The Professor (19 page)

"No, sir; they are English names."

"Just so; and is it the custom of the Genevese to give their
children English appellatives?"

"Non, Monsieur; mais—"

"Speak English, if you please."

"Mais—"

"English—"

"But" (slowly and with embarrassment) "my parents were not all
the two Genevese."

"Say BOTH, instead of 'all the two,' mademoiselle."

"Not BOTH Swiss: my mother was English."

"Ah! and of English extraction?"

"Yes—her ancestors were all English."

"And your father?"

"He was Swiss."

"What besides? What was his profession?"

"Ecclesiastic—pastor—he had a church."

"Since your mother is an Englishwoman, why do you not speak
English with more facility?"

"Maman est morte, il y a dix ans."

"And you do homage to her memory by forgetting her language.
Have the goodness to put French out of your mind so long as I
converse with you—keep to English."

"C'est si difficile, monsieur, quand on n'en a plus l'habitude."

"You had the habitude formerly, I suppose? Now answer me in your
mother tongue."

"Yes, sir, I spoke the English more than the French when I was a
child."

"Why do you not speak it now?"

"Because I have no English friends."

"You live with your father, I suppose?"

"My father is dead."

"You have brothers and sisters?"

"Not one."

"Do you live alone?"

"No—I have an aunt—ma tante Julienne."

"Your father's sister?"

"Justement, monsieur."

"Is that English?"

"No—but I forget—"

"For which, mademoiselle, if you were a child I should certainly
devise some slight punishment; at your age—you must be two or
three and twenty, I should think?"

"Pas encore, monsieur—en un mois j'aurai dix-neuf ans."

"Well, nineteen is a mature age, and, having attained it, you
ought to be so solicitous for your own improvement, that it
should not be needful for a master to remind you twice of the
expediency of your speaking English whenever practicable."

To this wise speech I received no answer; and, when I looked up,
my pupil was smiling to herself a much-meaning, though not very
gay smile; it seemed to say, "He talks of he knows not what:" it
said this so plainly, that I determined to request information on
the point concerning which my ignorance seemed to be thus tacitly
affirmed.

"Are you solicitous for your own improvement?"

"Rather."

"How do you prove it, mademoiselle?"

An odd question, and bluntly put; it excited a second smile.

"Why, monsieur, I am not inattentive—am I? I learn my lessons
well—"

"Oh, a child can do that! and what more do you do?"

"What more can I do?"

"Oh, certainly, not much; but you are a teacher, are you not, as
well as a pupil?"

"Yes."

"You teach lace-mending?"

"Yes."

"A dull, stupid occupation; do you like it?"

"No—it is tedious."

"Why do you pursue it? Why do you not rather teach history,
geography, grammar, even arithmetic?"

"Is monsieur certain that I am myself thoroughly acquainted with
these studies?"

"I don't know; you ought to be at your age."

"But I never was at school, monsieur—"

"Indeed! What then were your friends—what was your aunt about?
She is very much to blame."

"No monsieur, no—my aunt is good—she is not to blame—she does
what she can; she lodges and nourishes me" (I report Mdlle.
Henri's phrases literally, and it was thus she translated from
the French). "She is not rich; she has only an annuity of twelve
hundred francs, and it would be impossible for her to send me to
school."

"Rather," thought I to myself on hearing this, but I continued,
in the dogmatical tone I had adopted:—

"It is sad, however, that you should be brought up in ignorance
of the most ordinary branches of education; had you known
something of history and grammar you might, by degrees, have
relinquished your lace-mending drudgery, and risen in the world."

"It is what I mean to do."

"How? By a knowledge of English alone? That will not suffice;
no respectable family will receive a governess whose whole stock
of knowledge consists in a familiarity with one foreign
language."

"Monsieur, I know other things."

"Yes, yes, you can work with Berlin wools, and embroider
handkerchiefs and collars—that will do little for you."

Mdlle. Henri's lips were unclosed to answer, but she checked
herself, as thinking the discussion had been sufficiently
pursued, and remained silent.

"Speak," I continued, impatiently; "I never like the appearance
of acquiescence when the reality is not there; and you had a
contradiction at your tongue's end."

"Monsieur, I have had many lessons both in grammar, history,
geography, and arithmetic. I have gone through a course of each
study."

"Bravo! but how did you manage it, since your aunt could not
afford lo send you to school?"

"By lace-mending; by the thing monsieur despises so much."

"Truly! And now, mademoiselle, it will be a good exercise for
you to explain to me in English how such a result was produced by
such means."

"Monsieur, I begged my aunt to have me taught lace-mending soon
after we came to Brussels, because I knew it was a METIER, a
trade which was easily learnt, and by which I could earn some
money very soon. I learnt it in a few days, and I quickly got
work, for all the Brussels ladies have old lace—very precious
—which must be mended all the times it is washed. I earned
money a little, and this money I grave for lessons in the studies
I have mentioned; some of it I spent in buying books, English
books especially; soon I shall try to find a place of governess,
or school-teacher, when I can write and speak English well; but
it will be difficult, because those who know I have been a
lace-mender will despise me, as the pupils here despise me.
Pourtant j'ai mon projet," she added in a lower tone.

"What is it?"

"I will go and live in England; I will teach French there."

The words were pronounced emphatically. She said "England" as
you might suppose an Israelite of Moses' days would have said
Canaan.

"Have you a wish to see England?"

"Yes, and an intention."

And here a voice, the voice of the directress, interposed:-

"Mademoiselle Henri, je crois qu'il va pleuvoir; vous feriez
bien, ma bonne amie, de retourner chez vous tout de suite."

In silence, without a word of thanks for this officious warning,
Mdlle. Henri collected her books; she moved to me respectfully,
endeavoured to move to her superior, though the endeavour was
almost a failure, for her head seemed as if it would not bend,
and thus departed.

Where there is one grain of perseverance or wilfulness in the
composition, trifling obstacles are ever known rather to
stimulate than discourage. Mdlle. Reuter might as well have
spared herself the trouble of giving that intimation about the
weather (by-the-by her prediction was falsified by the event—it
did not rain that evening). At the close of the next lesson I
was again at Mdlle. Henri's desk. Thus did I accost her:—

"What is your idea of England, mademoiselle? Why do you wish to
go there?"

Accustomed by this time to the calculated abruptness of my
manner, it no longer discomposed or surprised her, and she
answered with only so much of hesitation as was rendered
inevitable by the difficulty she experienced in improvising the
translation of her thoughts from French to English.

"England is something unique, as I have heard and read; my idea
of it is vague, and I want to go there to render my idea clear,
definite."

"Hum! How much of England do you suppose you could see if you
went there in the capacity of a teacher? A strange notion you
must have of getting a clear and definite idea of a country!
All you could see of Great Britain would be the interior of a
school, or at most of one or two private dwellings."

"It would be an English school; they would be English dwellings."

"Indisputably; but what then? What would be the value of
observations made on a scale so narrow?"

"Monsieur, might not one learn something by analogy?
An-echantillon—a—a sample often serves to give an idea of the
whole; besides, narrow and wide are words comparative, are they
not? All my life would perhaps seem narrow in your eyes—all the
life of a—that little animal subterranean—une taupe—comment
dit-on?"

"Mole."

"Yes—a mole, which lives underground would seem narrow even to
me."

"Well, mademoiselle—what then? Proceed."

"Mais, monsieur, vous me comprenez."

"Not in the least; have the goodness to explain."

"Why, monsieur, it is just so. In Switzerland I have done but
little, learnt but little, and seen but little; my life there was
in a circle; I walked the same round every day; I could not get
out of it; had I rested—remained there even till my death, I
should never have enlarged it, because I am poor and not skilful,
I have not great acquirements; when I was quite tired of this
round, I begged my aunt to go to Brussels; my existence is no
larger here, because I am no richer or higher; I walk in as
narrow a limit, but the scene is changed; it would change again
if I went to England. I knew something of the bourgeois of
Geneva, now I know something of the bourgeois of Brussels; if I
went to London, I would know something of the bourgeois of
London. Can you make any sense out of what I say, monsieur, or
is it all obscure?"

"I see, I see—now let us advert to another subject; you propose
to devote your life to teaching, and you are a most unsuccessful
teacher; you cannot keep your pupils in order."

A flush of painful confusion was the result of this harsh remark;
she bent her head to the desk, but soon raising it replied—

"Monsieur, I am not a skilful teacher, it is true, but practice
improves; besides, I work under difficulties; here I only teach
sewing, I can show no power in sewing, no superiority—it is a
subordinate art; then I have no associates in this house, I am
isolated; I am too a heretic, which deprives me of influence."

"And in England you would be a foreigner; that too would deprive
you of influence, and would effectually separate you from all
round you; in England you would have as few connections, as
little importance as you have here."

"But I should be learning something; for the rest, there are
probably difficulties for such as I everywhere, and if I must
contend, and perhaps: be conquered, I would rather submit to
English pride than to Flemish coarseness; besides, monsieur—"

She stopped—not evidently from any difficulty in finding words
to express herself, but because discretion seemed to say, "You
have said enough."

"Finish your phrase," I urged.

"Besides, monsieur, I long to live once more among Protestants;
they are more honest than Catholics; a Romish school is a
building with porous walls, a hollow floor, a false ceiling;
every room in this house, monsieur, has eyeholes and ear-holes,
and what the house is, the inhabitants are, very treacherous;
they all think it lawful to tell lies; they all call it
politeness to profess friendship where they feel hatred."

"All?" said I; "you mean the pupils—the mere children
—inexperienced, giddy things, who have not learnt to distinguish
the difference between right and wrong?"

"On the contrary, monsieur—the children are the most sincere;
they have not yet had time to become accomplished in duplicity;
they will tell lies, but they do it inartificially, and you know
they are lying; but the grown-up people are very false; they
deceive strangers, they deceive each other—"

A servant here entered:—

"Mdlle. Henri—Mdlle. Reuter vous prie de vouloir bien conduire
la petite de Dorlodot chez elle, elle vous attend dans le cabinet
de Rosalie la portiere—c'est que sa bonne n'est pas venue la
chercher—voyez-vous."

"Eh bien! est-ce que je suis sa bonne—moi?" demanded Mdlle.
Henri; then smiling, with that same bitter, derisive smile I had
seen on her lips once before, she hastily rose and made her exit.

THE young Anglo-Swiss evidently derived both pleasure and profit
from the study of her mother-tongue. In teaching her I did not,
of course, confine myself to the ordinary school routine; I made
instruction in English a channel for instruction in literature.
I prescribed to her a course of reading; she had a little
selection of English classics, a few of which had been left her
by her mother, and the others she had purchased with her own
penny-fee. I lent her some more modern works; all these she read
with avidity, giving me, in writing, a clear summary of each work
when she had perused it. Composition, too, she delighted in.
Such occupation seemed the very breath of her nostrils, and soon
her improved productions wrung from me the avowal that those
qualities in her I had termed taste and fancy ought rather to
have been denominated judgment and imagination. When I intimated
so much, which I did as usual in dry and stinted phrase, I looked
for the radiant and exulting smile my one word of eulogy had
elicited before; but Frances coloured. If she did smile, it was
very softly and shyly; and instead of looking up to me with a
conquering glance, her eyes rested on my hand, which, stretched
over her shoulder, was writing some directions with a pencil on
the margin of her book.

"Well, are you pleased that I am satisfied with your progress?" I
asked.

"Yes," said she slowly, gently, the blush that had half subsided
returning.

"But I do not say enough, I suppose?" I continued. "My praises
are too cool?"