Part 18 (1/2)
”Well, then, if ever you are at the head of a large establishment, dismiss n.o.body. To speak truth, monsieur (and to you I will speak truth), I despise people who are always making rows, bl.u.s.tering, sending off one to the right, and another to the left, urging and hurrying circ.u.mstances. 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; circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sive; but when events fall out ill--when circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstance a little secret push, without noise, which sends it the way I wish, and I am successful after all, and n.o.body 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, circ.u.mstances 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 inc.u.mbrance.”
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 'ba.s.se 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 n.o.ble, 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--G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstance of my best pupil--my treasure--being s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed. 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 circ.u.mstance 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 fort.i.tude 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.