by Joan Aiken
“I do not envy her,” the pearl-braceleted lady was heard to remark.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” screamed Menispe into Ellen’s ear. She twisted, she kicked, she scratched, she bit. Ellen, however, was wiry, though small in stature, and she was also well accustomed to dealing with brawny young Flamandes, who had been known, on several occasions, to offer physical violence to their preceptresses; this skinny little scion of French aristocracy was no match at all for her. And the child was, indeed, overtired; by the time that Ellen had left the gaming rooms, traversed two more lengthy corridors, and climbed another flight of stairs, the small flaxen head was already lolling against her shoulder. And when they entered a very pretty child’s room furnished with rosewood and blue chintz hangings, little Menispe was three-quarters asleep. She opened her eyes to mutter again, “I detest you, I shall never love you, never!” then sank into profound slumber, as her bonne, a pleasant-looking Norman girl in red petticoat and printed cotton gown started forward to receive her.
“Ah, la petite! Elle est bien fatiguée. It is not well done of Monsieur le Comte to keep her up so late. Merci, mademoiselle.”
“I will bid you good night,” said Ellen, who could scarcely keep awake herself.
“Your chamber is close by here, mademoiselle,” Gaston said, eyeing her with even more respect. And he conducted her to the door of an equally pleasant room with a chintz-canopied bed, velvet-upholstered easy chairs, lace curtains, and a Pompadour glass on the dressing table. A fire blazed in the grate, and someone had already unpacked her trunk and laid out her nightdress, which looked skimpy and poverty-stricken spread out on the satin quilt.
“Thank you; good night,” said Ellen, digging in her reticule for the pourboire which he undoubtedly expected. With a little irony she wondered whether life in this lordly household might not cost more than she could afford.
“’Service, mademoiselle,” and he was gone.
She found hot water in a porcelain jug, and rose-scented soap in an alabaster dish. What a contrast to the rue St. Pierre, and Madame Bosschère’s institutional dormitory with the rows of narrow white beds, thought Ellen, sponging little Menispe’s bite marks, some of which had drawn blood, on her arms and wrists. And to think that last night at this time I was talking to Monsieur Patrice…
Shall I ever see him again?
The day had been too long and too confusing; her last thought, as her head sank into the opulent, down-filled pillow, was a vision of home: the bluebells like gray lace under the orchard trees, the cuckoo calling in the valley; then she slept.
Five
Ellen had assumed, from what Lady Morningquest had said about the Comte de la Ferté, and from his wife’s scornful allusion to “four hours in four hundred” that she would not be seeing much of her pupil’s father.
She was somewhat astonished, therefore, halfway through her first morning at the Hôtel Caudebec, when he appeared in the schoolroom. Since it was to be inferred that he had entertained his guests in the gaming rooms until an advanced hour of the night, or morning, it might reasonably be assumed that he would still be asleep, rather than vigorous, alert, healthily glowing, tiré à quatre épingles, in an elegant dark-green riding costume, apparently having been up and about for several hours.
Ellen felt herself at something of a disadvantage. She had been greeted with such hostility by little Menispe when she presented herself that morning that she saw there could be no progress made in teaching the child until time had improved the relations between them. Accordingly Ellen had at first appeared entirely to ignore the glowering Menispe, and had occupied herself instead with beguiling activities, involving the use of silver paper, wax, artificial flowers, feathers, cardboard, and scraps of satin and gauze, which she had procured with the assistance of the bonne. When these occupations failed to ensnare Menispe’s interest—though Ellen noticed one or two inquisitive glances—she resorted to simpler tactics, building a large baroque structure on the table with a box of child’s building bricks which she had discovered in a closet; their chipped and battered condition suggested that the set was in frequent and favorite use. Menispe had not been able to withstand this lure.
“Those are my bricks!” she indignantly shouted. “Not yours!”
“I know they are yours,” calmly responded Ellen. “And I am building you a beautiful palace with them.”
“It is not beautiful!” And with a sweeping gesture of fury Menispe ran to the table and destroyed the elaborate edifice with a blow of her fist.
Content at the result of her stratagem, Ellen proposed, “We will see how quickly I can build another tower before you can knock it down.”
“No we will not!”
But the child could not resist the destructive pleasure of demolishing Ellen’s ornamental creations—often before they were half completed—and, despite herself, she was being drawn into a kind of hostile partnership in this make-and-break game, when her father unceremoniously entered, tossing his riding whip onto a chair.
“Papa!” Instantly Menispe ran and clung to his leg like a squirrel.
“Well, mignonne? Are you working hard with your new teacher?”
“No, I am not! I hate her! Tell her to go away, Papa!”
His eyes met those of Ellen over the child’s head, and she realized that her first impression, only a moment before, had been a false one. The brief glow from riding in the fresh air had already left him; his eyes were set in hollows, and his thin features were pale.
“No, mignonne, I will not do that,” he said, tousling the child’s flaxen head. “Mademoiselle is here to make you into a clever lady, like your mama. Soon you will be doing all kinds of pleasant things with her.” And to Ellen he said, “Though I must confess, Mademoiselle—?”
“Paget.”
“Ah yes, Paget, forgive me; I must confess that when you appeared last night like one of the Erinnyes, and bore off this fillette, I was apprehensive! I feared you might deal hardly with her, and wear out her little life with severe disciplines. But I see my fears were groundless. Au contraire. Tout va bien. May the good work continue!”
And he smiled at the scatter of blocks over the table and floor, retreating as rapidly as he had come.
“Papa, stay! Do not go!”
“I cannot stay, petite. I have business affairs to attend to.”
“Can I come and be your bonheur when you play at the tables?”
He glanced guiltily, laughingly at Ellen, who kept her face blank.
“Not tonight, chérie. Maybe I do not play at the tables tonight. Au ’voir!” And he was gone.
* * *
Naturally, after this very correct paternal visitation, Ellen expected that the Comtesse would also appear in the schoolroom to discuss hours of work, methods of tuition, curriculum, and so forth. Or that she would summon her new employee for such a purpose. But during the next two days neither of these things happened.
When she woke on her first morning in the Hôtel Caudebec, Ellen had congratulated herself on the comforts of this new existence. Her bruised and sorrowful heart might have been left in Brussels, but at least her body had its creature comforts: the fire already lit in the hearth, the cup of chocolate brought to her bedside by a chambermaid, the charming, luxurious room.
But she soon realized that these solaces were going to be dearly bought.
After three days of battle against the hostility, willfulness, inattention, screaming fits, utter ignorance, and frenetic overactivity of little Menispe, Ellen sought an interview with the Countess. When, after considerable difficulty, this was achieved, Ellen came bluntly to the point.
“Has your daughter ever been examined by a doctor?” she asked.
Louise glanced up with an air of slight irritation from a book which she had been studying with absorbed concentration as Ellen approached her. She seemed intending to make it clear
that, since a governess for her child had been thrust on her without reference to herself, she was absolved, thereby, from any further concern regarding the educational process.
“A doctor? No, why? She is not ill? Quite the contrary, in fact, rudely healthy.” She raised her blond brows and gave Ellen a cold smile. “Last time I attempted to take her out in the carriage she kicked my shins, wore me out with her wriggling, and completely ruined a yellow jaconet walking dress.”
“Of course Menispe is not sick. That was not what I meant.” Ellen reined in her patience as best she could in the face of this willful non-comprehension. “But I wonder if such unbridled energy is normal in a child her age? And—although in some ways she is quite forward—her vocabulary is excellent, for example—in other areas her aptitude seems oddly poor. Of course—”
Of course, that might be because she has been almost entirely left to her own devices, Ellen had been on the point of saying, but stopped in time. This might quite possibly be the explanation, however. Such of the household as had, at one time or another, been moved to try and impart a little basic instruction to the child, had soon given up in despair, it was plain, daunted by the impossibility of persuading the mercurial little creature to sit still and pay attention for more than two consecutive minutes.
Louise said haughtily, “You are suggesting that my daughter is wanting in her wits? Mad?”
“Of course not, Countess. I would not dream of making such a ridiculous suggestion. On the contrary; in many ways she is unusually advanced.” In her grasp of the game of roulette, for instance, Ellen thought. “But she has an almost complete lack of ability to concentrate—”
“Oh, my dear Miss Paget—what do you expect in a child of four?”
“And unusually poor physical dexterity,” Ellen persisted doggedly, “which, coupled with her nonstop, tireless, almost hysterical activity, makes me wonder if there might be some slight maladjustment of the nervous system—which a doctor might be able to help—”
“Oh, mon dieu, my dear creature! If you come here and find fault with us in this way, I shall begin to regret that Aunt Paulina—however excellent her intentions—ever imported you into our household.”
Again Louise gave that brief, unamused smile, the corners of her pale mouth turning down, not up, her eyelids drooping to disguise the chill in her eyes. “And—do forgive me—but what can you know of such matters? You are, after all, quite young; your experience is necessarily limited—”
“I have taught children of all ages in a large school for a period of four years—” Ellen countered stubbornly.
“—And, moreover, you are judging the poor little angel on a basis of—what? Three days? Is not that a trifle premature?” Louise glanced sidelong at her charming gilt clock with the nine Muses. “Dear me! How very late it grows. I fear I must ask you to withdraw, dear Miss Paget, for I have the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle to commit to memory; I am to conduct a discussion on them in my salon this evening. So, pray, my dear creature, do not burden me any further, just now, with nursery matters.”
Germaine de Rhetorée, who had been absorbed in writing at a distant escritoire, now stood up, stretched, and strolled toward her friend. She had apparently passed the night in the Hôtel Caudebec; she wore a primrose-colored velvet negligee with fetching falls of lace.
“What is vexing you, my tigress?” she inquired.
“Oh, it is nothing, dear Camille—nothing at all.” Again the disdainful smile flickered briefly as Louise glanced at the governess. “Miss Paget here finds my tiger kitten too active.”
“Active? Surely a four-year-old should be a bundle of activity and curiosity?”
Ellen shrugged and withdrew. She did not intend to embark on a discussion with Mademoiselle de Rhetorée. Curiosity, though, she thought, returning to the nursery wing (which was situated at a considerable distance from the rooms occupied by the Comtesse)—curiosity is just what seems signally lacking in the child; she overturns objects, she empties drawers, she causes chaos and confusion, she interrupts, she contradicts, but she does not ask questions; she shows no wish to learn.
But perhaps that is due to the atmosphere in the Hôtel Caudebec?
As Ellen crossed the golden boudoir she heard Germaine remark, “After all, perhaps the poor child takes after her father—who, we must admit, must we not, has himself never grown out of the schoolroom?”
Louise merely laughed in reply. The laugh was unexpected: a warm, conspiratorial bubble of sound, wholly unrelated to her sour smiles.
I don’t blame Lady Morningquest for mistrusting such an influence on her niece, thought Ellen; I would imagine that Mademoiselle de Rhetorée is about as helpful to the marriage as a hyena in a hen coop.
Sighing, she once more addressed herself to her struggles with little Menispe.
At first Ellen had assumed that a child who seemed to have received so little adult attention might, in the end, be wooed by the sheer unaccustomed pleasure of being the object of somebody’s full-time care and attention. But after several days she was obliged to admit that she had been mistaken. Menispe was not to be won by anybody’s solicitude. She did not want attention. At all times she wanted to be doing, and she wanted the results of her actions to be as visible and far-reaching as possible. She was an unselfconscious child, often hardly aware when she was under scrutiny; but when she did become aware, the attention focused on her was a cause for annoyance, not gratification; she would charge head-down like a little bull at any grown person who bothered her with questions; she would kick shins, bite, or throw whatever article was to hand. If she felt that too much pressure was being put on her she would react by a screaming fit, lying on her back, drumming her heels, becoming first red, then blue in the face; after these convulsions she would be limp and sick for several hours, needing treatment with ice packs and tisanes.
Toward two people only did she display any feeling: her father, whom she patently adored, and her bonne, Véronique. The latter came in for a fair number of bites, thumps, and kicks, but also for some rough careless affection; by Véronique, Menispe would allow herself to be tucked in bed at night and kissed without instantly hitting out or struggling away. For her mother she evidently felt a bewildered kind of awe, regarding her as she might a fairy or some mysterious spirit who had come to take up habitation in the house; but this reverence was not enough to prevent the child from exasperating Louise every time they met by her fidgets and clumsiness; she was seldom permitted to remain in her mother’s boudoir for longer than five minutes. It was plain that Menispe had a strong dislike for Germaine de Rhetorée, at whom she invariably scowled and put out her tongue; but some of the awe she felt for her mother extended to her mother’s friend; Germaine was not in danger of physical assault. The latter, on her side, evinced a cool interest in the child, and would watch with dispassionate pity as Menispe committed some act of folly or disobedience and was dragged kicking and screaming from the room.
Ellen possessed an unladylike gift of which Lady Morningquest was quite unaware; it would have scandalized her to know that her goddaughter could whistle like a bird—or like a boy. Quite by chance one afternoon, a few days after her installation at the Hôtel Caudebec, when Menispe, made even more restless than usual by rainy weather, had overturned a chair, spilt a pot of ink, and torn some engravings in her urgency to get away from the table where her governess was trying to encourage her to draw, Ellen discovered the power that a simple tune held over her wayward charge.
Putting down sheets of blotting paper to soak up the spilt ink on the green baize table cover, Ellen had commenced an absentminded whistling. To her amazement Menispe, who had darted away to the farthest corner of the room, now came creeping back, eyeing her preceptress with wonder.
“What tune is that?”
“It is called ‘J’ai du bon tabac.’ Do you not know it?”
The untidy flaxen head was shaken vigor
ously.
“Oh! Well, I will sing it to you sometime.”
“Now!”
“No, not now. Now I am busy mopping up the ink that you knocked over.”
“Sing it now. Now!”
Ellen shook her head, smiling a little, guessing that here, possibly, she might have a lever, by means of which good behavior—or at least cooperation—might be achieved.
“Another time. When you have done something to please me.”
At this moment the schoolroom door opened. Unexpectedly, Germaine de Rhetorée strolled in. Ellen had encountered her several times by now—she seemed a constant visitor in the Hôtel Caudebec; but she had never approached the nursery wing before. This afternoon Ellen was startled and somewhat shocked to see that she was wearing men’s clothes—or at least a replica of a man’s costume: the strapped trousers, redingote, high stock, had all been copied in rough, cream-colored silk. She had metal-heeled boots and carried a stylish top hat; her hair was tied back by a bandeau. Tall, supple, with her firm chin and strongly marked brows, she looked like a handsome boy.
Little Menispe, at sight of her, furiously thrust out her lower lip and retreated to a corner, where she set to work energetically stripping the wool off a toy sheep set on rockers. Ellen had already decided that there would be no purpose at all in continual prohibitions; let the child fulfill her bent for destruction, if she must, on objects that were of no particular importance.
“You do not forbid?” Germaine inquired, indicating the activity with raised brows.
“I reserve my fire for major engagements,” Ellen replied coolly.
Germaine smiled. Ellen, as on the night of her first arrival, was struck by the immense charm of this smile. It seemed to light her face, her whole being, the room itself, with warmth and friendship. Her large dark-gray eyes opened wide, revealing greenish lights in their depths.
“So quickly you are learning to deal with the poor little flibbertigibbet! It would certainly require more patience than I possess!”