‘I ‘av not conceal myself, Mademoiselle,’ retorted the governness. ‘I ‘av act precisally as I ‘av been ordered. Your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, he is afraid, Waiatt says, to be interrupted by his creditors, and everything must be done very quaitly. I have been commanded to avoid me faire voir, you know, and I must obey my employer — voilà tout!’
‘And for how long have you been residing here?’ I persisted, in the same resentful vein.
‘‘Bout a week. It is soche triste place! I am so glad to see you, Maud! I’ve been so isolée, you dear leetle fool!’
‘You are not glad, Madame; you don’t love me — you never did,’ I exclaimed with sudden vehemence.
‘Yes, I am very glad; you know not, chère petite niaise, how I ‘av desire to educate you a leetle more. Let us understand one another. You think I do not love you, Mademoiselle, because you have mentioned to your poor papa that little dérèglement in his library. I have repent very often that so great indiscretion of my life. I thought to find some letters of Dr. Braierly. I think that man was trying to get your property, my dear Maud, and if I had found something I would tell you all about. But it was very great sottise, and you were very right to denounce me to Monsieur. Je n’ai point de rancune contre vous. No, no, none at all. On the contrary, I shall be your gardienne tutelaire — wat you call? — guardian angel — ah, yes, that is it. You think I speak par dérision; not at all. No, my dear cheaile, I do not speak par moquerie, unless perhaps the very least degree in the world.’
And with these words Madame laughed unpleasantly, showing the black caverns at the side of her mouth, and with a cold, steady malignity in her gaze.
‘Yes,’ I said; ‘I know what you mean, Madame — you hate me.’
‘Oh! wat great ogly word! I am shock! vous me faites honte. Poor Madame, she never hate any one; she loves all her friends, and her enemies she leaves to Heaven; while I am, as you see, more gay, more joyeuse than ever, they have not been ‘appy — no, they have not been fortunate these others. Wen I return, I find always some of my enemy they ‘av die, and some they have put themselves into embarrassment, or there has arrived to them some misfortune;’ and Madame shrugged and laughed a little scornfully.
A kind of horror chilled my rising anger, and I was silent.
‘You see, my dear Maud, it is very natural you should think I hate you. When I was with Mr. Austin Ruthyn, at Knowl, you know you did not like a me — never. But in consequence of our intimacy I confide you that which I ‘av of most dear in the world, my reputation. It is always so. The pupil can calomniate, without been discover, the gouvernante. ‘Av I not been always kind to you, Maud? Which ‘av I use of violence or of sweetness the most? I am, like other persons, jalouse de ma réputation; and it was difficult to suffer with patience the banishment which was invoked by you, because chiefly for your good, and for an indiscretion to which I was excited by motives the most pure and laudable. It was you who spied so cleverly — eh! and denounce me to Monsieur Ruthyn? Helas! wat bad world it is!’
‘I do not mean to speak at all about that occurrence, Madame; I will not discuss it. I dare say what you tell me of the cause of your engagement here is true, and I suppose we must travel, as you say, in company; but you must know that the less we see of each other while in this house the better.’
‘I am not so sure of that, my sweet little béte; your education has been neglected, or rather entirely abandoned, since you ‘av arrive at this place, I am told. You must not be a bestiole. We must do, you and I, as we are ordered. Mr. Silas Ruthyn he will tell us.’
All this time Madame was pulling on her stockings, getting her boots on, and otherwise proceeding with her dowdy toilet. I do not know why I stood there talking to her. We often act very differently from what we would have done upon reflection. I had involved myself in a dialogue, as wiser generals than I have entangled themselves in a general action when they meant only an affair of outposts. I had grown a little angry, and would not betray the least symptom of fear, although I felt that sensation profoundly.
‘My beloved father thought you so unfit a companion for me that he dismissed you at an hour’s notice, and I am very sure that my uncle will think as he did; you are not a fit companion for me, and had my uncle known what had passed he would never have admitted you to this house — never!’
‘Helas! Quelle disgrace! And you really think so, my dear Maud,’ exclaimed Madame, adjusting her wig before her glass, in the corner of which I could see half of her sly, grinning face, as she ogled herself in it.
‘I do, and so do you, Madame,’ I replied, growing more frightened.
‘It may be — we shall see; but everyone is not so cruel as you, ma chère petite calomniatrice.’
‘You shan’t call me those names,’ I said, in an angry tremor.
‘What name, dearest cheaile?’
‘Calomniatrice — that is an insult.’
‘Why, my most foolish little Maud, we may say rogue, and a thousand other little words in play which we do not say seriously.
‘You are not playing — you never play — you are angry, and you hate me,’ I exclaimed, vehemently.
‘Oh, fie! — wat shame! Do you not perceive, dearest cheaile, how much education you still need? You are proud, little demoiselle; you must become, on the contrary, quaite humble. Je ferai baiser le babouin à vous — ha, ha, ha! I weel make a you to kees the monkey. You are too proud, my dear cheaile.’
‘I am not such a fool as I was at Knowl,’ I said; ‘you shall not terrify me here. I will tell my uncle the whole truth,’ I said.
‘Well, it may be that is the best,’ she replied, with provoking coolness.
‘You think I don’t mean it?’
‘Of course you do,’ she replied.
‘And we shall see what my uncle thinks of it.’
‘We shall see, my dear,’ she replied, with an air of mock contrition.
‘Adieu, Madame!’
‘You are going to Monsieur Ruthyn? — very good!’
I made her no answer, but more agitated than I cared to show her, I left the room. I hurried along the twilight passage, and turned into the long gallery that opened from it at right angles. I had not gone half-a-dozen steps on my return when I heard a heavy tread and a rustling behind me.
‘I am ready, my dear; I weel accompany you,’ said the smirking phantom, hurrying after me.
‘Very well,’ was my reply; and threading our way, with a few hesitations and mistakes, we reached and descended the stairs, and in a minute more stood at my uncle’s door.
My uncle looked hard and strangely at us as we entered. He looked, indeed, as if his temper was violently excited, and glared and muttered to himself for a few seconds; and treating Madame to a stare of disgust, he asked peevishly —
‘Why am I disturbed, pray?’
‘Miss Maud a Ruthyn, she weel explain,’ replied Madame, with a great courtesy, like a boat going down in a ground swell.
‘Will you explain, my dear?’ he asked, in his coldest and most sarcastic tone.
I was agitated, and I am sure my statement was confused. I succeeded, however, in saying what I wanted.
‘Why, Madame, this is a grave charge! Do you admit it, pray?’
Madame, with the coolest possible effrontery, denied it all; with the most solemn asseverations, and with streaming eyes and clasped hands, conjured me melodramatically to withdraw that intolerable story, and to do her justice. I stared at her for a while astounded, and turning suddenly to my uncle, as vehemently asserted the truth of every syllable I had related.
‘You hear, my dear child, you hear her deny everything; what am I to think? You must excuse the bewilderment of my old head. Madame de la — that lady has arrived excellently recommended by the superioress of the place where dear Milly awaits you, and such persons are particular. It strikes me, my dear niece, that you must have made a mistake.’
I protested here. But he went on without seeming to hear the parenthesis —
‘De la Rougierre,’ I supplied.
‘Yes, thank you — Madame de la Rougierre, who has arrived with excellent testimonials, strenuously denies the whole thing. Here is a conflict, my dear — in my mind a presumption of mistake. I confess I should prefer that theory to a peremptory assumption of guilt.’
I felt incredulous and amazed; it seemed as if a dream were being enacted before me. A transaction of the most serious import, which I had witnessed with my own eyes, and described with unexceptionable minuteness and consistency, is discredited by that strange and suspicious old man with an imbecile coolness. It was quite in vain my reiterating my statement, backing it with the most earnest asseverations. I was beating the air. It did not seem to reach his mind. It was all received with a simper of feeble incredulity.
He patted and smoothed my head — he laughed gently, and shook his while I insisted; and Madame protested her purity in now tranquil floods of innocent tears, and murmured mild and melancholy prayers for my enlightenment and reformation. I felt as if I should lose my reason.
‘There now, dear Maud, we have heard enough; it is, I do believe, a delusion. Madame de la Rougierre will be your companion, at the utmost, for three or four weeks. Do exercise a little of your self-command and good sense — you know how I am tortured. Do not, I entreat, add to my perplexities. You may make yourself very happy with Madame if you will, I have no doubt.’
‘I propose to Mademoiselle,’ said Madame, drying her eyes with a gentle alacrity, ‘to profit of my visit for her education. But she does not seem to weesh wat I think is so useful.’
‘She threatened me with some horrid French vulgarism — de faire baiser le babouin à moi, whatever that means; and I know she hates me,’ I replied, impetuously.
‘Doucement — doucement!’ said my uncle, with a smile at once amused and compassionate. ‘Doucement! ma chère.’
With great hands and cunning eyes uplifted, Madame tearfully — for her tears came on short notice — again protested her absolute innocence. She had never in all her life so much as heard one so villain phrase.
‘You see, my dear, you have misheard; young people never attend. You will do well to take advantage of Madame’s short residence to get up your French a little, and the more you are with her the better.’
‘I understand then, Mr. Ruthyn, you weesh I should resume my instructions?’ asked Madame.
‘Certainly; and converse all you can in French with Mademoiselle Maud. You will be glad, my dear, that I’ve insisted on it,’ he said, turning to me, ‘when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else. And now, dear Maud — no, not a word more — you must leave me. Farewell, Madame!’
And he waved us out a little impatiently; and I, without one look toward Madame de la Rougierre, stunned and incensed, walked into my room and shut the door.
CHAPTER LV
THE FOOT OF HERCULES
I stood at the window — still the same leaden sky and feathery sleet before me — trying to estimate the magnitude of the discovery I had just made. Gradually a kind of despair seized me, and I threw myself passionately on my bed, weeping aloud.
Good Mary Quince was, of course, beside me in a moment, with her pale, concerned face.
‘Oh, Mary, Mary, she’s come — that dreadful woman, Madame de la Rougierre, has come to be my governess again; and Uncle Silas won’t hear or believe anything about her. It is vain talking; he is prepossessed. Was ever so unfortunate a creature as I? Who could have fancied or feared such a thing? Oh, Mary, Mary, what am I to do? what is to become of me? Am I never to shake off that vindictive, terrible woman?’
Mary said all she could to console me. I was making too much of her. What was she, after all, more than a governess? — she could not hurt me. I was not a child no longer — she could not bully me now; and my uncle, though he might be deceived for a while, would not be long finding her out.
Thus and soforth did good Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much of Madame’s visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a terrible moving background of shadows.
In a few minutes there was a knock at my door, and Madame herself entered. She was in walking costume. There had been a brief clearing of the weather, and she proposed our making a promenade together.
On seeing Mary Quince she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting, and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and pressed it with wonderful tenderness.
Honest Mary suffered all this somewhat reluctantly, never smiling, and, on the contrary, looking rather ruefully at her feet.
‘Weel you make a some tea? When I come back, dear Mary Quince, I ‘av so much to tell you and dear Miss Maud of all my adventures while I ‘av been away; it will make a you laugh ever so much. I was — what you theenk? — near, ever so near to be married!’ And upon this she broke into a screeching laugh, and shook Mary Quince merrily by the shoulder.
I sullenly declined going out, or rising; and when she had gone away, I told Mary that I should confine myself to my room while Madame stayed.
But self-denying ordinances self-imposed are not always long observed by youth. Madame de la Rougierre laid herself out to be agreeable; she had no end of stories — more than half, no doubt, pure fictions — to tell, but all, in that triste place, amusing. Mary Quince began to entertain a better opinion of her. She actually helped to make beds, and tried to be in every way of use, and seemed to have quite turned over a new leaf; and so gradually she moved me, first to listen, and at last to talk.
On the whole, these terms were better than a perpetual skirmish; but, notwithstanding all her gossip and friendliness, I continued to have a profound distrust and even terror of her.
She seemed curious about the Bartram-Haugh family, and all their ways, and listened darkly when I spoke. I told her, bit by bit, the whole story of Dudley, and she used, whenever there was news of the Seamew, to read the paragraph for my benefit; and in poor Milly’s battered little Atlas she used to trace the ship’s course with a pencil, writing in, from point to point, the date at which the vessel was ‘spoken’ at sea. She seemed amused at the irrepressible satisfaction with which I received these minutes of his progress; and she used to calculate the distance; — on such a day he was two hundred and sixty miles, on such another five hundred; the last point was more than eight hundred — good, better, best — best of all would be those ‘deleecious antipode, w’ere he would so soon promener on his head twelve thousand mile away;’ and at the conceit she would fall into screams of laughter.
Laugh as she might, however, there was substantial comfort in thinking of the boundless stretch of blue wave that rolled between me and that villainous cousin.
I was now on very odd terms with Madame. She had not relapsed into her favourite vein of oracular sarcasm and menace; she had, on the contrary, affected her goodhumoured and genial vein. But I was not to be deceived by this. I carried in my heart that deep-seated fear of her which her unpleasant goodhumour and gaiety never disturbed for a moment. I was very glad, therefore, when she went to Todcaster by rail, to make some purchases for the journey which we were daily expecting to commence; and happy in the opportunity of a walk, good old Mary Quince and I set forth for a little ramble.
As I wished to make some purchases in Feltram, I set out, with Mary Quince for my companion. On reaching the great gate we found it locked. The key, however, was in it, and as it required more than the strength of my hand to turn, Mary tried it. At the same moment old Crowle came out of the sombre lodge by its side, swallowing down a mouthful of his dinner in haste. No on
e, I believe, liked the long suspicious face of the old man, seldom shorn or washed, and furrowed with great, grimy perpendicular wrinkles. Leering fiercely at Mary, not pretending to see me, he wiped his mouth hurriedly with the back of his hand, and growled —
‘Drop it.’
‘Open it, please, Mr. Crowle,’ said Mary, renouncing the task.
Crowle wiped his mouth as before, looking inauspicious; shuffling to the spot, and muttering to himself, he first satisfied himself that the lock was fast, and then lodged the key in his coatpocket, and still muttering, retraced his steps.
‘We want the gate open, please,’ said Mary.
No answer.
‘Miss Maud wants to go into the town,’ she insisted.
‘We wants many a thing we can’t get,’ he growled, stepping into his habitation.
‘Please open the gate,’ I said, advancing.
He half turned on his threshold, and made a dumb show of touching his hat, although he had none on.
‘Can’t, ma’am; without an order from master, no one goes out here.’
‘You won’t allow me and my maid to pass the gate?’ I said.
‘’Tisn’t me, ma’am,’ said he; ‘but I can’t break orders, and no one goes out without the master allows.’
And without awaiting further parley, he entered, shutting his hatch behind him.
So Mary and I stood, looking very foolish at one another. This was the first restraint I had experienced since Milly and I had been refused a passage through the Windmill paling. The rule, however, on which Crowle insisted I felt confident could not have been intended to apply to me. A word to Uncle Silas would set all right; and in the meantime I proposed to Mary that we should take a walk — my favourite ramble — into the Windmill Wood.
I looked toward Dickon’s farmstead as we passed, thinking that Beauty might have been there. I did see the girl, who was plainly watching us. She stood in the doorway of the cottage, withdrawn into the shade, and, I fancied, anxious to escape observation. When we had passed on a little, I was confirmed in that belief by seeing her run down the footpath which led from the rear of the farmyard in the direction contrary to that in which we were moving.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 255
