Chapter 27

Above the photograph was written in ornamental characters, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles, à Noireau, Calvados." Underneath it were the words, "Fondé par M. Emile Perrier, avocat, et par son épouse." Though I knew very little of French, I could make out the meaning of these sentences. Monsieur Perrier was an _avocat_. Tardif had happened to speak to me about the notaries in Guernsey, who appeared to me to be of the same rank as our solicitors, while the _avocats_ were on a par with our barristers. A barrister founding a boarding-school for young ladies might be somewhat opposed to English customs, but it was clear that he must be a man of education and position; a gentleman, in fact.

"Isn't it a lovely place?" asked the child beside me, with a deep sigh of longing.

"Yes," I said; "I should like to go."

I had had time to make all these observations before the owner of the foreign voice, which I had heard at the door, came in. At the first glance I knew her to be a Frenchwoman, with the peculiar yellow tone in her skin which seems inevitable in middle-aged Frenchwomen. Her black eyes were steady and cold, and her general expression one of watchfulness. She had wrapped tightly about her a China crape shawl, which had once been white, but had now the same yellow tint as her complexion. The light was low, but she turned it a little higher, and scrutinized me with a keen and steady gaze.

"I have not the honor of knowing you," she said politely.

"I come from Ridley's agency-office," I answered, "about a situation as English teacher in a school in France."

"Be seated, miss," she said, pointing me to a stiff, high-backed chair, whither the little girl followed me, stroking with her hand the soft seal-skin jacket I was wearing.

"It is a great chance," she continued; "my friend Madame Perrier is very good, very amiable for her teachers. She is like a sister for them. The terms are very high, very high for France; but there is absolutely every comfort. The arrangements are precisely like England. She has lived in England for two years, and knows what English young ladies look for; and the house is positively English. I suppose you could introduce a few English pupils."

"No," I answered, "I am afraid I could not. I am sure I could not."

"That of course must be considered in the premium," she continued; "if you could have introduced, say, six pupils, the premium would be low. I do not think my friend would take one penny less than twenty pounds for the first year, and ten for the second."

The tears started to my eyes. I had felt so sure of going if I would pay ten pounds, that I was quite unprepared for this disappointment. There was still my diamond ring left; but how to dispose of it, for any thing like its value, I did not know. It was in my purse now, with all my small store of money, which I dared not leave behind me in my lodgings.

"What were you prepared to give?" asked Mrs. Wilkinson, while I hesitated.

"The clerk at Ridley's office told me the premium would be ten pounds," I answered;

"I do not see how I can give more."

"Well," she said, after musing a little, while I watched her face anxiously, "it is time this child went. She has been here a month, waiting for somebody to take her down to Noireau. I will agree with you, and will explain it to Madame Perrier. How soon could you go?"

"I should like to go to-morrow," I replied, feeling that the sooner I quitted London the better. Mrs. Wilkinson's steady eyes fastened upon me again with sharp curiosity.

"Have you references, miss?" she asked.

"No," I faltered, my hope sinking again before this old difficulty.

"It will be necessary then," she said, "for you to give the money to me, and I will forward it to Madame Perrier. Pardon, miss, but you perceive I could not send a teacher to them unless I knew that she could pay the money down. There is my commission to receive the money for my friend."

She gave me a paper written in French, of which I could read enough to see that it was a sort of official warrant to receive accounts for Monsieur Perrier, _avocat_, and his wife. I did not waver any longer. The prospect seemed too promising for me to lose it by any irresolution. I drew out my purse, and laid down two out of the three five-pound notes left me. She gave me a formal receipt in the names of Emile and Louise Perrier, and her sober face wore an expression of satisfaction.

"There! it is done," she said, wiping her pen carefully. "You will take lessons, any lessons you please, from the professors who attend the school. It is a grand chance, miss, a grand chance. Let us say you go the day after to-morrow; the child will be quite ready. She is going for four years to that splendid place, a place for ladies of the highest degree."

At that moment an imperious knock sounded upon the outer door, and the little girl ran to answer it, leaving the door of our room open. A voice which I knew well, a voice which made my heart stand still and my veins curdle, spoke in sharp loud tones in the hall.

"Is Mr. Foster come home yet?" were the words the terrible voice uttered, quite close to me it seemed; so close that I shrank back shivering as if every syllable struck a separate blow. All my senses were awake: I could hear every sound in the hall, each step that came nearer and nearer. Was she about to enter the room where I was sitting? She stood still for half a minute as if uncertain what to do.

"He is up stairs," said the child's voice. "He told me he was ill when I opened the door for him."

"Where is Mrs. Wilkinson?" she asked.

"She is here," said the child, "but there's a lady with her."

Then the woman's footsteps went on up the staircase. I listened to them climbing up one step after another, my brain throbbing with each sound, and I heard a door opened and closed. Mrs. Wilkinson had gone to the door, and looked out into the hall, as if expecting some other questions to be asked. She had not seen my panic of despair. I must get away before I lost the use of my senses, for I felt giddy and faint.

"I will send the child to you in a cab on Wednesday," she said, as I stood up and made my way toward the hall; "you have not told me your address."

I paused for a moment. Dared I tell her my address? Yet my money was paid, and if I did not I should lose both it and the refuge I had bought with it. Besides, I should awaken suspicion and inquiry by silence. It was a fearful risk to run; yet it seemed safer than a precipitous retreat. I gave her my address, and saw her write it down on a slip of paper.

As I returned to my lodgings I grew calmer and more hopeful. It was not likely that my husband would see the address, or even hear that any one like me had been at the house. I did not suppose he would know the name of Martineau as my mother's maiden name. As far as I recollected, I had never spoken of her to him. Moreover he was not a man to make himself at all pleasant and familiar with persons whom he looked upon as inferiors. It was highly improbable that he would enter into any conversation with his landlady. If that woman did so, all she would learn would be that a young lady, whose name was Martineau, had taken a situation as English teacher in a French school. What could there be in that to make her think of me?

I tried to soothe and reassure myself with these reasonings, but I could not be quiet or at peace. I watched all through the next day, listening to every sound in the house below; but no new terror assailed me. The second night I was tranquil enough to sleep.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

LEAVING ENGLAND.

I was on the rack all the next day. It was the last day I should be in England, and I had a nervous dread of being detained. If I should once more succeed in quitting the country undetected, it seemed as though I might hope to be in safety in Calvados. Of Calvados I knew even less than of the Channel Islands; I had never heard the name before. But Mrs. Wilkinson had given me the route by which we were to reach Noireau: by steamer to Havre, across the mouth of the Seine to Honfleur, to Falaise by train, and finally from Falaise to Noireau by omnibus. It was an utterly unknown region to me; and I had no reason to imagine that Richard Foster was better acquainted with it than I. My anxiety was simply to get clear away.

In the afternoon the little girl arrived quite alone, except that a man had been hired to carry a small box for her, and to deliver her into my charge. This was a great relief to me, and I paid the shilling he demanded gladly. The child was thinly and shabbily dressed for our long journey, and there was a forlorn loneliness about her position, left thus with a stranger, which touched me to the heart. We were alike poor, helpless, friendless--I was about to say childish, and in truth I was in many things little more than a child still. The small elf, with her sharp, large eyes, which were too big for her thin face, crept up to me, as the man slammed the door after him and clattered noisily downstairs.

"I'm so glad!" she said, with a deep-drawn sigh of relief; "I was afraid I should never go, and school is such a heavenly place!"

The words amused yet troubled me; they were so different from a child's ordinary opinion.

"It's such a hateful place at Mrs. Wilkinson's," she went on, "everybody calling me at once, and scolding me; and there are such a many people to run errands for. You don't know what it is to run errands when you are tired to death. And it's such a beautiful, splendid place where we're going to!"

"What is your name, my dear?" I asked, sitting down on my box and taking her on my lap. Such a thin, stunted little woman, precociously learned in trouble! Yet she nestled in my arms like a true child, and a tear or two rolled down her cheeks, as if from very contentment.

"Nobody has nursed me like this since mother died," she said. "I'm Mary; but father always called me Minima, because I was the least in the house. He kept a boys' school out of London, in Epping Forest, you know; and it was so heavenly! All the boys were good to me, and we used to call father Dominie. Then he died, and mother died just before him; and he said,'Courage, Minima! God will take care of my little girl.' So the boys' fathers and mothers made a subscription for me, and they got a great deal of money, a hundred pounds; and somebody told them about this school, where I can stay four years for a hundred pounds, and they all said that was the best thing they could do with me. But I've had to stay with Mrs. Wilkinson nearly two months, because she could not find a governess to go with me. I hate her; I detest her; I should like to spit at her!"

The little face was all aflame, and the large eyes burning.

"Hush! hush!" I said, drawing her head down upon my shoulder again.

"Then there is Mr. Foster," she continued, almost sobbing; "he torments me so. He likes to make fun of me, and tease me, till I can't bear to go into his room. Father used to say it was wicked to hate anybody, and I didn't hate anybody then. I was so happy. But you'd hate Mr. Foster, and Mrs. Foster, if you only knew them."

"Why?" I asked in a whisper. My voice sounded husky to me, and my throat felt parched. The child's impotent rage and hatred struck a slumbering chord within me.

"Oh! they are horrid in every way," she said, with emphasis; "they frighten me. He is fond of tormenting any thing because he's cruel. We had a cruel boy in our school once, so I know. But they are very poor--poor as Job, Mrs. Wilkinson says, and I'm glad. Aren't you glad?"

The question jarred in my memory against a passionate craving after revenge, which had died away in the quiet and tranquillity of Sark. A year ago I should have rejoiced in any measure of punishment or retribution, which had overtaken those who had destroyed my happiness. But it was not so now; or perhaps I should rather own that it was only faintly so. It had never occurred to me that my flight would plunge him into poverty similar to my own. But now that the idea was thrust upon me. I wondered how I could have overlooked this necessary consequence of my conduct. Ought I to do any thing for him? Was there any thing I could do to help him?"

"He is ill, too," pursued the child; "I heard him say once to Mrs. Foster, he knew he should die like a dog. I was a little tiny bit sorry for him then; for nobody would like to die like a dog, and not go to heaven, you know. But I don't care now, I shall never see them again--never, never! I could jump out of my skin for joy. I sha'n't even know when he is dead, if he does die like a dog."

Ill! dead! My heart beat faster and faster as I pondered over these words. Then I should be free indeed; his death would release me from bondage, from terror, from poverty--those three evils which dogged my steps. I had never ventured to let my thoughts run that way, but this child's prattling had forced them into it. Richard Foster ill--dying! O God! what ought I to do?

I could not make myself known to him; that was impossible. I would ten thousand times sooner die myself than return to him. He was not alone either. But yet there came back to my mind the first days when I knew him, when he was all tenderness and devotion to me, declaring that he could find no fault in his girl-wife. How happy I had been for a little while, exchanging my stepmother's harshness for his indulgence! He might have won my love; he had almost won it. But that happy, golden time was gone, and could never come back to me. Yet my heart was softened toward him, as I thought of him ill, perhaps dying. What could I do for him, without placing myself in his power?

There was one thing only that I could do, only one little sacrifice I could make for him whom I had vowed, in childish ignorance, to love, honor, and cherish in sickness and in health, until death parted us. A home was secured to me for twelve months, and at the end of that time I should have a better career open to me. I had enough money still to last me until then. My diamond ring, which had been his own gift to me on our wedding-day, would be valuable to him. Sixty pounds would be a help to him, if he were as poor as this child said. He must be poor, or he would never have gone to live in that mean street and neighborhood.

Perhaps--if he had been alone--I do not know, but possibly if he had been quite alone, ill, dying in that poor lodging of his, I might have gone to him. I ask myself again, could you have done this thing? But I cannot answer it even to myself. Poor and ill he was, but he was not alone.

It was enough for me, then, that I could do something, some little service for him. The old flame of vengeance had no spark of heat left in it. I was free from hatred of him. I set the child gently away from me, and wrote my last letter to my husband. Both the letter and the ring I enclosed in a little box. These are the words I wrote, and I put neither date nor name of place:

"I know that you are poor, and I send you all I can spare--the ring you once gave to me. I am even poorer than yourself, but I have just enough for my immediate wants. I forgive you, as I trust God forgives me."

I sat looking at it, thinking of it for some time. There was a vague doubt somewhere in my mind that this might work some mischief. But at last I decided that it should go. I must register the packet at a post-office on our way to the station, and it could not fail to reach him.

This business settled, I returned to the child, who was sitting, as I had so often, done, gazing pensively into the fire. Was she to be a sort of miniature copy of myself?

"Come, Minima," I said, "we must be thinking of tea. Which would you like best, buns, or cake, or bread-and-butter? We must go out and buy them, and you shall choose."

"Which would cost the most?" she asked, looking at me with the careworn expression of a woman. The question sounded so oddly, coming from lips so young, that it grieved me. How bitterly and heavily must the burden of poverty have already fallen upon this child! I was almost afraid to think what it must mean. I put my arm round her, pressing my cheek against hers, while childish visions, more childish than any in this little head, flitted before me, of pantomimes, and toys, and sweetmeats, and the thousand things that children love. If I had been as rich as my father had planned for me to be, how I would have lavished them upon this anxious little creature!

We were discussing this question with befitting gravity, when a great thump against the door brought a host of fears upon me. But before I could stir the insecure handle gave way, and no one more formidable appeared than the landlady of the house, carrying before her a tray on which was set out a sumptuous tea, consisting of buttered crumpets and shrimps. She put it down on my dressing-table, and stood surveying it and us with an expression of benign exultation, until she had recovered her breath sufficiently to speak.

"Those as are going into foring parts," she said, "ought to get a good English meal afore they start. If you was going to stay in England, miss, it would be quite a differing thing; but me and my master don't know what they may give you to eat where you're going to. Therefore we beg you'll accept of the crumpets, and the shrimps, and the bread-and-butter, and the tea, and every thing; and we mean no offence by it. You've been a very quiet, regular lodger, and give no trouble; and we're sorry to lose you. And this, my master says, is a testimonial to you."

I could hardly control my laughter, and I could not keep back my tears. It was a long time now since any one had shown me so much kindness and sympathy as this. The dull face of the good woman was brightened by her kind-hearted feeling, and instead of thanking her I put my lips to her cheek.

"Lor!" she exclaimed, "why! God bless you, my dear! I didn't mean any offence, you know. Lor! I never thought you'd pay me like that. It's very pretty of you, it is; for I'm sure you're a lady to the backbone, as often and often I've said to my master. Be good enough to eat it all, you and the little miss, for you've a long journey before you. God bless you both, my dears, and give you a good appetite!"

She backed out of the room as she was speaking, her face beaming upon us to the last.

There was a pleasant drollery about her conduct, and about the intense delight of the child, and her hearty enjoyment of the feast, which for the time effectually dissipated my fears and my melancholy thoughts. It was the last hour I should spend in my solitary room; my lonely days were past. This little elf, with her large sharp eyes, and sagacious womanly face, was to be my companion for the future. I felt closely drawn to her. Even the hungry appetite with which she ate spoke of the hard times she had gone through. When she had eaten all she could eat, I heard her say softly to herself, "Courage, Minima!"

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

A LONG JOURNEY.

It as little more than twelve months since I had started from the same station on the same route; but there was no Tardif at hand now. As I went into the ticket-office, Minima caught me by the dress and whispered earnestly into my ear.

"We're not to travel first-class," she said; "it costs too much. Mrs. Wilkinson said we ought to go third, if we could; and you're to pay for me, please, only half-price, and they'll pay you again when we reach the school. I'll come with you, and then they'll see I'm only half-price. I don't look too old, do I?"

"You look very old," I answered, smiling at her anxious face.

"Oh, dear, dear!" she said; "but I sit very small. Perhaps I'd better not come to the ticket-office; the porters are sure to think me only a little girl."

She was uneasy until we had fairly started from the station, her right to a half-ticket unchallenged.

The November night was cold and foggy, and there was little difference between the darkness of the suburbs and the darkness of the open country.

Once again the black hulls and masts of two steamers stood before us, at the end of our journey, and hurrying voices shouted, "This way for Jersey and Guernsey," "This way to Havre." What would I not have given to return to Sark, to my quiet room under Tardif's roof, with his true heart and steadfast friendship to rest upon! But that could not be. My feet were setting out upon a new track, and I did not know where the hidden path would lead me.

The next morning found us in France. It was a soft, sunny day, with a mellow light, which seemed to dwell fondly on the many-tinted leaves of the trees which covered the banks of the Seine. From Honfleur to Falaise the same warm, genial sunshine filled the air. The slowly-moving train carried us through woods where the autumn seemed but a few days old, and where the slender leaflets of the acacias still fluttered in the caressing breath of the wind. We passed through miles upon miles of orchards, where a few red leaves were hanging yet upon the knotted branches of the apple-trees, beneath which lay huge pyramids of apples. Truck-loads of them stood at every station. The air was scented by them. Children were pelting one another with them; and here and there, where the orchards had been cleared and the trees stripped, flocks of geese were searching for those scattered among the tufts of grass. The roses were in blossom, and the chrysanthemums were in their first glory. The few countrywomen who got into our carriage were still wearing their snowy muslin caps, as in summer. Nobody appeared cold and pinched yet, and everybody was living out-of-doors.

It was almost like going into a new world, and I breathed more freely the farther we travelled down into the interior. At Falaise we exchanged the train for a small omnibus, which bore the name "Noireau" conspicuously on its door. I had discovered that the little French I knew was not of much service, as I could in no way understand the rapid answers that were given to my questions. A woman came to us, at the door of a _café_, where the omnibus stopped in Falaise, and made a long and earnest harangue, of which I did not recognize one word. At length we started off on the last stage of our journey.

Where could we be going to? I began to ask myself the question anxiously after we had crept on, at a dog-trot, for what seemed an interminable time. We had passed through long avenues of trees, and across a series of wide, flat plains, and down gently-sloping roads into narrow valleys, and up the opposite ascents; and still the bells upon the horses' collars jingled sleepily, and their hoof-beats shambled along the roads. We were seldom in sight of any house, and we passed through very few villages. I felt as if we were going all the way to Marseilles.

"I'm so hungry!" said Minima, after a very long silence.

I too had been hungry for an hour or two past. We had breakfasted at mid-day at one of the stations, but we had had nothing to eat since, except a roll which Minima had brought away from breakfast, with wise prevision; but this had disappeared long ago.

"Try to go to sleep," I said; "lean against me. We must be there soon."

"Yes," she answered, "and it's such a splendid school! I'm going to stay there four years, you know, so it's foolish to mind being hungry now. 'Courage, Minima!' I must recollect that."