CHAPTER XVI.
In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient of FrancesEvans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinion of hercharacter. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkable degree of atleast two good points, viz., perseverance and a sense of duty; Ifound she was really capable of applying to study, of contending withdifficulties. At first I offered her the same help which I had alwaysfound it necessary to confer on the others; I began with unloosing forher each knotty point, but I soon discovered that such help was regardedby my new pupil as degrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proudimpatience. Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solvealone any perplexities they might present. She set to the task withserious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour, eagerlydemanded more. So much for her perseverance; as to her sense of duty,it evinced itself thus: she liked to learn, but hated to teach; herprogress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself shecould calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly,perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painfuleffort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavourto bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people ingeneral the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was asunembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to itshe could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination wentcounter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestlewith the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of childrenespecially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate topersuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in thesense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wastefulexpense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Francestoiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere herconscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on theirpart, because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as byresisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control--byforcing her to the employment of coercive measures--they couldinflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings--human childrenespecially--seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a powerwhich they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consistonly in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations areduller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher andhis bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over thatinstructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the veryyoung, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathizenor how to spare. Frances, I fear, suffered much; a continual weightseemed to oppress her spirits; I have said she did not live in thehouse, and whether in her own abode, wherever that might be, she worethe same preoccupied, unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that alwaysshaded her features under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell.
One day I gave, as a devoir, the trite little anecdote of Alfred tendingcakes in the herdsman's hut, to be related with amplifications. Asingular affair most of the pupils made of it; brevity was what theyhad chiefly studied; the majority of the narratives were perfectlyunintelligible; those of Sylvie and Leonie Ledru alone pretended toanything like sense and connection. Eulalie, indeed, had hit, upon aclever expedient for at once ensuring accuracy and saving trouble; shehad obtained access somehow to an abridged history of England, and hadcopied the anecdote out fair. I wrote on the margin of her production"Stupid and deceitful," and then tore it down the middle.
Last in the pile of single-leaved devoirs, I found one of severalsheets, neatly written out and stitched together; I knew the hand, andscarcely needed the evidence of the signature "Frances Evans Henri" toconfirm my conjecture as to the writer's identity.
Night was my usual time for correcting devoirs, and my own room theusual scene of such task--task most onerous hitherto; and it seemedstrange to me to feel rising within me an incipient sense of interest,as I snuffed the candle and addressed myself to the perusal of the poorteacher's manuscript.
"Now," thought I, "I shall see a glimpse of what she really is; I shallget an idea of the nature and extent of her powers; not that she can beexpected to express herself well in a foreign tongue, but still, if shehas any mind, here will be a reflection of it."
The narrative commenced by a description of a Saxon peasant's hut,situated within the confines of a great, leafless, winter forest; itrepresented an evening in December; flakes of snow were falling, andthe herdsman foretold a heavy storm; he summoned his wife to aid him incollecting their flock, roaming far away on the pastoral banks of theThone; he warns her that it will be late ere they return. The good womanis reluctant to quit her occupation of baking cakes for the eveningmeal; but acknowledging the primary importance of securing the herds andflocks, she puts on her sheep-skin mantle; and, addressing a strangerwho rests half reclined on a bed of rushes near the hearth, bids himmind the bread till her return.
"Take care, young man," she continues, "that you fasten the door wellafter us; and, above all, open to none in our absence; whatever soundyou hear, stir not, and look not out. The night will soon fall; thisforest is most wild and lonely; strange noises are often heard thereinafter sunset; wolves haunt these glades, and Danish warriors infest thecountry; worse things are talked of; you might chance to hear, as itwere, a child cry, and on opening the door to afford it succour, a greatblack bull, or a shadowy goblin dog, might rush over the threshold;or, more awful still, if something flapped, as with wings, against thelattice, and then a raven or a white dove flew in and settled on thehearth, such a visitor would be a sure sign of misfortune to the house;therefore, heed my advice, and lift the latchet for nothing."
Her husband calls her away, both depart. The stranger, left alone,listens awhile to the muffled snow-wind, the remote, swollen sound ofthe river, and then he speaks.
"It is Christmas Eve," says he, "I mark the date; here I sit alone ona rude couch of rushes, sheltered by the thatch of a herdsman's hut;I, whose inheritance was a kingdom, owe my night's harbourage to a poorserf; my throne is usurped, my crown presses the brow of an invader; Ihave no friends; my troops wander broken in the hills of Wales; recklessrobbers spoil my country; my subjects lie prostrate, their breastscrushed by the heel of the brutal Dane. Fate! thou hast done thy worst,and now thou standest before me resting thy hand on thy blunted blade.Ay; I see thine eye confront mine and demand why I still live, why Istill hope. Pagan demon, I credit not thine omnipotence, and so cannotsuccumb to thy power. My God, whose Son, as on this night, took on Himthe form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controlsthy hand, and without His behest thou canst not strike a stroke. My Godis sinless, eternal, all-wise--in Him is my trust; and though strippedand crushed by thee--though naked, desolate, void of resource--I do notdespair, I cannot despair: were the lance of Guthrum now wet with myblood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray; Jehovah,in his own time, will aid."
I need not continue the quotation the whole devoir was in the samestrain. There were errors of orthography, there were foreign idioms,there were some faults of construction, there were verbs irregulartransformed into verbs regular; it was mostly made up, as the aboveexample shows, of short and somewhat rude sentences, and the style stoodin great need of polish and sustained dignity; yet such as it was, Ihad hitherto seen nothing like it in the course of my professorialexperience. The girl's mind had conceived a picture of the hut, of thetwo peasants, of the crownless king; she had imagined the wintry forest,she had recalled the old Saxon ghost-legends, she had appreciatedAlfred's courage under calamity, she had remembered his Christianeducation, and had shown him, with the rooted confidence of thoseprimitive days, relying on the scriptural Jehovah for aid against themythological Destiny. This she had done without a hint from me: I hadgiven the subject, but not said a word about the manner of treating it.
"I will find, or make, an opportunity of speaking to her," I said tomyself as I rolled the devoir up; "I will learn what she has of Englishin her besides the
name of Frances Evans; she is no novice in thelanguage, that is evident, yet she told me she had neither been inEngland, nor taken lessons in English, nor lived in English families."
In the course of my next lesson, I made a report of the other devoirs,dealing out praise and blame in very small retail parcels, according tomy custom, for there was no use in blaming severely, and high encomiumswere rarely merited. I said nothing of Mdlle. Henri's exercise, and,spectacles on nose, I endeavoured to decipher in her countenance hersentiments at the omission. I wanted to find out whether in her existeda consciousness of her own talents. "If she thinks she did a cleverthing in composing that devoir, she will now look mortified," thoughtI. Grave as usual, almost sombre, was her face; as usual, her eyes werefastened on the cahier open before her; there was something, I thought,of expectation in her attitude, as I concluded a brief review of thelast devoir, and when, casting it from me and rubbing my hands, I badethem take their grammars, some slight change did pass over her airand mien, as though she now relinquished a faint prospect of pleasantexcitement; she had been waiting for something to be discussed in whichshe had a degree of interest; the discussion was not to come on, soexpectation sank back, shrunk and sad, but attention, promptly fillingup the void, repaired in a moment the transient collapse of feature;still, I felt, rather than saw, during the whole course of the lesson,that a hope had been wrenched from her, and that if she did not showdistress, it was because she would not.
At four o'clock, when the bell rang and the room was in immediatetumult, instead of taking my hat and starting from the estrade, I satstill a moment. I looked at Frances, she was putting her books into hercabas; having fastened the button, she raised her head; encountering myeye, she made a quiet, respectful obeisance, as bidding good afternoon,and was turning to depart:--
"Come here," said I, lifting my finger at the same time. She hesitated;she could not hear the words amidst the uproar now pervading bothschool-rooms; I repeated the sign; she approached; again she pausedwithin half a yard of the estrade, and looked shy, and still doubtfulwhether she had mistaken my meaning.
"Step up," I said, speaking with decision. It is the only way of dealingwith diffident, easily embarrassed characters, and with some slightmanual aid I presently got her placed just where I wanted her to be,that is, between my desk and the window, where she was screened from therush of the second division, and where no one could sneak behind her tolisten.
"Take a seat," I said, placing a tabouret; and I made her sit down. Iknew what I was doing would be considered a very strange thing, and,what was more, I did not care. Frances knew it also, and, I fear, by anappearance of agitation and trembling, that she cared much. I drew frommy pocket the rolled-up devoir.
"This is yours, I suppose?" said I, addressing her in English, for I nowfelt sure she could speak English.
"Yes," she answered distinctly; and as I unrolled it and laid it outflat on the desk before her with my hand upon it, and a pencil in thathand, I saw her moved, and, as it were, kindled; her depression beamedas a cloud might behind which the sun is burning.
"This devoir has numerous faults," said I. "It will take you some yearsof careful study before you are in a condition to write English withabsolute correctness. Attend: I will point out some principal defects."And I went through it carefully, noting every error, and demonstratingwhy they were errors, and how the words or phrases ought to have beenwritten. In the course of this sobering process she became calm. I nowwent on:
"As to the substance of your devoir, Mdlle. Henri, it has surprised me;I perused it with pleasure, because I saw in it some proofs of taste andfancy. Taste and fancy are not the highest gifts of the human mind, butsuch as they are you possess them--not probably in a paramount degree,but in a degree beyond what the majority can boast. You may then takecourage; cultivate the faculties that God and nature have bestowed onyou, and do not fear in any crisis of suffering, under any pressure ofinjustice, to derive free and full consolation from the consciousness oftheir strength and rarity."
"Strength and rarity!" I repeated to myself; "ay, the words are probablytrue," for on looking up, I saw the sun had dissevered its screeningcloud, her countenance was transfigured, a smile shone in her eyes--asmile almost triumphant; it seemed to say--
"I am glad you have been forced to discover so much of my nature; youneed not so carefully moderate your language. Do you think I am myself astranger to myself? What you tell me in terms so qualified, I have knownfully from a child."
She did say this as plainly as a frank and flashing glance could, butin a moment the glow of her complexion, the radiance of her aspect,had subsided; if strongly conscious of her talents, she was equallyconscious of her harassing defects, and the remembrance of theseobliterated for a single second, now reviving with sudden force, at oncesubdued the too vivid characters in which her sense of her powers hadbeen expressed. So quick was the revulsion of feeling, I had not time tocheck her triumph by reproof; ere I could contract my brows to a frownshe had become serious and almost mournful-looking.
"Thank you, sir," said she, rising. There was gratitude both in hervoice and in the look with which she accompanied it. It was time,indeed, for our conference to terminate; for, when I glanced around,behold all the boarders (the day-scholars had departed) were congregatedwithin a yard or two of my desk, and stood staring with eyes and mouthswide open; the three maitresses formed a whispering knot in one corner,and, close at my elbow, was the directress, sitting on a low chair,calmly clipping the tassels of her finished purse.