There came into view a shining white mansion, massive, square-looking,
three-storied, pierced with high windows and covered like a mosaic with
newly-painted white Venetian shutters. A dream-house, gleaming against
a background of fresh greensward and dark yew-trees. "It is not real,"
I said half-aloud, and mystery banished disappointment. For I had
pictured battlements, towers, drawbridges: had thought that "château"
meant "castle."
Nothing that day had been quite real. Perhaps it was the hot spring
weather. Or the over-wideawakeness that followed a sleepless night--ah,
Channel steamboat, stirrings of body and soul, desperate illness
creating more desperate resolves to be good, prayers of "Not _this_
time, God, and I'll be pure, holy!" renewed with each sickening lurch.
Or the inevitable first-day mystery of the foreign land.
I had been met at Havre quay-side by a silent crafty little man in
black, with a face like Punch and a head (when with un-English gesture
he removed his hat) as smooth and bald as an egg.
"I am François," was all he vouchsafed.
I addressed him in French; he did not seem to understand, shook his
head vaguely and made no reply. A ridiculous fear seized me that I did
not know French at all, that Miss le Mesurier's lessons had been one
mighty sham, false lessons in some goblin tongue.
Or was I dreaming? All the way along the busy quay, amid clamouring
porters, gesticulating cabmen, and marionette-like crowds, through
unfamiliar streets, and in an unbelievable railway train, a sense of
dreaming had persisted.
The carriage drew up in front of the great doorway. François, by signs,
explained that he was entrusted with my luggage. A little woman came
out on to the steps of the porch to greet me, smiling ingratiatingly.
She was a tiny, shrivelled thing, with bulgy eyes and a high receding
forehead ridged with careworn lines, the whole dominated by an
enormous nose: a human dormouse dressed in black. Despite its harassed
air, the face was kind; her age might be fifty. The housekeeper, I
surmised. She shook hands effusively.
"Good day, Mademoiselle, so you are here."
"Yes, Madame."
"You are tired. Come upstairs. I will show you your room."
My relief at finding that the French I had learnt was real after all,
was less strong than a sudden feeling of fright--religious fright,
for God speaks only English--before the blasphemous oddness of the
thing. After all, my conversations with Miss le Mesurier had only been
for conversation's sake: by way of learning the trick. But this real
talking, this conducting of life's actual business in the foreign
jargon!--(I prayed swiftly to know. "Little fool," replied God, _in
French_.)
I followed the little old lady into a lofty hall, very cool after the
heat outside, a cold and stately place. Doors opened out of it on every
side, surmounted with antlers. On the walls I saw armour, old swords,
banners. We mounted a broad staircase with walls covered in tapestries.
A mighty staircase. Majesty filled me.
"Here is your bedroom," said the little lady, "and this door leads
through to your study or boudoir, call it what you like. I hope you
will like them both."
"They are beautiful!" I cried, and my heart beat faster as I surveyed
the bright bedchamber, the bed-hangings in rose-coloured chintz, the
elegant boudoir with book-case and writing-desk and walls covered with
portraits and miniatures and little racks for cups and vases--all for
me. My heart exulted in contrasts. Oh, now I was a lady!
"You will want to wash your hands. I shall wait for you. I am so
glad you have come. Your presence--that is your arrival--it gives
me pleasure.... Now come downstairs to luncheon to be introduced to
us all. They will be so delighted to see you, dear Mademoiselle, my
daughters--"
"Then you are--"
"Madame de Florian."
"The Countess! Oh a thousand pardons!"
What an un-Brethren-like phrase. And what a bad beginning.
She sniggered, was immensely tickled. "Ha! Ha! You thought I was a
servant."
"Oh no! Not really--"
"Oh yes you did. And that does not surprise me. My daughters have
always told me I look like an old family servant: this will amuse
them so. Now come along to luncheon. One thing," she whispered
confidentially as she opened the bedroom door, "before you begin with
my daughters we must have a little talk together about them both, and
what each had best read with you. Ah, they are so different, Elise and
Suzanne: one would not think them sisters. What anxiety it all gives
me!"
And she knitted her brows and half closed her eyes in an expression of
exaggerated care I thought more comical than sad.
The Countess led the way down the great staircase. In place of a door
the dining-room had high hanging curtains. We passed through them into
by far the largest room I had ever seen. The floor was of polished
wood; there were no rugs or carpets. In each distant corner was a
complete suit of armour; all along the walls stood massive and stately
pieces of furniture. In the middle of this huge apartment, like an
island surrounded by an ocean of bare floor, was a table at which were
seated four persons: two young ladies, a gentleman and a little old
woman.
All four stared at me with unconcealed interest. Introductions left me
in a maze; I was too self-conscious to hear names, far too full of the
fact that I was being introduced to them to concentrate on their being
introduced to me. Then for the next few minutes I was too busy trying
to eat and drink aristocratically, acquiring slyly the new ritual of
forks and spoons, posing modestly for five pairs of eyes, to hazard
my own stare-round. Of the conversation, which was conducted almost
exclusively by the Countess and her younger daughter Suzanne, and which
concerned some peasant marriage in the district, I found after the
first few moments that I understood almost everything. The food was as
delicious as it was unfamiliar. There was an omelette with rich little
crusts in it, and a venison-stew with olives.
Towards the end of the meal I found courage to take the offensive and
look round. With pretence of unawareness that was pitiful to see, all
immediately arranged themselves to be gazed at: except the elder girl
Elise, who faced me with equal eye.
At the head of the table sat the Countess, full of asides to the
butler, and peering remorselessly at everybody's plate. When you took a
portion of a dish she watched anxiously, to appraise quantity.
On her right, nearly opposite me, sat a tall dark gentleman. With his
pointed little beard, suave voice and exaggerated manners, I decided he
was a villain: a true French villain. I disliked him at once: his eyes
told me he knew it, and they reciprocated. His hard eyes (though dark
instead of blue), identical beard (though black instead of yellow),
treacly eyes and cat-like gesture, all reminded me of Uncle Simeon.
I soon learnt that his name was de Fouquier; he was a cousin of the
late Count's and steward for the family estates. Like the Count, he
had played some part in the coup d'état which had placed the reigning
Emperor on the throne. He spent most of the year at the Château, living
as one of the family.
Next to him, and immediately opposite me was my principal charge,
Mademoiselle Suzanne: a big healthy young woman, a few months
younger than myself, but a year or two older in appearance. She was
fair-haired, big-featured and bright-eyed. A large mouth with full
red lips proclaimed her sister to Maud--and daughter to Eve. She was
lively, kind and perhaps stupid. She was always laughing.
At the end of the table, facing the Countess and immediately on my
left, sat Mademoiselle Elise, the elder daughter. She was unhealthily
pale; her eyes were fixed-looking, with dark rims underneath, as
though she hardly slept. The oddest feature was the forehead, high and
of a marble whiteness that made the blue veins stand out. There was
something cross and soured in her expression: also something miserable
that reminded me of myself--the first condition of sympathy.
Finally, beside me, and on the Countess' left, sat a wizened little
woman, a tinier edition of the tiny Countess, but sallower, uglier and
sharper-featured: ferret rather than dormouse. A pair of enormous blue
spectacles enabled her to observe without being observed. She was the
Countess' lady-companion. Her name, absurdly enough, was Mademoiselle
Gros.
The plainness and ordinariness of them all was what struck me most.
I had pictured stately and distinguished persons--grand, noble,
French--and here was a company quite as ugly and plebeian as the
Meeting. No one fulfilled my notion of aristocrats! No one resembled
the Stranger.
After luncheon, Mademoiselle Suzanne came up to my rooms to help me
unpack. She prattled ceaselessly, in English, which she spoke well,
though I found reason to correct her every few moments and thus to
begin my duties.
"I shall like you, I know. I hated Miss Jayne: that's our governess
when we were little: she was very ugly and severe. I teased her all
I dared. Once I kicked her, but I was only nine. Mademoiselle Soyer,
who taught us last, was really French, though her mother was English,
so she doesn't count. Our other governesses were all French; but"
(quickly) "you are not a governess of course; you are to be a friend.
I am sure you will like it with us: You can do whatever you want:
ride--you do ride?--go to picnics and excursions; there are very
pretty places near here. I am so glad you are not what I feared. Your
cousin[!] Lord Tawborough told Mamma you were so clever. And some
English women, you know--you know what I mean. But we shall be friends,
real friends, I know it."
"Do you?" thought I. "You are friendly and kind, but not at all like
that unknown thing I hoped so hard to find, a real friend of my own
age and sex, whom I could be free with, confide in--not love, for that
there is only Robbie--who could sometimes take the place of the Other
Me in my talks and visions, who could end the loneliness."
She paused in her babyish fiddling with my possessions. "What are you
thinking about? You are not listening."
"Oh nothing," I said, a shade guiltily, for I was taken with one of my
intuitive panics: Suppose she had guessed my thoughts? But the big eyes
were staring at me with nothing beyond vague curiosity. To make amends,
I set to and tattled in the liveliest and worldliest fashion I knew.
"Oh how droll you are, and what good times we shall have together."
Dinner (no Supper now: I was a lady!) found me already much more at
ease. I corrected some mistake in Mlle. Suzanne's pronunciation, and
that set the table going. While Weather is the conversational shield
and buckler of the English or of the French against themselves, against
each other it is the oddness and madness of the other's tongue.
"Heavens!" cried Suzanne. "That makes five ways I know of to pronounce
_ough_ in English. It is mad, absurd."
"There are seven ways at least," I boasted.
"There's nothing like that in our language. French is so simple."
"Oh? What about the irregular verbs?"
"You've got them too, quite as many."
"But they're not so irregular as yours: in fact, most of them aren't
really irregular at all!"
"Oh, not really irregular at all! _Am_, _be_, _is_, _are_: or _go_,
_went_, _been_; aren't they irregular enough for you?"
"And the spelling, oh dear!" put in the Countess....
This sort of thing is as gay and unfailing as a fountain. Thanks to
the good oddities of my mother-tongue, on my very first evening in
this strange land I was beginning to feel at home. Certainly I talked
more than at any meal in the eighteen years before. Everywhere else I
had been a child, a chattel: a thing to be bullied and silenced (Aunt
Jael), tortured (Uncle Simeon), exhorted (the Saints), prayed for
(Grandmother). The new unconstraint exhilarated me; my natural bent for
talking came into its own. Here I was listened to, expected to shine,
deferred to. I was clever: I was amusing: I was a lady!
Alone in my cosy bedroom, with the lamp lit, I reviewed my first
impressions. How good it all was: comfort, ease, dainty food, fine
surroundings; kindliness, deference; freedom, importance. Luxurious
liberty filled me: after eighteen years of prison I had escaped. But
would things continue as well as they had begun? Or were there new
perils ahead? Then Conscience pricked. Is it right, this life of ease,
this new atmosphere of careless liberty: is it of the Lord? What place
has religion here? Where is God? Has any one of these fine folk spoken,
or even thought, of holy things during one moment of this day? HAVE YOU?
It was late. I opened my Bible, and turned, involuntarily, inevitably,
to the one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm. I read it through aloud.
None of the old emotion, none of the old misery returned; as I read I
tried almost to force it back. Where had fled the wretchedness of that
other first night of a new life, in the dreary chamber at Torribridge?
Where was the desperate luxurious loneliness of that time? Had the
fatal atmosphere of France, the Papist Babylon, already in an hour
magically completed a change that the easier times of the past few
years had begun? Was I deprived of my oldest privilege, my misery? Had
I become unworthy of unhappiness? I contrasted myself bitterly with
the unhappy Mary of seven years back. Ease was poisoning my soul. I
dwelt with perverse envy on the wretched little girl of that other
night, and then fell to picturing all the unhappiness that had framed
my life, from the long agony of my mother before she bore me to the
daily oppression of the years that followed. Soon I was shedding
tears of pity for my unhappy past self: weeping, if not for Zion.
(More and more, as the contrasts of my new life developed, I indulged
in this glad unhappiness of sentimental backward-looking, mimicked
and dramatized the sincerity of my old child's misery, wallowed in
retrospective self-pity, cried amid present ease: "Ah, what a sad life
_was_ mine!") That I could weep for it as past showed me how wide and
sudden was the gulf between the new life and the old. I resolved to
widen it.
Already a new person--an empty, a surface Mary, of whose existence
within me I had sometimes had half-realized and swiftly-vanishing
notions--seemed to have sapped the fortress of my soul, to have assumed
command of "Me": a person with the same brain, the same will, the same
body, but another soul, or no soul. My brain decided to stifle for a
while the old Mary, to let this emptier, ease-fuller personality be all
myself. Then at the end of a space of time, I should know which was the
stronger, which was the realler Me. I never doubted but that I should
be free to make my choice.
I chose my Resolutions carefully, prayed them aloud, put them on paper,
sealed them in time-honoured envelope:--
(1) I will cease all visions and daydreams.
(2) I will abandon all magic tricks, numbers and hopes.
(3) I will play with none of my Terrors: Hell, Satan, Eternity.
(4) I will not brood. I will fight my distrust of happiness, my
evil instinct that for every moment of pleasure the Lord will make
me pay to the uttermost farthing.
(5) I will seek none of the ecstasies of religion; not try to
experience the Rapture, nor dwell overmuch on holy things. Resting
from a too great pleasure in God, at the end of the period I am
setting myself I may find myself nearer to Him. (A wise experiment,
whispered a Voice: perhaps God's, perhaps the Devil's.)
(6) _Only_, I will read His Word daily, and have for every moment
the motto "What would He do?"
(7) Except at Christmas only, I will not think of Robbie. If at the
end of the time, he is as clear and close as ever, I shall know
myself and him better, just as with God (5).
ALL THESE THINGS, for the rest of this year 1866, eight months
and more [precisely thirty-seven weeks I noticed with a twinge of
emotion which was itself an involuntary breach of (2)], I do, with
God's help, here and now RESOLVE.
M. L.
On the envelope I wrote in capitals "Very Private" in English and
"Personnel" in French, added "April 17th, 1866" and signed "M. L."--the
death-warrant of Mary I, proclamation from the throne of Mary II. And I
undressed, and slept like a lady.