We seemed to have our French lessons more frequently in the garden
than in the house; for there was a sort of arbour on the lawn near the
drawing-room window, to which we always found it easy to carry a table
and chairs, and all the rest of the lesson paraphernalia, if my mother
did not prohibit a lesson _al-fresco_.
M. de Chalabre wore, as a sort of morning costume, a coat, waistcoat,
and breeches, all made of the same kind of coarse grey cloth, which he
had bought in the neighbourhood. His three-cornered hat was brushed to a
nicety, his wig sat as no one else’s did. (My father’s was always awry.)
And the only thing wanted to his costume when he came was a flower.
Sometimes I fancied he purposely omitted gathering one of the roses that
clustered up the farm-house in which he lodged, in order to afford my
mother the pleasure of culling her choicest carnations and roses to make
him up his nosegay, or “posy,” as he liked to call it. He had picked
up that pretty country word, and adopted it as an especial favourite,
dwelling on the first syllable with all the languid softness of an
Italian accent. Many a time have Mary and I tried to say it like him, we
did so admire his way of speaking.
Once seated round the table, whether in the house or out of it, we were
bound to attend to our lessons; and somehow he made us perceive that
it was a part of the same chivalrous code that made him so helpful to
the helpless, to enforce the slightest claim of duty to the full. No
half-prepared lessons for him! The patience and the resource with which
he illustrated and enforced every precept; the untiring gentleness with
which he made our stubborn English tongues pronounce, and mis-pronounce,
and re-pronounce certain words; above all, the sweetness of temper which
never varied, were such as I have never seen equalled. If we wondered
at these qualities when we were children, how much greater has been our
surprise at their existence since we have been grown up, and have learnt
that, until his emigration, he was a man of rapid and impulsive action,
with the imperfect education implied in the circumstance that at fifteen
he was a sous-lieutenant in the Queen’s regiment, and must, consequently,
have had to apply himself hard and conscientiously to master the language
which he had in after life to teach.
Twice we had holidays to suit his sad convenience. Holidays with us were
not at Christmas, and Midsummer, Easter, and Michaelmas. If my mother
was unusually busy, we had what we called a holiday, though in reality
it involved harder work than our regular lessons; but we fetched, and
carried, and ran errands, and became rosy, and dusty, and sang merry
songs in the gaiety of our hearts. If the day was remarkably fine, my
dear father—whose spirits were rather apt to vary with the weather—would
come bursting in with his bright, kind, bronzed face, and carry the day
by storm with my mother. “It was a shame to coop such young things up in
a house,” he would say, “when every other young animal was frolicking in
the air and sunshine. Grammar!—what was that but the art of arranging
words?—and he never knew a woman but could do that fast enough.
Geography!—he would undertake to teach us more geography in one winter
evening, telling us of the countries where he had been, with just a map
before him, than we could learn in ten years with that stupid book, all
full of hard words. As for the French—why, that must be learnt; for he
should not like M. de Chalabre to think we slighted the lessons he took
so much pains to give us; but surely we could get up the earlier to
learn our French.” We promised by acclamation; and my mother—sometimes
smilingly, sometimes reluctantly—was always compelled to yield. And these
were the usual occasions for our holidays.
* * * * *
It was the fashion in those days to keep children much less informed
than they are now on the subjects which interest their parents. A sort
of hieroglyphic or cipher talk was used in order to conceal the meaning
of much that was said if children were present. My mother was proficient
in this way of talking, and took, we fancied, a certain pleasure in
perplexing my father by inventing a new cipher, as it were, every day.
For instance, for some time I was called Martia, because I was very tall
of my age; and, just as my father began to understand the name—and, it
must be owned, a good while after I had learned to prick up my ears
whenever Martia was named—my mother suddenly changed me into “the
buttress,” from the habit I had acquired of leaning my languid length
against a wall. I saw my father’s perplexity about this “buttress” for
some days, and could have helped him out of it, but I durst not. And so,
when the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was executed, the news was too
terrible to be put into plain English, and too terrible also to be known
to us children, nor could we at once find the clue to the cipher in
which it was spoken about. We heard about “the Iris being blown down,”
and saw my father’s honest, loyal excitement about it, and the quiet
reserve which always betokened some secret grief on my mother’s part.
We had no French lessons; and somehow the poor, battered, storm-torn
Iris was to blame for this. It was many weeks after this before we knew
the full reason of M. de Chalabre’s deep depression when he again came
amongst us; why he shook his head when my mother timidly offered him
some snowdrops on that first morning on which he began lessons again;
why he wore the deep mourning of that day, when all of the dress that
could be black was black, and the white muslin frills and ruffles were
unstarched and limp, as if to bespeak the very abandonment of grief. We
knew well enough the meaning of the next hieroglyphic announcement, “The
wicked, cruel boys had broken off the White Lily’s head!” That beautiful
queen, whose portrait once had been shown to us, with her blue eyes and
her fair, resolute look, her profusion of lightly powdered hair, her
white neck adorned with strings of pearls! We could have cried, if we
had dared, when we heard the transparent, mysterious words. We did cry
at night, sitting up in bed, with our arms round each other’s necks, and
vowing, in our weak, passionate, childish way, that if we lived long
enough, that lady’s death avenged should be. No one who cannot remember
that time can tell the shudder of horror that thrilled through the
country at hearing of this last execution. At the moment there was no
time for any consideration of the silent horrors endured for centuries
by the people, who at length rose in their madness against their rulers.
This last blow changed our dear M. de Chalabre. I never saw him again in
quite the same gaiety of heart as before this time. There seemed to be
tears very close behind his smiles for ever after. My father went to see
him when he had been about a week absent from us—no reason given, for
did not we, did not everyone know the horror the sun had looked upon? As
soon as my father had gone, my mother gave it in charge to us to make the
dressing-room belonging to our guest-chamber as much like a sitting-room
as possible. My father hoped to bring back M. de Chalabre for a visit to
us; but he would probably like to be a good deal alone; and we might move
any article of furniture we liked, if we only thought it would make him
comfortable.