The Girl from Paris

by Joan Aiken

  “Not with all those honest burghers squeaking away on their fiddles like demented gannets. I tell you, preserving a straight face through those soliloquies was the hardest thing I ever did.”

  “Indeed?” said Ellen coolly. “Excellent training for your diplomatic career, I should have thought. I am sure Madame would be gratified to learn of your efforts.”

  “Why, you could have played the part better!”

  “Thank you! But I am afraid I must leave you.” She started to move away. He detained her by grasping her wrist.

  “Don’t run away, Nell! Listen—can’t you join René and me later for a cutlet at the Jardin des Lauriers?”

  “Take supper with two young men? At a public restaurant? Are you mad? In any case, we shall be busy half the night, putting back the furniture.”

  “Oh, very well.” He did not seem unduly surprised, or cast down, at her refusal. “Would you care to come driving tomorrow?” he remarked, as an afterthought.

  She was surprised, but said firmly, “It is out of the question. Tomorrow is a normal school day.”

  “Well—then—don’t tell Mama, when next you write home, that I didn’t do my best to give you a treat!”

  The angle of Ellen’s jaw suggested that she did not take his good intentions at a very high value; and that her correspondence with his mother was not of a particularly warm or prolific nature. Again attempting to disengage her wrist from his clasp, she remarked drily, “I take it you have no news from home to give me?”

  “None of any consequence,” he replied in a similar tone. “In point of fact, I have not been down there since hunting ended—and then I only stayed a week; the Petworth hunt is a pitiful affair. All at the Hermitage seemed as usual then: my mama was in her usual fidgety spirits, complaining of her uninspiring neighbors; your young brother was meager and mumchance, as always; our little sister as repellently spoiled a brat as ever; and your papa laying down the law in his accustomed style. Nothing new. No—stay: the old cat died.”

  “What?” exclaimed Ellen, before she could stop herself, in a tone of genuine grief. “My cat Nibbins? Why—he was not so very old.”

  “No, well, I believe he was caught by a fox, or some such thing, Vicky told me. She was rather cut up about it. Ah, there goes René, signaling to me—he has had enough, poor fellow. Good night, Nell.”

  He let go of her hand, moved rapidly away among the other black-coated young men, and was at once lost to view.

  Ellen stood staring after him for a moment, with clenched hands and head drawn back. She took several deep ragged breaths, as if she had been running. She felt sore and pummeled, as always after one of her engagements with Benedict. Then, calm once more to outward appearance, she was moving away when Madame Bosschère, whose lynx eye missed nothing, intercepted her. Madame had, of course, by this time put off her scholar’s gown, and was resplendent in black velvet, russet lace, and a cap trimmed with sequins; she had been darting about the carré like a comet, making sure that all the parents received appropriate salutations.

  “Ah, ma chère Elène—so you have seen your brother the Honorable Benedict! That is good, that is right. Such an excellent young man—polished, well bred, thoroughly estimable. And is it true that one day he will be a vicomte?”

  “No, madame,” said Ellen, the touch of dryness in her tone again. “It is the elder brother who is Lord Easingwold. Benedict is merely honorable—unless his brother should die, of course.”

  “Ah, bien sûr. No matter, he is wellborn, one can see it in his look, and sure to make his way. Now, my child, I wish to hold a conversation with you on the matter of your welfare. You must come to my closet later, when the guests are gone.”

  “Tonight, madame? But—it will be late—after midnight, very likely.”

  “No matter; what I have to say is of importance. Do not forget.” And the Directrice glided away, shedding affable smiles wherever she went, receiving the compliments given for her enactment of the Shakespearian role with a look of modest, twinkling satisfaction, as being no more than her due.

  Ellen slipped away for a moment into a small practice room, unlit, for all its lamps had been taken to add splendor to the grand carré. For a moment weariness, of body and spirit, overcame her; she leaned against the wall, with her hands pressed against her eyes, trying to ignore the distant throb and squeak of fiddle and drum. But almost immediately her attention was caught by a closer, lesser sound: a faint, suppressed sob from a shadowy corner of the room.

  “Who is there?” Ellen demanded sharply. Her eyes, growing accustomed to the dim light, now discovered a small figure crouched on a stool. “Mary-Ann Gray? Is that you? What are you doing in here? Why are you not dancing with the rest?”

  “Oh, please, Miss Paget, don’t send me back! The others all laugh at me because I don’t know how to dance; and they say that my dress is too short, and ugly besides, and that I look a f-f-f-fright!”

  Mary-Ann was the youngest and most recently arrived of the English pupils; her father, a Yorkshire wool merchant, had left her in Brussels only three weeks ago. Now Ellen, drawing her to the doorway, saw that she was half drowned from crying, her nose red and swollen, her eyes puffy and bloodshot.

  “Fi donc! Look at you!” scolded Ellen gently. “What is all this about?”—as if she did not know very well.

  “I’m so h-h-homesick! The other girls are so unkind. And”—with another burst of tears—“it’s my little b-brother’s birthday tomorrow. He will be missing me so!”

  “Now listen, my dear,” said Ellen. “This will not do.” She had an impulse to put an arm round the little girl’s shoulders, but suppressed it. The child must learn to manage on her own. “We have all, all been homesick,” she went on. “When I first came here, I was no more than your age, and I was ready to die with misery at first.”

  A sudden piercing recollection came to her of those first hopeless days: running downstairs in the morning, early, before the other boarders, day after day, looking for a letter in Mama’s handwriting, which never came. She swallowed, and said, “But you will soon get over that. We all did. And then you will find that the other girls are not so bad! Only do not let them see that they have made you cry. Why, your face is quite swelled up. Crying does not help, really; in fact it makes you feel worse. Here, lean your head over the end of the sofa—that will clear your nose. Stay like that while I run to the kitchen; I will be back directly.”

  She procured from the cook, who was resting and imbibing cognac after her labors, a piece of ice and a cupful of vinegar. The ice was applied to Mary-Ann’s cheeks and eyes, the vinegar was used to bathe her forehead. “Your hair needs tidying,” said Ellen, and did it with a comb from her reticule. “There! Now you look fresh as a daisy, and I want you to walk calmly back into the carré and take your place with the girls in the grand chain. It is the last dance. Hark! I hear the fiddlers striking up.”

  “Oh, please, no, Miss Paget, I can’t!”

  “Most certainly you can. You look just as you ought. Nobody is going to laugh at you. It will all be over in five minutes, and then you can go to bed. Run along!”

  She gave the child a little push. Obediently, almost hypnotized, Mary-Ann walked back to the ballroom, and, after a moment or two, Ellen followed, straightening her shoulders as if she, not Mary-Ann, were the new pupil expecting to be met with hostility and ridicule.

  In fact nobody noticed her entrance. Guests were beginning to leave, and the large room was all in restless motion, with parties assembling together, parents bidding farewell to their daughters, final civilities being exchanged with the Directrice. Ellen wearily and dutifully placed herself where a departing parent could, if the need were felt, pause to consult her over a child’s difficulties, or congratulate her on progress; she braced herself to stand upright, wishing it were permissible to sit, or to lean against the wall.

  “There you a
re, at last!” exclaimed a voice in her ear. “I have been hunting for you, high and low. Where have you been?”

  “On my duties, Monsieur Patrice.”

  “Duties, bah! What an occasion for duties. But I can see that is true,” he went on more mildly. “Poor child, you look worn to the bone. Come aside, here, into the cabinet for a moment—I imagine you have taken nothing at all during this whole gallimaufry.” He seized her by the arm and led her into a small office where Madame transacted school business, and which Monsieur Patrice used as a workroom and study when he visited the building. “Parties—balls—festivities,” he went on irritably, pulling a decanter and two crystal glasses from a closet. “How I despise them! False compliments are exchanged, platitudes, inanities—there can be no sensible conversation, no profound thought expressed in such an atmosphere. There is only fatigue and ennui and idiocy! Here, drink this, it is porto, it will do you good. And sit a moment.”

  Obediently as Mary-Ann, Ellen sat, and sipped the sweet powerful stuff.

  “I should go back; they will begin moving the furniture,” she murmured.

  “And are there no hired footmen, no porters, no menservants to do that—I say nothing of those great bullocks of girls?”

  “They will do it carelessly and all wrong; and Madame will need me.”

  “So? I need you,” he said. “Mon amie, listen: I have a request to put to you; a favor to ask.”

  Ellen stared up at him in silence. Her face, from six years’ training, was well schooled to calm, but a great hope grew and became luminous in her eyes.

  Monsieur Patrice began to walk impatiently up and down the small room. Although not a tall man, he had a decision and vehemence in all his movements that made him impressive. He was active and nervous, not powerful, but fiery and rapid in his intelligence and quick apprehensions. He paused and bent an almost mesmeric look on Miss Paget.

  “You, my friend, are the one person I can talk to in this establishment—you are a remarkable soul—a spirit in a thousand! And yet how often can one procure even five minutes’ converse with you? It is insupportable! Your mind clears mine, as a solvent works on a reagent; you create a path in my wilderness, order in the ferment of my crowding ideas. You are my complement; by means of your analytical aptitude my light is organized into a spectrum. You are, in effect, a necessity to me!”

  “Oh, monsieur!” she murmured, overawed.

  “If I had you by my side—for a week, a month—for a day, even—what might I not accomplish! This situation here is wrong! It is not to be endured, that you must creep about here, like a mouse in a trap, permitted to blink at the light only through bars. You must, must be free!”

  A delicate color had come up into Ellen’s pale cheeks. Her eyes had begun to shine. But, still wholly uncertain as to his meaning and wishes, she remained silent, breathing quickly, watching him with a faint pucker of perplexity between her brows.

  “Look here!” he continued. He had on his velvet-trimmed surtout, as if he had been on the point of departure. From its pocket he dragged out a mass of papers, crumpled and crisscrossed with writing. “See, this here is my outline for a new chapter in my treatise. It deals with the subject of human love. But the writing is incoherent, loose, rambling; I find that I cannot marshal my thoughts, I need you beside me at the desk to discuss the subject.”

  “Human love?” she faltered.

  “Passion and charity, Eros and Agape. Oh, it sounds so simple when I say it in spoken language!”

  Does it? wondered Ellen.

  “Par exemple—your love for your brother, your child, your friend, your mate, your mother,” Monsieur Patrice went on, his words tumbling one over another. “Each is different in form, and how to analyze these differences?”

  Ellen felt herself drifting into a strange state of shadowy lassitude. The strong, heady porto, taken on top of her deep physical fatigue, had clouded her normal vigilant wariness; instead she experienced a series of dreamlike perceptions, visiting her in flashes, like swift glimpses through moving mist. With half her attention she heard the Professor’s words: “…your friend, your mate, your mother…” My love for my mother? she wondered. Long-buried recollections floated into her mind: a slight, dark-haired woman in a white dress knelt laughing under a yew tree—“Only see, Ellie, the hedgehog, see his little feet!” Or indoors, at the dining table, patiently inscribing a row of pothooks for her daughter to copy; reading Milton aloud in a clear dispassionate voice; playing hymns on the piano for Papa, changing over to Beethoven when he fell asleep, which he invariably did after five minutes; chuckling, after the visit of a formidable neighbor: “Lady Martello looks exactly like a heron.” And that strange confidence, given once, never again referred to: “You know, Ellie, you had a twin brother, but he died at birth; poor Papa was very upset and angry about that; it took him a long, long time to forgive me—if, indeed, he ever has; though it was not my fault. But—because of that—I have always felt that you were somehow doubly my child.” Oh, Ellen cried in her heart, and I felt so too, Mama! specially as Papa was so wholly uninterested in me. Another memory: the same figure, but with gray streaks in the dark hair, walking slowly, a hand pressed to her side. “No, I am not tired, but I have a little chill; half a day in bed will mend me.” But a day had not, nor a week.

  “Is this not a noble subject!” cried Monsieur Patrice with enthusiasm. “Human love! A subject requiring—demanding—thorough investigation, thorough consideration.”

  Ellen felt humble. To be here, alone, with this brilliant man, at such an hour, discussing such a subject—what an honor, what a felicity! Yet also, with deep apprehension, she knew that such a moment must be paid for; life always presented its accounts with merciless speed.

  As indeed on this occasion. For there was Madame Bosschère in the doorway, her brow black with disapprobation.

  “Mademoiselle Paget!” She chopped out the syllables like cordwood. “You are here? Why—may I ask—are you not superintending the rearrangement of the carré?”

  “I am very sorry—I was just about to, madame—” began Ellen.

  But Madame’s gaze, like a lighthouse ray, had moved on to her cousin.

  “Patrice! May I ask what you think you are doing? This is folly—abysmal, puerile, disgraceful folly; unworthy of you—perfidious to me! Good God! What would the world say, if it were known that you had made such an assignation, here, like this, alone, with a young girl, a teacher who is in my charge? Remember your situation—your promises—remember who you are!”

  “Oh, pray, madame—it was no assignation, indeed it was not!” Ellen protested.

  But Patrice glanced at Madame Bosschère like a caged creature. Though his eyes glittered with rebellion, he seemed brought up short by her words; he stood motionless, hands dangling at his sides, head bent, staring at his black, shining boots; Ellen, who scarcely dared breathe, began to be filled with a sickening realization that his purpose—whatever that was—had been deflected, if not wholly frustrated.

  “Promises?” he muttered, half to himself. “Ay, my God, what promises, made in youth, under duress! Such promises are shameful, they are for slaves, not for men!”

  Nevertheless he tucked the pages of manuscript slowly back into his velvet pocket.

  “But whatever you say—more discourse with Mademoiselle Paget I must and will have!” he suddenly snarled at his cousin, who stood with her arms folded, like Buonaparte on some hard-won field, confident of reinforcements at hand which the opposing force could not possibly match.

  “No! You must not, Patrice! Nor will you. I forbid it: now, absolutely, and entirely. You must put Miss Paget from your mind—wholly, forever, and at once!”

  Now, surely, he will defy her, thought Ellen. Now his brilliance will flame out. This man I know to be a genius. Compared with her plodding commonplace talent for administration, his mind is like the sun blazing out its light in
to space; now—if he chooses—he can totally annihilate her.

  But he did not choose. Ellen waited, breathless. The expected confrontation did not come. Patrice turned, slowly, his head still bent, his shoulders expressing defeat; the spirit seemed to dwindle inside him, like a blade sliding back into its sheath; even his eyes looked sunken and darkened, dying lamps on the brink of extinction. Without a glance at Ellen, without another word, he trudged from the room.

  Ellen quivered as if she had been stabbed. The shock, the disappointment, the shame of witnessing such an unexpected transformation in somebody she had looked up to, almost with reverence, far outweighed any apprehension at what Madame Bosschère might now say to her. But, in fact, to her surprise, when she turned her eyes unhappily to that lady, she found that Madame was regarding her with a kind, even an affectionate smile.

  “Ma pauvre petite! This is a sad business for you! Oh, how much simpler it would be if the whole race of men could be exterminated—or, better still, kept immured in a Garden of Zoology as pets, where the females could visit and feed them when they chose! I truly believe that men are too dangerous to be permitted at large among us. Consider Patrice, now, my cousin—what a charmer he is, but what a garçon, a gamin, an irresponsible child! I know, I know—you think him a genius; doubtless he is one. But, because of this great intellect of his, you, my poor child, must now leave Brussels and begin life over again in a new ménage. Oh, it is unfair! Still, perhaps, in the end, it will be for your good. It is, to be sure, time that you spread your wings a little.”

  “Leave Brussels?” gasped Ellen, hardly able to believe her ears. “Madame, you are not serious? You are not dismissing me?”

  “Oui! Et à l’instant, même! You must pack up your things tonight, and be ready to depart by midday tomorrow, so that you may travel under the escort of Miladi Morningquest. Oh, don’t worry, you are not leaving here in disgrace—nobody but us two shall ever know about this little incident! Indeed I am truly sorry to lose you—I grieve to part from you, my little one. But we must be practical! You could remain here no longer; it would be neither possible nor convenable for you to be meeting Patrice about the classrooms after this.”