by Ellen Wood
“The poor girl has lain like a weight upon my mind, since the time when we abandoned her in London,” confessed Lucy.
“Why did you abandon her?”
“It was not my fault,” murmured Lucy; and Robert felt vexed to have asked the hasty question. “I hoped she went home, as I desired her; but I did not feel sure of it, for Clara was thoughtless. And those unsuspicious country girls cannot take care of themselves too well. Robert, whatever has happened I regard as our fault,” she added, looking up at him with some fever in her eyes.
“As Mr. Bird’s fault; not yours,” corrected Robert — who, strange perhaps to say, observed courtesy of speech towards Bird when talking with Lucy: giving him in general a handle to his name. It might have sounded ironical, but that he couldn’t help. “Did you never write to ascertain what had become of her, Lucy?”
“My husband would not let me. He is often in difficulties: and we never have a settled home, or address. What will be done with her, Robert?”
“She will stay where she is until she is strong; Jane wishes it; and then we shall see about the future. Something will turn up for her in some place or other, I’ve little doubt.”
Jane glanced at her husband and smiled. Robert had given her a promise to help the girl to an honest living. But, as he frankly told his wife, had he known it was a sister of Bird’s, he might never have done so.
“About yourself, Lucy; that may be the better theme to talk of just now,” he resumed. “Will you remain here for good in your old home?”
The hot tears rushed to her eyes, the hot flush to her cheeks. She looked deprecatingly at both, as if craving pardon.
“I cannot. You know I cannot.”
“Shall I tell you what Bird is, Lucy? And what he most likely will be?”
“To what end, Robert?” she faintly asked. “I know it without.”
“Then you ought to leave him — for your own sake. Leave him before you are compelled to do so.”
“Not before, Robert.”
“But why?”
“Oh, Robert, don’t you see?” she answered, breaking down. “He is my husband.”
And nothing else could they get from her. Though she cried and sobbed, and did not deny that her life was a fear and a misery, yet she would go back to him; go back on the morrow; it was her duty. In the moment’s anger Robert Ashton said he would wash his hands of her as well as of Bird. But Jane and Lucy knew better.
“What can have induced you and Robert to take up this poor Clara in the way you are doing — and mean to do?” she asked when she was alone with Jane at the close of the evening.
“I — owe a debt of gratitude; and I thought I could best pay it in this way,” was Mrs. Ashton’s timid and rather unwilling answer.
“A debt of gratitude! To Clara?”
“No. To Heaven.”
VII.
CHARLES VAN RHEYN.
I shall always say it was a singular thing that I should chance to go back to school that time the day before the quarter opened. Singular, because I heard and saw more of the boy I am going to tell of than I otherwise might have heard and seen. I was present at his arrival; and I was present at his — well, let us say, at his departure.
The midsummer holidays were nearly up when Hugh was taken ill. Duffham was uncertain what the illness was going to be: so he pitched upon scarlatina. Upon that, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley packed me back to school there and then. Not from any fear of my taking it; I had had it, and Tod too (and both of us were well again, I recollect, within a week or so); but if once the disease had really shown itself, Dr. Frost would not have liked us to return lest we might convey it to the school. Tod was in Gloucestershire. He was written to, and told not to return home, but to go straight to school.
Dr. Frost was surprised to see me. He said my coming back was quite right; and I am sure he tried to put me at ease and make me comfortable. Not a single boy had stayed the holidays that summer, and the doctor and I were alone. The school would open the following day, when masters and boys were alike expected to return. I had dinner with the doctor — he usually dined late during the holidays — and we played at chess afterwards.
Breakfast was just over the next morning when the letters came in. Amongst them was one from France, bearing the Rouen post-mark. Now the doctor, learned man though he was in classics and what not, could make nothing of French. Carrying the letter to the window, turning its pages over and back again, and staring at it through his spectacles, he at last brought it to me.
“You are a pretty good French scholar, Johnny; can you read this? I can’t, I confess. But the paper’s so thin, and the ink so pale, and the writing so small, I could scarcely see it if it were English.”
And I had to go over it twice before I could make it out. As he said, the ink was pale, and it was a frightfully small and cramped handwriting. The letter was dated Rouen, and was signed curtly, “Van Rheyn,” French fashion, without the writer’s Christian name. Monsieur Van Rheyn wrote to say that he was about to consign his son, Charles Aberleigh Van Rheyn, to Dr. Frost’s care, and that he would arrive quickly after the letter, having already departed on his journey under the charge of a “gentilhomme Anglais.” It added that the son would bring credentials with him; that he spoke English, and was of partly English descent, through his mother, the late Madame Van Rheyn, née Aberleigh.
“Rather a summary way of consigning a pupil to my charge,” remarked Dr. Frost. “Aberleigh? — Aberleigh?” he continued, as if trying to recollect something, and bending his spectacles over the letter. “She must have been one of the Aberleighs of Upton, I should think. Perhaps Hall knows? I have heard her mention the Aberleighs.”
Ringing the bell, the housekeeper was sent for. Dr. Frost asked her what she knew of the Aberleighs of Upton.
“There’s none of them left now to know, sir,” answered Hall. “There never was but two — after the old mother died: Miss Aberleigh and Miss Emma Aberleigh. Good fortunes the young ladies had, sir, and both of them, I remember, married on the same day. Miss Aberleigh to Captain Scott, and Miss Emma to a French gentleman, Mosseer Van Rheyn.”
“I should think, by the name, he was Dutch — or Flemish; not French,” remarked the doctor.
“Anyway, sir, he was said to be French,” returned Hall. “A dark sallow gentleman who wore a braided coat. The young ladies never came back to their home after the wedding-day, and the place was sold. Captain Scott sailed with his wife for Injee, and Mosseer Van Rheyn took Miss Emma off to his house in France.”
“Do you recollect where his home was? In what part of France?”
“No, sir. And if I did, I should never be able to speak the name. Not long ago I heard it said that poor Miss Emma was dead — Mrs. Van Rheyn that is. A nice quiet girl, she was.”
“Then I conclude the new pupil spoken of to me, must be the son of Monsieur Van Rheyn and Miss Emma Aberleigh,” remarked the doctor, when Hall was dismissed. “You must help to make things pleasant for him, Johnny: it will be a change at first from his own home and country. Do you remember that other French boy we had here?”
I did. And the remembrance made me laugh. He used to lament every day that he had not a plate of soup for dinner, and to say the meat was tough.
Strolling out at the front iron gates in the course of the morning, wondering how long the boys were going to be before some of them put in an appearance, I caught sight of the first. He was walking up from the Plough and Harrow Inn, and must have come by the omnibus that plied backwards and forwards between the inn and the station. The Plough and Harrow man-of-all-work followed behind, carrying a large trunk.
Of all queer figures that boy looked the queerest. I wondered who he was, and whether he could really be coming as a pupil. His trousers and vest were nankeen, his coat was a sort of open blouse, and flew out behind him; the hat he wore was a tall chimney-pot with a wide brim. Off went the hat with a bow and a flourish of the arm, as he reached me and the gates.
“I ask your pardon, sir. This is, I believe, the pension of Dr. Frost?”
The French accent, though that was slight, the French manners, the French turn of the words, told me who it was. For a minute or two I really could not answer for staring at him. He seemed to have arrived with a shaved head, as if just out of gaol, or of brain-fever.
The hair was cut as closely as it could be cut, short of shaving: his face was red and round and covered with freckles: you could not have put a pin’s point between them. Really and truly it was the most remarkable figure ever seen out of a picture. I could not guess his age exactly: something perhaps between twelve and fourteen. He was slender and upright, and to all appearance strong.
“I think you must be Charles Van Rheyn,” I said then, holding out my hand to welcome him. “Dr. Frost is expecting you.”
He put his hand into mine after a moment’s hesitation, not seeming quite to understand that he might: but such a brightness came into his rather large and honest grey eyes, that I liked him from that hour, in spite of the clothes and the freckles and the shorn head. He had crossed to Folkestone by the night boat, he said, had come on to London, and the gentleman, who was his escort so far, had there put him into an early train to come on to his destination.
Dr. Frost was at the window, and came to the door. Van Rheyn stood still when within a yard of him, took his hat off with the most respectful air, and bowed his head half-way to the ground. He had evidently been brought up with a reverence for pastors and masters. The doctor shook hands. The first thing Van Rheyn did on entering the reception-parlour, was to produce from some inner pocket a large, square letter, sealed with two flaming red seals and a coat of arms; which he handed to the doctor. It contained a draft for a good sum of money in advance of the first three months’ payment, and some pages of closely-written matter in the crabbed hand of Monsieur Van Rheyn. Dr. Frost put the pages aside to await the arrival of the French master.
“My father was unable to remit the exact amount of money for the trimestre, sir, not knowing what it would be,” said young Van Rheyn. “And there will be the extra expenses besides. He will arrange that with you later.”
“The end of the term would have been time enough to remit this,” said the doctor, smiling. “It is not our custom to receive payment in advance.”
“It is the custom in France, sir, I assure you. And, besides, I am to you a stranger.”
“Not altogether a stranger; I believe I know something of your mother’s family,” said Dr. Frost. “How came your father to fix upon my school for you?”
“My mother knew of your school, sir: she and my father used to talk of placing me at it. And an English gentleman who came lately to Rouen spoke of it — he said he knew you very well. That again put into my father’s head to send me.”
It was the same Van Rheyn that they had thought — the son of Miss Emma Aberleigh. She had been dead two years.
“Are you a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?” questioned Dr. Frost.
“I am Protestant, sir: the same that my mother was. We attended the église of Monsieur le Pasteur Mons, of the Culte Evangélique.”
The doctor asked him if he would take anything before dinner, and he chose a glass of eau sucrée. The mal-de-mer had been rather bad, he said, and he had not been able to eat since.
Evidently Hall did not approve of eau sucrée. She had never made eau sucary, she said, when sent to for it. Bringing in the water and sugar, she stood by to watch Van Rheyn mix it, her face sour, her lips drawn in. I am sure it gave her pleasure, when he asked for a few drops of orange-flower water, to be able to say there was not such a thing in the house.
“This young gentleman is the son of the Miss Emma Aberleigh you once knew, Hall,” spoke the doctor, with a view no doubt to putting her on good terms with the new pupil.
“Yes, sir,” she answered crustily. “He favours his mamma about the eyes.”
“She must have had very nice eyes,” I put in.
“And so she had,” said Van Rheyn, looking at me gratefully. “Thank you for saying so. I wish you could have known her!”
“And might I ask, sir, what has become of the other Miss Aberleigh?” asked Hall of Van Rheyn. “The young lady who went off to Injee with her husband on the wedding-day.”
“You would say my Aunt Margaret,” he rejoined. “She is quite well. She and the major and the children will make the voyage to Europe next year.”
After the eau sucrée came to an end, the doctor turned him over to me, telling me to take care of him till dinner-time, which that day would be early. Van Rheyn said he should like to unpack his box, and we went upstairs together. Growing confidential over the unpacking, he gave me scraps of information touching his home and family, the mention of one item leading to another.
His baptismal name in full, he said, was Charles Jean Aberleigh; his father’s was Jean Marie. Their home was a très joli château close to Rouen: in five minutes you could walk there. It was all much changed since his mother died (he seemed to have loved her with a fervent love and to revere her memory); the last thing he did on coming away for England was to take some flowers to her grave. It was thought in Rouen that his father was going to make a second marriage with one of the Demoiselles de Tocqueville, whom his Aunt Claribelle did not like. His Aunt Claribelle, his father’s sister, had come to live at the château when his mother died; but if that Thérèsine de Tocqueville came into the house she would quit it. The Demoiselles de Tocqueville had hardly any dot, — which would be much against the marriage, Aunt Claribelle thought, and bad for his father; because when he, Charles, should be the age of twenty-one, the money came to him; it had been his mother’s, and was so settled: and his father’s own property was but small. Of course he should wish his father to keep always as much as he pleased, but Aunt Claribelle thought the English trustees would not allow that. Aunt Claribelle’s opinion was, that his father had at length decided to send him to a pension in England while he made the marriage; but he (Charles) knew that his mother had wished him to finish his education in England, and to go to one of the two colleges to which English gentlemen went.
“Here comes old Fontaine,” I interrupted at this juncture, seeing his arrival from the window.
Van Rheyn looked up from his shirts, which he was counting. He seemed to have the tidiest ways in the world. “Who is it that you say? Fontaine?”
“Monsieur Fontaine, the French master. You can talk away with him in your native tongue as much as you like, Van Rheyn.”
“But I have come here to speak the English tongue, not the French,” debated he, looking at me seriously. “My father wishes me to speak and read it without any accent; and I wish it also.”
“You speak it very well already.”
“But you can hear that it is not my native tongue — that I am a foreigner.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I must learn to speak it without that — as the English do. It will be necessary.”
I supposed he might allude to his future life. “What are you to be, Van Rheyn?” I inquired.
“What profession, do you ask? I need not be any: I have enough fortune to be a rentier — I don’t know what you call that in English; it means a gentleman who lives on his money. But I wish, myself, to be an English priest.”
“An English priest! Do you mean a parson?”
“Yes, I mean that. So you see I must learn the English tongue. My mother used to talk to me about the priests in her land — —”
“Parsons, Van Rheyn.”
“I beg your pardon: I forget. And I fear I have caught up the French names for things since my mother died. It was neither priest nor parson she used to call the English ministers.”
“Clergymen, perhaps.”
“That was it. She said the clergymen were good men, and she should like me to be one. In winter, when it was cold, and she had some fire in her chamber, I used to sit up there with her, after coming home from classe, and we talked together, our two selves.
I should have much money, she said, when I grew to be a man, and could lead an idle life. But she would not like that: she wanted me to be a good man, and to go to heaven when I died, where she would be; and she thought if I were a clergyman I should have serious thoughts always. So I wish to be a clergyman.”
He said all this with the utmost simplicity and composure, just as he might have spoken of going for a ride. There could be no mistaking that he was of a thoroughly straightforward and simple-minded nature.
“It might involve your living over here, Van Rheyn: once you were in Orders.”
“Yes, I know. Papa would not mind. England was mamma’s country, and she loved it. There was more peace in England than in France, she thought.”
“I say, she must have been a good mother, Van Rheyn.”
In a moment his grey eyes were shining at me through a mist of tears. “Oh, she was so good, so good! You can never know. If she had lived I should never have had sorrow.”
“What did she die of?”
“Ah, I cannot tell. She was well in the morning, and she was dead at night. Not that she was strong ever. It was one Dimanche. We had been to the office, she and I — —”
“What office?”
“Oh, pardon — I forget I am speaking English. I mean to church. Monsieur Mons had preached; and we were walking along the street towards home afterwards, mamma talking to me about the sermon, which had been a very holy one, when we met the Aunt Claribelle, who had come into the town for high mass at St. Ouen. Mamma asked her to come home and dine with us; and she said yes, but she must first go to say bon-jour to old Madame Soubitez. As she parted from us, there was suddenly a great outcry. It was fête at Rouen that Sunday. Some bands of music were to play on the estrade in the public garden, competing for a prize, consequently the streets were crowded. We looked back at the noise, and saw many horses, without riders, galloping along towards us; men were running after them, shouting and calling; and the people, mad with fright, tumbled over one another in the effort to get away. Later, we heard that these horses, frightened by something, had broken out of an hotel post-yard. Well, mamma gave just a cry of fear and held my hand tighter, as we set off to run with the rest, the horses stamping wildly after us. But the people pushed between us, and I lost her. She was at home before me, and was sitting at the side of the fountain, inside the château entrance-gate, when I got up, her face all white and blue, and her neck and throat beating, as she clung to the nearest lion with both hands. It alarmed me more than the horses had, for I had never seen her look so. ‘Come in, mamma,’ I said, ‘and take a little glass of cordial;’ but she could not answer me, she did not stir. I called one of the servants, and by-and-by she got a little breath again, and went into the house, leaning upon both of us, and so up to her chamber. Quite immediately papa came home: he always went into town to his club on the Sunday mornings, and he ran for Monsieur Petit, the médecin — the doctor. By seven o’clock in the evening, mamma was dead.”
