Chapter V: Ange

‘Ange is your sister’s name, is it not?’ I asked her.

‘Yes. And you will like her so much. She is such a darling! She was baptised ‘Angela,’ but we have always called her Ange for short. The country people gave it to her first. She was so pretty, like a little angel, running amongst them with her golden curls, and they named her ‘_Petite Ange!_’ And then we took it up, and she has been called so ever since.’

‘It is a very pretty abbreviation! Is there much difference in your ages?’

‘Five years. I am three-and-twenty, and she is but just eighteen. Am I younger than you?’

‘By a twelvemonth only. I hope we shall be very good friends, Tessie—if I may call you so.’

‘Yes, indeed you must; and I must call you by your name—Hilda—since papa says we are to be sisters. But if you should find the life here too dull and stupid after England! That would be very sad for all of us, would it not?’

‘Why should you anticipate it? I have not been accustomed to a gay life, Tessie. I lived all alone with my dear mother until—until——’

‘Yes, yes, I know!’ cried the girl, with ready sympathy.

‘And, as you may imagine, I am hardly likely to wish to mix in scenes of gaiety now. All I want is rest and peace.’

‘Shall we ever get it in this life?’ inquired Tessie, in a low voice.

I looked up at her in astonishment.

‘I mean—I mean—’ she went on confusedly, ‘that I am not going to let you stand here any longer. Come and see the bedroom I have prepared for you.’

For we were still lingering in the barely-furnished dining-room by which we had entered the house. She led me through a second apartment, smaller than the first, but bearing more signs of occupation, having an old piano in one corner, a case of books in another, and a cage of canary birds singing loudly in the window. Then, to my astonishment, we entered a large stone kitchen, from which a flight of stairs led up to the bedroom floor. At the table in the centre sat an old Frenchwoman, shredding potatoes into a wooden bowl; but whether she was a servant or not I felt puzzled to decide. She wore a stuff gown, as good as Tessie’s, with a scarlet worsted shawl, notwithstanding the heat, pinned tightly across her bosom, and a net-cap much ornamented with artificial flowers and ribbons, such as is never assumed by the lower classes in Belgium except on Sundays and fête days.

She did not look up, either, as we entered the kitchen, nor show any sign of noticing our presence until Tessie addressed her, as I thought, with some timidity.

‘This is Miss Marsh, Madame; she has just arrived by the diligence, and I am about to take her up to her bedroom that she may refresh herself before luncheon.’

‘Very good! You know your way there,’ muttered the woman in French, going on with her occupation.

‘We generally have our luncheon about this time,’ said Tessie to me, ‘but if you would like to take any refreshment beforehand——’

‘What refreshment would you offer her, unless it be an apple and a glass of sour beer?’ interrupted the potato-shredder, who appeared to understand English perfectly, although she spoke in French.

‘Oh, Madame! we can surely find Miss Marsh a roll and a little butter,’ replied Tessie, with a nervous laugh; but I assured her that I should need nothing until the family meal was announced.

I heard the Frenchwoman grumbling to herself as we ascended the stairs, and trusted that a close association with her would not form a necessary part of my new life.

‘Madame Marmoret is not very genial with strangers,’ remarked Tessie, as we entered a long bare corridor upon which the doors of the bedchambers opened.

‘Is she your housekeeper?’ I inquired

‘She is our everything. She nursed me and Ange when we were babies, and has reared us ever since. She is the cook and the housemaid and the footman and the butler all in one. But she is a shocking tyrant, and Ange and I hardly dare call our souls our own when she says that we shall not.’

‘Why don’t you get rid of her, then?’

Tessie’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.

‘Get rid of Madame Marmoret! We should almost as soon think of getting rid of papa. Oh, no! we shall never get rid of her, as long as we live. She is an “institution.” She wouldn’t go even if we asked her. She would turn us all out of the house first.’

To me, who possessed a strongly conservative spirit, and had no idea of permitting my inferiors to take a liberty with me, Tessie’s mode of talking about Madame Marmoret appeared only as excellent satire. I was yet to learn that it was sad and sober truth. But we had arrived at my bedchamber, and though I was a little disappointed at its want of size, all the bulk of the house seeming to be monopolised by passages and staircases, I could not help observing with gratitude the evident care that had been bestowed on the arrangement of the little white bed, and the muslin curtain that draped the window, and was touched beyond measure at the discovery of a small blue silk pincushion on the toilet-table, ready filled with pins, with ‘Hilda’ worked across the front of it in white beads.

‘Ange did that,’ said Tessie, delighted with my pleasure at the sight; ‘she was making that all last week, especially for your table. She wanted to work a little cross beneath your name, but I would not allow her. I thought you might not like it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the English, as a rule, are so superstitious. They are afraid of a cross. One would think it portended evil. But Ange is so good—so pious! She would live in the church, if it were possible.’

‘Is your church far from here?’

‘Ah! I did not mean our church—I meant that of our good friend, Monsieur Morteville. No, it is not far off—it is just over the way. But it is not a church at all. It is only a room.’

My face fell. I had always greatly enjoyed the services of religion, especially where well conducted, and I felt I should need the comfort of them more than ever now.

There had been something in Mr. Lovett’s manner and appearance—I know not why—that had led me to hope that I should derive much solace from being under his care. I suppose it was the look of extra refinement that had misled me. But Tessie’s description of their place of worship was very discouraging.

‘Only a room!’ I echoed, in a tone of disappointment.

‘Yes, and such an ugly one! It is a schoolroom on week-days, and we have to sit on the dirty benches that the children use. I play the harmonium, and Ange leads the hymns, but it is sorry work. It will be better now you have come. I hope you will sing with us. Papa is grand, of course. He is grand whatever he does, or wherever you put him; but it makes me sad to see him thrown away in such a horrid place. I always feel he ought to be preaching in a splendid cathedral like St. Gudule, at Brussels. He looks altogether out of place with whitewashed walls.’

‘St. Paul, in the upper room at Athens,’ I said, smiling.

‘Ah! St. Paul was never half such a man as our father. He ought to be Archbishop of Canterbury at the very least, or, as Ange says, Pope of Rome!’

‘He is certainly a very fine-looking old gentleman,’ I acquiesced.

‘Do you think he looks _old_?’ said Tessie. ‘He never seems to grow old, to Ange and me. It would be a dreadful thing to wake up some day and find that papa had really changed into an old gentleman.’

I could not say he looked young, and so I discreetly held my tongue. I had not quite completed my toilette when a bell was heard to tinkle.

‘I must go!’ cried Tessie. ‘That is Madame ringing the bell for me to lay the table for _goûter_. You see, Ange and I are obliged to help her in these little matters, or she could not get through her work. Do you think you can find your way downstairs again, Hilda, without me?’

‘I am sure I can,’ I answered; and in a few minutes more I proved my words by following her through the kitchen to the apartment which held the piano. There I found her busily employed in laying the luncheon-table, and singing a little French song as she worked.

The repast was a very simple one, but it looked inviting. There was a loaf of rye bread, a country cheese, a large basket of rosy apples, a bowl of custard, and a plate of _gaufres_, which Tessie told me she had made herself. Everything was beautifully clean, but there was evidence of strict economy, if not of poverty, in the arrangements, which, remembering what I had been told of the Reverend Horace Lovett’s grand patrons and connection with court, rather surprised me. However, I was no gourmand, and did not give a second thought to the matter. As soon as the _goûter_ was prepared, Madame Marmoret went out at the front door and rang a handbell violently on the balcony, which was shortly followed by the sound of her master’s voice and footsteps as he obeyed the signal to return home.

‘There is papa!’ exclaimed Tessie, ‘and there—yes! there comes Ange with him! I thought she could not be much longer. They must have met in the street.’

At this moment Mr. Lovett, his face beaming with kindly benevolence, appeared on the threshold of the room we sat in, dragging a girl after him by both her hands held in one of his.

‘Here she is,’ he said; ‘here’s my little maid, Hilda. I found her hiding somewhere away in the cow-house, afraid to show her face indoors for fear you would bite her nose off; and I believe she would have stayed there till to-morrow morning if I had not chanced to come across her.’

‘No, no, papa! indeed,’ remonstrated Ange, with the same foreign accent I had observed in her sister, ‘you are not just to me. I am not afraid: I was only going round to give the eggs to Madame, and take off my hat before presenting myself to Mademoiselle Marsh.’

He swung the girl in front of him, and nearly pushed her into my arms.

‘Go and present yourself to Mademoiselle Marsh, then,’ he said, mimicking her pronunciation.

As she stood before me, with her heightened colour and a deprecating look upon her face, I thought I had never seen such a pretty creature before as Mr. Lovett’s ‘little maid.’ She was dressed in black serge, like her sister, and had a white muslin pelerine crossed quaintly over her bosom; a straw hat, with a black ribbon tied round it, and a wide flapping brim that almost hid her features, formed her head-dress, and a plain silver cross, depending from her throat, was her only ornament. But how shall I ever describe her face! that mobile face, the expression of which changed every second, like a restless sea that never can keep still; and that delicate variable bloom, that rose and fell in crimson waves with every emotion that passed through her sensitive little brain! In actual appearance she was very like the old man, which accounted for his evident pride in her. She had his rich blue eyes, with long dark lashes and well-marked eyebrows: the chestnut hair—which I afterwards learned he had also possessed when young—with a natural wave in it like his, that kept it rippling low on her brow and the nape of her neck and round about her ears in little sunny curls. The tip of her pretty nose was just sufficiently tilted to redeem it from being aquiline, and her laughing mouth, displaying a row of firm white teeth, was childlike in its dewy roseleaf bloom.

I am not given to falling into raptures over the perfections of my own sex: few women are, in this century of pearl powder, belladonna, rouge and auricomus. But it was just because I had detected and been disgusted at such falsehoods, that I gazed at Angela Lovett as at something that I had never seen before. She looked as if she had but just stepped down, fresh made, from the hand of her Creator.

‘Oh, Ange!’ I exclaimed involuntarily, my admiration made patent by my voice, ‘I hope that you will like me!’

‘Like you—why, of course she will! what should she do else?’ replied her father, answering for her. ‘We must hear no more of likes and dislikes after to-day, Hilda! Here are my three daughters, all ready to attend me at my _goûter_, and I mean to make no distinction between them henceforward. So now, my little maid, kiss your sister Hilda, and let us see if Madame has given us anything that my poor old teeth can manage to crack for luncheon.’

The old gentleman’s kindness made me feel so completely at home, that when Ange blushingly advanced to salute me, I opened my arms and pressed the girl to my heart as if she had indeed been my younger sister. I was not surprised, as we gathered round the table, to see that Tessie had slipped out of the room and returned with a basin of hot soup, which she placed before her father, whilst Ange silently rose and produced a small tin of rusks for him to eat with it. It was but right that the old man, whose digestion was probably impaired, should fare more daintily than his young daughters, who could eat anything.

I resolved that, before the morrow came, I would ask Tessie to let me share in the labour of waiting on him and attending to his wants.

He was good enough to call me his daughter, and I would not take the name unless I were allowed to fulfil the service. So we girls ate rye bread and cheese and munched apples, whilst Mr. Lovett sipped his soup and sherry, and talked to us of the days before we were born, when he had been hand-in-glove with some of the highest and most celebrated names in England, until I wondered why he should have left a country which was reeking with patronage and interest for him, to bury himself abroad, even though it were as the tutor of a German prince. I could not venture, however, to put the question, although I did ask him if he had not greatly missed the associates of whom he spoke on first leaving them.

‘Yes, my dear Hilda, you are right. I certainly did so, but my motto through life has been, _Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra_. It was duty that called me to this country; a hard and difficult duty it is true, but one which I could not have neglected without sacrificing what was dearer to me than pleasure—my sense of right!’

And Mr. Lovett struck his broad chest with an energy that raised him very considerably in my estimation. There is something so ennobling in the sight of a man who is strong enough to conquer inclination in the cause of his religion. His girls regarded the sentiment he had expressed with the same admiration that I did. I could see Ange’s blue eyes beaming upon him from the opposite side of the table, whilst Tessie’s looked tenderer than before. It was beautiful to see their devotion to their father. How glad I was to find myself in a family who respected and loved each other, and were, moreover, so perfectly united.

On rising from the table, the girls asked me if I would accompany them in a walk, but the fatigue I had encountered since the day before was beginning to make itself palpably felt, and I decided to spend the afternoon in my own room, putting my wardrobe in order. Tessie offered to assist me, but I declined her services. After so much novelty and excitement, the idea of a few hours’ rest and solitude was grateful to me. But when I got alone I found I was too tired even to think. I turned out the contents of my boxes into the wooden press that waited for them, and then I flung myself down upon the inviting-looking little bed and fell fast asleep.