Chapter VI: Turkey and Truffles

I must have slept for several hours, when I was awakened by the sound of a shrill voice that reached me from the courtyard below. For my room was at the back of the house, and looked out on a little paved court that lay on the other side of the narrow garden, and led through a cow-shed into the main street again. So primitive was the mode of architecture and the idea of comfort in the town of St. Pucelle.

‘_Tiens!_’ the shrill voice was exclaiming when my ears were suddenly made cognisant of its existence; ‘you are a fool—a pig, a _maladroit_, to fancy any such thing! She will cost twice the money to keep that one of our girls do. Can we feed her on nettle soup and dandelion salad? Will she eat rye bread every day, and be content with crust _potage_ for her dinner? And her presence here will make the town furious. We shall be beset by them; they will say you have no right to increase your family; and if you tell them the reason why, they will answer, “Then give us justice,” and you will look like a fool—as you are!’

‘But, my dear good Marmoret,’ replied a soft voice, which sounded wonderfully like that of my guardian, though I could not believe that it was he, ‘you are mistaken; I shall tell them nothing.’

‘And you think I have four hands to work with, perhaps, and four feet on which to run up and down these stairs from morning till night, that you bring me another person to cook for and clean after. Bah! but it is you that will find yourself mistaken! If justice is to be done to any one it begins with me, Marie Marmoret, who has slaved and toiled for the last twenty-two years without so much as a “thank you” for it.’

‘Is that quite true?’ demanded the same soft voice. ‘But you are not yourself to-day, my good Marmoret; let us leave the discussion of these domestic matters until tomorrow.’

‘_Not myself!_’ echoed Madame, sharply; ‘it is false. I am not myself when I cringe and smile and speak softly, and pretend to believe that which I know to be a lie; but I am telling you my true mind now, and you can make what you please of it. I am getting tired—that is the truth—tired and sick of it all; and I know not why I should hold my tongue more than others.’

‘Well, well! I am about to see Dumont and Chrétien to-morrow, and they will believe what I say to them, if you do not.’

‘And much good your seeing them will do them—poor fools! They’d better by far come to me. I could give them a piece of advice worth two of yours.’

‘Now, my dear good Marmoret,’ said the other voice, ‘I must entreat you to be reasonable. I can manage my own affairs perfectly well, and need no assistance. You must oblige me by not interfering.’

‘Bah! I have been “reasonable,” as you call it, too long. If Dumont and Chrétien are to see you, I do so first. Have I not the prior claim? Answer me that!’

‘Certainly you have, and I always acknowledge it. But be patient, and your reward will come.’

‘I should like to see it,’ grumbled Madame Marmoret, as she bustled into the house again.

Now the whole of this conversation, being carried on in voluble French, was not patent to my understanding; but I could catch a word here and there, and it made me uneasy.

Madame Marmoret was evidently very angry, and her anger was chiefly directed against me. I was sure that the first part of her conversation alluded to my arrival at St. Pucelle, and her disgust at the prospect of having more work to do in consequence. It was annoying to think I had been the cause of a disturbance so soon; but Madame Marmoret had judged me too hastily, and I had no doubt that when she knew more of me she would alter her opinion. I should never dream of entering a household with only one servant, without taking my share of its duties. She thought, doubtless, that I was a fine English lady, accustomed to be waited on for everything, and unwilling to raise a hand to help myself. She would soon find out her mistake. I could dust and sweep and make beds perhaps as well as she could, and I had fully intended to join Tessie and Ange in their domestic avocations the very next morning.

But what puzzled me was to guess to whom Madame could possibly have been confiding her grievances. At first I had thought the voice was like that of Mr. Lovett, but when I heard the familiar way in which she addressed her companion, I knew at once that it could not be her master with whom she had been talking. And I was further convinced of the justice of my conclusion when a tap at my door was followed by the entrance of Ange to tell me that dinner would be ready in a few minutes.

‘We have been for such a long walk, Tessie and I,’ she said, as she took off her broad-brimmed hat and fanned her heated face with it; ‘right up the hill and as far as the forest. It was delightful when we got there! You would have enjoyed it, Hilda! The trees are so big and beautiful, and under them it is as cool and as shady as a church. And you and papa have been sleeping all the afternoon away. Lazy people!’

‘Has your papa been asleep also?’

‘Yes. We found him fast asleep in the big straw chair. I hid behind it, and tickled his nose with a branch of flowering lime until he woke. It was such fun to see his dear old head bobbing round to find out who it was. Most people would have been cross, you know, but papa is never cross about anything.’

‘Not with _you_, I expect,’ I said, smiling.

‘Nor with anybody, unless they have done something very bad indeed. Papa is an angel; you will know that when you have stayed here a little while. He is a great deal too good for this world.’

‘They say the best praise a man can have is that of his own household.’

‘Then papa deserves the very best, for every one loves him—in the house and out of it—they couldn’t help it. He is so good and holy. I should have no fear at all about getting into heaven if I were only sure I might keep hold of his skirts.’

‘My dear, you shouldn’t say that of any man.’

‘I must say it of papa. I often think he is only half a man. He is so much more like some of those dear old saints whose lives Monsieur Morteville has lent me to read, and who were too holy to live with sinners upon earth. You will say the same in a few days, Hilda. But now it is dinnertime, and we must go down, or we shall get a scolding.’

‘Few gentlemen like being kept waiting for their dinner,’ I observed.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean from papa; he never scolds. It is Madame who will be so angry if we are late. And as likely as not she will carry off the dishes again, and leave us without any dinner at all,’ cried Ange, laughing, as she disappeared.

I did not consider it a laughing matter, and so I quickly arranged my toilet and hurried after her.

The meal was laid in the front room, I found, this time—the _salle_, as they familiarly termed it—and the family were already assembled there.

Mr. Lovett sat at the head of the table, looking like a veritable patriarch, with his table-napkin pinned to his breast, after the foreign fashion; the girls were on either side of him, and I found I was expected to fill the seat of honour at the bottom.

‘As the eldest, my dear—as the eldest,’ he averred. ‘It is your proper place.’

Madame now appeared with a large covered dish, which she put before her master, and the contents of which, on being disclosed, proved to be a turkey stuffed with truffles. I felt quite hungry at the sight. My _goûter_ had been sparse, and the roast turkey smelt delicious. I had no hesitation in answering in the affirmative when I was asked if I would take some of it.

I thought Madame Marmoret seemed to be muttering very much to herself when she held my plate to her master, and as she returned it to me, her words were audible enough.

‘Extravagance—ruin!’ she let off close to my ears, like so many pistol-shots of anger.

I saw Ange and Tessie colour and look at me and then at their father, and Mr. Lovett himself seemed to think it was time to put an end to such exhibitions of folly.

‘_Tais-toi!_’ he said quite sharply to the woman, and then, appearing to regret his harshness, he added: ‘We know what we are about, my friend. Suppose you help me to some potatoes.’

Tessie and Ange made a simultaneous grab at the potato-dish, and, under cover of their alacrity to help their father, Madame grumbled herself out of the room.

When the confusion which followed this episode had somewhat subsided, I looked round the table and saw that neither of the girls had taken any turkey. I suppose their father had offered it to them, but they had not accepted it. Tessie was eating some slices of spiced sausage and bread, and Ange had cut up an entire cucumber as her share of dinner.

‘Do you not eat meat?’ I inquired, without thinking.

To the thoroughbred Briton, there appears something so extraordinary in any one dining on vegetables and bread.

‘No,’ replied Ange, with a pretty blush, ‘we do not care for it. In this country you see few people eat it, and, for my part, I could live upon cucumbers all the year round.’

Mr. Lovett was evidently not one of the ‘few.’ He consumed his turkey and truffles with the air of a real connoisseur, returning to it until he had nearly caused the whole of the breast to disappear, and washing it down with copious draughts of champagne, a bottle of which stood at his elbow. He asked me to take a glass, but I declined. I had never been used to wine, and preferred drinking water, as I saw the girls do. If Mr. Lovett’s daughters did not care for meat, it was not because they meant to make up the deficiency by pudding, for no second course followed the turkey. Some Gruyère cheese and biscuits were put upon the table for their father, but the flavour was too strong to suit anybody but himself. Tessie picked some ripe figs and grapes from the walls of the house and offered them to me in her sweet shy way, and we sat together on the sill of the window that looked out upon the street, eating our fruit and watching Ange perched upon her father’s knee, tying up the silver curls that hung over his brow with little bits of blue ribbon, as she was accustomed to do with her poodle’s top-knot.

It was a charming sight to see them together—the handsome old man with his look of proud contentment, and the beautiful girl who was playing with him; both so like and yet so unlike each other; she in her extreme youth and innocence, and he with the weight perhaps of five-and-sixty winters on his brow. Yet, when at last her gentle touch had sent him off to sleep in his chair, he almost seemed the younger of the two, as he lay back, peacefully slumbering, with scarcely a wrinkle on his fair smooth skin, and the little witch’s blue ribbons fluttering in his silver hair.

Meanwhile Ange joined Tessie and myself in the window-sill, and there we sat whispering to each other of all the thousand and one foolish things that enter young women’s brains.

‘And are you the only English in St. Pucelle?’ I asked, after we had finished discussing the place.

‘Oh, Tessie! only hear what Hilda is saying!’ exclaimed Ange. ‘What would Miss Sophia Markham do if she were to hear her? She would have a fit of hysterics, at the very least.’

‘Sophia Markham! That sounds dreadfully English,’ I observed.

‘And Miss Markham considers herself essentially French,’ replied Tessie, laughing. ‘She is constantly putting us right on subjects with which we have been familiar from our birth, and on more than one occasion she has been kind enough to correct our accent for us.’

‘What an unpleasant person! Does she live here?’

‘No; it is difficult to say where she lives——’

‘I can tell you,’ interrupted Ange, ‘with whoever will take her in.’

‘Or let themselves be taken in,’ continued her sister. ‘Miss Markham is ubiquitous. She has no settled home, but we seem to meet her everywhere. This summer she is staying here with a family of the name of Carolus, from Brussels.’

‘And, poor things, how sick they are of her! I am sure I pity them, having to listen to her silly chatter all day.’

‘Well, Ange, it strikes me that Mrs. Carolus and Miss Markham get on very well together. They are inseparable companions, and have always some mutual acquaintance to abuse. This Miss Markham is really clever, Hilda; she can do anything in needle-work, and is very talkative and pleasant——’

‘When there are gentlemen present,’ interposed Ange.

‘Oh, Ange! that is spiteful of you, though I must allow she is more pleasant with them than with her own sex.’

‘Is she a young woman?’ I asked.

‘Oh no! I should think she must be forty or more, but she always talks as if she were very young indeed, and she calls me and Ange “mere children.”’

‘I know the sort of woman you mean, exactly. We had one of them at Norwood, who made herself pre-eminently ridiculous. They can never believe they are too old for love or admiration, and they generally dress so as to make themselves the laughing-stocks of society.’

‘Oh! that is true, Hilda. Miss Markham borrowed a pelerine from Ange last week, and has come out in one exactly like it.’

‘Is it not strange,’ said Ange, musingly, ‘that Madame, who in general dislikes strangers so much, should have taken such a fancy to Sophia Markham? She says she is “_une dame très amiable_,” that she has “_l’air noble_,” and would well adorn a throne! What can Madame see in her to say all that?’

‘I am sure I cannot tell, Ange. Hilda will see her for herself, and then she can judge. But Miss Markham does not comprise the whole English population of St. Pucelle. There are, I should think, at present about a dozen families of visitors here, beside several single men for shooting.’

‘Is there shooting about here, then?’

‘Oh yes, in the forest of Piron—wild boars and rabbits, and hares and wolves——’

‘_Wolves!_ Tessie! Are you in earnest? You make me shiver.’

‘Indeed there are! And M. Condé keeps one in a cage, which we will show you. And there is excellent trout-fishing here also, Hilda.’

The mention of sport had recalled my young travelling companion to my mind, and I suddenly exclaimed:

‘By the way, I met some one on my journey from England, who told me that he knew you both: some one who met you at Rille, when you went to be confirmed there.’

Notwithstanding the fast-falling dusk, I saw the crimson mount to the cheek of Ange.

‘Who can it be?’ said Tessie. ‘Was it Mr. Henderson, a very old gentleman?’

‘No; this gentleman was quite young.’

‘Not Mr.——’ began Ange, and there she stopped short, and would say no more.

‘Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. It was a Master Frederick Stephenson who is at school at Mr. Felton’s, and was greatly interested at hearing I was coming to live at St. Pucelle. He seems a very nice boy. He was so kind and polite to me about my luggage and train-ticket.’

‘Oh! is that all?’ said Ange, disappointedly.

‘Ange thought it was a duke at the very least, coming back again to propose for her,’ said her sister.

‘I didn’t,’ pouted the little maid; ‘but we know such heaps of school-boys. It is nothing new to hear they come backwards and forwards. I do not remember Master Stephenson, but Mr. Felton is a great friend of papa’s, and we stayed at his house whilst we were in Rille.’

‘_Bonjour, mesdemoiselles_,’ said a courteous voice at the open door, and we started to see a gentleman enter the _salle_.

‘Monsieur le Baron!’ exclaimed Tessie and Ange in a breath, as they rose to their feet, and having saluted the new-comer, introduced him to me as the Baron de Nesselrode.

‘Papa! papa! here is Monsieur le Baron!’ cried Ange, as she pulled the blue top-knots out of her father’s curls and wakened him with a kiss on either cheek.

Mr. Lovett appeared delighted to welcome his friend, and they were soon engaged in active conversation.

‘Such an unfortunate young man,’ whispered Tessie to me, under cover of the gentlemen’s voices. ‘He belongs to one of the highest families in France, but he got so dreadfully into debt that his creditors have confiscated all his fortune, and only leave him a wretched little estate in St. Pucelle to live upon. Is it not melancholy? The poor Baron always looks so sad and dull to me. He has nothing to do but to shoot and visit his neighbours, and during the winter season we are almost the only people left here. Papa is very fond of him. He pities him so much, and thinks he has been so hardly used for a little wildness.’

‘And papa’s daughter seems to follow his example,’ I said, smiling.

‘Oh! no, _indeed_!’ remonstrated Tessie, earnestly; ‘but it _is_ sad to be left to live alone so young—don’t you think so? He is not thirty yet.’

Ange, entering at that moment with a lamp, showed me that Armand de Nesselrode was not only young, but very good-looking, which made me still further inclined to doubt whether fair-haired Tessie had not mistaken her feelings of compassion for him. He had an air of melancholy also that, combined with his dark languid eyes and the story I had heard, made him doubtless a very interesting object. He did not appear, however, to have paid his visit for the sake of seeing the Miss Lovetts, for, after the first ordinary greetings that had passed between them, he confined his attention entirely to their father, with whom he seemed to be on terms of the greatest intimacy. Cigars were produced and lighted, which was apparently the signal for the weaker sex to retire, as Tessie immediately asked me if I would go into the next room with them and have some music. Music I had little inclination for, but the wisdom of withdrawal I saw at once.

‘Papa always likes to be left alone with the Baron,’ said Tessie, as we entered the smaller apartment, ‘they have so much to talk about together.’

The girls asked me to sing, but I begged them to excuse me. I possessed a good voice, and the use of it had formed one of my favourite occupations. I had been accustomed to sing at all sorts of places: in church choirs, for charitable concerts, at evening parties; and _she_ had always been so proud to accompany me to the scenes of my small triumphs, and to double the praises I earned. Now I felt as if I should never sing again.

My voice, except for the common purposes of speech, would be as silent as hers from whom I had inherited it. I have learned since that this is the commonest feeling attendant upon sorrow. But grief was new to me then, and I believed myself to be thoroughly in earnest. Presently Ange sat down to the tinkling old instrument, whose notes were a misery to listen to, and began to sing—in low tones at first, but louder as she gained confidence—a French _chansonnette_. The little maid had not much volume of voice, I could have extinguished it with mine in a couple of bars; but what she possessed was so sweetly fresh and true, that it was a real pleasure to hear her. I sat at the window gazing up into the dark blue sky, now besprinkled with stars, and could have fancied I was listening to a child-angel singing—that is, if they ever sing _chansonnettes_. By-and-by she passed into a Latin hymn—one of those half-solemn, half-joyous chants that are so much in use in the Catholic churches, and then indeed I could look up to heaven through my tears and wonder if _she_ were listening too. Did she know of the sudden change that had taken place in my life, or were all my doings, my thoughts, my joys and my sorrows, to be matters of indifference to her thenceforward; to her who had ever been so ready to sympathise with me, even if I had a finger-ache? Under the influence of this thought and the music, my tears fell faster, and, unwilling that the girls should perceive my emotion, I rose, with the intention of going to my own room for a few minutes until I should have recovered myself. But the geography of the house was as yet unfamiliar to me, and in the dusk I made a mistake, and turned the handle of the door that led into the _salle_ instead of that which would have taken me to the kitchen.

I closed it again at once, but not before I had seen what was going on inside. The Baron and Mr. Lovett were seated close together at the table, playing cards by the light of a shaded lamp. There was not much harm in the circumstance, perhaps, but I had been brought up with rather strict ideas with regard to the clergy, and it offended my ideas of propriety. Yet, after all, what was there in a game of cards? I asked myself, as soon as I was alone. It was not likely that Mr. Lovett would play for anything but the pleasure of defeating his antagonist. And in a place like St. Pucelle, where there was no amusement to be had but such as one might devise for one’s self, it seemed hard that even a clergyman should be deprived of any innocent diversion. So I put the game of cards to one side, under the general decision that I must not judge the customs of one country by those of another.