect,
had subsided; if strongly conscious of her talents, she was equally
conscious of her harassing defects, and the remembrance of these
obliterated for a single second, now reviving with sudden force, at once
subdued the too vivid characters in which her sense of her powers had
been expressed. So quick was the revulsion of feeling, I had not time to
check her triumph by reproof; ere I could contract my brows to a frown
she had become serious and almost mournful-looking.
“Thank you, sir,” said she, rising. There was gratitude both in her
voice and in the look with which she accompanied it. It was time,
indeed, for our conference to terminate; for, when I glanced around,
behold all the boarders (the day-scholars had departed) were congregated
within a yard or two of my desk, and stood staring with eyes and mouths
wide open; the three maitresses formed a whispering knot in one corner,
and, close at my elbow, was the directress, sitting on a low chair,
calmly clipping the tassels of her finished purse.
CHAPTER XVII.
AFTER all I had profited but imperfectly by the opportunity I had so
boldly achieved of speaking to Mdlle. Henri; it was my intention to ask
her how she came to be possessed of two English baptismal names, Frances
and Evans, in addition to her French surname, also whence she derived
her good accent. I had forgotten both points, or, rather, our colloquy
had been so brief that I had not had time to bring them forward;
moreover, I had not half tested her powers of speaking English; all I
had drawn from her in that language were the words “Yes,” and “Thank
you, sir.” “No matter,” I reflected. “What has been left incomplete now,
shall be finished another day.” Nor did I fail to keep the promise thus
made to myself. It was difficult to get even a few words of particular
conversation with one pupil among so many; but, according to the old
proverb, “Where there is a will, there is a way;” and again and again
I managed to find an opportunity for exchanging a few words with Mdlle.
Henri, regardless that envy stared and detraction whispered whenever I
approached her.
“Your book an instant.” Such was the mode in which I often began these
brief dialogues; the time was always just at the conclusion of the
lesson; and motioning to her to rise, I installed myself in her place,
allowing her to stand deferentially at my side; for I esteemed it wise
and right in her case to enforce strictly all forms ordinarily in
use between master and pupil; the rather because I perceived that in
proportion as my manner grew austere and magisterial, hers became easy
and self-possessed—an odd contradiction, doubtless, to the ordinary
effect in such cases; but so it was.
“A pencil,” said I, holding out my hand without looking at her. (I am
now about to sketch a brief report of the first of these conferences.)
She gave me one, and while I underlined some errors in a grammatical
exercise she had written, I observed—
“You are not a native of Belgium?”
“No.”
“Nor of France?”
“No.”
“Where, then, is your birthplace?”
“I was born at Geneva.”
“You don’t call Frances and Evans Swiss names, I presume?”
“No, sir; they are English names.”
“Just so; and is it the custom of the Genevese to give their children
English appellatives?”
“Non, Monsieur; mais—”
“Speak English, if you please.”
“Mais—”
“English—”
“But” (slowly and with embarrassment) “my parents were not all the two
Genevese.”
“Say BOTH, instead of ‘all the two,’ mademoiselle.”
“Not BOTH Swiss: my mother was English.”
“Ah! and of English extraction?”
“Yes—her ancestors were all English.”
“And your father?”
“He was Swiss.”
“What besides? What was his profession?”
“Ecclesiastic—pastor—he had a church.”
“Since your mother is an Englishwoman, why do you not speak English with
more facility?”
“Maman est morte, il y a dix ans.”
“And you do homage to her memory by forgetting her language. Have the
goodness to put French out of your mind so long as I converse with
you—keep to English.”
“C’est si difficile, monsieur, quand on n’en a plus l’habitude.”
“You had the habitude formerly, I suppose? Now answer me in your mother
tongue.”
“Yes, sir, I spoke the English more than the French when I was a child.”
“Why do you not speak it now?”
“Because I have no English friends.”
“You live with your father, I suppose?”
“My father is dead.”
“You have brothers and sisters?”
“Not one.”
“Do you live alone?”
“No—I have an aunt—ma tante Julienne.”
“Your father’s sister?”
“Justement, monsieur.”
“Is that English?”
“No—but I forget—”
“For which, mademoiselle, if you were a child I should certainly devise
some slight punishment; at your age—you must be two or three and
twenty, I should think?”
“Pas encore, monsieur—en un mois j’aurai dix-neuf ans.”
“Well, nineteen is a mature age, and, having attained it, you ought to
be so solicitous for your own improvement, that it should not be needful
for a master to remind you twice of the expediency of your speaking
English whenever practicable.”
To this wise speech I received no answer; and, when I looked up, my
pupil was smiling to herself a much-meaning, though not very gay smile;
it seemed to say, “He talks of he knows not what:” it said this
so plainly, that I determined to request information on the point
concerning which my ignorance seemed to be thus tacitly affirmed.
“Are you solicitous for your own improvement?”
“Rather.”
“How do you prove it, mademoiselle?”
An odd question, and bluntly put; it excited a second smile.
“Why, monsieur, I am not inattentive—am I? I learn my lessons well—”
“Oh, a child can do that! and what more do you do?”
“What more can I do?”
“Oh, certainly, not much; but you are a teacher, are you not, as well as
a pupil?”
“Yes.”
“You teach lace-mending?”
“Yes.”
“A dull, stupid occupation; do you like it?”
“No—it is tedious.”
“Why do you pursue it? Why do you not rather teach history, geography,
grammar, even arithmetic?”
“Is monsieur certain that I am myself thoroughly acquainted with these
studies?”
“I don’t know; you ought to be at your age.”
“But I never was at school, monsieur—”
“Indeed! What then were your friends—what was your aunt about? She is
very much to blame.”
“No monsieur, no—my aunt is good—she is not to blame—she does what
she can; she lodges and nourishes me” (I report Mdlle. Henri’s phrases
literally, and it was thus she translated from the French). “She is not
rich; she has only an annuity of twelve hundred francs, and it would be
impossible for her to send me to school.”
“Rather,” thought I to myself on hearing this, but I continued, in the
dogmatical tone I had adopted:—
“It is sad, however, that you should be brought up in ignorance of the
most ordinary branches of education; had you known something of history
and grammar you might, by degrees, have relinquished your lace-mending
drudgery, and risen in the world.”
“It is what I mean to do.”
“How? By a knowledge of English alone? That will not suffice; no
respectable family will receive a governess whose whole stock of
knowledge consists in a familiarity with one foreign language.”
“Monsieur, I know other things.”
“Yes, yes, you can work with Berlin wools, and embroider handkerchiefs
and collars—that will do little for you.”
Mdlle. Henri’s lips were unclosed to answer, but she checked herself,
as thinking the discussion had been sufficiently pursued, and remained
silent.
“Speak,” I continued, impatiently; “I never like the appearance of
acquiescence when the reality is not there; and you had a contradiction
at your tongue’s end.”
“Monsieur, I have had many lessons both in grammar, history, geography,
and arithmetic. I have gone through a course of each study.”
“Bravo! but how did you manage it, since your aunt could not afford to
send you to school?”
“By lace-mending; by the thing monsieur despises so much.”
“Truly! And now, mademoiselle, it will be a good exercise for you to
explain to me in English how such a result was produced by such means.”
“Monsieur, I begged my aunt to have me taught lace-mending soon after
we came to Brussels, because I knew it was a METIER, a trade which was
easily learnt, and by which I could earn some money very soon. I learnt
it in a few days, and I quickly got work, for all the Brussels ladies
have old lace—very precious—which must be mended all the times it is
washed. I earned money a little, and this money I gave for lessons
in the studies I have mentioned; some of it I spent in buying books,
English books especially; soon I shall try to find a place of governess,
or school-teacher, when I can write and speak English well; but it will
be difficult, because those who know I have been a lace-mender will
despise me, as the pupils here despise me. Pourtant j’ai mon projet,”
she added in a lower tone.
“What is it?”
“I will go and live in England; I will teach French there.”
The words were pronounced emphatically. She said “England” as you might
suppose an Israelite of Moses’ days would have said Canaan.
“Have you a wish to see England?”
“Yes, and an intention.”
And here a voice, the voice of the directress, interposed:
“Mademoiselle Henri, je crois qu’il va pleuvoir; vous feriez bien, ma
bonne amie, de retourner chez vous tout de suite.”
In silence, without a word of thanks for this officious warning, Mdlle.
Henri collected her books; she moved to me respectfully, endeavoured to
move to her superior, though the endeavour was almost a failure, for her
head seemed as if it would not bend, and thus departed.
Where there is one grain of perseverance or wilfulness in the
composition, trifling obstacles are ever known rather to stimulate than
discourage. Mdlle. Reuter might as well have spared herself the trouble
of giving that intimation about the weather (by-the-by her prediction
was falsified by the event—it did not rain that evening). At the close
of the next lesson I was again at Mdlle. Henri’s desk. Thus did I accost
her:—
“What is your idea of England, mademoiselle? Why do you wish to go
there?”
Accustomed by this time to the calculated abruptness of my manner, it no
longer discomposed or surprised her, and she answered with only so
much of hesitation as was rendered inevitable by the difficulty she
experienced in improvising the translation of her thoughts from French
to English.
“England is something unique, as I have heard and read; my idea of it is
vague, and I want to go there to render my idea clear, definite.”
“Hum! How much of England do you suppose you could see if you went there
in the capacity of a teacher? A strange notion you must have of getting
a clear and definite idea of a country! All you could see of Great
Britain would be the interior of a school, or at most of one or two
private dwellings.”
“It would be an English school; they would be English dwellings.”
“Indisputably; but what then? What would be the value of observations
made on a scale so narrow?”
“Monsieur, might not one learn something by analogy?
An—echantillon—a—a sample often serves to give an idea of the whole;
besides, narrow and wide are words comparative, are they not? All my
life would perhaps seem narrow in your eyes—all the life of a—that
little animal subterranean—une taupe—comment dit-on?”
“Mole.”
“Yes—a mole, which lives underground would seem narrow even to me.”
“Well, mademoiselle—what then? Proceed.”
“Mais, monsieur, vous me comprenez.”
“Not in the least; have the goodness to explain.”
“Why, monsieur, it is just so. In Switzerland I have done but little,
learnt but little, and seen but little; my life there was in a circle;
I walked the same round every day; I could not get out of it; had I
rested—remained there even till my death, I should never have enlarged
it, because I am poor and not skilful, I have not great acquirements;
when I was quite tired of this round, I begged my aunt to go to
Brussels; my existence is no larger here, because I am no richer or
higher; I walk in as narrow a limit, but the scene is changed; it would
change again if I went to England. I knew something of the bourgeois of
Geneva, now I know something of the bourgeois of Brussels; if I went to
London, I would know something of the bourgeois of London. Can you make
any sense out of what I say, monsieur, or is it all obscure?”
“I see, I see—now let us advert to another subject; you propose to
devote your life to teaching, and you are a most unsuccessful teacher;
you cannot keep your pupils in order.”
A flush of painful confusion was the result of this harsh remark; she
bent her head to the desk, but soon raising it replied—
“Monsieur, I am not a skilful teacher, it is true, but practice
improves; besides, I work under difficulties; here I only teach sewing,
I can show no power in sewing, no superiority—it is a subordinate
art; then I have no associates in this house, I am isolated; I am too a
heretic, which deprives me of influence.”
“And in England you would be a foreigner; that too would deprive you
of influence, and would effectually separate you from all round you; in
England you would have as few connections, as little importance as you
have here.”
“But I should be learning something; for the rest, there are probably
difficulties for such as I everywhere, and if I must contend, and
perhaps be conquered, I would rather submit to English pride than to
Flemish coarseness; besides, monsieur—”
She stopped—not evidently from any difficulty in finding words to
express herself, but because discretion seemed to say, “You have said
enough.”
“Finish your phrase,” I urged.
“Besides, monsieur, I long to live once more among Protestants; they are
more honest than Catholics; a Romish school is a building with porous
walls, a hollow floor, a false ceiling; every room in this house,
monsieur, has eyeholes and ear-holes, and what the house is, the
inhabitants are, very treacherous; they all think it lawful to tell
lies; they all call it politeness to profess friendship where they feel
hatred.”
“All?” said I; “you mean the pupils—the mere children—inexperienced,
giddy things, who have not learnt to distinguish the difference between
right and wrong?”
“On the contrary, monsieur—the children are the most sincere; they have
not yet had time to become accomplished in duplicity; they will tell
lies, but they do it inartificially, and you know they are lying; but
the grown-up people are very false; they deceive strangers, they deceive
each other—”
A servant here entered:—
“Mdlle. Henri—Mdlle. Reuter vous prie de vouloir bien conduire la
petite de Dorlodot chez elle, elle vous attend dans le cabinet
de Rosalie la portiere—c’est que sa bonne n’est pas venue la
chercher—voyez-vous.”
“Eh bien! est-ce que je suis sa bonne—moi?” demanded Mdlle. Henri; then
smiling, with that same bitter, derisive smile I had seen on her lips
once before, she hastily rose and made her exit.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE young Anglo-Swiss evidently derived both pleasure and profit from
the study of her mother-tongue. In teaching her I did not, of course,
confine myself to the ordinary school routine; I made instruction in
English a channel for instruction in literature. I prescribed to her a
course of reading; she had a little selection of English classics, a
few of which had been left her by her mother, and the others she had
purchased with her own penny-fee. I lent her some more modern works; all
these she read with avidity, giving me, in writing, a clear summary of
each work when she had perused it. Composition, too, she delighted in.
Such occupation seemed the very breath of her nostrils, and soon her
improved productions wrung from me the avowal that those qualities in
her I had termed taste and fancy ought rather to have been denominated
judgment and imagination. When I intimated so much, which I did as usual
in dry and stinted phrase, I looked for the radiant and exulting smile
my one word of eulogy had elicited before; but Frances coloured. If she
did smile, it was very softly and shyly; and instead of looking up to me
with a conquering glance, her eyes rested on my hand, which, stretched
over her shoulder, was writing some directions with a pencil on the
margin of her book.
“Well, are you pleased that I am satisfied with your progress?” I asked.
“Yes,” said she slowly, gently, the blush that had half subsided
returning.
“But I do not say enough, I suppose?” I continued. “My praises are too
cool?”
She made no answer, and, I thought, looked a little sad. I divined her
thoughts, and should much have liked to have responded to them, had
it been expedient so to do. She was not now very ambitious of
my admiration—not eagerly desirous of dazzling me; a little
affection—ever so little—pleased her better than all the panegyrics in
the world. Feeling this, I stood a good while behind her, writing on
the margin of her book. I could hardly quit my station or relinquish my
occupation; something retained me bending there, my head very near
hers, and my hand near hers too; but the margin of a copy-book is not an
illimitable space—so, doubtless, the directress thought; and she took
occasion to walk past in order to ascertain by what art I prolonged so
disproportionately the period necessary for filling it. I was obliged to
go. Distasteful effort—to leave what we most prefer!
Frances did not become pale or feeble in consequence of her sedentary
employment; perhaps the stimulus it communicated to her mind
counterbalanced the inaction it imposed on her body. She changed,
indeed, changed obviously and rapidly; but it was for the better. When
I first saw her, her countenance was sunless, her complexion colourless;
she looked like one who had no source of enjoyment, no store of bliss
anywhere in the world; now the cloud had passed from her mien, leaving
space for the dawn of hope and interest, and those feelings rose like a
clear morning, animating what had been depressed, tinting what had been
pale. Her eyes, whose colour I had not at first known, so dim were they
with repressed tears, so shadowed with ceaseless dejection, now, lit by
a ray of the sunshine that cheered her heart, revealed irids of bright
hazel—irids large and full, screened with long lashes; and pupils
instinct with fire. That look of wan emaciation which anxiety or low
spirits often communicates to a thoughtful, thin face, rather long than
round, having vanished from hers, a clearness of skin almost bloom,
and a plumpness almost embonpoint, softened the decided lines of
her features. Her figure shared in this beneficial change; it became
rounder, and as the harmony of her form was complete and her stature of
the graceful middle height, one did not regret (or at least I did not
regret) the absence of confirmed fulness, in contours, still slight,
though compact, elegant, flexible—the exquisite turning of waist,
wrist, hand, foot, and ankle satisfied completely my notions of
symmetry, and allowed a lightness and freedom of movement which
corresponded with my ideas of grace.
Thus improved, thus wakened to life, Mdlle. Henri began to take a
new footing in the school; her mental power, manifested gradually but
steadily, ere long extorted recognition even from the envious; and when
the young and healthy saw that she could smile brightly, converse gaily,
move with vivacity and alertness, they acknowledged in her a sisterhood
of youth and health, and tolerated her as of their kind accordingly.
To speak truth, I watched this change much as a gardener watches the
growth of a precious plant, and I contributed to it too, even as the
said gardener contributes to the development of his favourite. To me it
was not difficult to discover how I could best foster my pupil, cherish
her starved feelings, and induce the outward manifestation of that
inward vigour which sunless drought and blighting blast had hitherto
forbidden to expand. Constancy of attention—a kindness as mute
as watchful, always standing by her, cloaked in the rough garb of
austerity, and making its real nature known only by a rare glance of
interest, or a cordial and gentle word; real respect masked with seeming
imperiousness, directing, urging her actions, yet helping her too, and
that with devoted care: these were the means I used, for these means
best suited Frances’ feelings, as susceptible as deep vibrating—her
nature at once proud and shy.
The benefits of my system became apparent also in her altered demeanour
as a teacher; she now took her place amongst her pupils with an air
of spirit and firmness which assured them at once that she meant to be
obeyed—and obeyed she was. They felt they had lost their power over
her. If any girl had rebelled, she would no longer have taken her
rebellion to heart; she possessed a source of comfort they could not
drain, a pillar of support they could not overthrow: formerly, when
insulted, she wept; now, she smiled.
The public reading of one of her devoirs achieved the revelation of her
talents to all and sundry; I remember the subject—it was an emigrant’s
letter to his friends at home. It opened with simplicity; some natural
and graphic touches disclosed to the reader the scene of virgin forest
and great, New-World river—barren of sail and flag—amidst which the
epistle was supposed to be indited. The difficulties and dangers that
attend a settler’s life, were hinted at; and in the few words said on
that subject, Mdlle. Henri failed not to render audible the voice of
resolve, patience, endeavour. The disasters which had driven him
from his native country were alluded to; stainless honour, inflexible
independence, indestructible self-respect there took the word. Past
days were spoken of; the grief of parting, the regrets of absence, were
touched upon; feeling, forcible and fine, breathed eloquent in every
period. At the close, consolation was suggested; religious faith became
there the speaker, and she spoke well.
The devoir was powerfully written in language at once chaste and choice,
in a style nerved with vigour and graced with harmony.
Mdlle. Reuter was quite sufficiently acquainted with English to
understand it when read or spoken in her presence, though she could
neither speak nor write it herself. During the perusal of this devoir,
she sat placidly busy, her eyes and fingers occupied with the formation
of a “riviere” or open-work hem round a cambric handkerchief; she
said nothing, and her face and forehead, clothed with a mask of purely
negative expression, were as blank of comment as her lips. As neither
surprise, pleasure, approbation, nor interest were evinced in her
countenance, so no more were disdain, envy, annoyance, weariness; if
that inscrutable mien said anything, it was simply this—
“The matter is too trite to excite an emotion, or call forth an
opinion.”
As soon as I had done, a hum rose; several of the pupils, pressing round
Mdlle. Henri, began to beset her with compliments; the composed voice of
the directress was now heard:—
“Young ladies, such of you as have cloaks and umbrellas will hasten
to return home before the shower becomes heavier” (it was raining a
little), “the remainder will wait till their respective servants arrive
to fetch them.” And the school dispersed, for it was four o’clock.
“Monsieur, a word,” said Mdlle. Reuter, stepping on to the estrade, and
signifying, by a movement of the hand, that she wished me to relinquish,
for an instant, the castor I had clutched.
“Mademoiselle, I am at your service.”
“Monsieur, it is of course an excellent plan to encourage effort in
young people by making conspicuous the progress of any particularly
industrious pupil; but do you not think that in the present instance,
Mdlle. Henri can hardly be considered as a concurrent with the other
pupils? She is older than most of them, and has had advantages of an
exclusive nature for acquiring a knowledge of English; on the other
hand, her sphere of life is somewhat beneath theirs; under these
circumstances, a public distinction, conferred upon Mdlle. Henri, may be
the means of suggesting comparisons, and exciting feelings such as would
be far from advantageous to the individual forming their object. The
interest I take in Mdlle. Henri’s real welfare makes me desirous of
screening her from annoyances of this sort; besides, monsieur, as I
have before hinted to you, the sentiment of AMOUR-PROPRE has a somewhat
marked preponderance in her character; celebrity has a tendency to
foster this sentiment, and in her it should be rather repressed—she
rather needs keeping down than bringing forward; and then I think,
monsieur—it appears to me that ambition, LITERARY ambition especially,
is not a feeling to be cherished in the mind of a woman: would not
Mdlle. Henri be much safer and happier if taught to believe that in the
quiet discharge of social duties consists her real vocation, than if
stimulated to aspire after applause and publicity? She may never marry;
scanty as are her resources, obscure as are her connections, uncertain
as is her health (for I think her consumptive, her mother died of that
complaint), it is more than probable she never will. I do not see how
she can rise to a position, whence such a step would be possible; but
even in celibacy it would be better for her to retain the character and
habits of a respectable decorous female.”
“Indisputably, mademoiselle,” was my answer. “Your opinion admits of no
doubt;” and, fearful of the harangue being renewed, I retreated under
cover of that cordial sentence of assent.
At the date of a fortnight after the little incident noted above, I find
it recorded in my diary that a hiatus occurred in Mdlle. Henri’s usually
regular attendance in class. The first day or two I wondered at her
absence, but did not like to ask an explanation of it; I thought indeed
some chance word might be dropped which would afford me the information
I wished to obtain, without my running the risk of exciting silly smiles
and gossiping whispers by demanding it. But when a week passed and
the seat at the desk near the door still remained vacant, and when
no allusion was made to the circumstance by any individual of the
class—when, on the contrary, I found that all observed a marked silence
on the point—I determined, COUTE QUI COUTE, to break the ice of this
silly reserve. I selected Sylvie as my informant, because from her I
knew that I should at least get a sensible answer, unaccompanied by
wriggle, titter, or other flourish of folly.
“Ou donc est Mdlle. Henri?” I said one day as I returned an
exercise-book I had been examining.
“Elle est partie, monsieur.”
“Partie? et pour combien de temps? Quand reviendra-t-elle?”
“Elle est partie pour toujours, monsieur; elle ne reviendra plus.”
“Ah!” was my involuntary exclamation; then after a pause:—
“En etes-vous bien sure, Sylvie?”
“Oui, oui, monsieur, mademoiselle la directrice nous l’a dit elle-meme
il y a deux ou trois jours.”
And I could pursue my inquiries no further; time, place, and
circumstances forbade my adding another word. I could neither comment on
what had been said, nor demand further particulars. A question as to the
reason of the teacher’s departure, as to whether it had been voluntary
or otherwise, was indeed on my lips, but I suppressed it—there were
listeners all round. An hour after, in passing Sylvie in the corridor as
she was putting on her bonnet, I stopped short and asked:—
“Sylvie, do you know Mdlle. Henri’s address? I have some books of hers,”
I added carelessly, “and I should wish to send them to her.”
“No, monsieur,” replied Sylvie; “but perhaps Rosalie, the portress, will
be able to give it you.”
Rosalie’s cabinet was just at hand; I stepped in and repeated the
inquiry. Rosalie—a smart French grisette—looked up from her work with
a knowing smile, precisely the sort of smile I had been so desirous to
avoid exciting. Her answer was prepared; she knew nothing whatever
of Mdlle. Henri’s address—had never known it. Turning from her with
impatience—for I believed she lied and was hired to lie—I almost
knocked down some one who had been standing at my back; it was the
directress. My abrupt movement made her recoil two or three steps. I was
obliged to apologize, which I did more concisely than politely. No man
likes to be dogged, and in the very irritable mood in which I then
was the sight of Mdlle. Reuter thoroughly incensed me. At the moment I
turned her countenance looked hard, dark, and inquisitive; her eyes
were bent upon me with an expression of almost hungry curiosity. I had
scarcely caught this phase of physiognomy ere it had vanished; a
bland smile played on her features; my harsh apology was received with
good-humoured facility.
“Oh, don’t mention it, monsieur; you only touched my hair with your
elbow; it is no worse, only a little dishevelled.” She shook it back,
and passing her fingers through her curls, loosened them into more
numerous and flowing ringlets. Then she went on with vivacity:
“Rosalie, I was coming to tell you to go instantly and close the windows
of the salon; the wind is rising, and the muslin curtains will be
covered with dust.”
Rosalie departed. “Now,” thought I, “this will not do; Mdlle. Reuter
thinks her meanness in eaves-dropping is screened by her art in devising
a pretext, whereas the muslin curtains she speaks of are not more
transparent than this same pretext.” An impulse came over me to thrust
the flimsy screen aside, and confront her craft boldly with a word or
two of plain truth. “The rough-shod foot treads most firmly on slippery
ground,” thought I; so I began:
“Mademoiselle Henri has left your establishment—been dismissed, I
presume?”
“Ah, I wished to have a little conversation with you, monsieur,” replied
the directress with the most natural and affable air in the world;
“but we cannot talk quietly here; will Monsieur step into the garden a
minute?” And she preceded me, stepping out through the glass-door I have
before mentioned.
“There,” said she, when we had reached the centre of the middle alley,
and when the foliage of shrubs and trees, now in their summer pride,
closing behind and around us, shut out the view of the house, and thus
imparted a sense of seclusion even to this little plot of ground in the
very core of a capital.
“There, one feels quiet and free when there are only pear-trees and
rose-bushes about one; I dare say you, like me, monsieur, are sometimes
tired of being eternally in the midst of life; of having human faces
always round you, human eyes always upon you, human voices always in
your ear. I am sure I often wish intensely for liberty to spend a whole
month in the country at some little farm-house, bien gentille, bien
propre, tout entouree de champs et de bois; quelle vie charmante que la
vie champetre! N’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“Cela depend, mademoiselle.”
“Que le vent est bon et frais!” continued the directress; and she was
right there, for it was a south wind, soft and sweet. I carried my hat
in my hand, and this gentle breeze, passing through my hair, soothed my
temples like balm. Its refreshing effect, however, penetrated no deeper
than the mere surface of the frame; for as I walked by the side of
Mdlle. Reuter, my heart was still hot within me, and while I was musing
the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue:—
“I understand Mdlle. Henri is gone from hence, and will not return?”
“Ah, true! I meant to have named the subject to you some days ago, but
my time is so completely taken up, I cannot do half the things I wish:
have you never experienced what it is, monsieur, to find the day too
short by twelve hours for your numerous duties?”
“Not often. Mdlle. Henri’s departure was not voluntary, I presume? If it
had been, she would certainly have given me some intimation of it, being
my pupil.”
“Oh, did she not tell you? that was strange; for my part, I never
thought of adverting to the subject; when one has so many things to
attend to, one is apt to forget little incidents that are not of primary
importance.”
“You consider Mdlle. Henri’s dismission, then, as a very insignificant
event?”
“Dismission? Ah! she was not dismissed; I can say with truth, monsieur,
that since I became the head of this establishment no master or teacher
has ever been dismissed from it.”
“Yet some have left it, mademoiselle?”
“Many; I have found it necessary to change frequently—a change of
instructors is often beneficial to the interests of a school; it gives
life and variety to the proceedings; it amuses the pupils, and suggests
to the parents the idea of exertion and progress.”
“Yet when you are tired of a professor or maitresse, you scruple to
dismiss them?”
“No need to have recourse to such extreme measures, I assure you.
Allons, monsieur le professeur—asseyons-nous; je vais vous donner une
petite lecon dans votre etat d’instituteur.” (I wish I might write
all she said to me in French—it loses sadly by being translated into
English.) We had now reached THE garden-chair; the directress sat down,
and signed to me to sit by her, but I only rested my knee on the seat,
and stood leaning my head and arm against the embowering branch of a
huge laburnum, whose golden flowers, blent with the dusky green leaves
of a lilac-bush, formed a mixed arch of shade and sunshine over the
retreat. Mdlle. Reuter sat silent a moment; some novel movements were
evidently working in her mind, and they showed their nature on her
astute brow; she was meditating some CHEF D’OEUVRE of policy. Convinced
by several months’ experience that the affectation of virtues she did
not possess was unavailing to ensnare me—aware that I had read her real
nature, and would believe nothing of the character she gave out as being
hers—she had determined, at last, to try a new key, and see if the lock
of my heart would yield to that; a little audacity, a word of truth, a
glimpse of the real. “Yes, I will try,” was her inward resolve; and then
her blue eye glittered upon me—it did not flash—nothing of flame ever
kindled in its temperate gleam.
“Monsieur fears to sit by me?” she inquired playfully.
“I have no wish to usurp Pelet’s place,” I answered, for I had got the
habit of speaking to her bluntly—a habit begun in anger, but continued
because I saw that, instead of offending, it fascinated her. She cast
down her eyes, and drooped her eyelids; she sighed uneasily; she turned
with an anxious gesture, as if she would give me the idea of a bird that
flutters in its cage, and would fain fly from its jail and jailer, and
seek its natural mate and pleasant nest.
“Well—and your lesson?” I demanded briefly.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, recovering herself, “you are so young, so frank
and fearless, so talented, so impatient of imbecility, so disdainful of
vulgarity, you need a lesson; here it is then: far more is to be done
in this world by dexterity than by strength; but, perhaps, you knew
that before, for there is delicacy as well as power in your
character—policy, as well as pride?”
“Go on,” said I; and I could hardly help smiling, the flattery was so
piquant, so finely seasoned. She caught the prohibited smile, though I
passed my hand over my month to conceal it; and again she made room for
me to sit beside her. I shook my head, though temptation penetrated to
my senses at the moment, and once more I told her to go on.
“Well, then, if ever you are at the head of a large establishment,
dismiss nobody. To speak truth, monsieur (and to you I will speak
truth), I despise people who are always making rows, blustering, sending
off one to the right, and another to the left, urging and hurrying
circumstances. I’ll tell you what I like best to do, monsieur, shall I?”
She looked up again; she had compounded her glance well this time—much
archness, more deference, a spicy dash of coquetry, an unveiled
consciousness of capacity. I nodded; she treated me like the great
Mogul; so I became the great Mogul as far as she was concerned.
“I like, monsieur, to take my knitting in my hands, and to sit quietly
down in my chair; circumstances defile past me; I watch their march; so
long as they follow the course I wish, I say nothing, and do nothing; I
don’t clap my hands, and cry out ‘Bravo! How lucky I am!’ to attract
the attention and envy of my neighbours—I am merely passive; but when
events fall out ill—when circumstances become adverse—I watch very
vigilantly; I knit on still, and still I hold my tongue; but every now
and then, monsieur, I just put my toe out—so—and give the rebellious
circumstance a little secret push, without noise, which sends it the way
I wish, and I am successful after all, and nobody has seen my expedient.
So, when teachers or masters become troublesome and inefficient—when,
in short, the interests of the school would suffer from their retaining
their places—I mind my knitting, events progress, circumstances glide
past; I see one which, if pushed ever so little awry, will render
untenable the post I wish to have vacated—the deed is done—the
stumbling-block removed—and no one saw me: I have not made an enemy, I
am rid of an incumbrance.”
A moment since, and I thought her alluring; this speech concluded, I
looked on her with distaste. “Just like you,” was my cold answer.
“And in this way you have ousted Mdlle. Henri? You wanted her office,
therefore you rendered it intolerable to her?”
“Not at all, monsieur, I was merely anxious about Mdlle. Henri’s health;
no, your moral sight is clear and piercing, but there you have failed
to discover the truth. I took—I have always taken a real interest in
Mdlle. Henri’s welfare; I did not like her going out in all weathers;
I thought it would be more advantageous for her to obtain a permanent
situation; besides, I considered her now qualified to do something more
than teach sewing. I reasoned with her; left the decision to herself;
she saw the correctness of my views, and adopted them.”
“Excellent! and now, mademoiselle, you will have the goodness to give me
her address.”
“Her address!” and a sombre and stony change came over the mien of
the directress. “Her address? Ah?—well—I wish I could oblige you,
monsieur, but I cannot, and I will tell you why; whenever I myself asked
her for her address, she always evaded the inquiry. I thought—I may
be wrong—but I THOUGHT her motive for doing so, was a natural, though
mistaken reluctance to introduce me to some, probably, very poor
abode; her means were narrow, her origin obscure; she lives somewhere,
doubtless, in the ‘basse ville.’”
“I’ll not lose sight of my best pupil yet,” said I, “though she were
born of beggars and lodged in a cellar; for the rest, it is absurd to
make a bugbear of her origin to me—I happen to know that she was a
Swiss pastor’s daughter, neither more nor less; and, as to her narrow
means, I care nothing for the poverty of her purse so long as her heart
overflows with affluence.”
“Your sentiments are perfectly noble, monsieur,” said the directress,
affecting to suppress a yawn; her sprightliness was now extinct, her
temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking
pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was
furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung
low over the citadel. I did not like her thus, so I cut short the
TETE-A-TETE and departed.
CHAPTER XIX.
NOVELISTS should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real
life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us
fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade;
they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of
rapture—still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we
rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour
the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish; unless, indeed, we have
plunged like beasts into sensual indulgence, abused, strained,
stimulated, again overstrained, and, at last, destroyed our faculties
for enjoyment; then, truly, we may find ourselves without support,
robbed of hope. Our agony is great, and how can it end? We have broken
the spring of our powers; life must be all suffering—too feeble to
conceive faith—death must be darkness—God, spirits, religion can have
no place in our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting
recollections of vice; and time brings us on to the brink of the grave,
and dissolution flings us in—a rag eaten through and through with
disease, wrung together with pain, stamped into the churchyard sod by
the inexorable heel of despair.
But the man of regular life and rational mind never despairs. He loses
his property—it is a blow—he staggers a moment; then, his energies,
roused by the smart, are at work to seek a remedy; activity soon
mitigates regret. Sickness affects him; he takes patience—endures what
he cannot cure. Acute pain racks him; his writhing limbs know not where
to find rest; he leans on Hope’s anchors. Death takes from him what
he loves; roots up, and tears violently away the stem round which his
affections were twined—a dark, dismal time, a frightful wrench—but
some morning Religion looks into his desolate house with sunrise, and
says, that in another world, another life, he shall meet his kindred
again. She speaks of that world as a place unsullied by sin—of that
life, as an era unembittered by suffering; she mightily strengthens
her consolation by connecting with it two ideas—which mortals cannot
comprehend, but on which they love to repose—Eternity, Immortality; and
the mind of the mourner, being filled with an image, faint yet glorious,
of heavenly hills all light and peace—of a spirit resting there in
bliss—of a day when his spirit shall also alight there, free and
disembodied—of a reunion perfected by love, purified from fear—he
takes courage—goes out to encounter the necessities and discharge the
duties of life; and, though sadness may never lift her burden from his
mind, Hope will enable him to support it.
Well—and what suggested all this? and what is the inference to be drawn
therefrom? What suggested it, is the circumstance of my best pupil—my
treasure—being snatched from my hands, and put away out of my reach;
the inference to be drawn from it is—that, being a steady, reasonable
man, I did not allow the resentment, disappointment, and grief,
engendered in my mind by this evil chance, to grow there to any
monstrous size; nor did I allow them to monopolize the whole space of my
heart; I pent them, on the contrary, in one strait and secret nook. In
the daytime, too, when I was about my duties, I put them on the silent
system; and it was only after I had closed the door of my chamber
at night that I somewhat relaxed my severity towards these morose
nurslings, and allowed vent to their language of murmurs; then, in
revenge, they sat on my pillow, haunted my bed, and kept me awake with
their long, midnight cry.
A week passed. I had said nothing more to Mdlle. Reuter. I had been calm
in my demeanour to her, though stony cold and hard. When I looked at
her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew
had consulted jealousy as an adviser, and employed treachery as an
instrument—the glance of quiet disdain and rooted distrust. On Saturday
evening, ere I left the house, I stept into the SALLE-A-MANGER, where
she was sitting alone, and, placing myself before her, I asked, with
the same tranquil tone and manner that I should have used had I put the
question for the first time—
“Mademoiselle, will you have the goodness to give me the address of
Frances Evans Henri?”
A little surprised, but not disconcerted, she smilingly disclaimed any
knowledge of that address, adding, “Monsieur has perhaps forgotten that
I explained all about that circumstance before—a week ago?”
“Mademoiselle,” I continued, “you would greatly oblige me by directing
me to that young person’s abode.”
She seemed somewhat puzzled; and, at last, looking up with an admirably
counterfeited air of naivete, she demanded, “Does Monsieur think I am
telling an untruth?”
Still avoiding to give her a direct answer, I said, “It is not then your
intention, mademoiselle, to oblige me in this particular?”
“But, monsieur, how can I tell you what I do not know?”
“Very well; I understand you perfectly, mademoiselle, and now I have
only two or three words to say. This is the last week in July; in
another month the vacation will commence, have the goodness to avail
yourself of the leisure it will afford you to look out for another
English master—at the close of August, I shall be under the necessity
of resigning my post in your establishment.”
I did not wait for her comments on this announcement, but bowed and
immediately withdrew.
That same evening, soon after dinner, a servant brought me a small
packet; it was directed in a hand I knew, but had not hoped so soon to
see again; being in my own apartment and alone, there was nothing to
prevent my immediately opening it; it contained four five-franc pieces,
and a note in English.
“MONSIEUR,
“I came to Mdlle. Reuter’s house yesterday, at the time when I knew you
would be just about finishing your lesson, and I asked if I might go
into the schoolroom and speak to you. Mdlle. Reuter came out and said
you were already gone; it had not yet struck four, so I thought she must
be mistaken, but concluded it would be vain to call another day on the
same errand. In one sense a note will do as well—it will wrap up the
20 francs, the price of the lessons I have received from you; and if it
will not fully express the thanks I owe you in addition—if it will not
bid you good-bye as I could wish to have done—if it will not tell you,
as I long to do, how sorry I am that I shall probably never see you
more—why, spoken words would hardly be more adequate to the task. Had
I seen you, I should probably have stammered out something feeble and
unsatisfactory—something belying my feelings rather than explaining
them; so it is perhaps as well that I was denied admission to your
presence. You often remarked, monsieur, that my devoirs dwelt a great
deal on fortitude in bearing grief—you said I introduced that theme too
often: I find indeed that it is much easier to write about a severe duty
than to perform it, for I am oppressed when I see and feel to what a
reverse fate has condemned me; you were kind to me, monsieur—very kind;
I am afflicted—I am heart-broken to be quite separated from you; soon
I shall have no friend on earth. But it is useless troubling you with my
distresses. What claim have I on your sympathy? None; I will then say no
more.
“Farewell, Monsieur.
“F. E. HENRI.”
I put up the note in my pocket-book. I slipped the five-franc pieces
into my purse—then I took a turn through my narrow chamber.
“Mdlle. Reuter talked about her poverty,” said I, “and she is poor;
yet she pays her debts and more. I have not yet given her a quarter’s
lessons, and she has sent me a quarter’s due. I wonder of what she
deprived herself to scrape together the twenty francs—I wonder what
sort of a place she has to live in, and what sort of a woman her aunt
is, and whether she is likely to get employment to supply the place she
has lost. No doubt she will have to trudge about long enough from school
to school, to inquire here, and apply there—be rejected in this place,
disappointed in that. Many an evening she’ll go to her bed tired
and unsuccessful. And the directress would not let her in to bid me
good-bye? I might not have the chance of standing with her for a few
minutes at a window in the schoolroom and exchanging some half-dozen of
sentences—getting to know where she lived—putting matters in train
for having all things arranged to my mind? No address on the note”—I
continued, drawing it again from the pocket-book and examining it on
each side of the two leaves: “women are women, that is certain, and
always do business like women; men mechanically put a date and address
to their communications. And these five-franc pieces?”—(I hauled them
forth from my purse)—“if she had offered me them herself instead of
tying them up with a thread of green silk in a kind of Lilliputian
packet, I could have thrust them back into her little hand, and shut
up the small, taper fingers over them—so—and compelled her shame, her
pride, her shyness, all to yield to a little bit of determined Will—now
where is she? How can I get at her?”
Opening my chamber door I walked down into the kitchen.
“Who brought the packet?” I asked of the servant who had delivered it to
me.
“Un petit commissionaire, monsieur.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Rien.”
And I wended my way up the back-stairs, wondrously the wiser for my
inquiries.
“No matter,” said I to myself, as I again closed the door. “No
matter—I’ll seek her through Brussels.”
And I did. I sought her day by day whenever I had a moment’s leisure,
for four weeks; I sought her on Sundays all day long; I sought her on
the Boulevards, in the Allee Verte, in the Park; I sought her in Ste.
Gudule and St. Jacques; I sought her in the two Protestant chapels; I
attended these latter at the German, French, and English services, not
doubting that I should meet her at one of them. All my researches were
absolutely fruitless; my security on the last point was proved by the
event to be equally groundless with my other calculations. I stood
at the door of each chapel after the service, and waited till every
individual had come out, scrutinizing every gown draping a slender form,
peering under every bonnet covering a young head. In vain; I saw
girlish figures pass me, drawing their black scarfs over their sloping
shoulders, but none of them had the exact turn and air of Mdlle.
Henri’s; I saw pale and thoughtful faces “encadrees” in bands of brown
hair, but I never found her forehead, her eyes, her eyebrows. All the
features of all the faces I met seemed frittered away, because my eye
failed to recognize the peculiarities it was bent upon; an ample space
of brow and a large, dark, and serious eye, with a fine but decided line
of eyebrow traced above.
“She has probably left Brussels—perhaps is gone to England, as she
said she would,” muttered I inwardly, as on the afternoon of the fourth
Sunday, I turned from the door of the chapel-royal which the door-keeper
had just closed and locked, and followed in the wake of the last of the
congregation, now dispersed and dispersing over the square. I had
soon outwalked the couples of English gentlemen and ladies. (Gracious
goodness! why don’t they dress better? My eye is yet filled with visions
of the high-flounced, slovenly, and tumbled dresses in costly silk and
satin, of the large unbecoming collars in expensive lace; of the ill-cut
coats and strangely fashioned pantaloons which every Sunday, at the
English service, filled the choirs of the chapel-royal, and after it,
issuing forth into the square, came into disadvantageous contrast with
freshly and trimly attired foreign figures, hastening to attend salut
at the church of Coburg.) I had passed these pairs of Britons, and
the groups of pretty British children, and the British footmen and
waiting-maids; I had crossed the Place Royale, and got into the Rue
Royale, thence I had diverged into the Rue de Louvain—an old and quiet
street. I remember that, feeling a little hungry, and not desiring to
go back and take my share of the “gouter,” now on the refectory-table
at Pelet’s—to wit, pistolets and water—I stepped into a baker’s and
refreshed myself on a COUC(?)—it is a Flemish word, I don’t know how
to spell it—A CORINTHE-ANGLICE, a currant bun—and a cup of coffee; and
then I strolled on towards the Porte de Louvain. Very soon I was out of
the city, and slowly mounting the hill, which ascends from the gate, I
took my time; for the afternoon, though cloudy, was very sultry, and not
a breeze stirred to refresh the atmosphere. No inhabitant of Brussels
need wander far to search for solitude; let him but move half a league
from his own city and he will find her brooding still and blank over
the wide fields, so drear though so fertile, spread out treeless and
trackless round the capital of Brabant. Having gained the summit of the
hill, and having stood and looked long over the cultured but lifeless
campaign, I felt a wish to quit the high road, which I had hitherto
followed, and get in among those tilled grounds—fertile as the beds
of a Brobdignagian kitchen-garden—spreading far and wide even to the
boundaries of the horizon, where, from a dusk green, distance changed
them to a sullen blue, and confused their tints with those of the livid
and thunderous-looking sky. Accordingly I turned up a by-path to the
right; I had not followed it far ere it brought me, as I expected, into
the fields, amidst which, just before me, stretched a long and lofty
white wall enclosing, as it seemed from the foliage showing above, some
thickly planted nursery of yew and cypress, for of that species were
the branches resting on the pale parapets, and crowding gloomily about a
massive cross, planted doubtless on a central eminence and extending its
arms, which seemed of black marble, over the summits of those sinister
trees. I approached, wondering to what house this well-protected garden
appertained; I turned the angle of the wall, thinking to see some
stately residence; I was close upon great iron gates; there was a
hut serving for a lodge near, but I had no occasion to apply for the
key—the gates were open; I pushed one leaf back—rain had rusted
its hinges, for it groaned dolefully as they revolved. Thick planting
embowered the entrance. Passing up the avenue, I saw objects on
each hand which, in their own mute language of inscription and sign,
explained clearly to what abode I had made my way. This was the
house appointed for all living; crosses, monuments, and garlands of
everlastings announced, “The Protestant Cemetery, outside the gate of
Louvain.”
The place was large enough to afford half an hour’s strolling without
the monotony of treading continually the same path; and, for those who
love to peruse the annals of graveyards, here was variety of inscription
enough to occupy the attention for double or treble that space of time.
Hither people of many kindreds, tongues, and nations, had brought their
dead for interment; and here, on pages of stone, of marble, and of
brass, were written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in
English, in French, in German, and Latin. Here the Englishman had
erected a marble monument over the remains of his Mary Smith or Jane
Brown, and inscribed it only with her name. There the French widower had
shaded the grave of his Elmire or Celestine with a brilliant thicket
of roses, amidst which a little tablet rising, bore an equally bright
testimony to her countless virtues. Every nation, tribe, and kindred,
mourned after its own fashion; and how soundless was the mourning of
all! My own tread, though slow and upon smooth-rolled paths, seemed to
startle, because it formed the sole break to a silence otherwise total.
Not only the winds, but the very fitful, wandering airs, were that
afternoon, as by common consent, all fallen asleep in their various
quarters; the north was hushed, the south silent, the east sobbed not,
nor did the west whisper. The clouds in heaven were condensed and
dull, but apparently quite motionless. Under the trees of this cemetery
nestled a warm breathless gloom, out of which the cypresses stood up
straight and mute, above which the willows hung low and still; where
the flowers, as languid as fair, waited listless for night dew or
thunder-shower; where the tombs, and those they hid, lay impassible to
sun or shadow, to rain or drought.
Importuned by the sound of my own footsteps, I turned off upon the turf,
and slowly advanced to a grove of yews; I saw something stir among the
stems; I thought it might be a broken branch swinging, my short-sighted
vision had caught no form, only a sense of motion; but the dusky shade
passed on, appearing and disappearing at the openings in the avenue. I
soon discerned it was a living thing, and a human thing; and, drawing
nearer, I perceived it was a woman, pacing slowly to and fro, and
evidently deeming herself alone as I had deemed myself alone, and
meditating as I had been meditating. Ere long she returned to a seat
which I fancy she had but just quitted, or I should have caught sight
of her before. It was in a nook, screened by a clump of trees; there was
the white wall before her, and a little stone set up against the wall,
and, at the foot of the stone, was an allotment of turf freshly turned
up, a new-made grave. I put on my spectacles, and passed softly close
behind her; glancing at the inscription on the stone, I read, “Julienne
Henri, died at Brussels, aged sixty. August 10th, 18—.” Having perused
the inscription, I looked down at the form sitting bent and thoughtful
just under my eyes, unconscious of the vicinity of any living thing; it
was a slim, youthful figure in mourning apparel of the plainest black
stuff, with a little simple, black crape bonnet; I felt, as well as
saw, who it was; and, moving neither hand nor foot, I stood some moments
enjoying the security of conviction. I had sought her for a month, and
had never discovered one of her traces—never met a hope, or seized
a chance of encountering her anywhere. I had been forced to loosen my
grasp on expectation; and, but an hour ago, had sunk slackly under
the discouraging thought that the current of life, and the impulse
of destiny, had swept her for ever from my reach; and, behold, while
bending suddenly earthward beneath the pressure of despondency—while
following with my eyes the track of sorrow on the turf of a
graveyard—here was my lost jewel dropped on the tear-fed herbage,
nestling in the messy and mouldy roots of yew-trees.
Frances sat very quiet, her elbow on her knee, and her head on her hand.
I knew she could retain a thinking attitude a long time without change;
at last, a tear fell; she had been looking at the name on the
stone before her, and her heart had no doubt endured one of those
constrictions with which the desolate living, regretting the dead, are,
at times, so sorely oppressed. Many tears rolled down, which she wiped
away, again and again, with her handkerchief; some distressed sobs
escaped her, and then, the paroxysm over, she sat quiet as before. I put
my hand gently on her shoulder; no need further to prepare her, for
she was neither hysterical nor liable to fainting-fits; a sudden push,
indeed, might have startled her, but the contact of my quiet touch
merely woke attention as I wished; and, though she turned quickly, yet
so lightning-swift is thought—in some minds especially—I believe the
wonder of what—the consciousness of who it was that thus stole unawares
on her solitude, had passed through her brain, and flashed into her
heart, even before she had effected that hasty movement; at least,
Amazement had hardly opened her eyes and raised them to mine, ere
Recognition informed their irids with most speaking brightness. Nervous
surprise had hardly discomposed her features ere a sentiment of most
vivid joy shone clear and warm on her whole countenance. I had hardly
time to observe that she was wasted and pale, ere called to feel a
responsive inward pleasure by the sense of most full and exquisite
pleasure glowing in the animated flush, and shining in the expansive
light, now diffused over my pupil’s face. It was the summer sun flashing
out after the heavy summer shower; and what fertilizes more rapidly than
that beam, burning almost like fire in its ardour?
I hate boldness—that boldness which is of the brassy brow and insensate
nerves; but I love the courage of the strong heart, the fervour of the
generous blood; I loved with passion the light of Frances Evans’ clear
hazel eye when it did not fear to look straight into mine; I loved the
tones with which she uttered the words—
“Mon maitre! mon maitre!”
I loved the movement with which she confided her hand to my hand; I
loved her as she stood there, penniless and parentless; for a sensualist
charmless, for me a treasure—my best object of sympathy on earth,
thinking such thoughts as I thought, feeling such feelings as I felt; my
ideal of the shrine in which to seal my stores of love; personification
of discretion and forethought, of diligence and perseverance, of
self-denial and self-control—those guardians, those trusty keepers of
the gift I longed to confer on her—the gift of all my affections;
model of truth and honour, of independence and conscientiousness—those
refiners and sustainers of an honest life; silent possessor of a well
of tenderness, of a flame, as genial as still, as pure as quenchless,
of natural feeling, natural passion—those sources of refreshment and
comfort to the sanctuary of home. I knew how quietly and how deeply the
well bubbled in her heart; I knew how the more dangerous flame burned
safely under the eye of reason; I had seen when the fire shot up a
moment high and vivid, when the accelerated heat troubled life’s current
in its channels; I had seen reason reduce the rebel, and humble its
blaze to embers. I had confidence in Frances Evans; I had respect
for her, and as I drew her arm through mine, and led her out of the
cemetery, I felt I had another sentiment, as strong as confidence, as
firm as respect, more fervid than either—that of love.
“Well, my pupil,” said I, as the ominous sounding gate swung to behind
us—“Well, I have found you again: a month’s search has seemed long,
and I little thought to have discovered my lost sheep straying amongst
graves.”
Never had I addressed her but as “Mademoiselle” before, and to speak
thus was to take up a tone new to both her and me. Her answer suprised
me that this language ruffled none of her feelings, woke no discord in
her heart:
“Mon maitre,” she said, “have you troubled yourself to seek me? I little
imagined you would think much of my absence, but I grieved bitterly to
be taken away from you. I was sorry for that circumstance when heavier
troubles ought to have made me forget it.”
“Your aunt is dead?”
“Yes, a fortnight since, and she died full of regret, which I could not
chase from her mind; she kept repeating, even during the last night
of her existence, ‘Frances, you will be so lonely when I am gone,
so friendless:’ she wished too that she could have been buried in
Switzerland, and it was I who persuaded her in her old age to leave the
banks of Lake Leman, and to come, only as it seems to die, in this flat
region of Flanders. Willingly would I have observed her last wish, and
taken her remains back to our own country, but that was impossible; I
was forced to lay her here.”
“She was ill but a short time, I presume?”
“But three weeks. When she began to sink I asked Mdlle. Reuter’s leave
to stay with her and wait on her; I readily got leave.”
“Do you return to the pensionnat!” I demanded hastily.
“Monsieur, when I had been at home a week Mdlle. Reuter called one
evening, just after I had got my aunt to bed; she went into her room
to speak to her, and was extremely civil and affable, as she always is;
afterwards she came and sat with me a long time, and just as she rose to
go away, she said: “Mademoiselle, I shall not soon cease to regret your
departure from my establishment, though indeed it is true that you have
taught your class of pupils so well that they are all quite accomplished
in the little works you manage so skilfully, and have not the slightest
need of further instruction; my second teacher must in future supply
your place, with regard to the younger pupils, as well as she can,
though she is indeed an inferior artiste to you, and doubtless it will
be your part now to assume a higher position in your calling; I am sure
you will everywhere find schools and families willing to profit by your
talents.’ And then she paid me my last quarter’s salary. I asked, as
mademoiselle would no doubt think, very bluntly, if she designed to
discharge me from the establishment. She smiled at my inelegance of
speech, and answered that ‘our connection as employer and employed was
certainly dissolved, but that she hoped still to retain the pleasure of
my acquaintance; she should always be happy to see me as a friend;’ and
then she said something about the excellent condition of the streets,
and the long continuance of fine weather, and went away quite cheerful.”
I laughed inwardly; all this was so like the directress—so like what I
had expected and guessed of her conduct; and then the exposure and proof
of her lie, unconsciously afforded by Frances:—“She had frequently
applied for Mdlle. Henri’s address,” forsooth; “Mdlle. Henri had always
evaded giving it,” &c., &c., and here I found her a visitor at the very
house of whose locality she had professed absolute ignorance!
Any comments I might have intended to make on my pupil’s communication,
were checked by the plashing of large rain-drops on our faces and on the
path, and by the muttering of a distant but coming storm. The warning
obvious in stagnant air and leaden sky had already induced me to take
the road leading back to Brussels, and now I hastened my own steps and
those of my companion, and, as our way lay downhill, we got on rapidly.
There was an interval after the fall of the first broad drops before
heavy rain came on; in the meantime we had passed through the Porte de
Louvain, and were again in the city.
“Where do you live?” I asked; “I will see you safe home.”
“Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges,” answered Frances.
It was not far from the Rue de Louvain, and we stood on the doorsteps
of the house we sought ere the clouds, severing with loud peal and
shattered cataract of lightning, emptied their livid folds in a torrent,
heavy, prone, and broad.
“Come in! come in!” said Frances, as, after putting her into the house,
I paused ere I followed: the word decided me; I stepped across the
threshold, shut the door on the rushing, flashing, whitening storm, and
followed her upstairs to her apartments. Neither she nor I were wet; a
projection over the door had warded off the straight-descending flood;
none but the first, large drops had touched our garments; one minute
more and we should not have had a dry thread on us.
Stepping over a little mat of green wool, I found myself in a small room
with a painted floor and a square of green carpet in the middle; the
articles of furniture were few, but all bright and exquisitely clean;
order reigned through its narrow limits—such order as it soothed my
punctilious soul to behold. And I had hesitated to enter the abode,
because I apprehended after all that Mdlle. Reuter’s hint about its
extreme poverty might be too well-founded, and I feared to embarrass the
lace-mender by entering her lodgings unawares! Poor the place might be;
poor truly it was; but its neatness was better than elegance, and had
but a bright little fire shone on that clean hearth, I should have
deemed it more attractive than a palace. No fire was there, however, and
no fuel laid ready to light; the lace-mender was unable to allow herself
that indulgence, especially now when, deprived by death of her sole
relative, she had only her own unaided exertions to rely on. Frances
went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, and she came out a
model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black stuff dress, so
accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, with her spotless
white collar turned back from a fair and shapely neck, with her
plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her temples, and in
a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had none—neither brooch,
ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough without them—perfection of fit,
proportion of form, grace of carriage, agreeably supplied their place.
Her eye, as she re-entered the small sitting-room, instantly sought
mine, which was just then lingering on the hearth; I knew she read at
once the sort of inward ruth and pitying pain which the chill vacancy of
that hearth stirred in my soul: quick to penetrate, quick to determine,
and quicker to put in practice, she had in a moment tied a holland apron
round her waist; then she disappeared, and reappeared with a basket;
it had a cover; she opened it, and produced wood and coal; deftly and
compactly she arranged them in the grate.
“It is her whole stock, and she will exhaust it out of hospitality,”
thought I.
“What are you going to do?” I asked: “not surely to light a fire this
hot evening? I shall be smothered.”
“Indeed, monsieur, I feel it very chilly since the rain began; besides,
I must boil the water for my tea, for I take tea on Sundays; you will be
obliged to try and bear the heat.”
She had struck a light; the wood was already in a blaze; and truly, when
contrasted with the darkness, the wild tumult of the tempest without,
that peaceful glow which began to beam on the now animated hearth,
seemed very cheering. A low, purring sound, from some quarter, announced
that another being, besides myself, was pleased with the change; a
black cat, roused by the light from its sleep on a little cushioned
foot-stool, came and rubbed its head against Frances’ gown as she knelt;
she caressed it, saying it had been a favourite with her “pauvre tante
Julienne.”
The fire being lit, the hearth swept, and a small kettle of a very
antique pattern, such as I thought I remembered to have seen in old
farmhouses in England, placed over the now ruddy flame, Frances’ hands
were washed, and her apron removed in an instant; then she opened a
cupboard, and took out a tea-tray, on which she had soon arranged a
china tea-equipage, whose pattern, shape, and size, denoted a remote
antiquity; a little, old-fashioned silver spoon was deposited in each
saucer; and a pair of silver tongs, equally old-fashioned, were laid
on the sugar-basin; from the cupboard, too, was produced a tidy
silver cream-ewer, not larger then an egg-shell. While making these
preparations, she chanced to look up, and, reading curiosity in my eyes,
she smiled and asked—
“Is this like England, monsieur?”
“Like the England of a hundred years ago,” I replied.
“Is it truly? Well, everything on this tray is at least a hundred
years old: these cups, these spoons, this ewer, are all heirlooms; my
great-grandmother left them to my grandmother, she to my mother, and my
mother brought them with her from England to Switzerland, and left them
to me; and, ever since I was a little girl, I have thought I should like
to carry them back to England, whence they came.”
She put some pistolets on the table; she made the tea, as foreigners do
make tea—i.e., at the rate of a teaspoonful to half-a-dozen cups;
she placed me a chair, and, as I took it, she asked, with a sort of
exaltation—
“Will it make you think yourself at home for a moment?”
“If I had a home in England, I believe it would recall it,” I
answered; and, in truth, there was a sort of illusion in seeing the
fair-complexioned English-looking girl presiding at the English meal,
and speaking in the English language.
“You have then no home?” was her remark.
“None, nor ever have had. If ever I possess a home, it must be of my own
making, and the task is yet to begin.” And, as I spoke, a pang, new to
me, shot across my heart: it was a pang of mortification at the humility
of my position, and the inadequacy of my means; while with that pang was
born a strong desire to do more, earn more, be more, possess more;
and in the increased possessions, my roused and eager spirit panted to
include the home I had never had, the wife I inwardly vowed to win.
Frances’ tea was little better than hot water, sugar, and milk; and her
pistolets, with which she could not offer me butter, were sweet to my
palate as manna.
The repast over, and the treasured plate and porcelain being washed and
put by, the bright table rubbed still brighter, “le chat de ma tante
Julienne” also being fed with provisions brought forth on a plate for
its special use, a few stray cinders, and a scattering of ashes too,
being swept from the hearth, Frances at last sat down; and then, as she
took a chair opposite to me, she betrayed, for the first time, a little
embarrassment; and no wonder, for indeed I had unconsciously watched
her rather too closely, followed all her steps and all her movements
a little too perseveringly with my eyes, for she mesmerized me by
the grace and alertness of her action—by the deft, cleanly, and even
decorative effect resulting from each touch of her slight and fine
fingers; and when, at last, she subsided to stillness, the intelligence
of her face seemed beauty to me, and I dwelt on it accordingly. Her
colour, however, rising, rather than settling with repose, and her eyes
remaining downcast, though I kept waiting for the lids to be raised that
I might drink a ray of the light I loved—a light where fire dissolved
in softness, where affection tempered penetration, where, just now
at least, pleasure played with thought—this expectation not being
gratified, I began at last to suspect that I had probably myself to
blame for the disappointment; I must cease gazing, and begin talking,
if I wished to break the spell under which she now sat motionless; so
recollecting the composing effect which an authoritative tone and manner
had ever been wont to produce on her, I said—
“Get one of your English books, mademoiselle, for the rain yet falls
heavily, and will probably detain me half an hour longer.”
Released, and set at ease, up she rose, got her book, and accepted at
once the chair I placed for her at my side. She had selected “Paradise
Lost” from her shelf of classics, thinking, I suppose, the religious
character of the book best adapted it to Sunday; I told her to begin at
the beginning, and while she read Milton’s invocation to that heavenly
muse, who on the “secret top of Oreb or Sinai” had taught the Hebrew
shepherd how in the womb of chaos, the conception of a world had
originated and ripened, I enjoyed, undisturbed, the treble pleasure of
having her near me, hearing the sound of her voice—a sound sweet and
satisfying in my ear—and looking, by intervals, at her face: of this
last privilege, I chiefly availed myself when I found fault with an
intonation, a pause, or an emphasis; as long as I dogmatized, I might
also gaze, without exciting too warm a flush.
“Enough,” said I, when she had gone through some half dozen pages (a
work of time with her, for she read slowly and paused often to ask and
receive information)—“enough; and now the rain is ceasing, and I must
soon go.” For indeed, at that moment, looking towards the window, I
saw it all blue; the thunder-clouds were broken and scattered, and the
setting August sun sent a gleam like the reflection of rubies through
the lattice. I got up; I drew on my gloves.
“You have not yet found another situation to supply the place of that
from which you were dismissed by Mdlle. Reuter?”
“No, monsieur; I have made inquiries everywhere, but they all ask me
for references; and to speak truth, I do not like to apply to the
directress, because I consider she acted neither justly nor honourably
towards me; she used underhand means to set my pupils against me, and
thereby render me unhappy while I held my place in her establishment,
and she eventually deprived me of it by a masked and hypocritical
manoeuvre, pretending that she was acting for my good, but really
snatching from me my chief means of subsistence, at a crisis when not
only my own life, but that of another, depended on my exertions: of her
I will never more ask a favour.”
“How, then, do you propose to get on? How do you live now?”
“I have still my lace-mending trade; with care it will keep me from
starvation, and I doubt not by dint of exertion to get better employment
yet; it is only a fortnight since I began to try; my courage or hopes
are by no means worn out yet.”
“And if you get what you wish, what then? what are your ultimate views?”
“To save enough to cross the Channel: I always look to England as my
Canaan.”
“Well, well—ere long I shall pay you another visit; good evening now,”
and I left her rather abruptly; I had much ado to resist a strong inward
impulse, urging me to take a warmer, more expressive leave: what so
natural as to fold her for a moment in a close embrace, to imprint one
kiss on her cheek or forehead? I was not unreasonable—that was all I
wanted; satisfied in that point, I could go away content; and Reason
denied me even this; she ordered me to turn my eyes from her face, and
my steps from her apartment—to quit her as dryly and coldly as I would
have quitted old Madame Pelet. I obeyed, but I swore rancorously to be
avenged one day. “I’ll earn a right to do as I please in this matter,
or I’ll die in the contest. I have one object before me now—to get that
Genevese girl for my wife; and my wife she shall be—that is, provided
she has as much, or half as much regard for her master as he has
for her. And would she be so docile, so smiling, so happy under my
instructions if she had not? would she sit at my side when I dictate
or correct, with such a still, contented, halcyon mien?” for I had ever
remarked, that however sad or harassed her countenance might be when
I entered a room, yet after I had been near her, spoken to her a few
words, given her some directions, uttered perhaps some reproofs, she
would, all at once, nestle into a nook of happiness, and look up serene
and revived. The reproofs suited her best of all: while I scolded she
would chip away with her pen-knife at a pencil or a pen; fidgetting a
little, pouting a little, defending herself by monosyllables, and when I
deprived her of the pen or pencil, fearing it would be all cut away,
and when I interdicted even the monosyllabic defence, for the purpose
of working up the subdued excitement a little higher, she would at last
raise her eyes and give me a certain glance, sweetened with gaiety, and
pointed with defiance, which, to speak truth, thrilled me as nothing had
ever done, and made me, in a fashion (though happily she did not know
it), her subject, if not her slave. After such little scenes her spirits
would maintain their flow, often for some hours, and, as I remarked
before, her health therefrom took a sustenance and vigour which,
previously to the event of her aunt’s death and her dismissal, had
almost recreated her whole frame.
It has taken me several minutes to write these last sentences; but I had
thought all their purport during the brief interval of descending the
stairs from Frances’ room. Just as I was opening the outer door,
I remembered the twenty francs which I had not restored; I paused:
impossible to carry them away with me; difficult to force them back
on their original owner; I had now seen her in her own humble abode,
witnessed the dignity of her poverty, the pride of order, the fastidious
care of conservatism, obvious in the arrangement and economy of her
little home; I was sure she would not suffer herself to be excused
paying her debts; I was certain the favour of indemnity would be
accepted from no hand, perhaps least of all from mine: yet these four
five-franc pieces were a burden to my self-respect, and I must get
rid of them. An expedient—a clumsy one no doubt, but the best I
could devise-suggested itself to me. I darted up the stairs, knocked,
re-entered the room as if in haste:—
“Mademoiselle, I have forgotten one of my gloves; I must have left it
here.”
She instantly rose to seek it; as she turned her back, I—being now
at the hearth—noiselessly lifted a little vase, one of a set of china
ornaments, as old-fashioned as the tea-cups—slipped the money under it,
then saying—“Oh here is my glove! I had dropped it within the fender;
good evening, mademoiselle,” I made my second exit.
Brief as my impromptu return had been, it had afforded me time to pick
up a heart-ache; I remarked that Frances had already removed the red
embers of her cheerful little fire from the grate: forced to calculate
every item, to save in every detail, she had instantly on my departure
retrenched a luxury too expensive to be enjoyed alone.
“I am glad it is not yet winter,” thought I; “but in two months more
come the winds and rains of November; would to God that before then I
could earn the right, and the power, to shovel coals into that grate AD
LIBITUM!”
Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze stirred the
air, purified by lightning; I felt the West behind me, where spread a
sky like opal; azure immingled with crimson: the enlarged sun, glorious
in Tyrian tints, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, eastward,
I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the arch of an
evening rainbow; a perfect rainbow—high, wide, vivid. I looked long;
my eye drank in the scene, and I suppose my brain must have absorbed
it; for that night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long time,
watching the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the
retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last fell
asleep; and then in a dream were reproduced the setting sun, the bank of
clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a terrace; I leaned
over a parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not
fathom, but hearing an endless dash of waves, I believed it to be the
sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense
blue: all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold
glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, approached,
enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth,
under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dusk clouds diffused behind.
It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed like
raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation, coloured what seemed
face and limbs; a large star shone with still lustre on an angel’s
forehead; an upraised arm and hand, glancing like a ray, pointed to the
bow overhead, and a voice in my heart whispered—
“Hope smiles on Effort!”
CHAPTER XX.
A COMPETENCY was what I wanted; a competency it was now my aim and
resolve to secure; but never had I been farther from the mark. With
August the school-year (l’annee scolaire) closed, the examinations
concluded, the prizes were adjudged, the schools dispersed, the gates of
all colleges, the doors of all pensionnats shut, not to be reopened till
the beginning or middle of October. The last day of August was at hand,
and what was my position? Had I advanced a step since the commencement
of the past quarter? On the contrary, I had receded one. By renouncing
my engagement as English master in Mdlle. Reuter’s establishment, I had
voluntarily cut off 20l. from my yearly income; I had diminished my 60l.
per annum to 40l., and even that sum I now held by a very precarious
tenure.
It is some time since I made any reference to M. Pelet. The moonlight
walk is, I think, the last incident recorded in this narrative where
that gentleman cuts any conspicuous figure: the fact is, since that
event, a change had come over the spirit of our intercourse. He, indeed,
ignorant that the still hour, a cloudless moon, and an open lattice,
had revealed to me the secret of his selfish love and false friendship,
would have continued smooth and complaisant as ever; but I grew spiny as
a porcupine, and inflexible as a blackthorn cudgel; I never had a smile
for his raillery, never a moment for his society; his invitations to
take coffee with him in his parlour were invariably rejected, and
very stiffly and sternly rejected too; his jesting allusions to the
directress (which he still continued) were heard with a grim calm very
different from the petulant pleasure they were formerly wont to excite.
For a long time Pelet bore with my frigid demeanour very patiently;
he even increased his attentions; but finding that even a cringing
politeness failed to thaw or move me, he at last altered too; in
his turn he cooled; his invitations ceased; his countenance became
suspicious and overcast, and I read in the perplexed yet brooding aspect
of his brow, a constant examination and comparison of premises, and an
anxious endeavour to draw thence some explanatory inference. Ere long,
I fancy, he succeeded, for he was not without penetration; perhaps, too,
Mdlle. Zoraide might have aided him in the solution of the enigma; at
any rate I soon found that the uncertainty of doubt had vanished from
his manner; renouncing all pretence of friendship and cordiality, he
adopted a reserved, formal, but still scrupulously polite deportment.
This was the point to which I had wished to bring him, and I was now
again comparatively at my ease. I did not, it is true, like my position
in his house; but being freed from the annoyance of false professions
and double-dealing I could endure it, especially as no heroic sentiment
of hatred or jealousy of the director distracted my philosophical soul;
he had not, I found, wounded me in a very tender point, the wound was so
soon and so radically healed, leaving only a sense of contempt for
the treacherous fashion in which it had been inflicted, and a lasting
mistrust of the hand which I had detected attempting to stab in the
dark.
This state of things continued till about the middle of July, and then
there was a little change; Pelet came home one night, an hour after his
usual time, in a state of unequivocal intoxication, a thing anomalous
with him; for if he had some of the worst faults of his countrymen,
he had also one at least of their virtues, i.e. sobriety. So drunk,
however, was he upon this occasion, that after having roused the whole
establishment (except the pupils, whose dormitory being over the classes
in a building apart from the dwelling-house, was consequently out of the
reach of disturbance) by violently ringing the hall-bell and ordering
lunch to be brought in immediately, for he imagined it was noon, whereas
the city bells had just tolled midnight; after having furiously rated
the servants for their want of punctuality, and gone near to chastise
his poor old mother, who advised him to go to bed, he began raving
dreadfully about “le maudit Anglais, Creemsvort.” I had not yet retired;
some German books I had got hold of had kept me up late; I heard the
uproar below, and could distinguish the director’s voice exalted in
a manner as appalling as it was unusual. Opening my door a little, I
became aware of a demand on his part for “Creemsvort” to be brought
down to him that he might cut his throat on the hall-table and wash
his honour, which he affirmed to be in a dirty condition, in infernal
British blood. “He is either mad or drunk,” thought I, “and in either
case the old woman and the servants will be the better of a man’s
assistance,” so I descended straight to the hall. I found him staggering
about, his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling—a pretty sight he was, a just
medium between the fool and the lunatic.
“Come, M. Pelet,” said I, “you had better go to bed,” and I took hold of
his arm. His excitement, of course, increased greatly at sight and touch
of the individual for whose blood he had been making application: he
struggled and struck with fury—but a drunken man is no match for a
sober one; and, even in his normal state, Pelet’s worn out frame could
not have stood against my sound one. I got him up-stairs, and, in
process of time, to bed. During the operation he did not fail to
utter comminations which, though broken, had a sense in them; while
stigmatizing me as the treacherous spawn of a perfidious country, he,
in the same breath, anathematized Zoraide Reuter; he termed her “femme
sotte et vicieuse,” who, in a fit of lewd caprice, had thrown herself
away on an unprincipled adventurer; directing the point of the last
appellation by a furious blow, obliquely aimed at me. I left him in the
act of bounding elastically out of the bed into which I had tucked him;
but, as I took the precaution of turning the key in the door behind me,
I retired to my own room, assured of his safe custody till the morning,
and free to draw undisturbed conclusions from the scene I had just
witnessed.
Now, it was precisely about this time that the directress, stung by
my coldness, bewitched by my scorn, and excited by the preference she
suspected me of cherishing for another, had fallen into a snare of her
own laying—was herself caught in the meshes of the very passion with
which she wished to entangle me. Conscious of the state of things in
that quarter, I gathered, from the condition in which I saw my
employer, that his lady-love had betrayed the alienation of her
affections—inclinations, rather, I would say; affection is a word at
once too warm and too pure for the subject—had let him see that the
cavity of her hollow heart, emptied of his image, was now occupied by
that of his usher. It was not without some surprise that I found
myself obliged to entertain this view of the case; Pelet, with
his old-established school, was so convenient, so profitable a
match—Zoraide was so calculating, so interested a woman—I wondered
mere personal preference could, in her mind, have prevailed for a moment
over worldly advantage: yet, it was evident, from what Pelet said, that,
not only had she repulsed him, but had even let slip expressions of
partiality for me. One of his drunken exclamations was, “And the
jade doats on your youth, you raw blockhead! and talks of your noble
deportment, as she calls your accursed English formality—and your pure
morals, forsooth! des moeurs de Caton a-t-elle dit—sotte!” Hers, I
thought, must be a curious soul, where in spite of a strong, natural
tendency to estimate unduly advantages of wealth and station, the
sardonic disdain of a fortuneless subordinate had wrought a deeper
impression than could be imprinted by the most flattering assiduities of
a prosperous CHEF D’INSTITUTION. I smiled inwardly; and strange to say,
though my AMOUR PROPRE was excited not disagreeably by the conquest, my
better feelings remained untouched. Next day, when I saw the directress,
and when she made an excuse to meet me in the corridor, and besought my
notice by a demeanour and look subdued to Helot humility, I could
not love, I could scarcely pity her. To answer briefly and dryly
some interesting inquiry about my health—to pass her by with a stern
bow—was all I could; her presence and manner had then, and for some
time previously and consequently, a singular effect upon me: they
sealed up all that was good, elicited all that was noxious in my nature;
sometimes they enervated my senses, but they always hardened my heart.
I was aware of the detriment done, and quarrelled with myself for the
change. I had ever hated a tyrant; and, behold, the possession of a
slave, self-given, went near to transform me into what I abhorred!
There was at once a sort of low gratification in receiving this luscious
incense from an attractive and still young worshipper; and an irritating
sense of degradation in the very experience of the pleasure. When she
stole about me with the soft step of a slave, I felt at once barbarous
and sensual as a pasha. I endured her homage sometimes; sometimes I
rebuked it. My indifference or harshness served equally to increase the
evil I desired to check.
“Que le dedain lui sied bien!” I once overheard her say to her mother:
“il est beau comme Apollon quand il sourit de son air hautain.”
And the jolly old dame laughed, and said she thought her daughter was
bewitched, for I had no point of a handsome man about me, except being
straight and without deformity. “Pour moi,” she continued, “il me fait
tout l’effet d’un chat-huant, avec ses besicles.”
Worthy old girl! I could have gone and kissed her had she not been a
little too old, too fat, and too red-faced; her sensible, truthful
words seemed so wholesome, contrasted with the morbid illusions of her
daughter.
When Pelet awoke on the morning after his frenzy fit, he retained no
recollection of what had happened the previous night, and his mother
fortunately had the discretion to refrain from informing him that I had
been a witness of his degradation. He did not again have recourse to
wine for curing his griefs, but even in his sober mood he soon showed
that the iron of jealousy had entered into his soul. A thorough
Frenchman, the national characteristic of ferocity had not been omitted
by nature in compounding the ingredients of his character; it had
appeared first in his access of drunken wrath, when some of his
demonstrations of hatred to my person were of a truly fiendish
character, and now it was more covertly betrayed by momentary
contractions of the features, and flashes of fierceness in his light
blue eyes, when their glance chanced to encounter mine. He absolutely
avoided speaking to me; I was now spared even the falsehood of his
politeness. In this state of our mutual relations, my soul rebelled
sometimes almost ungovernably, against living in the house and
discharging the service of such a man; but who is free from the
constraint of circumstances? At that time, I was not: I used to rise
each morning eager to shake off his yoke, and go out with my portmanteau
under my arm, if a beggar, at least a freeman; and in the evening, when
I came back from the pensionnat de demoiselles, a certain pleasant voice
in my ear; a certain face, so intelligent, yet so docile, so reflective,
yet so soft, in my eyes; a certain cast of character, at once proud
and pliant, sensitive and sagacious, serious and ardent, in my head; a
certain tone of feeling, fervid and modest, refined and practical, pure
and powerful, delighting and troubling my memory—visions of new ties I
longed to contract, of new duties I longed to undertake, had taken the
rover and the rebel out of me, and had shown endurance of my hated lot
in the light of a Spartan virtue.
But Pelet’s fury subsided; a fortnight sufficed for its rise, progress,
and extinction: in that space of time the dismissal of the obnoxious
teacher had been effected in the neighbouring house, and in the same
interval I had declared my resolution to follow and find out my pupil,
and upon my application for her address being refused, I had summarily
resigned my own post. This last act seemed at once to restore Mdlle.
Reuter to her senses; her sagacity, her judgment, so long misled by a
fascinating delusion, struck again into the right track the moment
that delusion vanished. By the right track, I do not mean the steep and
difficult path of principle—in that path she never trod; but the plain
highway of common sense, from which she had of late widely diverged.
When there she carefully sought, and having found, industriously pursued
the trail of her old suitor, M. Pelet. She soon overtook him. What arts
she employed to soothe and blind him I know not, but she succeeded both
in allaying his wrath, and hoodwinking his discernment, as was soon
proved by the alteration in his mien and manner; she must have managed
to convince him that I neither was, nor ever had been, a rival of his,
for the fortnight of fury against me terminated in a fit of exceeding
graciousness and amenity, not unmixed with a dash of exulting
self-complacency, more ludicrous than irritating. Pelet’s bachelor’s
life had been passed in proper French style with due disregard to moral
restraint, and I thought his married life promised to be very French
also. He often boasted to me what a terror he had been to certain
husbands of his acquaintance; I perceived it would not now be difficult
to pay him back in his own coin.
The crisis drew on. No sooner had the holidays commenced than note of
preparation for some momentous event sounded all through the premises
of Pelet: painters, polishers, and upholsterers were immediately set
to work, and there was talk of “la chambre de Madame,” “le salon de
Madame.” Not deeming it probable that the old duenna at present graced
with that title in our house, had inspired her son with such enthusiasm
of filial piety, as to induce him to fit up apartments expressly for her
use, I concluded, in common with the cook, the two housemaids, and the
kitchen-scullion, that a new and more juvenile Madame was destined to be
the tenant of these gay chambers.
Presently official announcement of the coming event was put forth. In
another week’s time M. Francois Pelet, directeur, and Mdlle. Zoraide
Reuter, directrice, were to be joined together in the bands of
matrimony. Monsieur, in person, heralded the fact to me; terminating
his communication by an obliging expression of his desire that I should
continue, as heretofore, his ablest assistant and most trusted friend;
and a proposition to raise my salary by an additional two hundred francs
per annum. I thanked him, gave no conclusive answer at the time, and,
when he had left me, threw off my blouse, put on my coat, and set out
on a long walk outside the Porte de Flandre, in order, as I thought, to
cool my blood, calm my nerves, and shake my disarranged ideas into some
order. In fact, I had just received what was virtually my dismissal.
I could not conceal, I did not desire to conceal from myself the
conviction that, being now certain that Mdlle. Reuter was destined to
become Madame Pelet it would not do for me to remain a dependent dweller
in the house which was soon to be hers. Her present demeanour towards
me was deficient neither in dignity nor propriety; but I knew her former
feeling was unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but
Opportunity would be too strong for either of these—Temptation would
shiver their restraints.
I was no pope—I could not boast infallibility: in short, if I stayed,
the probability was that, in three months’ time, a practical modern
French novel would be in full process of concoction under the roof of
the unsuspecting Pelet. Now, modern French novels are not to my
taste, either practically or theoretically. Limited as had yet been my
experience of life, I had once had the opportunity of contemplating,
near at hand, an example of the results produced by a course of
interesting and romantic domestic treachery. No golden halo of fiction
was about this example, I saw it bare and real, and it was very
loathsome. I saw a mind degraded by the practice of mean subterfuge, by
the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the infectious
influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced
and prolonged view of this spectacle; those sufferings I did not now
regret, for their simple recollection acted as a most wholesome antidote
to temptation. They had inscribed on my reason the conviction that
unlawful pleasure, trenching on another’s rights, is delusive and
envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison
cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave for ever.
From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave Pelet’s, and
that instantly; “but,” said Prudence, “you know not where to go, nor how
to live;” and then the dream of true love came over me: Frances Henri
seemed to stand at my side; her slender waist to invite my arm; her
hand to court my hand; I felt it was made to nestle in mine; I could not
relinquish my right to it, nor could I withdraw my eyes for ever from
hers, where I saw so much happiness, such a correspondence of heart with
heart; over whose expression I had such influence; where I could kindle
bliss, infuse awe, stir deep delight, rouse sparkling spirit, and
sometimes waken pleasurable dread. My hopes to will and possess, my
resolutions to merit and rise, rose in array against me; and here I was
about to plunge into the gulf of absolute destitution; “and all this,”
suggested an inward voice, “because you fear an evil which may never
happen!” “It will happen; you KNOW it will,” answered that stubborn
monitor, Conscience. “Do what you feel is right; obey me, and even in
the sloughs of want I will plant for you firm footing.” And then, as I
walked fast along the road, there rose upon me a strange, inly-felt idea
of some Great Being, unseen, but all present, who in His beneficence
desired only my welfare, and now watched the struggle of good and evil
in my heart, and waited to see whether I should obey His voice, heard in
the whispers of my conscience, or lend an ear to the sophisms by which
His enemy and mine—the Spirit of Evil—sought to lead me astray.
Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and
declining the green way along which Temptation strewed flowers; but
whereas, methought, the Deity of Love, the Friend of all that exists,
would smile well-pleased were I to gird up my loins and address myself
to the rude ascent; so, on the other hand, each inclination to the
velvet declivity seemed to kindle a gleam of triumph on the brow of the
man-hating, God-defying demon. Sharp and short I turned round; fast I
retraced my steps; in half an hour I was again at M. Pelet’s: I sought
him in his study; brief parley, concise explanation sufficed; my manner
proved that I was resolved; he, perhaps, at heart approved my
decision. After twenty minutes’ conversation, I re-entered my own room,
self-deprived of the means of living, self-sentenced to leave my present
home, with the short notice of a week in which to provide another.
CHAPTER XXI.
DIRECTLY as I closed the door, I saw laid on the table two letters; my
thought was, that they were notes of invitation from the friends of some
of my pupils; I had received such marks of attention occasionally, and
with me, who had no friends, correspondence of more interest was out
of the question; the postman’s arrival had never yet been an event of
interest to me since I came to Brussels. I laid my hand carelessly on
the documents, and coldly and slowly glancing at them, I prepared to
break the seals; my eye was arrested and my hand too; I saw what excited
me, as if I had found a vivid picture where I expected only to discover
a blank page: on one cover was an English postmark; on the other, a
lady’s clear, fine autograph; the last I opened first:—
“MONSIEUR,
“I FOUND out what you had done the very morning after your visit to me;
you might be sure I should dust the china, every day; and, as no one but
you had been in my room for a week, and as fairy-money is not current
in Brussels, I could not doubt who left the twenty francs on the
chimney-piece. I thought I heard you stir the vase when I was stooping
to look for your glove under the table, and I wondered you should
imagine it had got into such a little cup. Now, monsieur, the money
is not mine, and I shall not keep it; I will not send it in this note
because it might be lost—besides, it is heavy; but I will restore it
to you the first time I see you, and you must make no difficulties about
taking it; because, in the first place, I am sure, monsieur, you can
understand that one likes to pay one’s debts; that it is satisfactory
to owe no man anything; and, in the second place, I can now very well
afford to be honest, as I am provided with a situation. This last
circumstance is, indeed, the reason of my writing to you, for it is
pleasant to communicate good news; and, in these days, I have only my
master to whom I can tell anything.
“A week ago, monsieur, I was sent for by a Mrs. Wharton, an English
lady; her eldest daughter was going to be married, and some rich
relation having made her a present of a veil and dress in costly old
lace, as precious, they said, almost as jewels, but a little damaged by
time, I was commissioned to put them in repair. I had to do it at the
house; they gave me, besides, some embroidery to complete, and nearly
a week elapsed before I had finished everything. While I worked, Miss
Wharton often came into the room and sat with me, and so did Mrs.
Wharton; they made me talk English; asked how I had learned to speak it
so well; then they inquired what I knew besides—what books I had read;
soon they seemed to make a sort of wonder of me, considering me no doubt
as a learned grisette. One afternoon, Mrs. Wharton brought in a Parisian
lady to test the accuracy of my knowledge of French; the result of
it was that, owing probably in a great degree to the mother’s and
daughter’s good humour about the marriage, which inclined them to
do beneficent deeds, and partly, I think, because they are naturally
benevolent people, they decided that the wish I had expressed to do
something more than mend lace was a very legitimate one; and the same
day they took me in their carriage to Mrs. D.’s, who is the directress
of the first English school at Brussels. It seems she happened to be in
want of a French lady to give lessons in geography, history, grammar,
and composition, in the French language. Mrs. Wharton recommended me
very warmly; and, as two of her younger daughters are pupils in the
house, her patronage availed to get me the place. It was settled that I
am to attend six hours daily (for, happily, it was not required that
I should live in the house; I should have been sorry to leave my
lodgings), and, for this, Mrs. D. will give me twelve hundred francs per
annum.
“You see, therefore, monsieur, that I am now rich; richer almost than
I ever hoped to be: I feel thankful for it, especially as my sight was
beginning to be injured by constant working at fine lace; and I was
getting, too, very weary of sitting up late at nights, and yet not being
able to find time for reading or study. I began to fear that I should
fall ill, and be unable to pay my way; this fear is now, in a great
measure, removed; and, in truth, monsieur, I am very grateful to God for
the relief; and I feel it necessary, almost, to speak of my happiness
to some one who is kind-hearted enough to derive joy from seeing others
joyful. I could not, therefore, resist the temptation of writing to you;
I argued with myself it is very pleasant for me to write, and it will
not be exactly painful, though it may be tiresome to monsieur to
read. Do not be too angry with my circumlocution and inelegancies of
expression, and, believe me
“Your attached pupil,
“F. E. HENRI.”
Having read this letter, I mused on its contents for a few
moments—whether with sentiments pleasurable or otherwise I will
hereafter note—and then took up the other. It was directed in a hand
to me unknown—small, and rather neat; neither masculine nor exactly
feminine; the seal bore a coat of arms, concerning which I could only
decipher that it was not that of the Seacombe family, consequently the
epistle could be from none of my almost forgotten, and certainly quite
forgetting patrician relations. From whom, then, was it? I removed the
envelope; the note folded within ran as follows:
“I have no doubt in the world that you are doing well in that greasy
Flanders; living probably on the fat of the unctuous land; sitting like
a black-haired, tawny-skinned, long-nosed Israelite by the flesh-pots
of Egypt; or like a rascally son of Levi near the brass cauldrons of the
sanctuary, and every now and then plunging in a consecrated hook, and
drawing out of the sea of broth the fattest of heave-shoulders and the
fleshiest of wave-breasts. I know this, because you never write to any
one in England. Thankless dog that you are! I, by the sovereign efficacy
of my recommendation, got you the place where you are now living in
clover, and yet not a word of gratitude, or even acknowledgment, have
you ever offered in return; but I am coming to see you, and small
conception can you, with your addled aristocratic brains, form of the
sort of moral kicking I have, ready packed in my carpet-bag, destined to
be presented to you immediately on my arrival.
“Meantime I know all about your affairs, and have just got information,
by Brown’s last letter, that you are said to be on the point of forming
an advantageous match with a pursy, little Belgian schoolmistress—a
Mdlle. Zenobie, or some such name. Won’t I have a look at her when I
come over! And this you may rely on: if she pleases my taste, or if I
think it worth while in a pecuniary point of view, I’ll pounce on your
prize and bear her away triumphant in spite of your teeth. Yet I don’t
like dumpies either, and Brown says she is little and stout—the better
fitted for a wiry, starved-looking chap like you. “Be on the look-out,
for you know neither the day nor hour when your ----” (I don’t wish to
blaspheme, so I’ll leave a blank)—cometh.
“Yours truly,
“HUNSDEN YORKE HUNSDEN.”
“Humph!” said I; and ere I laid the letter down, I again glanced at the
small, neat handwriting, not a bit like that of a mercantile man, nor,
indeed, of any man except Hunsden himself. They talk of affinities
between the autograph and the character: what affinity was there here?
I recalled the writer’s peculiar face and certain traits I suspected,
rather than knew, to appertain to his nature, and I answered, “A great
deal.”
Hunsden, then, was coming to Brussels, and coming I knew not when;
coming charged with the expectation of finding me on the summit of
prosperity, about to be married, to step into a warm nest, to lie
comfortably down by the side of a snug, well-fed little mate.
“I wish him joy of the fidelity of the picture he has painted,” thought
I. “What will he say when, instead of a pair of plump turtle doves,
billing and cooing in a bower of roses, he finds a single lean
cormorant, standing mateless and shelterless on poverty’s bleak cliff?
Oh, confound him! Let him come, and let him laugh at the contrast
between rumour and fact. Were he the devil himself, instead of being
merely very like him, I’d not condescend to get out of his way, or to
forge a smile or a cheerful word wherewith to avert his sarcasm.”
Then I recurred to the other letter: that struck a chord whose sound I
could not deaden by thrusting my fingers into my ears, for it vibrated
within; and though its swell might be exquisite music, its cadence was a
groan.
That Frances was relieved from the pressure of want, that the curse of
excessive labour was taken off her, filled me with happiness; that her
first thought in prosperity should be to augment her joy by sharing
it with me, met and satisfied the wish of my heart. Two results of her
letter were then pleasant, sweet as two draughts of nectar; but applying
my lips for the third time to the cup, and they were excoriated as with
vinegar and gall.
Two persons whose desires are moderate may live well enough in Brussels
on an income which would scarcely afford a respectable maintenance for
one in London: and that, not because the necessaries of life are so
much dearer in the latter capital, or taxes so much higher than in the
former, but because the English surpass in folly all the nations on
God’s earth, and are more abject slaves to custom, to opinion, to
the desire to keep up a certain appearance, than the Italians are to
priestcraft, the French to vain-glory, the Russians to their Czar, or
the Germans to black beer. I have seen a degree of sense in the modest
arrangement of one homely Belgian household, that might put to shame the
elegance, the superfluities, the luxuries, the strained refinements of
a hundred genteel English mansions. In Belgium, provided you can
make money, you may save it; this is scarcely possible in England;
ostentation there lavishes in a month what industry has earned in a
year. More shame to all classes in that most bountiful and beggarly
country for their servile following of Fashion; I could write a chapter
or two on this subject, but must forbear, at least for the present. Had
I retained my 60l. per annum I could, now that Frances was in possession
of 50l., have gone straight to her this very evening, and spoken out the
words which, repressed, kept fretting my heart with fever; our united
income would, as we should have managed it, have sufficed well for
our mutual support; since we lived in a country where economy was not
confounded with meanness, where frugality in dress, food, and furniture,
was not synonymous with vulgarity in these various points. But the
placeless usher, bare of resource, and unsupported by connections, must
not think of this; such a sentiment as love, such a word as marriage,
were misplaced in his heart, and on his lips. Now for the first time did
I truly feel what it was to be poor; now did the sacrifice I had made
in casting from me the means of living put on a new aspect; instead of
a correct, just, honourable act, it seemed a deed at once light and
fanatical; I took several turns in my room, under the goading influence
of most poignant remorse; I walked a quarter of an hour from the wall to
the window; and at the window, self-reproach seemed to face me; at the
wall, self-disdain: all at once out spoke Conscience:—
“Down, stupid tormenters!” cried she; “the man has done his duty;
you shall not bait him thus by thoughts of what might have been; he
relinquished a temporary and contingent good to avoid a permanent and
certain evil he did well. Let him reflect now, and when your blinding
dust and deafening hum subside, he will discover a path.”
I sat down; I propped my forehead on both my hands; I thought and
thought an hour—two hours; vainly. I seemed like one sealed in a
subterranean vault, who gazes at utter blackness; at blackness ensured
by yard-thick stone walls around, and by piles of building above,
expecting light to penetrate through granite, and through cement firm
as granite. But there are chinks, or there may be chinks, in the
best adjusted masonry; there was a chink in my cavernous cell; for,
eventually, I saw, or seemed to see, a ray—pallid, indeed, and cold,
and doubtful, but still a ray, for it showed that narrow path which
conscience had promised after two, three hours’ torturing research in
brain and memory, I disinterred certain remains of circumstances, and
conceived a hope that by putting them together an expedient might be
framed, and a resource discovered. The circumstances were briefly these:
Some three months ago M. Pelet had, on the occasion of his fete, given
the boys a treat, which treat consisted in a party of pleasure to a
certain place of public resort in the outskirts of Brussels, of which
I do not at this moment remember the name, but near it were several of
those lakelets called etangs; and there was one etang, larger than the
rest, where on holidays people were accustomed to amuse themselves by
rowing round it in little boats. The boys having eaten an unlimited
quantity of “gaufres,” and drank several bottles of Louvain beer, amid
the shades of a garden made and provided for such crams, petitioned
the director for leave to take a row on the etang. Half a dozen of the
eldest succeeded in obtaining leave, and I was commissioned to accompany
them as surveillant. Among the half dozen happened to be a certain Jean
Baptiste Vandenhuten, a most ponderous young Flamand, not tall, but
even now, at the early age of sixteen, possessing a breadth and depth of
personal development truly national. It chanced that Jean was the first
lad to step into the boat; he stumbled, rolled to one side, the boat
revolted at his weight and capsized. Vandenhuten sank like lead, rose,
sank again. My coat and waistcoat were off in an instant; I had not been
brought up at Eton and boated and bathed and swam there ten long years
for nothing; it was a natural and easy act for me to leap to the rescue.
The lads and the boatmen yelled; they thought there would be two deaths
by drowning instead of one; but as Jean rose the third time, I clutched
him by one leg and the collar, and in three minutes more both he and I
were safe landed. To speak heaven’s truth, my merit in the action was
small indeed, for I had run no risk, and subsequently did not even catch
cold from the wetting; but when M. and Madame Vandenhuten, of whom Jean
Baptiste was the sole hope, came to hear of the exploit, they seemed
to think I had evinced a bravery and devotion which no thanks could
sufficiently repay. Madame, in particular, was “certain I must have
dearly loved their sweet son, or I would not thus have hazarded my own
life to save his.” Monsieur, an honest-looking, though phlegmatic man,
said very little, but he would not suffer me to leave the room, till
I had promised that in case I ever stood in need of help I would, by
applying to him, give him a chance of discharging the obligation under
which he affirmed I had laid him. These words, then, were my glimmer of
light; it was here I found my sole outlet; and in truth, though the cold
light roused, it did not cheer me; nor did the outlet seem such as I
should like to pass through. Right I had none to M. Vandenhuten’s good
offices; it was not on the ground of merit I could apply to him; no, I
must stand on that of necessity: I had no work; I wanted work; my best
chance of obtaining it lay in securing his recommendation. This I knew
could be had by asking for it; not to ask, because the request revolted
my pride and contradicted my habits, would, I felt, be an indulgence of
false and indolent fastidiousness. I might repent the omission all my
life; I would not then be guilty of it.
That evening I went to M. Vandenhuten’s; but I had bent the bow and
adjusted the shaft in vain; the string broke. I rang the bell at the
great door (it was a large, handsome house in an expensive part of the
town); a manservant opened; I asked for M. Vandenhuten; M. Vandenhuten
and family were all out of town—gone to Ostend—did not know when they
would be back. I left my card, and retraced my steps.
CHAPTER XXII
A WEEK is gone; LE JOUR DES NOCES arrived; the marriage was solemnized
at St. Jacques; Mdlle. Zoraide became Madame Pelet, NEE Reuter; and, in
about an hour after this transformation, “the happy pair,” as newspapers
phrase it, were on their way to Paris; where, according to previous
arrangement, the honeymoon was to be spent. The next day I quitted the
pensionnat. Myself and my chattels (some books and clothes) were soon
transferred to a modest lodging I had hired in a street not far off. In
half an hour my clothes were arranged in a commode, my books on a shelf,
and the “flitting” was effected. I should not have been unhappy that day
had not one pang tortured me—a longing to go to the Rue Notre Dame
aux Neiges, resisted, yet irritated by an inward resolve to avoid
that street till such time as the mist of doubt should clear from my
prospects.
It was a sweet September evening—very mild, very still; I had nothing
to do; at that hour I knew Frances would be equally released from
occupation; I thought she might possibly be wishing for her master, I
knew I wished for my pupil. Imagination began with her low whispers,
infusing into my soul the soft tale of pleasures that might be.
“You will find her reading or writing,” said she; “you can take your
seat at her side; you need not startle her peace by undue excitement;
you need not embarrass her manner by unusual action or language. Be as
you always are; look over what she has written; listen while she reads;
chide her, or quietly approve; you know the effect of either system; you
know her smile when pleased, you know the play of her looks when roused;
you have the secret of awakening what expression you will, and you can
choose amongst that pleasant variety. With you she will sit silent as
long as it suits you to talk alone; you can hold her under a potent
spell: intelligent as she is, eloquent as she can be, you can seal her
lips, and veil her bright countenance with diffidence; yet, you know,
she is not all monotonous mildness; you have seen, with a sort of
strange pleasure, revolt, scorn, austerity, bitterness, lay energetic
claim to a place in her feelings and physiognomy; you know that few
could rule her as you do; you know she might break, but never bend under
the hand of Tyranny and Injustice, but Reason and Affection can guide
her by a sign. Try their influence now. Go—they are not passions; you
may handle them safely.”
“I will NOT go was my answer to the sweet temptress. A man is master
of himself to a certain point, but not beyond it. Could I seek Frances
to-night, could I sit with her alone in a quiet room, and address her
only in the language of Reason and Affection?”
“No,” was the brief, fervent reply of that Love which had conquered and
now controlled me.
Time seemed to stagnate; the sun would not go down; my watch ticked, but
I thought the hands were paralyzed.
“What a hot evening!” I cried, throwing open the lattice; for, indeed, I
had seldom felt so feverish. Hearing a step ascending the common stair,
I wondered whether the “locataire,” now mounting to his apartments, were
as unsettled in mind and condition as I was, or whether he lived in the
calm of certain resources, and in the freedom of unfettered feelings.
What! was he coming in person to solve the problem hardly proposed in
inaudible thought? He had actually knocked at the door—at MY door; a
smart, prompt rap; and, almost before I could invite him in, he was over
the threshold, and had closed the door behind him.
“And how are you?” asked an indifferent, quiet voice, in the English
language; while my visitor, without any sort of bustle or introduction,
put his hat on the table, and his gloves into his hat, and drawing
the only armchair the room afforded a little forward, seated himself
tranquilly therein.
“Can’t you speak?” he inquired in a few moments, in a tone whose
nonchalance seemed to intimate that it was much the same thing whether
I answered or not. The fact is, I found it desirable to have recourse to
my good friends “les besicles;” not exactly to ascertain the identity of
my visitor—for I already knew him, confound his impudence! but to see
how he looked—to get a clear notion of his mien and countenance.
I wiped the glasses very deliberately, and put them on quite as
deliberately; adjusting them so as not to hurt the bridge of my nose
or get entangled in my short tufts of dun hair. I was sitting in the
window-seat, with my back to the light, and I had him VIS-A-VIS; a
position he would much rather have had reversed; for, at any time, he
preferred scrutinizing to being scrutinized. Yes, it was HE, and no
mistake, with his six feet of length arranged in a sitting attitude;
with his dark travelling surtout with its velvet collar, his gray
pantaloons, his black stock, and his face, the most original one Nature
ever modelled, yet the least obtrusively so; not one feature that could
be termed marked or odd, yet the effect of the whole unique. There is no
use in attempting to describe what is indescribable. Being in no hurry
to address him, I sat and stared at my ease.
“Oh, that’s your game—is it?” said he at last. “Well, we’ll see which
is soonest tired.” And he slowly drew out a fine cigar-case, picked one
to his taste, lit it, took a book from the shelf convenient to his hand,
then leaning back, proceeded to smoke and read as tranquilly as if he
had been in his own room, in Grove-street, X---shire, England. I knew
he was capable of continuing in that attitude till midnight, if he
conceived the whim, so I rose, and taking the book from his hand, I
said,—
“You did not ask for it, and you shall not have it.”
“It is silly and dull,” he observed, “so I have not lost much;” then the
spell being broken, he went on: “I thought you lived at Pelet’s; I went
there this afternoon expecting to be starved to death by sitting in
a boarding-school drawing-room, and they told me you were gone, had
departed this morning; you had left your address behind you though,
which I wondered at; it was a more practical and sensible precaution
than I should have imagined you capable of. Why did you leave?”
“Because M. Pelet has just married the lady whom you and Mr. Brown
assigned to me as my wife.”
“Oh, indeed!” replied Hunsden with a short laugh; “so you’ve lost both
your wife and your place?”
“Precisely so.”
I saw him give a quick, covert glance all round my room; he marked its
narrow limits, its scanty furniture: in an instant he had comprehended
the state of matters—had absolved me from the crime of prosperity. A
curious effect this discovery wrought in his strange mind; I am morally
certain that if he had found me installed in a handsome parlour,
lounging on a soft couch, with a pretty, wealthy wife at my side, he
would have hated me; a brief, cold, haughty visit, would in such a case
have been the extreme limit of his civilities, and never would he have
come near me more, so long as the tide of fortune bore me smoothly on
its surface; but the painted furniture, the bare walls, the cheerless
solitude of my room relaxed his rigid pride, and I know not what
softening change had taken place both in his voice and look ere he spoke
again.
“You have got another place?”
“No.”
“You are in the way of getting one?”
“No.”
“That is bad; have you applied to Brown?”
“No, indeed.”
“You had better; he often has it in his power to give useful information
in such matters.”
“He served me once very well; I have no claim on him, and am not in the
humour to bother him again.”
“Oh, if you’re bashful, and dread being intrusive, you need only
commission me. I shall see him to-night; I can put in a word.”
“I beg you will not, Mr. Hunsden; I am in your debt already; you did me
an important service when I was at X----; got me out of a den where I
was dying: that service I have never repaid, and at present I decline
positively adding another item to the account.”
“If the wind sits that way, I’m satisfied. I thought my unexampled
generosity in turning you out of that accursed counting-house would be
duly appreciated some day: ‘Cast your bread on the waters, and it
shall be found after many days,’ say the Scriptures. Yes, that’s right,
lad—make much of me—I’m a nonpareil: there’s nothing like me in the
common herd. In the meantime, to put all humbug aside and talk sense for
a few moments, you would be greatly the better of a situation, and what
is more, you are a fool if you refuse to take one from any hand that
offers it.”
“Very well, Mr. Hunsden; now you have settled that point, talk of
something else. What news from X----?”
“I have not settled that point, or at least there is another to settle
before we get to X----. Is this Miss Zenobie” (Zoraide, interposed
I)—“well, Zoraide—is she really married to Pelet?”
“I tell you yes—and if you don’t believe me, go and ask the cure of St.
Jacques.”
“And your heart is broken?”
“I am not aware that it is; it feels all right—beats as usual.”
“Then your feelings are less superfine than I took them to be; you must
be a coarse, callous character, to bear such a thwack without staggering
under it.”
“Staggering under it? What the deuce is there to stagger under in the
circumstance of a Belgian schoolmistress marrying a French schoolmaster?
The progeny will doubtless be a strange hybrid race; but that’s their
look-out—not mine.”
“He indulges in scurrilous jests, and the bride was his affianced one!”
“Who said so?”
“Brown.”
“I’ll tell you what, Hunsden—Brown is an old gossip.”
“He is; but in the meantime, if his gossip be founded on less than
fact—if you took no particular interest in Miss Zoraide—why, O
youthful pedagogue! did you leave your place in consequence of her
becoming Madame Pelet?”
“Because—” I felt my face grow a little hot; “because—in short, Mr.
Hunsden, I decline answering any more questions,” and I plunged my hands
deep in my breeches pocket.
Hunsden triumphed: his eyes—his laugh announced victory.
“What the deuce are you laughing at, Mr. Hunsden?”
“At your exemplary composure. Well, lad, I’ll not bore you; I see how
it is: Zoraide has jilted you—married some one richer, as any sensible
woman would have done if she had had the chance.”
I made no reply—I let him think so, not feeling inclined to enter into
an explanation of the real state of things, and as little to forge a
false account; but it was not easy to blind Hunsden; my very silence,
instead of convincing him that he had hit the truth, seemed to render
him doubtful about it; he went on:—
“I suppose the affair has been conducted as such affairs always
are amongst rational people: you offered her your youth and your
talents—such as they are—in exchange for her position and money: I
don’t suppose you took appearance, or what is called LOVE, into the
account—for I understand she is older than you, and Brown says, rather
sensible-looking than beautiful. She, having then no chance of making
a better bargain, was at first inclined to come to terms with you, but
Pelet—the head of a flourishing school—stepped in with a higher bid;
she accepted, and he has got her: a correct transaction—perfectly
so—business-like and legitimate. And now we’ll talk of something else.”
“Do,” said I, very glad to dismiss the topic, and especially glad to
have baffled the sagacity of my cross-questioner—if, indeed, I had
baffled it; for though his words now led away from the dangerous point,
his eyes, keen and watchful, seemed still preoccupied with the former
idea.
“You want to hear news from X----? And what interest can you have in
X----? You left no friends there, for you made none. Nobody ever asks
after you—neither man nor woman; and if I mention your name in company,
the men look as if I had spoken of Prester John; and the women sneer
covertly. Our X---- belles must have disliked you. How did you excite
their displeasure?”
“I don’t know. I seldom spoke to them—they were nothing to me. I
considered them only as something to be glanced at from a distance;
their dresses and faces were often pleasing enough to the eye: but
I could not understand their conversation, nor even read their
countenances. When I caught snatches of what they said, I could never
make much of it; and the play of their lips and eyes did not help me at
all.”
“That was your fault, not theirs. There are sensible, as well as
handsome women in X----; women it is worth any man’s while to talk to,
and with whom I can talk with pleasure: but you had and have no pleasant
address; there is nothing in you to induce a woman to be affable. I have
remarked you sitting near the door in a room full of company, bent on
hearing, not on speaking; on observing, not on entertaining; looking
frigidly shy at the commencement of a party, confusingly vigilant about
the middle, and insultingly weary towards the end. Is that the way, do
you think, ever to communicate pleasure or excite interest? No; and if
you are generally unpopular, it is because you deserve to be so.”
“Content!” I ejaculated.
“No, you are not content; you see beauty always turning its back on
you; you are mortified and then you sneer. I verily believe all that is
desirable on earth—wealth, reputation, love—will for ever to you be
the ripe grapes on the high trellis: you’ll look up at them; they will
tantalize in you the lust of the eye; but they are out of reach: you
have not the address to fetch a ladder, and you’ll go away calling them
sour.”
Cutting as these words might have been under some circumstances, they
drew no blood now. My life was changed; my experience had been varied
since I left X----, but Hunsden could not know this; he had seen me only
in the character of Mr. Crimsworth’s clerk—a dependant amongst wealthy
strangers, meeting disdain with a hard front, conscious of an unsocial
and unattractive exterior, refusing to sue for notice which I was sure
would be withheld, declining to evince an admiration which I knew would
be scorned as worthless. He could not be aware that since then youth and
loveliness had been to me everyday objects; that I had studied them at
leisure and closely, and had seen the plain texture of truth under
the embroidery of appearance; nor could he, keen-sighted as he
was, penetrate into my heart, search my brain, and read my peculiar
sympathies and antipathies; he had not known me long enough, or well
enough, to perceive how low my feelings would ebb under some influences,
powerful over most minds; how high, how fast they would flow under
other influences, that perhaps acted with the more intense force on me,
because they acted on me alone. Neither could he suspect for an instant
the history of my communications with Mdlle. Reuter; secret to him
and to all others was the tale of her strange infatuation; her
blandishments, her wiles had been seen but by me, and to me only were
they known; but they had changed me, for they had proved that I COULD
impress. A sweeter secret nestled deeper in my heart; one full of
tenderness and as full of strength: it took the sting out of Hunsden’s
sarcasm; it kept me unbent by shame, and unstirred by wrath. But of all
this I could say nothing—nothing decisive at least; uncertainty sealed
my lips, and during the interval of silence by which alone I replied to
Mr. Hunsden, I made up my mind to be for the present wholly misjudged
by him, and misjudged I was; he thought he had been rather too hard
upon me, and that I was crushed by the weight of his upbraidings; so to
re-assure me he said, doubtless I should mend some day; I was only at
the beginning of life yet; and since happily I was not quite without
sense, every false step I made would be a good lesson.
Just then I turned my face a little to the light; the approach of
twilight, and my position in the window-seat, had, for the last ten
minutes, prevented him from studying my countenance; as I moved,
however, he caught an expression which he thus interpreted:—
“Confound it! How doggedly self-approving the lad looks! I thought he
was fit to die with shame, and there he sits grinning smiles, as good as
to say, ‘Let the world wag as it will, I’ve the philosopher’s stone
in my waist-coat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard; I’m
independent of both Fate and Fortune.’”
“Hunsden—you spoke of grapes; I was thinking of a fruit I like better
than your X---- hot-house grapes—an unique fruit, growing wild, which I
have marked as my own, and hope one day to gather and taste. It is of no
use your offering me the draught of bitterness, or threatening me with
death by thirst: I have the anticipation of sweetness on my palate; the
hope of freshness on my lips; I can reject the unsavoury, and endure the
exhausting.”
“For how long?”
“Till the next opportunity for effort; and as the prize of success will
be a treasure after my own heart, I’ll bring a bull’s strength to the
struggle.”
“Bad luck crushes bulls as easily as bullaces; and, I believe, the fury
dogs you: you were born with a wooden spoon in your mouth, depend on
it.”
“I believe you; and I mean to make my wooden spoon do the work of some
people’s silver ladles: grasped firmly, and handled nimbly, even a
wooden spoon will shovel up broth.”
Hunsden rose: “I see,” said he; “I suppose you’re one of those who
develop best unwatched, and act best unaided—work your own way. Now,
I’ll go.” And, without another word, he was going; at the door he
turned:—
“Crimsworth Hall is sold,” said he.
“Sold!” was my echo.
“Yes; you know, of course, that your brother failed three months ago?”
“What! Edward Crimsworth?”
“Precisely; and his wife went home to her father’s; when affairs went
awry, his temper sympathized with them; he used her ill; I told you he
would be a tyrant to her some day; as to him—”
“Ay, as to him—what is become of him?”
“Nothing extraordinary—don’t be alarmed; he put himself under the
protection of the court, compounded with his creditors—tenpence in
the pound; in six weeks set up again, coaxed back his wife, and is
flourishing like a green bay-tree.”
“And Crimsworth Hall—was the furniture sold too?”
“Everything—from the grand piano down to the rolling-pin.”
“And the contents of the oak dining-room—were they sold?”
“Of course; why should the sofas and chairs of that room be held more
sacred than those of any other?”
“And the pictures?”
“What pictures? Crimsworth had no special collection that I know of—he
did not profess to be an amateur.”
“There were two portraits, one on each side the mantelpiece; you cannot
have forgotten them, Mr. Hunsden; you once noticed that of the lady—”
“Oh, I know! the thin-faced gentlewoman with a shawl put on like
drapery.—Why, as a matter of course, it would be sold among the other
things. If you had been rich, you might have bought it, for I remember
you said it represented your mother: you see what it is to be without a
sou.”
I did. “But surely,” I thought to myself, “I shall not always be so
poverty-stricken; I may one day buy it back yet.—Who purchased it? do
you know?” I asked.
“How is it likely? I never inquired who purchased anything; there spoke
the unpractical man—to imagine all the world is interested in what
interests himself! Now, good night—I’m off for Germany to-morrow
morning; I shall be back here in six weeks, and possibly I may call
and see you again; I wonder whether you’ll be still out of place!”
he laughed, as mockingly, as heartlessly as Mephistopheles, and so
laughing, vanished.
Some people, however indifferent they may become after a considerable
space of absence, always contrive to leave a pleasant impression just
at parting; not so Hunsden, a conference with him affected one like a
draught of Peruvian bark; it seemed a concentration of the specially
harsh, stringent, bitter; whether, like bark, it invigorated, I scarcely
knew.
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow; I slept little on the night
after this interview; towards morning I began to doze, but hardly had my
slumber become sleep, when I was roused from it by hearing a noise in
my sitting room, to which my bed-room adjoined—a step, and a shoving of
furniture; the movement lasted barely two minutes; with the closing
of the door it ceased. I listened; not a mouse stirred; perhaps I
had dreamt it; perhaps a locataire had made a mistake, and entered my
apartment instead of his own. It was yet but five o’clock; neither I nor
the day were wide awake; I turned, and was soon unconscious. When I did
rise, about two hours later, I had forgotten the circumstance; the first
thing I saw, however, on quitting my chamber, recalled it; just pushed
in at the door of my sitting-room, and still standing on end, was a
wooden packing-case—a rough deal affair, wide but shallow; a porter
had doubtless shoved it forward, but seeing no occupant of the room, had
left it at the entrance.
“That is none of mine,” thought I, approaching; “it must be meant for
somebody else.” I stooped to examine the address:—
“Wm. Crimsworth, Esq., No —, — St., Brussels.”
I was puzzled, but concluding that the best way to obtain information
was to ask within, I cut the cords and opened the case. Green baize
enveloped its contents, sewn carefully at the sides; I ripped the
pack-thread with my pen-knife, and still, as the seam gave way, glimpses
of gilding appeared through the widening interstices. Boards and baize
being at length removed, I lifted from the case a large picture, in a
magnificent frame; leaning it against a chair, in a position where the
light from the window fell favourably upon it, I stepped back—already I
had mounted my spectacles. A portrait-painter’s sky (the most sombre and
threatening of welkins), and distant trees of a conventional depth of
hue, raised in full relief a pale, pensive-looking female face, shadowed
with soft dark hair, almost blending with the equally dark clouds;
large, solemn eyes looked reflectively into mine; a thin cheek rested
on a delicate little hand; a shawl, artistically draped, half hid, half
showed a slight figure. A listener (had there been one) might have heard
me, after ten minutes’ silent gazing, utter the word “Mother!” I might
have said more—but with me, the first word uttered aloud in soliloquy
rouses consciousness; it reminds me that only crazy people talk to
themselves, and then I think out my monologue, instead of speaking it.
I had thought a long while, and a long while had contemplated the
intelligence, the sweetness, and—alas! the sadness also of those fine,
grey eyes, the mental power of that forehead, and the rare sensibility
of that serious mouth, when my glance, travelling downwards, fell on a
narrow billet, stuck in the corner of the picture, between the frame and
the canvas. Then I first asked, “Who sent this picture? Who thought of
me, saved it out of the wreck of Crimsworth Hall, and now commits it to
the care of its natural keeper?” I took the note from its niche; thus it
spoke:—
“There is a sort of stupid pleasure in giving a child sweets, a fool his
bells, a dog a bone. You are repaid by seeing the child besmear his face
with sugar; by witnessing how the fool’s ecstasy makes a greater fool of
him than ever; by watching the dog’s nature come out over his bone.
In giving William Crimsworth his mother’s picture, I give him sweets,
bells, and bone all in one; what grieves me is, that I cannot behold
the result; I would have added five shillings more to my bid if the
auctioneer could only have promised me that pleasure.
“H. Y. H.
“P.S.—You said last night you positively declined adding another item
to your account with me; don’t you think I’ve saved you that trouble?”
I muffled the picture in its green baize covering, restored it to the
case, and having transported the whole concern to my bed-room, put it
out of sight under my bed. My pleasure was now poisoned by pungent pain;
I determined to look no more till I could look at my ease. If Hunsden
had come in at that moment, I should have said to him, “I owe you
nothing, Hunsden—not a fraction of a farthing: you have paid yourself
in taunts!”
Too anxious to remain any longer quiescent, I had no sooner breakfasted,
than I repaired once more to M. Vandenhuten’s, scarcely hoping to find
him at home; for a week had barely elapsed since my first call: but
fancying I might be able to glean information as to the time when his
return was expected. A better result awaited me than I had anticipated,
for though the family were yet at Ostend, M. Vandenhuten had come over
to Brussels on business for the day. He received me with the quiet
kindness of a sincere though not excitable man. I had not sat five
minutes alone with him in his bureau, before I became aware of a sense
of ease in his presence, such as I rarely experienced with strangers.
I was surprised at my own composure, for, after all, I had come on
business to me exceedingly painful—that of soliciting a favour. I asked
on what basis the calm rested—I feared it might be deceptive. Ere long
I caught a glimpse of the ground, and at once I felt assured of its
solidity; I knew where it was.
M. Vandenhuten was rich, respected, and influential; I, poor, despised
and powerless; so we stood to the world at large as members of the
world’s society; but to each other, as a pair of human beings, our
positions were reversed. The Dutchman (he was not Flamand, but pure
Hollandais) was slow, cool, of rather dense intelligence, though sound
and accurate judgment; the Englishman far more nervous, active, quicker
both to plan and to practise, to conceive and to realize. The Dutchman
was benevolent, the Englishman susceptible; in short our characters
dovetailed, but my mind having more fire and action than his,
instinctively assumed and kept the predominance.
This point settled, and my position well ascertained, I addressed him
on the subject of my affairs with that genuine frankness which full
confidence can alone inspire. It was a pleasure to him to be so appealed
to; he thanked me for giving him this opportunity of using a little
exertion in my behalf. I went on to explain to him that my wish was not
so much to be helped, as to be put into the way of helping myself;
of him I did not want exertion—that was to be my part—but only
information and recommendation. Soon after I rose to go. He held out his
hand at parting—an action of greater significance with foreigners
than with Englishmen. As I exchanged a smile with him, I thought the
benevolence of his truthful face was better than the intelligence of my
own. Characters of my order experience a balm-like solace in the contact
of such souls as animated the honest breast of Victor Vandenhuten.
The next fortnight was a period of many alternations; my existence
during its lapse resembled a sky of one of those autumnal nights which
are specially haunted by meteors and falling stars. Hopes and fears,
expectations and disappointments, descended in glancing showers from
zenith to horizon; but all were transient, and darkness followed swift
each vanishing apparition. M. Vandenhuten aided me faithfully; he set me
on the track of several places, and himself made efforts to secure
them for me; but for a long time solicitation and recommendation were
vain—the door either shut in my face when I was about to walk in,
or another candidate, entering before me, rendered my further advance
useless. Feverish and roused, no disappointment arrested me; defeat
following fast on defeat served as stimulants to will. I forgot
fastidiousness, conquered reserve, thrust pride from me: I asked, I
persevered, I remonstrated, I dunned. It is so that openings are forced
into the guarded circle where Fortune sits dealing favours round. My
perseverance made me known; my importunity made me remarked. I was
inquired about; my former pupils’ parents, gathering the reports of
their children, heard me spoken of as talented, and they echoed the
word: the sound, bandied about at random, came at last to ears which,
but for its universality, it might never have reached; and at the very
crisis when I had tried my last effort and knew not what to do, Fortune
looked in at me one morning, as I sat in drear and almost desperate
deliberation on my bedstead, nodded with the familiarity of an old
acquaintance—though God knows I had never met her before—and threw a
prize into my lap.
In the second week of October, 18—, I got the appointment of English
professor to all the classes of ---- College, Brussels, with a salary
of three thousand francs per annum; and the certainty of being able, by
dint of the reputation and publicity accompanying the position, to make
as much more by private means. The official notice, which communicated
this information, mentioned also that it was the strong recommendation
of M. Vandenhuten, negociant, which had turned the scale of choice in my
favour.
No sooner had I read the announcement than I hurried to M. Vandenhuten’s
bureau, pushed the document under his nose, and when he had perused
it, took both his hands, and thanked him with unrestrained vivacity.
My vivid words and emphatic gesture moved his Dutch calm to unwonted
sensation. He said he was happy—glad to have served me; but he had
done nothing meriting such thanks. He had not laid out a centime—only
scratched a few words on a sheet of paper.
Again I repeated to him—
“You have made me quite happy, and in a way that suits me; I do not
feel an obligation irksome, conferred by your kind hand; I do not feel
disposed to shun you because you have done me a favour; from this day
you must consent to admit me to your intimate acquaintance, for I shall
hereafter recur again and again to the pleasure of your society.”
“Ainsi soit-il,” was the reply, accompanied by a smile of benignant
content. I went away with its sunshine in my heart.
CHAPTER XXIII
IT was two o’clock when I returned to my lodgings; my dinner, just
brought in from a neighbouring hotel, smoked on the table; I sat down
thinking to eat—had the plate been heaped with potsherds and broken
glass, instead of boiled beef and haricots, I could not have made a more
signal failure: appetite had forsaken me. Impatient of seeing food
which I could not taste, I put it all aside into a cupboard, and then
demanded, “What shall I do till evening?” for before six P.M. it would
be vain to seek the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges; its inhabitant (for me
it had but one) was detained by her vocation elsewhere. I walked in the
streets of Brussels, and I walked in my own room from two o’clock
till six; never once in that space of time did I sit down. I was in my
chamber when the last-named hour struck; I had just bathed my face and
feverish hands, and was standing near the glass; my cheek was crimson,
my eye was flame, still all my features looked quite settled and
calm. Descending swiftly the stair and stepping out, I was glad to see
Twilight drawing on in clouds; such shade was to me like a grateful
screen, and the chill of latter Autumn, breathing in a fitful wind from
the north-west, met me as a refreshing coolness. Still I saw it was cold
to others, for the women I passed were wrapped in shawls, and the men
had their coats buttoned close.
When are we quite happy? Was I so then? No; an urgent and growing dread
worried my nerves, and had worried them since the first moment good
tidings had reached me. How was Frances? It was ten weeks since I had
seen her, six since I had heard from her, or of her. I had answered
her letter by a brief note, friendly but calm, in which no mention of
continued correspondence or further visits was made. At that hour my
bark hung on the topmost curl of a wave of fate, and I knew not on what
shoal the onward rush of the billow might hurl it; I would not then
attach her destiny to mine by the slightest thread; if doomed to split
on the rock, or run aground on the sand-bank, I was resolved no other
vessel should share my disaster: but six weeks was a long time; and
could it be that she was still well and doing well? Were not all sages
agreed in declaring that happiness finds no climax on earth? Dared
I think that but half a street now divided me from the full cup of
contentment—the draught drawn from waters said to flow only in heaven?
I was at the door; I entered the quiet house; I mounted the stairs; the
lobby was void and still, all the doors closed; I looked for the neat
green mat; it lay duly in its place.
“Signal of hope!” I said, and advanced. “But I will be a little calmer;
I am not going to rush in, and get up a scene directly.” Forcibly
staying my eager step, I paused on the mat.
“What an absolute hush! Is she in? Is anybody in?” I demanded to
myself. A little tinkle, as of cinders falling from a grate, replied;
a movement—a fire was gently stirred; and the slight rustle of life
continuing, a step paced equably backwards and forwards, backwards and
forwards, in the apartment. Fascinated, I stood, more fixedly fascinated
when a voice rewarded the attention of my strained ear—so low, so
self-addressed, I never fancied the speaker otherwise than alone;
solitude might speak thus in a desert, or in the hall of a forsaken
house.
“‘And ne’er but once, my son,’ he said,
‘Was yon dark cavern trod;
In persecution’s iron days,
When the land was left by God.
From Bewley’s bog, with slaughter red,
A wanderer hither drew;
And oft he stopp’d and turn’d his head,
As by fits the night-winds blew.
For trampling round by Cheviot-edge
Were heard the troopers keen;
And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge
The death-shot flash’d between.’” etc. etc.
The old Scotch ballad was partly recited, then dropt; a pause ensued;
then another strain followed, in French, of which the purport,
translated, ran as follows:—
I gave, at first, attention close;
Then interest warm ensued;
From interest, as improvement rose,
Succeeded gratitude.
Obedience was no effort soon,
And labour was no pain;
If tired, a word, a glance alone
Would give me strength again.
From others of the studious band,
Ere long he singled me;
But only by more close demand,
And sterner urgency.
The task he from another took,
From me he did reject;
He would no slight omission brook,
And suffer no defect.
If my companions went astray,
He scarce their wanderings blam’d;
If I but falter’d in the way,
His anger fiercely flam’d.
Something stirred in an adjoining chamber; it would not do to be
surprised eaves-dropping; I tapped hastily, and as hastily entered.
Frances was just before me; she had been walking slowly in her room,
and her step was checked by my advent: Twilight only was with her, and
tranquil, ruddy Firelight; to these sisters, the Bright and the Dark,
she had been speaking, ere I entered, in poetry. Sir Walter Scott’s
voice, to her a foreign, far-off sound, a mountain echo, had uttered
itself in the first stanzas; the second, I thought, from the style and
the substance, was the language of her own heart. Her face was grave,
its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye—an eye
just returning from abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged
was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room;
but what—with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her
bent to meditation and haply inspiration—what had she to do with love?
“Nothing,” was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it
seemed to say, “I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is
to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections
do not bloom, nor do human passions glow for me.” Other women have such
thoughts. Frances, had she been as desolate as she deemed, would not
have been worse off than thousands of her sex. Look at the rigid and
formal race of old maids—the race whom all despise; they have fed
themselves, from youth upwards, on maxims of resignation and endurance.
Many of them get ossified with the dry diet; self-control is so
continually their thought, so perpetually their object, that at last
it absorbs the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature; and
they die mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parchment
and much bone. Anatomists will tell you that there is a heart in the
withered old maid’s carcass—the same as in that of any cherished wife
or proud mother in the land. Can this be so? I really don’t know; but
feel inclined to doubt it.
I came forward, bade Frances “good evening,” and took my seat. The chair
I had chosen was one she had probably just left; it stood by a little
table where were her open desk and papers. I know not whether she had
fully recognized me at first, but she did so now; and in a voice, soft
but quiet, she returned my greeting. I had shown no eagerness; she took
her cue from me, and evinced no surprise. We met as we had always met,
as master and pupil—nothing more. I proceeded to handle the papers;
Frances, observant and serviceable, stepped into an inner room, brought
a candle, lit it, placed it by me; then drew the curtain over the
lattice, and having added a little fresh fuel to the already bright
fire, she drew a second chair to the table and sat down at my right
hand, a little removed. The paper on the top was a translation of
some grave French author into English, but underneath lay a sheet with
stanzas; on this I laid hands. Frances half rose, made a movement to
recover the captured spoil, saying, that was nothing—a mere copy of
verses. I put by resistance with the decision I knew she never long
opposed; but on this occasion her fingers had fastened on the paper. I
had quietly to unloose them; their hold dissolved to my touch; her hand
shrunk away; my own would fain have followed it, but for the present I
forbade such impulse. The first page of the sheet was occupied with
the lines I had overheard; the sequel was not exactly the writer’s own
experience, but a composition by portions of that experience suggested.
Thus while egotism was avoided, the fancy was exercised, and the heart
satisfied. I translate as before, and my translation is nearly literal;
it continued thus:—
When sickness stay’d awhile my course,
He seem’d impatient still,
Because his pupil’s flagging force
Could not obey his will.
One day when summoned to the bed
Where pain and I did strive,
I heard him, as he bent his head,
Say, “God, she must revive!”
I felt his hand, with gentle stress,
A moment laid on mine,
And wished to mark my consciousness
By some responsive sign.
But pow’rless then to speak or move,
I only felt, within,
The sense of Hope, the strength of Love,
Their healing work begin.
And as he from the room withdrew,
My heart his steps pursued;
I long’d to prove, by efforts new;
My speechless gratitude.
When once again I took my place,
Long vacant, in the class,
Th’ unfrequent smile across his face
Did for one moment pass.
The lessons done; the signal made
Of glad release and play,
He, as he passed, an instant stay’d,
One kindly word to say.
“Jane, till to-morrow you are free
From tedious task and rule;
This afternoon I must not see
That yet pale face in school.
“Seek in the garden-shades a seat,
Far from the play-ground din;
The sun is warm, the air is sweet:
Stay till I call you in.”
A long and pleasant afternoon
I passed in those green bowers;
All silent, tranquil, and alone
With birds, and bees, and flowers.
Yet, when my master’s voice I heard
Call, from the window, “Jane!”
I entered, joyful, at the word,
The busy house again.
He, in the hall, paced up and down;
He paused as I passed by;
His forehead stern relaxed its frown:
He raised his deep-set eye.
“Not quite so pale,” he murmured low.
“Now Jane, go rest awhile.”
And as I smiled, his smoothened brow
Returned as glad a smile.
My perfect health restored, he took
His mien austere again;
And, as before, he would not brook
The slightest fault from Jane.
The longest task, the hardest theme
Fell to my share as erst,
And still I toiled to place my name
In every study first.
He yet begrudged and stinted praise,
But I had learnt to read
The secret meaning of his face,
And that was my best meed.
Even when his hasty temper spoke
In tones that sorrow stirred,
My grief was lulled as soon as woke
By some relenting word.
And when he lent some precious book,
Or gave some fragrant flower,
I did not quail to Envy’s look,
Upheld by Pleasure’s power.
At last our school ranks took their ground,
The hard-fought field I won;
The prize, a laurel-wreath, was bound
My throbbing forehead on.
Low at my master’s knee I bent,
The offered crown to meet;
Its green leaves through my temples sent
A thrill as wild as sweet.
The strong pulse of Ambition struck
In every vein I owned;
At the same instant, bleeding broke
A secret, inward wound.
The hour of triumph was to me
The hour of sorrow sore;
A day hence I must cross the sea,
Ne’er to recross it more.
An hour hence, in my master’s room
I with him sat alone,
And told him what a dreary gloom
O’er joy had parting thrown.
He little said; the time was brief,
The ship was soon to sail,
And while I sobbed in bitter grief,
My master but looked pale.
They called in haste; he bade me go,
Then snatched me back again;
He held me fast and murmured low,
“Why will they part us, Jane?”
“Were you not happy in my care?
Did I not faithful prove?
Will others to my darling bear
As true, as deep a love?
“O God, watch o’er my foster child!
O guard her gentle head!
When minds are high and tempests wild
Protection round her spread!
“They call again; leave then my breast;
Quit thy true shelter, Jane;
But when deceived, repulsed, opprest,
Come home to me again!”
I read—then dreamily made marks on the margin with my pencil; thinking
all the while of other things; thinking that “Jane” was now at my side;
no child, but a girl of nineteen; and she might be mine, so my heart
affirmed; Poverty’s curse was taken off me; Envy and Jealousy were
far away, and unapprized of this our quiet meeting; the frost of the
Master’s manner might melt; I felt the thaw coming fast, whether I would
or not; no further need for the eye to practise a hard look, for the
brow to compress its expanse into a stern fold: it was now permitted
to suffer the outward revelation of the inward glow—to seek, demand,
elicit an answering ardour. While musing thus, I thought that the grass
on Hermon never drank the fresh dews of sunset more gratefully than my
feelings drank the bliss of this hour.
Frances rose, as if restless; she passed before me to stir the fire,
which did not want stirring; she lifted and put down the little
ornaments on the mantelpiece; her dress waved within a yard of me;
slight, straight, and elegant, she stood erect on the hearth.
There are impulses we can control; but there are others which control
us, because they attain us with a tiger-leap, and are our masters ere
we have seen them. Perhaps, though, such impulses are seldom altogether
bad; perhaps Reason, by a process as brief as quiet, a process that
is finished ere felt, has ascertained the sanity of the deed. Instinct
meditates, and feels justified in remaining passive while it is
performed. I know I did not reason, I did not plan or intend, yet,
whereas one moment I was sitting solus on the chair near the table,
the next, I held Frances on my knee, placed there with sharpness and
decision, and retained with exceeding tenacity.
“Monsieur!” cried Frances, and was still: not another word escaped her
lips; sorely confounded she seemed during the lapse of the first few
moments; but the amazement soon subsided; terror did not succeed, nor
fury: after all, she was only a little nearer than she had ever been
before, to one she habitually respected and trusted; embarrassment might
have impelled her to contend, but self-respect checked resistance where
resistance was useless.
“Frances, how much regard have you for me?” was my demand. No answer;
the situation was yet too new and surprising to permit speech. On this
consideration, I compelled myself for some seconds to tolerate her
silence, though impatient of it: presently, I repeated the same
question—probably, not in the calmest of tones; she looked at me; my
face, doubtless, was no model of composure, my eyes no still wells of
tranquillity.
“Do speak,” I urged; and a very low, hurried, yet still arch voice
said—
“Monsieur, vous me faites mal; de grace lachez un peu ma main droite.”
In truth I became aware that I was holding the said “main droite” in
a somewhat ruthless grasp: I did as desired; and, for the third time,
asked more gently—
“Frances, how much regard have you for me?”
“Mon maitre, j’en ai beaucoup,” was the truthful rejoinder.
“Frances, have you enough to give yourself to me as my wife?—to accept
me as your husband?”
I felt the agitation of the heart, I saw “the purple light of love” cast
its glowing reflection on cheeks, temples, neck; I desired to consult
the eye, but sheltering lash and lid forbade.
“Monsieur,” said the soft voice at last,—“Monsieur desire savoir si je
consens—si—enfin, si je veux me marier avec lui?”
“Justement.”
“Monsieur sera-t-il aussi bon mari qu’il a ete bon maitre?”
“I will try, Frances.”
A pause; then with a new, yet still subdued inflexion of the voice—an
inflexion which provoked while it pleased me—accompanied, too, by a
“sourire a la fois fin et timide” in perfect harmony with the tone:—
“C’est a dire, monsieur sera toujours un peu entete exigeant,
volontaire—?”
“Have I been so, Frances?”
“Mais oui; vous le savez bien.”
“Have I been nothing else?”
“Mais oui; vous avez ete mon meilleur ami.”
“And what, Frances, are you to me?”
“Votre devouee eleve, qui vous aime de tout son coeur.”
“Will my pupil consent to pass her life with me? Speak English now,
Frances.”
Some moments were taken for reflection; the answer, pronounced slowly,
ran thus:—
“You have always made me happy; I like to hear you speak; I like to
see you; I like to be near you; I believe you are very good, and very
superior; I know you are stern to those who are careless and idle, but
you are kind, very kind to the attentive and industrious, even if they
are not clever. Master, I should be GLAD to live with you always;”
and she made a sort of movement, as if she would have clung to me, but
restraining herself she only added with earnest emphasis—“Master, I
consent to pass my life with you.”
“Very well, Frances.”
I drew her a little nearer to my heart; I took a first kiss from her
lips, thereby sealing the compact, now framed between us; afterwards she
and I were silent, nor was our silence brief. Frances’ thoughts, during
this interval, I know not, nor did I attempt to guess them; I was not
occupied in searching her countenance, nor in otherwise troubling her
composure. The peace I felt, I wished her to feel; my arm, it is true,
still detained her; but with a restraint that was gentle enough, so long
as no opposition tightened it. My gaze was on the red fire; my heart was
measuring its own content; it sounded and sounded, and found the depth
fathomless.
“Monsieur,” at last said my quiet companion, as stirless in her
happiness as a mouse in its terror. Even now in speaking she scarcely
lifted her head.
“Well, Frances?” I like unexaggerated intercourse; it is not my way to
overpower with amorous epithets, any more than to worry with selfishly
importunate caresses.
“Monsieur est raisonnable, n’est-ce pas?”
“Yes; especially when I am requested to be so in English: but why do
you ask me? You see nothing vehement or obtrusive in my manner; am I not
tranquil enough?”
“Ce n’est pas cela—” began Frances.
“English!” I reminded her.
“Well, monsieur, I wished merely to say, that I should like, of course,
to retain my employment of teaching. You will teach still, I suppose,
monsieur?”
“Oh, yes! It is all I have to depend on.”
“Bon!—I mean good. Thus we shall have both the same profession. I like
that; and my efforts to get on will be as unrestrained as yours—will
they not, monsieur?”
“You are laying plans to be independent of me,” said I.
“Yes, monsieur; I must be no incumbrance to you—no burden in any way.”
“But, Frances, I have not yet told you what my prospects are. I have
left M. Pelet’s; and after nearly a month’s seeking, I have got another
place, with a salary of three thousand francs a year, which I can easily
double by a little additional exertion. Thus you see it would be useless
for you to fag yourself by going out to give lessons; on six thousand
francs you and I can live, and live well.”
Frances seemed to consider. There is something flattering to man’s
strength, something consonant to his honourable pride, in the idea of
becoming the providence of what he loves—feeding and clothing it, as
God does the lilies of the field. So, to decide her resolution, I went
on:—
“Life has been painful and laborious enough to you so far, Frances; you
require complete rest; your twelve hundred francs would not form a very
important addition to our income, and what sacrifice of comfort to earn
it! Relinquish your labours: you must be weary, and let me have the
happiness of giving you rest.”
I am not sure whether Frances had accorded due attention to my harangue;
instead of answering me with her usual respectful promptitude, she only
sighed and said,—
“How rich you are, monsieur!” and then she stirred uneasy in my
arms. “Three thousand francs!” she murmured, “While I get only twelve
hundred!” She went on faster. “However, it must be so for the present;
and, monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my
place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast;” and her little fingers emphatically
tightened on mine.
“Think of my marrying you to be kept by you, monsieur! I could not do
it; and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close,
noisy school-rooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering
at home, unemployed and solitary; I should get depressed and sullen, and
you would soon tire of me.”
“Frances, you could read and study—two things you like so well.”
“Monsieur, I could not; I like a contemplative life, but I like an
active life better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have
taken notice, monsieur, that people who are only in each other’s company
for amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each
other so highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer
together.”
“You speak God’s truth,” said I at last, “and you shall have your own
way, for it is the best way. Now, as a reward for such ready consent,
give me a voluntary kiss.”
After some hesitation, natural to a novice in the art of kissing, she
brought her lips into very shy and gentle contact with my forehead; I
took the small gift as a loan, and repaid it promptly, and with generous
interest.
I know not whether Frances was really much altered since the time
I first saw her; but, as I looked at her now, I felt that she was
singularly changed for me; the sad eye, the pale cheek, the dejected
and joyless countenance I remembered as her early attributes, were quite
gone, and now I saw a face dressed in graces; smile, dimple, and
rosy tint rounded its contours and brightened its hues. I had been
accustomed to nurse a flattering idea that my strong attachment to her
proved some particular perspicacity in my nature; she was not handsome,
she was not rich, she was not even accomplished, yet was she my life’s
treasure; I must then be a man of peculiar discernment. To-night my eyes
opened on the mistake I had made; I began to suspect that it was only my
tastes which were unique, not my power of discovering and appreciating
the superiority of moral worth over physical charms. For me Frances
had physical charms: in her there was no deformity to get over; none of
those prominent defects of eyes, teeth, complexion, shape, which hold at
bay the admiration of the boldest male champions of intellect (for
women can love a downright ugly man if he be but talented); had she been
either “edentee, myope, rugueuse, ou bossue,” my feelings towards
her might still have been kindly, but they could never have been
impassioned; I had affection for the poor little misshapen Sylvie, but
for her I could never have had love. It is true Frances’ mental points
had been the first to interest me, and they still retained the strongest
hold on my preference; but I liked the graces of her person too. I
derived a pleasure, purely material, from contemplating the clearness
of her brown eyes, the fairness of her fine skin, the purity of her
well-set teeth, the proportion of her delicate form; and that pleasure
I could ill have dispensed with. It appeared, then, that I too was a
sensualist, in my temperate and fastidious way.
Now, reader, during the last two pages I have been giving you honey
fresh from flowers, but you must not live entirely on food so luscious;
taste then a little gall—just a drop, by way of change.
At a somewhat late hour I returned to my lodgings: having temporarily
forgotten that man had any such coarse cares as those of eating and
drinking, I went to bed fasting. I had been excited and in action all
day, and had tasted no food since eight that morning; besides, for a
fortnight past, I had known no rest either of body or mind; the last few
hours had been a sweet delirium, it would not subside now, and till long
after midnight, broke with troubled ecstacy the rest I so much needed.
At last I dozed, but not for long; it was yet quite dark when I awoke,
and my waking was like that of Job when a spirit passed before his face,
and like him, “the hair of my flesh stood up.” I might continue the
parallel, for in truth, though I saw nothing, yet “a thing was secretly
brought unto me, and mine ear received a little thereof; there was
silence, and I heard a voice,” saying—“In the midst of life we are in
death.”
That sound, and the sensation of chill anguish accompanying it, many
would have regarded as supernatural; but I recognized it at once as the
effect of reaction. Man is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was
my mortal nature which now faltered and plained; my nerves, which jarred
and gave a false sound, because the soul, of late rushing headlong to an
aim, had overstrained the body’s comparative weakness. A horror of great
darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known
formerly, but had thought for ever departed. I was temporarily a prey to
hypochondria.
She had been my acquaintance, nay, my guest, once before in boyhood; I
had entertained her at bed and board for a year; for that space of time
I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she
walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where
we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me,
and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree; taking me entirely to her
death-cold bosom, and holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would
tell me at such hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she
would discourse to me of her own country—the grave—and again and again
promise to conduct me there ere long; and, drawing me to the very brink
of a black, sullen river, show me, on the other side, shores unequal
with mound, monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more hoary
than moonlight. “Necropolis!” she would whisper, pointing to the pale
piles, and add, “It contains a mansion prepared for you.”
But my boyhood was lonely, parentless; uncheered by brother or sister;
and there was no marvel that, just as I rose to youth, a sorceress,
finding me lost in vague mental wanderings, with many affections and few
objects, glowing aspirations and gloomy prospects, strong desires and
slender hopes, should lift up her illusive lamp to me in the distance,
and lure me to her vaulted home of horrors. No wonder her spells
THEN had power; but NOW, when my course was widening, my prospect
brightening; when my affections had found a rest; when my desires,
folding wings, weary with long flight, had just alighted on the very lap
of fruition, and nestled there warm, content, under the caress of a soft
hand—why did hypochondria accost me now?
I repulsed her as one would a dreaded and ghastly concubine coming to
embitter a husband’s heart toward his young bride; in vain; she kept her
sway over me for that night and the next day, and eight succeeding days.
Afterwards, my spirits began slowly to recover their tone; my appetite
returned, and in a fortnight I was well. I had gone about as usual all
the time, and had said nothing to anybody of what I felt; but I was glad
when the evil spirit departed from me, and I could again seek Frances,
and sit at her side, freed from the dreadful tyranny of my demon.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ONE fine, frosty Sunday in November, Frances and I took a long walk; we
made the tour of the city by the Boulevards; and, afterwards, Frances
being a little tired, we sat down on one of those wayside seats placed
under the trees, at intervals, for the accommodation of the weary.
Frances was telling me about Switzerland; the subject animated her;
and I was just thinking that her eyes spoke full as eloquently as her
tongue, when she stopped and remarked—
“Monsieur, there is a gentleman who knows you.”
I looked up; three fashionably dressed men were just then
passing—Englishmen, I knew by their air and gait as well as by their
features; in the tallest of the trio I at once recognized Mr. Hunsden;
he was in the act of lifting his hat to Frances; afterwards, he made a
grimace at me, and passed on.
“Who is he?”
“A person I knew in England.”
“Why did he bow to me? He does not know me.”
“Yes, he does know you, in his way.”
“How, monsieur?” (She still called me “monsieur”; I could not persuade
her to adopt any more familiar term.)
“Did you not read the expression of his eyes?”
“Of his eyes? No. What did they say?”
“To you they said, ‘How do you do, Wilhelmina Crimsworth?’ To me, ‘So
you have found your counterpart at last; there she sits, the female of
your kind!’”
“Monsieur, you could not read all that in his eyes; he was so soon
gone.”
“I read that and more, Frances; I read that he will probably call on me
this evening, or on some future occasion shortly; and I have no doubt
he will insist on being introduced to you; shall I bring him to your
rooms?”
“If you please, monsieur—I have no objection; I think, indeed, I should
rather like to see him nearer; he looks so original.”
As I had anticipated, Mr. Hunsden came that evening. The first thing he
said was:—
“You need not begin boasting, Monsieur le Professeur; I know about your
appointment to ---- College, and all that; Brown has told me.” Then
he intimated that he had returned from Germany but a day or two since;
afterwards, he abruptly demanded whether that was Madame Pelet-Reuter
with whom he had seen me on the Boulevards. I was going to utter a
rather emphatic negative, but on second thoughts I checked myself, and,
seeming to assent, asked what he thought of her?
“As to her, I’ll come to that directly; but first I’ve a word for you. I
see you are a scoundrel; you’ve no business to be promenading about with
another man’s wife. I thought you had sounder sense than to get mixed up
in foreign hodge-podge of this sort.”
“But the lady?”
“She’s too good for you evidently; she is like you, but something better
than you—no beauty, though; yet when she rose (for I looked back to
see you both walk away) I thought her figure and carriage good. These
foreigners understand grace. What the devil has she done with Pelet? She
has not been married to him three months—he must be a spoon!”
I would not let the mistake go too far; I did not like it much.
“Pelet? How your head runs on Mons. and Madame Pelet! You are always
talking about them. I wish to the gods you had wed Mdlle. Zoraide
yourself!”
“Was that young gentlewoman not Mdlle. Zoraide?”
“No; nor Madame Zoraide either.”
“Why did you tell a lie, then?”
“I told no lie; but you are is such a hurry. She is a pupil of mine—a
Swiss girl.”
“And of course you are going to be married to her? Don’t deny that.”
“Married! I think I shall—if Fate spares us both ten weeks longer. That
is my little wild strawberry, Hunsden, whose sweetness made me careless
of your hothouse grapes.”
“Stop! No boasting—no heroics; I won’t hear them. What is she? To what
caste does she belong?”
I smiled. Hunsden unconsciously laid stress on the word caste, and, in
fact, republican, lord-hater as he was, Hunsden was as proud of his old
----shire blood, of his descent and family standing, respectable and
respected through long generations back, as any peer in the realm of
his Norman race and Conquest-dated title. Hunsden would as little have
thought of taking a wife from a caste inferior to his own, as a Stanley
would think of mating with a Cobden. I enjoyed the surprise I should
give; I enjoyed the triumph of my practice over his theory; and leaning
over the table, and uttering the words slowly but with repressed glee, I
said concisely—
“She is a lace-mender.”
Hunsden examined me. He did not SAY he was surprised, but surprised he
was; he had his own notions of good breeding. I saw he suspected I
was going to take some very rash step; but repressing declamation or
remonstrance, he only answered—
“Well, you are the best judge of your own affairs. A lace-mender may
make a good wife as well as a lady; but of course you have taken care
to ascertain thoroughly that since she has not education, fortune or
station, she is well furnished with such natural qualities as you think
most likely to conduce to your happiness. Has she many relations?”
“None in Brussels.”
“That is better. Relations are often the real evil in such cases. I
cannot but think that a train of inferior connections would have been a
bore to you to your life’s end.”
After sitting in silence a little while longer, Hunsden rose, and was
quietly bidding me good evening; the polite, considerate manner in which
he offered me his hand (a thing he had never done before), convinced me
that he thought I had made a terrible fool of myself; and that, ruined
and thrown away as I was, it was no time for sarcasm or cynicism, or
indeed for anything but indulgence and forbearance.
“Good night, William,” he said, in a really soft voice, while his face
looked benevolently compassionate. “Good night, lad. I wish you and your
future wife much prosperity; and I hope she will satisfy your fastidious
soul.”
I had much ado to refrain from laughing as I beheld the magnanimous pity
of his mien; maintaining, however, a grave air, I said:—
“I thought you would have liked to have seen Mdlle. Henri?”
“Oh, that is the name! Yes—if it would be convenient, I should like to
see her—but----.” He hesitated.
“Well?”
“I should on no account wish to intrude.”
“Come, then,” said I. We set out. Hunsden no doubt regarded me as a
rash, imprudent man, thus to show my poor little grisette sweetheart,
in her poor little unfurnished grenier; but he prepared to act the real
gentleman, having, in fact, the kernel of that character, under the
harsh husk it pleased him to wear by way of mental mackintosh. He talked
affably, and even gently, as we went along the street; he had never been
so civil to me in his life. We reached the house, entered, ascended the
stair; on gaining the lobby, Hunsden turned to mount a narrower stair
which led to a higher story; I saw his mind was bent on the attics.
“Here, Mr. Hunsden,” said I quietly, tapping at Frances’ door. He
turned; in his genuine politeness he was a little disconcerted at
having made the mistake; his eye reverted to the green mat, but he said
nothing.
We walked in, and Frances rose from her seat near the table to receive
us; her mourning attire gave her a recluse, rather conventual, but
withal very distinguished look; its grave simplicity added nothing
to beauty, but much to dignity; the finish of the white collar and
manchettes sufficed for a relief to the merino gown of solemn black;
ornament was forsworn. Frances curtsied with sedate grace, looking, as
she always did, when one first accosted her, more a woman to respect
than to love; I introduced Mr. Hunsden, and she expressed her happiness
at making his acquaintance in French. The pure and polished accent, the
low yet sweet and rather full voice, produced their effect immediately;
Hunsden spoke French in reply; I had not heard him speak that language
before; he managed it very well. I retired to the window-seat; Mr.
Hunsden, at his hostess’s invitation, occupied a chair near the hearth;
from my position I could see them both, and the room too, at a glance.
The room was so clean and bright, it looked like a little polished
cabinet; a glass filled with flowers in the centre of the table, a
fresh rose in each china cup on the mantelpiece gave it an air of FETE.
Frances was serious, and Mr. Hunsden subdued, but both mutually polite;
they got on at the French swimmingly: ordinary topics were discussed
with great state and decorum; I thought I had never seen two such models
of propriety, for Hunsden (thanks to the constraint of the foreign
tongue) was obliged to shape his phrases, and measure his sentences,
with a care that forbade any eccentricity. At last England was
mentioned, and Frances proceeded to ask questions. Animated by degrees,
she began to change, just as a grave night-sky changes at the approach
of sunrise: first it seemed as if her forehead cleared, then her eyes
glittered, her features relaxed, and became quite mobile; her subdued
complexion grew warm and transparent; to me, she now looked pretty;
before, she had only looked ladylike.
She had many things to say to the Englishman just fresh from his
island-country, and she urged him with an enthusiasm of curiosity, which
ere long thawed Hunsden’s reserve as fire thaws a congealed viper. I use
this not very flattering comparison because he vividly reminded me of a
snake waking from torpor, as he erected his tall form, reared his head,
before a little declined, and putting back his hair from his broad Saxon
forehead, showed unshaded the gleam of almost savage satire which his
interlocutor’s tone of eagerness and look of ardour had sufficed at
once to kindle in his soul and elicit from his eyes: he was himself;
as Frances was herself, and in none but his own language would he now
address her.
“You understand English?” was the prefatory question.
“A little.”
“Well, then, you shall have plenty of it; and first, I see you’ve not
much more sense than some others of my acquaintance” (indicating me
with his thumb), “or else you’d never turn rabid about that dirty little
country called England; for rabid, I see you are; I read Anglophobia in
your looks, and hear it in your words. Why, mademoiselle, is it possible
that anybody with a grain of rationality should feel enthusiasm about a
mere name, and that name England? I thought you were a lady-abbess five
minutes ago, and respected you accordingly; and now I see you are a sort
of Swiss sibyl, with high Tory and high Church principles!”
“England is your country?” asked Frances.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t like it?”
“I’d be sorry to like it! A little corrupt, venal, lord-and-king-cursed
nation, full of mucky pride (as they say in ----shire), and helpless
pauperism; rotten with abuses, worm-eaten with prejudices!”
“You might say so of almost every state; there are abuses and prejudices
everywhere, and I thought fewer in England than in other countries.”
“Come to England and see. Come to Birmingham and Manchester; come to St.
Giles’ in London, and get a practical notion of how our system works.
Examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk
in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English
cottage doors; get a glimpse of Famine crouched torpid on black
hearthstones; of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of
Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her
favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched
hovels----”
“I was not thinking of the wretchedness and vice in England; I was
thinking of the good side—of what is elevated in your character as a
nation.”
“There is no good side—none at least of which you can have any
knowledge; for you cannot appreciate the efforts of industry, the
achievements of enterprise, or the discoveries of science: narrowness
of education and obscurity of position quite incapacitate you
from understanding these points; and as to historical and poetical
associations, I will not insult you, mademoiselle, by supposing that you
alluded to such humbug.”
“But I did partly.”
Hunsden laughed—his laugh of unmitigated scorn.
“I did, Mr. Hunsden. Are you of the number of those to whom such
associations give no pleasure?”
“Mademoiselle, what is an association? I never saw one. What is its
length, breadth, weight, value—ay, VALUE? What price will it bring in
the market?”
“Your portrait, to any one who loved you, would, for the sake of
association, be without price.”
That inscrutable Hunsden heard this remark and felt it rather acutely,
too, somewhere; for he coloured—a thing not unusual with him, when hit
unawares on a tender point. A sort of trouble momentarily darkened
his eye, and I believe he filled up the transient pause succeeding his
antagonist’s home-thrust, by a wish that some one did love him as
he would like to be loved—some one whose love he could unreservedly
return.
The lady pursued her temporary advantage.
“If your world is a world without associations, Mr. Hunsden, I no longer
wonder that you hate England so. I don’t clearly know what Paradise is,
and what angels are; yet taking it to be the most glorious region I can
conceive, and angels the most elevated existences—if one of them—if
Abdiel the Faithful himself” (she was thinking of Milton) “were suddenly
stripped of the faculty of association, I think he would soon rush forth
from ‘the ever-during gates,’ leave heaven, and seek what he had lost in
hell. Yes, in the very hell from which he turned ‘with retorted scorn.’”
Frances’ tone in saying this was as marked as her language, and it
was when the word “hell” twanged off from her lips, with a somewhat
startling emphasis, that Hunsden deigned to bestow one slight glance of
admiration. He liked something strong, whether in man or woman; he liked
whatever dared to clear conventional limits. He had never before heard
a lady say “hell” with that uncompromising sort of accent, and the sound
pleased him from a lady’s lips; he would fain have had Frances to strike
the string again, but it was not in her way. The display of eccentric
vigour never gave her pleasure, and it only sounded in her voice or
flashed in her countenance when extraordinary circumstances—and those
generally painful—forced it out of the depths where it burned latent.
To me, once or twice, she had in intimate conversation, uttered
venturous thoughts in nervous language; but when the hour of such
manifestation was past, I could not recall it; it came of itself and of
itself departed. Hunsden’s excitations she put by soon with a smile, and
recurring to the theme of disputation, said—
“Since England is nothing, why do the continental nations respect her
so?”
“I should have thought no child would have asked that question,” replied
Hunsden, who never at any time gave information without reproving for
stupidity those who asked it of him. “If you had been my pupil, as I
suppose you once had the misfortune to be that of a deplorable character
not a hundred miles off, I would have put you in the corner for such a
confession of ignorance. Why, mademoiselle, can’t you see that it is
our GOLD which buys us French politeness, German good-will, and Swiss
servility?” And he sneered diabolically.
“Swiss?” said Frances, catching the word “servility.” “Do you call my
countrymen servile?” and she started up. I could not suppress a low
laugh; there was ire in her glance and defiance in her attitude. “Do
you abuse Switzerland to me, Mr. Hunsden? Do you think I have no
associations? Do you calculate that I am prepared to dwell only on what
vice and degradation may be found in Alpine villages, and to leave
quite out of my heart the social greatness of my countrymen, and our
blood-earned freedom, and the natural glories of our mountains? You’re
mistaken—you’re mistaken.”
“Social greatness? Call it what you will, your countrymen are sensible
fellows; they make a marketable article of what to you is an abstract
idea; they have, ere this, sold their social greatness and also their
blood-earned freedom to be the servants of foreign kings.”
“You never were in Switzerland?”
“Yes—I have been there twice.”
“You know nothing of it.”
“I do.”
“And you say the Swiss are mercenary, as a parrot says ‘Poor Poll,’ or
as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or as the French
accuse them of being perfidious: there is no justice in your dictums.”
“There is truth.”
“I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I am an
unpractical woman, for you don’t acknowledge what really exists; you
want to annihilate individual patriotism and national greatness as
an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by denying their
existence.”
“Where are you flying to? You are off at a tangent—I thought we were
talking about the mercenary nature of the Swiss.”
“We were—and if you proved to me that the Swiss are mercenary to-morrow
(which you cannot do) I should love Switzerland still.”
“You would be mad, then—mad as a March hare—to indulge in a passion
for millions of shiploads of soil, timber, snow, and ice.”
“Not so mad as you who love nothing.”
“There’s a method in my madness; there’s none in yours.”
“Your method is to squeeze the sap out of creation and make manure of
the refuse, by way of turning it to what you call use.”
“You cannot reason at all,” said Hunsden; “there is no logic in you.”
“Better to be without logic than without feeling,” retorted Frances, who
was now passing backwards and forwards from her cupboard to the table,
intent, if not on hospitable thoughts, at least on hospitable deeds, for
she was laying the cloth, and putting plates, knives and forks thereon.
“Is that a hit at me, mademoiselle? Do you suppose I am without
feeling?”
“I suppose you are always interfering with your own feelings, and those
of other people, and dogmatizing about the irrationality of this, that,
and the other sentiment, and then ordering it to be suppressed because
you imagine it to be inconsistent with logic.”
“I do right.”
Frances had stepped out of sight into a sort of little pantry; she soon
reappeared.
“You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think so. Just
be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr. Hunsden; I have something
to cook.” (An interval occupied in settling a casserole on the fire;
then, while she stirred its contents:) “Right! as if it were right to
crush any pleasurable sentiment that God has given to man, especially
any sentiment that, like patriotism, spreads man’s selfishness in wider
circles” (fire stirred, dish put down before it).
“Were you born in Switzerland?”
“I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?”
“And where did you get your English features and figure?”
“I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus I have
a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an interest in two
noble, free, and fortunate countries.”
“You had an English mother?”
“Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from
Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?”
“On the contrary, I’m a universal patriot, if you could understand me
rightly: my country is the world.”
“Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you have
the goodness to come to table. Monsieur” (to me who appeared to be now
absorbed in reading by moonlight)—“Monsieur, supper is served.”
This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had been
bandying phrases with Mr. Hunsden—not so short, graver and softer.
“Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no intention of
staying.”
“Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you have
only the alternative of eating it.”
The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two small but
tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with nicety; a salad
and “fromage francais,” completed it. The business of eating interposed
a brief truce between the belligerents, but no sooner was supper
disposed of than they were at it again. The fresh subject of dispute
ran on the spirit of religious intolerance which Mr. Hunsden affirmed to
exist strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment
of the Swiss to freedom. Here Frances had greatly the worst of it,
not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her own real
opinions on the point in question happened to coincide pretty nearly
with Mr. Hunsden’s, and she only contradicted him out of opposition. At
last she gave in, confessing that she thought as he thought, but bidding
him take notice that she did not consider herself beaten.
“No more did the French at Waterloo,” said Hunsden.
“There is no comparison between the cases,” rejoined Frances; “mine was
a sham fight.”
“Sham or real, it’s up with you.”
“No; though I have neither logic nor wealth of words, yet in a case
where my opinion really differed from yours, I would adhere to it when
I had not another word to say in its defence; you should be baffled by
dumb determination. You speak of Waterloo; your Wellington ought to have
been conquered there, according to Napoleon; but he persevered in spite
of the laws of war, and was victorious in defiance of military tactics.
I would do as he did.”
“I’ll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of the same sort
of stubborn stuff in you.”
“I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and I’d
scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the much-enduring nature
of our heroic William in his soul.”
“If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass.”
“Does not ASS mean BAUDET?” asked Frances, turning to me.
“No, no,” replied I, “it means an ESPRIT-FORT; and now,” I continued, as
I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing between these two, “it
is high time to go.”
Hunsden rose. “Good bye,” said he to Frances; “I shall be off for this
glorious England to-morrow, and it may be twelve months or more before
I come to Brussels again; whenever I do come I’ll seek you out, and
you shall see if I don’t find means to make you fiercer than a dragon.
You’ve done pretty well this evening, but next interview you shall
challenge me outright. Meantime you’re doomed to become Mrs. William
Crimsworth, I suppose; poor young lady? but you have a spark of spirit;
cherish it, and give the Professor the full benefit thereof.”
“Are you married. Mr. Hunsden?” asked Frances, suddenly.
“No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a Benedict by my
look.”
“Well, whenever you marry don’t take a wife out of Switzerland; for if
you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons—above all, if
you mention the word ASS in the same breath with the name Tell (for
ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate
it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some night smother her
Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare’s Othello smothered
Desdemona.”
“I am warned,” said Hunsden; “and so are you, lad,” (nodding to me). “I
hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his gentle lady, in which
the parts shall be reversed according to the plan just sketched—you,
however, being in my nightcap. Farewell, mademoiselle!” He bowed on her
hand, absolutely like Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron;
adding—“Death from such fingers would not be without charms.”
“Mon Dieu!” murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting her
distinctly arched brows; “c’est qu’il fait des compliments! je ne m’y
suis pas attendu.” She smiled, half in ire, half in mirth, curtsied with
foreign grace, and so they parted.
No sooner had we got into the street than Hunsden collared me.
“And that is your lace-mender?” said he; “and you reckon you have done
a fine, magnanimous thing in offering to marry her? You, a scion of
Seacombe, have proved your disdain of social distinctions by taking up
with an ouvriere! And I pitied the fellow, thinking his feelings had
misled him, and that he had hurt himself by contracting a low match!”
“Just let go my collar, Hunsden.”
On the contrary, he swayed me to and fro; so I grappled him round the
waist. It was dark; the street lonely and lampless. We had then a
tug for it; and after we had both rolled on the pavement, and with
difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed to walk on more soberly.
“Yes, that’s my lace-mender,” said I; “and she is to be mine for
life—God willing.”
“God is not willing—you can’t suppose it; what business have you to
be suited so well with a partner? And she treats you with a sort of
respect, too, and says, ‘Monsieur’ and modulates her tone in addressing
you, actually, as if you were something superior! She could not evince
more deference to such a one as I, were she favoured by fortune to the
supreme extent of being my choice instead of yours.”
“Hunsden, you’re a puppy. But you’ve only seen the title-page of my
happiness; you don’t know the tale that follows; you cannot conceive the
interest and sweet variety and thrilling excitement of the narrative.”
Hunsden—speaking low and deep, for we had now entered a busier
street—desired me to hold my peace, threatening to do something
dreadful if I stimulated his wrath further by boasting. I laughed till
my sides ached. We soon reached his hotel; before he entered it, he
said—
“Don’t be vainglorious. Your lace-mender is too good for you, but not
good enough for me; neither physically nor morally does she come up
to my ideal of a woman. No; I dream of something far beyond that
pale-faced, excitable little Helvetian (by-the-by she has infinitely
more of the nervous, mobile Parisienne in her than of the the robust
‘jungfrau’). Your Mdlle. Henri is in person “chetive”, in mind “sans
caractere”, compared with the queen of my visions. You, indeed, may put
up with that “minois chiffone”; but when I marry I must have straighter
and more harmonious features, to say nothing of a nobler and better
developed shape than that perverse, ill-thriven child can boast.”
“Bribe a seraph to fetch you a coal of fire from heaven, if you will,”
said I, “and with it kindle life in the tallest, fattest, most boneless,
fullest-blooded of Ruben’s painted women—leave me only my Alpine peri,
and I’ll not envy you.”
With a simultaneous movement, each turned his back on the other. Neither
said “God bless you;” yet on the morrow the sea was to roll between us.
CHAPTER XXV.
IN two months more Frances had fulfilled the time of mourning for her
aunt. One January morning—the first of the new year holidays—I went in
a fiacre, accompanied only by M. Vandenhuten, to the Rue Notre Dame aux
Neiges, and having alighted alone and walked upstairs, I found Frances
apparently waiting for me, dressed in a style scarcely appropriate to
that cold, bright, frosty day. Never till now had I seen her attired in
any other than black or sad-coloured stuff; and there she stood by the
window, clad all in white, and white of a most diaphanous texture; her
array was very simple, to be sure, but it looked imposing and festal
because it was so clear, full, and floating; a veil shadowed her head,
and hung below her knee; a little wreath of pink flowers fastened it
to her thickly tressed Grecian plait, and thence it fell softly on each
side of her face. Singular to state, she was, or had been crying; when
I asked her if she were ready, she said “Yes, monsieur,” with something
very like a checked sob; and when I took a shawl, which lay on the
table, and folded it round her, not only did tear after tear course
unbidden down her cheek, but she shook to my ministration like a reed.
I said I was sorry to see her in such low spirits, and requested to
be allowed an insight into the origin thereof. She only said, “It was
impossible to help it,” and then voluntarily, though hurriedly, putting
her hand into mine, accompanied me out of the room, and ran downstairs
with a quick, uncertain step, like one who was eager to get some
formidable piece of business over. I put her into the fiacre. M.
Vandenhuten received her, and seated her beside himself; we drove all
together to the Protestant chapel, went through a certain service in the
Common Prayer Book, and she and I came out married. M. Vandenhuten had
given the bride away.
We took no bridal trip; our modesty, screened by the peaceful obscurity
of our station, and the pleasant isolation of our circumstances, did not
exact that additional precaution. We repaired at once to a small house
I had taken in the faubourg nearest to that part of the city where the
scene of our avocations lay.
Three or four hours after the wedding ceremony, Frances, divested of her
bridal snow, and attired in a pretty lilac gown of warmer materials,
a piquant black silk apron, and a lace collar with some finishing
decoration of lilac ribbon, was kneeling on the carpet of a neatly
furnished though not spacious parlour, arranging on the shelves of a
chiffoniere some books, which I handed to her from the table. It was
snowing fast out of doors; the afternoon had turned out wild and
cold; the leaden sky seemed full of drifts, and the street was already
ankle-deep in the white downfall. Our fire burned bright, our new
habitation looked brilliantly clean and fresh, the furniture was all
arranged, and there were but some articles of glass, china, books,
&c., to put in order. Frances found in this business occupation till
tea-time, and then, after I had distinctly instructed her how to make
a cup of tea in rational English style, and after she had got over the
dismay occasioned by seeing such an extravagant amount of material put
into the pot, she administered to me a proper British repast, at which
there wanted neither candles nor urn, firelight nor comfort.
Our week’s holiday glided by, and we readdressed ourselves to labour.
Both my wife and I began in good earnest with the notion that we were
working people, destined to earn our bread by exertion, and that of the
most assiduous kind. Our days were thoroughly occupied; we used to part
every morning at eight o’clock, and not meet again till five P.M.; but
into what sweet rest did the turmoil of each busy day decline! Looking
down the vista of memory, I see the evenings passed in that little
parlour like a long string of rubies circling the dusky brow of the past.
Unvaried were they as each cut gem, and like each gem brilliant and
burning.
A year and a half passed. One morning (it was a FETE, and we had the day
to ourselves) Frances said to me, with a suddenness peculiar to her when
she had been thinking long on a subject, and at last, having come to
a conclusion, wished to test its soundness by the touchstone of my
judgment:—
“I don’t work enough.”
“What now?” demanded I, looking up from my coffee, which I had been
deliberately stirring while enjoying, in anticipation, a walk I proposed
to take with Frances, that fine summer day (it was June), to a certain
farmhouse in the country, where we were to dine. “What now?” and I
saw at once, in the serious ardour of her face, a project of vital
importance.
“I am not satisfied,” returned she: “you are now earning eight thousand
francs a year” (it was true; my efforts, punctuality, the fame of my
pupils’ progress, the publicity of my station, had so far helped me
on), “while I am still at my miserable twelve hundred francs. I CAN do
better, and I WILL.”
“You work as long and as diligently as I do, Frances.”
“Yes, monsieur, but I am not working in the right way, and I am
convinced of it.”
“You wish to change—you have a plan for progress in your mind; go and
put on your bonnet; and, while we take our walk, you shall tell me of
it.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
She went—as docile as a well-trained child; she was a curious mixture
of tractability and firmness: I sat thinking about her, and wondering
what her plan could be, when she re-entered.
“Monsieur, I have given Minnie” (our bonne) “leave to go out too, as it
is so very fine; so will you be kind enough to lock the door, and take
the key with you?”
“Kiss me, Mrs. Crimsworth,” was my not very apposite reply; but she
looked so engaging in her light summer dress and little cottage bonnet,
and her manner in speaking to me was then, as always, so unaffectedly
and suavely respectful, that my heart expanded at the sight of her, and
a kiss seemed necessary to content its importunity.
“There, monsieur.”
“Why do you always call me ‘Monsieur’? Say, ‘William.’”
“I cannot pronounce your W; besides, ‘Monsieur’ belongs to you; I like
it best.”
Minnie having departed in clean cap and smart shawl, we, too, set out,
leaving the house solitary and silent—silent, at least, but for
the ticking of the clock. We were soon clear of Brussels; the fields
received us, and then the lanes, remote from carriage-resounding
CHAUSSEES. Ere long we came upon a nook, so rural, green, and secluded,
it might have been a spot in some pastoral English province; a bank of
short and mossy grass, under a hawthorn, offered a seat too tempting
to be declined; we took it, and when we had admired and examined some
English-looking wild-flowers growing at our feet, I recalled Frances’
attention and my own to the topic touched on at breakfast.
“What was her plan?” A natural one—the next step to be mounted by
us, or, at least, by her, if she wanted to rise in her profession. She
proposed to begin a school. We already had the means for commencing on
a careful scale, having lived greatly within our income. We possessed,
too, by this time, an extensive and eligible connection, in the sense
advantageous to our business; for, though our circle of visiting
acquaintance continued as limited as ever, we were now widely known in
schools and families as teachers. When Frances had developed her plan,
she intimated, in some closing sentences, her hopes for the future. If
we only had good health and tolerable success, me might, she was sure,
in time realize an independency; and that, perhaps, before we were too
old to enjoy it; then both she and I would rest; and what was to hinder
us from going to live in England? England was still her Promised Land.
I put no obstacle in her way; raised no objection; I knew she was
not one who could live quiescent and inactive, or even comparatively
inactive. Duties she must have to fulfil, and important duties; work to
do—and exciting, absorbing, profitable work; strong faculties stirred
in her frame, and they demanded full nourishment, free exercise: mine
was not the hand ever to starve or cramp them; no, I delighted in
offering them sustenance, and in clearing them wider space for action.
“You have conceived a plan, Frances,” said I, “and a good plan; execute
it; you have my free consent, and wherever and whenever my assistance is
wanted, ask and you shall have.”
Frances’ eyes thanked me almost with tears; just a sparkle or two, soon
brushed away; she possessed herself of my hand too, and held it for
some time very close clasped in both her own, but she said no more than
“Thank you, monsieur.”
We passed a divine day, and came home late, lighted by a full summer
moon.
Ten years rushed now upon me with dusty, vibrating, unresting wings;
years of bustle, action, unslacked endeavour; years in which I and
my wife, having launched ourselves in the full career of progress, as
progress whirls on in European capitals, scarcely knew repose, were
strangers to amusement, never thought of indulgence, and yet, as
our course ran side by side, as we marched hand in hand, we neither
murmured, repented, nor faltered. Hope indeed cheered us; health kept us
up; harmony of thought and deed smoothed many difficulties, and finally,
success bestowed every now and then encouraging reward on diligence. Our
school became one of the most popular in Brussels, and as by degrees
we raised our terms and elevated our system of education, our choice of
pupils grew more select, and at length included the children of the
best families in Belgium. We had too an excellent connection in England,
first opened by the unsolicited recommendation of Mr. Hunsden, who
having been over, and having abused me for my prosperity in set terms,
went back, and soon after sent a leash of young ----shire heiresses—his
cousins; as he said “to be polished off by Mrs. Crimsworth.”
As to this same Mrs. Crimsworth, in one sense she was become another
woman, though in another she remained unchanged. So different was
she under different circumstances. I seemed to possess two wives. The
faculties of her nature, already disclosed when I married her, remained
fresh and fair; but other faculties shot up strong, branched out
broad, and quite altered the external character of the plant. Firmness,
activity, and enterprise, covered with grave foliage, poetic feeling
and fervour; but these flowers were still there, preserved pure and dewy
under the umbrage of later growth and hardier nature: perhaps I only in
the world knew the secret of their existence, but to me they were ever
ready to yield an exquisite fragrance and present a beauty as chaste as
radiant.
In the daytime my house and establishment were conducted by Madame the
directress, a stately and elegant woman, bearing much anxious thought on
her large brow; much calculated dignity in her serious mien: immediately
after breakfast I used to part with this lady; I went to my college,
she to her schoolroom; returning for an hour in the course of the day,
I found her always in class, intently occupied; silence, industry,
observance, attending on her presence. When not actually teaching,
she was overlooking and guiding by eye and gesture; she then appeared
vigilant and solicitous. When communicating instruction, her aspect was
more animated; she seemed to feel a certain enjoyment in the occupation.
The language in which she addressed her pupils, though simple and
unpretending, was never trite or dry; she did not speak from routine
formulas—she made her own phrases as she went on, and very nervous
and impressive phrases they frequently were; often, when elucidating
favourite points of history, or geography, she would wax genuinely
eloquent in her earnestness. Her pupils, or at least the elder and more
intelligent amongst them, recognized well the language of a superior
mind; they felt too, and some of them received the impression of
elevated sentiments; there was little fondling between mistress and
girls, but some of Frances’ pupils in time learnt to love her sincerely,
all of them beheld her with respect; her general demeanour towards
them was serious; sometimes benignant when they pleased her with their
progress and attention, always scrupulously refined and considerate.
In cases where reproof or punishment was called for she was usually
forbearing enough; but if any took advantage of that forbearance, which
sometimes happened, a sharp, sudden and lightning-like severity taught
the culprit the extent of the mistake committed. Sometimes a gleam of
tenderness softened her eyes and manner, but this was rare; only when
a pupil was sick, or when it pined after home, or in the case of some
little motherless child, or of one much poorer than its companions,
whose scanty wardrobe and mean appointments brought on it the contempt
of the jewelled young countesses and silk-clad misses. Over such feeble
fledglings the directress spread a wing of kindliest protection: it was
to their bedside she came at night to tuck them warmly in; it was after
them she looked in winter to see that they always had a comfortable seat
by the stove; it was they who by turns were summoned to the salon to
receive some little dole of cake or fruit—to sit on a footstool at
the fireside—to enjoy home comforts, and almost home liberty, for
an evening together—to be spoken to gently and softly, comforted,
encouraged, cherished—and when bedtime came, dismissed with a kiss
of true tenderness. As to Julia and Georgiana G----, daughters of an
English baronet, as to Mdlle. Mathilde de ----, heiress of a Belgian
count, and sundry other children of patrician race, the directress was
careful of them as of the others, anxious for their progress, as for
that of the rest—but it never seemed to enter her head to distinguish
them by a mark of preference; one girl of noble blood she loved
dearly—a young Irish baroness—lady Catherine ----; but it was for her
enthusiastic heart and clever head, for her generosity and her genius,
the title and rank went for nothing.
My afternoons were spent also in college, with the exception of an hour
that my wife daily exacted of me for her establishment, and with which
she would not dispense. She said that I must spend that time amongst her
pupils to learn their characters, to be AU COURANT with everything that
was passing in the house, to become interested in what interested her,
to be able to give her my opinion on knotty points when she required it,
and this she did constantly, never allowing my interest in the pupils
to fall asleep, and never making any change of importance without
my cognizance and consent. She delighted to sit by me when I gave my
lessons (lessons in literature), her hands folded on her knee, the most
fixedly attentive of any present. She rarely addressed me in class; when
she did it was with an air of marked deference; it was her pleasure, her
joy to make me still the master in all things.
At six o’clock P.M. my daily labours ceased. I then came home, for
my home was my heaven; ever at that hour, as I entered our private
sitting-room, the lady-directress vanished from before my eyes, and
Frances Henri, my own little lace-mender, was magically restored to my
arms; much disappointed she would have been if her master had not been
as constant to the tryst as herself, and if his truthfull kiss had not
been prompt to answer her soft, “Bon soir, monsieur.”
Talk French to me she would, and many a punishment she has had for
her wilfulness. I fear the choice of chastisement must have been
injudicious, for instead of correcting the fault, it seemed to encourage
its renewal. Our evenings were our own; that recreation was necessary to
refresh our strength for the due discharge of our duties; sometimes we
spent them all in conversation, and my young Genevese, now that she was
thoroughly accustomed to her English professor, now that she loved
him too absolutely to fear him much, reposed in him a confidence so
unlimited that topics of conversation could no more be wanting with him
than subjects for communion with her own heart. In those moments, happy
as a bird with its mate, she would show me what she had of vivacity, of
mirth, of originality in her well-dowered nature. She would show, too,
some stores of raillery, of “malice,” and would vex, tease, pique me
sometimes about what she called my “bizarreries anglaises,” my “caprices
insulaires,” with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect white
demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and the elfish
freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war
of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the
delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked
me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the
sprite that teased me. Vain idea! no sooner had I grasped hand or arm
than the elf was gone; the provocative smile quenched in the expressive
brown eyes, and a ray of gentle homage shone under the lids in its
place. I had seized a mere vexing fairy, and found a submissive and
supplicating little mortal woman in my arms. Then I made her get a book,
and read English to me for an hour by way of penance. I frequently dosed
her with Wordsworth in this way, and Wordsworth steadied her soon; she
had a difficulty in comprehending his deep, serene, and sober mind; his
language, too, was not facile to her; she had to ask questions, to sue
for explanations, to be like a child and a novice, and to acknowledge
me as her senior and director. Her instinct instantly penetrated and
possessed the meaning of more ardent and imaginative writers. Byron
excited her; Scott she loved; Wordsworth only she puzzled at, wondered
over, and hesitated to pronounce an opinion upon.
But whether she read to me, or talked with me; whether she teased me
in French, or entreated me in English; whether she jested with wit,
or inquired with deference; narrated with interest, or listened with
attention; whether she smiled at me or on me, always at nine o’clock I
was left abandoned. She would extricate herself from my arms, quit
my side, take her lamp, and be gone. Her mission was upstairs; I have
followed her sometimes and watched her. First she opened the door of the
dortoir (the pupils’ chamber), noiselessly she glided up the long room
between the two rows of white beds, surveyed all the sleepers; if any
were wakeful, especially if any were sad, spoke to them and soothed
them; stood some minutes to ascertain that all was safe and tranquil;
trimmed the watch-light which burned in the apartment all night, then
withdrew, closing the door behind her without sound. Thence she glided
to our own chamber; it had a little cabinet within; this she sought;
there, too, appeared a bed, but one, and that a very small one; her face
(the night I followed and observed her) changed as she approached this
tiny couch; from grave it warmed to earnest; she shaded with one hand
the lamp she held in the other; she bent above the pillow and hung
over a child asleep; its slumber (that evening at least, and usually,
I believe) was sound and calm; no tear wet its dark eyelashes; no fever
heated its round cheek; no ill dream discomposed its budding features.
Frances gazed, she did not smile, and yet the deepest delight filled,
flushed her face; feeling pleasurable, powerful, worked in her whole
frame, which still was motionless. I saw, indeed, her heart heave, her
lips were a little apart, her breathing grew somewhat hurried; the child
smiled; then at last the mother smiled too, and said in low soliloquy,
“God bless my little son!” She stooped closer over him, breathed the
softest of kisses on his brow, covered his minute hand with hers, and
at last started up and came away. I regained the parlour before her.
Entering it two minutes later she said quietly as she put down her
extinguished lamp—
“Victor rests well: he smiled in his sleep; he has your smile,
monsieur.”
The said Victor was of course her own boy, born in the third year of
our marriage: his Christian name had been given him in honour of M.
Vandenhuten, who continued always our trusty and well-beloved friend.
Frances was then a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her a
good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had she
married a harsh, envious, careless man—a profligate, a prodigal,
a drunkard, or a tyrant—is another question, and one which I once
propounded to her. Her answer, given after some reflection, was—
“I should have tried to endure the evil or cure it for awhile; and when
I found it intolerable and incurable, I should have left my torturer
suddenly and silently.”
“And if law or might had forced you back again?”
“What, to a drunkard, a profligate, a selfish spendthrift, an unjust
fool?”
“Yes.”
“I would have gone back; again assured myself whether or not his vice
and my misery were capable of remedy; and if not, have left him again.”
“And if again forced to return, and compelled to abide?”
“I don’t know,” she said, hastily. “Why do you ask me, monsieur?”
I would have an answer, because I saw a strange kind of spirit in her
eye, whose voice I determined to waken.
“Monsieur, if a wife’s nature loathes that of the man she is wedded to,
marriage must be slavery. Against slavery all right thinkers revolt, and
though torture be the price of resistance, torture must be dared: though
the only road to freedom lie through the gates of death, those gates
must be passed; for freedom is indispensable. Then, monsieur, I would
resist as far as my strength permitted; when that strength failed I
should be sure of a refuge. Death would certainly screen me both from
bad laws and their consequences.”
“Voluntary death, Frances?”
“No, monsieur. I’d have courage to live out every throe of anguish fate
assigned me, and principle to contend for justice and liberty to the
last.”
“I see you would have made no patient Grizzle. And now, supposing fate
had merely assigned you the lot of an old maid, what then? How would you
have liked celibacy?”
“Not much, certainly. An old maid’s life must doubtless be void and
vapid—her heart strained and empty. Had I been an old maid I should
have spent existence in efforts to fill the void and ease the aching. I
should have probably failed, and died weary and disappointed, despised
and of no account, like other single women. But I’m not an old maid,”
she added quickly. “I should have been, though, but for my master. I
should never have suited any man but Professor Crimsworth—no other
gentleman, French, English, or Belgian, would have thought me amiable or
handsome; and I doubt whether I should have cared for the approbation
of many others, if I could have obtained it. Now, I have been Professor
Crimsworth’s wife eight years, and what is he in my eyes? Is he
honourable, beloved ----?” She stopped, her voice was cut off, her eyes
suddenly suffused. She and I were standing side by side; she threw her
arms round me, and strained me to her heart with passionate earnestness:
the energy of her whole being glowed in her dark and then dilated
eye, and crimsoned her animated cheek; her look and movement were like
inspiration; in one there was such a flash, in the other such a power.
Half an hour afterwards, when she had become calm, I asked where all
that wild vigour was gone which had transformed her ere-while and made
her glance so thrilling and ardent—her action so rapid and strong. She
looked down, smiling softly and passively:—
“I cannot tell where it is gone, monsieur,” said she, “but I know that,
whenever it is wanted, it will come back again.”
Behold us now at the close of the ten years, and we have realized an
independency. The rapidity with which we attained this end had its
origin in three reasons:— Firstly, we worked so hard for it; secondly,
we had no incumbrances to delay success; thirdly, as soon as we had
capital to invest, two well-skilled counsellors, one in Belgium, one in
England, viz. Vandenhuten and Hunsden, gave us each a word of advice
as to the sort of investment to be chosen. The suggestion made was
judicious; and, being promptly acted on, the result proved gainful—I
need not say how gainful; I communicated details to Messrs. Vandenhuten
and Hunsden; nobody else can be interested in hearing them.
Accounts being wound up, and our professional connection disposed of, we
both agreed that, as mammon was not our master, nor his service that in
which we desired to spend our lives; as our desires were temperate, and
our habits unostentatious, we had now abundance to live on—abundance to
leave our boy; and should besides always have a balance on hand, which,
properly managed by right sympathy and unselfish activity, might
help philanthropy in her enterprises, and put solace into the hand of
charity.
To England we now resolved to take wing; we arrived there safely;
Frances realized the dream of her lifetime. We spent a whole summer
and autumn in travelling from end to end of the British islands, and
afterwards passed a winter in London. Then we thought it high time
to fix our residence. My heart yearned towards my native county of
----shire; and it is in ----shire I now live; it is in the library of my
own home I am now writing. That home lies amid a sequestered and rather
hilly region, thirty miles removed from X----; a region whose verdure
the smoke of mills has not yet sullied, whose waters still run pure,
whose swells of moorland preserve in some ferny glens that lie between
them the very primal wildness of nature, her moss, her bracken, her
blue-bells, her scents of reed and heather, her free and fresh breezes.
My house is a picturesque and not too spacious dwelling, with low and
long windows, a trellised and leaf-veiled porch over the front door,
just now, on this summer evening, looking like an arch of roses and ivy.
The garden is chiefly laid out in lawn, formed of the sod of the hills,
with herbage short and soft as moss, full of its own peculiar flowers,
tiny and starlike, imbedded in the minute embroidery of their fine
foliage. At the bottom of the sloping garden there is a wicket, which
opens upon a lane as green as the lawn, very long, shady, and little
frequented; on the turf of this lane generally appear the first daisies
of spring—whence its name—Daisy Lane; serving also as a distinction to
the house.
It terminates (the lane I mean) in a valley full of wood; which
wood—chiefly oak and beech—spreads shadowy about the vicinage of a
very old mansion, one of the Elizabethan structures, much larger, as
well as more antique than Daisy Lane, the property and residence of
an individual familiar both to me and to the reader. Yes, in Hunsden
Wood—for so are those glades and that grey building, with many gables
and more chimneys, named—abides Yorke Hunsden, still unmarried; never,
I suppose, having yet found his ideal, though I know at least a score
of young ladies within a circuit of forty miles, who would be willing to
assist him in the search.
The estate fell to him by the death of his father, five years since; he
has given up trade, after having made by it sufficient to pay off some
incumbrances by which the family heritage was burdened. I say he abides
here, but I do not think he is resident above five months out of the
twelve; he wanders from land to land, and spends some part of each
winter in town: he frequently brings visitors with him when he comes to
----shire, and these visitors are often foreigners; sometimes he has
a German metaphysician, sometimes a French savant; he had once a
dissatisfied and savage-looking Italian, who neither sang nor played,
and of whom Frances affirmed that he had “tout l’air d’un conspirateur.”
What English guests Hunsden invites, are all either men of Birmingham or
Manchester—hard men, seemingly knit up in one thought, whose talk is
of free trade. The foreign visitors, too, are politicians; they take a
wider theme—European progress—the spread of liberal sentiments over
the Continent; on their mental tablets, the names of Russia, Austria,
and the Pope, are inscribed in red ink. I have heard some of them talk
vigorous sense—yea, I have been present at polyglot discussions in the
old, oak-lined dining-room at Hunsden Wood, where a singular insight
was given of the sentiments entertained by resolute minds respecting old
northern despotisms, and old southern superstitions: also, I have heard
much twaddle, enounced chiefly in French and Deutsch, but let that pass.
Hunsden himself tolerated the drivelling theorists; with the practical
men he seemed leagued hand and heart.
When Hunsden is staying alone at the Wood (which seldom happens) he
generally finds his way two or three times a week to Daisy Lane. He has
a philanthropic motive for coming to smoke his cigar in our porch on
summer evenings; he says he does it to kill the earwigs amongst the
roses, with which insects, but for his benevolent fumigations, he
intimates we should certainly be overrun. On wet days, too, we are
almost sure to see him; according to him, it gets on time to work
me into lunacy by treading on my mental corns, or to force from Mrs.
Crimsworth revelations of the dragon within her, by insulting the memory
of Hofer and Tell.
We also go frequently to Hunsden Wood, and both I and Frances relish a
visit there highly. If there are other guests, their characters are
an interesting study; their conversation is exciting and strange; the
absence of all local narrowness both in the host and his chosen society
gives a metropolitan, almost a cosmopolitan freedom and largeness to the
talk. Hunsden himself is a polite man in his own house: he has, when he
chooses to employ it, an inexhaustible power of entertaining guests; his
very mansion too is interesting, the rooms look storied, the
passages legendary, the low-ceiled chambers, with their long rows of
diamond-paned lattices, have an old-world, haunted air: in his travels
he has collected stores of articles of VERTU, which are well and
tastefully disposed in his panelled or tapestried rooms: I have seen
there one or two pictures, and one or two pieces of statuary which many
an aristocratic connoisseur might have envied.
When I and Frances have dined and spent an evening with Hunsden, he
often walks home with us. His wood is large, and some of the timber
is old and of huge growth. There are winding ways in it which, pursued
through glade and brake, make the walk back to Daisy Lane a somewhat
long one. Many a time, when we have had the benefit of a full moon,
and when the night has been mild and balmy, when, moreover, a certain
nightingale has been singing, and a certain stream, hid in alders, has
lent the song a soft accompaniment, the remote church-bell of the one
hamlet in a district of ten miles, has tolled midnight ere the lord of
the wood left us at our porch. Free-flowing was his talk at such hours,
and far more quiet and gentle than in the day-time and before numbers.
He would then forget politics and discussion, and would dwell on the
past times of his house, on his family history, on himself and his own
feelings—subjects each and all invested with a peculiar zest, for they
were each and all unique. One glorious night in June, after I had been
taunting him about his ideal bride and asking him when she would
come and graft her foreign beauty on the old Hunsden oak, he answered
suddenly—
“You call her ideal; but see, here is her shadow; and there cannot be a
shadow without a substance.”
He had led us from the depth of the “winding way” into a glade from
whence the beeches withdrew, leaving it open to the sky; an unclouded
moon poured her light into this glade, and Hunsden held out under her
beam an ivory miniature.
Frances, with eagerness, examined it first; then she gave it to
me—still, however, pushing her little face close to mine, and seeking
in my eyes what I thought of the portrait. I thought it represented a
very handsome and very individual-looking female face, with, as he had
once said, “straight and harmonious features.” It was dark; the hair,
raven-black, swept not only from the brow, but from the temples—seemed
thrust away carelessly, as if such beauty dispensed with, nay,
despised arrangement. The Italian eye looked straight into you, and an
independent, determined eye it was; the mouth was as firm as fine; the
chin ditto. On the back of the miniature was gilded “Lucia.”
“That is a real head,” was my conclusion.
Hunsden smiled.
“I think so,” he replied. “All was real in Lucia.”
“And she was somebody you would have liked to marry—but could not?”
“I should certainly have liked to marry her, and that I HAVE not done so
is a proof that I COULD not.”
He repossessed himself of the miniature, now again in Frances’ hand, and
put it away.
“What do YOU think of it?” he asked of my wife, as he buttoned his coat
over it.
“I am sure Lucia once wore chains and broke them,” was the strange
answer. “I do not mean matrimonial chains,” she added, correcting
herself, as if she feared mis-interpretation, “but social chains of some
sort. The face is that of one who has made an effort, and a successful
and triumphant effort, to wrest some vigorous and valued faculty from
insupportable constraint; and when Lucia’s faculty got free, I am
certain it spread wide pinions and carried her higher than—” she
hesitated.
“Than what?” demanded Hunsden.
“Than ‘les convenances’ permitted you to follow.”
“I think you grow spiteful—impertinent.”
“Lucia has trodden the stage,” continued Frances. “You never seriously
thought of marrying her; you admired her originality, her fearlessness,
her energy of body and mind; you delighted in her talent, whatever that
was, whether song, dance, or dramatic representation; you worshipped her
beauty, which was of the sort after your own heart: but I am sure she
filled a sphere from whence you would never have thought of taking a
wife.”
“Ingenious,” remarked Hunsden; “whether true or not is another question.
Meantime, don’t you feel your little lamp of a spirit wax very pale,
beside such a girandole as Lucia’s?”
“Yes.”
“Candid, at least; and the Professor will soon be dissatisfied with the
dim light you give?”
“Will you, monsieur?”
“My sight was always too weak to endure a blaze, Frances,” and we had
now reached the wicket.
I said, a few pages back, that this is a sweet summer evening; it
is—there has been a series of lovely days, and this is the loveliest;
the hay is just carried from my fields, its perfume still lingers in the
air. Frances proposed to me, an hour or two since, to take tea out
on the lawn; I see the round table, loaded with china, placed under a
certain beech; Hunsden is expected—nay, I hear he is come—there is his
voice, laying down the law on some point with authority; that of Frances
replies; she opposes him of course. They are disputing about Victor,
of whom Hunsden affirms that his mother is making a milksop. Mrs.
Crimsworth retaliates:—
“Better a thousand times he should be a milksop than what he, Hunsden,
calls ‘a fine lad;’ and moreover she says that if Hunsden were to become
a fixture in the neighbourhood, and were not a mere comet, coming and
going, no one knows how, when, where, or why, she should be quite uneasy
till she had got Victor away to a school at least a hundred miles off;
for that with his mutinous maxims and unpractical dogmas, he would ruin
a score of children.”
I have a word to say of Victor ere I shut this manuscript in my
desk—but it must be a brief one, for I hear the tinkle of silver on
porcelain.
Victor is as little of a pretty child as I am of a handsome man, or his
mother of a fine woman; he is pale and spare, with large eyes, as dark
as those of Frances, and as deeply set as mine. His shape is symmetrical
enough, but slight; his health is good. I never saw a child smile less
than he does, nor one who knits such a formidable brow when sitting over
a book that interests him, or while listening to tales of adventure,
peril, or wonder, narrated by his mother, Hunsden, or myself. But
though still, he is not unhappy—though serious, not morose; he has a
susceptibility to pleasurable sensations almost too keen, for it amounts
to enthusiasm. He learned to read in the old-fashioned way out of a
spelling-book at his mother’s knee, and as he got on without driving by
that method, she thought it unnecessary to buy him ivory letters, or to
try any of the other inducements to learning now deemed indispensable.
When he could read, he became a glutton of books, and is so still.
His toys have been few, and he has never wanted more. For those he
possesses, he seems to have contracted a partiality amounting to
affection; this feeling, directed towards one or two living animals of
the house, strengthens almost to a passion.
Mr. Hunsden gave him a mastiff cub, which he called Yorke, after the
donor; it grew to a superb dog, whose fierceness, however, was much
modified by the companionship and caresses of its young master. He would
go nowhere, do nothing without Yorke; Yorke lay at his feet while he
learned his lessons, played with him in the garden, walked with him in
the lane and wood, sat near his chair at meals, was fed always by his
own hand, was the first thing he sought in the morning, the last he left
at night. Yorke accompanied Mr. Hunsden one day to X----, and was bitten
in the street by a dog in a rabid state. As soon as Hunsden had brought
him home, and had informed me of the circumstance, I went into the yard
and shot him where he lay licking his wound: he was dead in an instant;
he had not seen me level the gun; I stood behind him. I had scarcely
been ten minutes in the house, when my ear was struck with sounds of
anguish: I repaired to the yard once more, for they proceeded thence.
Victor was kneeling beside his dead mastiff, bent over it, embracing its
bull-like neck, and lost in a passion of the wildest woe: he saw me.
“Oh, papa, I’ll never forgive you! I’ll never forgive you!” was his
exclamation. “You shot Yorke—I saw it from the window. I never believed
you could be so cruel—I can love you no more!”
I had much ado to explain to him, with a steady voice, the stern
necessity of the deed; he still, with that inconsolable and bitter
accent which I cannot render, but which pierced my heart, repeated—
“He might have been cured—you should have tried—you should have burnt
the wound with a hot iron, or covered it with caustic. You gave no time;
and now it is too late—he is dead!”
He sank fairly down on the senseless carcase; I waited patiently a long
while, till his grief had somewhat exhausted him; and then I lifted him
in my arms and carried him to his mother, sure that she would comfort
him best. She had witnessed the whole scene from a window; she would not
come out for fear of increasing my difficulties by her emotion, but she
was ready now to receive him. She took him to her kind heart, and on
to her gentle lap; consoled him but with her lips, her eyes, her soft
embrace, for some time; and then, when his sobs diminished, told him
that Yorke had felt no pain in dying, and that if he had been left to
expire naturally, his end would have been most horrible; above all, she
told him that I was not cruel (for that idea seemed to give exquisite
pain to poor Victor), that it was my affection for Yorke and him which
had made me act so, and that I was now almost heart-broken to see him
weep thus bitterly.
Victor would have been no true son of his father, had these
considerations, these reasons, breathed in so low, so sweet a
tone—married to caresses so benign, so tender—to looks so inspired
with pitying sympathy—produced no effect on him. They did produce an
effect: he grew calmer, rested his face on her shoulder, and lay still
in her arms. Looking up, shortly, he asked his mother to tell him over
again what she had said about Yorke having suffered no pain, and my not
being cruel; the balmy words being repeated, he again pillowed his cheek
on her breast, and was again tranquil.
Some hours after, he came to me in my library, asked if I forgave him,
and desired to be reconciled. I drew the lad to my side, and there I
kept him a good while, and had much talk with him, in the course of
which he disclosed many points of feeling and thought I approved of in
my son. I found, it is true, few elements of the “good fellow” or the
“fine fellow” in him; scant sparkles of the spirit which loves to flash
over the wine cup, or which kindles the passions to a destroying
fire; but I saw in the soil of his heart healthy and swelling germs
of compassion, affection, fidelity. I discovered in the garden of his
intellect a rich growth of wholesome principles—reason, justice, moral
courage, promised, if not blighted, a fertile bearing. So I bestowed on
his large forehead, and on his cheek—still pale with tears—a proud and
contented kiss, and sent him away comforted. Yet I saw him the next day
laid on the mound under which Yorke had been buried, his face covered
with his hands; he was melancholy for some weeks, and more than a year
elapsed before he would listen to any proposal of having another dog.
Victor learns fast. He must soon go to Eton, where, I suspect, his first
year or two will be utter wretchedness: to leave me, his mother, and his
home, will give his heart an agonized wrench; then, the fagging will not
suit him—but emulation, thirst after knowledge, the glory of success,
will stir and reward him in time. Meantime, I feel in myself a strong
repugnance to fix the hour which will uproot my sole olive branch, and
transplant it far from me; and, when I speak to Frances on the subject,
I am heard with a kind of patient pain, as though I alluded to some
fearful operation, at which her nature shudders, but from which her
fortitude will not permit her to recoil. The step must, however, be
taken, and it shall be; for, though Frances will not make a milksop of
her son, she will accustom him to a style of treatment, a forbearance,
a congenial tenderness, he will meet with from none else. She sees, as
I also see, a something in Victor’s temper—a kind of electrical ardour
and power—which emits, now and then, ominous sparks; Hunsden calls it
his spirit, and says it should not be curbed. I call it the leaven of
the offending Adam, and consider that it should be, if not WHIPPED out
of him, at least soundly disciplined; and that he will be cheap of
any amount of either bodily or mental suffering which will ground him
radically in the art of self-control. Frances gives this something in
her son’s marked character no name; but when it appears in the grinding
of his teeth, in the glittering of his eye, in the fierce revolt of
feeling against disappointment, mischance, sudden sorrow, or supposed
injustice, she folds him to her breast, or takes him to walk with her
alone in the wood; then she reasons with him like any philosopher, and
to reason Victor is ever accessible; then she looks at him with eyes of
love, and by love Victor can be infallibly subjugated; but will reason
or love be the weapons with which in future the world will meet his
violence? Oh, no! for that flash in his black eye—for that cloud on
his bony brow—for that compression of his statuesque lips, the lad will
some day get blows instead of blandishments—kicks instead of kisses;
then for the fit of mute fury which will sicken his body and madden
his soul; then for the ordeal of merited and salutary suffering, out of
which he will come (I trust) a wiser and a better man.
I see him now; he stands by Hunsden, who is seated on the lawn under the
beech; Hunsden’s hand rests on the boy’s collar, and he is instilling
God knows what principles into his ear. Victor looks well just now, for
he listens with a sort of smiling interest; he never looks so like his
mother as when he smiles—pity the sunshine breaks out so rarely! Victor
has a preference for Hunsden, full as strong as I deem desirable, being
considerably more potent, decided, and indiscriminating, than any I ever
entertained for that personage myself. Frances, too, regards it with a
sort of unexpressed anxiety; while her son leans on Hunsden’s knee, or
rests against his shoulder, she roves with restless movement round,
like a dove guarding its young from a hovering hawk; she says she wishes
Hunsden had children of his own, for then he would better know the
danger of inciting their pride end indulging their foibles.
Frances approaches my library window; puts aside the honeysuckle which
half covers it, and tells me tea is ready; seeing that I continue busy
she enters the room, comes near me quietly, and puts her hand on my
shoulder.
“Monsieur est trop applique.”
“I shall soon have done.”
She draws a chair near, and sits down to wait till I have finished; her
presence is as pleasant to my mind as the perfume of the fresh hay and
spicy flowers, as the glow of the westering sun, as the repose of the
midsummer eve are to my senses.
But Hunsden comes; I hear his step, and there he is, bending through the
lattice, from which he has thrust away the woodbine with unsparing hand,
disturbing two bees and a butterfly.
“Crimsworth! I say, Crimsworth! take that pen out of his hand, mistress,
and make him lift up his head.”
“Well, Hunsden? I hear you—”
“I was at X---- yesterday! your brother Ned is getting richer than
Croesus by railway speculations; they call him in the Piece Hall a stag
of ten; and I have heard from Brown. M. and Madame Vandenhuten and Jean
Baptiste talk of coming to see you next month. He mentions the Pelets
too; he says their domestic harmony is not the finest in the world, but
in business they are doing ‘on ne peut mieux,’ which circumstance
he concludes will be a sufficient consolation to both for any little
crosses in the affections. Why don’t you invite the Pelets to ----shire,
Crimsworth? I should so like to see your first flame, Zoraide. Mistress,
don’t be jealous, but he loved that lady to distraction; I know it for a
fact. Brown says she weighs twelve stones now; you see what you’ve
lost, Mr. Professor. Now, Monsieur and Madame, if you don’t come to tea,
Victor and I will begin without you.”
“Papa, come!”