IN THE RUE DU CHERCHE-MIDI.
“Il ne faut jamais se laisser trop voir, même à ceux qui nous aiment.”
It was not very definitely known what Mademoiselle Brun taught in the
School of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in the Rue du Cherche-Midi in
Paris. For it is to be feared that Mademoiselle Brun knew nothing except
the world; and it is precisely that form of knowledge which is least
cultivated in a convent school.
“She has had a romance,” whispered her bright-eyed charges, and lapsed
into suppressed giggles at the mere mention of such a word in connection
with a little woman dressed in rusty black, with thin grey hair, a thin
grey face, and a yellow neck.
It would seem, however, that there is a point where even a
mother-superior must come down, as it were, into the market-place and
meet the world. That point is where the convent purse rattles thinly and
the mother-superior must face hunger. It had, in fact, been intimated to
the conductors of the School of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart by the
ladies of the quarter of St. Germain, that the convent teaching taught
too little of one world and too much of another. And the mother-superior,
being a sensible woman, agreed to engage a certain number of teachers
from the outer world. Mademoiselle Brun was vaguely entitled an
instructress, while Mademoiselle Denise Lange bore the proud title of
mathematical mistress.
Mademoiselle Brun, with her compressed mouth, her wrinkled face, and her
cold hazel eyes, accepted the situation, as we have to accept most
situations in this world, merely because there is no choice.
“What can you teach?” asked the soft-eyed mother-superior.
“Anything,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a direct gaze, which somehow
cowed the nun.
“She has had a romance,” whispered some wag of fourteen, when
Mademoiselle Brun first appeared in the schoolroom; and that became the
accepted legend regarding her.
“What are you saying of me?” she asked one day, when her rather sudden
appearance caused silence at a moment when silence was not compulsory.
“That you once had a romance, mademoiselle,” answered some daring girl.
“Ah!”
And perhaps the dusky wrinkles lapsed into gentler lines, for some one
had the audacity to touch mademoiselle's hand with a birdlike tap of one
finger.
“And you must tell it to us.”
For there were no nuns present, and mademoiselle was suspected of having
a fine contempt for the most stringent of the convent laws.
“No.”
“But why not, mademoiselle?”
“Because the real romances are never told,” replied Mademoiselle Brun.
But that was only her way, perhaps, of concealing the fact that there was
nothing to tell. She spoke in a low voice, for her class shared the long
schoolroom this afternoon with the mathematical class. The room did not
lend itself to description, for it had bare walls and two long windows
looking down disconsolately upon a courtyard, where a grey cat sunned
herself in the daytime and bewailed her lot at night. Who, indeed, would
be a convent cat?
At the far end of the long room Mademoiselle Denise Lange was
superintending, with an earnest face, the studies of five young ladies.
It was only necessary to look at the respective heads of the pupils to
conclude that these young persons were engaged in mathematical problems,
for there is nothing so discomposing to the hair as arithmetic.
Mademoiselle Lange herself seemed no more capable of steering a course
through a double equation than her pupils, for she was young and pretty,
with laughing lips and fair hair, now somewhat ruffled by her
calculations. When, however, she looked up, it might have been perceived
that her glance was clear and penetrating.
There was no more popular person in the Convent of the Sacred Heart than
Denise Lange, and in no walk of life is personal attractiveness so
much appreciated as in a girls' school. It is only later in life that
_ces demoiselles_ begin to find that their neighbour's beauty is
but skin-deep. The nuns--“fond fools,” Mademoiselle Brun called
them--concluded that because Denise was pretty she must be good. The
girls loved Denise with a wild and exceedingly ephemeral affection,
because she was little more than a girl herself, and was, like
themselves, liable to moments of deep arithmetical despondency.
Mademoiselle Brun admitted that she was fond of Denise because she was
her second cousin, and that was all.
When worldly mammas, essentially of the second empire, who perhaps had
doubts respecting a purely conventional education, made inquiries on this
subject, the mother-superior, feeling very wicked and worldly, usually
made mention of the mathematical mistress, Denise Lange, daughter of the
great and good general who was killed at Solferino. And no other word of
identification was needed. For some keen-witted artist had painted a
great salon picture of, not a young paladin, but a fat old soldier,
eighteen stone, on his huge charger, with shaking red cheeks and blazing
eyes, standing in his stirrups, bursting out of his tight tunic, and
roaring to his _enfants_ to follow him to their death.
It was after the battle of Solferino that Mademoiselle Brun had come into
Denise Lange's life, taking her from her convent school to live in a dull
little apartment in the Rue des Saints Pères, educating her, dressing
her, caring for her with a grim affection which never wasted itself in
words. How she pinched and saved, and taught herself that she might teach
others; how she triumphantly made both ends meet,--are secrets which,
like Mademoiselle Brun's romance, she would not tell. For French women
are not only cleverer and more capable than French men, but they are
cleverer and more capable than any other women in the world. History,
moreover, will prove this; for nearly all the great women that the world
has seen have been produced by France.
Denise and Mademoiselle Brun still lived in the dull little apartment
in the Rue des Saints Pères--that narrow street which runs southward
from the Quai Voltaire to the Boulevard St. Germain, where the cheap
frame-makers, the artists' colourmen, and the dealers in old prints have
their shops. To the convent school, the old woman and the young girl,
walking daily through the streets to their work, brought with them that
breath of worldliness which the advance of civilization seemed to render
desirable to the curriculum of a girls' school.
“It must be heavenly, mademoiselle, to walk in the streets quite alone,”
said one of Mademoiselle Brun's pupils to her one day.
“It is,” was the reply; “especially near the gutter.”
But this afternoon there was no conversation, for the literature class
knew that Mademoiselle Brun was in a contrary humour.
“She is looking at that dear Denise with discontented eyes. She is in a
shocking temper,” had been the whispered warning from mouth to mouth.
And in truth Mademoiselle Brun constantly glanced down the length of the
schoolroom to where Denise was sitting. But a seeing eye could well
perceive that it was not with Denise, but with the schoolroom, that the
little old woman was discontented. Perhaps she had at times a cruel
thought that the Rue des Saints Pères, emphasized as it were by the Rue
du Cherche-Midi, was hardly gay for a young life. Perhaps the soft touch
of spring that was in the March air stirred up restless longings in the
soul of this little grey town-mouse.
And while she was watching Denise, the cross-grained old nun who acted as
concierge to this quiet house came into the room, and handed Denise a
long blue envelope.
“It is addressed in a man's handwriting,” she said warningly.
“Then let us by all means send for the tongs,” answered Denise, taking
the letter with a mock air of alarm.
But she looked at it curiously, and glanced towards Mademoiselle Brun
before she opened it. It was, perhaps, characteristic of the little old
schoolmistress to show no interest whatever. And yet to her it probably
seemed an age before Denise came towards her, carrying the letter in her
outstretched hand.
“At first,” said the girl, “I thought it was a joke--a trick of one of
the girls. But it is serious enough. It is a romance inside a blue
envelope--that is all.”
She gave a joyous laugh, and threw the letter down on Mademoiselle Brun's
knees.
“It is my father's cousin, Mattei Perucca, who has died suddenly, and has
left me an estate in Corsica,” she continued, impatiently opening the
letter, which Mademoiselle Brun fingered with pessimistic distrust. “See
here! that is the address of my estate in Corsica, where I shall invite
you to stay with me--I, who stand before you in my old black alpaca, and
would borrow a hairpin if you can spare it.”
Her hands were busy with her hair as she spoke; and she seemed to touch
life and its entanglements as lightly. Mademoiselle Brun, however, read
the letter very gravely. For she was a wise old Frenchwoman, who knew
that it is only bad news which may safely be accepted as true.
The letter, which was accompanied by an enclosure, was from a
Marseilles solicitor, and began by inquiring as to the identity of
Mademoiselle Denise Lange, instructress at the convent school in the Rue
du Cherche-Midi, with the daughter of the late General Lange, who met his
death on the field of Solferino. It then proceeded to explain that Denise
Lange had inherited the property known as the Perucca property, in the
commune of Calvi, in the Island of Corsica. Followed a schedule of the
said property, which included the historic château, known as the Casa
Perucca. The solicitor concluded with a word for himself, after the
manner of his kind, and clearly demonstrated that no other lawyer was so
capable as he to arrange the affairs of Mademoiselle Denise Lange.
“Jean Jacques Moreau,” read Mademoiselle Brun, with some scorn, the
signature of the Marseilles notary. “An imbecile, your Jean Jacques--an
imbecile, like his great and mischievous namesake. He does not say of
what malady your second cousin died, or what income the property will
yield--if any.”
“But we can ask him those particulars.”
“And pay for each answer,” retorted Mademoiselle Brun, folding the letter
reflectively.
She was remembering that a few minutes earlier she had been thinking that
their present existence was too narrow for Denise; and now, in the
twinkling of an eye, life seemed to be opening out and spreading with a
rapidity which only the thoughts of youth could follow and the energy of
spring keep pace with.
“Then we will go to Marseilles and ask the questions ourselves, and then
he cannot charge for each answer, for I know he could never keep count.”
But Mademoiselle Brun only looked grave, and would not rise to Denise's
lighter humour. It almost seemed, indeed, as if she were afraid--she who
had never known fear through all the years of pinch and struggle, who had
faced a world that had no use for her, that would not buy the poor
services she had to sell. For to know the worst is always a relief, and
to exchange it for something better is like exchanging an old coat for a
new one.
“And in the mean time--” said Mademoiselle Brun, turning sharply upon her
pupils, who had taken the opportunity of abandoning French literature.
“In the mean time,” said Denise, turning reluctantly away--“in the mean
time, I am filling a vat of so many cubic metres, from a well so many
metres deep, with a pail containing four litres, and of course the pail
has a leak in it, and the well becomes deeper as one draws from it, and
the Casa Perucca is, I suppose, a dream.”
She went back to her work, and in a few moments was quite absorbed in it.
And it was Mademoiselle Brun who could not settle to her French
literature, nor compose her thoughts at all. For change is the natural
desire of youth, and the belief that it must be for the better, part and
parcel of the astounding optimism of that state of life.
A few minutes later Denise remembered the enclosure--a letter in a thick
white envelope, which was still lying on her desk. She opened it.
“MADEMOISELLE” (the letter ran),
“I think I have the pleasure of addressing the daughter of an old
comrade-in-arms, and this must be my excuse for at once approaching my
object. I hear by accident that you have inherited from the late Mattei
Perucca his small property near Olmeta in Corsica. I knew Mattei Perucca,
and the property you inherit is not unknown to one who has had official
dealings with landowners in Corsica. I tell you frankly that it would be
impossible, in the present disturbed state of the island, for you to live
at Olmeta, and I ask you as frankly whether you are disposed to sell me
your small estate. I have long cherished the scheme of buying a small
parcel of land in Corsica for the purpose of showing the natives that
agriculture may be made profitable in so fertile an island, by dint of
industry and a firm and unswerving honesty. The Perucca property would
suit my purpose. You may be doing a good action in handing over your
tenants to one who understands the Corsican nature. I, in addition to
relieving the monotony of my present exile at Bastia, may perhaps be
inaugurating a happier state of affairs in this most unfortunate country.
“Awaiting your answer, I am, mademoiselle,
“Your obedient servant,
“LOUIS GILBERT (Colonel).”
The school bell rang as Denise finished reading the letter. The class was
over.
“We shall descend into the well again to-morrow,” she said, closing her
books.
The girls trooped out into the forlorn courtyard, leaving Mademoiselle
Brun and Denise alone in the schoolroom. Mademoiselle Brun read the
second letter with a silent concentration. She glanced up when she had
finished it.
“Of course you will sell,” she said.
Denise was looking out of the tall closed windows at the few yards of sky
that were visible above the roofs. Some fleecy clouds were speeding
across the clear ether.
“No,” she answered slowly; “I think I shall go to Corsica. Tell me,” she
added, after a pause--“I suppose I have Corsican blood in my veins?”
“I suppose so,” admitted Mademoiselle Brun, reluctantly.